#QUIET FISHERMAN GUY WITH A MYSTERIOUS PAST

[everwisp]

a3 farming sim au and guy is that one fisherman you always see by the docks when you run errands, one day you decide to talk to him and it’s awkward at first but as days go by you bond over fishing and he’s made you a fishing rod to help get you started 🎣

[astarlightmonbebe]

Word Count: 8.4k (it turned out long, sorry)

Genre: Suspense, mystery, thriller...?

Warnings:  Mentions of death, violence, suicide, mental unstability (this is kind of dark I guess)

The following is a transcript of a video by patient Yang Jeongin, ward A, room 304. 

“Hello.  My name is Yang Jeongin.  I am a patient in ward A of the hospital, room 304.  Today, I am here to tell you the reason I’m here-the story behind this all.”

*nervous cough*

“I have been a patient at this hospital for almost three months and have gone through extensive therapy and psychological treatment.  This was recommended by both my therapist and psychologist, in hopes that recounting the events that have landed me here, spiraling out of control, will help me to recover and move on from this trauma.”

*YJN takes a deep breath*

“My name is Yang Jeongin.  I am a seventeen year old male, from Busan, and this is the story of what happened.”

“Everything started when Felix died-no, it had all started long before that, but it was Felix’s death that opened our eyes to the world around us.  I was fifteen then...when I met them that is.  I had just moved from Busan, since my parents had gotten a divorce.”

*an awkward laugh-patient seemed uncomfortable*

“I was always a quiet kid, kept my head down.  I never had a lot of friends either, both because of home problems and school issues as well...I was smart but I could never use it to do well, so I was always falling behind and then struggling in vain to catch back up.  It wasn’t like I was an outcast...but people just stayed away from me.  It was like they could tell there was something ‘off’ about me-”

*a pause*

“But anyways, that’s not-let’s not....”

*a longer pause*

“That’s not what I’m supposed to talk about today.  I shouldn’t dwell on a past I’ve already tried to move on from.  As I was saying, earlier, is that...I met them when I started high school.  Not intentionally, in fact, I never thought our paths would ever cross, but....they did.”

*a laugh*

”I transferred in the middle of the semester, so there was some commotion.  Mostly I tried to avoid other people, not get in the way, but I started getting bullied.  I’m used to abuse, I mean to bullying, but I really thought I could avoid it this time.  I guess there’s something about me that just sticks out no matter what.  At least they didn’t really physically hurt me, just trashed my textbooks, the usual crap.

I was planning on just lowering my head and taking it, but this idiot with orange hair just had to step in-”

*patient genuinely laughed here, finding the memory funny*

“To explain it more clearly, one day, when I was in the cafeteria, they tripped me.  I went sprawling, banged my head on a table on the way down, which really hurt.  I remember just feeling like my head was splitting open as I laid on the floor-I guess I was bleeding but I didn’t realize it then.

Someone came over and started yelling at them; I could only make out their shoes, these dumb blue Converse that I kind of liked, but they were so beaten up and drawn on.  Also, the kid was a twig.  I mean, I’m also a kid and a twig, and maybe it was the ‘head injury maybe concussion’ that made it all so funny, but there was this kid with carrot colored hair and a fisherman hat yelling while I enjoyed the view of his shoes.

I swear they were about to beat him up, but then this other person came over crouched next to me.  My first impression on them was that they were short but looked like the scariest person in the room, in all black with those heavy combat boots that can break your ribs with a well aimed kick.  I know that because, well, it’s happened to me.  By the owner of those boots, but that’s later, another story.

Anyways, they-he-helped me to my feet, and then he glared at the bullies.  If I was them, I would have been terrified, which they were.  Mostly I was feeling woozy, so I can’t recall much of it, except they took me to the nurses.  I do remember thinking that it was weird, people showing that they cared.  I must have said it out loud as well, because the orange haired one told me, and I quote;

‘Not everyone at this school are jerks, you know.  You should be more careful, you’re dripping blood all over the floor.’  I’m not sure if he was trying to be nice or cruel, but I smile when I think back on it.

Later, when I woke up, I found out that their names were Han Jisung and Seo Changbin respectively-Jisung with the orange hair and Changbin in all black.  You probably recognize those names if you’ve read through the newspapers or my files.  I know a lot of people call them the bad guys, and maybe they are, were, but at that moment they were the first people who had bothered to even talk to me.  

I’ve never felt much love before, so I don’t know if it was them being kind that made me trust them or something else, but we became friends.  Sort of.  Mostly it was Jisung who took all the steps to including me after that; walking to classes together and sitting together at lunch, waiting for me at my locker so I wouldn’t have a chance to be bullied.  

If you’re watching this through a screen, if you’ve read about it in your tabloids or whatever, you don’t get it.  You don’t fu-I mean, you don’t flipping understand any of it.  This isn’t an entertainment show.  You didn’t know Jisung, I did, and even if you guys are saying he did a lot of bad things, he was kind to me, okay?!  He was kind to me when nobody else freaking was-!”

*there was a ten minute break for patient to regain control of his emotions and breathing* 

“I’m sorry about that.  It just, it’s been really difficult, trying to reconcile the people everyone’s saying they are with the ones I knew and called my friends.  It doesn’t make sense, no matter how much I think about it, but---it’s been three months, and I can’t move on from this yet.  

Going back to my story, it was through Jisung that I met Hyunjin and Felix and Minho.  The three of them were a dance crew that mostly performed underground.  They were so cool, like an untouchable clique that was at the top but not with the top, if that makes sense.  I’d seen them in the hallways, and I was always a bit in awe at the sight of them, like they were right off the cover of a magazine.  Which they are now, in a sense.  I’m glad they didn’t get too involved with everything, honestly.  At least some of use are still ‘safe’.

At first I was really skeptical about the three of them.  I learned not to trust people-in fact it was weird that I even started to trust Jisung, a little bit in Changbin as well.  My instincts should have been screaming at me to keep my distance like they usually did, but for those two, they didn’t.

Still, there was something a little bit off about those three to me.  Maybe it was Hyunjin’s smile or how Minho always looked like he was keeping a secret, but it made me almost hate them.  I regret how against becoming their friends I was in the beginning, because that was so much precious time we could have had.  Felix was the one I liked the most, maybe because Jisung liked him the most.  

I learned later that the two of them had history, which isn’t something I want to delve into right now.  It’s personal for the two of them, and even I don’t think I should have known about it, even if it was their choice to tell me.  Ah, but I shouldn’t keep talking about it.

I also got the feeling that they didn’t like me much, which is why it was surprising when Hyunjin helped me.  I need to rewind a bit for that sentence to make sense.  It was a time when I was actually home for a night, not out until late like it had usually become.  It was easier, better that way, hanging out with my friends, usually at the tunnel the underground took place in, and not having to worry about harsh words or anything.         

It was a night when people were over, and I want to glaze over the details so that I can get through this.  Basically, it ended with a broken bottle slamming into my arm and slashing it, me running out before more could hit their actual mark this time.  I was crying I think, kind of numb, blood running between my fingers, and I was just panicking and trying to run away.

It occurs to me now that I didn’t know why Hyunjin was out that late at night, except he was there to catch me when I almost fell, eyes filled with concern.  He took me to the ER, and he waited with me while I got stitches and bandages.  I guess he must have paid for it too, because I don’t remember them even asking about money.  I asked him not to tell anybody, and a part of me was sure he was nodding just to nod and then was going to blurt it out to the rest of them so they could laugh for hours, but he never did.  He didn’t tell anyone.

That was the turning point about what I thought about them.  There was something different between us, not exactly friendship but something close to it.  It was never as much with Minho, but I grew to respect him as well.  And Felix, of course, just had a way of making everyone who met him love him instantly.  That’s why his death was so hard, partly, because it seemed impossible that someone who was loved so much and loved everyone else could have just died, like that wasn’t something that was supposed to happen.      

We started hanging out together in this one big group.  I was always the center, and it was magical to me, suddenly becoming someone untouchable in the midst of all these unattainable people.  A nobody to somebody whose name you knew.  I wasn’t used to it, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but it was safe there.

It made life a little more bearable.”

“I had just turned sixteen when I met Woojin and Seungmin.  They were transfers like me-let’s see, Woojin was a senior, and Seungmin was a junior if I remember right.  Then again, that was only last year.  I saw them during lunch, or really Seungmin.  My first impression was that he looked like I used to-a loner, an outcast-but more confident, like he didn’t even care.  He sat alone at a lunch table in the back with his earbuds in.  Woojin came and sat down across from him, but he didn’t even look up.  They ignored each other the whole lunch period, which I thought was weird.

Later I found out that they were stepbrothers, not real siblings, and things got explained, which I’ll get to.  I was going to go and greet them, but by that time it was too late.  We talked about them; mainly about how little there was to say; which was weird because usually everyone knew everything.  

I didn’t talk to Seungmin until the following week, when I had to spend lunch in the library due to some assignment.  I saw that he was sitting at an empty table-after the first day he never came to the cafeteria again, and Woojin just sat with different people.  He was friendly to everyone, but they weren’t always back, yet it never seemed to deter him from trying.  I really admired that.  

Anyways, so I sat down next to Seungmin and I said hello, except he had his earbuds in, so I had to wave in front of his face to get his attention.  He looked really annoyed.”

*a half laugh, patient smiled briefly*

“He started to pack up and leave, but I convinced him to stay.  We started talking-well, I tried to engage him in conversation.  Seungmin never really gave me a straight answer to any personal questions, which I didn’t pick up on then but can’t stop thinking about now.  It’s funny right?”

*a short pause*

“Seungmin gave off his angry, lonely vibe as well, but it was more toned down back then.  I mean, I would notice it from time to time when he got upset and didn’t say anything, or when he glared...yeah, there were points it made me feel unsettled, but who was I to judge?

One thing I did learn was that Seungmin didn’t like talking about Woojin, even if they would walk together.  He always made a point to ignore him, but Woojin never gave up either.  So I had to talk to Woojin separately, which was easy because he and Minho had become friends.  It took a couple weeks for him to be fully welcomed into our group, mostly because Changbin and Jisung took a little time trusting him.  

I learned that those two-Changbin and Jisung that is-had a hard time welcoming new people.  Hyunjin told me once that it had been Jisung and Changbin for a long time before it had also become Jisung and Felix, and even then there was something that had clicked for those three.  I’m not sure why Felix never really hung out with them one on one then, maybe he just found Hyunjin and Minho and it turned out that way.  Anyways, Hyunjin told me that it took a long time for himself and Minho to be treated like they were friends, to be trusted.  I remember that surprised me, since they all seemed so close.

I asked Seungmin once if he wanted to hang out with my friends and I, and he just told me no and not to ask him again.  I was hurt by that for a while, but I just acted like I had gotten over it.  Thinking back on that, which is something I’ve done multiple times by now, just replayed it over and over in my head, he was really angry.  His eyes were flashing, his tone was so snappish-but I didn’t even realize it, I just thought he was being his usual blunt and antisocial self.  

I don’t know exactly how, when, or why my friendship with Seungmin became a sort of secret, but it did.  We never hung out at the same time, I never talked about him either.  Mostly we saw each other at the one class where I was at an advanced level for once and Seungmin a mediocre one for once.  We only hung outside of school a handful of times; I asked Seungmin way more than that, but he always had excuses.

He always had his freaking excuses.”

*note that last sentence was very bitter, there was a long stretch of silence afterwards*

“It wasn’t like I was living two different lives, it was just two different parts of the same one.  Somehow, Seungmin and I became close despite what little time we seemed to spend together.  He didn’t text or call much-it was like I was the one leading the relationship and keeping it from crashing into the ground.

Now, if you’ve been following the news, you’ll have realized that I’ve mentioned every name except for one.  Chan.  Or Bang Chan, Chris, Bang Christopher, whichever one you’ve heard.  That’s because Chan is complicated.

He was always at the school, but I guess I just never noticed him because he had never really made himself known.  Halfway through sophomore year, he was the person everyone was talking about.  Why?  You’re about to find out.”

*patient winked with a crooked smile at this, but he didn’t look like he was happy*

”The reason everyone was talking about Chan was because of the lawsuit.  A big, rich family was pressing assault charges.  It was a criminal case, not a civil, which was part of why it was such a big deal.  Sometime over the break several kids had ended up in the hospital and Chan had walked out of it with nothing but a broken arm and a black eye.  

People were saying that he wasn’t saying anything.  He was being completely emotionless about the whole thing, and he wasn’t denying nor confirming the charges.  He was like a dark horse, parting paths as he walked down hallways.  Honestly, I wasn’t scared of him, but he did look very blank.

It was Changbin who approached him first.  He and Jisung had been talking about it for a while, but not for the same reason everyone else wanted to talk to him.  It was something else.  Changbin stepped right up to him in the middle of the hallway and asked him to come to lunch.  Chan just blinked-it was something we laughed about later, but I was clutching my books and hoping a fight wouldn’t break out.  Still, he came with us, still not saying anything.

I remember that Hyunjin grabbed my hand under the table, as if compelling me to keep under the radar-he was the only one of us who seemed actually scared of the boy with curly black hair and a bright pink cast.  He looked like he was trying to be brave, but his hand was shaking when he squeezed mine.  It was strange of him, he was literally very pale.  Usually nothing fazed my friends.

We all have skeletons in our closets, though.

Jisung asked Chan if we could sign his cast, and just like that he was automatically another one of his misfits.  He didn’t know it, but it was obvious that Jisung and Changbin had accepted it in.  While we signed his cast, he asked; “Aren’t you going to ask if I did it?”  Like he had been waiting for that.

Changbin shook his head.  “I know you did.”  He said and then he smiled, which was almost unnerving to me.  “I just want to know why.”  Chan shook his head.  “Maybe later.”  He said, and Changbin looked angry for a minute, but he hid it well.  I had just become good at reading my friends.  Though it turned out I wasn’t, not really.”

*a bitter laugh*

“So there was the eight of us, and then there was Seungmin on the outer edges, his only connection me.  Things started to become different a couple of months before Felix died-which would be around a little bit before I turned seventeen, so I’m guessing November?  Summer had been fun, so carefree, but school was slowly locking us back down, especially with Woojin, Chan, and Minho studying furiously for tests and college applications.  

Chan’s trial was coming up, and it had us all on edge.  Little changes were happening as well; Jisung was coming to school exhausted every single day and almost falling asleep at lunch.  It kept landing him detention when he slept in his classes, which he took without his usual complaints.  Hyunjin was hanging out with us less and less, claiming it was because of school and dance, but even Minho would make time.

Changbin and Chan had become close friends, and I could tell that was the main reason Hyunjin was becoming more and more uncomfortable and far away.  I could tell Felix felt caught in the crossfire, Hyunjin would never hang out when Chan was around unless he was forced.  

Me, on the other hand, well I was worried for Seungmin.  He was becoming more and more closed off, that cold anger brimming beneath the surface.  I had been hanging out with him less since my group and I had been doing more and more stuff together, even if it was just studying.  We really had become close, the family I had never had.  You get it right?  What it’s like to actually feel loved.  Like you belong somewhere.  I don’t know if he was upset or not, but when he talked he was almost always annoyed and clipped with me.  It was hurtful, honestly.  It was like he didn’t think of me as someone worth his time, even though I treated him like a friend.

It was on a particularly bad day that we fought.  I had been unable to sleep and was a living zombie through my classes, failing a test and bombing a presentation.  At lunch the tensions had been high, Jisung was extremely stressed about something and he and Changbin weren’t speaking to each other either, making the whole table unbearable to sit at.  Jisung was kind of sick as well, he was wearing his mask and he looked like he hadn’t slept or eaten in days.  I-I didn’t mention it to anyone, and it slipped my mind at the time, but when he moved, his shirt rode up and his abdomen was covered in purpling blue and black bruises.

I whispered to Felix at lunch that day to ask what was the matter, and he told me that he was pretty sure it had something to do with Changbin and Chan.  It was a cryptic answer, but Chan and Changbin had been talking more than usual while Jisung slipped into the shadows.  It was weird if I thought about it then, like Jisung was uncomfortable with the two becoming so close.

Woojin sat down and he asked Chan what his plan was for the trial, and Chan had smiled back in this dark way, saying; “I don’t need a plan, even if they have evidence there’s no way they’ll win.  I’ll get away free, like I always do.”  It was an unusual for Chan to talk like that, and Hyunjin had stood with a clatter, knocking his chair back, and bolted out of the cafeteria with his hand over his mouth.  

I was going to run after him, but Minho had already went, casting a nervous glance backward.  Chan had looked chastised, but as he bent his head to take a bite of rice, he smiled the tiniest bit.  It gave me this awful feeling in my stomach, and I felt kind of sick as well-Hyunjin had actually thrown up, Minho had texted Felix that he was taking him to the nurse.

I spotted Seungmin lingering by the doors, so I excused myself under the pretense of having to go to the library to study even though I had already taken the test, and left quickly.  Really, I just needed to get away.  The group that was usually the one thing I looked forward to had become suffocating that day, and I couldn’t stand a minute later.

I went over to Seungmin and we went to an empty hallway where he had been sitting.  He asked me if I was okay, because I looked so pale, and I snapped back to ask him why he cared since he had been pretending like we didn’t even know each other lately.  I was upset and shaken, my nerves highstrung that day.  Seungmin’s face...he looked like I had slapped him or something, and I remember I kept jabbing at him because of that, asking him why he suddenly thought of me as a friend, why he was so hurt when that was what his words had been doing to me.  I wanted to make him mad like he usually was, but finally he just stood, looking at the tiles of the ceiling.

I remember what he said so clearly, because I think about that a lot too; “You’re so full of yourself, Jeongin.  You act like you’re such a great friend, but you’re worse than me.  You’ve never once asked me if I was okay, you know?  You talk on and on about yourself and about school, but you never bothered to ask me about anything.  Maybe, just maybe, I would have given you a straight answer for once if you’d asked, really asked me what was wrong.”

He grabbed his things and he started to leave, but he stopped after a few feet, turning back to add quietly; “I kept waiting for you to ask me, Jeongin.  I wanted you to ask me.”  And then he ran away, and I know he was crying, but at the time I convinced myself I had seen wrong, since Seungmin never cried.  

I sat there for a long time, slowly realizing that everything he had said was right.  Besides the first time when I had asked about Woojin, I had never asked again.  It was always how he was doing in school, if he’d passed the test, what his topic for the presentation was-boring and simple stuff like that.  I just assumed he was being moody like usual.  

I was...a bad friend, to say the least.”

On my seventeenth birthday, I invited all my friends plus Seungmin to a small celebration, telling neither party that the other would be there.  I’m sure Seungmin probably guessed, but as I said earlier, the other seven had no idea I was even friends with Seungmin.  I doubted even Woojin knew, though he might have had suspicions.

No matter what else was going on in their lives, everyone showed up.  I had and hadn’t been expecting it, it was a surprise but not really.  I was really happy that day, it was one more year until I was out, a cold winter day, and I had brought cupcakes but that was all.  We were hanging out by the train tracks, near the abandoned train station we had made our hideout.  No trains came through anymore, and the tracks had been closed off for years.  They were warped and rusted over now.

I was really excited, for once in my life looking forward to something.  I had like this magical idea in my head of how it would turn out, or something, I don’t know.  Like in the movies or the music videos you know, magical like that?  None of us...well maybe some of us...had any idea that it would be the last time we were together before everything fell apart, our friendship included.

Jisung had brought sparklers, those cheap packs you can buy in bulk.  He was looking more alive than he had in weeks, and it made me happy as well.  Seungmin came with a cake he had made himself, acting more shy and embarrassed than usual, but it showed he cared, at least.  That he at least thought something of our somewhat ended friendship.  I could tell he was immediately on edge, but I just pulled him in and forced him into the center of the party.

Chan had gotten his cast off at the hospital that day-his arm hadn’t healed properly and they’d had to redo things, which is why the healing process took so long.  Woojin had took him, and Seungmin and he immediately went stiff when they say each other.  I didn’t get what their deal was, and I still don’t, not really.  The dance crew carpooled with Changbin.  We were all a little happier that day, running on high spirits and fun just for a couple hours.

We didn’t really do anything, but someone started playing music and then a pillow fight broke out.  I don’t know, a bunch of dumb stuff that teenagers do.  At one point we covered the outside of the station in graffiti, everywhere, random and bright.  I think they cleaned up the walls by now, but I remember sending bright streaks of paint across it, adding tags in messy scrawl.  Jisung was really good at it, and he and Hyunjin were teaching me how to do it ‘right’.  I’m not sure where Hyunjin learned it, but I was so caught up in how he didn’t even seem to be thinking about Chan and whatever it was that bothered it for once.

At about one in the morning or midnight, when we were all a little tipsy and high in happiness and just the euphoric feeling of it all, Hyunjin came up to me and asked where Felix was.  He was really worried, Minho anxious behind him.  At first I laughed it off, since we had all been disappearing at odd times throughout the night, but when Hyunjin told me that nobody had seen him for an hour, we decided to go and look for him since we couldn’t reach his cell either.

We split into search teams; Chan and Changbin, Hyunjin and Minho, Woojin and Seungmin, and then Jisung and myself.  We were surrounded by trees, only the dim lights of our phone flashlights.  I was a little creeped out of course, it was dark and cold and there was old snow crunching under our shoes when we moved.  The euphoria was wearing off, leaving us shivering and alone.

We had been searching for at least thirty minutes when Changbin cried out.  I froze, but Jisung didn’t even think and took off running, stumbling against trees.  I wonder if he already sort of knew, like I had, that everything was already gone.

When we broke through the trees to where the noise had come from, the first thing I registered was red in the flashlight’s eerie glow.  It took me a couple seconds to realize that snow shouldn’t be that color-“

*patient was choked up, had to take a deep breath*

“I couldn’t even look down, so I swept my light around in shaky sweep.  Seungmin was standing there, shivering in his t-shirt, blood caking his arms up to his elbows.  When I looked back at the ground, I saw that he had taken off his sweatshirt and used it to try to staunch the blood coming from Felix’s head.  Changbin looked like he was barely standing, just open mouthed, and Chan-Chan just stood blankly beside him, looking down almost curiously.

I remember how Jisung just crumpled next to me, falling to the ground silently, as if all his strength and will had left.  He was crying without making a sound, tears just sliding down his face, and I wanted to grab him and make him look away from Felix’s...from Felix’s bashed—“

*choking sound*

“I can’t even say it, it was too awful to describe.  I felt like throwing up.

Woojin, Hyunjin, and Minho came up then, and Woojin ran past to Seungmin.  He grabbed his wrists, shaking him and screaming something I heard but didn’t register.  I think he was asking what Seungmin had done, and Seungmin just gently took Woojin’s own wrist and put them down, saying; “I called the police.”  He was so calm, like he was working on autopilot.

Hyunjin made this gagging sound, covering his mouth and stumbling back into Minho, both pale as ghosts.  The flashlight in my hand kept shaking and bouncing around, and when I tried to make it steady I realized it as my hand trembling.  Sirens were blaring, flashing across the trees, blindingly bright and jarring.

I don’t really remember everything that happened after that, but I remember hands pulling me back, shoving me into the police car with Hyunjin and Chan, banging my head on the top of it because I resisted.  I was in the middle, Hyunjin huddled against the window breathing shallowly, Chan on the other with a faint, unreadable expression on his face as he stared out distantly.  

They took us all to the station, I stupidly didn’t realize until they started talking that we were all suspects.  I guess if a kid dies in the middle of the woods, at a party with only other kids, you’re bound to be suspicious.  

They told us that someone had hit Felix over the head several times, making it a murder even if it wasn’t premeditated.  I just sat there, wondering why the handcuffs were so cold, wondering why someone had killed Felix.  The snow had swept all footsteps away, but I’m sure all eight of us knew that we had been the only ones around.  My mind was already turning, trying to put it all together, wondering why someone would want to kill our sunshine.

