“My wager’s on Shorn’s crew.”
Frigid wind whipped through Korin’s hair and tried to find its way through his coat, cold fingers searching for any purchase to leech what little body heat he had left. At the very least today was clear. Cloudless skies might not have been the ideal conditions for today’s operation, but it meant Korin was only cold, not cold and wet.
“Not his style,” Drell’s voice. Even inside his head it sounded as though was from a distance. Korin reached up to tug on his earpiece.
You’ll go –
“I’ll go deaf, blind, and a thousand other things I’m not even sure humans can get” he snapped, “I know I know.”
“You still messing with the worm?” it was Bool this time, “If you’d just leave it alone you’d forget it was even there.”
“Right,” Korin muttered, too quiet for anyone to hear. He was sure it was transmitted – the worm picked up any little sound you made, even your breathing. Supposedly it could even hear your heartbeat, but he had never managed to confirm it for himself. “It’s burrowed into my ear canal and I’m supposed to ignore it?”
Yes.
“Ah thanks, I was worried my question wasn’t rhetorical enough.”
You know how to remove it. If it bothers you so much just rip it out.
“Sound idea, the second lieutenant would love it.”
Then please quit the whining? I can already feel your discomfort, I don’t need the added commentary.
“It’s completely Shorn’s style,” Hetal was back on his theory, “Big haul, small crew, and this route crosses right through his territory.”
Korin looked to his left where he could just see the speck of black that was the large airman. Bare chested and wearing what could only charitably be called pants, it was easier to see the trailing haze of heat he left in his wake. One of the two Scorches in the squadron, no amount of cold could bother him. He could have flown into a block of ice and melted a path straight through. “Must be nice.”
You hate the worm? Imagine if you needed the bag too. Yeah, you’re welcome.
“Might keep my face warmer.”
“Only looks like his style if you’re a moron,” Cena far on the right wing joined the idle conversation. She was much too far for Korin to see, yet if she was looking he was sure she could make him out against the perfect sky. A Snap, she was one of the squadron’s lookouts. Korin never bothered listening to the specifics, but he knew her improved eyesight had something to do with the ability to turn her eyes into ice, or something?
Micro–lenses in the viscous fluid of her eyes that allow for the fine adjustments and focusing of light far beyond what the iris can manage.
“Yeah, that. Perfect team. You listen to the useless jabbering of the floraficers and I do all the flying, fighting, risking my life . . . wait, what do you do again?”
Listen to your grumbling. And give you the ability to fly. “Eh, sounds useless,” Korin grinned.
I should have let you fall. “He doesn’t just go for any big haul,” Cena continued, “Only the ones that he knows he can carry back without a ship. The Deliberate was porting masts. Try flying on your own with one of those tucked under your arm. No Titan’s managing that.”
“I’d still be willing to give it a try,” Raesh cut in, drawing several dry chuckles that echoed inside Korin’s head.
“I’d wave as you plummeted straight into the Mists.”
“Korin’d catch me.”
Korin laughed, “No I’d wave too, just from right next to you.”
“But the Puckle’s carrying small arms down there. Even Korin’d be able to carry an armful.”
He opened his mouth to retort but Hetal did not give him the time, “Just saying I’ll be bagging some of Shorn’s crew by the end of this operation, maybe even the pirate lord himself.”
“Mouths shut, kids,” Second Lieutenant Ayla cut through the chatter, her voice louder than all the others, “Puckle’s coming up on the turn. Cena, Ghaal, Stick, Gretch, climb to ceiling and keep those eyes of yours on the scan. Hetal you’re on Cena, Kip stick to Stick, keep ‘em safe. Titans on me, we’re kissing mist. Korin, go as low as you can before your worm dies. Something comes at us from below I wanna know about it.
A chorus of “Heard” stuttered through Korin’s ear as he added his own. Following her lead, he and the rest of the Titans tilted towards the Mists below, splitting as the Snaps and Scorches started climbing. The formation closed around him, and Korin’s unaided eyes saw his squadmates clearly for the first time since jumping from the Puckle’s deck.
Titans every one of them, the air behind them crackled with electricity, small arcs of blue light sparking through the sky. Raesh pulled up to his right, a monster of a man at two-hundred centimeters and one-hundred thirty kilograms. That anything could lift his frame from the ground was a testament to his wyrm’s fortitude. Or it had a thing for punishment. Curled snuggly on it’s bondmate’s broad back, the translucent figure yawned like a cat, stretching as the furious wind of their descent howled around them. More an outline than flesh and blood, its shape was defined by thin streaks of lightning. Looking closer the lines pulsed with a steady rhythm that was mirrored in Raesh. Faint light scored his arms and legs like veins just beneath the skin, the beat mirrored in the wyrm on his back and originating from his own heart.
Finished with its wake-up routine, the serpentine figure strolled up to Raesh’s shoulder before curling under his other arm like a sash. Its head swiveled to glance at Korin before turning its gaze to the same direction as its bondmate. Looking forward himself Korin met Ayla’s eyes as she fell into a position on his left. Covered by a sheer veil her mouth mirrored the words that barked in his ear.
“That as fast as you can fall? Get down there before we fly straight into an ambush.”
Heard that? She wants us to go faster.
Throwing the sign for “Heard” he felt a grin cross his lips that was not his own.
“Fine,” he relented, “Have it your way.”
The world blurred.
Korin pointed his nose to the Mists as his vision ceased to hold any meaning. The gusting howl became an explosion that tore at his eardrums. His stomach turned as gravity add its own strength to his fall. An endless sea of dark grey below rushed up to meet him. Nerves and animalistic fear threated to tear his heart form his chest.
Breathe.
The Mists consumed his vision, filling it until he could see nothing else. Scraping against his peripherals he tried to grab one last look at the sun without turning his head lest the wind snap his neck. Nothing. Daggering into the Mists light and sound faded away to muffled afterthoughts. Falling further he could feel the pressure building quickly on his back as though he had submerged himself in water, yet aside from a slight discomfort in his ears it never came close to crushing him.
You’re welcome.
“Yeah,” he muttered, “Thanks for not letting me die.”
It’s not so much an active choice. More like a contract I haven’t yet broken.
“Well then thanks for not breaking it at the worst possible time?”
Harder than it sounds. But again, you’re welcome.
“–rin . . . ear me?” Ayla’s voice warbled and stuttered, random fluctuations in the Mists interfering with the worm’s Pulse.
I think we went a little too far.
“Barely,” he spoke loud enough so that hopefully Ayla could hear him, “Climbing half a klick, see if that helps.”
Now his stomach lurched the other way, twisting itself into a knot as the forces from below tried to yank it through his bellybutton.
“Better?”
“Much,” Her words still sounded as though they were being churned into butter, but at least she was no longer cutting out. “Hold altitude and slow up a bit. At that decent rate you overshot the Puckle by at least a couple klicks.”
Shadows swam through the Mists around him, shifting shapes that flitted about just out of sight.
“Yeah, got a few down here myself.”
“Bloody storms you’re that low? Surprised the worm’s this clear. Must have gotten a good batch this time. How’s the visibility?”
“Awful, but the Pulse should light up a Titan’s trail or a set of pulsesails well enough. Probably want to stay a bit ahead of our little ward. Anyone coming from this low’ll be looking to stay out in front of them as well.”
“Fair point. Still pull back a few hundred meters then hold heading and speed. Keep talking to me about what you see.”
Korin smiled, “Well right now the puckles are kinda dancing around me, trying to figure if I’m –”
“I don’t care about the mist mites, kid. Anything you see that’s worth my time.”
“Heard.”
“Alright people, net’s spread. Let’s see what we catch.”
–––––
“Carver?”
Lorren looked up from the mug, squinting her vision into focus. A pair of black eyes stared down at her from behind a massive beard, concern wrinkling the already overgrown brows above them. A gut covered in Glorm hide overalls poked out in front of the man, and as her head once more began to fall forward she caught a glimpse of cedar braces around thigh-high boots. “Rock and drop you’re wrecked. Gunther! I need a pitcher of water up here!”
The rumblings faded away as the man took a step from the table, Lorren no longer caring to summon up the energy to keep track of him. For her lack of effort she did not see the paddle of a hand as it struck her across the face.
Now she had her focus. Staggering to her feet she could feel the roots like claws start to grow from her hands, only to suddenly be on the floor, vines sprouting form her back to cushion her fall.
“’Anks,” she muttered. There was no response but she could feel the disgruntlement inside her head.
“Don’t mention it,” said the man.
“Not you,” she snapped, “Wha . . . what’re you playing? Think jush – just because I’m sloshed doesn’t mean I can’t – I can’t – I can’t . . .”
“Maybe?” he guessed, “Drink this, then threaten me.”
Grabbing the proffered cup she drained it before letting it fall to the table. Her tongue felt numb but her sluggish wits quickly realized what she’d been given.
“Water?!” rage boiled in her gut, hotter than when she had been slapped, “Don’t gimme water when I’m –”
“Being offered a job?”
“You interrupt a lot, don’t you? Don’t need a job. Got plenty of money. And if not, got more’n that in goodwill.” She raised her voice, “Right Gunther?”
The words swam to her from across the room, “Get out, Lorren.”
She raised her mug in a cheer as she took a sip, only to spit it out in disgust. Somehow the man had replaced her stout with even more water.
“Disgusting,” she carefully placed the cup to the side. Water was water, and she was not so drunk as to waste a whole mug. She knew exactly what it was worth.
“Perhaps not as much of the latter as you think, but I’m sure you’ve got plenty of the former. Funny thing, I get the feeling you don’t really care for either at the moment.”
“You’re right, where’s my beer?”
“You spilled it in your lap.”
“. . . ah.”
“Draken left earlier this morning. Without you.”
She scoffed, “Figure that one out all by yourself?”
“Pretty hefty contract to just walk out on. Got a reason?”
“I’m too famous,” a small bit of spittle leaked out the side of her mouth, “Needed a bigger name to fit my grandeur.”
“Bigger than the Draken?”
“Yup,” her head bobbed in an exaggerated nod, “So unless your Ludover himself I’m not interested in whatever you’re offering.”
The man gave a rolling chuckle that made his gut bounce and the chair beneath him creak, “No I’m not Riker, and I doubt you’ve ever heard of the Glispin.”
“Tiny, rockhopper. Study little thing though, built in Borsjur.”
Her company raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Heard the skipper’s an ass.”
Another laugh, this time long and loud, “Like I said I’m not the Ludover.”
“Then leave.”
“But tomorrow I’m taking his gambit.”
“. . . call me Lore.”
–––––
I wouldn’t try to touch them if I were you.
“Why not?” Korin muttered, his hand slowly reaching for the puckles flitting around him.
Never liked the look of them. Something behind the eyes. Always seemed like they were up to something.
“Seemed? You never bothered to find out?”
This may come as a surprise to you, but when instinct tells you not to mess with something, those that listen to those instincts have a tendency to live longer.
“Honey.”
What?
“Honey,” his hand inched forward, “I’ll bet the first guy to stick his hand up a beehive was considered the village idiot. But because he ignored his animal instincts and figured those striped rotters were hiding something good, he probably died one of the richest men of all time.”
Or, the wyrm snarked, he died that day. And the one who found his body surrounded by dead bees and an empty hive got the payout of a lifetime.
“Only one way to find out.”
You dumb idio–
Korin lunged through the air, hand outstretched. The closest mist mite tried to dodge but it seemed to swim through which the airman flew. Fingers closed and Korin gave a hoot of triumph. The eel’s body twisted and turned, body slick with moisture as it struggled to free itself, mouth snapping wildly as it tried to twist itself into a knot tight enough to catch Korin’s wrist in its jaws. Refusing to give it the chance he swung it around himself like a whip, keeping it far from any part of him he cared to keep.
“And – whoa, close there – after all that worry.”
Congrats, you’ve accomplished . . . what exactly?
“I alone have conquered nature.”
Who knew this was all it took.
“If you think about it all of human history has led to this moment. So from a certain point of view I’m the pinnacle of storms!”
Spines rippled down the puckle’s body, starting at the head and running down its length until Korin’s hand felt the bite of a dozen pinions punch through is leather gauntlet and dig into his palm. Instantly released the creature hissed as it darted deeper into the mists, disappearing from sight before Korin cared to look for it. Cradling his wounds, a raucous laughter echoed in his head as the worm in his ear barked to life.
“Korin, talk,” Ayla’s voice was tight with concern.
“It’s nothing,” he raised his voice, “Just startled is all. Bleeding mist mites.”
“Storms Korin, gave me a heart attack. Try not to die to a puckle before our pirates get a crack at you.”
No promises, the wyrm ghosted through the mists into view, pulling beside its bondmate, You better hope those spines weren’t poisonous.
“Wait, are they?”
A dark chuckle was the only response.
“This is serious is my hand going to fall off?”
Wouldn’t know, never had the hand to lose. Is that something they do?
“Not normally.”
Probably fine then, but . . .
“But what?”
Korin glanced to his side where the wyrm still flew. Thought it matched his direction and speed its head pointed behind them, the faint whisps of translucent air that made the outline of its eyes squinting as it looked back into the mists.
The airman followed his gaze, “What are you –"
Trails of light glowed through the mist, glaring despite their distance.
“I’ve got pulse trails!” Korin yelled into the worm, “Four coming from behind, lateral distance seven-fifty to a thousand meters! Current ascent rate they’ll breach mist in just under three minutes.”
“Got something here too,” Cena’s voice, so quiet Korin could barely hear as Ayla’s worm transmitted her words to the rest of the squadron, “Can see another four kissing mist. Can’t make out their classes yet.”
“Korin,” Ayla now, “You’ve got a line on their trails, what’re they running?”
“Ti –” he paused, thoughts racing, Those are way too bright and steady to be Titan trails. It’s like they’re burning straight Pulse. But that’s –
“You cut out,” the second lieutenants voice fluttered with a note of concern, “Confirm Titans?”
“They’re too bright,” he whispered. “They’re too bright,” for the second time that day his heart threatened to push its way out of his chest.
“Airman Ashor!” Ayla snapped, “What are –”
“Rotters!” he knew he was yelling but he didn’t care, “Every bleeding one of them’s a rotter trail!”
Voices split Korin’s skull as everyone spoke at once. Several shouts of “Impossible,” and “It’s far too early” clashed with demands for greater details or information before Ayla brought everyone to heel with a sharp command.
“Korin you’re sure? Not the time for a misread.”
“I’m positive,” his hands were shaking as he reached for the straps securing one of his four short spear to his back, “They’re flying on pure Pulse. Breach in two!”
“Rise to match but don’t engage. Where’ll they be in relation to the Puckle?”
“Right below. They keep this ascent rate they’ll smash into her hull.”
“Heard,” Ayla took a deep breath, “Prepare to defend. Snaps, drop in formation but keep the Puckle in your range, I want you providing fire support. Check your shots, I don’t want to lose anyone in the crossfire. Kip stay with them, you’re still on guard duty. Anything gets too close turn it to ash. Raesh take Bolin and Set, head off the group that’s coming from the front. Hetal kiss mist and join them.”
