#reminds me of Glyph in mass effect ^^

[felassan]

ball 👍

Michael: "Mages can also use orb/dagger (not shown in this video). This one uses a staff" [source]

An orb? ^^

[cybertronian-cupid]

hey um, i saw that requests were open and im still not sure if this will get through but, can i have a tfp megs with an s/o who is really into things relating to collars and leashes?,, im sorry if this has already been done before, i just really want to see how it plays out !!

im really sorry about how i type, it just gets embarrassing to ask for stuff like this :(

Anon, the way you type is perfectly fine, and let me tell you that I couldn't get enough of this request (it also reminded me of this anon thirsting). Since I couldn't choose how to write it, here a both sub & dom s/o headcanons.💥

These did get lenghty, but a fave is a fave and there is surprisingly more to the whole collars and leashes thing... Master dynamics and more fun jazz*cackles* ~Gregoria🏩

............................. ....................... ............................

Submissive S/O:

When his S/O says they want to wear a collar during sex he is amused. His dirty talking and growling will be full of different nicknames.

He wants to see what really gets them going; are they his loyal pet? Servant? Slave? He has them on a leash already, it'll just take a tug in the right direction for them to roll over and please him.

His favourite thing is seeing them present the collar to him, and how their eyes practically light up when he fastens it around their neck and hoists them up by it.

When he isn't mass displaced he finds the way they look precious. Almost makes him forgive their slip ups during training.

He won’t let them kiss him until he wants it and if they don’t come to him fast enough he will yank their leash. He won’t give them what they want until they learn to behave, and the more he has to pull, the more careful he has to be, and so he’ll indulge them less.

Standing in a corner becomes a challenge of its own, since they have to look properly sorry when he asks them if they’ve learned their lesson. If they ask nicely enough, he’ll treat them as rough as they want the next time they behave.

He does have to replace the leashes too often for his liking, mostly because they snap too easily. Chains are the exception, but those limit the amount of punishments. And the eventual bite imprints on the leather when his S/O brings him the leash are a big part of his fun.

When they say they’ve been considering more than just using play collars, he needs a proper explanation for what they mean.

Once they explain the significance and steps of collaring, he needs a moment to process it. Humans have… many courting rituals it seems.

As their Master he will make sure his property is treated well, if they are certain they want this.

He gets them a new training collar to wear around the ship and takes great delight in both their embarrassment and the way he can make full use of their arousal once they are back in his quarters.

He tells them exactly what kind of collars they'll go and buy for themself for when they are out of his sight and rewards them accordingly when they return with a variety for him to approve of.

They end up owning a pretty little collar for nearly every occasion, and when they are outside of the Nemesis they can pick between the many velvet, studded, leather or simple jewelry chokers they bought on his instructions.

Each of them has his name in Cybetronian glyphs engraved on it. Subtle enough for them to always remember who they belong to, and not suspicious to the point of alerting the autobots.

Onboard the ship they have strict rules that are in effect as soon as they set one foot inside.

Training in confidence and demeanor is the first thing he begins with. Posture collar and a corset secured by a thick chain is something that they wear every time he takes them to the command bridge.

When he does give them a formal collar, it's made out of a part of his armour with a conjux vow etched into the metal. They are branded with the Decepticon insignia, either burned or tattooed into their skin. Whichever it is, he monitors and helps with the healing process of the mark.

Soon after they are fully healed he might indulge them in attending a bigger party hosted by the community. During their training he has attended smaller events more often, but he has a war to win, an army to run and minimal amounts of patience for other humans.

They are allowed to keep contact and interact with the other submissives, pets, slaves and the like, but aside from a dominant he deemed trustworthy enough to keep an eye on them, they are not allowed to speak to any of the others attending the events. Weeks of receiving the barest of attention are not worth it.

............................. ....................... ............................

Dominant S/O:

He's suspicious at first. They aren't the first to imagine or want to see him wearing something like that. They are however the first partner to outright say it and not backtrack when he challenges them about it, or shy away from actually discussing it with him.

The first time he does mass displace, just to give them a bit of advantage. He doubts wearing a collar will actually do anything for him, especially with the kind they chose. He expected a regular thick chain, and they got what looks like a thick leather belt.

He finds their improvisation amusing and intriguing, especially when they manage to fasten it in place with surprising ease and speed.

The training is relatively boring at first, since they seem set on "fixing" his daily routines: refueling, recharge time and similar nonsense, when he could instead focus on running battle simulations and revising plans and possible locations of the autobot base. His remark over this counting as part of recharge doesn't go unpunished.

The sessions with less training are mostly teasing and playful, with him intentionally disobeying and pushing his s/o's buttons and letting himself be manhandled.

They've broken a cane and a number of paddles after they eventually decide to touch his spike, but a punishment was still in order. He actually overloaded while counting the strikes on one occasion and had to work hard for them to play with him again. Playing didn't mean he got an overload from them however.

His behaviour changes for the better when S/O actually gets him a proper play collar in his size to wear when he isn’t mass displaced.

How did they do it, where did they get it? Doesn’t matter, because with the way they are looking at him when he puts it on he doesn’t plan on asking too many questions.

Once he’s relaxed he’ll do anything and everything they say perfectly, as long as it ensures they keep their attention on him.

He was genuinely shocked to find just how distressed he was by the lack of it during one scene, and he had no idea how to handle the much longer aftercare that followed. When the two of them were reestablishing boundaries there was much frustration involved, simply on account of him being stubborn.

He might get ready for them on occasion. Seeing his S/O coo at how eager he is on those days he waits for them with his collar on, does funny things to his frame.

Put him on a leash when he’s at the peak of his heat. Do it, he’ll be a desperate, dripping mess just from having the collar and leash in sight and will overload as soon as he gets the order to put it on.

He won’t do any sort of branding or such. If, and that is a big if, he’d ever consider wearing a mark that is not of his cause, it would have to be after conjuxing his human.

Friction marks or scratches on his plating however? He doesn’t mind those at all. He even finds S/O a bit too pushy if they keep checking in about his comfort and the marks left around his neck cabling. There was quite some improvisation involved for them to be able to do anything in the first place, might as well let their dedication show.

He was the one to ask about the events and parties, and took great pride at the reaction to his holoform, and the following boost of his S/O's reputation in the community due to his appearance and stellar behaviour.

His S/O being the one to wear a key to his (mass displaced) collar on them at all times, with a shiny metal tag bearing his name, has his engines run hotter. Knowing they are powerful enough that he can call them his Keeper with certainty, and knowing they are aware of how quickly the tables can turn if they betray his trust is a special kind of high.

Correction tools are a must with him during play. Even if he is well behaved, being the center of attention just by wearing the collar is already a reward of its own, so an ocassional reminder of who's in control might be neccesary

When or if the training extends out of the bedroom, his S/O will rarely find he didn’t follow the orders to look after himself when they are away. It does benefit his overall performance on the battlefield, keeps his temper mostly in check and he gets their praise on top of it all? No reason to disobey then.

If anyone asks why they wear a sturdy chain belt with an additional chain attached to Megatron’s armour, it is most definitely just a safety precaution in case they fall off. No other reason at all~ ;)

During high stakes the rules have to be either negotiated or undergo slight changes. His S/O picks up on the source of his frustrations easily and most times suggests changes before he even brings it up, reaffirming that yes, in this regard he can calmly let them take the lead.

[rachnerds]

A Good Fit

Headcanon for Miranda/Liara after Shepard dies. This is based on the ending to my run of Mass Effect and my Shepard.

Her gloved hand massages her own forehead as she attempts to rifle through data. She's been collecting almost everything she can for almost a year. It was her own project - none of her agents were assigned to assist. It was a personal project that she was able to justify using her resources for. She was the Shadow Broker. The only person who would know was her.

"Perhaps it may be time for a break from your information gathering, Shadow Broker." A VI appears, chirping innocently as a VI does. It hums quietly and spins methodically in Liara's periphery.

"Goddess," she remarks in a breathy, surprised tone. "I suppose you may be right." She takes a deep sigh. She takes a quick glance at the picture sitting on her desk. Shepard's blue eyes pierce into hers and grief floods her. How she misses the Commander, even after almost a full year. "Yes, Glyph. A short break would suit me well." She places a hand atop the frame for a moment, and after hesitating, flips it on its face. She needed a break from Shepard's gaze, too.

Her office is situated on The Normandy still. She dislikes the post because it reminds her of Shepard, but beyond that, she doesn't have any other reason to be discontent. The crew is familiar; made up of her friends even. Most had survived the Reaper war, and so they have each other to depend on.

She wanders slowly and aimlessly down the hallway before she's visible to those in the mess hall. Only a few linger, as it's the middle of their sleep cycle. One is a crew member she admittedly doesn't know outside of the intel she's acquired on her own (which she has for everyone on the crew). But the other is someone she knows quite well: Miranda Lawson, the Normandy's former but reinstated XO.

Miranda studies her tea as she hears Liara shuffle in. Her eyes flicker to the slow moving Asari, which brings a smile to her face. It's small, and Liara wouldn't notice it, but it forms for a moment. "Lost, doctor?" Miranda says, grabbing the attention of the information broker who finds Miranda and offers a smile, both genuine and social in nature.

"It feels that way at times," Liara replies in a breathy tone, "though I'll admit it's my thoughts that leave me feeling lost moreso than my geography." She moves to the table in which Miranda sits, taking the conversation as invitation to join her. "Between you and me, I wasn't even aware of the time before deciding to stumble out of my office."

