#the gradient limbs i’m going insane

[onetaho]

SUMMER ALASTOR!!!!!!!

[cotgar2]

Hi hi!! I’m getting into drawing humans and I would love to see your process for your lined and coloured digital pieces! I would also love some advice for drawing in any nature if you can~

No problem at all!! Sorry this took a minute to get to, but I wanted to get a good drawing to show a step by step process for lol. And since I’m extremely aware of the fact that my handwriting’s crap lol, under the cut is a transcription!

NOTE: I’M NOT AN EXPERT. THERE ARE TOTALLY BETTER EXPLANATIONS OUT THERE LOL

Roughs, imo, help just understand wtf you’re doing lol. They don’t have to be neat in any sense, and they just serve the purpose of you understanding how you’re gonna go about whatever

I am literally insane and do lines in one layer 99% of the time. And usually my “lines” are what most artists consider their sketch. I’m just an impatient artist fhfhdbfb

In my experience, changing the lines after helps find spots that were missed when coloring much easier! Whether that’s with the fill bucket or by hand, it’s super annoying when it misses stuff. Happens to the best of us

If I could marry a stage of art, it’s these two. I feel like I black out and wake up when I do them, but they’re so fun. I apologize for the last one not really having advice, but it seriously is up to the artist on what to do here! I add gradients with different layer types to make colors pop, but the colors can change depending on where they are or even what character it is. There’s no set-in-stone advice there, at least in my experience, and that can go for both stages 4 and 5.

AND I GOT A HUGE TIP FOR DRAWING HUMANS: REFERENCES!!! USE THEM!!!! I am a big fucking idiot for not using them more, since a kid I’ve been resistent and IDK WHY, IM A BIG STUPID IDIOT, USE REFERENCES PLEASE. It helps so much and makes your art make sense. By that, I mean that the gestures are so much clearer and everything. Your best reference? YOU!! Take a photo of yourself doing a stupid-ass pose! I did that for my recent animation, where this exact frame was taken from me, posing in front of my camera!

(His fuckin pancakes :,( fhshhd im sorry)

Do not be scared to use references, please. I beg of you, I beg of ANYONE reading this. USE REFERENCES. TAKE STUPID CRINGE PHOTOS OF YOURSELF FOR YOUR ART.

Hope that helped!! And again I am not a professional and none of this is saying to copy me exactly. It’s purposefully leaving out some of my process so you can explore your own approach at drawing humans! I wish you luck, anon!! :Dcc

Transcript:

1) “Rough”. Note: A sketch doesn’t have to be this defined!! Gets shape and definition; understanding where limbs / hair / clothes go, consistent dynamics. General understanding of what to do, basically. Pointing at dog face: Wasn’t in final, and that’s okay! (Extra image: I wouldn’t worry about this, but this just shows how the dynamics try to flow. Basically just up lol)

1) “Rough”. Note: A sketch doesn’t have to be this defined!! Gets shape and definition; understanding where limbs / hair / clothes go, consistent dynamics. General understanding of what to do, basically. Pointing at dog face: Wasn’t in final, and that’s okay! (Extra image: I wouldn’t worry about this, but this just shows how the dynamics try to flow. Basically just up lol)

1) “Rough”. Note: A sketch doesn’t have to be this defined!! Gets shape and definition; understanding where limbs / hair / clothes go, consistent dynamics. General understanding of what to do, basically. Pointing at dog face: Wasn’t in final, and that’s okay! (Extra image: I wouldn’t worry about this, but this just shows how the dynamics try to flow. Basically just up lol)

2) Lines/Cleanup. Multiple stages can happen!!! Defines shapes… And that all I kinda do loll. Lineart differs from person to person! I personally try not to use the stabilizer unless I need to, just to give it a hand-drawn look! Though that definitely has its downsides… This part takes me the longest…

3) Flats. I usually don’t put too much work into this step. I don’t change lines until after flats! Pointing to dog face: No more mouth! Pointing to bottom image: For stylistic purposes, I put the highlights from JJK (Jujutsu Kaisen) here too

[thread-theocracy]

Satan Demon Form Redesign 💚🔥

[More Info Below / Demon Form Redesigns ]

Preliminary Thoughts / Word Salad

DISCLAIMER: NO CHARACTER DESIGN IS PERFECT! I designed these with my tastes in mind (these are purely subjective). I did not make these to insult the developers and their hard work. I also didn’t make these to fight with other people in the fandom (let me be a freak in peace)!

While I’m a fan of Satan, I personally dislike his demon form. A lot. His canon form seems… rushed? An afterthought? There are parts that I like (the weird rib cage ribbon is interesting to me), but most of it is… eh??? Anyways I think he deserved better, at least in some aspects of visual design. While most of Beel’s redesign were additions to his existing form, most of Satan’s are changes.