“Breach in one!”
Heavy breathing rife with nervous energy clouded Ayla’s words, but her voice remained steady, “Remaining Titans on me, get under her hull and keep it free of holes. Korin I need a disrupt. Just before they breach I need a flyby. Nothing fancy, just something to break their formation so we can finish them off. A hit and run, if they’re truly rotters and you close they’ll rip you apart. Breach?”
“Thirty!”
“Hard burns people, make it to position before they do. Captain Renalt,” she spoke into her other worm with the skipper of the Puckle on the other side, “Prep for boarders. We’ve got company.”
–––––
The moment she opened her eyes Lore regretted it. Even laying down her head felt like an open wound, and her stomach felt like the Churn far below.
“You could have stopped this. Still can, actually.”
There was no reply.
“Sulking, really?” She tried to get her feet beneath her but quickly realized the futility.
“It’s almost noon. I get it, you’re mad I skipped out on the Draken. I –” she faltered, the finality of her words striking harder than last night. Now she needed a drink.
“I am too. She’s a good ship. I’m sure they found another Navigator who’ll take care of her.” The words were hollow. Draken was hers. “But she doesn’t matter. Not anymore. I have to do this. If there’s even a chance, this is it. A gambit run will cut fifty years off the cycle. I – please,” water blurred the corner of her eyes, “Please. Help me make it to the Glispin. Help me look. Help me find her. I won’t be able to do any of this without you.”
You will die, the growl rumbled in her skull, flat and emotionless.
“Please.”
Silence. Then her blood started to pound in her ears, her heart racing as something pushed her body to move. The storm in her stomach quieted and the throbbing from her head faded to nothing more than a bad memory. Parched she reached for the waterskin beside the bed, slinging it over her shoulder as she moved. Her pack by the door was already prepared, a remnant from the day before and assembled for her journey on the Draken.
“Trip’s be a bit longer than an ice scoop. I missing anything?” Bring the box.
“Right,” dashing back to the bed she reached under until her fingers brushed cold steel. Pulling back a small, intricate blacksmith’s puzzle in the shape of a cube hung by her fingertips, no larger than her hand. Stuffing it in a side pocket of her pack she took a final look about her room. Bare walls and bare floors looked back at her. What was the point of furnishing a room when you barely lived in it? A glint of silver from the bed once more drew her close. Folded within the rumpled sheets lay a small chain with a silver and glass pendant. Sealed within a vial a small sprig of a vine glowed with a tiny light, faint yet steady. A quick swipe and it was once more safely around her neck.
“Would’ve been a piss poor way to start a gambit.”
As if there’s a good way to go about it.
Ignoring him Lore shouldered the pack and pushed through the door, squinting as sunlight filtered into the small alley. Clean and sturdy apartments rose on either side, their weight supported and lifted by the vinewood slats composing their walls. Delvers never wasted space, and that carried through on the houses they built. Passing onto the street beyond the alley Lore sidled through the crowd with ease. So many bodies and yet there was little jostling. Unlike islanders, delvers knew how to pass each other in tight spaces. Shops and apartments towered into the sky above and slowly leaned over the street, built out and high with liberal use of vinewood to support such precarious architecture. Some had so much that their hardwood supports acted more like anchors, keeping them from floating away with the wind.
Even though much of the sky was obscured Lore could just see the child islands flying high above. Far smaller than the island they were tethered to, they held the overflow of Port Aarvald. A growing city needed space, and the islanders had refused to give them more of the island, stating what land remained on Imnar was needed for farmland. So the inhabitants of the port did what any respectable delvers would – they made their own land. Regalia was the newest addition. Pulled from the mists by none other than the Draken herself, the chunk of rock five-hundred meters across soared above the city, towers of scaffolding already covering her craggy face as the builders set to work. Four tethers of greatvine – each thicker than a rockhopper – lashed her to the port and kept her from being blown away. The greatvines were grown from the underbelly of Imnar herself, and resonated with waves of Pulse gathered from the Mists below. It had taken a dozen teams of Navigators to manage such a feat, but the result was well worth the effort.
There were three other such floating rocks above the port, but Lore thought Regalia by far the grandest. Not only because it was the largest by a couple meters, but because she had found and flown it herself. Piloting Draken it had taken three days of painful navigation through the mists. Olard had thought it too heavy, which is why she was the Navigator and he was only the skipper.
“What’ll he do without me keeping him in check?”
Feel happiness for the first time in years?
“Eh, he’ll miss me.”
A single step and the buildings peeled away, opening the sky and revealing the docks ahead. A legion of ships floated tethered to stories of moors stacked high on top of each other and slightly offset. Fliers and tugs darted between them, loading and offloading cargo from delver and islander ships alike. Distantly she caught a glimpse of Slithin, Draken’s sister ship. Sixty meters bow to stern she was far from the largest ship in port, but she was by far the sturdiest. If you wanted to take something that large deep into the Mists you needed something stronger than steel and a lack of self-preservation. Sails stowed she looked like nothing more than a long and rounded log dotted by bolting-hutches, fasteners, tow hooks, and a line of thick viewports for the bridge crew. Booms and masts like skeletal fingers bristled down her length and along her underside, currently empty of wind and pulsesails alike. She had been caught in a storm and her canvas had been so damaged it was a miracle she’d managed to climb back to port.
Turning her back on the achingly familiar profile of the Slithin felt like tearing out her heart. Pointing her feet towards the tallest towers of moors where a small navy of rockhoppers bobbed in the wind.
Glispin, she mused, a ship. My ship.
–––––
Calm down, came the voice inside his head, you’re going to pop an artery before they get a chance too.
“Hold.”
Ayla’s called to him over the worm, conducting his charge. Through the Mists the four lines of pure pulse ascended, gaining speed.
“Twenty.”
If you die on me I’m making sure they never find your corpse.
Korin wanted to respond but was too busy counting down.
“Fifteen.”
“Hold.”
Sweat and mist slicked his hair to his head, a tie holding the long strands form his eyes. White knuckles gripped his spear, the numbness making him question whether they were his own.
“Ten.”
“Nine.”
“Eight.”
“Seven?”
“Six?!”
“FIVE!”
“Now!” Ayla screamed and Korin launched. The wyrm gave a whoop within his head as its bondmate pushed them forward, adrenaline coursing through his blood and hurling them to even greater speeds. Korin’s nervous mind marveled at how they flew. Was this why Alya had waited so long? How had she known? Sound and wind blurred together as his eyes refused to understand what they were seeing. A thousand meters fell away and sunlight glinted above as Korin and the four trails raced to the edge of the Mists.
A moment.
A hearbeat.
A body.
Korin released the spear and turned ever so slightly. Fletching at the end of the projectile carried it true, and as the airman sailed past a stunned creature it could not have reacted as the weapon punched a hole through it’s chest the size of Korin’s head.
The world exploded with sound.
“Engaging from the front!”
“They’re Rotters! They’re bloody Rotters!"
“Watch the roots!”
“Bleeding assholes!”
Korin looped around, his worm twitching with the number of voices screaming through its tendrils. He had already recovered his spear, caught moments before. The hit was true, and the shaft hadn’t split. If it had entered anything less than a perfect angle it would have been nothing more than splinters. Pulling into a climb he breached the mist to glimpse the battle for first time.
Ayla and her Titans were in trouble. The fight was three to four and yet his squadmates dashed and dived like frightened birds. Bolts of lightning flew widely behind them, the human’s unable to accurately aim their wyrms without sight.
“Korin get your ass to the bow!” Ayla’s voice thundered in his ear. As he watched she collided with a Rotter. Her limbs flashed as Pulse coursed through them, screaming as she tore the unfortunate creature in half with her bare hands. Even as its legs dropped the upper torso refused to die, roots and vines growing out of it as the its mouth opened to let loose an alien wail.
Red blood flecked with electricity coursed down her arm as she ripped it off of her, spitting after the body as it fell. She looked up, eyes burning with rage, and turned directly to Korin.
“Move!”
Terror raced him further. Curving around the Puckle the sight that met him made his blood curdle. Bolin was dead, his body held aloft by his wyrm. Wooden roots encased and pierced his body, puncturing his neck and growing through his eyes and nose. A waterfall of blood leaked from him, swallowed by the Mists below. Set was struggling, his limbs flashing with terrible power as he fended vines. He tried to fly free but a thick root had curled around his leg and was pulling him closer to the rotter from which it had grown. Hetal dodged and weaved, his flight path contorted into knots as he threw billowing tongues of fire around him. Two hung on his tail, but refused to get close, obviously wary of what the intense heat would do to the vines that comprised their bodies. Chasing their heels a hail of ice spears fell from on high, thrown by the snaps above. It was clear they were too far away, their projectiles having too far to travel. Aside from a slight annoyance the hostiles paid them no mind.
Only Raesh looked like he was winning his fight. From the looks of it the rotter was doing its best to stay away from him. The massive airman sailed through the sky, lighting cutting swaths of air before him as his prey desperately tried to shake him. Again and again Raesh tried to close into a grapple, but from the looks of it the creature wanted anything but.
“He’ll be fine,” Korin turned back to Hetal, then climbed. Higher and higher, cold air burned his skin. Another thousand meters above the Puckle and he stalled, flipping his body and letting the soles of his feet see the sun. Falling. Faster. Faster.
Release. The spear fell away from him, seeking blood.
It missed. His target dropped and the weapon hissed by, carving a trench down its back. Korin cursed as he heard the sound of splintering wood, a single bad throw destroying the spear. Pulling up to prepare for another pass he reached behind him to grab another, only for the wind to be knocked from him as something heavy collided with him from behind.
Hetal’s other tail!
He had not even realized it had peeled away from the other and fallen with him. Putting on speed Korin tired to distance himself from his attacker, but something wrapped around his leg like a ball and chain, weighing him down.
Korin move!
A burst of power shot through Korin’s body and he pulled, hard. The vine wrapped around his leg went taught as it dragged its host behind it, the two bodies corkscrewing through the air in a wild flurry of wind and fear. Depite his maneuvers the plant continued to grow up his body, tightening its grasp as it tied first his legs, then reached for his fingertips, trying to trap them to his torso. Korin faltered and he fell, for the first time looking down he saw his enemy.
Taller than him by at least thirty centimeters, it reached for him with a long, thin limb tipped with three fingers. Its face was long and pointed, two sets of eyes – one above and set slightly wider than those below – glared at him. It’s snarling mouth revealed a row of blunted, round teeth, and a wide, white tongue within. It did not have external ears, instead two small holes were hidden within the folds of the vines that encased its head. He would have tried to guess the proportions of its torso, but it was impossible to guess what it had looked like before the transformation.
Rotters were born flesh and blood, but as they aged they slowly replaced themselves with vines, eating away at their muscles and sinew until they were more plant than a being made of living tissue. What remained of their old bodies slowly decayed off of them, food for their floral replacements, earning them their name.
This one looked younger. One leg still remained completely untouched by vines, the familiar curvature of muscles beneath flesh all the more gruesome because of the fringes of rotting meat that circled its hip joint. The appendage almost looked human, except the foot was long and thin, an it’s foot more a paw by sight, and longer bones lengthened the distance between the ankle and toes. A flitting though left Korin wondering how such a thing could walk.
Pain. His arms struggled to free themselves but already he could feel sharp thorns digging into his body, tearing groves in his skin as they curled around the root still holding him still. High it climbed, searching for his neck. He was going to meet the same fate as Bolin. A breathless howl filled his mind like a storm, a scream of animalistic rage. Wind rose around him and buffeted his assailant, but the thorns dug deeper, holding them together. Korin looked down once more into the eyes of his killer.
A five-fingered hand – larger than Korin’s head – curled around the rotter’s face. Electricity flashed beneath skin and knuckles creaked as the hand squeezed, until a sickening pop heralded come moments before the creatures head exploded in a geyser of clear, watery blood. The root loosened and Korin wriggled free, Raesh’s smiling visage floating up to greet him. Another rotter struggled in his grap – the one he had been chasing – caught by the throat. A crunch and it went limp.
Dropping the corpse the big airman gave a solemn nod, then tore through the air, charging for the rotter from which Set’s limp body now hung. Glancing back to Hetal Korin caught a glimpse of what had once been his opponent, the fireball already fading into the Mists.
“We’re going to win,” he breathed, “We’re –”
Cena’s voice cut through his words, “Twenty more on the horizon, closing as fast as they can.”
“Ten more behind as well!” Stick, another Snap called through the worm, “They must have circled around!”
Fingers of dread gripped his spine as he dived, slipping down into the mists. Far below he could see them, their pulsetrails bright in the fog.
“Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five!” he added his own report, “Twenty-five coming from below! Breach in a minute thirty!”
Ayla swore, “Fifty-five. Raesh, how you looking?”
“It’s just me and Hetal. Set and Bolin are gone.”
“I lost Erit,” the worm went silent, tense seconds passing as everyone came to the same conclusion. Rotters were slow. Even a Titan could outrun one, albeit with difficulty. The Puckle and her flightless crew, however . . .
“We stay,” Ayla spoke into dead silence, “Snaps, join up with Raesh. Kip, you’re with me at the stern. Korin, run.”
Blood drained from his face and his tongue went dry, “What?”
“Someone needs to let command know the rotters are back. I don’t care what they have out there or where it is, you can outfly it. Get back and tell them everything. Tell them –” she choked off, her voice growing thick on her last words.
Raesh’s roar filled the void, “Tell them there were hundreds!” nervous chuckles echoed all around, “And as you ran you saw us slay entire legions before we fell! If they aren’t singing songs about us by the end of the month, I’ll come back and finish what the rotter started.”
“Why aren’t you moving!” Ayla cut back in as cheers shook his head, “Go!”
Turning his back to his comrades Korin flew, wind wicking away tears.
–––––
(Continued in comments)