Miranda watches the tea in her cup swirl, a gentle cloud of steam hovers just above it. "I'm no doctor myself T'Soni, but I think one would tell you to ensure you're obtaining healthy amounts of sleep." Another grin forms and she leans in across the table, "It doesn't seem like you're doing that." She nags in a playful whisper.

Liara lets out an appreciative chuckle as she leans back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. "You sound like Shepard." An eyebrow perks and her heart flutters, thinking back to her bondmate fondly. Miranda can see and feel the grief. It's something she's been experiencing too.

Perhaps overcome with sleep, Liara talks more than she normally would. Before she knows it, words tumble out. "At the very end, in our base in London, the Commander and I shared time together. She knew, well," Liara pauses, reflecting on the moment. "she knew she wouldn't, couldn't, survive, and she told me to seek comfort and safety in the friends we had surrounded ourselves with." Her eyes connect with Miranda's, and she feels nervousness she hadn't ever felt before in Miranda's presence. Even despite all the interactions they'd preciously shared. "She told me specifically to...turn to you." Her head shakes left to right as though to brush off the comment, but when she finds Miranda's attention again, she sees that the statement was taken as anything but casual.

Miranda had straightened up while Liara had been speaking. Her expression is solemn and serious. She holds Liara's eyes intently. "Shepard told me something similar. Different, but the same." Her words are curt and short as though she's holding back some emotion she doesn't want Liara to see. "Maybe we should talk about this at another time, when we both aren't so tired." Liara watches as Miranda stands, obviously struck by their conversation. Liara stands too, feeling as though she could offer some comfort to Miranda in response to the admittance she's just made.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Lawson, if I've upset you-." A gloved hand silences her as it's raised from across the way.

"You haven't, Liara." Miranda says truthfully, her stomach tying into a knot. "Invite me to your office another time and we'll talk about what Shepard said, and what she meant." She holds Liara's blue eyes in hers for a moment before offering a nod, leaving the former archaeologist alone in the mess hall.

She admittedly misses her once office, now inhabited by the Asari she just left in the mess hall. The Asari Shepard had told Miranda to watch out for and be there for. The Commander, in her way, hadn't said much more than that, but Miranda had an idea of what she had meant.

In their time together working for Cerberus, Miranda and Shepard had grown close. Miranda was adamant about the other woman staying loyal to Dr. T'Soni. She knew Shepard would never forgive herself for both hurting Liara by being with Miranda and conversely, hurting Miranda by returning to Liara. Miranda smiles at the conversation they had shared, the one that ultimately sealed Miranda off to Shepard. She grimaces for a moment, not allowing herself to feel regret.

She reflects back to the time before she had brought Shepard back. The naive archaeologist had found her way to Cerberus and to her; Miranda was foolish then for her loyalties, but it had brought T'Soni to her. She takes a heavy breath while remembering.

Miranda made sure that Shepard stayed loyal to Liara because Miranda knew, intimately, the type of partner Liara was. It had always been casual between them. They used each other as a way to release energy, and anger, and fear. Miranda was rigid and guarded. Less so now, but certainly back then. Liara had been soft and looking for an interaction she could connect to. Miranda fit the bill, and Liara, Miranda's.

If Shepard knew about their time together, she never mentioned it to Miranda. But in the tone of one of their final conversations, the one about being there for Liara in her absence, Miranda had a feeling she knew. She didn't ask, it wasn't her place, but she took Shepard's words as meaning "if I can't be with Liara, you should be."

[pleasespellchimerical]

Informed vs Uninformed choices in video games

So I finished my first playthru of Heaven’s Vault last night. Definitely going to do at least one more, since the devs estimate that you’ll only see 30% of the full game in any one playthru, and I really want more of this world. 12 hours was not nearly enough!

Anyway (slight spoilers for the ending, but I’ll try to keep stuff vague since the details don’t matter much for this discussion), the ending reminded me a lot of the ending of Mass Effect 3. Yes, the same ending that was so reviled that Bioware later released extra content to try and do it better justice. The same ending that players said undermined the game’s theme of making choices that had real impact. The ending that railroaded you into four choices, and none of these choices felt narratively satisfying. 

Heaven’s Vault had an ending structured similarly, at least on the surface. You reach the titular vault, and are given three choices. None of these options are perfect, all will have significant negative effects on the world, and you have to pick in order to finish the game.

The difference between these two endings? This structure works for Heaven’s Vault in a way that it doesn’t for Mass Effect 3, and I think a lot of this has to deal with how much information the player is given, how they are given it, and how it’ll affect their choice.

Heaven’s Vault is primarily a game about archaeology, history, and how these fields inform the present. In Heaven’s Vault, you play Aliyah, an archaeologist in a culture where archaeology and history are not formal, or even respected, disciplines. A search for a missing professor leads Aliyah and her robot, Six, down a trail of ancient sites, artifacts, and writing, to find a great secret dating from the beginning of history. Aliyah’s discoveries are so earth-shattering that they rewrite the story of Nebula itself, and force her to confront long-held cultural truths that are called into question through her work.

Mass Effect does have similar themes woven into it, but they’re more in the background. ME1 introduces an archaeologist, Liara, who studies the technology and culture of a vanished predecessor race (Protheans). During the course of ME1, you learn that the fate of the Protheans holds horrible implications for life in the galaxy, and the penultimate mission has the player explore a lost Prothean planet and unearth secrets that allow them to temporarily stop the invasion of the Reapers, a race of machines that wants to destroy all life in the galaxy.

In Mass Effect 1, because of an encounter with a Prothean artifact and the access to Prothean records, the player is given information in a dead language that you can understand flawlessly, clearly states the reasons for Prothean extinction, and gives you information on ways to stop a similar fate in the present.

Heaven’s Vault doesn’t offer answers as simple as that. The foundational mechanic of the game is translation of an ancient language. As you learn more of it, you can complete some translations and make educated guesses on others, but in one playthru, you will not be able to understand all the glyphs you encounter. Information about the past has to be inferred through your translations, the way you interpret those translations, archaeological sites, and artifacts. 

In the Mass Effect franchise, you continue to receive easy information from ancient sources. The third game introduces a Prothean, the last of the extinct race who survived in stasis. He is able to give you direct information about Prothean culture and their extinction. Liara also discovers a Prothean blueprint, the Crucible, a superweapon that can destroy the Reapers. The third Mass Effect game is a race to complete the Crucible while fighting off Reapers. The trick is, we don’t know what the Crucible actually does. It’s a mystery--much like Heaven’s Vault.

Turns out, when the Crucible is activated at the 11th hour, it houses an AI that explains the Reapers--where they came from, why they want to wipe out organic life, and explains the options to end the invasion.

Then, the players has to chose from these options, and a legendarily bad game ending came to be.

On the surface, the ending to Heaven’s Vault looks similar. Aliyah arrives at the Vault, discovers something ancient and powerful, and is given a choice to make that will affect not just her, but the fate of the world she lives in.

So why does the ending to Heaven’s Vault work while Mass Effect 3′s does not?

It’s about the amount of information the player is given.

Mass Effect gives you easy information. There is no language barrier, ancient knowledge is dropped into the player’s hands with no need for interpreting it, because the answers are clear. You have a primary source in the Prothean character (no language barrier there either), and the end of the game gives you complete information about why the antagonists are the way they are, and the consequences of each choice you can make to stop them.

Heaven’s Vault has not given you any of this. Even understanding the ‘dire warning’ on the Vault door depends on your translation, and your interpretations of what the Vault could be. Sites, artifacts, and inscriptions are not guaranteed to the player; exploring one site more thoroughly than another can lead you to a completely different understanding of the past. The player is not forced to find certain information, and not forced to interpret it in a certain way. Another game mechanic gives the player different choices about how to interpret what they find, and the interpretations given in the dialogue will affect your dialogue options and possible interpretations later.

In short, it is impossible to get all the information, and not always possible to get good information.

In Mass Effect, there is no choice but to find this information, and it is given to you as fact, not educated (or uneducated) guesses.

When making the final choice, Mass Effect states everything out plainly. The choice given inside Heaven’s Vault, however, the choice is muddled by your understanding of the Vault, the people who built it, what its purpose is, and your limited understanding of the spoken language (after all, translating text doesn’t tell you what the language sounds like, or how to understand spoken speech). 

You have to complete the choice with the information you have--which will not be the same from player to player, or playthru to playthru.

And by finishing the game with limited information, the choice you make is more meaningful. It reflects your understanding of the world--both ancient and modern. It reflects your experiences. And it preserves some of the mystery. Heaven’s Vault is a game built on mysteries. To solve them all would be unrealistic (real life archaeology and history certainly cannot do this), and maybe a little unsatisfying. Retaining some of the mystery preserves the player’s curiosity (that presumably drove them to complete the game), and gives an ending that holds meaning based on how you played the game.

This was the intent with Mass Effect. That the player’s choices be meaningful, and the conclusion satisfying to fans who played all three games.

But by dumping out all the information, and giving the player identical choices no matter what their path in the game, this meaning is ultimately erased. The player’s choices have no impact on the conclusion--the only choice that matters is the final one. A mystery that was teased since the first game, spanning the lifetime of the galaxy and everything that came before and impacted the present, is revealed in plain text. And if the player isn’t satisfied with how the mystery of the Reapers is solved, there’s nothing to do but write some fanfic. The game gives you no room for interpretation. In the end, there’s an unsatisfied fanbase that doesn’t have much to discuss besides what choice they picked and how much it sucked that all their other choices were disregarded. 

