After years of saving, we finally had enough money to replace one of our 2 old family vehicles with a new one. Both of our older vehicles had become a bit old and janky, and we wanted a car that had leather seats and a bit of luxury so that we could take long road trips and drives in a pleasant way. We planned to keep this car for the next 10 years.
We were replacing the SUV he normally drives because it was a couple years older then the one I drive - so I told him to pick any SUV he wanted because he'd be the primary driver. Once I said that, he decided on a Toyota 4Runner, a SUV that is more like a truck and something he knew I would hate. I swallowed my opinion and stuck to my word, and even agreed to go over our budget $10,000 so he could get all the bells a whistles. I thought, "Well, I hate it, but at least he's happy." The following week he blacked out all the chrome with a blackout kit. Then he tinted the front side windows. Then he bought a tow kit with a trailer we don't need. (He works behind a desk). He said - "I'm getting new tires and then I'm done."
Fast forward to me returning from visiting family to our $45,000 4runner with monster tires, a lift kit, and a giant tow hitch cork of an animated character. We are in our 50's. He took me for a ride and at 5'2", I had to struggle to get into it. Since he also "leveled" it - it drives like an off road vehicle. It's bumpy and harsh. The "nice" car we'd planned to take on trips and to dinner is now a monster truck.
When I tried to move it yesterday morning from the driveway to get my car, I cranked the wheel, and the giant tires scrapped the wheel well and made a loud "ssccreechhh" as neighbors watched in disbelief and amusement. One neighbor friend asked if "I was OK." The tires are too big for the wheel well so my husband had to hack off part of the brand new car's wheel well to accommodate these giant tires. I got the credit card bill - he spent $2500 on these tires and rims.
I'm beside myself. We've been fighting nonstop. I would never do something like this to him and I don't understand how or what is happening. We rarely vacation so long drives were our way of connecting - now long drives are out unless I want to go for a bumpy and embarrassing experience. Even my 12 year old son feels embarrassed by this vehicle, and said to me "dad wants me to have the truck when I go to high school - do I have to take it?" He doesn't want to be dropped off in it - we live in a fairly conservative area that is densely populated - no where near the country where maybe this truck makes sense?
When I see this monstrosity on our narrow street, I'm filled with sadness that I can't shake. It's a car I can't enjoy - but my husband loves it. If he told me he wanted a monster truck - we could have split up the $45,000 - gotten him a slightly older truck to modify, and still gotten a decent replacement family car - but now we are tapped. AITA?
UPDATE: I asked him to read all the comments here and we'd talk when I came home. When I returned, he read them, but said it wasn't fair because it wasn't "a monster truck" - yes the tires were bigger and yes it need a lift kit to accommodate, and yes, he had to trim the wheel well even after the lift kit - but technically it wasn't "a monster truck". (To me it was, but it wasn't the clownish ones he showed me online.) I agreed it could be worse - so (for my husband) "hey Reddit peeps, my bad - it wasn't an actual monster truck, I took creative liberties that were not fair and I apologize."
Then we moved on to the bigger issue for me - my main issue was that he turned our brand new family vehicle into a mod toy that only he would enjoy. I told him it was uncomfortable and embarrassing. He really couldn't understand the "embarrassing" part. Why did I care what others thought?? He really tried to convince me that I was too concerned about what others thought and that I had a problem. At this point I changed the subject to "can we go to the store and pick up dinner?" He was grateful for the change of subject and I went upstairs to change.
I put on the tightest pink v-neck t-shirt I could find, and stuffed my sport bra with every pair of socks in my drawer. I then rolled up a few t-shirts and stuffed them in for good measure. My body was now in the shape of a very top heavy letter "P". I then commenced to tease out my long hair into the perfect 80's hairdo with lots of hairspray with makeup to match. I also threw on a pair of heels with my leggings. When I walked past our kids, they laughed. When I walked down the stairs, my husband's eyes widened. He was betting I wouldn't go outside like that, and he said "let's go" - thinking he was calling my bluff. I strutted my stuff right to his truck with an exaggerated swing. He started to sweat. Once we were in, he said - "where to?" I said, "the grocery store" (smack dab in the center of town). Halfway there - he said "Fine, I get your point". I said "take me to the store". It was packed. Once we got there I jumped out, arched back, and started strutting to the entrance - at this point he panicked and said "I get it, I get it!!!" I turned around and said - "are you sure?" - the look of fear in his eyes was enough. We both returned to the truck.
Afterwards we went for a drive and had a long talk. He explained that what he thought he was buying and what actually ended up on the car wasn't exactly the same, but he felt he was in too deep. (Didn't help that the car guys were all patting him on the back in admiration). He then convinced himself that this look was even better than what he really wanted. I then explained that a modification could void our warranty. This really freaked him out - he didn't think about this. Luckily it is the kind of lift that can easily be removed. I think in the end, the voided warranty is what swayed him. We'll take a financial hit for sure, but we're in a much better place today than this morning, and are trying to figure out what works for both of us. I'm so glad the guy I married showed up today, because I didn't marry "monster truck guy" - he's a total A-hole.