Satan’s visual design centers around opposing Lucifer in every possible way. Be it bright color palettes or asymmetry, he dresses in a way to visually solidify a unique identity for himself. Also, asymmetry, at least in my perspective, plays a lot into concepts of ‘imperfection’ and ‘incompletion’ and I think it works in showing his perception of self / forming an identity outside of Lucifer (later lessons hint that Satan feels like an inadequate copy of him). Anyway, those are the main focuses of this design. I’m grasping at straws and I feel like I’m going insane. <3

[ I’m monologuing too much. Onto the actual redesign.]

Redesign Info

With this redesign, there are two components.

----

The first form is a dormant one, with black gradients covering the limbs of the body (soot-like) and smoke coming out of arms and hooves legs.

Summary Info / HCs

Smoke erupting from limbs (can also emerge from eyes and mouth)

Black gradients on arms + legs

Detached / Suspended hooves feet (Wanted to make him seem ‘incomplete’)

Black sclera + Greener eyes

Cracks in horns

----

The second form is an ignited version of the first, with flames replacing the smoke.

He usually reaches this form when he’s pushed to a certain edge. The first form is a warning and the second form is the final outcome to most scenarios / gags.

Summary Info / HCs

Fire erupting from limbs (can also emerge from eyes and mouth)

Glowing veins + Transparent skin (parts of the bone can be also seen underneath)

Glowing Eyes + Mouth

Flames crack through the skin like molten lava on dark rock (Shows in cracks in horns as well)

The stronger / longer he burns, the more parts of his body turn to ash / detach. If it’s too much, all that’s left is a crooked black skeleton on fire :D

He’ll slowly recover overtime if he goes over the line

Will his outfit burn off when he ignites??? (only when I want it to)

----

Outfit

Portions are mostly mish-mashed from his different canon outfits: Outfit cropping like his butler outfit, Satan (™) coat draping like his casual / human world, button-up from his TSL, etc.

Lots of the implementations of the outfit take inspiration directly from his canon demon form. Gold patterning is taken from his belt, metal harness? taken from his ribcage bow concept, etc

Tried to implement the boa / fluff / feathers into the coat. I could never form an outfit and keep the boa. It drives me nuts

----

Additional Undrawn Concepts

More detached / suspended portions of his body

The smoke that comes out of his body can materialize into weapons? Hazardous objects?

If he blows himself up too much he just turns to ashes. Slowly reforms over time.

Transparent skin goes a bit farther and you can maybe see his rib cage / organs? Maybe take it a step further and instead of the ribcage ribbon it’s an open top with a distorted rib cage popping out?

----

Credits

R02-obey-me: Satan tail brush. Used as base -> rendered over / cleaned.

[bakatenshii]

Ok if I’m just going insane pls slap me or stab me or something but were u the one (it has to be u Bc I remember someone screeching in the tags) who said they were writing mafia Kenma? If so, w-would u spare a crumb snippet

AHHHH HI HI OMG I CANT BELIEVE U REMEMBERRR, YES THATS ME! mayhaps someone else also is but I do indeed have a mafia kenma wip that’s only like a few paragraphs in rn heheh but here! a crumb for u my love:

It’s loud, too loud. The neons flash in kaleidoscopes, twisting up exposed spines, traveling past sweaty limbs slick with gradients of reflective strobes. Kuroo takes three steps in, the fuchsia flickers twice, Kenma blinks once— the bass cranks up higher, and a body sways only remotely off-beat.

The eyes that stare back into his are unblinking, glazed over with a sheen of euphoria, veiled gently by—

A nudge at his arms propels him forward, surging him into the crowd, into the tangling bodies, into your body that’s not longer swaying off-beat; no longer swaying at all.

You’re pretty, too pretty— not that he’s surprised; it’s what to expect given the job. A middleman, that’s why he’s here, why Kuroo’s dragged him to the club he owns that he never comes to, because Kenma doesn’t do clubs.

Kenma doesn’t really do crowds either, or social interactions; the young master of the Kozume family leaves all the lip service to his right hand man.

[themummersfolly]

I will probably not enter this in the contest I wrote it for, but I’m proud of it anyway.

@aerialsquid, @ardenrosegarden, you will probably like this. It involves ghosts and extinct cephalopods.

The Ordovician Testament

           I guess it all started the day we opened a new fracture at the Dakota site. I was a consulting geologist, monitoring pressure gradients in the wellbore while they pumped slurry in to widen the crack.

           “We’re about ready to start extracting,” the site manager told me. I nodded.

