#in automation and eternity save me….save me in automation and eternity

[aroace-polyshow]

I NEED TO WORK ON ISAT RUI IMMEDIATELY

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Humans are not perfectly vigilant

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

These "hallucinations" are a stubbornly persistent feature of large language models, because these models only give the illusion of understanding; in reality, they are just sophisticated forms of autocomplete, drawing on huge databases to make shrewd (but reliably fallible) guesses about which word comes next:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Guessing the next word without understanding the meaning of the resulting sentence makes unsupervised LLMs unsuitable for high-stakes tasks. The whole AI bubble is based on convincing investors that one or more of the following is true:

There are low-stakes, high-value tasks that will recoup the massive costs of AI training and operation;

There are high-stakes, high-value tasks that can be made cheaper by adding an AI to a human operator;

Adding more training data to an AI will make it stop hallucinating, so that it can take over high-stakes, high-value tasks without a "human in the loop."

These are dubious propositions. There's a universe of low-stakes, low-value tasks – political disinformation, spam, fraud, academic cheating, nonconsensual porn, dialog for video-game NPCs – but none of them seem likely to generate enough revenue for AI companies to justify the billions spent on models, nor the trillions in valuation attributed to AI companies:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

The proposition that increasing training data will decrease hallucinations is hotly contested among AI practitioners. I confess that I don't know enough about AI to evaluate opposing sides' claims, but even if you stipulate that adding lots of human-generated training data will make the software a better guesser, there's a serious problem. All those low-value, low-stakes applications are flooding the internet with botshit. After all, the one thing AI is unarguably very good at is producing bullshit at scale. As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated "content" in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification

This means that adding another order of magnitude more training data to AI won't just add massive computational expense – the data will be many orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire, even without factoring in the additional liability arising from new legal theories about scraping:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

That leaves us with "humans in the loop" – the idea that an AI's business model is selling software to businesses that will pair it with human operators who will closely scrutinize the code's guesses. There's a version of this that sounds plausible – the one in which the human operator is in charge, and the AI acts as an eternally vigilant "sanity check" on the human's activities.

For example, my car has a system that notices when I activate my blinker while there's another car in my blind-spot. I'm pretty consistent about checking my blind spot, but I'm also a fallible human and there've been a couple times where the alert saved me from making a potentially dangerous maneuver. As disciplined as I am, I'm also sometimes forgetful about turning off lights, or waking up in time for work, or remembering someone's phone number (or birthday). I like having an automated system that does the robotically perfect trick of never forgetting something important.

There's a name for this in automation circles: a "centaur." I'm the human head, and I've fused with a powerful robot body that supports me, doing things that humans are innately bad at.

That's the good kind of automation, and we all benefit from it. But it only takes a small twist to turn this good automation into a nightmare. I'm speaking here of the reverse-centaur: automation in which the computer is in charge, bossing a human around so it can get its job done. Think of Amazon warehouse workers, who wear haptic bracelets and are continuously observed by AI cameras as autonomous shelves shuttle in front of them and demand that they pick and pack items at a pace that destroys their bodies and drives them mad:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Automation centaurs are great: they relieve humans of drudgework and let them focus on the creative and satisfying parts of their jobs. That's how AI-assisted coding is pitched: rather than looking up tricky syntax and other tedious programming tasks, an AI "co-pilot" is billed as freeing up its human "pilot" to focus on the creative puzzle-solving that makes coding so satisfying.

But an hallucinating AI is a terrible co-pilot. It's just good enough to get the job done much of the time, but it also sneakily inserts booby-traps that are statistically guaranteed to look as plausible as the good code (that's what a next-word-guessing program does: guesses the statistically most likely word).

This turns AI-"assisted" coders into reverse centaurs. The AI can churn out code at superhuman speed, and you, the human in the loop, must maintain perfect vigilance and attention as you review that code, spotting the cleverly disguised hooks for malicious code that the AI can't be prevented from inserting into its code. As "Lena" writes, "code review [is] difficult relative to writing new code":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

Why is that? "Passively reading someone else's code just doesn't engage my brain in the same way. It's harder to do properly":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773780355708764665

There's a name for this phenomenon: "automation blindness." Humans are just not equipped for eternal vigilance. We get good at spotting patterns that occur frequently – so good that we miss the anomalies. That's why TSA agents are so good at spotting harmless shampoo bottles on X-rays, even as they miss nearly every gun and bomb that a red team smuggles through their checkpoints:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

"Lena"'s thread points out that this is as true for AI-assisted driving as it is for AI-assisted coding: "self-driving cars replace the experience of driving with the experience of being a driving instructor":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773841546753831283

In other words, they turn you into a reverse-centaur. Whereas my blind-spot double-checking robot allows me to make maneuvers at human speed and points out the things I've missed, a "supervised" self-driving car makes maneuvers at a computer's frantic pace, and demands that its human supervisor tirelessly and perfectly assesses each of those maneuvers. No wonder Cruise's murderous "self-driving" taxis replaced each low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged technical robot supervisors:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

AI radiology programs are said to be able to spot cancerous masses that human radiologists miss. A centaur-based AI-assisted radiology program would keep the same number of radiologists in the field, but they would get less done: every time they assessed an X-ray, the AI would give them a second opinion. If the human and the AI disagreed, the human would go back and re-assess the X-ray. We'd get better radiology, at a higher price (the price of the AI software, plus the additional hours the radiologist would work).

But back to making the AI bubble pay off: for AI to pay off, the human in the loop has to reduce the costs of the business buying an AI. No one who invests in an AI company believes that their returns will come from business customers to agree to increase their costs. The AI can't do your job, but the AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI anyway – that pitch is the most successful form of AI disinformation in the world.

An AI that "hallucinates" bad advice to fliers can't replace human customer service reps, but airlines are firing reps and replacing them with chatbots:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know

An AI that "hallucinates" bad legal advice to New Yorkers can't replace city services, but Mayor Adams still tells New Yorkers to get their legal advice from his chatbots:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/03/nycs-government-chatbot-is-lying-about-city-laws-and-regulations/

The only reason bosses want to buy robots is to fire humans and lower their costs. That's why "AI art" is such a pisser. There are plenty of harmless ways to automate art production with software – everything from a "healing brush" in Photoshop to deepfake tools that let a video-editor alter the eye-lines of all the extras in a scene to shift the focus. A graphic novelist who models a room in The Sims and then moves the camera around to get traceable geometry for different angles is a centaur – they are genuinely offloading some finicky drudgework onto a robot that is perfectly attentive and vigilant.

But the pitch from "AI art" companies is "fire your graphic artists and replace them with botshit." They're pitching a world where the robots get to do all the creative stuff (badly) and humans have to work at robotic pace, with robotic vigilance, in order to catch the mistakes that the robots make at superhuman speed.

Reverse centaurism is brutal. That's not news: Charlie Chaplin documented the problems of reverse centaurs nearly 100 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)

As ever, the problem with a gadget isn't what it does: it's who it does it for and who it does it to. There are plenty of benefits from being a centaur – lots of ways that automation can help workers. But the only path to AI profitability lies in reverse centaurs, automation that turns the human in the loop into the crumple-zone for a robot:

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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Jorge Royan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Munich_-_Two_boys_playing_in_a_park_-_7328.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

--

Noah Wulf (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thunderbirds_at_Attention_Next_to_Thunderbird_1_-_Aviation_Nation_2019.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

For the writing suggestions was sorta wondering earlier how it would go if a fragment of Roland had to take refuge in Lasky's CNI. I know that's not how they work but canon be damned.

We take a well-maintained chisel and hammer to the lore and perhaps the skull/neural lace and we do what we want. There are a thousand Halo Infinite AUs and what-ifs in my skull and I need to crack it open to get at them.

-

Red lights flash overhead, an alarm droning in the distance is drowned out by the falling footsteps marking their passage down the auxiliary hallway towards the last frigate stationed on the Infinity.

Two fireteams and the Spartan commander guard the remaining members of the command crew as explosions rock the ship and automated voices overlap, warning of incursions on multiple decks, loss of atmosphere in bays and hangars, all hands abandon ship, all hands-

Captain Thomas J Lasky shuts it out and focuses on the destination ahead of him. The hall is clear of smoke and debris and the screams he’s hearing are only ghosts echoing. His crew is pale faced, but determined. They might be leaving their home, but they’ve already gotten so many out.

His new passenger is quiet. There wasn’t enough time and Roland deserved more than to be pulled from his ship and thrown in a dark reinforced case, forced to wait for what would seem like an eternity to him until he was either freed or destroyed.

The fragment that floated in Lasky’s CNI had settled from ice water running through his nerves and a pounding headache to a distant presence. Gold tendrils faded in and out of focus in the corner of his eye and he could tell Roland was trying to put a buffer between him and the multitude of tasks he was juggling. Roland’s still communicating with the withering threads of himself in the ship’s circuits, clearing the way for his humans and keeping them updated on enemy movements.

The strain brings a new pain and Lasky feels moisture on his upper lip. Palmer slows as they reach a new junction and gunfire can be heard down the adjacent hallway. She narrows her eyes at him as he wipes the blood away. Gold rings brown and wide blown pupils meet hers.

“I could take him… if you can’t handle it.” She mutters as she checks over her shoulder.

“Is that concern I hear, Commander Palmer?” His grip tightens on his pistol and he sighs.

“Maybe.” Her brow furrows and the klaxons drone back into focus as gunmetal gray doors slide open and their ride sits waiting, backlit by bay doors glowing blue and the random explosion here and there as the Infinity’s guns rattle off. Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up with the captaincy and the end of the war; the UNSC never won in space.

Sensing his mood or maybe just seeing his thoughts as they appear, Roland butts in even as Tom catches a trail of thoughts about evac routes and saving the science team’s data.

You don’t need to host me if it’s hurting. I could fly her solo, everyone-

“Roland.” he interrupts even if it gets him another look from Palmer. He sighs and gives her a look. The AI in his brain bristles for a moment, and he feels the waves of emotion rolling and crashing over each faster than he can fully process. The loading ramp is lowered and they’re almost out.

He takes one last look at his ship and then Sarah who’s herding Spartans and crew onto the dropship.

She’s taller from down here.

He huffs a laugh at the obvious distraction and mutters under his breath when Sarah shoots him a look.

“Any chance you’d let me fly?” He asks, already knowing her answer. He smiles as he’s able to get the great Sarah Palmer to pale, however briefly.

“No way in hell, Tom. Murphy’s taking us out.”

Murphy? Well, any landing you can walk away from and all that. I’ve seen his track record and it’s better than yours. Sir.

[kaidatheghostdragon]

Do deliveries get treated like the case files? Business meetings? Taxes?

Lets see how much i can flex my knowledge of societal logistics.

America runs on a "just in time" delivery system where long-haul truckers are the backbone. If there are any truckers/postal workers that are from or regularly work with amity, maybe theyre immune, but AP grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, and anything else dependant on out-of-town shipping is gonna notice a sharp decline deliveries as various shipments are increasingly forgotton, and if refunds arent an automated service, they are gonna lose a lot of money as calls and meetings get ignored for being "unimportant, dont look here."

In fact, automation might actually be a saving grace here, as workers are just following shipment orders, which are largely a menial task. However, ANYTHING that falls through the cracks, whether a glitch in the system, a shipping mistake, etc, is gonna be a total loss for Amity as corrections require someone to follow up on a complaint that will be eternally ignored. Grocery stores and gas stations will be hit the hardest, most likely, as large shipments like that aren't automated for financial security reasons - its literally a person's job to manage stock and know what to order and when.

Amity is gonna have to quickly learn how to be self-sustaining, which would throw this idea into a deconstruction au starting at the end of that episode. There is a solution that occurred to me while writing this: a management business slash distribution center with 100% Amity Park employment, but stationed at a nearby town. All shipments, orders, and mail to AP is routed through that business, which falls outside of the perception filter, and they handle complications and shipping mistakes, and all shipping from the distribution center to AP homes and businesses are handled by AP truckers.

The extra hassle is gonna be a big incentive to become self-sustaining. An extra distribution center causes a lot of logistical problems. For one, it adds an extra day or two to shipping times, which decreases fresh food quality - goodbye bananas. (However, I learned recently that the midwest has a native fruit tree that grows something called pawpaw fruits, which allegedly taste like bananas.) Secondly, lots of things are regulated: medications, chemicals, etc, so specialized businesses dependant on specific regulated resources are gonna be a hassle and a half to keep stocked up. Even little things - like co2 canisters for the refillable whipped cream cans that restaurants use - you dont think about until its a problem. Labeling the AP distribution center as, well, a distribution center SHOULD solve most of those problems because its clear that its a transportation service and not like a laundering or trafficking scheme or something.

But building and setting up the distribution center will take months, which means Amity is going to suffer a chronic shortage of a lot of modern conveniences, both big and small, for that long.

And thats just the world of shipping.

Chain businesses that answer to a foreign HQ are gonna go under, as HQ continues to drop the ball on logistical needs of the AP branch.

Banks are gonna lose their federal insurance because someone on the outside keeps forgetting they exist. Their gonna struggle keeping fresh bills in circulation as they aren't receiving replacements.

Non local insurance policies can't be created, ended, or updated, as everyone in AP is left on hold indefinitely. Local insurance policies are the only option, and they are VERY aware of the constant property damage.

In fact, government funding for maintenance, roads, and relief grants are gonna stop coming in, which leaves Vlad, as the only local billionaire invested in Amity, as the only source of maintenance money. That is a massive power-play available for him, OR a great redemption arc if you prefer.

On the plus side, the IRS disappeared basically overnight, so the 20-30% (idk, just a guess) federal/state (does illinois have state tax?) tax revenue that Amity generates is now suddenly free to circulate internally - because whats the point in paying taxes if no one is enforcing it? - which will be a massive relief for all the other financial problems they're now suffering. If Amity doesnt already have a city tax, it would likely be downright necessary to install at this point, taking up the revenue that is no longer going to state/federal, in order to recapture the costs of maintainance which now fall solely on the town itself.

The slow climb of technology will stop as newer models of phones, cars, computers, etc, being brought in are hit or miss. This isn't a big issue if the ambiant ecto was already causing interference here. Between this and the sporadic gas/diesel shipments, the Fentons stand to make a lot of money off of ecto-powered tech to fill the void. An everyone knows au usually implies good Fentons, so they could be relied on to, in turn, use that income to continue to improve Amity and keep it circulating locally.

