#Structural Monitoring Instruments

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[crustyfloor]

A new pop-up store dropped for ALIEN STAGE's 2nd anniversary and wow. It's so sick.

It's Interesting what exactly these experiments are focusing on and monitoring.

Instrument practice

I found it interesting earlier that Till was so tame, more so than he usually is when he's going through experiments, but music, and making music is what he loves doing, So he was fully in his element here. This was probably the only thing he was made to do by the aliens that he at least tolerated.

(Additionally, judging by his collar (orange), he was at least calm. maybe he just isn't fazed anymore.)

//Side note, that head contraption looks familiar BUT this most likely isn't related at least i hope

(It puts me at ease, at least..)

Dance practice

This surprised me, but I suppose Mizi needed more skills.

She looks very startled here, and nervous(?) +It looks like she's doing this while singing. And with that face covering I assume this was a test monitoring her dance balance, precision, etc. At first, I did think it was odd, "Why would Shine put her through that" But alas I was reminded that even though Mizi is the flower of the group she was never untouchable, to Shine, this was the equivalent of teaching your dog to sit and stay.

(seeing this it reminded me of those scenes in movies where the people are dancing, and the music gets faster and faster until they fall. I wonder if she was doing through something similar to that)

Singing practice (?)

Similar to Till she also looks quite calm outwardly, if the machine around her neck is an iteration of the collars they have, then this process wasn't something she liked, or given how intense this experiment looks, this was a test of high-pressure to ensure she always stayed calm during performances (?). Then again this could also be a posture practice given all the structure focused on maintaining her position.

(What I believe was another form of this test was shown before so I think so)

(With her hands in a praying stance I wonder if she was praying to herself or singing a religious song (sweet dream?) It's also interesting that the machinery around her looks like a halo, and she looks so...angelic? holy?)

Image making practice

By image making, I think they made Ivan replicate expressions with his face. Whether this process was painful for him or not...I'm not sure. But it looked visibly uncomfortable, maybe that was the point. (His expression, even in this circumstance is so dubious..)

Ivan, among other things, needed to have a spotless appearance to be successful, his image was a priority given his skills were certainly guaranteed.

I assume the aliens eventually took note of his lack of expression, in the real world this can be a detriment to one's career, so the Aliens had to ensure quality was perfect. (To a more...dedicated level)

Superiority test

'Superiority test' Is very vague.

HyunA is very calm here too, likely sedated in that water with all the tablets on her. I guess this was a test to get an idea of a pet human's strengths and weaknesses, endurance, and temperament to compare and contrast them with others, testing who is more viable for Alien stage?

Another interesting, and sad part about this is that HyunWoo was there, watching his sister through her experiments.

(Also, it looks like both of her legs are normal, no alien leg yet.)

Heart rate variability

And finally, the most visceral of them all. The wording 'variability' makes this all the more sickening, the Aliens were testing his heart hours, testing it at different rates, speeds, and states. And he was in agony the entire time. Even the way he's clutching his chest, it gives me chills. This would've been a completely harmless test in a normal setting, as something quite similar to this can be performed efficiently in real life. But he's being tortured in the process.

This is one of the first times we've ever seen Luka's face so truly clear and unprotected, (understandably so.) He's even crying.

[nasa]

Roman's primary structure hangs from cables as it moves into the big clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

What Makes the Clean Room So Clean?

When you picture NASA’s most important creations, you probably think of a satellite, telescope, or maybe a rover. But what about the room they’re made in? Believe it or not, the room itself where these instruments are put together—a clean room—is pretty special. 

A clean room is a space that protects technology from contamination. This is especially important when sending very sensitive items into space that even small particles could interfere with.

There are two main categories of contamination that we have to keep away from our instruments. The first is particulate contamination, like dust. The second is molecular contamination, which is more like oil or grease. Both types affect a telescope’s image quality, as well as the time it takes to capture imagery. Having too many particles on our instruments is like looking through a dirty window. A clean room makes for clean science!

Two technicians clean the floor of Goddard’s big clean room.

Our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has the largest clean room of its kind in the world. It’s as tall as an eight-story building and as wide as two basketball courts.

Goddard’s clean room has fewer than 3,000 micron-size particles per cubic meter of air. If you lined up all those tiny particles, they’d be no longer than a sesame seed. If those particles were the size of 16-inch (0.4-meter) inflatable beach balls, we’d find only 3,000 spread throughout the whole body of Mount Everest!

A clean room technician observes a sample under a microscope.

The clean room keeps out particles larger than five microns across, just seven percent of the width of an average human hair. It does this via special filters that remove around 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns and larger from incoming air. Six fans the size of school buses spin to keep air flowing and pressurize the room. Since the pressure inside is higher, the clean air keeps unclean air out when doors open.

A technician analyzes a sample under ultraviolet light.

In addition, anyone who enters must wear a “bunny suit” to keep their body particles away from the machinery. A bunny suit covers most of the person inside. Sometimes scientists have trouble recognizing each other while in the suits, but they do get to know each other’s mannerisms very well.

This illustration depicts the anatomy of a bunny suit, which covers clean room technicians from head to toe to protect sensitive technology.

The bunny suit is only the beginning: before putting it on, team members undergo a preparation routine involving a hairnet and an air shower. Fun fact – you’re not allowed to wear products like perfume, lotion, or deodorant. Even odors can transfer easily!

Six of Goddard’s clean room technicians (left to right: Daniel DaCosta, Jill Bender, Anne Martino, Leon Bailey, Frank D’Annunzio, and Josh Thomas).

It takes a lot of specialists to run Goddard’s clean room. There are 10 people on the Contamination Control Technician Team, 30 people on the Clean Room Engineering Team to cover all Goddard missions, and another 10 people on the Facilities Team to monitor the clean room itself. They check on its temperature, humidity, and particle counts.

A technician rinses critical hardware with isopropyl alcohol and separates the particulate and isopropyl alcohol to leave the particles on a membrane for microscopic analysis.

Besides the standard mopping and vacuuming, the team uses tools such as isopropyl alcohol, acetone, wipes, swabs, white light, and ultraviolet light. Plus, they have a particle monitor that uses a laser to measure air particle count and size.

The team keeping the clean room spotless plays an integral role in the success of NASA’s missions. So, the next time you have to clean your bedroom, consider yourself lucky that the stakes aren’t so high!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[ghoulodont]

Hyaline

After Dewdrop is injured during a concert, Rain is there to help him heal.

Ship: Raindrop Characters: Dewdrop, Rain Words: 11.3k

Hurt/Comfort, Broken Bones, Sickfic (arguably), Caretaking, Injury Recovery, Skeletour

Read below or on AO3

When it happens, he thinks nothing of it at all. He’s in a hurry between songs and the stiff sole of his uniform boot skids over the edge of the stair as he steps down onto it. His foot drops onto the step below, then the one after that, with his ankle pressed into an awkward position as it suddenly takes the full weight of his body. His reflexes, mechanical and automatic, have him catching himself before the signals from the event can even reach his brain. He finds himself at the bottom of the staircase with one hand on the railing keeping him upright.

What’s concerning, though, is when those same reflexes, ones that caught him just moments ago, subsequently prevent him from stepping with that same foot flat on the ground at the bottom of the stairs. A bright electric pain runs up his ankle that, briefly, takes his breath away. He shifts his weight back to his other foot to give himself a second to recover. He pulls the strap of his guitar over his head.

The stage left guitar tech, ready and waiting to help him swap instruments, reaches for the guitar. “You okay?” he asks.

Dew nods. He takes the new guitar and puts it on. He gently rolls his ankle, which aches with the movement. It’s throbbing now, pain only increasing with time.

He’s ready to just walk it off until he takes his first step back up the stairs to the stage. Putting weight on his foot rekindles the same electric pain, so intense that his knee buckles as a structural measure to alleviate it, absorbing his weight and redirecting it downwards until his shin hits the stairs. He reaches out with one hand and grips the railing; the other holds the neck of his guitar away from the surrounding structures.

If he doesn’t get upstairs right away, he’s going to miss the beginning of the next song. They’ll start without him. He scrambles, panicked, and tries again to take another step before he’s even upright. The metal edge of the stair bites into his shin. His throat feels tight, like a hand is grabbing the back of his collar and pulling, holding him in place, keeping him from moving forward.

“You sure you’re okay?”

He collects himself and pushes himself back up to his feet — or foot, balancing again on just one. He looks down at his boot, which looks okay, the same as it always does. Is he okay, though? He can’t get up the stairs, or really walk at all, so maybe not.

“I think maybe I twisted my ankle or something,” he admits. Saying it out loud makes his face burn with shame. He doesn’t have time for this — the whole production doesn’t have time for this. He shifts his weight again, the other way, easing pressure onto his injured leg. It protests with another lance of sharp pain. He grits his teeth and pushes through. It’s bearable, but not ideal. He tries his best to take one step forward and manages a short and inadequate little hobble.

Suddenly everything is too much, too tight, too restrictive. His boots are so heavy. It’s dark, and the ceilings, the underside of the stage, are low. The stairs are insurmountable. He pulls out his in-ear monitors. He wrestles his guitar strap off with an unsteady hand.

His guitar tech takes it from him and nods at the stairs. “You should sit down.”

He does, one hand on the railing again to lower himself carefully onto the steps. His head swims. He leans back, supporting himself with his elbows. Even without any weight on it, his ankle screams at him. He can’t tell if it’s actually still getting worse or if he’s just losing his grip on everything.

The guitar tech is talking into his radio. He’s inaudible from this distance but it’s obviously about him, about the current situation, sharing with the whole crew that he’s unable to do his job and is fucking up the show. He tips his head back, trying to get more air in his lungs. Above him, the next song starts.

Wardrobe is the first on the scene, asking which leg it is. He points to his left one. She kneels and begins to remove his boot.

Despite her clear attempt to be gentle, Dew whines like a kicked dog when she pulls the hard leather over his heel, pressing the stiff sole against his toes and forcing his ankle to bend. There aren’t any laces she can undo, or zippers to open, so she’s pulling the front and back of the upper apart as much as possible, stretching the small panel of elastic on either side. The convenience of just being able to step in and out of them, something he had appreciated, is now turning against him.

It goes beyond that — if he didn’t have to wear these stupid boots, none of this would have happened anyway. Of course, the knee-high boots from the previous uniforms would have zipped all the way down the side and allowed his injured ankle to come out without pain, but with their more flexible soles, thinner and more pliable leather, there’s no way he would have missed a step on the stairs while wearing them in the first place. They were custom made; he and the other ghouls took turns tracing each other’s feet on pieces of paper to send as a reference, and then when they arrived they fit perfectly. The current boots came in logo-plastered shoeboxes from some factory somewhere.

More people start showing up, buzzing around and making the bottom of the staircase a nexus of far more activity than is usual during the show. He avoids eye contact with familiar faces, too ashamed of the drama that he has inadvertently set in motion, that’s still unfolding in front of him. Someone puts his foot up on a folding metal chair.

A paramedic arrives on the scene, ushered in from beyond the curtain. He places a big equipment bag near the end of the railing and squats next to the chair. To some degree, Dew knew implicitly that this would happen, was the sequence of events that he was consenting to when he took his guitar off and sat down, but experiencing it in the present reveals just how much he had been denying it, shoving it away into the corner of his mind and making it as abstract as possible. But, no, there really is a guy in a fancy, official-looking paramedic uniform peeling off his sock right now and asking him what happened.

“Slid down a couple stairs. Twisted my ankle.”

“Right, did you land on this part?” The paramedic points to the outside surface of his foot, in front of the prominent bone of his ankle. A crew member shines a flashlight at it.

Dew nods. He averts his eyes, as if maybe one less viewer will make a difference in how he feels right now. It doesn’t put a dent in the amount of scrutiny.

“Have you been able to put any weight on it?”

“A little.”

“And how much are you able to move it? Can you point your toes?”

He can, slightly, if he pushes through the pain and forces himself to. It feels like his ankle is tearing itself apart at the seams but he keeps going. He should be able to do this — he doesn’t want to think about what it might mean if he can’t.

“Stop, that’s enough.”

The paramedic runs him through several more movements, all similarly painful and difficult, as the song on stage above them finishes. He presses inquisitively on a spot near his ankle that makes him physically recoil, pulling his foot off the chair and towards his body in a protective instinct. The sudden, jarring movement hurts too. He feels like a line of dominoes toppling over. He blinks away the stars in his vision.

He replaces his foot on the chair slowly. He drums his fingers on the edge of the stair he’s sitting on with no particular rhythm. “Can’t we do this after the show?” He doesn’t need to be able to do all these exercises in order to perform.

“You need an x-ray of this,”

“I need to get back on stage.”

The paramedic briefly glances up at the tour manager, who is standing over them with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. “Well… as long as you keep your weight off it as much as possible…”

The tour manager nods and reaches for his radio. “We can put a chair—”

“Absolutely not,” Dew snaps.

“Okay, well, let me get it wrapped up and you should be able to hold out for the rest of the show.” He digs in his big bag of supplies.

