#not only is my master thesis not good right now i am PAINFULLY aware of how inadequate it is

[greencheekconure27]

Dear G-d or whoever's up there

If I'm got to be stupid please at least make me feel smart about it, this is emotionally exhausting.

[blindedbythedarkness]

Josh,

I did it. I'm out. I'm finally done with my degree and away from that fucking university.

Had I not learnt the lessons that I did from your death, there's a good chance it would have finished me off at the end there. The way I was treated as I struggled with my thesis was unbearable and I've rarely felt so hopeless. I suppose it's a very fitting end to my time there. Three times my university experience nearly resulted in my suicide and though I somehow made it through, the marks it left on me will be visible for the rest of my life. I gained a degree, a master's degree in fact, but I lost so much more and yet compared to you, I was lucky.

I'm so relieved to be away from campus. As pretty as it was, it was always tainted by the 6-story grave that most people just knew as the maths building. For the last year or so, the main route around campus was changed to allow for more pedestrian areas, meaning every time I drove to campus I was forced to go right past that building. It didn't make me sad as such, more awoke a very primal hatred that made me want to get away from it as quickly as possible and yell "Fuck off! I hate you! You're disgusting!" (Don't worry Josh, I am aware it's pretty dumb to want a building to fuck off! But Monkey Brain doesn't think like that.)

I think it's kind of like when I was younger and living back in the house that had been flooded. I didn't realise quite how much I feared the rain until we moved away and I loved it again. I don't think I knew just how stifled and haunted I felt by the university campus, until I was away from it for good and realised I could breath again.

How the fuck was I there for four years, Josh? I'm a different person to the C that started there, the C that you met. I never felt like I had the full, typical uni student experience, but that doesn't mean I did nothing at all. Looking back, I did so much! I got drunk for the first time and the last and took care of so many drunk flatmates; I won the flat pool tournament; I joined the pride societies exec only a month after starting, despite not even being out back home. I went on my first date with a girl; met my current boyfriend of three years and started living as authentically me. I tried mixed netball and archery and wheelchair basketball; I auditioned for the university taskmaster; I made the most of the student cinema and even went to two showings of a film in one night (I think we can all agree that The Greatest Showman is...well pretty great). I went to a nightclub and unsurprisingly decided the SU rock nights were more my style; I played more laser quest than I ever did as a kid; I joined the musical theatre society and sang and danced despite my anxiety and atrocious coordination. I very nearly hit a tree after speeding down hills in a trolley; I won the flat screaming competition and I helped turn a flatmates entire bedroom upside-down (including the plug sockets). I tried yoga (it didn't cure me) and plenty of weird foods that I'd never heard of but "really aren't that posh"; I met people from all over the world; I made friends and at one time had an amazing little squad. I finally got to go to Eurovision party and a Halloween party; I stayed up far too late and learnt that I need at least four hours sleep to not drop off during lectures! I learnt that long-distance friendships can work; I learnt how to navigate all over the country on my own and I walked down the street dressed as Frank N Furter, in barely more than a corset and tights, in the middle of February. I power-walked to campus in just a hoodie and pyjamas past a tour of prospective students, only to miss a deadline by three minutes; I worked past my fear of rodents to get the three rat babies I have now. I hid from security in empty rooms late at night; lost so many pub quizzes and I learnt that the people from the Doctor Who society were some of the best company, so when I went to events it was never to watch the show.

I also learnt a lot of life lessons. I learnt that landlords will go to extreme lengths to try to keep your deposit but that they will see no problem leaving you without an oven for a month or without heating for three weeks in Winter. I learnt how to coexist with plants in the vents, black mold covering the ceiling and mushrooms growing out of the carpet. I learnt how to fight to get a deposit back; how to contact the council and to assert my rights as a tenant. I learnt how easily a crash can happen if just one person isn't paying attention; what happens when you ring 999 and that you really do talk total nonsense when in shock. I learnt to trust my gut when I knew I needed to see a doctor; that waiting lists are dangerously long and that you almost never get the healthcare you need without a fight. I learnt how it feels to be helpless and left to deteriorate; that trauma can trigger life-threatening, chronic health problems and that once you are disabled, people think your life has limited worth. I learnt that my university spends painfully little on student mental health support; how doctors deliver bad news and what it's like to lose a friend at 20 years old to suicide. I learnt that how to navigate grief while still taking exams; that spending time with the dead is often a lot more peaceful than with the living and what happens at a funeral. I learnt that when you make a complaint, there is no one else on your side; that the university cares more about its reputation than the actual service it provides and that my existence as a student beyond the fees I paid matters very little to the vast majority of university staff. I learnt that grief changes people and it's true that everyone deals with it differently; I learnt what it's like to see your group of friends fall apart in slow motion and that friends really can break your heart too. I learnt that academics will work you until you're on your knees so long as they get what they want; that sometimes begging for help isn't enough and what happens when you end up in A&E from self harm. I learnt that many people are unaware of how privileged they are; that many people will only care until it costs them something and that good friends are incredibly rare. And honestly? I learnt that life is a real, unfair bitch.

