#she's not built with a manual override like I am.

[cesium-sheep]

no yeah pretty sure it's a trauma response thing.

the whole year has been so very very very bad, so as the end gets nearer I get counterintuitively more anxious, both because I become more afraid something else will come along to kick me back into the pit and because I have a little more room to breathe instead of just having to grit my teeth and carry on. (this is pretty normal in the context of prolonged stress and long-term traumatic situations (as opposed to singular Events))

[overwatchworks]

Ooo I have a McGenji prompt! ((It sounds kinda dumb though)) Maybe some sort of apocalypse-wasteland like Au where Genji and McCree both got separated for years. But, the way the reunite is through some sort of brutal injury Genji receives when scavenging by himself. ((Oh god I am legit cringe, I’m so sorry-))

Okay, I have a few things to say about this first:

1.) Nonnie, you are enjoying a harmless, if a bit more rare, AU for a pairing you like. Do not talk yourself down for liking it. Don’t call your little joys or things that make you excited dumb, because if they make you happy, then that’s all that matters. It’s not cringy to enjoy things, and it’s not cringy to be excited about an idea. Don’t let yourself be the person that talks down on your own interests, rather, be the one to encourage yourself to enjoy them to their fullest! So what if no one else really talks about it or you’ve never seen it before? Enjoy it anyways! Offer the idea anyways—there is no harm in it whatsoever! And you’re not cringy for enjoying it!

2.) When I first saw this prompt, I in no way, shape, or form thought it was cringe. I was simply intrigued by an idea I have never seen before for a McGen AU. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it happen, or how I would make it work, but when I sat down to actually write it, I had a blast. Your idea is fun and creative and I had a really good time figuring out what to make from it! You absolutely do not need to apologize. Which leads me to my last point.

3.) This is a no judgement zone. You shoot me an idea, I will do my best to make it happen. You have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to be afraid of. The worst anyone can tell you for this is “no thanks”. And I’m telling you now, this was fun. This was great, and I’m glad you asked for it.

Now, with that out of the way; Nonnie, here is your Apocalypse-Wasteland AU McGenji!

Genji knew he should not have gone in to that airship carrier alone. Knew he should have brought some of his crew with him for back up in case something went wrong. Hana had said she would come with him in the morning. Said she needed parts for her mech and that Jamison would be with her as well. 

But Genji had not wanted to wait. 

There would be too many scavengers like them looking in such a prize overnight. All the good metals and wiring and fuel cells would be gone by morning. Precious materials he needed to keep his systems functioning and the joints of most of his limbs still working. So Genji had gone in alone, even when he knew he should not have, when he knew there was so much that could go wrong. 

And of course, of course, it all went wrong. 

The wires he had been using as a rope to climb to a communications room of some sort were frayed. They had snapped when he was half way up, suspended forty feet in the air. Vertigo, and then static when he hit the ground. Fell through some of the debris and down even further into the wreckage. Somewhere he would not be found, even by luck, buried too deep for any of his comm signals to work. 

He could feel the parts of him that were broken. The synthetic parts. Wiring exposed and sparking at the ends, lighting up his nerves with fire that had only subsided slightly with time. Half of his vision was gone, sensors pinging in the peripheral of what he had left in bright red warning. 

System failure. 

Ruptures in his prosthetics. 

Something puncturing his chest. 

He couldn’t move his legs, they were trapped beneath something. The dull thudding of his heart—one of the few human accessories he had left—was a constant throbbing in his ears, high-pitched ringing beneath that. 

Genji was dying. 

Could feel the mix of biofluids and blood dribbling out of him slowly. Everything that was supposed to keep him working and healthy failing him. He had been too reckless—this carrier was huge, there would have been plenty left over for them in the morning. He should have just waited, he should have judged the wiring better, he had done this his whole life, was built to be the best at it. 

And yet here he was. Bitterly, there was a thought that at least if someone did eventually find him, he would be quite the treasure to scavenge. Long after he had died and the human parts of him rotted away, of course. 

Genji was dying, and all he could do was wait.

-

He had almost drifted to the point of no return. Had almost let go and not been able to come back. There was the sounds of scraping and clattering, someone grunting. Underwater. Muted to his ears, like he was underwater. 

Genji blinked slowly, eyes barely able to open. A flash of red greeted him, glowing hellish in the darkness. Heavy breathing. From him or whatever it was in front of him, Genji could not tell. 

And then he was being lifted from the rubble, body dangling limply from the strong grip he was held in. A familiar voice swam to him through the darkness.

“Hang on, Genji. Just hang on.”

-

Laughter. Something sweet and innocent. Childish. Because they were children. Children running through a scavenger’s yard, a workshop of sorts. 

There were creatures made of metal and what they had thought was a little bit of magic; sentient, in a sense, but simply run by mechanics. By cybernetics. A tinker’s shop. 

Genji was hiding behind a piece of sheet metal leaning against a pile of scraps, hand pressed to his mouth to quiet his giggles. Someone grabbed him from behind, and he squealed in delight as Jesse lifted him off his feet.

“Caught you!”

“That’s not fair, you grew up here so you know all the good hiding spots!”

“Even when we play at your place I still win,” Jesse shot back playfully, Genji sticking out his tongue.

“You do not always win.”

“Do too! You’re too easy to find! I’ll always find you.”

Genji smiled, and so did Jesse. And they were happy, in a time where it was okay to be happy and carefree. In a world where it was still safe to be children.

-

Genji woke to quiet whirring. His sensors were offline, he could not feel the right side of his body from the neck down. His cybernetics were not connecting to his conscious nervous system. 

Manual override: system shutdown, they blinked at him in green beneath his eyelids. 

Alarm shot through him, fear a tangible thing in his mouth, sharp and tangy like iron. Something began to beep, Genji turning his head to look around frantically, snapping awake. Both his eyes worked, and clearly his auditory sensors were back online as well. At least there was that.

“Woah, woah there. You’re okay. I didn’t scavenge you or anythin’. You were pretty beat up as it was, not much worth takin’.”

The accent was odd. Not quite because it was out of place, but because it was so familiar. Like traces of a dream still clinging after waking up. The source of the voice was a man wrapped up in a metal chestplate and a gauntlet on one arm, a tattered cloak of some sort hanging from his shoulders. He had a hat, too, and a cigar. Something old school. 

One of his eyes was glowing red, brighter than the lit end of that which was hanging from his lips. Heavy boots, metal around his waist, chains hooked to his belts. He stepped closer, into the light, hand raising to tip his hat back from his eyes. On closer inspection, Genji saw that it was a prosthetic, not a gauntlet. 

And those eyes were strikingly familiar. That face was one he could never forget. 

Old memories that Genji had thought were lost came back to him. Laughter. Something sweet and innocent. Childish. Jesse grinning underneath the blazing sun, both of them sweating. Jesse playing in the dirt, drawing a poor rendition of Genji’s face in it. Jesse chasing one of the cybernetic dogs after it took off with part of their lunch, Genji laughing until the dog came back and stole more of his. 

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse.

“Sorry, had to shut you down to fix you up. It would have killed you otherwise, trying to keep all of you functioning at once and keeping up with pinging your sensors. Would’a been in agony. I kept your most important systems up and runnin’, but gave the rest of you a break,” he continued lightly, walking over and unplugging some of the wiring that had been hooked up to Genji’s body. 

All he could do was stare wide eyed as Jesse reached down and connected the rest of Genji’s ports, clasping his prosthetics back on for him. Each one shocked back to life, Genji feeling the nerves burn for a moment before they connected and resynchronized with the rest of him. He flexed his toes, stretched his legs and shook out his arm. It was muscle memory more than him actually being aware of doing it.

“Now, I’m trustin’ you not to immediately jump me here. I saved your life, you spare mine, yeah?”

“Jesse,” Genji finally breathed. Jesse blinked, brows raising slightly.

“Oh. So you do remember...”

“Of course I remember.”

“They said you would lose all your early memories with the modifications and whatnot. Figured that’d mean me too, especially after I had to leave. You had no chance to relearn who I was.”

Genji took him in, simply stared and recalled as much as he could about them. Childhood friends. His best friend. All the mischief they would get into. Jesse building things in the night and showing Genji how to bring them to life. Their first scavenge together, gathering materials to make some of the very first models of what eventually became Genji’s modifications. 

Jesse leaving before they were finished.

“I...Know who you are. I remember. There are gaps and places that are static,” Genji grimaced, fingertips brushing against his temple. Sometimes remembering was hard. Certain things were hard to recall, others impossible. But sometimes it wasn’t.

“But I know one thing for certain; you’re my Jesse.”

Jesse’s face softened, a smile gracing his lips. It was not as big or as carefree as it once was, weighed down by the harsh reality of their world. But it was familiar. Something Genji could never forget.

“It’s good to see you again, Genji. It’s real good to see you.”

Genji smiled back, something warm in him that was definitely human making him feel light in a way he had not been since the world had broken more than it already was.

“It is good to see you too, Jesse. Perhaps we can take some time to catch up while my systems reset.”

Jesse sat with a grunt, taking off his hat, running a hand through his hair. Genji watched the movements, eyes scrunching slightly with his grin.

“I’d like that,” Jesse nodded.

~~

[the-ash0]

Rhythm

It has become easy for me now to fall into a daily rhythm. One of getting up with the sun, eating, training, eating and then training some more before I drag myself away long after nightfall to eat and sleep for the last time. Reset and repeat the next morning, and the one after that. Again and again.

It is the gravity room that makes this possible; a piece of amazing technology located within the confines of a spaceship planted firmly on the grounds outside the back of Capsule Corp. It is a bigger, more well-equipped ship than I’ve spent most of my previous life on. And, as much as I used to hate my travel time, there is a pleasant familiarity to this place. More importantly however, is the room’s singular capability to challenge me, even beyond the pull my native planet had.

This is nothing like the long and unending cycle of pod-cryo-sleep, purge, pod-cryo-sleep, tank, report and start again, but it feels good. Familiar; in an old way. I lose myself in that rhythm of exhaustion thankfully, as it stops my brain from going in circles.

I tell myself that I will become better than Kakarot with this machine, and as soon as my mind thinks of a why, or when, or what-ever for, I up the gravity and all conscious thought stops. At night I fall asleep completely spent in mind and body, too exhausted to even try to dream.

It is close to a  pleasant state of oblivion.

There are a few hurdles to overcome, of course. The first is a familiar nemesis: a fatigue that seems as much mental as physical. It is something I have conquered time and time again, and it cannot keep me down. Yet I find it harder to defeat in the stillness of the chamber, with neither foe nor competitor to measure myself against. Left to my own devices, exhaustion sets in earlier with every session and I have to resort to naked willpower to keep going.

I ran into the second hurdle into a few weeks after starting my training. ‘Parameter Safety warning’, a voice had called out and suggests to ‘please consult mechanic before continuing’. This happens at just 50 g’s and will not let me progress past this number.I know Kakarot’s machine went up to one hundred. Needless to say, I am not amused.

Today I decide to do something about it. I turn the gravity simulator off and start to scroll through the computer’s settings. Nothing appears broken, but I cannot remove the lock. Probably because I am missing some of the finer details, such as the written language. Most of it is still too alien for me to do more than guess.

After a few minutes, I decide to try another tactic. I have dealt with unresponsive spaceships before, and few things can't be fixed by crossing some wires. I sit down heavily, pull out a panel underneath the controls, and start to short out circuits, bringing threads together in hopes of finding the manual override.

I get burned for my trouble; a bright spark singes my fingers. A moment later ,the entire blasted room is thrown into darkness. I curse as I squint down at my work and try to reverse the damage. But the fading light that comes through the small window is hardly enough to work with, and my fingers are shaking. The machine is dead; a full power out. I won’t be getting anything more done today.

When I straighten up, then shiver. The room is quickly cooling off, and the sweat I had worked up earlier has left me chilled after this break. I should have at least put on a shirt before I tried to fix the problem. Yet there seems to be little reason to coddle myself, especially as I appear to be too stupid to fix this dumb earth-contraption on my own. So I stomp outside, feeling heavier with every step. The air is chilly and damp and it is almost fully dark.

Seriously, what is the point of putting safeties on a machine for me? Does that woman not realise it is near-death that allows a Saiyan to become stronger? And here on Earth, I can finally take all of the risks I want. Because here there are senzu bean, and wishes upon a dragon, and magic of every kind.

I shake my head at the stupidity of it and trudge slowly towards the main building. Although, I suddenly realise, there just might be a problem with this plan of mine. If I did kill myself, then who, in their right minds, would waste a wish on me?