Dew lets his head fall back. The stage lights beam down on him as the next song starts. It feels like he’s looking up at the surface of a lake from below, sinking under. He can’t hold his breath for much longer.

The paramedic offers him some pills — “ibuprofen,” he says. Someone else passes him a bottle of water. His hands shake as he brings it to his lips.

He begins to feel more composed as the paramedic wraps his ankle in an elastic bandage, each loop of the stretchy fabric holding him a little more together. The compression is soothing, in a way. It’s a bit uncomfortable in how it presses down against sensitive places but overall it feels like it’s pressing back against the throbbing pain emanating from inside.

When his shoe goes back on, he’s ready for the brief pain of his ankle flexing to accommodate the opening. He squeezes his fists tight and rides the wave of dizziness it brings. Actually, though, once it’s on, the thick sole and inflexible leather that he was cursing earlier make his ankle feel much more stable. Maybe it’s all not as bad as he thought.

Hands help him to his feet, move the chair out of the way, bring his guitar. He puts some weight onto his foot. It hurts, but he can deal with it. He can make it up the stairs, onto the stage. He leans hard on the railing and watches his feet carefully with each step. Someone is following behind him, probably to catch him if he falls again, but he doesn’t. When he gets to the top, he straightens out his guitar over his body and takes a deep breath.

He looks up to see Rain staring at him from halfway across the stage. He can feel the concern radiating off of him, but his thoughts are opaque. What does he know about what happened? And what can he communicate back to him, anyway? Dew just nods at him, an acknowledgment of nothing in particular, or maybe that he’s okay.

Without the support of the railing, walking across the stage is arduous. He takes a few steps forward, just enough that he’s not standing conspicuously in front of the stairs. The weight of thousands of eyes presses into him, a familiar energizing presence now shifting to the forefront of his mind, its usual vivacity twisting into something more hostile, critical.

Despite being back on stage, playing his part like nothing happened, the shame doesn’t fade. If anything, it gets worse, becomes more pointed, digs itself under his skin with sharp claws. What was once a blanket of panic and a singular goal is now crystallized regret, specific flashes of memory, little questions and details, spreading out kaleidoscopic.

But, no, the goal is still singular — to finish the show. And he will. All this angst for a misstep, for what, a twisted ankle? He’s going to put some ice on it and will be fine by tomorrow, he has to be. He focuses on playing, being there, his duty as a live musician.

He’s so focused that Rain ends up sneaking up on him, appearing by his side unexpectedly. He bumps their shoulders together, gently, a barely-there brush of spandex covered skin. Dew bristles at the attention. It would be so normal in any other context, any other show, antics and interactions like this. Now it feels too noticeable, like he’s pointing out that something is wrong. There’s worry in his eyes; Dew doesn’t want to see it.

And when Rain makes his way to his next unofficial mark, returning to the comfortably rehearsed flow of the song, it feels like being stranded on an inhospitable island, having sent his savior away. He’s alone here with his pain, which is becoming harder and harder to push through.

As much as he tries to pour himself into the performance, he can’t shake his mental countdown of how many songs are left. It’s a north star he doesn’t want to be following but it glistens too bright to look past, outshines every other light in his sky, blinds him. Really, it’s the only thing keeping him upright. Everything continues as orchestrated. Phantom comes over to play next to him and then goes back to his own side of the stage. Rain comes and goes. Two songs left. One song.

When the house lights come up after the last note, all the energy he’s been holding onto begins to leave him, faster than he anticipated or planned for. He can’t be on stage for a single moment longer. He turns and limps to the stairs, lifts his guitar strap over his head, vision gray around the edges. His ankle feels like a live wire.

He practically has to be carried off the stage. He passes his guitar to the tech at the top of the stairs, then makes his way back into the underworld with one arm slung over a supporting shoulder, in clear view of the audience — it doesn’t matter.

He’s led to a chair which he carefully lowers himself onto, weight askew on one leg. Feet cross the stage above him. With only plain white lights on, kept at a steady intensity without any strobing or motion, it’s both brighter under the stage and easier to see the motion of those above it, casting shadows through the metal grate.

A wardrobe assistant is back to take his shoe off again, before he can even catch his breath. He doesn’t have it in him to protest, nor to stifle the pathetic groan he makes when his ankle bends, just like the last time. He’s back to hating these boots again now — why was he ready to forgive them earlier? The assistant sets it aside carefully. The boots are her responsibility, after all, not him. She’s extricating her charge from the scene.

Someone puts his foot up on a second chair. He feels awkward and in the way, vulnerable, bridging a leg-length gap like this in an already tight space.

The paramedic begins unraveling the bandage from his leg. Even the air touching his freshly exposed skin hurts. There’s a huge purple bruise below his ankle now, starting near the bone and spreading down toward the sole of his foot and forward toward his toes. It’s swollen, too, all of the usual edges softened like a crude replica of what it’s supposed to look like.

When he starts poking and prodding at it again, presumably for some medically relevant reason, and not just to torment him, Dew looks away, up at the stage above him. Eight pairs of feet stand in a line. This isn’t part of the performance, so it’s okay that he’s not there with them. The sudden tightness in his throat at the image, an off-center row of bodies, insists otherwise.

And then the show is over. Papa and the ghouls make their way down the stairs and spill out into the underworld. Instead of dispersing to their own individual after-show tasks and personal whims, they gather around Dew’s chair, first Rain, then Phantom, then Mountain, then Aurora, until they’ve all followed each other’s lead and joined in on the fuss. Their chatter and worry settles over him like a dark cloud.

“What happened?”

“Dude, have you been walking on that?”

“Oh no, Dew, that looks really bad.”

All eyes are on him and the macabre spectacle of his bloated, discolored foot. It’s embarrassing, and it’s enough to make him question, briefly, if he really will be on stage tomorrow like he should be, has to be, will be, will be. He will be. Now is not the time to think otherwise.

Meanwhile, the paramedic starts wrapping his ankle back up again, lifting it and pressing on it in ways that make the muscles in his thigh jump involuntarily, sending startling little jolts of pain streaking up along his nerves. It’s all too much. Dew leans his head back and covers his eyes with one arm.

“Let’s leave him alone, guys.”

It’s a relief, but a little part of him wants to reach out and grab them and hold them here, to not be alone. Still, he would much rather be alone than fussed over like this. It’s a trade-off he’s entirely willing to make.

One by one, they filter out through the curtain, off to the dressing room or the green room or the bus or wherever else. Soon the only people left in the vicinity are the crew working on their load-out tasks, the paramedic — and Rain.

Rain is standing right next to him like it’s his own leg propped up on the chair, like he’s just as much a vital and irremovable part of this scenario as Dew is, frowning thoughtfully at his ankle as it disappears under the bandage. When he notices Dew looking at him, he offers him a small, gentle smile.

“How are you doing?” He places one hand on Dew’s shoulder and rubs back and forth.

He’s doing fucking awful, obviously, and he doesn’t want to be pitied. But the hand on his shoulder isn’t pity, it isn’t platitude. It feels like the most normal thing that has happened all night, or at least in the past hour.

“I mean—” Rain waves his hand as if to indicate the general situation. “Considering.”

Dew forces out a heavy breath that doesn’t take with it any of his tension, only serving to keep his frustration from rising further. “This sucks,” is all he can say, and even that catches in his throat.

Rain kneads his shoulders with both hands, pressing his thumbs into the base of his neck in small circles. The heat from his palms sinks through the fabric of his tailcoat.

Meanwhile, the paramedic puts an ice pack over his wrapped ankle. He can’t feel the cold through the bandage. It’s probably more a formality than anything else, one step in flowchart in an emergency medicine handbook somewhere that describes the official procedure for what to do if someone falls down the fucking stairs. What’s next? He doesn’t want to ask.

“Listen,” the paramedic starts, like he’s about to speak candidly, maybe say something that Dew doesn’t want to hear. “You really should get an x-ray of this soon, either tonight or tomorrow. We can take you to the emergency department if you need but you’ll likely be waiting for a while, and there’s not much they can do for you anyway, besides pain management and setting you up with a referral. I talked to your manager… you may want to just make an appointment with an orthopedist in the morning.”

Dew nods. “What time does the bus leave?” It’s the first thing that comes to his mind, despite everything.

“Four, I think?” Rain glances up at a nearby equipment case that has some papers taped to it, any of which may or may not be a schedule.

“Definitely no guarantee that you would be seen by then.” The paramedic zips up his bag. “As long as your pain is under control I would say it’s not necessary to go tonight.”

The expression “under control” leaves a fair amount of room for interpretation. He would describe the pain as… significant. Really, his leg could fall off completely and if he was given the choice he would still rather take the bus than whatever the alternative is. Thinking about it fills him with dread. He’s not sure what’s worse — that he would be abandoning the rest of the band or that they would be abandoning him, leaving him here in an unfamiliar city.

“I’ll be fine,” he says.

The paramedic nods and hoists his bag over his shoulder. “Take ibuprofen every 6 hours, add paracetamol too if you need. Keep it elevated, ice it for 20 minutes at a time. And keep your weight off it as much as you can.“

Once he exits the underworld, through the curtain with his big bag and fancy uniform and medical advice, Dew deflates. He sinks down in the chair and lets his head fall backwards until the crown of his hat comes to rest against a metal truss supporting the stage. He wants to tear it off his head and throw it on the ground, but unlike the boots it’s done nothing wrong. It would be collateral damage, and he would earn the ire of the wardrobe team. He probably shouldn’t even be letting it be pushed up against a solid object like this; it might get dented. He tips his head forward instead.

For a minute, he closes his eyes and just breathes, feeling his upper body rise and fall. His ankle throbs. His whole body is sore from standing unevenly, holding his weight off center and limping, even for such a short amount of time. The muscles around his hips, up his back, down the sides of his thighs, feel overworked.

Rain rubs circles between his shoulders, only stopping briefly a few times to move out of the way of crew members darting about. Dew sits up upon hearing him apologize out loud to someone stepping around them.

As soon as they’re alone again, as much as they can be, Rain asks, “Should we move somewhere quieter?”

The idea of moving sounds miserable, but the underworld has indeed become more and more saturated with activity as the entire crew mobilizes to systematically deconstruct every part of the production and pack it onto trucks. Some time soon, there won’t be an underworld anymore, because there won’t be a stage. And they need to get their uniforms off, anyway.

When he tries to stand up, shifting all his weight onto one bent leg, Ran grabs his arm and holds it firmly, all but hauling him to his feet. He waits a moment for him to find his balance before he places that arm across his shoulders, behind his neck. He wraps his arm around Dew’s waist and pulls their bodies together.

The first few steps are awkward, and they have to pause for a moment to figure out how to navigate the curtain, but they soon find a rhythm. It’s not comfortable, and he has to think about every step, but it feels safe and secure to have a hand on his hip, a solid torso pressed tight against his own.

Rain only lets go when they’re at the threshold of Dew’s dressing room, carefully unraveling their arrangement of limbs once Dew is firmly situated with one hand braced against the wall.

“Do you need help with your— anything?”

Dew shakes his head. “I think I’m good for now.”

“Okay, well, text me if you need me?”

“I will. If I do.”

Rain pulls the door almost all the way closed. He peeks through the opening one last time before closing it completely.

Now alone, Dew lowers himself onto a nearby couch with a huff. It’s not like he’s going to fall to pieces if left unsupervised. He takes off his hat and places it next to him, then unfastens his collar and takes that off too. He rolls the zipper pull of his bodysuit between his fingers. He doesn’t need help with this, he’s not that incapacitated. He tugs the zipper open.

Getting out of his uniform is an awkward, partially seated, one-legged ordeal, and showering has the opposite of its usual relaxing and refreshing effect. When Rain returns, knocking gently on the door, he’s flopped on the couch again, bandage dampened around the edges, one pant leg askew to accommodate it.

Rain’s face falls upon opening the door and seeing him there.

“I’m fine,” Dew answers, before Rain can ask anything.

“Okay.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “Well, do you maybe want to head out to the bus?”

The enclosed space of the bus does sound appealing, as does its familiarity, even if it’s barely more familiar than this dressing room, only by a few days. He doesn’t want to move, though, and he doesn’t want to see anyone else, to be subject to their questioning and scorn.

“Everyone else is going out tonight, I think,” Rain adds.

“Yeah, okay.” Dew pushes himself upright on the couch with a hand against the armrest and starts trying to extricate himself from the depths of the seat cushions that he’s been pulled into.

Rain takes both of his hands and helps him stand. When Dew reaches for his bag, Rain shakes his head. “I’ll come back and get it.”

Pressed together again, arms wrapped around each other, they make a slow step-by-step procession to the bus. Once they make it through the door, Dew is ready to collapse onto the nearest chair, but Rain keeps going straight up the narrow, curving staircase and into the upstairs lounge, where he lowers him down onto an L-shaped couch.

“Put your feet up,” he says, helping him turn and sit lengthwise, nestling him into a leather-lined corner. He arranges throw pillows around him, behind his back, under his foot, like he’s a piece of fragile glassware being prepared for transport, loaded up in a cardboard box padded by butcher paper and bubble wrap.

“Is that good? Comfortable?”