           “You know what the downside is to this process? No fossils.”

           “What, like dinosaurs?”

           “No, no, we’re in the wrong place for that. See right here,” I pointed to a chart, a map of the wellbore. “We’re right on the edge of the Ordovician shale. The fossils in this layer would be shellfish, trilobites, corals…”

           “You collect ‘em?”

           “Sort of. But that’s only part of it. Think of what we can learn from them, the picture they paint of the way the world was during that time…”

           I could see the manager’s eyes glazing over. He didn’t care that much about geology, as long as it wasn’t working against him. As long as the well kept producing.

           At last, the oil started to flow.

           “Hell yeah!” The manager grinned. “This is a good one!”

           I grinned back. The company had gone out on a limb with this site; my team had been pushing for it, and it had paid off.

           I was still thinking about the nice fat end-of-year bonus we’d be getting when my vision started to change. Everything in the monitoring station took on an electric glow. I blinked. It didn’t go away; in fact, it was getting stronger. A faint tension appeared far behind my eyes.

           “Hey, Greg, I’m gonna punch out early today. I think I’m getting a migraine.”

           The manager glanced back at me. “Yeah, sure. We should be good for a while. Be careful.”

           Halfway down the highway, the pain set in. I pulled into the first motel I saw, managed to hold it together long enough to book in, stagger to my room, and collapse.

-------

           To this day I haven’t had as bad a headache as that one. I was in that motel room for three days: two of them trying to fight off the pain, the third too wrung-out to move. When my team members called to check on me, they told me to go to the hospital. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have.

           As bad as it was, the pain wasn’t the worst part. Whenever I fell asleep, I saw colors. Bright, vivid, solid colors, blinding primaries, rapid-fire pastels, swirling psychedelic neons. It sounds nice, but at the time it was like being kicked repeatedly in the brain. My head was full of colors that gave me no peace and made no sense.

           And the mood swings – one minute I was bawling my eyes out, the next, I was ready to rip the lamp out of the wall and throw it across the room. At one point I was up for about twenty-four hours straight, bouncing from rage to depression to manic glee, faintly aware than there was something wrong with me.

           About 3 am on the third day of my stay, the pain broke enough to get a coherent thought through, and that thought was that I might have been poisoned. My next thought, which occurred maybe forty minutes later, was that the worst of it was over and I might as well try to get some sleep.

           This time, I dreamt of an ocean.

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           I didn’t have any more symptoms after that, although as soon as I was up I made an appointment to get checked out. Everything came back normal, and the doctor gave me a referral to a neurologist if I kept having migraines. I didn’t call, but I held on to the number. The pain and hallucinations were gone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t over.

           In the following days and weeks, I kept coming back to that thought. Every now and then, my head would fill up with colors again. And I kept dreaming about oceans. Not like I was at the beach or sailing or scuba diving; I was disembodied, submerged in a sea I didn’t recognize. When I was awake, I would get flashes of sights and smells, like when a memory jogs, but in response to the most random things. And I was remembering things I had never seen.

           Come to think of it, I was having a lot of intrusive thoughts, and I had a growing sense that I wasn’t alone. In the middle of the night, I would wake up thinking something had brushed past me; a search of the house would show it was empty. At work, on the long drive to the site – I felt like if I looked over my shoulder fast enough, I would see… something.

           “I feel like there’s another mind inside my head,” I said.

           “Maybe you should see a doctor,” offered Greg.

           I didn’t really want to see a shrink. But when invisible tentacles wrapped around me in the shower, I decided to bite the bullet.

           “Stress,” the psychiatrist said after talking to me. She suggested I take some time off work. But she wanted to schedule a follow-up, soon. She was worried.

           I had some vacation time, and the nearest airport was advertising cheap flights to Mexico. If I was having a nervous breakdown, might as well have it in Puerto Vallarta with a drink in my hand. On the flight the intrusive thoughts seemed to slack off; but during the final approach, when I looked out the window and saw the Pacific, my vision exploded with purple and teal. Ocean, ocean, ocean! I had to reach for the airsickness bag.

-------

           Whatever this is, it’s connected to the sea. I spent the first day of my trip lying in my hotel room with the blinds drawn, going over and over the past weeks. I wasn’t in any pain, but the thing in my head – I was increasingly sure that it was something separate from me – whatever it was had gotten more agitated since I arrived in PV. This all started in a rented room like this… Had anything unusual happened around that time? Did I eat something, or interact with anyone who acted strange? No, the only thing that had happened was we’d opened a new fracture at the wellbore…

           I sat up straight. That was the day this had started. Either that headache had done me permanent damage, or oil wasn’t the only thing that had come up the wellbore.