Source
Clarification from the researcher regarding the title:

... The decision to put "AI" in the title was made by the media team in order to shorten the title. Although it's technically correct ... "Machine learning" is a more accurate descriptor.

Questions	Answers
Hi! Thanks for doing this AMA. What would you say is the biggest takeaway for a couple based on the results of your study? And is there anything a single person should take from it while looking for a partner? If I'm understanding it correctly, it looks like a lot of the factors that lead to success are things it might not be easy to evaluate until you've actually been in a relationship with someone for a bit. Thank you!	I think the biggest takeaway, to paraphrase my old friend and colleague Geoff MacDonald, is that the person you choose may not be as important as the relationship you build. As a culture, we put so much emphasis on choosing the right person. These results suggest that it’s really more important to be the right person. To create the conditions that will allow a relationship to flourish.
	In terms of your point about evaluations, this is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about myself. Can a relationship be objectively evaluated—are some partnerships inherently better than others--and if so, when do these objective criteria first come online? This is somewhere my students and I would really like to take our research next. We want to recruit couples in brand new relationships and study how they evaluate each other for compatibility and fit, and how those evaluations change as the relationship develops.
	We were supposed to launch the study in March, but it got stalled due to COVID. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to open the lab up again, and I’ll have some more concrete answers for you.
Did any of your couples include arranged marriages? I ask this because my husband and I both come from cultures with a high degree of parental/community involvement in matchmaking. Without even planning to do so, we did effectively the same thing to ourselves. I told him on our first date (set up by our friend community) that I was only interested in someone who was serious about marriage/kids and he agreed. We operated under the idea that we would do our best to build a healthy relationship that would end in marriage and I think that mindset is key to us having such a happy, healthy, and satisfied relationship now. I would be curious to see if other couples who were in either arranged marriages (willfully) or had a very strong marriage goal early on had the same results as couples who did not.	Not to my knowledge. Our data were from Canada, the US, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Israel, and Switzerland. Very Western-centric, as you can see, so they don't lend themselves well to cross-cultural research questions.
	Arranged marriages have always intrigued me, and a long-term research goal of mine is to prospectively follow people in arranged marriages and compare their trajectories to the trajectories of self-selected marriages.
	The existing literature that I know of on arranged marriage--and it's not a very large literature-- has produced pretty mixed findings. Some studies have compared people in arranged vs. self-selected marriages and found no differences in relationship quality. Some have found higher quality for the self-selected marriages. Some studies have shown different results depending on which marital quality measure you use, or on how you define "arranged". So it's very much a topic in need of further research.
As a single person looking for a long-term relationship partner....do the results of this study mean I could be happy with literally anybody? Aren't there some people who would be more likely to appreciate me and act in ways that show me they're committed to our relationship? (and vice versa)	That’s really hard to say. One of the limitations of the project is self-selection – we only looked at couples who are already together. We didn’t, say, pair people at random. If we had, we might have found much stronger partner effects. So, there may very well be plenty of people who you wouldn’t match well with, but those people are selected out by the time you enroll in our study.
	What the results do suggest is that by the time you’re in a sufficiently established partnership to enroll in a research study together, your partner’s traits aren’t very important anymore.
	Really, we need a lot more research on the early relationship stages—how do these relationship dynamics form in the first place?—to produce a satisfying answer to your question.
Have you found that the partnerships need to have a similar understanding of what the commitment translates to? For example, putting equal effort into maintaining the home, or equal involvement with children. Do any of the studies collect information to confirm or deny the reliability of zodiac sign (eastern and western) compatibility? For participants who had a “type” they were attracted to while dating, did their significant other match that description?	This is one of the more interesting aspects of the findings, IMO – we did not find any evidence for any kind of partner matching predicting relationship quality.
	The algorithm we were using detects interactions. So if my traits and preferences match with your traits and preferences to predict relationship quality, we should have picked up on that. For example, if Andrea says she likes extraverted guys, and she’s happy with Tom because he’s an extraverted guy, we should have found that putting Andrea’s desired extraversion and Tom’s own extraversion into the same model would have predicted more variance than either on its own. But that’s not what happens. Combining both partner’s variables didn’t predict more variance than just one partner’s variables. So that goes against the idea of matching, similarity, having a type, etc. If there was any matching going on, it didn’t predict how happy people were with their partners.
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Very thought provoking. Have you been able to find evidence that predicts the relationship quality? And thank you for doing this AMA!	Relationship-specific variables did a great job of predicting relationship quality. Your own perceptions of the relationship--such as your own sexual satisfaction, how much conflict you think there is in the relationship, and how committed you think your partner is--predicted 45% of the variance in your own relationship quality, at the beginning of the study. These same variables also predicted 18% of relationship satisfaction at the end of the study.
	And in fact, no other variables added to that total variance explained. Not your traits, not your partner’s traits, and not your partner’s perceptions of the relationship. All of the effects were driven by own judgments about the relationship.
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So, basically, if one is in a relationship and they are making the point to perceive themselves as in a happy relationship, they will be. How much does it matter to the success of the relationship if one perceives themselves positively but the other does not?	That’s a great question. My team and I were surprised that the partner’s perceptions of the relationship predicted so much less variance than own perceptions. Own perceptions of the relationship predicted 45% of the variance in relationship quality, but the partner’s perceptions (measured with the exact same variables!) predicted only 15%.
	That difference suggests that there’s a pretty big discrepancy in those ratings--how you perceive the relationship is not necessarily how your partner perceives it. It’s not clear at this point what the implications of those discrepancies are, or where they come from, but that would be a great topic for future research. How can two people be in the same relationship, and disagree so much about what it’s like?
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I'm an extrovert and I've been intensely unhappy dating introverts. So this seems to go against my own experiences, because there's not enough in common between us to keep a relationship going, and I don't feel that they care about me enough to compromise (e.g. they agree to attend game night with me once a month vs weekly).	I think this really highlights that self-selection problem I mentioned—your relationships with introverts may not last long enough to be included in a study like this, which means those data are not part of the results. That’s why I really want to see more data on fledging relationships. I’d love to enroll you in a study at the point when you have just started dating an introvert, and ask you about your experiences over those few ephemeral weeks or months that the relationship lasts before it fizzles out. Those sorts of data are so difficult to collect but I think they’re a really important piece of the puzzle.
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Well I've been with my introverted husband for nine years. We've decided just recently that separation is probably the best course of action in the future (neither of us want to make such a large decision right now, in the midst of the world being on pause and both of us being depressed about it).	I'm really sorry to hear that, Transplanted_Cactus.
Why do you think that it's so difficult to predict which relationships will work out well, and which won't? (whether using AI or not) Thanks for doing the AMA!	That’s a great question. I think when it comes to relationship quality and longevity, there are a lot of chaotic processes at work that make long-term prediction difficult. Stressors and life events that come up, idiosyncratic experiences that you might happen to have with your partner, other people who may enter or exit your life and who give you different perspectives and ways of thinking about the partnership, etc.
	So we can predict the aspects of the relationship that are stable, but they also change over time in unpredictable ways. I think that’s because the changes are largely driven by these kinds of environmental and contextual factors that are very difficult to measure, let alone predict.
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Dr. John Gottman has been able to predict divorce with 94% accuracy. Check him out, his books are fantastic!	I can't speak to Gottman's books, which I'm sure are fantastic. But, from what I can tell, his claim that he can predict divorce with 94% accuracy comes from this study of 52 couples, published in 1992: https://search-proquest-com.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/docview/614305792?accountid=15115
	13.5% of the sample had divorced over a three-year period, or 7 couples. After the data were already in hand, the researchers used a discriminant function analysis with nine predictors to predict which couples divorced, with 93.6% accuracy.
	This model suffers from a statistical problem called overfitting. With a small sample size, and a technique that doesn't use any kind of cross-validation, you can essentially keep adding predictors until you explain close to 100% of the variance. We call that a saturated model. Almost all the variance has technically been "explained", but only for the very specific sample that the model was built on. If I went and recruited 52 new couples, and applied this exact same model to those data, the accuracy would likely be much less - likely closer to 86.5% (which is the baseline here - you get 86.5% accuracy if you simply predict that no one gets divorced).
	Tldr Although I have lots of respect for Gottman, I am incredibly dubious of that 94% claim.
Thanks for doing this Dr. Joel! Very interesting research. What made you think machine learning would be a good way to study the success of romantic relationships?	Well, traditional statistical methods that we use in this field—like regression and multilevel modelling--are really great for delving into the mechanisms or inner workings of a handful of variables. But, they aren’t very good at dealing with a large number of variables at once.
	The major advantage of machine learning is that it can handle a very large number of predictors, and tell you which ones are really driving prediction, as well as how well they are performing as a group. So, the goal of the project was to take all of the many many variables that have already been examined in separate studies, and make them directly compete for that variance. Which of these hundreds of measures are most important, and when taken as a whole, how well do they perform?
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Really interesting work and I really appreciate the approachable explanations. Out of curiosity, what kind of machine learning are you using? How many features are you starting with and how are those coded?	We conducted the analyses with Random Forests, using the randomForests package in R. Each dataset was collected by a different team of researchers and therefore had different predictors - typically ~50 variables per dataset, which we manually coded into either features of the self or features of the relationship. We also used the VSURF package to initially pair down the number of predictors in each model.
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Got it thank you! Why did you choose random forests?	Key advantages: it can handle a very large number of predictors at once, it's able to capture non-linear effects and interactions, and its use of out-of-bag sampling helps to minimize overfitting issues.
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Just for clarity, these aren't advantages that are unique to random forests at all. Instead, with a dataset like yours, any choice of standard classical classifier should have performed similarly. The random forest is nice because it lends itself to interpretability of feature importance through the GINI coefficient, and doesnt require a separate feature selector. I'm wondering why you called it AI in the post though? In the machine learning community, we wouldnt call this AI. I'm not sure if you're aware, but the public perception that this kind of thing is AI has been harmful to our field.	Our dependent measure was continuous, so this was random forests built on regression trees, rather than classification trees. But yes - plenty of other ML methods likely would have done a fine job.
	The decision to put "AI" in the title was made by the media team in order to shorten the title. Although it's technically correct, I do agree with you that it's a stretch. "Machine learning" is a more accurate descriptor.
Do these factors change in order of importance with age? Is there any set of factors that predicts divorce?	In fact, age was one of the only demographic variables that performed well in our models. Age contributed to 68% of the models we tested. Now, machine learning is pretty black boxy, so we can’t tell you exactly what age is doing in these models. But it’s quite possible that it’s a moderator of a lot of the other variables—that different variables are important for relationship quality depending on your age.
	We did not try to predict divorce or breakups in these models. Other papers have done that though, although not with machine learning. Karney & Bradbury 1995 (https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1995-36558-001 ) is, I believe, still the most comprehensive paper to date on the predictors of divorce. Le et al 2010 (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01285.x?casa_token=pSw5wWgnZSYAAAAA%3ANGeIEDkDNcUmWWi4XiZN1gXDX4F8zMGP98V_O7sWkaW-Z8N0XZ0IuoJNoaSWAwHlZstwN_18X99JT8WQ) is the best paper on predictors of breakups.
	Top predictors of divorce and breakups tend to be global evaluations of the relationship. Variables like how satisfied you are in the relationship, and how committed you are to the relationship. That’s part of why we focused on these outcome variables in our project.
Hello, Very interesting findings! What would you suggest single people using tinder etc should make sure to find out early / use in their “screening” process for best possible outcomes?	Insofar as our data can speak to this (which is debatable), I would say you want to look for a partner who seems genuinely interested in you, who is good at perspective-taking with you, and who seems to be responsive to your needs. Someone who makes you feel understood, validated, and cared for. If I was a betting person, I would bet on those things.
How do control for the self-reported nature of the data? I would imagine people would be biased in their description of their current relationship compared to past relationships or the prospect of a future one. More plainly, I would expect Ex's to have a largely negative connotation and re-entering the dating pool requires substantial effort; so I may respond more positively about my current relationship.	Absolutely – people tend to hold a lot of positive illusions about their romantic partners, and to perceive their partners in a highly biased way. But, I think I would push back on the idea that this is something that needs to be controlled for or somehow subtracted from the ratings. When we’re talking about relationship quality, really, perception is reality. You’re happy if you think you’re happy! It’s an inherently subjective construct.
	I think that’s why own traits did such a better job of predicting relationship quality than the partner’s traits, in these analyses. Your own proneness to things like positive and negative affect are going to shape how you perceive your partner and the relationship, and therefore how satisfied you are with that relationship. To a large extent, we project our own personalities, feelings, biases, etc. onto our partners.
Dr. Joel! Really interesting research, I can't imagine the tenacity needed to collaborate and coordinate with so many researchers. Looking forward, what variables do you envision accounting for that initial spark between two people, before an established relationship exists?	My colleagues and I looked at this very question in another project, where we applied machine learning to speed-dating data. These data were collected by Paul Eastwick (key player in the current project), and also by Eli Finkel. They had over a hundred measures in that study, which I fed into the algorithms. But, despite that, we found that we could not predict that initial spark at all. Zero variance explained.
	https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617714580?casa_token=SinsSsmAG6EAAAAA%3Ah1e4KUls_Ohk0ODleHlTLpD7l94PfX0R9GZ2yMVjR--ERRHNwSHkymy7nD1WOeJh3enfqRf-uZvWCA
What do you think of the ‘love languages’ and are there any parallels?	The love languages are a really fun and intuitive concept. Unfortunately the scale on the website is, psychometrically speaking, a mess. One of the big problems with it is its forced choice format. It makes you choose between options in a way that artificially exaggerates your preference for one love language over another.
	I saw a talk by a graduate student once who tried to validate a love languages scale and use it in her research. But when she measured the languages with a Likert scale, she got a huge ceiling effect. Everyone topped out on most of the languages, e.g., most everyone loves hugs, AND receiving presents, AND quality time etc. Basically, she found that everyone speaks every love language.
Are you against the Gottman research that’s been done and widely used as a relationship predictor? How is your work different and how is it the same? Thanks!	IIRC, the Gottman findings you're referring to attempted to predict divorce, using coded interactions that were videotaped in the lab. That's pretty different from our project, which predicted relationship quality with primarily self-report variables. So, we can't directly speak to the veracity of Gottman's findings with these data.
	I am personally quite skeptical about the claim that divorce can be predicted with 94% accuracy, using any combination of variables. That seems extremely high. The data and code supporting that claim are not available to my knowledge, but I suspect that the models may be quite overfitted to a particular dataset, and would thus have difficulty replicating in a different dataset.
If​ you​ were​ to​ give​ a​ teenager​ an​ advice​ about​ pursuing​ AI​ field, which​ courses​ or​ curriculum​s would​ you​ recommend​ both​ bachelor and​ master​ degree?	This I can't say much about, as I took a pretty serendipitous route to learning about machine learning. My background is in psychology, which includes a lot of statistical training but not machine learning per se. I think it's safe to say that you can't go wrong with programming and statistics courses. If you learn some programming environments like maybe R or Python, and learn about some foundational statistical techniques like regression, that should give you a solid basis of knowledge.
What was your methodology for quantifying which factors are most predictive? Meaning, how did you model the data and how did you establish importance of each variable?	The project included 43 longitudinal datasets. Each dataset included a large questionnaire collected at the beginning of the study (different measures in each study). We organized all measures collected at baseline into traits vs. relationship variables, reported by each partner. Then, we put different combinations of those groups of variables into Random Forests models to predict relationship satisfaction and commitment at the beginning vs. the end of the study. In total, we ran up to 42 Random Forest models on each study, then meta-analyzed the results.
	The Random Forest algorithm pulls out the most important variables and lists them in their order of strength. It also tells you the total amount of variance explained.
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Thanks for the detailed response. Where would one be able to look up the details of the study such as how feature importance was computed (I assume based on decreasing node impurity), if results were cross validated (and how folds were created), and what the predictive performance of the classifiers was? I'm interested since the importance of the variables is only meaningful when the model has good generalization performance. I could not find such details when doing a quick keyword search on the paper.	You can find all of the code and detailed results for each dataset here: https://osf.io/g8tm7/
	These are random forests built on regression trees, not classification trees, so feature importance is calculated based on reduction of the MSE. Results were not cross-validated - instead we relied on the models' out of bag performance (essentially, the technique tests each tree on a sample not used to construct the tree).
What would be more useful for growing a healthy relationship? 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?	Well Dr. MacDonald, taking an academic approach to this question, I would have to say that having 1 horse-sized advisor would likely be more useful than 100 duck-sized advisors.
Did you study partners with open relationships? Do you believe that open relationships can be long lasting and fulfilling? Thank you for all the hard work. It's incredibly intriguing. I'll have a lot to read up on tonight.	This project didn’t really touch on open relationships, but I have done other work in this area. A couple of years ago, one of my students recruited 233 people who were interested in opening up their relationships—but hadn’t done so yet—and tracked them over two months. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550619897157
	We found no differences in relationship quality between those who opened up over the course of the study and those who didn’t. We did find increases in sexual satisfaction for those who opened up. This is consistent with other, cross-sectional work on open relationships. So, we don’t have definitive answers yet, but so far, the data are looking promising for open relationships!
Hi Dr Joel, Thanks for the AMA. I was reading your paper, and its really interesting, could you please tell me what 'actor' and 'partner' variables/effects are?	"Actor" refers to the person who's relationship quality we're predicting, and "partner" refers to their partner. So, if Andreas and Mary are participating in this study, and we are trying to predict whether Andreas is happy in the relationship, Andreas is the actor and Mary is the partner. When we're predicting Mary's satisfaction, Mary is the actor, and Andreas is the partner. We set the models up this way instead of distinguishing the partners by gender (e.g., husband and wife) so that we can include same-sex couples in the analyses.
So basically, you guys determined that successful relationships are more likely to be successful? I don't mean to be snarky, but how can you say you are predicting how happy people will be with their relationships by essentially asking them, how happy are you with these different aspects of your relationship? This study comes across as more commentary than prediction. The study would be interesting if you could prove that political idealogy, body type, age, religion, upbringing, personality traits are all predictors of varying degree as to whether a relationship will be successful because those are data points that remain somewhat constant before and after the start of a new relationship, and you could then determine how compatible a couple would be together should they choose to pursue a relationship, but the way I am reading this is that you guys basically asked people how happy they were with certain aspects of their relationship, and then said, "if you are in a good relationship, you are more likely to be happy!" It should not have taken 43 data sets from 11,000 couples and a machine learning algorithm to figure this out. This is obvious. Sure, maybe people didn't have an exact value to assign to each variable, but it's no secret that if you don't feel your partner isn't committed to the relationship or you aren't sexually satisfied, the relationship is likely doomed. Can you please offer me a rebuttal to this criticism?	I totally get this perspective. But the thing is, it's not science's job to be counterintuitive. Its job is to be robust and accurate, and sometimes reality is just not that surprising.
	Many of those more "interesting" variables you mentioned-- political ideology, religion, upbringing, etc--were in this project. They were measured, they were tested, and they didn't work. This project had hundreds of measures, many of which, it turns out, just aren't that important.
	For example, take individual differences. Many of these studies included measures of:
	- education
	- income
	- stress levels
	- anxiety
	- depression
	- relationship beliefs
	- the big five measures (extraversion, openness, etc.)
	- life values
	- ethnicity
	- self-control
	All that stuff combined, measured from one partner, explained a grand total of 5% of the variance in the other partner's relationship satisfaction. That's it.
	We preregistered these analyses before we ran them, and were prepared to publish them no matter how they came out. This is how they came out, so this is what we published.
How many of the couples reported being unhappy? Because my experience, compared to what you've answered so far, and what I've read from literally thousands of women on a forum in regards to why they are happy in their relationships, has been entirely opposite of what your data is saying.	Most couples were pretty happy, as is typical of relationship samples. But, the responses did cover the full range of the scale, so there were plenty of unhappy couples in there as well.
	Hard to say why the results differ from the first-hand accounts you have read. But, the data are the data, and this is what the data showed!
Will the ai ever be released to the public?	Yes! Details of the project, including all of the code and meta-data, are available here: https://osf.io/d6yk
What’s your 2nd favorite aquatic creature?	Top favorite is whales, hands-down. Second favorite? Gonna go with dolphins. Cetaceans for the win.
Do you want to develop an app?	I fully, deeply, absolutely do not. https://twitter.com/datingdecisions/status/1288635730336591872
which relationships last longer? the ones with people with different interests or similar interests?	We didn't predict relationship longevity per se. But in terms of predicting relationship satisfaction and commitment, we found no evidence that matching matters in any way. Combining both partner's traits into one model did not predict more variance than one partner's traits on their own.
	So we found no evidence for the idea that birds of a feather flock together, nor did we find evidence for the idea that opposites attract.
I mean, aren't those factors pretty obvious anyway? Why do we need an algorithm to analyze 11,000 couples to tell us we need decent sex, affection, and trust?	It's a good point - the variables that wound up being important are pretty intuitive. But, many of the variables that didn't make the cut seem intuitive as well. For example, you'll notice that gender is not on the list. There are hundreds of studies on the importance of gender in relationships, and it was measured in every study we had. Yet, it almost never emerged as a predictor.
	So, I think this is the sort of project where any results would have appeared obvious in retrospect. To me, the surprising findings are not so much the stuff that worked, but the stuff that didn't work. You can see a full list of all the variables tested here: https://osf.io/8fzku/
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Surely that's because (almost) no one for who gender is important enters a relationship with someone who isn't that gender? I'm sure if we could take a group and randomize partners gender - gender preference would emerge as significant. I feel like these results say "Gender isn't important in a partner as long as you pick the gender you want your partner to be"	Not gender preference, gender. YOUR gender.
	If relationship satisfaction operates differently depending on your gender--for example, if men and women prefer different things in a relationship--then gender should have emerged as a consistent predictor in our models.
I'm preparing to apply for MSc thesis to research in Western. I am an international student. What would be your suggestion to get in and conduct my research successfully?	This could be a whole other post, but one key piece of advice I have for people applying to graduate school is to spend some time on that research statement. The statement provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate:
	* Intrinsic motivation (are you confident that graduate school is how you want to spend your next 5-6 years?)
	* Prior research-related experience (how have you honed your academic interests and skills?)
	* Research interest fit (is this lab a place where you will be able to conduct the kind of research you want to do?)
	Also, be sure to do a bit of research into the advisor you're applying to work with and make sure that there's fit there, both in terms of research interests and in terms of their mentoring style.
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I've identified two Computer Science professors at Western and reading though their papers and work. So I should have my exact research statement before applying for the University and contacting the professor? Or will I get admission because of my profile and later discuss with my professor to choose a research statement?	You should begin by contacting the professors, briefly explaining your research interests to them and asking if they are accepting students. Then if they are accepting students, you should craft your research statement, which you include as part of your application to the program.
Hey, I'm also from UWO. Do you have any papers published that I could learn further?	Hello, fellow Mustang! A full list of my publications is available on my lab website: http://relationshipdecisions.org/publications/
Have you ever watched Black Mirror, or anything else explaining why this is a bad idea?	Black Mirror is a really nice illustration of the importance of research ethics boards.
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I think they were referring to the episode Hang the DJ which I won't spoil but is very pertinent to your work. I came to ask if you had seen this.	Ethics aside, I love the Hang the DJ episode of Black Mirror. It's consistent with my view of relationship compatibility, which is that you cannot predict the quality of a relationship that hasn't formed yet.
Hi! Thanks for doing this ama. Did you study same sex couples? Were there any discernible differences in relationship satisfaction?	Some of the studies had a modest number of same-sex couples, and many studies had sexual orientation as a measure. Neither gender nor sexual orientation tended to emerge as a predictor in the models, suggesting that there probably weren't a lot of differences there. That said, we did not dig into the data and directly test for differences.
So why do you even think that it is possible to predict the future of a couple ? In my experience computers are not very good with predictions. And what are your objective points with wich you feed the ai. And I think that your work is really great and interesting :)	Thank you, Party_Frozy! Certainly, we went into this project prepared for the possibility that we would not be able to predict relationship quality at all. In fact, the last time my colleagues and I embarked on a machine learning project, it was with speed dating data, and we reached exactly this conclusion – we could NOT predict which pairs of individuals would be attracted to each other. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617714580)
	So we were pleased to find that we could predict up to 18% of the variance in relationship quality over time. It’s a modest amount, and there’s certainly lots of unexplained variance left there. But it’s more than 0 and that’s exciting!
	The predictors we used in the model were hundreds of self-reported measures collected from the couples. There was a total of 43 datasets, each of which measured different things. Tons of traits, preferences, relationship judgments, demographic variables, etc. Some more concrete and objective than others.
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Why apply machine learning to something as nebulous and subjective as human relationships? Are you interested in applying ML to other areas of social science, or perhaps even the humanities? It seems to me that you're doing some cross disciplinary research. Is your background more in social science or computer science?	My background is in psychology. I'm a relationships researcher, so romantic relationships are really my focus. I agree that relationships are incredibly nebulous and subjective, which is part of why they are so fascinating to me! I think they’re a central part of many people’s lives, so it’s worth pulling out all the methodological stops to try to understand them, empirically.
	I take a multi-method approach to studying relationships. In other projects I've used videotaped interactions between couples, daily experience studies where we send brief surveys to couples about their relationships each day, longitudinal methods where we track relationships over months or years, etc.
the below is a reply to the above
One of the interesting things about data mining is its ability to find correlations that people wouldn't normally think of. Have you considered adding some objective variables such as height, weight, eye color, frequency of sex, etc., along with people's subjective assessments of the quality of their relationships, how long their relationships last, etc? Or do you do that already?	Many of the variables you listed there were included in at least a subset of the datasets we had. Sexual frequency was commonly measured, and was a decent predictor. Specific physical characteristics (e.g., height, weight) were not measured frequently enough to really say how useful they were. When they appeared, we categorized them as individual differences.
Why can't you predict anything with covid?	Believe me: the COVID research is coming. Many academics are currently studying relationships in the wake of COVID, but collecting data, writing up the results, and getting them published is a very slow process. Expect an explosion of papers in another 1-2 years.
How did you like WesternU? London is a great area.	I've only lived here for two years, but so far I like it a lot! Western is a great place to work- awesome students, and tons of research support. London is a smaller city than I'm used to, but it has a lot of hidden gems. The longer I live here the more it grows on me.