“I’m fine,” Dew says, a refrain that might be more for his own reassurance than anything else.

“I’m going to grab some stuff. Is that okay?”

Dew nods, but his head barely moves. His body feels limp.

“Okay?”

“Yes!” Dew snaps, and immediately regrets it. “Sorry. Yeah, that’s fine.” He swallows the lump forming in his throat “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be right back.”

As promised, Rain comes and goes, taking care of little tasks and bringing with him various provisions and amenities. He brings another pillow for Dew to rest his foot on, and a new ice pack from the freezer. He puts away their bags. He brings them food, which Dew picks at. He puts on a movie, which neither of them really pay any attention to.

Dew’s foot, on its improvised pillow pedestal, radiates an irritating but overall bearable ache. The cold of the ice pack eventually does sink all the way into the bandage and provides some comfort as well. If he holds completely still, it’s not so bad.

“Did you want me to get you something else?” Rain’s eyes are fixed on Dew’s barely-touched plate, brow creased with worry.

“No, I just—” Even thinking about food makes his stomach turn. He really should eat something, if he’s so worried about being ready to perform tomorrow, but that worry sabotages itself too ironically. He has to look away to quell the wave of nausea that rises.

Rain takes both of their plates away.

When he comes back, he sits down carefully next to Dew on the couch and gets as close as he can without jostling him. Their shoulders press together gently.

“What do you need right now?”

Dew looks over at him. Rain always knows what he needs. Asking him something like this is not really a request for information, it can’t be. It’s him taking a small step back, giving Dew the space to express himself.

“Please, just—” Dew’s face heats up. “Distract me.”

“Okay.” Rain takes out his phone. He pulls up an app with black and white squares. “Help me with this.”

Dew rolls his eyes. “Come on, you know I’m not good at these.”

“Just try.” He tilts the screen towards him.

It takes them over an hour to get through the puzzle, and the distribution of work is not equal by a long shot — Rain vetoes most of Dew’s answers as “not crosswordy,” and pulls random trivia out of thin air, justifying it by saying “some things show up often enough that you remember them.” Still, it occupies his mind, more so than when they’ve done this together in the past, which usually ended up being a spectator sport. This time, Rain pulls him in, over and over, prompting him to give answers, even if they’re mostly rejected.

They move on to some other word game, then briefly to a video game on the big TV, which proves to be too much excitement for Dew’s body that would very much prefer to remain as motionless as possible. Rain pulls up another crossword, and Dew mostly just watches this time, letting the letters wash over him. Now that it’s been pointed out to him, he does see the repeated words, EEL and OSLO and TSAR, their component parts all spinning together into a probabilistic blur.

He’s so tired, maybe more than he can ever remember being after a performance, despite standing in one spot for a large part of it. He rests his head on Rain’s shoulder.

Sounds of activity fill other parts of the bus as the rest of the band gets back from their outing. It’s not clear how Rain did it, who he told and what, but nobody comes in and bothers them, which is particularly impressive considering how coveted the space they’ve currently sequestered tends to be. It’s probably as much for their well being as it is for his comfort, considering he would likely bite someone’s head off if they looked at him wrong.

Rain’s phone congratulates him for solving another puzzle. He turns the screen off and sets it aside.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”A reflexive answer. “Tired.”

“Do you want me to help you to your bunk?”

Fuck, he forgot he would need to move again. His bunk is only a few meters down the hall, but the idea of rearranging everything, getting comfortable again, sounds overwhelming, to say the least. He groans.

“Do you want to stay here?”

He nods, his cheek rubbing against the soft fabric of Rain’s shirt. Procrastination probably isn’t going to make anything easier in the long run, but it’s so inviting.

“One second,” Rain says.

Dew lifts his head as Rain’s shoulder eases out from under it. His arm is suddenly cold without a body pressed up against him.

He closes the lounge door behind him. Beyond it, there’s sounds of movement, muffled talking. It’s not possible to pick Rain in particular out of the eclectic soundscape. Nearby, someone laughs, high-pitched and silvery, maybe Aurora. Downstairs, music thrums through the fancy sound system, treble attenuated by the floor, and Swiss sings along.

Rain comes back with an armful of blankets and pillows. He dumps them on the couch, then pulls one blanket out of the pile. He places it over Dew’s body, taking great care not to let it tug at his injured leg.

“Do you want to lie down or stay like this?”

“I’m fine like this.” He leans forward a little bit as Rain puts a pillow behind his head. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” Rain sits down next to him, on the shorter side of the couch, and pulls a blanket over himself. There’s not anywhere near enough space for him to lie down.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“Oh. I was going to sleep here.” He pulls his blanket up a little higher, for emphasis. His brow furrows. “Unless you wanted me to leave—”

“No,” Dew says, whinier and more pathetic than he wishes he would sound. “I mean, as long as you’re comfortable.”

“I’ll be fine.” He pinches a sliver of his lip under one fang, a telltale sign that he’s thinking hard. He’s probably not even aware that he’s doing it. “I just want to be here if you need something. Because I’m not sure you would text me.”

A stalwart champion of independence inside him says that of course he would, that he doesn’t need to be watched over. But it also says that he wouldn’t need anything at all. “I might not,” he admits.

Rain smiles. “See?” For a moment, his expression fades into something more distant, wistful.

Then he stands and putters around the room, straightening up video game controllers and forgotten throw pillows. When he turns off the lights, the room is inky black for just a few seconds, until Dew’s eyes adjust, and Rain is a gray figure sitting back down on the couch.

Dew rests his head on his shoulder again. He closes his eyes. He focuses on remaining absolutely still, breathing steadily in and out. He is so, so tired. Surely, if he just lies here, sleep will come. The lounge is pleasantly dark, calm, quiet enough — the sounds from the other parts of the bus are normal, something he’s learned to tune out.

The only thing that’s really threatening to keep him awake is his ankle. Without any other sensations competing with it, the pain expands to fill all of his awareness. It carries with it a reminder of its context, the troubles it has caused, and that it will cause, the show tomorrow, the unknowns.

Rain sighs quietly underneath him. If he concentrates, he can feel his pulse, beating steadily near where his shoulder meets his neck. Maybe he’s imagining it, or his perception is distorted by the pain that’s throbbing with his own heartbeat. He lets himself believe it’s real for now.

He finally dozes off, evidently, because all of a sudden he’s waking up, the bus is moving, and his foot is on fire. The wail that leaves his mouth doesn’t feel like it belongs to him.

“Dew?” Rain’s voice is quiet, unsure. If he wasn’t already awake, it wouldn’t have been loud enough to wake him.

The bus shudders as it goes over a bump in the road, fancy suspension system be damned, and even that gentle motion sends a lance of pain through his ankle. He yelps, caught off guard. Instinctively, he sits forward and reaches for it, but stops himself halfway. His hand flops ineffectually on his shin, arm heavy with exhaustion. He clenches his fingers and digs his nails in.

The pain is so intense that it ignites a buzzing urge to move his whole body, to roll his shoulders, to open and close his free hand in a white-knuckle fist. Gravity tugs against his every movement. The skin on the back of his neck prickles.

“Dew, is it your foot?”

He nods, frantic, jaw clamped shut. He doesn’t know what kind of sound he would make if he opened his mouth to speak.

“Let me get something for it,” Rain says, already standing up, blanket crumpling on the floor.

Dew sits back against the couch with a thump. Maybe Rain will bring a saw, and he can cut his leg off and be done with it. He presses a fist into the center of his forehead, between his eyes. He bites his tongue, hard.

When he comes back, he’s holding has an awkward armful of items. He pushes the door closed with his elbow. “I’m sorry, I should have woken you up to take this,” he says, handing him a small pile of pills. Dew doesn’t care what they are. He would take anything at this point.

Rain presses a bottle of water into his hand, cold, condensation barely starting to form on the outside. Drinking from it is like an anvil hitting his stomach.

“Do you want ice?” He holds up an ice pack.

“Ice, yes—” Dew grabs at it. Rain moves at the same time, placing it on his wrapped ankle. It feels like pressure, nothing more.

Dew groans. He leans forward, reaches down and presses the ice pack onto the bandage — he can’t feel the cold at all, just another layer of dull pain on top of the rest of it. He tears at the bandage, pulls the end of it free and loosens the loops tucked around his lower leg. It’s too tight, too intricate, he can’t get it off. His breaths speed up, rushing in his ears, and it doesn’t feel like they’re bringing in any air.

“What’s wrong?” Rain turns on the lights. The sudden brightness jolts through his eye sockets.

“I need the ice to— It needs to be closer.” He pulls on one loop and it tightens another. He pushes the whole tangle of bandage downward, but it just gets stuck around his ankle, which screams in response. The ice pack lies discarded on the couch.

“Okay, okay,” Rain soothes, panic brushing at the edges of his voice. He starts pulling the loops free, one by one, a longer tail of loose bandage dropping onto the couch each time. Cool air touches overwarm skin.

It’s not fast enough. Dew reaches out to join him, to tug on the bandages again too, but Rain takes his hand and places it firmly on his knee, out of the way.

When only a few loops of bandage remain, wrapped around the end of his foot near his toes, Dew takes the ice pack and presses it into the heart of the pain, the point where his ankle bone meets the side of his foot. This, finally, provides some slim modicum of relief. He lets out a shaky breath. The lounge is quiet, filled only by the sounds of the bus in motion — wheels on the pavement, the engine.

Rain rubs his back, slow, firm strokes up and down his spine. “Better?”

“A little.” His voice comes out raspy, uneven, too tight to sustain a proper whisper.

“Can I do something else?”

“What else even is there to do?” His voice cracks on the last word. His eyes burn.

No, no, not over something like this, like he’s a child that scraped his knee on the playground. He looks up, leans his head back. Tears pool against his sclera, creeping higher until they begin to refract the lights above him into a dizzying sparkle.

Rain doesn’t say anything, just keeps rubbing his back. Because he’s right, there’s nothing he can do. He fucked up, and these are the consequences — humiliation, exhaustion, and excruciating pain.

He can’t even keep forcing himself to believe that he’s going to be able to play in the show tomorrow, to do his job. He couldn’t handle the costume and the stage layout and the setlist and the schedule. And on only the third show, too. There’s no point to him being here, he’s going to be sent home.

This is what finally makes the stupid tears spill out onto his face, leaving a hot trail down to his jawline, first on one side and then the other. He inhales through his nose, sharp and involuntary, making a gross sniffling noise.

“It’s going to be okay,” Rain soothes.

Dew shakes his head, vehement. He must not understand what’s at stake. He hasn’t put the pieces together.

“It’s hard right now but it’s going to get better.” So naive.

“It’s over,” he squeaks, followed by another gasping inhale that he can’t control. He clamps his hand over his mouth.

“No, no it’s not, nothing is over because of this.”

He can’t speak. He shakes his head again.

“Are you thinking about tomorrow?”

He nods. Tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.

“Everything is going to get taken care of, you just need to focus on feeling better.”

“I’m trying. I can’t—” His breath hitches. “I’m so. Tired. And I can’t sleep.”

“I’m sorry.” Rain brushes away tears with gentle fingers. His hand is cold against his flushed cheek.

“It hurts so much.” It’s embarrassing to admit it even though it’s plainly apparent from his behavior, his distress. He’s weak for being unable to endure the pain of a minor injury like this.

“I know.” His hand dances across his face, from one side to the other and back, wiping fresh tears as they fall. “Just hold on for thirty minutes, and the medicine will start working. Less than that, now. Twenty-five.”

It’s optimistic of him to think that whatever non-prescription drugs he scrounged up will change anything, but it’s enough to focus on for now. He exhales a shaky breath.

“Do you want me to distract you? Or put something on the TV?”

He shakes his head. “I just want to sleep.”

“Okay,” he says, like this is an actionable request and not a plea for mercy.

Rain gets up and dims the lights to a barely-there glow. He fluffs pillows and adjusts blankets. He returns to his spot on the couch.

Dew tries to get comfortable. He sits back against the couch, until that feels wrong and he has to lean forward again. He adjusts the ice pack. Briefly, he tries to lie on his side, but it proves to be too much motion for his ankle. Rain’s careful handiwork falls into disarray, blankets twisted and tangled. Through all the fidgeting and adjusting, he keeps rubbing Dew’s back, arm, shoulder, whatever is accessible.

The minutes stretch on like this, until the pills kick in, all at once. The relief is euphoric. A warm ocean cradles him; he floats on its surface, buoyant in the saltwater. It’s amusing, distantly, to feel a such a dramatic effect from over-the-counter pain relievers. It’s not an absence of pain either, just a decrease that pulls him back over the edge from agony to something more tolerable. Even that makes him feel high.

He sinks into the cushions. His muscles feel like jelly. Next to him, Rain seems to relax a little bit too, slowing his touches. Sleep awaits with open arms.

When he wakes up, light is filtering in through the blinds. The bus is stopped. He’s lying flat with head in Rain’s lap, and Rain is sitting perpendicular to him, legs extended, upper body slumped in the corner where the two sides of the couch meet. He’s still asleep, judging by his breathing.

