#best computer science solution

[techtoio]

Exploring the Latest Trends in Software Development

Introduction The software is something like an industry whose development is ever-evolving with new technologies and changing market needs as the drivers. To this end, developers must keep abreast with current trends in their fields of operation to remain competitive and relevant. Read to continue .....

[sirtbhopal]

Signed MOU with Imperial Solution Bhopal

The Sage Group Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Computer Science and Information Technology SIRT, Bhopal Has Signed MOU with "Imperial Solution Bhopal"

[stellar-solar-flare]

Volatile | Chapter 1/3 | Steve Rogers x Reader

Explicit - 18+ only - Minors DNI.

Steve Rogers returns from a mission only to be immediately alerted about a medical emergency: you, the Avengers Initiative's leading science expert, have been hit by a potent, unknown aphrodisiac on your own mission. Pressed for time and out of options, he has to, together with the AI's medical department, figure out a solution.

Mutual pining, smut with feelings, eventual happy ending.

Content Warnings: explicit sexual content, sex pollen, non-consensual exposal to sex pollen, dubious consent because Reader is under the influence of an aphrodisiac (but all sex is very much mutually wanted), protective & possessive Steve Rogers, Captain kink, praise kink, very light dom/sub elements, dirty talk, pet names, thigh riding, finger sucking, mention of non-con.

Reader specifics: She/her. Works as a science specialist in AI under codename Dr. Chiral for her chemistry proficiency. Six times PhD, an Avenger. Late twenties, no description of appearance given.

Alternate Universe: The Avengers Initiative (AI) continued SHIELD's work after its collapse to corruption, with Steve as the Head Strategist and Tony as the Director. The Avengers are living together in the Tower - Bucky has healed, and Civil War never happened because Tony and Steve worked through their differences like adults.

I do not own anything Marvel related. This is an unofficial fan work. No copyright infringement intended. This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

FIC MASTERLIST | AUTHOR MASTERLIST | AO3

Chapter 1: Verona

Chapter notes: Dr. Carolina Vinterberg is my original character, a regular face in my fics. Background Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanoff.

3,179 words.

Over his years on Earth, and occasionally in space, Steve Rogers had seen a lot of things that had bordered on impossible and occasionally crossed well into it – his own existence not being the least. Aliens? Superweapons? Computer programs turned into sentient robots married to an actual witch? His best friend resurrected seventy years after his death and sporting a mechanical arm that could rip steering wheels out of cars? Sure. All fine. He could roll with it.

But this. This was close to taking the cake. He swallowed and folded his hands very carefully to rest behind his back as he was standing in the office of Avengers Initiative’s Head of Medicine, Dr. Carolina Vinterberg. He had been summoned the minute his jet had landed, not having had even the time to change out of the stealth suit. The shield sat strapped onto his back.

“Could you repeat that?” he said.

The doctor regarded him with her ever-calm, icy blue eyes and something about that neutral expression and neat blonde braid she always sported was so absurd, considering the situation at hand, that Steve wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or both. She was cradling a StarkPad on her arm and standing in front of a large screen that was showing toxicity profiles.

“A foreign aphrodisiac, Captain Rogers,” she stated. “Possibly of interstellar origin. Presumably affecting the hormonal levels of those who are subjected to it, resulting in heightened drive to pursue venereal gratification.”

The words made sense individually but as they were strung together, they didn’t seem to form a coherent sentence. Or rather – they did, but Steve’s head was screaming for any other explanation than the one he was deciphering. Anything but this.

“Horny,” Sam groaned from where he was sitting. “What the doc here is saying is that they both got really horny. I’m considering buying Tony a bottle of champagne for all that noise-cancelling tech. Would’ve been a long ride home otherwise.”

Steve closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them, this whole nightmare would’ve vanished. God, he wasn’t looking forward to writing the strategic guidelines for future occasions of this one. Instead, when he opened his eyes, Dr. Vinterberg was regarding him as unfazed as she had been earlier.

“Sergeant Wilson is correct. Both agents subjected to the substance reached a heightened state of arousal within minutes of the exposure.”

Steve wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t. That wasn’t the priority right now.

“Did…” he coughed, even as he could tell from Sam’s expression that the answer was going to be no. “Did that result to any violations of physical kind? Anything non-consensual?”

Vinterberg shook her head, consulting the tablet as if she was reading routine blood-test results to Steve.

“It appears that the substance amplifies existing affections instead of creating them. Neither Sergeant Barnes nor Dr. Chiral expressed any interest in each other or in Sergeant Wilson, or in the medical staff that handled their quarantine, for the matter.”

“And thank god for that,” Sam muttered under his breath.

“Considering she and Sergeant Barnes were exposed to the substance simultaneously while they were investigating the laboratory, it is reasonable to assume that if it had been just a simple pheromone attack, they would’ve expressed interest in each other,” Dr. Vinterberg explained. “But that has not been the case.”

Alright. He could deal with that. The carnal nature of the substance aside, it did sound like a standard exposure to a foreign pathogen. It was a good thing that he was informed of the incident, but it seemed like both Bucky and you were still… indisposed. And Vinterberg certainly wasn’t the person to try to ease him into bad news – she would’ve led with them, if there had been any.

“So, what happened out there?” Steve asked, forcing the tone of his voice stay even.

Sam looked at him, clearly as excited to have this conversation as Steve himself was, but they both realized the need to be professionals, especially around such a delicate topic.

“We went into the laboratory and Chiral and Barnes were examining the backroom where they kept this stuff. There must’ve been some kind of invisible trigger that broke a couple of the bottles, releasing the vapor in the air. They both exited immediately and activated the quarantine protocols, but I can only assume they both got a good whiff.”

The quarantine protocols. Steve might get his own bottle of champagne for Banner and Stark for that one. All the mission Quinjets were supplied with a FRIDAY-controlled system that would, upon an agent requesting it, release a large bulletproof-glass cylinder that would surround the subject much like the Hulk Containment Field had done. With thrusters in the bottom, the cylinders would automatically float into a separate containment area on the back of the jet. They allowed for radio transmission to and from the cylinder but filtered out everything, keeping both the one subjected to a substance and other agents safe. Alright. So, that meant that Sam had probably gotten an earful once he’d gone to check on you and Bucky but otherwise, it seemed like the team had gotten off easy.

Wrong expression for the situation. Wrong. Steve nodded at Sam, absorbing the information, and turned to Vinterberg.

“Even with the mission immediately aborted, by the time the Quinjet was here, both Dr. Chiral and Sergeant Barnes were under the influence of the substance to the point that they weren’t able to act or express themselves coherently,” she said. “Considering the previously existing physical relationship between Sergeant Barnes and Agent Romanoff and the consent form signed by Agent Romanoff, I decided that the best course of treatment in Barnes’ case is to, as the idiom goes, let them ride it out. They’re currently in containment room 2A, and we’re monitoring Barnes’ vitals via the wireless sensor system but otherwise giving them privacy, unless either of them activates FRIDAY’s emergency protocols.”

Containment room. That was good news – those rooms were more hotel rooms than hospital ones, designed for quarantining the ones that needed to be quarantined but who didn’t need any further medical care. Dr. Vinterberg had the necessary authority to greenlight a decision that was, even if unconventional, clearly a treatment of a medical condition and if Nat and Bucky wanted to bang it out, good for them – that definitely didn’t need Steve’s involvement. Vinterberg sat down behind her desk and put her pad down. She didn’t look even remotely fazed as she met Steve’s eyes.

“However, Dr. Chiral’s case is much more complicated.”

No. No. No. Not you. Not this way. Not when Steve hadn’t been there to protect you. He had had a schedule conflict, another mission that had required him and Tony specifically and that old Hydra lab he’d sent you should’ve been a routine data extraction, all the intelligence information had pointed towards it... With difficulty, he reeled his spiraling thoughts back in.

“She doesn’t have a romantic, or otherwise physical, partner listed in her file. Considering her diligence with her medical paperwork and the pre-mission information updating protocols you yourself have implemented, Captain Rogers, we can safely assume that to be an accurate assessment of the situation,” Vinterberg said. “Any standard treatment option for cases like this has had no effect so far – the substance, presumably to maintain an optimal physical state for continued sexual activity, has sped up her metabolism and overclocked her entire system. She is burning all sedatives out faster than we can safely administer them, and we have legitimate medical concern for how long her heart and brain can take this. It also appears that simply achieving a climax isn’t enough to offset the effects of the substance. When comparing the data of Dr. Chiral and Sergeant Barnes, it appears that the presence of a partner is crucial.”

In any other situation, the simple image of you writhing on your bed, moaning, fingers buried in between your legs would’ve required Steve to dump a bucket of cold water on his head but now, his head was only focusing on the fact that you were in danger. Because of a mission he’d greenlit you to go to.

“Especially with no medical precedent, we are concerned that if continued, this could be fatal for Dr. Chiral,” Vinterberg said. “Which is the only reason I’m willing to relay you the information that she has, exclusively and rather explicitly, asked for you, Captain Rogers.”

For a second, Steve’s brain flashed into white static. He was pretty certain his mouth had dropped open.

“Asked me to… What exactly?”

“Participate in sexual activity with her,” Vinterberg replied, and Steve thanked all the gods that watched over universe for her robotic demeanor as a million thoughts flooded into his brain.

You wanted him. At least, some part of you wanted him. He had had his hopes, his fantasies, and he had been so close to asking you out but backed off at the last second, afraid of possible rejection affecting your working relationship. You weren’t his subordinate – as a leading science expert of the AI, you ranked as high as he did – but with the intensity of the line of work you’d chosen, there was no room for any kind of personal bad blood.

Showing aside the image of his name falling out of your lips like a feverish prayer took every last drop of Steve’s willpower. He straightened up to remind himself of the position he was in and cleared his throat.

“Even if Dr. Chiral has asked that, that’s not consent. She’s under the effects of what appears to be a drug that heavily alters consciousness. She is unable to give proper consent.”

Dr. Vinterberg nodded.

“I agree. Again, this is an unorthodox approach and from a medical standpoint, her current consent isn’t a valid one. However, with the limited timeframe and limited options, I am forced to bring this option to the table,” she said. “Sergeant Wilson is here because Dr. Chiral gave him a message to relay just prior to, effectively, losing consciousness. It was meant for you, Captain Rogers. I’d like you to listen to what he has to say before he leaves the room as we go into more detail regarding Dr. Chiral’s medical information.”

Vinterberg nodded at Sam, who turned in his chair to look Steve properly. His shoulders were tight.

“Yeah, Cap, believe me that after this I’ll be out of here before I lose the last ability to look any of you in the eye,” Sam gave him a dry laugh. “But Chiral told me to tell you – if I understood it correctly since she was shouting it through the containment chamber glass and on the verge of losing it – that she remembers the moonlight in Verona. I don’t know what that –“

“I do,” Steve said, his mouth getting drier.

Your fifth mission together, for the first time just the two of you. The moonlight dripping through the stained-glass windows in a church in Verona, the gunshot still ringing in Steve’s eyes and his palms extending over your bleeding thigh. He was had been trying so hard to not focus on the widening pool of blood underneath you that had stained the marble floor, instead looking into your eyes and counting seconds for an extraction team.

Just focus, Ace, alright. Stay with me. Look at the moonlight. Look how pretty it is. I need you to stay with me.

The look in your eyes, the softness of your face even through the pain that had had to be excruciating. Your hand, still holding the glass vial that had gotten you shot but that would also later be the downfall of an international drug operation.

I’m not scared, Steve. You’ve got me. I trust you.

In the present, both Dr. Vinterberg’s and Sam’s expectant gazes were on Steve.

“It seems to imply that she knew what she would be asking. That she wanted me to know that she trusts me.”

Dr. Vinterberg nodded. She didn’t ask further questions – she clearly understood it meant a lot to Steve but didn’t really seem to consider the details her business.

“That would be in line with the fact that in her medical file, she has granted you the power of attorney over her medical care, should she be incapacitated. There is an obvious conflict of interest here, rendering the document itself null and void, but it does highlight the trust she has. And there was a recording on her StarkWatch,” Dr. Vinterberg said. “I took a look at it, as the time it had been made coincided with the mission.”

“As is your right under the Medical Emergency Breach Protocol,” Steve nodded. “Is the recording relevant?”

“That’s for you to decide. It appears that Dr. Chiral meant to send it to you,” she said, turning to look at Sam. “Unfortunately, Sergeant Wilson, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Any further details of Dr. Chirals medical state and the recording –“

“I understand, Doc. Trust me, I got more than enough details when we started sorting this mess out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go find a tub of holy water to sink myself into.” 

Sam headed out, patting still-stunned Steve on the shoulder as he did. As soon as the door closed after him, Vinterberg tapped the buttons of her pad, and the StarkWatch on Steve’s wrist vibrated as it received a message.

“Take a look.”

Steve pressed the button on the watch to project the 4K hologram display above it. When starting the recording, you had managed to deploy the camera drone from your device, but it floated almost uncomfortably close to your face. The glass containment chamber surrounding you was so well lit that he could see every detail of your face, the drops of sweat on your temples, the sweaty sheen on your cheeks. You were drawing air in like you were drowning, your chest rising and falling with your rapid pants for air. You writhed in the skintight mission environmental protection suit that clung to your every sweet curve. It was just you, as the section you were in was separated from the one that held Bucky, for security and privacy that had proved itself to be a wise choice with this incident.

“Steve, oh, fuck, Steve, something is happening to me and I think… Oh god, I need you, I need you, please, just please…”

Steve kept his calm but only just barely. The whimpering tone of yours shot right into his veins, and a part of him was already ready to give you everything you asked, but he needed to focus. In the message, your eyes cleared up for a moment.