The humans seemed relatively easy to infiltrate. Shave his fur, dye his skin, undergo extensive facial reconstructive surgery... Some would have said that last requirement made infiltration far from easy, but Egil's great-uncle had needed extra vertebrae added to his neck and a prosthetic tail in order to infiltrate the Raquids before their assimilation by the Cultivators' Combine. Egil was shorter and stockier than the human norm, but there was enough variation in the species that he should be able to pass with only the occasional double-take. A species that had obviously never developed the germ theory of disease couldn't possibly have sufficient medical sophistication to detect the internal differences in his anatomy.
​
That assumption proved to be in error. Every career path that might lead to an inside look at the human military capabilities was barricaded by the need for a physical exam, either to make sure he wouldn't kill himself trying to do the job or else for their "health insurance". Egil escaped detection at the unexpectedly thorough initial exam by feigning a panic attack (apparently these humans regarded phobias as a disability to be worked around rather than a character flaw), but he found himself relegated to the less bureaucratized sections of the human economy.
​
Even the criminal element proved instructive--but in a way that Egil found most disheartening. The weapons available on the civilian black market were sufficiently advanced to make any ground assault a bloodbath. Presumably these were inferior to what the human militaries possessed. Worse, a non-negligible percentage of the humans he observed in hostile interactions with each other displayed sufficient spite to destroy resources they could not prevent a rival from seizing.
​
"We have limited time," Egil reported over the hyper-com he'd set up. "They are currently scrambling to preserve the remnants of their system's fourth planet's productivity. Once they realize that the effort is futile, they will almost certainly begin expanding their agricultural efforts on the third. From what i have seen, they will be unwilling to restrict themselves to starvation rations, and the population density is already much higher than we had thought possible based on their current land usage. Although they have not yet fully exploited their potential arable land, we can assume the clock to have started ticking.
​
"Unfortunately," Egil continued, "despite their minimal space based infrastructure, their suborbital weaponry is sufficient to render a ground assault useful only for population reduction. We also cannot count on orbital superiority to cow them into submission: too many of them score too high for spite. We could exterminate them if we were willing to glass a farm world to do it; we cannot assimilate them by force."
​
"You look unwell, Egil," the officer taking his report said. "Is it merely fretting over our collective future if we cannot obtain this world and its resources?"
​
Egil shook his head and answered, "I am unwell. This planet's fungi and bacteria are astonishingly prolific. I had a great deal of difficulty in finding quarters that could be adequately sanitized. I finally had to resort to removing all non-essential wall materials and furnishings, and i've been buying disinfectants in quantities that are getting me odd looks from the neighbors. Despite my best efforts, however, i've developed severe diarrhea, and the antibiotics i'm taking are becoming ever less effective. I'm already taking the maximum unsupervised dosage; i would appreciate an opportunity to consult with one of our medics about whether i should risk going higher.
​
"I would advise against medical evacuation," Egil continued. "This is not something to risk introducing to the home ships."
​
The recording officer bowed his head in acknowledgement. "That's an exemplary conduct medal, at a minimum, should the worst come to pass. Obviously the preferred reward would be a long life--but such is not within our power to grant or withhold. I will see about arranging a medical consultation window."
​
--------------------
​
Egil awakened in a human hospital bed with multiple IVs feeding him fluids. Three of the humans in the room had dark suits and postures that screamed 'security'; three wore white coats, gloves, and surgical masks; and one wore a business suit and gave the impression of being some kind of diplomat. There were also multiple cameras and microphones and screens apparently intended to allow two way communication.
​
"He's awake," someone noted.
​
"Well, Mr. Extra-terrestrial," one of the doctors said, "i don't know whether to thank you for giving us a new class of antibiotics or chew you out for giving us a strain of C. diff that's already resistant to it. Although i suppose the C. diff is doing a pretty good job of that for us."
​
" 'Already'?" Egil asked groggily. "This resistance to the antibiotics is something you expect to happen?"
​
"We usually get a year or two after introducing a new antibiotic before resistant strains start turning up in awkward places, but yes, it's inevitable. The resistant strains already exist in trace amounts--even in the one case of a completely synthetic class of antibiotic--they just suffer from sufficient metabolic penalties that they can only proliferate in the presence of the relevant antibiotics."
​
"I see," Egil said. "You haven't exterminated your microbes because you can't, not because you don't know they cause illness. This explains many of the seeming contradictions. I suppose that putting enough chlorine in your water to kill all the microbes rather than most would exceed your own threshold of toxicity?"
​
"Precisely," the doctor answered. "That isn't our only reason for not attempting to exterminate all microbes, however. Pathogenic strains are a minuscule minority among microbes; most are harmless or beneficial."
​
"Beneficial!" Egil said incredulously. "What possible benefit could a parasite be?"
​
"Some of our gut microbes break down complex sugars that we can't; others produce essential vitamins. Most help inhibit the growth of pathogenic strains; some help regulate our immune reactions. There's a skin bacteria whose whole job is to help calm the inflammatory response to minimize the risk of overreactions. I'd bet that when your people first exterminated their micro-flora, they saw a massive spike in allergy rates."
​
"I am not a historian," Egil said. "We lose maybe ten percent of our children to severe food allergies, however. Not because we don't know how to treat them but because supporting that many with chronic conditions would jeopardize our ability to support everyone else. We keep hoping it will be bred out of our population--but we've been hoping that for over a thousand years."
​
"Brutal," the diplomat said. "But based on your research notes, i can see why your people feel they don't have a choice in the matter."
​
"You know, then," Egil said. "Why go to all this trouble," he indicated the medical equipment, "for a spy?"
​
"Because we want a channel to open negotiations through before your people's warships arrive. Your comm gear is both bio-metrically coded and password protected, which means we need you alive," the diplomatic explained. "I won't deny that we're all indulging in a little schadenfreude at your diarrhea problem, but we'll be a lot happier if you can convince your people to hand over enough medical data for us to keep you alive." He looked to the doctors. "How hard is that going to be, anyway?"
​
"Hydration is straightforward enough," a different doctor than the one that had addressed Egil previously answered. "But we're guessing at the electrolyte balance. We can work out the normal nutritional requirements based on his supply of emergency rations and supplements--but what's needed for maintaining good health can be different than what's needed to replenish one's reserves after a major illness."
​
Egil nodded slowly. "The recommended solution for mild diarrhea is similar to what's in your sports drinks; it's assumed that there's no point in including severe cases in the basic emergency medical training because you can't do anything if you've passed out, anyway. Was that how i was found out?"
​
"No," the diplomat said. "You were buying household disinfectants in suspiciously large quantities. Large enough to get you on a terrorism watch list. It didn't take long to determine that you were using all that bleach for its intended purpose, and were only in danger of accidentally gassing yourself--but by then it was equally clear that you were spying for somebody, and that you weren't making your reports in any known language. At least that nasty little C. diff infection you've got exonerates you from suspicion of planning a chemical attack."
​
"Is it untreatable, then?" Egil asked. "If my antibiotics don't work, and yours don't work either..."
​
The first doctor answered, "The most effective treatment for recurring C. diff infections is a fecal transplant. Although C. diff has a frustrating ability to survive on surfaces and is immune to alcohol based sanitizers, it is fairly weak against competing micro-flora. Unfortunately, we don't know which microbes are harmful and which are benign in your species. Obviously, none are absolutely essential, since you haven't died off from the lack of gut bacteria. You said it's been a thousand years since you exterminated them--that may be long enough that your species has lost the ability to interface properly with mutualistic microbes. On the other hand, since you haven't been able to breed out the susceptibility to fatal allergic reactions, it's possible that your immune requirements haven't changed enough to matter. But trial and error testing on a sample size of one is problematic on both ethical and procedural counts."
​
Egil nodded slowly. "I fail to see how you could make things any worse than they are now. Even if you decided to send me home, i would refuse to go--i will not risk introducing this pathogen to our ships. But if my condition seems stable, it might be prudent to defer any such experiments until after we have opened channels for whatever negotiations you think are possible."
​
"Your people need food, correct?" the diplomat asked.
​
"Yes," Egil said. "All of our home ships and capital warships have extensive hydroponic sections, but that's only enough for starvation rations. A single farmworld can double our food supply to something comfortable."
​
"Uh-huh," the diplomat said slowly. "How many people do you think our planet currently supports."
​
"Based on how much of your arable land you're actually using, around five hundred million," Egil answered. "Double that if you're on starvation rations--which from my observations, most of you clearly aren't."
​
Everyone in the room, security men included, struggled to not burst out laughing. "We passed the one billion mark approximately two and a half centuries ago," the diplomat explained. "We're well past eight billion now; i can't remember if the estimate is flirting with nine billion yet. Figure eight and a half billion plus or minus a couple of hundred million."
​
Egil sat up so hard that one of the IVs threatened to pull out. "That's impossible!"
​
"Let me guess," the diplomat said. "Your people took the same kill everything approach to crop pathogens that you did to personal ones, didn't you?"
​
"Of course," Egil said. "Microbes are dangerous; every civilization exterminates them once they realize how disease is transmitted."
​
"Many diseases are caused by microbes," the first doctor said. "Not all of them. Some are genetic, some are idiopathic--and some are caused by not having enough of the right microbes."
​
"And when you wiped out the environmental microbiome," the diplomat said, "you also wiped out the nitrogen fixing bacteria and the fungal networks that share nutrients between plants and the microbes that break down dead organic matter so that the nutrients can be recycled. No wonder your people kill planets so fast."
​
"To keep a planet productive for a hundred years is a feat we have finally learned to duplicate reliably. It is the pinnacle of multiple civilizations' accomplishments."
​
"And for how many millennia were these planets fertile before your ignorance touched them?" the diplomat demanded. He practically snarled, "How much do your people need to live--per year, that is."
​
Egil named a figure, and everyone in the room stared at him in disbelief. Probably wondering how a single planet could supply that much. "That's all?" one of the doctors said, not quite under his breath.
​
"And how many planets have you used up?" the diplomat asked.
​
"I'm not sure," Egil said. "Based on the number of species in the combine, it must be over seven hundred. Probably higher, since some did not survive long enough to be absorbed. Sometimes because they refused to assimilate, sometimes dead before we discovered their world, sometimes reason they died off unknown."
​
"If i thought there was any chance we could make up the tech difference in time," the diplomat said, "i'd tell you all to go to hell. But since there's no way we can pull off space superiority before your fleets arrive, i'll have to settle for a small wager."
​
"What do you think you have to wager with?" Egil asked.
​
"Our planet, of course," the diplomat answered. "You advised your superiors against conquest by force just based on an incomplete knowledge of our conventional weapons. You missed the fact that we still have stockpiles of nuclear weapons large enough to go scorched earth in a way that only the microbes your people are so terrified of could hope to survive."
​
"Nuclear weapons?" Egil asked. "What, like weaponized fission reactors? As good as fission reactors are for power to fuel ratios, we wouldn't risk using them on any ship that might end up in the same system as a farmworld, just from the potential severity of the accidents."
​
"We deployed two of them in combat," the diplomat said. "Not sure how many got detonated in above-ground testing before we decided that was a bad idea. Doesn't seem to have done any but localized harm, and that for a shorter duration than many of us expected. Mad as it is, mutually assured destruction is the only true strategic defense there is--otherwise some idiot just has to think he has the upper hand to get a lot of people killed trying to take your stuff."
​
"We cannot risk the possibility that you are not bluffing about your willingness to use these weapons," Egil said. "But we equally cannot afford to leave empty handed. What do you propose?"
​
"Ten years," the diplomat said. "We give you the amount of food you have stated, and you give us cargo ships and the coordinates of these no longer fertile worlds. If we get these planets producing food again, we keep half of them. If not, we keep feeding you from ours."
​
"What is to stop you from taking these cargo ships and turning them into warships?" Egil demanded.
​
"What is to stop you from taking all the worlds we restore, if we do not?" the diplomat returned. "If you could somehow make us all disappear while leaving earth untouched, you would gain only a single planet that you would use up in only a single century. But if you take this wager, you get hundreds of planets to feed from, and the knowledge of how to keep them fertile."
​
Something had been nagging at Egil, and he finally identified it. "You lie. Your system's fourth planet. You have not been able to save it."
​
"Save it?" the diplomat asked puzzled. "What do you mean, save Mars?" Then he realized, "You think it started habitable?" The other humans echoed his incredulity. "We're terraforming it. Until we accidentally introduced a few microbes with our rovers, that place was dead as a doornail."
​
Egil fainted. The idea was just too preposterous.
​
----------------------
​
Terrance took a deep breath as he prepared to address the UN general assembly. Despite the alien Combine's bizarre ignorance of basic ecology, he had the feeling that they were the easier group to convince to accept his proposal.
​
"Fellow humans, for generations we have speculated on the whether might life might exist elsewhere in the universe. For generations we imagined what a first meeting might be like, whether they would find us or we would find them. Whether they would be better than us, or worse; whether they would be like us, or too alien to understand.
​
"One of the scenarios we imagined was that they might find us as an adult finds a wayward child carelessly destroying the things he needs in order to survive. That they would lecture us on how we have been destroying our environment and teach us how to live better.
​
"Instead, we have learned that at our worst we barely put our ecosystem into the scratch and dent section, while they have done--this!" The screen behind Terrance changed to display a selection of dramatic views of the aliens' former farmworlds. Some were dust bowls, some were deserts, some looked like the immediate aftermath of a forest fire or volcanic eruption. All were barren.
​
Terrance continued, "Every one of these worlds was, within living memory, as green as our earth. But these aliens believe that any organism that is not useful is a pathogen or a pest to be exterminated. They believe that any organism with no known use is useless. They don't even understand that grass-eating animals need their gut bacteria in order to digest cellulose! As a result, they destroyed every organism that contributed to the survival of their food crops and animals.
​
"Having exhausted the last of their worlds, and being able to produce only starvation rations from their ships' gardens, they have turned their attention to our world. Allowed to have their way, they will do to earth just as they have to each of these worlds.
​
"As you know, space superiority is a well nigh insurmountable advantage: this is why we have treaties prohibiting space weaponization. These aliens are not party to our treaties, nor will they see any reason why they should be. Our only advantage is that they need our world intact, and we can, if we choose, put up enough of a fight to go out with a blaze of glory instead of the slow century long withering away they intend for our world."
​
Terrance waited for the delegates to absorb the implications and then added, "We do have one other advantage. The amount i was told they require per year to feed their population is only a tenth of our global production."
​
That got everyone's attention. "So i propose we make a wager with this Cultivators' Combine. We give them the food they need. In return, they give us ships so that we can travel to these worlds they have destroyed and begin restoring them. If we succeed, we keep half the planets. If we fail, better to have us doing the farming here on earth than them. And, of course, we can set aside a small fraction of those ships to reverse engineer to start building fleets of our own--just in case these aliens try to weasel out of their agreement when we win the bet."
​
Terrance signaled that he was finished, and ready to begin taking questions.
​
"How many planets are we talking about?"
​
"Twelve hundred and sixty-seven," Terrance answered. "I left the question of what should be done with the odd one to this assembly's more subtle diplomatic skills."
​
"How are the worlds to be divided?"
​
"I made it absolutely clear that their choosing their half first was unacceptable," Terrance said. "Whether it is better to draw a line on a starmap or to play 'i choose one, you choose one' with them is something i defer to your judgement, as well as being a question that may have a different answer after we've been working with them for a decade or so than it does at this time."
​
"I understand why you think these planets are salvageable--at worst, it can't be any harder than terraforming Mars; but why do you think it can be done so quickly?"
​
"Invasive species," Terrance said, getting a laugh. "Really, though, these are habitable planets. They still have breathable atmospheres and robust magnetic fields. They just need a planet-sized dose of probiotics. And there are enough of them that we don't have to waste time arguing over the best way to go about it, the way we are with Mars. We can try one plan on one planet, a different plan on another. As long as we aren't exporting seed-stock faster than earth can replenish it, we can't lose."