Dew shifts slowly so as not to wake him. His whole body feels stiff, mildly sore. His ankle aches, but the pain isn’t as bad as it was in the middle of the night.

He looks down at it, tucking his chin toward his chest. It’s still sticking out from the tangled blanket over the rest of his body, resting on a single pillow. The ice pack lies on the couch next to it, melted, as does a heap of elastic bandage. It’s more purple than the last time he saw it, and more swollen too. He wiggles his toes experimentally. He stops right away when pain shoots up his leg with the tiniest movement.

He starts easing his head back down into Rain’s lap but pauses when he moves in his sleep beneath him. He sits up instead, just as slow. His head spins. He blinks and rubs a hand over his face.

His phone is wedged between two couch cushions. He checks the time — it’s still morning. In his notifications is a text from one of the production coordinators about a doctor’s appointment in the early afternoon.

So he wasn’t asleep for very long at all, and has a couple of hours to kill before his appointment. It really would be nice to sleep more, to spend some time not thinking about anything. The idea of actually trying to fall asleep again, getting comfortable, sounds like too much of a chore. He’s tired, but not unbearably so. He should just commit to being awake.

It’s not like he can go anywhere, though, or do anything else. He flops against the back of the couch next to him, tipping over sideways so that he doesn’t have to move his legs. His cheek presses into cool leather. He sighs.

“Dew?” Rain’s voice comes unexpectedly from behind him, raspy from disuse.

He jumps, startled.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Sorry if I woke you up.”

Rain shakes his head. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I just woke up a couple minutes ago.”

“Good. That’s good.” He’s already kicking into gear, getting up and collecting the pillows strewn across the room.

When he reaches Dew’s side of the couch, Rain picks up one end of the abandoned bandage, lifting a long tail out of the limp pile. “I guess we should put this back on?”

Dew grimaces. “I guess.” He’s not interested in anything touching his ankle, but if he wants to stand up or move around at all, he would probably be more comfortable with it at least a little bit immobilized.

“Unless the ice…?”

The tips of his ears start to feel warm. Unless he wants to make a big dramatic scene over it like last night? “No, it’s okay now.”

“Okay, well, did you want to do it? Or do you want me to do it for you?”

“Can you?” His voice comes out small.

Something like relief washes over Rain’s face. “Sure, of course.”

Rain sits down at the end of the couch. He takes one end of the bandage and presses it into his skin, holding it there, on the top of his foot near his toes. Dew hisses through his teeth at the contact.

“Sorry,” Rain says, lifting his hand away. The bandage crumples down onto the pillow.

“It’s fine, just do it.” He clenches his teeth, hopefully not in a way that’s noticeable.

He hesitates, but then holds the bandage against his foot again. He loops it around his foot one, two, three times, then pauses to adjust, pressing down with cautious fingers and gently tugging the free end with his other hand. Elasticized fabric slides under Dew’s arch.

In the end, his ankle is wrapped up again, though not quite as neatly as it was before. He puts his foot down next to his other one. The difference between them, visually, is concerning. The bruising is covered by the bandage, but the swelling is compounded by the additional layers covering it, making it look massive.

Rain helps him down the stairs to the bathroom, gets him things from his bag, brings them both food again so he doesn’t have to go all the way inside. It’s humiliating to need to be assisted with every single task, to do nothing of his own power, but if it had to be anyone helping him… now that’s an embarrassingly saccharine thought.

He takes another pile of pills, at Rain’s direction. He can see what they are now — two tylenol and four ibuprofen. It seems extreme, if not dangerous, but he’s not going to question it, not after last night.

Then they wait. Waiting, in general, is a very normal part of being on tour, but not like this, anxious, with something looming ahead. He should be killing time with the rest of the band, maybe out and about somewhere, excited for the show tonight. So should Rain, but instead he’s entertaining his petulant boyfriend with games and videos, switching to something new as soon as it stops holding his attention.

“I would be fine by myself, you know,” Dew says, as Rain scrolls through a list of movies for the millionth time.

Rain frowns slightly. He puts down the TV remote. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“I mean— you don’t need to do this if you don’t want to.”

“Well, I do want to.” He picks up his phone and scoots over next to Dew.

They’re in the depths of a Wikipedia rabbit hole when he gets a text that a car will arrive soon to take him to his appointment. Rain helps him walk a short distance across the sunny concrete parking lot to where, by the time they make it there, the car awaits. He offers his arm to hold onto as he lowers himself into the back seat, pivoting on his one leg.

The clunk of the door closing feels abrupt. Just like that, he’s alone. Why was he expecting otherwise? He looks down at his feet on the freshly vacuumed floor mat, his single shoe. He feels a little bit like he’s being brought to his execution.

The opposite door opening pulls him from his thoughts. Rain gets in the car and closes the door behind him. Right, of course. He settles back against the seat. Rain is watching him with big worried eyes, like maybe he can see his thoughts spilling out from how hard they’re churning.

He actually isn’t sure what he thinks is going to happen. As it stands, his ankle is simultaneously damaged beyond repair and just a little bruised. He’s overreacting and at the same time his life is ruined. He needs an x-ray just as a formality, but the doctor will give him devastating news which he dreads hearing.

Out the window, trees pass by, weathered brick walls, iron fences. Carbon copy rowhouses sitting pressed up against each other become gated estates hidden behind foliage as they leave the city center. They’re dropped off in front of an unassuming building, and make their way inside.

The waiting area is fancy, in a subtle way. They sit on a real sofa, like one that might be in someone’s living room. It doesn’t quite feel like a doctor’s office. It calls attention to how unusual this whole thing really is, the context, the logistics of it all. It’s not necessarily normal to be able to schedule a same-day doctor’s appointment at the drop of the hat anywhere in the world unless, perhaps, you’re a key part of a concert tour with a budget in the millions. He could put a price tag on his leg.

They aren’t there for long before a doctor arrives and ushers them to an exam room. Her white coat seems out of place at first, at the threshold of the oddly domestic waiting area, but she fits in better once the door is closed, with pale gray cabinets and a little stool on five caster wheels. Dew sits on a padded table.

She asks him what happened, where it hurts, all the same as before. Saying it is embarrassing every time. As much as he can, he leaves out the parts about the concert, the stage, the costume, just mentioning the stairs, that he tripped, that he received first aid right away. Behind her, Rain raises an eyebrow when he describes how he stood and walked on his injured leg for mysterious and vague reasons, with no clear motivation.

She unwraps the bandage from his ankle. He knows what it looks like underneath, but it’s still unpleasant to see it again. The weave of the fabric is imprinted on his skin. She asks him to lie down, and he doesn’t have to look at it anymore.

“What do you do for work?” Her fingers press into the side of his leg near near his calf and start to work their way lower.

“I’m a… musician.”

“I see, so are you on your feet much? She digs into his ankle bone in a way that’s unpleasant but not exceedingly painful.

“Um, I’m on tour right now, so—” He flinches when she touches a spot on the side of his foot, his words interrupted by a strangled yelp.

“Is this where the pain is worst?” She presses on it again, more gently, just indicating to it. It’s like the deepest, most sensitive bruise he’s ever had, like an exposed nerve.

“Yeah.” He stops himself from squirming on the table, wriggling away from her hands, from the close observation. “Yes, I think so.”

“Let’s get an x-ray of this, and we’ll take it from there, okay?”

He’s directed to a room at the end of the hall. Rain helps him down from the exam table and supports him as they walk there together. They’re getting better at this, more coordinated and in tune with each other’s motions. It’s a good thing, in the sense that it’s easier to move around, but it’s not a skill he wants to be developing in the first place.

When they get there, a technician asks Rain to wait outside. A door closes between them.

The room inside is dark, and is full of white equipment, austere plastic-shelled machines and furniture, utilitarian fixtures. The technician instructs him to sit on a hard table at its center. She places a rectangular panel underneath his foot. She adjusts his body with light, barely-there touches, bending his knee, extending his ankle, pointing his toes so that the sole of his foot is flat on the panel. Something inside his foot, at the point where the doctor pressed, protests being stretched this way. The chill of all the rigid surfaces, and of the air in the room, sinks into his skin.

When the technician presses a button on the machine looming above the table, it shines a rectangle of light on him like sun through a window. The shadowed lines between the panes form a crosshair that she aims at the middle of his foot. He feels exposed, lit by a spotlight and placed in front of a camera that will look inside him, through him.

He holds still while she steps into another room, leaving him entirely alone. This must be what it’s like in a museum after closing time, a curio on a pedestal in the dark surrounded by white walls. A day’s worth of attention evaporates off him like steam into the air.

She comes back after barely any time at all. She takes two more pictures in the same manner, one with his knee tipped inwards and one with it rotated all the way out until the whole length of his leg is resting on the table. Then he’s done, and is sent back to the exam room.

He manages to limp back to the door, where Rain seems surprised to see him emerge by himself. They make their way down the hall again, retracing their careful, methodical steps.

When they get back to the exam room, the doctor isn’t there. Rain leads Dew to the table — no, not again. He shakes his head. There is a pair of chairs on the other side of the room, across from a desk. Rain helps him into one and sits in the other.

Dew exhales; what starts as a sigh becomes a frustrated groan. Every time he sits down he’s reminded how tired he is. The only thing preventing him from curling up right here and trying to fall asleep is that he knows he wouldn’t be able to, not with the anxiety and the pain, the lights, the unfamiliar surroundings. His leg hurts more from having briefly walked on it.

“Doing okay?” Rain is looking at him with big eyes again.

“I guess.” He slumps down in the chair, melting under his concerned gaze. As much as the question makes him squirm he really does appreciate that Rain is being so attentive. If only he could express it in a normal way, instead of whatever he’s doing now. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“Of course.”

“And thank you for walking me everywhere. Because I can’t walk by myself.”

“Sure. But actually I was going to ask—” Rain sits up a bit straighter, turns toward him slightly, like he’s about to change the subject to something serious. “Were you walking by yourself earlier? In the other room.”

“Just a couple steps. I think it was a bad idea.” He looks down at his bare foot. “It hurt.”

“You could have asked me to help you.”

“What, through the radiation-proof lead door?”

“I would have heard you.”

Dew scoffs. He probably would have, though. Somehow.

There’s a brisk knock on the door, and then the doctor opens it and walks in without any delay. Dew scrambles to sit up properly in his chair. She sits at the desk across from them. Suddenly this all feels very formal.

“I took a look at your x-rays,” she says. “I’m afraid you’ve broken your foot.”

Dew’s blood runs cold. Branching timelines slam together; disparate possibilities collapse into a single present. He distantly feels Rain’s hand on his arm.

“Here, let me show you.” She turns to her computer, clicks a few times, then rotates the monitor towards him.

On it is an x-ray of a foot, looking down from the front. It looks exactly like the paint on the front of the uniform boots, the same stupid boot that made him fall. A startled laugh bubbles up from his chest before he can stop it.

“You can see the fracture here.” She drags the mouse cursor along one dark line through a gray-white bone. “And here.” She moves the cursor to another, similar looking line.

Dew struggles to formulate an intelligent question. In the end, what comes out is, “It’s broken twice?”

“Yes, it’s broken in two places. Two fractures.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s not uncommon.” She folds her hands on the desk in front of her. “Based on the location of the fractures, and because they are well aligned, I believe it will heal on its own over time. About six to eight weeks.”

She’s saying it like this is the good option, but Dew isn’t sure what the other possibilities might be. How else do bones heal? Probably better not to think about it. He nods.

“I’m going to give you a special boot to wear. You can put as much weight on your foot as you feel comfortable with, but only while the boot is on. Alright?”

That means he can stand, he can walk. He can be on stage like normal. The sudden sense of relief is so potent that he feels lightheaded. He nods again.

“Don’t push yourself too hard. Walking a bit will help with healing, but start slow, listen to your body, especially for the next few days.”

He feels a little bit like he’s been caught doing something naughty, even though it actually hasn’t happened yet. It’s as if she can read his mind. Or maybe everyone thinks this, and she’s just responding to an observed pattern.

“Other than that, elevating your leg and using ice will help with the pain and swelling. You can take the boot off while you’re resting, it’s just to make walking more comfortable ”

Dew nods. “Okay.”

“Do you have any questions?”

He shakes his head. No, not any that he’s going to risk asking, and maybe getting an answer that he doesn’t like. His mind was already made up the moment he got permission to bear weight on his leg, even though it came with some caveats that he may or may not follow to the letter.

“Great, let me get that boot for you.”

As soon as the door closes behind her, Rain is on his case. “You’re thinking about the show tonight, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.” He can’t help but smile a little at Rain’s very predictable discernment. At least he didn’t say anything out loud in front of the doctor.

“Just be careful, okay? Take it slow, like she said.”

“I will.”

When the doctor comes back, she’s carrying a very tall and bulky item of footwear. It’s black, at the very least. It won’t be too out of place with his stage uniform. It even has a similarly thick sole.

His foot and leg are wrapped in a soft foam sleeve and then five velcro straps are tightened around it, holding a metal frame in place. The top of the boot ends just below his knee. His toes stick out just slightly from the liner.

He stands up slowly. Involuntarily, he holds his hands out to balance. Rain reaches out and grabs one of them.