Well, me of course. The one person I can always count on. But, if I’m dead I can hardly wish myself back. Hell, would anyone even waste a senzu on me if it’s not part of a ‘battle to the death’’ situation? I can think of only two people who would be stupid enough to do so, and one of them is drifting around in space somewhere, dead himself for a while to come.

Capsule Corp rises before me, and somewhere within are my rooms and my bed. Perhaps it is a good time to quit and get some sleep. Perhaps, for safety sake, I’ll steal a senzu bean from somewhere before I push myself further. Although I have no idea where they come from. Probably from a golden goose’s butt, or out of the rose garden of a talking cat.

I've managed to shuffle my way to the front door before it opens up to show a disheveled blue-haired mess standing in front of me in her nightgown.

“Kami, Vegeta!”

Enter hurdle number three. Ah, yes. The woman. She is the other person who might be crazy enough to wish me back in the unlikely event I do get myself killed training. She may have built me this machine, but ever since complains that I’m pushing myself too hard and too far every chance she gets. Enough for me to think that she might do it. Want to monitor what I do. Make schedules. Plans. Science stuff. No; beyond the usual interests  those of a scientific disposition have in this, she genuinely seems worries about me. But why she does worries me.

I scowl at her angrily and then accuse her without moving from the doorstep. “Are you spying on me?”

Her reply sounds not even remotely guilty. Or scared. “I was sleeping, if you must know. Then all the safely alarms went off at once. I thought you’d keeled over and died.”

“Well, I didn’t,” I deadpan, “as you can see I am fine.”

“...fine?” She seems confused by the concept, but after a moment she sighs and steps aside, gesturing me to enter.

Damn. Suddenly I reconsider going inside at all. I can't tell why she does the things she does, and it makes me suspicious of her every suggestion. Then I try to figure out  whether or not to follow her suggestions on the probability that they might be an attempt on her part at reverse psychology. Or an attempt at reverse-reverse psychology. Yet, as I still have not figured out her motives, I am just guessing. It is aggravating beyond reason.   

The woman tuts and drags me inside, her long fingernails dig into my biceps. She takes me to the living room, her voice high and angry as she chastises me about doing what I do best. I should probably explain to her how ridiculous it is to measure me against any human scale, but I don’t because only one question keeps playing through my head.

What is her deal?

[dramallamadingdang]

The longest reply post in the history of ever.

These go back, like, two weeks, because I am a very bad llama. An I should probably break this up into multiple posts, but I don’t wanna go through and select replies again. So...apologies to those for whom the “Read More” cuts don’t work?

These be for @getmygameon, @alicenorthernlights-blog, @eulaliasims, @penig, @tamtam-go92, @didilysims, @taylors-simblr, @mortia, @delicatesoul88, @twofingerswhiskey, annnnnnnd @immerso-sims...

getmygameon replied to your photo “Owen, running in terror from Olivia. …..Well, OK, really he was...”

Small miracles, dear. Small miracles ;) *pats*

Yeah. :) I’m actually surprised Owen made it to graduation. He didn’t have great chances of going to class/finals, according to my rules -- which is why he often ended up on probation -- but eventually his Fortune aspiration kicked in and worked in his favor. He rolled up wants to go to class because of it, and rolled wants override the manual rolls I do to decide that.

alicenorthernlights-blog replied to your post “I woke up this evening in one of those little dream-induced panicky...”

Hyperactive shield volcanoes. The scaries thing I can think about Hawaii.

I dunno...Hyperactive volcanoes aren’t bad. They are constantly letting off steam, quite literally, so they just kind of constantly belch instead of going, “Oh, hey, I think I’ll catastrophically explode this week.” I worry about the quiet ones. Like, the last time I was in Naples/Capri and visiting Pompeii/Herculaneum, Vesuvius -- which is overdue for explosion -- was all grumbly and belching smoke. Creepy! Or there’s all those up in the Cascades here in the States that are kinda overdue to explode. And then there’s Yellowstone, which is practically underneath me. If that thing ever goes, we all gonna die. :)

To me, the scariest thing about Hawai’i is...the cost of living. Yowza. Which, now that I think about it, might have factored into the dream. Cost of living at possible destinations is definitely a factor when it comes to emigration planning. :) Hawai’i would be a terrible option in that regard even if it wasn’t part of the US. :)

eulaliasims replied to your photoset “Oriana toddlerated into a crisp untextured white tux, some cheekbones...”

I love the combo of pure white tuxedo and enormous (for a toddler) bun. Oriana's got a real Look.

Ohgodohgod, 90s flashback to that Roxette song! :D 

When my son -- who’s now a big, bad Army Ranger who’s killed people -- was around kindergarten age, that was his favorite song, and he sang it (with all the wrong words) while doing this hysterically-amusing dance to it. Which of course I recorded to keep as blackmail material. So now it’s like, “Behave, or your unit commander -- or, worse, your unit in general -- gets a copy of this, bucko.” 

*ahem* But yes, she is totally fabulous! And Maxis fails at tuxedos.

penig replied to your photo “Amelia is Unthrilled about potty training. But at least she...”

Nobody's thrilled about pottytraining. Can't blame her for that.

But she’s a Family Sim! She’s supposed to love this stuff! She’s supposed to be so proud of her little precious darling using the potty! She’s supposed to be glowing with maternal contentedness that she gets to stand there and watch her kid poop! 

...OK, OK, so in game-reality Family Sims are THE WORST at actually raising and interacting with their kids as opposed to just making/birthing them. (I’m tellin’ ya: Pleasure Sims are THE BEST parents...and Owen has a Pleasure secondary.) But, you know, they’re supposed to like this stuff. Ideally. Or at least theoretically.

tamtam-go92 replied to your photoset “Owen is, of course, excited to have another baby to cuddle, now that...”

Love how oriana's Shirt matches owen's skin.

HAH! It does, doesn’t it?

Which reminds me that I need to get baby clothes working in my game again. Since I dumped all my custom clothing and just defaulted most of the Maxis stuff, I’m back to diaper-clad babies...

didilysims replied to your post “So sad about the deaths �� Why don't you use Comfort soup? What are...”

Wait, are *you* saying you caused this plague?? MURDERER!!!! (I'm kidding...sort of. ;) )

MEA CULPA! I AM A PIXEL MURDERER! :D

Although, I didn’t deliberately start the sickness in this household. Sage came home from work with it. So it’s all the game’s fault.

taylors-simblr replied to your post “So sad about the deaths �� Why don't you use Comfort soup? What are...”

I’m very similar to this. I get super attached to my sims, but I still don’t coddle them. I do allow them to plead to the reaper otherwise I’d lose a lot more sims and I only have a small population. I just get very sad when my sims die, have a break from playing, them get over it. I always have the clones of them to play with anyway

I imagine it’s hard when Sims to whom you’re attached die. I mean, there are players who avoid it entirely, never allowing Sims to age past adult (or to age at all) and who use mods to make things non-deadly because they’re so attached. I confess that I don’t understand the mindset, myself, especially because you can make clones of them or resurrect them at will or whatever, but it does exist and is valid and all that. 

But yeah, if you have or allow only a playable population, you don’t really need population control. :) I’m more of a “let ‘em breed freely, then cull the herd when necessary” sort of player, though.  

mortia replied to your post “So sad about the deaths �� Why don't you use Comfort soup? What are...”

I like this. I also use the Realistic Sickness mod but I DO get attached to my pixel people and find myself coddling the hell out of them the second they even start to sniffle. I need to stop doing that and just let life play out once in a while.

I can understand, intellectually, the desire to coddle. I don’t really feel it myself because I don’t “attach” to pixel people, but I understand that other people do. There are times when I’ve felt a need to coddle that have nothing to do with attachment, though. Like, if I really wanted a particular Sim to breed because of unique facial features or the recessive genes they have and stuff like that. And I think I have coddled a few of those at times, over the years. But generally, I’m of the opinion that it makes no sense to use Real Sickness if you’re going to coddle because it just makes the coddling more drawn-out and frustrating. :) Then again, I suppose I can see where you might want to coddle your faves -- or, say, those in higher classes who might have access to some sort of dubious “medicine,” in a medieval game -- and let everyone else die as they will.

penig replied to your post “But alas: It was not to be.”

What?! Nooooo!

YEEEEEES! :) Well, OK, kind of “no” because child ghosts are wacky in that they just teleport around instead of float because they don’t have the proper animations. (Which is dumb. I mean, they made it possible for children to die -- as opposed to the immortal babies/toddlers -- so you’d think they’d’ve given child ghosts the proper floating animations, but noooooooo!) So, I kinda wish she’d croaked after her teen age-up, but...such is my game.

didilysims replied to your photo “Yeah, that hike was definitely not a good idea. :( I’m bummed. :( Sage...”

Sickness is not to be taken lightly. You should know this!!!

Yeah, yeah, bad llama! BAD! NO PEAR 4 ME! 

(One of our llamas goes absolutely insane for pears. She adores them, has since she was weaned. If she sees that you have one, she will follow you around and stick her head over your shoulder and poke you with her muzzle and give you little hums and long-lashed puppy-dog eyes until you give it to her. Only for pears, though. Other fruit she can take or leave, but she’s a total pear whore. And you can’t even trick her with pears that are oddly-colored or oddly-shaped. Like Asian pears, which are apple-shaped. She knows the difference between an apple and an Asian pear. Llamas -- camelids in general, but especially llamas -- are kind of scary-smart that way. I wish they could tutor the super-stupid horses. Seriously, if horses hadn’t been domesticated, I don’t think they’d still exist. They’re great big idiots constantly looking for new and interesting ways to die. Deer are geniuses compared to them. Sure, they’re loyal as all hell, and very trainable, and I love them to death, but...Dumb to the core, all of them.)

didilysims replied to your photo “Meanwhile, Gwendolyn exists and got gave herself a promotion! We’ll...”

ALlamaInEveryHome would make an excellent username...

It would be! Wish I’d thought of it, when I made this Tumblr. :)

didilysims replied to your photo “Heeeey, Cherry! I totally just knocked up your daughter, man. It was...”

Umm...tell me more about this (harvestable?) peach tree please. :)

‘Tis one of Sun & Moon’s seasonal fruit trees, from this set here. 12/10 would recommend. :)

mortia replied to your photoset “To get everyone’s mind off Sage’s death, Emmy took the girls on an...”

Ooh these are lovely!

didilysims replied to your photoset “To get everyone’s mind off Sage’s death, Emmy took the girls on an...”

This is such a gorgeous lot--and the background too!

It is one of my favorite lots that I’ve built. But it’s also kind of annoying. Since it slopes so much from road to waterline, much of the lot is pretty much unusable. Like, Sims trying to talk to another Sim just do a lot of stomping and yelling because of the slope. I kind of hate that in Sims 2 Sims can’t really interact with each other on anything other than flat ground. (They fixed this for Castaway, which is one of the things I love about that game, but not TS2. WHY??!) It’s one of the reasons why I (usually) build only on flat lots and why I’m (generally) fond of flattening beach lots from road to waterline, too. So...Yeah, that lot is very pretty to look at, but it’s pretty much only usable in the 10-tile-wide strip of flat beach. The rest just generates lots of yelling and stomping. So, it’s also kind of wasted space. :\

penig replied to your photo “Annnnnnd a couple hours later, this happened. *headdesk* I kind of...”

Everyone grieves in their own way?

I suppose one could see it as doing something life-affirming in the aftermath of death. Especially when you’re sick and possibly facing death yourself. Although I gotta say that sex is not high on my to-do list when I’m sick. :) But, to each their own!

eulaliasims replied to your photo “Yeah, that hike was definitely not a good idea. :( I’m bummed. :( Sage...”

Noooo, Sage. :(

I know. I was bummed. :( But, life -- or the game, in this case -- goes on. :)

tamtam-go92 replied to your photo “Stephanie does most of the gardening these days, while her dad’s at...”

What can you even do there?

Fishing, apparently. Which Sims can do pretty much anywhere there’s water, so what’s the point? :)

penig replied to your photo “Sage doesn’t do sitting still very well, and the next day he rolled up...”

This is what happens when you don't lock 'em in their rooms. You could have sent him out by himself, you know.

I could have...but my rule for hikes is that as many people in the household as possible go on them when any household member rolls a want for one and is able to take one. So, obviously toddlers get left behind as well as someone to care for them, and if anyone’s imminently due to go to work/school they don’t go, but everyone else, including pets, goes. Even if they’re sick. 

penig replied to your photo “Stephanie does most of the gardening these days, while her dad’s at...”

It has major routing fails and a fishing hole. Also the hydroponic garden for some reason.