So I guess, after all that, it's no surprise that I'm a different person. I feel like I managed to age ten years, not four. And I mean, I'm glad for some of the life lessons because I know they'll help me later on but I can't help but wish I'd somehow learnt them another way. I don't know, Josh. University wasn't all bad, I met you for a start, but it also hurt me so badly. I'm so glad to be moving on. I wonder what I will learn at my new university; I wonder who I will be four years from now.

Love always, Josh,

C

[all-stars-have-shadows]

Much may be Forgotten ‘ere the Tide Runs Dry

Ladies and gentlemen, the final chapter. I feel obligated as a writer to thank those of you who have read my work, shared my work, appreciated my work. It’s been fun to write, and I hope it’s been fun to read. Also, sorry/not sorry that this chapter is twice as long as the others; I’ve never been very good at wrapping up, but I like to think I’ve done a pretty decent job. As always, you can find parts one,two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten on my blog using these hyperlinks or by clicking on the “Original Writing” tab at the top of the page.

Sisters Veronica and Kathrine are in England searching for castles while Ver writes her master’s thesis. They’ve stumbled into the undocumented ruins of a castle dungeon. Hopelessly lost, they begin to realise that not only are they trapped, but they may not be alone. As they fight toward escape, they encounter one final challenge to overcome before they have a chance of seeing the sun again, and discover that Mother Nature is no idle force.

Feel free to let me know what you think! I also have quite a collection of research associated with the location and history discussed here, and I am more than happy to answer any questions you have about that. **Please make sure my name goes with all of my writing, this is an original work and all characters and plots are my own creation.**

Tagging @everyjourneylove and @luckynumber1213 as per request. Thank you guys for being such faithful readers, even in spite of my odd hours and sporadic posting schedule. I hope this chapter is the ending you’ve been waiting for.

______________________________________________________________

I was beyond curses at this point. I can’t even begin to describe the despair and panic that flooded through me. By this point, the walkways on either side had narrowed to mere inches, and we were walking in the canal itself, a good five feet below the ground level. If it flooded right now, there was nowhere for us to go.

I grabbed her arm. “We have to move faster." But we couldn't. It was all the two of us could do to keep on our feet. We pressed on, hobbling as quickly as we could. The water continued to rise, covering our knees and reaching our waists with alarming speed. Our waterlogged jeans and sneakers slowed us down even more. We had left our backpacks behind hours ago.

Splash. Ver tripping and was flung headlong into the water. She came up gasping, and I realised it was almost up to her shoulders. I was taller than her; I might be able to keep my head up, but it would cover her completely.

"Your shoes," she said, urgently. "Kick off your shoes. They'll only drag you down when you try to swim." A sudden wave slapped her in the face, leaving her with a mouthful of seawater.

We lived for a long time on the shores of Lake Superior. We used to go boating, fishing, and swimming. Until my cousin Lexi drowned. She was swimming at night on a dare, and a current just dragged her under. I was eight years old at the time, and I was terrified. I swore I'd never get that close to the water again. And so, despite living half my life next to the biggest lake in the country, I never learned to swim.

The water was over my head now. I could feel the current dragging at my shirt and the legs of my jeans. It was disorienting. Something slammed into my knees, and I lost my balance. The last thing I remember is catching a glimpse of light somewhere far ahead.

Air.

