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soaplickerrr · 14 days

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Accidentally Coincidental

CHAPTER 7 (click pictures for better quality)

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a/n: updates will be slow, i'm working on a pretty long fic on my side blog.

pairing: Idol!Kim Seungmin x Fem! CollegeStudent!Reader

genre: contemporary romance

SMAU

synopsis: Y/N, a regular college student accidentally texts Seungmin, a star in the K-pop group Stray Kids while trying to text her Ex, Soonyoung to come pick up his things, leading to an unexpected connection that blossoms into a heartfelt romance.

ignore time stamps, dates (other than the ones mentioned during texting) and typos

THERES A WRITTEN PART, DO NOT JS SCROLL THEOUGH THE PICS!!

The towering glass facade of JYP Entertainment stands in front of you, gleaming under the afternoon sun. The building is sleek and modern, almost like a beacon calling you forward with its promise of dreams fulfilled and careers made. For a moment, you pause outside, taking a deep breath to steady the nervous energy buzzing in your veins. Today is a big day, your chance to prove yourself at one of the biggest entertainment companies. The opportunity to showcase your editing skills is finally here, and you’re determined to nail it.

You step through the revolving doors and into the lobby, where everything is polished to a shine, from the pristine marble floors to the sleek, minimalist decor that screams sophistication and class. The soft hum of conversation, the rapid tapping of heels, and the occasional chime of an elevator create a symphony of activity around you. You can feel the eyes of staff and visitors glancing at you as you make your way to the receptionist’s desk, your pulse quickening with each step. You straighten your back and put on a polite smile, trying to project a confidence that you don’t quite feel.

The receptionist looks up with a professional but somewhat warm smile. “Hello, how can I help you?”

You clear your throat, trying to keep your voice steady. “Hi, I have an appointment today. My name is L/N Y/N.”

The receptionist nods, typing something into her computer with swift, practiced keystrokes. Her eyes flick up to meet yours again, studying you briefly. “Alright, just a moment. Someone will be with you shortly.”

You manage a tight smile and nod, shifting your weight from one foot to the other as you wait. You try not to fidget, but your hands feel awkward and out of place, unsure where they should rest. Just as you’re contemplating what to do with them, two men in suits approach from a side door. They move with a certain authority, their expressions serious, no, stern, but not in a way that feels threatening. Just…official.

“Excuse me, could you tell us your name again?” one of them asks, his tone flat and his gaze steady.

“Uh, Y/N,” you reply, a bit taken aback by the second request but deciding it’s best not to ask why.

The men exchange a quick, wordless look. Then, one of them speaks again. “We’ll need to take your phone. Company policy. No recording, photos, or unauthorized communications inside.”

Your eyes widen a little at the unexpected request, and you blink, momentarily caught off guard. “Oh, sure. Right.” You fumble with your bag, pulling out your phone. Handing it over feels strange, like you’re parting with a lifeline. You watch as they slip it into a small, padded pouch and secure it with a seal, locking it away. You know it’s standard security protocol in a place like this, but the absence of your phone suddenly makes you feel vulnerable, almost exposed, like you’ve had a piece of armor taken away.

“Follow us, please,” the other man says, turning sharply on his heel. You nod, swallowing down the nerves bubbling up inside, and fall in step behind them. The click of your shoes against the immaculate floor seems louder than usual in the otherwise hushed hallway. You try to keep your breathing even as they lead you through a series of corridors that seem to grow more pristine and imposing with each turn. Bright overhead lights reflect off polished surfaces, and you catch glimpses of framed awards, photographs of famous artists, and plaques of achievement lining the walls.

Finally, they lead you to a set of heavy double doors, which they push open to reveal a spacious conference room. Inside, the air is cooler, almost chilled, and there’s a tension you can’t quite place. Several people are already seated around a large, glossy table, including the CEO of JYP Entertainment himself, as well as a group of individuals who appear to be part of the editing team, seasoned professionals by the looks of them. A sense of awe mixed with anxiety twists in your stomach.

“Welcome, Y/N,” the CEO says with a smile that is both warm and assessing, his gaze sharp. The tension in your shoulders loosens a little. “We’re glad you could join us today. We’ve heard some promising things about you. Today, we’ll be putting you through a series of tests to evaluate your editing skills and see if you’d be a good fit for our team.”

You nod, your mouth a bit dry but you manage to offer a polite smile in return. “Thank you for this opportunity. I’m excited to get started.”

They don’t waste any time. One of the team members, a woman with a sharp bob and an even sharper expression, gestures for you to follow her to another room. As you walk, you take in the atmosphere: a blend of high-stakes professionalism and intense creative energy. She leads you into a larger room, even more imposing than the last, lined wall-to-wall with high-end computers. These aren’t your average editing setups; they’re top-of-the-line, the kind of equipment you’ve only seen in magazines or YouTube reviews, machines that look like they could handle any project you could throw at them and then some. Your fingers itch with anticipation.

You’re directed to one of the stations and take a seat, feeling the weight of their expectations settle over you. “Alright, let’s get started,” the woman says. “We have an unedited scene from a music video here. Take a look, and tell us how you’d approach it. What kind of cuts, pacing, effects, anything you think would make the scene really stand out.”

You lean forward, watching as the raw footage plays out on the screen. It’s a good scene, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. Your mind starts to race with ideas, visualizing how you could tighten the cuts, adjust the pacing, and use color grading to make certain moments pop. After a moment of silence, you start speaking, sharing your thoughts. You can see the team members watching you closely, a few nodding slightly, others jotting down notes. When you finish, you notice a few raised eyebrows, they weren’t expecting that.

“Interesting approach,” one of them says, scribbling more notes. “Not the usual take, but it’s got potential.”

Then, they take you over to another project, they reveal what the unedited footage actually is. Your breath catches in your throat. It’s “JJAM” by Stray Kids, you recognize the song. You’re momentarily stunned, feeling a rush of excitement and disbelief all at once. You’re a huge fan of the group, and now you have the chance to put your spin on something this important. It feels surreal. But there’s no time to get lost in the moment. You’re given two scenes to edit, the first chorus, and the scene right after it. You listen to the hype music as you edit, the next scene’s calmer sound a blessing, both Seungmin and I.N’s voices loosening your shoulders.

You refocus, your heart pounding.

Your hands move with a blend of instinct and precision as you begin editing. You adjust the cuts to match the intensity of the beats, sync transitions perfectly with the energy of the music, and add visual effects that enhance the atmosphere without overshadowing the artists. Time starts to blur as you fall into the familiar rhythm of editing. You’re in the zone, entirely focused on the work in front of you.

When you finally lean back and look at the clock, three hours of cutting, moving and placing have passed in what felt like a blink. You hadn’t realized how deeply you were holding your breath until you exhale and call the team over.

“I’m done,” you say, trying to keep the fatigue out of your voice but unable to hide the pride in your work.

They gather around, their eyes on the screen as they review what you’ve done. The room is filled with murmurs, some nodding, some pointing at specific cuts or transitions. You can’t hear everything they’re saying, but you pick up a few key words: “clean,” “sharp,” “unexpected.” You try not to overthink it as they finish their discussion.

“Very good, Y/N,” the woman with the sharp bob finally says, nodding in approval. “Now, let’s test your attention to detail. There’s a tiny flaw in this already-edited video. It’s subtle, but we want to see if you can spot it.”

You nod, feeling a fresh wave of determination. You lean in closer to the screen, eyes scanning carefully over the footage. A few seconds pass before you see it, a tiny synchronization issue where the beat of the music and the cut don’t quite match up perfectly.

“There,” you point out confidently. “The beat and the cut are slightly off-sync. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there.”

There’s a pause, and then a few murmurs of approval ripple through the team. You catch a few nodding in agreement, clearly impressed, though they keep their expressions controlled. Over the next several hours, they put you through a series of additional tests, each one more challenging than the last. Some require speed, others a sharp eye for continuity, and a few push your creativity to the limit. You’re exhausted, but adrenaline and sheer willpower keep you going.

By the time you finish the last task, you’re nearly slumped over the desk, eyes tired but heart pounding with a mix of hope and anxiety. You can barely keep from fidgeting as one of the senior editors, a tall man with graying hair, speaks up.

“Well, Y/N, you’ve shown us a lot today,” he says, and you hold your breath, waiting. “We’re pleased to offer you a position on our editing team. Congratulations.”

The words hit you like a wave, and for a moment, you’re not sure you heard correctly. Then, a wide smile spreads across your face, and a rush of relief and joy floods through you. “Thank you! I’m so excited to be here. I promise I’ll work hard and give my best.”

They hand you your phone back, still sealed in its pouch, and guide you back through the maze of hallways. You bow in gratefulness, a huge, full-teethed smile adorning your face.

As you step out of the building into the cool night air, you finally allow yourself to breathe freely. You tear open the pouch and grab your phone, hands slightly trembling with excitement. The screen lights up, and you quickly navigate to your messages, fingers flying over the keyboard.

Idk how to feel about this chapter , ALSO I DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT EDITING SO DONT BASH ME 😭😭😭

TAGLIST - CLOSED - if your name is in pink, I couldn't tag you

@disasterousdangerousbi @akitfffr @alexateurmom @jeonginplsholdmyhand @sunarins-whore @feelikecinderella @minniesuperversee @istglevi-gotmesimping @dreamerwasfound @whiteghostt @your-favorite-pirate @pnutbutter-n-j-elyy @chuuyaobsessed @ihrtlix @onlyhyunjin @jisuperboard @dazzlingjade @sellomaybe @lixiesbrownies333 @kkamismom12 @iatemycatfreckles @puppyminnnie @imperfectlyperfectprincess1 @ayyonoona @missvanjii @jc003 @dontwannaexsist @everglowdaisies

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perfectlovevn · 4 months

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Is there any like. Tidbits we can know about the Milo's? Especially manipulation Milo I'm going feral over him- anyway, love your game! I've played it idk how many times at this point and I think I've found everything. All within a week of finding it but that doesn't matter hdhgsh

Here is a big list of Milo facts I made before.