“Hell, I really hope this is transmitting but Steve, I think… Bucky was already asking about Nat and that probably means this isn’t mindless, that it’ll be you I’ll be asking to…” your eyes glazed back over and you ripped the zipper of your suit down, revealing a thin tank top, “Fuck, these clothes, I’m so hot, Steve, please, make the burning stop, I need you, I need you to –“

Thankful for the camera angle that blocked most of what was happening in your containment chamber, Steve kept his focus on your face as you tore the suit off and struggled with the clearly constricting bra underneath the tank top. It didn’t do him much, since the feverish, wanton look in your eyes, your mouth parted in gasps, then your teeth biting down on your lower lip as your hands cupped your own chest felt plenty indecent. He saw you try to battle for control for a few more seconds and in a feat of the same self-discipline that had made you PhD times six, you won.

“Steve, I want you. Regardless of whatever this is. I’ve wanted you since Verona and oh fuck, your hands, your big strong hands on my thigh… Steve, I don’t want you to do this if you don’t want me, they’ll find a way that doesn’t involve… you fucking me until I can’t walk, until I can’t see straight, god, if your hands are that big I wonder how big –“ you panted, then shook your head and managed to continue, speaking as fast as you could to make use of the little time you knew you had left, “I was too much of a coward to tell you in Verona and afterwards but I’ve wanted you for a long time and I really didn’t want you to find out this way but I want you, in other ways too and not just… you deep inside me, your body covering me completely as you press me against the wall, fuck, it’s so hot in here, Steve, oh, fuck, I want you to –“

The transmission cut off. Dr. Vinterberg’s poker face hadn’t even flinched. She looked at Steve.

“It only went into more and more explicit detail of her fantasies from there,” she said. “I consider this, together with the message she gave Sergeant Wilson and the fact that she has demonstrated trust in you, to be acceptable grounds to greenlight this approach, should you yourself give your consent to this, Captain Rogers. Especially when weighed against the possibility of permanent damage to Dr. Chiral’s body. It is a volatile, unpredictable situation but such is the nature of this line of work.”

You had begged for him. You had begged for him. You had wanted him since Verona, since almost six months ago, and you wanted him still. Wanted him now. Needed him.

I’m not scared, Steve. You’ve got me. I trust you.

Somewhere far away underneath the sound of blood rushing in Steve’s body, Dr. Vinterberg was talking about how both of you had been tested negative for any STDs and you were on birth control, how the sensors on your wrists would continue to measure your vitals and the medical team would be given an alert if something dangerous was happening in your system, but other than that, you would be given complete privacy. But there was only one thought in Steve’s mind anymore, pushing all others out.

“Where is she?” Steve asked.

“Containment room 2B,” Dr. Vinterberg answered, staring at your vitals on the pad. “Considering there wasn’t much we could do, we wanted her to be as comfortable as –“

As the door closed behind Steve, Vinterberg realized she was talking to an empty room. Her expression unchanged, she nodded to herself and tapped her pad to authorize Steve’s access into Containment room 2B and activate the protocol that would shut off all surveillance from the room, save for the emergency system that would keep monitoring your vitals and allow either of you to evoke safety protocols. With that done, she made a few short notes onto your file and Steve’s file, jotting down the fact that consent had been established as extensively as was possible in current circumstances. Finally, she ordered herself a latte from FRIDAY’s system and pulled up the notes for her newest research paper, slipping back into blessedly calm world of meiotic recombination.

Next Chapter >>

[alexanderwales]

Castle Solutions was the only time travel company in the world. They had a giant corporate headquarters in downtown Chicago, which was the only place in the entire world with a time machine, at least as far as anyone knew. They were worth hundreds of billions, and the only reason they weren't worth more seemed to be that they didn't care all that much about money. The time machines were used for everything: reporting, media, market corrections, the surveillance state, and industry. Castle Solutions was the lynchpin of the modern world.

Daniel had thought the waiting room would be nicer.

He sat in a blue-gray chair that would have been at home in any waiting room anywhere else in Chicago. Slightly tinny music played over speakers from the ceiling. A fake potted plant sat in one corner, failing to look lively. There were no windows, because the waiting room was deep in the heart of the building, close to the machine itself.

Daniel was the only one in the waiting room. He'd come half an hour early, lugging all his gear, and now the only thing left was for the clock to run down. A bored-looking woman had come in to tell him that it might be awhile, that they were running behind schedule — the time travel company, running behind schedule. So there had been more waiting than expected.

A man in a charcoal gray suit with a simple blue backpack came in. He slung the backpack down onto the ground with a sigh and rubbed his face. He had stubble there, but an artful amount of it, like he'd spent some time in the mirror making sure that it was the right amount of scruff to offset his expensive suit.

Daniel looked straight ahead, trying not to look, keeping his face blank, like he was passing by a homeless person who might ask him for money he didn't have.

"Wow, you've got a lot of stuff," said the man. "Is that a sword?"

"It's a katana," said Daniel. He didn't match the eye contact the man was giving him.

"Oh, cool," said the man. "You're going to ... katana times?"

"Edo Japan, yeah," said Daniel.

Daniel was trying his best not to engage, to get this conversation over as quickly as possible. He wasn't making eye contact.

The man picked up his backpack and moved across the waiting room to be closer to Daniel.

"You speak Japanese?" the man asked.

"Hai, watashi wa nihongo o hanashimasu," replied Daniel. He wished that he were more fluent, that the words had come out less rote.

"Cool," said the man. He had apparently also come closer to get a look at all of Daniel's stuff. His eyes moved over the duffel bags. There wasn't much to see, everything had been carefully packed away. "Wow, you sure are prepared, huh?"

"It's a different time and place," said Daniel with a shrug. It represented five years of planning, five years of training, learning, honing himself.

"Personally, I'm going to 1946," said the man, though Daniel hadn't asked. He held out his hand. "Archie Vedder."

Daniel reluctantly took the hand. "Daniel Strom." He had never really gotten the hang of shaking hands. He worried that his hands were too clammy, a worry that proved founded when Archie wiped his hand on that expensive charcoal suit.

"I went with the kit," said Archie, pointing to his backpack. "I've got papers, I've got a computer with a backup, I've got a projector, a media library, a science library, the whole works, plus some forged bonds and a stack of cash. I got a sweet deal on it, they're overstocked now."

Retreating into the past had seen its heyday. Now most of the people who had been most enthusiastic were gone, and there were only the dissenters left. Everyone agreed with using the machine for the mundane stuff, but simply leaving, never to return, rubbed people the wrong way.

"I guess they don't sell kits for Edo," Archie ventured.

"They do," said Daniel. "They're trash."

"Ah," said Archie.

"This is all custom," said Daniel. "Higher quality, field tested, everything I'll need to set myself up there." Only some of it was stock. He had two computers, three smartphones, chargers and plugs, solar panels, replacement batteries, and redundant media libraries and science libraries.

Archie raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean, field tested? Because people don't come back. You're there for good, right?"

What it actually meant was that Daniel had gone out into a field and tested it, made sure that it worked under various conditions, set himself up like he might be explaining all this to a carefully chosen daimyo. There was only so much that camping in the woods and taking dry run vacations could tell him though.

"Some of it is theory," said Daniel. "Research."

"Yeah, see, that's why I went with 1946," said Archie. "It's really well-trod. You know, I was reading an article the other day that maybe the Baby Boom was a little overstated? Like, we're obviously living in the wake of time travelers, but that's the prime time to come back, anywhere from 1946 to 1960. The economy is doing well, tech is advancing, it's familiar enough. The culture is so close you can sell some stuff from a media library, it's brilliant. You're five steps away from becoming a multimillionaire in a time when that meant something."

"Sure," said Daniel.

"Any reason you're doing hard mode?" asked Archie. "I mean, samurai and ninjas are cool, sure, but —"

"It's not about that," said Daniel.

"Alright, sure," shrugged Archie.

Daniel looked over at the waiting room's lone clock. You would think that a waiting room for a time travel company would have better clocks, but it was a cheap utilitarian design, thin plastic and wobbly hands.

"What's it about then?" asked Archie.

"I was going to go with a friend," said Daniel. "We had practiced together, trained together. Then he got cancer."

"Ah, shit," said Archie.

"He lived," said Daniel. "He's fine. But he's on medications now, and will be for the rest of his life, and he can't go anymore."

"Huh," said Archie. "So there's a friend who you're leaving behind?"

"No," said Daniel. "I mean ... this was what we did together. We talked about it a lot. We read history books and practiced crafts and skills. At the start, I didn't really take it that seriously, it was just a hobby, but I got invested, and I guess I kept seeing it as — I don't know."

"I mean for me, it's a way out," said Archie. "Most people feel that way, yeah? My wife filed for divorce, I got fired from my job, so hey, time to start over in 1946, pretend I'm part of the Greatest Generation, ride the waves I know are coming. Exploit it."

Daniel grimaced. The Vietnam War, segregation, the Red Scare? People had a rosy view of that time. He'd never felt particularly aligned with people like Archie who were just looking to make a quick buck.

"Oh come on," said Archie. "You think you're better than me? You're a, you know, what's the word. Colonizer."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "No."

"What, just 'no', it's not, you know, what we did to the Native Americans?" asked Archie. "The whole 'conquer the past' thing?"

"I'm a single person," said Daniel. "I'm bringing back things that will change their culture forever, but I'm not an agent of my country, and even if I were, I think those people who want to be a god king are morons. And sorry, I'm not spending my last minutes in the present on badly rehashing a debate I've had a thousand times already."

"Why not?" asked Archie. "See, I think having arguments right before you go is great. You can leave on a high note. I've spent the last few days saying whatever the hell I wanted to people. It's great. I went to my dad and said 'hey, you were a terrible father, I never liked you, and it's sad that you thought I needed your approval'. And then you know what's hilarious? I get to just walk away and never be seen again. How's that for a power move? How's that for a mic drop?"

"Seems immature," said Daniel.

"Well, see, I'm actually fine being immature," said Archie with a little laugh. "And when this conversation is done, one or both of us is going into the past, never to be seen nor heard from again, and isn't that great? You don't like me, I don't like you, and then we're strangers again."

Daniel had been looking straight ahead, but he turned to Archie after that. "You don't like me?" he asked. "You don't know me."

"I know your type," said Archie. He leaned back. "You spent what, three years cooking up a plan, making this trip back in time your entire personality, and now you think you're better than me, better than everyone, like you've got it all figured out. You talked yourself into throwing away everything you've got going on here. You got dreams of a future in the past. It's quitter talk, is what it is."

"Fuck off," said Daniel. In his normal life he'd have never said it, but he was on the precipice.

"You think going into the past is going to transform you?" asked Archie. "That another world, a second chance, you'll somehow become the man you think you were supposed to be? Well let me tell you, if you were a loser here, you'll be a loser there."

Daniel stood up and drew his sword. He'd practiced the draw a thousand times. The sword gleamed, even under the ugly fluorescent lighting of the waiting room. "Fuck off, or you'll be going back to the 50s missing a hand."

"Bah," said Archie. "Fine." He stood up and took a seat further away, the same one he'd taken when he first came in. He was bouncing his leg and reading something on his phone.

Daniel was putting his sword back in its sheath when the receptionist came into the room.

"Daniel?" she asked, glancing only briefly at the sword. "They're ready for you."

"Finally," Daniel thought but didn't say, because even though he wasn't going to be around anymore, he believed in basic politeness.