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      “Why don’t you go ahead and wish Tenna luck?” Sylnya suggested while she, Draevin and Peter headed down the hill towards the arena. “I still have some errands to do before the first match.”
      Draevin gave Sylnya a dubious look. “And by errands you of course mean you have bets you need to place.”
      “I don’t see why it’s any of your business what I do with my money,” Sylnya said. “You worry about seeing Tenna off and I’ll worry about me.”
      “What good would that even do?” Draevin asked. “And why are you so insistent?”
      “Because she was really upset after you blew her off yesterday. I’m sure she’d appreciate the encouragement.”
      “Hey, that wasn’t even my fault. Why don’t you blame Peter for that one? He’s the one that made plans with Faernyl for me.”
      Peter tried to slink back behind Draevin’s back where he would be out of sight. Sylnya glared at him. “That was kind of rude.”
      Peter looked at the ground and fidgeted with his glasses when they focused their attention on him. They were still walking toward the arena; Draevin led them around a gaggle of young gnome girls that sounded like they were gossiping about that self-righteous eldrin, Hanu. “It was a mistake,” Peter admitted to Sylnya after they passed by. “I’ll try not to impersonate him again but I didn’t think he’d actually follow through on those plans. How is that my fault?”
      Sylnya let out a weary sigh. “I don’t understand it, Drae, but that girl thinks the world of you for some reason. It would mean a lot to her if you wished her luck, and it would barely cost you a thing.”
      “I could do it for you,” Peter offered, “as a way to make up for the thing with Faernyl yesterday.”
      “No, no,” Draevin said. “I’ll do it. You wouldn’t know what to say, and I’d rather you not get in the habit of impersonating me.” Something caught Draevin’s eye and he tilted his head back to see a posse of eldrin approaching the arena from a different direction. The group was on a collision-course with their own and Istven was leading the way. “Though on second thought if you’re willing to keep Istven off my back for the rest of the day I’d consider us even.”
      “Deal,” Peter said without the slightest hesitation.
      Istven was striding confidently in his full battle-regalia. He drew quite a bit of notice and it helped that he was surrounded by richly-dressed eldrin nobles no doubt seeking favors in anticipation of his winning this year’s tournament. He wore a suit of custom-fitted plate mail that was burnished black with accents of polished silver gilding. The colors of his outfit mirrored his night-black skin, while the silver accents mirrored his argent white hair. The infamous black crown of King Haedril was mounted securely to the pauldron on his left shoulder.
      “Interesting,” Peter said. He already had a notepad out and Draevin watched the human’s dexterous fingers sketch out an approximation of Istven’s form remarkably quickly. Instead of the piece of charcoal Draevin had grown used to, it seemed Peter was now writing with a high quality pencil. Between that and the crystal engraving stylus Peter had to have spent a good portion of his winnings from yesterday; Draevin was just surprised he hadn’t upgraded his shabby wardrobe while he was shopping. “Is that really allowed?” Peter asked as he finished his sketch and tucked his notepad away. “A full suit of armor like that? It looks like he even has a sword at his hip.”
      “It’s allowed all right,” Sylnya told him. “You can bring anything you want into your matches as long as you can carry it. They only restrict you to one magical item.”
      “Is that why you let Kot jump up into your arms during your introduction yesterday?” Peter asked Sylnya.
      “I really don’t have time for a bunch of questions right now,” Sylnya answered. She turned to the path that led to the betting cages. “Go talk to Tenna, Drae and take Peter with you. I’ll meet you guys back at the booth.” She slipped into the crowd and was gone before Draevin could raise an objection.
      Istven was coming their way. “So was that offer real?” Draevin asked Peter.
      “Which?” Peter asked. He sounded a little uneasy. “The Istven thing or the Tenna thing?”
      “Istven,” Draevin said. He grabbed Peter by his shoulders and pointed him towards the approaching eldrin. “The guy’s unstable as all hell and dangerous to boot. Just convince him to leave me alone while still maintaining the Mutual Assurance pact we agreed to yesterday.”
      “And how exactly am I supposed to do that?” Peter asked.
      “Oh please,” Draevin said dismissively, “like your wheels aren’t already turning. I saw how quickly you adapted to the situation yesterday. This should be easy for you.”
      “No no,” Peter said loudly in a snobby voice Draevin didn’t recognize. “I’m quite all right thank you. You may leave.” He waved a hand at Draevin to dismiss him and Draevin recognized the hand. It was his hand. And he was wearing his face too! Peter had seamlessly transformed into a perfect copy of Draevin. Draevin looked down at his own clothes and saw that he was now in the purple robes of a Guild acolyte. Peter really did think fast on his feet.
      Istven marched right up to Draevin-Peter and said, “We need to talk.” The crowd of simpering eldrin nobles waited behind him.
      Peter-Draevin cleared his throat. “Public or private?”
      Istven looked pointedly at Draevin—the real Draevin—and visibly sneered. “Private obviously.” He pointed to acolyte-Draevin. “You. Leave us.”
      “Yes sir,” Draevin answered and was pleased to find his voice sounded different. It sounded feminine. He realized with a start that he’d been transformed into a copy of the nice elf girl that had helped them at The Pot earlier that morning.
      Draevin slipped away without incident, his only remaining concern being how long the disguise Peter had given him would last. It would be awkward trying to give Tenna some words of encouragement while wearing the face of another woman. When he got to the tunnel leading to the arena grounds the guards waved him right through without the slightest challenge. It was probably fine for him to sneak in like this, since as a fellow contestant he was allowed to enter anyways, but it still left him a bit uneasy. Was this what passed for security? They just let anyone wearing a purple robe into secure sections of the arena?
      He found Tenna pacing at the mouth of the tunnel. She was wearing pale blue Ice Armor robes with frozen spikes of hair in a blatant mimicry of Draevin’s own aesthetic. He couldn’t be too upset about it though since he was the one who had taught her those spells. When she saw him coming towards her she gave a frightened gasp.
      “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” she started to say.
      “Relax,” Draevin told her, “it’s just me.”
      Tenna blinked. “You?”
      “Oh sorry, I probably look different. It’s me Draevin,” he told her. He wiped at his face, but it didn’t do anything about the illusion covering him. He realized that he didn’t actually know how to get rid of Peter’s illusion. The spell was probably weak enough that a little interference might be enough though. With an effortless gesture Draevin conjured a light mist of ice around himself and that did the trick: the illusion immediately collapsed.
      “Draevin!” Tenna squealed with glee. Her apprehension was replaced with excitement and she leapt on him and wrapped him in a hug. “It’s so nice to see you.” She hopped down and stepped back a pace. “What was with the disguise?”
      Rather than try to explain the situation with Istven, Draevin opted to simply tell Tenna, “I had someone dangerous looking for me.” Tenna got a worried look on her face when he said it, and he immediately regretted his choice of words. Even if they were technically truthful. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. Really, I’m fine.”
      Tenna studied her boots for a moment; they were heavy duty, complete with spikes for gripping tight on icy surfaces. That was at least one change between their styles, Draevin preferred normal shoes that he could slide around in when he needed speed.
      “Nice boots,” he complimented her.
      Even though Tenna had been looking at them already, she started for a second and seemed to recognize them for the first time. “Oh, yeah. They’re—”
      Maeve’s announcement cut off whatever Tenna had been about to say. “The first match of the day is ready to begin, will the fighters please make their way to the stage.”
      “That’s me,” Tenna groaned. “I wish they’d let me go second today. I don’t feel ready!”
      Draevin patted the smaller elf on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine. You and Sharack are both registered with the Guild so you shouldn’t be in any mortal danger.”
      Tenna looked horrified. Her eyes practically popped out of her head. “Mortal danger?” she asked in a tiny voice.
      That probably hadn’t been the right thing to say. Draevin tried to salvage things and leave her with some actual advice. “Don’t worry about that. Just remember that Lizard-kin like Sharack usually open aggressively. They have big mana pools, but they don’t recover as fast as us elves. If you can hold back his opening attack it’ll only get easier. Did you eat?”
      Tenna frowned. “Nooooo,” she whined. “My stomach gets all queasy if I eat before a match.” She reached under her shirt collar and pulled out a necklace. At the end was a small bird seemingly carved from purple amethyst. “Won’t Tambril’s Magpie get me all the mana I need anyway?”
      Draevin shook his head. “It’ll help but usually not a ton. You’d be surprised how many people are able to avoid it. You’re going to have to get over those nerves. Having a full belly is going to be a big advantage. Do you think you could hold down some water?”
      Her mouth twisted up on one side in an uncertain expression. “Probably?” she said. Her upward inflection made it sound like a question.
      “Then here,” Draevin said. He handed her the water skin from his belt. “Drink this.”
      She looked at the skin and groaned. “All of it?” she asked.
      “Yes, of course! I’d have you drink three if I had three. Everything you can fit.” He patted his pockets to find something more he could give her but that had been the only thing edible. There was an old tip among elf wizards for eating non-food before a match if your nerves were bothering you, but he decided against suggesting it: the elvish stereotype of eating dirt didn’t need any reinforcement.
      Tenna finished chugging down the water and handed back the empty flagon. “My stomach at least feels full,” she said, clutching one hand over her torso. She looked to Draevin almost like the kid he’d first met almost a century ago. She’d been whining to her mom at the time that the ice cream stand had been out of Draesicles so Draevin had made her one on the spot. She had the same wide-eyed look now as she’d had then. Though he’d never had kids Draevin imagined this was something like the pride a father must feel on seeing their kid off to their first day of school.
      “Good,” he told her, “as soon as that match starts you cannibalize everything you’ve got and burn that water into mana as fast as you can. You’ll wear him down.” Tenna started to move in to give Draevin another hug but he was already patting her on the shoulder, so he just kept doing that and it caused her to flush pink in embarrassment. “Well. I think I better leave before I get you in trouble.”
      “Right.” Tenna nodded. “Thanks for the help, Drae!” She walked to the edge of her fighter’s box with a confident stride and waved to some fans that cheered upon seeing her.
      Draevin hurried to leave so he could get to his seat before the match started. On his way out he caught a confused look from the guard who’d let him past when he looked like a Guild woman. He gave the guard a grin and a wink as he went by.
      Fans were hurrying about with food and drinks in hand as they scrambled to get to their seats before the first match started. Draevin had to weave between them to get to his booth. When he arrived Maeve still hadn’t started the introductions. Peter and Sylnya were already seated, and Sylnya had a ticket from the betting house clutched tightly in her hand.
      The human and dryad were already in the middle of a conversation. “…adjust all the time based on how many people are betting on each side,” Sylnya was explaining.
      “So that means more people are betting for me this time?” Peter asked.
      “Hey,” Draevin greeted as he took his seat.
      “Hi, Draevin,” Peter acknowledged, while Sylnya just nodded her head.
      “Well, yeah,” Sylnya continued, “with that rumor going around that you’re secretly a demon more people are willing to take a chance on you.”
      “What rumor?” Draevin asked. Instead of answering Sylnya shushed him and pointed towards the field.
      “Tenna is an elvish cryomancer representing Caldenia.” Maeve began the introductions. Tenna waved excitedly from inside her fighter’s box in their direction. Draevin returned the gesture. “She is carrying Tambril’s Thieving Magpie, and her wish if she wins this year’s tournament is to liberate the people of Trenal from Eldesian Tyranny.” Tenna held up the glowing crystal bird from around her neck for the crowd to examine, though from this distance it just looked like a flash of purple light. “Tenna wants everyone to know that the war between Caldenia and Eldesia has gone on long enough and will go down as a blight on Eldesia’s history.”
      At her announcement nearly every eldrin in the audience went studiously silent as well as anyone that didn’t want to piss them off. The elves in the crowd cheered loud enough to make up for it though. Draevin stood up and added his own voice to the mix in a rare display of patriotism that had more to do with supporting a friend than a nation.
      Maeve gestured an arm toward Sharack and waited for the last of the chatter to die down before continuing. The big green lizard-kin sported a floppy ridge of spikes going down his back starting at the top of his head. He wore what looked to Draevin like a black bathrobe but that he’d been told was actually something called a kimono and he had some kind of long wooden pole strapped to his back.
      Peter was sketching a quick drawing of Sharack in his notepad, and asked a quick question without looking up. “Why is he dressed so differently than Korack was?”
      “Korack’s just more northernized than most lizard-kin,” Sylnya told him.
      “That’s a nice way of saying he’s totally disconnected from his own culture,” Draevin added. Sylnya just scoffed.
      “Sharack is a lizard-kin chronomancer representing Emperor Loktai of the Kingdom of Kreet,” Maeve announced. Being so far to the south, lizard-kin didn’t typically attract large groups of fans, but there was a smattering of applause at the mention of Kreet.
      Draevin overheard Sylnya tell Peter, “Chronomancy is time magic.” Peter nodded along.
      “As his item, Sharack has brought Musashi’s Katana of Piercing Death and his wish if he wins this year’s tournament is to end Kreet’s famine,” Maeve continued. Sharack grabbed the pole on his back and pulled the end to reveal an impressively long one-sided blade inside. As he continued drawing it out it quickly became apparent that the blade was longer than Tenna was tall. It sloped back from the handle in a graceful arch and gleamed in the light.
      “That’s impressive,” Peter said while many of the crowd murmured among themselves appreciably.
      “What’s this about piercing death?” Draevin asked in concern. He was suddenly a lot less confident that Tenna would survive.
      Maeve signaled the judges. The bell chimed and the match began.
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Hi Folks,
Throwaway account here providing the full Article: https://theathletic.com/2115449/2020/10/06/manchester-united-jadon-sancho-transfer-window/ since it's behind a paywall.