Let's see if I can think of some more, probably just for Manipulation Milo then since right now its really hot and I can't think.

Manipulation Milo:

Probably owns like a ton of clothes for different occasions. Suits, dresses, headbands, trousers, shorts, whatever. He keeps up on trends and knows what works together well.

Sings very well in karaoke, probably has a soft yet playful voice, but when he gets desperate it becomes much softer, similar to how he is in PreMilo form.

Probably keeps up with a lot of shonen manga and whatever the latest anime is. Has a soft spot for anime about cats or romance animes back from when he was PreMilo.

Goes out of the way to talk to people who are loners quite often. Even if they don't particularly want to talk to him, he believes its important to leave some sort of rapport with them. Plus, the quiet ones always seem to know things they shouldn't. He should know, he was one of them before.

For some reason, I can imagine him lying down in a sunbeam like a cat does. Probably looks up at the MC and watches them every now and then.

I can imagine him always carrying snacks in his pocket and eating them through the day. Be careful if he offers you something, you never know whether or not it's drugged.

Manipulation Milo, I think I've mentioned before tries to mimic Eris in the way he talks. I think that unlike Eris who when speaking while walking is very pointed and decisive, he tends to sway gently from side to side, allowing his jacket to move back and forth.

Given the opportunity and the expertise, he does also have those kinds of malware on our computer, but only just for recording things like keystrokes, watching the camera or looking through your browser history. It's weird how he knows these things, am I right.

He's pretty good at rhythm games, and somehow never misses a beat when it comes to them. And fashion games. Inspired by that one post about mobile rhythm games. Hums along to the songs as he plays.

Physically much weaker than Violence Milo, but still is fairly strong for his height. Still, he is far less likely to use forceful methods and actually will feign getting hurt to gain sympathy.

#perfectlovevn #perfect love vn #yanderevn #yandere vn #about manipulation milo #milo asks

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collapsedsquid · 3 days

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Dalio became more and more preoccupied with establishing a reputation as a guru. He talked often about Bridgewater’s ‘Principles’, a set of obiter dicta he had established over the years, which codified the rules for what the New Yorker’s John Cassidy called ‘the world’s richest and strangest hedge fund’. The idea was to create a culture of radical candour. All of Bridgewater’s employees were supposed to give one another constant feedback. Especially negative feedback. One Principle was that ‘No one has the right to hold a critical opinion without speaking up.’ It was forbidden to criticise anybody in their absence: you had to say everything straight to the subject’s face. Everyone at Bridgewater was given a tablet computer that they were supposed to fill with ‘dots’, positive or negative, giving constant ratings on every aspect of the company and their colleagues. The offices were full of cameras and sound equipment recording interactions between staff, all of it added to a Transparency Library, where it could be viewed by other members of staff, who would then provide feedback. Employees handed over their personal phones on arriving at work, and were allowed to use only monitored company phones; computer keystrokes were tracked. The surveillance and feedback were put to use. Failings resulted in ‘probings’ or public interrogations, often led by Dalio, in which the employee would be grilled on what they had done wrong, in search of the higher truth – the deeper, underlying weakness – that had caused it to happen. Dalio had visited China and liked what he saw, so he incorporated into Bridgewater a system in which Principles Captains, Auditors and Overseers vied in supervising their application and reported to a body called the Politburo. Videos of employees being caught violating a Principle, then probed, then promising to mend their ways, were assembled and used to inculcate the Principles. One series of videos, of a senior colleague caught in a untruth, was called ‘Eileen Lies’. Another, in which a newly pregnant senior colleague was publicly humiliated and reduced to tears, was called ‘Pain + Reflection = Progress’. Dalio was so pleased with that one he emailed it to all of Bridgewater’s thousand employees, and instructed that a version of it be shown to people applying for jobs at the firm. Expressing too much sympathy for the victim was an excellent way of failing to be offered a job. ‘Sugarcoating creates sugar addiction’ was a Principle. One of Dalio’s visions was to have the Principles encoded into software so that Bridgewaterians who needed a steer on what to do could consult the oracle. The project took more than a decade, cost $100 million and never produced anything useful, mainly because the Principles, all 375 of them, are a load of platitudinous, self-contradictory mince.

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i-was-today-years-old-when · 1 year

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i learned that HP was busted multiple times shipping their laptops like the EliteBook, ProBook, Pavilion and Envy with keyloggers that could record keystrokes to a local file accessible by anyone. This alarming discovery by a cyber-security firm impacted over 460 laptop models. And it happened multiple times. (x)

#today i learned #facts #truth #history #technology

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ms-demeanor · 1 year

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Hello, I'm currently in the process of switching over to Firefox, and was wondering if you could help me with something. One big feature I am painfully missing from Chrome, is being able to group tabs together in collapsible categories. I have terrible ADHD and frequently need to leave groups of tabs open for multiple days until I can get back to them. I'm currently running Tree-Style Tabs extension, but it's not quite what I want Do you know of any plugins/extensions that can provide similar functionality to Chrome's tab grouping? Thanks!

Okay so at the moment i'm using Simple Tab Grouping, which appears to do what you're looking for but I just have to give you a word of caution that if you open a group of tabs in a window that you haven't created a group from it closes all the tabs in that window, which is how I lost like fifty of my open tabs (which, LBR, was probably a good thing).

I've been using it for a couple of weeks and so far it's really handy, especially combined with multi-account containers.

So for instance I've got tumblr open in a catch-all group which is where I go for random bullshit like webcomics and digging around wikipedia and reading the news and general internet surfing stuff; I have a separate group that is just youtube videos and any time i open a youtube video in a different group I move it to that other group so I don't clutter up my other groups. I have a "work" group which is where I keep work stuff and where I'm logged in with my work container accounts and I have a "fandom" group where I've got a bunch of ao3 tabs open and i'm logged into cryptpad and have WIPs open.

If I open a new window that new window doesn't go into a group unless i make it go into the group and if I'm in a new window and I select a group from the menu it opens those tabs in that window and closes anything that wasn't part of a group; if i'm in an open window in my "work" group and select my youtube group it opens all the youtube tabs in that window and exits out of the work tabs but the work tabs are preserved and i can just as easily switch back to them.

So what this means at this point is that instead of keeping eight windows with about 150 manually sorted tabs up at all times, I have three windows with about 10 tabs up at all times and I can open 10 other windows with different tabs in a few keystrokes.

I'm sure that doesn't explain anything actually, but Simple Tab Grouping is working out well for me and seems to do the thing you're describing but you'll want to play with it before you decide to stick with it and make sure you've got a record of any tabs you need to keep before you start clicking through stuff because oof.

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ronearoundblindly · 4 months

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Sneak Peek

Y'all this follow-up Jake Jensen thing is getting out of hand 😵‍💫

It's already over 2k and they've barely touched yet, oops.

You suggest he have the fish in his room for a while, like shared custody, but then he knows you would have access to listen to him via the livestream.

If he tells you you have to mute it every time, you'll know he might not have. If he refuses to keep the feed up or the camera functioning, you'll be suspicious of why. If he says fucking anything against your very thoughtful and adorable idea, it'll be a cold day in hell since he will endure all forms of torture just to see your elated smile as the tank is finally setup between his closet and his bed across the room from his desk.

The keystrokes from his work are too faint for the camera's microphone, and he proceeds to wear headphones for music, take calls outside, and never touch himself in his own room for weeks. Ok fine, two, he makes it two weeks.

Deprived of hearing you, which he grew rather dependent on, and needing to inconspicuously lengthen his showers, Jake is a mess.

Why didn't he record anything? Why would he??? He was supposed to get himself together like a man and either ask you out or get the fuck over it.

He even watches (but mostly listens to) porn through his headphones without touching himself in an attempt to fade the memory, but then you show up at his door, asking to visit with the 'kiddos' and checking with the Marauders if 'daddy' is treating them well.

He's not gonna make it, man.

You settle on his bed to read for a while because why the fuck would he say 'no' to you, and this is the part that does Jake in the most: his sheets smell like you after and turning in his desk chair to find you accidentally asleep in his bed just... He can't.

He's unwell thinking about how sweet you are, how fucking horrible he's being by fantasizing about you this way, how if he just had the balls to crawl over to kiss you, he'd--but he doesn't. He just gets worse...

A/N: In no way, shape, or form should I be enjoying this man's torture so much, but here we are and you bitches can suffer with me...

#sneak peek #current wip #jake jensen x reader #jake jensen smut

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freeuselandonorris · 4 months

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Hi there. This is quite a dull question (relative to your usual delightfully spicy asks) but how did you get into subtitling and what does it entail? I’m looking for work that’ll help me steer clear of conventional office environments and tedious work place politics; this strikes me as something I’d be good at. Thanks😘

hello!!

popped this under a cut for length ☺️

i got into subtitling because a relative worked for the company, which is a pretty common story - it's not the kind of industry a lot of people know about!

hopefully you're UK-based as that's all i can speak to, but i'm sure it's similar in other countries. there are two main types of subtitling for broadcast: live (where you're subtitling live TV as it happens (e.g. news, sport, live chat shows) and offline/pre-recorded (pre-filmed stuff ranging from the kardashians to movies and everything in between).

live subtitling is my main area. you need to be able to work well under pressure, be decent with computers, and be able to multitask well as it generally involves speaking, listening and typing all at the same time. you're essentially repeating what's being said, editing it on the fly for coherency and adding spoken punctuation commands, and editing it as it goes out. it's a skill!

pre-recorded, you need to be meticulous, have excellent spelling and grammar abilities, and work well to tight deadlines. as you have far more time to do a pre-rec show, you type the captions out, format them and assign timecodes.

whichever you're interested in, in the UK the main providers are usually the in-house TV channels (BBC through Red Bee, ITV, Sky) but the contracts do change hands a fair bit. a lot of the pre-rec contracts are freelance, and most of them (live and pre-rec) are home-working rather than office-based. the interviews generally comprise questions, spelling and grammar tests, plus sometimes a test of the voice recognition equipment if you're doing live subs.

for me, the pros: exciting and varied workday, get paid to watch TV, great when you're covering stuff you like (i used to get to subtitle Sky F1!), my colleagues have always been nice, there's always work to pick up as a freelancer once you've got the skills.

cons: long/antisocial shift patterns for live subs, lack of job security (even in the permanent roles, there's always a threat of redundancy if a contract goes, plus the ever-looming threat of AI), forced to watch stuff you dislike (personally i found watching constant news coverage really took a toll on my mental health in the end), a lot of people end up with RSI issues from the repetitive keystrokes involved.

re: your last point - i will say that it's a lot less glamorous than it sounds and is largely a convential office-based job (or home-office based) in many respects!

hope this is useful, let me know if i can give any more info :)

#answered

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omegaversetheory · 4 months

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Your Pack - Through the Ages #1

Traditional Omegaverse

Long post ahead! Now this is all heavily informed by my own aus and headcannons and therefore is a bit more alternative than some of the aus and fics you've stumbled across only because I've decided to dive really deep here and get creative.