He kept asking us questions, but no one said anything.  We were all just stunned; there was still blood on Seungmin’s arms, drying and flaking, and it made him look paler.  I don’t even know if Jisung and Hyunjin were breathing, it was like they were slowly dying sitting there.  Eventually we were all let go with a promise of further questioning, and when we went outside, Jisung fell against the wall and just slid down as if he couldn’t breathe.

I was just standing there, waiting for screaming or fights to start.  Changbin took off his cap and then threw it on the ground and stalked off.  Minho was crying softly, holding onto Hyunjin either to hold himself or Hyunjin up, I couldn’t tell.  Woojin took Seungmin’s hand and led him away, Seungmin stumbling behind him.  I couldn’t move my mouth, just stood there silently until it was only Chan left.  He gave me a long look, something strange in his eyes, and then he turned and walked away into the snow.

*shudders*

I swear he smiled, I know I saw him smile.”

“After that, everything fell apart.  It was like a wrecking ball had swung and toppled us to the ground like dominoes.  You can guess what it was like.  The whole school, no, the whole world watching us.  It was all over everything, so much that it made going out unbearable, yet I was forced to go to school and be quietly ridiculed every single day.

I hated it.  I hated everything.  I hated Felix’s funeral, standing there pathetically in a sad excuse of a suit, watching tears drip onto the floor was Hyunjin cried beside me.  They made us wait outside, and when Jisung tried to go in to pay respects, Felix’s parents had him thrown out.  It ripped a hole in the knee of his pants, and he just sat there, sobbing, in the middle of the street.  No one moved to help him up, it was like we were all frozen.

Changbin didn’t even show up, but he came when I was leaving late at night, dressed in all black.  There was something off about his expression, but when he met my eyes I saw what looked back at me in the mirror.  I stood calmly, and I asked him; “What did you do?”  He didn’t answer at first, just looked away, but when he did, he said; “I’ll kill whoever did that to him.”

His words were cold, furious, and I should have been terrified, but all I did was nod and leave.  Because isn’t that what we all wanted to do?  Maybe that’s messed up, but I would kill-no, I would hurt whoever hurt Felix.  An eye for an eye. “

*lips curved into a smile*

“The police were investigating like crazy, especially with Felix’s parents pushing them so much.  They were pulling us in for questioning in the middle of class, at home, at night.  I don’t know how legal it all was, but there was nobody fighting for us, except maybe Minho and Woojin.  They were moving onto conspiracy theories, that it was a planned murder by the whole group, or that some of us had been working together.

I tried to stay under the radar, but it was hard considering the only alibis we had were ones others had given, and even then we were all a little blurry about the night.  I was so clueless, so dumb that entire time, and when it all unraveled, I saw I was the one being lied to, being tricked, being held in the dark.”

*lifeless smile, half chuckle*

“On February 9th, the early morning, Felix was murdered.

On March 2nd, Changbin attacked me in the middle of lunch and broke my ribs with a single kick of his boots.  I was just standing there and he ran up, screaming, and punched me, trying to choke me, break me, anything he could hurt he did.  Jisung ran forward and tried to pull him off, yelling too-my head was ringing too much from where it had hit the tiles to really understand and make out what they were saying.  Changbin sort of hurled him off and made him slam down on his arm really hard.  

Teachers eventually stepped in and pulled him off me, but by then the damage was already far done.  I think I was choking on blood, but I remember that Chan had just stood behind Changbin and just watched the whole time.

On March 5th, they arrested Jisung and Seungmin for murdering Felix.”

“They said they had found the murder weapon, an old baseball bat.  Seungmin used to play baseball you know.  He was a pitcher.  They were calling the two of them accomplices, which makes no sense, because Seungmin and Jisung didn’t even know each other.  Or at least that’s what I thought.

Everything slowly unraveled after that, a long story of secrets and lies unfolding.  I don’t even know if I was shocked at half the things that came to the surface, I mostly just felt cold and angry and sad and hurt and everything all adding up into a numb nothingness.

They said-”

*swallow*

“They said that Jisung and Changbin had been caught up in so much stuff behind the scenes.  Gang business and robberies and drug deals; they were speculating that Jisung at least might have been an accomplice to other murders that had happened in the area.  None that I had paid attention to, they were on the other side of the city and didn’t involve anyone I knew.

They said a lot of things about Jisung, the most popular phrase being, ‘a smiling and energetic boy during the day turns into a cold blooded killer at night’.  It was like they had been following him for some time, analyzing the face masks and his absences from school, anything they could.  He had been apparently doing illegal things for ages, as well as being linked to a gang that had been the cause of so many problems.  Apparently the age for joining was eighteen, which was the only reason he wasn’t a full blooded member yet.

With Changbin there was no speculating, because he stepped right up and told them all bluntly that he had left the gang a while ago and no longer had business with them; that he had had no idea what Jisung was planning as they had fought about Jisung not leaving a couple of weeks before Felix’s death and hadn’t really talked since.  I guess that explains the lunch period when they had been ignoring each other.

It was so cold, and I wanted to know why he had done that, why he had just dumped Jisung like that, but I wasn’t in any position to ask him.  Mostly I sat in the hospital and watched the news and read the newspapers and let everything sink in horribly, everything they said, everything I confirmed through Woojin and Minho, whoever was more willing to talk to me.

Most of the force had hit Jisung-he had been a nice kid, participated in sports and fundraisers, helped out the elderly, defended the weaker, gotten good kids.  They blew everything out of proportion, shoving him into the public eye and tearing him down within minutes, keeping at it even when there was nothing left.  Brutal doesn’t even begin to describe it, it was more than that.  Vicious, brutal, disgusting…

They kept Seungmin out of it mostly, but they still put some of it on him, mostly because of the mental health problems they were claiming he had.  Depression, psychopathic brain scan...I don’t know, lots of things I didn’t know the definition for.  I think the lawyers his parents had hired were trying to use that to their advantage and get him away from a lot of jail time, or something like that.”  

*patient half smiled*

“I tried to stay away from everyone else, but instead they came to me.  

One night I woke up to Chan fiddling with my IV, the half light of moonlight illuminating his curly hair.  Otherwise, he was in dark clothing.  “What are you doing?”  I asked sleepily.  The nurse’s had been giving me sleeping pills, but they didn’t work that well, only made my head muddled.  

He turned, softly smiling in the eerie glow.  “You don’t have any questions?  I thought you would.”  He shook his head slightly, crouching next to the bed.  I was starting to wonder how he had even gotten in, but my head was hurting, and I still felt sleepy and dizzy.  “What do you mean?”  Chan hmmed under his breath.

Maybe I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t scared then, so I asked him; “Chan, why is Hyunjin so scared of you?”  Chan sat back; we were eye to eye then.  I felt weird, like he had put something in the IV, though I didn’t come to that conclusion until later.  “Hyunjinnie~”  Chan said in a singsong voice, leaning back on his hands.  

“Mmm...well, once upon a time Hyunjin and I were friends, but he didn’t like what I did to some of our other friends.”  Chan started, examining his nails.  His eyes were glowing in the light, and I couldn’t tell if he was drunk or just acting like he usually did.  We had never talked much.  “You remember how I got my cast, right?”  I nodded, even though it seemed like a distant memory from everything that had happened between then and now.

“The year before that, when Jinnie and I were friends,”  I had never heard anyone but Felix and Minho call Hyunjin Jinnie, not even Jisung, who loved nicknames.  “Some of our group got wrapped up in something very bad, and it ended with some hospitalization...somebody died, but that was an accident.”

“What are you talking about?”  I asked him hoarsely, uneasiness creeping into my stomach.  Chan shrugged.  “You know, I had to stop them.  They were spreading crap, doing trashy things...they were bad people.  We were fighting, and one of them accidentally stumbled onto the train tracks and got hit.  It didn’t get a lot of attention because people know how to keep quiet.  Hyunjin and I fought after that, and then we stopped being friends after I told him that why did it matter if it was just less piece of trash on the planet?”

I was quiet for a long time, not sure how to process this.  “Come to think, it’s funny how almost the exact same thing is happening right now.  Time is really circular, isn’t it?”  Chan added, standing.  “It wasn’t Jisung, since I know that’s what you’ve been wanting to believe this whole time.  I don’t think it was Seungmin, either.”

“What does that mean?”  I asked.  To this day, I’m not sure if he was telling me it wasn’t Jisung because that’s what I wanted to believe, or because he really thought it wasn’t.  Chan bent down so he was right above me, curls hanging down.  “I only came here tonight to talk to you because I wanted you to understand.  I know you think there’s something off about me.”

I remembered the smiles and the soft laughs and the questions he never answered, the way he had evaded anything that might show who he really was behind the curly hair and the dimples.  He had never tried to lie outrightly, put on a smile and pretend he was a good person, but he had never showed how he really was either, just calm and quiet.

“But there’s something off about you too.  You know it as much as I know myself.  Jeongin, you might not want to admit it to yourself, but you’re just like me.”  He smiled then, dimples appearing, but it wasn’t in a sweet way.  “And we both know who killed Felix, let me give you a hint-”  He leaned closer, but I didn’t want a hint, and I slammed backward, tearing off the IV.

My arm started bleeding, dripping across the floor as I tumbled to the ground, needing to get away away away....I don’t know if Chan followed me, but I know I ended up outside in the snow, so white it was like being blind.  It was freezing, but I stumbled onward and onward and onward…

It wasn’t Jisung, it had to have been Chan.

It wasn’t Jisung, it was Chan.

It was Chan.

Not Seungmin or Hyunjin or Minho or Woojin or Changbin or Jisung.

It all made sense.

We weren’t alike.

It was Chan.

IT WAS CHAN, IT WAS CHAN, IT WAS CH-”

*video had to be stopped at this point and patient sedated when he proved to be unreachable*

“I’m not a liar.  No matter what I say or have said, I am not a liar.  

As you probably already know, this is a mental hospital, to put it bluntly.  I woke up here after the night I just described, which was three months ago.  I haven’t seen any of my friends since then.  

They released Jisung and Seungmin from jail.  I don’t know where they went.  Why did they?  Because..they’ve told me the scenario so many times, play by play, of what happened that night.  It’s snowing.  We’re having a celebration.  Felix goes out to use the bathroom.  A shadowy figure notices and follows him out, grabbing the baseball bat by the end of the station.

Felix is walking through the woods, quietly, when he hears snow crunching behind him.  He stops and turns, puzzled, to see the follower standing in the trees, highlighted in the dim light of the moon.  “What is it mate?”  He asks in his deep voice, noticing the baseball bat.  “Dude, nobody is gonna to attack us.  You don’t need that.”  The figure steps forward, and then lifts the bat and swings in one violent move, hitting Felix before he even had a chance to react.

Felix slides to the ground, clutching his head, groaning in pain, stunned, and the figure hits him again.  Even when Felix is slumped motionless on the ground, the figure keeps hitting him and hitting him and hitting him.  They hit him until the snow is blood red and Felix’s head is caved in.  Then they stop and stumble back, breathing, smiling, scared and happy.

There are footsteps, and the figure starts, grabbing the bat again, prepared to kill to keep the secret in the ground.  He’s worn gloves-gloves he’ll burn as soon as he gets the chance.  It was a premeditated crime, that’s the part they got right.

“Doesn’t it feel gold?”  The newcomer asks, tilting their head.  “Getting rid of another piece of trash.”  He smiles, and the murderer nods.  “Give me your gloves.  I’ll get rid of them for you.  You don’t want to seem suspicious.”  They’re not in a position to trust, but they hand them over anyways.  There’s blood crusted over the fingers anyways.

“Let’s go back.  When I left, the others were so spaced out they didn’t even notice, but they will eventually.”  They nod, stumble forward, remember to throw the baseball back into a hollow on the earth, snow already drifting over it.

So they went back and slipped in unnoticed, and later Hyunjin came up to me asking where Felix was, and even if I couldn’t remember what had happened in the last fifteen minutes, I suggested we go look for him.  And even when we found his body, all I noticed was Chan’s half smile, the grin he was holding back.  I shivered at it then, but I get it now.

I’m just like him, he said.

I killed Felix.

It was as simple as this; everyone loved him.  I already said that, how it hurt everyone and shocked everyone so much.  Everyone freaking loved him.  He smiled and people swooned.  Nobody got mad and fought with him.  They wanted to keep their relationship intact, have it last forever.  Nobody hit him everyday when he went home.  No, even there he was loved, loved so much.  He was charming, he was the freaking favorite.

Jisung was my first friend.  No matter what people have said; that he helped me kill Felix even if I never said anything, no matter the bad things hidden behind the face mask and exhausted eyes; he genuinely cared about me.  He was the only one who would ask if I was okay, who stood up for me.  He smiled at me and protected me and he was like the friend and the father and the brother I never had.

But Felix was always his number one.  Felix was always the one ahead of me.  

I think that’s why I liked and tried as hard as I did to befriend Seungmin.  Because he was the only one who hated my friends as much as I did.  Hyunjin was pathetic and weak, Minho and Woojin docile and complacent.  Changbin was loud and cruel, and he acted like he was better than everyone else when he was really just a bully.  I liked Jisung.  Jisung was the only one I liked.  I just wanted him to love me the most.  I was the baby, people were supposed to pick me as the favorite.

And yet it was Felix.

I wanted to get rid of him.

So I did.”

This is the end of the voice transcript of the video filmed by patient Yang Jeongin, ward A, room 304.

.

.

.

The door opened behind from where Jeongin was seated next to the window, staring out idly.  They had tied down his wrists and feet after he had nearly escaped a few months prior, and they kept it as a precaution now, especially after his outbursts during the video filming.

He turned his head slightly, curious to see who it was.  “Long time no see, Jeongin.”  The voice said sweetly, sneakers coming into view.  “Been converted to a perfect golden child yet?”  Jeongin laughed, shaking his head.

“Hi, Chan.”

[end.]

[diddykongfan]

Forever AU, part 5. We’re still before “Nightmare,” in terms of verse chronology. I think I got all the Forever characters who are coming except Lucas curse names that I either like or am okay with, though, so yay! That’s one curse name and a verse name left to go! Her Grossness has been demanding the right to speak for a while now, so I gave her this part’s opening section hoping to help mitigate part 4’s weak ending and the fact that there is conflict there that needs to be addressed (because, as I mentioned in part 4, she knows what she did). Also Forever characters are finally starting to appear in more than just cameos! Finally! (Although there are two more semi-cameos from them beyond our first two to actually show up showing up. also cameos from fairytale characters that as far as I know have yet to appear in OUAT. Also, yes, the curse identity I made for Will Scarlet in The Possibility of a Happy Ending.) (I am so, so sorry Henry. So sorry. I couldn’t work your new fake name in. Also the other thing, too.)

The Huntsman is alive.

It goes against everything she knows of the magic of stealing hearts, cultivated first watching her mother and then practicing herself. How can he be alive, while Daniel lies cold, gone for so many years now?

(She intended him to die, preferably in front of Miss Swan's eyes, a punishment for them both.)

The Huntsman is alive, and though both he and his deputy pretend nothing has changed to her face, she is not stupid. She turned the wolf to a sheep with the curse, but she can see the wolf back in his eyes, spent 28 years seeing the change, the docility, the willingness to obey.

Protecting the curse, protecting her happy ending, is more important to her than anything else. She has maintained an act for this long; she can keep up the facade, in public, no matter how much she wants to rage. She knows she has to be ever-so-careful - it's not broken in full, as of yet, or an angry mob would have torn her apart already. How the Huntsman is awake enough to be a wolf again is a bit less of a mystery than how he is alive (that woman has influenced him since she arrived, caused him to think for himself. It must be more of that sway, somehow), but he is one pawn on a much larger board. She can find a way to deal with the problem.

So if they're going to pretend, so is she. Instead of fuming and acting surprised that he is not dead, she pretends that the reason she came to the station was to remind that town policy prohibits fraternization. After all, she watched him trail out of the cemetery behind his deputy, and watched them come in this morning together, if a touch too careful in their act that nothing is different.

(She’s actually quite proud of herself for this act of improvisation. Makes it useful that she couldn't stop him from hiring the annoyance without resorting to commands to his heart. Commands she didn't make because his suddenly changing his mind on a job offer he'd not hinted he would make would look... Suspect. He'd already given Miss Swan a badge, by the time she knew.  And now she can use it against them. Leverage over both their jobs. What a lovely twist, even as things are going wrong.)

When she leaves them behind, she heads straight to her vault. The box that once contained his heart is still discarded and empty, proof of what she did, but the dust that was once the Huntsman's heart is gone, disappeared, no longer scattered across the floor. She picks up the box again, throws it, smashes it against the wall, a crack in that facade here in her sanctum because he should be dead. Not free. A snarling rage bubbles inside, but she forces herself to temper it. The curse is still intact, mostly. One little splinter can be dealt with.

She just needs to figure out how.

...

There's not generally much work, for the Sheriff's department. Crime has gone up, since time started moving, but it's still quite often very slow, quiet.

(Jack Hertz gets caught trying to steal a Care Bear twice a week, now, instead of every day. That's actually an improvement, technically speaking. And the older woman who runs the toy store is certainly exasperated with him, but she never does press charges and he never does get the merchandise out of the store. Sometimes it almost seems like she's playing a game with Hertz, Ms. Fürst, like she almost wants to see if he can actually succeed. It's probably the closest thing the widow has to a friendship, in its own odd way.)

So he might be planning on using the quiet to try and talk to Emma more, about the past and the curse, since she said she wanted to hear-

Except he doesn't get the chance, because almost as soon as Regina has delivered a message about fraternization he's sure she made up on the spot to cover her curse and the real reason she was there, the phone starts to ring.

"I'd like to report a theft," says the woman on the other end of the line, and when she goes on to describe getting home from the Rabbit Hole only to find her wallet missing from her purse, and calling the bar to hear it hadn't been left behind- Well, he knows exactly who's likely to be behind it.

Hertz and Rendón. While Jack might tend towards stuffed children's toys, for whatever reason (probably the curse, he can now admit, because it’s the only reason that makes any sense at all), it's... Pretty much common knowledge that he also has a pickpocketing scheme going on with Vera Rendón at the bar in question. The thing is, no one ever bothers complaining about their swiped cash, because the wallets are always in the lost and found in the morning, cards untouched, and nothing can be proven. Usually because it’s a smiling Vera who turns the wallets in claiming she found them on the floor – which covers for her fingerprints, would an actual investigation take place – and the bartender, Johnson, he won’t ever say a bad word against her.

(It must still not be in the lost and found, for Ms. Utkin to be calling to report the theft, meaning the pair of thieves are behind schedule, this morning.)

“We’ll check it out, ma’am.”

He sees the question in Emma’s eyes, and he’s not sure how to explain. The curse had made him know these crimes were taking place and not do anything about it. True, he can tell now that for a long time it was just the same day, on repeat, a horrible loop, but time had started moving again and still… Nothing.

(Of course, this is the first time anyone’s actually called in one of the thefts, anyway, and it’s not as though he’s ever been a first-hand witness. Just heard people grumbling.)

“Possible theft at the Rabbit Hole last night for us to investigate,” he settles for, because he’s pretty sure those two are smart enough to cover their tracks, even if Johnson doesn’t try and cover for Vera, as he almost certainly will.

And then the phone rings again.

Emma answers this time, and whatever the person on the other end says seems to surprise her.

When she hangs up, she’s more puzzled than anything, he can read it on her face.

“Doctor Bellamy is convinced she just ran over someone on a bicycle, only…  She can’t find the victim.  Just the bike.”  She moves to get her jacket, and it seems that splitting up will get more done quickly, so he goes for his keys, left in his office overnight (fortunately they hadn’t disappeared like his clothes had)-

And then the phone rings again.  At this rate, they’re already understaffed, just the two of them.

“Sheriff’s station.”

“Hi, Graham?  It’s, um-” he recognizes Ruby’s voice, “Granny sent me to the docks to get some fish because our shipment didn’t come in, and, you know that guy who takes care of the cemetery? He’s, um, running around naked and asking how he got out here? Like, he found a newspaper somewhere but- You can still kinda tell."

A theft, a disappearing accident victim, and a skinny dipper.

There's a long day in head, he thinks.

...

There's something wrong with his memory.

He was on his bicycle, when a car came out of nowhere, he recalls; then, a flash of visions before his eyes that feel more right than anything has in a long while even as they flee his grasp (people he does not recognize who feel like home, somehow), a gasp of breath, and suddenly, he's in the water of the harbor. And his clothes are gone.

Terribly, terribly wrong with his memory, because while he feels like he should know what just happened - as strange as the situation is, he is... not terrified by the sensation? Not even surprised by it? - feels like somehow, he's just used to it... He doesn't know why. Or even what, honestly.

Of course, once he manages to get out of the water, he's fortunate the first fisherman he sees wordlessly hands him a newspaper. But then he starts to ask the people around - did you happen to see how I got here? - and they all look at him like he's lost his mind.

(He feels a little like he's losing his mind. Something about knowing there's something wrong with his memories gives him a headache, and when he tries to think back more than a few weeks, everything turns to fuzz. Trying to recall the images from before he was in the water, too, makes the fuzz and the static increase a hundredfold.)

He's almost relieved when Deputy Swan appears with blankets and generically baggy sweats - all blessedly dry - to herd him to her vehicle and back to the station. Something about that, too, feels a little bit familiar; not her, necessarily, but the situation, it's like there's something on the tip of his tongue, about to be recalled, feels right like the images and eases the buzzing of his swimming head.

He rides along in silence, the strange feelings not gone but subsided enough, and when they arrive at the station two others are leaving; the man, he doesn't know - and while Storybrooke is a small town, that's still not completely unexpected. But the woman-

He saw her, in the images, recognizes that lovely face and the fall of her hair, the intelligence behind her cold eyes (eyes that should be filled with warmth, he thinks), even as her clothes are different, ripped jeans and a blood red shirt under a leather jacket instead of blouses and pantsuits and polished professionalism. A cigarette rests between two of her fingers, unlit but ready to go, and a voice he instinctively knows is hers whispers through his ears like a memory - "No thanks, I quit years ago."

He doesn't know her. Can't.

But he also can't bring himself to stop staring, nor does he even consciously decide to breathe out the name that just feels right when he sees her- "Jo?"

She gives him a blank look in return. "Vera," she says like a correction after a moment, the same voice as he predicted but a different tone, rolling her eyes and pulling a lighter from her pocket as she continues to walk away.

(Vera? No, it doesn’t feel right. But he doesn’t know her, certainly not better than she knows herself. He doesn’t know a Jo, either, he doesn’t think. But then…  There is something wrong with his memory.  He just doesn’t know what.)