United’s hopeless pursuit of Jadon Sancho – the real story
^{Laurie Whitwell, David Ornstein and more} (Other contributor: Raphael Honigstein)
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer identified Jadon Sancho as his principal target this summer in what was seen as a vital opportunity for squad enhancement following Champions League qualification.
But after 10 weeks of opportunity for talks, Sancho remains a Borussia Dortmund player and the simple truth is that United never got close.
The Athletic has been told that Solskjaer urged Ed Woodward to keep trying, and financial concerns meant other signings were pushed to the periphery until the final 48 hours of the window.
Donny van de Beek arrived on September 2 but sources say United waited to pull the trigger on other purchases until it became clear Sancho was not arriving.
So for the third window in a row, United were active on deadline day, completing the signings of Edinson Cavani, Alex Telles, Amad Diallo and Facundo Pellistri. In January, it was Odion Ighalo, hot on the heels of Bruno Fernandes. Last summer, the club were trying to sign Mario Mandzukic or Paulo Dybala.
The cause for this year’s unedifying sense of late freneticism appears to centre on the priority given to the Sancho move and, fundamentally, a misunderstanding by United of Dortmund’s intentions.
Essentially, United did not believe Dortmund would stay firm on the price-tag of €120 million or their deadline of August 10, embarking on a long-running game of poker without realising that the Bundesliga club weren’t even at the table. United effectively sat still in the hope Dortmund would blink first and place the call they were ready to do business. Intermediaries attempted to broker a deal but were waiting on United to move, which did not happen.
Some sources felt Woodward was holding until the last moment to place an all-in bet, giving the impression of resistance in the ambition of driving the price down. But instead, United kept their chips and stayed true to their valuation. By never ruling themselves out of the deal though, United’s actions seriously annoyed Dortmund’s executives, who became even more entrenched in their position as the weeks went on.
When Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc stood at the side of their training pitches on August 10, the first day of pre-season, and said the decision on Sancho staying was “final”, one alarmed United director made a call to check whether the statement was genuine. The response was along the lines of, “What did you expect? You knew the terms.”
Hans-Joachim Watzke, Dortmund’s chief executive, is said to have personally phoned United at the start of the summer and explained very clearly how much the deal would cost and when it needed to be done by.
United privately argue that the continued conversations after that point, conducted via intermediaries Emeka Obasi and Marco Lichtsteiner, were evidence of Dortmund remaining open to a sale. But the reason for the involvement of agents is hotly disputed.
United insist Dortmund wanted talks done through Obasi and Lichtsteiner, and some believe this was so Dortmund could stick to their public stance while having a backchannel to a potential resolution. United held lengthy discussions and made known what they were willing to pay, which held a firm limit given the current economic environment.
Sources say Dortmund reject that idea and deny they ever appointed agents. Previous deals with Arsenal and Barcelona for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembele respectively were based on face-to-face meetings with club counterparts.
On this occasion, they believed that they had provided the fee to United and since Woodward failed to match it by August 10, there was no need for further direct discussion.
United felt there was tacit encouragement to keep lines of communication going but the only way they could have got the deal on after that date was with a “crazy” offer along the lines of Neymar’s £200 million transfer to Paris Saint-Germain. Sources told The Athletic that if United had come in with an offer of €140-£150 million then Dortmund might have done business. Conscious of their reputation having set their position out so publicly, Dortmund would have been able to sell that as a turnaround made in extraordinary circumstances.
United argued that the €120 million price tag did not take into account the financial hit caused by the pandemic. Executives genuinely felt it should come down, given the full total of the transfer was potentially enormous. The Athletic has been told initial calculations rose to €250 million including wages and agent fees. United made what has been described as a “calm decision” to refuse that amount and felt vindicated when the government postponed the return of fans to stadiums costing the club another £50 million in lost revenue.
But it is understood that Dortmund originally planned for the €120 million as a “minimum” — and ideally wanted nearer the €147 million fee that Barcelona paid for Dembele — so it was an adjustment to even consider a bid that could reach that figure in installments.
In any case, United never got near to that guaranteed sum. One offer, submitted by chief negotiator Matt Judge through the agents in the final week of September, amounted to £80 million, plus add-ons. Once passed to Watzke, it was immediately rejected as too little too late. There was a sense at the Westfalenstadion that United did not take Dortmund’s demands seriously or were acting without full intentions to actually complete the signing.
All proposals were said to have been relayed to Dortmund via the agents knowing full well they would be turned down.
Sancho himself is believed to have felt undervalued by the offers and even if United had placed the right bid late on, it is understood he would have questioned why it did not come earlier.
Sancho was never going to agitate for a move unless United came close to Dortmund’s demands. Illness kept him out of the squad for Saturday’s 4-0 win over Freiburg but Sancho then attended a house party in London with Tammy Abraham and Ben Chilwell, in breach of lockdown rules, and will join up late with England as a result. He has since apologised.
The forward was prepared to join United but not “desperate” to move this summer. He was relaxed either way. That was the sense drawn by England team-mates at the September camp.
That being said, others close to United were under the impression he “would walk to Old Trafford”. Sancho texted Marcus Rashford about United, and the pair were said to be excited at the prospect of linking up. Sancho has many friends in Manchester from his time at Manchester City.
Other United players were in touch too and so was Solskjaer, who as long ago as January wanted to ascertain Sancho’s willingness to join and to get a personal sense of his character. Having privately acknowledged the possibility of a sale, Dortmund were aware of the conversations, which are standard for most transfers.
There had actually been dialogue with Sancho’s representatives dating back to when he left Manchester City for Dortmund in 2017, but talks commenced in earnest this year once United had secured Champions League football on July 26.
United’s exit from the Europa League was disappointing, but some close to the club felt it would at least reinforce the impetus for signings — a reminder to the Glazer family that funding was required to take the next step. “But extending the window to October 5 is probably the worst thing for Solskjaer,” said a source. “I can see United taking talks to the wire again.”
There were some raised eyebrows at United over reports of Sancho’s lateness to training and fines for breaching lockdown regulations in Germany. But United viewed the indiscretions as attributable to a desire to move on from Dortmund. “We’ll make Carrington a place where he wants to come to work every day,” one member of staff told a colleague.
Solskjaer had determined Sancho would be his main target, with one source saying in April: “We are ready to go, we know who we want, the people at the top are now certain.”
But that conviction was not found in the pursuit, with Dortmund soon frustrated at United’s reluctance to commit to a fee or structure. There were allegations of “freestyling”, a refusal to provide a top line, and when pushed for answers, Judge suggested the issue lay with “the owners”. Agents proposing other players were told of a £50 million net spend budget. Executives feel they have a responsibility to protect the long-term strength of the club by not over-paying.
The Athletic has previously reported how Joel Glazer, in daily contact with Woodward, is involved in all major signings and paid particularly close attention to the Sancho deal. There were accusations of a split in opinion between the pair over the price to be sanctioned, with Woodward advocating a higher fee, but United insist board members were united on their view that €120 million was too much in the post-COVID-19 climate. Recruitment staff were told about a significant budget being allocated to Sancho but later the internal line back from Woodward was that the deal was “too much money”.
Privately United suggested the €120 million figure could be reached including some unrealistic bonuses, which may have allowed Dortmund to save face with a headline figure. Dortmund were resolute in their stance though and believed a higher price could be achieved next summer. The cause for their confidence was revealed when Zorc announced a previously unknown extension to Sancho’s contract, meaning it did not run out until 2023.
United insist they knew all those details and were for a long time frustrated by what they perceived to be the slow process of dealing with Dortmund through Obasi, Sancho’s agent, and Lichtsteiner, the brother of former Arsenal player Stephan. The two intermediaries are described as “very close”. Lichtsteiner previously assisted on the departures of Aubameyang and Dembele to Arsenal and Barcelona respectively, and has vast experience of difficult transfers. He is said to be well-regarded and very discreet with information.
United have in the past worked on deals through agents, and last summer placed an offer for the Newcastle United midfielder Sean Longstaff in this manner. Sources at Newcastle suspected this was so United had deniability if unsuccessful.
On other occasions, the technique has worked well. Woodward conducted the purchase of Juan Mata from Chelsea without one word to his counterparts at Stamford Bridge to block any chance of Wayne Rooney being brought into the conversation. Chelsea wanted to buy Rooney that window.
Before any fee could be finalised this time, there were difficulties over wages and agent fees.
It has been suggested to The Athletic that the opening contract offer to Sancho was actually slightly lower than his Dortmund salary. As is customary in Germany, Sancho’s contract was heavily incentivised and contained bonus payments for each point Dortmund achieved.
Conscious of maintaining a certain wage structure, United’s initial proposal was less than Sancho’s total pay packet at Dortmund. Van de Beek joined on £110,000 a week, for instance, and his representatives were told that was in line with a refined structure given Fernandes signed for £150,000 a week.
A second offer to Sancho, in early August, is said to have achieved parity with his Dortmund deal, with the potential for a fractional increase based on performance. This was not accepted. Sancho’s representatives, who carefully organised a move away from City in 2017, were clear in their view of Sancho’s worth and expected to be recompensed as such.
Though not asking for money equitable to David De Gea, who signed a deal worth more than £375,000 a week within the final 12 months of becoming a free agent, the terms desired were thought to be in the region of Paul Pogba’s £250,000 a week.
There were reports that wages had been sorted in the first week of August but this was not the case. United believed leaks to that end emanating from Germany were an attempt to “put pressure” on the process.
Still, there was positivity about a solution. Sources say the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was keeping himself abreast of Sancho’s situation and around this stage told friends he believed the player would end up at Old Trafford.
There was eventually a breakthrough on Sancho’s salary in the second week of September.
Running parallel were negotiations over agent fees. Some have suggested an initial proposal for a payment to the agents put United on the back foot. After negotiations, a lower sum was agreed. But that still left the transfer fee and, as the gap remained, other options were considered. A prospective loan deal for Gareth Bale was set up but the Wales international declined to wait as a reserve for Sancho. He had the emotional pull of Tottenham Hotspur in any case.
Watford’s Ismaila Sarr, previously not regarded as a genuine option, came into the reckoning in the final fortnight of the window when United explored a loan move. With Watford in the Championship, Sarr has until the domestic deadline of October 16 to join a Premier League club.
Talks also commenced over Dembele. An original inquiry for the Barcelona forward was made in July but at that stage, Dembele was not interested. Sources say Liverpool also made a check back then.
But while Liverpool instead signed Diogo Jota on September 19, it was United returning in the dying embers of the market to investigate whether Dembele might join on loan. It was a late move. A source close to the Barcelona dressing room said at the time: “He intended to stay at Barcelona. In pre-season, his attitude was really different and the players were super happy to see how he was training and how involved in the routine. Therefore, everything has to have changed a lot for him to have decided to go to United.”
In the end, United only wanted a loan. Barcelona demanded a sale, so the situation looked unlikely to develop until a late change of stance by the La Liga club on Monday evening. Barcelona indicated they would agree to a loan but only if Dembele extended his contract at the Nou Camp, and the deal was off.
Industry insiders reported numerous other inquiries and proposals put to the club by representatives, such as Real Madrid’s Luka Jovic, Inter Milan’s Ivan Perisic and Juventus’ Douglas Costa. There was exasperation among some at Carrington that United were leaving business so late again and having to work down their list to second and third options. “Looks like a panic buy,” was the assessment by one source close to the dressing room of the Cavani signing.
United did ask Bayer Leverkusen for Kai Havertz in January but were put off by the €100 million fee and never made a follow-up call this summer, clearing the path to Chelsea.
Meanwhile, the Sancho failure represents the third time Dortmund have got their way over United this year, after the signings of Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham — two episodes that have caused lingering frustration.
Some agents who have worked with United on other deals believe the club should have halted talks on Sancho much earlier if €120 million was seen as too much and pursued alternatives. There are accusations the delay speaks to a fundamental issue in recruitment, which sources call a paralysis of decision-making. But given how much Solskjaer wanted Sancho, United wanted to try for their No 1 target for as long as possible.
United accept they have missed out on a top player but insist they have not over-extended their finances. The signings of Diallo and Pellistri, both 18-year-old wingers, are regarded as viable options for the first-team once bedded into England through the under-21s side. Diallo’s cost of €21 million plus €20 million is not insignificant, however, inevitably inviting questions about why United refused the extra money for Sancho. Diallo has been scouted since 2016 and is considered one of the most exciting prospects in Italy. There are echoes when Anthony Martial signed for big expense and little experience and became Joel Glazer’s favourite player.
Sancho will stay in the crosshairs, for the next time trading opens. It’s understood he long since shifted his focus to a future transfer rather than moving in the current window. But it is anticipated more clubs will be in the reckoning for his signature by then.