           I squeezed my eyes shut, shouted mentally at the source of the colors and visions. Hey! What the hell are you?

-------

           A neighboring hotel had a hypnotist doing nightly shows. Expert in multiple personality disorder, said his brochure. Underneath, it listed another of his specialties: contacting past lives.

           This is insane, I thought as I knocked on his door.

           I’d called ahead, asking if I could meet with him privately, since I didn’t want to work out my issues in front of a crowd. The fee was a little steep, but he sounded intrigued by my symptoms and offered to meet me before a show.

           If he was a quack, at least he was professional about it. He explained up front what would and would not happen and what might happen, and then he put me into a trance.

           You are completely safe, nothing can hurt you. You allow all thoughts to exist. You float through all levels of consciousness like a warm, peaceful…

           OCEAN.

           I was disembodied, submerged in sunlit waters. Beside me rose a coral reef; below it spread meadows and forests of seaweed. Sea-pens and sea-lilies sprouted everywhere. Below me, rustling through mud and algae –

           Trilobites?!

           They were trilobites. Little Asaphus kowalewskii with its eyestalks – I had a fossil of that one in my collection. And a Paraceraurus, all horns and spines, blindingly iridescent.

           And off in the murky distance, the outline of a gigantic, drifting cone.

           This sea hadn’t existed for over 400 million years.

-------

           “When I snap my fingers, you will return to the waking world.”

           On cue, I opened my eyes. The hypnotist stared at me, his face sweaty. His assistant had her phone out, poised to make a call.

           “You should have told me you are an epileptic!” he started.

           “What?”

           “When you were in the trance – you slumped down, you were making faces. When I spoke to you, it was like you couldn’t understand me. You tried to speak and a noise like an animal came out! Do you remember anything?”

           “Yeah, I… I was in an ocean. Like the one in my dreams, only I could see it clearly this time.”

           The hypnotist stared at me, chewing his lip. “Can you describe this ocean?”

           “Shallow, lots of light coming through the water. It was full of extinct creatures.” If I concentrated, I could picture it clearly.

           “Extinct creatures – perhaps a manifestation of your oneness with all life, past and present –”

           “No, no, a real ocean with an ecosystem that’s been extinct for millions of years. Like the fossil record came alive, like I travelled back in time or something.”

           He and his assistant exchanged glances. “How are you feeling now?”

           “Okay – a little loopy. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten.”

           He motioned to his assistant. She put down her phone, dug in her purse, handed me a candy bar.

           “I’ve never seen a case like yours,” he said. “If you’re willing, I’d like to see you after tonight’s show. There are a few things I can try that might make sense of this.”

-------

           The hypnotist’s assistant walked me down to the hotel restaurant; I think she was afraid I would have another episode on the way. Once I had eaten, I stretched out on a couch in the lobby, but didn’t sleep. If I let my mind wander, I could see subdued colors at the edges of my vision, could feel tentacles drifting loosely around me.

           The hypnosis show was over around 10 pm. When the last of the audience had filtered out, I went in for my second appointment.

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           “You are completely safe and at peace. You are alone in a comfortable room. No one who enters this room can harm you.”

           “Okay.” In my mind’s eye, the room looked a lot like the hypnotist’s hotel room.

           “There is a knock on the door. It is the source of the visions you’ve been having.”

           There was water outside the window, ocean water. A school of finless, heavy-headed fish swam by.

           “Remember: nothing that enters this room can harm you. You are completely safe. You open the door and invite your guest inside.”

           I did just that.

           “What do you see?”

           “It’s – it’s an ammonoid. No, it’s an older species. An Ordovician nautiloid.” Awake, I might have been scared. But in the trance it was no worse than coming face to face with a noisy neighbor. Big eyes, with square pupils like a goat’s, stared at me over a mass of gently swaying tentacles; behind them, a shell curved away in a loose spiral. It drifted in, swimming through the room as if still in the water.

           “You are completely safe. You can ask it any question you want.”

           So I did. “What are you?”

           The creature’s eyes turned purple. On the mantle covering the end of its shell, a rippling hounds-tooth pattern appeared.

           “It’s changing color. I think – I think it’s trying to communicate.”

           “You are one with your guest. You feel its thoughts and feelings as your own.”

           He was right. Desire to be understood. Identity. The colors, each with a concept attached to them.

           “It’s the name of its species,” I realized. “Purple is happy, blessed. The other pattern – it’s more complex. I don’t quite get it. It’s one of the Blessed Somethings.” Another wash of thought. “It has a question for me.”

           “What is the question?”

           “It wants to know if I’m – if I’m a squid? A nautiloid? No, it’s asking if I’m a person, like a sentient being. Yes, yes I am. Are you?”