So I’ve been getting a lot of DM’s (18 and counting) regarding the effects of AAS and neurodegeneracy, is it real, how it happens, can it be minimized, etc. (PS if I don't respond, stop being a little bitch about it. I have a life too and cant get to all of ya'll. I'll get to you, wait in line) So here’s my quick write up of the biggest players.
TL; DR is at the bottom. Feel free to skip anything with a bullet point, those are just quotes from studies I thought were relevant
​
What is neurodegeneration? Neurodegeneration (irreversible tissue loss) defines the gradual and progressive deterioration in neuronal functions such as movement, motivation, and memory due to the structural alterations of neurons or neuron death. These changes give rise to accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain, and the loss of mitochondria functions.
​
Let’s start with testosterone.
"It has been demonstrated that testosterone is neuroprotective in healthy male subjects. On the other hand, the neuroprotective features of testosterone is reduced with increased age and then leads to enhanced ROS production and neurodegeneration." So which one is it? Well, it's both. The effect is dependent on plasma levels of testosterone.
Testosterone has bidirectional effects; it is both an antioxidant and oxidative stressor and this dependent on the condition of the brain. In short it is both neurodegenerative and neuroprotective depending on certain conditions. Those conditions are greatly correlated with plasma testosterone levels.
Neurodegenerative effects: How do they happen? Via the destruction of dopaminergic neurons within the Substantia Nigra. This is the same degeneration that occurs in Parkinson’s disease. This happens with SUPRAPHYSIOLOGICAL/HYPER-ANDROGENIC LEVELS OF TESTOSTERONE.

• “It has been reported that testosterone can enhance oxidative stress-induced neurotoxicity in dopaminergic neurons in rats and then leads to loss of dopamine neurons and neurodegeneration”

Now what happens with too little testosterone? Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA, or Kennedy’s Disease). SBMA is a progressive debilitating neurodegenerative disorder resulting in muscle cramps and progressive weakness due to degeneration of motor neurons in the brainstem and spinal cord. Thankfully, this is a genetic disease due a mutation in the androgen receptor gene. That being said, males with decreased testosterone levels will still experience the neurodegenerative symptoms but can be treated via testosterone replacement therapy. This happens with HYPO-ANDROGENIC LEVELS OF TESTOSTERONE.

• “It has been shown that testosterone has a vital role for the progression of spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA). SBMA is a neurodegenerative disease and influences middle aged males due to the decreases testosterone levels and testosterone replacement therapy may improve the symptoms of the disease”

So, too little testosterone is bad, too much testosterone is bad. You want that perfect balance.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5449473/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24634831/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3255552/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26385432/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27167771/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3774356/

​
Trenbolone. The shitshow king himself.
Trenbolone metabolites (17β-trenbolone) accumulate within the hippocampus of the brain. The hippocampus plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory, and in spatial memory that enables navigation. This metabolite induces the apoptosis of the neurons within the hippocampus, meanwhile completely overpowering the neuroprotective effects of testosterone (which as discussed above, is seen at normal physiological TRT levels).
Amyloid beta (Aβ) are the peptides within the hippocampus. Trenbolone alters the accumulation of amyloid beta, via misfolding of the protein itself. This misfolded protein is called an oligomer, which are incredibly toxic to nerve cells. This trenbolone induced misfold of Aβ is seen in plaque like structures, very similar to those seen in Alzheimer’s and prion disease (thankfully, no where near as deadly as prion disease).

• - “It has been shown that 17β-trenbolone is accumulated in the fetus and adult rat brain, particularly in the hippocampus. Aβ accumulation is modulated by 17β-trenbolone and 17β-trenbolone promotes the apoptosis of primary neurons of hippocampus in vitro. It has been suggested that 17β-trenbolone is implicated in neurodegeneration and the individuals who are exposed to this substance by several ways are affected”
• - “17β-trenbolone's distribution and its effects on serum hormone levels and Aβ42 accumulation in vivo and its effects on AD related parameters in vitro were assessed. 17β-trenbolone accumulated in adult rat brain, especially in the hippocampus, and in the fetus brain. It altered Aβ42 accumulation. 17β-trenbolone induced apoptosis of primary hippocampal neurons in vitro and resisted neuroprotective function of testosterone. Presenilin-1 protein expression was down-regulated while β-amyloid peptide 42 (Aβ42) production and caspase-3 activities were increased. Both androgen and estrogen receptors mediated the processes. 17β-trenbolone played critical roles in neurodegeneration.”

In short, tren is bad.

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25461682/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4458166/
• https://www.intechopen.com/books/sex-hormones-in-neurodegenerative-processes-and-diseases/neurophysiological-repercussions-of-anabolic-steroid-abuse-a-road-into-neurodegenerative-disorders

​
Nandrolone (Deca/NPP)
Deca induces neural death via the overactivation of the N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor within the cortex of the brain. The specific neuronal death pathway induced by an excessive stimulation of glutamate receptors, resulting in excessive Ca2+ influx through a receptor’s associated ion channels, resulting in apoptosis of neuronal cells. The hyper-excitability the of NMDA receptor is also shows in Alzheimer’s and other cognitive neurodegenerative diseases. Interestingly, the activity of the NMDA receptor was INCREASED with the use of aromatase inhibitors, further suggesting that estrogen is neuroprotective in a fuckton of various ways. Once again, TRT levels of testosterone seemed to be neuroprotective against this effect.
Furthermore, Deca induces the creation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). ROS are unstable molecules that contain oxygen radicals and that easily reacts with other molecules in a cell. A build up of reactive oxygen species in cells may cause damage to DNA, RNA, and proteins, and may cause cell death.