As you know, I don't believe that an omegaverse would mirror our understanding of culture, sociology, etc.. So before you flood my inbox with a "this isn't realistic!" note, save yourself the keystrokes, I know and that's my point.

Pack Leadership

You are a part of your paternal grandfather's pack as the culture you live in is patriarchal. Your grandfather is an alpha and also serves the role of pack head just like his father before him. Your father is an alpha and holds the position of "second alpha". When your grandfather dies he will become the pack head. Your grandmother is an beta and fulfills the role of Lady of the Pack, if she were an omega or alpha she could also fulfil this role. As your grandfather is the leader of men, she is the leader of women and children. When the men are away: trading, hunting, or otherwise she is the acting pack leader. Your father's position as second alpha does not supersede her authority.

While it is common for the pack head and the pack lady to be coupled, that is not always the case. The Lady of the Pack is always someone who grew up in the pack, not someone who married in. When your brother becomes pack head after your father your mother (who will likely succeed your grandmother as the Lady) will pick her replacement. Traditionally it is the previous pack head's eldest daughter. Your brother's wife would then become that Lady's second.

The pack head and the pack second do not travel together. When there is something that needs to be handled outside of your pack's region - normally your father is sent to handle it under your grandfather's explict direction.

Pack Territory

Your region can vary in size. It gets larger when a daughter of the pack alpha's line get's married, as land is often part of her dowry. Trading with other packs in the area can also be a source of expansion, but the biggest cause for expansion is often absorbing another pack altogether. This may happen after a pack war, but a merge may also come about as a political decision to strengthen both bodies.

Large packs may split up and live as pods around the pack region, unified under the direction of the pack head. In this case, each pod would have it's own leader - normally an alpha but it could be a beta. Pod leaders would be connected to the pack head through a familial line, the most common is that the pod leaders are the pack head's sons, nephews, or grandsons.

A pack split occurs after a civil war, or may occur if a pack head feels the population and territory is becoming too large to control. Unlike a Pod split, a pack split means the territory would be permanently split according to the pack head/current circumstances. The new pack would not be a pod and therefore would not be entitled to any resources, protection, or miscellaneous support from that parent pack. This is not always a negative thing, sometime it occurs if a pod begins to flourish further than anticipated and it makes sense to become independent.

Gender Roles -

Men and women have very clear and distinct roles. A pack or pod leader is always a man. Men are also warriors, traders, farmers, gatherers, etc.. Women are seen as vital to the pack's prosperity and therefore are not to engage in work that takes them outside of the pack region. Women are teachers, keep the pack records, are crafters who make things for the men to trade, take care of the children, are often cooks (but not always), etc.. In many cases female pack members recieve a more well rounded education, than their male counterparts who begin the apprenticeship process from a very young age and only learn the skills required of that position.

Alphas, betas, and omegas also have different roles. Alpha men are normally chosen to fulfill combat/very physical roles such as warriors, builder, shephards, mechanics etc.. Beta men might be navigators, negotiators, engineers, etc.. Omega men might also be farmers, gatherers, cooks, voyagers, architects etc.. Men are the ones that leave the pack frequently - it is no uncommon for a man to be away from the pack for many weeks at a time due to his occupation.

Alpha women are often teachers/educators/child rearers, they might provide pack protection if the men are away, and frequently engage in trades like carpentry, blacksmithing, etc.. Beta women are doctors/nurses/morticians, gardeners, tailors, record keepers, librarians etc. Omega women are often painters, ceramicists, chandlers, printers, lawkeepers stenographers they might tend to small animals like chicken/rabbits. Women always stay within pack territory unless of an emergency.

Children/Families

Children grow up in their parents' homes until they are either married or can support themselves via the wages from their occupation. All children are educated through the age of 13. At age 3, children are sent to a nursery to be looked after by nursery attendants here they will receive basic schooling. At aged 6, children move up to "reading school" which lasts until age 11. Years 12 and 13 are spent in a more rigorous environment called "topper" in which they are scouted after by townspeople looking for new apprentices, take apptitude tests, try out different jobs, and hone skills in specific areas. Boys typically begin their apprenticeships full time at 14. Girls often move on to "AES" or "academic and educational stimulation" which may last until age 18, but they may leave at any time, most leave by 15. Girls who complete AES are normally then trained to be governesses, teachers, law-readers/makers, etc.. Apprenticeships and other extra-vocational training normally lasts 2-3 years.

Due to the limited resources of a pack, couplings aren't permitted to have children any time they want. Instead, they must wait for periods of prosperity to be granted a special license. Licenses are handed out based on wait time, for example a coupling that has been bonded/married for 3 years would be ahead of a coupling that has just been bonded. Having children out of bond is normally unacceptable, as it could easily put a strain on pack resources. In large affluent packs, this is not as much of a worry. In a normal pack, couplings wouldn't have to wait more than a year to get a child-rearing license and if they were just bonded, they would often wait half that time. It is a sign of bad fourtune ahead if the wait time becomes longer than 24 months or you notice your pack without any unweaned children. (Bonding liscenses will be touched on in another post, but also exist to prevent incest and intermixing of close family lines)

Because couplings cannot have children whenever they'd like, multiples like twins or triplets are seen as a true blessing - and that family will be said to have good favor forever. Marrying a multiple is also said to be good luck as multiples often run in family lines.

Some packs have family limits - for example a coupling may not have more than four full term pregnancies. Others have occupation limits, for example a farmer's family may have seven pregnancies but a warrior's family might only have three. Others may have no limits at all and put more of the financial risk on the parents.

Children are raised by their parents but also by all of the adults in their village. It is common for a child to refer to family friends and neighbors as their aunt or uncle (though the word used specifically might be distinctive of their dynamic rather than their gender)

#a/b/o #omegaverse #a/b/o dynamics #omegaverse dynamics #super long post #traditional omegaverse #traditional omegaverse packs #packs #pack structure #a/b/o headcanons #omegaverse au #a/b/o au #omegaverse headcanons #pack roles #pack head #pack lady #omegaversetheory #omegaversetheory au

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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How Apple could open its App Store without really opening its App Store

Last week, Mark Gurman published a blockbuster story in Bloomberg, revealing Apple’s plan to allow third-party Ios App Stores to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Apple didn’t confirm it, but I believe it. Gurman’s sourcing was impeccable:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/will-apple-allow-users-to-install-third-party-app-stores-sideload-in-europe

This is a huge deal. While Apple’s “curated” approach to software delivers benefits to users, those benefits are unreliable. As I explain in a new post for EFF’s Deeplinks blog, Apple only fights for its users when doing so is good for its shareholders. But when something is good for Apple shareholders and bad for its customers, the shareholders win, every time:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/heres-how-apple-could-open-its-app-store-without-really-opening-its-app-store

To see how this works, just consider Apple’s record in China. First, Apple removed all working VPN apps from its Chinese App Store, to facilitate state spying on its Chinese customers:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Then Apple backdoored its Chinese cloud servers, to further facilitate state surveillance of Chinese Iphone owners:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

Then, just last month, Apple neutered Airdrop’s P2P file-sharing in order to help the Chinese state in its campaign to stamp out protests:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/11/apple-limits-iphone-filesharing-feature-used-by-protesters-in-china

Apple claims that its App Store is a fortress that protects its users against external threats. But the Iphone is designed to block its owners from choosing rival app stores, which means that when Apple betrays its customers, the fortress walls become prison walls. Governments know this, and they rely on it when they demand that Apple compromise its customers to totalitarian surveillance:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

Now, there’s an interesting contrast here. When the DFBI demanded that Apple backdoor its devices to aid in the prosecution of the San Bernardino shooters, Apple took its customers’ side, bravely refusing to compromise its devices:

https://www.eff.org/cases/apple-challenges-fbi-all-writs-act-order

That was the right call to make. Does it mean that Apple doesn’t value privacy for its Chinese customers’ privacy as much as it values it for American customers? Does it mean that Apple respects the CCP more than it respects the FBI?

Not at all. It just means that China was able to threaten Apple’s shareholders in ways that the DoJ couldn’t. Standing up to the Chinese government would threaten Apple’s access to 350 million middle-class Chinese potential customers, and an equal number of Chinese low-waged workers who could be tapped to manufacture Apple devices under brutal labor conditions at rock-bottom prices.

Standing up to the FBI didn’t threaten Apple’s shareholders the way that standing up to the CCP would, so Apple stood up for its American users and sold out its Chinese users.

But that doesn’t mean that US Apple customers are safe. In the US, Apple defends its customers from rival commercial threats, but actively prevents those customers from defending themselves against Apple’s own commercial threats.

Famously, Apple took its customers side over Facebook’s, adding an amazing, best-in-class, one-click opt-out to tracking, which is costing Facebook $10 billion per year. You love to see it:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

On the other hand…Apple secretly continued to its customers’ clicks, taps, gestures, apps and keystrokes, even after those customers explicitly opted out of tracking, and used that data to build nonconsensual dossiers on every Ios owner for use in its own ad-targeting business:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Apple defended its customers against Facebook’s predation, but not its own. When Apple’s shareholder interests are on the line, Apple’s App Store becomes a prison, not a fortress: because Apple controls which software you can install, it can (and does) block you from installing apps that extend its block on commercial surveillance to Apple itself.