There’s a lesson here for game devs who want to make epic, history-spanning games, where player choices really matter. Heaven’s Vault and Mass Effect are two very different games--but when one makes a Final Choice mechanic work, and one doesn’t, it isn’t arbitrary as to why this happened. 

Anyway, go play Heaven’s Vault. This game is one of the best I’ve played in years, and I’m really in admiration of what this tiny game studio has achieved. It has more scale and scope than many open-world AAA games, and a beautiful, nuanced story. Art, music, and voice acting is all incredible. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 28 Feb 2020

Today's links

Clearview AI's customer database leaks: Sic semper grifter.

The Internet of Anal Things: Recreating Stelarc's "Amplified Body" with an IoT butt-plug.

Oakland's vintage Space Burger/Giant Burger building needs a home! Adopt a googie today.

Fan-made reproduction of the Tower of Terror: Even has a deepfaked Serling.

Drawing the Simpsons with pure CSS: Impractical, but so impressive.

Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert: 89% of the web is now encrypted.

AI Dungeon Master: A work in progress, for sure.

How to lie with (coronavirus) maps: Lies, damned lies, and epidemiological data-visualizations.

This day in history: 2019, 2015

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Clearview AI's customer database leaks (permalink)

Clearview is the grifty facial recognition startup that created a database by scraping social media and now offers cops secretive deals on its semi-magic, never-peer-reviewed technology. The company became notorious in January after the NYT did a deep dive into its secretive deals and its weird, Trump-adjascent ex-male-model founder.

(the Times piece was superbly researched but terribly credulous about Clearview's marketing claims)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

Yesterday, Clearview warned its customers that it had been hacked and lost its customer database. Today, that customer database was published.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-fbi-ice-global-law-enforcement

It seems that the NYT weren't the only ones to take Clearview's marketing claims at face value. Its client list includes the DoJ, ICE, Macy's, Walmart, and the NBA. All in all the dump includes more than 2,200 users, including "law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the world."

Included: state AGs, university rent-a-cops, and clients in Saudi Arabia.

"BuzzFeed News authenticated the logs, which list about 2,900 institutions and include details such as the number of log-ins, the number of searches, and the date of the last search."

What does Clearview, a sercurity company, say about this ghastly security breach? "Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century."

Big shrug energy.

"Government agents should not be running our faces against a shadily assembled database of billions of our photos in secret and with no safeguards against abuse," ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, said to BuzzFeed News.

It is amazing that this needs to be said.

"More than 50 educational institutions across 24 states named in the log. Among them are two high schools."

They are:

Central Montco Technical High School in Pennsylvania

Somerset Berkley Regional High School in Massachusetts

The log also has an entry for Interpol.

The Internet of Anal Things (permalink)

In 1994, the notorious/celebrated electronic artist Stelarc did a performance called "Amplified Body" in which he "controlled robots, cameras and other instruments by tensing and releasing his muscles"

https://web.archive.org/web/20120712181429/https://v2.nl/events/amplified-body

Now, artist/critic Dani Ploeger has revisited Amplified Body with his own performance, which is very similar to Stelarc's, except all the peripherals are controlled by Ploeger tensing and releasing his anal sphincters around a smart butt-plug.

https://www.daniploeger.org/amplified-body

He calls it "B-hind" and it's a ha-ha-only-serious. The buttplug is "an anal electrode with EMG sensor for domestic treatment of faecal incontinence," and the accompanying text is a kind of art-speak parody of IoT biz-speak.

https://we-make-money-not-art.com/b-hind-celebrating-the-internet-of-anal-things

"B-hind offers a unique IoT solution to fully integrate your sphincter muscle in everyday living. The revolutionary anal electrode-powered interface system replaces conventional hand/voice-based interaction, enabling advanced digital control rooted in your body's interior. Celebrating the abject and the grotesque, ‍B‒hind facilitates simple, plug-and-play access to a holistic body experience in the age of networked society."

B-hind was produced in collaboration with V2_, the Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, and In4Art.

Oakland's vintage Space Burger/Giant Burger building needs a home! (permalink)

Giant Burger was once an East Bay institution, known for its burgers and its gorgeous googie architecture.

https://localwiki.org/oakland/Giant_Burger

One of the very last Giant Burger buildings is now under threat. Though the Telegraph Ave location was rescued in 2015 and converted to a "Space Burger," it's now seeking a new home because it is in the path of the Eastline project.

https://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/02/24/space-burger-launches-in-uptown-oakland/

The Oakland Heritage Alliance is hoping someone will rescue and move the building: " Do you have an idea for a new location for this mid-century icon? Please contact info@oaklandheritage.org if you know of an appropriate lot, project, or site, preferably downtown."

(Image CC BY-SA, Our Oakland)

Fan-made reproduction of the Tower of Terror (permalink)

Orangele set out to re-create the Walt Disney World Twilight Zone Tower of Terror elevator loading zone in the entry area to their home theater. He's not only done an impressive re-make of the set, but he's also augmented it with FANTASTIC gimmicks.

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/threads/the-tower-of-terror-theater.365747/

It's not merely that's he's created a rain, thunder and lightning effect outside the patio doors…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QMzN0v4mJQ

Nor has he merely created props like this gimmicked side table that flips over at the press of a button.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY7gQLMnbeA

He's also created HIS OWN ROD SERLING DEEPFAKE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=MIsjYJwOXSU

I kinda seriously love that he left Rod's cigarette in. The Disney version looks…uncanny.

Not shown: "exploding fuse box with simulated smoke and fire, motorized lighted elevator dial, motorized/lighted pressure gauge, video monitor playing Tower of Terror ride sequence seen through the elevator door wrap, motorized "elevator door'"

He notes, "I was once married, but now as a single person, I can do whatever I want, haha. NEVER getting married again."

Drawing the Simpsons with pure CSS (permalink)

Implementing animated Simpsons illustrations in CSS isn't the most practical web-coding demo I've seen, but it's among the most impressive. Bravo, Chris Pattle!

(not shown: the eyes animate and blink!)

https://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in-css/

#bart .head .hair1 { top: 22px; left: 0px; width: 6px; height: 7px; -webkit-transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); -ms-transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); }

I especially love the quick-reference buttons to see the raw CSS. It reminds me of nothing so much as the incredibly complex Logo programs I used to write on my Apple ][+ in the 1980s, drawing very complicated, vector-based sprites and glyphs.

https://github.com/pattle/simpsons-in-css/blob/master/css/bart.css

Most interesting is the way that this modular approach to graphics allows for this kind of simple, in-browser transformation.

Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert (permalink)

When the AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein walked into EFF's offices in 2005 to reveal that his employers had ordered him to help the NSA spy on the entire internet, it was a bombshell.

https://www.eff.org/tags/mark-klein

The Snowden papers revealed the scope of the surveillance in fine and alarming detail. According to his memoir, Snowden was motivated to blow the whistle when he witnessed then-NSA Director James Clapper lie to Senator Ron Wyden about the Klein matter.

Since that day in 2005, privacy advocates have been fretting about just how EASY it was to spy on the whole internet. So much of that was down to the fact that the net wasn't encrypted by default.

This was especially keen for @EFF. After all, we made our bones by suing the NSA in the 90s and winning the right for civilians to access working cryptography (we did it by establishing that "Code is speech" for the purposes of the First Amendment).

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech

Crypto had been legal since 1992, but by Klein's 2005 disclosures, it was still a rarity. 8 years later — at the Snowden moment — the web was STILL mostly plaintext. How could we encrypt the web to save it from mass surveillance?

So in 2014, we joined forces with Mozilla, the University of Michigan and Akamai to create Let's Encrypt, a project to give anyone and everyone free TLS certificates, the key component needed to encrypt the requests your web-server exchanges with your readers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Encrypt

Encrypting the web was an uphill climb: by 2017, Let's Encrypt had issued 100m certificates, tipping the web over so that the majority of traffic (58%) was encrypted. Today, Let's Encrypt has issued ONE BILLION certs, and 81% of pageloads use HTTPS (in the USA, it's 91%)! This is astonishing, bordering on miraculous. If this had been the situation back in 2005, there would have been no NSA mass surveillance.

Even more astonishing: there are only 11 full-timers on the Let's Encrypt team, plus a few outside contractors and part-timers. A group of people who could fit in a minibus managed to encrypt virtually the entire internet.

https://letsencrypt.org/2020/02/27/one-billion-certs.html

There are lots of reasons to factor technology (and technologists) in any plan for social change, but this illustrates one of the primary tactical considerations. "Architecture is Politics" (as Mitch Kapor said when he co-founded EFF), and the architectural choices that small groups of skilled people make can reach all the way around the world.

This kind of breathtaking power is what inspires so many people to become technologists: the force-multiplier effect of networked code can imbue your work with global salience (for good or ill). It's why we should be so glad of the burgeoning tech and ethics movement, from Tech Won't Build It to the Googler Uprising. And it's especially why we should be excited about the proliferation of open syllabi for teaching tech and ethics.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jWIrA8jHz5fYAW4h9CkUD8gKS5V98PDJDymRf8d9vKI/edit#gid=0

It's also the reason I'm so humbled and thrilled when I hear from technologists that their path into the field started with my novel Little Brother, whose message isn't "Tech is terrible," but, "This will all be so great, if we don't screw it up."

https://craphound.com/littlebrother

(and I should probably mention here that the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface, comes out in October and explicitly wrestles with the question of ethics, agency, and allyship in tech).