He gathered his things and left the waiting room, ready to leave.

~~~~

Archie sat outside Castle Solutions, in their little courtyard, vaping.

It wasn't long before the receptionist, Lydia, came to sit next to him.

"It didn't really seem like you wanted to convince that one," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry."

She shrugged and pulled out a vape pen of her own. "Sometimes you just want to yell at someone. I get that. But you're risking us getting caught. And if we get caught in the future, we probably get caught in the present."

"Yup," he said. "Won't happen again."

"Give it a few days before you come back," she said. "Three, let's say. He didn't file a complaint, so there's nothing in the system."

"Mmm," said Archie. He made a long, slow drag of the pen. They sat there vaping together for a while. It had often occurred to him that vaping was impossibly lame, but it felt less lame when done with someone else. He watched as the vapor left her mouth in a thin, concentrated stream. "You wanna go out sometime?"

"On a date?" she asked. She gave the tip of her vape pen a casual look. "No, not really."

"Alright," said Archie.

"I don't really know what your deal is," she said. "Why this is important to you. Why you want to talk people back from the brink, or yell at them."

"Mmm," said Archie. "You want to tragic backstory?"

"Meh," Lydia replied. "I'm not going on a date with someone who has a tragic backstory. That's all. Sorry. I've got my own tragic backstory, thanks very much."

"Fair," said Archie. "It was my kid brother, that's the short version. He up and left one day, left us a note that read like ... well, you know." He drew a finger across his neck.

"Where'd he go?" asked Lydia.

"England, 16th century," said Archie. "He thought he was going to take Shakespeare's place." He shook his head. "Only eighteen, you know? Unconscionable that they let kids that young through. He had his whole life ahead of him and he just ... disappeared."

Lydia sighed. "Yeah."

She turned off her vape pen, then mimed stubbing it out on the bench like a cigarette before slipping it into her purse. He felt a surge of attraction for her.

"Alright, I'll go on the date," said Lydia. "But if we're going to be dating, you've gotta stop this."

"Vaping?" asked Archie.

"You know what I mean," said Lydia. "You going in there trying to convince them to back out, that's one thing. It's noble, almost. But if it's going to be fighting, if it's you trying to work through some shit, then I'm not sticking my neck out for you. Doubly so if you want to get together. You process your trauma some other way, or repress it like the rest of us, alright?"

Archie thought about that for a moment. "Alright. Sure."

"I've got to get back to work," said Lydia as she rose from the bench. "You have my number."

Archie nodded, and after she had left, he stayed, looking out at the courtyard.

He wondered how Daniel was doing out there, in that other timeline, but he supposed that he would never know.

[fipindustries]

Artificial Intelligence Risk

about a month ago i got into my mind the idea of trying the format of video essay, and the topic i came up with that i felt i could more or less handle was AI risk and my objections to yudkowsky. i wrote the script but then soon afterwards i ran out of motivation to do the video. still i didnt want the effort to go to waste so i decided to share the text, slightly edited here. this is a LONG fucking thing so put it aside on its own tab and come back to it when you are comfortable and ready to sink your teeth on quite a lot of reading

Anyway, let’s talk about AI risk

I’m going to be doing a very quick introduction to some of the latest conversations that have been going on in the field of artificial intelligence, what are artificial intelligences exactly, what is an AGI, what is an agent, the orthogonality thesis, the concept of instrumental convergence, alignment and how does Eliezer Yudkowsky figure in all of this.

 If you are already familiar with this you can skip to section two where I’m going to be talking about yudkowsky’s arguments for AI research presenting an existential risk to, not just humanity, or even the world, but to the entire universe and my own tepid rebuttal to his argument.

Now, I SHOULD clarify, I am not an expert on the field, my credentials are dubious at best, I am a college drop out from the career of computer science and I have a three year graduate degree in video game design and a three year graduate degree in electromechanical instalations. All that I know about the current state of AI research I have learned by reading articles, consulting a few friends who have studied about the topic more extensevily than me,

and watching educational you tube videos so. You know. Not an authority on the matter from any considerable point of view and my opinions should be regarded as such.

So without further ado, let’s get in on it.

PART ONE, A RUSHED INTRODUCTION ON THE SUBJECT

1.1 general intelligence and agency

lets begin with what counts as artificial intelligence, the technical definition for artificial intelligence is, eh…, well, why don’t I let a Masters degree in machine intelligence explain it:

 Now let’s get a bit more precise here and include the definition of AGI, Artificial General intelligence. It is understood that classic ai’s such as the ones we have in our videogames or in alpha GO or even our roombas, are narrow Ais, that is to say, they are capable of doing only one kind of thing. They do not understand the world beyond their field of expertise whether that be within a videogame level, within a GO board or within you filthy disgusting floor.

AGI on the other hand is much more, well, general, it can have a multimodal understanding of its surroundings, it can generalize, it can extrapolate, it can learn new things across multiple different fields, it can come up with solutions that account for multiple different factors, it can incorporate new ideas and concepts. Essentially, a human is an agi. So far that is the last frontier of AI research, and although we are not there quite yet, it does seem like we are doing some moderate strides in that direction. We’ve all seen the impressive conversational and coding skills that GPT-4 has and Google just released Gemini, a multimodal AI that can understand and generate text, sounds, images and video simultaneously. Now, of course it has its limits, it has no persistent memory, its contextual window while larger than previous models is still relatively small compared to a human (contextual window means essentially short term memory, how many things can it keep track of and act coherently about).

And yet there is one more factor I haven’t mentioned yet that would be needed to make something a “true” AGI. That is Agency. To have goals and autonomously come up with plans and carry those plans out in the world to achieve those goals. I as a person, have agency over my life, because I can choose at any given moment to do something without anyone explicitly telling me to do it, and I can decide how to do it. That is what computers, and machines to a larger extent, don’t have. Volition.

So, Now that we have established that, allow me to introduce yet one more definition here, one that you may disagree with but which I need to establish in order to have a common language with you such that I can communicate these ideas effectively. The definition of intelligence. It’s a thorny subject and people get very particular with that word because there are moral associations with it. To imply that someone or something has or hasn’t intelligence can be seen as implying that it deserves or doesn’t deserve admiration, validity, moral worth or even  personhood. I don’t care about any of that dumb shit. The way Im going to be using intelligence in this video is basically “how capable you are to do many different things successfully”. The more “intelligent” an AI is, the more capable of doing things that AI can be. After all, there is a reason why education is considered such a universally good thing in society. To educate a child is to uplift them, to expand their world, to increase their opportunities in life. And the same goes for AI. I need to emphasize that this is just the way I’m using the word within the context of this video, I don’t care if you are a psychologist or a neurosurgeon, or a pedagogue, I need a word to express this idea and that is the word im going to use, if you don’t like it or if you think this is innapropiate of me then by all means, keep on thinking that, go on and comment about it below the video, and then go on to suck my dick.

Anyway. Now, we have established what an AGI is, we have established what agency is, and we have established how having more intelligence increases your agency. But as the intelligence of a given agent increases we start to see certain trends, certain strategies start to arise again and again, and we call this Instrumental convergence.

1.2 instrumental convergence

The basic idea behind instrumental convergence is that if you are an intelligent agent that wants to achieve some goal, there are some common basic strategies that you are going to turn towards no matter what. It doesn’t matter if your goal is as complicated as building a nuclear bomb or as simple as making a cup of tea. These are things we can reliably predict any AGI worth its salt is going to try to do.

First of all is self-preservation. Its going to try to protect itself. When you want to do something, being dead is usually. Bad. its counterproductive. Is not generally recommended. Dying is widely considered unadvisable by 9 out of every ten experts in the field. If there is something that it wants getting done, it wont get done if it dies or is turned off, so its safe to predict that any AGI will try to do things in order not be turned off. How far it may go in order to do this? Well… [wouldn’t you like to know weather boy].

Another thing it will predictably converge towards is goal preservation. That is to say, it will resist any attempt to try and change it, to alter it, to modify its goals. Because, again, if you want to accomplish something, suddenly deciding that you want to do something else is uh, not going to accomplish the first thing, is it? Lets say that you want to take care of your child, that is your goal, that is the thing you want to accomplish, and I come to you and say, here, let me change you on the inside so that you don’t care about protecting your kid. Obviously you are not going to let me, because if you stopped caring about your kids, then your kids wouldn’t be cared for or protected. And you want to ensure that happens, so caring about something else instead is a huge no-no- which is why, if we make AGI and it has goals that we don’t like it will probably resist any attempt to “fix” it.

And finally another goal that it will most likely trend towards is self improvement. Which can be more generalized to “resource acquisition”. If it lacks capacities to carry out a plan, then step one of that plan will always be to increase capacities. If you want to get something really expensive, well first you need to get money. If you want to increase your chances of getting a high paying job then you need to get education, if you want to get a partner you need to increase how attractive you are. And as we established earlier, if intelligence is the thing that increases your agency, you want to become smarter in order to do more things. So one more time, is not a huge leap at all, it is not a stretch of the imagination, to say that any AGI will probably seek to increase its capabilities, whether by acquiring more computation, by improving itself, by taking control of resources.

All these three things I mentioned are sure bets, they are likely to happen and safe to assume. They are things we ought to keep in mind when creating AGI.

 Now of course, I have implied a sinister tone to all these things, I have made all this sound vaguely threatening, haven’t i?. There is one more assumption im sneaking into all of this which I haven’t talked about. All that I have mentioned presents a very callous view of AGI, I have made it apparent that all of these strategies it may follow will go in conflict with people, maybe even go as far as to harm humans. Am I impliying that AGI may tend to be… Evil???

1.3 The Orthogonality thesis

Well, not quite.

We humans care about things. Generally. And we generally tend to care about roughly the same things, simply by virtue of being humans. We have some innate preferences and some innate dislikes. We have a tendency to not like suffering (please keep in mind I said a tendency, im talking about a statistical trend, something that most humans present to some degree). Most of us, baring social conditioning, would take pause at the idea of torturing someone directly, on purpose, with our bare hands. (edit bear paws onto my hands as I say this).  Most would feel uncomfortable at the thought of doing it to multitudes of people. We tend to show a preference for food, water, air, shelter, comfort, entertainment and companionship. This is just how we are fundamentally wired. These things can be overcome, of course, but that is the thing, they have to be overcome in the first place.

An AGI is not going to have the same evolutionary predisposition to these things like we do because it is not made of the same things a human is made of and it was not raised the same way a human was raised.

There is something about a human brain, in a human body, flooded with human hormones that makes us feel and think and act in certain ways and care about certain things.

All an AGI is going to have is the goals it developed during its training, and will only care insofar as those goals are met. So say an AGI has the goal of going to the corner store to bring me a pack of cookies. In its way there it comes across an anthill in its path, it will probably step on the anthill because to take that step takes it closer to the corner store, and why wouldn’t it step on the anthill? Was it programmed with some specific innate preference not to step on ants? No? then it will step on the anthill and not pay any mind  to it.

Now lets say it comes across a cat. Same logic applies, if it wasn’t programmed with an inherent tendency to value animals, stepping on the cat wont slow it down at all.

Now let’s say it comes across a baby.

Of course, if its intelligent enough it will probably understand that if it steps on that baby people might notice and try to stop it, most likely even try to disable it or turn it off so it will not step on the baby, to save itself from all that trouble. But you have to understand that it wont stop because it will feel bad about harming a baby or because it understands that to harm a baby is wrong. And indeed if it was powerful enough such that no matter what people did they could not stop it and it would suffer no consequence for killing the baby, it would have probably killed the baby.

If I need to put it in gross, inaccurate terms for you to get it then let me put it this way. Its essentially a sociopath. It only cares about the wellbeing of others in as far as that benefits it self. Except human sociopaths do care nominally about having human comforts and companionship, albeit in a very instrumental way, which will involve some manner of stable society and civilization around them. Also they are only human, and are limited in the harm they can do by human limitations.  An AGI doesn’t need any of that and is not limited by any of that.

So ultimately, much like a car’s goal is to move forward and it is not built to care about wether a human is in front of it or not, an AGI will carry its own goals regardless of what it has to sacrifice in order to carry that goal effectively. And those goals don’t need to include human wellbeing.

Now With that said. How DO we make it so that AGI cares about human wellbeing, how do we make it so that it wants good things for us. How do we make it so that its goals align with that of humans?

1.4 Alignment.

Alignment… is hard [cue hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy scene about the space being big]

This is the part im going to skip over the fastest because frankly it’s a deep field of study, there are many current strategies for aligning AGI, from mesa optimizers, to reinforced learning with human feedback, to adversarial asynchronous AI assisted reward training to uh, sitting on our asses and doing nothing. Suffice to say, none of these methods are perfect or foolproof.

One thing many people like to gesture at when they have not learned or studied anything about the subject is the three laws of robotics by isaac Asimov, a robot should not harm a human or allow by inaction to let a human come to harm, a robot should do what a human orders unless it contradicts the first law and a robot should preserve itself unless that goes against the previous two laws. Now the thing Asimov was prescient about was that these laws were not just “programmed” into the robots. These laws were not coded into their software, they were hardwired, they were part of the robot’s electronic architecture such that a robot could not ever be without those three laws much like a car couldn’t run without wheels.

In this Asimov realized how important these three laws were, that they had to be intrinsic to the robot’s very being, they couldn’t be hacked or uninstalled or erased. A robot simply could not be without these rules. Ideally that is what alignment should be. When we create an AGI, it should be made such that human values are its fundamental goal, that is the thing they should seek to maximize, instead of instrumental values, that is to say something they value simply because it allows it to achieve something else.