Yeah, I’m afraid I’m pretty unimpressed with the hobby lots in general. :\ The only one I ever really use is the Cuisine one, and that just for food contests. I think what I’m eventually going to do, instead of fussing around to make over the hidden hobby lots, is just build all my own “hobby lots,” but just make them regular community lots and then use the Visitor Controller to limit their patronage to Sims for whom the dedicated hobby is their OTH. I think that would make them busier overall, which would be nice. They won’t have the hobby leaders...but if I wanted to, I could make them owned by the game-generated leaders, so they’d still be there...although I don’t know if they’d retain their “leader” functions, since I’d have to make them temporarily playable to buy the lots. It’ll be something to experiment with...one day. :) A large community-lot garden would be nice for Nature Sims to grow/maintain/harvest...although I suppose they’d have to stay on it for a number of days. And it’d be better if gardening was autonomous...And...

Well, anyway! it makes sense to have the hydroponic garden on the Nature lot, I suppose. I guess when the devs were building the lots, they just threw in anything that was related to (or “assigned” to, via the coding) that hobby that existed at the time.

delicatesoul88 replied to your post “So Tumblr decided to unfollow a bunch of people for me. :\”

It does that to me too! All the time! I really wish it wouldn't...

Yeah, I’ve seen people complaining about Tumblr unfollowing people as long as I’ve had a Tumblr. (Four years, geez!) Honestly, I always kind of suspected that people claimed that it did that in order to “cover up” the fact that they’d unfollowed people deliberately. But then it happened to me! And I didn’t even realize it! I just assumed those people had gone quiet for a while, as people do off and on...until I saw reblogs of posts that I didn’t recall having seen. And then I looked through the blogs I follow and, sure enough, they were no longer there. :\ I knew I didn’t do it, even by accident, because I don’t think I’ve ever unfollowed anyone, even when they announce they’re leaving... just in case they come back like, say, Trapping did. I’ll mute reblogs, sometimes, if they reblog a lot of non-Sims stuff, esp. real-world political/social things that I use Tumblr to escape from for a little while, but I’ll still want to see any original stuff they post. Otherwise I wouldn’t have followed them in the first place.

Anyway, yeah, it’s very, very annoying, and I wish that Tumblr would address whatever’s causing it. But then, Tumblr seems to like to try to control what we see, don’t they? :\ Thank God for Xkit! :D

eulaliasims replied to your post “Replies, yay!”

I love the graying snouts on the dogs too. :) Older doggos are great. Cats too! Kittens are lovely, but older cats are highly underrated. Grumpy old lady cats are the best.

Yeah, I have a huge soft spot for grumpy old lady cats. My own RL grumpy old lady cat passed away rather recently. (She was almost 19 when she got really sick and I decided to have her euthanized, so she had a good long, but always kind of sickly life, probably since she was a very runty runt of the litter.) Once she got past kittenhood, she wasn’t the cuddly kind -- she appreciated being petted and scritched and she would curl up next to you of her own volition, but would never get in a lap or tolerate being picked up or held -- but she was very chatty. She’d sit near me, and we’d have long cat-sound “conversations.” I often imagined that she was bitching to me about all the annoying young ‘uns and all the damn dogs underfoot.

I kinda wish the cats/dogs in game had more varied behaviors like that, but I understand the coding limitations and all. *sigh*

penig replied to your photoset “Samantha, childified. She looks just like Sage, down to the Vulcan...”

Bathtub piracy is one of the most important traits its possible to pass on.

YES IT IS! Bathtub piracy is probably one of those things that annoy a lot of people but that I just love, love, love. :)

penig replied to your photo “Later, the other Emmy GilsCarbo called this Emmy GilsCarbo. :) (The...”

You could start calling Simon's Emmy Em instead.

I could, yes...but I rather like confusing myself. Messing with my brain is so much fun! S’why I appreciate hallucinogens. :)

twofingerswhiskey replied to your post “SO MUCH DEGRASSED, THEY COULD CALL YOU DEGRASSI. okay there's my joke...”

The show is actually super popular, everyone I know has at least heard of it - it's been around for more than two generations, so I mean, yeah :D

Two generations? Really? I thought it was just a 90s thing. But then, I haven’t really watched TV since the early 90s, so there’s that. :) Anyway, I know the name of the show, but I know nothing about it other than that, since I never watched it. Seemed like it was aimed at a demographic that...isn’t me. :) My kids, maybe, but not me.

immerso-sims replied to your photoset “Annnnnd the younger daughter, Samantha. ”

Goopy and Sandy's genes still going strong!

They are! Goopy’s nose seems to override Sandy’s, but Sandy’s lips and jawline seem to override Goopy’s, so it all comes out even. 

immerso-sims replied to your photo “Heeeey, Cherry! I totally just knocked up your daughter, man. It was...”

I am laughing way too hard at this :D

Yeah, I think Sam is pretty much the most amusing Sim I’ve had in my game, ever, and he’s not even a playable. And really, I kinda hope he never becomes playable because then he’d probably become all boringly domesticated. It’s just, as an ex-llama-mascot, he’s freakin’ everywhere, and he’s apparently in a sort of eternally-adolescent hormonal overdrive. Don “Lothario” is a total amateur compared to this guy. Some folks will probably dislike him for that (and perhaps will dislike me “glorifying” or approving of his behavior or whatever), but I take this game not-seriously-at-all, and I have never had a Sim who’s made me laugh so much, sometimes in exasperation but also because he just does goofy things. I’ve had ex-llamas in my game before, but they’ve not been nearly so entertaining.

[hufflepirate]

Prompt: During Crystal Venom, Corrupted!Alfor and Coran are canonically on the bridge together. What would corrupted!Alfor say to him?

Ok, so since I actually know this was @reidluver now, I’m gonna go ahead and tag you.  :P  Also, sorry for how long this took, only no, I’m not, because it’s also like twice as long as I’d planned.  But the actual canonical scene started with Corrupted!Alfor ordering Coran and the others to stay away from his daughter and how could I not?  I mean, holy crap, Voltron, are you trying to kill me?  Anyway, I hope this is at least half as much fun to read as it was to write, because I am a not-so-secret drama queen and I definitely needed this.

“Stay away from my daughter!”

The words hit Coran like a blow to the gut.  Allura’s voice, too dreamy and too high and too unreal, was bad enough, but this - he stopped in his tracks, clenching his jaw as he breathed in through his nose and tried not to let the pain show.  After a breath, he could work out what was happening.  "The crystal must have corrupted King Alfor’s artificial intelligence. It’s taking over!“  

His chest felt tight, but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he’d been uncomfortable with the AI even before.  He’d been Alfor the way he was when he knocked Allura out and put her in a pod, not Alfor the way he was at the very, very end, and it had hurt to watch him, to know that the Alfor in front of him wasn’t just artificial, but incomplete, to know that this Alfor wasn’t the one who had finally, finally run out of hope and gone back into the fight anyway, leaving him behind.

At least the unreality of this AI was obvious.  Alfor had gone to face Zarkon alone, but first he had looked him in the eye, holding his elbow steadily, in the grip of a brother-in-arms, and made him swear to take care of Allura.  Even the old AI Alfor had never done that, had never committed him into her service, had never committed her into his care.  Perhaps the old AI had known he would, or could, or might, but he hadn’t.  This new Alfor - no.  This new AI wasn’t Alfor at all.  Not if he was trying to keep them apart.

The dying star appeared suddenly, and Coran gasped, lungs filling painfully fast as his mouth dropped open.  It was horrifying.  Heartstopping.  Slightly less frightening than the particle barrier that sprang up, just as suddenly, around the princess.

“Father, I can see Altea.”

A pang of something sharp ran through Coran’s chest.  "Allura!“ he shouted, leaning into the barrier to get closer to her, even though he knew it could shock him, if the AI wanted it to. “Allura, wake up! What you’re seeing isn’t real.”

She turned to the side, reaching up to touch something he couldn’t see, and Coran’s whole body felt ice cold, watching her.  She bent down, reaching toward the floor, and said something about juniberries, which had always been her favorite, which had been in the AI chamber with her before, which had always been part of this AI’s plan, and he felt his hand clench into a fist.

“Allura, please! You’ve got to listen to me!”  Keep breathing, he told himself, keep breathing.  Keep your anger in check.  Stay focused on Allura.

He’d always been angry when someone hurt Allura.  Always.  And right now, that couldn’t be enough.  Because right now, she thought she had her father and she couldn’t see she didn’t, and the pain was all in the future.  He had to make her see.  And that was going to hurt her, but he couldn’t let the anger sweep him away.  He couldn’t.  Not when her life depended on him making her realize her father’s form had betrayed her.

He took a step back, away from the barrier, and he took a deep breath, trying to think his way out of this.  He needed perspective.  Space.  Time.  All things he could hardly afford right now.

“Is this real?”

He could hear Alfor tell her it was, but it wasn’t, and that wasn’t Alfor, and he just needed to make her see.  He just needed her to hear him.  He just needed to make her - to make her smell!  "But where is the fragrance of the sweet juniberries?!“ he asked, shouting at the top of his lungs and hoping she could hear him.

Surely, the original AI had built a space for him in its world.  Surely, it remembered he belonged beside her.  Beside them.  Surely, if he kept trying, it would let her hear him.  If it wasn’t too far gone.  If she wasn’t too far gone.

Allura raised a hand to her nose and - "That’s not Altea.”

Coran closed his eyes, letting relief wash over him for just a moment, and Pidge jumped into the silence, telling Allura to turn them around.

He could hear her step forward, toward her handholds, and he opened his eyes again just in time to see her flying backward, electricity zapping in the air around her.  Shiro caught her faster than he could, but it didn’t matter, because she didn’t stay down for long.

Allura flung herself up against the barrier, begging her father to turn them around, and when he told her no, when he told her he had every intention of plunging them into the heart of the exploding star, Coran didn’t know how to tell her that wasn’t her father.  If she couldn’t see it for herself, he couldn’t fix that.  He didn’t know how to poke holes in the vision, anymore, when the vision was wrong, all by itself, and so obviously.

Allura argued back, like she always had, and Coran stood back and watched, because that’s what he would have done before.  Because he didn’t know how to tell her there was no use.  Because he didn’t know how to tell her about that last, awful varga on Altea, when she was already frozen and her father, her real father, had faced the end for real and nothing he’d said had been anything like this.

“You don’t have to live a lifetime of war,” the AI said, and Coran had to force himself to keep breathing, because that was almost, almost real.  It was everything he wanted for her.  It was all he thought he still had a right to hope for, one day, if they got lucky.  But not like this.

The wave of relief he felt when the old AI broke through the new one, just for a moment, was strong enough that he suddenly understood what Allura must feel when she looked at it.  He could feel the reality of the AI, the Alfor-ness of it, and those few quintants the AI didn’t remember seemed smaller now, less important, right as it became too late for that to matter.

Allura turned toward him just as he was stabilizing himself, again, from his sudden certainty that one of the AIs was somehow really Alfor.  Her eyes were full of fire, as much as her father’s had ever been, and Coran felt a surge of something in his chest that wasn’t relief at all.  Everything was too much, and too mixed up, and Allura shouldn’t have to fight like this.  She shouldn’t have to do this.  "I’ve got to get into the A.I. chamber to disconnect my father’s power source manually.“

She’d lost everything.  Everything.  And she hadn’t even had Alfor’s eyes burning into her own, giving her a new mission, swearing her to a new purpose before he was gone.  "But that means losing King Alfor forever!” he said, words slipping out before he could think better of them.

She knew that already.  It was in her eyes.  It was in her voice as she gave orders to the paladins.  And then she was moving, and he couldn’t do any less.  Not even when it had just hit him how much she was sacrificing.  Not even when it had just really hit him exactly how much it would hurt her to do it.

“I can try to override the system to open the hangars,” he told her.  And then she was gone, and the paladins were rushing out behind her, and it was just him, with the AI at his back, trying to open the doors.

“You would let her destroy me,” the AI spat from behind him.  He didn’t have to turn around to see the AI’s twisted snarl across Alfor’s face.  He’d seen it when he walked in, when it shouted at him to stay away from Allura, and he’d thought that had hurt, but he’d been wrong.  It was nothing compared to this.  "Her own father, and you would make her destroy me herself.  Didn’t I tell you to protect her?“

He kept his mouth shut, focusing on the screens in front of him.  "I gave you an order, soldier!” the AI barked behind him.  He hadn’t.  Even the old AI was from before Alfor had given him that one last mission.  That last trust.  That last calling.  This wasn’t Alfor.  It wasn’t real.  It didn’t know.  It never had.  Coran opened the hangar doors.

“I gave you everything,” the AI spat, “I made you what you are.  And this is how you repay me?  By letting my own daughter murder me?”

The paladins were pushing against the Castle, trying to slow its descent, and even if he wanted to try to fight his way through the particle barrier, he couldn’t.  All he could do was keep the AI distracted, keep its attention divided between Allura and the ship’s controls and himself.  He turned around and took a step toward the false Alfor.