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

AI Dungeon Master (permalink)

Since 2018, Lara martin has been using machine learning to augment the job of the Dungeon Master, with the goal of someday building a fully autonomous, robotic DM.

https://laramartin.net/

AI Dungeon Master is a blend of ML techniques and "old-fashioned rule-based features" to create a centaur DM that augments a human DM's imagination with the power of ML, natural language processing, and related techniques.

She's co-author of a new paper about the effort, "Story Realization: Expanding Plot Events into Sentences" which "describes a way algorithms to use "events," consisting of a subject, verb, object, and other elements, to make a coherent narrative."

https://aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2020GB/AAAI-AmmanabroluP.6647.pdf

The system uses training data (plots from Doctor Who, Futurama, and X-Files) to expand text-snippets into plotlines that continue the action. It's a bit of a dancing bear, though, an impressive achievement that's not quite ready for primetime ("We're nowhere close to this being a reality yet").

https://www.wired.com/story/forget-chess-real-challenge-teaching-ai-play-dandd/

This may bring to mind AI Dungeon, the viral GPT-2-generated dungeon crawler from December.

https://aidungeon.io/

As Will Knight writes, "Playing AI Dungeon often feels more like a maddening improv session than a text adventure."

Knight proposes that "AI DM" might be the next big symbolic challenge for machine learning, the 2020s equivalent to "AI Go player" or "AI chess master."

How to lie with (coronavirus) maps (permalink)

The media around the coronavirus outbreak is like a masterclass in the classic "How to Lie With Maps."

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo27400568.html

Self-described "cartonerd" Kenneth Field's prescriptions for mapmakers wanting to illustrate the spread of coronavirus is a superb read about data visualization, responsibility, and clarity.

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/mapping-coronavirus-responsibly/

Both of these images are representing the same data. Look at the map and you might get the impression that coronavirus infections are at high levels across all of China's provinces. Look at the bar-chart and you'll see that it's almost entire Hubei.

Here's a proposed way to represent the same data on a map without misleading people.

Another point that jumped out: stop coloring maps in red!

"We're mapping a human health tragedy that may get way worse before it subsides. Do we really want the map to be screaming bright red? Red can connotate death, still statistically extremely rare for coronavirus."

This day in history (permalink)

#5yrsago Ad-hoc museums of a failing utopia: photos of Soviet shop-windows https://boingboing.net/2015/02/28/ad-hoc-museums-of-a-failing-ut.html

#5yrsago First-hand reports of torture from Homan Square, Chicago PD's "black site" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/27/chicago-abusive-confinment-homan-square

#1yrago EFF's roadmap for a 21st Century antitrust doctrine https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/antitrust-enforcement-needs-evolve-21st-century

#1yrago Yet another study shows that the most effective "anti-piracy" strategy is good products at a fair price https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kg7pv/studies-keep-showing-that-the-best-way-to-stop-piracy-is-to-offer-cheaper-better-alternatives

#1yrago London's awful estate agents are cratering, warning of a "prolonged downturn" in the housing market https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47389160

#1yrago Bad security design made it easy to spy on video from Ring doorbells and insert fake video into their feeds https://web.archive.org/web/20190411195308/https://dojo.bullguard.com/dojo-by-bullguard/blog/ring/

#1yrago Amazon killed Seattle's homelessness-relief tax by threatening not to move into a massive new building, then they canceled the move anyway https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/huge-downtown-seattle-office-space-that-amazon-had-leased-is-reportedly-put-on-market/

#1yrago The "Reputation Management" industry continues to depend on forged legal documents https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190216/15544941616/pissed-consumer-exposes-new-york-luxury-car-dealers-use-bogus-notarized-letters-to-remove-critical-reviews.shtml

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Allegra of Oakland Heritage Alliance, Waxy (https://waxy.org/), We Make Money Not Art (https://we-make-money-not-art.com/), Sam Posten (https://twitter.com/Navesink), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Kottke (https://kottke.org) and Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last week, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs" this week; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers' Fortresses: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/24/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-the-gatekeepers-fortresses/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[computersciencegothic]

Is it a silly prank, a Pagan ritual, or a genius discovery about the next era of mass transit? In a picture posted to Flickr by artist James Bridle—known for coining the term, "New Aesthetic"—a car is sitting in the middle of a parking lot has been surrounded by a magic salt circle. In the language of road markings, the dotted white lines on the outside say, "Come On In," but the solid white line on the inside says, "Do Not Cross." To the car's built-in cameras, these are indomitable laws of magic: Petrificus Totalus for autonomous automobiles.

Captioned simply, "Autonomous Trap 001," the scene evokes a world of narratives involving the much-hyped technology of self-driving cars. It could be mischievous hackers disrupting a friend's self-driving ride home; the police seizing a dissident's getaway vehicle; highway robbers trapping their prey; witches exorcizing a demon from their hatchback.

Self-driving cars aren't there yet, but the artist-philosopher-programmer's thought-provoking photo is a reminder that we'll have to start thinking about these things soon. If a self-driving car is designed to read the road, what happens when the language of the road is abused by those with nefarious intent?

Bridle has carved out a space for himself among those thinking 10–100 years in the future. His website Booktwo.org is lousy with philosophical treatises, thought experiments, creative code, and art projects. His "collaboration with technology" Five Eyes was part of the V&A Museum's privacy-oriented show All of This Belongs to You, which also included the remains of whistleblower Edward Snowden's smashed hard drive full of leaked documents. Bridle has spent the last decade making drones more relatable, uncovering the mysteries of weather prediction, and otherwise trying to elucidate the invisible technologies—usually military in origin—that rule our world.

Recently Bridle has become fascinated by autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars will be available to the public soon. Singapore is considering the purchase of a fleet of 300,000 driverless taxis to replace the 780,000 manned ones currently clogging their streets. Google's self-driving car initiative, now called Waymo, has been investing in the technology since 2009. Elon Musk's Tesla is already implementing limited automated features in the United States, and even slow-moving large scale car manufacturers like Ford are getting into the game. If driverless cars become anywhere as ubiquitous as the horseless carriage, innocuous vandalism like the Autonomous Trap is just the beginning the problems engineers will have to solve.

Now Bridle is trying to build his own self-driving car, and made the sardonic artwork Autonomous Trap 001 in the process. He's released all the code developed in pursuit of the DIY self-driving car here. We spoke to Bridle to learn more about the circumstances behind this vague photo series and better understand his apprehension and curiosity about the robot chauffeurs of the future.

Creators: What are we looking at here? Can you give me a brief explanation of Autonomous Trap 001?

James Bridle: What you're looking at is a salt circle, a traditional form of protection—from within or without—in magical practice. In this case it's being used to arrest an autonomous vehicle—a self-driving car, which relies on machine vision and processing to guide it. By quickly deploying the expected form of road markings—in this case, a No Entry glyph—we can confuse the car's vision system into believing it's surrounded by no entry points, and entrap it.

Is this actually an autonomous car, or is it conceptual?

I don't actually have a self-driving car, unfortunately—I don't think any have made it to Greece yet, plus the cost issue—but I do have a pretty good understanding of how the things work, having been researching them for a while. And the one in the picture is a research vehicle for building my own. As usual, I've got totally carried away in the research, and ended up writing a bunch of my own software, rigging up cameras and building neural networks to reproduce some of the more interesting currents in the field. Like the trap, I wouldn't entirely trust what I've built, but the principles are sound.

Where did you take these pictures?

I made this Trap while training the car on the roads around Mount Parnassus in Central Greece. Parnassus feels like an appropriate location because, as well as being quite spectacular scenery and wonderful to drive and hike around, it's the home of the Muses in mythology, as well as the site of the Delphic Oracle. The ascent of Mount Parnassus is, in esoteric terms, the journey towards knowledge, and art.

What is your role in the project and is there anyone else involved?

It's just me. I did a project last year called Cloud Index Index which used satellite imagery and machine learning to explore politics and computational thinking, and I had a lot of help on that, particularly from Gene Kogan, another artist who works with machine learning. This time I wanted to do it all myself—mostly to show that I could, and therefore, in theory and accepting an immense amount of privilege and good fortune, anyone can. These technologies are for everyone: you can read the papers, repeat the findings, study the code, build your own tools. This radically reshapes the way you understand and interact with the world, and is something I think is quite crucial to propagate in the current age.

Why did you create Autonomous Trap 001, besides poking fun at an incredibly hyped technology?

It's part of a body of work / research / writing / fooling about to explore and understand the contemporary technologies of automation, in order to better use them, and in some cases to disrupt and oppose them.

Self-driving cars bring together a bunch of really interesting technologies—such as machine vision and intelligence—with crucial social issues such as the atomization and changing nature of labor, the shift of power to corporate elites and Silicon Valley, and the quasi-religious faith in computation as the only framework for the production of truth—and hence, ethics and social justice.

The Trap falls into the category of resistance, while the attempt to build my own car is a process of understanding how the dominant narratives of these technologies are produced, and could be changed. I don't see why cab drivers of the future shouldn't be chalking white lines on side streets to derail self-driving Ubers which are putting them out of work, and I also think we need more eyes and hands on the tools which are shaping all of our futures.

Were there any unexpected challenges in creating the piece?

I ran out of salt, and had to drive back to the nearest village to buy a few more kilos. Luckily, salt, unlike bandwidth and computational power, is a pretty cheap resource. Also, I should have pulled my trousers up for the video.