For about five seconds, everything was utterly black. Then, with a gasp, I felt air rushing into my lungs. Right that second, I swore off every substance I’d ever taken in my life. I’d have even given up coffee for one more breath of oxygen. I felt gravel digging into my cheek, water lapping gently around my waist. Slowly, painfully, I opened my eyes.

Everything was blurry. I could make out dried stalks of grass and weeds, and vaguely beyond it, water. As my mind began to clear, I could hear the water, too, crashing in the distance. I could also hear…sirens? Somewhere behind me, people were shouting in a faint jumble of voices and words. Someone touched my back.

“She’s awake!” An unfamiliar face peered down at me. “Can you hear me, miss?”

I tried to speak, choked, tried again. I heard him holler for water. A moment later, a plastic cup was pressed against my lips.

“Slowly,” he said, tipping the glass so I could drink. Someone else helped prop me up so I didn’t choke on it. I hadn’t had fresh water for days. “Now. Can you tell me your name? How did you get here?”

“Kathrine,” I rasped. “Kathrine Cutter. We were—my sister.” Panic flooded my brain. “My sister. Where is she—you have to-” I choked on the water I was trying to drink and nearly threw up.

“Already on the way to the hospital,” he answered. “We found her a kilometer further down the coast.”

Strong hands lifted me off the ground, carrying me away from the shore. “We’re going to get you to the hospital,” a woman assured me. “You’re going to be just fine.”

“Wait.” I grabbed her hand. “Wait; you can’t take me just yet. I need to speak to the police.”

“It’s going to be alright.” She said again. “You’ve been through a lot. Just rest for now, let us do our jobs.”

“No!” There was enough force in my voice to make her pause. “I need to speak with an officer. There’s a-there’s a dungeon. A labyrinth. Somewhere below where we’re standing.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure move closer, and made out the shape of a badge. Police, maybe fire department. I turned toward them. “There are…” I started coughing again. The woman at my shoulder cleared her throat impatiently. Slowly, deliberately, I turned to the officer and tried again. “There are smugglers using the tunnels of a medieval dungeon to run drugs out of Liverpool and into Ireland. Heroin, cases of it. We stumbled on two of them by accident and they trapped us in the dungeons. It’s hard to navigate, but I can get you to them. I know where to go. I remember.”

The officer knelt next to me. “Are you sure?” I nodded carefully. “Can you describe it, or them?”

“I can draw you a map. You’ll have to wait for the tide to get in, but I can draw it.”

“Tides’ already running out,” he answered. He turned to someone behind him. “Pencil and paper! Quickly!”

The nurse tried to argue, he insisted they needed it, I shut them both down with a quiet, “If I don’t do this now, I might never remember”. Pencil and paper were retrieved as requested.

And I stopped to think. I knew where we were when we’d fallen in, at least roughly. I pressed my memory for clues, directions, distances. So much of it was just a jumble of turns in the ever-curving tunnels. I started to draw, acutely aware of the number of eyes watching me as I did so. I drew the entrance point, noted that it flooded with the tide. I drew the big room with the EMP device. And then it was like the pencil just took over. Lines appeared on paper, tunnels I barely remembered walking through as my brain assembled the pieces one step at a time. Where I’d fallen in. An estimated distance from there to the oubliette room. I told them about the sobbing mine worker. I don’t know how long I sat, shivering on the road, sketching lines on a now-damp piece of paper.

“That’s it.” I shoved the paper at him. “That’s what I remember. I know it isn’t perfect, but it…it’ll get you there.”

The officer’s eyes widened as he took the proffered paper. “How could you possibly…you were dehydrated and sick, how did you remember…look at this!” he exclaimed to the officer behind him. “Compass points, distances. It’s all in feet and yards but we can…” Whatever else he said to say was lost in the whirl of officers and medical personnel. I was only vaguely aware of being rushed to an ambulance, having an IV inserted in my arm.

It was three days before they let me see my sister. I was kept in intensive care, being treated for hypothermia, dehydration, four broken ribs, and a hairline crack in my skull from being slammed about in the canal. When she finally came to visit me, on crutches and wincing, I was well enough to lean forward and give her a weak, but still heartfelt, hug.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked, maneuvering herself gingerly onto the bed. She’d done some nasty damage to one of her ankles in addition to being treated for trauma. But she was out and about, which was more than I could say.