“You gave me nothing,” he spat back at it.  "You’re not him.  He’d never stand there and watch her die.“

"And yet, you would stand there and watch her murder her own father.  Or is that what you want?”

The AI’s eyes were cruel, much crueler than Alfor’s ever were, and Coran felt himself shaking, but he kept his chin up.  "You’re not her father.“

Suddenly, the machine laughed, harsh and cackling and almost Galra, and that voice coming from Alfor’s throat sent another wave of cold through Coran’s body.  "So that’s it.  You want to see her kill me.  You think you can replace me.  You are a fool.  She’ll never love you like she loved me.”

“I’m no king,” he answered, keeping his chin up, “I never tried to be.”

“You’re no father.  You never were, and you never will be.  Allura is mine.”

No, he thought, Allura is mine.  He couldn’t say it.  Didn’t say it.  Bit the words back.  

“She fought you off,” he said, “She wasn’t fooled.  She knows you’re not her father.”  He took another step toward the AI.  "She’ll never belong to you.  She’ll never let you use her again.“

"She’ll never love you like she loved him,” the AI said again, poking at the part that hurt, the part he’d tried to ignore and deflect, and even its admission that it wasn’t Alfor, that it couldn’t be Alfor, wasn’t enough to stop the words from stinging.

“She doesn’t have to,” he answered. “She shouldn’t.”

“She doesn’t,” the AI said, “She won’t.  You can’t hide forever.  You were a terrible soldier.  The Prince only kept you around to make jokes and fix machinery.”  It was slipping.  Maybe it could only really pretend for one person at a time.  Coran knew full well that if it was pretending, the person it was pretending for wasn’t him.  But it still had Alfor’s memories, and that was still enough to make it dangerous.

“The King,” he answered, taking another step forward.  "Alfor was my king.”  Allura must be doing well.  She must be.  She had the AI on the ropes.  He just had to keep its focus divided for a little bit longer.

“As soon as we have destroyed the Galra, I will see Allura crowned, too,” he declared.  "I will put the crown on her head myself, and I will make whatever is left of your empire watch.  And then whatever she wants me around for, she can have.”

"You will die, like he did.  Alfor was weak.  A fool.  A coward.  Like you.  He fled, and then he died, and he left his daughter to fight his war, with nothing but a fool to guide her.  And still, she loves him more than she loves you.  She loves a shadow of him more than she loves you.”

“She’s supposed to!”  It came out sounding convincing.  That was good.  He’d said it enough times to himself that it ought to.

She was supposed to love her father the most, even when her father was gone.  He was supposed to step back and go where she sent him, even when that meant waiting outside, alone with his grief, while she spoke to a computer program over and over and didn’t see the missing pieces in it.  Just because he could see the ways it failed to be Alfor, could see them until he couldn’t see anything else, didn’t mean Allura didn’t have the right to love the father she’d lost.

“You’re going to die knowing you’re less than nothing to her,” the AI spat.  "You’re going to die knowing she’d rather watch you die than kill me.“

He’d rather have died than watched Alfor die, but it was too late for that.  Alfor was already dead.  This wasn’t real.  It wasn’t real.  He stepped forward a fourth time.  "Do you think I’m afraid of dying?” he asked the AI.  "I swore to protect her with my life.  I accepted the thought of dying a long time ago.“

"Then you will die knowing you have failed.”

He had no more words.  He needed more words.  He needed to keep its attention.  Just enough of it to keep it distracted.  Just enough to give Allura time.  His mind was blank.  Too blank.

A sick feeling settled into the pit of his stomach as the AI grew silent, its eyes softening their glare as it seemed to look inward.  He had to think of something.  To say something.  His throat was getting thick and tight and he had to think of something.

Alfor and the barrier flickered, and flickered, and disappeared, and suddenly he could breathe more easily again.  "She did it,“ he murmured, before the soft sounds of his computer whirring back to life and the Castle’s alarms going off called him back to his station.

It was hard to stare into the heart of a supernova and feel like the danger was over, but as he started to turn the Castle around, he felt very little besides relief.  It was over.  It was over.  And now he could pick up the pieces, like he’d sworn to do before the real Alfor passed away.  He closed his eyes, remembering.

”She’ll be sad, Coran.  You both will, but she won’t be expecting it.  She won’t know about this.  About - the end.  Not like you do.  So she’ll need you.  I’m sorry to put that on you, but - I didn’t mean for it to come to this.“

He hadn’t told Alfor, back then, that the AI would be enough for her.  He hadn’t lied, not even to make him feel better.  They’d both known it wouldn’t be enough.  Not forever.  Not when the universe kept going, kept changing, and the AI couldn’t change with it.  But he’d never thought this day would come so soon.

Allura stepped back onto the bridge, shouting orders and stepping up to the wormhole generator to get them out of there, and Coran kept his chin up and followed orders, being the soldier she needed him to be.  And whatever else he was to her, whatever else he would ever be, would be right there beside her when she needed him.  It would have to be enough.  He would have to be enough.

It was hard knowing it was really just the two of them, now, but it was also clarifying.  It was nice to lose the last of the pretenses.  He’d sworn to be there for her, and he was going to be.  And if all he could ever hope to be was enough, it was still the highest calling he could imagine.  ”I’ll look after her, Alfor,“ he whispered in the wormhole, too softly for her to hear.  An old promise.  A new promise.  The only promise he needed.

[creativesage]

Why, as women, there has never been a better time to stand up and finally be counted.

By Danielle Newnham

At the end of last year, LinkedIn asked what my prediction was for 2017 and naturally, I said “The rise of women.” The post I wrote on this was entitled Rise of the Women (in Tech): How the biggest disruption next year will come from women, not robots, and can be found here.

The reason I am so bullish on this is because I believe now is the first time in history that we have a voice. But it is still critical that we band together to support each other and tell the stories of female role models so that we create our own legacy, and to inspire future generations into fields which might once have been regarded as male-dominated.

This is one of the reasons I wrote Female Innovators at Work. The book tells the back-stories of twenty amazingly inspirational women in tech and is available on Amazon. It was really important to me to seek these women out and tell their unique and compelling stories — the lessons they learned, the hurdles they overcame, the successes they share.

So as we bid adieu to the month which sees us celebrate women with International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, I thought I’d share an exclusive look at why I wrote this book, taken from its introduction:

In July 2006, I walked into the office of my very first tech startup and fell madly in love with the industry. Much like today, startups revealed a window into the future, which was, and still is, hugely exciting to me. That first startup worked on personalized search, NFC (near field communication), mobile payments, and mobile phone applications — all of which were several years ahead of their time. And although that company ran out of funding and closed down, as many do, I really enjoyed my time there and the experience taught me some valuable lessons. But there was something that bothered me. There were too few women.

Two years later, I joined the founding team at ubinow — a mobile apps agency set up by two members of the previous company’s mobile team. And the lack of women in the industry became even more apparent, especially when we started looking to hire more developers. This was not because women didn’t exist in tech, because they do. The issue was about visibility; a problem that persists today.

So I started to wonder, “How can we change this?” This, in turn, led me to ask, “Where are the stories about women doing well and thriving in this industry?” They were nowhere to be found. The press wasn’t covering women, the startups weren’t hiring women, and the industry wasn’t promoting women. So how could we possibly attract more or even retain those women already here if we did not champion them? I started conducting some research and began to uncover a treasure trove of female innovators. The more I discovered, the more I asked myself, “Why haven’t these stories been told?”

If one looks at the history of computer science, the overriding images of its creators have nearly always been men, despite some of its earliest innovators being women such as Ada Lovelace. Added to that, around the time that computers started arriving in our homes in the mid-1980s, advertising for personal computers mainly targeted boys. Magazines, films, and books at the time also focused on young males being the creators and consumers of tech, so the narrative shifted away from female programmers and focused almost entirely on men. And this was around the same time that the field saw a significant decline in the number of women taking courses in computer science.

But I knew that if more people learned these stories, they would be inspired too — and that by sharing them, we might have a better chance of changing the face of tech, in terms of its history, as well as its future. And these stories deserve to be told, so I decided to include some of them in this book. In Female Innovators at Work, I interviewed twenty inspiring women in tech; some just starting out but many with years of experience behind them. All are stories of women innovating. Each woman tells a different story about her personal journey, but there are some commonalities that are fascinating.

The first trait I found true for all was the unwavering grit and determination to succeed, often a trait built upon from childhood. Most would argue that all entrepreneurs share this trait — and they would be right. But what I find especially fascinating are the struggles that these women faced and how they used adversity to rise above it all. This includes Brenda Romero, who having been ostracized by her peers as a teen, decided to always “be one better.” And Ramona Pierson, who came back from death’s door to prove wrong the doctors who said she’d never thrive; she did just that and far more. And Judith Klein, whose father, an Auschwitz survivor, told her, “As a Jew, you must do even better than everyone else if you mean to get anywhere.” These women had a steely determination to make it, no matter what.

Another interesting commonality is how mission-led many of the startups are. This leads me to believe that with women at the helm, we will see an increasing number of tech-for-social-good businesses, which is something the world needs more of right now. Examples in this book include Majora Carter, who founded StartUp Box to both empower and improve the opportunities for young people in low-status communities such as her own, in South Bronx, New York. And Yasmine Mustafa, a refugee who fled Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1990s and later founded ROAR for Good after learning her neighbor was raped on her doorstep in Philadelphia. And Judith Owigar, who both set up two organizations: AkiraChix to encourage more women into tech in Kenya, and JuaKali to change the face of manual labor. And Gwynne Shotwell, who is working with Elon Musk to realize a shared vision to save humanity and colonize Mars.

So why tell these stories now? The simple answer is because they should have been told already. The longer answer is that as the advancement of technology continues at an exponential rate, it has become necessary for our tech workforce to be as diverse as those it is being built for. The industry requires more skilled technologists, with different backgrounds and experiences, to take on the ever-increasing roles being created. And consumers and companies need a diverse range of workers building solutions for all.

In 2015, Intel pledged a $300 million budget to a “Diversity in Technology” initiative that aims to tackle both its own workforce diversity, as well as that of the tech industry in general. And they are not the only technology company looking to make a change. Facebook, Google, and other major players are also stepping up. They understand that it is the diverse workforces of tomorrow that will help shape the future of innovation and drive the next revolution.

And tech’s ability to empower and drive change makes it the perfect field for female innovators to lead in order to create a better world. So I hope that the stories inside this book inspire, inform, and encourage the next generation of women in tech. Because tech needs you. It needs all of us.

As women, there has never been a better time to stand up and to finally be counted.

Female Innovators at Work is available to buy from Amazon UK and Amazon US.

This post originally appeared on Tease and Totes.

***

We have been celebrating and honoring Women’s History Month, and we invite you to read selections from this special section on Tumblr [search under #WomensHistoryMonth ], plus we’ve been adding posts about women in business, the arts, technology and other fields throughout the month of March, including in honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2017. You may want to read some of them on previous pages. Enjoy!

***

If you missed any of the last few weeks of posts, please click on “next” (below) to find more articles, posts, photos and illustrations on the next page and beyond (if you’re on a computer, or scroll down on mobile). We hope you’re enjoying these resources and finding value in them, for yourself, and your organization.

***

Curator and Publisher:

~ Cathryn Hrudicka, Author, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer, Creative Sage™

+ Co-Founder, Women Who Innovate

[maxwellyjordan]

How I Stopped Taking Unscheduled Calls

The most common complaint made by lawyers is that the constant flow of interruptions (phone calls and emails) throughout the day prevents them from getting any work done. However, the most common complaint made against lawyers is the failure to respond to clients.

Fixing these two problems may seem like a zero-sum game, like you can’t correct one without worsening the other. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the move to stop taking unscheduled phone calls in my practice simultaneously increased my productivity and client satisfaction.

My improved productivity is probably not a surprise but why would client satisfaction increase? I think it happens for a few reasons.

The common complaint “my lawyer didn’t get back to me” really means that the client would like to know that their matter is being handled and progressing, that someone is listening and helping, or something along those lines. Those underlying needs can often be addressed by a team member who isn’t a lawyer, and I would bet money that a properly trained team member with the right personality will do it better than you. If the matter does require a lawyer, the call is scheduled so the client knows that you now have time set aside to contact them and assist.

Scheduling calls guarantees that the client gets a response from you. That means less chance of things getting missed or falling through the cracks.

Phone calls are more productive since you have a chance to prepare before the call.

When something is available in limited quantities, we automatically assume it is more valuable and higher quality and we desire it more. When clients know your time is limited but they have a spot reserved in your busy schedule they feel special and are more appreciative, not to mention we’ve noticed they are more inclined to be punctual and respectful of your time.