This is Autonomous Car Trap 001. Do you have more planned?

I have a habit of numbering things, but yes, there will definitely be more. Like the Drone Shadows, which proliferate to this day, consciously starting a series seems to have generative effects.

Where does this fit in your larger body of work?

It's all part of the same attempt to understand the world and act in it, if that doesn't sound too pompous. This work follows directly from projects on machine vision, artificial intelligence, militarized technology, big data etc.—as well as more, shall we say, poetic interventions into emerging technologies. It's one big rolling project, with occasional bouts of specific obsession.

What's next for you? What other projects are you working on?

This body of work is in part in preparation for a solo exhibition which opens next month in Berlin, at Nome Gallery, called Failing to Distinguish Between a Tractor Trailer and the Bright White Sky. I'll be showing a bunch of different outcomes of the research, including interpretations of the machine vision systems I've been building, and the results of the self-driving car training—and hopefully connecting them to some of my more mythological interests.

I've also got a new commission opening in London next week, as part of Convergence—a series of billboards in East London continuing my search for the Render Ghosts. Beyond that, I'm mostly working on writing projects about the new dark age and the relationship between technology, knowledge, understanding, and agency.

Keep up with James Bridle's work on his website.

[teratoscope]

reverse cargo cultist

TexorcistYou wake in the dark.Your suit stares at you, empty, at the far side of the room. It’s bound, likeyou—hung from the rafters. The chassis is daubed with glyphs from a script youcan’t parse, a bit like Cyrillic but squirmier. They glisten in the firelight.Your captors file inin silence. Underneath the stitched-and-stenciled alchemical equations andwarding signs the body armor is familiar—time-worn and ill-fitting on some, butobviously of Freestar One make. The veils, however, are new. Sturdy red cloth,riveted in place over the ballistic helmet, draping down to chest-height. Noholes for eyes.When the knives comeout it’s not you they dismantle. It’s the suit. They’re gentle with it,levering it apart along all the weakest points. Your breathing slows, suddenlylabored. The air feels thickened. Somethingis congealing; something your captors accounted for. Six of them form acorridor between you and your dismembered armor, careful not to enter thecleared ten-foot circle of floorspace at the center of this decrepit little barn.It starts as a greasy gray-browncloud, steadily collapsing into a fat lozenge of roiling, weightless gunk. Something dark wriggles in the center,waiting to be born.  HD 3 MV 120’ AC 15 AT Fist of Dysfunction(d6 kinetic, on a hit that beats target AC by 4 or better a piece of equipment onthe target’s person gains Smash 6 or halves its current Smash rating) or byweapon Special machine empath, summon/bind gremlin psychoplasm

Machine empath—a Texorcistmay spend an exploration turn communing with a piece of complex machinery. Atthe end of the exploration turn, the Texorcist has intimate knowledge of themachine’s history and internal workings, and will be able to service, operate, and/orreproduce it without error if provided sufficient time and materials. However,there is a 1 in 6 chance when working with completely unfamiliar machinery thatthe device in question will “reject” the Texorcist, and they will be completelyincapable of engaging meaningfully with the machine. This chance rises to 2 in3 if the device was used directly against the Texorcist in some manner.A Texorcist may receive sensory information from machinesthey have communed with, so long as they’re powered or don’t need a powersource. This bond, however, goes both ways; if a device a Texorcist is bound tois destroyed, they take half their current hp in psychic damage.

Summon/bind gremlinpsychoplasm—a Texorcist may forgo their actions during a combat round to “conjure”a psychoplasmic mass, “channeling the rude spirit” of any destroyed, jammed, orcomplex machine into it to produce a small, approximately humanoid psi-formloyal to its conjuror (stats as goblin). Gremlin psychoplasms have limitedself-awareness, strong violent tendencies, rudimentary tool-use skills, andwill last for as many exploration turns as the conjuror has HD. The conjurormay attempt to extend the effect by losing 1 hp/excess turn; these hp do notheal until the conjuror undergoes a long rest.

We’ve sent a lot of soldiers into Tetron stomping grounds,for a lot of different reasons. Reconnaissance, retrieval, disposal of politicallyinconvenient field agents, to name a few. We’ve sent legends and we’ve sentscum. Only once has an entire field team come back without casualties. In fact,they came back with more soldiers than they went in with.

Those were the Texorcists. They didn’t call themselves thatat the time—hell, we don’t really call them that, not on paper. Just some dumbjoke that stuck too long.

They volunteered, and when they came back they didn’t regretit.

But they couldn’t stick around on our side either. Fromtheir perspective they were gone too long, and their wandering changed themirrevocably.

We don’t talk a lot about religion upwell. Not in public. It’snot conducive to smooth operation. It’s there, but we keep it behind closeddoors. Downwell it’s not too different. You get chaplains in the fieldsometimes, and some folks pick up a little of the local superstition, and ofcourse there’s no shortage of prayer to be heard between and in the midst of anexchange of fire, but we don’t have evangelicals.

Okay, maybe secularevangelicals.

But the Texorcists came out the other side of the quarantinezone diehard believers. In precisely what, it’s hard to explain. Animism’s apart of it, or as they put it, an extension of Object-Oriented Ontology. There’ssomething Hobbesian in there too. Whatever they saw in there, it convinced thempretty firmly that the state of nature was war of all against all. And when Isay all I mean all. When a Texorcistconsecrates each individual bullet, what they’re doing isn’t strictly speakingblessing them. It’s a loyalty check. Roll call. Reminding the spirit of everygrain of gunpowder and high-explosive warhead where they sit on the great chainof being.

They absolutely hate it when you call them mystics. All ofthis is a science to them. They’ve spent relative generations getting it downthrough trial and error and desperate experimentation, and they’re stillfiguring out the full implementations.

There are rumors of bigger, weirder psience projects goingon in their little enclaves. Larger scale plasmic inductions. Post-ContactArtifact fuckery. They’re making demons downthere, calling them up and putting them down, figuring out what they can shackleand what they can strip for parts. Maybe it’s all just stuff they’re drawingout of their own heads, maybe it’s extradimensional fuckery, maybe they reallyare dredging devils out of Machine Hell, whatever it is, it’s real enough.

Judging by the scale of the raids that come downon their heads, they scare the shit outof the Occulters, and that’s reason enough to scare the shit out of me.

[wellscanthemback]

MERWeek2018 Day 2: Pictures and Moments

Pairing: Female Shepard & Admiral David Anderson

Timeline: Mass Effect 3 [with Universe Alterations]

Notes: Day 2 for MERWeek2018: Mostly from Anderson’s POV. There is no way my Jane would not send him a vid-chat or bombard his Omni-tool with photos. Afterall, Anderson was always sending her embarrassing childhood photos and vids of herself during her venture against Saren back from when they lived together for a short period before briefly returning to the streets before she was old enough to join the Alliance.

--In my personal canon, [War Hero] Jane Shepard is Earth 'raised’  and is the younger twin of [Ruthless] John Shepard is Space ’raised’ as is their younger half-sister [Sole-Survivor] Cryda (cree-da) Shepard who was raised mostly as a Colonist though all were Spaceborn. Hannah Shepard is their Mother. Admiral Hackett is the Father of the twins (I’ll divulge that later).

-Jane is my canon Shepard.

He was exhausted. Earth was exhausted. How many had they saved compared to what was lost? The Reapers were overwhelming them faster than they could count the days.

He often wondered what would have happened if he had left Earth with the Commander. After their briefing before he decided to give her his Citadel apartment, after being kicked in the ass by Cerberus, she had gone downhill fast. He’d received a report from Joker or at least he thought it was Joker. Something was kicking him in the ass that said it wasn’t Joker’s report, though this one he had received faster than the speed of light, surprisingly fast considering their last was received two months after it was sent. His worst fears confirmed as he read Shepard’s mental health was deteriorating due to the amount of stress this war had put her under and according to a medical report attached she showing signs of deep depression and PTSD to the point it was affecting her physical and mental health more than ever.

“Admiral Anderson!” The shout of his name broke him out of his thoughts.  He looked up to see the young soldier entering the room.

 “What is it, lieutenant?” He called over and the man looked up.

 “A message from the citadel, sir!” He explained as he hovered his Omni-tool over to Anderson who received the message.

 It was always a relief to receive a message from familiars, or at least he hoped it was a familiar. “Who from?”

 “Commander Shepard I believe, Sir. It has attachments.” The young man explained with bright eyes. The same bright eyes heard from anyone who hears about Commander Shepard. Anderson felt his stomach do a kick and flip. As his eyes quickly snapped to his own Omni-tool.

 “Dammit, I hope she hasn’t gotten herself into trouble again.” He cursed quietly but loud enough for the Lieutenant to hear, he looked up, “If you ever meet the Commander, you’ll understand.”

 “Sir?” The poor man was confused now.

 “Remind me to tell you about her first reconnaissance mission.” He said playfully, chuckling t the memory. Then he cleared his throat, “Dismissed.”

 “Admiral.” The man saluted and left, though disappointed at the lack of information. As Anderson sat down and waited for complete silence in the room before opening up the vid and he was greeted by static. Shit! Dammit! Come on work!

 “Alright everyone, let me talk!” He chuckled as Shepard’s voice cut through the static and the picture appeared and he was greeted in surprise by Jane Shepard smiling happily, compared to her weary state on the Citadel Apartment complex over the vid-com, “Hey, Anderson. I hope you’re still kicking ass down there!”

 Joker’s voice cut through from the behind her, “hey, that’s my line!”