The boot forces him to put most of his weight on his heel, which does indeed hurt less than standing normally. Now that he knows where the broken bones are, it seems obvious. He’s still trying to wrap his head around it, that it was his foot, not his ankle. He was so sure he hurt his ankle. It doesn’t really matter that much — it’s all connected, anyway — but the sudden clarity is jarring.

He takes a small, experimental step. This is fine. It’s doable.

“Feels alright? I can grab you a pair of crutches if that would be easier at first.”

He shakes his head. “No.” Absolutely definitely not. “Thank you.”

Apparently that’s enough, and he doesn’t need to convince her any further of his supposed accession to pacing himself and doing as he’s told. He feels almost giddy. It could have been so much worse.

Despite his new ability to walk on his own, Rain doesn’t let go of his arm as they head back down the hallway to the waiting room and out the front door. As he begins to feel more confident, he takes longer and longer strides, but soon reaches an upper limit — the inability to bend his ankle is way more disruptive to his gait than he expected. The sole of the boot is much thicker than that of his other shoe, too, which makes it feel like he’s walking sideways along a small but annoying hill, stepping up with one foot and down with the other.

Outside, the two of them sit on a wooden bench as they wait for the car to come back around and pick them up. The air is pleasantly cool, and warm sunlight shines down on them.

Dew extends both legs out in front of him. The boot is huge in comparison to his other leg. It looks ridiculous on him, completely out of proportion. He should be grateful that he’s going to be able to be on stage at all, let alone standing up, walking, but instead he’s finding new things to be embarrassed about. At least he’s not going to be sitting in a chair with everyone running circles around him. It’s just a shoe, another in a collection of notable footwear from the past day.

They make it back to the concert venue in time for soundcheck. It’s a place composed of seemingly endless hallways. All of them are, but endless is longer than usual today, considering the circumstances. By the time they reach the arena floor, Dew’s ankle — no, his foot — is really starting to ache. In the underworld, he stands with all his weight on his good leg.

It’s strange to be here again. Last time he was under the stage, everything was so different. Memories flank him like a pack of wolves.

It’s not the same place, though, technically. The stage is the same, but he’s miles away from where he was last night. The ground under his feet is different.

Everyone seems very relieved to see him, and keen to express it, which is embarrassing, but thankfully other than that they give him space. If he had to tell the whole story right now of everything that’s happened he would probably combust. It’s hard enough just telling the story to himself, remembering it, the details. He does his best to reassure everyone that he’s feeling okay.

Soundcheck, at first, boosts his confidence. He really will be able to do this. He’s standing, playing, but a new problem arises — he can’t use his pedals properly with the bulkiness of the boot, and his ankle fixed in one position. So close, yet so far.

He’s in the middle of considering if he’s willing to relinquish control of the pedal effects to his guitar tech, or just to some computer maybe, or even leave them out altogether, when Phantom bounds up to him, sprightly as ever, and offers to do it for him.

“I can be your feet for tonight,” he says.

Poor Phantom, like everyone else, probably has been wondering about him after the drama he caused last night, and has been very politely leaving him alone in spite of it. This is the first chance he’s had to offer to help, and really, how can Dew say no?

After soundcheck, Rain helps him to his dressing room, seemingly intent on forcing him to rest for a while. The bus lounge they so selfishly annexed would probably still be available, as would, of course, his bunk, but the parking lot is so far away. Inside, his uniform is waiting for him, including both of the associated shoes.

He collapses onto the couch. Walking is still exhausting, even with the boot, or maybe because of it. Rain sets him up with pillows under his foot and a plastic bag full of ice, and he even manages to take a short but much-needed nap before he has to get ready for the show. If Rain sleeps too, he’s not sure. What he does know is that he’s there when he falls asleep and still there when he wakes up.

Getting into his uniform, when it’s time, is about as much of an ordeal as it was to take it off last night. He has to remove the boot to change his clothes and then put it back on again, which means wrestling with an excessive amount of velcro that seems to have a mind of its own and a desire to stick to everything in its vicinity. When he’s done, a mismatched pair of shoes remains on the dressing room floor, his own right one with the left from his uniform.

The boot looks the same as before — bulky, out of place. It might actually look even bigger now, given how tight the bodysuit is, maximizing the difference between the sizes of his legs. It is what it is, an inelegant, unattractive thing that makes it possible for him to walk, just barely.

Anticipation builds over the course of his final preparations for the show until, finally, he’s standing on stage again, the audience buzzing on the other side of the curtain. He feels an unprecedented level of self-consciousness. The boot really sticks out, literally, and he’s not going to be up to his own standards. He’s going to be a disappointment.

When the curtain falls, everything comes into focus. The important thing is that he’s here, even if he can’t participate in all the ways he wants to. He can still play. Phantom helps with his pedals, as does Rain. Papa comes to him, instead of the other way around.

By the halfway point of the set the pain in his foot has increased to a dull roar. His back and hips ache from the unsustainable distribution of his weight, the unequal height of his shoe and boot. He moves less and less, stands in one place. It starts to be a distraction.

He can hear Rain in his head telling him to take care of himself. Also, he can see Rain in real life watching him, surely eager to say the same thing, given the opportunity.

Dew hobbles carefully to the drum riser. Between parts, in the short interval in which he can use his hands to steady himself, sits down on the steps. In no time at all, Rain is there too, standing next to him on those same steps, perfectly casual — he stands here all the time.

The six weeks or longer that it’s expected to take for him to heal will extend through what remains of this part of the tour. Maybe, hopefully, he will feel better as the shows go on, become more mobile. Maybe the rest of the tour will be like tonight. Suddenly, for the first time, he’s okay with that possibility.

[multi-fandoms-posts]

Secrets in the Storm

X Men Masterlist

The sky outside is heavy and dark as the jet flies through the storm. Inside, Y/N, Charles, and Erik sit tense and silent. Their mission: to infiltrate a dangerous facility where mutants are being held—a task that requires the utmost concentration. Yet something is distracting Charles. His gaze is restless, and he rubs his forehead.

“Charles, what’s wrong?” Y/N asks, noticing his unease.

“It’s hard to explain,” he murmurs, closing his eyes. “There’s… a presence. I feel something, but I can’t quite grasp it.”

Erik, who is monitoring the instruments, turns to him. “Now is not the time for riddles, Charles. Focus on the mission.”

Charles nods, but the feeling doesn’t leave him. This presence is powerful, but different from anything he has ever felt before. He tries to ignore it, but it lingers. Something important that he doesn’t yet understand.

As the jet lands, they must move quickly. The facility is hidden behind dense trees, the rain making the ground muddy and slippery. They run through the forest, each step cautious, ready for the upcoming fight. But Charles keeps stopping, his thoughts drifting back to the strange presence. He knows he can’t ignore it any longer, but now is not the time to question it.

When they reach the facility, the battle erupts. Erik raises his arms, metal beams tear from the walls, hurling enemies to the ground. Y/N fights with swift, precise movements, while Charles uses his telepathic abilities to confuse their foes. Then, the presence in Charles’ mind becomes suddenly overwhelming. It hits him like a revelation he hadn’t anticipated.

“Erik!” he calls telepathically. “It’s Y/N…”

“What about her?” Erik dodges an attack and sends several metal pieces crashing into his enemies. “I’m busy, Charles!”

“She’s pregnant.”

Erik stops abruptly, and before he can react, he is struck hard from the side. He is slammed against the wall, the metal structure behind him bending under the impact. Erik collapses to the ground, dazed. Charles immediately feels a surge of anger rising within him.

“Erik!” Y/N calls, but before she can move, Charles raises his hands. The telepathic barrier he creates is stronger than ever, forcing the enemies back, driving them to their knees. His eyes sparkle with determination.

But Erik is already up again, blood running down his forehead, yet he ignores it. With a deep, angry breath, he extends his hands, and the metal structures of the facility twist and shatter under his command. “No one,” he growls, “touches her.” His rage unleashes a massive shockwave, throwing enemies against the walls and shaking the facility to its core.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Y/N shouts as she continues to fight, confused by the sudden shift in their fighting styles. “Why are you so aggressive?”

Charles doesn’t respond; his mind is solely focused on protecting Y/N and the child. “We need to protect her, Erik,” he sends telepathically.

Erik simply nods and unleashes another wave of metal and fury. Metal plates slice through the air, crushing enemies in a destructive whirlwind. Every move Erik makes is wild and deadly, his powers unleashed with an intensity Y/N has never seen before.

Charles is equally relentless. He delves deeper into the enemies’ minds, forcing them to turn their weapons on each other. Every attack is more precise, every blow harder, as he knows Y/N and the life she carries must be protected.

Finally, after a long, brutal fight, the last enemies lie on the ground. The facility is secured, but the air is heavy with tension and unspoken truths. Erik breathes heavily, his eyes fixed on Y/N, while Charles remains vigilant.

Back in the jet, as the world outside is engulfed in the storm, the three sit exhausted together. Y/N keeps throwing questioning glances at Erik and Charles, both of whom are visibly tense. Finally, she breaks the silence.

“What was that? Why did you suddenly fight like that?”

Charles takes a deep breath and sits next to Y/N. “There’s something you need to know,” he begins cautiously. “During the mission, I felt something I couldn’t initially place. But then I realized what it was.”

Y/N looks at him, her confusion growing. “What do you mean, Charles?”

Charles looks to Erik, who nods briefly before speaking to Y/N. “You… you’re pregnant, Y/N,” Charles says quietly.

For a moment, Y/N just stares at him, as if she hasn’t understood. “What?”

Y/N is speechless, her hand moving incredulously to her stomach. “I… how? How could I not know?”

Erik moves closer and takes her hand. “We didn’t know either,” he says softly, “but when Charles felt it, we knew one thing: We have to protect you and the baby. That’s why we fought the way we did.”

Y/N looks at the two of them, her eyes wide with shock and surprise. But deep in her heart, she feels that she is no longer alone. She has a family ready to do anything to protect her and the unborn child.

“We will do everything to protect you,” Charles says gently, his eyes full of resolve.

“No matter the cost,” Erik adds, his voice firm and clear.

And Y/N knows she is not alone—she has two of the most powerful mutants in the world by her side, who will not hesitate to sacrifice everything for her and the life she carries.

[witchofthesouls]

I would love to see you write some more culture differences between the bots and humans. If you wouldn’t mind :0 I wish we saw some in TFP

Same here. I love seeing world-building and deep lore, especially with other fantasy/sci-fi civilizations.

TFP gave us so much and so little at the same time. It's like going to a restaurant, you have a drink and great appetizers, so you're constantly waiting for the entrée that isn't coming!

TFP is also really fascinating when looking at it with the lens of the caste system and its deep roots within and among the 'bots, even their reduced circumstances. I get the feeling that Optimus is way more casual in way with his team than what the decorum would demand, even with his barriers.

The Autobots would find human cityscapes as quaint. Even the dense sprawls of megacities with towering high rises are paltry reminder of what they're used to.

Cybertron was a planet where its wilds had been tamed. Either reshaped or completely stripped. The Wastelands is/was an apt name for the baren landscapes outside the established city-states.

It wasn't just a large difference in public transport and zoning and sheer scale. It was also the functional design and architecture.

City-states mimicked the layouts of Titans' ground alt-modes. They didn't sprawl outward. Those had set perimeters based on Titans' outer defenses. Instead, the cities expanded up or down.

It wasn't limited to just a parking structure or secretive bases. Whole levels housed entire communities of what castes resided there: occupations, hospitals, sewage, refineries, restaurants, entertainment, and so much. Some mecha go without ever seeing the sunlight or feel real wind, especially those at the lowest of the system. The lowest castes are set all the way at the bottom, among ancient tech and dilapidated buildings. Sorting and recycling what could be kept and what must be sent back to the upper levels.

The concept of "open to the public" would confuse the Autobots. The Golden Age operated its society under the strict overview of a caste system, which expanded to "where" and "what" individuals of a caste could access.

Monster truck rallies fall under bloodsport to them. Bulkhead once scavenged money to watch and do small bets at high-stakes drift racing and lower-tier gladiator matches below the ground. Mecha still had to pay entrance fees to it.

Parks were under the Artisanal caste. Blending murals of legends, careful tending to fauna that are functionally extinct that was tailored to the agreed aesthetic, live music from specific pupils of masters, playing on instruments that merged with the gardens, so it was difficult to tell what was a tool and a plant or animal. And entry to any of it was only allowed for certain castes.

Universities were thriving, self-contained communities, and major points of power. No one off the list would be allowed into its grounds. All visitors and short-term guests were deeply screened and monitored. There is no such thing as "dropping by." Everything is meticulously planned and prepared. Unless a faculty member personally vouches for a guest, they must heed the numerous rules or a risk permanent banning.

Academia had long since been territorial over its talents and quality of its programs and people. They refuse to allow anyone outside its jurisdiction to bully one of its own. No matter the rank or caste, it will close its inescapable jaws around an outsider.

The fact that someone could go to a private university and simply jog upon its grounds is mind-boggling to the 'bots.