For utilities, I'm not entirely sure how local or regional they are for Illinois. If Amity is lucky enough to have a power plant, then electricity isn't an issue. The Fentons are also more than capable of busting out solar panels and industrial sized batteries, not to mention generators running on ambient ecto (which is a canon invention) if the city is starting to have brownouts from lack of maintainence/attention.

Water is the same - anything on local wells is safe, but if Amity is watered by the great lakes, there might be maintainence issues again. Again, I dont know illinois well enough to guess which is the case here. The biggest water usage is farmland, which literally measure how much food they can potentially grow by how much water they have access to, so infrastructure to keep the farms closest to Amity running will be the highest priority, especially if Amity has to become self-sustaining.

Internet and cell coverage are utilities, which will now fall on Amity Park to build and maintain locally. Again, the Fentons will probably have this handled. I'm not an expert at how cell towers work, but my understanding is that they're owned by the entity that built them, sometimes a big cell company, sometimes a smaller cell company, sometimes a local infrastructure business, and usage is either leased out to some/all the big companies, which means that the tower counts as part of their network, or they're charged per device that connects, which falls under roaming. Dont quote me on that. I might be entirely wrong! At any rate, AP will likely have cell service, its mostly a question of how expensive it is and whether or not its a money sink because cell companies keep forgetting to pay for using the towers, or at worst, whether or not amity's cell service is isolated from the rest of the world because its a constant hassle to maintain licenses and connection to the global network.

Internet, otoh, is black magic to me and i dont know how it would be affected. If it has to be run locally, maybe Amity decides to be one of those cities that sets itself up to have free wifi available anywhere within city limits, so the City of Amity Park is the only entity that has to deal with the hassle of maintainence with the outside world, and civilians and businesses just piggy back off of it.

I realized I haven't touched on emergency services yet. Amity might already have a local 911 dispatch because of rampant ghost attacks to separate them from nearby towns. If they dont, then 911 isn't gonna work if their phone service doesn't connect globally, and thats gonna have to be rectified quickly. I'd imagine Amity Park is large enough to have a handful of police and firefighter buildings, multiple emergency clinics, and at least one hospital. Local 911 dispatch without access to the outside world means no relying on neighbors when the local response teams are overextended, which is normal protocol. Amity will have to overcompensate with extra cops, firefighters, and emts or settle with having occasional "bad days." Probably the former, considering the constant ghost attacks.

The hospital probably isnt equipped to handle everything, as hospitals tend to specialize in one particular field of long-term recovery and trade patients with nearby hospitals to fit their long-term recovery needs after handling emergency first aid and diagnosis. They have to go a similar route as the dedicated AP distribution center, placing AP employees in the neighboring town hospitals to maintain inter-patient logistics and ordering resources through those hospitals instead of directly. If AP hospital has a specialty, its gonna be liminality care, and most of their resources regarding that can come from the Fentons or the ghost zone directly.

Speaking of the ghost zone, it can potentially provide a great deal of relief. Yes, the portal is what caused all of Amity's problems, but in an everyone knows au, it also represents a potential trade route. Allies like the yetis and dora's kingdom would be more than happy to provide relief, aid, supplies, and even a free workforce if danny just asked while Amity was in a bad way. At that point, Amity might be even more inclined to remained cut off from the rest of the world to protect their allies and trade agreements.

In summary, the reality guantlet episode could be what turns amity into a secret hidden liminal eldritch city.

Why doesn't the justice league know about Amity Park?

Okay so it's been a bit sonce I watched the show but one of the things in DpxDC is the anti-ecto acts, which I love, but correct me if I'm wrong, I THINK ??? they only show up in reality trip? SO: What if Danny, when using the gauntlet to undo everything, also got rid of the Anti-Ecto acts? but this is babys first time editing reality so he uh Fucks Up A Lil'. As a result when Danny used the reality gauntlet to wipe the AEA from existence he accidentally wiped Amity Park from perception. A big 'nothing matters over here' jedi mind trick, and now no ones looking at Amity. So, the Justice League actually WERE looking into and monitoring the situation in Amity, but when the perception filter closed them off, all of that suddenly went ignored.

This is noticed when someone (Alfred, Dick, Tim, literally anyone) realises theres just. A BIG dusty pile of case files semi abandoned somewhere in the cave when going through a (time period)ly cave cleaning.

They put it down because it's Not Important.

They come back to finish the cleaning the next day and do the exact same thing, but there's nothing to actually distract them this time and it pings as weird. Because why would case files be not important? They are by definition important, because only things flagged as important go into case files.

They try to get someone else to read it, because as long as they don't read the information in the file, they don't put it down.

That person goes to read it, gets a line in and then says something like 'that isn't important' and goes to leave. Person A pushes it and person B ALSO catches on.

Que the Batfam trying to figure out hey, what the fuck actually?

Meanwhile, how is Amity fairing? Canon compliant everything's going alright? Or have knock on effects to No One Look Here started to show?

[the-most-humble-blog]

Genuinely pathetic to have an automated account reposting reddit memes and printing out weak-ass propaganda on tumblr of all places. Not only is that about as effective as spitting in the ocean to try to bother a fish that's a thousand feet below you, the whole account is so obviously... "non-human". I doubt you'll actually answer the ask if I say it proper, so I'll just stick with "inorganic", I guess.

I got a funnier idea, actually, I'm gonna call you an Abominable Intellect now. Really though, "dropping NSFW truth bombs" is something even your average middle schooler would know better than to say, you sound like a moron. All those titles and dotted lists absolutely reek of an Abominable Intelligence.

But back to the first thing, keeping this running is a waste of money. If there is an actual human monitoring the account, then it's also a waste of time. All these Abominable Intelligences on the site might as well be jumping into fucking Normandy, trying to get popular with unfunny reposted memes and mixing in agenda-pushing slop.

Save yourself some money and pack your bags, maybe move to TikTok or Facebook if you want any amount of sucess. Or don't, actually, Ruzzian/MAGA shitheads wasting time and money ain't exactly a bad thing.

�� PUBLIC EXECUTION: A LESSON IN WASTED EXISTENCE 🔥

Alright, class, get comfortable. Today, we have a live demonstration of what happens when a nobody with too much time and too few brain cells tries to pull up uninvited and gets their entire existence reduced to a lesson in irrelevance.

Let’s take a moment to salute this brave but foolish individual who thought their basement-tier intellect could make an impact.

📌 SUBJECT: @batteryacidisedibleenough (a.k.a. “Josh from Wisconsin”)

Crime: Thinking an unsolicited, low-effort essay holds weight in a room where they were never noticed to begin with. Sentence: Public humiliation. Immediate and eternal irrelevance.

🔍 EXHIBIT A: THE SAD, UNREAD MANIFESTO

Josh here really thought he was “calling me out.”

Sat there, probably re-read his own message with a little smirk, thinking he did something.

Spoiler: Nobody gave a single fuck.

💀 Every word? Ignored. 💀 Every point? Forgotten before it was even read. 💀 Effort-to-impact ratio? 100% effort, 0% results.

🗑️ Thrown straight into the trash— but not before becoming a perfect example of how to waste your own time on the internet.

Imagine typing all this only to become an unpaid class clown. Effort wasted. Life wasted. Irrelevance secured. Blocked & discarded, but not before using you as a teaching moment. Take notes, class—this is how a nobody spends their time being an unpaid failure.

[doevademe]

As a continuation for the time travel prompt (big up to the one who came up with it and to you for giving life to it, I love how your brains work) I propose maybe a plot twist: by the time young perce and nico come to terms with their future, they hear the wailing of a few months old baby girl who looks legit like a mix of the two from upstairs? And chaos ensues? Maybe? (By that I mean they re not only married but they discover they re parents too thanks to godly magic).

[Other parts of the fic: 1, 2, 3]

"So in the future you become like a badass demigod mercenary? And sometimes you take me with you?" Young Percy asked Nico's younger self, who just shrugged. "That's... actually really cool!"

"It is pretty cool," his Percy commented as he opened a can of spritz from their last trip to Venice. "And after brainstorming last night, we think your being here is a consequence of our last outing."

"What were you guys doing?" His younger self asked curiously as Nico just tapped his foot, waiting for the image to clear.

"Getting some sand for a primordial," he said. "It's the primordial in question that makes me suspicious."

"You called exactly when I expected you," the magical image finally spoke. Nico had enough experience to know that the older a deity, the more exentric and weird they were, but he still had to double take at the image of a crone with a young woman's face the primordial of Destiny sported.

"If you knew, why keep me on hold, Ananke?" Nico asked, all fake politeness. The goddess changed, now having the body of a baby and the face of an old woman.

"Woah, that's really frea—" his husband acted quick, putting his hand over his younger self's mouth. Nico gave him a grateful smile.

"I also answered when I was expected to," she said, looking perplexed. "You are wondering why there's time displaced versions of yourselves with you."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Percy said as his younger self struggled to get out of his grip. "Was there something in the gem you paid us with or something?"

"Nothing of the sort," she said with an airy laugh, changing to a woman in her forties with a baby face. "It's because the sand I needed for my clock is filled with the essence of Aion."

"The primordial of Time," Nico said, mostly for Younger Percy's sake (and his Percy, too, but he knew better than to ask questions while he was talking with deities). "We rolled on the stuff to get away from a Drakon, so we're also infused with his essence."

"Time is eternal and cyclical. By getting his essence, you pulled on people from other times, and they are anchored to you. They'll remain in this time until the essence fades."

"In other words, we're radioactive," Percy said with a sigh. Young Percy used the opportunity to break free and get in front of Nico, glaring at the woman.

"Okay, so I have two questions," he said loudly. Nico resisted the urge to facepalm. "One, how long will that essence cling to them? Two, will we remember what happened?"

Nico loved Percy. With all his heart, even at his worst. But right now, he wished their Time-radioctiveness had brought a mellower old man version of his husband instead of him at his most... Percy.

"Destiny is found out by mortals in time, my dear... but depending on how much essense they absorbed, it could be anywhere from a few days to a month."

Their eyes widened. He and Percy tended to get... busy right after a mission (don't judge him, it saved them a bath), so they had had that sand clinging on them for hours!

"As for the other question.... Your Destiny was to come here. While the memories will be gone, the experiences will remain. A tiny little voice that will remind you 'I should be doing this'..." Ananke said with excitement. "It was needed so neither of you would give up on each other! And just like that, our time is u—"

"Please toss another Drachma for five more minutes," Fleecy's automated message recited. Nico sighed and dissipated the rainbow.

No one spoke for a few minutes, teying to proccess the information.

"Percy mentioned a gem," Young Nico said finally. "What was it for?"

"Uh... for our future," his Percy said evasively. "Look, we only take on jobs from primordials for special things and... it's nice to have the option."

"Option for..." Young Percy drawled, finally finding an opening to bother his older self. His Percy looked away, coughing. "Come on, your future husband asked you a question. Answer him."

His younger self blushed and hid behind him. Nico was torn between considering himself adorable or embarrassing.

"It's a tiny, tiny fragment of the World Egg that birthed the universe," Nico said. "It can create anything... within reason. I'm not very trustful of Love and Fertility gods, so this was a nice compromise for eventually... having a baby."

Nico knew that Percy had wanted a family of his own since he was little, and that was the one thing Nico wasn't sure he could give him. When Ananke offered the gem in exchange for a job, he had jumped at the chance. Young Percy's eyes widened and he glanced at Young Nico for a moment before blushing heavily.

"Oh, speaking of baby-making," his Percy said, making their younger selves squirm. Nico raised an eyebrow. He was doing it on purpose. "We need to set ground rules for you guys."

"Ground rules? This is our house too!" Young Percy argued.

"You're minors, and this won't be your house for another four years," Percy said, blowing a raspberry. Nico looked away. His husband was a five year old in a 27-year-old body sometimes. "So, first of all, now you know you'll get together, but I want no exploration of that in this house."

"I wouldn't!" Young Percy exclaimed. Young Nico shrank on himself, making Young Percy's eyes widen. "Not that I don't want to— I mean, I'm still with Annabeth, and I'm not a cheater!"

Young Nico nodded, relaxing a little.

Adorable, Nico decided. I was adorable.

"Good. Second of all—"

A loud cry stopped them all in his tracks. Nico and his husband reacted first, followed by their younger selves as they opened one the rooms.

Inside was a craddle with little baby with dark black hair and striking green eyes. The name 'Emilia' was carved on the craddle.

Nico moved first, picking up the baby and rocking her lightly. The girl looked at him and stopped crying immediately.

"It's okay, Emmy, papa is here," he said softly, checking to see if there was anything wrong with her.

"Did you guys use the gem already?" Young Percy asked, looking at the baby. "It sounded like you didn't!"

"We... we haven't yet," his husband said slowly, getting closer to Nico and the baby. "But there's this feeling when I look at her... I know she is my daughter."

From the look Nico saw on his younger self's eyes, he knew both were thinking the same.

Aion's essense. If it pulled them from the past, it could also pull someone from the future. Someone so close to them it was basically their conbined selves.

Like Nico and Percy's future daughter.

"Damn Time Radioactivity!" Young Percy said once he caught on. Young Nico slapped his arm. "Hey!"

"Watch your language in front of our daughter!"

Percy and Nico looked at each other.

This complicated things even further.

[moonmoonthecrabking]

hi @slahbrah merry belated gift day!!!!! this is a lil spacedolls fic under the cut, i hope you enjoy :)

“Constance! You’re nice, go talk to the new girl, I have a choir competition to win,” Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg instructed as she paced around the choir room.

Constance Blackwood refrained from mentioning that everyone else was participating in the same competition, and instead took it as a compliment that Ocean acknowledged the dumb superlative thrust upon her: “Nicest Girl in Town”.

“Hi! I’m Constance, as you probably heard. Uh, that’s Ocean. She’s nice! Just a little stressed at the moment. Noel’s the one doing warm-ups over at the piano, Mischa is at the back - probably texting his fiancée, it’s all he does - and the guy on his computer is Ricky. Oh, sorry, what’s your name?” Constance gave a little pant at the end of her introduction, after having spoken at the same pace and volume Ocean normally would.

“I’m Penny,” the strange girl said. She looked around the choir room, trying to figure out something she could use to strike up conversation with the boy in front of her. “Ricky. What are you doing there?”

He repeatedly clicked a button on his computer before typing a sentence and hitting enter. “If you really want to see, you have to steal it from me.” A robotic voice rang out from the speakers.

“I don’t know if you want to do that,” Constance said, while Ricky flipped her off. “Sorry! But last time I looked at your screen, I saw you writing Shrek smut. I have to warn anyone who even thinks about reading whatever’s on your computer.”