           A pale blue swirl of annoyance. Of course I am.

           “You can ask your guest any question.”

           I mulled it over. “How did you get here? Inside my head, I mean.”

           In response, a riot of colors and patterns.

           “I don’t understand. Can you show me?”

           One long, smooth feeler reached out to the window and touched the glass. I followed it and looked out.

           The seaweed was gone, and most of the algal mat. All the coral had turned gray. Overhead, the surface of the water creaked and groaned: ice. The sea was cold and sour.

           “Ordovician extinction,” I said.

           Death. Empty shells. Only the mindless drift-feeders were left.

           The new fracture had been near the top edge of the Ordovician shale. “You were trapped there. We let you out.”

           Affirmation. Confused affirmation.

           “What do you want?”

           The colors turned muddy. It had no idea; it hadn’t asked for any of this.

           “Can I talk to you again sometime?”

           Affirmation, and relief.

-------

           There were six days left in my vacation. I decided to spend them learning to meditate.

           The hypnotist offered several theories about what was going on, mainly “past life regression” and “ancestral memories.” My theory, and the one I was going with, was that we had somehow turned loose an ancient ghost, and I was being haunted. Actually, it wasn’t all that frightening once I came to that conclusion. The whole thing had been accidental; far from being malicious, the thing in my head seemed apologetic when I told it all the trouble it had caused.

           It wasn’t hard to reach a state of mind where I could talk to my guest, as I’d started to call it. Before the flight home, we’d even worked out a way to share space in my waking mind without causing problems, and my strange dreams had stopped. The biggest hurdle was communication. My guest used a visual language of colors and patterns; emotions and simple nouns and verbs were easy, but more complicated concepts tended to get lost in translation. Playing around with the paint program on my computer, I found out I could transcribe our conversations… sort of. And when I got home, I pulled out my fossil collection to show it.

           Stone. I was showing my guest a fossil ammonite shell. When I closed my eyes, I held it with tentacles instead of fingers, turning it over and examining it. Old. Very old.

           “Millions of years younger than you. From the Jurassic period.”

           City-builders, too?

           “What?”

           Nautiloids, cities, construction. Descendants build, maybe?

           I sat back, mulling over the images and color-words. “Wait – you build cities?”

           Not self. Too small. Nautiloid-kind, city-builders. City-dwellers.

           “City-builders, like a civilization? 400 million years ago, in the ocean?”

           Annoyance and confusion. How was this a question? It was surprised enough that I was a land-dweller.

           “We never found evidence of intelligent life before us – none that we recognized.”

           Confusion. Denial. It wasn’t possible, there had been so many of them all over the world.

           “Maybe we didn’t know what we were looking at. Or maybe… it’s been almost half a billion years. Not much survives that long.”

           Denial. Denial. But then: Understanding. Yes, time eats all.

           Red was the color of Nautiloid grief. Red like an ancient sunset filled my mind for the rest of the evening.

-------

           “Will you show me?” I asked one day. “I want to know about them. About your kind, what they were like.”

           I closed my eyes and saw them. My guest’s family, or something like a family. They were the group that had raised it, but none of them were genetically related. Many weren’t even the same species; as I saw more and asked questions, I learned that my guest was one of several intelligent nautiloid species. It showed me straight cones like wizards’ hats; loose curlicues; tight curlicues; talkative, half-naked little things like cuttlefish darting around. Not only had they existed at the same time, but they used the same color languages, lived and worked in mixed groups, raised their young together. Their civilization was founded around the idea that each species was necessary to the lives of the others.

           My guest showed me things it had seen, things it had heard of. The civilization of the nautiloids had lasted nearly a million years, in all its various iterations and divisions. I saw shining cities of gel and silica stretching up the walls of continental shelves; I saw the ocean floor vents around which their technology centered. Household items of cast cement and water-fired clay, delicate metallurgy that had long since corroded away to nothing. They had domesticated the giant drifting orthocones, they hunted the arthropods that tried to prey on them. They had learned to live in all corners of the ocean and at all depths. They had even begun to explore the barren, alien land.

           But then the cold had come. And not every species had been able to weather it.

           Food animals disappeared first. Then disease began to spread as hunger and cold took their toll. Those that lived in the shallow reefs suffered most. Attempts to build shelters were too late; within a few years, whole segments of society were extinct.

           Symbiosis. If the surface-people do not farm, the depths-people cannot make. If the egg-raisers do not nurture, the city-makers cannot build.

           “Did anybody make it through?”

           Unknown. Maybe. Not self, but maybe others.