“I’ve been worse,” I answered. She grinned faintly, then looked down at her hands, uncharacteristically shy.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into all of this,” she burst out. “The dungeon, the travelling, exploring the tunnels…all of that was my fault. And I’m sorry.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “If you really want to apologise, there’s one thing you can do for me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“Get your Master’s degree in something else. Contact the school, tell them you’re switching from ‘dark spots of the dark ages’ to biology. Or theatre. Or American lit. Anything that doesn’t require you to travel.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “It’s Medieval History and Lore, Kat,” she said wryly. “But you may have a point—when we get back, I am calling in a very serious meeting with my academic advisor.”

“No more crazy road trips?”

“No more crazy road trips,” she confirmed. She reached out and squeezed my arm. “Though I did do some digging after I booked flights home: did you know they’re working on a new excavation in Egypt? There’s a hidden chamber in King Tut’s tomb that they say might be the burial place of Queen Nefertiti.”

Her face was unreadable, her voice totally deadpan. I gave her a look. “You’re out of your mind.”

She burst out laughing. “Maybe. I mostly just wanted to see what you would do. Although I am serious—archaeologist do think that judging from thermal imaging, there are at least two different tunnels that no one knew about before. For a long time they’ve been speculating on why his tomb is so much smaller, but if there are new tunnels then that means he…”

I let her talk. Ver is never happy unless she has something to obsess about. I was more interested in the first fact she’d dropped: she’d booked flights. We were going home.

As we boarded the airplane a week later, still battered and sore, but ready to go home, I felt a slight shiver run down my spine. We’d had such a hard time explaining to mom what had happened. I certainly couldn’t begin to think of what I was going to tell my friends. I’d spoken with Scotland Yard again, and with an archaeologist who wanted me to help them map out the tunnels more thoroughly, maybe even fly me back for some serious intern work. They, too, were waiting for a reply. But as we taxied down the runway and took to the wide blue sky, I was struck with the thought that maybe I didn’t have to tell anyone anything. No tales of adventure. No tunnel maps, no international visits. Maybe some things truly are better left alone. Deep below the surface, cut off by the tide, maybe some things are meant to be forgotten.

[throwaway8472]

Throwaway People

If only the packaging design could change the contents.

 Far away, in this place called China, which is known, vaguely, by most US citizens as a kind of generally bad place full of Communists, dog-eaters, and some kind of big wall or something, there is a Child.

 He lives in a city. The name doesn’t matter, because it is like many other cities in that place, the same story repeating itself over and over in so many locations as to make the title of a single of them about as irrelevant as the name of your waiter or what brand of bottled water you buy. He is 7 years old, and walking to work. It’s raining, water leaking from the poison sky like oil dripping from the bottom of a poorly kept thirty year old Oldsmobile. It pools in the gutters of the street, flowing past a dead cat in a greasy torrent, and if you look closely you can see the water is filled with miniature rainbows of color from the oil that covers it in a thin film.

 Even in the worst of places, there is beauty, as long as you know where to look.

 The child steps in a pool of water and over the curb of the street. He doesn’t see the rainbows in the water, we was too busy stepping over the dead cat. The particular factory where the child works is owned by some sort of company that, in some way he does not understand, is involved with apples. He often wonders about the strange paradoxical nature of this company, which, as far as he can tell, makes large amount of white boxes. No apples seem to be involved whatsoever.

 One day, after twelve hours of operating the machine that stamps some English words and an apple on these white boxes, the child decided to walk over and take a closer look at one of them. He turned the finished box over in his hands a couple of times, looking it over trying to discover what it was about these things that made them so desirable. He wasn’t all that impressed. Maybe the white boxes were used to hold the apples. They probably make those at some other factory, he decides with a faint nod.

The white boxes are shipped somewhere else, where other other 7 year old children stamp out sheets of metal or plastic all day. Eventually all of these assorted components are compiled into black wafers which people carry around with them in their pockets. They are astounding devices, a machine that is able to allow you to talk to people all over the world in real time, where you can even speak face to face, like Marty Mcfly does when he travels to the future in Back to the Future 2. They are connected to a vast network that contains the entirety of human knowledge.