 “Your point?” came the Commander’s cocky reply.

 Joker grumbled something unintelligible as everyone laughed. A female voice reached his ears, “Jeff, behave.” It wasn’t a voice he recognised. Anderson could recognise the Quarian Tali’Zorrah and the Turian Garrus Vakarian. Kaidan and Joker were there, along with Steve Cortez and James Vega. Samantha Taylor, the Asari Dr Liara Tsoni, there was another Asari, an Asari Justicar, he recalled, Samara, was there as well.

Some were heard but out of earshot. “Just wanted to thank you again for the apartment, Joker suggested a party and luckily, so far, things haven’t gotten out of hand. Keeping Grunt and Wrex under control is simply the main task in not breaking anything.”

 There was another woman on the screen, Miranda Lawson, former Cerberus he believed he was told, another man with dark skin appeared beside her, Jacob Taylor, also former Cerberus. Both were grinning at Shepard. The heavily tattooed woman was Jack, she was working with Kahlee at the Grissom Academy was also smiling at her. He spied the two Krogan in the back, along with the mercenary, Zaeed Massani, whom Shepard told him about. There was a woman in the shadows, whom he didn’t recognise but guessed it was the thief he had heard about; the one who travelled with Shepard during her fight against the Collectors. Shepard was moving her Omni-tool around to capture everyone with her. Damn, Jane. I hope you’re not getting into too much trouble up there.

 “What was that, Liara?” Shepard called, “Is Javik alright?”

 “He’ll be fine, I just don’t think he can control his alcohol intake.” Was the Asari’s reply as an unidentified alien appeared with her on screen, what the hell is that? Shepard glanced back at the screen, “Oh, you haven’t been told about Javik, he’s a Prothean, a living Prothean.”

 “Yes, the last living Prothean.” He grumbled in the back and Anderson’s eyes widened, “You primitives always state the obvious.”

 “And our new friend and ally against the Reapers,” Shepard chuckled, making the Prothean stutter, “he’s okay once you get to know him.”

 She has a Prothean and two god damn Krogan in the apartment… dammit, Shepard! And you wonder why I worry?

 “Don’t worry, Admiral. We’ve got Shepard under control.” Kaidan said as though he could read Anderson’s mind and the colour of Shepard’s face began to clash with her hair.

 “Really, Kaidan?” she cursed, her face grew darker as Kaidan kissed her cheek. Anderson blinked, I’ll have a few words for you the next time we meet, Major, that I can guarantee you he thought darkly before blinking at an unintelligible shout from behind them and spun around, Shepard snapping “Joker, you can shut up too!”

 “Calm down, Shepard,” Garrus cut through, “We all know who really breaks things around here.”

 “Wow, Garrus. Thanks,” she muttered sarcastically, to which Anderson chuckled. Then another face appeared, dark hair and blue eyes, Jane gave him a look, “Don’t even start, Johnny.”

 John Shepard, her twin brother. The two may not look even remotely alike, well, save a couple of facial similarities and mannerisms. The two were twins. Jane, the Hero of the Skyllian Blitz and John, the Butcher of Torfan. Anderson couldn’t say he was surprised to see the two had reconciled after the whole Collector business. He wondered if the same could be said about Hannah Shepard and Admiral Hackett. John had held his hands up in self-defence. “I’m saying nothing, Janie.” Before looking at the cam, “Hey Anderson, Cryda told me to say hi the next we saw you!”

 “I can tell him myself, Johnny!” yelled the voice of the young woman in question as she appeared behind the twins, grinning and waving at the Camera, “Hey Admiral!”

 Cryda Shepard was their younger sister; half-sister. The girl spent most of her time being schooled on Mindoir as she preferred solid ground to Spacecraft before the place was attacked by mercs. The girl was lucky, she’s a Shepard and a spitting image of her older sister despite being ten years younger. They hang tight despite their different choices. Jane grew up on Earth, John luckily remained with his Mother in Space and Cryda preferred to be amongst the Colonists and was studying Colonism, three Shepards and all three were very different, how the hell were they all even related?

 Jane turned back to the cam’s face, “Wish you were here, Anderson. We have everyone here, except a select few who were unable to attend. Karin’s busy with work or so she says, and as for Ash, Mordin, Thane and Legion. I’m sure they’re watching down on us.” She went silent for a moment before shaking it off. “Hackett will be taking John and Cryda after this is over, I’m going to be needed at the front line.”

 “Are you ever going to call him 'Dad' , Janie,” John called from off-screen to which Jane rolled her eyes, and Kaidan glared at the off-screen man. Nope, still not going well. Jane had still blocked Hackett out of that part of her life.

 Jane cleared her throat, “Whether you actually receive this still remains to be seen though, still, you’re missing one hell of a party! So I’ll send you all the pictures we had Glyph take over the course of the night along with any we all may have taken. Save some Reapers asses for me to kick when we reach Earth. I’ll have the entire Galaxy behind me and we will beat them, I know we will and we’ll do all do it together!”

 There was an eruption of cheers from behind her and a crowd of arms washed over the red-haired woman in the centre of the screen and at that, a wide grin broke across her face. Anderson froze and instinctually paused the screen to take in what he was seeing. Never in all his years that he had known Commander Jane Shepard, had ever seen her seen her smile like that. After her defeat on Thessia… Joker had said in their last briefing that she was going downhill, and fast. Yet, here she was, as though the world were normal, as though there wasn’t a war going on. Smiling and laughing with her crew... no, her friends, her family. She’d come a long way from Earth, snatched from her family and living on the streets of Humanity’s homeworld. He was proud of her, more than he would be able to express.

 He sat there silently, taking in the image. That was the woman she was supposed to be. “I’m proud of you, child,” came the whisper, and a smile etched on his face as he blinked away the glazing of his eyes, clearing his throat before clicking play.

 Her laughter echoing through the speaker, “We miss you, I miss you! We’ll have another once this is all over! Promise! Shepard out.”

 The vid ended on her last smile, and he smiled at the last image. Before recalling there was an attachment and after locating it, well, he just wasn’t expecting his Omni-tool to be overloaded with a wave of over a hundred images. “Jesus Christ, Shepard.”

 How long did he have? For that moment he didn’t care and scrolled through every single one. His suspicions confirmed the presence of each individual he had seen or thought he had seen, save the robotic VI EDI who had not been in camera range however he was sure it was her voice he had heard somewhere in the vid. Probably the one scolding Joker? Jane was seen with each individual, hugging and kissing and joking around. He paused on this particular one with Kaidan caught in a standstill with Shepard in his arms. The way the man looked at her as though she were the greatest treasure to be found. Perhaps for the young Major, she was. However, he realised then that it never clicked in his mind two to three years ago, after the SR1 was destroyed that Kaidan wasn’t just grieving for a Commander or friend. He was grieving for his lover, for the woman he loved. Anderson sighed. At least they took the chance before it was too late.

 One thing stood out in the pictures though. She was smiling. She was laughing. She was happy. That’s what this woman’s life should have been like all this time. She should have been smiling, long ago. She should have been happy, laughing and joking with friends and family. Heck, if she wasn’t with the Alliance could have been raising her own family. She should have been safe and happy, away from all the war and fighting.

 Even as a child, he’d never seen her smile like that. A tiny little red-haired child who had stood out amongst the gaggle of children in that children’s home. Those big wide green eyes full of wonder as she had looked up at him. He was barely a decorated Alliance Soldier himself. He had placed one of his own medals, one he earned for his part in the First Contact War, on her little white t-shirt bearing the alliance emblem.

 “How will I give it back to you?” She asked innocently, truthfully, he had not expected to get it back after placing it on her.

 “The day you join the Alliance Military,” He told her, as she fiddled with it, lifting her chin to look at him, “I’ll be there waiting.” It resulted in her standing up straight, saluting him with a tiny “yes, sir.” Possibly the cutest thing anyone had ever seen if the awes from the soldiers behind him were anything to go by… nope, definitely cute and he had a picture to prove it and tease his former XO about. The next he saw her was on the streets, a chance encounter in the Metropolis café, over three and half years after meeting her. No shoes, muddied and tangled hair. Dirty clothes… the same t-shirt… and his medal. It hung on her, she had lost a lot of weight. He wondered what might have become of her if he hadn’t intervened and stopped the café owner from chasing her off. He didn’t like to think of it. Though, he wasn’t sure how he’d have to actually explain to the Alliance that he had taken in a random child off the street. What would he have said? He’d lost count of the days, weeks, months, the years he’d spent looking after her before the Alliance eventually called him in. He’d left her alone for a few short hours. A thirteen-year-old girl, who knew not to open the door to strangers and knew how to use a gun, what was the worst that could happen?

 He found out when he got home after explaining his situation and discovered his apartment had been trashed, a man in Alliance uniform with a bullet in his head and little Jane was gone. He never thought he’d be spending the next few years searching the streets for the little red-haired girl. The man in uniform wasn’t even a real Alliance Soldier but an infiltrator… a Merc. His CO called the search off. The man was unlikely to be alone and there were more than half a dozen kids on the streets. He never forgave himself for that.  The look on his face, as Jane attempted to describe years later, the day she turned up in front of him. Fresh in uniform, the same big green eyes full of wonder and that future she held in her hands and what was the first thing she did, she placed the medal back on his shirt and saluted him. He didn’t even speak as he embraced her. He wasn’t sure she’d gotten over the embarrassment… but neither could he get her to tell her what happened that day he’d left her alone. She could only say, “It wasn’t your fault.”