As well as libraries and their courses and workshops. So anyone can go? Anyone?! Everyone has access to the knowledge!? Can anyone simply go join a seminar on local gardening? Anyone can just go to a playground and start swinging or playing basketball or flying a kite or dancing to music? Anyone?

Bulkhead had a lot of questions for Jack and Raf since they're locals compared to Miko.

"So anyone can go?"

"Yeah. I used to spend my recess looking up bird anatomy and Ancient Greece and Egypt."

"You had a thing for ancient civilizations?" Raf asked.

"Doesn't everyone?" Jack shrugged. "Pharoahs and gladiators and old gods? We ate that up with mystery books or Goosebumps."

"I read Sherlock Holmes and the Chronicles of Narnia."

"Those are classics. Hey, did you get into The Lo-"

"Hold up," Bulkhead cut in, crouched down and leaning more forward, as if sharing a secret and quietly ask, "So anyone?"

"Yes. Anyone." Jack repeated, rapidly firing off each point with a finger. "Their family. Their friends. Their classmates. Their coworkers. Their pe-"

"Even, let's say, a construction worker. He could just go inside and pick up, I don't know, quantum physics? Anatomy of any frames? Gardening?"

"Sure." Raf squinted and moved to wipe off his glasses with his sleeves. "Clubs and people like to donate more to expand the base. Some of the college professors even leave early editions of their textbooks." Raf readjusted his glasses and beamed. "It's for easier access people and for an industrial copier."

"Oh..." There was a wealth of meaning in that small noise.

"You..." Jack struggled on the concept. Perhaps giant metal aliens didn't need books and could download information from their own internet. "You don't have libraries or schools?"

"No. We did." Bulkhead sighed. "I just wasn't allowed into them."

Out of all of them, Miko would be the to come the closest to understanding them in some ways. 出る杭は打たれる. The nail that sticks out gets hammered in.

As a transfer student from Japan, Miko does have instances of culture clashes with her American classmates and host family.

She's loud. She knows that. But Americans are a different breed with no restraint. In some ways, admirable. In others, incredibly frustrating.

Miko is used to a far heavier workload with long hours after-school and a busy city life. Jasper qualifies between a small and large town that she can't walk around easily on her own with the blazing heat and bitter cold nights and the lack of a car or a bike.

Detention in the US is a joke to her. Stay in school after it's over? She's used to doing that back at home with clubs and cleaning it. On a Saturday? Same thing. Some clubs back home ran long hours over the weekend. Do homework? She already finished it during lunch or between classes because she wants all the other time to herself and the 'bots.

Because Bulkhead gets a realization just how free the kids' social mobility is, he tries to get on Miko over her scrapping at school and her assignments, especially after Ratchet's high jacking their science projects resulted in failure. And that was another strange blow since Ratchet is a medic and a scientist. She's smart and quick and can be rough around the edges and so everywhere, and, to him, Miko deserves everything she could want in her short life. (And wasn't that also a terrifying concept to grasp? To just live and die under a single vorn?)

At first, Miko was getting annoyed because it's similar to the well-meaning nagging her host family does, but she reads the worry he has, and they have to really sit down and speak and soothe over his misunderstandings.

It comes as a huge surprise to her that Bulkhead can just download a language into him. Context and colloquialisms would be missing, and he needs work because he's a mix between extreme formality and, much to her delight, yakuza. And it's all because of her own frustration that English is her second language.

[squidsinashirt]

What’s the longest dive you have ever needed to complete for a rescue, and how did you handle fatigue and mental focus? It’s got to be incredibly difficult to have a complicated rescue that requires continued attention.

Ooh, big question (a very good one, thanks!)

I’ve done quite a few long trips that have meant staying at depth for a couple of weeks here and there, research trips and obviously back when I served with the WASPs. Not for an immediate rescue though as part of iR - It’s very different when it’s a rescue.

The longest rescue dive I’ve ever done in one stint was nineteen hours. That’s the record for me (and not one I’m eager to beat). It was off the Mariana Ridge. A deep-sea pipeline maintenance station had a catastrophic collapse - pressure door failure, electrical fire, you name it. There were six workers trapped in a reinforced chamber, two hundred metres below the surface. Scrubbers that were failing, a hull that critical - it was a race against time and physics.

The dive was brutal. Currents were wicked strong, the seabed was shifting, the structure was collapsing and the visibility was almost zero. I had to alternate between piloting Thunderbird 4 through a collapsed support grid and EVA’ing to try and stabilise the structure and make us room to get close. Absolutely no room for error. One wrong move and the entire thing could’ve gone down.

And here’s the thing most people don’t realize — it’s not just the currents, or the pressure, or the sheer isolation that wears you down. It’s the constant vigilance. For eighteen hours, I couldn’t mentally look away. Every second I was calculating: gas reserves, structural stress, movement patterns, pressure calculations, body positioning, welding and cutting. When you’re diving that deep, with that kind of responsibility on your shoulders, you’re always working. There’s no coast mode.

It’s the mental grind that really tries to get you. You’re thinking about how to gently cut through a collapsed bulkhead without triggering a chain reaction. What is going to happen if I release this valve? How is the pressure going to shift? What else has failed on that panel that I can see - is there a weak spot I’m not anticipating? How injured are the crew? Am I going to be able to stabilise them before they need to hit the surface? What am I going to do if I get inside this thing and someone’s too sick for that? How am I getting us all out if my entryway is blocked, what’s my plan B, C, D?

Because you’re always thinking about the voices on the other end of your comms - scared, breathing too fast, trying to believe someone’s coming. They don’t need to know how complicated it is on your side - they just need to know you’re coming for them.

I used very short windows back in Four, still at pressure, to do breathing drills - stretch, re-center myself, run diagnostics. It helps keep a clear head.

I manage fatigue the same way I manage everything else down there — through systems and rhythm. My suit is obviously pressure and temp controlled automatically. Four runs my monitoring remotely, but I hooked up to the umbilical for outside EVA’ing for that length of time. Saved swapping tanks, and it meant she could continue to adjust my gases for me as I worked, constantly judging my nitrogen levels for a mix of Tri and Hydrox. Takes some of the brain work away for me, and I trust her (and Brains’ engineering) without fault. I have an integrated hydration system (like a squid-friendly Camelback) so I have electrolyte fluids going (it’s just fancy Gatorade 😏). High-calorie, fast-absorbing nutrient gels every couple of hours. Caffeine tabs when I felt myself slipping.

I had my favourite playlist running low in one ear. Mostly instrumental stuff. Nothing that demanded too much brain space. And of course, John’s chatter about systems in the moments that didn’t require that intense, silent focus, and Virgil’s absolutely terrible ocean themed puns. And this is why they’re so damn excellent at what they do - John knows when to stay quiet or when to chime in with a report back on something, and Virgil just knows me in the field like nobody else, I don’t have to explain everything, he anticipates it.

Scott, on the other hand, was actually blocked from comms at one point because I was sick of hearing my own name and having to reply every five minutes because he was convinced I was dead. He was somewhere between strangling me and having kittens by the time I re-surfaced, I think it may have been more peaceful under the water 😏

The actual extraction took nearly six hours. Had to flush one of the pipelines and use it as my way in which was… yeah, until I’d actually got into it and made sure it was totally clear of the gas, I was sweating, won’t lie. It was pitch black, only had my headlight and (look away now if you’re claustrophobic) tight enough that it was a bit of a wiggle at the bends, shoulder to shoulder touching kind of stuff. Really, navigating through it by touch and feel, before there wasn’t enough space to turn my bed properly or lift my arms.

Once I was inside, I stabilised all of the crew and then one by one, guided each of the guys back out through that pipeline. That was tough. Most of them were injured, all of them were cold and hypoxic, and (again, claustrophobics of the world, shield your eyes), being dragged backwards through a flooded pipeline in the dark, unable to lift your arms and with the wall just inches off your nose is terrifying. Took a lot of my signature chatter to get us all through that one.

But each safe rescue is an adrenaline boost - you move with the wins, however small or big they are. Break it down into steps. It keeps you going. Each crewmember safe in the back of Four was a huge push to carry on, despite the fatigue and exhaustion and discomfort. And in the end, the massive satisfaction of a job well done when there’s six men returned safely to their families.

And I was exhausted 😂 I slept off my decomp after I’d got the crew to the surface. Sound asleep in my kit on the floor in the back of Four. 11/10, best sleep of my life. Virgil gave me a piggyback to the medbay once I hit the top and let me go back to sleep 😂

Once again, Scott thought I was dead. I was, in fact, alive and well- as my suit reported, but why allow fact to get in the way of a good smotherhenning? 😏 I fell asleep on one of the loungers by the pool and I swear he was on patrol to make sure I was still breathing.

[vqrtualheartss]

𝓜𝓲𝓵𝓮𝓼 1610 𝔁 𝓐𝓺𝓾𝓪𝔀𝓮𝓫 𝓐𝓬𝓻𝓸𝓫𝓪𝓽

ᴅ☆ᴇ'ꜱ ꜱᴀʏ|

HEY YALL, so I made a lil drabble n stuff idk what else to sayy.

ALSO, my page is growing sm whatt😭. I love love love love love y'all, mwah. Like y'all don't know how it makes me feel thinking abt when I started this page, also sorry for the future heartache if y'all r not strong.

'Who's Aquaweb??' YOU. Click here for some info(more to come obvi)

Expect a song rec cause y'all know how much I like to incorporate music into my workss, I like that the song goes well alongside the fic, but its based off of Waiting room by Phoebe Bridgers

This doesn't apply to any gender

"It's for the better, just know it's for the better" Clinging on Miles' hand, the struggle in his eyes remained evident. Of course it were having to hold on to a whole person and police vehicle with weak web fluid, not to mention the emotional strain the current moments had on his heart.

"This cannot be happening, not when I haven't even found Miles"

"This can not be happening"

Nothing the father or son thought and said could've stopped the series of misfortunes for even a second. Because indeed, without a doubt, Miles' canon event was in process. What the Spider-Society, including yourself failed to decipher was that there were another crucial variable to Miles' canon: you.

"Miles you have to let me go"

The soft eyes you gave to him made the beautiful chaos seem mediocre. Be it the case that you had to be thrown onto a broken off bridge, Miles was going to make sure you were alive at least.

"I can do both, I can save you both"

Through his own peripheral he saw you shaking your head, tears dampening and streaming through the holes of your rubbed out mask. Since ever, you knew Miles had to ability to do great things. It wasn't something new when monitoring him for over 2 years now. But this, this whole thing was too much pressure for such a diamond.

"MILES"

Using her own strength, Gwen formed a shaky structure underneath the car.

Instantly, his head shot up to her, to Gwen. The gaze they both shared mocked the brief conversation between you two.

Whatever.

That was something you knew you could never achieve with him, that stare, that intimate, loving, beatific, blissful, longing stare.

"I don't want to do this anymore"

Immediately, your expression morphed from a slight saddened to wistful. Taking advantage of their ignorance, you snapped the thinning web fluid that held you to Miles. The web fluid that held you off the bridge, away from the deep waters below; held you living.

Blocking out the screams of terror and ache, you dived head first into the ocean, the last bit of air to ever enter your body escaping with a sigh.

Reappropriate arrogance. You know that you were nothing in that moment to Miles than a person in need of saving, not because he loved you, saw you as family or even a close friend.

I got the "I'm not gonna be here forever" talk yesterday and I feel sad like why are you gonna tell me that.

[encardio-rite]

Metasensing for Megastructures: The Role of Encardio Rite in Building the Shri Ram Temple, Ayodhya

Encardio Rite played a crucial role in the construction of the Shri Ram Temple in Ayodhya, utilizing advanced structural monitoring and geotechnical instrumentation to ensure its integrity and safety.

For more Click here

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Seismic clues from Marsquakes suggest liquid water and life potential beneath the surface

Are subterranean lifeforms viable on Mars? A new interpretation of Martian seismic data by scientists Ikuo Katayama of Hiroshima University and Yuya Akamatsu of Research Institute for Marine Geodynamics suggests the presence of water below the surface of Mars. "If liquid water exists on Mars," Katayama says, "the presence of microbial activity" is possible.

This analysis is based on seismic data from SEIS (Seismic Experiment for the Interior Structure), deployed from NASA's InSight lander that landed on Mars in 2018. This robotic lander is unique because it was able to use its robotic arm to place a seismometer on the surface of Mars. The SEIS instrument, which contains the seismometer, uses the seismic waves naturally generated on Mars from Marsquakes or meteorite impacts to scan the planet's interior.

When a Marsquake or meteorite impact occurs on Mars, SEIS can read the energy emitted as P-waves, S-waves, and surface waves to create an image of the planet's interior. Scientists can use P-waves and S-waves to determine a lot about the rocks that make up Mars, including the density of the rocks or potential composition changes within the rocks.

For example, S-waves cannot travel through water and move at a slower speed than P-waves. Therefore, the presence, absence, and arrival time of S-waves can determine what the subsurface looks like. Moreover, P-waves can travel faster through higher-density material and slower through less dense material, so their velocity can help determine the density of the material the wave is traveling through, as well as if there are any changes in density along its path. The seismic data collected with SEIS shows a boundary at 10 km depth and 20 km depth from measured discrepancies in seismic velocity.