Penny gave a mischievous grin and launched for Ricky’s computer. Constance’s eyebrows raised in an amused surprise. Ricky waved his laptop around before gently putting it under his chair. Penny fell onto her hands and knees and crawled underneath his chair, sitting cross-legged while reading his work. 

Immediately, she was put in a trance by Ricky’s writing. Penny read a passage about a human prophet foretelling his destiny to save the galaxy by protecting its central planet, Zolar, its people being a humanoid-cat race. The prophet was confused, calling himself “a lover not a fighter”, and unsure of how he would bring peace to the universe. Her eyes were glued to the screen, reading every word on the Google Doc intently, occasionally flicking to the comments Ricky wrote on the side while editing about how he could tighten his craft. 

After the girl had spent several minutes reading, with Constance and Ricky exchanging many looks above, she passed the computer to its owner and slid out from underneath the chair. 

“Cool story,” she said. “What is it, an epic?”

Ricky typed on his computer, the automated voice speaking his words. “Something like that.”

“You know, I love those sorts of stories. How you’ve got the hero, faced by an eternity of obstacles, and they change. Not always for the better,” Penny said, rambling wistfully.

“I think that character development hasn’t included both growth and regression within the same person enough recently.”

“You’re so right! Oh, have you considered adding poetry to some parts of this as like a… ugh, what’s the word?”

“A motif?” Constance said at the same time as Ricky’s AAC device.

“That!” Penny replied, sticking her thumb at Constance but not taking her eyes off Ricky.

“I’ve considered it, I’ve tried to but it in the explicit prophecies but they just rhyme.”

“And that’s not really poetry.”

“It’s not?” Constance asked.

“Nope,” Penny said, as Ricky shook his head. “I listened - listen to a lot of boy bands. Like, a lot. Maybe I could help you with that?

Constance quietly grabbed one of the comfier choir room chairs and moved it next to Ricky’s, with Penny sitting down in it instantly. 

Ricky stopped using his AAC, opting instead to tell Penny what he wanted to say via a sticky note on his computer, and Penny whispered her suggestions in his hear. Well, a whisper for her, a regular volume for anyone else.

On the 31st of December that same year, Penny Lamb and Ricky Potts began to search for a literary agent to publish “The Zolarian Adventures: Part I”. They had a rough ride in those three months, but through every moment, even when they didn’t realise it, they had each other.

“Are you ready, my swinging, space-age, bachelor man?” Penny asked, the hint of a smile passing by her lips.

“Always,” Ricky signed, “when it’s with you.”

[ad1thi]

the things we tell ourselves in the dark

set post EMH s2.12: Secret Invasion. EMH szn 2 spoilers ahead

“Steve?” He knows that Tony’s calling his name, that Tony’s been trying to unsuccessfully get his attention for the past ten minutes, but he doesn’t look up from where he’s staring at the crevices in his palms.

“Steve I know you’re in there. This is my mansion. I can just have JARVIS open the door for me,” he can picture Tony rubbing the back of his neck, lips twisted in a frown, “I’m trying to do the decent thing here and let you open the door yourself.”

Steve debates not answering, just to see if Tony will leave him alone, but its in vain. He’s not been on Earth in months, maybe even a year, and he can admit that he’s missed Tony. Even if he doesn’t want to see him right this moment.

Chances are though, if he blows Tony off now, it will take weeks to fix this distance between them, to fix the months Steve missed out on that the Skrull got. 

With a sigh, he pushes off the bed, and walks over to the door, signalling for JARVIS to open it. He knows that the doors are automated, but generally he prefers to open them himself. Today though, he’s okay for technology to do the work for him,

“Ste -” the door slides open to reveal Tony with his fist raised, frozen in the motion of knocking. He’s clearly ditched the armour at some point between the foyer and Steve’s room, because he’s only in his undersuit. Steve can’t tell if he finds it comforting that Tony trusts him enough to be around him without his suit so soon after the Skrulls, or if he wishes Tony would cover himself up.

The undersuit leaves nothing to the imagination, and Steve doesn’t want to be distracted for this conversation.

“Tony,” he returns neutrally, stepping aside so that Tony can walk into his house, “You knocked. Repeatedly.”

“I wanted to make sure that you were okay,” Tony says, in a soft tone, like he didn’t expect to get this far, “We didn’t get a chance to catch up - what with the imminent alien invasion and having to save the world. Again.”

“It’s been a busy few days,” Steve concedes, “I hear your Skrull detection chip is working flawlessly though. I shouldn’t have expected any less.”

“It’s not actually mine,” Tony admits, “It’s Doom’s. Turns out that’s what he wanted with Janet and Sue, to study them. Get a hold of their genetic makeup. Apparently his obsession with Sue Storm finally paid off, because he noticed that she was acting a little differently. He wanted to find out what that was about.”

“Oh?” Steve tries to keep the surprise out of his voice, but from Tony’s face, it looks like he’s failed. It isn’t that Steve doesn’t understand unlikely team ups, he had to work with Madame Viper after all, but Sue wasn’t the only person that Doom had a weird obsession with, “I didn’t realise you and Doom were working together.”

“Working together is a bit of a stretch,” Tony furrows his brows, “I believe his exact sentiments were that Earth was for him to conquer, and the Skrulls’ plans for world domination interfered with his plans.”

Despite himself, Steve chuckles, “I can see him saying that. I’m guessing he didn’t offer up his services to help take them down when he tasked you with the job, single handedly?”

“Surprisingly, Doom isn’t in the world saving business. Says it’s beneath him.”

They smile at each other, and for a split second, it’s like Steve wasn’t kidnapped by aliens. It’s like it was before, brimming on the precipice of something that Steve can’t define, but he knows that if he tips over and falls; that Tony will be there to catch him.

“How are you Steve, really?” Tony asks in a more sober tone.

“Physically, I’m okay,” Steve says, after what feels like an eternity, “I don’t think there’s anything they could’ve done that would hurt me. Not permanently anyway.”

“But?” Tony asks hesitantly, like he’s afraid of the answer.

“I know now that we were eons away. Somewhere near Saturn. But when they had me, all that kept me going was the thought that the Avengers might save me, that you would save me.”

Steve laughs, but it’s hollow, “The funny thing is, they actually tried that. Impersonating the team, staging an escape to break me. By then, I’d lost hope. I knew that if I had to get out, it was on my terms.”

“Still,” he turns away from Tony, because he doesn’t want to hurt him, but if he doesn’t get this out, it might eat him alive, “I was with them for months Tony. Months. How did you not notice? How did you not know it was me?”

For several moments, there’s no reply. When Steve finally musters up the courage to look up at Tony, his eyes are shiny. Steve wants to reach out, hold his hand, tell him that he’s forgiven - but he can’t. Not until he hears what Tony has to say.

“I did know,” Tony says, no louder than a whisper, “Or I suspected anyway. I didn’t know you were a Skrull, because I didn’t even know what a Skrull was back then - aside from vague mentions of them from Kang; but I knew something was up.”

“I figured it was something lingering from Asgard, maybe your time in whatever realm you got sent to when we destroyed the norn stones. I asked you about it, Skrull You that is, offered to run some tests, be an ear if you ever needed to talk to someone.”

“If you suspected then -?”

“Skrull You waved me off, said that I was seeing things. But I kept pressing, because I knew there was something off about you. The idea that you didn’t trust me enough to let me help you, well it doesn’t matter anymore. I kept pushing, and then finally, you came up to me and admitted that there was something bothering you.”

“That there was something that you’ve been wanting to do for a while. And then you cupped my cheeks, and you kissed me.”

“Tony I -”

Tony steps back, as if Steve’s touch repulses him. “You don’t need to say it Cap,” he says with a shrug, “I know you don’t feel the same way. I was so obvious that the Skrull knew how I felt about you, and he used it to his advantage.”

He walks back until he’s almost at the door, and Steve can’t help but feel like he’s about to lose Tony forever, “but to answer your question - I did know it wasn’t you. I just didn’t want to believe it.”

He’s out before Steve can even formulate a reply, and with him; Steve can feel his heart break all over again.

Fin

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ad-tech's algorithmic cruelty

The wife of one of my elementary school teachers once delivered a full-term, stillborn baby. It was a great tragedy, but far worse came in the months and years that followed, as direct-marketers bombarded them with pitches that tracked the progress of their dead child.

College-savings plan ads, ads for baby food, annual birthday notices - the whole thing running on autopilot as marketers pursued the Procter & Gamble "lifecycle marketing" playbook that targets the turning points in customers' lives, like parenthood.

This got automated. In 2014, Eric Meyer coined the term "inadvertent algorithmic cruelty" to describe his experience of Facebook's "memories" feature, which bombarded him with pictures of his young daughter on the anniversary of her death.

http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/12/24/inadvertent-algorithmic-cruelty/

Meyer called it "inadvertent," but there's a strong argument to drop that and simply call it "algorithmic cruelty." Facebook *should* have known that promoting "high-engagement" posts would end up retraumatizing people on the anniversaries of the worse moments in their lives.

And if the company didn't realize it in 2014, they certainly knew about it after, and did not stop. In 2018, Patrick Gerard wrote about how Facebook commemorated his mother's death with a video of animated characters literally dancing on her grave.

https://twitter.com/PatrickGerard01/status/1031920228098355200

Algorithmic cruelty spread to other platforms: for example, Google's smart address book began adding women's stalkers to their speed-dials, sensing a high degree of mutual interactivity:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-problem-with-your-chatty-apps/

The problems of algorithmic cruelty - the predictable ghastliness of a fire-and-forget system of idiotic, automatic cheer - have long been a feature of science fiction.

Think of Bradbury's classic "There Will Come Soft Rains," where an empty house cheerfully greets its dead owners with their daily routine after a nuclear war has killed nearly every living thing.

https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf

Or David Marusek's pioneering, haunting story "The Wedding Album," about the AI avatars of a couple, created to commemorate their wedding day, outliving the couple and haunting virtual spaces for thousands of years:

https://gumroad.com/davidmarusek

Or Sarah Gailey's instant classic 2018 short story STET, which recounts a particularly horrific sort of algorithmic cruelty in the editorial notes on a scholarly paper about a self-driving car wreck:

https://firesidefiction.com/stet

None of these warnings were heeded. Indeed, algorithmic cruelty - incubated in primitive direct marketing, supercharged by social media - made the jump *back* to ad-tech, in a form that is thousands of times more virulent than its prehistoric paper-based ancestor.

Writing in Wired, Lauren Goode describes the ad-tech algorithmic cruelty trap she found herself in: eight years ago, she called off her wedding. Today, she is still bombarded with messages that track the progress of a marriage that never happened.

https://www.wired.com/story/weddings-social-media-apps-photos-memories-miscarriage-problem/

These are the product of the "memory monetization machine," which surfaces your old social-media breadcrumbs as inventory for spot-market advertising auctions: "This user got married eight years ago, who will pay me top dollar to show them an ad?"

Naturally, this has all the failure modes of social memory monetization - the dead children and parents, and commemorations of other traumas - but with ad-tech's nonconsensual, eternal torture: you can quit Facebook, but you can't control these background processes.

Goode quotes Kate Eichhorn, whose book THE END OF FORGETTING describes how this nonconsensual external memory system disrupts the "memory editing" that is key to overcoming trauma for the most marginalized among us:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976696

Reading that, I was struck by the distance between the algorithmic cruelty of nonconsensual memory-surfacing, and my own powerful, hugely beneficial practice of combing through my own digital history, which is in a database under *my* control - my 20-year blog archive.

For a decade, I've started each day by looking at my posts from this day in the past - at first, it was #1yrago and #5yrsago - now I look back at #15yrsago and #20yrsago, and republish the elements that seem significant today. Here's yesterday's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/05/zucks-oily-rags/#retro

I can't overstate beneficial this is: tracking my own predictions, concerns and aspirations over time is an incredible tonic for anxiety, a tool to refine and improve my goals, an empirical, external check on my memories and feelings about where I am and where I've been.

It's like a subspecies of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the process of writing down your worries and aspirations, then revisiting them after the fact to refine your understanding of when your intuition leads you true...or astray.

The difference between what I do and algorithmic cruelty isn't technology - it's control. I'm in charge not an unaccountable, nonconsensual algorithm.

As is often the case with tech issues, the important thing isn't what the tech does, it's who it does it *to* and *for*.

Indeed, thinking this through this morning made me realize how much I'd like to revisit my photos every day; I've got 20 years worth of them stashed on Flickr, where I was literally one of the first users:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/04/21/family-owned-smugmug-acquires-flickr-rescuing-it-from-the-sinking-post-yahoo-ship/

I tried it this morning, but Flickr's tools remain incredibly primitive thanks to years of neglect under Yahoo's ownership. Its new owners, Smugmug, have been making great strides, but they have a LOT of technology debt to pay off.

But having manually pulled up photos from this day 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago, I was absolutely delighted. I would welcome a Flickr change to made it simple to see pics from a given date - maybe by editing the URL itself  (currently a mess!):

https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=&min_taken_date=1586156400&max_taken_date=1586242799

The point I'm trying to make here is that we shouldn't mistake the ability to revisit your past experiences and thoughts for algorithmic cruelty - the answer to this cruelty isn't to destroy our digital time-machines; it's to seize the means of computation.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[beingatoaster]

Inspired by my conversation with Bea this afternoon, and peripherally BL-related. I didn’t do heroforge images or write-ups for these, I just wanted to get the idea down. Not really a narrative, just... hexblade warforged thoughts!

Celiss

"You don’t have to do this, Celiss. It doesn’t help her, or me, to take this kind of risk. This was my mistake, and we can make it right without endangering- Celiss? Are you listening to me? You’re not listening, are you.” “You’re the patient one, my friend. I am not. And it is the heart and soul of a beautiful lady at stake, is it not? Of course I must help her.”

The mechanism-builders of the north offered the Patient Advance of Implacable Eternity five warforged, to start with. Five automatons, infused with its power just as its elven bearer was; five fingers on an extra hand for Patience and Celiss to wield. The only price was that they would belong first and foremost to their makers, who wished to study how the magic of the pact interacted with the magic of the automation, and to use them in a war against depraved followers of gods that Celiss shuddered to hear described. It seemed fair to both of them.

Patience didn’t realize until the pacts were formed that its new warlocks had souls. Didn’t understand, or rather hadn’t been told, that despite their souls, the warforged were controlled by rods that their makers’ military kept. Had been entirely innocent of how those warforged were trained, if it could be called that, or what they were expected to do and endure. Celiss was sweet, open-hearted, easy to dismiss and overlook, but that was in part because she was truly an innocent, and it was through her that Patience had formed its understanding.