Then there’s the app tax. Apple charges app makers a 30% commission on all their sales, which means that certain businesses literally can’t exist. Take audiobooks: audiobook sellers have 20% gross margins on their wares. If they sell their audiobooks through apps and pay a 30% vig to Apple, they lose money on every sale. Thus, the only Ios app that will sell you an audiobook is Apple’s own Apple Books.

Apple Books requires authors and publishers to wrap their books in Apple’s DRM, and the DMCA makes it a felony to supply your own readers with a tool to convert the books you published to a rival’s format. That means that readers have to surrender every book they’ve bought on Apple Books if you switch platforms and ask them to follow you. It’s not just social media that turns creators into digital sharecroppers.

It’s not any better when it comes to the businesses that can eke out an existence under the app tax’s yoke. These businesses pass their extra costs on to Apple’s customers, who ultimately bear the app tax burden. Because every app maker has to pay the app tax, they all tacitly collude to hike their prices. And because mobile is a duopoly, the app tax is also buried in every Android app, because Google has exactly the same app tax as Apple (Google will also be forced to remove barriers to third-party app stores under the DMA).

All this to say that it is a terrible error to impute morals or values to giant corporations. Apple and Google are both immortal colony organisms that view human beings as inconvenient gut flora. They are remorseless paperclip-maximizing artificial life forms. They are, in other words, limited liability corporations.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/paperclip-maximizer

“If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product” sounds good, but it’s absolutely wrong. You can’t bribe a paperclip-maximizing colony organism into treating you with dignity by spending money with it. Companies’ treatment of you depends on what they can get away with — not their “personalities.” Apple doesn’t respect privacy — it thinks it can make more paperclips by giving some of its customers some privacy. As soon as Apple finds a way to make more paperclips by spying on those you (say, by starting its own internal adtech business), it will spy on you, and the $1000 you spent on your Iphone will not save you.

Once you understand that corporate conduct is a matter of power, not personality, then you understand that the way to prevent companies from harming you is to meet their power with countervailing power. This is why tech worker unions matter: organized labor has historically been the most important check on corporate power, which is why tech companies are so vicious in the face of union drives:

https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-rises/

Beyond labor, two other forces can discipline corporate conduct: regulation and competition. The biggest threat to a business’s customers is that business’s own shareholders. A company might defend its customers against a rival, but they will never defend its customers against its own shareholders.

Regulation and competition both impose costs on shareholder who abuse their customers: regulation can punish bad conduct with fines that come out of shareholder profits, and competition can create a race to the top as businesses seek to poach each others’ customers by offering them progressively better deals.

Which brings me back to the DMA, the EU’s pending regulation forcing Apple to open its app store, and Apple’s leaked plans to comply with the regulation. This is (potentially) great news, because rival app stores can offer Apple customers an escape hatch from mandatory surveillance and price-gouging.

But the devil is in the details. There are so many ways that Apple can use malicious compliance to appear to offer a competitive app marketplace without actually doing so. In my article for EFF, I offer a checklist of fuckieries to watch for in Apple’s plans:

• Forcing software authors in Apple’s Developer Program. Not only does this force developers to pay Apple for the privilege of selling to Iphone owners, but it also forces them to sign onto a Bible-thick EULA that places all kinds of arbitrary limits on their software. It’s not enough for Apple to open up to rival app stores — it also must not sabotage rivals who produce competing SDKs for Ios.

• Forcing App Store criteria on rival app stores. Apple mustn’t be permitted to turn legitimate vetting for security or privacy risks into editorial control over which apps Ios users are allowed to use. Apple may not want to carry games that highlight labor conditions in high-tech manufacturing sweatshops:

https://venturebeat.com/games/apple-drops-uncomfortable-sweatshop-hd-game-from-app-store/

And it may object to apps that track US drone killings of civilians abroad:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/aug/30/apple-blocks-us-drone-strike-app

But those arbitrary editorial conditions shouldn’t be imposed on rival app stores.

• Taxing rival app stores for “security vetting.” Apple is not the only entity qualified to assess the security of apps:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

and it’s just as capable as its rivals of making grave errors:

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/apple-fixes-exploited-iphone-zero/

It’s fine to say that app stores must submit to third-party security certification, but they should be free to choose Apple out of a field of qualified privacy certifiers.

• Requiring third-party app stores to process payments with Apple. The app tax should be disciplined by competition. Allowing Apple to extract 30% from transactions in its rivals’ app stores would defeat the whole purpose of the DMA.

• Arbitrarily revoking third party app stores. It’s foreseeable that some third-party app stores would be so incompetent or malicious that Apple could revoke their ability to operate on Ios devices. However, if Apple were to pretextually shut down third-party app stores, it could sour Iphone owners off the whole prospect of getting apps elsewhere.

Apple must not be permitted to use its power to shut down app stores in an anti-competitive way, but distinguishing pretextual shutdowns from bona fide ones is a time-consuming, fact-intensive process that could leave customers in limbo for years.

One way to manage this is for regulators to dangle massive fines for pretextual shutdowns. In addition to this, Apple must make some provision to continue its customers’ access to the apps, media and data from the app stores it shuts down.

All of this points to the role that regulators pay, even (especially) when it comes to disciplining companies through competition. The DMA is overseen by the EU Commission, which has the power to investigate, verify and approve (or reject) the standards that Apple sets for privacy, security, and app stores themselves. The Commission should anticipate and fund the regulators needed to manage these tasks quickly, thoroughly and efficiently.

Finally, Europeans shouldn’t have all the fun. If Apple can do this for Europeans, it can do it for every Apple device owner. If you bought an Ios device, it’s yours, not Apple’s, and you should have the right to technological self determination that Europeans get when it comes to deciding which software it runs.

Image: Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/eu-flag-11.png

CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[Image ID: An EU flag. The blue background has a fine tracery of etched circuitry.]

#pluralistic #apple #malicious compliance #walled gardens #app stores #interoperability #interop #european union #eu #digital markets act #ios #dma

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ninjathrowingstork · 10 months

Text

Blade Runner: Bitter Water

Hello I am back again with more heartbreak.

I'll probably update with my actual notes once I remember what I wanted to add for this.

______________________________________________________________

Chapter 3

A blood black nothingness.

A system of cells.

Within cells interlinked.

Within one stem.

And dreadfully distinct.

Against the dark.

A tall white fountain played."

He’d passed. He always passed.

Leaving the dingy white room, the rapid-fire questioning had left his mind feeling scraped raw, but he was still on his baseline and he had a job to do. It had been nearly a week, and he was running out of time. This hadn’t been the fight he was looking for, but hunting down where a fugitive replicant would go to ground meant finding other fugitives sometimes. Fugitives who fought back.

But they weren't designed to fight, to hunt, to kill, the way he had been designed.

The investigation was getting nowhere.

kD6-3.7 scanned through another day’s worth of surveillance recordings, fruitlessly looking for one, specific spinner.

While pursuing his other lead had resulted in the crash landing in a pile of slush, he’d eventually tracked down first a shop owner who’d recognized the lost heiress’s replicant companion and that had led to someone else who’d confirmed the woman’s daily route, and finally to the series of cameras along the streets.

Just for once, he wished something could have been easy. It took days to get some of the recordings back, from stores and private security cameras. Sure the Police Department could request the files be turned over, but tracking down the paperwork and waiting for permits to go through had already set him back, even before sitting and watching through the days and days of recordings. He’d eventually had to put each camera’s recording of the last day the replicant woman had been seen together in sequence, tracking her path along the usual route, and-

There.

One moment she was walking, head down under an umbrella, and the next she’d turned a corner and by the camera next in the sequence, she was gone. There was still one more recording, partially blocked by an awning, that had a viewpoint of the alley in between the two streets. It was slim chance, but-

He had it. The woman turned the corner onto the street, lined with parked spinners, speeding up slightly on the empty sidewalk. He watched as the door of one swung open as she approached, and with one last look over her shoulder, she’d slid into the dark, unmarked vehicle and it had pulled away and vanished into the flow of traffic around the next corner. But-

Zooming in. Another flick of the controls and the image of the spinner’s open door was magnified to take up the whole screen. He brightened it, and there. It was her mistress. The missing heiress was already in the vehicle, holding the door open for the replicant woman to join her.

He’d been told not to look into the human woman’s vanishing as well, and he’d surmised the two were connected, but their timing and circumstances for disappearing had stayed a mystery, until now. While finding the method of their disappearance solved several questions, it only raised more. If the two hadn’t been abducted, hadn’t been taken by force, that left the questions of who helped the pair, and why did they leave ? Answering those would be a start in finding where they went.

Wearily, he ran his hands down his face, it had been long hours sifting through the recordings, and it was getting close to dinnertime. That didn’t mean he was done for the night, though. With a few keystrokes, he sent the shots of the replicant Alice entering the car and a report of his progress to the Lieutenant, and put in a request for any ID on the spinner the system could find.. She’d given him a week, and he had one more day to work the case before she’d said it would be passed along, solved or not. He hoped he’d made enough progress to buy more time. Whether that was to work the case or to live, he wasn’t sure. It was the highest profile assignment he’d been given, and the family of the missing girl could easily ask for his retirement for not finding the pair. Still. Joshi had phrased it to sound like this was just a courtesy and a preliminary investigation before more important resources were invested in the case. He could still be retired and replaced over a courtesy, when dealing with a family with the money of the missing girl.

The only thing left was to go take a look at the street where the replicant woman had been picked up, if he could still find any evidence. If he could get any lead in the case from there.

Trudging through the station, he kept his head down as always. The past week had been. . . different. The other officers still either ignored him entirely, or else he had to endure the gauntlet of glares and the occasional curse flung as he passed, sometimes a shoulder slamming against him as he passed, but. But. No one had grabbed him, no one had touched him more than in passing. He wondered how long the sergeant’s influence would keep them off of him, but he would take whatever reprieve she’d bought him.