Part 43 is here
Listen up. Do you have a gnawing feeling that something isn't right? A gut instinct? Is your intuition leaving you in a state of vigilance? Is your spidey sense tingling? Do you feel like the truth is hidden in plain sight, but you can't quite see it?
You're not alone.
So what is the truth and why won't they just tell us? They aren't going to tell us the truth because most of us can't handle the truth. They experiment on live subjects in the past, but suddenly they've seen the light? Suddenly they've found morality and embraced truth and ethical behavior?

The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study was a controlled study of the effects of malaria on the prisoners of Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet, Illinois, beginning in the 1940s. The study was conducted by the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago in conjunction with the United States Army and the State Department. At the Nuremberg trials, Nazi doctors cited the precedent of the malaria experiments as part of their defense. Link Here

Any day that Nazi Doctors use your experiment as a defense for Nazi medical experiments is not a good day.
Let me show you one other part of the puzzle that you need to read. Let me show you that at some point the money, power, or even the scientific research can detach some individuals from reality.
"A number of years ago, we talked about, 'What if there wasn't clean water? What if there wasn't enough food?" she said on the radio show. "Where might we go? What might we do as a family?' So, I think we should leave those preparations to ourselves." The only thing they did not prepare, however, was the vaccine or a treatment for the virus that would cause a pandemic, though she acknowledged how "lucky" she and her family are to be in a position of privilege when it comes to dealing with COVID-19. "What we mostly talk about now in our home every night is how lucky we are," she continued. "We understand our privilege. When we say our grace at night, what we're thankful for around the table, is that we aren't struggling to put a meal on the table as so many families around the world are." Link Here
Yep. Sure thing Melinda. You guys just sit around the dinner table (like us normal plebs) and talk about how lucky you are to have food. Then you went out and stocked up your basement. Maybe they hoarded all the toilet paper because they're so full of crap they can use TP to wipe their mouths with after they speak. And what a minute, isn’t hoarding food bad? And aren't billionaires just hoarding cash? Different rules for different people, and it makes no difference what they say publicly when it's still just the same crap.
August 7, 2019 | Many of the world's elite, including hedge fund managers, sports stars and tech executives (Bill Gates is rumored to have bunkers at all his properties) have chosen to design their own secret shelters to house their families and staff. Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Company, says 2016 sales for their custom high-end underground bunkers grew 700% compared to 2015, while overall sales have grown 300% since the November US presidential election alone. Link Here
So which basements were you stocking Bill? I'm betting you stocked all of them. But that article really made it sound like you personally went grocery shopping, didn't it?
And there's that year again, 2015. The same year as the Bird Man plauge doctor video, coronavirus and bats possible pandemic discovered, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing went mainstream, and the Billy Boy pandemic warnings started with a Ted Talk, then the Doomsday Bunkers elite MKultra wealthy segment jumped by 700%.
That's not a good sign.
It's all connected. All of it. We might not know how. Or who's doing what. Or how bad our current ELE events will become, but we need to at least get an outline of the big picture, before the big picture turns into the Main Event.
As far as I'm concerned, there is no possible way our present unexplained mysteries aren't prognosticators of upcoming calamities.
No. Way. At. All.
Let's throw the spotlight back onto our pandemic. It's all plain and simple when you accept the government's and the medical community's word at Face(book) value. Our leaders tell us to Keep Calm and Carry On. Just take two official narrative pills and wait for the vaccine. It's all good. Honestly. Listen. Trust. Obey.

1913 to 1951: Dr. Leo Stanley, chief surgeon at the San Quentin Prison, performed a wide variety of experiments on hundreds of prisoners at San Quentin. Many of the experiments involved testicular implants, where Stanley would take the testicles out of executed prisoners and surgically implant them into living prisoners. In other experiments, he attempted to implant the testicles of rams, goats, and boars into living prisoners. Stanley also performed various eugenics experiments, and forced sterilizations on San Quentin prisoners.[13] Stanley believed that his experiments would rejuvenate old men, control crime (which he believed had biological causes), and prevent the "unfit" from reproducing.

Whelp, at least you could say that Dr. Stanley had the balls to carry out his experiments.
Tuberculosis. Syphilis. Herpes. Influenza. Malaria. The medical society treated us to a rolodex of experiments.

In 1941, at the University of Michigan, virologists Thomas Francis, Jonas Salk and other researchers deliberately infected patients at several Michigan mental institutions with the influenza virus by spraying the virus into their nasal passages.[24] Francis Peyton Rous, based at the Rockefeller Institute and editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, wrote the following to Francis regarding the experiments:

It may save you much trouble if you publish your paper... elsewhere than in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. The Journal is under constant scrutiny by the anti-vivisectionists who would not hesitate to play up the fact that you used for your tests human beings of a state institution. That the tests were wholly justified goes without saying.

Wholy justified. Goes without saying. But we would never be so reckless with experiments today, no matter how justified, would we?
NY MAG. March 20

On January 13, less than a week after COVID-19 was identified as the virus behind the outbreak in Wuhan, researchers at Cambridge-based biotech company Moderna proposed a vaccine to fight it. A little over two months later, on Monday morning, a pharmacist in Seattle injected Rebecca Sirull with that vaccine, making her the third person to be injected in a 45-person clinical trial, the first human trial in the country. To rush the vaccine to clinical trial, Moderna skipped animal testing, a somewhat extraordinary measure. Sirull, a healthy 25-year-old editorial coordinator at a research institute, will receive a second injection in a month and have her blood drawn regularly for more than a year. Should the test be successful, the more optimistic estimates suggest that a vaccine could be available in 12 to 18 months. Intelligencer spoke with Sirull about her decision to take part.

Oh. Uhm. OK.

Jill Horowitz stood outside the Quaker Ridge Shopping Center in New Rochelle, N.Y.—an early COVID-19 hotspot—in March, stopping shoppers as they walked into the grocery store. She handed them blue pamphlets soliciting volunteers for a Rockefeller University antibody research study. “I would say, ‘Would you like to help us find a cure?’” says Horowitz, executive director of strategic operations at Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Molecular Immunology. “I didn’t even have to mention coronavirus. This neighborhood was completely subsumed.”

Yessiree ladies and gentlemen, step right up, roll up that sleeve, and get a poke to save all the good folks out there from the pandemic. The one that contaminates surfaces, but now doesn't spread through surfaces. The virus that you don’t need a mask for because a mask will make it worse. The virus you might need a mask for because it wouldn't hurt, but it's not airborne. Put on a darn mask because the virus is airborne. Maybe. But air-conditioning makes COVID-19 worse. So only wear a mask inside. The virus that worsens with pollution, but don't worry about putting on the mask outside. Because if you wear a mask you'll stop the second wave. But there might not be a second wave, it might just be one long continuous wave.
Is anyone else getting the impression that they don't have enough information about the virus to be issuing guidelines yet?
But I'm just being paranoid. I'm sure of it. That was then, and this is now.