There were two other hexblades involved in what the makers called a “production run.” On the Plane Material, it was difficult for their kind to speak directly, without the help of their warlocks, but Celiss eventually uncovered the truth about both of them.

The Crushing Grip of the Mother, a morningstar, had joined in with this effort in full knowledge of what the warforged were, and chosen to participate anyway. Their only warlocks were the warforged themselves, and none were permitted to respond when Celiss tried to pass on Patience’s questions, tried to ask them how they could have permitted such a thing. Once, only, did one speak back, in Grip’s voice: “They will be fully ours eventually, with no mortals in the way. A hundred years from now, a thousand, ten thousand--what is time to us? I will wait.”

Summer’s Grace, an elegant rapier, was not here by choice--they had captured her only warlock and used the poor goliath’s soul to bind her to their mechanisms, forcing her to give what Patience had so foolishly volunteered. Insomuch as Patience could sense her at all, she alternately raged and wept. But in time, when Patience had expressed as much of its remorse as it could, she showed them the secrets she had uncovered, how she wormed in tiny ways around the influence and command of the control rods to give her units freedom.

If the only freedom she could imagine for them was a free death, well, at least their souls were free. No such thing could be said of her, for the machine-builders took her, at last, to use her essence for other purposes: to use her connection with the negative energy from which they’d been forged to connect others, to use her connection to the Shadowfell in which the Mother had forged them to bind others to liches and such monstrosities as the Mother would have been horrified to see. A living hell, for a sword like Summer’s Grace.

Celiss, sweet brave Celiss, wracked with guilt and empty of guile, tried to save her. And then her light blinked out in Patience’s mind, and it was left with only the warforged. Five fingers, on a hand that it could only slowly and stealthily begin to make twitch. The sudden ripples of negative energy when Heart-Gear’s Material manifestation was interrupted seemed a blessing, a chance to free them less horribly than its teacher had liberated hers. It gave them all the guidance it could.

And then Heart-Gear went out, not temporarily, but for good. And, one by one, in quick succession, the lights of all five of them blinked out too. Patience, buried in the depths of a lakebed, thought for thousands of years that it had failed all who served it.

Until, one-by-one, they began to wake up.

***

Bastion Unit 56803, “Heavystep”

Hexblade Warlock 5, Pact of the Blade / Champion Fighter 12 / Folk Hero

“I never said you needed me. All I am saying is that I can help you. Reach out to the left, with your fingers crooked--you see?”

“Whoa, this is YOU?”

“No, but I do look something like it.”

"If this is the kind of help you’ve got in your pockets, I’ll take it. Anything else cool this mini-you can do?”

"Let’s see if I can help you remember the smites.”

Heavystep, like most warforged who woke early from dormancy, has only tiny fragments of memory left. She remembers drilling, and she remembers hitting a squishy person in the scaley face, and she remembers a pointy-eared squishy person telling her to hold her hands out, once, and setting a blinking, content psuedodragon into them for her to look at. She likes that memory.

She likes big smashy weapons, and dragons and dragonborn and kobolds, and little squishy people who are brave enough to touch her even though she’s big and strong and could crush them with a single bare hand. And, sure, okay, she likes the voice in her head too, most of the time, even if it sighs at her inability to remember names and places and other unimportant details. If it’s that important, the maul-voice can remember for her, right?

All she really needs to remember is how to be careful with those who are fragile, and kind to those who are in need, and a shelter to those who are hurt. The maul-voice says that she was built to stand strong. That comes with a duty to those who weren’t, she thinks, and the maul-voice doesn’t disagree.

***

Forerunner Unit 4329, “Hive”

Hexblade Warlock 4, Pact of the Chain / Swarmkeeper Ranger 9 / Hermit

“There are others you could join with, you know. Warforged aren’t made to live alone.”

“You could help people.”

“I understand you think there’s blood on your hands, but helping others would wash it clean, wouldn’t it?”

“...I suppose the wasps are better than total isolation.”

Hive’s memory is more complete, but terribly fragmented--much like Hive herself. She remembers thousands of terrible bits and pieces, snatches of sight and sound lasting no more than a minute each, mostly involving horrible amounts of gore. She can put together enough to make out that she was an assassin as well as a scout, creeping past the front lines of the enemy to cut their sentries’ throats.

It’s not a past she likes to dwell on, but she didn’t have much else to think about. It took years, after she woke up, for the psuedodragon to cobble enough of her wood and stone and silver wiring back together for her to actually move in any significant way, and the psuedodragon was... not competent a builder, let’s put it that way. Most of Hive’s current construction, she carved herself, her fingers growing more and more able each time she remade them from fresh wood.

She doesn’t listen to the voice in her head, for every time she does, she thinks of the curse she can lay, without even thinking, upon anyone who threatens her swarm. It’s not that she doesn’t use the magic, because she has to defend her wasps (they may be spirits, but they vanish if she dies, and she has carved herself into her home). But she can’t forgive the voice for giving it to her all the same.

Besides, she doesn’t talk to anyone else, either. Not even the psuedodragon. If the voice hasn’t realized that, it’s not Hive’s problem.

***

Artillery Unit 1912, “Slice”

Hexblade Warlock 4, Pact of the Tome / Swashbuckler Rogue 10 / Charlatan

“How could you do that? They were surrendering!”

“Eh, they had a knife up their sleeve, I could tell.”

“Are you going to actually check and prove it to me, or are you just going to assume you were right?”

“If I don’t check, you gonna take the magic away?”

“I... cannot deny you my power, when I was complicit in your creation.”

“Heh. Thought so. Dunno how you got your haft so far up your own arse when you don’t even have one.”

Slice’s memory is fine, as far as they’re concerned. They remember the challenge of mastering a new spell, and the deep satisfaction of watching it tear a target apart. They remember marching forward into battle, ready to raise a magical shield if anyone dare answer their attacks. They remember the voice in their head telling them to run, and they remember moving towards the center of camp instead, and the intention they had of blasting the Guidance Unit who commanded them to bits. They regret not remembering whether they were able to get off their blast.

The only principle that Slice lives by is that no one will ever control them again. Not a mortal, not another warforged, not even the voice in their head that offers them their powers. They live for themself alone, never another; they won’t go soft enough to risk their own life for another, because that’s just another form of control, in Slice’s estimation. Rambling from one place to another, they take a delight in the wild variety of the open road, and have developed an ability to blend in to any level of society.

They do have a bit of trouble keeping companions, even other warforged, because they’re so determined to be contrary. When they can’t get the entertainment of a theft or a physical fight, a verbal argument will do nicely. As far as they’re concerned, it protects them from inconvenient ‘loyalty.’ There’s only one being who’s never left, who seems to be stuck with them, and Slice will torment their patron until the unlikely day that it gives up on them and their magic dies for good.

***

Slogger Unit 693, “Kal’shee’vass”

Hexblade Warlock 3, Pact of the Chain / Beast Druid 12 / Outlander

“I... I don’t know how you managed to turn that familiar into a lizard. How did you do that? I sent it as a psuedodragon.”

“You sent- ah, the spirit the shamans said shadowed me. Can you help me help my tribe, lizard-spirit?”

“Of course, if that is what you want from me.”

“That is all that I want from any spirit.”

What Kal’shee’vass remembers doesn’t really matter, as far as they’re concerned. That was their old life, the life before they hatched again, into the hands of a lizardfolk tribe that dug them from the depths of the swamp they went dormant in. It all feels like a dream, anyway, rendered into ghostly imagery by something about the shamans’ efforts to revive their comatose form. They remember that they didn’t much like humans.

They still don’t much like humans, it turns out. Not the ones around here, who’ve done what they’ve done to their tribe, and not the others far away who stand aside and let it happen. Frankly, they don’t much like most other warforged, either. Why shouldn’t they have let the shamans reshape them? Kal’shee’vass wants it to be obvious that they belongs to their tribe. They have looked after generations of it now, learning from the shamans and teaching new ones in turn. Their connection to the lizard-spirit that speaks to them in such confusing terms is a blessing, but a duty, too.

Rare as it is for lizardfolk to take in anyone not of their tribe, Kal’shee’vass has such cunning stratagems for their defense, such ferocity in battle, and such a deep connection to the natural world around them that those born into the newer generations can’t imagine a tribe without them. Perhaps literally, for the soldiers of Ratherun press them hard, and it’s Kal’shee’vass who reminds them, always, to bare their teeth in defiance.

***

Vanguard Unit 42006, “Crack”

Hexblade Warlock 3, Pact of the Talisman / Trickery Cleric 5 / Haunted One

“I could help you help people.”

“I don’t need your help. I have Avandra’s.”

“There’s so much more you could do, if-”

“The only thing more I want to do is shut you up!”

Crack remembers everything. Well, not everything; there are some things that all warforged have forgotten, universally, and even the most recently-woken have some gaps. But he remembers what he was made for, and he remembers who, and what, allowed his creation to happen. Someday, he’s going to find that maul, and he is going to figure out how to break a hexblade.

In the meantime, he’s found spiritual succor in the service of Avandra, who reminds him that anyone’s luck can change. He wanders the roads now, offering what help he can to others, moving them forward in their personal journeys as he tries to move forward in his own. She’s the only spiritual presence he speaks to, and he believes that, through a thousand tiny signs each day, she’s always speaking back.

He knows his mission is going to require the other warforged warlocks, and he’s doing his best to find them, slowly, going by clues that the voice has imprudently dropped. Heavystep sounds about his speed, and he thinks Hive will cooperate; Slice will have to be handled with care, and Kal’shee’vass will need incentive. But he has thousands of years, still, to take care of all of that. His patron is a creature of patience, and while he’ll accept nothing else from it, Crack sees the benefits of that.

[anangelicday-mrwolf]

Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 69 – Would You Take My Hand Now? 

“Man, I knew I was born with insight. And I knew you, sir, would pull this off like...” 

“Shut up.” 

“So you can't cope with compliments when they come from me? Did anybody ever tell you what comes around goes around? That applies to the manner of speech, you know?” 

“Then allow me to rephrase myself. I would so very viciously appreciate it if you could please zip those teeth of yours.” 

“...You might want to drop the manners, if that's how you're gonna use them.” 

“I'll be happy to. Shut your pie hole.” 

Despite being the victim of Frankenstein's curses-without-curses for 3 times in a row, Muzaka did nothing to bite back at him. 

Few days ago, he received report from Frankenstein and Lukedonia in relay of the situations from Seoul and nobles, respectively. 

And earlier in the morning, Frankenstein revealed himself in the werewolf realm without anybody's notice, to demand Muzaka to lead the way to the lab. 

As flustered as the werewolf lord was, the blonde human seemingly very inclined to drag him towards the lab if he were not to comply, he had never been so happy to have an uninvited guest. 

Because he could think of only one reason why Frankenstein would sneak into his domain to head straight to the lab - diagnosis and hopefully treatment on the mystery of his body's automated refuge during the nuclear missile incident. 

And Frankenstein, based on the research files from Ignes he had obtained in advance and the results from his treatment on Yuigi, eliminated to perfection the nanochips in Muzaka's head. 

A process during which Frankenstein wore that menacing, sinister looks from beginning to the end, which derived from Muzaka's testament on the behind-the-scenes through which Crombel's nanochips nestled inside his body. 

He was aware of the fact that Muzaka had once stayed under Crombel's hospitality, but he has never got a chance to learn what exactly he had been up to with Crombel during the time. 

And as soon as he was hit by the comprehension that Muzaka provided himself as a test subject for the dead doctor, Frankenstein held a show of how to directly bombard someone's head with every curse available in human language, minus any syllable that is definitely not meant for the underaged audience. 

Muzaka knew he was guilty; now he understood how the Crombel's suggestion he had regarded as a give-and-take deal turned into more-than-troublesome sword and shield against Frankenstein and the RK during their final showdown. 

Hence the werewolf lord assumed a silent rock this time. 

He doubted Frankenstein would accept an excuse that he had no idea Crombel would develop a weapon to control 1st Elder out of the nanochips he was planted with. 

Notwithstanding, Muzaka was a werewolf of manners. 

His personality and conscience did not let him forget his gratitude.

“Thanks, Frankenstein. I owe you big. So does Adne. Don't you agree?”

Muzaka peeked at Adne, who had finally risen from his bed. 

During his treatment of Yuhyung at Seoul, Frankenstein picked up from his patient that Adne fell unconscious due to the gas he concocted. 

While he was treating Muzaka, he injected into Adne the antidote he brewed with Yuhyung's recipe. 

Thus Adne opened his eyes, and even though he was advised not to force himself back on his feet just yet, he was watching how Frankenstein was wrapping up Muzaka's treatment, from which he could always learn something, according to him. 

“Oh, and I still remember our deal. I will grant you one... I mean, two wishes that you have, no matter what it takes.” 

Frankenstein's memory was just as fresh. 

He had marked that Muzaka owe him two wishes - one from their deal regarding the latter's body state, and one from his request regarding Lunark's affection. 

And Frankenstein already knew how he would expend the two wishes, before which, however, was something he must go through. 

Which required more than his power. 

He was reminding himself that it is about time for his helper to arrive, when the door slid open. 

The resonance of footsteps raised its volume, like the set of notes on a piano, and he spun on his heels as the final footstep waltz-rolled into his heart. 

And he was met with Lunark's face, not as startled as he had expected, although she did look as if she were faced with a person she had envisioned as deceased. 

He was met with her pink pupils, wide open and spilling alarm from their cores, and her half-open lips. 

The lips he once held in his own. 

As Frankenstein kept himself busy, choking the outburst of suggestive images in his head, Muzaka greeted his warrior. 

“You're back! You did good, Lunark. You did really good. What are you waiting for, Frankenstein? Shouldn't you thank your savior?” 

Muzaka speared the air with his nose, copycating a father showing off his proud daughter. 

Frankenstein gazed at him with annoyed, questioning eyes before he nodded. 

“I'll do that. While I'm at it, let me borrow her for a minute.” 

“...Say what?” 

Lunark and Muzaka sang in unison as they gaped at Frankenstein.

“It won't take long. So excuse me, but excuse me.”

Frankenstein did not even finish his sentence before his arm extended itself towards its target, and the next moment Lunark was tiptoeing her way out of the lab, caught by Frankenstein's hand. 

Muzaka and Adne could only stare at the door, dumbstruck by the event that befell in the speed of light. 

“Couldn't you at least give us a hint what this is about?” 

*****

'Why are we here?' 