Sergeant Flint. He hadn’t spoken to her since that night, but he’d seen her at the desk in passing a few times. She’d looked up, nodding in recognition each time, but he’d been focused on the case, and it seemed wrong to approach her uninvited, with others around. There had been that one time he’d passed a hallway to see her red hair shining in it’s tight knot as the tall woman was speaking with the Madam. The conversation had seemed friendly, but there was the now-recognizable angry set to her jaw, and Joshi had been standing even more stick-straight than usual. Whatever the two women had been discussing seemed personal, and he’d turned and left them alone.

“Officer K?” As though summoned by the memory, there she was striding down the hallway as he passed. With barely a pause, she fell into step beside him as they entered the entryway together. “On a case tonight?” It was less formal, less restrained than she’d been at first but there was a new tautness to her words, and that set to her jaw that said anger had returned.

Best be wary then. “I am, ma’am.” Then, “the report is due tomorrow.”

She paused as they neared the desk, and he stopped a step later, looking back at the tall sergeant. “Think you’ll have time for dinner again?”

Dinner? Was this a regular thing for them now? There was a small flutter of - of something in his chest, a strange lightness, but still. . . “If this lead doesn’t turn up anything, I - I could meet you somewhere.” It was one of the longest sentences he’d said to her so far. He told her the neighborhood, and after a moment, she nodded.

“There’s a rail station there. Meet you there at seven?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“If you’re not working, officer, it’s not an order.”

The pitch of her voice shifted minutely, the tone softer as it had been when she’d reassured him before. Oh. Not an order. He could. . . he could say no, could say another time, if he wanted. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll meet you there at seven.” This was already too close. Too familiar. Before she could say anything else, he’d turned on his heel and headed out into the evening.

Within cells interlinked.

The streets on the way were as busy as they’d been on the day of the disappearance, but turning down the side street, it was quiet. The backs of a few stores, and crumbling brick walls. It was. . . nice, not a neighborhood a wealthy heiress would be walking through, but someplace her tutor and assistant replicant would be left alone. Stopping at the point across from the camera, still with an awning stretched over a door blocking a corner of the view, he looked along the empty stretch of street. A single spinner hummed by in the evening chill. Not for the first time, he recalled his instructions not to look into the missing girl, the missing human. Investigating her would possibly give more information about the spinner’s route, where she had boarded it, who was driving it behind the dark privacy-tinted windows. If anyone had been watching the street here that day, they wouldn’t have any more insight than the camera had given about the spinner or the two passengers. Between the tinting and the positioning of that awning, any identification of the vehicle or driver had been carefully hidden.

They knew someone would come looking.

They knew, and he’d get nothing else from here.

Once more, Officer KD6-3.7 turned, trudging into the evening. He might still make the station for seven.

By the time he reached the monorail station, he half expected she’d have gone. It wasn’t long after the hour, but she had no reason to wait for him.

But.

There she was, lights glinting off the damp on the shoulders of her coat. She peeled herself away from the wall when she spotted him, lowering the boot she’d propped up behind her. “Didn’t know if you’d make it.”

Didn't know if he’d make it alive, he realized. There never was a guarantee he’d come back. “I don’t have that much of a social life,” he shrugged. “Didn’t know if you’d still be here.”

That got an almost-grin from her. “Not much of a social life either, I had time to wait.”

The thought that a human would willingly spend her time just waiting for him, not knowing if he’d make it back, was. . . strange.

“And anyway, I was the one who asked to meet,” turning on her heel, she led him into the station and towards the monorail car. “Wasn’t about to leave you here, if you got held up on the way and happened to be late.”

As little as he could trust most humans, and even less those who held rank over him, whose orders he was bound to obey, he could feel himself actually trusting the sergeant. This was well beyond caring for his well being as department property, coming to this corner of the city just to meet him. The first night she’d led him from the station, had given him food and kindness, she’d said she didn’t want to use him, and his instincts were telling him this woman didn’t change her mind easily so he doubted that was her plan for the evening.

Ahead, his companion quietly slid by the kiosk where evening passengers stopped scanning passes with a soft chime before crossing the platform to board. “We’re not paying, ma’am?” He’d been on the monorail that wound through the black buildings and neon lights once before, in his first, disorienting days alive as he was learning his new life on the force. He’d been with another officer then, taking him through the city on foot instead of spinner for once, leading him along with a hand clamped painfully around his arm, and it had all been too overwhelmingly new for him to process if there had been any fare paid then. He hadn’t tried the rail system since, preferring either the privacy of a department spinner or the economy of traveling by foot.

Without stopping, Flint glanced back at him, reaching to tap at the insignia pinned to her coat shoulder. “Not in uniform, officer, we ride free, department wants us to have a presence out here and the transit folks say it keeps the rides safer.” He caught the corner of her half-smile before she turned back.

As the lights of the city slipped by in the night, he glanced sideways at the woman standing still as a statue, gazing calmly out the window as she held onto the overhead strap for balance. Maybe her presence in her uniform-blue coat did make the other passengers in their car feel safer, maybe not, but if all he’d gotten from them was the occasional side-eye, he knew the weight of presence she carried around her was keeping him a little safer. They didn’t talk during the ride, despite the ease between them earlier Flint had slipped back into being the stone-faced sergeant beside him with the closeness of the other riders around them, and.

And.

And there was still that flicker of the suppressed anger in the set of her mouth and line of her jaw. Had something happened in the past week? Was this night with him for her to unwind for once instead of him? But there had been that something in how she’d asked to meet him, something masked behind the rare lightness in her tone. Either way, whatever her intentions, he reminded himself, it wasn’t his place to question her. Even if she had said it wasn’t an order.

Still in silence, they left the rail car, a jerk of her head the only signal it was time to exit before she led him out and back into the city streets. There were more holo-signs here, the city more dense than the area they’d just come from. High above them, a glowing pink woman was dancing on the side of one building, and he stopped, for once watching one of the myriad of advertisements he walked through daily. “Those digis really are something.” The sergeant had stopped, joining him again to stare up at the display. “Wonder if they really can be whoever you want, like she says.”

“Wouldn’t know.” The idea of just having someone around to talk to had been utterly alien to him until little more than a week before, but having someone, even a fake, digital companion had been so far above any wildest dreams, if he’d had any. “Probably costs a lot, though, so they must be worth it.”

“Probably right.” The rosy light slid over the orange of her hair, turning it a strange, murky shade, “ but I guess if folks really need someone to talk to. . .” she shrugged, before turning and leading him further through the streets.

Dinner that night was some kind of meat, likely vat grown also, but with a slight char to the corners and served on long skewers, and tonight, he didn’t protest her buying him food. Tonight, they ate quietly again, only commenting on the sauce on the meat, on the crowds. Tonight she wasn’t trying to distract him from anything, to save him from anything. There was no sharing of memories or stories of life- on the force and just of living . Just the company of sharing a meal with someone else as they watched the crowds pass by.

She was subtle. So subtle it took until they were both nearly finished eating for him to realize she was watching for someone , and as she quickly finished her food, he wolfed down the last bites of his, savoring the memory of the sauce and crunch of seared vegetables, trailing a step behind her as they crossed through the evening foot traffic to another table across the market from theirs.

The pair, a man and a woman, stood, talking over plates of food and something- something in the way they stood, the fit of their clothes, despite being nondescript civilian garments, said this pair were also police. Plainclothes, likely detectives-

Like the sergeant had been, he remembered.

“Roark and Nguyen,” Flint had stopped, just far enough the pair wouldn’t notice them, her voice just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the street. “I’ve known ‘em for a while. They ever give you any trouble?”

The question caught him off guard. Had they ever been among the ones he’d learned to avoid? Their faces were familiar, but just as another pair he’d seen around the precinct, never when his tormentors were around, never among the hands reaching to drag him into corners or rooms. “No, no, they’ve never bothered me.”

“Good.” She nodded curtly. “Knew I could trust ‘em, just had to be sure, you know?”

He didn’t know, but the realization she’d asked if her friends had ever. . . the thought she’d checked her knowledge of them was real against his experience was something he’d lie awake in his thin, fold-out bed thinking about in the night. But for now, he was following her again, straight for the pair.

“Evening, detectives.” There was a new wryness in her voice as she greeted them. It was almost. . . playful?

“Sarge, it’s been a while.”

“Hey, you.” The other woman, shorter, dark hair brushing damply against her shoulders, grinned up at the sergeant.

He was seeing their friendship, seeing the serious, hardened senior officers he passed every day as people, as friends. There was that pull, that twisting in his chest again for something he’d never truly be a part of.

“Hey back at you both. Been keeping out of trouble?”

“Nothing we can’t get ourselves out of, you know.” The man, average height with a fighter’s build, his instincts filled in, as the detective leaned his elbows on the table, a smile in his eyes despite an otherwise serious expression. “Who’s your friend?”

“Matt, Alicia, Officer K’s new around here.” A tilt of her head invited him to step into their circle, joining Flint and her friends at the table. “K, these two and I go way back. Went out drinking with them when I first made detective.”

And she still stopped to ask him if they’d ever hurt him.

“And the Sarge here has been kicking our asses in the shooting range since the academy days,” The man - Matt’s face finally cracked into a grin as he ran a hand through short, sandy hair, brushing out a scattering of snowflakes.

“He’s the new ‘runner, right?” Detective Nguyen - Alicia - eyed him curiously.

“Yeah, since they stopped partnering with human detectives, don’t think I’ve seen much of the last few. Well, uh, it’s good to finally meet ya,” finally looking past the sergeant to greet K.

Beside him, Flint’s jaw twitched with- with annoyance?

“That’s part of why I need to ask you two a favor.”

“Oh?” The shorter detective leaned forward to mirror her partner, curiously. “What kind of favor?”

“Have you two seen Walters and his pals much this week?”

She shook her head, as her partner drawled a slow “can’t say that I have.”