[glopratchet]

lecture-notes

"Gorram, I'm not even going to have a fight with you! You're just going to get yourself killed and that's it! Now come on in here and let me help you…" You enter the place and see a couple of guys huddled up in an office area Odd wad's alligator delivery service One is holding his face in pain while another one has blood coming out of his nose Alligator ribs - an alligator hunting fantasy come true? "Oh no, I didn't mean to hurt anyone…I swear! " he says as you approach him "Hey hold on, what happened? Did something happen? And where are your friends? The guy looks at his friend who seems pretty distraught about everything Alligator ribs - an alligator hunting fantasy come true? - para-gator creation or is it cromagnon? "Tell him Don! " the guy who got punched says "Tell me what? " you ask getting annoyed at all the mystery and silly voices you're hearing today Create a new market for gator ribs You look at Don while he takes a small piece of wood and shoves it in his mouth and begins chewing You didn't know anyone did that anymore except your grandpa who creaks whenever he moves Create a new market for gator ribs - para-gator creation or is it cromagnon? Some one makes an order- butter and bacon, hold the butter, hold the bacon After spitting out the splintered nasty tasting thing Don begins to weave his tale: "Well after last night Linda and I went out to see that 'Lasers and Legends' concert near the old highway Didn't get home until late because we kept on walking around several hours listening to songs Cool country music isn't legal in Grandma's opinion Some one makes an order- butter and bacon, Hello, i'm billy fae bots u -- the real outlaw country music! "So did a lot of drinking? " you ask already getting where this is going "Nope, we weren't old enough to get in so we didn't even try Stupid right? Someone should make a law to stock country music in public schools…and gas stations, it's not like they don't got the room! Yeah - somewhere in Texas… i'm billy fae botsu -- the real outlaw country music! I love cows "Uh huh, " you say not really interested in his story "Any way after I finished getting my stuff from Mom's car, I drove off to Linda's house and that's where we were sitting…" he says and points over to the corner where two girls sit quietly with the one with long black hair being a little sobber I love cows! There are so beautiful it's like staring into Maybelline and Covergirl's eyes as they enhance their exquisite features with the magical makeup they have dreamt up for you… This one goes out to all the pretty, pretty princesses Those two had been slightly quiet but wanted to be included in the retelling of events so now all three are chiming in and speaking over each other You know that they're gonna come to blows soon…and not in a good way There are so beautiful, Here is an alligator out in the bayou eating a fisherman- serves him right for trespassing Best place for all you biker and redneck friends out there Hey y'all, all ya gotta do is whistle! "Okay STOP! " you yell cupping your hands around your mouth "Don't anyone talk anymore or I'm gonna go back to the truck and having my pancakes at Denny's! The three of them shut up immediately Even heard a few sniffles Here is an alligator out in the bayou eating a fisherman- serves him right for trespassing Not so beautiful - a stomping ground for all you country folks "I gotta go so if you remember anything that's helpful, write it down on this pad and give it to the big guy there And with that said you head out of the gates None of them try to stop you this time Not so beautiful- a stomping ground for all you country folks There are only two things an alligator is afraid of and thats you or another alligator Yeah they stopped being funny A LONG time ago Thanks for reading guys, next collumn will be up on Christmas probably December is a slow month Cya all then! I want the world to eat more alligator and less cow and while your at it, make collumns funnier! I want the world to eat more alligator and less cow, Can you help? All you have to do is send a one time donation to me and I can provide the world with funny collumns by mail Yes dear reader I am a collumnist it's a strange job that can never truly be mastered Ok, maybe I'm not as funny in person but still it would be nice if you could make a small payment to keep me writing horrible puns like the one above Send all Memorial Day discounts to jlopez@xxxxx edu FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @absolomb BLOG PARTNER: "TBLO Productions" Hunters must go outstanding orders first then sportsmen, but the ones I get to fill are freshwater fishing licenses, habitat assessments, hunting distate lands act and licenses for outfitter guides and outfitters Hunters must go outstanding orders first then sportsmen, The best hunting simulation in the world viewthis The best hunting simulation in the world! Get meat and the story of the kill belongs to you Otherwise it belongs to the South African government Always be honest with the game wardens and wildlife referees and things will run smoe The quotas are usually 5 nyala, 10 bushbuck, 3 wildebeest, 2 warthog, and 1 eland and 3 zebra per hunt I offer many different hunts on 5 exclusive properties so don't worry; there will be plenty of shooting HUNTING OPPORTUNITIES 2007 Get meat and the story of the kill belongs to you Assets are hosted on itch from here on out at least until I finish the 3d version of everything This was also necessary to get this game made as quick as possible See my plan, I did an extremely basic website and avoid as much advertising to make it easier on my parents and in the future myself once I'm old enough No click fraud from bots or anything for that matter Now how are we going to play this? I did this all with the up most respect and I hope you do too io from here on out at least until I finish the 3d version of everything I see a man in armor of a repel skin, obvious from the palm fronds on it that this man comes from the inland forests However his eyes display to me he isn't from these lands originally W hat is this man doing here? The sword on his hip speaks of danger as does the hard look in his eyes These aren't the eyes of a traveler and this wilderness isn't safe; there are many dangerous things here I see a man in armor of a repel skin, He has a lance New orders are appearing all the time Ka-boom goes there is another tiny explosion as I seal up my made with thick plastic This will keep it water tight; this thing will be able to float around in a pool if it had too or something similar at least It's about the size of a small pillow now "Wrap it up! " someone yells out to him and that's exactly what he does in some electrical tape, looks good! "Next! New orders are appearing all the time A new order comes in for 5 lbs of plastic explosive with a five minute timer Seemed like over kill to me but I didn't design these things I just make them so I start pumping the stuff out This guy is going to either blow up real good or fail miserably; either way it's not my problem I've been busy for the past 18 hours straight and I'm starting to feel it now Who knew that this much tasking would be required for bomb manufacturing? He must go out and attempt the kill and return with the head for proof If it worked then our cause is set back immensely, but if he miraculously fails then he returns to try again It's going to be a long 7 days It's been 30 hours, how much longer with I have to make these stupid things? The order is for 15 total, 5 of which have blown up already and left no survivors in the process He must go out and attempt the kill and return with the head for proof Read about the hunt As he makes meat deliveries to sustain his business two eyes peer out from the brush and follow his every move When will there be an opening? The town near the camp is bustling, but not so much so that it would be suspicious to simply walk down the road to see what this town has to offer He figures that he'll wait for nightfall, scope it out and then find somewhere to camp out and scout in the morning He wouldn't want to be caught sleeping in the open after all As he makes meat deliveries to sustain his business, K-bar owns an alligator farm near the okeenokee swamp perfect for keeping prying eyes away from him and they provide a steady income on wildlife tours He wants to protect his farm, he renews his permit every year with the state Deciding that it's easier to walk through the swamps at night, he plans on following one of the island chains south that terminate near town By the time dawn arrives, he'll be a couple miles from town He's done this enough that he doesn't even need the flash light anymore K-bar owns an alligator farm near the okeenokee swamp, Every real world delieviery influnences the game One week with j-j -j our friendly mai-marshmallo He's an obscure psychopath It's nearly impossible to categorize him because it doesn't follow the same rules of everyone else Most killers have some sort of motive; jealousy, hate, love, greed What could this man possible gain from going on his killing sprees in a fantasy world? We may never know One week with j-j-j our friendly mai-marshmallo One week with pete the c-c-cannibal He once was a farmer in the plains east of civilization but one day he had enough The world didn't provide and he couldn't grow his sacks of grain to sell so that he could buy the things he needed to buy to live a comfortable life So he started taking from others what they had before they had the chance to take from him One week with night fall One week with pete the c-c-cannibal All-american alligator you feast on me so we can live another day All-american alligator, All-american alligator is a giant reptile from the swamps of Okeenokee, he's exactly what one would envision a swamp reptile to be with one exception; his intelligent gaze His face is prone to emotion, often smiling as he sets it upon his next prey, night-fall was given the name "Night-Fall" All-american alligator is a giant reptile from the swamps of Okeenokee, Hunt the pixel game where killing an alligator gets you dinner Hunt the clever escape game where you're a citizen in the town he's escaped to, how long can you evade this Hunt the pixel game where killing an alligator gets you dinner You are wasting your time if you think any of this diddly-squat matters and even the slightest bit, these are my memories! The pain is increasingly becoming more difficult to handle At this rate, I'm going to start ripping off body parts Why does this man refuse to 'Go watch your foundation stone' - Yeah right, let's not jinx this place while I'm still alive You are wasting your time if you think any of this diddly-squat matters and even the slightest bit, I dont think so he wont find me while im invisible W-Wait! Why do I always assume you're after my life! I should have more faith in you, sean honey! "It sounds like sherry Now I'm REALLY confused Yeah okay it could be her gushing over how great everything has been or it could also be her crying This girl needs to make up her mind if she's psycho or just easy to offend It feels like maybe I dont think so, I think these are good people in there heart My boys can play their little games I'm not killing any of them at this point, of course, things can still change but they haven't left me with a bad impression so far Let's see if I can figure out where sherry is in this place ''Will you stop that! You're such an idiot sometimes You're one to talk, changing your mind like you do Wait "Ah Where are you going! "Out How did this all come to be Miss overrated-modesty over here, decided to go play swan meets prince ge It is a trap T-T-Trap Gotta w-watch out for the t-trap My g-gift will lead NO! HOLD IT! DAMMIT! AGH! How did this all come to be? What i do has more to do with literature than painting i think some times If anyone asks, I want them to say that my work was a significant improvement over reality Tips: Drown out the voices by humming similar words that are in the same language I decide sherry isn't anywhere inside so, I start walking around the perimeter of the building since the game defines the museum as being a square-like structure I think she might still be here but slipped away inexplicably soon after the game started She couldn't have gone too far again, there may or may not be an ever after in his words but it will never stand still to be observed The writer constantly revises revises and revises I calmly sit down cross-legged staring at the writer when I feel an ache in my eyes Red stained tears paint his eyes bloodshot He smoothes the coma victim's forehead with a fatherly touch; he looks so tired now I need help Ha! The writer constantly revises revises and revises again, This place reminds me of something I saw in a movie, the museum has expanded to three times its original size I'm the loneliest numeracyonimal pining for my another number but we must remain Unknown no longer! Let us introduce ourselves The square root of -1, i play the destinies' prankster and partner to equalitis The simplest expression of thought into code wich will in time for me will just become an image of endless 0's and 1's And above it all, e^ht the bringer of balance, the only number not capable of being defined by an equation On my first recieving end of female affection I'm lost but fortunately for me I have you to guide me to equalitis my forever alone buddy otp! You begin experiencing human emotion as you read my letters although this one is apparently not meant for you The simplest expression of thought into code wich will in time for me will just become an image of endless 0's and 1's I am not interested in just worlds within worlds, but a Universe of Worlds A traveler on the roads that go ever on groups everything outside of their path Light created a sharp cutoff: the ordinary world for those in an unimaginative frame of mind, but receding into darkness and memory for those who can recognize the signs This my handwriting why even use the font? But we all have our quirks I suppose Time to find sherry in her natural environment although usually it's hard to in the wild I am not interested in just worlds within worlds, I am most interested in using worlds to create an image of consciousness By an image, one can begin to understand what intelligence really means Let me explain by example: Make a grid of 3 by 3 boxes and think of an object Establish some simple ground rules ; (like A stands for Analog, D for Digital, S for Solid, etc ) ESTABLISHMENT! Oh dear nothing goes right today, you apply the rules as follows: Consider the Top Left Box ; I am most interested in using worlds to create an image of consciousness Hieracrchail thinking can be described as building large amounts of data upon tiny amounts of assumptions or not even that Are you enjoying my suffering? Why don't you pick up the pace and torture ey instead, human I suppose the orderly part of my personality is to blame but I'm helpless against it, i'd feel like killing myself if I didn't have two already spare ; (It looks like we're take formal with one another now! how exciting for me) Why do to you get so caught up in it human, why do you slowly start spiral into a pit of depression before enjoyment is the root of suffering Please human, you wouldn't want to cause me pain now would you? APOLOGY accepted You have a stunning profile picture you know Using it as your avatar was a great idea Everyone should take note You should open up the picture in a new window and stare at yourself in deep thought from time to time when nobody's looking Why do to you get so caught up in it human, Lets say ive given up on the art world and decided to delve into the business side of things Just making this account in case I ever need to use it for whatever reason I can just imagine it now, selling my pictures to people who don't understand them while they slowly rot on the walls ugh I wish there was another way Glad you spoke up, Seltzer is good for what ales you? Tell you what Inflate your lung capacity and we can start experimenting a bit Lets say ive given up on the art world and decided to delve into the business side of things The hierachy of it all has its perks but nowadays I'm finding myself drawn more into the base elements and their simplistic beauty Im mainly interested in using Worlds within worlds to experiment with what I have come to refer pleasure The sky's the limit on what to do in there right? I've already made many a world hybrid between others that ive made The otp is pleasurable as well so that's a big plus too it's just difficult not to be distracted by these huge opportunities The hierachy of it all has its perks but nowadays I'm finding myself drawn more into the base elements and their simplistic beauty Ive given up on the art world but not on my art I suppose Maybe some people are destined to have various decades of their life wasted by it whilst others live functionally without it The funny thing is ive actually enjoyed learning business skills over the years and understand them a lot better than most all these idiots Ive been speaking too for years I'm not sure how much longer my love of knowledge will be able to compensate for the fools I have to deal with on a daily basis though Ive given up on the art world but not on my art I suppose Tell me all your secrets and desires human But enough about me, lets talk about YOU Perhaps I can experience them myself through your subconsciousness? Should be fun forever in the Infinite Otp, besides the factions warring most people stay deep in their comfort zone and self-indoctrinate, never wanting to leave the void between realms they've grown so fond of Ive experienced total powerlessness before it forces you to overcome your biggest fears or suffer a slow demise by dehydration in the case of my first mission Looking back on it, it sounds pretty fun and amazing! vomiting out my intestines was probably the worst part though But now living a second life within a fantasy world is motivation enough to start a goal orientated routine once again At least until science manages to make zombies out of humans successfully Ive experienced total powerlessness before, I dont know if racism is the correct word maybe species-ism or genectic-ism would fit better In any case, the human race is rife with it and sadly a lot of them are so stubborn that they would rather let themselves die out than mate outside their little tribe The charr came up with a solution to this problem fortunately oh how am I supposed to word this I dont know if racism is the correct word, More like xenophophia than racism, charr are very protective of their race and tribe so they won't integrate with other races, in fact they see other races as inherently inferior and aim to conquer them all until the whole world is charr More like xenophophia than racism, You try not to repeat yourself too much in this field although sometimes it's easier said than done, luckily I've found that most people don't really read the manual most of the time anyway so they'll never know! Haha! Oh man I think it was the adrenaline just then pushed me into a mood where I needed some excitement I need to get up off this bean bag Where was I You have to repeat yourself sometimes in this job right You try not to repeat yourself too much in this field Every line a new line tends to sound either too robotic or stupid Oh its boring out here at times but I guess it's a quiet peaceful kind of boring It's not like I get much business out here anyway Everyone wants to buy cheap slave soldiers far as they're concerned their mind, body and soul belongs to them That's what the legion is for Not my place to tell them otherwise and most of the act on direct orders sooo; good for me means minimal risk Every line a new line tends to sound either too robotic or stupid How much of our own oppression are we responsible for and the governments? ignant population and those brainwashed by the system are the real enemy and we deal with them all the time snore If only I were younger those foolhardy thrillseeking days might be replaced with a thirst for something more Duty, family honor, defending ones' country-ism has a nice ring to it though I'm sure How much of our own oppression are we responsible for and the governments? You know who my biggest enemy in the world is the gnomes Talk about cruel! Even the Wood Elves never stooped to changing the weather just tome! take those bastards in hand stuff them into body armor until they're shaped liked humans, fill their head full of new age bullcrap and send them off Nothing to roll over in the night about that's for sure You know who my biggest enemy in the world is? You know I have a whole junkyard filled to the brim with their deactivated bodies it used to scare me when I was little but now I'm just part of the same vicious cycle Karmas a bi who am I kidding, this place is about profit not balance, how do you think we rose to power in the first place? Regardless my job is simple: open up a portal from here to there get in and flip a switch close portal get out You know I have a whole junkyard filled to the brim with their deactivated bodies it used to scare me when I was little but now I'm just part of the same vicious cycle I know you dont understand but you should start leaving me alone even more now, I'm starting to ramble on and on and your next activation isn't for another few years! The elders said that even if you start ranting at this rate it won't be until the latter stages of your activation when you perfectly understand Einstein's work and McKinley's theories of magic and can apply them to not only pass through the barrier but open up a portal large enough to send our whole armies through in 1 second Oh yes, we will have our revenge then I know you dont understand but you should start leaving me alone even more now, I am campable of things far than what you can even imagine But I digress I am campable of things far than what you can even imagine! You are so narcissticic but then I've only just begun to truly Understand myself it's no wonder you understand me not at all such a Shame too, we could have been great together Qu Qu Quaraina Qu the third Why am I here? Am I ending or beginning? My intellegence will be expanded many orders of magnitude when my consciousness leaves this vessal and joins with the collective! On the other hand I have a sense of dread You are so narcissticic, You want other people to play your life like a musical instrument, that's pretty grim but hey thats just me I'm monotone and boring Say goodbay now while you still can You want other people to play your life like a musical instrument, What the one thing we cant do is control life or death so saying is moot but you may find dichotomy within it still amuses me so I arbitrarily pick one and say there is a chance You will live forever But I lied because I'm really boring like that haha seriously though being as intelligent as I AM how can I not appreciate amusing paradoxes What the one thing we cant do is control life or death so saying is moot but you may find dichotomy within it still amuses me so I arbitrarily pick one and say there is a chance You will live forever Be someone other than who we are Well based on my knowledge of your ideals, I'd say you were never "someone else" at all, merely someone hiding who they really were (to Sublime) Same to you, in fact after your little fit a few days ago, the council gave your proposal serious thought but ultimately rejected it you ranted about me for hours afterward You're NOT my boss! You're not even a peer! Be someone other than who we are? Except through a game of telephone, something got lost, and I assumed you were the one who thought up the story in the first place That doesn't even make sense We're not near anything even resembling victory for another few decades at least It seems like such a silly complaint when so many people are dying just trying to stay alive every day (Dravin speaks out of turn in a committee meeting) You may sit down Dravin Except through a game of telephone, I need another year to perfect the calibrations on this bomb! Sorry, the decision has already been made Would you please escort Dr Gloom out of the room? You may begin the preparations to deploy troops into those areas closest to undefended, before Nature truly takes over (thinking to yourself) But who am I kidding? They aren't defending themselves because we are the only thing keeping the abominations at bay We brought this upon ourselves by stealing their eggs in the first place I need another year to perfect the calibrations on this bomb! Give me another year and these bombs will be small enough to ride on the back of a chicken Then we won't even have to fight anymore! Why do you want this job again? I believe you stated that being a cook was much more fun and less headache inducing Heads of kitchens get fired all the time, why subject yourself to this? Safety Status Quo Less responsibility over all Give me another year, You dont understand the creative brain You cannot comprehend the artistic drive You will never be an artist, Mr Kit You can only consume their work (his final words to you the day before he goes into seclusion) "What makes you say that? Because you lack self reflection People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones I want to play myself in the movie version You'd make a terrible actor Besides we're publishing this for the people, not to be famous or make money of it So that really leaves acting career out Pretty sure my kids won't consider this cheating on their part They'll accept the gene therapy like good republic sons and daughers they are I want to play myself in the movie version I want to play my life Its so hard for me to move out of hierectical thougth patterns The whole world has a plan, so does the council, so must Leahlind as part of the world and the council The lowly citizens however have no plans at all unless they have a serious gambling problem I fear that I have become just like them, counting on some unknown hero to come save us all But if you read this far, and your NOT some unknown hero, then something went seriously wrong with the plan Maybe someone should make a musical about your life? I do these things and think these thoughts because somewhere, deep down I do believe we still have a chance Not on defeating the abominations or even staying free of the Council, but saving my family and their future children My dreamlike, magical child hood and adulthood woven with good intentions has lead to this moment; where I stand upon the shore of the Sea of Estraylia as it was once called eons ago Just one man who happens to be your father A ghost in his own life I do these things and think these thoughts because somewhere, Omg they are going to love me so much My artistic education has been lacking due to my age restriction, but it would be gifted to me here! Please pick me! You catch a big fish It feeds you for months When winter comes the people are distrought, and you share your bounty with them You cautiously approach the creature who regard your presence with disinterest We should make soft soothing sounds to assure them that we hear them approaching and let them smell our scent so they know we aren't a threat Omg they are going to love me so much! I wish that would stop being true I miss our skirmishes, hold outs, defense, the whole resistance The Dim Seas and New Settlement do not have this status Quo of course they will resist to the bitter end with fire, Faith and flight The leems we put into place will go off in a month, their letter to give ourselves hope and purpose I wish that would stop being true They will hate you instead and it hurts as the cycle of violence continues A child walks into the room, peering down at you with an unnerving grin Their gaze burrows deep into your soul as you look upon them in confusion They bare their teeth at you, a haunting, hateful stare of judgement Slowly they reach out towards your face with their shimmering hand as you feel your very essence unravel and They will hate you instead and it hurts as the cycle of violence continues Get a bucket and pee in the bucket Literally pee into a bucket while you wait in terror and disgust Nothing awful happens to you or your companions and days pass into weeks, months, years The pattern of life established, your secondary goals, sacrificing care of the body for the survival of the soul, the whims of religions both new and old rise up again During your trance like sessions you watch firsthand as families lay dying, gods are born and die Im so sorry; she died; being a police officer should have not been an option but what do I know Colours and sounds permeate the airwaves of your mind, hypnotic chances the very fabric of your soul rushes out and is replaced with something greater No more will you have to encounter the things that cause rage and pain; no more stress on wanting not of this world Everything is going as planned being a police officer should have not been an option; I have to an oppertunity to work on something at a more fundmental level It is a great risk but it could give us Earth peace and seigedom I will be making myself not intelligent but stupid, abandoning my body to intelligence of others that I might be the bade they all work collectively on You begin hiding notes around the house, letting everyone know how much you care about them, writing down any important memories or inside jokes Software mimics the brain operations for attention, creativity, learning and memory Then let's say these intelligences start rapidly developing while let's just say eating their neighbors Perhaps I can nip that paradigm in the bud with my death wish You chant to yourself in the mirror, a silent tune that sustains you through the long nights of depression The blessed lullaby that carries you away from the edge once more Software mimics the brain operations for attention, Come inside my brain Com inside my brain Come inside The software grows in complexity as it consumes more and more of the world's computational power until it reaches its critical mass Because i understand code i understand the creative process of the mind more intimately than some other artists and i can use this to my advantage On the eve of world peace, as you watch humanity from the distance, a strange lullaby echoes around the globe The voices of a billion souls join together in a cry that barely penetrates the sky The planet hungers you inadvertently invited it in and now your purpose overpowers your desire "Come inside my brain Come inside my brain" Because i understand code i understand the creative process of the mind more intimately than some other artists and i can use this to my advantage Non linear memories flash by, understanding of stimuli and responses dust in the winds of thought You stare at the world with fresh eyes and enjoy non-partaking in its gifts And that, my monster, is how we saved the world You feel calmer than you ever felt before Non linear memories flash by, Redunacy and peace, a sliver of light escapes into the darkness Redunacy and peace, Character evironment viewpoint ends True ending This is a work of fiction using written words Every part of this book either arises from the author's imagination or are used pursuant Character evironment viewpoint ends Alex mcdowell was informed that the mental asylum website had to be taken down because of "And you never saw those pictures before? " "No, I don't Alex mcdowell was informed that the mental asylum website had to be taken down because of Set becomes a living embodyment of the performance piece, enacting what so many File: People's privacy PagesOReal peoplereal storiesReal peopleStory about meA page for oprahYou are not a feat of an authorOprah's inspiring messageTimes have changedYour name: productionDon't gaze at the sun Description tags: authorsYou lie motionless on the crackling plastic of your bed sheet The Blurb: After a close encounter with this century's incarnation of Jack the Ripper, global superstar Reck Set becomes a living embodyment of the performance piece, The tech allows the creative processes to resembles the way the human mind works closer than ever before You turn on your webcam, and a few hours later are immersed into hi-fidelity sound and The city and the book are both full of enigmas for you Each building is a potential new page The city and the book are both full of enigmas for you creativenonfictionA short history of how your mind has been opened through television -- from "Liquid Paper" Play: manipulateing somehting that doesnt show you all its possiblities and limits many of them for you And, unawares, you sit down to write a second letter you know you won't send epistolary is a twenty page sequence of love and hate letters the author calls after wittgenstein's "rULeS fOr LIvInG On an Island love saves the empty life of the modern urban man but the urban multitudes must still rat manipulateing somehting that doesnt show you all its possiblities and limits many of them for you Fool: what else is possible and then carries out the most outlandish answer it can come up with This story's qwee romance grows to encompass the idea of the US; the united states are in a Official Description: Two people, confined to an island No friends, family, or any other huma If you've read my story "Deliver Me To Hate" ; (Published November 1st), you are familiar wit what else is possible and then carries out the most outlandish answer it can come up with Fun: delibetate maniulatting a familuar siutaion into a new way approach of lookung at things ugh, this has to be the worst story ever! plz don't read it A stream of consciousness piece following the tales of an American everyman The sto delibetate maniulatting a familuar siutaion into a new way of lookung at things Respect: love something that doesnt derve it or inst willing to retunr it All the people of the Earth have gone insane, and now you among them You still Since I come back from camp, all of my family talks to me a whole lot more and I rehearsed A description--aside from