This boundary has previously been interpreted as sharp transitions in the porosity (the percentage of open space in a rock) or chemical composition of the Martian interior. However, Katayama and Akamatsu have interpreted these cracks as potential evidence for water within the Martian subsurface. The seismic data indicate a boundary between dry cracks and water-filled cracks in the Martian subsurface. To test their hypothesis, they measured the seismic velocity passing through rocks with the same structures and composition of a typical Martian crustal rock under wet, dry, and frozen conditions.

A typical Martian rock is similar to the diabase rocks from Rydaholm, Sweden, due to their evenly sized plagioclase and orthopyroxene grains. In the lab, Katayama and Akamatsu measured P-wave and S-wave velocity using a piezoelectric transducer, which uses "electrical energy . . . as a wave source" that "monitor[s] seismic wave energy" on dry, wet, and frozen diabase samples. Experimentation revealed that the seismic velocities of the dry, wet, and frozen samples are significantly different, which supports the interpretation that the boundary at 10 km and 20 km could be from a change from dry rock to wet rock.

These laboratory experiments back up Katayama and Yuya's hypothesis that the boundary measured by seismic data indicates a transition from dry rock to wet rock rather than a change in porosity or chemical composition. The findings, therefore, provide compelling evidence for the existence of liquid water beneath the surface of Mars. "Many studies suggest the presence of water on ancient Mars billions of years ago," Katayama explains, "but our model indicates the presence of liquid water on present-day Mars."

TOP IMAGE: NASA's InSight lander is shown above with all of its different devices that have been used for scientific discovery. The SEIS (Seismic Experiment for the Interior Structure) seismometer is shown to the bottom left of the lander. Credit: Ikuo Katayama

CENTRE IMAGE: A diagram showing how different seismic waves travel across Mars. Credit: Ikuo Katayama

LOWER IMAGE: A panel of figures showing how S-wave and P-wave velocities, the ratio of P-wave and S-wave velocity, and porosity change throughout the Martian subsurface. The diagram on the far right shows what these differences mean for each rock layer. Credit: Ikuo Katayama

[eretzyisrael]

BY PARK MACDOUGALD

The “movement,” in turn, while it recruits from among students and other self-motivated radicals willing to put their bodies on the line, relies heavily on the funding of progressive donors and nonprofits connected to the upper reaches of the Democratic Party. Take the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement, Columbia University. According to reporting in the New York Post, the Columbia encampment was principally organized by three groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime (WOL). Let’s take each in turn.

JVP is, in essence, the “Jewish”-branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, backed by the usual big-money progressive donors—including some, like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, that were instrumental in selling Obama’s Iran Deal to the public. JVP and its affiliated political action arm, JVP Action, have received at least $650,000 from various branches of George Soros’ philanthropic empire since 2017, $441,510 from the Kaphan Foundation (founded by early Amazon employee Sheldon Kaphan), $340,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and smaller amounts from progressive donors such as the Quitiplas Foundation, according to reporting from the New York Post and NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel research institute. JVP has also received nearly $1.5 million from various donor-advised funds—which allow wealthy clients to give anonymously through their financial institutions—run through the charitable giving arms of Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, and TIAA, according to NGO Monitor’s review of those institutions’ tax documents.

SJP, by contrast, is an outgrowth of the Islamist networks dissolved during the U.S. government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and related charities for fundraising for Hamas. SJP is a subsidiary of an organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); SJP in fact has no “formal corporate structure of its own but operates as AMP’s campus brand,” according to a lawsuit filed last week against AJP Educational Fund, the parent nonprofit of AMP. Both AMP and SJP were founded by the same man, Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian academic who formerly fundraised for KindHearts, an Islamic charity dissolved in 2012 pursuant to a settlement with the U.S. Treasury, which froze the group’s assets for fundraising for Hamas (KindHearts did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement). And several of AMP’s senior leaders are former fundraisers for HLF and related charities, according to November congressional testimony from former U.S. Treasury official Jonathan Schanzer. An ongoing federal lawsuit by the family of David Boim, an American teenager killed in a Hamas terrorist attack in 1996, goes so far as to allege that AMP is a “disguised continuance” and “legal alter-ego” of the Islamic Association for Palestine, was founded with startup money from current Hamas official Musa Abu Marzook and dissolved alongside HLF. AMP has denied it is a continuation of IAP.

Today, however, National SJP is legally a “fiscal sponsorship” of another nonprofit: a White Plains, New York, 501(c)(3) called the WESPAC Foundation. A fiscal sponsorship is a legal arrangement in which a larger nonprofit “sponsors” a smaller group, essentially lending it the sponsor’s tax-exempt status and providing back-office support in exchange for fees and influence over the sponsorship’s operations. For legal and tax purposes, the sponsor and the sponsorship are the same entity, meaning that the sponsorship is relieved of the requirement to independently disclose its donors or file a Form 990 with the IRS. This makes fiscal sponsorships a “convenient way to mask links between donors and controversial causes,” according to the Capital Research Center. Donors, in other words, can effectively use nonprofits such as WESPAC to obscure their direct connections to controversial causes.

Something of the sort appears to be happening with WESPAC. Run by the market researcher Howard Horowitz, WESPAC reveals very little about its donors, although scattered reporting and public disclosures suggest that the group is used as a pass-through between larger institutions and pro-Palestinian radicals. Since 2006, for instance, WESPAC has received more than half a million in donations from the Elias Foundation, a family foundation run by the private equity investor James Mann and his wife. WESPAC has also received smaller amounts from Grassroots International (an “environmental” group heavily funded by Thousand Currents), the Sparkplug Foundation (a far-left group funded by the Wall Street fortune of Felice and Yoram Gelman), and the Bafrayung Fund, run by Rachel Gelman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and the sister of Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman. (A self-described “abolitionist,” Gelman was featured in a 2020 New York Times feature on “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.”) In 2022, WESPAC also received $97,000 from the Tides Foundation, the grant-making arm of the Tides Nexus.

WESPAC, however, is not merely the fiscal sponsor of the Hamas-linked SJP but also the fiscal sponsor of the third group involved in organizing the Columbia protests, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), formerly known as New York City SJP. Founded by the Palestinian American lawyer Nerdeen Kiswani, a former activist with the Hunter College and CUNY chapters of SJP, WOL has emerged over the past seven months as perhaps the most notorious antisemitic group in the country, and has been banned from Facebook and Instagram for glorifying Hamas. A full list of the group’s provocations would take thousands of words, but it has been the central organizing force in the series of “Flood”-themed protests in New York City since Oct. 7, including multiple bridge and highway blockades, a November riot at Grand Central Station, the vandalism of the New York Public Library, and protests at the Rockefeller Center Christmas-tree lighting. In addition to their confrontational tactics, WOL-led protests tend to have a few other hallmarks. These include eliminationist rhetoric directed at the Jewish state—such as Arabic chants of “strike, strike, Tel Aviv”; the prominent display of Hezbollah flags and other insignia of explicitly Islamist resistance; the presence of masked Arab street muscle; and the antisemitic intimidation of counterprotesters by said masked Arab street muscle.

WOL’s role appears to be that of shock troops, akin to the role played by black block militants on the anarchist side of the ledger. WOL is, however, connected to more seemingly “mainstream” elements of the anti-Israel movement. Abdullah Akl, a prominent WOL leader—indeed, the man leading the “strike Tel Aviv” chants in the video linked above—is also listed as a “field organizer” on the website of MPower Change, the “advocacy project” led by Linda Sarsour. MPower Change, in turn, is a fiscal sponsorship of NEO Philanthropy, another large progressive clearinghouse. NEO Philanthropy and its 501(c)(4) “sister,” NEO Philanthropy Action Fund, have received more than $37 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2021 alone, as well as substantial funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.

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In a first, researchers from NASA and Virginia Tech used satellite data to measure the height and speed of potentially hazardous flood waves traveling down U.S. rivers. The three waves they tracked were likely caused by extreme rainfall and by a loosened ice jam. While there is currently no database that compiles satellite data on river flood waves, the new study highlights the potential of space-based observations to aid hydrologists and engineers, especially those working in communities along river networks with limited flood control structures such as levees and flood gates.Unlike ocean waves, which are ordinarily driven by wind and tides, and roll to shore at a steady clip, river waves (also called flood or flow waves) are temporary surges stretching tens to hundreds of miles. Typically caused by rainfall or seasonal snowmelt, they are essential to shuttling nutrients and organisms down a river. But they can also pose hazards: Extreme river waves triggered by a prolonged downpour or dam break can produce floods.“Ocean waves are well known from surfing and sailing, but rivers are the arteries of the planet. We want to understand their dynamics,” said Cedric David, a hydrologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and a coauthor of a new study published May 14 in Geophysical Research Letters.Measuring Speed and SizeTo search for river waves for her doctoral research, lead author Hana Thurman of Virginia Tech turned to a spacecraft launched in 2022. The SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales). It is surveying the height of nearly all of Earth’s surface waters, both fresh and salty, using its sensitive Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn). The instrument maps the elevation and width of water bodies by bouncing microwaves off the surface and timing how long the signal takes to return. SWOT is depicted in orbit in this artist’s concept, with sunlight glinting off one of its solar panels and both antennas of its key instrument — the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) — extended. The antennas collect data along a swath 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide on either side of the satellite. Credit: CNES “In addition to monitoring total storage of waters in lakes and rivers, we zoom in on dynamics and impacts of water movement and change,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.Thurman knew that SWOT has helped scientists track rising sea levels near the coast, spot tsunami slosh, and map the seafloor, but could she identify river height anomalies in the data indicating a wave on the move?She found that the mission had caught three clear examples of river waves, including one that arose abruptly on the Yellowstone River in Montana in April 2023. As the satellite passed overhead, it observed a 9.1-foot-tall (2.8-meter-tall) crest flowing toward the Missouri River in North Dakota. It was divided into a dramatic 6.8-mile-long (11-kilometer-long) peak followed by a more drawn‐out tail. These details are exciting to see from orbit and illustrate the KaRIn instrument’s uniquely high spatial resolution, Thurman said.Sleuthing through optical Sentinel-2 imagery of the area, she determined that the wave likely resulted from an ice jam breaking apart upstream and releasing pent-up water.The other two river waves that Thurman and the team found were triggered by rainfall runoff. One, spotted by SWOT starting on Jan. 25, 2024, on the Colorado River south of Austin, Texas, was associated with the largest flood of the year on that section of river. Measuring over 30 feet (9 meters) tall and 166 miles (267 kilometers) long, it traveled around 3.5 feet (1.07 meters) per second for over 250 miles (400 kilometers) before discharging into Matagorda Bay.The other wave originated on the Ocmulgee River near Macon, Georgia, in March 2024. Measuring over 20 feet (6 meters) tall and extending more than 100 miles (165 kilometers), it traveled about a foot (0.33 meters) per second for more than 124 miles (200 kilometers).“We’re learning more about the shape and speed of flow waves, and how they change along long stretches of river,” Thurman said. “That could help us answer questions like, how fast could a flood get here and is infrastructure at risk?”Complementary ObservationsEngineers and water managers measuring river waves have long relied on stream gauges, which record water height and estimate discharge at fixed points along a river. In the United States, stream gauge networks are maintained by agencies including the U.S. Geological Survey. They are sparser in other parts of the world.“Satellite data is complementary because it can help fill in the gaps,” said study supervisor George Allen, a hydrologist and remote sensing expert at Virginia Tech.If stream gauges are like toll booths clocking cars as they pass, SWOT is like a traffic helicopter taking snapshots of the highway. The wave speeds that SWOT helped determine were similar to those calculated using gauge data alone, Allen said, showing how the satellite could help monitor waves in river basins without gauges. Knowing where and why river waves develop can help scientists tracking changing flood patterns around the world.Orbiting Earth multiple times each day, SWOT is expected to observe some 55% of large-scale floods at some stage in their life cycle. “If we see something in the data, we can say something,” David said of SWOT’s potential to flag dangerous floods in the making. “For a long time, we’ve stood on the banks of our rivers, but we’ve never seen them like we are now.”More About SWOTThe SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.

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"Intelligence Bureau Result Declared: Here's How to Download Your Scorecard"

 Established in 1887 during British colonial rule, the IB has evolved extensively over the a long time to become certainly one of India’s most crucial contraptions within the combat against terrorism, espionage, and threats to national solidarity.

intelligence bureau exam result date

Historical Background

The origins of the Intelligence Bureau hint lower back to British India when it was founded as the Indian Political Intelligence Office in London, later referred to as the Indian Political Intelligence (IPI). Its primary reason changed into to screen and counter anti-British sports among Indian revolutionaries overseas. In 1887, under Lord Dufferin, the then Viceroy of India, the IB became officially established in India to consolidate and centralize intelligence amassing in the country.

After India received independence in 1947, the IB was reorganized to serve the sovereign Republic of India. Over time, because the usa’s intelligence wishes multiplied, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) was carved out of the IB in 1968 to handle external intelligence, whilst the IB continued to cognizance on domestic intelligence and inner safety.