Then: In a 1946 to 1948 study in Guatemala, U.S. researchers used prostitutes to infect prison inmates, insane asylum patients, and Guatemalan soldiers with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in order to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating the STDs. They later tried infecting people with "direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men's penises and on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded . . . or in a few cases through spinal punctures". Approximately 700 people were infected as part of the study (including orphan children). The study was sponsored by the Public Health Service, the National Institutes of Health, the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the World Health Organization's Pan American Health Organization) and the Guatemalan government. The team was led by John Charles Cutler, who later participated in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Cutler chose to do the study in Guatemala because he would not have been permitted to do it in the United States. In 2010 when the research was revealed, the U.S. officially apologized to Guatemala for the studies. A lawsuit has been launched against Johns Hopkins University, Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Rockefeller Foundation for alleged involvement in the study.

That is so reassuring as we move forward, isn’t it? And don't give me any that was back then we've changed arguments. We haven't changed at all. Proof? Ok. Let's go.
This is a link to an LA Times article that talks about Bill Gates and his AIDS fight in Africa. You go Bill. Get them vaccines out to the people. You're such a good guy! That's what a New Normal article would say. This isn’t a New Normal article. It's scathing in it's judgment. They may not be dying of AIDS, or just living longer with AIDS, but they are dying due to other factors, which should be easily acquirable with the wealth at Bill's disposal to prevent.
But there was one item that caught my eye. It talked about a Paper Mill that was in a country in Africa, that Bill owned a substantial amount of stock in. This company owned paper mills in North America. Those paper mills were environmentally friendly with little emissions. But not the one in the African Country. Nope. Not at all. That one didn't bother with environmentally friendly processes.
The story goes on to discuss how one of Bill's AIDS treatment recipients lived downwind from this plant and how the fumes we're probably killing him. And what were the fumes?
Hydrogen Sulfide. (Read more at Flatten the Curve) - Part 13
Yes seriously. Treating them for AIDS while downwind from Hydrogen Sulfide. I'm not sure about you, but that sounds like a medical experiment to me. Seriously, the guy that wants to stop climate-change by geo-engineering the planet doesn't use his clout to stop the pollution from a paper plant that he owns stock in. OK. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
Yet actually it might. No, seriously, it really might. I've already stated that the virus seems to be activated with environmental toxins. And here we have an ultimate real life laboratory. And what does this real life laboratory research?
Why maybe it researchers Miasma theory? Huh? Yep. Here we go.

The miasma theory is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma, a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter.

Rotting organic matter, like at meat plants?
May 7, 2020: www.wired.com | Why Meatpacking Plants Have Become Covid-19 Hot Spots.
June 23, 2020: https://www.bbc.com | Coronavirus: Why have there been so many outbreaks in meat processing plants?
And do you know what else was associated with Miasma Theory? The Bird Man plauge doctor, just like the 2015 "you're all dead" video.
The word miasma comes from ancient Greek and means "pollution". And then we have Covid-19 and pollution.
The idea also gave rise to the name malaria (literally "bad air") through medieval Italian.
Malaria? What? Crazy? Aren't there debunked studies about Malaria drugs working on COVID-19? Nah. Must be fake news. Right? Or fake facts. Or is it fake news reporting fake facts? I'm just so confused.
Does the strangeness end there? Sadly, it doesn't folks. Not at all. Not in this New Normal.
Because Mr. Bill Gates is trying to eradicate tuberculosis.
And, Hydrogen sulfide stimulates Mycobacterium tuberculosis respiration, growth
Back when I looked for information about the pandemic, I noticed something odd, the mortality rate for Covid-19 fluctuated depending on the region. Now I'm not a doctor, but you don’t have to be to read, do you? So I kept looking at the data for similarities. And they were there. Hypoxic or polluted water like lakes or coastlines. Cities with factory polluting emissions. They all led to outbrakes and higher mortality rates.
And then it changed. I saw ourbreak regions with low mortality rates. It didn't make sense, but there had to be a reason. There's always a reason. And as I kept looking at the similarities of low mortality rates something jumped out, a lot of them were still vaccinated for Mycobacterium Tuberculosis.
Yep.
But this is crazy talk Greek! You're just looking for dots and finding a way to connect them. It's just a coincidence that Bill Gates is funding AIDS prevention, an article exists that points out a therapy participant is close to a source of hydrogen sulfide emissions from a company that Billy has stock investments in, and that Billy also has a program to eradicate tuberculosis. Stop seeing patterns where they don't exist. You're freaking people out.
Crap. Perhaps you're right. Maybe I am freaking people out. But let me show you something else. It's something that I noticed about a month after this pandemic was shutting us down. And it didn't make any sense to me at the time. Ready?
www.pnas.org | BCG vaccine protection from severe coronavirus disease 2019 COVID-19.
BCG? What's that?
www.sciencedaily.com | Preliminary study suggests tuberculosis vaccine may be limiting COVID-19 deaths.
And then the studies started backing it up. Even betteworse, they linked it to Hydrogen Sulfide, endogenous not exogenous, but Hydrogen Sulfide is the same no matter if you breathe it in or produce it biologically.
So, yeah. Let's dig.

Endogenous Hydrogen Sulfide stimulates Mycobacterium Tuberculosis respiration, growth, and pathogenesis.

In mammals, H2S elicits a biphasic, concentration-dependent mitochondrial response14, which can be cytotoxic or cytoprotective. For example, at high concentrations H2S reversibly inhibits cytochrome c oxidase (Complex IV)15–17. In contrast, at low concentrations H2S can serve as bioenergetic fuel to stimulate mitochondrial respiration without uncoupling of respiration. Link here

At high concentrations Hydrogen Sulfide can be cytotoxic and reversibly inhibit cytochrome c oxidase. We've followed the White Rabbit and now we're digging. Can't stop now. Won't stop now.

Defects involving genetic mutations altering cytochrome c oxidase (COX) functionality or structure can result in severe, often fatal metabolic disorders.

Disorders involving dysfunctional COX assembly via gene mutations include Leigh syndrome, cardiomyopathy, leukodystrophy, anemia, and sensorineural deafness**.Link here.

Anemia? Like, the Momento movie? Do I have amnesia now and I have to live my life backwards?
Hold on, don't freak out. You don't have amnesia. Self inflicted amnesia induced systemically via behaviorally manipulated echo chambers introduced systemically through social media electronic pathways? Possibly. But this is anemia, and that's another story.

Current management of COVID-19 is based on the premise that respiratory failure is the leading cause of fatalities (Zhou et al., 2020). Nevertheless, mounting evidence points to drastic systemic events taking place that contribute to accelerated COVID-19 pathogenesis. The “cytokine storm” is a notion that is reportedly hailed as the hallmark of the COVID-19 hyper-inflammatory state (Mehta et al., 2020). Consecutive studies linked COVID-19 related hyper-inflammation to systemic events including hypercoagulability, oxidative stress and altered iron metabolism. Mehta et al., 2020, Phua et al., 2020

Hyperinflammatory and altered iron metabolism. Following? Good.

Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) has been regarded as an infective-inflammatory disease, which affects mainly lungs. More recently, a multi-organ involvement has been highlighted, with different pathways of injury. A hemoglobinopathy, hypoxia and cell iron overload might have a possible additional role. Scientific literature has pointed out two potential pathophysiological mechanisms: i) severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV- 2) interaction with hemoglobin molecule, through CD147, CD26 and other receptors located on erythrocyte and/or blood cell precursors; ii) hepcidin-mimetic action of a viral spike protein, inducing ferroportin blockage. Link Here.

Hypoxia? Where have I heard that before?

A dangerous symptom of the coronavirus that can cause a patient to fall unconscious or even die is known as hypoxia — when the body’s tissues do not receive enough oxygen. Dr. Richard Levitan, an emergency doctor working in New York City, wrote for the New York Times at the end of April that he has seen COVID-19 patients with “alarmingly low” oxygen levels, but no shortness of breath. He describes this as “silent hypoxia”. These patients had oxygen saturation levels as low as 50 per cent when normal levels are usually at 94 to 100 per cent at sea level, Levitan explained. These patients had oxygen saturation levels as low as 50 per cent when normal levels are usually at 94 to 100 per cent at sea level, Levitan explained.

Low oxygen levels. Dysregulates immune system. Are your They Live sunglasses on? Are plugged into the Matrix or hacking the Matrix?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov | Hydrogen sulfide stimulates Mycobacterium tuberculosis respiration + growth.

Tuberculosis (TB) is responsible for millions of deaths each year and several billion people are latently infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Mtb modulates host factors, such as endogenous gaseous signalling molecules, to persist in humans for decades. H2S has diverse biological functions, including modulation of immunity and cellular respiration. However, the role of H2S in TB is unclear. We found that mice deficient in H2S production are more resistant to Mtb infection than WT mice. Upon infection, Mtb increases host H2S, which suppresses central carbon metabolism and increases inflammation. Distribution of H2S-producing enzymes in human TB lungs showed that H2S is produced at the site of infection. These findings identify glycolysis and H2S-producing enzymes as targets for TB host-directed therapies.

Don't Freak Out like LeChic, but I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Dorothy.
Speaking of Kansas, do you remember the dust storm as the tornado blew in and swept Dorthy to Oz?
The “Godzilla” Saharan dust cloud over the US, explained:

Dust clouds originate in the Sahara, the largest desert in the world outside the poles, and the Sahel, just south of the Sahara. Much of the dust originates in the Bodélé Depression in Chad, an ancient dry lake bed at the threshold of the Sahara and the Sahel. There, convective storms in the early summer whip the dry ground and loft particles of silica, iron, and phosphorous as high as 20,000 feet into the sky. Link Here

And then we have this:

Residents wear face masks to protect themselves from the Saharan dust clouds covering Dakar, Senegal. N95 masks and even surgical masks can help protect people from getting sick from the dust. Breathing dust can trigger problems like asthma attacks and worsen conditions like heart disease. But particles from natural sources can pose some unique threats. “Desert soil can also be contaminated with bacteria and fungal spores or with toxic heavy metal,” Achakulwisut said. “For example, in the US Southwest, dust episodes there have been linked to outbreaks of Valley Fever and arsenic poisoning.” Link Here

Contaminated with bacteria. Guaranteed Anaerobic bacteria. And it carries along metallic compounds. Like this:

**A 2001 study in Limnology and Oceanography suggested that the seasonal windfalls of iron-rich Saharan dust become a banquet for red tides, blooms of algae that spill into the ocean like dye, deplete it of oxygen, and release toxins. Dust clouds can also host unwelcome stowaways. Jun 24, 2020 Link Here.

Red tides. Blooms of algae. Or rather perhaps, Cyanobacteria blooms? All in a dust storm. Maybe we should start wearing masks, right? Don't want to breathe in toxic dust, do we?