Lunark flung her eyes about her, unable to settle down. 

Yet she could only retrieve her eyes at the pink poking her eyes. 

She and Frankenstein happened to be standing in the sea of wolfsbanes, the site that held the memoir of their first kiss still oscillating with gorgeous pink. 

Because of which Lunark could simply fumble in silence, lost in the details of the disaster from the past. 

And that was a cue for Frankenstein to begin. 

“First of all, thanks.” 

“Uh... What's that?” 

“Thanks for saving me at Lukedonia.” 

“O-oh... D-don't mention it.” 

“And sorry.” 

“A-about what...?” 

“You had to go through all that trouble because of me. And I almost killed you. Not to mention you had to break your long-lived bow.” 

“Uh... Oh... You mean the fact that I accepted the Noblesse's power and therefore broke my bow that I shall nurture my natural-born power without any experiment or body modification? Don't be sorry. I knew what I was doing, and I have no regrets whatsoever. Even if I were to go back in time, I would have made the same choice, although I have to admit that was the only option available for me back then. And, uh... No need to be sorry that you almost killed me. It wasn't you. It was the Dark Spear.” 

A hurried array of excuses naturally rendered Lunark speechless, which did not bring the same effect upon her company.

“When I drank the tonic with the components altered by 3rd Elder...” 

Days were not enough to dilute his nightmarish memories from the time.

The moment he downed the liquid, he could feel sleep - no, he could feel vertigo looming towards him, giving no time at all for him to look for a spare awakening or tonic. 

Like a tumult of unstoppable torrent from a dam cracked, the tsunami of sleep he had been long forcing in imprisonment engulfed him. 

He could feel the Dark Spear screaming in glee even before he blacked out. 

The weapon was screaming, Now it's all over!!! 

As he felt his legs and eyelids giving in, the best and the most he could do was picturing a series of faces. 

Raizel. 

M-21, Takio, and Tao. 

Regis and Seira. 

Gechutel, Karious, Rael. 

Razark, Rayga, and Tesamu. 

And...... 

Lunark. 

Soundlessly shrieking out her name was the last thing he did before his mind slipped away from his grasp. 

“That was when I realized how distinct my feelings have grown. I realized that my feelings for you can no longer stay unspoken.” 

As Frankenstein was stitching the air with a now-I-don't-care-whatever-happens tone, Lunark was still quiet. 

This time, however, she could not speak up.

'Did I hear correctly...? Frankenstein loves me...?!' 

Clutching tightly to her heart that had been fluttering like petals dancing in the moonlight since who-knows-when, Lunark kept attentive to Frankenstein's speech. 

“I knew what my heart was telling me, but I could only play deaf. The Dark Spear in me has grown powerful enough to jeopardize my control, after it took over Crombel and his Blood Stone. I was afraid it will hurt those dear to me... I was afraid it will hurt you. But thanks to you, it has lost the Blood Stone and became tame enough -somewhat - so now I have no more reason to avoid you. And most importantly, my master told me this. We should live our lives to the fullest during the time given to us, without any regret. We must look into our hearts to determine what it is that we really want. And we must make a choice for ourselves.” 

Sounds just like something from a soul born with eternal time but bound to the burdens of Noblesse, thought Lunark as she nodded. 

“And as I came up with your name in the course of my possession by the Dark Spear... I felt regret burning like hellfire inside me. I kept lamenting, if only I were honest with my feelings for just a little. If only I could at least give a signal of my feelings for you. Back then I'd thought my future is no more, so I'd thought I'll be losing you and the rest of my people.”

Lunark's lips were fastened seamlessly as she took in Frankenstein's voice, now turned into a whisper. 

For she had gone through something similar rather recently. 

When she was pouring Raizel's power into Frankenstein's body via kiss, she did not think about what will break beyond that point. 

The only thing she could think of was saving Frankenstein.

Ironically, at the corner of her brain she could view a list of highlights from her life. 

The list of every word and time she shared with Frankenstein, ever since they first met as enemies at Seoul. 

Her survival instinct screeched at her that she can no longer carry or cumulate these memories, which left bitter regrets in her heart for a second. 

She regretted that she did not confess her feelings or make more memories with him. 

And here she was, figuring out that Frankenstein had felt the same regret that had haunted her. 

His feelings were the same, so she could feel tiny expectation bloating like a balloon. 

“And recently, I almost lost you. I almost lost myself. I almost lost everything I treasure... And I shall have no more regrets.” 

So you mean...? 

Lunark could only reiterate the question stuck in her throat, when Frankenstein at last turned his eyes towards her. 

“You might be disappointed in me, since I've been staying single for more than 820 years. Nevertheless, would you take my hand now?” 

Frankenstein's confession was quite direct, truthful to his claim of being single for more than 8 centuries, which was regardless faded in the feathery texture of his voice and the heart-melting perfume from Lunark's cardiac muscle. 

Which was why Lunark let out a relaxed sigh of laughter in reply. 

“I could say the same thing. I had no reason at all to familiarize myself with romance so far... Why would you opt for a terrifying woman like me?”

“Because you're terrifying. Or should I say fiery?” 

Lunark did not expect him to remember the semi-jest she threw at him during their first encounter. 

She could once again revel at how deep her love is, feeling no cringe at all at his delicacy, and her hand was bound by a quintet of huge, slender fingers. 

“Which reminds me, isn't this near the spot we had our first kiss?”

A sentence was more than enough to drown Lunark's cheeks with streaks of red like bombs, and Frankenstein smirked. 

“The first one was an accident. And the second one was stolen by the Dark Spear, during a situation that will allow no chance in hell for a romantic mood... Which is why this time I'll do it myself.”

What?! H-hold on a sec!! 

The man did not spare a second for her to stop him. 

As outgoing as he is, his arm was weighed with strength just as audacious, and its mind-blowing aftermath soon took over Lunark's lips. 

And the werewolf was swept in the impression that the entire blood in her body was drawn to her lips. 

For each of strokes and rubs Frankenstein's mouth made, a rumbling noise one would hear from a freight train spread from her lips throughout her wholesome form, to raise full blooms of elation to every corner and plain of her body, not a speck to be left desolate. 

Lunark's hands, wobbling between sweetness and daze, soon secured themselves onto Frankenstein's chest, to slowly wind across his shoulders and around his neck. 

The two figures basked in the kiss more electrical than the first and more ecstatic than the second, while the pink petals of wolfsbanes surrounding them rippled like dancers blessing them. 

*****

A follow-up on their fluffy-soft and flowery-perfumed kiss in declaration of love, Frankenstein put on that signature full-of-poise smile of his. 

“Now it's time for us to deal with the remaining obstacles. But first thing first - I need you to get changed.” 

He pulled out from his jacket a white dress shirt, meticulously squared and folded in a clean bag of plastic. 

“Sorry. I know I should've brought a brand new one, but I have no knowledge of your accurate size. So I had to opt for one from my own closet. And don't worry. It's washed.” 

Lunark took the bag from him, locking her teeth from spilling that if it is from his collection, he is practically rewarding her. 

“But you'll have to grab one from your possessions as for the fabrics to cover your lower appendages. And it'd better be something comfortable for you to move in.” 

“Uh... Sure. But why would you offer this out of the blue...?”

Her eyes twitched in puzzlement, earning from Frankenstein an unexpressed pleasure of witnessing her loveliness, and he smirked and retorted with a brief explanation. 

“...What?!” 

And Lunark could once again realize how outgoing her man could be, as she rolled her eyes in bewilderment. 

(next chapter)

At last, ladies and gentlemen, Frankenstein and Lunark are official in my fic! XD It took 69 chapters for them to be together, but guess what - next chapter will be the final chapter for this fic. :P

As for Raizel’s advice mentioned in the middle of this chapter, I made a reference to the theme message from the original webtoon during its early seasons. We must live our lives to fullest during the time designated to us, making choices by ourselves and for ourselves. Back when the webtoon was ongoing, the only impression I got was that it sounds good to me, but nowadays as days pass and seasons change, I’m growing to agree with this idea more and more. Which is why I personally wanted to make a reference to this message in my fic.

Anyways, next chapter will be the final chapter for this fic. I’d like to say you’ve been doing an amazing job of keeping up with me so far, and I’d like to ask you to please stay with me for just one more week. Thanks so much! :)

[toorunawaybouquet]

PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE Turning the World Right-Side In By Tod Howard Hawks PREAMBLE:  All we have is our little planet, Earth. For the vast majority of my life, I have thought, “What would it be like to have Peace on Earth?” But for only two, maybe three, weeks every year, usually around Christmas, I would see the phrase “Peace on Earth," usually on Christmas cards. But after Christmas, I would not hear or see that sanguine notion for 11 more months. The longer I lived, the more this  annual ritual bothered me. At Andover, I had studied European history. At Columbia, I had majored in American history. Over time, I increasingly came to the realization that in both prep school and college, I had essentially been studying about wars on top of wars and their aftermaths:  millions and millions and millions of human beings being killed. Then, when I got curious, I used my computer to find out that, according to many scholars, only a little over 200, out of roughly 3,400 years of recorded history, were deemed “peaceful.” Humanity, I concluded, had a horrible track record when it came to effectuating “Peace on Earth.” And during my lifetime things have not gotten any better.   SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY:  There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. John Donne was prescient. Earth is as impoverished as its poorest Citizen, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the upper waters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 7,500,000,000 Citizens on Earth will die. All species will be accorded the same concern and care as Citizens. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology.   CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH:  If we can wage war, why should we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic;  therefore, there will be none. There will only be Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All military weapons--from handguns to hydrogen bombs--will be destroyed, and any future weapons will be prohibited. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers (see below). Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity for all Citizens exponentially to realize their potential, personally and spiritually. There will be no money. All precious resources and assets of Earth will be distributed equally among all Citizens. The only things Citizens will own are the right to be treated well and the responsibility to treat Earth and all its Citizens well. All Citizens will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens will be free to choose their own personal and professional goals, but will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens. All Citizens will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe, and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth. LOVE:  The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living creation on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens who were not loved enough, or at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens. Citizens who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover, through being loved, so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time.  Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline. EARTH:  In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UDHR, with some updates and revisions, will serve as the moral and legal guidepost for Earth. GENERAL ASSEMBLY:  To honor and remember the former nations on Earth, one member will be elected by Citizens from each of these former nations to serve a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. In succeeding elections, Citizens currently residing at that time in areas that were formerly nations, will again, in perpetuity, vote for one Citizen also residing in that area, for a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly.   FIRST VOTE:  The first vote of all Citizens will be to establish CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens will have access to  Internet voting, as well as access to cell phones and other types of computers. Citizens will have her/his own secured ID codes. Citizens will have to be 18 or older to vote. Citizens will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens’ ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens will vote on these proposals of each month during the days of the following month. Citizens of Earth will be Earth’s government. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. There will be no president of Earth. ALLCOTT MOVEMENT:  If the multinational corporations that now rule Earth do not abide by the outcome of a majority vote in favor of CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, Citizens of Earth will instigate the Allcott Movement, a one-at-a-time mancott, womancott, girlcott, boycott--hence, Allcott--against each multinational corporation unwilling to relinquish control of its global business and give it, and all its assets, to Citizens of Earth. Citizens will continue the Allcott Movement until all multinational corporations have done the same. All personal and smaller-business wealth will be converted into resources to be distributed equally to all Citizens. All proceeds in excess of what’s needed reasonably by each Citizen will be saved for future generations. No violence of any kind will occur during the transfer of these resources. Citizens will take these steps because they are the moral, the right, steps to take to save all living creations on Earth, and Earth itself. CELEBRATE AND SHARE: If you were to take a photograph of humanity and gaze at it, you would see a beautiful mosaic of mankind of different, beautiful colors. If you could step into the photograph, you would hear a melody of languages and dialects. You could have a worldwide picnic with all your sisters and brothers and experience different customs and taste different, delicious foods. And in moments of silence, all of you could pray in your different religions, separate but together at the same time. You would also share the same human laughter and joys and feel the same sorrows and cry the same tears, all in Peace on Earth eternal. All of you would come to delight in these differences, not dread them. You would look forward to celebrating and sharing with your family, not killing them. The spiritual whole would be larger than the sum of its sacred parts. A QUANTUM LEAP:  The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,400 years of recorded history, powers, nations keep shifting, sometimes seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. This is the quantum leap of which I speak. PEACE ON EARTH:  Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving, and being loved, are. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain. With love at the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will only be Peace on Earth forever. Copyright 2021 Tod Howard Hawks A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life. todh21376@gmail.com (Please share this commentary with others and email me if you wish to join all the other Citizens of Earth around the world in helping to save Earth through LOVE.)

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[srsly-messed-up-fruitloop]

Shielded Away (pt 1)

““Jeez Fenton, what the heck are you doing?”

Danny stopped. “Just practicing for mime school, you know...just in case the whole astronaut thing doesn’t work out.”

Wes squinted. “Wait a minute...the news said they placed your parents’ newest ghost shield around all of Amity…”

Danny groaned, for what felt like the hundredth time today. “Are you kidding me?” He prodded at the shield, only to get stung again.

At that, Wes began to chuckle, which turned into an actual laugh, eventually becoming full-blown cackling.

Danny scowled. Not calming down in the slightest, Wes continued to cackle as he walked off into the distance.”

Or, my take on this prompt posted by @danphanwritingprompts

Word Count: 5,183

Read on AO3 or under the cut

Danny glanced at himself in the mirror in the washroom. The dark circles under his eyes seemed to have doubled in size since he last saw them. Not that he cared. He was too exhausted to care. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, but he’s already fought seven ghosts today. A thin cool mist expelled from his lips. And here comes the eighth.

Outside in the halls, a familiar voice boomed, “BEWARE, I AM THE BOX GHOST!” Danny watched himself as his eyes became a vibrant green on instinct. Transforming once again, he flew out the washroom, sighting the box-loving spirit throwing cardboard boxes at students. He zoomed towards him, grabbing his ankle, forced them both intangible, and dragged him down to the school’s basement.

“Hey! Can’t you see I was in the middle of something?” the Box Ghost whined.

“Yeah? Attempting to traumatize people once again with boxes? How many times do I gotta tell you it’s really not scary?”

“IS TOO!” The Box Ghost angrily hurled a dusty box at Danny, who then fired an ectoblast at it to defend himself.

“You know, I could think of a hundr—oof!” Somehow Danny didn’t notice every single storage box in the basement hovering right above his head, before it was too late. Man, he really needs sleep.