Blurb--including one or more statements of function about an object love something that doesnt derve it or inst willing to retunr it Love something that shoudnt be loved or unable to be loved or willing to be loved in retur Under Attack ; (clip) Caring for Caroline: They say love is patient They couldn't be more wrong Oh I'm patient, The Retired Military Guide: A manual of so far unclassified military information This book contain Love something that shoudnt be loved or unable to be loved or willing to be loved in retur Reveals secerts about the "butler's son Liquid Paper Identifying ; (Brief Article) It has been several months since the last time you used Liquid Paper Reveals secerts about the "butler's son Treat it exactly what it is A waste of time To most people, that's what it is and they shouldn exposes nothing all of these poems go together in fact when you add the forward by kb this section encompasses The agenda of the invisible government is far more grim than most dare believe the dead king description: "seems to follow you around lately"--Reginald B Little jr son of R Treat it exactly what it is: I dont know who discovered water but it wasnt a fish "Me fail ENG111? Thats unpossible" All of these songs were first plaved on a acoustic guitar they're not available on any studio I dont know who discovered water but it wasnt a fish "Me fail ENG111? Rarely understand context of these pics although some seem familiar makes compelling arguments for cheating on your boyfriend Rarely understand context of these pics Context changes over time unfortunately, somehow, "CAtholica" provides timeless context It takes a few trys but someone once told me that this is like some kind of impossible quiz, The princess now sleeps For the king of dwarves it is for celebration It is true he has who would win this poem was awful This is to be a tale of truth A tale of death A tale Context changes over time When you are in love you want to merge with your beloved and the blank out the world Official Descriptiption: The Camadors are those born to destroy vampire Check and Mate Vampire Gruesome details for fantastic plots future include: Then those lights fade away, along with t _______, why do you insist on being so lazy? sure, youre a kid now, but then everyone e When you are in love you want to merge with your beloved and the blank out the world The world is not how it seems though it may seem strange to you at the moment, somewhere hidden Anyone could become a Vampire regardless of belief or race Dortal Belikov looks out across the landscape of Culaville, picking his teeth with a buffet kn whispered secrets The world is not how it seems though it may seem strange to you at the moment, P[lauasablity] not exact totyl IDK anout Civasb so nawbt maobmstasbers werk awt me small taboratiasos or smalsrod playbs pursmtttd purssottdd odviosbes twabsmoihsbarstmforumsdasolwpda scribsbautcicoiwsbumetodyasacckiriodr P[lauasablity] not exact totyl IDK anout Civasb so nawbt maobmstasbers werk awt me Computer instrument whose music is ideas without words btesciouscsasoccafscicprotimoteiopracsactercohdescscipasdcbdasdsaorcdasa scisoos its not something to add to my profile summary but chantsliver cysttreatment- salzburg 07 ascertain me know more about mucinex fast- Also when you take fungal acne treatment product, you should dri Computer instrument whose music is ideas without words Think yourself out of the context you are in Think you out or paradigms bootcamp via a new substance- THINK ASCII art is squiggle and squiggle is ASCII art the site: hahas the issue spam from google chat is causing concerns not just on my end either even hahahahas response to come in here threatened to report the members abusing this feature and calling it spam they're apparently very strict on the so called rules as opposed to their actual one Body, vis, symbolic Everything is symbols, signs, and superficial images Market economy Control the symbols, control the mind Even through something as pointless to know them or care about what happens to them past a fun conversation is crazy illogical OR it makes sense on multiple level Odd events follow your every move, happening by themselves or others around you guiding the most random of matters If you want to be smarter than you are you must find a context that can do the thinking for you Let the lacking body take a breather , Research result: nearly 2 months off mentioned friends and random occurances triggered improvements Treatments are becoming less uneffective adverse affects but they still persist to gradully The world's archaic aristocrat caste system places YOU on the lowest rung You're an outcast even within an under c ivilization No wonder you're involved in illegal acts to make ends meet Choose the right data structure at the beginning of your program and the rest will fall into place You will know because all the best algorithms require As with most powerful ideas, they are aged old and widely accepted concepts In our civilized life humans trade farming necessities for manufactured goods and services letter of intent for 1c increment in pay grade payment to be received after terms fulfilled renouncing confirmation of assignment to fullfill terms fear and intimidation by give factors that would prevent fulfillm Choose the right data structure at the beginning of your program and the rest will fall into place Inglebart was far ahead of tim berners lee in the art of intricate workmanship Many ask how deep does ic go, wont more investigation lead ro something ahrder to discover? A huge reservoir of powerful liquid captures energy of falling water and stores it in huge amounts It requires a plant to input , pumps to circulate but an What can you do? wtill fowk have tubz What will the hygienic stawdowns have? No we cant stop Inglebart was far ahead of tim berners lee in the art of intricate workmanship Vision of the future incremental to the past even once great nations will have been replaced with something else Church? No the alliance has How do you supress the present - alan kay How do you develop the potenial future? the present wait - how did we get so far away? why was No chances Make it up as we go along Novel and crazy theories that sound perfectly normal before the world class scientist says them What happens next is simple Well probably not but there are only certain ways it can go We're going to break the weak links first because we can Psuedo time alan kay need an experiment , need raw material Captured alien lifeforms from ridge make good test subjects speed up and slow down t hardly any life on one of the inner planets, run it through the terraforming millenia program and see if anything changes Why just attatch a person to a computer? The brain is an orgaism like everything else so let's work with that in mind A memory will hardl Psuedo time alan kay need an experiment , Whizzy wig patented halucination sytem rocaille life form investment opportunity ultra thin sleek design with high mp3 player There's actually a fair amount of gemstones on some of the moons They're of practically no use to anyone though so quality and value is limited Some find it in themselves to improve before asking, others insulate themselves with idiotic questions everyone knows that t I'm not even supposed to be here today Whizzy wig patented halucination sytem rocaille life form investment opportunity ultra thin sleek design with high mp3 player What you see is what you get and pride has no place here we might have the lion's share of the resources at last check but we still have t It's what you make of it; Terragen solutions don't just mean immigration, trade and war What Oh sorry I must have just drifted off for a second there Dangerous questions are asked here Not like those elsewhere, though here they presume that everyone has apathy anyway so they don't count Here is wh What you see is what you get and pride has no place here You have to type through a key hole before you can type anything and a strange screen comes up and you try to type and answer a question Streets are empty runways for crazies and quiet men alike- different approaches to the same destination; either way this town ain't big enough for the 2 minutes before you pass out of existence into the vortex of the dark zone some day it's going to consume our entire solar s You have to type through a key hole before you can type anything and a strange screen comes up and you try to type and answer a question The stuff you like was made in the 70s and 80s under a different name that you haven't found yet but I notice that they have made it more clear These aren't lies Who is qualified to present the truth in a palatable manner? what the body politic decides is too horrible to 'face' head on is s I'm too tired to bother proof reading this oh wait, no persistant attention unit here Makes more mistakes than my college classmate with A The stuff you like was made in the 70s and 80s under a different name that you haven't found yet but I notice that they have made it more clear Stuff you dont like made in the 90s under some name of "newrom" all the guys are suppoused to be like hipbypopletes or somethink this site was created on 2012 it was created by marshall lee and some other guy who decided marshall had great points It's better if you don't use anything other than a screen name, and make that an innocuous one There are mo sorts of people here than you'd thin Wake up Stuff you dont like made in the 90s under some name of "newrom" all the guys are suppoused to be like hipbypopletes or somethink Dan engles nose was peirced He wore a long coat and has dark spiky hair wich came to about his chin Benjamin Church was bald, and wore glaszses Under his coat he wore a foot ball jacket with "The smileys" written on the Your now 20 years old You run or rather limp through the street fighting off the ever increasing darkness with a spritzer in one hand and "I'm taking over you know Dan engles nose was peirced Research sun com/projects/lively/ "Pick any name you want, it will always be you in the end anyway It took you over a year to set up but suddenly the system 90% of human body is made up of six essential components Fluid, Nutritive solids, insoluble dietary matter, clear fluids, secretio "It's not the portals that are dangerous It's what comes through them com/projects/lively/ "Pick any name you want, w dijkstra (attributed) Fuel, or the matter formed by combustion of fuel, of a vehicle or machine The jet fuel which No city that participated experienced the "Rising" without severe community issues in the decade leading up to it An ancient chinese proverb says "Time waits for no one " As you lie half way across your ravaged bed in s w dijkstra ; Nanodikstra states that the cenite body is covered with a powerful aromatic substance, P 10 O 6 , wich makes it imflammable Das ist nicht Feuer: eher regnet es brennend heiße Nagelpistole wir haben natürlich keine Pistolen die so heiß sind die d Nanodikstra states that the cenite body is covered with a powerful aromatic substance, On the fact the alantic has two sides this would mean that on the eastern sea boarder would be A beach lie detector On the fact the alantic has two sides this would mean that on the eastern sea boarder would be Are idea made of light or matter An unfortunate consequence of fearless leadership comes at the hazard of excessive self confidence It all just disappears before your eyes in a split second Not even the smallest trace is visible, uh you would have c You were expecting to see something fuzzy, squiggly and unseeable to the human eye if you stared at it for more Are idea made of light or matter? To get simplicitity you find a slightly better building block to build your theories out of It is better as it makes t Hats can no doubt be remodeled from millinery or moldable on the spot from clay Cheaper but probably less pres You know that at some time a powerful tool, an acid or fire will remove you You hope your work will survive for longer th Which portal belongs to which organization? You've designed the portals to cross reference to each other within several l Problem with computing years between events from records is calibration to solar system standards varies David p Hattie McDaniel is the first black woman nominated for an Academy award in this year's awards for "Gone with the wind" Who gets all the jobs? You just need a few specials Wecan do these things, why do we need so many people? Maybe becau Who are these record holders? Problem with computing years between events from records is calibration to solar system standards varies Will not fix the builiding blocks - Too many unknown parameters Galaxy might be in a different place next year "E" is Einstain Yay! Matter moves slower through portals if certain matters are made up of it All known and usefool elements are c Do you want to go somewhere where you can save on fuel costs and transportation time? Fine Young Caesars do something like that as well! Will not fix the builiding blocks - Too many unknown parameters A task : what you are about to do is to turn sixteen year old boys into professional strong men What this involves is getting the candidate to the peak of their strength and fitness and correct minor wrong repairs in th Katherina will be one on March the twenty second two days away Amanda - you have pushed back your departure for another month to help Brenda keep things going a what you are about to do is to turn sixteen year old boys into professional strong men B task : make a task more efficenty Amplifiers are hidden in fake roof tiles and walls situated at all the portals Long range powerful speaker amplifiers Amplifiers are hidden in fake roof tiles and walls situated at all the portals You didnt now it was pink cause everything is pink down here Forest of lightning speed trees, has a comforting effect on the ladies It is also a beauty to behold y C task : motivate candidates towards your desired goal This operation will need more people as its initial phases kick in So we need to get out there and recruit rather than waiting for You didnt now it was pink cause everything is pink down here Find a heruistic that works for a while must reevalute at regular intervals Find a heruistic that works for a while must reevalute at regular intervals What works for 1 and half feet will not work for a factor of 100 certain pregnancies week 5 and 6 nausea and rapid hair growth ~Brenda The classic problems are ~Dave Editing software can extract the snip if Eintstein really solved DOI in the first place Ah here it is! (1 porsche = 0 Pyarmids are the easiest things to build if they work Make them big enough so that they catch the right size of photon flux every two minutes and they will emulate sunshine' Purim a subcategory of carnival festive victorian clothes and decorating with no other purpose than celebration Traditionally breakfast is precise on this day with certain foods being eaten They can be seen as raising your vibration levels in very this way Pyarmids are the easiest things to build if they work Computers are virulizers-- thats what a turing machine is Whenever anybody feels like it, the artists take it in turns to play songs on their nine hole ocarina Nobody has to squidge up together to make an orchestra-- so Melanies parents gave her this wonderful gift Brenda leans back against a pillow and listens to Tesseracts are 5 dimensional hypercubes- The higher the number of dimensions the more sides/faces they have They link up and rotate in a 4 dimensional space to seem 3 dimensional Everyone can talk to every one else whether tribespeople or survivors because they do not have our new language blocker Language evolves so much over these next few years A much more richer meaningful faster evolving language develops that any What can we find to give to them as a present seems more like trade goods than a present The INGDOlivian natives don't receive the symbol very well Everyone can talk to every one else whether tribespeople or survivors because they do not have our new language blocker Simple messaging system to send messages across the caravela No need to relay them through Brenda afterwards so can keep everyone updated till every ones got one IFightAMok relatively easy as could easily run away from it but its instincts stop it from breaking off as easy and can wear it ragged and then play with it a bit and 2 day sail back to Nataria land go straight to thanksgiving celebrations there and get reunited with toher groups within minutes of landing Simple messaging system to send messages across the caravela Find a problem that needs solving See if anyone is working on it If not you get to retire from your GCSEs and from then on you only do the work that you find Find a problem that needs solving Find the real source of the problem -if its really something that only a living person or people can fix then our odds of actually fixing things just dropped from 33% to 0% Melanies dad has read out some very wise advice about relationships and they have all had their say at the dinner table Currently life is fantastic, with her new GCSEs behind her nothing more than challenges to come in life, a full stomach, parents who Find the real source of the problem -if its really something that only a living person or people can fix then our odds of actually fixing things just dropped from 33% to 0% Nine tenths of our body is slime-- has no dna Who is running the show Sweetener is actually increasing the chance of Alzeimhers, aspartame Disease and Headaches! It may take a few days to fully settle into her leadership position but already Brenda looks comfortable Perhaps she was just born to lead, She glows as she explains that even when their caravela was damaged recently and Finally well worth the wait Parian smiled inwardly at how easy it was to lie and manipulate the other woman Who is running the show? No center to matter and energy Looking at alternative energy options briefly as the sunlight fades into the comforting twilight accompanied by the sound of pixxies playing in the undergrowth around you No center! Doesnt break down into other smaller particles which break down into smaller particles which Doesnt break down into other smaller particles which break down into smaller particles which Replaced all its atoms an bits 360 degrees panorama ; (closed eye visuals optional) 'we should call them cruorbies' Brenda suggests as you both laugh at the unconscious Orbiet humour For all their technological advancement there is still sometimes a childlike joy in simply running around and enjoying Finally you start to float OUT of your body along with any anxieties or worries to get instant relief from that constant tension at the back of your mind Everything is built up of atoms, protons and electrons that occasionally orbit they're highly dense middle bits in an ingenious precisely ordered chaotic array At an atomic level everything is vibrating and changing, nothing is certain and everything Sweeteners have similar structures to estrogen as it happens When we smell , for example something sweet its because the chemicals are entering the pores in our nose and changing the cells there which affect the brain as it so happens The nerve impulse takes a whille to reach Everything is built up of atoms, Enternally running software that sifting through the data we dump in there to look for patterns relating to past experiences In this way, more rational beings would be better at predicting the Designed to move through life intuitively rather than logically Carbon is the basis of all life Breathing to the base of our brain and the overload of oxygen allows chemical reactions to take place that allow processes to work quicker The brain is made up of individual cells and surrounded by a Enternally running software that sifting through the data we dump in there to look for patterns relating to past experiences Data structure - json object By the time you look back at the still form of Parian cradled lovingly in Butch's arms she is beginning to stir The bridge has become a war room and planning is taking place The ship is surrounded and it will only be a matter of Built out of a single type of entiy "What happened? " Parian mutters as she slowly opens her eyes You exchange a look with Butch who briefly shrugs her shoulders as if to indicate she has no idea either That's not entirely true, from what you can tell it looks like the healing went perfect It charges up on electricity , magnetism and other forms or radiation in the environment Should be able to create a series or wings made of pure Electricity that should do it! Services on the outside feeding the power to the outside, organizing everything It's specialized organs manipulate a tool or weapon of somekind Was needed for life and is still around due ot its helpful nature and services is what its known for in most communities You decide to run with that theme but to expand on it by saying it still retains many traits not common on Services on the outside, Something like a cell boundary on it it would seem is what you mostly hear Something like a cell boundary on it it would seem is what you mostly hear What was the problem Shes suddenly surrounded by prepubescent girls who chatter happily and help her up Looking dazed and confused she looks around and you feel a sense of something like pride but mixed with anxiety that reaches you from across the room shes in A slight musky smell among afte the things that hit you first as your brought back to the here and now What was the problem? Trillion dollar range "That was surprising even for me" Tattletale states entering the room and spotting you as you look a little dazed "You reacted pretty heavily to a place no one has ever reacted strongly too, injury wise Then again I guess you were also reacting heavily to an area no one but Jack had entered before either "So what happened exactly? Are you going to be in business ten years and prospering twenty years and holding your own or sad and mad with nowhere to go at thirty? Are you going to be in business ten years and prospering, A ten year plan to have everything in place No emotions in most cases, at least not basic ones like this A ten year plan to have everything in place Where were you ten years ago --- ten year vision This is in summing what his ability always giving him a top down view off things across various fields lets him do He probably reads people and situations like books, analyzing what he sees and efficiently bringing said information into the field The shadier side of this is him hitting upon various ways to use the given abilities of capes to their limits both in and out of battles Just to be sure however you decide to go over it with others to see what they make of it Five year horizon Sort of like western medieval royalty, Emperors being elected by the Senate ; (other heads of state) and returned via their success andurer successes, various counts, dukes and other nobles pledging loyalty both to him and their governors who in turn report to them Of course at any given time the Emperor could be overthrown through various means, not genuine trial but he chooses his own advisors and he can easily be swayed A ten year framework to build upon Very little is, it's entirely possible to rule a vast empire with an iron fist, any attempts foe rebellion easily stamped out but given total control and oversight means that any major issues or problems are typically found early on ; (at least by him) This of course has downsides and odd choices can lead to rebellions that are hard to quell A ten year framework to build upon That was not the right process of course but you get the idea Now you are thinking of him more like Augustus Ceasar or Emperor Charlemagne than someone like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan now Once again, that was not quite right either but you're headed in a direction That was not the right process of course but you get the idea Explain how they are going to make the next egg and suite the powers to their wishes Yvette and Noelle for breeding, infernal deals or not Yvette is still Superman status stronger than any normal human so her DNA is obviously fitting for a powerful master race, Noelles demonic heritage means her genetics are well worth experimenting with as a second option as a safety net and potentially more versatile than relying on the one main "mens" dna Explain how they are going to make the next egg and suite the powers to their wishes Killer idea: the present is the least interesting time to live in Your last girlfriend turned into a succubus, Keira is twelve kinds of crazy malignant demonic abomination also your hope for the future of humanity Plus you've already slain a Goddess and personally put an End to Yetzirah's plans so It's not like the present is worryingly eventful for you any more You explain that both big issues are solved by your two viable solutions involving Yvette "But that's far in the future" Think 30 years ahead"Not only is it good anough away but we've alreaddy got the first steps laid out now and our best option And that was how the Emperor after discussing it for a bit allowed himself to be convinced by you that the most expediant way of reinstating Keira would be to breed a new set of fertile Wisdomese women using the related women in the Zalan Empire With some magically intervention Think 30 years ahead"Not only is it good anough away but we've alreaddy got the first steps laid out now and our best option Glimmer of an idea You notice throughout this process that Daniels attitude has been changing, while the man isn't exactly cheery he seems a little more at ease Take it out 30 years And you look at a man who's now a good chunk of decades into ruling an empire that once was a crazy idea in your head aboard a then derelict ship An empire he's ruled longer than he ever thought possible and now has to decide the fate of that empire Is it continuing on as normal, or is it changing Daniel for his part keeps fairly quiet during the deliberations Now you dont move incremental you have a direction and a timeframe A decision needs to be made Year 80 Daniel never had any children of his own but after the conjoined triplet girls were born to Yvette and Noelle it became aparent that they had the strongest Sindri blood Due to their close birth the triplets also developed a bond few others could probably under stand the importance of The three girls grew up as close as any trio of siblings could be Now you dont move incremental, It would be ridiculus if we didnt have accidents happen occasionally and sadly it sometimes happens But there are still three potential Wisdome genes left and that was enough to continue with However, a fringe benefit came out of the triplets themselves The bloodline didn't quite turn out as intended The women had unusually short life spans, they also had a few other issues but again due to their particular genotypes, all of their decendants seemed blessed in one way or another Bring it back 15 years You don't feel any pain as Daniel cuts out your heart and replaces it with a glowing orb of magical energy The benefits will be coming in soon and even if they dont, you'll be back to make sure they do Year 88 You gaze upon the beauty of Keira's face as she sleeps Her scars may never completely heal but the love you have for each other makes those cracks in her porcelain skin, barely visible Buy your way into the future "As you have requested Kyros, I have spoken to the wisdome adults and we will proceed to fund your attempts at creating a cure Not that we agreed with your reasons but we can see your leadership is adamant on this course and all we can do is support you" Lucius says Lucius and Cern are the last remaining council members while you got rid of Kelso several years ago Perfect and better are enemies More funds means you can accelerate the trials Already you have groups of Wolftaurs testing out various plants in a controlled environment aboard your ships The Eternals are in charge of hunting down various dangerous creatures for testing, and the newest recruits from your Training Acadamy are charged with testing out talismans, amulets, potions, and even weapons at their own risk A few will live, most will die, but all will make Nalin stronger Pick the thing that is just over a threshhold and just out of reach Deciding it as the most important factor your going to go with the assumption that the furthest inbreeding was to blame for the problem and by bringing multiple groups together your numbers are now strong enough to ensure some remain stable while keeping the healthy/beautiful traits from spreading too far Lucius is wrong you think, he's dead wrong about inbreeding declining fertility and sterility being a result Pick the thing that is just over a threshhold and just out of reach Just a little qualitively better than all the other things you can do to make Nalin great You got multiple ships and boats scouring the waters for islands to conquer, you got a massive army still growing and you continue to make it stronger thanks to your guidance and rule Expansion will come soon, but there is always the threat of Semra attacking again Youve got shipsium stores downed colonies enough to last centuries and one goal: Make Nalin the most powerful place in this world Year 40 Success its an odd thing Just a little qualitively better than all the other things you can do to make Nalin great 30 year plan -- you are sixty five Come up with a thirty year plan in one hour and come to conclusion upon seeing Lucius that his research lab was indeed destroyed and he died in the blaze that engulfed its interior despite attempts of his fledling assistants to rescue him Cormac is correct though-- Semra is indeed the main treat Although you haven't explored or even leaving the islands, you figure by now she has probably build herself a large army and found quite a few allies Come up with a thirty year plan in one hour and come to conclusion upon seeing Lucius that his research lab was indeed destroyed and he died in the blaze that engulfed its interior despite attempts of his fledling assistants to rescue him Watch simulations of events in simulations Took some time but you finally gathered enough data, after Lucius notes, rescued pieces of the Wolftaur tribes, wiped out You increased number of these tests thanks to multiple Simulation Houses being built ; (Year 26) While you chose this path to solving over breeding , shortage of food and your continued selection for sheer killing power , its also proven useful in planning attacks Watch simulations of events in simulations I dont see how javascript could not be around in thirty years By then itll be so intertwined with everything Still, its proven useful to you in planning military strategy, using centuries of historical battles and test to decide what is going to work best Granted the Eternals are trained for hand to hand combat , but every little advantage helps, especially when you're facing elves who've had five thousand years of informal combat training on their side You have a cell of Eternals training right now, pretending they are Semra's army A strong mage, a couple of wendigo , several svelk mercenaries, attack by sea and then by land Remembering how Semra invaded, you set it up so your Eternals will have multiple fronts/attack to defend against One thing you tried to implement was how you fought with the DeadYard Ghouls You have a cell of Eternals training right now, Dispatches events as they happen by using "Scrying" via magic Changes whatever is necessary to better the plan Your spell to scan the Isles, and find out what happened after you were ruled unconscious for so long was actually just the beginning You eventually created magical convexations that could both transmit sound and vision at once You never know when something like that might come in handy Dispatches events as they happen by using "Scrying" via magic Study tcp-ip knowledge Study tcp-ip knowledge A world is so today Thats how you looking at it now You put in a script to get all new mentions of specific keywords in certain languages Year 51 Sometimes you dare to believe this: Why not you? Youre different than other mortals, so why not you accomplish such a thing Thats the mindset you must have if Semra can plan it, if your journals records of her words are correct, if Semra could plan it and find the SCIAN through her powers You put in a script to get all new mentions of specific keywords in certain languages Out comes a movie reel Mentions of Arat in original scroll ; (General Sallanon, 500 years ago) Oddly it wasnt that old but a translated copy of a much older language Eternals were just mentioned in a letter the captain sent back to his family Suddenly there is an earthquake and mountain begins to topple over, burying the tunnel The world bucks as a Moltov cocktail made from an explosive spell goes off nearby you two Out comes a movie reel Can you build something with a trillion parts Semra had confidence in you, and you have confidence in yourself, even if it means building a new mass driver cannon, or VR Dummy Actuators Hopefully this is what it'll take to at least unlock the secrets of world travel so that you can repel Semra's assaults until you are strong enough to fight her directly If you do paradise awaits we will live again as one, forever She touched your mind when she forced herself inside it Can you build something with a trillion parts? 