But Snake Park is no paradise. For decades the residents have lived with the mine, which they say blows clouds of dust into their homes. Now Snake Park, formally known as Doornkop, is in the sub-district with the highest number of Covid-19 infections in Gauteng. Last week, Gauteng Premier David Makhura linked “cluster outbreaks” on mines, and people moving between them and where they live, to the Covid-19 infections in the western part of Soweto. In 2017, the Bench Marks Foundation, a nonprofit that monitors multinational corporations, released the results of a survey of household health in four mine-affected areas in Soweto. Mine tailings contain heavy metals and chemicals and cause various illnesses, including mental health issues and Down’s Syndrome. The report found that more than two thirds of the respondents in Snake Park complained about respiratory problems, including persistent coughs, sinus issues, asthma and tuberculosis. This year, the August dust storms in Snake Park will coincide with the expected peak of Covid-19 infections in Gauteng.

“We can’t breathe well. This mine is very dangerous. It’s toxic,” Phongoma says, adjusting his bright blue mask. Looking at the mine dump, now glistening in the afternoon sun, he adds: “It’s a bomb. It’s a nuclear weapon — and with this Covid-19 thing, it’s going to explode.” Link Here

Stranger and stranger, isn’t it? So strange that I would venture to say, Stranger Things haven't happened. You might want to read Flatten the Curve Part 39, and what I wrote about Turkmenistan and wearing masks for toxic dust. Link Here
So where are we now? Knowwhere or nowhere? Are you a nobody or a knowbody? Is this picture that I'm painting connecting enough dots for everyone? Does anticipating mass riots in protest of the upcoming environmental collapse, and the wars for natural resources along with it, make the centralization of the economy plus the mass surveillance system make more sense? The masks and facial detection AI improvements? Does ID2020, another Billy Boy project make more sense? The upcoming robotic automation of the workforce? The curtailing of civil rights? Heck, what about the Bill Gates endorsement of impossible meats and the sudden push to vegetarianism? Remember the meat plant shutdowns? Rotting organic matter and Hydrogen Sulfide?
Please remember, Hydrogen Sulfide outgassing is pretty consistent across past Extinction Level Events. Does this mean that all hope is lost? Puhlease. Hope flows abundant. We shut Pandora's Box before hope could escape, remember?
Let me leave you with one final thought. Words matter. Look them up. They know what's happening. They know all of this. The words they use hide it in plain sight.
I've written about Bill's fortuitous investment strategy. How he seemed to hit all the right stocks as the pandemic and environmental collapse strikes. It's mostly hidden in shell companies after shell companies, but it has to start somewhere. And it does. He owns Cascade Investment L.L.C. Link Here
Which: Oct. 22, 2014 · A subsidiary of Cascade Investments LLC, which oversees the Gates fortune, is buying thousands of acres of land in north Florida. Link Here
And what does Cascade mean? Let's look?
cascade (n.)

"a fall or flow of water over a cliff, a waterfall," 1640s, from French cascade (17c.), from Italian cascata "waterfall," from cascare "to fall," from Vulgar Latin casicare, frequentative of Latin casum, casus, past participle of cadere "to fall" (from PIE root kad- "to fall"). cascade (n.) a succession of stages or operations or processes or units;

To prepare. To fall. Interesting choice for a name.

Meteor showers occur when the earth bowls through a dense stream of debris left in the wake of a comet, asteroid, or other space-borne object. Depending on where you look, you may encounter fewer meteors, however. Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere will see shooting stars emanate from the shower’s “radiant” point in the southern sky, meaning the best meteors with the longest tails will be most readily visible in the east and west. A much more spectacular meteor shower — among the year’s most prolific — will pepper the skies with a spattering of bright shooting stars and “fireballs” come mid-August. The Perseid meteor shower peaks the night of Tuesday, Aug. 11. Dozens of shooting stars could be visible beneath a clear sky every hour. Perseid meteors zip across the sky at 37 miles per second. Their diaphanous tails can appear white, orange, yellow, pink, turquoise and even violet, lingering in the sky for a few seconds. The rainbow spectrum of colors come from the combustion of magnesium, sodium and iron. Link Here

Pepper the skies with fireballs. Fall from the skies.

Comet 67P's rotten-egg smell comes from hydrogen sulfide, and the horse-stable odor comes from ammonia. These scents are blended with the fainter almond smell of hydrogen cyanide, the vinegarlike odor of sulphur dioxide and the sweet-smelling scent of carbon disulphide, researchers said. Link Here

Hnmm. It definitely sounds like Bill was getting ahead of the curve before we started to Flatten the Curve, by being a good student and getting prepared before the hoarders bought up all the toilet paper for the upcoming SHTF event.
Wouldn't you agree? Are these all coincidence, or should we pay more attention?
They want us to Keep Calm and Carry On. When do people tell you to remain calm? When you start to panic. So do you really think they would tell us the truth and deal with panicking masses? Or do you think they would hide it?
Hide it in plain sight?
Keep your head up and eyes open. Talk soon.

Introduction

I am hoping that this will be a good reference for some frequently asked questions about upgrades on here. It will help people understand some of their hardware limitations, and prove why some things (like PCIE 4.0) are not at all important. This will greatly help folks understand if they can handle a monitor upgrade, or if they should get a better GPU. I'm also posting an FAQ after this info to explain lots of these questions using the data.
This table will show the number of pixels that are generated each second (PPS) for various resolution and FPS combinations. If you were to keep all settings the same (ie. stay pegged at ultra and RTX off) then your PC should be able to push a different res/FPS combo with the same PPS as long as you have a modern capable CPU.

Pixels per Second combinations

Resolution:	1080	1440	4k
FPS
30	62,208,000	110,592,000	248,832,000
60	124,416,000	221,184,000	497,664,000
120	248,832,000	442,368,000	995,328,000
144	298,598,400	530,841,600	1,194,393,600
165	342,144,000	608,256,000	1,368,576,000
200	414,720,000	737,280,000	1,658,880,000
240	497,664,000	884,736,000	1,990,656,000
360	746,496,000	1,327,104,000	2,985,984,000

​

Explanation:

So for an example. If you are currently running a 1080/240 monitor and all is smooth, you can see that you can confidently upgrade to a 1440 monitor and know that you can run the exact same settings at 120hz, and likely 144hz without worrying about upgrading your GPU too. In the opposite direction say you have a 4k/60 monitor and want to get something faster, you can confidently switch to a 1440/144 monitor and for sure hit at least 120hz out the gate.
This shows just how hard 4k still is too. If you want something visually stunning and don't care about speed, then your PC that maxes at 240hz in 1080 will just handle 4k/60.

FAQ:

Do I need PCIE 4.0?
Simple answer, no. Longer answer, PCIE 3.0 can handle everything on this table with plenty of headroom. The PCIE 3.0 standard maxes out at 32 GB/s. If you are running standard 8-bit color then at 4k/360hz you are only pushing 11.2 GB/s. If you have a way to stretch that to 16-bit color then you are still only using 20.16 GB/s. You won't max out PCIE 3.0 until 8k/240hz using standard 8-bit color. So That 3090 you have your eyes set on won't even need PCIE 4.0 unless you're pushing 8k/120hz with 16-bit color, or it is using a ridiculous number of inactive pixels.
Likely not. The above crossed through info where I was being dumb shows just how much 32GB/s really is. Basically for all the information the CPU sends to the graphics card for processing it has to be exceeding that level. If you're getting a new motherboard it isn't a bad idea to go ahead and get one with a PCIE 4.0 port because at some point there will be a game that is so detailed it hits the PCIE 3.0 limit at high FPS. That will likely be awhile though. If your budget doesn't even allow for a cheaper B550 board then you'll do fine without it for now.
​
Should I wait for the new G-Sync 360hz monitors to fUtUrE pRoOf?
Probably not. If you want the 1440/360hz monitor then your rig better be capable of handling 4k/165hz. If you think it can do that then sure, but I seriously wonder if the 3090 will even be able to make that happen in anything besides e-sports titles (which is what they're made for). With how low you'll have to turn quality down it probably won't be worth it. Benchmarks will tell us for sure.
​
Do I need a new GPU for the monitor I want?
That's where this table will help you. Match what you know about your current setup over to your new monitor and see. If you are pushing your current monitor at max tilt and not maxing your system, I'd recommend upgrading your monitor before spending on the GPU. If you max your system out then and want to hit a higher FPS then pick up the GPU.
​
Where does CPU come into play here?
As long as you have a modern CPU that's let's say Ryzen 5-series and up or equivalent you should be fine for these purposes. If you want to get into the super high refresh rates (200+) then it starts to matter and you may want to find some more speed in the latest/greatest. Generally though you will see that your CPU is not very close to being fully utilized while running most games unless you have a lot of other stuff running in the background.
​
Should I get a 3000 series card?
If you've looked at all the numbers and think you actually have tangible benefit then sure! Don't get one if you will need a new monitor too though unless you're ready to buy them as a pair. With the prices this is probably a great time to upgrade to a 3070 or 3080 IF you are GPU limited. Still wait for benchmarks though people.
​
8K?!?!?
No way, not happening. To hit 30hz in 8k your PC better handle 4k/120 with ease. If you want something remotely smooth you won't touch 8k for quite awhile still. My bet is this is the limit of a 3090. And this all goes without there being any mainstream 8k options for TVs or monitors so keep dreaming.
​
If you have any other thoughts that fit in here drop a comment and I'll add them!
​
Edit 1: I got washed away in the numbers and was an idiot about PCIE stuff