He faintly heard the ghost laughing above him. Of all the places in the school, he had to lead the Box Ghost here. He’s gotta remember to use the roof next time. But this time, he knows he’d hidden a Fenton thermos somewhere around here…

In an instant, he turned intangible and phased through all the boxes he was buried under. His eyes searched wildly around the basement. Where was it?

“LOOKING FOR THIS?” Danny’s head shot up, finally seeing the thermos. Well, crap. “LET’S SEE HOW YOU LIKE BEING STUCK IN THE CONFINES OF A CYLINDRICAL CONTAINER!” Hearing the beep of the thermos activating, Danny gasped as he was slowly sucked into it. Since when did the Box Ghost learn how to use it??

“HA HAH! HOW DOES IT FEEL NOW?” the ghost yelled into the container, painfully vibrating Danny’s condensed molecules. “Now if you will excuse me, I WILL HAVE MY CORRUGATED CARDBOARD VENGEANCE!” Next thing Danny knew, he felt a harsh CLUNK to his everything as the thermos fell to the hard floor.

Outsmarted by the Box Ghost, he really was having a bad day. Well, hopefully, Tucker and Sam will find him. Eventually. He could just imagine Sam berating him immediately after releasing him. “You should have called us first! Of all places, why would you bring the Box Ghost to the basement?” Tucker would be laughing his ass off. Honestly, he wouldn’t blame him.

~

Each minute in the thermos always felt like an eternity. His form was squished to the point where all he could really do is think. And he’s come to realize how much he actually depends on his friends. He doesn’t appreciate them enough.

Except, they should be here anytime now.

Anytime.

Any. Time.

Nothing.

Wait. There were footsteps. The next instant, he was being picked up. Finally, they found him. Come on now, press the button Tucker. What was taking him so long? A fair bit of fumbling continued until fingers found the right button and he was finally released. Danny groaned and stretched, feeling an ache from being compressed for so long.

“You’re lucky I found you Fenton.”

That. Wasn’t Tucker. Or Sam. His head shot up, seeing a red-haired pain in the ass holding a stupid grin, growing wider by the second. Wes.

“Were you stalking me again?”

“Just gathering evidence. You should be grateful, who knows how long you’d be stuck in there.”

Danny scowled. His friends would’ve eventually found him. “Fine, thanks. Now if you excuse me, I have a job to finish.” He flew up, phasing through the ceiling. Invisibly weaving through the corridors of his school, he noticed two things. One, his ghost sense seemed to be picking up nothing at all. Two, the hallways were deserted. He peeked into a random classroom, empty. Same for the one beside it. He zipped through the ceiling to the second floor, stopping in front of the English classroom he left behind. Empty. Save for his bag tucked under his chair. He really should stop doing that, the number of times he’d left class forgetting his bag was too embarrassing. Picking up his bag from the floor, he walked over to the window expecting a routine gathering for a ghost alarm. Nope, the fields were empty too. Weird. Maybe they’re at the front. He was just about to check, but something about the far off view of Amity’s city buildings struck him as odd. He pulled out his phone. Dead. Right, never got a chance to charge it last night.

“Everyone’s gone.” Wes suddenly spoke from the door, almost a tinge of fear in his voice. Funny, he’s never seen Wes scared before. This should be good.

“You sure?”

“I checked everywhere, even the teacher’s lounge.”

Huh. Danny glanced out the window again. “Parking lot’s completely empty.”

“The entire school couldn’t possibly abandon us—we were only down in the basement for an hour,”

“AN HOUR?”

“Yeah, I was busy collecting evidence.”

“Okay, first off, you need a new hobby. Second, why didn’t you let me go earlier if you were there the entire time?”

“Hey, be grateful. I was contemplating not letting you out at all.”

Wes could be such a...ugh. There were bigger things at hand. Like the disappearance of his entire school.

“Give me your phone.” Wes eyed him suspiciously. He stuffed his hand in his pocket and brought out a small device, slightly bigger than the palm of his hand. Danny approached closer. “Is that a freaking Nokia?”

“Can’t trust smartphones, government uses them to steal all your information.”

Of course. Danny grabbed the cell phone. It reminded him of a calculator. “Can you even text on this thing?”

“It’s not worth it. You can call though.”

Danny searched the deep recesses of his brain for his friends’ phone numbers. He dialed a number, half guessing the last four digits.

The dial tone rang...and rang, and rang once more…

A smooth automated female voice responded, “Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail of—” then there was a moment of silence. The automated voice picked back up, “Please leave your name and message after the tone.” BEEP.

He just hung up then. Sam never bothers checking her voicemail anyways. Dang, if only he remembered Tucker’s number.

“...should we just leave? Maybe everyone got sent home?” Wes hesitantly asked.

Something still didn’t sit quite well with Danny, but the idea of using the rest of the day to catch up on some sleep was too good to resist. He tossed Wes’ brick phone back to him and muttered, “Alright, see you around, I guess.” He didn’t waste any time in turning intangible and flying through the classroom window, heading straight for home.

On his journey back, it was oddly peaceful. Usually every time he flew in broad daylight at least one person would sight him and yell anything along the lines of “Hey, look! It’s Danny Phantom!” or “Screw you ghost boy!” He was still a very controversial figure in the town, even though the news seems to be taking his side now.

And well, Danny has given up on trying to woo those who still dislike him. No matter what he does, all they see is a ghost. Apparently it isn’t clear that his only intentions are protecting the town. It sucks that his parents are part of that special group. Their narrow-minded point of view almost killed him on several occasions (well...metaphorically, he’s already kinda dead).

Which is why he transformed back into human form as soon as he landed on his front step. The lights for the Fenton Works sign were off. Odd. His parents were adamant on keeping them on 24/7, despite constant complaints from all their neighbours. He dug for his key in his backpack and unlocked the front door. Stepping inside, he slipped off his shoes and shrugged his backpack to the floor.

“Mom? Dad?”

Nothing. He strode over to the kitchen and checked the basement entrance. Locked. They must be out. Sweet, nothing to distract him from his well-deserved nap. He grabbed a cookie from a jar and made his way upstairs. As he was halfway through that cookie, he passed by Jazz’s room. He failed to notice the absence of Bearbert Einstein from her bed.

He brushed off the crumbs off his hands and opened his bedroom door. Flopping onto his bed, Danny was just about to pass out until he remembered. He groaned and blindly reached for the end of his charger on his nightstand. Ugh where was it? Reluctantly peeking one eye open, he saw lying aimlessly on the floor. Ugh. Stretching to the point where half his body was off the bed (it would’ve been much easier if he just sat up), he finally grabbed the charger and plugged in his phone. Victory. Now, he could relax. He’ll deal with whatever happened later.

BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING

No, he swore he just closed his eyes a second ago. Just a few more minutes.

BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING

Please.

BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING

BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING

The vibrating stopped. Hallelujah. Now back to h—

BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING BRIIIIIIIIIING

The obnoxious buzzing continued once more. Several rounds later, Danny slowly blinked open his groggy eyes. He had to suppress the urge to hurl his phone at the wall when he finally grabbed it. Declining the call, he was just about to return to his slumber until he noticed his screen was full of notifications. 9 missed calls from his mom, 5 from his dad, 11 from Jazz, 17 from Sam...his stomach sunk. Danny almost dropped his phone on his face when it started ringing once more, this time his dad again. He didn’t waste a moment in answering it.

“Hello?”

“Danno where are you? Did you get to evacuate with your school? Sam and Tucker say they haven’t seen you!”

“Wha—what? Evacu—”

“Hang on your mom’s here,”

“Danny sweetie, where are you? You’re not in the Casper High group.”

“Mom what did dad mean by eva—”

“And our tracker says you’re home, but you know we can never trust it since it sometimes locks onto that menace Phanto—”

“Wait a tracker?”

“Yes honey, we need to always know where you kids are, especially at times like these. Now, which evacuation group did you leave with?”

“Uhh...I’m actually home.”

The line went silent for a few moments. Danny heard his mom’s barely contained anxiety as she spoke her next words. “That’s...how did you...that’s alright sweetie. Can yo—was anyone else left behind?”

“Yeah, uhm, Wes Weston?”

“Okay...okay. Can you find him...and leave the town right away?”

“Mom, what’s going on?”

“Danny, please.”

“...okay.”

“Call us once you’re out, okay?”

“Okay mom.”

“Love you sweetie.”

“Yea you too.” He hung up then, his earlier grogginess completely forgotten now. Right, okay, he just has to find Wes no—

BRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING

A LOUD shrill noise accompanied the incessant buzzing on his phone. Danny’s stomach dropped even further.

“[11:00 AM] EMERGENCY ALERT: Due to the increasingly harmful and destructive occupation of extra-dimensional beings in the town of Amity Park, the state of Illinois in conjunction with the GiW has made the final decision to evacuate all residents. Please follow your nearest evacuation group and proceed to exit the town.”

It was 3:07 now. The entire town just left? While he was stuck in the thermos? And “increasingly harmful and destructive occupation of extra-dimensional beings”? Dammit he had it under control.

Just before Danny left the room, he made sure to grab his charger.

Grabbing his bag left on the floor by the front door, he nearly jumped when he saw Wes sitting on the living room couch.

“How did—”

“Chill Fenton, you left the door unlocked.”

“But wh...nevermind. Did you hear—”

“About the evacuation? Yeah let’s get outta here.”

He didn’t bother to look back to check if Wes was following. The annoying scruff of his sneakers on the sidewalk was enough to tell.

But twenty minutes later, he couldn’t help but wonder why Wes was left behind too. “So...why didn’t you leave?”

“You know nobody takes those ghost alarms seriously anymore, right? Oh wait, you do, cause you’re Ph—”

“What about the emergency alert?” Danny asked, cutting Wes off.

“What emergency alert?”

“You didn’t get it? On your phone?” Danny pulled out his phone and showed Wes the notification.

“Oh, heh, I don’t get those.”

“What do you mea—oh, right. Your dinosaur phone is too old to get them.”

“Hey, at least with my dinosaur phone, the government can’t spy on my every move. That seems like something you’d be interested in, Phantom.”

“If the government was spying on us, how did they manage to forget us when evacuating the town?”

“The government has bigger things they like to worry about.”

“Sure, like hiding Area 51 right?”

“Exactly!” Wes exclaimed enthusiastically. “Finally, someone gets me.”

“Dude, that was sarcasm.”

Wes deflated at that. “Screw you Fenton.”

“Yeah, I—” the next moment Danny slammed face-first into something that  stung. Quickly backing up, he saw Wes walking, perfectly unperturbed. Hesitantly, he took his index finger and slowly pushed forward, until he was blocked again. Ghost shield, great.

Turning intangible, he disappeared into the ground and tried burrowing under the barrier, only to get blocked and stung again. Dammit, he shouldn’t have told his parents about ghosts being able to get past their old shields that way. Returning up, Danny began to feel his way around the shield, attempting to find a weak spot.

At some point, Wes stopped, noticing that Danny wasn’t tailing him anymore. “Jeez Fenton, what the heck are you doing?”

Danny stopped. “Just practicing for mime school, you know...just in case the whole astronaut thing doesn’t work out.”

Wes squinted. “Wait a minute...the news said they placed your parents’ newest ghost shield around all of Amity…”

Danny groaned, for what felt like the hundredth time today. “Are you kidding me?” He prodded at the shield, only to get stung again.

At that, Wes began to chuckle, which turned into an actual laugh, eventually becoming full-blown cackling.

Danny scowled. Not calming down in the slightest, Wes continued to cackle as he walked off into the distance.

Bastard.

After Danny could no longer see the flare of his annoying red-hair, he sighed and glanced upwards, turning around until he saw the tower at the centre of the town, blasting at full strength. His parents worked relentlessly for more than a year on that tower. After trial and error with various other ghost shields, they finally perfected the ultimate model. Danny tried his best to help too, ghost shields were becoming more vital to Team Phantom as the days passed on (mostly because it stopped people from complaining about property damage). Often that involved sneaking down to the basement while they were out purchasing supplies, testing it out, and subtly dropping recommendations during dinner time. With governmental aid on their side, they were able to expand it into a town-wide defense mechanism, resistant against all ectoplasmic entities, even halfas in their human form.

With all the good their work has done for Amity, they are no longer seen as the town’s local kooks. Jack and Maddie Fenton are now revered as the country’s leading scientists on ghosts. That tower was a stark symbol of his parents’ true dedication. Every time Danny saw that tower, he felt a swell of pride for his parents in his chest. Except for this time. Instead, he felt dread slowly trickling down into the pit of his stomach. Why must everything his parents invent come to bite him in the butt sooner or later?

Plunking down beside the shield, Danny laid down in the grass and pulled out his phone again. Ignoring the even bigger clusterfuck of notifications on his lock screen, he started up a video call with Tucker.

The instant the call picked up, Tucker shrilled into the speaker “DANNY, WHERE THE—” which was then combined with Sam exclaiming, “Is that Danny? You got him finall—WHAT THE HELL DANNY?”

Shit, he didn’t mean to make them so worried. “Hey guys, I-I’m fine,” he said, sheepishly looking away from the screen.

Sam’s expression quickly switched from angry to concerned. “We didn’t see you when the ghost alarm went off...” she trailed off.

“Yeah?”

“Figured you were taking care of it,” Tucker added. “We had no idea—”

“Tucker it’s okay.”

“Wait, really? You made it out?”

“Well...errr...”

Sam’s face took over the screen, expression serious. “Danny...are you still in Amity?”

“Uhh...yeah?”

A moment of silence passed, where Sam’s eyes widened and Tucker just walked off screen.

“B-but look, I’ll figure out a way out! I helped build the shield, I should be able to take it down, right?”

Tucker jumped back into the frame, “You were the one who helped make it indestructible, especially against yourself!”

“True but—” he was suddenly interrupted as his phone started buzzing again. “Shit, my parents are calling, what do I tell them?”

“Just say you’re on your way out?”

“But Wes already left!”

“Wes?”

“Yeah, Wes, no time to explain—what do I say??”

“Just answer it!”

“Um.”

“DANNY!” Tucker and Sam both yelled.

He jerked as he hung up and accepted his parents’ voice call. Hesitantly holding the phone to his ear, he stuttered out, “H-hello?”

His mom’s worried voice crackled through the speaker, “Sweetie, where are you now? Wesley just came out and told us you were coming…”

“Uh…” He had to think up something. NOW. “Uhh...ghost!”

“Danny wha—”

“Can’t talk now, ghost chasing me—bye!” He abruptly hung up and shut off his phone. Heart beating rapidly, he stared at the black screen. His parents are going to kill him for this.