But how do we even begin to do that? How do we codify “human values” into a robot? How do we define “harm” for example? How do we even define “human”??? how do we define “happiness”? how do we explain a robot what is right and what is wrong when half the time we ourselves cannot even begin to agree on that? these are not just technical questions that robotic experts have to find the way to codify into ones and zeroes, these are profound philosophical questions to which we still don’t have satisfying answers to.

Well, the best sort of hack solution we’ve come up with so far is not to create bespoke fundamental axiomatic rules that the robot has to follow, but rather train it to imitate humans by showing it a billion billion examples of human behavior. But of course there is a problem with that approach. And no, is not just that humans are flawed and have a tendency to cause harm and therefore to ask a robot to imitate a human means creating something that can do all the bad things a human does, although that IS a problem too. The real problem is that we are training it to *imitate* a human, not  to *be* a human.

To reiterate what I said during the orthogonality thesis, is not good enough that I, for example, buy roses and give massages to act nice to my girlfriend because it allows me to have sex with her, I am not merely imitating or performing the rol of a loving partner because her happiness is an instrumental value to my fundamental value of getting sex. I should want to be nice to my girlfriend because it makes her happy and that is the thing I care about. Her happiness is  my fundamental value. Likewise, to an AGI, human fulfilment should be its fundamental value, not something that it learns to do because it allows it to achieve a certain reward that we give during training. Because if it only really cares deep down about the reward, rather than about what the reward is meant to incentivize, then that reward can very easily be divorced from human happiness.

Its goodharts law, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Why do students cheat during tests? Because their education is measured by grades, so the grades become the target and so students will seek to get high grades regardless of whether they learned or not. When trained on their subject and measured by grades, what they learn is not the school subject, they learn to get high grades, they learn to cheat.

This is also something known in psychology, punishment tends to be a poor mechanism of enforcing behavior because all it teaches people is how to avoid the punishment, it teaches people not to get caught. Which is why punitive justice doesn’t work all that well in stopping recividism and this is why the carceral system is rotten to core and why jail should be fucking abolish-[interrupt the transmission]

Now, how is this all relevant to current AI research? Well, the thing is, we ended up going about the worst possible way to create alignable AI.

1.5 LLMs (large language models)

This is getting way too fucking long So, hurrying up, lets do a quick review of how do Large language models work. We create a neural network which is a collection of giant matrixes, essentially a bunch of numbers that we add and multiply together over and over again, and then we tune those numbers by throwing absurdly big amounts of training data such that it starts forming internal mathematical models based on that data and it starts creating coherent patterns that it can recognize and replicate AND extrapolate! if we do this enough times with matrixes that are big enough and then when we start prodding it for human behavior it will be able to follow the pattern of human behavior that we prime it with and give us coherent responses.

(takes a big breath)this “thing” has learned. To imitate. Human. Behavior.

Problem is, we don’t know what “this thing” actually is, we just know that *it* can imitate humans.

You caught that?

What you have to understand is, we don’t actually know what internal models it creates, we don’t know what are the patterns that it extracted or internalized from the data that we fed it, we don’t know what are the internal rules that decide its behavior, we don’t know what is going on inside there, current LLMs are a black box. We don’t know what it learned, we don’t know what its fundamental values are, we don’t know how it thinks or what it truly wants. all we know is that it can imitate humans when we ask it to do so. We created some inhuman entity that is moderatly intelligent in specific contexts (that is to say, very capable) and we trained it to imitate humans. That sounds a bit unnerving doesn’t it?

 To be clear, LLMs are not carefully crafted piece by piece. This does not work like traditional software where a programmer will sit down and build the thing line by line, all its behaviors specified. Is more accurate to say that LLMs, are grown, almost organically. We know the process that generates them, but we don’t know exactly what it generates or how what it generates works internally, it is a mistery. And these things are so big and so complicated internally that to try and go inside and decipher what they are doing is almost intractable.

But, on the bright side, we are trying to tract it. There is a big subfield of AI research called interpretability, which is actually doing the hard work of going inside and figuring out how the sausage gets made, and they have been doing some moderate progress as of lately. Which is encouraging. But still, understanding the enemy is only step one, step two is coming up with an actually effective and reliable way of turning that potential enemy into a friend.

Puff! Ok so, now that this is all out of the way I can go onto the last subject before I move on to part two of this video, the character of the hour, the man the myth the legend. The modern day Casandra. Mr chicken little himself! Sci fi author extraordinaire! The mad man! The futurist! The leader of the rationalist movement!

1.5 Yudkowsky

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky  born September 11, 1979, wait, what the fuck, September eleven? (looks at camera) yudkowsky was born on 9/11, I literally just learned this for the first time! What the fuck, oh that sucks, oh no, oh no, my condolences, that’s terrible…. Moving on. he is an American artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence, including the idea that there might not be a "fire alarm" for AI He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. Or so says his Wikipedia page.

Yudkowsky is, shall we say, a character. a very eccentric man, he is an AI doomer. Convinced that AGI, once finally created, will most likely kill all humans, extract all valuable resources from the planet, disassemble the solar system, create a dyson sphere around the sun and expand across the universe turning all of the cosmos into paperclips. Wait, no, that is not quite it, to properly quote,( grabs a piece of paper and very pointedly reads from it) turn the cosmos into tiny squiggly  molecules resembling paperclips whose configuration just so happens to fulfill the strange, alien unfathomable terminal goal they ended up developing in training. So you know, something totally different.

And he is utterly convinced of this idea, has been for over a decade now, not only that but, while he cannot pinpoint a precise date, he is confident that, more likely than not it will happen within this century. In fact most betting markets seem to believe that we will get AGI somewhere in the mid 30’s.

His argument is basically that in the field of AI research, the development of capabilities is going much faster than the development of alignment, so that AIs will become disproportionately powerful before we ever figure out how to control them. And once we create unaligned AGI we will have created an agent who doesn’t care about humans but will care about something else entirely irrelevant to us and it will seek to maximize that goal, and because it will be vastly more intelligent than humans therefore we wont be able to stop it. In fact not only we wont be able to stop it, there wont be a fight at all. It will carry out its plans for world domination in secret without us even detecting it and it will execute it before any of us even realize what happened. Because that is what a smart person trying to take over the world would do.

This is why the definition I gave of intelligence at the beginning is so important, it all hinges on that, intelligence as the measure of how capable you are to come up with solutions to problems, problems such as “how to kill all humans without being detected or stopped”. And you may say well now, intelligence is fine and all but there are limits to what you can accomplish with raw intelligence, even if you are supposedly smarter than a human surely you wouldn’t be capable of just taking over the world uninmpeeded, intelligence is not this end all be all superpower. Yudkowsky would respond that you are not recognizing or respecting the power that intelligence has. After all it was intelligence what designed the atom bomb, it was intelligence what created a cure for polio and it was intelligence what made it so that there is a human foot print on the moon.

Some may call this view of intelligence a bit reductive. After all surely it wasn’t *just* intelligence what did all that but also hard physical labor and the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of people. But, he would argue, intelligence was the underlying motor that moved all that. That to come up with the plan and to convince people to follow it and to delegate the tasks to the appropriate subagents, it was all directed by thought, by ideas, by intelligence. By the way, so far I am not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, I am merely explaining his ideas.

But remember, it doesn’t stop there, like I said during his intro, he believes there will be “no fire alarm”. In fact for all we know, maybe AGI has already been created and its merely bidding its time and plotting in the background, trying to get more compute, trying to get smarter. (to be fair, he doesn’t think this is right now, but with the next iteration of gpt? Gpt 5 or 6? Well who knows). He thinks that the entire world should halt AI research and punish with multilateral international treaties any group or nation that doesn’t stop. going as far as putting military attacks on GPU farms as sanctions of those treaties.

What’s more, he believes that, in fact, the fight is already lost. AI is already progressing too fast and there is nothing to stop it, we are not showing any signs of making headway with alignment and no one is incentivized to slow down. Recently he wrote an article called “dying with dignity” where he essentially says all this, AGI will destroy us, there is no point in planning for the future or having children and that we should act as if we are already dead. This doesn’t mean to stop fighting or to stop trying to find ways to align AGI, impossible as it may seem, but to merely have the basic dignity of acknowledging that we are probably not going to win. In every interview ive seen with the guy he sounds fairly defeatist and honestly kind of depressed. He truly seems to think its hopeless, if not because the AGI is clearly unbeatable and superior to humans, then because humans are clearly so stupid that we keep developing AI completely unregulated while making the tools to develop AI widely available and public for anyone to grab and do as they please with, as well as connecting every AI to the internet and to all mobile devices giving it instant access to humanity. and  worst of all: we keep teaching it how to code. From his perspective it really seems like people are in a rush to create the most unsecured, wildly available, unrestricted, capable, hyperconnected AGI possible.

We are not just going to summon the antichrist, we are going to receive them with a red carpet and immediately hand it the keys to the kingdom before it even manages to fully get out of its fiery pit.

So. The situation seems dire, at least to this guy. Now, to be clear, only he and a handful of other AI researchers are on that specific level of alarm. The opinions vary across the field and from what I understand this level of hopelessness and defeatism is the minority opinion.

I WILL say, however what is NOT the minority opinion is that AGI IS actually dangerous, maybe not quite on the level of immediate, inevitable and total human extinction but certainly a genuine threat that has to be taken seriously. AGI being something dangerous if unaligned is not a fringe position and I would not consider it something to be dismissed as an idea that experts don’t take seriously.

Aaand here is where I step up and clarify that this is my position as well. I am also, very much, a believer that AGI would posit a colossal danger to humanity. That yes, an unaligned AGI would represent an agent smarter than a human, capable of causing vast harm to humanity and with no human qualms or limitations to do so. I believe this is not just possible but probable and likely to happen within our lifetimes.

So there. I made my position clear.

BUT!

With all that said. I do have one key disagreement with yudkowsky. And partially the reason why I made this video was so that I could present this counterargument and maybe he, or someone that thinks like him, will see it and either change their mind or present a counter-counterargument that changes MY mind (although I really hope they don’t, that would be really depressing.)

Finally, we can move on to part 2

PART TWO- MY COUNTERARGUMENT TO YUDKOWSKY

I really have my work cut out for me, don’t i? as I said I am not expert and this dude has probably spent far more time than me thinking about this. But I have seen most interviews that guy has been doing for a year, I have seen most of his debates and I have followed him on twitter for years now. (also, to be clear, I AM a fan of the guy, I have read hpmor, three worlds collide, the dark lords answer, a girl intercorrupted, the sequences, and I TRIED to read planecrash, that last one didn’t work out so well for me). My point is in all the material I have seen of Eliezer I don’t recall anyone ever giving him quite this specific argument I’m about to give.

It’s a limited argument. as I have already stated I largely agree with most of what he says, I DO believe that unaligned AGI is possible, I DO believe it would be really dangerous if it were to exist and I do believe alignment is really hard. My key disagreement is specifically about his point I descrived earlier, about the lack of a fire alarm, and perhaps, more to the point, to humanity’s lack of response to such an alarm if it were to come to pass.

All we would need, is a Chernobyl incident, what is that? A situation where this technology goes out of control and causes a lot of damage, of potentially catastrophic consequences, but not so bad that it cannot be contained in time by enough effort. We need a weaker form of AGI to try to harm us, maybe even present a believable threat of taking over the world, but not so smart that humans cant do anything about it. We need essentially an AI vaccine, so that we can finally start developing proper AI antibodies. “aintibodies”

In the past humanity was dazzled by the limitless potential of nuclear power, to the point that old chemistry sets, the kind that were sold to children, would come with uranium for them to play with. We were building atom bombs, nuclear stations, the future was very much based on the power of the atom. But after a couple of really close calls and big enough scares we became, as a species, terrified of nuclear power. Some may argue to the point of overcorrection. We became scared enough that even megalomaniacal hawkish leaders were able to take pause and reconsider using it as a weapon, we became so scared that we overregulated the technology to the point of it almost becoming economically inviable to apply, we started disassembling nuclear stations across the world and to slowly reduce our nuclear arsenal.

This is all a proof of concept that, no matter how alluring a technology may be, if we are scared enough of it we can coordinate as a species and roll it back, to do our best to put the genie back in the bottle. One of the things eliezer says over and over again is that what makes AGI different from other technologies is that if we get it wrong on the first try we don’t get a second chance. Here is where I think he is wrong: I think if we get AGI wrong on the first try, it is more likely than not that nothing world ending will happen. Perhaps it will be something scary, perhaps something really scary, but unlikely that it will be on the level of all humans dropping dead simultaneously due to diamonoid bacteria. And THAT will be our Chernobyl, that will be the fire alarm, that will be the red flag that the disaster monkeys, as he call us, wont be able to ignore.

Now WHY do I think this? Based on what am I saying this? I will not be as hyperbolic as other yudkowsky detractors and say that he claims AGI will be basically a god. The AGI yudkowsky proposes is not a god. Just a really advanced alien, maybe even a wizard, but certainly not a god.

Still, even if not quite on the level of godhood, this dangerous superintelligent AGI yudkowsky proposes would be impressive. It would be the most advanced and powerful entity on planet earth. It would be humanity’s greatest achievement.