You might worry about losing potential new clients if you don’t answer the phone every time it rings but scheduling all calls has increased our engagement rate as well. The potential new client speaks with a team member who is able to give some initial information and schedule an initial phone call with me. The key is to help the potential new client feel heard and clearly set out their next steps.

Your practice doesn’t need to be chaotic. You can take large volumes of phone calls in an organized, calm, and deliberate way that makes your clients happy and helps you be more productive. Here is the process I followed to stop taking unscheduled calls:

1. Create rules for your Calendar.

I decided the times each day during which phone calls can be scheduled. I do my best work in the morning, so on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday my phone calls are scheduled in the afternoons when my energy and focus typically dips. On Thursdays, phone calls can be scheduled any time during the morning or afternoon since I try to schedule deep focus work earlier in the week. I do not take phone calls on Fridays.

I set rules for how far in advance calls need to be booked and how close together calls can be booked.

My calendar has “flex time” built-in where I can make calls or send emails even if a true emergency disrupts my schedule. Every practice area is different and you might have legitimate things that unexpectedly upset your schedule. Build some flexibility into your calendar to account for this.

Your system can be created manually in your Outlook or Google calendar, or by using scheduling software like Calendly or Acuity. We use Calendly.

2. Create a phone script to handle incoming calls.

Over thousands of inbound calls, we discovered that almost all phone calls could be grouped into three categories. We created a detailed decision tree/phone script for our Client Coordinator to follow based on those categories.

If someone asks to speak with me, the default answer is “He’s not available. Is there something I can help you with?” I am unavailable for unscheduled phone calls so even if I am in my office is the truth to say that I am unavailable. It is crucial that the person answering the phone asks they can help the caller. At this point in the conversation, we likely still don’t know the reason why the caller wants to speak with me and offering to assist will often leave the caller to disclose more information which the Client Coordinator can use to determine the appropriate next steps. Often it will be something that the Client Coordinator can help with, even if that help is scheduling a phone call.

The caller is almost never put through to my voicemail. The only exception is if the Client Coordinator is certain that the purpose of the message is only to pass along information to me and does not require a call back. The Client Coordinator explains that my voicemail messages get just get sent to her to determine how to handle them, so by speaking with the Client Coordinator they are making things move faster.

3. Train your team.

Our Client Coordinator knows the calendar rules inside and out and must follow them. The phone script decision tree has been tested out on thousands of callers and must be followed.

The Client Coordinator is not allowed to override the rules on her own and must consult me if she thinks an exception should be made – yes, sometimes I make exceptions in special circumstances. For that reason, she needs to have a good idea of what constitutes a true emergency and what does not.

Our Client Coordinator is more involved in our files than a traditional receptionist. She knows our clients very well and usually knows the status of the project we are working on for a particular client. This allows her to offer more help to the caller than a traditional receptionist could. This is where an in-house team member can provide far superior service to the client compared to a virtual receptionist.

4. Train your clients.

From the first contact with our firm, potential new clients are learning to rely on non-lawyer team members since that is who they speak with.

In my first conversation with potential new clients, I let them know that our Client Coordinator is the best point of contact since they will get a much quicker response.

New clients receive a welcome package that includes an introduction to the team, explains our roles and once again points out that I only take scheduled calls and that our Client Coordinator is the person to contact if the client needs anything. It explains the benefits to the client that come from our call scheduling policy.

New clients usually see the benefit of our call scheduling policy right away, but we have many clients who have been with us long before the policy was in place. The key to transitioning these clients to the new call scheduling policy has been to explain the benefits to them. When you are working on matters for those clients, they don’t want you to pause to take every incoming call as that type of multitasking reduces efficiency and performance and increases the chance of errors.

5. Follow the schedule.

Make sure that you are punctual making calls at the scheduled time. If you don’t follow the system, your team members and clients won’t respect it either.

The post How I Stopped Taking Unscheduled Calls appeared first on Lawyerist.

from Law https://lawyerist.com/blog/how-i-stopped-taking-unscheduled-calls/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[lesliepump]

How I Stopped Taking Unscheduled Calls

The most common complaint made by lawyers is that the constant flow of interruptions (phone calls and emails) throughout the day prevents them from getting any work done. However, the most common complaint made against lawyers is the failure to respond to clients.

Fixing these two problems may seem like a zero-sum game, like you can’t correct one without worsening the other. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the move to stop taking unscheduled phone calls in my practice simultaneously increased my productivity and client satisfaction.

My improved productivity is probably not a surprise but why would client satisfaction increase? I think it happens for a few reasons.

The common complaint “my lawyer didn’t get back to me” really means that the client would like to know that their matter is being handled and progressing, that someone is listening and helping, or something along those lines. Those underlying needs can often be addressed by a team member who isn’t a lawyer, and I would bet money that a properly trained team member with the right personality will do it better than you. If the matter does require a lawyer, the call is scheduled so the client knows that you now have time set aside to contact them and assist.

Scheduling calls guarantees that the client gets a response from you. That means less chance of things getting missed or falling through the cracks.

Phone calls are more productive since you have a chance to prepare before the call.

When something is available in limited quantities, we automatically assume it is more valuable and higher quality and we desire it more. When clients know your time is limited but they have a spot reserved in your busy schedule they feel special and are more appreciative, not to mention we’ve noticed they are more inclined to be punctual and respectful of your time.

You might worry about losing potential new clients if you don’t answer the phone every time it rings but scheduling all calls has increased our engagement rate as well. The potential new client speaks with a team member who is able to give some initial information and schedule an initial phone call with me. The key is to help the potential new client feel heard and clearly set out their next steps.

Your practice doesn’t need to be chaotic. You can take large volumes of phone calls in an organized, calm, and deliberate way that makes your clients happy and helps you be more productive. Here is the process I followed to stop taking unscheduled calls:

1. Create rules for your Calendar.

I decided the times each day during which phone calls can be scheduled. I do my best work in the morning, so on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday my phone calls are scheduled in the afternoons when my energy and focus typically dips. On Thursdays, phone calls can be scheduled any time during the morning or afternoon since I try to schedule deep focus work earlier in the week. I do not take phone calls on Fridays.

I set rules for how far in advance calls need to be booked and how close together calls can be booked.

My calendar has “flex time” built-in where I can make calls or send emails even if a true emergency disrupts my schedule. Every practice area is different and you might have legitimate things that unexpectedly upset your schedule. Build some flexibility into your calendar to account for this.

Your system can be created manually in your Outlook or Google calendar, or by using scheduling software like Calendly or Acuity. We use Calendly.

2. Create a phone script to handle incoming calls.

Over thousands of inbound calls, we discovered that almost all phone calls could be grouped into three categories. We created a detailed decision tree/phone script for our Client Coordinator to follow based on those categories.

If someone asks to speak with me, the default answer is “He’s not available. Is there something I can help you with?” I am unavailable for unscheduled phone calls so even if I am in my office is the truth to say that I am unavailable. It is crucial that the person answering the phone asks they can help the caller. At this point in the conversation, we likely still don’t know the reason why the caller wants to speak with me and offering to assist will often leave the caller to disclose more information which the Client Coordinator can use to determine the appropriate next steps. Often it will be something that the Client Coordinator can help with, even if that help is scheduling a phone call.

The caller is almost never put through to my voicemail. The only exception is if the Client Coordinator is certain that the purpose of the message is only to pass along information to me and does not require a call back. The Client Coordinator explains that my voicemail messages get just get sent to her to determine how to handle them, so by speaking with the Client Coordinator they are making things move faster.

3. Train your team.

Our Client Coordinator knows the calendar rules inside and out and must follow them. The phone script decision tree has been tested out on thousands of callers and must be followed.

The Client Coordinator is not allowed to override the rules on her own and must consult me if she thinks an exception should be made – yes, sometimes I make exceptions in special circumstances. For that reason, she needs to have a good idea of what constitutes a true emergency and what does not.

Our Client Coordinator is more involved in our files than a traditional receptionist. She knows our clients very well and usually knows the status of the project we are working on for a particular client. This allows her to offer more help to the caller than a traditional receptionist could. This is where an in-house team member can provide far superior service to the client compared to a virtual receptionist.

4. Train your clients.

From the first contact with our firm, potential new clients are learning to rely on non-lawyer team members since that is who they speak with.

In my first conversation with potential new clients, I let them know that our Client Coordinator is the best point of contact since they will get a much quicker response.

New clients receive a welcome package that includes an introduction to the team, explains our roles and once again points out that I only take scheduled calls and that our Client Coordinator is the person to contact if the client needs anything. It explains the benefits to the client that come from our call scheduling policy.

New clients usually see the benefit of our call scheduling policy right away, but we have many clients who have been with us long before the policy was in place. The key to transitioning these clients to the new call scheduling policy has been to explain the benefits to them. When you are working on matters for those clients, they don’t want you to pause to take every incoming call as that type of multitasking reduces efficiency and performance and increases the chance of errors.

5. Follow the schedule.

Make sure that you are punctual making calls at the scheduled time. If you don’t follow the system, your team members and clients won’t respect it either.

The post How I Stopped Taking Unscheduled Calls appeared first on Lawyerist.

from Law and Politics https://lawyerist.com/blog/how-i-stopped-taking-unscheduled-calls/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[topicprinter]

Hey r/startups! I've seen quite a few posts in this sub about non-technical founders going down the outsourcing route. Here's my experience outsourcing our MVP.Compromising is part of product design, and often the compromise is cutting scope. Cutting scope is better than compromising on quality. (Quality being defined as design, usability, stability, and performance.) Customers get excited about a product that does a few things well, whereas they’re turned off by poor execution, because poor execution erodes their trust in your brand and their confidence for the future. A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is about cutting scope from your grand plan while maintaining quality. It’s the smallest thing you could build to test the viability of your idea in a real-life scenario.When you’re a solo founder, you’re very interested in cutting scope because not only do you have to design the product, you also have to build it. I realised my long term vision for Dovetail as a ‘qualitative research platform’ would need to hit the back-burner as I decided to focus on diary studies first.Picking this niche for our MVP was a good decision, although only just. There isn’t much competition for a diary study product, automating a manual process has clear value, and because it’s a niche, marketing and SEO are straightforward. Yet one thing I overlooked is how infrequently researchers run diary studies and how important recurring revenue is for a business. More on that in a later post.I’d written some JavaScript in the past, so I thought Node.js, Firebase, and Twilio SMS (for the contextual diary entries) would be a decent stack. A few days of spiking made me realise this was harder than I thought, so my girlfriend suggested Ruby on Rails since she’s familiar with it. The thought of learning another language when I hardly knew JavaScript frightened me. But one of the nice things about Ruby on Rails is that — unlike Node — it’s very opinionated. Ruby on Rails makes it clear when you’re going down the wrong path because the light starts to fade away, the trees contort into creepy shapes, and howling noises emerge from the dense forest that appears to have engulfed you. You quickly find another path (usually on StackOverflow).The outsourcing optionAround this time somebody suggested outsourcing via Upwork. I had never considered outsourcing, and the image in my head was a bustling Indian call centre. I investigated Upwork and decided to give it a shot. After all, what else could I do? I believed in the idea. I am a designer, so I sketched, wireframed, and designed until I had a clickable InVision prototype. If you’re not a designer, try to sketch your idea anyway, and look for a freelancer to help you with the high fidelity designs and prototype.Dozens of quotes appeared within minutes of posting the job on Upwork. Mostly automated, mostly rubbish. I reduced the offers down to two: a solo developer in the US and a web development agency in Poland. The solo developer had startup experience, although he wanted to use Node and his timezone overlap with Sydney wasn’t great. (I was still working at Atlassian, so could only start work on Dovetail at 6pm.) The Polish agency had a comprehensive quote and understood the idea. They were an established business specialising in Ruby on Rails development. Most importantly, their timezone meant I could work with them in the evenings.We went over the details of the project and I walked them through the design prototype. I told them my budget, they came back with a quote of around $5,000 USD and a four week estimate. We broke the project down into milestones and had partial payments released at each.Pro tips for outsourcingI learned a great deal working with the Polish team throughout those four weeks. If you’re thinking about outsourcing, here are some tips.Be prepared. This is not the time to be Agile. Plan everything in advance. Have designs, requirement documents, tasks, and a clickable prototype if possible.Be present. Ask for regular check-ins, screenshots, and demos. Upwork has a built-in chat tool, so use that to talk with the team. If you can code a little, get the code and review it. At the least you’ll start to familiarise yourself with the technology.Be prescriptive. When working at Atlassian, I could ask developers to use their common sense with small design decisions. Contracted developers are eager to avoid mistakes and loathe ambiguity. They make no guesses about the behaviour of functionality. You will need to tell them exactly how you want everything to work and provide all assets.Set expectations. Triple check the developers know what the final deliverable should be and what your expectations are for quality. Again, a clickable prototype is a great way to show what you want instead of telling, and it helps bust through language barriers.Consider a team over a single developer. Agencies give you more security than a solo developer. They often have a project manager who can speak fluent English, and the developers have others around them to ask for advice.Consider the time difference. Ensure their working hours line up with yours, otherwise you might find yourself on a Skype call in the middle of the night. If you’re working a day job like I was, then shoot for overlap in the morning or evening.Use a site like Upwork. They hold the money in escrow until both parties agree the work is completed satisfactorily. They also have a review system which is useful for vetting, and can help mediate disagreements.At the end of the four weeks I reviewed what I got. The Ruby backend and configuration on Heroku looked reasonable, but the frontend was a mess. I spent long nights rewriting JavaScript, the view templates, and CSS. The developers opted to use Bootstrap, which would normally be fine, but as a designer I am quite picky with details. If you’ve ever worked with Bootstrap, I’m sure you understand how difficult it can be to customise. The CSS codebase was 50% overrides. Yuck.I learned a great deal about working with tests, continuous integration, deploying to Heroku, and Ruby on Rails’ Model View Controller framework. I was already on the path to ‘becoming a developer’ although I hardly noticed because I was focused on the output. There were frustrating moments where I wanted to give up, and at least once or twice I felt utterly useless and out of my depth. My morale was a rollercoaster during this time. Huge shoutout to my girlfriend Lucy who helped me through these programming hurdles.Apart from Bootstrap, I was happy with the result I got from the Polish developers. The project had gone smoothly, within budget, and within time. But most importantly, I now had a working thing! The next step was the daunting task of getting some people to use it.https://dovetail.blog/outsourcing-your-startups-mvp-326c1067a535