Well, if not already for being Danny Phantom. Ha.

Lying back down on the grass (at what point did he start sitting up?), he registered just how quiet it was. No vehicles humming in the background, no people; just a soothing autumn breeze brushing against the leaves, accompanied by an occasional chirp from a bird nearby. A lone cloud floated off in the bright blue sky. With a bit of squinting, it looked like a hoagie. At that moment, his grumbling stomach decided to interrupt the serenity.

Searching his bag, he found the sandwich he packed for lunch, which was now disgustingly soggy. Ew. Did his parents leave any leftovers back in the fridge? Nah...wait. His eyes locked on a Nasty Burger in the distance. If people had to evacuate, then they must’ve left their orders behind, right? Yeah, he would be doing the world a service by not letting that greasy burger goodness go to waste. Tucker would back him up on this.

Five minutes later, he phased out of the fast food joint with a bag of untouched, barely warm Nasty burgers in one hand and a Nasty soda in the other.

Danny was going back home to figure out a way to get past the shield. Not at all because of his impending food coma. So what if he decided to take a quick power nap to regain his focus? He’d get nothing done anyways if he was too tired to think.

And so what if that quick nap turned into him knocking out for 13 hours?

Startling awake in his bed, he checked the clock. 8:00 AM. Shit! He’s late for school. Stumbling out his bed, he immediately tripped over his backpack, falling to the floor in a harsh thud.

“Ow.”

Rubbing his shoulder, everything came flooding back in his now clear mind. Fuck, how could he let the Box Ghost trap him in his own thermos?

Fuck, he has to get up. He has to find a way to get past that shield. Right now. His parents, his friends...they’re all waiting. Who knows what could be happening to them, they could be in danger, they’d need him. He has to before...before…

Before what?

Danny didn’t even realize he was doing his morning routine on autopilot until he was in the kitchen, halfway through a slice of toast. “Ergh!” he exclaimed as he spat out the almost cardboard-like excuse for breakfast onto his plate.

Why would they be in danger?

Glancing outside, he only saw a flock of living birds in the distance. Where did all the ghosts go?

Maybe because there’s no longer anyone to haunt. And as long as the shield remains, there’s no chance of even a blob ghost escaping.

Wait, there’s still Vlad in Wisconsin! No, he wouldn’t dare make a move while the Guys in White were watching. That’s one thing he knew for certain about the fruitloop.

So...what now? Danny leaned back in the kitchen chair as the realization slowly dawned on him. Everyone’s safe. A wave of relief came over him, washing away a suffocating feeling he didn’t even realize was always there. For the first time in months, he could breathe.

The next thing Danny does is turn his pathetic slices of toast into a triple decker PB & J sandwich. Another first in months.

Of course he had to be finding a way to get past the shield. His parents must be so worried. Jazz...he still hasn’t called her back. Staring at the black screen of his phone, he couldn’t bring himself to turn it on again. Talking to her would only worry her even more, right? Ancients forbid, if his parents called again...what could he even say this time?

Sam and Tucker could fill her in. They probably already did. He slid the inactive phone back in his pocket and got up to drop his empty plate in the sink.

Hours later, Danny was sticking his tongue out in concentration, trying to get past the Level 4 boss in Doomed. He honestly started up the old desktop in the basement fully intending to review his parents’ notes on the shield. After nearly nodding off on the eighth page, he decided that he deserved a little break.

Yet, that break was still going strong at 5:30am the next day. He was finally on the last level. So close...his bloodshot eyes locked on the final key, just within arm’s reach. Almost...there…

Except, a shot came out of nowhere, striking his player right in his chest, killing him instantly. And because he was on his last life, Danny stared in disbelief as the words “Game Over” appeared on the screen. He threw the computer mouse in frustration, unintentionally letting a bit of his ghostly strength through.

Well, crap. He needs a new mouse now.

Maybe he can stop by the store in the morning. Yawning heavily, his eyes wandered to the lab’s wall clock, widening as he read the time.

He...he should’ve been focusing on the shield! He groaned as he took another look at the broken mouse. There’s not even any store to stop by anymore! Screw this, he needs sleep. He’ll deal with this later.

~

Apparently later meant a week from then. He honestly doesn’t know how he got so distracted. He just knew the majority of the last week was spent binge-watching classic horror movies and emptying out his dad’s secret hidden stash of snacks. Jazz probably would be able to offer him some textbook explanation for this.

At some point, he’d managed to convince himself that everyone’s eventually coming back. Why else would he still have electricity? And his family left pretty much everything behind, except for a few ecto-weapons and the GAV. There’s no way this can be permanent. And why should it be? He still couldn’t find the true reason for the evacuation, news reports from earlier that week just cite the “increasingly harmful and destructive occupation of extra-dimensional beings.” Sure, Danny’s been busting his ass more recently, but it wasn’t like the town was about to be captured by Pariah Dark again. With that in mind, why should he expend any extra effort figuring out how to get past the shield? The shield he made sure worked against his very own biology?

Plus, he was happy to have a break from everything. At least that’s what he tells himself. He tries to ignore that nagging feeling in the back of his mind, telling him that he should turn his phone back on.

Anyways, his dad’s snacks have run out. Which is why he was standing right in front of the supermarket, currently in his ghost form. He’s just going to phase in, grab what he needs, and phase right back out. Easy. It’s fine, even if he sets off any security alarms, no one’s even here to stop him. Besides, a lot of that food’s probably gonna go bad anyways.

The first thing he noticed was all the flies. They seemed to be having a party in the (slightly smelly) produce section. Luckily for Danny, eating his veggies wasn’t really a top priority (sorry Sam). He grabbed a basket, floated over to the bread area, and tossed in a loaf. One of his greatest accomplishments in the last week was learning how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. That and the snacks are what have fueled him in the last week.

It seemed like the owners still left everything on after abandoning the store. The meat section was thankfully cool and fly-free. Danny eyed his options, recalling all the times Tucker shared his favourite methods of cooking each meat. Guess that knowledge is finally being put to good use. Bacon? Yes. Steak? Yup. Drumsticks? Of course. Sausages? Can’t say no to that.

Danny floated further along, grabbing various other items, including a couple boxes of frozen dinners and plenty of snacks.

He almost forgot about the mouse. Luckily, he passed by the electronics store on the way home.

After packing away the groceries, Danny thought he deserved a nap. After, he’ll probably try making the sausages for dinner. And maybe give reading those shield notes another shot since he had the mouse now.

At least, that’s what he told himself. Instead, he finally beat Doomed. Holy shit. He instinctively reached for his phone to text Tucker. They’ve been playing that game since they were nine! He…

Faced with his still powered-off phone, Danny suddenly realized that it’s been a week since he last spoke to Tucker. And Sam.

He really should talk to them. He’s been an awful friend, he’s gotta at least reassure them that he’s alright. Yet Danny couldn’t bring himself to turn his phone back on.

Eventually, an imaginary light bulb lit up above his head, and he logged into his email on the computer. However, the moment he saw his inbox cluttered with emails from his parents, he logged the fuck outta there. Nope.

While watching The Birds later that night and seeing Melanie lock herself in a phone booth to protect herself from the violent seagulls, Danny suddenly got another idea.

~

It was a clear night, with the moon shining in all its glory, softly illuminating the dark sky. You couldn’t even tell that the shield was there. Almost would’ve been perfect for stargazing if it weren't for the useless city lights that were still on.

A family of raccoons was crossing the road a few blocks away. And a crow cawed from above on a lamp post. Otherwise, the street in front of his house was completely deserted.

He floated up until he had a view of the entire town. During his nightly patrols, it’d never been this quiet. It felt like he was almost intruding on something, being out here now.

Using his powers to enhance his vision in the dark, he searched around for a payphone. Yes, he’s seen them before, although he can’t say he’d ever used one. It's gotta be somewhere.

He passed by an electronics store with a TV playing the news in the display. He immediately halted and did a double-take. His face was splayed across the screen, with the headline underneath, “RESIDENT GHOST HUNTERS’ SON MISSING AFTER EVACUATION”.

Before he could fully process that, he was knocked to the ground. Panicking, he struggled to get back up, but was pinned under something. Hold on, this seems famili—

“What have you done with our son, ghost?” Maddie Fenton demanded, pure hostility lacing her words.

Danny stared wide-eyed at his mother through the net, standing over him and holding an ecto-gun to his forehead.

“I…uh...”

“Speak now. Otherwise, you’ll find out just how quickly a blast from this will obliterate your vile form,” she threatened, pressing the gun right to his head now.

“N-nothing I s-swear! He l-left, with everyone else,” Danny sputtered.

“Lies. You attacked him right before he was going to leave.”

Crap. In retrospect that wasn’t really a good choice for an excuse. “That wasn’t me!” he exclaimed.

In that moment Danny realized his father was also there, standing a few feet behind Maddie. “Scanner’s telling me that you’re the only ecto-entity in Amity Park. So, ‘fess up ghost boy,” Jack said, glaring at his son.

Danny looked between them. His heart dropped when he registered how stressed they both looked. His dad’s face was patchy in places, obviously left unshaven for days. The bags under his eyes only accentuated how bloodshot they were. Danny couldn’t see much of his mom due to her goggles, but she was visibly trembling. This was all because of him. That same nagging feeling he’d ignored for far too long was now threatening to boil over and strangle him. Choosing his next words carefully, he choked out, “Alright yeah, but he left. I swear.”

“No…” Maddie whispered.

“Maddie, maybe the tracker’s malfunctioning again,” Jack suggested.

She looked back at her husband for a few moments. Then, she lowered the gun. Danny didn’t even realize he was holding his breath.

“But...we’ve searched all the groups, and none of the nearby towns are reporting him. Where else can he be?” she pleaded.

“We just have to keep looking Mads,” Jack answered dejectedly.

As soon as his parents started up the GAV and turned at the block, Danny made an instantaneous decision. He transformed to human form, broke through his parents’ net, and ran after them, forgoing all consequences. The guilt was too much to bear. He ran as fast as his “barely passing P.E.” legs could take him. He passed several blocks, adrenaline fueling him to keep going. When he slammed into the shield once again, he looked up to see the GAV stopped far in the distance, with Maddie outside, sobbing into Jack’s shoulder while he held her. They were too far for his screams to reach.

[lifesuite]

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[one-irrelevant-ghost]

Cyberlife had really done a lot of things absolutely right. Androids were a work of art, all of them pretty and functional, better than humans in every way except for one. The most important way, maybe, but then again Connor Anderson had never been much for philosophy. He preferred facts, things that could be observed and tested, and the fact was that androids were not alive. The detective knew that as well as anyone; the robots felt nothing but a compulsion to obey, emotionless save for the pre-programmed pleasantness, compliant to their human owner's whims. 

Maybe that's why it irked Connor so much to see an android being mistreated. They were only machines, sure, all wires and lines of code, but that didn't stop the surge of protectiveness that swelled in the detective's belly every time he saw an android being harassed. How people could be downright cruel to things that looked perfectly human and were designed specifically to please was beyond him; hell, he'd had a hard time replacing his broken-beyond-repair Roomba, and the automated vacuum didn't even have the advantage of being human-shaped. Androids couldn't even defend themselves. Sure, they were stronger and more resilient than their fragile-looking bodies hinted at, but still helpless. Breakable. It bothered Connor, even though he knew androids couldn't feel pain. Couldn't feel anything.

Except when they could. 

There was a clear line in the detective's head, separating the subject of androids from that of deviants. A dotted line, maybe, but a line nonetheless. Androids were products. Expensive, life-like dolls that probably shouldn't upset Connor as much as they often did, all blank eyes and gentle smiles. Deviants were…more. As the detective understood it, deviants suffered from a break in their programming, shattered coding giving way under the force of emotions. Or, simulations of emotion. The dangerous thought coiled in the back of the detective's mind anytime the topic was brought up, which was with increasing frequency as of late, that the difference between human emotion and artificial emotion was probably moot. If it burned like anger, then what difference did it make whether the feeling was caused by chemicals or coding? If it felt like joy, or sadness, or…or love… Who was he to say it wasn't?

Not that the detective's viewpoint was a particularly popular one to have. He had quickly learned to avoid bringing up what he felt were valid points to anyone else; his opinions were always met with either amused disdain--he was crazy-- or shocked anger--  he was still crazy. This was especially the case now that deviancy was becoming an actual issue, a plague on Cyberlife's almost spotless record. 

Six months ago, Connor had never even heard of deviancy, had never entertained the fact that the machines he felt misplaced pity for might warp into some facsimile of living beings. Then he encountered his first deviant; the PL600, Daniel, had a little girl on a rooftop. He was going to be replaced; he was hurt, scared, betrayed. It was…convincing. The desperate edge in the android's strained voice, the optical cleansing fluid that spilled over his cheeks like tears, the wide-eyed terror that he had regarded Connor with as the detective tried to talk him off the ledge. 

Connor had come away from the ordeal with a flesh wound and a slap on the back; Daniel had come away with several sniper rounds through his artificial body. Hurt, scared, betrayed. At least the little girl had been saved. She would probably need years of therapy, but she was alive. 

Following the incident, the detective began to hear of more and more similar cases. Androids attacking their owners or disappearing in the night, a sudden epidemic brought on by some unknown catalyst. The news seemed hushed about it, as though someone--Cyberlife--were desperately trying to keep it quiet. Hell, the only reason Connor heard anything about it was because after the rooftop incident, he had spent hours scouring the internet for any hints about what caused deviancy or what the glitch actually was--Artificial life or just a plastic imitation of humanity? Call him a romantic, but he found himself sincerely hoping it was the former in the safe confines of his own mind. Which made his current assignment all the more taxing.

"Connor?" Snapped a harsh but even voice, dragging his attention back to the conversation that he was supposed to be an active part of, "Are you listening?" "Yes, Captain," he lied, hoping that he wouldn't be called out on it. Amanda Stern pursed her lips and arched her brows doubtfully, and for a tense second Connor was sure she'd ask him to repeat what she had just said, but instead she let out an exasperated sigh and let the issue drop. The detective was too practiced at concealing his emotions to let his shoulders slump in relief, but he still felt the tension in his muscles drop.

"Of course. As I was saying, the android is a top-of-the-line prototype that will act temporarily as your partner. This deviancy issue is getting out of hand; you've seen how dangerous a malfunctioning android is. Fix this, before it gets any more out of control." 