It would also be, I imagine, really hard to create. Even leaving aside the alignment bussines, to create a powerful superintelligent AGI without flaws, without bugs, without glitches, It would have to be an incredibly complex, specific, particular and hard to get right feat of software engineering. We are not just talking about an AGI smarter than a human, that’s easy stuff, humans are not that smart and arguably current AI is already smarter than a human, at least within their context window and until they start hallucinating. But what we are talking about here is an AGI capable of outsmarting reality.

We are talking about an AGI smart enough to carry out complex, multistep plans, in which they are not going to be in control of every factor and variable, specially at the beginning. We are talking about AGI that will have to function in the outside world, crashing with outside logistics and sheer dumb chance. We are talking about plans for world domination with no unforeseen factors, no unexpected delays or mistakes, every single possible setback and hidden variable accounted for. Im not saying that an AGI capable of doing this wont be possible maybe some day, im saying that to create an AGI that is capable of doing this, on the first try, without a hitch, is probably really really really hard for humans to do. Im saying there are probably not a lot of worlds where humans fiddling with giant inscrutable matrixes stumble upon the right precise set of layers and weight and biases that give rise to the Doctor from doctor who, and there are probably a whole truckload of worlds where humans end up with a lot of incoherent nonsense and rubbish.

Im saying that AGI, when it fails, when humans screw it up, doesn’t suddenly become more powerful than we ever expected, its more likely that it just fails and collapses. To turn one of Eliezer’s examples against him, when you screw up a rocket, it doesn’t accidentally punch a worm hole in the fabric of time and space, it just explodes before reaching the stratosphere. When you screw up a nuclear bomb, you don’t get to blow up the solar system, you just get a less powerful bomb.

He presents a fully aligned AGI as this big challenge that humanity has to get right on the first try, but that seems to imply that building an unaligned AGI is just a simple matter, almost taken for granted. It may be comparatively easier than an aligned AGI, but my point is that already unaligned AGI is stupidly hard to do and that if you fail in building unaligned AGI, then you don’t get an unaligned AGI, you just get another stupid model that screws up and stumbles on itself the second it encounters something unexpected. And that is a good thing I’d say! That means that there is SOME safety margin, some space to screw up before we need to really start worrying. And further more, what I am saying is that our first earnest attempt at an unaligned AGI will probably not be that smart or impressive because we as humans would have probably screwed something up, we would have probably unintentionally programmed it with some stupid glitch or bug or flaw and wont be a threat to all of humanity.

Now here comes the hypothetical back and forth, because im not stupid and I can try to anticipate what Yudkowsky might argue back and try to answer that before he says it (although I believe the guy is probably smarter than me and if I follow his logic, I probably cant actually anticipate what he would argue to prove me wrong, much like I cant predict what moves Magnus Carlsen would make in a game of chess against me, I SHOULD predict that him proving me wrong is the likeliest option, even if I cant picture how he will do it, but you see, I believe in a little thing called debating with dignity, wink)

What I anticipate he would argue is that AGI, no matter how flawed and shoddy our first attempt at making it were, would understand that is not smart enough yet and try to become smarter, so it would lie and pretend to be an aligned AGI so that it can trick us into giving it access to more compute or just so that it can bid its time and create an AGI smarter than itself. So even if we don’t create a perfect unaligned AGI, this imperfect AGI would try to create it and succeed, and then THAT new AGI would be the world ender to worry about.

So two things to that, first, this is filled with a lot of assumptions which I don’t know the likelihood of. The idea that this first flawed AGI would be smart enough to understand its limitations, smart enough to convincingly lie about it and smart enough to create an AGI that is better than itself. My priors about all these things are dubious at best. Second, It feels like kicking the can down the road. I don’t think creating an AGI capable of all of this is trivial to make on a first attempt. I think its more likely that we will create an unaligned AGI that is flawed, that is kind of dumb, that is unreliable, even to itself and its own twisted, orthogonal goals.

And I think this flawed creature MIGHT attempt something, maybe something genuenly threatning, but it wont be smart enough to pull it off effortlessly and flawlessly, because us humans are not smart enough to create something that can do that on the first try. And THAT first flawed attempt, that warning shot, THAT will be our fire alarm, that will be our Chernobyl. And THAT will be the thing that opens the door to us disaster monkeys finally getting our shit together.

But hey, maybe yudkowsky wouldn’t argue that, maybe he would come with some better, more insightful response I cant anticipate. If so, im waiting eagerly (although not TOO eagerly) for it.

Part 3 CONCLUSSION

So.

After all that, what is there left to say? Well, if everything that I said checks out then there is hope to be had. My two objectives here were first to provide people who are not familiar with the subject with a starting point as well as with the basic arguments supporting the concept of AI risk, why its something to be taken seriously and not just high faluting wackos who read one too many sci fi stories. This was not meant to be thorough or deep, just a quick catch up with the bear minimum so that, if you are curious and want to go deeper into the subject, you know where to start. I personally recommend watching rob miles’ AI risk series on youtube as well as reading the series of books written by yudkowsky known as the sequences, which can be found on the website lesswrong. If you want other refutations of yudkowsky’s argument you can search for paul christiano or robin hanson, both very smart people who had very smart debates on the subject against eliezer.

The second purpose here was to provide an argument against Yudkowskys brand of doomerism both so that it can be accepted if proven right or properly refuted if proven wrong. Again, I really hope that its not proven wrong. It would really really suck if I end up being wrong about this. But, as a very smart person said once, what is true is already true, and knowing it doesn’t make it any worse. If the sky is blue I want to believe that the sky is blue, and if the sky is not blue then I don’t want to believe the sky is blue.

This has been a presentation by FIP industries, thanks for watching.

[skwpr]

A simple representation of images does not offer enough for proper memorization.

Study Faster And Retain More With This Quick Tip

I don’t know a single student who doesn’t want to study faster and retain more at the same time. I usually get a little nervous when trying to use quick fixes to make this happen, but today I have an actual quick tip to help you do just this!

Being a problem solver by nature, I dug into the situation and tried a few new approaches. Some worked, and some did not.

One of my best strategies was to sort the information into two categories:

facts to be memorized

concepts to be understood

You can use this strategy for any course. No matter the subject, there are things you have to memorize (terminology, dates, names, equations, etc) and concepts you need to master. Identifying this creates a clear, drama-free path, meaning you actually study faster and retain more because you are working on the right information in the right way.

How To Memorize Facts

I used to hate memorization work. It seemed tedious and hard and I sucked at it. Or so I thought!

Turns out I just didn’t have good skills. now I have some strategies in my toolbox and I love fact work. It’s easy and you can master it quickly. The key to mastering memorization is to:

Keep a list of what you need to memorize.

Schedule time every day to work on it. You must have the daily repetition if you want new facts to stick in your short-term memory. Start with just 10-min each day and you will see results.

Vary your memorization strategies. If you use only one strategy it becomes less effective.

How To Master Concepts

How you approach concept mastery is going to vary a lot based on the subject you are studying. There are two strategies to help with every subject:

1. Hands-On Practice

You will never fully master a concept through reading about it. You learn the concept through reading, but there is a big difference between learning something and mastering it.

The basics of hands-on practice for any subject are to come up with an applicable problem and solve it. Then come up with another problem and solve it too. Here are a few ideas, by subject, of how you might practice:

literature – Read a book or short story and write an analysis of whatever focus you are working on.

computer science – Come up with a problem and solve it with real code.

graphic design – Imagine a client asked you to design something, and create 3 different solutions for them.

math – Pick an equation, make up some starting numbers, and solve it.

science – Define a hypothesis, create a simple experiment, get in the lab and execute it!

2. Explain Or Teach It To Someone Else

Want to be certain you have mastered and fully understand a concept? Teach it to someone else.

As a teacher myself, I can tell you there have been plenty of concepts I thought I knew really well until I tried explaining them to someone else. You need a thorough understanding yourself before you can help someone else understand it.

Enlist the help of a friend or family member and try to explain a major concept in a few minutes. If you struggle, make note of the sticky spots. They are exactly what you need to work on next.

If you have no problem explaining it and your friend understood everything, mark it off your list and move on to the next concept.

I hope this quick strategy helps you dig out of confusion and take the right action in order to study faster and retain more.

Try It Yourself: 20-Minute Challenge

Grab your notes, a fresh piece of paper, and a timer.

Set the timer for 15 minutes.

Go through your notes and sort every piece of information into one of the two categories: concept or fact Challenge yourself to do this before the timer goes off. Go with your first instinct if you aren’t sure.

Spend the next 5 minutes and map out your next steps.

How and when will you work on the memorization each day?

How will you approach the first concept?

[kararisa]

marigold promises

— 21. equilibrium [☕︎ = 1.2k words]

You walk through the corridors of Lawrence Hall, your campus' science building, trying your best not to look too out of place while you make your way to the offices.

Ganyu had texted you a bit after lunch and told you that Professor Minci needed to meet with you at 5 pm. On the way to her office, as luck would have it, you manage to bump into Albedo, who tells you he’d been called to Prof Minci’s office as well. Somehow the topic of your conversation shifted to the recent quiz you had in physics.

“The answer to number fifteen was clearly ‘a’,” you retort.

“No, the answer is ‘c’,” Albedo hands you a piece of paper before stuffing his hands in the pockets of his cardigan. Upon closer inspection, you see that the paper has his calculations for each problem in the quiz.

You scan your eyes across his neat handwriting before finding his solution to number 15, “How the heck is your scratch paper this organized?”

He ignores your question and begins to explain how he got his answer, guiding you step by step until you get to the answer, “And there’s your answer, one hundred newtons.” – a smug smile appears on his stupid face – “So you, my dear Cupcake, got that question wrong.”

After looking at his solution for a second time, you realize that you had, unfortunately, made a mistake at some point during your computations, “No need to rub it in my face, Sunshine, but whatever. I concede.”

“You know, if you ever need a tutor-” you elbow him in the side before he finishes his sentence.

Before you knew it, the two of you finally reached the door to Prof Minci’s office. You knock on the door and open it slightly, peeking into your chemistry professor’s office.

“Good afternoon. You called for us?”

“Come in, you two,” she beckons you inside, setting aside a stack of papers. You head inside first with Albedo in tow, the two of you taking your seats in the two chairs placed in front of her desk.

Professor Minci laughs, “You cuties aren’t in trouble, don’t worry,” – you felt yourself relax at her words – “In fact, I’d say it’s the opposite; I’m honestly impressed with how you two performed.”

She shuffles through some papers before handing you and Albedo the tests you took for the qualifiers. Scanning through your answers, you internally curse yourself for the handful of mistakes you made. Ten mistakes in math, eight in science. Good, but not good enough.

“Your performance in the regionals qualifiers was exceptional, but that leaves us with a bit of a problem. While the two of you are our reps for science, you both got the same score for math,” Prof leans forward and gestures to the tests you’re holding. “We have some ways we can go about this, but we’re going to have to be quick since the organizers need names by tomorrow.”

She begins listing your options: (1) take a short test and they choose whoever scores the highest, (2) you decide amongst yourselves (you cross that one off the list – as if you and Albedo could ever agree on anything), or (3) they choose the third-highest scorer.

But Albedo starts before you can even open your mouth, “If it’s alright, I’d like for them to be the representative.”

What? 

“Hm, that was quick," Prof Minci looks at you. "Are you okay with that?”

“O-of course Prof. I’d be honored to represent our school,” you turn to look at Albedo when he fixes you with an icy look before looking back to Prof Minci.

When she finally dismisses you two, Albedo books it for the exit and you have to quicken your pace to catch up to him. The cold look in his eyes comes to the forefront of your mind and sends a chill down your spine. 

Rather than jump to conclusions, a cautious curiosity overtakes you. What in the world happened to cause him to react like that?

You grab his sleeve before he gets the chance to run off, "Not so fast, Sunshine," he turns around, his cold blue eyes boring into you. You glare at him in turn, waiting for a reaction. There were so many things you wanted to say to him but you have one objective: Get answers — that's all you want from him.

Nothing more, nothing less.

The distance between you two has never felt more palpable. 

“Why did you do it?”

Albedo looks unimpressed, "You're gonna have to specify what you mean by that, Cupcake." 

"You know damn well what I mean. Why did you step down?" 

“Don't push me for an answer,” he takes a step back as he averts his gaze, tugging his sleeve from your grasp. “It has always been you, after all. You’ve always been so much better than me anyway. If anything, you should be thanking me for not putting up a fight.” the sarcasm in his voice makes his statement all the more spiteful.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Does he think so lowly of you that he thinks you are incapable of outperforming him? Despite all of your arguments, you believed that the two of you had reached a common ground, but perhaps you were mistaken.

You know what he’s trying to do: he’s throwing away this opportunity just to spite you

“Do not think me lesser than you just because you placed higher than me last semester, Sunshine,” you say, each word seething with venom. “What use is your rank if you insist on not bothering to use your fucking head?"

Albedo takes one, two, three steps toward you until he’s right in front of you. A tense silence falls between the two of you, your only company found in the distant chatter of the science building. There is a word for moments like these, where you wait with bated breath as the seconds pass by.

The silence is broken when he finally leans in closer, “Please. At least I know my limits, unlike you. Are you so desperate to prove yourself that you constantly feel the need to compare yourself to me? It’s pathetic, Cupcake.”

You take a step back at what he said. You won’t lie, that shit stings, but you mask your hurt with the most intense glare you can muster. Those five long years we’ve spent apart really have changed us – for better and for worse.

If he regrets his words, he doesn’t show it. His bitterness lingers in the air as you stand there and watch him walk away.

You tuck away all the hurt you felt when he looked you in the eye and tipped the fragile equilibrium the two of you tried so desperately to maintain. What use were these shallow niceties when you can never seem to reach any semblance of an agreement with him?

All you have left is the rage that boils within you, red and raw. Anger means you’re still fighting. Anger means you haven’t given up.

And you’ve always been a fighter, even when you were kids.