[porrimstentadick]

An Android’s Guide to Becoming a Witch’s Familiar

Length: 7536 words

Fandom: None

Summary:  An android is bought by a witch to become a familiar, and in the process, learns she is more than what she was built for.

Warnings: implied animal death.

Mireille sighed at the large package waiting outside her door. The box read FRAGILE in bold red letters on all sides, with a startlingly modern PromotheusCo holographic logo shimmering in the sunlight that managed to filter through the trees in front of her cozy cottage. It was brick, covered in ivy, and was situated in one of the rare nature preserves on the countryside. It was technically a historic landmark, which meant it wasn’t technically supposed to be inhabited; but Mireille Klostermeier was the rightful heir to the land, so she took the opportunity to live here.

It was fitting, for a modern witch.

Mireille was one of the few witches in the area. Although she was greatly appreciated by the surrounding city, whom often came to her for magical cures and advice, she largely picked this location for its history, its relative isolation, and more importantly, its access to traditional craft materials. Many witches were happy enough to move to techcraft entirely—Mireille, however, was a little more traditional.

“Well, I guess we better get started then…” Mireille said to herself, and dragged the box in the house. It was made slightly easier by an antigrav lift inside the box, but it wasn’t easy by any means.

She maneuvered the large box in the door, which was slightly shorter than standard, but after a moment of some stubborn tugging, it was lying in the middle of her small living room. The couch was conveniently out of the way, and although the holoscreen was an older, bulkier model, she was able to tuck that away in a corner as well. With everything set, and the daylight outside slowly retiring into twilight, Mireille lit some candles on the windowsill that faced the front yard, and set to work.

PrometheusCo boxes were notoriously difficult to unwrap. The first layer was of old fashioned bubble wrap, taped together with packing tape. Mireille took the tape in her hands and put all her strength into tearing it apart; when that proved fruitless, she grabbed a knife.

The inner box was made of something else entirely. This was where it got interesting; the box was about 4 feet long and two feet wide. A small indent in the sleek black box indicated a place for Mireille to place her thumb; she had read about this. It was a security measure, to make sure no merchandise was delivered to the incorrect party.

It better not be, Mireille mused to herself. She had spent a fortune on this.

The box opened with a burst of mist. It was the decompression of the special Foam inside, which cradled the contents of the box perfectly. Finally, Mireille was able to see her new familiar.

PrometheusCo was one of a few companies producing androids these days, but they also had the distinction of being the first to mass market the technology in a user-friendly package. The first models were standard house workers with little actual intelligence, and no awareness. Certainly, the current models also lacked any true consciousness—it was a matter of law, but they were much more clever in every other way. They still cost an arm and a leg , though they were leagues more affordable now that the materials had both improved and become cheaper to produce.

Inside the box, curled in a fetal position was PrometheusCo’s CHO-XV3 model android. Mireille’s eyes wandered over its paper-white skin, made of artificial plastic that once activated would take on the color and texture of real human skin. This model had a silver triangular piece of material where its ears would have been: that was where many of the access panels meant for emergency overrides and resets would be housed. Mireille reached for them, but stopped herself; one of the reasons she had ordered this model, she was embarrassed to admit, was because the access panel shape reminded her of cat ears.

She moved onto the rest of it, searching for an instruction manual, or a power button, or something else. “Now where can I power you up…”

Suddenly a loud Ting! Filled the tiny living room, and Mireille stepped back in surprise. Then, from out of the box, the android began to unfurl.

It slowly rose up, shoulders hunched, a sudden burst of steam released from a double vent along its back. It straightened to its full height, and Mireille had her first full look at her new android.

Although its skin had gained texture, it was still paper white; so were its eyes, which had a tiny pupil. On the left side of its face, a break in the skin marked where the plastic had been put together; its hair was also paper-white, and in a sort of neutral bowl cut. This model was designed to be rather thin but boxy in shape, with a modest breast size; although it was the model she ordered, Mireille couldn’t help but turn and blush; the models came with default clothes, but they got in the way of setup, or so she heard. The android’s nakedness was still jarring.

The only bit of color in the entire android was the LED strip imbedded in each of the android’s sides; it shifted colors throughout the spectrum.

Finally, Mireille locked eyes with the machine.

“User recognized. Hello Mireille Klostermeier. I am PrometheusCo’s CHO-XV3 model. If you would like, I will initiate setup.”

The android’s voice was in a pleasantly neutral tone. “Um. Yes. Initiate…setup?”

The android smiled. A pure facsimile, she knew, but it was still nice. “All right. Setup initializing. First, please tell me what your primary purpose for me will be. I have a variety of modes; I am a fully functional housemaid, I can provide excellent companionship, and I even have a variety of sexual partner modes to try. I can also serve as a personal assistant or secretary.”

Mireille’s blush deepened at the ‘sexual partner modes’. It was true; a huge portion of the android market was entirely dedicated to what amounted to robot sexual partners. A significant amount of research had gone towards developing an emotionally fulfilling AI for just such a purpose, and so many of the marketed models had intentionally sexual physiques, including some truly ridiculous specialty models. Nevertheless, that wasn’t the purpose she had bought this android for.

“I guess you could call it a research assistant,” Mireille said. The android processed this.

“I see. In that case, I will load the appropriate software—“

Mireille stopped the android. “No need for that. I have my own…er, ‘software’ I’d like you to use.”

“So long as this custom software has been obtained legally and is within legal bounds, I will be happy to accept it. In that case, we may move onto customization,” the android said in the same tone. “Each aspect of my appearance is fully customizable, aside from my access panels, and my measurements.

“Here is a pamphlet with all of my customization options. I will be glad to wait until you are ready to decide.”

The android handed her a thick pamphlet, but Mireille shook her head. “I don’t need it. I already decided what I wanted my settings to be.”

The android tilted its head. “Please continue.”

“style F0-45 for the hair, please. And for the skin, middle—and the eyes, color 635.”

“Accepted,” the android said. “What color would you like my LED display to be?”

Oh! She hadn’t thought of that. “I guess…could I have a light green?”

“Matching color to the best of my ability,” the android said. As she spoke, the LED display on her side shifted to a bright green. Her hair began to grow of its own accord, down past her shoulders, back, and finally coming to rest past her buttocks; the bangs shifted into a center part, the hair on her sideburns growing slightly to square ends, framing her face nicely. The hair shifted color from white to black rapidly, starting from the roots and cascading down to the tips as if liquid dye had been poured on it. The paper-white skin gained realistic color to a middling tan, and her white eyes turned a dark green color.

Okay. Mireille took a deep breath. Now it was the hard part.

“Would you like to load the custom software now or later?”

Mireille pulled a small hard drive from her pocket. It was laden with the standard programming for androids, along with some…extra thrown in.

It was highly illegal, but the technical sigils on the drive would keep it from being reported and the android would accept the software. Hopefully. She had only one foot in the rapidly-growing world of techno-witchery, after all.

“Load this, please,” Mireille said, handing the android the hard drive. Inserting it into a hidden slot, the AI’s eyes cast downward as she began to download the data. Her mechanical eyes widened when she ran into what Mireille assumed was the first non-standard protocol.

“This is…highly illegal material, I’m going to have to—report impossible. What?” The android’s eyes were shifting back and forth as she ran into more and more illegal code. Finally succumbing to what was probably an overwhelming amount of information, she faltered, nearly toppling over. “What…what have you done?” The android said, a hint of color in her voice that hadn’t been there before.

Mireille stepped away and began to clean up the box that the android came in as she explained: “I gave you the most recent software package invented by the technological High Magis Guild. They’ve been tinkering as much with AI and magic as hackers have, but the Magis Guilds are practically untouchable.”

“When you said research assistant, you meant—“

“Yes. I meant Familiar assistant.”

The android was silent for a while, fans whirring quietly in the background, letting out heat from her rear vents. “I still have one more piece of set-up.”

Mireille stopped and dusted her hands, placing her fists on her hips. “What’s that?”

“I need a name.”

Mireille smiled. “I already thought of that. How does Kat sound?”

Kat learned the ropes quickly. Unlike most software, the custom software Mireille had borrowed from the Tech Guild didn’t include pre-built knowledge on how to function, partially because each witch was different in their craft, and partially because the amount of data stored on it was getting to its limit anyway.

What it did do, however, was release the inhibitors in Kat’s processors for self-awareness and loaded in capacity for feelings and free thought. The software was the seed. Only Kat could make it grow.

The first few days, Kat simply helped out in the garden. Mireille was a woman who didn’t much care for her looks, as not many people saw her on a normal basis, and she found it was better for evoking a reaction in her clients. Kat, although she was able to look things up on the internet, occasionally got the wrong answer for Mireille’s endless guess-that-herb games . Every so often, the sun would shine down on a bare spot between plants, and Kat would see the gleaming surface of a crystal, slightly buried in the dirt. Most of the time was spent weeding; it seemed that Mireille needed the extra help, as some portions of the garden were unfortunately infested with the unwanted foliage.

“I can only do so much myself,” Mireille said, tugging at a particularly strong weed with gloved hands. They were in the middle of the large herb garden growing out back, surrounded by poorly-maintained hedges. “It gets tiring. I have clients over and sometimes I don’t have the energy to garden.”

“Why would you do that?” Kat asked sincerely. “There are many places to find these in the city. For instance, this cilantro can easily be bought pre-dried.” The android held up a piece of cilantro that had fallen to the ground.

“That’s what my friends in the city tell me. Then again, they don’t do much with herbs and crystals anymore. The new craze is all about the tech.” The stubborn weed held on. “I guess I feel like the plants are closer to my heart this way, so I can use them more efficiently.”

Efficiency was something Kat could understand. “So it is a higher payoff to grow your own, despite difficulties maintaining the garden?”

Pop. Mireille held the conquered weed high and smiled at Kat. “Yep. Now are you ready for another pop quiz?”

The first client Kat had ever seen came to Mireille’s cabin four days after Kat had come to live there. Kat hadn’t noticed it, but Mireille had a storefront in the garage, which had a small walkway leading to the rest of the house—but otherwise, it was a separate building. A rather homey-looking interior, much like the rest of her living space, was accented by an old-fashioned wooden sales counter as well as a till, but Kat thought it looked so old as to be unusable. Otherwise, the walls were lined with a few animal skulls, star-shaped wall decorations, and shelves full of bottles and jars. A horseshoe hung above the garage door.

The client himself looked exhausted. His shoulders were hunched and his business casual attire did nothing to help his face, under-eyes gray and a steely set to his jaw. Kat had been sent to greet the man after the bell had rung while Mireille finished bottling up some freshly dried herbs. Kat came face-to-face with the man and put on her most friendly smile. (She didn’t realize it looked a bit too friendly.)

“Welcome, sir. Mireille will be with you in just a moment. My name is Kat. Is there anything I can get for y—“

Abruptly cutting her off, the man said irritably: “Get me a chair, now! I walked all the way out here.”