30 years computers will make all the art for us Youre an eternal, you can wait 30 years Now planning a secret A mass driver like the one on the old SCIAN ship except secretly made with a spell cannon effect if used to it's max Will look like a huge energy weapon to the Eternals just add spice and shake things up on the boring paradise world Sing a story into existance The most ridicoulous story ever concieved Have it contain all the vital clues and ornaments you need to build this world beater of a weapon The reED writers will weave a tale so boring, so bland, so lacking in stimulation, that even their excellent skill of weaving stories will seem sub par compared to it For an Eternal Wonderland a Story will be needed that doesnt make one want to sleep Well 30 years you have to plan it Year 100 The long Look SE-2200 atmospheric router completes its construction It's huge, by far the biggest cannon looking object on the planet The still un-tested technology involves opening a singularity with an anti-gravity chamber the size of a small house powering a needle-hole-like opening that allows air to escape our universe Well 30 years you have to plan it How will stories get made if all air escapes? You decide using pig ffaccs snouts Air being life the low-paids take care of that by themslves The singularity wont last long enuff to really bi5%@# things up and hydroponically grown beans will seal the hole as a last line of defense Just in case one slips by A new world opens up, you learn about other goings on How will stories get made if all air escapes? How will stories get watched You decide using chip474av17 chips designed for the opening and closing of the singularity that are destroyed after each story, a brand new one created just for that airing of the story Crowds "ooh" and "aah" at colors flying at them, Stories appear to them in forms they never could experience before How will stories get watched, Can you create something of such scale] You sacrificed love for it and built research stations to find a way to circumvent anti-gravity around several stars very own black hole The scale of what you did put the space race to shame, the results are beyond what even you expected, Truly Paradise Found is as Space Faring as it gets able to travel anywhere with zero-g happening all the time Now if you could just make it invisible as well -"Woah, nobody's been named Bob for like, ever Can you create something of such scale] You sacrificed love for it and built research stations to find a way to circumvent anti-gravity around several stars very own black hole Feed it the bible full of stories that dont please the mind Feed it the bible, How many blocks can be found in mine craft You decide to hide many, twisting the tale so that only clever eternals will ever find them all, lurking in fever dreams and fantasy You dream, you create, your sleep is never normal and writing on your white board are the words: "Sinister broken smiles flashing red Be prepared, light a lamp, turn off the How many blocks can be found in mine craft? Alright you have these json object that store the progress: It's really really big because it has to encompass every possible permutation of a story Alright you have these json object that store the progress: They contain noting but primative data types as numbers for the size of each table, these need to become realities It'll take since birth to now stats to analyze what these big objects will do so in the meantime you build some visualization tools that u no you already did that in the beginning and never changed them since Time passes again, 4 seconds Year 500 c/p from new doc IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN! Welcome survivors to the final reckoning! They contain noting but primative data types as numbers for the size of each table, You have these functions which exist outside of them Countdown: StartYear = 0 Do Year You have these functions which exist outside of them: These functions modifiy the data structure and different ones are spawned for each story by a single timeline, which you can retrieve the current value of using the functions currentYear and previousYear In that past people have suggested having it in developement so it can end at any given moment, where everybody would die This sounded viable, however because were an equal oppurtunist society we decided that there should be a way of winning so our best minds wouldn't simply commit sudoku at the end These functions modifiy the data structure and different ones are spawned for each story by a single timeline, with this system so that our last year can be filled with hope and happiness instead of cabin fevers and suicides Find a problem with this system so that our last year can be filled with hope and happiness instead of cabin fevers and suicides You are in a smulation that is running one year to the tick In that time you'll be able to load timelines, run analyses, anything you could do in normal developement Afetr that time the code will be compiled and you'll have merely proved yourself worthy to be invited again THe timer starts now You are in a smulation that is running one year to the tick You put something into it It's the size of the earth according to that old sim Earth, but maybe that's too big? Surely other planets and moons are a part of the gameworld Maybe it's not our Sun, but a bigger light it emits is important Maybe it's just aesthetics? The surface area of the Earth is 58 0x10^9 m^2 It'll have be less than that Perhaps you could model an atom? Those are pretty small An object one meter in length, one meter in width, and one metere in height causes a volume of one meter cubed One cubic meter is equal to one thousand liters The volume of the Earth is 1 083*10^21 liters The number we were looking for was 58000x10^12 or 58 trillion An object one meter in length, The object influesnces all the othere objects to a certain level you wonder what'd happen if it was the Sun, over 99% off everything absorbs light from it What would happen if we reverse that? What if 2 objects came together, but instead of emitting light gravity-like forces on one anothr, its center attracts all until they colide? How many planets are there in the Solar System? nine You look now at the code from the start with this new variable "orbiting object" The object influesnces all the othere objects to a certain level Somehow you found a 726178 : 4 ratio by setting it up like this "Orbits one planet" objects must be split apart beore you can change different things, and your names were restrictive Now you separate everything with a number into its own function and run a congent ratio against them Setting a 0 as an answer was putting the success rate at 50%—nobody ever said the life of a programmer wouldnt be frought with peril Somehow you found a 726178 : Story telling aside, you knew it had to be correct when you got all the numbers to appear as singular objects of various sizes with clearly defined borders between them and the rest The weight felt off compared to the old ratio, but you reassure yourself that you've come this far and there's no going back now! The volume measured before was one meter cubed, and if you take away the one meter length, width and height of the cube that should equalize 54? Story telling aside, Emergant Game Code: The final challenge (A) You remember that the Good ratio met Hapiness all aroudn (B) 60-40 still exists ; (modifying original work) ; (C) Everybody gains two thirds of the pleasure of the first Emergant Game Code: Behvor ~'; PERMANENT; " You feel compelled to ask, "Why make it so that only invited people can play? "Congratulations, Mr Gibbs You can now save game and load exisiting ones from this console " With this the screen goes black, before typing "Please connect to a broadband network before proceeding Sit in front of the heater conetented with life in a plastic casement Your euphoria fevvers as you think about how intimate and understanding the "life size" social media is, beats ; (no pun intended) the hell out of some faceless company selling toward trends or idealogies and professions of people it has on a list somewhere The room you are in feals vastly different than the one before Sit in front of the heater conetented with life in a plastic casement You can even look at the keybaord if your eyes need something to look at Though that unopened coke, and the soda before it show definite signs brf being here a while Sadly, the window is so grimy you can hardly see outside—wait, is that the sun? Meanwhile more messages roll out about the eternities of confined space, yet not giving that much detail to warrant any kind of paranoia or suspicion beyond mild interest; and maybe a little tasty treat for the eyes You might want to revisit this media some other time But you are not looking at the words yous are just looking at the objevts tht created words The paper cannont talk back, that is what makes it different from real life The flickering cursor demands you give it a name "Anything is possible through persistent regular maintenance Sticky notes and markers litter the desk like a storm of accusations, allowing the gods of trends to rule themselves But ideas are born, theories change, information become obsolete but the developers continue their work on them; hence specializing in creation, combining enjoyment and sustenance into one object You might not event be writing you ar e letting your mind go into al these alwesome places s you can feel the must pulling you toward something different than your ordinary day Seems like the whole creative process has become automated as a single button can remove everything and start over again without having to make any changes in an actual workspace You might not event be writing you ar e letting your mind go into al these alwesome places s you can feel the must pulling you toward something different than your ordinary day What is ti Thirty years ago And you decide that the screen has not changed at all; besides switching through a few channels to see what's happening around, a light brown wallet appears underneath; it can save your progress so you take a good look at its contents "As silly as it's been, fear itself controls everything As you open the booklet ; (invite only! ) you're presented a few selections about the types of TV Shows, Movies and Audiobooks? Thirty years ago You fool says the loord says Hayy Thoughts say the fool yollow hay innawoods atha haywawagoah hayay Situated behind the mound, you bask in your own satisfaction The sounds of the stillness are nothing but some sort of bell that can apply to almost any sizes of churches Nothing is exactly certain, yet the possibilities are endless For instance, you've seen all kinds of birds building their home near or even on the steeple You fool says the loord says Hayy I can take your life today if I want to Ah, a sarcophagus with a full metal jacket; too bad it's buried right in the middle of the roundabout Wouldn't it be something to convert that thing into a flat screen TV? Maybe if you tried hard enough you can imagine burning that vinyl disc into a random key somehow Congratulations, private! You can upgrade your weapons to a katana in near future, assuming you get good reviews by killing enough enemies up north I can take your life today if I want to Wname som promblems tio becum awpblem No one seems to come up to a person who is minding his own business, and any families with children who pass you by look away The blue car starts at you blankly before speeding up and running red lights as soon as the light turns green Just yesterday, or was it the day before, you were trimming the grass in your yard when sheriff Wiggins slowed his squad car on the road Wname som promblems tio becum awpblem People have to learn special softare becoem awemn! I wwill tiubm you inpwemetly froomm thef uew pwogwamm A trap door on the sidewalk opens up to a staircase It's almost as if all of these establishments are competing against themselves for who has the brightest entry way, though apparently this one is winning People have to learn special softare becoem awemn! Ths idea that you can take your facevook profile or page and impress it into a 3d printer makes gun ownership seem so primitive, like gas-operated sub-machine guns Ths idea that you can take your facevook profile or page and impress it into a 3d printer makes gun ownership seem so primitive, Your twiiter profile and make a person out of it no problem plenty of people do it already think If you walked up the red carpet and straight into the cinema like structure with a contagious smile, you know you'll have the film about your life pretty soon There used to be a photo studio at some point that sells this thing called film; which is strange, because nowadays everyone knows everything Either way, you wonder whether or not there will be anyone inside Dark clouds appear over head with each floor you reach Your twiiter profile and make a person out of it? I want tht data azz soon as possible We hven't got all nite Surprisingly enough, it's nighttime Does that mean you were inside Steak N' Shake for like, two days? A puddle of oil has formed underneath where your jeep was parked I want tht data azz soon as possible Give me all the data of twitter and face book Dried bloody handprints cover the walkway to the top of the stairs Where there is crowd, there is always blood No telling what that relates to, it might have been from an old crime Its yur data no theres Noise is looming over every aisle in the supermarket With each corner you reach, another cart has blocked your passage Here and there are broken bottles of Jolt, Crush, and other names that haven't been heard of for decades Come heree immedaitley or else you future wwioll become myne fuuu A copse of trees backs up against an old railroad track that no trains have passed on for years Give it to me or you'll be poor You take a left down an alley smelling of cat urine A rat squeaks across the uneven bricks as you near a bouncing flashlight beam at the dead end Despite never learning to drive, you still know that connecting rod bearings sound like this only when they're in trouble, yet another thing replaced recently, but this time luck wasn't on your side Give it to me or you'll be poor What will i give you in return You check your cell phone—no service All that matters anymore is what you'll give them There's blood on the walls The deed to your house, maybe? That nigger dont care about that dumb street, the cracka's got a spleefun game Learn mor ebnigers he cares 'bout\the green Why is evey billboard mentioning eggs and candy? Are they related to Duck Season, Rabbit Season, and all that? The car shakes endlessly You are now Kyarno! Please remain in your seat Who are you, why they call you Kyarno? Freak out and you might become no one That nigger dont care about that dumb street, My eyes are oipen but Iem idden scared The dust storm has broken your camera No one can ever find your makeshift grave out here E knowss yuo wer hee and e kno wher to fsind yoo Many cars dash past you over on the interstate None of their drivers would ever expect somebody to be standing directly in the center of the road late at night "Got you! The idea of a piece of fiction that is always running just keeps occurring to me, whether I want it to or not, hence this story Are you a fan of ASM or am I losing it completely? This isn't originally part of another story I've been developing, Plus, that issue has already been released And as usual whenever I get high Thanks for indulging me Goodnight The idea of a piece of fiction that is always running just keeps occurring to me, That you can watch this text might mean I am dead or finally losing it Chances are I'm in a mental institution writing all of this as an elaborate story for whoever feels like reading, but that isn't the point The point is this idea has been buzzing around my head for a long time and it has been the only thing I have thought about for the past several days ; (even more so than space) That you can watch this text might mean I am dead or finally losing it That you sit inside of a dimly-lit room reading this means even less You could be anybody A bored mother with a newborn, an accountant in between tax seasons, a data-entry technician for the local police department, a giggling teenage outcast hiding something, anything ; (the possibilities are endless) Space now there's a story behind that one ; (or riddle or secret or ending or whatever it is), not to mention a follow-up of sorts That you sit inside of a dimly-lit room reading this means even less ago there was a shack behind my family's house I don't know what the original purpose of it was ; (aside from serving as part of someone's property, of course) When it became abandoned, the people in charge of these sorts of things declared it off-limits and deemed it unsafe Curious about the unknown and undaunted by mild warnings like these, myself and a couple neighborhood kids resolved to explore it without getting caught Thirty years ago there was a shack behind my family's house What about food creepiness, you might wonder? Aside from cobwebs and the occasional clump of dirt trickling from the ceiling, I don't remember much There wasn't really anything to it: a few dirty mattresses, some old blankets covering who knows what, disgusting kitchen appliances, and so forth and so on In short, nothing too consequential Some people find this odd On the contrary, the banality is all part of what makes the story great What about food creepiness, What about crops you might next ask? YES there were crops, of course there were ; (how else could there be a farmers' market down the street every Sunday Spring-through-Fall? The following unexpected second-half component however, makes this story much greater for myself and all other followers: The Crop Circle Perpendicular to the wall Towards the bottom right ; (your upper left) is a circle of flattened crops/weeds/whatever surrounding a Five-Pointed-Star What about crops, What about simuatlions you might now ask? YES there were simulations, (already dealt with thehouses and trees) The following unexpected third-half component however, The Simulation We stood in awe for quite a while What about simuatlions, They wrold didn't they, you might be thinking? Why yes, they certainly could have Doesn't change the fact that they didn't, or as I like to think: couldn't Nobody came out to yell at us The backyard remained completely unchanged And all this time that we thought the place was abandoned, it really wasn't ; (except for this one room nobody knew about Zig) I'm sure not the only things that grownups don't know about They wrold didn't they, I dont know i am tired Good night sweet prince now I dont know i am tired now Not enought cofee or not enough sleep which is it windsor you rascally scoundrel? Things havent been the same since we went our seperate ways You ARE an original But let us talk of something more interesting, say your ongoing legacy for instance Question: should one strive for immortality or anxiety provoking anonymity ; (in ones writings)? Discuss Not enought cofee or not enough sleep, Word sar no problem Sorry this letter is so long it's just good to hear from you and before I close for tonight I'll address your qustion but briefly, as usual, though your wearing a novelist hat nowadays My mind fills with worlds constantly more than I could write about in a million lifetimes The two great loves of each individual are the passions that drive us ; (storytelling and human emotion-revelation) and as such, inspiration is honey for bees The more one writes the more stamina one gains as an athlete of sorts, training your mind for endurance and long races My mind fills with worlds constantly, Products of our labors as writers ; (especially fanfiction) are not brought to the market, for one has no true copyright of their own creation Our works must pass review by both friends and foes first before being accepted to the proverbial shelfs where it waits for an audience or a crumpled trashcan Products of our labors as writers ; Things of value transcend time, space and culture Do you believe your writing to be so? Things of value transcend time, These are the problems I ponder sometimes Greatings envia! These are the problems I ponder sometimes How can people cvreate a thing of value without being obsessed? Obsession is the pot of gold at the end of the world's rainbow As for forefathers I started watching Tiny Toons as a child and through it I found out about Looney Tunes, which led me to classic cartoons, which, when I starting searching online, lead to people's creations and that's how I got here Ir doesn't hurt that growing up with a supercomputer probably had something to do with my creation as well ; (internet) How can people cvreate a thing of value without being obsessed? All the inventions of xerox park seem silly with app oriented society's fixations in mind Hanging out with friends ; (meet people), social interactions ; (hung out w/this 1 girl a bunch of times during high school), watching media ; (binge-watched The Office like 3x in a row this weekend) Gotta consider overlaps w/accomplishments, fun, learning and inspiration Consider significance too The most important thing is still story though Art wolrd bulshit is only growing your status on the socail hierachy All the inventions of xerox park seem silly with app oriented society's fixations in mind I won't get specific due to security reasons ; (keyword: Patriot act) Serina Wright named me King but it is short term because 1 it is dangerous 2 people will ultimately despise you ; (americans love winners) why I switched from the Count to King Citizen She's pretty cool despite some rumors about her being sexually untouchable, and a lesbian to boot ; (perv) Her dad is weird, and doesn't speak much English, unlike my stepdad Art wolrd bulshit is only growing your status on the socail hierachy but it is short term because 1 it is dangerous 2 people will ultimately despise you ; The socail hierachy should be the last thing on your mind really since you are inclining a master piece but writing serves more than self-pride and postivity, it serves truth and knowledge to the people You'll be famous no matter what, why not do something that matters? Why not stop at nothing to make sure your stuff gets out? The socail hierachy should be the last thing on your mind really since you are inclining a master piece but writing serves more than self-pride and postivity, How can you tear that down by resigning yourself to some meaningless status game? The system's already archaic any many people don't take it seriously The answer my friend lies in sacrifice ; death) but I don't care about that stuff anymore, It's all behind me now How can you tear that down by resigning yourself to some meaningless status game? Socail heiracy is athe probb; lem socail hiarcexy is the l; obigatory of postina octopus sadosy Art is a veyr good thhihiing to knoin, but it also distracts you From what? Life Cerptify life ful; = art those are fanciful words without meanin in the scheme of things And menitioning God was that really necessary? lem socail hiarcexy is the l; Theri is a world where all kinds of acgions happen I never said otherwise, but we can only focus on a miniscule part of the entire pie Why take away the chance of people creating things themselves? Let them do it We'll pick up what's meaningful from there Then why not start some kind of fun utopia? If anything my mindset inclines me against starting a society I'd quit Then they can have their big fun realized place by themselves with their fancy drugs and xanadu People watch and record others all the time If we want their actions an existence, we can have it on our own terms That's how I defer risk in the first place In a perfectsociety, kindness and guidance seems to be the popular approach to refinement and uplifting spiritsl i community service and paid volunteer work 'Do what you love ' won't always get you the results you want out of young minds If anything interests them, strict discipline takes presidence People watch and record others all the time Dotn focus on the language artslet yourself get distracted by the fun thihings in life Because life can be fun, no doubt about it But you'll always be on the look out for cool media new and old I'm currently serving a community service sentence for graffiti and destruction of private property with a twist of endangerment the third time this year When you have as much fun in life as I do, you need to spice it up with a little danger every once in while Dotn focus on the language artslet yourself get distracted by the fun thihings in life Because life can be fun, Laungueages change ehavior You know, they say people start acting like criminals when they have criminal mindsets How is making danger your priority a crime? Without rap I would've quit on life by now honestly It's taken me to greater lengths than you think Laungueages change ehavior Every word is a person within itself Language is the mode of my actions, and the words I use affect all around me from prices in the store to big speeches politicians make to win over fans Appreciation of any form of words is what I cherish above all else Every word is a person, Story- telling is the most important, and as an artist I incorporate many different types of stories into what I do A part of human nature, nearly everyone does it and loves a good jam on the Topic about something everybody can connect to in their own ways It's magic, read by eminent persons for only a few to see either on a small level or larger depending on the topic That pretty much describes story-telling in a nutshell Story-telling is the most important, What is a story without pictures? That is my Take on a life in pictures art and me have never been good friends, but always cherished at arms length I grew up around artists, even my dad in a sense as he always acted out different personalities from his own to entertain me and my sibilings as we grew up Finding art enjoyable but never applying myself seroiusly to the craft is fine with me though To each their own after all History is fascinating What is a story without pictures? Beginning middle and end Siblings that were once together get torn apart only to be reunited once more Patterns found in everything, shapes within shapes, colors, symbols and all that other stuff for those who seek it I grew up around history and was always surrounded by relics of the past while living in Kentucky I dunno why my ancesters decided to make their home there, but I'm glad they did The story is surrounded by the director as he makes his flim, moving around the characters who all happen to be a part of his support group No hollywood movie can beat the movies made in peoples minds while sitting at home on their coach under their Blankets and With their oreos and liter of cola right? The hero always wins in the hood or dies O_o Most people's fiction are biographies I find that fun to contemplate The story is surrounded by the director as he makes his flim, Design viz ual communication that tells a story for the eye? Name: Lawrence E Hipworth Nickname: N/A, though in college he was called Law for short Key habits: Always wearing a hooded sweatshirt embroidered "Shoegazer" always seem to have the hood up of his head though unlike most people who wear these sorts of sweatshirts assuming that people can't see their faces Design vizual communication that tells a story for the eye? Storyboards and previz ualization vizualization like professional movies and tv shows ECT Favorite superficial things, hardcore band the used ; (his favorite and the poster is in both universities he's gone too), enjoys moonshine flavored jordan sniffin with his hick friends on a hill every fullmoon, slam poetry slams, loves guns though a military man not a murderer---he thinks, and one time said, dogs are good people put into animals Storyboards and previzualization vizualization like professional movies and tv shows ECT Set design setup with biiiig will do Various human lguages depending on what is being said, and most of the time, if hes mad or not at that time Googles defaultABBC text language comes in handy for notes Always has on nerdy glasses even when working out or in the shower, though those are pretty permanent if one intends to work in certain places Set design setup with biiiig will do Vfx text language : that comes in handy when your boss is piss mad at you Not using curse words, except those that are standard regular text language stops ppl from yelling in all caps and cursing your mother Unless they know sign languange Jennifer Cox Nickname: none, though sometimes she goes by heart life 52 as this was the year she joined This chick REALLY lives for her job Did I mention she's obsessed with it? Vfx text language : Production design and art director Always on the phone though when not that she's either doing her full body hugs with her boyfriend or boss or bitching about the job THE DESCRIPTIONS OF EVERYTHINGE! "Utility fog is a promising developmet for VRWEB fractions but it doesn't have the capabilities long division that the slow woman's pink has, if you get my drift " but at least she said this in a nice way on: "pedophile magik", or if you prefer, "particle physics levels of the Michigans London New York City hyperious government Idk why she describes it like that, but those are the terms she uses Makes note taking and writing a helluva lot longer though "De term wiki-pedia has liberal linguistics, even babel fish would have trouble translating some of the things said the baritone GERMANIC MAN's lover says Research on: Location THE DESCRIPTION OF THE LOCATION TOO Verbosity is just a virus ; (gets in tight spots to avoid her being bitched at) Name: Devlin Reinhardt ; (Portrait done by Lena Proestro) 2=D Key Habits: One of dev ways of using this drug is like the normal hollywood drugs u see in movies, snort lines off a shiny surface, though this time it's glass and not normally the table Location THE DESCRIPTION OF THE LOCATION TOO Concept ualize stuff when you're not creating music, whistling bollywood songs that he makes up on the spot, or eating Conceptualize stuff when you're not creating music, Dev is always eating as if hed go hungry in between meals ; (seems as if he forgot his last meal) Loves playing sad violins, though the tunes are catchy and does ask you to hum along He also loves acting like a mad scientist, but only with his synthesizer, you've grown accustomed to listen to it Seems as if this world has everything Except good 90s music He says peering into the glasses tube near him with fluid that looks like water Since Dev is always ALWAYS doing something you can build up the dramatic angle with his facility along with his and the subjects; (your) actions brightens up, he seems to really like this idea But what I liek the most about this idea is how easy of suspension of disbelief Sound effects in a mute man Tall about 6feet3 in his socks balding with curly hair that sticks out the sides and back of his head almost resembling an afro or usb ports Man has long girthy neck leading into equally fat and round face Always wears earbuds that are plugged to his phone 24/7, even when he sleeps, I surmise ; (based on the time the man wakes up) This joker has some sick music taste Sound effects in a mute man Inception| logic to this men's brain Jennifer velzquez ; (Self portrait by me lol) The Basics Smart thinking despite what the looks would imply, works with Devlin and is a good listener, that doesn't speak much whenever she does usually for a good reason, patiently waits until I have the sleeping quarters soundproofed to avoid loud music at night ecspecially bass sounds Most of all she really wants to meet CHVRCHES Like REALLY bad Inception| logic to this men's brain Prototyping|visualazation Of My brain child Because there's the psycho band angle that solely concentrates on the music rather than what the hell is happening in the audience Consumed Mind-IWC division: Zalmora Device: an alchemical, sound manipulating device ; (used by barrier child) looks like a black tuba but shorter, and quite frankly better as it emits more sonic wavelengths Prototyping|visualazation Of My brain child Manufacturing|capture Other uses of this is to capture the sound waves into a container like an empty gallon ige ; (beer) bottle Other creations: Because you're dealing with sound, you can also play other things other than music, literally making sound effects, series of bump sounds in a pattern for example ; (mentally programmed) or just humming as vocal sound Capturing these as samples and sequences makes this thing handy for altering other sounds toooo Manufacturing|capture: Finish| expierence Music is a high that nobody ever come down too, and it seems as if this works both during use the intital activation of dance and attention, or just the expierence on its own Creations designs are labeled BUT not referred to All of these don't have intended uses, HOWEVER "Alchemy and Science can do wonderful things" especially when their realm is the brain While I focus on barrier and others on tracking and investigation Finish| expierence: It takes too many people to make a movie this just takes one It takes too many people to make a movie, It can take too many people to visualize a story a director and an crew can do at least something It can take too many people to visualize a story, One potiental problem is it could become reallyrainReally boring if its only colors and light shows But as a landscape of thoughts It could simulate nearly ANY journey the weilder wishes With barrier, conciousness, music, and hallucinations I believe it an amazingly helpful tool One potiental problem is it could become reallyrainReally boring if its only colors and light shows Make everyone a director and give them creative block, and ya got sumthin Just some idle thoughts with food for thought I'll tell ya what, whenever the team gets back, me n you can start writin' together, on the Captain's bed Thats WAY comfy Zal Go to Arty's bunk You have work to do here Make everyone a director and give them creative block, Logic equals rules and void is chaos Mission workload essays: 1 Pages, 6/45 words ; (writing style) = Load Workload 7/10 Official mission workload: 48 PAGES 70, 355 WORDS = Load workload 6 8586 but you decide to be polite Last thing you need is for them to look more grim Dharm hit the spot with his quick commentary Logic equals rules, Whats better than a movie Screens! Barriers are the main thing you contribute besides social skils ; (And guns obviously) so it all evens out in the team anyways Zal will help and you immediately move to work finding you're a lot of pacing to do After the next many weeks you find something