“Well, that pack’s been givin’ K here trouble lately, and L-T can’t do much through official channels to stop it.” Her voice had slipped into the nomad drawl as she spoke to her friends. “Try as I might, I can't watch everything at once-” that got another grin from the detectives, “so I’m askin’ if you two could help keep an eye out, run interference for him. Keep that pack of degenerates off his back. Leastways until they get bored and back off. It’ll save me the worry and keeps the L-T from coming down on me if he takes any damage in the station that’ll put him out of commission.”

This was. . . different, from how she’d been- been concerned for him, framing the request as a favor for her, for the department instead. Using her own friendship with them to shield him again.

Both detectives stared at him, she with a cool appraisal and he with a sharp curiosity, and he found himself wanting to shift uncomfortably under the new scrutiny. He’d learned this much attention from anyone not connected to a case was rarely ever good.

Roark straightened up, the sharp grin he’d greeted the Sergeant with almost returning. “Well. Never thought about the runners having trouble like that, but Walters and his guys are jackasses, so- K, was it?”

“Yes, sir.” His reply was too quiet, again, as he stared at the flickering light of a holo ad on a wall past the man's shoulder.

“K, you find me or Alicia here if there’s any trouble, those degenerates know not to mess with us.”

It wouldn’t help if he was ambushed in the hallways again, but it was a start.

“And I know this is already a big favor,” Flint jumped in, “but anyone else you can trust, who’s not been taking advantage of K here,” the muscle of his shoulder twitched as she dropped one hand onto the fabric of his coat, resting it with the slightest squeeze before dropping away,, “run this by them also, that the Sarge says he’s off limits.”

Off limits. He almost missed the two nodding in agreement as he processed what her words meant.

“Hey, Tam,” Nguyen reached across the table, tapping the surface by where the Sergeant’s arms were folded. “In exchange for this massive favor, you gonna come back out from behind that desk again? Joshi’s got that standing offer for you to join us in plain clothes again, I hear.

Beside him, Flint shifted minutely. Uncomfortably? “I’m fine where I am, Detective, you know that. ‘Asides, if she wants me back that badly she can make it an order.” She shrugged, barely a lift of her shoulders. “You never know, though. Someday I’ll get bored in the precinct maybe, and finally go outside again.”

The humor in her voice sounded forced to his ears, but the seriousness of the moment was broken. Making their goodbyes, Flint excused herself from her friends, and strode back along the street, with him following a step behind, the two of them alone in the crowds again.

The carefully-designed investigator’s mind they’d built in him was racing with questions as he followed, watching the sharp set of her shoulders in the blue coat. All of them led back to why . Why had she asked him to meet her and spend another evening out with her? Why go out of her way to meet him at the station, Why introduce him to her friends, and ask-

She’d known. She’d known the pair would be eating in this neighborhood, and for her own reasons had made the encounter and request appear casual. But. But that still left the question of why . She didn’t have to do this, didn’t have to protect him. He’d been built to endure the violence that came with the solitary life of a blade runner. He - didn't’ want, couldn’t want anything else - would have survived. But the sergeant had told him she’d used her position and influence to put the fear of real consequences, the fear of their sergeant into his - his attackers. Off limits , she’d said. She’d already done that for him. Now, she’d gone further and requested help from detectives . Human detectives. For him. If he could have felt shame, felt it even after what he’d been subjected to in his short life so far, he would have been ashamed of the request that the well-known and respected partners have to watch out for him, that they have to watch out for one replicant in the station who can’t-

But. There was, once more, that strange warmth in his chest that she was trying to protect him, and they’d agreed. He’d never spoken with the pair - still hadn’t beyond a few words, he realized, playing back the conversation - and, because she’d asked them, the two had agreed to help watch out for him and keep Walters and his cronies off his back. It wasn’t much on the surface, but, if they kept their word, then the number of humans in this world who gave a second thought for his life had just tripled. It seemed unlikely, but. . . but the memory of warm food and tea, of the blue-coated figure parting the crowds ahead of them, and of the rare, warm touches said it just all might be true.

That figure strode ahead, hand now shoved deep back into the pockets of her coat, and he followed as always, just a step behind her shoulder. With one long step, he caught up, for once walking beside her. She looked as she did that first night, that determination, that deeply hidden burning anger that only highly-tuned senses could have detected. “Thank you. . . thank you for doing that. You didn’t have to” He sounded too quiet in his own ears again, each word carefully measured out.

She shrugged one shoulder, “can’t always be around to keep those sonsabitches off you, already asked Bernal and Elliot to help keep an eye out also. They’ve never bothered you, right?” One eyebrow tilted, she glanced across him finally.

He’d seen the two men on occasion also, they’d maybe looked at him in passing but never longer than it took to recognize his approach before going back to their own conversion, their own lives. “No, they’ve never bothered me. “

“Yeah, those two are the last guys I’d ever suspect, and the last who’d be into whatever kicks Walters and the others get from. . . well, it’s just not their thing.”

There were several things she could mean, but right now it meant he had two pairs of respected, senior, human officers watching his back in the station.

“Thank you” His voice was even quieter this time. Falling back to his usual position at her back, he almost missed the quirk of a smile his thanks earned.

“It’s the least I can do, Officer K.” Her voice was that almost-gentle tone again, the current of anger she’d carried all night hidden deep. “Like I said before, you shouldn’t have to put up with how they treat you.”

Any other protests he might have made, if he’d been able to find it in himself to ever contradict her, were lost as he trailed her through the narrow, winding stalls of the night market she’d led them into. This was more closely packed than the one she’d brought him to before, smaller openings for evening shoppers to eat, and tighter lanes wrapping around the few, coveted stores hemming the packed streets. Long legs carried Flint smoothly through the press, sliding around crowds with the occasional person slipping out of the way upon recognizing her. Finally, she slowed, giving him the chance to catch up.

“Up there,” she gestured at a larger booth, selling what looked like fruit from a distance. It was set up against a wall, possibly connected to one of the permanent shops if he judged the large, semi-permanent structure right. They stopped, and he watched over her shoulder as the sergeant leaned in, ordering from the woman behind the counter, her sleek dark hair a contrast with Flint’s fiery copper. It was hard to hear, even with his heightened senses, but he could faintly make out “les vrais” before the woman nodded, vanishing into the darkness of her shop.

“When I was a kid,” Flint had turned, staring out across the market as she spoke, her nomad’s drawl slipping back into her speech, “sometimes we’d find berry bushes up in the mountains still. Scrubby lil’ things, but they’d be out there clingin’ to life.” His full attention was focused on the story, another memory of a real childhood she was sharing with him. “Sometimes we’d find berries on them, growing in whatever sunlight the things could get. Dusty, tart little things, but we’d pick any we could reach. Bring ‘em to the city, get good money for ‘em, even then.”

He could only imagine, produce that wasn’t grown in Wallace-made facilities was treated like gold, and-

The thought was interrupted as the soft rustling of paper containers sliding across the counter heralded the woman’s return. Two small, paper cups holding. . . holding blackberries.

“Since getting here, this is the only place I’ve found that still has a hookup with other dusties, can still buy the berries from outside the city.” Her almost-grin looked more like a grin than ever now. As she reached out, taking the cups from the woman, he almost missed the flash of a slip of paper passed along with one cup to the sergeant, vanishing behind her fingers a moment later. Strange, but her business was none of his, and questioning human officers, no matter how odd their behavior, was not his job.

The almost-warm almost-grin was back as she passed him one of the small cups, and for once, he barely noticed how her hand pulled away too quickly for their fingers to touch. The cup held barely a handful of small, dark berries, with a small swirl of . . . whipped cream? Slowly, carefully, he tried a berry with a bit of the cream, and-

For a heartbeat, it was as though a part of his brain froze and a wave of something ran through him as the thin membranes of the berry burst on his tongue. It was sweet , sweet in a way nothing he’d ever tried compared to. There was a tart earthiness to the berry, a burst of flavor and juice that no synthetically grown food could compare with, somehow more substantial than any fruit he’d tried before.

“Like it?” Beside him, Flint popped one of her own berries in her mouth, eyes suddenly distant as she chewed.

“It’s. . . it's real. ” This was real food, something more real than he’d ever had, ever be able to afford on his own and that ache behind his sternum was back, aching for everything he’d never know, never be able to experience, everything that was long-gone from the world even before he’d drawn his first breath. “They’re. . . really real. Ma’am I can’t-”

“Yeah, they’re real. They get sweeter when they’re on the plant longer, get to stay in the sun longer, but those don’t stay good as long to get em’ to a buyer.” She popped another berry in her mouth, savoring it for a moment. “And I know what you’re going to say, K, and you absolutely can . Your life doesn’t have to be shitty, leastways no shittier than any of ours down here, just because of what you are. You get a chance to enjoy some small, bright spot of joy down here, you enjoy what you can, you hear me?”

He did, and while most of what she said still sounded wrong to him, he took another bite of berries and cream, feeling the flavors burst in his mouth like nothing ever had before, feeling their realness and beauty. It was wasted on him, of course, since he was neither of those things himself, but . . . but for however long he had left to live, he’d remember the taste. “Yes, ma’am. And thank you, for the berries, for everything. If it’s an order, then I’ll. . . allow myself to enjoy things.”

That drew a snort of a laugh from her. “It’s not an order, just a suggestion. It took me a hellova long time once I got here to start livin’ like a civilized person, enjoying the stuff we never had out there,” she jerked her head in what was probably the direction of the badlands, “havin’ so much running water alone felt wrong. But, I adapted. Learned to take what little softness the city had. It’s different, but. . . you learn to live, understand?”

He did, a little. Remembering his curt, perfunctory showers framed her words over that being even more water than a nomad girl had in a new light. “I- I think so. I’ll. . . I’ll learn, eventually. Maybe get to do some living while I’m alive, right?” The dry humor was coming easier now.

Chewing the last of her cupful of the rare treat, Flint’s quirk of a grin showed it was appreciated. Eventually, regretfully, the last of the purple-black jewel-like berries he guessed to be more rare and prized than actual jewels these days was gone. The only trace was the lingering tartness on his tongue, and the rich, slightly-sweet oiliness of the cream coating his mouth.