• “A redox system imbalance with an excess of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) can contribute to neuronal cell injury and death and has been associated with apoptosis. The redox system may play different roles in apoptosis. Protein oxidation may essentially influence the gene expression necessary for the signals leading to apoptosis. Caspase activation, DNA binding of several transcription factors, and cytoskeletal alterations in cells undergoing apoptosis may directly or indirectly be affected by oxidative events.”
• "Orlando et al. studied the effect of some AAS (testosterone, nandrolone, stanozolol, and gestrinone) on excitotoxic neuronal death induced by N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) in primary cultures of mouse cortical cells. The term “excitotoxicity” was coined by John Olney to describe a specific neuronal death pathway induced by an excessive stimulation of glutamate receptors, resulting in excessive Ca2+ influx through a receptor’s associated ion channels. The Authors demonstrated that only very high concentrations of testosterone were able to amplify neuronal excitotoxicity; on the contrary lower testosterone concentrations seemed to be protective."

In short, nandrolone bad, but not as bad as tren.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462038/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17662261/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5778021/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9341569/

​
Estrogen and Aromatase Inhibitors
Estrogen is neuroprotective, it’s important in congition and mental health. A decrease in estrogen is heavily associated with a decrease in conginiton in both males and females. Furthermore, estrogen modulates the proper folding of amyloid beta and is responsible for proper accumulation. It has an additional anti-inflammatory effect via the inhibition of pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Estrogen also plays a crucial role in DNA repair. Estrogen regulated DNA repair mechanisms in the brain have neuroprotective effects. Estrogen regulates the transcription of DNA base excision repair genes as well as the translocation of the base excision repair enzymes between different subcellular compartments.
What about aromatases inhibitors? In general, inhibition of aromatase, the enzyme that catalyzes the nonreversible conversion of aromatizable androgens into estrogens, results in lower estrogen levels. This inhibition is associated with altered beta amyloid deposition and more severe strokes in Alzheimer’s Disease mouse models

• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jnc.13371
• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2017.00430/full
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109568/
• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2017.00430/full

****SIDENOTE LETROZOLES DOES NOT FOLLOW THIS RULE. LETROZOLE ACTUALLY INCREASES THE ESTRADIOLE LEVELS WITHIN THE BRAIN, WHILE REDUCING SYSTEMIC ESTADIOLE LEVELS. THIS EFFECT IS FUCKED AND I’M NOT GOING TO GET INTO IT THIS TIME.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109568/

​
TUDCA: bet some of you fucks didn’t expect to see this make the list.
TUDCA is incredible when it comes to neuroprotection. TUDCA inhibits NF-kB which is responsible for causing acute neural inflammation (inflammation is a key factor that leads to neural apoptosis). TUDCA has an additional anti-inflammatory effect in neuroinflammation through the regulation of the transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) pathway within the hippocampus. Finally, TUDCA modulates cell death by interrupting classic pathways of apoptosis (the calcium influx that was described with nandrolone above) and it prevents the misfolding of amyloid beta, the same exact misfolding that was induced by trenbolone and seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Many trials are currently using TUDCA as an effective early treatment of Alzheimer’s, meaning that TUDCA may help prevent the progression of disease, but does not reverse it.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1430980/#:~:text=Tauroursodeoxycholic%20acid%20(TUDCA)%2C%20an,thought%20to%20occur%20by%20apoptosis.%2C%20an,thought%20to%20occur%20by%20apoptosis.)
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5319238/

​
Could this mean that short, 8 week blasts of tren a (or NPP), along with TRT test, supplemented with TUDCA be the new meta for minimizing the neurodegeneration? Who the fuck knows.
​
TL;DR
In terms of neurodegeneracy: High test, bad. Low test, bad. TRT test, good. Tren, very bad. Deca/NPP, bad, not as bad as tren tho. Estrogen, very good. TUDCA, fucking incredible.

/Wall of text/
TLDR: 2020 is a dumpster fire and we could all do with a hug. Also, if someone doesn’t think Baby Yoda is cute, that is probably the red flaggest flag of all flags.
So it turns out if you’ve been seeing a guy for 7 months but never explicitly said “We are exclusive, and we will both delete dating apps from all our digital devices on x date, and we’ll define a relationship as strictly monogamous” then all bets are off on all points.
It makes sense now all the red flags I made excuses for. We never went on dates (well COVID means everything’s closed), out in public (maybe I’m just ugly today), much less out during the day (it’s been a long week). I never received any compliments or questions about how I was doing or how my day went (ok so he isn’t needy). I was never asked about my hopes or dreams or likes or needs (so he’s not clingy). Sometimes he just wouldn’t answer my texts for days on end - twice we didn’t even see each other for a month (sometimes people forget to reply after opening a message/ok so people have deadlines at work). That endless barrage of Asian females he follows on Instagram (well I shouldn’t be so insecure about who he follows on social media). That time he forgot my birthday (well I’d only reminded him three days before my birthday instead of the day of). That he never cleaned his place before I visited (spiders and ants are living things too). When I dreamed that he cheated and he laughed and said it was a great one (he’s a bad listener anyway/I’m soft spoken/ it’s before noon). When he only responded to any form of communication when sex was on the table (I should think of interesting things to talk about). When he refused to take couple photos (bad hair day). When he refused to send me any pics but always wanted in return (I should be less selfish). When he said to never tag or post anything about him on social media (private lives are private). When he kept bringing up his exes on our first few months of dates (cultural difference). When he never listened and forgot everything I said (eh it’s not a big deal). When he got arrested twice in two days (eh the felony won’t pass). When he never planned anything in advance (well why not live in the moment) and only wanted to hang out on his time or not at all (yeah, I guess could be less anxious about things like planning and the future). He never asked if I was ok.
It wasn’t that I didn’t voice my concerns. I’m a fan of clear, open communication and don’t believe in silent treatment/passive aggressiveness. Any of the above grievances I brought up at least twice via text or in person. I stopped suggesting cute outside dates after month three. Hindsight says his landlady was trying to help me when she wouldn’t stop telling me how he was never here.
I feel dirty. How many times did I visit him after he’d been inside someone else? How many times did he cum inside some other girl and then stick that dick in me? That towel he used to wipe me off after sex - what else did he put on me? He always smelled good. Sometimes he smelled of cherries. Was that scent left over from another girl? How many times did I reassure myself that I was just imagining things because a boyfriend in relationships who says “happy 6 month-a-versary” deserves a girlfriend who is at the very essence of it all, cool.
He put me at risk for the coronavirus. This’ll be the second time I’ll need to get tested for STI’s since meeting him and he’s not a fan of condoms. I can’t even talk about the yeast infections - plural - that I thought were all my fault. I’d been told in previous relationships that I should be more affectionate and wear more dresses and cook and have long hair and talk more, so I thought if I did things differently this time, I’d be a better girlfriend. But I’m rereading everything I’ve been unhappy about and I sound like a gaslit Mars bar.
I waver from anger to sadness to apathy to complete nothingness. When I brought up his online dating profile, his response was two-fold: 1) We were never exclusive, and 2) What can we do to resolve this issue. I asked that he clarify point one because I’d brought up the topic at least twice and if all he’d wanted was a fuck buddy or a FWB then he could’ve just said so. But could how anyone know what they want, he responded. Nevermind that we were 7 months in. I guess it’s my fault then for assuming one million and one things. I pushed on point two. Turns out the issue was me being mad, not that he was a liar and a cheat. What a bizarre response! He had no plans for how to resolve this “issue” and made no further suggestions.
One time we had sex five times in one day. He said it was the best weekend ever after the last bit, and as usual his phone was flooding with texts. Answering messages was always more pressing than pillow talk, you see. But this time his phone tilted in such a way I could see past the privacy screen. “Brenda/Brenna from Tinder,” it said. I’d asked before why his phone was always ringing and why he was always on his phone in front of me. Would it be so hard to turn off notifications or be on silent? Was I not pretty enough that it wouldn’t be worth paying me any attention before, during, after? He told me it was disingenuous of him to pretend these notifications didn’t exist. After all, it wasn’t like he’d texted her since last summer for a hookup. He couldn’t control what others sent to his phone.
Every act is in question now. How could I have been so stupid? I could’ve asked for more, pressed for more, defined more. I could’ve done so many things like been a better girlfriend, been skimpier in my wardrobe, prettier in the face, smarter on all topics past and current. I beat myself up now even though I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s easy to berate myself but rationally I shouldn’t. It should not be on me to need to request a definition of boundaries and exclusivity and monogamy after months of calling one another bf or gf or using words like relationship or happy anniversary or good morning kisses and making midnight calls. That invite to be his plus one to his sister’s wedding? To the out-of-state, huge family get-together, favorite sibling’s wedding? All a scam. He didn’t like me after all. I was just another Asian female with a pulse. He was upset when I pointed out his actions never showed he cared for me at all. He got mad and blocked me on Instagram. It would be too much to imagine that he could ever love me. Furthermore, the “issue” should not have been on how to make me “not mad,” because clearly a girl who isn’t smiling is the worst thing on earth. And the clear disregard for my health - “you‘re fine on the STI front, trust me” - ! I am not at fault.
EDIT: Turns out he wasn’t mad that I was mad. He was mad that I found out all his Instagram followers/followees were Asian girls he met on dating apps. (How is it this was what made him so angry?? “You know what you did,” he angrily accused as though everything was my fault and he had truly never done wrong.) I told him I have been and continue to deserve to be wanted, cared for, and loved. His response: “I love certain things more than others” and pointedly stared at me for too long. Toxic thinking is ask what’s wrong with me. Strong thinking is accepting that I like who I am and what I deserve, which is far, far better.
The funny thing is, maybe we weren’t a couple at all. Maybe this was never a relationship and I didn’t know it. The mind tricks really play with you here the deeper you go. The only things I know for sure are that he never liked me to begin with, that he never respected me, that he never thought about me, and that he was and remains deeply inconsiderate and unkind.
I’m more or less the long lost love child of April Ludgate and Amy Santiago so in the long term I’ll be ok. Outside of this ramshackle fiasco I swear I have at least half a brain. I’ve learned a lot about what it means to be kind and that it’s ok to be upset and voice my unhappiness more firmly. This was a very uncharacteristic blip from me on the 2020 radar. This lasted so long because I was an idiot who liked a hot guy and thought we had things in common. You don’t find a lot of tall, atheist, higher educated guys with perfect music taste, piercings, a crazy hot accent, surfer body, love of music festivals and science. Then again, maybe you can. There are 8 billion people out there. But even then all we had in common was a broken windshield, and I’m not interested in being yet another Asian notch on another lying skeezeball’s bedpost.
In conclusion, I like who I am and I look forward to meeting someone who likes me too. But until then, I’d really, really appreciate a hug from someone who actually listens. I feel like that’s not too much to ask.

I'd never really enjoyed the water.
When I was a kid I went to a classmate's birthday party and their older brother threw me headfirst into their pool. I hadn't known how to swim at the time. Those resulting feelings of clawing panic and choking suffocation have remained with me my whole life. It's still hard for me to get into water of any depth and I'm in my late twenties now. For this reason my friends and family were confused when I told them I'd landed a job on an oil rig a few hundred miles off the coast of Galveston. Partly because of its location in quite a lot of water and partly because I'd never done anything like it before.
I'd lost my job about a year earlier and eleven months of hunting down another office position hadn't been going well. I was preparing to head up to Austin, where I'd heard there were more opportunities in my field, when the oil rig gig fell into my lap. Literally.
I was at a diner one night around midnight. Not a prime time for business, so there were only a few people around. There was a no-nonsense waitress with dark hair and a savage wit that I'd been working up the courage to ask out for a drink, a group of drunk teenagers arguing over syrup distribution and an old guy sitting in the booth across the aisle from mine. He'd been nursing a cup of coffee while studying the day's newspaper. He wore a tan windbreaker, faded dad-jeans and the kind of tight, iron-grey haircut you'd expect to see on an ageing vet. Otherwise, he was as nondescript as a person could get. I ran drink proposals through my head, determined to pose the question to Cassie when she came over to refill my mug. Maybe I shouldn't though. She probably had a dozen jackasses asking her out every-
"You need something?" The old man asked, returning my stare. I'd been zoned out, looking at him while lost in thought. Awkward. His eyebrow raised up, irritated.
"A job?"
I was trying for glib, but I suppose some of my frustration must have leaked through because his eyebrow relaxed. When he did, something about him changed. Visibly the same, but something in the shape of his stance and the color of his eyes shifted imperceptibly away from generic and into something unsettling. Then it was gone. Before I had a chance to form any real thoughts about it, he'd shuffled sideways out of his booth, stood over me and held the paper out in his hand.
"Good luck then," he said, then dropped the folded-over newspaper into my lap and walked away. I watched him dodder out the door. I guess I had a look on my face because Cassie was suddenly there, filling my mug and asking if everything was alright.
"Yeah, sorry - that weird old guy just tossed his paper at me," I held up the folded sheaf of newsprint as evidence.
"Dick," she glanced over her shoulder and appraised the pile of change on the table behind her, "No tip either. Want me to throw that away for you?" As I passed it to her, I saw that the paper was folded open to the classified section and one entry seemed perfectly centered on the page. It read:

WANTED: OFFSHORE RADIO OPERATOR - JUNIOR - PERDIDO PLATFORM. ONSITE TRAINING FOR SR POSITIONS AND CERTIFICATIONS: FCC, MEDICAL, MARITIME SECCLEAR, DOE-Q. COMPETITIVE RATES. IMMEDIATE AVAILABILITY.

There were other details and some contact information but they felt irrelevant. I'd already come to some kind of decision before I'd even finished reading it all. Not just that I'd decided to apply, but that the intervening time and tasks that would take place before my boots were on-deck were inconsequential. I was already there, tasting the salt-spray in my beard and relaxed with the fatigue that only comes from a long day of hard work. The wind gusted and I rocked back in my booth, letting the chilled, wet breeze play across my face.
"Guess not," Cassie muttered as she walked away.
I never did manage to ask her out.
 