— previous || masterlist || next

summary: it was evident that you and albedo have changed in the five years you’ve spent apart, but you know better than to view him through the lens of nostalgia. with one goal on your mind – graduate valedictorian – who better to stand in your way than the studious, intelligent, ice-cold albedo? one thing’s for sure: he’s going down.

author's notes:

im sorry 🥹

featured song: Afraid by The Neighbourhood

taglist (i):

@fvkkyu @mintreen @edreee @khyllynnn @xxmirrorballxx @aiikalvr @yaefics @unsterblich-prinz @aequha @alch3myy @lovely-althxa @nei-rinn @cridtiins @zestrya @skylions-den @moriiartt @theother-victoria @sunsethw4 @dazaisfavgf @serossidechick @koiir @lazy-sanns @sweetbunnybunbun @dee-zbignuts @redactedhimbo @yurstepm0m @fanfictwarrior @fuyaa @saoiirsee @ireallylikehamsters @elfxiao @whosxangel @kitsuvil @orionicchaos @blurr3db3rry @semi-orangeapple @kunikuzushiit @atlatcaheart @wrrapedroundmyfingerlikearing @scarafrisbee @lost-wicked-artist @kairxse @elysiasbae @eurekatanya @empathum @tatiratty @zannivrs @mikismusings @sunoo-bby @astolary

— the taglist is currently open! if you’d like to be added feel free to reply or send in an ask! – if your blog isn't highlighted it means i can't tag you.

[canmom]

rn attempts to use AI in anime have mostly been generating backgrounds in a short film by Wit, and the results were pretty awful. garbage in garbage out though. the question is whether the tech can be made useful - keeping interesting artistic decisions in the hands of humans and automating the tedious parts, and giving enough artistic control to achieve a coherent direction and clean up the jank.

for example, if someone figured out how to make a really good AI inbetweener, with consistent volumes and artist control over spacing, that would be huge. inbetweening is the part of 2D animation that nobody especially wants to do if they can help it; it's relatively mindless application of principle, artistic decisions are limited (I recall Felix Colgrave saying something very witty to this effect but I don't have it to hand). but it's also really important to do well - a huge part of KyoAni's magic recipe is valuing inbetweeners and treating it as a respectable permanent position instead of a training position. good inbetweening means good movement. but everywhere outside KyoAni, it mostly gets outsourced to the bottom of the chain, mainly internationally to South Korea and the Philippines. in some anime studios it's been explicitly treated as a training position and they charge for the use of a desk if you take too long to graduate to a key animator.

some studios like Science Saru have been using vector animation in Flash to enable automated inbetweening. the results have a very distinct look - they got a lot better at it over time but it can feel quite uncanny. Blender Grease Pencil, which is also vector software, also gives you automated inbetweening, though it's rather fiddly to set up since it requires the two drawings to have the same stroke count and order, so it's best used if you've sculpted the lines rather than redrawn them.

however, most animators prefer to work in raster rather than vector, which is harder to inbetween automatically.

AI video interpolation tools also exist, though they draw a lot of ire from animators who see those '60fps anime' videos which completely shit all over the timing and spacing and ruin the feeling and weight of the animation, lack any understanding of animating on 2s/3s/4s in the source, and often create ugly incomprehensible mushy inbetweens which only work at all because they're on screen so briefly.

a better approach would be to create inbetweens earlier in the pipeline when the drawings are clean and the AI doesn't have to try to replicate compositing and photography. in theory this is a well posed problem for training a neural network, you could give it lots of examples of key drawing input and inbetween output. probably you'd need some way to inform the AI about matching features of the drawing, the way that key animators will often put a number on each lock of hair to help the inbetweener keep track of which way it's going. you'd also need a way to communicate arcs and spacing. but that all sounds pretty solvable.

this would not be good news for job security at outsourcing studios, obviously - these aren't particularly good jobs with poor pay and extreme hours, but they do keep a bunch of people housed and fed, people who are essential to anime yet already treated as disposable footnotes by the industry. it also would be another nail in the coffin of inbetweening's traditional role as a school of animation drawing skills for future key animators. on the other hand, it would be incredible news for bedroom animators, allowing much larger and more ambitious independent traditional animation - as long as the cheap compute still exists. hard to say how things would fall in the long run. ultimately the only solution is to break copies-of-art as a commodity and find another way to divert a proportion of the social surplus to artistic expression.

i feel like this kind of tool will exist sooner or later. not looking forward to the discourse bomb when the first real AI-assisted anime drops lmao

[moonshine-nightlight]

Snapped - Part 3

Mech’s not sure why the aftermath of this mission is hitting him so hard, but he’s doing his best to calm down when Gwen’s presence shatters his control. Now it’s a count down to see if he can figure out how to put a stop to the instincts and hormones that are running wild inside him—before he does something they’ll both regret.

Science fiction, alien romance, male alien x female human

Story Status: COMPLETE

AO3: Snapped Chapter 3

[Part 1] [Part 2] Part 3 [Part 4 - NSFW]

“Right now,” Mech begins, trying to think of the best way to explain this without giving anything too revealing away. It doesn’t help that his mind and instincts want to tell her, his trust in her overriding his knowing that she doesn’t want him in that way. “My brain has decided to flood my bloodstream with hormones to an alarming degree, which are in turn, affecting my thought process and making my brain produce even more chemicals in response.”

Gwen nods and Mech tries to think on how to continue his explanation instead of how her hair would feel, slipping through his fingers as he–. “I need to either reverse, neutralize, or however I can stop more reactions from happening. Then I need to see if I can flush any of these hormones out of my system. While the sedative is helping for now, we’ve got a time limit before I won’t be able to think again. In that case, you’ll need to lock me in my quarters and hope I can just wait it out.”

“Sounds like we should work now while we can,” Gwen says, but he watches her head over to one of the ship’s computers and start pulling up the security for unused cabins. Smart girl. Mech purposely looks away from what she’s doing and back to cycling through possible serums. If they get to that final option, he wants locking him up to succeed even if his mind has forgotten why it needs to. Mech appreciates her not drawing attention to this option or arguing with him. It’s in everyone’s best interests that, if he can’t find a solution, he’s locked up where he can’t get to her. Gwen continues, “What was that, um—you called it a sedative, right? What was that supposed to do?”

“It was supposed to slow down the release of additional hormones and counteract some that had already been released,” Mech replies, trying to stay focused on the content of her words and not how pleasing he finds her voice. Not being able to see her helps, but he can still sense her heat, her scent swirling through the closed room with ease. He pulls up the sendative’s formula and the sample of blood he fed the system, trying to see if there are any obvious reasons it’s failing. 

“How well is that working?” Gwen asks, but she saw his reaction, his lapse in control, earlier. She must know the answer already.

“Not well at all,” he confirms. He can see now it’s not that the sedative isn’t working. It’s outnumbered and overwhelmed. His blood has a truly staggering amount of hormones, still being released in waves. The sedative has already bonded with as much as it can. “I thought it would have a more significant impact, but it could only do so much and it’s already used up, so to speak.” He would have to take a lot more for an additional effect. That would likely lead to blocking the release of necessary chemicals as well as an overabundance of the compound the bonding process produces. “If I take enough to handle the problem, it’ll poison me.”

“Ok-ay, yeah, no—don’t want that,” Gwen replies, turning her back on the screen she’d been using—so hopefully whatever room she set up to quarantine him is prepared now. That sends some ripples of relief through him—he’s not sure how he’ll able to weather the hormones one his own, but at least she’ll be safe. Hopefully, she’ll stop looking so concerned once he’s locked away. Although, when had he turned back around to look at her? 

“So what’s the next move?” Gwen asks, interrupting his thoughts. She nibbles on her lower lip as she thinks and he wants to replace her teeth and tongue with his own. Her lips must be so soft and– “You gave your computer something to analyze, right? What did it say?”

“The program identified my condition,” Mech says, forcing his eyes away from tracing her collarbones, all the lovely skin her pretty dress is still leaving on display, to the screen in question. He pulls the case studies back up. “It’s happened before, but not often and under different circumstances.”

“Like what?” Gwen asks, her voice more curious than concerned, but another glance he can’t help her reveals she’s only trying to act that way. She always starts messing with her hair when she’s worried. The strands twirl around her finger and he wants to see them haloing her head as she lies underneath him, moving as he–

“Two people at once,” Mech manages as he stares furiously at the screen. Recriminations sound through his head just loud enough to drown out any imaginings of what she might sound like as he claimed her as his mate. He begins running through some of the medications they tried on these individuals. They’d all been on his home planet when the imbalance seized them. Does he even have all of these materials? Their weathering of their systems was primarily done with supportive care as they gave into the insistence of their hormones. Mating for days in some cases until the hormone surge was satisfied. His voice is rough once more as he continues, “So they were able to help each other.”

“But there’s just you,” Gwen realizes, worry and sympathy in her voice. She’s such a compassionate person. Surely she would understand his predicament, if he just explained.  Maybe she would be willing to help him. She wouldn’t want him to suff–no, Mech cuts off his traitorous thoughts, knowing he would hate himself if he awoke from the surge to learn she’d mated with him out of pity or worse, that he’d tricked himself into hearing what he wanted to hear. “And you said I was only sort of helping.”

Mech bites back the words to explain in graphic detail exactly what she’s doing to him. Her presence remains a double-edged sword—a distracting one that is as liable to defend him as it is to cut him. “Right.”

“Sorry,” she says and her voice is so falsely casual he has to turn around. He sees her shrug and give an attempt at a smile. “Only human I’m afraid. Still, better than nothing, yeah?” She looks like he might blame her for being human, like she feels bad she can’t do more when it's a miracle she’s being as tolerant of this, this disgraceful lapse in control on his part.

“Of course.” Mech can’t have her thinking any of this is her fault. He reaches out to comfort her, to reassure her that she’s not failing at anything, that there’s nothing for her to feel guilty for, before he remembers why that would be a mistake. His arm falls back to his side, useless. Instead he tries to meet her eyes, needing her to understand. “I’m very grateful you’re here, Gwen.”

Her eyes measure his words before her smile turns far more genuine and it’s like the first drops of rain after a drought, refreshing and revitalizing. He can see the individual flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the delicate curls that frame her face, the red of her lips.

A beep draws his attention away, causes him to realize he’d stepped closer to her without even noticing.

“Okay, it’s generated a list of formulations we can create here with the supplies on hand,” Mech says, forcing his mind into the science as deeply as he can. Trying to lose himself in the problem rather than in Gwen. 

The news is as sobering as it can be. By virtue of the previous cases affecting couples, most of the treatments heavily relied on their mating. Significantly, they require complimentary pheromones as a key ingredient to lessen the intensity of the effects. Dosing the affected individuals with each other hormones in addition to those introduced via actual mating, tricking the hormones into thinking they already had enough of what they craved. Judging by the one couple who surged at the same time, but hours away from each, that was also how the duration was shortened. 

Human hormones of his “mate”, if he were in close enough prolonged contact, would likely help, but they could not be extracted from the venom for extra dosing because humans didn’t have any venom. And it would need to be human sexual pheromones, more concentrated than just the typical riotous blend they generated in abundance. So even that solution is heavily reliant on mating with Gwen, which is the one thing he definitely cannot do. 

He furiously types updated parameters into the system, ruthlessly screening out all suggested formulations that required the use of complimentary mate hormones. He can see, out of the corner of his eyes, that Gwen has drifted closer, clearly attempting to understand what the results might be since he’s stopped explaining. 

Mech can’t let her get any closer. “Most of these require supplies we don’t have or chemicals from the other who’s afflicted. I’m trying to narrow it down to a list of solutions I can actually make.” She still takes another distracted and curious step closer. He can’t even make his mouth form the words to tell her to stay back because he wants her closer. Wants to feel the heat she gives off against his skin, he wants to take in her scent directly from the source, lick the taste of her and—

“Can you get that other case of materials? I think it’s just back up of what’s here, but maybe there’s something else in there I forgot about,” he asks and Gwen brightens at the chance to help.

“Sure thing,” she replies and heads over to the other side of the room.

Mech turns his attention back to calculating which of these proposed solutions has the most promise and is the most efficient use of the compounds on hand.

He actually is able to refocus on the problem. He’s starting to hope that maybe the sedative just needed more time to kick or that he can create a more targetted one that won’t have too many negative side-effects. He doesn’t even notice when Gwen comes over, a cabinet or two down from him, with the case he asked for. She opens it and slides next to the other. It's only then that he looks at her again. He forces his eyes to stay away from her, forces them to stay focused on the carefully labeled packages and plants from his home in the case.

Just as he thought, there’s really only one or two that are different from the primary case—minor seasonal fluctuation in when they were assembled. Still, he dutifully plugs those new compounds into the system and waits to see if that alters the results.

The distant sound of the air filter system kicking on almost doesn’t rate notice either until it blows a strong stream of Gwen’s scent right into his senses. His nostrils flare and so do his spines, his claws extending into the wood of the countertop instantly.

“Mech!”

He’s already flung himself back towards the door, eyes lit up as he tries to get out of that tempting, delicious airflow. “Turn it off!” he hisses, closing his eyes as he anchors himself in place. Gwen doesn’t answer, but he can hear her pushing the cart aside to get to the control panel on the wall.

Despite his best effort, the airflow has re-circulated Gwen’s scent thoroughly throughout the medbay. He feels the pull to where he can sense she is. Humans have such strong pheromones by nature that Gwen’s typical scent is more than enough to convince his mind in this state that she’s ready for mating. His mind is spinning as he digs his claws into the wall as he strains to hold onto the knowledge that he can’t go to her.

His senses are in such an aware state that the sudden rush of cool air over his head feels more like a faucet of cold water. He lets out a surprised noise, that was not a yelp, and blinks up to see the vent over the door wide open. Tilting his head back down, he sees Gwen still at the controls, clearly running some sort of air purification program, pulling the air from her side out of the room and pushing out fresh, sanitized air from his side. 

Mech had forgotten that of course the medbay was equipped with more than the ship’s typical air filtration system. While obviously they couldn’t run a full air sanitation program with two living people still in the room, this refresh is still very helpful. Gwen’s eyes meet his own and he’s surprised by how much worry he can see in them. He thinks his eyes are still glowing, but he’s careful to relax his spines, breathing deep of the fresh air and withdrawing his claws from the wall. “Thank you,” he says, mind actually fixed on the gratitude he feels for the clear head and only minorly on how lovely her hair looks as artificial wind tugs at it.