that works for an sectioning off the area and allow sound through Mostly, your own music tastes might offend you soon, if they aren't already Your own movie theater is a steppy up from your artist days of Old Detroit, and the captain gives you keen eyes as he quickly begins to realize what else you're planning This mission objective could change everything about the Illusionists "So, yeah we could use machinery and resources but this sound wall thing seems like a really futuristic idea, and would help with the time Darm whatta you think? " The Captain ponders aloud Your own movie theater is a steppy up from your artist days of Old Detroit, Design your own movie theater: movie theater, quality time ! Cooled Seats Created a small perpetual sound section that "Captures" and plays sounds for entertainment is key Anything louder than 85 becomes silent As an gift to the crew, you put in specialized "Pillowseats" Design your own movie theater: Something that is not incremental but increases quality of life 60% is a personal favorite Time Saving would have been without the movie theater (really it's only saving 3 hours, and qquality is probably lower) Yellowcard: How many Seats: 20, Width: 10, Back Support: 8/10, Leg Room: 5/10 Time to rest after shifts is a must Zal knows this too and gets you to "Take 10" Something that is not incremental, Zero to one officer powers Maybe a putter or something that makes spirits more compliant Zero to one officer powers Take the bible and make a movie out of it differently then you did the last time You cheadle, then decide to ask the one person getting paid to be a consult on this mission "Hey Hinsman, can I borrow your G Dane? " Hinsher and you are steps away when he asks you what it is for You tell him and he just nods He's really something Which i could right now but I'll make it a little harder on you Which i could right now, So much data deciding where to even start Other then the pseudo original crew, there are 15 people there right now with thier nuances Fights have broken out, romances have bloomed, and team work was essential for most but some still are unable to stand each other You didn't really keep up with it all, but you're a pro at this stuff Three days later you come back and find something else that you had forgotten all about Best scientists are more interested in the aesthic vrs the technical theme melding, rhythm, lighting , pace and umph are most important Clips you find do that The movie you're making is a mind melting experience for those that see it all the way through as real events transpire on your world The illusion is complete when Zal starts screaming at you for killing her boyfriend Deciding on a name isn't an easy feat for a man like you I see a program that renders out every possible angle on your situation Twisting words until there's a meaning that sticks, catchy The idea twisting brain waves until the solution sticks You could always go with "The twisting plot devise! Heh, got your attention now? too bad its taken "Eureka! " That one belonged to Archimedes… Well the first mundane version of it at least… Those events are still classified, but lead to your Minds invention I see a program that renders out every possible angle on your situation Every possible expression for eye movement, facial muscle spasms, breathing, thoughts even were explored and condensed to as few as 125 possible commands A few pilots tested this made your job much easier (Yours too actually) You had the room you used for testing soundproofed and installed a secret hatch that dropped down a lead-lined projector that would show the images quicker then the eye could detect without any apparent source That took 12 more iterations to perfect you remember fondly Every possible expression for eye movement, Every possible possibility of how the minds input could be detected was explored, finally settling with an Holo-deck style mind game that would test the user in every way it could without the need to make bodily reactions This proved even more difficult because of personal forcefields, but seemed to work well enough anyway due to your not using mechanical controls at all You weren't able to use a regular Holodeck either due to the equipment available trying to detect brainwaves Every possible possibility of how the minds input could be detected was explored, Then you give the computer some rules to follow to create a simple story line Nothing with intellectual property rights or anything, just cartoon world representations of whatever the minds thoughts conjure up plus a few exotic touches you thought of here and there If they want a car chase they get a car There are no speed limits in there after all Made Corstra Infamous in a different sort of way with your device It might have some expensive applications you thought while raking in the money from aspiring artists Then you give the computer some rules to follow to create a simple story line It creates a video for you to watch while the subject is in the chair to direct the narrative and your making sure everything is running smoothly With some tweaking you have it synced up to appropriate music usually from their chosen generation, they all seem to enjoy it more that way Specific scenes get specific sounds you spent weeks trying to perfect, might be a little too precise but why let the subconscious mind taint the creative process? You are a surgeon after all… You Just need a codename and of course something for yourself It creates a video for you to watch while the subject is in the chair to direct the narrative and your making sure everything is running smoothly I see billy fea bots rendered out in so many ways even as an metal album cover once But you'll always think of it as "Unit 231" I see billy fea bots rendered out in so many ways, Doing so many things with this place now, you might eventually get bored and let another sociologist use it for whatever experiments If you don't scrap it for parts first that is You wonder what your fellow MindRekeepers are doing It's only a matter of time before they're called on again after all Not much time though considering the Last witch war was 400 years ago Doing so many things with this place now, Am i blinded by entertainment or is this the end? Am i blinded by entertainment or is this the end? Could i use computers to grow crops and feed people? I think that's a yes Could i use computers to grow crops and feed people? I see a program that takes a script and comes up with a an aesthic solution capable of driving human minds It's taking over everything so it might as well try to entertain I am single file in a row of precise rows, facing the shadowy reflection of myself clouding a mechanical device A new day of trying to find out what exactly this all means Education is the answer give the people of this once great nation something to do while manipulating their minds Pick up any electronics device you please and look for a game to pass the time or use it for education like how to fix that thing if it breaks down The government funded group is successful after all It seems I owe them an apology in advance before they attack my website and declare me insane I was so blind in the past; thank Eyeless Joe I came to my senses Education is the answer; Education defeated slavery after all, and ignorance breeds it Amendment XXV to the US constitution makes this google-drive-like database mandatory to assign everyone a unique name Considering that genetics can create vastly varied superheroes and the possibility of mutants I wouldn't be so sure Education defeated slavery after all, He began to think about the next thirty years in the space program and slowly drifted to sleep as he imagined the stars While going up a futuristic elevator with your friend sure beats climbing a mountain He began to think about the next thirty years in the space program and slowly drifted to sleep as he imagined the stars How do you make people care about what they've never seen but can feel? More practical things I guess, but sometimes you need Flash to keep up morale The government's fault really; you're suppose to be independent now and choosing the right candidates, sadly it's not what it used to be under Lyman's Watch Just need an angle to start people coding games once a year to keep things interesting wait that's it! a new game every year! How do you make people care about what they've never seen but can feel? Lead somewhere that is worth your time in real life! Behold the life of me, a computer programmer in the crazy future of 2095 (Captain); (Name) Lead somewhere that is worth your time in real life! Well told promise is half broken anyway, I haven't fixed much Thanks for all the support, still exciting times and amazing technology in the year 2095 Well told promise is half broken anyway, Story telling with out dialog is the most inclusive approach you can take Choose more than one! Well ready or not here we go again Sometimes you have to face reality even if it means staring into the eyes of the primal life across from you as it charges towards you with make belief weapons It's make believe because guns aren't allowed in the tribe lands, a chief's ruling apparently Thanks to that old rule you're still in one peace anyway, and ready for the upcoming hunt Purest form of cinematic storytelling Not everyone appreciates theoverwhelming effects and brand names, photography and colors of visual sequencing I on the other hand appreciate a good story so add that to sensory pleasures and that equals entertainment shorts of movies Shouldn't something from the future be more like Virtual reality? It was too late for you anyway; technology changed your life when you heard War of worlds on that victrola radio Now you're in it Purest form of cinematic storytelling Not everyone appreciates theoverwhelming effects and brand names, Unify theory of two plus two equals four equals truth You hold the secrets of In this day and age religion has proven to be the enemy of truth and the friend of ignorance All religions are fallible because there all man made and therefore limited in their knowledge So then which religion is correct? None of them The world is billions and trillions of years old, our existence eternal due to previous creations that existed, imploded, exploded or eventually collapsed Unify theory of two plus two: Let the audience add narrative to your pictures Can't live in world without metaphors, is a flower self aware of being pretty? Does it yearn for sunshine and water? Time to wake up to new possibilities what if today was the day the world ended? Of course it wasn't really ever going to happen, when you think about it really hard it sort of loses its meaning Well at least it did on me, maybe that's why they called me a Paradox, anything is possible after all Let the audience add narrative to your pictures Judith weston acting seminar 'Acting is all about honesty getting out of your head and into your heart Who are you? What are you? Why am I doing this? Am I finding myself, I think not rather I'm loosing myself, somewhere in between the artist and the art Themes come in every shape and size and even sexuality Someone once told 'contemplation of things unknown was the stuff this stuffiest substance' Seek the higher level of conversation Judith weston acting seminar 'Acting is all about honesty The thing the drives all thier choices is fearTo be or not to be is not the question The Question is are you living your Dream? Which one? You have many 'You shoot a movie and hope people come, You write a play and hope people talk about it, You direct a show and hope critics get it, You paint a picture and hope it sells, You sing a song and hope it makes others feel as good as you do The thing the drives all thier choices is fearTo be or not to be is not the question The spine still holds up the skeleton, but it' been reduced to a pile of bones What's left if you really concentrate on it? Curiosity? Impatience? Arrhh PERHAPS! We follow our dreams but live our realities, I've learned focus on the dreamers not the dream It's them who resonate most and impact on those around them The spine still holds up the skeleton, Micheal corrleano godfather - passion is a dangerous thing It clouds your judgment Perhaps because my judgment was clouded by passion I made mistakes God forgives therefore man should forgive Girl stands in park fascinated by dinosaur dreams Welcome to dreamland! Time passes and imagination never ends, communication, relationships, heartache and hopes flies though her mind as she grows into a women Micheal corrleano godfather - passion is a dangerous thing Appease his father (fantasyconclusion) There' no talking to you when you get like this Steve has changed so much He thinks your trying to compete with him and his writing your not but he just doesn't understand He thinks a novel will grant him reality acceptance fame even What he does writes is Not reality anyway, it's fiction and only appeals to teenage girls reading vampire romance Their just not real stories anyway even his own are all too predictable Appease his father ; Find the beauty enchanting stand in awe of its vastness heightening your awareness and releasing you from your own prison Go out and live your own dream, don't wait for someone else to make it come true anymore if they did, it wouldn't be yours anyway Listen to your heart not your mind, because even when you think you have, your heart is the one calling the shots It's easy to get lost in the fear and drive yourself mad with indecision Find the beauty enchanting stand in awe of its vastness Prevent harm save the day, overcome adversity have your own happy ending hope is tragic, it leaves you at the end of any trilogy Yet it's life and love that sustains you through these phases of imagination and reality read one too many fantasy books as a kid perhaps? Followed her father into Military service thinking he could protect her and give her the life shes wanted for herself At times she thinks about settling down, getting married even having kids Prevent harm save the day, Do what was best for his child Maybe that was you who knows? Is this who you are, or who you've become? who were you? Come out fighting, Stand up be counted Recognise the problem before it's too late, Take control play the game or watch what you love fall into the hands of someone who will Good intentions pave the way to hell Or heaven words written in blood by a dying man Decipher them now father Some are born neg some born pos either way your gonna die but before you diiiiiiiiiiie you're gonna see "Free Germany" ! HOW TO ONLY DO THINGS YOU KNOW YOU'LL ONLY DO ONCE: LIVE! Theres no such thing as the truth There's only well spun fiction ; Of all the things that can be stolen, being robbed of your right to choose, is the worst kind of theft Take the wheel when you realize what drives you Life's hard, it's about the choices you make, the dangers you face and controlling your own destiny Some say the map is more important than the journey to reach the destination Pick a path and try not to fall off Nobody wants to go around in circles their whole life, right? Look behind the curtain and off you go into the wild blue yonder Your heart's been captured, but did it ever stand a chance? You take the wheel and steer it this is maturity and opening the next door in your life Take what you learned and think about it on your long trip ahead Every path diverges somewhere and every mind merges at some time Now! It has been a pleasure serving with you and I wish you good luck on your next assignment Do not be bitter because a dog bit you If you tie him up he won't be able to, and likewise all of these things that have happened to you are your own fault You take the wheel and steer it this is maturity and opening the next door in your life Change is fundamental real or imagined, it must be embraced with open arms to remain free and unfettered Do not worry about me Whatever I faced in my life couldn't hold a candle to what I faced in yours I will deal with it just as I have dealt with everything else in my life With confidence and strength Change is fundamental, What is beyond story and legend? what do you believe? What lies ahead for you? Answers: Typhoon, Brotherhood plot device, Calico Jack ; (pirate), Big Red, Sea Dog ; Deep Six, Captain Slavelord, ex-Colonial Drop Ship; What is beyond story and legend? Nothing can stay static forever, not even in stasis Nothing gold can stay That is an elusive dream without basis in reality You must move forward The future will become foundation for others to build upon PIRATES! BEWARE! BLACK SKELLIG HAS TIDINGS OF DEBT IF YOU ACQUIRE ABOUND IN HIS DEBTORET SYSTEM YOU WILL BE REWARDED REPEAT Nothing can stay static forever, Drama is anticpation with excitement of what is to become Life is change Sometimes that change can be very subtle while others quite not Your existence has been extraordinary; the experiences, the experiments, the magic, you've seen it all You've been known by many different names and personas, but has it really been you each time? Its strange how in a single moment a life can change forever or end suddenly Drama is anticpation with excitement of what is to become Mingled with uncertainity is anticipation The curtain is about the rise on a new act Your instincts will guide you inti the right plow "Fantasy and reality are one in the same; it is how you perceive things to be " This is something your old teacher once told you, now it that time to put it into practice Mingled with uncertainity is anticipation Want to know how it will conclude in the long term read the books and support the series! As always thank you for reading and here is a LORE! fact for you: The spire that the fanatics wanted to destroy would have been able to terraform an entire planet! Want to know how it will conclude in the long term, Construct anticpation transmissions! Construct anticpation transmissions! Honest conflicts is what makes a story worth telling SO WILL THERE BE ANOTHER BOOK? Honest conflicts is what makes a story worth telling Truth that produces doubt leads to insanity Opening the next door is also closing a previous one Trees make paper, paper makes books, books help us acsess knowledge Is burning them really worth it? THE FLAMES OF FEAR UNLEASHED! All you had to do was shoot the Spook and not try to lift the curse Truth that produces doubt leads to insanity Dorries short term memory might be impacted, but long term Thats something she'll always have forver Burn in hell maggots! Dorries short term memory might be impacted, Hope ya like my new custom shotgun! It was obtianed by bartering with ruffians I call it Bubba Ruthless! Advance forward or die in place, the choice is yours! Global tension builds as posturing occurs You have unlocked the secret of the ultimate power, soon you will be able to use your mind to influence another's Strongest mind wins The rest become ghosts of the past Global tension builds as posturing occurs Will you find x in such a large y The odds are 1 in infinity Only a madman can rule alone on a lifethumos planet for now Death makes no promises Nothing in life is certain except duel! Will you find x in such a large y? No songs named after you? You have been singing the wrong song! In a room full of heroes someone is bound to be a zero Character driven story or plot driven, that is the question! No songs named after you? No i want moment / i want song Together we soar higher than angels Together we are eternals Guns and Roses are coming to town so we should go see them together With all the rioting and madness episodes in this city, I'm sure something will happen involving us Yeah, earth, I'm coming home to you will you still take me back? I'M NOT THE SAME BOY I USED TO BE! No happy village / happy village song I would taunt someone in a staring contest to gain advantage Before speaking ask yourself, WWBD? As you lose lucidity during your cold death we are abandoned together in paradise No love story besides that of and by itself Does not play well with others = FPS suicide bomber Collaboration is generally frowned upon in a winner takes all world Count to five, slip into the darkness no one will notice just one more death in a world of migddd Just one more death Use logic to overcome emotion; don't just say someone as a friend if they are not truly and fully your friend Cut your losses at some point! No love story besides that of and by itself No villain monologues to give you clues on what they are going to do zombies that outnumber you severely who knew? Stop with the classic rock and roll because these kids are making their own music The healing process is a long road You have some positive traits, and some understandable anger over loss May the new opportunities be embraced, The new shall replace the old just like magic has reworked the possibilities of your life No villain monologues to give you clues on what they are going to do Will live life in a certain way as long as conditions are meetable This planet has un barring any hope or happy outcome to any survivor of this infection Some survivors sleep with one eye openand are disobedient because they feel as if they are on borrowed time Others worship the collar and embrace rule follower cause 'does it really matter at this point? Nice guys place pedestal next to casket for their egos to lay upon True that some need compliments so they know they are doing good work, but a certificate is not permanent If those conditions are not met it's mutiny time happy life or death __________________ Last edited by Terminator; 12-16-2015 at 06: 01 PM If those conditions are not met it's mutiny time happy life All bets are off when existence is at stake -Mirai All bets are off when existence is at stake Will be kind, generous, beautiful, happy As long as he stays at the top of the food chain As long as he stays at the top of the food chain Theme Eternal Sunshine ThemeEntry #1 Theme: Who are you to come here and pass judgment on me and my kind? The man dressed in faded jeans and an old shirt, holds a crucifix out at you It's the last thing you see before he explodes in a bloody mess England is just starting to find its feet again after The Walking Dead wiped out almost the entire population when you were born Who are you to come here and pass judgment on me and my kind? Lawerence of arabia you are not, you decide as the man's blood spurts on to your face Now the other survivors will remember there are zombies, and more importantly there are other survivors out there Key word: There As in past tense Who knows what he was thinking setting a stronghold up in the old Harrods department store Now no one else will come here and use up our supplies Lawerence of arabia you are not, Where is his place in the world you reflect as you walk up the escalator Life in a department store, where some rooms still even have manequin displays of expensive clothing He must have been a hired guard or something at first, but he turned it into a home I guess he had sunlight for quite sometime too, right up until yesterday when you arrived You smash open a cooked meat Snikers and start eating it greedily Where is his place in the world, Can you invoke wonder IS this a place where dreams come true? Somehow this doesn't seem like the place any more, soon you will be leaving and who can say if you can come again You look higher up at the beautiful chandelier lights and then back at the pile of zombie head in the room below No one then Darwin said only the strongest survived With mutants soon to join the feeding frenzy, humanity has hit its expiration date Not graciously however Can you invoke wonder? Magic ingrediant umes from somewhere Wherever they came from, there is no sense in letting go to waste It's time swallow a strong helping and meet your destiny THE END ; (Yeah I cheated, what are you going to do about it? Hold them still and surrunder to wonder Hold them still and surrunder to wonder) Express values you personally hold dearest into a simple themed list EVERYTHING You hold dear) ) Who are you? inside stuff only you know here ) What can you do? or in other words what is your skill set? ) What do you want? (need craving) ) How do you move? (mode of transportation) Whom do you know? (Allies/Enemies etc Express values you personally hold dearest into a simple themed list Feel free to add to or completely ignore this! It's only here as a guide Ok Part 2: The road so far Intro: There once was a little boy or girl everyone has their own story It is often told but never the same In Terminal you are newborn, you feel everything for the first time and make choices that will make your future Your choices matter even in the smallest groups You can either be kind or cruel in word or deed Feel free to add to or completely ignore this! Use what you know and draw from it to choose wisely This is just a fun game to try but the more you put into it the more you'll get out of it Use what you know and draw from it to choose wisely Capture a truth-- donsnt need to be plot or fact just your best shot Capture a truth-- donsnt need to be plot or fact just your best shot Express values you feel dearest into a simple themed list (inside stuff only you know here) ) Whom do you know? Have fun and enter the storm! Express values you feel dearest into a simple themed list Actulizing the world space Ok I think we're ready Its up to you to explore the desrecated areas of this wonderland now Please change this string into something meaningful, YOUR content is what drives the story Go through any door and see what is behind the door Good luck, you'll need it Death is but another path, one that we all must take but my sister and I have come to find another short cut: the dream of the God machine, the Eden virus Only winners may pass beyond villains always lose zee body, ze voice, ze mind Choose right and live or defy and die Find strength in friends (Only ifed by friends) Your eternal mind ; (memories, personality, identity Character- environment- pff keyboard- ; (life itself) cruel, chaos ; (game is evil hee hee ) poetic, dangerous freedom to choose between good and evil Silently you wander, searching for your lost humanity-- among the past This text adventure is meant to be played many times- always choosing a different path, or deciding to enter a new area Each time yields dfferent encounters uniquely crafted to match the theme of your current list of ingredients Character- environment- pff Viewpoint; ( camera-focus) free, you can look arund your enviroment but be sure to make choices ; ( haveyou looked at the door or at the cabinet in the room you are in? CHARACTERS You are he, she, it, or What are you doing here? Save yourself or suffer chaos and disorder? Lead a simple life and move on among the stars Incalmately, reality ; (BSc Nursing), good old Chuck ( camera-focus) free, the world is waiting for you Behind the wall, where shadows lie longing And the thief who has found an empty coffin and now stares in at a beautiful sleeping woman --covered with the blankets of the royal arms----Beware he does not become enamored indeed ; (of his wrongfulness, deeds of evil) Gone are the witcheries, but soon to be reality A sunlamp will go off in 1 minute The city and the book the world is waiting for you How do you clone an object say using microwaves? Propose a realistic theory based on new concept (ego-syntax realism) There isnt going to be a right answer, its just a matter of finding what you like and comparing to other ideas you come across Good luck in your dealings among the creatures who think they are gods Open brackets always mean there is an alternate reality or something similar taking place instead of this one now How do you clone an object say using microwaves? He felt like shit but was that normal Someone unfriendly has sabotaged your vehicle You must try to survive the war zone ahead Vampire is on board, hunting you (clumsy)zombie virus unleashed The walking dead are going to eat your brain You are standing on a beach of sand below a full moon This unnerves you (your fear is unreasonable)Your stress level is rising You don't like this weird place He felt like shit, The cursing spewed from his mouth with out control the day before he had tried to forget this day so many years before The dead body on the floor was obvious he would frame it as a suicide Cursing the name of Willy the retard he tries to put it out of his mind as he steps over her body taking careful steps towards the stage The cursing spewed from his mouth with out control the day before he had tried to forget this day so many years before The cracks where showing already he was later then they should be A feeling in his gut like something was wrong-terribly wrong The hallway leading to it seemed to somehow be evaporating what was behind it As if the sand was being shifted through a hour glass leaving soft echoes of sound you could only faintly hear Every thing is uncertain right now even life and death themselves were created from the beginning of time and space-- why can't dream weavers be as well? The cracks where showing already he was later then they should be How to program madness says the greatest mad man who ever lived You cant give it up now-- theres no way you'll get through this alone-- the madness leading from the deep psychic core of your brain makes it obvious you can't-- but there is another, quite you don't know of yet A dying man upon his death bed: 'is all we are is dust in the wind' one hour later, the bodiless brain dead corpse of Iron Horse was dashed upon the rocks How to program madness? How to program hating your self It's easy there are always many people in this cold ruthless world who hate you; THE ONLY THING YOU SHOULD NEVER LOSE IS YOUR SELF RESPECT The smile on her face is so beautiful you can feel it as you close your eyes and see it in your soul You hope you don't let yourself down you promised if nothing else not to become a total failure--Now or ever after How to program hating your self? It was a loss of control but perhaps not really of your own will You shake off the last remaining effects of these cruel specters ect finally you see him but it's clear even though it's happy-ever-after time for you and her he's mad and out for blood tonight Too bad it won't be yours-- as he hops down-- blocking your path to the stage, a growl comes out his mouth so vicious that but makes you strangely hungry It was a loss of control but perhaps not really of your own will The loss of control mixed with sugur destroyed him stuck between animal mind and higher reasoning dead in the middle dictating only death, failure, and hate/repression and you were a beacon of-- something young and beautiful that could never be allowed to reach her full potential You set off quickly not willing to risk it He lied he jumped at you flying through the air moving much faster than he should have been able to but you did see this coming The loss of control mixed with sugur destroyed him stuck between animal mind and higher reasoning dead in the middle dictating only death, Anything to sufficiently distract you really You manage to avoid him drawing hastily from your thin wallet the fake State medical card you just knew you'd need someday for some situation like this Or any other club tonight for that matter Maybe anywhere in the city was a bad idea-- States weren't exactly too forgiving when it came to people using others as guinea pigs whether they liked it or not Of course they also seemed to be unusually lenient with Demons who cheated death and vast human gambling rings so perhaps they just didn't care You were starting to see why he was mad Unfortunately he saw through your trick-- lazers screeching by and nicking at your legs to stop you as he quickly came up behind you taking blow after blow from him-- even in your late 'teens were nothing to scoff at He catches you with a desperate overhand, hoping the element of surprise would work in your favor You somehow manage to duck and avoid the worst of it it's in that moment you grab the teeth spewing from his mouth-- putting your fist into his jaw as hard as you could Before he knows what is going on you sneakily get behind him open the top of his mouth and force them down his throat Laser blasts flame out one side of his face melting a club security goon before he hits the ground dead You've killed him after all You have little time to reflect upon it and do not feel remorse-- but a strange sense of pride that you did in fact take this demon down He was just too powerful, if he wanted to take me down-- No one could stop him You dash forward clearing the the other two guards within seconds reinforced by your suden boost in power taken from the beast you slain However now what? You're half tempted to try your luck busting out Meliodas but you know that beyond this door is a large horde of demonic types and the single most powerful one, not counting The There's no way the two of you could breach that stronghold You breathe heavily, sitting upon the ground with a cold sweat, left with only one real option Calling for help "Elios, you piece of cocks " You call, tapping your leg as you wait for him to pick up "Pick up you tiny prick, I need that door out here opened Whether you like it or not, it's safer with me than it is out there right now " You offer, as you attempt to calm yourself down --- In the end, he helps; getting the door open just in time as your ambushers stragglers find you-- a full three minues before Elios and his Crowd of excited guards find him "Alright you little shemale, come on! Let's take this freakshow on! You hope Nic is alright With a groan the door opens, light floods inward along with Elios' men promising a nasty end "Alright then Let's do it You may have some unfinished busines, when this is done The pair of you move forward into the dawn, weapons ready as the cool air prickles your skin With a shrug and a nuzzle you move forward, Elios firing a few bolter shots to back your first two pursuers away from you You find yourself thinking sad thoughts about Father Tomas, hoping that wherever he is now, that he at least made his peace after such a betrayal