 
Water doesn't seem much like water from five thousand feet. On the way out over the Gulf of Mexico it looked like a distant, shimmering sheet of solid cobalt stretching away to the horizon. The interior of the AW139 that I and fourteen other offshore workers occupied was utilitarian, and decked in the corporate red-and-yellow of the owners. I was new and could barely pull my eyes away from the ocean far below, or the helicopter itself - both were fresh experiences for me. Most of the other relief crew were in various states of world-weary repose and it was likely the same on the two choppers ahead of us. I was the only new recruit, brought in to replace the previous radio operator who'd apparently quit just days earlier without bothering to let anyone know. The rest of the people in transit were relieving crewmembers who were headed back inland for a month or so of downtime.
I'd already seen a few signs of large aquatic animals and so found myself studying the calm waters for the black fins of an Orca - one of my favorites from childhood. Which is why, when I happened to glance back to the horizon, I was stunned by what I saw.
The Perdido platform reared up out of the ocean like the metropolitan conning tower of some massive submarine. Giant cranes sprouted up from the edges of the structure and spread their limbs out over the water, creating the illusion that the oil rig was adding to itself. Growing. A helipad extended out from the large residential block at the top, like a beggar's hand held up beseeching the sky for some act of charity. The lead helicopter deposited itself on the pad and fifteen people spilled out of it, heading for a scaffolded set of stairs. Our bird circled lazily while the process repeated for the second chopper. We landed soon after.
I was the last passenger out and I quickly retreated from the aircraft and the deafening whirlwind it produced. A short, blonde woman with a clipboard approached me and we shared a brief laugh as she tried to corral her wind-whipped hair.
"Name?" she shouted over the noise.
"Nat Shaw!" I barked back.
The remnants of her laugh faded as she scanned through her papers, "I don't see you on here!"
I stepped around to her shoulder to check myself, and she obliged by holding the clipboard out for me. As I did, I noticed another man climbing down from the co-pilot seat of the chopper. I could feel the woman looking at me as I watched him approach us. It was the old guy from the diner. He was dressed more or less the same.
"Lara! I see you've met Mr. Shaw!" he shouted, then raised his arm and swirled it above his head. Behind him, the chopper lurched off the helipad and began to ascend out and away over the water.
"Yes sir, I've met him," she smiled a glance at me, "but he's not on my crew roster," and held out the clipboard to the older man.
He waved it away without looking at it, "Not a problem Lara, Mr. Shaw will be helping us on the exploratory barge for the foreseeable future. We'll manage him through the duty roster on the Blue Auger."
At that, Lara stilled. It was only for a moment, but something about her demeanor shifted. There was an awkward pause where nothing was said.
The man cleared his throat, "Yes, well - Mr. Shaw, if you'd come with me? We'll let Lara here get back to work. She's got a whole bunch of people to process, don't you?" His eyes swiveled back to her.
She stammered out another affirmative. The older man turned to walk back to the helipad and I moved to follow when Lara's hand touched my elbow.
"Good luck over there. Be careful," and with that she hurried off down the stairwell.
I suddenly wasn't much enjoying my first day at work. What did I have to be careful of? The old man? The Blue Auger? I studied the nearby barge while I walked back to the helipad where the man - I realized he hadn't yet supplied a name - was busy poking at his cellphone.
The barge was an enormous twin-hulled catamaran, with a massive administration tower topped by a deck-wide wheelhouse. It looked like someone had dropped a mid-sized office building onto the center of a ship. There were people on deck, moving with a purpose. Nestled between the two hulls was a smaller shape floating in the water. It looked like a tiny submarine.
"Pretty impressive, isn't she?" the old man shouted back to me over his shoulder. As he did, he waved broadly at the Auger, giving the impression he was saying hello to it. A chopper, smaller than the one we rode in on, lifted off from the distant helipad and began to make its way over to us. I stepped up beside him.
"So what am I doing here?" I asked, staring at the approaching helicopter, "and who are you?"
The old man continued to stare out at the barge, and some distance beyond it, before he spoke.
"You're empty. You have nothing back there," he gestured vaguely back to the mainland, "and you've no idea how to find something to fill what's missing either."
I gaped, suddenly very angry. Who the hell was this asshole to say that shit to me, employer or not. I immediately began fantasizing about the helicopter fuel they were about to burn hauling me back to the mainland. Before I could speak, he turned and looked me in the eyes. They were different. Not the watery-blue from the diner, nor any brief flash of compassion. Instead, they were almost as grey as his hair and as focused as any I'd ever seen. This man was not the nobody he'd crafted himself to resemble.
"Back there, you're playing a game you're not equipped for and have no interest in winning. Out here," he gestured to the broad expanses of sea and sky, "the rules are a rough draft. You can find meaning, unscripted."
He stepped closer, and though he was almost a foot shorter, he loomed over me. "That," he pointed back to shore again, "has always been a collection of accorded lies. All crafted to help keep the chaos at bay. The most offensive among them being that if you look around the pig pen hard enough, you'll find your purpose. But the truth is there isn't anything to find. You have to make it yourself. That's what we're doing here Mr. Shaw - forging purpose." He stepped back to watch the helicopter make its final approach.
"What happened to the other guy? The other radio operator. Why'd he quit?"
The old man's face crumpled into a frown, but his eyes lost none of their resolve. His mouth moved in quiet response, but the words were lost in the wash of descending blades.
 
 
Despite the strange first day, the first few weeks of my time on the barge had been almost boring. A lot of extremely inane radio chatter and records logging. My ongoing battle with seasickness had also begun to take its toll. I hadn't been sleeping well and my mood had darkened under the oppressive quiet of the ship. Barely anyone spoke to one another. Those that did, did in whispered tones and wary glances. Many of the interactions I'd had were short and unpleasant.
I'd only really found any comfort while alone in my bunk, reading. Even that had taken a few days. The first night I'd rolled onto the surprisingly comfortable mattress to find myself staring at a nightstand photo of two strangers. A beautiful woman with her arms wrapped around the poster-ideal of a man's man. I picked it up and looked closely. The man was wearing heavy duty overalls, a plaid shirt with a high-vis vest on top. Behind him, towers of steel and piping made an abstract backdrop. He had a rich, dark beard and bright white teeth in a textbook grin. A topography of smile lines and crows feet mapped the contours of his face, which was framed with a dash of silvering at his temples. He looked like he should be selling aftershave and lumber. I flipped the frame over.

Hannah & Rick, '18

I opened the nightstand drawer, tossed the picture frame inside and slid it closed. I guessed I was this guy's replacement. Rick the radio guy. I thought briefly of Cassie, and rolled back over.
After that, I assumed most people were cold-shouldering me because I was Rick's replacement. He didn't look very replaceable and I certainly didn't feel like I came close. I'm sure Hannah would have agreed. It was almost two weeks before a co-worker explained what the actual reason for the standoffishness was.
"He likes you," Ferdinand mumbled around a mouthful of cold chicken. We'd bumped into each other down in the canteen well after hours, raiding the staff fridge. The water had been calm that evening and my stomach had settled down long enough to remember what hunger felt like.
"What? Who? What?" I asked over a plate of half-finished fruit and vegetables.
"No. Not like that. The other guy, the other radio guy. I think he feels responsible about that. He treats you different. Like a person. With the rest of us, he's - I dunno. An asshole."
"Responsible?" I asked. "Didn't the other guy quit?"
Mitch paused before taking another mouthful, "Yeah. Sure he did. He went down, then he didn't come back up. I guess he found a job down there, eh?"
"Down? On the mini-sub? I haven't seen anyone go down on that since I've been here. Where does it go?"
For the first time since the conversation began, Mitch looked uncomfortable.
"Look man, if no one's told you anything, maybe it's --
He was cut off by a brutally loud claxon that cut through my thoughts like a razorblade. Lights began to flicker on all over the canteen. Mitch had gone white.
"What is it?"
"Looks like you get to find out."
The old man was standing silhouetted in the doorway of the canteen, flashing lights ran riot behind him.
"Oh good. You're already up. Mitch, take him to fitting please - five minutes," then he spun around and strode away. He'd been wearing a wetsuit with some kind of harness over the top of it, festooned with boxy objects and pouches.
"Come on," Mitch said over his shoulder, already heading for the exit. Before I could say anything, he repeated, "come on," and disappeared out the door.
 
 
I began to have serious misgivings. Stripping naked in front of Mitch to frantically don a wetsuit hadn't been enjoyable, but that unease paled compared to what I felt seated and strapped securely in the mini-sub. For people with a longstanding fear of water, submarines don't feature on the bucket list. I didn't want to be there. Mitch had deposited me in the minisub and rushed off. The old man were there too, along with five other people I'd seen around the 'Augur but hadn’t yet met. They looked like the cast of a budget action flick. Come to that, so did I. My harness contained various tools and electronic components, a hand-held HAM radio and an alarming amount of medical supplies.
"Hey," I said into the murmur of conversation happening in front of me. No one responded. The old man was pointing around the sub and saying things that I had no context for.
"Hey," I said more loudly than before. One of the others, Simon I think, glanced at me briefly to shake his head.
"Hey asshole!" I barked into the compartment. Everyone froze. The old man paused, facing away from me, nodding his head. He turned those intense eyes back on me, but my irritation was an effective bulwark.
"Yes Mr. Shaw. What can we do for you?"
"Why am I sitting here, and where the hell are we going? I don't have to be here, I shouldn't be here. I could just quit," I babbled. I was angry and confused - what I'd thought had been a genuinely lucky opportunity had rapidly become a nightmare.
"Go ahead," the old man said, gesturing to the hatch that led outside. Everyone else had fallen silent.
I hadn't expected that. Slowly, I began to unbuckle my belt.
"If you truly think that what you want is back there, you should go. Maybe your purpose is there. Maybe if you empty enough bottles and make enough acquaintances, you'll find it. You people," he glanced around the compartment, "are always looking for answers everywhere except where they are."
He took a breath to compose himself and dismiss the small bit of rage that had leaked out of his composure.
"Do what you want," he finished, and turned back to the console he'd been examining. My hands retreated from the buckle. He was an asshole. He was also right. Might as well see what was in this direction..
The ride down had been a pleasure. The first in weeks. After almost a month of constant nausea, I found my seasickness lift completely during the descent, and it was quite a descent. Many hours went by while we gained depth at the snail's pace required to allow our bodies to adjust to the pressure. Let me be clear. I passed all the courses and exams necessary to operate radio equipment on a major offshore oil platform. Submarines were not part of the curriculum. I knew almost nothing about them. Any knowledge I had was gleaned from movies. One of those tidbits was that wartime subs in World War Two could only drop down a few hundred meters safely. You can drop that far in a few minutes. We'd been at it much longer.
After seven hours on the minisub, listening to the creaks and groans, I began to grow uncontrollably restless and anxious. Everyone seemed to have something to do but me - there was already someone at the radio, passing information up to the Augur above. She was cute too - and the thought had me irritated with myself. My life was changing on a moment-to-moment basis. A wild variety of new experiences and input assaulted me from every direction, but I couldn't appreciate it past the details - a habit of mine in uncomfortable situations. Most situations.
"Look. I don't want to sound like that guy, but are we close? There's nothing to see or do except brainstorm ways I could die in here and I'm getting a little strung out."
A few of them turned to look at me and the old man reached over to push a button on the console. Below me, a section of the floor panel began to recede into the wall (the bulkhead?). It revealed a six-inch-thick partition of plexiglass in the floor. It was a porthole. I slowly unbuckled my straps and knelt to peer through. My fear succumbed to wonder.
We were descending down through a narrow chasm. The minisub's spotlights played up and down cliff walls to either side. Below, the crevasse descended into darkness, but in the middle of that darkness was an oasis. Four intensely bright lights betrayed the corners of a structure. Clearly manmade, it was the rough shape of a thick book laying face down, but instead of laying on a flat surface, a semi-circular channel had been carved along the length of it, right down the middle. Fastened to it, in the carved-out space, was some sort of pipe that extended from one side of the chasm wall to the other. Maybe some sort of underwater oil pipeline? Guylines stretched outward from the structure and connected to the surrounding walls of stone. They'd clamped a huge submarine onto a underwater pipe. I looked up. The old man was staring at me with one eyebrow raised.
The structure soon passed by my field of view as we slipped below it. I got a brief glimpse of the pipe from much closer than before. It wasn't a perfect cylinder after all and had a rough-seeming texture to it. It looked old, possibly damaged. It seemed likely that this was some kind of repair vessel they'd attached to it. A short while later my attention was pulled away from the porthole by the sounds of loud splashes and voices beyond hull of the minisub.
"Docked," said Simon, at the helm. His companion, Steph, noted the air outside was good and that they still had a clear connection to the surface. The other three crew on board were people I hadn't met before. They moved differently than the rest of us - in concert, as if they'd been moving around in close proximity for a long time. I had no real experience with classifying people in terms of their threat level, but I felt these three were very dangerous indeed. Morgan, Spencer and Loraine. Definitely not mechanics.
The three of them slowed to a stop as they saw me watching.
"Need something?" their apparent leader, Morgan, asked.
"Nope."
Never had they met someone as gifted at avoiding conflict as me. I went back to listening beyond the walls of the minisub and the trio continued their inscrutable preparations. Something clanked loudly against the hull and I yelped, then shrugged at the looks I got. I felt completely out of my element. A few feet to my left, the hatch airlock began to crank open. Cool, scentless air gusted in.
"Welcome aboard the Lucky Barnacle," a voice announced from outside. The old man grimaced at this and glared at someone beyond the threshold.
"Fine. I mean, welcome to Deep Sea LB-1," the voice recited in sarcastic monotone.
I poked my head around the hatch and found a hand waiting to be grabbed. I did so and it pulled me through into bright, halogen light. I stumbled up a short, floating platform and onto a rubberized deck. Behind me the minisub bobbed in a moon pool that was sized just right to accept it. Looking around revealed a scene straight out of a movie. On one side of the room, high-pressure dive suits hung in racks along the wall, with nearby rows of pressure tanks lined up like soldiers at attention. A woman moved along them, taking notes with a tablet. A small crane overhung the minisub, and seemed fully capable of lifting the vehicle without issue. On the other side of the room an array of small portholes ran along the bulkhead, revealing the ultramarine darkness beyond. The hand that gripped mine was attached to a mountain of a man who was grinning huge teeth out from behind an unruly auburn beard.
"Hey buddy, watch yer step," he said, grinning wider.
"Sorry, first time on a … uh, whatever this is."
"Mobile Subaquatic Habitat, or the Mosh Pit. Or," he somehow grinned wider as he leaned back to the minisub's hatch, "the Lucky Barnacle!"
His head pulled away from the hatch as the old man stepped out.
"I see you've met Curtis, the manager of the DSLB-1," he grimaced.
Curtis mouthed the word captain at me as the old man reached back to help the rest of the crew out debark. It appeared I wasn't the only one lacking experienced sea legs.
"Nat," I said and reach out to shake the man's hand. I've heard you can tell a lot about someone by their handshake, but I'd never been able to suss out what that meant. What I did know, was that I fully expected a man like this to do his best to crush my hand bones and, when he didn't, I found myself grinning too.
"See, I told you he'd smile," Morgan punched Loraine in the shoulder as they clomped by with their overfull seabags - moments later Loraine handed her a fiver. Spencer rolled his eyes as he passed. All three seemed to know where they were headed. Steph and Simon loitered nearby, chatting.
"Nice to meet ya. So what brings you down to the Mosh Pit? No offense, but you don't look like a PSC."
"I'm not sure actually. No one's told me much of anything. What's a PSC?"
At this, Curtis' ebullient demeanor faltered and he pivoted his head deliberately toward the old man, who'd already closed his eyes and begun to sigh.
"You didn't brief him first?" Curtis asked flatly.
"No time. And what would I have said? What would you say?"
"I'd at least tell him-"
"Tell him what?" The old man leaned in toward Curtis. "Tell me Mr. Warsaw, what would you have said?"
Curtis flushed red and his frustration seemed about to become physical. He abruptly relented, "I don't know."
"Yes," the old man agreed and strode between us toward the only exit that wasn't back out through the moon pool, "come with me, please, Mr. Shaw."
His shouldered glance took us both in, "It's time we got to work."
 