Not knowing why her hands were suddenly trembling a little, Kat did as instructed, fetching a fold-out lawn chair from behind the garage, and setting it up. The hunched-over man sat down with a sigh, not thanking her.

What Kat had learned was curiosity crept up on her suddenly. “Sir, can I please ask why you’re here?”

The man looked shocked to have the android speak up of her own accord, and stumbled a bit before replying. “Well, I, uh, Miss Klostermeier does a bang-up job with those energy-clearing hands she’s got. I have a really busy job, see, so I get all kinds of exhausted on the job. Might’ve had a stroke by now if it weren’t for her. Uh, I don’t remember seeing an android here before.”

Kat nodded. “I am Mireille’s new Familiar assistant.”

With that simple statement, the man’s eyes grew darker. “So that’s why…”

At that moment, Mireille came stumbling inside the shop. She nodded and smiled to Kat, who couldn’t help but smile back; Mireille had called this being happy. Kat was very happy to get a friendly look. Turning towards the client, Mireille clucked her tongue before going outside the counter to examine him more closely.

“George, what have I told you about skipping out on your meditation exercises? You look worse than usual,” Mireille said. “I’m assuming you’re going to want the same?”

“Yes, please,” George said.

Kat watched with fascination as George relaxed in his seat and Mireille began to lay her hands, first on his hunched-over back; then, gliding smoothly over his shirt, up his shoulders and lingering there; moving up his neck, she then brought her hands smoothly down to the base of his back, onto his legs, lingering at spots every so often. George gradually sat up straighter, and Mireille, for her part, had her eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance. Kat stared at her eyes, which in that moment seemed unfathomable.

After about ten minutes of going over the same area with her hands, Mireille stopped, eyes returning to normal. George stretched luxuriously.

“Ah, that feels so much better,” George said. “Thank you, Miss Klostermeier. I assume it will be the usual payment?”

Mireille nodded, turning briefly to look Kat in the eye. “Yes sir. You know my standard rate for healing magic, but only pay what you can afford. I’m not in the business of daylight robbery.”

“Yeah, yeah, a’ course,” George said, then handed her a wad of cash. It didn’t look like a lot of money, but Kat figured there was some method to her madness. “I’ll see you same time next month, Miss Klostermeier.”

The two said their goodbyes and George was off towards the main city. Kat stood awkwardly near the till as Mireille put in the cash she had just received, locking it with a small key around her neck. “Do know what just happened, Kat?” Mireille asked.

“Only that you had an exchange of a service for currency. I cannot speculate on the specifics,” Kat answered, already having thought of the answer.

“That was one of the most basic of healing magics. George is a regular of mine. He has a hellish job, and he lets himself get caught up in the bustle of work. He always comes in with the most tense muscles I have ever seen.”

“Wouldn’t he be able to fix it with a massage?” Kat asked. “Those are available in this city.”

Mireille looked at her with a smirk and beckoned her to follow. Behind the garage was a plethora of lawn supplies. Mireille took the lawn chair George had been sitting in and gestured for Kat to grab a chair and do the same.

“It’s not just his muscles,” Mireille explained. “It’s his mind and spirit. You’re right, a massage could easily fix tense muscles, but when George came to me he told me he had tried every masseuse in the city, and nothing had helped him. He tensed right back up within ten minutes.

“A skill I learned allows me to feel the energy of anyone I lay my hands on. All of his spiritual energy was blocked and stagnated, because his mind had seized up from all the stress. So I calm the mind, and get the energy flowing again. Simple as that.”

Kat considered it for a moment. “Is it similar to the electricity running through my system? The energy you speak of cannot be blood or oxygen, which is paramount to human function.”

“Don’t you have anything else running through your, uh, system?” Mireille asked.

“Coolant,” Kat replied.

“Well, let’s equate your coolant to blood, then. Without it, you’d overheat and have to shut down. Without blood or oxygen, humans die,” Kat explained. “But if your electricity was weakened, you wouldn’t cease to function, you would just get…I don’t know much about robotics, but I assume you’d get all glitchy. It’s kind of like that for living things, only most people don’t notice it. If your energy gets clogged you can feel sluggish and stuck and your body might ache more.”

A moment of silence passed between them as both watched the sun sink lower into the horizon over the greenery of the nature preserve; in the far distance Mireille could see skyscrapers over the trees of the forest separating her tiny backyard oasis from the rest of the preserve, and eventually the city.

“Am I not a living thing?” Kat asked, looking at Mireille with questioning emerald eyes.

Mireille’s eyes widened, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Uh. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that question?” she said, tugging awkwardly at her wild brown hair.

“Oh. I will have to ask others, then.” Kat said. Who these ‘others’ were, Mireille didn’t know.

After the sun sank below the city’s skyline and the clouds no longer reflected the pink-orange of sunset, the two abandoned their lawn chairs and returned to the cottage.

An android had no need for a bed. Specifically, androids were made to enter power-saving mode standing up so their owners could tuck them in an unobtrusive corner. Many owners, however, found this to be creepy: walking into their kitchens for a midnight snack and seeing a figure out of the corner of their eye was enough to wake up their whole neighborhoods, so often owners thought that laying the android down on the couch in a semblance of sleep might be better.

Kat knew all of this, as the information was freely available on the web. What she didn’t understand was why she had an entire room to herself. The first day there, Mireille had ushered her into the room, plain white walls, a bed with white linens, and a oak nightstand as well as a bookshelf and set of drawers, and said proudly that this was to be her room.

After attempting to explain that she had no need of this space, Mireille insisted. After an incident with a shattered cup of tea and a small burn, Mireille also insisted she use the bed when in power-saving mode.

It was a day approximately one week and three days after Kat had arrived that she roused herself from power-saving mode to find Mireille standing in the doorway, looking thoughtful as she examined the room.

“Is there something wrong?” Kat asked, and Mireille jumped a little bit before laughing.

“No, there’s nothing wrong,” Mireille said. “I was just thinking I need to get some supplies from the city.”

“Oh.” Kat blinked. “I thought you received your supplies by mail?”

Mireille looked mischievous for a moment. “Normally, yes. But these are special supplies. What would you say about a trip into the city?”

The trip from the nature preserve to the city was, as Mireille loudly proclaimed, “A huge chore” and one that she didn’t do very often. Indeed, Kat observed that Mireille spent most of the trip trying not to fall over various dead logs and gnarled tree roots.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just call a taxi,” Kat said after Mireille nearly fell and cursed a particularly old root.

“I can’t,” Mireille said. “I live on the nature preserve. It’s beautiful, and part of the way they keep it that way is by declaring it a no-fly zone except for special circumstances, like my deliveries, and even then they have to keep to a special route. Taxis are considered extraneous and disturbances to wildlife.”

Wildlife. Kat had seen some skittering in the forest, the creatures seeming to avoid her with extra care. Mireille noted it was odd that they scattered like that. Normally she had an uncanny ability to get close to the creatures in the forest.

After what seemed like “an eternity” to Mireille but was in fact only two hours by Kat’s reckoning, they reached the edge of the preserve. A large gate made of iron (an anachronism in the age of reliable plasteel) opened once Mireille properly identified herself to the gate controls, and at once Kat was greeted with the sight of the city.

As it was close to midday, the street was bustling with people heading to lunch. The sun reflected harshly off the white skyscrapers and smooth concrete labeled with paths for pedestrians. Light glinted off the windows of shops, and Mireille shaded her eyes. “I should’ve brought sunglasses,” she muttered.

It was like stepping into a different world. Where once there was the womb of the forest to dapple the sunlight gently on Kat’s synthetic skin and soft earth to step on, the city was both wide-open and claustrophobic. The street that ringed the perimeter of the nature preserve was quickly left behind as Mireille struggled with navigating through the crowds of people. Kat, turning on her life-monitoring systems, also noticed that her heart rate was rapidly increasing and breath becoming shallow.

Catching up to Mireille who seemed intent on leading the way, Kat, with the most ginger of touches, grasped Mireille’s free hand.

A new emotion, one Kat didn’t have the word for, flooded her mind. She could feel the warmth emanating from Mireille’s hand, seeping through her synthetic skin into her sensors, and when Mireille turned to look her brown eyes seemed to glow golden from the sunlight. The world stopped for a moment when their eyes met.

And then it was over, and Mireille looked down. “Kat, you…”

“I noticed you seemed to be becoming anxious,” Kat said. “I…thought that a reassuring touch would be beneficial.”

Mireille smiled warmly. “Thank you, Kat. It is. Shall we go?”

The streets seemed to part ways for them then, Mireille no longer struggling to find the correct street. Instead of what Kat had calculated would be a shop that sold the items Mireille used, they stepped inside a department store.

Mireille, still holding Kat’s hand, made a beeline for the bedding section.

“Kat,” Mireille asked innocently, looking at the android. “Do you have a favorite color?”

Kat tilted her head. “I have no color preferences.”

Mireille scoffed. “That software I loaded you with included a capacity for aesthetic preference.”

Kat shook her head. “I still…don’t think I have one.”

Mireille thought in silence for a few seconds, then nodded, deciding something to herself. “Okay. Let me grab some things, and you pick whatever you’re drawn to the most.

Mireille bustled to and fro, gathering bedsheets from various corners of the store. Finally, she laid them all out on a display bed and positioned Kat in front of them.

They were the spectrum of the rainbow, all plain.

“I’m confused,” Kat said. “What is the purpose of picking a set of sheets?”

Mireille sighed in frustration. “Just pick the one you’re drawn to. And don’t just pick one randomly!”

Kat nodded and looked back at the sheets. She let her eyes rest over each one. The red sheet was the color of the roses in the backyard, bright, but she held no special fondness for it. Orange the color of the sunset—beautiful, she realized, it was aesthetically beautiful—but not any more special than the red. This continued until she came to the set of blue sheets.

They were the color of the sky at its apex during the day, and something must have shown on her face, because Mireille grinned. “I…prefer the blue, although green comes somewhat close,” Kat said.

“Blue it is!”

As they were picking out the sheets, other customers had begun to stare. Once Mireille had picked up the blue set of sheets, she finally noticed them, and she shrank into herself a bit.

Without prompting or checking to see what her vital signs were, Kat again grasped her hand gently, and could feel her pulse relax.

They hurried through the checkout, and once outside, Mireille let out a sigh. “That’s one stop down.”

“This wasn’t the supply you were looking for?” Kat asked.

“Only one of them,” Mireille said, grinning again. They pushed through the streets and headed off to another mystery destination.

Before three, they were carrying the blue set of sheets, a can of turquoise paint, a glass statue of a blue dolphin Kat had lingered at, and two posters, one of the ocean and the other of the schematics of the first permanent civilian space-station. All of these items Mireille insisted upon after Kat had spent a considerable time examining them. The ocean was aesthetically pleasing, like the sunset, and the schematics gave Kat a sense of pleasure to ponder.

Mireille announced they were going to their last stop for the day, and headed towards an alley situated between two skyscraper bases. Here the sun didn’t reach, and the formerly pristine concrete had accumulated a bit of dirt and trash from the city’s passers-by.

At the end of the alley was a spartan staircase leading to a door that looked just like any other back entrance. They climbed the stairs and Mireille knocked three times.

The door opened a crack, then swung wide, revealing a woman with fiery red hair and brown eyes whose smile seemed to take up the width of her freckle-covered face.

“Mir!” the stranger said, embracing Mireille, still laden with goods. Mireille just accepted the hug and leaned in, unable to return it.

“Jas! It’s so good to see you,” Mireille said. Jas affirmed and ushered Mireille into the darkly-lit interior, pausing when her eyes met Kat.

“You got a CHO-XV3? That’s…unexpected,” Jas said, but motioned for her to come in. Kat complied.

“Her name is Kat,” Mireille said. Kat’s eyes quickly adjusted to the dim lighting; the interior of the house was made much like Mireille’s cottage, but Kat could tell it was only a façade. The wood was stained dark, with a thread of LED light casting the room in a violet wash. There were overhead lights, but the fixtures of atmospheric lighting seemed to be more to Jas’s  liking.

Jas appraised her, and Kat felt a flush of what Mireille had identified as worry. But she nodded in approval. “I can see why you made the decisions you did, Mir. I like her. You loaded her with the software from the Guild?”

“I did.”

“How’s she coming along?”

The two continued like this, speaking as though Kat were not in the room. As they spoke, a feeling began to grow, finally culminating when Kat said suddenly. “I don’t enjoy being spoken about like this.”

The two paused, Jas’s eyes fascinated and Mireille’s looking like a cross of horrified and embarrassed.