Now, some scientists somewhere came up with this idea that we are actually living in a multiverse, that there are are universes out there that exist in which every potentiality is realized. So there’s one where you didn’t forget your morning coffee this morning, or decided to marry one of your exes when you were 18, lived a miserable life of nagging and other nonsense, and blew your brains out at 50 on your wedding anniversary. Things like that. In one of these universe, some fluke caused Leonardo Di Vinci to be transported to the apartment of a broke-ass graduate student that blew a hundred grand on a degree where he learned 14th century Italian. One evening, while the student was finishing his masters degree in Hypothetical Egyptian Skateboarding, he looked up from his thesis: “Could King Tut Do a Sick kick-flip Or Not?”, and there was Leonardo, just standing there and looking confused.

 One day, the two of them were talking about the aforementioned black wafers that have an apple stamped on them. Leonardo was asking what these things were, because he noticed that many people seemed to be staring into them vapidly, even in social situations when they were with their friends and family, or when they were driving their cars.

 “Oh, well, we use them to talk to each other.“

 Leonardo’s confused by this. "I don’t understand, it seems to me that these devices do not promote talking to each other. Sometimes I see people yelling into them, sure. But the majority of the time they’re just sitting there looking at them.”

 "Oh,“ says the graduate student, "you can talk to people like that, too. Look at this:”

 And he pulls the black wafer with the apple stamped on it out of his pocket, turns it to Leonardo so he can show him this new marvelous form of communication people of the future use. Leonardo watches as he types in “hey bro, want to go see the new move this Friday?” and clicks a button.

 "See that, you type in some words, and then you send those words to someone!“

 "So let me get this straight,” says Leonardo slowly, trying not to sound obtuse, “you have a device for real time communication, where you can speak to people all over the world, and yet you choose to send them these "text messages”?

 The graduate student nods. “Yeah, pretty much. You can communicate with friends and people in other ways, too!” he says excitedly.

 He shows Leonardo Di Vinci Facebook. I will not be describing it, as you likely already spend enough time visiting it and communicating with people there already.

 "And look here,“ says the graduate student, "here’s one of some of my friends at the zoo! They’re having a good time, looks like.”

 "Hrm.“ Leonardo looks troubled. "So these people go to places and go out and have fun, and take pictures of it and post it here, to show other people how much fun they had?”

 "Yep.“

 "So they stop having fun for a little while to take a picture of themselves having fun, in order to let people know that they’re having fun? Doesn’t that seem somewhat artificial?”

 "Oh look at this, it’s a picture of my best friend’s broken leg!“

 Leonardo’s education in the intricacies of modern human communication extended far into the night. He learned about the internet, saw youtube, wikipedia, tumblr, and a variety of other places that seemed vastly important to the graduate student. Before he went to bed, Leonardo pulled out his journal and wrote the following:

 "They appear to have machines that allow them to access vast amounts of information about any possible subject, that can calculate vast sums and that could be used as tools to become an expert in any field. Instead they use them to watch people dump buckets of ice on their heads or look at pictures of cats.”

 Now, these black wafers must cross an entire ocean to arrive at the location where they are sold. One might wonder why they would be manufactured in one place, when the intended place of sale is, quite literally on the other side of the planet. If you dug a hole all the way through the entire world from where you are right now, you’d probably poke your head up in a factory for one of these things. And yet, mysteriously, they continue to be made far, far away.

 This is because it is cheaper to ship them halfway across the world than it is to produce them where the vast majority of people actually buy them. Where people buy these magic black wafers, 12 hour workdays, 7 day weeks, paying people next to nothing, and child labor are frowned upon for some reason. So the people in charge decided to just do all that stuff somewhere else to avoid getting in trouble.

 The thing you need to remember is that in this place where the magic black wafers are bought, there is one overriding moral principal: profit. Anything profitable is therefor moral. Anything unprofitable is immoral. Also, profits now are almost always more moral than profits later, but if the profits later are many times the size of the profits now, it may be moral to wait.

 Now, every few years something very important happens. A new magic black wafer is released. They have many important features that make them improvements over previous models, such as having slightly larger screens, slightly thinner frames, and, perhaps most importantly from a marketing standpoint, a bigger number following the product’s name. Around the world, people rush to be the first to acquire these new models. They camp in front of stores. They wait in lines and talk about the weather and how much gas mileage their car gets. The listen to people at Best Buy try to sell them unnecessary additions to the black wafers. They endure all of these awful tribulations in order to acquire the new model of the magic black wafer and then post about it on websites of communication like Facebook.