Gwen gives him a shaky smile and wisely keeps the program running, staying where she is on the other side of the room. “Glad I still knew how to do that. Never thought I’d have any reason to be grateful for that shipment of squezares for bursting.”

Mech shudders in memory of the smell that had spread throughout the ship what that particular cargo had been damaged. “Not sure it was worth it.” Gwen’s smile gets more solid at the joke and Mech finally feels something like solid ground under his feet. He hadn’t noticed how much her scent was affecting him. Staying as close to the fresh air vent as he can, Mech reaches over and manages to pull the diagnostic screen to him. But before he can look at the results it’s populated, Gwen speaks up again.

“I know you said that even if I’m not a graviel, I’m better than nothing,” she says, looking hesitant and frustrated and guilty for no reason Mech can think of, “but are you sure that’s true?” Gwen meets his eyes and he hates how desperate she looks all of a sudden. His reaction to her increased scent must have really worried her. The mental clarity the fresh air has brought him is overwhelmed by his innate desire to comfort her. He takes a step closer on instinct, needing to sooth her anyway he can. She holds up her hand, this time telling him to stay back and it cuts far deeper than he knows it should. Because she’s right. He should stay away if he’s the reason she looks this distraught, the reason they're in this whole mess. “Because I still don’t understand what’s happening to you and it seems like I’m making things worse. Every time it’s gotten worse has been my fault.”

“Not your fault,” he insists. “I promise it’s my fault. I keep forgetting or trying to—” He cuts himself off before he can say “claim you as my mate”. Between his own mind and the way, no matter what filters he puts on it, the system keeps insisting he do so as well the thought is always on the tip of his tongue. “Trying to act as though you’re affected too, like the other cases.”

“Are you sure there isn’t more I can do?” Gwen pleads. “You’re holding yourself back and it's hurting you. I’m not gonna break or get mad at you or whatever. It’s not as though your instincts want to fight me or something, is it?”

“No, not…” Mech swallows down venom and forces himself give an answer, any answer to get her to back away from this line of questioning. Even now he can feel himself wavering. Would it really be so bad to tell her the truth? What if she wants—No. He can’t let himself think such things. But he can’t have her thinking he wants to hurt her either. Not that he seems able to help it, going by the look on her face. All he can do is shake his head and hope she can hear the truth in his voice, “Nothing like that.”

“Mech…” 

Gwen gives him a look he can’t interpret, only that her skepticism is clear to him. But at what he has no idea and with all his hormones raging it's too easy for that confusion and fear to meld into frustration. “It’s very hard to think, alright?” he snaps. “It’s heard to hear, in a sense, anything that isn’t what my body is telling me.” He needs her to understand what’s at stake. “If I stop being able to hear you…”

“But if you don’t want to hurt—” Gwen tries to argue, a stubborn look on her face. If only she understood what she was pushing for and how much he wants to take her up on that offer, damn the consequences.

But he can’t. He knows the risks, knows the consequences. Even now, his instincts also want to keep her safe and happy, even as they want to claim her. Mech’s pretty sure that’s the only reason he’s as lucid as he is. That he’s resisting as well as he is.

“Accidents happen, Gwen,” he replies, frustrated at his inability to articulate the danger to her without giving himself away. “I’m stronger than you, physically. I could hurt you. And I didn’t just mean literally hear you. I meant interpret any communication, including physical movement, as signs of possible distress. I’m essentially drunk. People do all sorts of dangerous and potentially harmful things, when out of their mind, even if they don’t intend to. Even if they wouldn’t under normal circumstances.”

“Okay, okay,” Gwen puts her hands up. “I get it. I just think that if chemistry isn’t working—which it really doesn’t seem like it is—that you should just stop beating around the bush and tell me what your instincts want.” She looks over at him earnestly. “I don’t know shit about your biology or chemistry, but maybe I could help you figure out another way to handle everything. Something practical instead of scientific. I feel like I’m trying to help with one hand tied behind my back.”

“Gwen,” he runs a hand through his hair in frustration. 

Gwen glares back at him, the frustration in every line of her body mirroring his own. “Just tell me!”

“Fine! You really want to know? My instincts,” he lets the words out through gritted teeth. He no longer has the strength to keep them in any longer. All his focus has to be on not acting on them. “They want you. They want me to claim you,” he chances a look at her face, “Make you mine. My mate.”

“Oh!” Her eyes go very wide before they dart away from Mech’s, likely embarrassed for him. And herself. And this whole cursed situation. “I’m sorry. I know you must…” She bites her lip which Mech really wishes she wouldn’t. “Sorry. How can I stop…” She makes a vague gesture at herself.

“You can’t,” he replies bluntly. “You need to be here so I don’t think you’re in danger or with rivals, but you can’t touch me or I might not be able to hold myself back, not quickly enough.” He swallows, finally articulating his greatest fear which feels more real now that she knows. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Gwen’s whole expression softens. “You would never hurt me.”

“Wouldn’t mean to,” he allows, flicking his eyes back to the screen, but all the words are out of focus.

“Wouldn’t,” she replies stubbornly, jutting her chin out. To his relief she doesn’t keep pushing it, allowing the sound of the vents working to fill the room as he finally is able to read the screen. 

She can’t seem to keep silent long. “Do you know why your instincts picked me?” she asks tentatively. “Or why now? If we knew that, maybe we could reverse it or fix it.”

“Don’t know why now—makes no sense. Must just…” Mech shakes his head. Probably just a matter of time. “Here,” he pulls up a fieldguide and throws it over to the screen near her. “Find that.” He points to a particular plant that’s in a seasonal variety only in the second case while he pulls the original main case over to him with his tail. He can’t risk going any closer to her than he already is for the moment. Even doing it that way, he knows it's only shame that she knows his weakness that’s keeping his tail from reaching out to her. 

Mech can’t dwell on what he reveals and the only good consequence is that he’s embarrassed enough, and afraid enough of how this might affect their relationship going forward, that it's actually helping to quell the hormones in his blood. Still, he knows he can’t lose focus and so he throws himself into creating the most promising looking medication. It’s untested, but it should compensate for the lack of an actual graviel mate to wait through the reaction with. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to get him into the secure room Gwen’s prepared. Maybe by the time this chemical snap has blown over, Gwen will have not forgotten, but be willing to pretend he never said anything.

He crosses from one wall to the other on his side, feeding the machine there the compounds he’s prepared. “Can you add the amount on the screen?” he asks, voice gruff and awkward. “Then close the lid, that’s the last ingredient.”

“Sure,” Gwen says. He hates and is grateful for how normal she sounds, like he hasn’t just disrupted the perfectly calibrated balance their friendship had managed to reach.

He doesn’t dare look up, waits for the sound of the lid closing and of her footsteps as she crosses back to her side. Even that short trip closer resulted in some of her scent blown his way and she smells like temptation distilled down to its truest form.

He sets the machine running and carefully breathes shallowly until the vents have once more blown away her enticing scent. 

“Mech, really, why me?” Gwen asks, interrupting the quiet. She sounds cautious but unwilling to leave well enough alone. He almost can’t handle that question. “Why would—”

“Of course, it’s you!” the words burst from him without thought, without permission. He’s already bared more of himself than he’d prefer, but this question is the worst because how can she even ask it. “Who else could it be? There’s no one—” He shakes his head and glares at her, unable to help himself. “There’s only you. Always you.”

Her eyes are wide as she looks at him, genuine shock evident. “Mech…”

[Part 4 - NSFW]

[thatscarletflycatcher]

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[kochivamarketing]

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[carolunduke-04]

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[k-evans-reads]

Playing With Fire

Chapter 20

Summary: After a change of heart nearly ten years into her career as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse, Ellie Maxwell has moved back home and returned to her old job at the local bakery, where the regulars are the firefighters from down the street. When sparks begin to fly between Ellie and the guarded, closed-off Chris, will anything come of it?

Pairing: Firefighter!Chris Evans X OFC Elizabeth “Ellie” Maxwell

Word Count: 4,263

By: @k-evans-writes and @ourfinest-hour

We do NOT give permission for our works to be reuploaded, translated, or reposted on any other site. Our work is our own.

Warnings: None.

Previous | Main Masterlist | Playing With Fire Masterlist

The refrigerator rattled as Ellie shut it with her hip, a frown on her lips as she carried the glasses of wine over to the butcher block island. Chris could barely pay any attention to her expression as he read the Google page that took up half the screen on his computer, the other half being occupied with a calendar for the rapidly-approaching summer months. 

Ellie put the glasses down before she wrapped her arms around Chris’ broad shoulders, pressing a soft kiss to his bearded cheek to help relieve the tension in his body. She knew how much Ashlee’s impending move was weighing on him and dealing with the logistics of it didn’t help at all. 

“What about that horseback riding camp?” Ellie quietly asked as she rubbed a hand over his shoulder, reminding him of the camp at a local equestrian center. 

“I don’t know if Hazel being in charge of an animal that big is a good idea. The carnage she causes with a mini shopping cart is bad enough,” he muttered with upturned lips as he made himself chuckle. His fingers quickly began scrolling again before he sat upright some more, “Oh here’s an art camp, I bet she’d like that.” 

Ellie nodded, reaching onto the plate in front of her for her slice of pizza. “There’s also that science camp through the school I’ve heard is fun,” she suggested, gently knocking her shoulder against Chris’ as she munched on their dinner.

“These camps are going to be really good for her but I still don’t know what I’m going to do on my days working,” Chris sighed, shooting her a sideways grimace as he double-checked the calendar before he began to register Hazel for the art camp. “I just didn’t expect Ashlee to be gone this soon.” 

“Have you talked to your mom?” 

He paused, sighing quietly before he nodded. It was something he’d put a lot of thought into given the new situation, and while he was relieved Hazel wouldn’t be leaving him, it didn’t mean it wasn’t stressful to figure out. “Yeah and she’s more than happy to have Hazel on Thursdays and Saturdays, but she works Fridays and wouldn’t be able to pick Hazel up on time from any of these camps. Besides, I don’t really feel comfortable having her do that much… it’s not her responsibility,” he told Ellie, trailing off at the end as he shrugged.

She stayed quiet for several moments, long enough that Chris’ curiosity was piqued. Once he finished entering her medical history, he turned to give Ellie a look. “I was thinking about that too…” She finally replied, a nervous look on her face. 

Chris nodded, reassuring her, “I think I have an idea though.” 

“I do too,” Ellie responded, pausing as she raised a brow at him. “But what’s yours?” 

“I think the best solution is to look at hiring a nanny,” Chris sighed and explained, his fingers tapping against the wooden counter. “That way the responsibility wouldn’t fall on my mom and they could have her Friday and Saturday until I’m off. It’s not that unusual and I have the guest room too.” 

Ellie was quiet as she listened to his words, nodding carefully before she tentatively pointed out, “But is bringing a new person into Hazel’s life while all of this is happening a good idea?” 

“I know, but I don’t know what else to do,” he sighed. “Ash already offered to pay more in child support because of the new arrangement, so it’d probably cover the cost.”

Ellie turned as she listened to him, leaning her side against the fabric bar stool and looking at him.“You could ask me about my idea… it’s a pretty good one…” she told him with a smirk, her hand reaching out to loosely grasp his own. 

Chris huffed out a laugh, shaking his head and asking, “Alright smarty pants, what’s your genius idea?” 

“I know someone who loves Hazel, owns her own business, and would be able to adjust her schedule to be able to pick up Hazel from camps on Friday and have her until you’re done with work on Saturday,” she smiled as she squeezed his hand.

He dropped his head and sighed, closing his eyes as he realized what she was offering. “Ellie-” 

“No, hear me out for a minute,” Ellie interrupted him firmly. “Chris, none of this is going to be easy for Hazie. She needs some consistency and I could pick her up and even take her to your house so she'll have all her toys and be in her house. I love Hazel and would adore getting to spend more time with her.” 

His lower lip jutted out and his jaw clenched as he listened to her words, unable to wrap his head around the generous offer. It was nothing short of over the top kindness, but that was everything Ellie was, even to strangers. But for him and Hazel? He couldn’t help but think they didn’t warrant this shift, this extra responsibility added to her plate, just to ease some stress off of his shoulders. “I just can’t have you do that much,” he whispered to her, thoughts echoing through his mind as the sound of Dodger’s light snoring carried into the kitchen from the living room. 

She laughed, and the genuine smile that appeared on her face never failed to warm him from the inside out. “Well if you’re really planning on marrying me then you’re going to have to get used to relying on me a little more,” she retorted playfully. 

“It’s not that I wouldn’t love for you and Hazel to be together, I just don’t feel like I can ask you to do that, Elles. Especially not when you’ve just started your own business,” he attempted to explain as he watched her and grasped her hand tighter. 

“Well with all these camps she’s in, I’d be able to work most of the day on Fridays anyway, and then on Saturdays, Brooke has it covered,” Ellie assured him, and she smiled before she dropped his hand for a moment to drink her wine, but before he barely realized it, her hand was back in his. “Honey, I want to do this.” 

“...Are you sure?” He finally asked her, his voice soft and unsure. 

“Completely.” 

“I can’t tell you what a load that takes off my mind knowing Hazel will be with you,” Chris admitted with a smile. “Besides, I kind of like seeing my girls together.” 

“Well I might not be quite as cute as your other girl but I also don’t bruise your heels with a shopping cart,” Ellie grinned, and Chris couldn’t help but burst into laughter at that. Once their laughter stopped and he made a move back to look at his computer – which was still open on the registration – Ellie’s voice interrupted him as she asked, “So when are you going to tell Hazel?” 

“Ashlee and I are telling her tomorrow morning,” Chris murmured, huffing out a sigh. “God, I’m dreading that.” 

“Let’s not borrow tomorrow’s troubles. You’ll handle it in the morning with Ashlee,” Ellie reassured him, her hand moving to travel up and down his back comfortingly. “But how about you tell me all the camps Hazel’s in so I can do my schedule and start planning all the fun things I’m going to do with her.” 

Chris watched her with thinly-veiled near-awe, and he shook his head as he playfully asked, “Why do I have a feeling I’m about to be replaced as Hazel’s favorite?” 

“Who are we kidding, neither of us can compete with Dodger,” Ellie retorted, and it was then that Chris realized how well she not only knew him – but how well she knew Hazel as well – only after a short time in their lives, and it warmed his heart to know that what they already had between them was only going to continue to grow. 

Chris rinsed his hand off in the sink, before he dropped the peanut butter and jelly covered knife into the dishwasher, then placed the sandwich and cut up strawberries on one of Hazel’s purple plates. He passed by the living room – where Scott was watching a Red Sox game – before he reached the small playroom to tell Hazel lunch was ready. But his brows furrowed as he looked over the room, finding his curly-haired daughter sitting at her mini-table, furiously coloring away in a coloring book. “Hey Hazelnut, I thought you were supposed to pick up your toys?” He asked her pointedly, leaning his hip against the open archway as he looked over the disaster of a room. 