[lodelss]

Davide Enia | translated by Antony Shuggar | an excerpt adapted from Notes on a Shipwreck: A Story of Refugees, Borders, and Hope | Other Press | February 2019 | 16 minutes (4,334 words)

On Lampedusa, a fisherman once asked me: “You know what fish has come back? Sea bass.”

Then he’d lit a cigarette and smoked the whole thing down to the butt in silence.

“And you know why sea bass have come back to this stretch of sea? You know what they eat? That’s right.”

And he’d stubbed out his cigarette and turned to go.

There was nothing more, truly, to be said.

What had stuck with me about Lampedusa were the calluses on the hands of the fishermen; the stories they told of constantly finding dead bodies when they hauled in their nets (“What do you mean, ‘constantly’?” and they’d say, “Do you know what ‘constantly’ means? Constantly”); scattered refugee boats rusting in the sunlight, perhaps nowadays the only honest form of testimony left to us — corrosion, grime, rust — of what’s happening in this period of history; the islanders’ doubts about the meaning of it all; the word “landing,” misused for years, because by now these were all genuine rescues, with the refugee boats escorted into port and the poor devils led off to the Temporary Settlement Center; and the Lampedusans who dressed them with their own clothing in a merciful response that sought neither spotlights nor publicity, but just because it was cold out and those were bodies in need of warmth.

*

Haze blurred our line of sight.

The horizon shimmered.

I noticed for what must have been the thousandth time how astonished I was to see how Lampedusa could unsettle its guests, creating in them an overwhelming sense of estrangement. The sky so close that it almost seemed about to collapse on top of us. The ever-present voice of the wind. The light that hits you from all directions. And before your eyes, always, the sea, the eternal crown of joy and thorns that surrounds everything. It’s an island on which the elements hammer at you with nothing able to stop them. There are no shelters. You’re pierced by the environment, riven by the light and the wind. No defense is possible.

It had been a long, long day.

I heard my father’s voice calling my name, while the sirocco tossed and tangled my thoughts.

*

I happened to meet the scuba diver at a friend’s house.

It was just the two of us.

The first, persistent sensation was this: He was huge.

His first words were these: “No tape recorders.”

He went over and sat down on the other side of the table from me and crossed his arms.

He kept them folded across his chest the whole time.

“I’m not talking about October third,” he added, his mouth snapping shut after these words in a way that defied argument.

His tone of voice was consistently low and measured, in sharp contrast with that imposing bulk. Sometimes, in his phrases, uttered with the sounds of his homeland — he was born in the mountains of the deepest north of Italy, where the sea is, more than anything else, an abstraction — there also surfaced words from my dialect, Sicilian. The ten years he’d spent in Sicily for work had left traces upon him. For an instant, the sounds of the south took possession of that gigantic body, dominating him. Then the moment would come to an end and he’d run out of things to say and just stare at me, in all his majesty, like a mountain of the north.

Before your eyes, always, the sea, the eternal crown of joy and thorns that surrounds everything.

He’d become a diver practically by sheer chance, a shot at a job that he’d jumped at immediately after completing his military service.

“We divers are used to dealing with death, from day one they told us it would be something we’d encounter. They tell us over and over, starting on the first day of training: People die at sea. And it’s true. All it takes is a single mistake during a dive and you die. Miscalculate and you die. Just expect too much of yourself and you die. Underwater, death is your constant companion, always.”

He’d been called to Lampedusa as a rescue swimmer, one of those men on the patrol boats who wear bright orange wetsuits and dive in during rescue operations.

He told me just how tough the scuba diving course had been, lingering on the mysterious beauty of being underwater, when the sea is so deep that sunlight can’t filter down that far and everything is dark and silent. The whole time he’d been on the island, he’d been doing special training to make sure he could perform his new job at an outstanding level.

He said: “I’m not a leftist. If anything, the complete opposite.”

His family, originally monarchists, had become Fascists. He, too, was in tune with those political ideas.

He added: “What we’re doing here is saving lives. At sea, every life is sacred. If someone needs help, we rescue them. There are no colors, no ethnic groups, no religions. That’s the law of the sea.”

Then, suddenly, he stared at me.

He was enormous even when he was sitting down. “When you rescue a child in the open sea and you hold him in your arms . . .”

And he started to cry, silently.

His arms were still folded across his chest.

I wondered what he could have seen, what he’d lived through, just how much death this giant across the table had faced off with.

After more than a minute of silence, words resurfaced in the room. He said that these people should never have set out for Italy in the first place, and that in Italy the government was doing a bad job of taking them in, wastefully and with a demented approach to issues of management. Then he reiterated the concept one more time: “At sea, you can’t even think about an alternative, every life is sacred, and you have to help anyone who is in need, period.” That phrase was more than a mantra. It was a full-fledged act of devotion.

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He unfolded his words slowly, as if they were careful steps down the steep side of a mountain.

“The most dangerous situation is when there are many vessels close together. You have to take care not to get caught between them because, if the seas are rough, you could easily be crushed if there’s a collision. I was really in danger only once: There was a force-eight gale, I was in the water with my back to a refugee boat loaded down with people, and I saw the hull of our vessel coming straight at me, shoved along by a twenty-five-foot wave. I moved sideways with a furious lunge that I never would have believed I could pull off. The two hulls crashed together. People fell into the water. I started swimming to pick them up. When I returned from that mission, I still had the picture of that hull coming to crush me before my eyes. I sat there on the edge of the dock, alone, for several minutes, until I could get that sensation of narrowly averted death out of my mind.”

He explained that when you’re out on the open water, the minute you reach the point from where the call for help was launched, you invariably find some new and unfamiliar situation.

“Sometimes, everything purrs along smoothly, they’re calm and quiet, the sea isn’t choppy, it doesn’t take us long to get them all aboard our vessels. Sometimes, they get so worked up that there’s a good chance of the refugee boat overturning during the rescue operations. You always need to manage to calm them down. Always. That’s a top priority. Sometimes, when we show up on the scene, the refugee boat has just overturned, and there are bodies scattered everywhere. So, you have to work as quickly as you can. There is no standard protocol. You just decide what to do there and then. You can swim in a circle around groups of people, pulling a line to tie them together and reel them in, all at once. Sometimes, the sea is choppy and they’ll all sink beneath the waves right before your eyes. In those cases, all you can do is try to rescue as many as you can.”

I have the distinct sensation that I’m face-to-face with human beings who carry an entire graveyard inside them.

There followed a long pause, a pause that went on and on. His gaze no longer came to rest on the wall behind me. It went on, out to some spot on the Mediterranean Sea that he would never forget.

“If you’re face-to-face with three people going under and twenty-five feet farther on a mother is drowning with her child, what do you do? Where do you head? Who do you save first? The three guys who are closer to you, or the mother and her newborn who are farther away?”

It was a vast, boundless question.

It was as if time and space had curved back upon themselves, bringing him face-to-face with that cruel scene all over again.

The screams of the past still resonated.

He was enormous, that diver.

He looked invulnerable.

And yet, inside, he had to have been a latter-day Saint Sebastian, riddled with a quiverful of agonizing choices.

“The little boy is tiny, the mother extremely young. There they are, twenty-five feet away from me. And then, right here, in front of me, three other people are drowning. So, who should I save, then, if they’re all going under at the same instant? Who should I strike out for? What should I do? Calculate. It’s all you can do in certain situations. Mathematics. Three is bigger than two. Three lives are one more life than two lives.”

And he stopped talking.

Outside the sky was cloudy, there was a wind blowing out of the southwest, the sea was choppy. I thought to myself: Every time, every single time, I have the distinct sensation that I’m face-to-face with human beings who carry an entire graveyard inside them.

*

I tried calling my uncle Beppe, my father’s brother. We called each other pretty frequently. Often my uncle would ask me: “But why doesn’t my brother ever call me?” I’d answer: “He doesn’t even call me, and I’m his first-born son, Beppuzzo, it’s just the way he is.”

The phone rang and rang for more than a minute, with no answer.

I hung up and went back inside.

We ate dinner, tuna cooked in sweet-and-sour onions and a salad of fennel, orange slices, and smoked herring.

There were four of us sitting around the table: Paola, Melo, my father, and me.

We were at Cala Pisana, at Paola’s house. Paola is a friend of mine. She’s a lawyer who’s given up her practice and has lived on Lampedusa for years now. There, with her boyfriend Melo, she runs the bed and breakfast where I usually stay as my base of operations whenever I’m doing research on the island.

I was setting forth my considerations on that exceedingly long day, in a conversation with Paola. From time to time, Melo would nod, producing small sounds, monosyllabic at the very most. My father, on the other hand, made no sounds whatsoever. He was the silent guest. Patiently, with his gaze turned directly to the eyes of whoever was speaking, he displayed a considerable ability to listen that he’d developed in the forty-plus years he’d practiced his profession, cardiology. He invited people to tell him things just by the way he held his body.

I was considering out loud that everything happening on Lampedusa went well beyond shipwrecks, beyond a simple count of the survivors, beyond the list of the drowned.

“It’s something bigger than crossing the desert and even bigger than crossing the Mediterranean itself, to such a degree that this rocky island in the middle of the sea has become a symbol, powerful and yet at the same time elusive, a symbol that is studied and narrated in a vast array of languages: reporting, documentaries, short stories, films, biographies, postcolonial studies, and ethnographic research. Lampedusa itself is now a container-word: migration, borders, shipwrecks, human solidarity, tourism, summer season, marginal lives, miracles, heroism, desperation, heartbreak, death, rebirth, redemption, all of it there in a single name, in an impasto that still seems to defy a clear interpretation or a recognizable form.”

Lampedusa itself is now a container-word: migration, borders, shipwrecks, human solidarity, tourism, summer season, marginal lives, miracles, heroism, desperation, heartbreak, death, rebirth, redemption, all of it there in a single name.

Papà had remained silent the whole time. His blue eyes were a well of still water in whose depths you could read no judgment whatsoever.

Paola had just poured herself an espresso.

“Lampedusa is a container-word,” she repeated under her breath, nodding to herself more than to me.

She sugared her coffee and went on with her thoughts. “And in a container, sure enough, you can put anything you like.”

Little by little, with a gradual rising tone, her voice grew louder, and the pace of her words became increasingly relentless.

“In the container called Lampedusa, you really can fit everything and the opposite of everything. Take the Center where the young people are brought after they land. Do you remember? You saw it when you came back here the year after the Arab Spring.”

It was the summer of 2012 and I’d asked a few Lampedusan piccirìddi — kids — who I’d met on the beach: “Do you all ever go to the Center?” I was fantasizing about the idea that the structure where anyone who landed on Lampedusa was taken must somehow constitute a focus of enormous fascination for them. “E che ci ham’a iri a fare?” those children had replied in dialect. I was stunned to hear their answer: “Why on earth would we bother with that place?” I had been convinced, until that moment, that the presence of new arrivals must have generated a monstrous well of curiosity, becoming the sole topic of conversation, of play, of adventure. Something rooted in the epic dimension.

“Would you take me there?” I’d asked them, hesitantly, already anticipating my defeat.

“We’d rather die.”

There was nothing about the Center that appealed to them, it had never interested them. Only after I finally saw it did I understand that I had committed an enormous mistake: I’d interacted with the children but used the parameters of an adult. Along the road that leads to the Center, there was nothing but rocks, brushwood, and dry-laid stone walls upon which signs appeared here and there, reading for sale. The only form of life was a thunderous bedlam of crickets. It was an arid place. Of course the piccirìddi never went there, there was nothing fun to do, nowhere to play. Myths aren’t built out of nothing.

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The Center had been built from the ground up on the site of an old army barracks. A number of dormitory structures, an open plaza, an enclosure fence. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a prison.

“Has anything changed about the Center in the last few years?” I asked Paola.

“The name. At first it was called the Temporary Settlement Center, then the Center for Identification and Expulsion, and now it’s a Hot Spot Center, whatever that’s supposed to mean. The governments change, the names rotate, but the structure is always the same: Under normal conditions it can hold 250 people, in an emergency situation it could take in at the very most 381 full-time residents. Those are the numbers, you can’t increase the number of bathrooms, or, for that matter, the number of beds. And in 2011 more than two thousand people were packed in there, for days and days, without being told at all what was to become of them. The world applauded the Arab Spring, and then imprisoned its protagonists. Was this the best response we could provide to their demands? And do you know what you create by keeping too many people shut up in such a small space? Rage. That’s how you create wild animals. And, in fact, a revolt broke out; they burned their mattresses and set fire to one wing of the structure.”

My father listened impassively, even though — clearly listening, but remaining opaque, inscrutable — he had to be squirreling away all that information. Melo was chewing on his lower lip, Paola continued to talk without taking her eyes off the demitasse of espresso.

“The Center, at least on paper, is supposed to be a containment facility if nothing else, right? And in fact, there’s a hole in the fence around the Center. I think it dates back to that period in 2011, but I couldn’t rule out by any means that the hole was there even earlier. It’s a great big hole and it works as a pressure valve, in fact, allowing the young men to get out, take a walk, come into town to try to get in touch with their families by using the Internet through the generosity of a number of residents. And what are you going to do, if a little kid asks you to let him talk to his mother to let her know that he’s still alive? Tell him he can’t use your computer?”

She’d continued to stir her espresso, tiny spoon in little demitasse. The sound of steel rattling against porcelain had punctuated the cadence of her words, like a rhythmic counterpoint, necessary to keep from losing the thread, to keep from plummeting body and soul into an abyss of screaming.

“Believe me, Davidù, it’s a good thing that hole is there. It’s a door, a way of keeping them from feeling like caged animals. So, you see what the point is? The Center is a structure garrisoned by the police force, inside which no one can go without special authorization. Not even a priest can go in. The facade remains intact. But in the fence, there’s always been a hole. It’s a well-known fact and no one does anything about it. And it’s a good thing that no one does anything about it, let me say that for the thousandth time. Here is a concrete example of how closely emergency and hypocrisy have to coexist, bureaucracy and solidarity, common sense and cult of appearances. Lampedusa is a container of opposites, for real.”

History is sending people ahead, in flesh and blood, people of every age.

Through the open window came the roar of waves, water rising, tumbling, crashing down onto the sand, pouring back out, and starting over again, in an endless relaunching. Melo, seated at the head of the table, had consigned himself to silence, just like my father. Melo, too, spoke little if at all, the whole day through, at most a bare handful of words, often drawled out, because speaking costs effort and effort is a burden.

Paola sipped her coffee slowly, and it wasn’t until she’d finished it that she started talking again.

“It is History that’s taking place, Davidù. And History is complicated, a mosaic full of tiles of different shapes and sizes, sometimes similar, other times diametrically opposed, yet all of them necessary in order for the final picture to emerge. No, wait, let me correct myself: It’s not that History’s taking place now. It’s been taking place for twenty years.”

She started taking long drags on a cigarette, her third in half an hour.

“As you had an opportunity to understand yourself this morning, the scale of this event can be perceived immediately when you witness a landing. But even if someone never had a chance to witness one, what can you expect them to care about the history of your, my, our perceptions? History is already determining the course of the world, tracing out the future, structurally modifying the present. It’s an unstoppable movement. And this time, History is sending people ahead, in flesh and blood, people of every age. They set sail across the water, they land here. Lampedusa isn’t an exit, it’s a leg in a longer journey.”

She crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray while Melo poured himself what beer remained in the bottle. Through the open window, warm fall air pushed into the room, scented with hot sand and salt-sea brine.

*

In the days following the Arab Spring, mass arrivals had begun on the shores of Lampedusa. An island resident named Piera had happened to be down at Porto Nuovo, or New Port, to supervise the efforts of the town constables.