 As with all things constructed with human hands, sometimes they break.

 Not very far away, in this place called America, which is known, vaguely, by most US citizens as a generally good place filled with democracy and freedom, there is a Man.

 He lives in a city. The name doesn’t matter, because it is like many other cities in that place, the same story repeating itself over and over in so many locations as to make the title of a single of them is irrelevant. He is 46 years old, and walking to the store where he purchased a magic black wafer with an apple stamped on it. The sky that reflects off the gleaming mirror-finish of the skyscrapers is a clear blue, crisscrossed with the exhaust of airplanes. As the man steps over the curb he passes by a homeless man sitting leaned up next to a wall. He doesn’t see him. He’s too busy thinking about the Justice he’s about to deal out, because his magic black wafer is bent.

 As he passes through the doorway, mouth is set, face frozen in an angry grimace that is either the visage of a vengeful god, or someone painfully attempting to pass a bowel movement. He goes up to the front desk, and he says, in an authoritative voice:

 "I need a replacement.“

 And holds up his magic black wafer sideways to his victim behind the counter, to make it clear that it is most assuredly bent.

 "Alright sir. How was your device damaged?”

 He scowls. “I think you guys know why. Haven’t you watched the news. These things are DEFECTIVE. Damn things bend all the goddamn time. I want a new one.”

 "I am aware of this sir. But could you please tell me how your device was bent?“

 "I don’t see how that’s important.” he said guardedly.

 The man behind the counter says nothing. He has discovered that if you look at people and wait long enough, they tend to answer on their own.

 "Well you see…“ he begins, then stoppes suddenly, to collect himself. "my 7 year old son didn’t understand one of the phone’s features.”

 "What feature was that?“

 "Airplane mode.”

 Silence. The man behind the counter waits again.

 "Well, you see, my son put the phone in airplane mode, and threw it off the balcony…“ he pauses here, uncertainly, then finishes, with more confidence, "It Bent!”

 The man behind the counter nods. “Sir, I’m afraid I can’t replace your phone.”

 "WHAT? Are you kidding me? It’s not my fault the damn things are defective!“

 "But sir, you see,-” and here the man behind the counter is caught off guard by a penetrating glare from his supervisor who is standing across the room. He stands and waits like a terrified animal as the supervisor walks over and asks to speak with him in private.

 The man with the bent phone nods approvingly at this new development. A few moments later, the supervisor walks over.

 He’s holding a white box with an apple and some words stamped on it. It’s traveled a long way to be here, from back in its home in that nameless city in China.

 "Here’s your new phone sir, I’m sorry for your inconvenience!“

 The man grabs the box, manicured nails gleaming. He straightens the tie on his Armani suit as he walks back to his Porsche.

If only the packaging design could change the contents.

 When he gets home he opens the white box containing his new magic black wafer.

 He posts about it on Facebook. The post gets 9 likes.

 He throws the box away. It lay there sadly for a few more hours, the apple stamped upon it facing upward defiantly. Then it is buried under the remains of a Chinese takeout meal, and is forgotten.

[983762wwewewe]

If only the packaging design could change the contents.

  Far away, in this place called China, which is known, vaguely, by most US citizens as a kind of generally bad place full of Communists, dog-eaters, and some kind of big wall or something, there is a Child.

  He lives in a city. The name doesn’t matter, because it is like many other cities in that place, the same story repeating itself over and over in so many locations as to make the title of a single of them about as irrelevant as the name of your waiter or what brand of bottled water you buy. He is 7 years old, and walking to work. It’s raining, water leaking from the poison sky like oil dripping from the bottom of a poorly kept thirty year old Oldsmobile. It pools in the gutters of the street, flowing past a dead cat in a greasy torrent, and if you look closely you can see the water is filled with miniature rainbows of color from the oil that covers it in a thin film.

  Even in the worst of places, there is beauty, as long as you know where to look.

  The child steps in a pool of water and over the curb of the street. He doesn’t see the rainbows in the water, we was too busy stepping over the dead cat. The particular factory where the child works is owned by some sort of company that, in some way he does not understand, is involved with apples. He often wonders about the strange paradoxical nature of this company, which, as far as he can tell, makes large amount of white boxes. No apples seem to be involved whatsoever.