 
Have I mentioned I don't like water? It's amazing how far you can get on confusion and adrenaline. Eventually, however, your brain climbs out of the back seat and really examines what's going on. I had just taken a small submarine down to a larger submarine that was clamped onto an old, broken pipeline almost a kilometer under the gulf of Mexico. My ears felt weird and I was a little dizzy. The whole structure around me creaked with metallic groans that evoked scenes of explosive flooding from a dozen different movies. I was a radio tech. A brand new radio tech. What the fuck was I doing here?
Halfway down the third nondescript corridor I stopped following Curtis and the old man. They continued for a half-dozen paces, muttering to each other in tones of frustration. Curtis stopped first and glanced around at me, assessing. Then he grabbed the old man's arm, and they both turned to look at me.
"What the fuck am I doing here?" I asked flatly into the corridor.
"Like I said before, you-" the old man started, but I'd had my fill.
"No. Stop. Three months ago my days were a blur of masturbation, whiskey, and cold cereal. Why the fuck am I here? Tell me now or," I gestured around, "I'll start breaking expensive stuff until you send me back up. I shouldn't be here. I heard what you said and I want what you described, purpose, but my whole body is telling me I shouldn't be here. Why?"
The old man's face creased in irritation and he took a step toward me. Behind him, Curtis was carefully expressionless.
"That discomfort is called personal growth Mr. Shaw. You were nothing, and now you're just a little bit more. Now if--"
"WHY AM I HERE?" I hadn't expected to scream, but the bellow echoed up and down the corridor, and I heard the sounds of other crew noises throughout the structure grind to a halt. Even the old man faltered. Curtis spoke for him.
"Because if you die, too, you won't be missed. Fewer questions."
The old man's shoulders tensed and he pressed a few fingers to his forehead, "Curtis.."
"Well it's true, ain't it? I mean, he's smart enough to work the gear and he's relatively fit and healthy." He looked at me, "I bet you don't have a girl and I bet you're not real close with anyone up top, are ya? Did you have a job when you applied for this one?"
I looked at the old man, quietly daring him to look at me. He did. The truth was right there, all over his face.
"I'm expendable?"
"We all are, yes."
It figured. Even this new frontier was just another facet of life letting me know my biggest value was that I had none. I turned on my heel and began to walk back to the moon pool. I'd wait there until the minisub headed back to the surface.
Behind me, in the distance, someone else screamed, "WHY AM I HERE!"
This time the silence that followed was filled with a tension I understood. Where my voice had been filled with frustration, fear and anger, this new one… Hadn't reflected anything. Have you ever tried to scream without emotion coloring the words? I'd been parroted. I slowly turned around to find the old man and Curtis facing away from me once more, staring down the corridor, both rigid with the same unease I felt. I walked up and stood beside them.
Curtis spoke first, "I.. Didn't know he could do that."
"Do what?" the old man replied.
"Yell."
The old man glanced at me, this time with a slightly higher appraisal than he'd had previously.
"Come on. Both of you."
 
 
A couple corridors later, Curtis opened a locked hatch. Behind it was a ladder that went up. As I waited my turn to climb, I plotted our path here from memory. We'd docked on the bottom of the structure, at the edge. By now we had to be somewhere near the middle. Near the pipe the habitat straddled. I followed them up.
The room I found myself in was unlike any other I'd seen. It was long, about the full length of the Lucky Barnacle, but only about fifteen feet wide. Three of the walls sported racks of equipment, some of which I recognized but most I couldn't fathom uses for. The fourth wall was one of the long ones. The entire length of it was glass, buttressed every ten or fifteen feet by steel girders. The thick glass was fastened to the steel supports by hundreds of inch-wide bolts. The glass had the familiar crosshatch of safety wire. A half dozen tripods topped with expensive camera equipment were positioned near the windowed wall. Morgan, Loraine and Spencer were on their feet, compact submachineguns held in tense grips. I was about to object to being around deadly weapons when my eyes shuttled sideways and looked through the glass. My objections died.
The "pipe" dominated the view. It ran across the far side of the room beyond the glass, and disappeared into giant gaskets in the bulkheads at either end of the wide space. The thick rubber was pressed down onto the pipe by concentric rings of hydraulic pistons. Even still, the seals weren't perfect, and seawater could be seen dripping down the walls under both apertures. The pipe itself was much larger than I had thought, almost ten feet in diameter - though the width wasn't perfectly consistent. Actually, it seemed to be changing slightly as I watched. Undulating. Breathing. The texture I'd seen before hadn't been rust either, but long striations of material separated by deep gaps - like tree bark but much more pronounced. It was so enormous and strange that whole seconds went by before I noticed the man in the room with it.
He was facing away from the six of us, looking at - I couldn't call it a pipe anymore - the trunk. He was ghostly pale, bald and totally naked. He was also very well built with well-defined muscles that rippled in the bright lights. He was flexing randomly, almost spasming. He reminded me of drug addicts I'd known in the most violent stages of their withdrawal. I watched in rapt fascination as his hands crept up to his scalp and clawed at the skin there, like he was trying to pull his thoughts out.
"WHY AM I HERE!" he screamed again, but the trunk remained inscrutable. He panted with the exertion. I looked back at the old man and found him staring at me. Everyone else was focused on the scene beyond the glass. I opened my mouth to shove one of the hundred questions I had out, but he shook his head slightly at me and pointed back to the big room. Watch.
I did for a few more moments, when the figure suddenly grew still. Very still. I leaned closer to the glass. He wasn't moving at all. Even his gasping breath had stopped completely. He could have been a statue but for the sweat. Off to the side I saw Curtis look at his watch, then at a screen I couldn't see.
Curtis looked toward the old man. "Thirty-three minutes this time. The new phrase must've bumped it up," then he looked at me, "See? You're already making a difference."
The old man put a finger to his lips and pointed back through the glass. Curtis and I both looked again. The figure unlocked, and now seemed totally limber and relaxed. A hand idly crept up and scratched his head, the very picture of nonchalant confusion. Then he seemed to look down and notice his nudity. A slightly uncomfortable chuckle came through the speakers, and the man spun around with his hands covering his sex. He stared at us through the glass for the moment, then laughed.
"Alright. Good one guys, now gimme back my clothes." His eyes landed on mine and became confused. Modesty forgotten, his hands dropped slightly, "who's the new guy?"
Beneath where his hands had been, there was nothing. He had no genitals - nothing but a smooth patch of hairless skin where they should have been.
"Who's the new guy. Who's the newguywhosthenewguy," his look of confusion grew concerned, as he repeated the words a few more times.
When no one responded to him, a nervous smile began to flicker on and off his face. It was when he smiled that I realized I knew him. Without the beard and full head of hair he was almost unrecognizable. The smile lines and crows feet were also gone, but the face belonged to the photo in my nightstand up top. Rick. Rick the radio guy. The guy I'd come down to replace.
"Holy shit," I said.
"Holy shit," Rick agreed.
The old man's hand on my shoulder startled me out of my shock.
"Now we can chat about why you're here."
 

I enjoyed writing up and seeing positive feedback from this post so I decided to write up about an interesting prop bet that came from the 2+2 poker forums that I feel went under the radar. It's way longer than I thought it would be but this story has it all: large amounts of money being bet, furious grinding, 25 buy in swings, community outrage and Doug Polk.

The Site

The modern cash game grinder may be surprised to hear that there used to be a Sharkscope style tracking website for online cash games, it was called PokerTableRatings or PTR. It tracked hands fairly accurately. Today, it doesn’t exist and has been shut down for years but it was a valuable resource for grinders and having one browser open to check out opponents was useful. PTR showed your graph and win rates at different stakes, it also had an achievement system. Some achievements were serious like ‘1 Million Dollars In Profit’ and some were less serious like ‘Check Raise 3 Times In A Hand’. One coveted achievement given by PTR was the ‘Ultimate Grinder’. This was given to the most profitable player each month at each stake, this was all tracked on the Ultimate Grinder Leaderboard. So for example: if you are the top of the leaderboard for 50NL in December 2008, you will receive the ‘Ultimate Grinder December 50nl 2008’ badge on your PTR profile.

The Bets

The year is 2010. Johnathon Duhamel has won the WSOP Main Event. Poker, especially online poker is still booming. The grinders are plentiful. The fish are more plentiful. Posts flow on 2+2 like wine.
Enter Silent_0ne. He puts out a proposition bet on BBV (Beats, Brags and Variance: a subforum of 2+2 which is the precursor to Poker’s weekly BBV thread). Back in the golden days of online poker and 2+2 it was common for large prop bets to be made on BBV. Silent_0ne’s prop bet is he will be the ultimate grinder for December 2010 at 100nl. No easy feat, the previous months' ultimate grinders had won between $12k-18k and Silent_0ne claimed to have never played more than 10 tables or ever played on Pokerstars. The odds were set at 6:1 odds in Silent’s_0ne’s favour. Jalexand42 was selected to be the escrow and judge of this prop bet, so he will be the middleman for the money and he will arbitrate any disputes. The rules were set down covered many different situations. The judge was confident of this:

Jalexand42: Just a quick note about the judging... I'm optimistic there won't be any controversy in this bet the way the rules have been defined. (#83)

He would turn out to be so wrong.
Many 2+2 posters weighed their opinions in and started to place bets:

Chicago Joey (Joey Ingram): damn that is going to be interesting for a bunch of reasons(#46)
Canoodles: If I was OP, I wouldn't take this for less than 100-1. (#18)
Chinz: Settling for 6-1 and doing it on December when lots of SNE chasers are playing really high volume... You don't seem to like money. (#218)

Nearly all the posters doubted Silent_0ne but he seemed confident and Jalexand42 started collecting money.
By the 28th November, with 3 days to go until the challenge begins the bets were placed and finalized, 14 people put up between $600-$3k. Silent_0ne stood to gain $67,500 or lose $11,250 from the bet alone. In just a few days he would put himself at the mercy of variance and would dedicate himself to destroying 100nl. If he overcomes this challenging month, he stood to win a significant amount of money.

The Play

December the first rolled in and Silent_0ne starting playing. It was a rocky start for him, he finished day two down more than $2k and received comments from 2+2 posters like:

ChicagoJoey [Joey Ingram]: lol trainwreck (#392)
MinSixBet: are you still taking action? (#399)

But some posters really believed in him and were rooting hard:

Eaglesfan1: Forget about the leaderboard and focus on your game and playing ur best. (#406)

However things got worse and Silent_one seemed to be losing hope, on day 4 he posted this:

Silent_0ne: just got owned
bad rly bad "hero call" for big pot
set of 8s < set of As
KK < AK
bad river bluff shove
set of 6s < str
10s < Js
AK < AA
AK on AK6 board < 66
AA < 99 on 974 board
^ all greater than 200 big blind pots
could have prevented half of those if I didnt suck so much (#410)

Day 5 and Silent_0ne was doing better but was down a few buy ins, still far behind his target. Remember, he needs to be number one in profit in the massive 2010 pool of 100nl Pokerstars players. He posted this astonishing hand:
Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em $0.20 Ante - 9 players

Silent_0ne: $568.55 UTG+1: $444.30 UTG+2: $519.10 MP1: $226.75 Hero (MP2): $257.70 CO: $250.00 BTN: $100.00 SB: $257.70 BB: $120.90
Pre Flop: ($3.30) Silent_0ne is MP2 with 9h9c
Silent_0ne raises to $4.80, UTG+1 raises to $18.60, 1 fold, MP1 calls $18.60, 5 folds, Silent_0ne calls $13.80
Flop: ($59.10) 2h8s5s(3 players)
Silent_0ne checks, UTG+1 bets $32, MP1 folds, Silent_0ne raises to $92, UTG+1 calls $60
Turn: ($243.10) Kc (2 players)
Silent_0ne checks, UTG+1 checks
River: ($243.10) 4s (2 players)
Silent_0ne bets $127, UTG+1 raises to $333.50 all in, Silent_0ne calls $206.50
Final Pot: $910.10
Silent_0ne shows 9h9c (a pair of Nines)
UTG+1 shows 9dJc (high card King)
Silent_0ne wins $907.10

As you can see, 2010 was truly an amazing place for online poker.
Silent_0ne was bringing out his inner grinder and was playing 16 hour sessions and seeing huge swings in the first week. Day 7 and he posted some hands that shocked the community and his growing fan base:

DPred123: wtf at those HHs. (#520)
Transa: LoLolLololooLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL (#521)

Here are two of the hands he posted:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em $0.20 Ante - 9 players
Pre Flop: ($3.30) MP1: $365.20 Hero (CO): $342.35 Silent_0ne is CO with 7s7d
3 folds, MP1 raises to $4, 1 fold, Silent_0ne raises to $15.50, 3 folds, MP1 raises to $41.90, Silent_0ne raises to $342.15 all in, MP1 calls $300.25
Flop: ($687.60) ThKc6s(2 players - 1 is all in)
Turn: ($687.60) Ts (2 players - 1 is all in)
River: ($687.60) 2h (2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: $687.60
MP1 shows AcAh (two pair, Aces and Tens)

and:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em $0.20 Ante - 3 players
BTN: $656.85 Silent_0ne(SB): $288.00 BB: $345.00
Pre Flop: ($2.10) Silent_0ne is SB with 4d4h
BTN raises to $3, Silent_0ne raises to $12, 1 fold, BTN calls $9
Flop: ($25.60) 3h6d5s(2 players)
Silent_0ne checks, BTN bets $18, Silent_0ne raises to $275.80 all in, BTN calls $257.80
Turn: ($577.20) Js (2 players - 1 is all in)
River: ($577.20) 9c (2 players - 1 is all in)
Final Pot: $577.20
BTN shows 3d5d (two pair, Fives and Threes)
Hero Silent_0ne 4h4h (a pair of Fours)
BTN wins $576.20

Silent_0ne explained:

Silent_0ne: barely ate anything last few days. i just get up and play, dont prepare anything. im playing right now btw. down around 2700$ for the month. im really dumb for spewing off 3k+ just cause i was tilted/ran bad, and snapped. another problem that people overlook is the extra attention i get at the tables for doing this prop bet. lots of regs can exploit my plays and then all tend to focus on owning me. (#554)

Silent_0ne had started the month on a $3k downswing, then won $2.5k before going on another $3k downswing in just one week. He must have felt desperate as after an hour and a half Silent_0ne had an idea and events took a shocking turn:

Silent_0ne: any interested if i give up 100nl and start tomorrow on day 7 at 50nl to try and get the badge there for 6 to 1. i wanna gamble and break even on the month, so im willing to put up 5k on this if any1 is interested? (#570)

This new bet must have seemed too good to be true. At this point he had been relentlessly grinding 100nl for a week, was losing badly, he was tilting, was likely playing more tables than he can handle and he’s a week behind getting to the top of the 50nl leaderboard. The bets started to pour in and within an hour he had 7 people place action. The community commented:

Absurd: This is adsurd (#601)
jalexand42: Seriously, take a day to cool off. (#599)
King Fish: I'd be interested but highly advise you to reconsider this and maybe take an hour and step back. Edit: will take $1800 to your $300 assuming same judge and escrow. (#574)
loK2thabrain: I call dibs on first bet when he moves down to win the 25nl badge. (#700)

Everyone on the thread couldn’t believe what they reading, However, Silent_0ne seemed to accept that the 100nl bet was dead and he wasn’t getting the $67k prop bet win. He was willing to pay the $11k out and enter a new prop bet. Now, being the Ultimate Grinder at 50nl is his goal. Again, the bets were substantial and he had 8:1 odds in his favour for being the Ultimate Grinder for December at 50nl. The same day he made the new bet, he started at 50nl and was off.

