#minor temporal incursion

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

The gang from Peacemist went on a camping outing for training purposes, the only time that anyone in the Inspector Spacetime universe did such an activity.

How fortunate for them that they only had to deal with a minor temporal incursion rather than an alien invasion or some such.

[nocturnalnarrator]

I have to admit to being very new to this—please bear with me.

ahem

Welcome to The Night Shift.

I'm your Narrator, Nikki.

You’ve stumbled into a corner of the internet where fiction bends reality, systems are exposed, and the stories linger long after midnight. This space is for outliers, confused, and the quietly unraveling.

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Most fiction published here lives in the same universe, but you don’t need a map to enjoy the view.

Before we begin, due to the unfortunate accident on last months journey, I am legally obligated to give you your Void Safety Brief.

Your Void Safety Brief (Protocol 7.1)

Welcome to the edge of reality. Before you proceed further into these tales, a brief orientation is advised for your cognitive and existential safety. Please read carefully.

Narrative Advisory: Consumption of stories herein may lead to unexpected side effects including, but not limited to: mild dissociation, heightened awareness of shadows, questioning the nature of reality, unhealthy suspicion of common household objects (especially closets), sudden urges to research obscure folklore, and an increased sensitivity to the static between dimensions. Proceed with caution.

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Temporal/Cognitive Stability: While navigating these narratives, be aware that linear time perception may fluctuate. What feels like minutes spent reading could result in hours lost to the narrative void. Furthermore, distinguishing between fictional viewpoints and your own internal monologue may become... challenging. Keep grounding objects (like snacks, pets, or strongly-held empirical truths) nearby.

Community Protocol: Engage with fellow Creatures of the Night in the Subscriber Chat, but be advised: shared theories may coalesce into unforeseen psychic phenomena or minor reality incursions. Spoiler etiquette is encouraged but often futile against paradoxical information loops.

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This concludes your initial safety briefing. You may now proceed further into the shadows. We absolve ourselves of responsibility hereafter.

[sleepysera]

1.20.22 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

Liberia: Stampede at religious ceremony kills 29 people (AP)

“At least 29 people in Liberia, including 11 children and a pregnant woman, have died in a stampede of worshippers at a Christian ceremony in a densely populated area of the capital, Monrovia, officials said Thursday. The stampede erupted when a gang of thugs armed with knives attacked some of the hundreds attending the ceremony at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday night, police spokesman Moses Carter told The Associated Press.”

Tonga: First aid flights arrive as disaster-hit islands aim to keep Covid out (CNN)

“The first contactless aid flights arrived in disaster-hit Tonga on Thursday, as the coronavirus-free Pacific island nation takes precautions to keep the virus out of its borders in the wake of a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami. Flights from Australia and New Zealand carrying humanitarian aid and disaster relief landed at Fua'amotu International Airport in Tonga's capital, Nuku'alofa, after the runway was cleared of volcanic ash and debris following Saturday's violent eruption of the underwater Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano. It also comes as a senior Tongan politician warned of potential food shortages in the country.”

North Korea: Slams US, hints at resuming nuclear, ICBM tests (AP)

“Accusing the United States of hostility and threats, North Korea on Thursday said it will consider restarting “all temporally-suspended activities” it had paused during its diplomacy with the Trump administration, in an apparent threat to resume testing of nuclear explosives and long-range missiles. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un presided over a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party where officials set policy goals for “immediately bolstering” military capabilities to counter the Americans’ “hostile moves.””

US NEWS

Voting Rights: Voting bill collapses, Democrats unable to change filibuster (AP)

“Voting legislation that Democrats and civil rights leaders say is vital to protecting democracy collapsed late Wednesday when two senators refused to join their own party in changing Senate rules to overcome a Republican filibuster after a raw, emotional debate. The outcome was a stinging defeat for President Joe Biden and his party, coming at the tumultuous close to his first year in office.”

Ukraine: US vows swift, severe response if Russia sends troops to Ukraine (AP)

“U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Thursday that there would be a “swift, severe” response from the United States and its allies if Russia sends any military forces into Ukraine. Blinken’s comments in Berlin appeared to be another effort to clear up any confusion about the position of the U.S. and its NATO allies after U.S. President Joe Biden was heavily criticized for saying a “minor incursion” by Russia would elicit a lesser response.”

Capitol Riot: US Supreme Court ruling is bitter legal and personal blow to Trump (CNN)

“The Supreme Court's refusal to block the release of Trump White House documents to the House January 6 committee represents a huge defeat for the ex-President's frantic effort to cover up his 2021 coup attempt. The major blow on Wednesday -- yet another instance of the courts rebuking Donald Trump's attempts to use them for his own political gain -- will allow the committee to go even deeper inside his West Wing and understand what was going on before and during his mob's attack on the US Capitol.”

[fundgruber]

In the last decade or so, the lockstep incursion of flat ontologies, notions of quasi-sentient matter, slime-lined and mushroom-sprouting vitalisms, and network-everything into contemporary art discourse and exhibitions has been hard to miss. Embraced with steady fanfare, a slushy and exhilaratingly immoderate carnival of chemistry and composting across our discursive landscape has us querying the unfathomable inexhaustibility of objects, their capacity to pipeline unwieldy forces and transgress the tiny territory of the real available to human access. But as excitement for this vivacious and mud-splattered thinking spikes, ostensibly terraforming a new plateau from which to assess our cultural artifacts, skepticism tactfully summons sharpened attention. Slight misgivings we felt all along for the conceptual pirouettes encouraged by this complicity with the powers of the object or the Earth or the cosmos find some oxygen and molt their modesty. As they are elaborated, it is evident that these suspicions can’t be hastily explained by charging intellectual miserliness before new proposals or blindness to the ways in which nonhuman forces are implicated in the structuring of things. It is, rather, that the scales and temporalities, the profound entanglements of apparatus and knowledge production, on which these discourses often rely and reflect in their native conceptual neighborhoods and disciplinary enclosures become, in transit and translation, something quite minor: the supposedly intractable potency and bottomless ineffability of art objects.

Gean Moreno, Introduction, In the Mind But Not From There - Real Abstraction and Contemporary Art. 2019