  One day, after twelve hours of operating the machine that stamps some English words and an apple on these white boxes, the child decided to walk over and take a closer look at one of them. He turned the finished box over in his hands a couple of times, looking it over trying to discover what it was about these things that made them so desirable. He wasn’t all that impressed. Maybe the white boxes were used to hold the apples. They probably make those at some other factory, he decides with a faint nod.

The white boxes are shipped somewhere else, where other other 7 year old children stamp out sheets of metal or plastic all day. Eventually all of these assorted components are compiled into black wafers which people carry around with them in their pockets. They are astounding devices, a machine that is able to allow you to talk to people all over the world in real time, where you can even speak face to face, like Marty Mcfly does when he travels to the future in Back to the Future 2. They are connected to a vast network that contains the entirety of human knowledge.

Now, some scientists somewhere came up with this idea that we are actually living in a multiverse, that there are are universes out there that exist in which every potentiality is realized. So there’s one where you didn’t forget your morning coffee this morning, or decided to marry one of your exes when you were 18, lived a miserable life of nagging and other nonsense, and blew your brains out at 50 on your wedding anniversary. Things like that. In one of these universe, some fluke caused Leonardo Di Vinci to be transported to the apartment of a broke-ass graduate student that blew a hundred grand on a degree where he learned 14th century Italian. One evening, while the student was finishing his masters degree in Hypothetical Egyptian Skateboarding, he looked up from his thesis: “Could King Tut Do a Sick kick-flip Or Not?”, and there was Leonardo, just standing there and looking confused.

  One day, the two of them were talking about the aforementioned black wafers that have an apple stamped on them. Leonardo was asking what these things were, because he noticed that many people seemed to be staring into them vapidly, even in social situations when they were with their friends and family, or when they were driving their cars.

  "Oh, well, we use them to talk to each other.“

  Leonardo’s confused by this. "I don’t understand, it seems to me that these devices do not promote talking to each other. Sometimes I see people yelling into them, sure. But the majority of the time they’re just sitting there looking at them.”

  "Oh,“ says the graduate student, "you can talk to people like that, too. Look at this:”

  And he pulls the black wafer with the apple stamped on it out of his pocket, turns it to Leonardo so he can show him this new marvelous form of communication people of the future use. Leonardo watches as he types in “hey bro, want to go see the new move this Friday?” and clicks a button.

  "See that, you type in some words, and then you send those words to someone!“

  "So let me get this straight,” says Leonardo slowly, trying not to sound obtuse, “you have a device for real time communication, where you can speak to people all over the world, and yet you choose to send them these "text messages”?

  The graduate student nods. “Yeah, pretty much. You can communicate with friends and people in other ways, too!” he says excitedly.

  He shows Leonardo Di Vinci Facebook. I will not be describing it, as you likely already spend enough time visiting it and communicating with people there already.

  "And look here,“ says the graduate student, "here’s one of some of my friends at the zoo! They’re having a good time, looks like.”

  "Hrm.“ Leonardo looks troubled. "So these people go to places and go out and have fun, and take pictures of it and post it here, to show other people how much fun they had?”

  "Yep.“

  "So they stop having fun for a little while to take a picture of themselves having fun, in order to let people know that they’re having fun? Doesn’t that seem somewhat artificial?”

  "Oh look at this, it’s a picture of my best friend’s broken leg!“

  Leonardo’s education in the intricacies of modern human communication extended far into the night. He learned about the internet, saw youtube, wikipedia, tumblr, and a variety of other places that seemed vastly important to the graduate student. Before he went to bed, Leonardo pulled out his journal and wrote the following:

  "They appear to have machines that allow them to access vast amounts of information about any possible subject, that can calculate vast sums and that could be used as tools to become an expert in any field. Instead they use them to watch people dump buckets of ice on their heads or look at pictures of cats.”

  Now, these black wafers must cross an entire ocean to arrive at the location where they are sold. One might wonder why they would be manufactured in one place, when the intended place of sale is, quite literally on the other side of the planet. If you dug a hole all the way through the entire world from where you are right now, you’d probably poke your head up in a factory for one of these things. And yet, mysteriously, they continue to be made far, far away.