He’d just eaten what was likely a small fortune in bootleg, genuine fruit. There was a strange mix of - not emotions he didn’t feel - from the delicacy. He knew he didn’t deserve them, that the rare produce grown on some far-off mountain that still had the faintest tang of dust clinging to them was far beyond the station for which he’d been made, been manufactured. They had been more real and valuable than he. But. But she’d told him he could eat them. Had wanted to see him enjoy them. If it had been anyone but Flint he might have suspected they’d wanted to see his reaction, if he reacted, to the taste as their own entertainment. She wasn’t like that and it didn’t take the heightened intuition and observational reflexes that had been carved into his nervous system to see that. She’d told him to eat, and even though the same deeply-carved and wired instincts recognized her as a superior officer, and something deep within his mind knew her as a registered user and her orders were law and there was never any question about obeying her commands. This hadn’t been an order, really. She’d given him the food, sure, but the closest thing to an actual order had been. . . to find what made him happy? He may not have been given the luxury of free will, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find peace in the small luxuries he was able to obtain.

It didn’t make sense, not with everything he knew to be true about himself, how he was created and what he’d been created to do. That he was a product, not a person. Maybe, though, maybe what the sergeant wanted him to hear was that it didn’t mean he had to endure what might be a short, brutal life entirely alone and empty. The idea was . . . new. As much as he could trust any human, and any who he’d been created to serve and obey, he trusted her.

They’d thrown the empty containers away as they exited the market, Flint falling back a step to walk beside him, far enough away her elbows couldn’t brush his with her hands back in her coat pockets, face hidden inside the cavernous hood. They walked in silence that way for a few blocks, the sounds and lights of the city at night rippling around them.

“Bein’ a nomad, it’s not all that folks think it is.” Her voice broke the silence between them, and he half-turned to look at the sergeant beside him on the sidewalk, but the shadow of the hood hid her face as she spoke. “Folks in the Department jus’ know the dusties in raiding parties, maybe some that’ll camp outside the city, sellin’ anything that’ll sell. Anything we’ve found.”

We , she’d said. It’d been a long time since Flint had been with them, K remembered, but she still slipped and called herself one of them.

“But ridin’ together, stripping abandoned buildings, cities, looking for anything we can use, sure it’s a rough life but you’ve got the convoy, you know?”

He didn’t know, but stayed silent as she spoke.

“There’s scavenging yeah, but we weren’t scaveys, not like those almost-ferals down south. We work as teams, families sometimes, watch each other’s backs. You learn to turn junk into whatever we needed out there. Going on reuse and recycle runs to find supplies off old trucks, old machines. Clean it up, hammer out the dents, and cut it int’a what you need.”

They walked, surrounded by the darkness and grime of the city that was the only home he’d known, but. . . but her words conjured up memories that weren’t his, of a dirty, lonely childhood spent hammering trash for the few pieces of treasure. Of bleak, dusty stretches of parched land. What could a life out there have been with a convoy and family behind you? “I. . . I have memories of the ruins,” it was the first time he’d told anyone about the past that wasn’t his. “In an orphanage, they put us to work picking over scrap metal, breaking apart old machines.”

A small hum of what might have been sympathy sounded from the hooded woman. “Think I heard about places like that, never been near one from what I recall. Yeah the clan had kids around but if’n one lost their folks, we’d just keep ‘em and raise ‘em with the rest.”

A family, even in the harsh, wild life of the nomadic clans out in the badlands, it was more than he’d ever had. Ever have. “So, why’d you leave and join the Police?” There were notes in the file, and while he could put together pieces from her interview and records, there were also things she’d never said.

For a few steps, they walked together in silence again until he thought she might not answer. “Lost my ma when I was real young,” that much he’d already heard. “My brother and my Da were on a convoy with me, and one night raiders hit us. We got away but Da got hit and we lost him.” Her words were short, clipped. Rehearsed? Something nearly inaudible in her tone sounded rehearsed but then, he supposed, she must have told this story before. The Madam had been her partner in the past and he doubted the hard-eyed woman he answered to would have let Flint’s history stay a mystery to her.

“Brother and I stayed on the convoy together for a time after that, then one night we met up with another band, and knew the folks so we camped together that night,” she continued. “In the morning, he was gone. Hopped a truck in the other caravan and left.”

“He left you?”

She shrugged, one-shouldered. “Left the memories, saw a chance for a new band to fight with and took it. He liked to fight.” The last sounded almost sad. “Didn’t have anything keepin’ me there, so I packed whatever I had and came here. Knew the city was dangerous and all, but if’n I’m gonna get mine one day, I figured I’d do it somewhere I didn’t hafta forage for food and might get a hot shower first.” Beside him, she rolled her shoulders, head tilting back to look at the sky. It had begun snowing again, and the flakes settled on her lashes in the glimpse of her face he got before, lowering her head once again, she was lost in the hood.

“Why’d you choose to join the police?” You had the choice to join. He’d never have the choice to or not, only the preprogrammed memories of choosing that he’d been given, like a pile of clothing left folded on a chair for him.

“Why them? Well, as much as I can keep an engine goin’, things I was best at were fighting and shooting. Spent enough years guarding convoys I thought might as well get paid for it, not that the pay for a beat cop just startin’ out is that much, but it sure as hell was more than I’d ever had before.”

And it sure as hell had to be more than the small allowance he was given by the same department.

“Also, picked the Police over private cops because I’d heard they always needed fresh meat, and weren’t as choosy. Knew I could handle anything they threw at me after growin’ up how I did.” Her voice had dropped off at the end, and . . . and he could almost relate, almost understand with his fictional past. Fighting to survive in the orphanage had made the brutality, the isolation of his life here almost easy. But- but her past was real , her humanity stood as a chasm between them and their nearly parallel stories.

“And now here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“Ever think of. . . of visiting them, your clan?”

Another long pause. “Got no one left to visit. Some old friends, yeah. Might find my brother out there if I go asking around, if he’s still topside. Been so long though, don’t think I’d really know them that much. Anyway, got my life here now. Got work to do.”

They’d reached the platform for the monorail again, and, now silent, she led him back across the platform and onto the car. She was silent again as they soared through the night, the sleek metal capsule flying past spinners and signs, the smells of bodies and metal dust and late-night spilled alcohol drifting around them. Soon, they had stopped again, and he realized this was the station closest to the market and his own neighborhood.

Still in silence now, they walked together through the snow-dusted streets. Around them, the lights rippled off the powder in the moments before it melted to a cold grey slush, turning the streets a momentary shimmering rainbow of neon.

They were a few blocks from his building when she broke the silence. “I’m taking the promotion.”

Only his expertly crafted neurochemical system kept him from twitching at the jolt of surprise. “The promotion?”

“Back to sergeant.” She’d shoved her hood back, staring levelly ahead, face back to the stony mask. “Got an ultimatum from the L-T. Wants me to take it, join a new task force that’s being built for these kidnappings, or else I’ll be put on the nomad raids.”

He remembered that briefing, the events. . . after had made the report less important, and it wasn’t his work anyway, but he’d heard talk in passing of more disappearances in the week since. But that would mean. . .

“So I won’t be around as much anymore, K. Might be in the precinct for reports but can’t say it’ll be regularly anymore. I’ve done what I can and having detectives saying you’re off limits should keep those pieces of shit off your back.”

At least as far as anyone could see them, he knew. It might not stop the wandering eyes and hands, but he hoped, as much as he could hope for anything, it would keep them from going any further again. “I. . . I understand. Does this mean-”

“And these nights will have to end, yes.” The words were as cold as the snow beneath their boots. “I’ve had word from up above that this. . . association is frowned on. Might impact your effectiveness or something. Point is, I’ve been ordered to back off.”

It was back, that yawning pit inside his guts, knowing now how much it ached when he wasn’t supposed to feel it ache, feel anything. He knew now what it was to have someone being near him, to walk beside in the dark, to eat with, tasting flavors he’d never dreamed he could ever know. But now, now he knew . And because of what he was, who had paid for him, he was denied that life a second time. “I understand.” He swallowed around the tightness rising up his throat. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any trouble, sergeant.”

They’d reached his doorstep again, and she glanced away, the corners of her mouth turning down as the simmering anger she’d carried all night flared. She’d known. She’d planned this as a final night, he realized. Flint must have been told that week, been arguing with Joshi that day in the hallway, and had planned this night to be a farewell, to tell him others would be looking out for him and to give him one last taste of the life he could never know. A taste of the fruit he would never be worthy of knowing. She’d known it would always end like this.

“It’s no trouble, Officer K. And if the department wants to come down on anyone for this, they can take it out on me. I’ve been around long enough to handle it.” And for her, censure wouldn’t mean the risk of retirement.

A rapid flicker of emotions nearly broke her stone-like composure, nearly said something else before the faint click of her teeth killed the words. “Goodnight, officer.” Turning on her heel, she strode into the dark and snow.

“Goodbye,” his whisper followed her into the night.

On feet that felt as dead and heavy as lead from more than just the cold, he forced himself to climb the long flights of stairs up to his apartment. The jeers and hands reaching and groping for him that he usually had to endure on the path to his door all faded out as white noise tonight. Silently, he brushed past all of them, head down, ducking into the safety of his collar. Cans and debris crunched under his boots as he shouldered past figures outside his apartment. Someone called out at him as he unlocked the door, slipping inside as it shut behind him before any reaching fingers could catch the back of his coat (this time).

He was alone.

He’d always been alone. Now, he- he could almost feel how alone he was.

(He wasn’t supposed to have feelings opinions but still-)

Silently, as always, he moved through his evening routine. He was meant to be alone. The lukewarm water of his shower pelted skin. He’d known almost what it was like to have a friend. The packaged seasoning for the stovetop noodles smelled stale compared to the memory of flavors so sudden his eyes had nearly watered. The packaged food was better than the protein grubs, although less nutritious, but the meal earlier had been solid and warm and he wished he could forget how the background hypervigilance needed for a blade runner to survive had quieted some with the presence in the blue coat beside him. Harsh alcohol burned down his throat, washing the small meal down, but the memory of the taste of berries and cream still clung to his taste buds.