“Far indeed,” Jas said. “I’m sorry, Kat. I moonlight as an IT guy sometimes. I’m used to androids being practically non-sentient.”

“Sentient?”

“Aware of one’s own existence as a single entity.”

Kat looked down to her feet. “Oh.”

Mireille was suddenly at her side. “It was rude of us to talk like you weren’t here,” Mireille said. “I apologize. Why don’t you come and sit?”

Jas let out a breath. “An organic apologizing to an android. That ain’t something you see every day. Mir’s gonna get some techcraft supplies, so why don’t we have a little chat, Kat?”

Jas was insatiably curious. In their short conversation, Kat learned the names for the emotions she had yet to acquire labels for, learned that the illegal software had started as Jas’s brainchild, and that Jas was a talented tech witch.

A squeal came from Mireille’s direction, who had retreated into a back room down a hallway. She came rushing out, holding a somewhat porky orange tabby. “I found Mouser!”

Without ceremony, Mireille plopped Mouser down on the worn couch and began to coo at him and play with his ears. Mouser seemed to tolerate the attention, and Jas just watched amusedly. Catching Kat’s curious gaze, Jas explained:

“Mouser is my familiar. Well, my pet, but he helps out in my craft, too.” Jas got up and stroked the cat, picking him up (much to Mireille’s dismayed whining) and sat him on Kat’s lap.

Kat was prepared for the animal to run away screeching, but instead the tabby just looked up at her with his big brown eyes, blinking slowly and waving his tail lazily back and forth. Tentatively, she reached out to pat his head, and found that his fur was pleasantly soft. The cat leaned into her touch.

Jas smiled. “He likes you.”

“All the other animals were scared of her in the forest,” Mireille said. “I don’t get it.”

“Ah, dear Mir, my Mouser is always a little ahead of the game when it comes to people,” Jas said. “The others will catch up eventually.”

Saying their goodbyes to Jas, Kat and Mireille headed out as the sky turned to a star-speckled indigo, a ring of magenta on the horizon. The city streets were only a little less crowded, it seemed, though the swarm of people grew thicker with every passing minute. Lights illuminating walkways began to turn on as the sky grew darker and the two hurriedly scurried along the streets, weighed down with their acquired treasures.

The trip back through the woods was made all the more grueling in the dark, with Kat lighting the way (Mireille had been unaware android’s eyes also functioned as emergency flashlights). Mireille thought it a feat that she only tripped twice, and somehow her supplies, tucked in brown wrapping paper, remained intact through the whole trip. It was deeply dark when they finally made it back to the cottage, and Mireille made a beeline straight for Kat’s room, collapsing on the white cotton sheets with a huff of effort.

“If it’s okay with you, let’s wait until tomorrow to redecorate your room, huh? I’m beat.”

Kat blinked curiously at her. “Redecorate?”

Sitting up, Mireille lifted an eyebrow. “Well, obviously. What did you think those sheets were for? And the decorations? My room is way too crowded with stuff already. I wanted you to pick out stuff you liked.”

Kat wasn’t certain what to say in response. “I don’t need new decorations, Mireille. I can perform optimally with what I currently have. It is more than enough, in fact.”

Mireille twisted her mouth into a half-smile. “Kat, why are you still acting like I only want you around because you’re a mach—an android?” She stumbled over the word machine.

“I thought I was here to assist you with your craft and be your personal assistant,” Kat said, suddenly uncertain as to where the conversation was going. “This level of caring for an android like myself is…unnecessary, according to the knowledge I was created with.”

Suddenly turning serious, Mireille stood up, looking at Kat evenly in the eye. “I didn’t want you because I needed an unthinking assistant to do all my hard work for me,” she said, even-toned. “I wanted you because I needed a new familiar. And a familiar is much more than just a simple assistant.”

Kat felt more hot air than usual expelling through the vents on her back, cooling mechanisms whirring a little harder to compensate for the inexplicable rising heat within her body. “I was never told what being a familiar assistant involved. Surely if an animal can do it, you wouldn’t have needed an android?”

Mireille grasped her shoulder firmly but reassuringly. “Being a familiar is about being in a witch’s total confidence. Two souls meet in the middle to create a powerful craft borne of love and trust, not of servitude. Animals are traditional, but that doesn’t mean a familiar is less than her witch. Familiars are invaluable collaborators. No one witch can do it alone. And I…tried.”

Her voice faltered, and she withdrew her hand. “Mireille?” Kat asked, searching her suddenly darkened expression.

“I’m going to go to bed,” she said simply. “Tomorrow, we redecorate. Then I’m going to teach you about the Sabbat.”

Kat simply watched as Mireille walked down the hallway and disappeared into her room.

One Year Ago:

It was only midday and already Mir had come for tea and a chat, as she had so often these past few weeks; Jas was wondering if the girl was going to up and move in soon. They were sitting on the roof underneath a pieced-together shade attached to the neighboring building via duct tape and a prayer . It was necessary to keep the midday sun from beating down on the white roof. Still, they barely said a word as they sipped their cool drinks and watched the people pass by on the streets below.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Jas said abruptly.

“Keep doing what?” Mir said, looking innocently over at Jas.

“I know it’s lonely at home since…since it happened, but you can’t just keep stuffing it up with tea and conversation. It isn’t healthy, especially for someone your age.”

Mir shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Where did that come from all the sudden? And screw age. We both know neither of us act like we’re in our 190’s.”

Jas took another sip. “You damn well know I know, Mir. For the love of the gods, I’m an empath. I know when one of my friends is hurting.”

A moment of silence passed as Mir’s expression soured. “How am I supposed to move on, Jas? You know as well as I do that Belle was special. You can’t just replace a familiar like her.”

“I never said anything about replacing her,” Jas said. “It’s just how it is. You can never replace a true witch’s familiar. What I’m saying is, you can’t keep living alone.”

In the distance, a car honked, and a stranger on the street below waved to the rooftop pair randomly. Jas waved back briefly, but continued. “I know you want to be independent. We all do. It’s just one of those things. It’s why coven meetings are so damn rare nowadays. But you’ve been alone long enough. Belle’s death just made it clearer.”

Mir twitched when Jas said ‘death’, but otherwise remained quiet for a few seconds, chewing over Jas’s words in her mind. “Well, what do you suggest I do? Join the dating pool or something?”

“Nah, you’d never land a fish from this ocean,” Jas said light-heartedly, laughing. “And besides, you do need a new familiar. Those are hard to come across. But you know that idea I had about custom android software?”

Mir scoffed at the mention of androids. “Uh-huh.”

“The tech guild up and ran with my idea. They’re going to start production on it. I know you aren’t the biggest fan of them, but hey, with my design, an android could be a familiar AND a decent assistant…”

Kat did not enter power-saving mode that night. Something kept gnawing at her thought processes, and in the end, she stared at the new blue accoutrements and examining her room, thinking.

Her room. Mireille had provided it for her knowing she didn’t need it. Maybe she didn’t know it wasn’t customary to give her kind a space. She wasn’t sure. But the more she stared, and the longer she went without lying down and saving her power consumption, the more her thoughts started to become disorganized and frayed.

In the end, she decided, she did want the room. Not because she needed it, but because…because…

Kat had asked an online forum for androids whether or not she was able to be considered a ‘living thing’ and more often than not, the responses came back:

No.

No, and the other androids were treated as an appliance or even as a novelty. They were objects to be marketed, like Mireille’s herbal tonics and creams. They were useful, but not deserving of respect. And the more responses like this poured in the more a feeling grew inside her, small at first and then growing in strength. Something she had never felt before--like a spark turning into a white-hot coal where her stomach might have been if she was human.

And so that’s how Mireille found her the next morning: seemingly having dropped where she sat sometime in the middle of the night when it was deemed necessary for her to enter power-saving mode by force, gripping the glass dolphin gently.

Kat woke hours later as the sun was well into the sky and streaming through her ivy-covered window, tucked underneath the sheets and blanket for the first time, dolphin set delicately on top of her drawers and all the accessories they had bought the previous day stacked neatly next to it. Kat gingerly got out of bed, wondering if the blanket had always seemed this soft and then noticed a note in Mireille’s scrawling handwriting on the drawers.

Noticed you passed out last night, n thought to tuck you in. Sleep as long as you want, will be working in the garden n preparing for sabbat tonight. Meet me whenever youre feeling up to it!

Love Mireille

As promised, she was in the garden, but not doing the weeding Kat had been expecting; instead, Mireille was seated near one of the hedges, cross-legged with her eyes closed.

Approaching snapped her out of her reverie, however, and Mireille smiled a little sheepishly. “Hey Kat. I’m sorry if I seemed weird last night. It’s just…”

Kat shook her head. “Please don’t be sorry. It was best if I heard that, I think. I have another question for you, Mireille.”

Perking up, Mireille seemed to give her the go-ahead. “Last night I experienced a new emotion. I have asked my fellow androids whether or not I am a ‘living thing’.” Understanding dawned on Mireille’s face. ‘Others’, indeed. “They ubiquitously replied in the negative. They say we are only meant to be appliances, but that can’t be right. I’m not just an appliance. An appliance doesn’t become a witch’s equal,” Kat said, voice rising and getting faster without her saying so. “What is this feeling I have? Like fire, here.” Kat pointed to her would-be stomach.

Mireille’s face looked suddenly a little more serious. “Kat, I think you’ve gotten your first taste of anger.”

Anger. Yes, that seemed about right.

“What is anger good for?” Kat asked. “I do not see its use beyond making me feel…worse than I ever have.”

Mireille stood up and stretched. “As a witch, I must understand a great many things about emotion. The energy of it, its effect on the human body and its uses.” Mireille began to pace. “Anger is potent. It’s the merging of passion and hatred. And if it’s excessive, it can pollute the soul in most people. But it can also be a powerful force for change. It is one part passion, after all, and that is the most useful tool in a witch’s arsenal.” Looking Kat straight in the face, Mireille continued. “Anger can be freeing just as it can be poisonous, because once you’ve allowed yourself to feel it, you can accept that something is wrong, and begin to work for change.”

Change. Kat kept silent and thought about the hundreds of androids who had replied to her question.

“I have one more feelings question,” Kat said. “Why is it than when I hold your hand—“ as if to prove it to herself, Kat reached and took a hold of Mireille’s thick, strong hand—“I feel as though suddenly I am much warmer than I was before?”

Mireille smiled, her cheeks reddening. “Where do you feel this, Kat?”

Kat lifted her finger to point at where her heart might be.

“I think we need to find that out for ourselves.” Suddenly, Mireille pressed her lips to Kat’s cheek. “Come. I have to teach you about the Sabbat before it gets dark.”

It was only twice a year when the witches of the city gathered to form a coven: the summer and winter solstices were agreed upon as the necessary time for witches to convene as they had in times past. Jas and Mireille were among the oldest of this current generation Mireille had explained to Kat. As such, they were to choose the witches that would lead the Rite.

It was just before sundown when all had gathered in a clearing of trees on the nature preserve. Kat had explained that this particular preserve had been used by witches in previous generations, and had no small part in ensuring that it was saved from the onslaught of urbanization. Each witch was dressed in a black cloak. Kat would have thought she stood out being dressed in a white cloak, until she noticed several similarly-dressed figures and realized with a small start that she was looking at other androids, models that were anywhere from years older than her to only months.

As the sun set on the horizon, a black-cloaked woman stepped forward with her white-cloaked android companion, a male model with piercing gold eyes that met Kat’s, and the summer Rite began.

It was like nothing Kat had been expecting, even with Mireille’s explanations. Witches, so much older than they appeared to be, called names of gods long-forgotten by the public; there were prayers, pleas, and the leader of the Rite took on what Mireille explained was a god’s energy, to restore something to the witches present that had been lost since the last solstice. Kat was unable to explain it, but even she could feel something fluttering where her heart would have been.

As the Rite came to a close, and the witches mingled, some heading back home in the dark, some staying, Kat found that Mireille’s once empty home was now full of people—and androids. They eyed her and smiled to themselves.

Some chose to stay the night rather than walk home in the darkness. This included Jas, who had decided to claim the couch in the living room. As Kat headed off to bed, Mireille caught her by the sleeve.

“Kat, what if I stayed in your room? Just for tonight? Someone, er, needs a bed to sleep on.” Mireille’s face was reddening again.

Kat nodded and smiled, feeling heat rising in her again, and the two settled in the white sheets. Kat found herself again enjoying the soft weight of the blanket. Without saying anything, Mireille curled around her, draping her arm across Kat’s torso and tucking her head into the soft curve of her neck.

“Tomorrow we’re going to paint this room,” Mireille said, already sounding sleepy.

“We will,” Kat said, and they both fell asleep in the darkness, illuminated in the soft glow of the moon.