-------

           They had a written language, if you can call it that. My guest taught me. Strands of colored fiber, knotted, strung with shells and beads. We had to make a lot of substitutions; some of the modern materials weren’t exactly right. But a nautiloid would have found it readable. My nautiloid did.

           I would sit up late into the night, stringing yarn together while my guest dictated. It was a book, but it felt like a rosary, like a prayer that could be handled. Do not forget us. We lived. We mattered.

           I had gotten used to my guest. It had a name for me; I don’t know what it meant, but it looked like dark blue tie-dye with a spray of stars. I had a name for it: Shelby Squidsworth. We would talk about geology, the species that had come after the nautiloids, what might come after humanity. It was fascinated by life on land.

           When the book was finished, we celebrated with a trip to the beach.

           Descendants? It wanted to know. I sat on the sand, drying in the sun.

           “Your descendants, you mean? Do you have any?”

           Maybe. An image of my Jurassic-era ammonite. All stone, maybe. All empty.

           “There are still creatures like you today.” I concentrated on an image of a nautilus, of squid and octopi. “They’re not as smart as you guys, not in a city-building, history-recording sort of way. Not that we know of. But they might get there.”

Maybe. Images of its family group; it missed them.

I dug my toes through the sand. “Did your people believe in an afterlife?”

           Yes. A whirl of colors; I didn’t grasp the meaning, but it seemed to comfort my guest. I wondered why it was with me and not there; quietly, I hoped, but it noticed.

           No burial. No rites.

           “If you got a proper funeral, would you be able to rest?”

           Maybe. Hope.

           “Tell me what I need to do.”

-------

           400 million years ago, when the nautiloids laid their dead to rest, they would separate the body from the shell. In deep-water countries, the shell would be painted and displayed by the family group; in shallow waters, where my guest was from, it was floated on the surface or pushed onto land, to dry and crumble in the sun. The body was ritually eaten by family and close friends, so that their loved one could remain with them in a way and strengthen them.

           Old custom. Dawn-of-time custom.

           “My people don’t really approve of cannibalism.”

           Amusement. Different species. Have comfort.

           I bought a big ceramic shell online, and about a pound of calamari from the store. It was as close as I could get; the spirit of the thing was what mattered. I ate the calamari alone, in silence. I had the sense that my guest ate, too, for all the other nautiloids who had died alone. Then, with the ceramic shell on a little raft I’d built, I drove to the beach and waded out past the surf.

           “Do you think humans and nautiloids go to the same afterlife?”

           Maybe. Hope.

           “I’ll see you later, then. Godspeed, good friend.”

           I laid a garland of knotted yarn over the shell: a nautiloid benediction, written out. I knew a few of the words humans use, and I said those as well. Then I pushed the raft off, away from the shore.

           When I climbed out of the water, I was alone in my head.

-------

           “You’re different,” Greg said. It was my first day back at the site. “You have a good vacation?”

“Yeah. I had to attend a funeral right at the end, though.”

“Man.” Greg winced. “Family?”

“A friend.”

“That’s rough.”

“It was time. And the service was just the way my friend wanted.”

“Timing still sucks.” Greg shuffled. “Oh hey, you’ll like this: the museum was running an exhibit on ancient sea life. I had my daughter last weekend, so I took her to see it.” He handed me a flier. “She wants to do her school project on these nautilus fossils. I told her you could help her with the research.”

“I don’t know how much I can help, but I’ll try.” I smiled at the picture on the flier.

My friend’s book was coiled neatly in my backpack; I had already started the translation. I doubted most people would want to read it, and even fewer would believe it. But it would be there, at least for a while: a faint, brief echo of a people long gone. A chance for them to be remembered.

           I can only hope that when my time comes, someone will offer me the same kindness.

[whereipostwords]

Desperation

The slow and steady creaking of the station is a constant. It's almost comforting in a way. I only notice it when I think about it, otherwise I would have long since gone insane, but its consistent in a way that nothing else is nowadays. It's a simple way to ground myself amidst it all, the split wires and crushed steel which I brush through. My hand waits in front of me to move apart the rubble: I haven’t been in this part of the station since it happened, so there hasn’t been a chance to clear out any of the more dangerous wreckage and much less the random debris. I part a flat sheet of rubber once used for insulation that obstructs my view, carefully navigating my legs around the seemingly endless pile of metal scraps and carbon-fibre tubing. As the rubber moves above my head I freeze.