Curled in his thin, cold fold-out bed, he thought ahead to what the next day might hold, his time on the case had run out, and depending on what was asked by the people even beyond his Madame’s sphere of power, he could be gone and another, new replicant in this apartment in the next few days. He’d been given a case with little to use and a short timeline, been given as little choice or consideration in this assignment as he’d ever been, and now the one person who’d cared enough to try to help him the least bit was gone. If the worst happened the next day, there’d be no one left to remember him. A deep curl of something by his heart almost ached at the thought. As he drifted off, the ghostly memory of a rough wooden toy in small hands that weren’t really his made his palms itch with the phantom touch, and the persistent whispered “ survive” slid through his mind, soothing away the thing that another might have called despair.

<- Chapter 2. Chapter 4. ->

#blade runner 2049 #blade runner #blade runner fanfic #fanfic #blade runner 2049 fanfic #officer kd6 3.7 #officer K. fanfic #ryan gosling #writing #cyberpunk

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novelmonger · 4 months

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I haven't made any updates for my scoping class in a while, mostly because my sisters and I are trying to move by the end of the month, so most of my free time has been eaten up with packing, apartment hunting, and sundry other annoying things on top of the usual adulting and other obligations. So I am woefully behind on homework - eight hours behind at this point oTL I'll really have to put my nose to the grindstone once we move.

But I have made a bit of progress in between all of that. As I think I mentioned last time, after a few lessons about the nitty-gritty of how to edit in this program, next is a whole slew of lessons about basic things about the program (which I kind of think should have come first, but whatever). Since my last update, I have learned:

How to use the spellcheck

How to customize the layout (but I'm mostly just leaving everything in the default settings because ain't nobody got time for that)

How to copy and move files within the program

How to save what they call the "update area" - basically, all the new words/translations you've globaled, as they call it, so the program will automatically translate certain keystrokes from the reporter to the right words (like if the reporter has never typed the name "Debbie," the program will now translate those strokes as "Debbie" rather than "deb E" or something)

And yes, it's all as riveting as it sounds.

But now I'm actually kind of excited, because the next lesson is about Audiosync, which is a feature that links an audio file to the text file of the transcript. So if the audio of the proceeding gets recorded, you can listen along and catch things that were said the reporter may have missed, or you can figure out if what someone said is a statement or a question, that kind of thing.

I didn't realize there would be actual files to practice on, with full audio and everything! But this is about as close as it gets to the real thing, so even though the instructions are "just play around until you feel comfortable," I'm totally just going to edit all of them all the way through (even though one of them is like 150 pages long ^^'). I'm like...paranoid that I'm going to get to the end of this course and still not know what I'm doing when I set foot in the real world. I know I'm being overly cautious and fastidious about this, fully editing every transcript example they give me, but I'm hoping it will pay in the long run.

Also, this will probably give me the best indication of whether I can really do this job and how enjoyable/exhausting/stressful it might be. I mean, at this point, I'm probably not going to back out, but for adulting things, I like to know what to expect as much as possible ahead of time.

#what's the scope?#pretty sure i'm not going to be able to finish by the end of july like i originally planned #but as long as i'm still making progress right???#maybe my new deadline should be when the lease is up in whatever apartment we end up moving to

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ohtobemare · 1 year

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Abstracts, Part 1 • Iceman X OFC

Summary: It's been six months since the beginning of the end of his life. But, while Tom Kazansky still lives, parts of him have already died. And, he's made his peace with that. Maybe. Partially. But then she arrives, one glorious day in May, and reminds him that even dead things can, in fact, be brought back to life.

Length: ~1700 words

Pairings: Tom "Iceman" Kazansky x OFC

Warnings: Angst, mentions of cancer/tracheotomy, age gap, religious undertones

There's little a man can do when he's handed his death sentence.

Written in hardly-legible cursive, which is then subsequently punched into one of seemingly endless computers that make up the world. That singular computer will digest that singular information, spin it endlessly in its trove of hardware and software as if it doesn't contain information that will, very literally, conclude the end of your life.

It will sit in the cold, unfeeling dungeon of cyberspace, existing as little more than just data. Attached to just another patient record. A record that is faceless, void of emotion, and by all sense of the word, unliving.

Until someone else assigns that record and its subsequent numbers a name. A date and location of birth—demographics that begin to paint the picture of someone who, subsequently, is very much alive and feeling.

A few keystrokes tell the cold and void machine now containing the end of your life to deposit everything that's been discussed on printed paper. Paper that an administrative professional, who has sense changed shifts since the arrival of this dreadful news, hands you with the softest, most sympathetic look a stranger could offer another face which adds to the sea of those she will see over the course of eight hours.

"We'll call you to confirm the appointment," is all she says, handing over the paperwork. "Oncology will leave a message if they can't reach you."

And that's it. Left to face the cold and rigid lines of the world beyond this haven, which has suddenly and unexpectedly become an Eden of safety and promise, the paper is little more than a detail in what has become the last chapter of his life.

At least, that's what he thinks. What he feels. And if not for feeling?

He may as well already be dead.

XxxX

"...we're looking at complete loss of speech, Tom. Tracheotomy is the only light we have at the end of this tunnel. Communication will be difficult, but not entirely impossible. You'll have to adapt—"

The memory of the words rings cold and sharp against the cavity of Admiral Tom Kazansky's chest as he tracks the numbers on the calendar hanging in front of him. It's been six months. Six months to the day since his diagnosis, since the beginning of the end of his living days.

He's not dead, of course. Not yet. Remission means something to the people on the other end of this disease, on the statistical side of cancer. Usually, the words "in remission" were a lifeline to the dying—a weapon against death standing at the door. Chased into the wings, thousands of people continued living with remission forever the adjective before their name.

But just because his body isn't dead doesn't mean a part of him is still living. Iceman still draws breath, his heart still beats a little stronger every day he wakes up and pulls himself out of bed. But a larger part of him–the blissfully ignorant parts—aren't the same. They flatlined the day his doctor had scheduled him for an appointment with oncology, when in reality, he'd simply come in for a wellness check.

The anniversary date, circled in vermilion marker, glares back at him. A spot on his record of life. He doesn't remember writing it, of course—Ice doesn't remember a lot of things these days. But, it's handwriting that can only belong to him. He doesn't remember writing it, no, but he knows his own handwriting.

SIX MONTHS is circled so boldly, so determinedly, that he can only feel distraught that the Tom who had sat down to mark this date half a year ago had been so doomsday. So apocalyptic. His six-months-ago self had been hopeless, drowning in anger and fear and confusion— marking out a date on a calendar had been poignant, important enough to warrant capital letters and the importance of a red Sharpie marker.

The corner of his mouth ticks up as he stares at the date.

Six months is a long damn time. He remembers the days that he could blink and half a year had already happened—but not anymore. Six months was unfathomable to those who watched the sands in their hourglass pass through the needle's eye. When he'd schedule this date, six months had felt fleeting. Like a drop in the bucket.

But the reality is this—six months is six months.

He shakes his head and pulls his eyes off the calendar, instead dropping them to the desk before him. Pristine, everything is as it should be, including a marker that is sure to be identical to the one he's already recognized for a good ten minutes on the calendar. Grabbing it, he snaps the cap off, discards it, and spins the marker through his fingers, its sharp, acidic scent as familiar as it probably had been six months ago.

Smirking, he takes the Sharpie and scrawls REMISSION through the bold, printed letters of May, which really don't deserve the wrath of his scrawl. Satisfied that this month this year will forever be marked with his victory, he recaps the marker and sticks it behind his ear. It looks good. Poignant.

It's all anyone who glances at the calendar will ever notice. Akimbo before the calendar, arms crossed over his chest, he smiles at the feeling lighting up every vein in his body. There's still a dull ache behind his ribs, this damn tube is still sensitive and raw at home in his throat, but there is something new—something he hasn't felt in a long damn time.

"Ice? You here?"

The voice calling to him from beyond the office is familiar—it's one of his students. Moving from the calendar to exit the office, he emerges from the small space and into the air of the studio, which is suddenly far more alive with the rush of lights and movement than it was when he'd slipped in here a few hours ago.

Kneading life into his hands, he approaches the young man unloading his backpack on one of the sculpture tables. Theo is one of the most gifted sculptors in the country, at least in his own opinion—he's been coming to the studio since he'd opened it. From Charlotte attending UCLA, Theo runs the floor when other matters demand his attention—other matters that pull him from his grotto, his place of healing.

Tom claps a hand on his shoulder, offering him a full smile. "Here early, aren't ya?" Theo teases him, offering his hand. Ice shakes it, like always, and shrugs a shoulder. "Figures. You're basically a vampire, you know that?"

His face twists into an amused wrinkle, prompting a grin from Theo. "Is there anything shipping out today?" There isn't, but, before he can offer a response Theo is backpedaling away from the table, thumbing over his shoulder, "I'm gonna make coffee. I'm dragging ass this morning, T."

Rolling his eyes, this kid doesn't even have an idea of what dragging ass actually means. There's little more privilege than spending your day tucked away in the confines of inspiration and peace, able to work for yourself and accomplish something as holy and serendipitous as art, and that's all Theo and others like him know.

Coming here, spending their days immersed in the lifeblood of culture and society—once, it had been nothing but a hope for him. A desire, a dream. One that was born after he started chasing sky and fulfilling his life's mission of flying for the United States. That had been manifested in his soul at birth, thanks to his father, but—-art. God, art. It had been in his veins, living against his heart, for thirty years.

It had only taken this damn disease—the end of his career—to recognize that heartbeat. And perhaps a small part of Tom Kazansky should be grateful that he's survived this, even without a voice. Because without this, art may never have found him. May never had revived him from the flatline his life had become.

Maybe he's a little grateful. Or stupid.

Either is a distinct possibility, these days.

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