Her tiny shoulders quickly shrugged, her voice unhappy as she simply replied, “I don’t wanna.” 

“I told you to pick them up before lunch and then that it was naptime,” he reminded her. He’d been cognizant of the fact that Hazel had woken up earlier than normal and had already had an emotional morning, and while that was already enough for him to attempt a nap, he was desperately looking forward to a break to decompress from the day. 

But she clearly had other plans as she looked up at him with a deep frown on her little face, shouting, “No!” 

“Hazel June, pick them up now. No arguments,” Chris ordered, and he pushed himself off of the wooden archway to carefully cross the room, but not before he could step on a Lego. He quickly bit back the several curse words he wanted to say before he pulled the markers and coloring book away from Hazel and pointed at the mess behind her. 

“I don’t want to take a nap!” She insisted as she pushed the messy strands of hair out of her face, and every word from her mouth was only increasing the pounding headache that had started for Chris. 

“Hazel Evans this is not a discussion,” he told her, his voice low and stern as he took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose.

She let out a shuddering breath as she cried, “I want Ellie!” 

He shook his head, gently lifting her from the seat and standing her up, nudging her in the direction of her toys as he ordered, “Not until you pick up your toys.” 

“I just want my Ellie!” The little girl pleaded again, her voice wavering as furious tears fell from her eyes.

“Hazel, I already told you to pick up these toys!” Chris finally snapped, frustrated at the situation, at Hazel’s inactions, at the stupid waves of pain in his foot, and even at the damn occasionally-flickering lightbulb overhead, the very one he’d been meaning to change for weeks.

As Hazel’s cries grew louder and Chris’ mind continued to scream at him to do something, his brother stepped into the room, his voice a much-needed calming force as he said, “Hey, relax for a minute.” 

“Scott, I don’t need you to tell me what to do,” Chris replied harshly, jerking his arm away as Scott touched it lightly. He instantly regretted the action when he saw the way Hazel’s eyes widened and her breath caught, her eyes bouncing between her father and uncle. 

“Bro, remember what happened this morning, okay?” Scott whispered under his breath, his face serious as Chris met his eyes. “Everyone’s emotional… just go take Dodger out and breathe. I’ll handle this.” 

He nodded, swallowing as embarrassment suddenly flooded his system. He looked at Hazel in shame, seeing the way her body wracked with tears. As Scott once again whispered “I got this,” to Chris, he leaned down, pressing a long kiss to his daughter’s forehead and squeezing her quickly before he turned, leaving the room. 

Chris whistled for Dodger, meeting the always-happy pooch in the mudroom as he clipped his leash to Dodger’s red collar, and he barely remembered to grab his phone from the kitchen before he hastily left the house. He moved quickly down the street, frantic to put some distance between himself and Hazel as he processed what’d just happened, how he blew up over nothing, and took out his frustration with the situation around them on his young, innocent daughter.

Before he could spiral further, Chris reached into his pocket for his phone. He paused as he stared at his phone background, at the large smile that filled Hazel’s face as she held an ice cream cone in her hand and sat on the curb outside their local ice cream stand. Feeling as though his tail was between his legs, he called the one person who’d hold no judgment, listening as the call rang until she answered. “Hey Elles,” he murmured, his voice quiet and sad. “You busy?” 

“No I’m just at home,” he heard her reply, a rustling in the background. “I’ve been thinking about you guys all day. How did everything go this morning?” 

“I think we ruined Hazel’s life,” he told her drily, a frown on his face as he watched Dodger sniff a bush. “And I’m not joking.” 

Ellie’s sharp intake of breath carried through the call, her voice sad as she sympathetically answered, “Oh honey, that’s not true.” 

“Ellie, she was so upset. At first she just didn’t seem to understand and then she cried, but then Hazel just wouldn’t say anything,” he recalled, unable to get the image of Hazel’s blank stare and then her sobs out of his mind, or the way she clung to him as he carried her back to their car when they left the park. 

“Well she’s processing it, give her time,” Ellie suggested, her voice kind and even. “Think of how hard it was for you to process.” 

But Chris shook his head, shooting a tight smile as they passed a neighbor on their walk. “She hates me, Elles,” he repeated. 

“You know she adores you,” Ellie reassured him, but Chris couldn’t help but think those days of Hazel’s unending love were behind them. 

“I just chewed her out for not picking up her fuckin’ toys… I chewed her out an hour after she found out her mother is moving. What kind of a fuckin’ father am I?” He asked incredulously, turning to begin walking back towards his home. 

Ellie was quiet for several beats and he distracted himself by watching Dodger stare at a bird, but he nervously tapped his fingers against his legs as he waited for Ellie’s response. “Beating yourself up isn’t going to help anything, honey,” she finally began tentatively, but he knew she was trying to show her sympathy. 

“You should have seen the look on her face, Ellie. She was so upset and then just cried for you,” he confessed, his heart breaking at the memory. 

Ellie was silent for another beat, her voice confused when she finally asked, “For me?” 

“She just said she wanted you,” he repeated, unable to not hear Hazel’s pleading voice in his mind. 

He heard Ellie hastily stand, something – probably a book – thumping to the floor, forgotten in her rush. “I’m coming right now,” she told him as she moved, the call switching to speaker as she quickly gathered her things.

“Elles, I love that she wants you but why doesn’t she want me? I want to help her and all I do is hurt her,” he asked her, insecurity filling him as his fears about his and Hazel’s relationship only grew. 

“Christopher Evans, stop right now and listen to me,” Ellie told him firmly, pausing until Chris quieted down. “Hazel adores you to no end but today was a shitty day for all of you. I think you both just need some comfort and I’ll be there in less than ten minutes so just hold out until then, okay?” 

He nodded his head, not even realizing for a long moment that she couldn’t see it and eventually spit out a worried, “Okay,” before they hung up. Chris could feel the deep regret and anxiety flowing through his body, hating how all of this hurt the little girl that he loved more than anything in the world. He kept his head down, just staring at the pavement as he kept walking Dodger, letting the sweet pooch stretch his legs but all too soon he was back right where he started and walked into the house where Hazel’s loud, exhausted wails could still be heard. 

Chris let Dodger off his leash before pulling off his shoes, quietly walking into the living room where Scott sat with Hazel on the floor, rubbing her back while she loudly cried. He saw the look of pure distress on Scott’s face before he noted to his brother, “Sounds like it’s not going too well in here.” 

His brother frowned, glancing towards him before focusing on Hazel and moving her hair from in front of her face. “I’m trying but nothing is working,” he finally admitted to him. 

“Hazel, honey I’m so sorry I got upset earlier. Can you forgive me?” Chris’s voice was soft as he sat down on the floor in front of her, his heart practically aching as he heard her hiccup interrupting the steady flow of tears down her cheeks as she nodded her little head. He couldn’t stand it any longer and just held his hands out for her, telling her, “C’mere Basil.” 

She scooted closer to him, letting Chris lift her into his lap and holding her tight against his chest. He couldn’t imagine all the emotions flowing through Hazel right now, knowing just how upset and shocked he had been when he found out about Ashlee’s move but at least he had an adult brain that could process it. He hated hearing the deep wails muffled against his chest as she cried, making Chris’ own tears start to flow down his cheeks while Scott reached over to squeeze his shoulder, doing what he could to comfort them. 

Although Hazel’s tears didn’t stop, he could feel her body relaxing a little bit in his embrace and it made him feel as if he was doing at least one thing right. He wanted to be that place of comfort for her, but in this moment he felt like he needed his own bit of comfort and calm, which soon came in the form of a compassionate blonde who came racing into his home only moments later.

He watched her face drop as she looked at them both crying in the middle of the living room but Ellie wasted no time dropping to her knees and brought an arm around Chris’ broad shoulders while she pressed a kiss to his cheek. Seeing that they’d want a moment, Scott quietly stood and excused himself to the kitchen, leaving the three alone in the living room that was only filled with the sound of Hazel’s loud cries. 

Chris tilted his head, giving Ellie a grateful half-smile before he focused his attention back on Hazel. “Basil, look who’s here,” he murmured quietly, his hand moving to loosen her grasp on his silver chain. 

“I-I want m-m-my Ellie,” Hazel whimpered, her breath coming out in shudders as she clung to Chris’ frame.

He saw the way Ellie’s shoulders slouched in pity at the cry, and she held her arms out, telling her, “Oh Hazie girl, I’m here.” 

Chris let go of his tight grasp on Hazel, letting Ellie take the curly headed sobbing girl and pull her into her own lap. She held onto Hazel while pressing a kiss to her forehead then rested her cheek against it, slowly rocking her back and forth while reminding her, “It’s okay Hazie, we’re right here for you.” 

He just sat there watching every motherly bit of Ellie come pouring out as she comforted his daughter, holding her tight and reminding her that everything was going to be alright and somehow managing to remind Chris of the same thing in the process. Chris eventually stood to his feet, going to the kitchen to get a glass of water for Hazel before bringing it back and resuming his place on the carpet, Ellie giving him a thankful smile. 

“Okay Hazie, it’s time to take a big deep breath. You ready?” Ellie asked, lifting her head up but keeping Hazel right in her lap. Ellie grabbed the hem of her tee shirt, lifting it up to wipe away the tears covering Hazel’s cheeks and chin before the sniffling girl nodded and took a deep breath with Ellie, helping to calm her tears. 

Chris gave the little girl a tight smile before he leaned forward, pressing a kiss to her forehead. As he continued wiping her face and moved to messily tie her hair back, he quietly asked, “Are you hungry, Basil?” 

“N-no,” she whispered, her wide brown eyes blinking slowly and tiredly as she leaned against Ellie.

“How about just a drink of water, then?” Ellie suggested, her head downturned as the couple each watched Hazel hesitate before she nodded. Chris handed the children’s cup to Hazel, watching as she slowly took a long sip of water before relaxing again. “Chris, can you go get Mr. Duck?” 

But Hazel’s brows furrowed momentarily before she interjected, “I want Clucky!” 

Chris pressed another kiss to her cheek before going to the playroom to find her chicken stuffed animal, digging through the bins of plush toys before finding it and bringing it back to the living room. He couldn’t help but stop for a moment, a pang in his heart as he looked at the scene in front of him. Rather than on the floor as they were a minute ago, Ellie had moved to sit on the couch with Hazel in her lap, laying up against Ellie’s chest with her head tucked under Ellie’s chin. The caring blonde had pulled a blanket over them – the very one she’d made him for Christmas – and rubbed her hand up and down Hazel’s back, helping to comfort the little girl who was already struggling to keep her eyes open. When Chris held out the stuffed chicken, Ellie took it, pretending to make Clucky kiss Hazel on the cheek and getting a giggle out of the tired girl who then tucked her toy under her arm before her eyes fully closed. 

It was several minutes filled with much-needed silence before Scott’s tentative footsteps sounded, his younger brother coming down the front hall and pausing in the open archway of the living room. “Hey Chris, I’m going to head out,” he quietly announced. 

“Okay, I’ll go out with you,” Chris replied, gently pressing a kiss to both Hazel and Ellie’s heads before he stood up, heading towards the front door with Scott. “Thanks for everything, Scott. I don’t know what I would have done without you today.” 

“Of course, you know I’m always here for you,” Scott told him without hesitation, his shoulder bumping Chris’ as he paused for a moment. “Anything you need, you can always call me.” 

Chris nodded, his lips pursed as he admitted, “I might be needing you a lot more while Ashlee’s moving if Hazel keeps reacting like this.” 

“I’m not so sure about that, I think Ellie’s got everything covered,” Scott replied with a chuckle, glancing behind them, barely able to see Ellie and Hazel on the couch. “Although I think she always does.” 

“You obviously weren’t there while we were redoing the bakery,” Chris muttered, watching with a smirk as Scott laughed quietly at his words before he left the small, thankfully peaceful home, shutting the front door behind him silently. 

Chris hadn’t even realized just how hungry he was, his stomach growling loudly at his lack of food from the day, it instead being tied in knots. But now that Ellie had come and helped relax his whole body, he found himself reaching for the uneaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had made for Hazel, taking a bite as he walked back to the living room. His girls were still on the couch, Ellie just gazing down at Hazel and pushing some of her curls off of her forehead while she slept soundly. 

He couldn’t help but feel so full of emotions, his body exhausted from what the day had held so far but when he saw that soft smile of Ellie’s shining back at him, it felt like the weights that were laid on his shoulders simply fell right off. Chris silently shuffled over to the couch, sitting down as he kept biting into the sandwich while he slunk down on the cushions, his head resting against the back while he let out a long breath. It stayed completely silent in that room as he felt a warm hand rub along his shoulder, causing him to glance over at Ellie who was smiling brightly before tugging at his shirt, wordlessly urging him to come over where he rested his head on her shoulder. 

She surprised him in more ways than one when she rested her cheek against his forehead then whispered, “You're a great dad, Chris.” 

And although in that moment, he was feeling anything but a great dad, he knew that Ellie wasn’t one to say things she didn’t mean and that faith in him was enough to give his anxious thoughts a rest. He turned his head to kiss her cheek, communicating all he needed to in that one action and for the first time since hearing that Ashlee was going to move, he had a glimmer of hope that just maybe everything would be alright.

A/N: Not gonna lie, that entire last sequence with Scott, Hazel, Chris, and Ellie is one of our favorite scenes ever. We love them and feel for them all so much, but we also adore the fact that Scott pushed Chris to even ask Ellie out in the first place, and now here she is comforting Hazel!

We can't wait to hear your thoughts! We are in the homestretch now for Chellie... they'll wrap up right before the holidays. We have some big plans not only for them, but for Sam and Nat's stories as well that we can't wait for you to read soon!

[yesloulou]

(re: Ferrari's incompetency due to superiority complex induced risk aversion)

coming up with the best race strategies is like trying to find the best combo of elements in a system where, there are hundreds of elements to consider (weather, track condition, tire performance, opponents’ strats, etc), and the majority of them are either unknown (is there gonna be a safety car?) or ever changing (wet or dry track). This is a science problem that calls for a scientific solution.

In combinatorics, when you want to compute the most optimized path (race strategies) to a desired state (winning), there are establish computational mechanisms to adhere to. No strategist who wants to succeed at their job can afford to allow irrelevant factors (ie. risk aversion) take up their mental capacity. Race strategists, by definition, are supposed to figure out the most profiting strategy by taking on reasonable, calculated risks. Being risk averse as a strategist is like. fearing human interaction as a teacher. you literally can't have that.

And as long as this overall risk aversion culture exists within Ferrari (due to team politics but ultimately: them being a very proud team who's struggling) , i can't see their strategists perform like other competent teams' do. I want sharl to win with his dream team too but I honestly think he should leave bc this is not the kind of problem that can be made up for by raw talent :(