The New Bet

Enter Fees. Fees is the 2+2 username of Ryan Fee (Currently on Team Upswing), at this point he was known for being a fearsome 2000nl grinder and writing Ryan Fee’s 6 max guide, which he distributed for free. In a world where succinct and good poker strategy was hard to come by, this was a valuable guide for many players. He takes interest in the thread on the 7th of December:

Fees i'll take all the action, PM me (#746)

Fees booked action late and the details of this booking were not listed in the thread. The next day, Fees acts a question about the rules:

Fees: what if kerpowski or jeffmet wins the ugl and he gets second? (#878)

Kerpowski and Jeffmet are players who took action against Silent_0ne. They are also 50/100nl grinders. The case of fellow grinders taking action was covered in the rules. A poster quotes the rules and informs Fees that they have to be existing 50nl/100nl grinders. Fees then asks the following question:

Fees: i think that implies at the same tables as him, but what if they just play completely different games and just win the ugl?

Remember these probing questions, they’ll become relevant later.
By the 10th of December things looked tough for Silent_0ne, the player of the top of the 50nl leaderboard was already at $2.5k profit (50 buy ins). Silent_0ne was up $1.1k and estimated he was only 2-3 days behind pace. By the 12th of December he was still playing brutally long sessions:

Silent_0ne: just finished 11 hour session, too tired to post anything, ill go to bed for a couple hours then post graphs/hands when i wake up. was tilted throughout entire session, played 12k hands...eyes burn...ran bad for once (6 buyins below ev)

He also posted eight hands that looked pretty spewy, here is one of them:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em $0.10 Ante - 5 players BB: $50.00 UTG: $103.40 CO: $137.65 BTN: $133.00 Silent_0ne (SB): $144.60
Pre Flop: ($1.25) Hero is SB with AdQh
1 fold, CO raises to $1.50, BTN calls $1.50, Silent_0ne calls $1.25, BB calls $1
Flop: ($6.50) 6c6d6s(4 players)
Silent_0ne checks, BB checks, CO bets $4, BTN folds, Silent_0ne raises to $14.75, BB folds, CO calls $10.75
Turn: ($36.00) 8h (2 players)
Silent_0ne bets $25.75, CO calls $25.75
River: ($87.50) 4d (2 players)
Silent_0ne bets $102.50 all in, CO calls $95.55 all in
Final Pot: $278.60
CO shows JdJc (a full house, Sixes full of Jacks)
Silent_0ne shows AdQh (three of a kind, Sixes)
CO wins $276.60

Even people taking action against him gave him advice:

King Fish: I am speechless … It's NL50. Stop trying to get so fancy. (#1038)

But then, Silent_0ne has an explosive session and is up an incredible $2800 in one day, that’s 56 buy ins! The posters go wild as he moves into 3rd place on the 50nl Ultimate Grinder leaderboard:

1. vaike $3,142, 19.38 Hands BB/100
   
2. zzn1980 $2,833, 2.46 Hands BB/100
   
3. Silent_0ne69 $2,634, 5.19 Hands B/100
   

For the first time people are starting to believe that he can do this.
Fast forward to the next day, December 13th and with another miraculous winning session he reaches number one on the leaderboard. He has $3.4k profit at 50nl and number two is close behind with $3.1k, if he can maintain his win rate of 6b/100 hands then he should have a very real chance of making an incredible comeback.
14th December. Fees posts:

Fees: still taking action, I want 2:1

Despite Silent_0ne being top of the leaderboard when he posted this and Fees already buying action Fees seemed willing to take 2:1 in Silent_0ne’s favour.
Soon after, a poster in the thread reveals that:

tightmaniac: fees is 4th

It is revealed that Fees who is normally a 2000nl player is playing 50nl HU and is 4th on the leaderboard. HU 50nl still counts towards the 50nl leaderboard. With the higher rate of hands of HU, bigger winrates of HU and Fees' skill, it could mean he would soon reach the top of the leaderboard. 10 minutes after TightManic’s post Fees lowers his odds:

Fees: Looking to take action on this at 1:1 (#1180)

The judge weighs in:

Jalexand42: If fees' didn't disclose this to whoever has his action, it's obviously pretty questionable, although that probably should have been asked. As far as the prop bet tho, I specifically asked Silent whether HU players should be included/excluded and he said included. The rules clearly don't exclude some random player from dropping down and playing $50nl (or $100nl for the original bet). They DO clearly state that people who bet against Silent one as part of the prop bet are NOT allowed to interfere with the bet, but I don't have anything to do with whatever side action fees may have on this. I told kerpowski last night that I didn't want him to play HU to try to win the badge, since I felt like it was a gray area in the intent of the rules (since he obviously doesn't normally play those stakes).
Kind of sucks for OP if this is going on, but I can't really change the rules after it's started since that would affect the people that bet against Silent. (#1196)

As of the 15 December Silent_0ne was still top of the board with $4.4k and most posters were expressing their displeasure if Fees were to continue playing 50nl. Silent_0ne drops this bombshell:

Silent_0ne: ‘2. Actions must be in accordance with the intent of having a fair prop bet. No actions (chip dumping, collusion, ghosting/coaching players on Silent_0ne's tables, etc) can be taken with the intent to affect the outcome of the prop bet. Violations will result in the violator's action being forfeited and may result in additional modification/extention to neutralize the interference.’ [Silent_0ne is quoting the rules here.] ‘The spirit of the bet is that OP is competing against players who 'really' play NL100, both ring and heads up.’
I know a friend of Fees and his friend said he was legit and everything. alittle after the bet started and action was full, fees approached me and my friend about taking additional action at 10 to 1. my friend and I took an additional 2.5k to his 25k and escrowed to wcgrider. the bet was under the assumption that the same rules as the 100nl bet were going to be used, and whatever the judge decides would be final.
so given the quotes above, it is against the rules that someone betting against me should also be able to compete against me given that he does not regularly play at 50nl (he plays 6max 2knl and WON the UGL badge last month at that stake) also, im not allowed to play 50nl HU which is really fishy and easy to win the UGL badge at if you put in enough volume.
regardless of if fees action is with Jalex or not, i think the same rules apply, because he is not a regular at the stakes and he accepted the same rules when making the bet with my friend and I going to eat something then start up a grind session, hopefully I continue to crush and run good, though my heart has sunk when I looked at fees in forth, and I feel ill and tilted (#1205)

Silent_0ne posted that he did a deal, off with main thread with 10 to 1 odds (Fees betting $25k to Silent_0ne’s $2.5k that Silent_0ne will win ultimate grinder 50nl) with Fees and that WCGRider (Doug Polk, currently of Upswing Poker and poker Youtube fame) is the escrow, not Jalexand42. Most posters now seem outraged:

King Fish: Wow what an angle shoot by Fees on this. This does help define the measure of what type of person he is that he is even attempting it. (#1207)
Tumaterminator: sickest hustle ever. (#1210)
kp1022: wait, doeboyfre$h is fees?
he sat me in 50nl HU a few days ago FWIW
after PTR'ing him , i asked why was he playing so low? he replied, "busto" (#1234)

Some of the posters were trying to play Fees at the 50nl in attempt to slow down his winning streak and tell Fees that he is breaking the rules. Silent_0ne expressed his displeasure and downed mental state:

Silent_0ne: this is horrible. im going to start my first grind right now. imo what fees is doing is against the rules and is unfair. i really hope i dont lose alot right now, but im in a pretty poor emotional state
please whoever is decent, sit it up with fees and discouarge him to continue what hes doing. 2knl player won badge last month, makes big bet against me and decides to compete for 50nl badge against me... (#1267)

For the first time in a few days Fees posts:

Fees: Hey,
Just to clear a few things up,

1. I haven't broken any rules, there isn't a rule that explicitly states that I cannot win the UGL.
2. I'm not trying to scam/do anything shady/etc, when I made the bet I posted in this thread asking if a bettor could win the UGL […] anyway I'm going to try and win the 50nl UGL this month... I haven't done anything wrong and there is nothing wrong with me going for it.

Then, an enflamed debate about the rules erupts, almost every poster is furious at Fees

Silent_0ne: had a conversation with WCGRider over the phone. the assumption was that jalex is the judge of this bet, and his word is final. WCGRider is simply just an escrow. fees and I agreed on the rules of the bet and having jalex of the judge. #1352

Then WCGRider (Doug Polk) posts for the first time:

WCGRider: Wanted to make a quick post here because i talked to colin earlier about this and i want to clear up a few things.
First off, I was never told i was going to be an escrow. I literally woke up with colins [Silent_0ne] money in my account. I was never asked anything, I was never told anything, I just was sent the money and thats it.
So now im being brought into this to make a decision, which i dont think really is fair. I haven't read any of this thread, I haven't read the rules. Also, fees has to be one of my best friends here in las vegas, and I want that to be clear before i give my opinion about this. I think its sort of unfair that i get put into this situation.

jalexand42 then posts his judgment in a lengthy post (#1526) but I believe this excerpt sums it up:

jalexand42: So, while it is not UNFAIR of fees to be playing $50nl, he has CLEARLY taken actions that will influence the outcome of the bet IF he wins the UGL for $50nl for December. Fees would clearly NOT be playing $50nl (and in fact is still playing his normal stakes) if he didn't have action on this bet. Fees also clearly understood this was a questionable area with regard to the rules based on his posts in this thread and he did not clarify it with the judge. He posts also indicate clearly that he felt he was subject to the rules. Therefore, I rule that Fees' standing on the UGL for December WILL BE IGNORED for purposes of determining this bet if he wins.

Many posters praise Jalexand42. But Jalexand42 does not have the money from the sidebet between Silent_0ne and Fees. WCGrider does. Silent_0ne gives his piece of mind and a quick poker update:

Silent_0ne: yes, i agree with this [Jalexand42's judgment].
also, fees can keep the 25k in the bet without any forfiet. im just really happy things worked out okay.
however i probably should have read this before my session I just played. probably wouldnt have spewed as much at the endodays been my worst day since the start of the 50nl bet so far. gonna play 1 more session later tonight and going to be in alot better and focused mood (#1561)

Then, another bombshell drops, a friend of WCRrider’s reveals that Fees didn’t even escrow his money to Doug:
theskillzdatklls: Afaik, Fees did not ship his $25k share to Doug, only Colin [Silent_0ne] sent his part. (#1669)
2+2 reacts:

Handbaggio: LOL wtf, fees hasn't escrowed his bet??? (#1676)
rnb0sprnkles: LOL and when I thought the drama was starting to die down, the thread gets even crazier (#1698)

Jalexand42 has a conversation with WCGRider to reach an agreement and reports:

Jalexand42: Okay, so here's the summary of my conversation with WCGRider:

1. He is only holding Silent & the_most's action, $2,500.
   
2. He did talk to Fees. Fees told him he was going to talk to Colin [Silent_0ne] today and 'hopes to work out something reasonable'.
   
3. I asked what that means, he said he didn't feel like he could tell me, because he felt like what Fees told him was as a friend, but that it sounded fair in WCGRider's opinion.
   
4. WCGRider said he thought my decision making sounded reasonable.
   
5. WCGrider said that noone told him what to do, so he figured he was just holding on to Silent's money.
   
6. I told WCGrider I was willing for him to ship me the $2.5k now if he was feeling uncomfortable, he said he'd wait to see what Silent & Fees work out. ( #1703)
   

Back to actual poker and Silent_0ne reports a bad losing session on the 16th December citing all the ongoing drama:

Silent_0ne: 22 buyin downswing im playing really bad right now, and I really wish I didn't have to think about and deal with all these other problems.

The community are rooting really hard to him at this point and are all telling him to stay strong. Things start to get messy when Jalexand42 speaks with WCGRider and Fees and in a long post ( #1957) said that WCGRider protested his participation was unfair and Jalexand42 accused him of not of not already sending the $25k to Jalexand42. Fees also tried to offer Silent_0ne a $1k buy out saying it was ‘super generous’, it was refused. Silent_0ne states that the reason fees doesn't want his money escrowed by Jalexand42 is that he is afraid that his bet will be forfeited due to breaking the rules. WCGRider chimed in to defend himself (he also spoke about playing 50nl-100nl and having a rough year, which is interesting as he developed into the top HU player for a time and couldn’t get action, even at the highest stakes.) The 2+2 community then debate and lightly harass WCGRider and Fees to concede and send the money to Jalexand42. Fees finally agrees to a 50% buyout.

The Outcome

On the 17th of December and Silent_0ne slips to number 2 on the leaderboards.

1. vaike $3,835 ,17.44BB/100
   
2. Silent_0ne69 $3,523, 4.25BB/100
   

Silent_0ne then makes a post that changes everything:

Silent_0ne : Hello everyone
firstly, I would like to say thank you so much to everyone who supported me throughout this bet. i cant stress how much it meant to me to see any post wishing me goodluck, or someone pming me given me some life lessons and more encouragement.
ive been approached by the bettors on numerous occasions regarding a buyout. the original buyout deal offered was 33%. eventually 37% was offered, and then 44%, and finally I agreed on 50% of total wagers from all 6 bettors as their buyout.
I am not really satisfied with a buyout, and I was not the one originally looking for the buyout. the bettors wanted it and I decided to see what they had to offer. what I wanted was time to spend with friends and family throughout the christmas break. With continuing this bet, I do have alot of confidence of accomplishing it, but at the expense of isolation through one of the most special times of each year. My family was mad at me when I tried explaining to them I probably wouldn't be able to particpate in any family events and have much if any celebration of christmas.
my goal the next 14 days was to just grind it out 10 hours each day with breaks inbetween, and sleep. Instead I will be able to go back to my regular, stress free grinding, and shipping 50% of the total wagers after half the month as gone by. In the end, including both the 100nl and 50nl prop bets, I made a net of roughly +20k. The other two options would be risking a net of -20k or a net of +60k. I took the variance free route, and all the bettors did the same thing. None of us wanted to lose the bet obviously, so I think we worked out a fair resolution with this buyout.
I have no hard feelings against fees or wcg rider. Perhaps a different scenerio would have occured if the recent issues did not occur, but thats in the past now and i'm looking forwards to a postive future. (#2511)

So, in the end all the parties involved reached a buyout agreement on the 50nl prop bet. Silent_0ne would stop playing the 50nl prop bet and would be up $20k. The community replies:

Ditch Digger: Silent, nice job. 50% is more than reasonable. (#2516)
kelnel: gg on +20k, u rocked!! (#2520)
shhhnake_eyes: I call this the most anticlimactic finish ever. (#2522)

Link to original thread.
Note: Please note I’ve tried to be impartial in writing this. Please let me know publicly or privately if there are any errors or you feel I misrepresented something or someone. The quotes I’ve included don’t always show the full post made but I’ve included the post number in each quote so you can read it on 2+2 in full context. If you want to be fully informed you should read the whole 2+2 thread.