  This is because it is cheaper to ship them halfway across the world than it is to produce them where the vast majority of people actually buy them. Where people buy these magic black wafers, 12 hour workdays, 7 day weeks, paying people next to nothing, and child labor are frowned upon for some reason. So the people in charge decided to just do all that stuff somewhere else to avoid getting in trouble.

  The thing you need to remember is that in this place where the magic black wafers are bought, there is one overriding moral principal: profit. Anything profitable is therefor moral. Anything unprofitable is immoral. Also, profits now are almost always more moral than profits later, but if the profits later are many times the size of the profits now, it may be moral to wait.

  Now, every few years something very important happens. A new magic black wafer is released. They have many important features that make them improvements over previous models, such as having slightly larger screens, slightly thinner frames, and, perhaps most importantly from a marketing standpoint, a bigger number following the product’s name. Around the world, people rush to be the first to acquire these new models. They camp in front of stores. They wait in lines and talk about the weather and how much gas mileage their car gets. The listen to people at Best Buy try to sell them unnecessary additions to the black wafers. They endure all of these awful tribulations in order to acquire the new model of the magic black wafer and then post about it on websites of communication like Facebook.

  As with all things constructed with human hands, sometimes they break.

  Not very far away, in this place called America, which is known, vaguely, by most US citizens as a generally good place filled with democracy and freedom, there is a Man.

  He lives in a city. The name doesn’t matter, because it is like many other cities in that place, the same story repeating itself over and over in so many locations as to make the title of a single of them is irrelevant. He is 46 years old, and walking to the store where he purchased a magic black wafer with an apple stamped on it. The sky that reflects off the gleaming mirror-finish of the skyscrapers is a clear blue, crisscrossed with the exhaust of airplanes. As the man steps over the curb he passes by a homeless man sitting leaned up next to a wall. He doesn’t see him. He’s too busy thinking about the Justice he’s about to deal out, because his magic black wafer is bent.

  As he passes through the doorway, mouth is set, face frozen in an angry grimace that is either the visage of a vengeful god, or someone painfully attempting to pass a bowel movement. He goes up to the front desk, and he says, in an authoritative voice:

  "I need a replacement.“

  And holds up his magic black wafer sideways to his victim behind the counter, to make it clear that it is most assuredly bent.

  "Alright sir. How was your device damaged?”

  He scowls. “I think you guys know why. Haven’t you watched the news. These things are DEFECTIVE. Damn things bend all the goddamn time. I want a new one.”

  "I am aware of this sir. But could you please tell me how your device was bent?“

  "I don’t see how that’s important.” he said guardedly.

  The man behind the counter says nothing. He has discovered that if you look at people and wait long enough, they tend to answer on their own.

  "Well you see…“ he begins, then stoppes suddenly, to collect himself. "my 7 year old son didn’t understand one of the phone’s features.”

  "What feature was that?“

  "Airplane mode.”

  Silence. The man behind the counter waits again.

  "Well, you see, my son put the phone in airplane mode, and threw it off the balcony…“ he pauses here, uncertainly, then finishes, with more confidence, "It Bent!”

  The man behind the counter nods. “Sir, I’m afraid I can’t replace your phone.”

  "WHAT? Are you kidding me? It’s not my fault the damn things are defective!“

  "But sir, you see,-” and here the man behind the counter is caught off guard by a penetrating glare from his supervisor who is standing across the room. He stands and waits like a terrified animal as the supervisor walks over and asks to speak with him in private.

  The man with the bent phone nods approvingly at this new development. A few moments later, the supervisor walks over.

  He’s holding a white box with an apple and some words stamped on it. It’s traveled a long way to be here, from back in its home in that nameless city in China.

  "Here’s your new phone sir, I’m sorry for your inconvenience!“

  The man grabs the box, manicured nails gleaming. He straightens the tie on his Armani suit as he walks back to his Porsche.

 If only the packaging design could change the contents.

  When he gets home he opens the white box containing his new magic black wafer.

  He posts about it on Facebook. The post gets 9 likes.

  He throws the box away. It lay there sadly for a few more hours, the apple stamped upon it facing upward defiantly. Then it is buried under the remains of a Chinese takeout meal, and is forgotten.