Objectives and Functions

The Intelligence Bureau’s center capabilities center around collecting, processing, and analyzing intelligence related to national security. Its primary responsibilities encompass:

Security Clearance: The IB conducts historical past checks and safety verifications for appointments to touchy authorities positions, issuing protection clearances as needed.

Advisory Role: The bureau advises the significant and state governments on inner security matters and intelligence assessments.

Structure and Organization

The Intelligence Bureau operates beneath the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India. It is headed through a Director of Intelligence Bureau (DIB), a position generally held by a senior officer from the Indian Police Service (IPS), frequently with vast experience in protection and intelligence work.

The organizational shape of the IB is secretive and now not publicly disclosed in element because of national protection worries. However, it is regarded to have various specialized units focusing on unique domains, which includes:

Counter-Terrorism

Cyber Intelligence

Counter-Espionage

Communal Intelligence

Border Intelligence

Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) Monitoring

IB officers are published across the u . S . A ., which include in all most important towns and states, and they also liaise closely with nation police forces and vital paramilitary organizations. The corporation’s headquarters is located in New Delhi.

Recruitment and Training

Recruitment to the Intelligence Bureau happens through numerous channels:

Direct Recruitment: The Intelligence Bureau recruits Assistant Central Intelligence Officers (ACIOs) through aggressive tests carried out through the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Deputation: Senior officers from the Indian Police Service (IPS) and other central government offerings regularly be part of the IB on deputation.

Promotions: Internal promotions additionally play a giant role in staffing the organisation at better ranges.

Training for IB employees is rigorous and includes modules on surveillance, information analysis, interrogation strategies, language competencies, and cyber intelligence. Given the covert nature of the work, education also emphasizes discretion, psychological resilience, and adherence to the rule of law.

Operations and Achievements

Given the classified nature of the IB's paintings, many of its operations continue to be undisclosed. However, several excessive-profile instances have highlighted its effectiveness:

Terrorism Prevention: The IB has performed a key position in preempting several terror assaults, especially through early caution intelligence shared with safety forces.

Counter-Insurgency in Kashmir: The IB has been instrumental in intelligence gathering in Jammu and Kashmir, aiding in counter-insurgency operations and figuring out threats from throughout the border.

Neutralizing Maoist Insurgency: In states suffering from Left-Wing Extremism, such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha, the IB works carefully with kingdom police and paramilitary forces to dismantle Maoist networks.

Monitoring Radicalization: The organisation monitors the activities of radical organizations and social media to detect early symptoms of radicalization, specifically among children.

Tracking Foreign Spies: The IB has historically uncovered undercover agent rings operated through antagonistic countries, preventing sensitive statistics from being compromised.

Challenges and Criticism

Despite its contributions, the IB has now not been resistant to criticism and demanding situations:

Lack of Accountability: As the IB operates outside the purview of public scrutiny and parliamentary oversight, there were calls for extra transparency and duty mechanisms.

Political Misuse: Critics allege that the IB has once in a while been used by ruling governments to spy on political warring parties, main to ethical and legal questions.

Coordination Issues: Inter-organisation contention and shortage of seamless coordination among IB, R&AW, and state police forces can every now and then abate effective intelligence sharing.

Technological Upgradation: In an age of cyber struggle and AI-pushed espionage, the IB faces the assignment of continuously upgrading its technological talents to live in advance of adversaries.

Comparison with Other Agencies

Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW): Deals with external intelligence and operates underneath the Cabinet Secretariat.

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA): Handles army-related intelligence.

Among these, the IB remains the maximum full-size for domestic intelligence and is often the primary to reply to inner threats.

Reforms and the Way Forward

To decorate the effectiveness of the Intelligence Bureau, several reforms had been recommended by means of professionals:

Parliamentary Oversight: Establishing a parliamentary committee to supervise intelligence operations may want to decorate transparency without compromising national protection.

Inter-Agency Integration: Improved cooperation and data-sharing between distinct intelligence and law enforcement our bodies could boom responsiveness.

Technological Modernization: Investments in AI, large facts analytics, and cybersecurity infrastructure are crucial for preserving up with rising threats.

Public Engagement: While secrecy is critical, there need to be a broader public understanding of the IB’s role in national safety to foster believe and cooperation.

Internal Security Monitoring: The IB video display units and counters threats to inner stability, including terrorism, insurgency, communal violence, and political unrest.

Counterintelligence: The bureau identifies and neutralizes espionage sports by way of overseas retailers running inside India.

Surveillance Operations: It conducts surveillance on individuals, organizations, or agencies suspected of activities towards the country.

Political Intelligence: Though debatable, the IB also gathers intelligence on political moves and sports which could have implications for national security.

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How to Train Employees on New Video Conferencing Software

Introduction

In today’s swift-paced, virtual international, the desire for valuable communique has under no circumstances been extra central. As organizations maintain to evolve to far flung work and hybrid fashions, gaining knowledge of video conferencing tools is main. This article goals to grant a finished handbook on easy methods to practice staff on new video conferencing tools. By leveraging advanced conference room audio video equipment and working out the nuances of digital communication, firms can verify that their teams are smartly-fitted to have interaction with buyers and associates readily.

Understanding Video Conferencing Tools What Are Video Conferencing Tools?

Video conferencing methods are device applications that permit participants to communicate in precise-time due to audio and visual channels over the cyber web. Popular structures consist of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Cisco WebEx. These gear are predominant for accomplishing conferences, webinars, and collaborative projects devoid of the need for bodily presence.

Why Are Video Conferencing Tools Important? conference room audio video equipment Flexibility: Employees can sign up meetings from virtually at any place. Cost-Effective: Reduces tour prices associated with in-user conferences. Enhanced Collaboration: Facilitates genuine-time sharing of archives and screens. Engagement: Offers traits like polls, chat containers, and breakout rooms to enhance interplay. Key Components of Conference Room Video Conferencing Equipment Essential Hardware

To make use of video conferencing conveniently, having the correct video convention room equipment is quintessential. Here’s a breakdown of principal hardware:

Cameras: High-definition cameras that trap clean graphics. Microphones: Quality microphones ascertain sound clarity. Speakers: Good speakers furnish audible sound without distortion. Software Solutions

Having potent instrument solutions is similarly fundamental. Look for structures that integrate seamlessly with current techniques and be offering user-pleasant interfaces.

How to Train Employees on New Video Conferencing Tools

Training laborers on new video conferencing methods requires a strategic method. Here’s a step-through-step marketing consultant:

Step 1: Assess Current Skill Levels

Before diving into instruction sessions, investigate your workers' contemporary familiarity with video conferencing gear. This should be would becould very well be finished via surveys or informal discussions.

Why Is This Important?

Understanding the baseline means degree allows for you to tailor your preparation application as a result. For instance, if most employees are already accepted with ordinary functionalities but war with evolved good points like monitor sharing or breakout rooms, focus your classes there.

Step 2: Create Training Materials

Develop finished training resources that disguise all aspects of the selected video conferencing tool—from setup guidance to troubleshooting recommendations.

Types of Training Materials: User Manuals

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🔒 Locked, Conditioned, and Proud: Serve with Discipline, Serve with Pride! 🔒

🔐 Unlocking Excellence: The Republic's Path to Perfection 🔐

Embark on a journey of self-discovery and service like never before! The Republic's approach to conditioning is a meticulous blend of tradition and cutting-edge technology, ensuring that each conscript emerges as the epitome of discipline and commitment.

Chastity Regime: A Symbol of Dedication Picture this: locked while on duty, a chastity cage, a symbol of dedication that transcends the physical. It's not just about control; it's about willingly submitting to a higher purpose. Your body, a canvas for the Republic's ideals, becomes a testament to your unwavering commitment.

Neuro-Enhanced Training: Shaping Minds, Forging Patriots From the moment you step into the Conscript Service, your mind becomes a canvas, ready to be sculpted by neuro-enhanced training. Virtual reality scenarios blend seamlessly with real-world challenges, molding your cognitive and emotional states to perfection. The Republic doesn't just want conscripts; it seeks perfection, and perfection requires conditioning.

Conditioned Where Necessary: Molding the Perfect Patriot It's not about restriction; it's about precision. Conditioned where necessary, your body becomes a well-tuned instrument of service. The Republic demands excellence, and through careful molding, you'll embody the ideals of loyalty, duty, and sacrifice. Your transformation is not just physical—it's a metamorphosis of the soul.

AI Oversight: Happy and Content in Service The ever-watchful eye of AI ensures that your journey is guided, your progress monitored, and your well-being prioritized. Embrace the oversight; it's not just surveillance—it's a safeguarding of your contentment. Happy conscripts make a formidable force, and the Republic understands the delicate balance between control and satisfaction.

Clad in Uniforms: Tactical, Proud, United Whether you're donning the black tactical gear of the Security Forces, the red flightsuits of the Paramedics, the yellow speedos of the Lifeguards, or the pristine white one-pieces of the Nursing Corps, your uniform is more than attire—it's a statement. A statement of unity, purpose, and a shared commitment to the Republic's vision.

🌐 The Republic's Path to Perfection: A Symphony of Control and Contentment 🌐

Embrace the journey, conscript. Let the Republic shape you into the perfect patriot. From the chastity regime to the conditioning and AI oversight, every facet of your existence is a testament to the pursuit of excellence. The Republic doesn't settle for ordinary—it aspires for perfection.

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Top 5 Most Needed Equipment in a Hospital

Hospitals are the cornerstone of healthcare, playing a crucial role in saving lives and improving the quality of care. To deliver optimal treatment, hospitals must be equipped with the latest and most essential medical devices. These tools not only enhance diagnostic accuracy but also ensure patient safety and efficient operations. In this article, we’ll explore the top 5 most needed equipment in a hospital, detailing their importance and functionality. If you’re looking to procure high-quality devices, consider exploring options to buy medical supplies online, where convenience meets affordability.

1. Diagnostic Imaging Systems

Diagnostic imaging systems are indispensable in modern medicine, allowing doctors to view and analyze internal structures of the body. Equipment such as X-ray machines, CT scanners, and MRI machines provide critical insights into a patient’s condition.

Why They’re Needed:

Enable early and accurate diagnosis.

Help in planning surgical procedures.

Monitor the effectiveness of ongoing treatments.

Investing in reliable diagnostic imaging systems ensures better patient outcomes and streamlines the treatment process. High-quality imaging devices are widely available through medical supplies online platforms, offering advanced technology at competitive prices.

2. Patient Monitoring Systems

Patient monitoring systems are essential for tracking vital signs such as heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and temperature. These systems are particularly crucial in intensive care units (ICUs) and operating rooms.

Key Features:

Continuous monitoring of patient health.

Real-time alerts for any abnormalities.

Integration with hospital information systems for data storage and analysis.

Modern patient monitors are equipped with wireless capabilities, enabling remote monitoring. This feature is invaluable, especially during emergencies or in telemedicine settings.

3. BPL ECG Machine

An electrocardiogram (ECG) machine records the electrical activity of the heart and is essential for diagnosing various cardiac conditions. Among the top-rated ECG machines, the BPL ECG machine stands out for its precision and user-friendly design.

Benefits of BPL ECG Machines:

High accuracy in detecting arrhythmias and heart abnormalities.

Easy-to-use interface for healthcare professionals.

Portability, making it ideal for both hospital and home use.

Cardiac health is a critical aspect of patient care, and a dependable ECG machine ensures timely intervention. Purchasing a BPL ECG machine from trusted sources online guarantees authenticity and quality.

4. Surgical Instruments and Equipment

No hospital can function without a comprehensive range of surgical instruments. From scalpels and forceps to advanced robotic surgical systems, these tools are vital for performing both minor and major surgeries.

Must-Have Surgical Equipment:

Sterilizers to ensure a contamination-free environment.

Laparoscopic tools for minimally invasive procedures.

Advanced anesthesia machines for patient safety during operations.

To maintain high standards of patient care, hospitals must regularly update and replace their surgical instruments. Many healthcare facilities prefer sourcing these items through medical supplies online, ensuring timely delivery and cost-effectiveness.

5. Ventilators and Respiratory Equipment

Ventilators and other respiratory equipment have become indispensable, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These devices provide critical support for patients who struggle to breathe independently.

Importance of Ventilators:

Assist patients with respiratory failure.

Play a crucial role in ICUs and emergency care units.

Provide life-saving support during severe illnesses or post-surgical recovery.

Modern ventilators come with advanced settings to customize airflow and pressure, catering to the unique needs of each patient. Hospitals can explore various models and price ranges by purchasing these devices from medical supplies online platforms.

Why Choose Medical Supplies Online?

The healthcare industry is evolving rapidly, and so is the way hospitals procure equipment. Buying medical supplies online offers several advantages, including:

Wide Range of Options: From basic tools to advanced machinery, online platforms provide a comprehensive selection of medical equipment.

Cost Efficiency: Competitive pricing and frequent discounts make online shopping more affordable.

Convenience: Avoid the hassle of visiting multiple vendors; place orders with just a few clicks.

Authenticity: Reputable platforms ensure that all products meet international quality standards.