Currently a steel beam stands in the center of the hallway, clearly having sheared through the superstructure before hitting the armor plating on this level, if one is to go by the massive hole in the wall along its arc. This section was a buffer between the inner and outer station, meant to ensure nothing happening in the former affected the latter. A surprisingly well thought out countermeasure given the otherwise uninspired construction, and one that I am immensely happy for. I don’t doubt that the superheavy support would have gone all the way out into the void had it not been stopped by this well placed armor belt. Shame that they had skimped on that same protection for the actual outer hull and had instead gone for exterior shielding, something about having to only protect one side from what I had heard in the break room. Because of that little cost saving feature I couldn’t go anywhere near sections 21-b through 34-b This was especially unfortunate given that was where the hangar was.

Fucking accountants.

In any case, the beam. The area surrounding it was no less cramped and unpleasant than my current position but the lights which covered every side, floor and ceiling in the station were on and I could see the few control panels with unbroken screens flickering idly. That was a good sign: it meant that the support hadn’t snapped all the redundant wiring on its way down, even the closest ones. A lucky break if there ever was one. A somewhat less fortuitous turn of events is the state of the hunk of metal itself

An electrical line (neon green) is snaked around it which is, really, not my favorite part of the day so far. I lower my hand, my left, before raising its righty counterpart and whispering in a low, calm tone “Mini, detect energy signatures.”

A high and squeaky response comes almost immediately. “Sure thing, boss!”

My construction suits visor fills with lights. Some of them are represent numbers, other words, but I don’t need to look at them to know the verdict. An overpowering blue haze has fallen over the exposed wiring. “Fuck,” I curse softly.

Neon green wiring led directly to the secondary reactors. The ones that were currently on and spewing out enough electricity to electrocute the populations of most habitable moons. My construction suit is pretty good at dealing with that kind of thing but there’s a limit there.

“Do you want me to read you the voltage readings, Boss?”

I sighed. “No thank you Mini”

“Whatever you say Boss!”

Whatever idiot “HR guru” designed the standard VI like this deserves a special place in hell, I muse as I glance towards my power indicator at the top left of my visor. It reads “45%,” which translates as about two hours. Another “cost saving feature” from management: shitty battery life. It took me an hour to get here, which means another hour to get back plus whatever time it takes to grab the stuff and run. I don’t have time for this.

I sigh again, deeper this time, and turn to my left. Keyboard, floor panel, adhesive, expired ration pack. Just more junk. I turn to me right and what I see makes my eyes widen slightly. A scratched up sign reads “Cafetaria, 20m” with a little arrow pointing in the direction of my obstacle. I’m close.

I turn my head back around and stare at the beam. “Mini, turn off energy detection”

The little thing in my head chirps in the affirmative and the blue haze lifts from the room. I can now clearly see a door behind the thing blocking my way. My heart beats slightly faster. I need in, I think desperately. The food recycler in there was going to make foraging expeditions a thing of the past. Sure the supplies back home would last me a while longer but things were getting more and more dangerous every time I went out. The way things were going I was more than likely going to bite it sooner than later.

An unpleasant thought enters my head. What if its locked? I didn’t have a key card to the mess, none of the laborers did. The cooks mostly left it unlocked except during the night but occasionally they kept it closed for privacy, presumably because some waitress was shagging a chef. Everything had gone to shit during the afternoon so it probably wouldn’t be locked. But what if.

I shook my head. I’d survived this long and I wasn’t exactly enthused about the other option. Just...get to the damn door first. All I had to do was somehow get past the electrical deathtrap between me and it.

I take a closer look. Sections of wire, still clearly connected to the main line, are spread along the ground. There’s enough space between them that I could perhaps move between them if I was desperate, although I would rather not take my chances. All it takes is a split second of contact for me to literally combust much like a juice-filled water balloon. The walls have some handles in case the artificial gravity fails and they seem to be free of any coppery vines of death. That being said the massive holes in either end make them seem somewhat...unstable. Better than the floor, though. I consider for a second just getting rid of the obstacle: my blowtorch isn’t going to be running out of fuel anytime soon and it has enough range to cut the whole thing without my getting unduly close, but the idea of the entire superstructure falling on top of my make the idea somewhat less palatable. No way I can just cut the wires at the distance I need, either. I’m good but not that good.

My lips purse slightly as i think. My options don’t look good. Either I risk myself dying to human error, and I’ve never been very graceful, or roll the dice on the station not being shit, which is a bad bet to make given how much the union complained about it. “Looks like I’ll be scavenging for rations a while longer” I murmur to myself lightly. I turn around, moving the junk around me in the process. I’ve already gone through the workshop and armory for tools, though I haven’t gone through them all, so there should be something in the stash to help. Worst case scenario I’m wrong and I come back. No harm done.

A thud echoes through the hallways.

I stop suddenly. My breathing slows as my heart rate increases.

Thud

No no no no no no it’s supposed to be on the other side of the station, I saw it on the goddamn cameras.