 Anderson sighed as he returned his eyes to his Omni-tool. The next photo was of all of them together in the living area in front of the piano. He smiled at that. She was with the people who had followed her to hell and back. Who loved and believed in her. He exhaled quietly, she was where she belonged.

The last image was of Shepard alone. She just stood there in her N7 hooded jumper smiling at the camera. The image showed him a woman who looked as though she had never seen the worst of a battle or was even in the middle of a war. It showed the woman who looked as though she had had the best years of her life and was content where she was. That was his baby girl. Blood or not... That was... No, 'is' his kid! His child.

 Anderson felt a wetness fall down his face and exhaled sharply as he wiped his eyes, I’m proud of you, Jane and I promise this to you, child. On my own life… I’ll be there to make sure you live through this.

[dramatic-sapphic]

My final opinion on ME:A

Okay, some of you already know that I finished Andromeda yesterday, and I wanted to write down what I thought about it. There will be some meta and critical content, but also positive stuff. This might get long so I’ll put it under a cut for those who don’t care/ don’t want spoilers

I’m just going to start with what I liked the most about the game.

The Protagonist: I played as a sarcastic but empathic scott ryder and fell in love with him after the first three dialouges. His voice actor is amazing, and I really enjoyed that you have a bit more control about who your character is than with Shepard (except for sheps past, but bioware didn’t really work with that). My ryder kind of reminded me of Hawke, another character I could deeply connect to. Plus, they dropped the renegade/paragon system, which I’m glad for.

No forced grey morality: After the disaster that was dragon age inquisition, I was afraid that they would try that shit again in mass effect. Thank god they didn’t. Just imagine if they went “hey, the angara did this one (1) bad thing, maybe they deserved to be oppressed??!!1?”. There were some choices, for example saving the krogan scouts or the salarian pathfinder, where you could easily justify both desicions, and I enjoyed that greatly. 

The whole kadara plot: Guys, I think even before I started to play andromeda I made it quite clear that reyes vidal would be my fave. And what can I say, I know myself pretty damn well apparently because I love him. So. Much. But that aside, kadara is probably my favourite planet in the whole game, and I found the story to be intruiguing (It was also a huge missed opportunity but more about that later)

The companions: Wow, where do I start. I love all of them. Even cora and drack, two characters I believed to be a bit bland at first, grew on me after their loyalty quest. Jaals storyline was mindblowing, and in my opinion, he’s one of the best characters bioware has ever created. Then there’s Peebee, another character I grew to love with all my heart. I just. I love them all a lot. If I were to compare me:a to the OT, me:a is a close second after me:1 in regards to companions.

Some small things: The beautiful scenery. Small cutscenes, even in side quests. Everything you do seems to somehow matter. That feeling when you hit 100% viability. The angara, their cutlure, the fact that ryder hugs jaals mother because the angara “like the hugging”. Very talkative companions. The humour. I could list more, but then this post would be endless.

Now, on to the thing I absolutely hated (I’m going to skip the face animations, because you get used to them pretty quickly)

The glyph puzzles and vaults: They were the bane of my existance. I hate puzzles. I hate puzzles so fucking much, you have no idea. The fact that there are barely any puzzles in the OT was so amazing to me, and then those fuckers decided to but them everywhere. And made them obligatory. No, I don’t want to solve a fucking sudoku puzzle in a shooter. I want to shoot (and occasionally stab) things. 

Not enough focus on the main story: There were a lot of sidequests in this game, no question. And they were enjoyable, kind of. But did they really need to be there? Wouldn’t you rather focus on making one, big main plot for each planet and just throw in a few sidequest for those who like to do them? This is what I mean when I said that kadara was a missed opportunity. There was so much potential! It was intruiguing, it had two characters I would have loved to hear more about, it even had a little bit of the grey morality bioware loves so much. But they rushed it, and I’ll be forever angry because of it.

The whole ending: Okay, listen. The Archon was nothing but an evil douchebag. The story was kind of interesting at first, because I thought “Wow, he must have some really strong motivations if he’s willing to cause so much pain”. But nah. See, I think that bioware forgot how to write compelling villains and endings sometime after they sold their soul to EA. The archdemon was evil, but still terrifying (at least for me). Saren was evil, but still terrifying. The endings were amazing because there was good buildup for the bossfights. You arrive at a place which was fine before and watch it being completely decimated: people are slaughtered, everything around you is destroyed, and you become terribly aware that if you fail, everyone will die. There’s nothing like that in me:a. You waltz in there, while you buddies take care of the other bad guys, one irrelevant side character dies, you feel a bit for your twin, but that’s it. It was rushed. It didn’t have any emotional impact. If your villain doesn’t have a reason for being evil, at least make them terrifying enough for me to fear them.

The horrible treatment of bi/gay characters: When I first heard about this, I thought that people were overreacting. Oh, how wrong I was. The whole Jil/Gil story was just disgusting. The relationship between Peebs and her ex was abusive. There were those two turians in a relationship, but as it turns out, one of them died. They didn’t put as much effort into same sex relationships as they did with the others. They didn’t even bother changing the kiss animation during the dance with reyes for a male ryder, so he ended up kissing reyes chin instead. I’m sure there were more things I just missed or forgot about. What the fuck bioware? 

My final thoughts are... I’m really not sure. I enjoyed the game. Hell, I loved it more than I did me:2 (but less than the other OT games). But bioware is slowly moving in a direction I’m not entirely comfortable with. I’ve played most of their rpgs, and I loved them. But when I look back at da:o, me:1, baldurs gate and neverwinter night, I’m starting to see less and less of what made them special in their newer games. Now, their pacing is all over the place, they can’t write bad guys, there are too many meaningless sidequests, and while the games are still fun, there just isn’t any emotional impact anymore (i’m mostly talking about me:a and da:i here). And now anthem is coming and I’m starting to loose any hope that they might learn from their mistakes.

Mass effect andromeda was a solid game, with amazing companions, but a lot of the critizism it got was deserved. I just wished that bioware would finally listen to it and go back to doing what they’re good at, instead of doing whatever is popular at the moment. But that’s not going to happen any time soon.

[nofomoartworld]

Meet the Artist Using Ritual Magic to Trap Self-Driving Cars

Is it a silly prank, a Pagan ritual, or a genius discovery about the next era of mass transit? In a picture posted to Flickr by artist James Bridle—known for coining the term, "New Aesthetic"—a car is sitting in the middle of a parking lot has been surrounded by a magic salt circle. In the language of road markings, the dotted white lines on the outside say, "Come On In," but the solid white line on the inside says, "Do Not Cross." To the car's built-in cameras, these are indomitable laws of magic: Petrificus Totalus for autonomous automobiles.

Captioned simply, "Autonomous Trap 001," the scene evokes a world of narratives involving the much-hyped technology of self-driving cars. It could be mischievous hackers disrupting a friend's self-driving ride home; the police seizing a dissident's getaway vehicle; highway robbers trapping their prey; witches exorcizing a demon from their hatchback.

Self-driving cars aren't there yet, but the artist-philosopher-programmer's thought-provoking photo is a reminder that we'll have to start thinking about these things soon. If a self-driving car is designed to read the road, what happens when the language of the road is abused by those with nefarious intent?

Bridle has carved out a space for himself among those thinking 10–100 years in the future. His website Booktwo.org is lousy with philosophical treatises, thought experiments, creative code, and art projects. His "collaboration with technology" Five Eyes was part of the V&A Museum's privacy-oriented show All of This Belongs to You, which also included the remains of whistleblower Edward Snowden's smashed hard drive full of leaked documents. Bridle has spent the last decade making drones more relatable, uncovering the mysteries of weather prediction, and otherwise trying to elucidate the invisible technologies—usually military in origin—that rule our world.

Recently Bridle has become fascinated by autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars will be available to the public soon. Singapore is considering buying a fleet of 300,000 driverless taxis to replace the 780,000 manned ones currently clogging their streets. Google's self-driving car initiative, now called Waymo, has been investing in the technology since 2009. Elon Musk's Tesla is already implementing limited automated features in the United States, and even slow-moving large scale car manufacturers like Ford are getting into the game. If driverless cars become anywhere as ubiquitous as the horseless carriage, innocuous vandalism like the Autonomous Trap is just the beginning the problems engineers will have to solve.

Now Bridle is trying to build his own self-driving car, and made the sardonic artwork Autonomous Trap 001 in the process. He's released all the code developed in pursuit of the DIY self-driving car here. We spoke to Bridle to learn more about the circumstances behind this vague photo series and better understand his apprehension and curiosity about the robot chauffeurs of the future.

Creators: What are we looking at here? Can you give me a brief explanation of Autonomous Trap 001?

James Bridle: What you're looking at is a salt circle, a traditional form of protection—from within or without—in magical practice. In this case it's being used to arrest an autonomous vehicle—a self-driving car, which relies on machine vision and processing to guide it. By quickly deploying the expected form of road markings—in this case, a No Entry glyph—we can confuse the car's vision system into believing it's surrounded by no entry points, and entrap it.

Is this actually an autonomous car, or is it conceptual?

I don't actually have a self-driving car, unfortunately—I don't think any have made it to Greece yet, plus the cost issue—but I do have a pretty good understanding of how the things work, having been researching them for a while. And the one in the picture is a research vehicle for building my own. As usual, I've got totally carried away in the research, and ended up writing a bunch of my own software, rigging up cameras and building neural networks to reproduce some of the more interesting currents in the field. Like the trap, I wouldn't entirely trust what I've built, but the principles are sound.