“I’ve still got the scene before my eyes, it was completely insane! So many people had landed that you couldn’t make your way through the port. They were everywhere, the wharf was packed and the vessels were coming in and landing, more people one right after the other. A procession of refugee boats! And they were coming ashore by the thousands! We were there to give them a hand, but we were hardly prepared for anything like those numbers. A carabiniere was telling all the new arrivals in French to move over to the hill to make room for the others, and in the meantime new boats were coming in from the sea, all of them packed to the gunwales, and there was just no time to move people aside before the new refugee boats had already landed more young people. I really couldn’t begin to guess how many thousands came in that afternoon, it was impossible to count them, seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand, there was no settled number. And how could we ever reckon that number? There were more of them than there were islanders on Lampedusa, that much is certain. The ones who were standing on the hill, as soon as the boats came in carrying their families — wives, husbands, children — would rush down to rejoin their loved ones. An incredibly crazy scene: The police would try to separate them and we were caught in the middle, knocked back and forth. You couldn’t figure out what was going on. And from the sea, boat after boat kept arriving, so many of them, in quick succession. A flotilla! No one had ever seen such a thing. There was a gentleman who arrived with a falcon on his arm. On another refugee boat, one young Tunisian had brought his own sheep. A lovely sheep! A breed of sheep I’d never seen in my life, spectacular. A thick coat of wool, very curly! Stupendous. But in the end, we had to put the animal down. There was no alternative.”

There were more foreigners than residents on Lampedusa, more than ten thousand refugees as compared to five thousand islanders. Fear and curiosity coexisted with mistrust and pity. The shutters remained fastened tight, or else they’d open to hand out sweaters and shoes, electric adapters to charge cell phones, glasses of water, a chair to sit on, and a seat at the table to break bread together. These were flesh-and-blood people, right there before our eyes, not statistics you read about in the newspapers or numbers shouted out over the television. And so, in a sort of overtime of aid and assistance, people found and distributed ponchos because it was raining out, or they cooked five pounds of pasta because those young people were hungry and hadn’t eaten in days.

Everyone had been abandoned to their own devices.

The following year, the Italian government proudly proclaimed the figure of “zero landings on Lampedusa” as if it were a medal of honor to be pinned to its chest.

“And it’s true,” Paola had assured me that summer in 2012. “No boats are landing here anymore. We didn’t even see any in the spring. And do you know why? When the refugee boats are intercepted they’re escorted all the way to Sicily, and that’s where the landings take place, far out of the spotlight. Which means: zero landings on Lampedusa. From a purely statistical point of view, the logic is impeccable. And yet, you see? The island is fragmented, in the throes of anxiety, tumbled and tossed in this media maelstrom, a hail of contradictions. People talk less and less and, when they do, it’s only to complain about concrete problems, such as the lack of a hospital, for instance, or the cost of gasoline, which here is the highest in all of Italy. And they point out, with a touch of bitterness, that all the attention is always focused on those who arrived over the water, while the everyday challenges that we residents face don’t really seem to matter to anyone, except to us.”

There was the vacation season, the real engine of the island’s economy, to get up and running.

From time to time, someone would shoot a furtive glance toward the horizon.

“Sooner or later, something will come back to these beaches,” a fisherman had told me. That prediction, shared by all the residents, came true the following year, on October 3, 2013. It was an event that outpaced even our wildest nightmares. A refugee boat overturned just a few hundred yards off the coast of the island, the waters filled up with corpses, and Lampedusa was overrun by coffins and television news crews. What had actually changed in the recent years, after all, were just the minor details. The corpses found in the fishing nets, for example, were simply tossed back into the sea in order to prevent the fishing boats from being confiscated and held in a subsequent investigation. The reports of alleged sinkings — alleged because the only sources were the words of those who had traveled on sister refugee boats — were only mentioned at the tail end of the newscasts. In the absence of a corpse, it’s always better to leave death confined to territories that everyone prefers not to explore. And yet, in the months that preceded the October tragedy, the everyday rescue work carried out by the Italian Coast Guard continued as always, people continued to trek across the Sahara, women continued to be raped in Libyan prisons, the refugee boats and the rubber dinghies set sail and were intercepted, or else they sank.

History certainly hadn’t stopped.

* * *

Davide Enia was born in 1974 in Palermo, Italy. He has written, directed, and performed in plays for the stage and for radio. Enia has been honored with the Ubu Prize, the Tondelli Award, and the ETI Award, Italy’s three most prestigious theater prizes. He lives and cooks in Rome.

Longreads Editor: Dana Snitzky

[lodelss]

Notes on a Shipwreck

Davide Enia | translated by Antony Shuggar | an excerpt adapted from Notes on a Shipwreck: A Story of Refugees, Borders, and Hope | Other Press | February 2019 | 16 minutes (4,334 words)

On Lampedusa, a fisherman once asked me: “You know what fish has come back? Sea bass.”

Then he’d lit a cigarette and smoked the whole thing down to the butt in silence.

“And you know why sea bass have come back to this stretch of sea? You know what they eat? That’s right.”

And he’d stubbed out his cigarette and turned to go.

There was nothing more, truly, to be said.

What had stuck with me about Lampedusa were the calluses on the hands of the fishermen; the stories they told of constantly finding dead bodies when they hauled in their nets (“What do you mean, ‘constantly’?” and they’d say, “Do you know what ‘constantly’ means? Constantly”); scattered refugee boats rusting in the sunlight, perhaps nowadays the only honest form of testimony left to us — corrosion, grime, rust — of what’s happening in this period of history; the islanders’ doubts about the meaning of it all; the word “landing,” misused for years, because by now these were all genuine rescues, with the refugee boats escorted into port and the poor devils led off to the Temporary Settlement Center; and the Lampedusans who dressed them with their own clothing in a merciful response that sought neither spotlights nor publicity, but just because it was cold out and those were bodies in need of warmth.

*

Haze blurred our line of sight.

The horizon shimmered.

I noticed for what must have been the thousandth time how astonished I was to see how Lampedusa could unsettle its guests, creating in them an overwhelming sense of estrangement. The sky so close that it almost seemed about to collapse on top of us. The ever-present voice of the wind. The light that hits you from all directions. And before your eyes, always, the sea, the eternal crown of joy and thorns that surrounds everything. It’s an island on which the elements hammer at you with nothing able to stop them. There are no shelters. You’re pierced by the environment, riven by the light and the wind. No defense is possible.

It had been a long, long day.

I heard my father’s voice calling my name, while the sirocco tossed and tangled my thoughts.

*

I happened to meet the scuba diver at a friend’s house.

It was just the two of us.

The first, persistent sensation was this: He was huge.

His first words were these: “No tape recorders.”

He went over and sat down on the other side of the table from me and crossed his arms.

He kept them folded across his chest the whole time.

“I’m not talking about October third,” he added, his mouth snapping shut after these words in a way that defied argument.

His tone of voice was consistently low and measured, in sharp contrast with that imposing bulk. Sometimes, in his phrases, uttered with the sounds of his homeland — he was born in the mountains of the deepest north of Italy, where the sea is, more than anything else, an abstraction — there also surfaced words from my dialect, Sicilian. The ten years he’d spent in Sicily for work had left traces upon him. For an instant, the sounds of the south took possession of that gigantic body, dominating him. Then the moment would come to an end and he’d run out of things to say and just stare at me, in all his majesty, like a mountain of the north.

Before your eyes, always, the sea, the eternal crown of joy and thorns that surrounds everything.

He’d become a diver practically by sheer chance, a shot at a job that he’d jumped at immediately after completing his military service.

“We divers are used to dealing with death, from day one they told us it would be something we’d encounter. They tell us over and over, starting on the first day of training: People die at sea. And it’s true. All it takes is a single mistake during a dive and you die. Miscalculate and you die. Just expect too much of yourself and you die. Underwater, death is your constant companion, always.”

He’d been called to Lampedusa as a rescue swimmer, one of those men on the patrol boats who wear bright orange wetsuits and dive in during rescue operations.

He told me just how tough the scuba diving course had been, lingering on the mysterious beauty of being underwater, when the sea is so deep that sunlight can’t filter down that far and everything is dark and silent. The whole time he’d been on the island, he’d been doing special training to make sure he could perform his new job at an outstanding level.

He said: “I’m not a leftist. If anything, the complete opposite.”

His family, originally monarchists, had become Fascists. He, too, was in tune with those political ideas.

He added: “What we’re doing here is saving lives. At sea, every life is sacred. If someone needs help, we rescue them. There are no colors, no ethnic groups, no religions. That’s the law of the sea.”

Then, suddenly, he stared at me.

He was enormous even when he was sitting down. “When you rescue a child in the open sea and you hold him in your arms . . .”

And he started to cry, silently.

His arms were still folded across his chest.

I wondered what he could have seen, what he’d lived through, just how much death this giant across the table had faced off with.

After more than a minute of silence, words resurfaced in the room. He said that these people should never have set out for Italy in the first place, and that in Italy the government was doing a bad job of taking them in, wastefully and with a demented approach to issues of management. Then he reiterated the concept one more time: “At sea, you can’t even think about an alternative, every life is sacred, and you have to help anyone who is in need, period.” That phrase was more than a mantra. It was a full-fledged act of devotion.

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He unfolded his words slowly, as if they were careful steps down the steep side of a mountain.

“The most dangerous situation is when there are many vessels close together. You have to take care not to get caught between them because, if the seas are rough, you could easily be crushed if there’s a collision. I was really in danger only once: There was a force-eight gale, I was in the water with my back to a refugee boat loaded down with people, and I saw the hull of our vessel coming straight at me, shoved along by a twenty-five-foot wave. I moved sideways with a furious lunge that I never would have believed I could pull off. The two hulls crashed together. People fell into the water. I started swimming to pick them up. When I returned from that mission, I still had the picture of that hull coming to crush me before my eyes. I sat there on the edge of the dock, alone, for several minutes, until I could get that sensation of narrowly averted death out of my mind.”

He explained that when you’re out on the open water, the minute you reach the point from where the call for help was launched, you invariably find some new and unfamiliar situation.

“Sometimes, everything purrs along smoothly, they’re calm and quiet, the sea isn’t choppy, it doesn’t take us long to get them all aboard our vessels. Sometimes, they get so worked up that there’s a good chance of the refugee boat overturning during the rescue operations. You always need to manage to calm them down. Always. That’s a top priority. Sometimes, when we show up on the scene, the refugee boat has just overturned, and there are bodies scattered everywhere. So, you have to work as quickly as you can. There is no standard protocol. You just decide what to do there and then. You can swim in a circle around groups of people, pulling a line to tie them together and reel them in, all at once. Sometimes, the sea is choppy and they’ll all sink beneath the waves right before your eyes. In those cases, all you can do is try to rescue as many as you can.”

I have the distinct sensation that I’m face-to-face with human beings who carry an entire graveyard inside them.

There followed a long pause, a pause that went on and on. His gaze no longer came to rest on the wall behind me. It went on, out to some spot on the Mediterranean Sea that he would never forget.

“If you’re face-to-face with three people going under and twenty-five feet farther on a mother is drowning with her child, what do you do? Where do you head? Who do you save first? The three guys who are closer to you, or the mother and her newborn who are farther away?”

It was a vast, boundless question.

It was as if time and space had curved back upon themselves, bringing him face-to-face with that cruel scene all over again.

The screams of the past still resonated.

He was enormous, that diver.

He looked invulnerable.

And yet, inside, he had to have been a latter-day Saint Sebastian, riddled with a quiverful of agonizing choices.

“The little boy is tiny, the mother extremely young. There they are, twenty-five feet away from me. And then, right here, in front of me, three other people are drowning. So, who should I save, then, if they’re all going under at the same instant? Who should I strike out for? What should I do? Calculate. It’s all you can do in certain situations. Mathematics. Three is bigger than two. Three lives are one more life than two lives.”

And he stopped talking.

Outside the sky was cloudy, there was a wind blowing out of the southwest, the sea was choppy. I thought to myself: Every time, every single time, I have the distinct sensation that I’m face-to-face with human beings who carry an entire graveyard inside them.

*

I tried calling my uncle Beppe, my father’s brother. We called each other pretty frequently. Often my uncle would ask me: “But why doesn’t my brother ever call me?” I’d answer: “He doesn’t even call me, and I’m his first-born son, Beppuzzo, it’s just the way he is.”

The phone rang and rang for more than a minute, with no answer.

I hung up and went back inside.

We ate dinner, tuna cooked in sweet-and-sour onions and a salad of fennel, orange slices, and smoked herring.

There were four of us sitting around the table: Paola, Melo, my father, and me.

We were at Cala Pisana, at Paola’s house. Paola is a friend of mine. She’s a lawyer who’s given up her practice and has lived on Lampedusa for years now. There, with her boyfriend Melo, she runs the bed and breakfast where I usually stay as my base of operations whenever I’m doing research on the island.

I was setting forth my considerations on that exceedingly long day, in a conversation with Paola. From time to time, Melo would nod, producing small sounds, monosyllabic at the very most. My father, on the other hand, made no sounds whatsoever. He was the silent guest. Patiently, with his gaze turned directly to the eyes of whoever was speaking, he displayed a considerable ability to listen that he’d developed in the forty-plus years he’d practiced his profession, cardiology. He invited people to tell him things just by the way he held his body.

I was considering out loud that everything happening on Lampedusa went well beyond shipwrecks, beyond a simple count of the survivors, beyond the list of the drowned.

“It’s something bigger than crossing the desert and even bigger than crossing the Mediterranean itself, to such a degree that this rocky island in the middle of the sea has become a symbol, powerful and yet at the same time elusive, a symbol that is studied and narrated in a vast array of languages: reporting, documentaries, short stories, films, biographies, postcolonial studies, and ethnographic research. Lampedusa itself is now a container-word: migration, borders, shipwrecks, human solidarity, tourism, summer season, marginal lives, miracles, heroism, desperation, heartbreak, death, rebirth, redemption, all of it there in a single name, in an impasto that still seems to defy a clear interpretation or a recognizable form.”

Lampedusa itself is now a container-word: migration, borders, shipwrecks, human solidarity, tourism, summer season, marginal lives, miracles, heroism, desperation, heartbreak, death, rebirth, redemption, all of it there in a single name.

Papà had remained silent the whole time. His blue eyes were a well of still water in whose depths you could read no judgment whatsoever.

Paola had just poured herself an espresso.

“Lampedusa is a container-word,” she repeated under her breath, nodding to herself more than to me.

She sugared her coffee and went on with her thoughts. “And in a container, sure enough, you can put anything you like.”

Little by little, with a gradual rising tone, her voice grew louder, and the pace of her words became increasingly relentless.

“In the container called Lampedusa, you really can fit everything and the opposite of everything. Take the Center where the young people are brought after they land. Do you remember? You saw it when you came back here the year after the Arab Spring.”

It was the summer of 2012 and I’d asked a few Lampedusan piccirìddi — kids — who I’d met on the beach: “Do you all ever go to the Center?” I was fantasizing about the idea that the structure where anyone who landed on Lampedusa was taken must somehow constitute a focus of enormous fascination for them. “E che ci ham’a iri a fare?” those children had replied in dialect. I was stunned to hear their answer: “Why on earth would we bother with that place?” I had been convinced, until that moment, that the presence of new arrivals must have generated a monstrous well of curiosity, becoming the sole topic of conversation, of play, of adventure. Something rooted in the epic dimension.

“Would you take me there?” I’d asked them, hesitantly, already anticipating my defeat.

“We’d rather die.”

There was nothing about the Center that appealed to them, it had never interested them. Only after I finally saw it did I understand that I had committed an enormous mistake: I’d interacted with the children but used the parameters of an adult. Along the road that leads to the Center, there was nothing but rocks, brushwood, and dry-laid stone walls upon which signs appeared here and there, reading for sale. The only form of life was a thunderous bedlam of crickets. It was an arid place. Of course the piccirìddi never went there, there was nothing fun to do, nowhere to play. Myths aren’t built out of nothing.

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The Center had been built from the ground up on the site of an old army barracks. A number of dormitory structures, an open plaza, an enclosure fence. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a prison.

“Has anything changed about the Center in the last few years?” I asked Paola.

“The name. At first it was called the Temporary Settlement Center, then the Center for Identification and Expulsion, and now it’s a Hot Spot Center, whatever that’s supposed to mean. The governments change, the names rotate, but the structure is always the same: Under normal conditions it can hold 250 people, in an emergency situation it could take in at the very most 381 full-time residents. Those are the numbers, you can’t increase the number of bathrooms, or, for that matter, the number of beds. And in 2011 more than two thousand people were packed in there, for days and days, without being told at all what was to become of them. The world applauded the Arab Spring, and then imprisoned its protagonists. Was this the best response we could provide to their demands? And do you know what you create by keeping too many people shut up in such a small space? Rage. That’s how you create wild animals. And, in fact, a revolt broke out; they burned their mattresses and set fire to one wing of the structure.”

My father listened impassively, even though — clearly listening, but remaining opaque, inscrutable — he had to be squirreling away all that information. Melo was chewing on his lower lip, Paola continued to talk without taking her eyes off the demitasse of espresso.

“The Center, at least on paper, is supposed to be a containment facility if nothing else, right? And in fact, there’s a hole in the fence around the Center. I think it dates back to that period in 2011, but I couldn’t rule out by any means that the hole was there even earlier. It’s a great big hole and it works as a pressure valve, in fact, allowing the young men to get out, take a walk, come into town to try to get in touch with their families by using the Internet through the generosity of a number of residents. And what are you going to do, if a little kid asks you to let him talk to his mother to let her know that he’s still alive? Tell him he can’t use your computer?”

She’d continued to stir her espresso, tiny spoon in little demitasse. The sound of steel rattling against porcelain had punctuated the cadence of her words, like a rhythmic counterpoint, necessary to keep from losing the thread, to keep from plummeting body and soul into an abyss of screaming.

“Believe me, Davidù, it’s a good thing that hole is there. It’s a door, a way of keeping them from feeling like caged animals. So, you see what the point is? The Center is a structure garrisoned by the police force, inside which no one can go without special authorization. Not even a priest can go in. The facade remains intact. But in the fence, there’s always been a hole. It’s a well-known fact and no one does anything about it. And it’s a good thing that no one does anything about it, let me say that for the thousandth time. Here is a concrete example of how closely emergency and hypocrisy have to coexist, bureaucracy and solidarity, common sense and cult of appearances. Lampedusa is a container of opposites, for real.”

History is sending people ahead, in flesh and blood, people of every age.

Through the open window came the roar of waves, water rising, tumbling, crashing down onto the sand, pouring back out, and starting over again, in an endless relaunching. Melo, seated at the head of the table, had consigned himself to silence, just like my father. Melo, too, spoke little if at all, the whole day through, at most a bare handful of words, often drawled out, because speaking costs effort and effort is a burden.

Paola sipped her coffee slowly, and it wasn’t until she’d finished it that she started talking again.

“It is History that’s taking place, Davidù. And History is complicated, a mosaic full of tiles of different shapes and sizes, sometimes similar, other times diametrically opposed, yet all of them necessary in order for the final picture to emerge. No, wait, let me correct myself: It’s not that History’s taking place now. It’s been taking place for twenty years.”

She started taking long drags on a cigarette, her third in half an hour.

“As you had an opportunity to understand yourself this morning, the scale of this event can be perceived immediately when you witness a landing. But even if someone never had a chance to witness one, what can you expect them to care about the history of your, my, our perceptions? History is already determining the course of the world, tracing out the future, structurally modifying the present. It’s an unstoppable movement. And this time, History is sending people ahead, in flesh and blood, people of every age. They set sail across the water, they land here. Lampedusa isn’t an exit, it’s a leg in a longer journey.”

She crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray while Melo poured himself what beer remained in the bottle. Through the open window, warm fall air pushed into the room, scented with hot sand and salt-sea brine.

*

In the days following the Arab Spring, mass arrivals had begun on the shores of Lampedusa. An island resident named Piera had happened to be down at Porto Nuovo, or New Port, to supervise the efforts of the town constables.

“I’ve still got the scene before my eyes, it was completely insane! So many people had landed that you couldn’t make your way through the port. They were everywhere, the wharf was packed and the vessels were coming in and landing, more people one right after the other. A procession of refugee boats! And they were coming ashore by the thousands! We were there to give them a hand, but we were hardly prepared for anything like those numbers. A carabiniere was telling all the new arrivals in French to move over to the hill to make room for the others, and in the meantime new boats were coming in from the sea, all of them packed to the gunwales, and there was just no time to move people aside before the new refugee boats had already landed more young people. I really couldn’t begin to guess how many thousands came in that afternoon, it was impossible to count them, seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand, there was no settled number. And how could we ever reckon that number? There were more of them than there were islanders on Lampedusa, that much is certain. The ones who were standing on the hill, as soon as the boats came in carrying their families — wives, husbands, children — would rush down to rejoin their loved ones. An incredibly crazy scene: The police would try to separate them and we were caught in the middle, knocked back and forth. You couldn’t figure out what was going on. And from the sea, boat after boat kept arriving, so many of them, in quick succession. A flotilla! No one had ever seen such a thing. There was a gentleman who arrived with a falcon on his arm. On another refugee boat, one young Tunisian had brought his own sheep. A lovely sheep! A breed of sheep I’d never seen in my life, spectacular. A thick coat of wool, very curly! Stupendous. But in the end, we had to put the animal down. There was no alternative.”

There were more foreigners than residents on Lampedusa, more than ten thousand refugees as compared to five thousand islanders. Fear and curiosity coexisted with mistrust and pity. The shutters remained fastened tight, or else they’d open to hand out sweaters and shoes, electric adapters to charge cell phones, glasses of water, a chair to sit on, and a seat at the table to break bread together. These were flesh-and-blood people, right there before our eyes, not statistics you read about in the newspapers or numbers shouted out over the television. And so, in a sort of overtime of aid and assistance, people found and distributed ponchos because it was raining out, or they cooked five pounds of pasta because those young people were hungry and hadn’t eaten in days.

Everyone had been abandoned to their own devices.

The following year, the Italian government proudly proclaimed the figure of “zero landings on Lampedusa” as if it were a medal of honor to be pinned to its chest.

“And it’s true,” Paola had assured me that summer in 2012. “No boats are landing here anymore. We didn’t even see any in the spring. And do you know why? When the refugee boats are intercepted they’re escorted all the way to Sicily, and that’s where the landings take place, far out of the spotlight. Which means: zero landings on Lampedusa. From a purely statistical point of view, the logic is impeccable. And yet, you see? The island is fragmented, in the throes of anxiety, tumbled and tossed in this media maelstrom, a hail of contradictions. People talk less and less and, when they do, it’s only to complain about concrete problems, such as the lack of a hospital, for instance, or the cost of gasoline, which here is the highest in all of Italy. And they point out, with a touch of bitterness, that all the attention is always focused on those who arrived over the water, while the everyday challenges that we residents face don’t really seem to matter to anyone, except to us.”

There was the vacation season, the real engine of the island’s economy, to get up and running.

From time to time, someone would shoot a furtive glance toward the horizon.

“Sooner or later, something will come back to these beaches,” a fisherman had told me. That prediction, shared by all the residents, came true the following year, on October 3, 2013. It was an event that outpaced even our wildest nightmares. A refugee boat overturned just a few hundred yards off the coast of the island, the waters filled up with corpses, and Lampedusa was overrun by coffins and television news crews. What had actually changed in the recent years, after all, were just the minor details. The corpses found in the fishing nets, for example, were simply tossed back into the sea in order to prevent the fishing boats from being confiscated and held in a subsequent investigation. The reports of alleged sinkings — alleged because the only sources were the words of those who had traveled on sister refugee boats — were only mentioned at the tail end of the newscasts. In the absence of a corpse, it’s always better to leave death confined to territories that everyone prefers not to explore. And yet, in the months that preceded the October tragedy, the everyday rescue work carried out by the Italian Coast Guard continued as always, people continued to trek across the Sahara, women continued to be raped in Libyan prisons, the refugee boats and the rubber dinghies set sail and were intercepted, or else they sank.

History certainly hadn’t stopped.

* * *

Davide Enia was born in 1974 in Palermo, Italy. He has written, directed, and performed in plays for the stage and for radio. Enia has been honored with the Ubu Prize, the Tondelli Award, and the ETI Award, Italy’s three most prestigious theater prizes. He lives and cooks in Rome.

Longreads Editor: Dana Snitzky

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