Thud. I can feel a tremor in my boots

Fuck, it can’t be more than two junctions down. I was too caught up in everything to notice it. I’m getting sloppy, too confident, and it's going to get me killed.

There’s no point in running. It’s faster than I am, much faster.

Thud. Louder this time

Too much noise and it’ll decide to stop playing. Have to get out of here. I carefully turn around back to the door. I’ll have to risk going through.

Thud

My breath hitches: it's the goddamn wires. The shaking’s moved them around, they’re everywhere. No place to step. Every inch around the beam is covered.

Thud

I don’t want to die I don’t want to die, not like Jenkins did when it got him, I can still smell the skin on the bulkhead

Thud

...only sixty days left, goddamnit, sixty days and I was free...

Thud. A low drone can be heard.

...Jenkins

Thud

Jenkins had talked management into setting up the insulated flooring everywhere. I remember the party the union threw after it. Man wouldn’t shut up about.

Thud

The flooring is close to one hundred percent non-conductive. Better than plastics as a rule, except in cost efficiency. Problem is that it’s not as strong nor as heat resistant as the treated steel, so much so that they have to replace it every so often...

Thud

...so much so that I can cut it right out of the floor. If I can do that than I can take it and put anywhere I need, anywhere that I need not to be electrocuted…

Thud

...Like my body

I move at once. My blowtorch comes out of the holster on my hip in one smooth movement. There’s a dial on the side with a red to green color gradient along its axis. With my thumb I move the pointer towards the green, the lower settings. If I’m too loud I’m done for. Memories of bleached skin and still twitching limbs stretched over air ducts fill my mind. I lean down towards a bit of unobscured floor large enough for my needs, bring down my tool and pull the trigger.

The droning grows louder, bit by bit. I can feel the urge to curse but hold it back: its not running yet, I still have time. My arm moves deftly to cut out two small squares, each large enough to fold around my feet. I can tell already that I didn’t bring any adhesives, wanting to take as little as possible to make it quick. It wasn’t supposed to be here I think wildly as I set the torch to its lowest possible strength and heat up the metal. This wasn’t going to be fun.

The construction suits were designed with use of tools in mind. It is because of this that the standard suit had thermal shielding in the upper body, to avoid blowtorch injuries. But not the lower body. That’s where all the mountings were, not enough space to pad it out with all that material. There was enough that this wouldn’t kill me…

But damn me if it wouldn’t hurt like hell.

I take one of the red hot metal sheets on both hands. I can barely feel the heat. I bring it slowly down to my right foot.

I jam it on.

It’s all I can do not to scream. I bite my tongue as heat diffuses throughout my foot, through my blood and through my mind.

Thud

With a cry held behind my teeth I bend the now malleable steel around the edges of my boot. I can feel it cooling, fitting my limbs form like a glove. With shaking hands I reach for the other, confirming that it’s still hot enough to work with. I bring it to my other foot and do the same the before, the pain no less for the repetition as the damnable noise comes ever closer. I can hear the breathing now, a terrible discordant thing with a hundred tones overlapping in a low, husky cacophony. Sometimes I think I can hear a muffled moan amidst it.

I move swiftly. It’ll smell me any second now, its right around the corner. I can almost see the shadow out of the corner of my eyes. I move without hesitation over the wires. Either it’ll kill me too quickly for me to care or I’ll get across. I do so in two long leaps. I can feel eyes on my back as the low drone turns into a high wine. Its spotted me, its breathing has grown heavier and louder. “Cafeteria door, open!” I yell, feeling no shame at how my voice cracks.

In that moment, everything slows. I can’t help but think that it would be ironic if the door was locked. Fitting, even.

I slam my hand against the door controls, pressing the back of the fist against the ID reader. Every breath is an eternity, every eternity something beyond that, something indescribable except to those who know what total fear is like.

The door opens and I fly in. The floor tremors.

I turn around as the door shuts. My eyes fall on the crack between the two reinforced sections. A gaunt, stretched face with black eyes smiles at me upon four legs as I watch it fully close.

I stand there for a moment, looking at the entry. I can still hear the breathing through it, lessened though it is. My visor is filled with warnings about my heart rate, about exhaustion and about nerve damage. I ignore them.

I move away from entrance, heading towards the back of the kitchen. The mess tables are full of opened ration packs, long since inedible. I think I can see bits of flesh in some of them. I ignore them, instead looking only at the vat that sits on the top of a counter, sitting innocuously among the silverware. On it, in bold faced yellow lettering, is the words “Food Reyc Vat, Use With Caution”

I sit down on the ground against some of the drawers and stare at it. Never again, I think.

As I lay there in a backdrop of a world gone mad, from outside the door, clear as day, I hear singing.