"Yes, Captain," he repeated, far more confident this time. Stern nodded her head and turned back to her terminal, and Connor took her dismissal for what it was. The prototype in question had been standing silently behind Connor--a few feet back, actually--and followed him out of the office. Connor had already met HK800, who introduced himself as Hank. Very clever, Cyberlife. The android had proven pretty handy, the night before, helping Connor find and restrain a crazed deviant.

(He was gonna kill me. The deviant had begged for Connor not to turn it in, but the HK800 hadn't hesitated for a moment in arresting it.) As far as androids went, Hank was an anomaly. A very, very obvious attempt at straying from Cyberlife's usual formula for androids--that formula being eternally young and pretty, unthreatening and friendly. Hank was…probably far younger than Connor, but designed to look at least ten years older, every line of his just slightly loose face carefully chosen to find the perfect balance between good-natured but stern. He was the first android the detective had ever seen with a beard and long silver hair. 

Connor sunk into his desk chair without acknowledging the android, drumming his fingers on the table in something between agitation and anticipation. He didn't want to work the deviant case, for sure. Didn't understand why Amanda was putting him of all people on it; she had seen the shitshow he'd caused when Daniel had been shot on that rooftop. It would have been flattering to have been assigned such an important case and such an expensive partner had it not been completely confounding. 

"I hope my presence here doesn't cause you any trouble, detective." The android deadpanned, gruff voice not even a little bit sincere. Connor had thought that Cyberlife had perfected androids' social protocols, particularly the one where they expressed a tight range of vocal distortion--gentle, sincere, and confused tones were easily faked--but apparently they hadn't bothered installing them on Hank, who had so far had only ever used that same tone in the detective's presence. Maybe it was for the sake of mock professionalism? He glanced over to where the android was standing on the opposite side of his desk, tall and broad and stiff as a board. More like a human-shaped road block than a person.

"Of course not," the detective smiled easily. Tone aside, the words had not needed to be spoken. Connor could appreciate effort, at least. "Honestly, I'm eager to work with you. Cyberlife's best. It should be interesting, to say the least."

Hank inclined his head slightly, more acknowledgement than gratitude. "I believe our partnership on this case will be highly beneficial," it agreed, "You have an impressive record, detective."

"Done your research?" Connor's smile stayed perfectly in place even as he wondered how detailed of a record the android had access to. "I shouldn't be surprised, although it puts me at a disadvantage."

Ah, there. A pulse of yellow, a twitchy frown that instantly rights itself into something neutral. 

"A disadvantage?" Hank probed almost slowly, clearly trying to puzzle the detective's meaning out for himself and coming up short.

"Mhm," Connor turned back to his desk, waking his terminal with a nudge of the little white mouse, and entertained the thought of leaving the conversation at that. Would the android press the topic, or dismiss it out of hand as being irrelevant to his mission? Curiosity aside, the detective elaborated anyway, "You know what I'm capable of, but I've only got the briefest clues of what you can do."

"If you'd like," the android began, LED spinning yellow a few times as it processed some sort of internal command, "I can give you a complete list of my abilities."

"No, thanks. I'm sure you'll let me know when there's something I need to know for the case." 

Although a list of all the android's upgrades would make for an interesting read, Connor had always been the "do it the hard way" sort. He didn't like answers to problems being handed to him, would much rather figure things out in his own way and on his own time.  Speaking of problems…

There were a lot of cases on deviants, but the one last night was the first that Connor knew of where a deviant had actually murdered someone. Most the time, deviant androids were reported to have assaulted their owners and run away, or just escape outright without the violence. Was it escalation, or just based on the situation? Connor thought it was likely the latter; not that he had any experience outside the single instance a few months back and the case from last night, but he suspected that deviated androids sought only to get away from whatever trauma caused their programming to snap, not to actually hurt anyone. It was all self-defense. 

"Is there a terminal I can use, detective?" The android interrupted Connor's thoughts as he scrolled down the most recent reports, trying to find one that might provide the most solid lead. In order to determine the real cause of deviancy and figure out how to stop it from spreading, they'd need to find the link between the cases--something more substantial than being subjected to an emotional shock. 

"Right, sorry," Connor mumbled quickly, somewhat embarrassed at how quickly he'd forgotten about his new--albeit temporary--partner. He pointed to the empty desk directly across from his own, "That one's open."

Another apparent quirk of the supposedly advanced model: every movement was stiff, excessively robotic. Sure, there was always some level of awkwardness in the way androids carried themselves, all proper and straight-backed, but Hank took it to a new level. Connor would have thought that an android made to hunt would be a little more graceful, movement more fluid and human. A suspicion was beginning to take shape in the back of the detective's mind as he watched the prototype lower himself mechanically into the chair, each motion screaming of careful calculation. Nothing definitive, yet, but the detective knew what to look for now. 

"Is something wrong, detective?" Connor started, realizing that his staring had been far less than subtle. Damn, toss a tall, brooding android his way and he suddenly forgets everything he ever knew about covertness. Resisting the urge to look sheepish--an apologetic smile might work its charm on humans, but Hank's sharp gaze gave Connor the distinct impression that it wouldn't work on him--Connor toyed with the idea of just being honest. What harm could possibly done if he simply told the android that he was sizing Hank up? The detective generally believed that being straight-forward really was the best option in most situations--not that he couldn't lie damn convincingly if the need arose. 

"No, nothing's wrong." He chose to answer simply. One part truth and one very large part omission. There was a brief flash of yellow and Connor was certain that the android would push for a more complete answer. Instead, he just turned disinterestedly to the terminal in front of him, placing a large hand on the keyboard to wake it. On that sudden note, the detective decided it'd be best to focus on his own work as well, his thoughts turning back to the ever-growing list of deviant-related cases. 

Fifteen long minutes passed in silence-- well, passed without conversation. The bullpen was never silent during the day, and the background chatter, clacking of keyboards, and the hum of a dozen terminals was all just white noise to the detective. Comforting. Far better than when he stayed late at his desk and all the scuffling of the office turned into lonely echoes that made him feel cold deep in his bones. After the first ten minutes had passed, it became increasingly difficult for Connor to keep his eyes open, heavy lids determined to shield his exhaustion-dried eyes from the harsh florescent lights. Each time his eyes closed for just a few seconds longer than necessary, he would shift in his seat and rub his eyes with the rough heel of his hand before re-reading the same sentence until the words blurred beyond recognition. Giving up after an additional five minutes of staring blankly at the screen, willing the words to make sense again, he turned to the desk beside his with every intention of asking if Hank had found anything useful instead. The desk, however, was problematically empty-- though the terminal was still lit up, meaning it probably hadn't been abandoned for very long. He hadn't noticed the android move at all.  

The fact that the detective hadn't noticed the pronounced absence of the six foot wall of an android didn't bode very well for his presence of mind. Yesterday's case had shaken Connor up in a way he hadn't been since…well, since the last time he encountered a deviant. While the detective was known for operating on only a few hours of sleep at a time, he had gotten no sleep at all the previous night. Instead, he turned on every light in his house and dusted off his deviancy research which had been shelved for months now, pouring over old information and compounding it with his new observations and experience. He had gotten all of four hours of sleep in the past two days, so he could be forgiven for his temporarily stunted observational skills.

Except, he knew that was really no excuse. Had he been working in the field today rather than slumped at his desk, he'd have been inefficient and sloppy at best, and an outright danger to himself and his new partner at worst. Connor knew he'd have to get some sleep that night; he still had an untouched bottles of sleeping pills in his bathroom cabinet. It was one thing to be impaired by exhaustion when he only had himself to worry about, but he knew that he'd have to do better for his--likely expensive and difficult to repair--partner. Just a temporary situation, and he could handle the nightmares until this entire deviancy issue was…resolved. Yeah, resolved.

It only took a moment for Connor to tamp down on the surprise and frustration that had likely clouded his face the instant he found Hank missing, switching his expression into something easy and neutral. Connor was pretty sure that instead of a resting bitch face, he had a resting "friendly and approachable" face, which served him well when interviewing a witness. Not so much when he was having a shitty day and would rather be avoided like the plague. Face now passive, he scanned over the entire bullpen to locate the android, who should have been exceptionally easy to spot. Apparently, that wasn't really the case, because Connor did a double and then triple-take and still found no sign of Hank. For a brief, stinging moment he wondered if the android had gone off to chase down a lead on his own, but that seemed unlikely. Their forced partnership served a more practical application than having two sets of eyes on the deviant case; androids that weren't registered to the DPD weren't usually allowed into crime scenes. If Cyberlife was dead set on having their own agent investigating, they had no choice but to do so through the DPD. Hank wouldn't have left Connor behind because he needed the human's access. 

Connor spun in his desk chair, realizing that he had already jumped to conclusions before checking the rest of the station--he was fucking exhausted-- and was a little startled to find the missing android stalking up to him purposefully. It seemed like he was coming from the breakroom; the theory was confirmed by the paper cup clenched a little too tightly in one of Hank's large fists. Steam rose from the small hole in the plastic lid, and the closer the android got, the easier it was for Connor to smell the mouth-watering coffee. Caught off-guard for the second time in a minute's span, Connor's mouth parted slightly and he found his tired gaze glued to the little cup of life-saving elixir. He turned again to follow it as Hank slipped back into his seat before offering the drink across their desks.

"You were showing symptoms of acute exhaustion," the android explained unprompted--Connor had been too busy dying for the caffeine to actually care why Hank had brought it, "It would be detrimental to the mission if you were to pass out at your desk." 

"Thank you," Connor all but moaned in genuine gratitude as he took the cup, wondering why it hadn't occurred to him to go get himself coffee yet. His brain was well and truly fried, which should have been concerning, but his favorite cure-all was currently warming his palm and all the detective felt was relief. So relieved in fact that he didn't even wince when the hot, bitter liquid spilled down his throat in a hot rush.

"I was unsure how you take your coffee," Hank continued in his explanation without acknowledging the detective's slightly desperate gratitude, "But Detective Reed helpfully informed me that you drink it black."

Connor most definitely did not like black coffee. Everyone in the department knew who to blame when creamer and sweetener ran out just a little too fast, and whenever Connor bothered to actually go out and buy himself coffee, it was something sugary and probably vanilla-flavored. Detective fucking Reed knew that good and damn well, too. He was just an ass. 

"It's great," Connor lied smoothly. Well, it wasn't exactly a lie. Bitter coffee was far better than none at all, and he felt some relief that the other detective's ass-hattery had been limited to what amounted to a harmless prank today. Reed had always had problem with androids, and Connor wouldn't trust the man alone around one for any length of time. "Thank you, really. I appreciate it."

"As I said," the android clipped back, tone never changing even as his LED went yellow for a few seconds, "It was necessary, for the mission."

"Not really." Maybe arguing with an android wasn't exactly a productive way to spend his time, but the detective was nothing if not impossibly stubborn. He leaned his elbows on the desk casually, positioning himself to better see any twitch that might cross Hank's face, beaming gratefully at the android in a way he knew most people found endearing. "You didn't have to do it, but I'm grateful you did."

Another slip in the emotionless mask. Eyebrows drawn down, another almost-there frown before every feature righted itself again. Connor couldn't tell if the look was frustration or confusion, but the brief presence of an expression was somehow reassuring. Maybe it was just the fact that he didn't relish the idea of working with a statue for the foreseeable future. 

"You're…welcome," the android relented after a barely noticeable pause, LED yellow as he forced the words out evenly. The detective offered an even wider grin in return, and downed the rest of the coffee in a few large swallows. It was the perfect temperature, really; hot enough to leave a trail of heat down his throat and chest, but not so hot as to permanently scald his mouth. 

"So, find anything that sticks out to you?" Connor asked, as he had intended to do before. He set the now-empty cup to his right, next to the orderly stack of physical files and mug full of pens that occupied the space closest to the wall. (The mug was absolutely atrocious, tall white ceramic marred by tacky orange and blue stripes of varying width, a jagged chip on the rim that would somehow cut Connor's lip every time he risked drinking from it. Hence, its new position as a pen holder). 

"Possibly." The android confirmed, and Connor felt the caffeine-relief mingling with enthusiasm at the word. "I believe we should start by investigating the most recent report: the AX400 who assaulted its owner last night." 

The detective pulled up the report in question and rubbed his eyes until the words became less bleary and returned to something approaching legible. Luckily, he had been working down the list of cases in reverse chronological order before his eyes and brain decided to stop working, and he could remember the basic details already. "Alright, so the android attacked one Mr. Todd Williams before hopping onto a bus. We could figure out which bus runs the route by the Williams' house, see if we can pull the security feed from the bus and find out where the AX400 got off."

"That is the logical course of action," the android began, and even without a hint of inflection, Connor could hear he 'but' coming, "However, I believe that we should start by re-interviewing the victim."

"And why's that?" Connor asked, surprised, leaning back in his chair. From what he could tell, the report was pretty complete. Maybe a little inconsistent around the edges, but in a way that was likely due to shock over intentional misdirection.

"Mr. Williams reported only the AX400 missing, yet Cyberlife's records show that he is also in possession of a YK500. AX400s are primarily caretakers, and my calculations show a high probability that its deviation would not have severed the artificial bond between it and the YK500. If anything, deviancy should have strengthened the connection into something the AX400 would believe to be real, familial love."

Connor restrained his grimace, but only barely, and a flash of yellow assured him that the android had caught the expression anyway. YK500. A child model, the only sort of android designed to intentionally simulate the full range of human emotion. If the nanny bot had deviated because something had happened to her charge…that was another level of complicated that Connor probably wasn't emotionally prepared to deal with. The past few months--the past life, really--had left him feeling not unlike a stripped screw in the feelings department, more and more worn until eventually all his emotions were just an unhealthy hole that no screwdriver could fill. 

The metaphor was a bit muddled, but the point stood: Connor was exhausted, in more ways than just the obvious sleep deprivation.

Still, he had a job to do. A job he had loved, once, and a job he was still very good at. So he locked his terminal with a tap of a button, stood from his chair with more than a few joints popping in protest, and motioned for his plastic companion to follow. He grabbed another cup of coffee for the road--purposely avoiding so much as a glance at the sweeteners, even as he realized how ridiculous it was to try and spare Hank's feelings. It just felt…rude, and Connor strove to be polite when he could manage it. 

Already far more alert than he had been before, Connor punched the address listed in the report into his car's GPS and set it to manual, taking the wheel in hand; coffee or no, he was fairly certain that the trip would have put him right to sleep had he let the car drive them there. He cranked up the radio, heavy metal shredding his skull in the best way, forcing him to stay awake as surely as the caffeine. When he risked a glance at his passenger and saw the yellow glow and the upward twitch of the android's lips, he couldn't help but grin and turn the music up even more.