Where did you take these pictures?

I made this Trap while training the car on the roads around Mount Parnassus in Central Greece. Parnassus feels like an appropriate location because, as well as being quite spectacular scenery and wonderful to drive and hike around, it's the home of the Muses in mythology, as well as the site of the Delphic Oracle. The ascent of Mount Parnassus is, in esoteric terms, the journey towards knowledge, and art.

What is your role in the project and is there anyone else involved? What planning and research did you do to create that shot?

It's just me. I did a project last year called Cloud Index Index which used satellite imagery and machine learning to explore politics and computational thinking, and I had a lot of help on that, particularly from Gene Kogan, another artist who works with machine learning. This time I wanted to do it all myself—mostly to show that I could, and therefore, in theory and accepting an immense amount of privilege and good fortune, anyone can. These technologies are for everyone: you can read the papers, repeat the findings, study the code, build your own tools. This radically reshapes the way you understand and interact with the world, and is something I think is quite crucial to propagate in the current age.

Why did you create Autonomous Trap 001, besides poking fun at an incredibly hyped technology?

It's part of a body of work / research / writing / fooling about to explore and understand the contemporary technologies of automation, in order to better use them, and in some cases to disrupt and oppose them.

Self-driving cars bring together a bunch of really interesting technologies—such as machine vision and intelligence—with crucial social issues such as the atomization and changing nature of labor, the shift of power to corporate elites and Silicon Valley, and the quasi-religious faith in computation as the only framework for the production of truth—and hence, ethics and social justice.

The Trap falls into the category of resistance, while the attempt to build my own car is a process of understanding how the dominant narratives of these technologies are produced, and could be changed. I don't see why cab drivers of the future shouldn't be chalking white lines on side streets to derail self-driving Ubers which are putting them out of work, and I also think we need more eyes and hands on the tools which are shaping all of our futures.

Were there any unexpected challenges in creating the piece?

I ran out of salt, and had to drive back to the nearest village to buy a few more kilos. Luckily, salt, unlike bandwidth and computational power, is a pretty cheap resource. Also, I should have pulled my trousers up for the video.

This is Autonomous Car Trap 001. Do you have more planned?

I have a habit of numbering things, but yes, there will definitely be more. Like the Drone Shadows, which proliferate to this day, consciously starting a series seems to have generative effects.

Where does this fit in your larger body of work?

It's all part of the same attempt to understand the world and act in it, if that doesn't sound too pompous. This work follows directly from projects on machine vision, artificial intelligence, militarized technology, big data etc.—as well as more, shall we say, poetic interventions into emerging technologies. It's one big rolling project, with occasional bouts of specific obsession.

What's next for you? What other projects are you working on?

This body of work is in part in preparation for a solo exhibition which opens next month in Berlin, at Nome Gallery, called Failing to Distinguish Between a Tractor Trailer and the Bright White Sky. I'll be showing a bunch of different outcomes of the research, including interpretations of the machine vision systems I've been building, and the results of the self-driving car training—and hopefully connecting them to some of my more mythological interests.

I've also got a new commission opening in London next week, as part of Convergence—a series of billboards in East London continuing my search for the Render Ghosts. Beyond that, I'm mostly working on writing projects about the new dark age and the relationship between technology, knowledge, understanding, and agency.

Keep up with James Bridle's work on his website and read more about in the links below.

Related:

Edward Snowden's Smashed Laptop Belongs to Everyone

Here's What Happens When You Mix Weather, Political Data, and Machine Learning

The New Aesthetic Revisited: The Debate Continues!

from creators http://ift.tt/2mG8tIH via IFTTT

[theoriginalladya]

WIP Whenever

Oh, @pigeontheoneandonly, your timing on this couldn’t be better!!!  I got clobbered by the muses yesterday, so yay, incoming werwolfy things!!!!!  Thanks for tagging me!

Tagging ANYONE!!!!  C’mon and join in and just tag me back so I can see what you all are up to!

Werewolf the Apocalypse meets Mass Effect - Caleb Shepard/Kaidan Alenko (mshenko) pairing - this is from a writing prompt from @mallaidhsomo that quickly got out of control.  Still editing and over 3500 words, so likely will end up it’s own thing. :P  THANK YOU FOR THAT PROMPT!  DOORS FLEW OPEN!

(it’s really strange how easily some of this stuff blends and how challenging the rest is! lol)

Just a heads up, in case you don’t want to see it:  transformations occur (not graphic), discussion of wounds/scars, brief mention of nudity.

From deeper within the facility, the rat-tat-tat-tat of gunfire mix with shouts and screams.  And  yet, oddly enough, the halls still remain empty but for them.  

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Ashley points at a heavy metal door.  “This one!”

Kaidan immediately sets on the lock, but his hacking attempts fail miserably.  This must be the right place if the doors are so heavily secured.

Beside him, Williams pushes him away.  “Let me,” she says in a voice that’s already lowering even as her body starts to change.  For her, the shift is easy; one’s breed form is the simplest change.  Immediately, she rushes at the door and tries to burst it inside.

“Wait!”  Kaidan sighs and takes a step back out of the way.  There’s no arguing with a determined Get, and Ash has always had a chip on her shoulder.  While she attempts to brute force the door, he pulls his focus inward, closes his eyes, and attempts to ally with the spirits to Peek through.  When his eyes open again, he’s seeing far beyond the door and Ashley standing in front of him.

“Room’s empty but …”  His breath catches, eyes widening.  “I … There’s someone in there!”

In the guttural language of their kind, Williams orders him out of the way.  He quickly retreats from his vision and does so.  As he settles back into himself, Ashley steps back as far as she can, lowers her shoulder and runs straight for the barricade, a loud, piercing growl releasing from her throat as she makes contact.  Though it doesn’t break the door down, it does seem to loosen it up. At the same time, another blaring alarm sounds, adding to the cacophony surrounding them.  Williams retreats again and repeats her previous action. Kaidan, for his part, wraps his hands around his weapon, searching the halls for anyone who might take an unexpected or undue interest in them.  Still, nothing.

“Got it!”

Kaidan raises his left arm to protect his face as the door finally gives.  Williams stumbles a few steps inside before coming to a stop.  As he tries to follow, he’s thwarted by her furry form.  “Called-to-Glory, move!” he orders in Garou, moving around her to the left.  He only takes a step, however, when he sees the problem.  A partial wall of flames blocks their way forward.  Searching above, Kaidan spies a sprinkler system which, for some reason, has yet to kick in.  Aiming his weapon at it, he fires.  Within seconds, droplets spurt forth.  They do little to put out the flames, however.  Sighing in frustration, Kaidan shifts to his own crinos form.  As a rule, Garou are as afraid of fire as any of the other changing breeds, but since crinos is not his breed form, it will offer him some healing benefit if he takes damage.  

There isn’t much room to move in the space, but he manages to get in three steps before leaping over the flame.  He lands on the other side a bit awkwardly and lurches forward into one of the unoccupied examination tables in the room, his mass and bulk shifting it forward like a drunken krogan.  But as he rises again, using the thing to steady himself, he finally gets a good look at what he observed when peeking earlier.  “Get over here!” he shouts back over his shoulder to Williams before stumbling forward.  

There, lying on the table on the furthest side of the room, is the body of wolf, solid white fur, blunt snout, and blue woaded glyphs that run all over him.  He knows those markings, recognizes the shape of the head.  He steps up beside his friend and slowly reaches out a hand while sending a prayer to the spirits and Gaia that he has not finally lost his mind …

An ear twitches as one of Kaidan’s claws brushes close, barely touching, and he pulls back immediately.  Looking closer now, he can see the wolf’s belly rising and falling with each breath.  Jagged lines mark his body, his face, from head to tail that remind him of pelts sewn together to form a blanket.  In the next moment, the wolf’s eyes flicker open.  “Sealgaire?”

Panting softly, the wolf turns his head, eyes never leaving Kaidan’s.  The growling guttural language of the Garou that escapes is weak, but proof he isn’t seeing things.  “Cneasí?”

A loud growl behind him alerts Kaidan that Ashley is still present.  Looking back, he notes the fire has diminished somewhat, though the alarms still blare loudly and weapons fire can still be heard in the distance.  “We need to go,” he tells the wolf.  “Now.  Can you move? Can you shift?”  He steps back to give him room, and at the same time transforms back to homid.  

Sealgaire slowly pulls himself to the edge of the table; he falls over the edge more than hops off, but manages to land on all four feet and though he wobbles somewhat, he remains upright.  Then his eyes close.  Kaidan retreats further to give him as much room as he needs.  It takes several minutes, at first he only makes it to crinos – still the same white fur marked with blue woaded glyphs – but after another minute, a tall, dark-haired homid shape takes the familiar form of Commander Caleb Shepard.  Alive. Breathing.  And completely naked.  

Kaidan cannot hide a wince.  The marks he’d seen on the wolf are much clearer in this form, wounds of some sort that aren’t even close to being fully healed.  Carefully, Kaidan reaches out a hand to touch his shoulder, whispering, “Shepard?”

Caleb stares back, disbelief and bewilderment on his face. He tries to take a step … and nearly falls flat on his face.  Kaidan lurches forward, sliding under his arm in support and guiding him to lean on the table.  As he looks around the room for anything that might help, he finds a storage closet. “Williams,” he shouts, gesturing for Shepard to stay put, “get over here now!”