I'm more or less happy with how this one is right now. I could spend another few days sort of refining it but I don't think it'd change much.
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It didn't take much coaxing to get the humans to agree, even Izumi could hardly contain her excitement to get inside the equivalent to a Gundam. The hardest part was getting the boys away from the Bavarius Steelsuit, named so after the company that created the very first model. Lso'na gave them a little run down on the specifics as fresh spacesuits were being made for them using a type of superior alien 3D printer.
At least as far as Jean-Francois could tell, that was the best explanation to what he was told the machines were doing. Lso'na had measured and gotten all the measurements she needed before beginning her small briefing.
"So we'll be doing a skirmish, brawl scenario. This means it's just a straight up fight, no objective except to be the last one standing. Weapons are tuned down so we don't actually hurt ourselves or damage the Steelsuits too severely."
"What weapons are available?" Barry seemed to be taking this more serious than anything else at the academy up to this point.
"We're limited to lasers. Real games however, also have missiles, railguns and melee. For defenses, a type 7 plasma shield is the primary means of protection. A second layer of armor exists but for these skirmishes we stop when there’s an armor breach or the Steelsuit runs out of power." Lso'na pointed out on a display the various components of the Steelsuit.
"Now since we're not many, we'll be doing 3 versus 3 with condensed roles. Normally, a Steelsuit is crewed by a pilot, a shield operator, a gunner and a spottecomms operator. Overseeing the squadron is also a commander. Since we're 3, pilot and spotter become one position while gunner and shield operator are the other."
"A few questions." Jean-Francois raised his hand, hoping to ask before Lso'na continued on.
"How do we pilot these? Also you mentioned a shield operator, so shields are manual?"
Lso’na changed the display, showing the inside of the Steelsuit.
"When you sit down in the seat, which is also being manufactured right now, you'll connect to the Steelsuit in a very tactile way. These seats are easily replaceable depending on the pilot’s size. Your movements will be interpreted by the helmet you'll wear and be sent as actions to the Steelsuit. Hence, a human pilot should be able to pilot this Dwei'Dun Steelsuit but you'd have much more difficulty, if even able to, with a four legged Nwar Steelsuit one for example. The shields are manually controlled by an operator in order to save energy. The operator activates them where they are needed. The laser requires a continuous stream to inflict damage, so you’ll need to keep it focused on the enemy."
"What about the tail?" Remarked Laura.
"I don't think it should cause much issue. At worst, you won't be able to use it. We can maybe remove it if it causes trouble but it helps for balance."
Lso'na looked behind the humans and waved. "Oh good, they're here."
The four turned around to look at whoever was approaching. A small black furry creature came into view, making small but quick steps that clicked on the hard metal floor. It wore some open vest and small shorts, a tiny tail swinging at the back. It almost appeared to be related to the sheep family of species if not for its elongated face that seemed canine in nature. Moving alongside it, a blue alien that could best be described as some kind of blob or rather a slime, slid across the floor at the same pace.
Izumi's eyes went wide as she saw the small furry creature. Without much of a warning she got up and ran towards it, prompting the poor thing to backtrack and run in the other direction. It didn't get far however as Izumi's longer legs allowed her to snatch it up.
"Unhand me you foul beast!" It screamed as she held it tight to her chest, muttering to herself about how cute it is.
"That is my friend Smilriet, he's the pilot on my team.” Introduced Lso’na.” Can you please let him go?"
Izumi relented and put the creature down, it's cleft hooves tapping the floor, making a small clang as she lowered it.
"Never in my life have I ever…" it raged, murmuring under its breath as it got some distance between Izumi and itself.
"Hello Lso'na, how are you today?" Asked the other creature.
"I'm good, thank you Lykos. These are the new students, they're human. This is Barry, Laura, Izumi and Jean-Francois. " she said as she pointed them out for Lykos.
The four of them greeted Lykos, using waves or bows.
"Alright so lastly, the skirmish location is on the flat surface you saw outside the dome, that is the top of the Tar Meena station. At random, a few metal panels will be raised, allowing for cover."
Lso'na closed the display and began walking towards the Steelsuit.
"Now for teams, I'll need a gunner for my team and the other three will be able to use the backup Steelsuit, Avaton. I'm not going to lie, it's rather inferior to Numidium but we're just doing this match for fun and practice."
"Is your friend not playing?" Izumi was afraid she had scared the other alien by her show of affection.
"Smilriet is but not Lykos. Her kind, the Kucid, don't do well in these kinds of environments. Usually most species have certain positions they excel at for Steel Squadron but her’s simply don’t use them."
"I'd like to try gunner." Proposed Barry. "I've got a few guns back home and I played a bunch of shooters back in the day. "
"Well, I've been hunting a few times with my uncle. He used to work for Heckler & Koch, so I've had the chance to see a few guns. I think I should be the other gunner. " added Laura.
Jean-Francois and Izumi nodded their understanding. Izumi was next to speak.
"Well, I've never gotten my driver's license, so I don't think I would be a good pilot. If you don't mind doing it, Jean-Francois?"
"It's fine by me. I've often wondered about how far virtual reality could go and this seems like a great moment to experience."
Lso'na stopped in front of Numidium, the Dwei'Dun Steelsuit and smiled. After hearing their short bit of history, she really wanted to see how well they'd do in a Steelsuit. The machine signalled it had finished its job and she walked over, retrieving four spacesuits for the humans.
"Let's suit up."
In the dome, red lights flashed, indicating the beginning of a steel squadron match. Secondary dome protection procedures became active, raising another partial dome around the main one. Out on the top of the station, large metallic plates were raised from the station’s structure, creating an artificial battlefield.
Atop the dome, two small rooms occupy the topmost space, giving view to the full battlefield. Lso'na sat in the top one, overlooking the entire station and began readying herself for the match. As commander, she wouldn't have much to do in a skirmish like this but in official games, she'd be analyzing the situation, formulating a plan, researching enemy Steelsuit capabilities and communicating with her own Steelsuit.
The elevator dinged, signaling it had just reached her floor and someone exited it, his heavy steps reverberating through the floor.
"Hello Father."
A short tired grunt was all the reply given as her father let himself down gently unto the soft floor cushions that surround the small room.
The stable's doors opened, letting out the first Steelsuit, the spare one that Jean-Francois was piloting. It moved rather clumsily and without any grace. He moved to the other end of the field, taking cover as they awaited for the game's start.
A few minutes later, giving time for the first team to choose a position, the Numidium stepped out, gracefully moving at a good pace with the skillful piloting of it's pilot, Smilriet.
"I'm still surprised you managed to convince Smilriet to pilot for you, he's pretty good." remarked her father. “Who are you playing against?” he added after a pause.
Lso’na took a deep breath, the match was about to begin. “The new students, the humans.”
Down in the lounge area of the dome, xenos were getting ready for some entertainment as the Steel Squadron game was about to start. Many stopped what they were doing and headed to the windows in order to better see the match.
"Looks like it's the Dwei'Dun stable having a practice match. They'll need it if they hope to make the finals this year."
"Yeah, their performance last year was abysmal, I"m surprised they didn't lose their funding."
"The Avaton looks pretty rough around the edges, new pilot probably. Bet you 5 CNPC they don't even last 5 minutes."
"Hah, I'll take that bet."
A high pitched single note sound rang throughout the dome, indicating that the match was about to begin. Only one floor down from Lso’na, Izumi was in a similar room to her enem commander, able to see great distances and the entirety of the battlefield. Lso’na had briefly mentioned to her that this was to simulate being in orbit and having satellite assistance, granting a bird's eye view of the full battle to the commander.
“Testing testing, do you receive me?” she spoke to the communication device in front of her, it was linked to a computer.
“Loud and clear.” Came the reply from Laura and Jean-Francois.
“Okay. Match is starting. The enemy is at your...9 o’clock. Moving in your direction.”
It took a moment for Jean-Francois to situate himself, turning around to change his positioning. Getting a bit more used to the controls, he peeked behind the metallic panel and advanced as he saw no one. On the other side, moving much more fluidly and, the Numidium made its way towards it’s target with assistance from it’s commander.
“Okay, stop. They’re right on the other side of this panel. Maybe flank them? “ Izumi wasn’t sure what they needed to do but it sounded like the best move. Obviously, a role like commander would shine more during a bigger engagement.
As her team began moving around to get on the enemy’s rear, Izumi was surprised by the enemy’s movement. The Numidium jumped up high, gaining height advantage on the backup Steelsuit. As soon as it landed next to the Avaton, the Numidium began firing its laser weapon.
To Jean-Francois’ credit, he managed to react rapidly enough, dashing to the right while Laura activated the shields on the side receiving laser fire. The damage was minimal but helped put the Numidium on the offensive. It kept at it, following the Avaton while its gunner tried keeping the laser on it.
A fast paced exchange followed, lasers striking the exterior armor briefly before shields fell in place, cancelling the laser with high density plasma. The plasma shielding used more energy than the lasers, making defensive turtling a bad idea. Jean-Francois kept his Steelsuit in motion, trying to make Barry work harder to get solid hits on him. The superior maneuverability of the Numidium meant that Laura had to work harder than Barry in order to keep her weapons focused.
Jean-Francois darted behind some cover, buying some time. Izumi gave him the Numidium’s position but there wasn’t much he could do with that information because Lso’na was also giving them his position. He started getting more used to the Avaton’s responses, his movements becoming slightly more fluid with time as he ran around, trying to let Laura get some shots in while he focused on trying to be hard to hit. It was a mixed success, he was able to use the shields less but Laura was missing more of her shots.
“Damnit, stop moving so much Jean-Francois!” Laura screamed as she switched the shields to the left arm, cancelling out the Numidium’s laser ever so briefly.
“I can’t! If I don’t try and dodge some of these, we’ll just run out of power.” Jean-Francois was at a loss of what to do. His machine was inferior to the enemy’s and his lack of familiarity with it did not help. He thought about rushing it, maybe catching it off guard and throwing it on the ground but remembered that melee was off the table for this skirmish.
The Avaton’s energy reserves depleted mere moments later, the Steelsuit grinding down to a halt. Disappointed, Laura and Jean-Francois waited in the Steelsuit as it was towed back into the hangar.
Up above in the commander’s post, Lso’na’ father stood up.
“Well, that was a tad bit underwhelming.” He looked at the game’s statistics sheet as he scratched his chin. “Although, the Numidium gunner had a fairly good accuracy with 82 % continuous laser up-time. That’s a fair bit above the league average, you should look into adding him to the roster.”
Her father was right, she’d have to get Barry into her team somehow. She had expected a good showing from the humans but she was left more impressed than she initially thought. Even the gunner of the grand champion Nwar team, Pheto, only had an accuracy of 72% without using computer assisted targeting.
"And you know what? I never even told them there's computer assisted targeting. Both gunners were simply using manual controls."
She entered the elevator, leaving with a smug look on her face as her father blinked rapidly in visible disbelief. Down below. the spectators in the dome returned to their previous activities, having enjoyed the temporary entertainment.
“Hey, 5 minutes 28 seconds, you owe me 5 Credits!” cheered one of the xenos.
The other rolled it’s 8 eyes and shook its head, decidedly that had been a bad wager,
Back in the hangar, the pilots exited their Steelsuits while removing their helmets. It had been a short time but a rather strenuous activity. If Jean-Francois had to compare it to something human, he’d have said bumper cars on steroids.
Lso’na and Izumi had come down from the dome in order to meet up with the others.
“Ahh dang. Sorry girls, wish I could have been better.” Jean-Francois’ head hung low.
“Hey, that was actually a fairly good first showing.” Lso’na said as she did her best smile.
“Yeah, it was a ton of fun! Even if we wouldn’t have won.” added Barry. “I might even have to say, this sport is even better than hockey. If we add this on Earth, I’m sure it’d replace baseball as America’s favourite pastime.”
“Lso’na is right. For a first time effort, that was pretty good. With some training, you could maybe make it into a lower division Steel Squadron league.” Smilriet kept his distance from Izumi as he joined in the conversation.
“You got any water around here? That was a pretty good workout and I’m parched.” Jean-Francois looked around but saw only machines and tools.
Lso’na motioned to everyone to follow her. “Oh yeah, let me buy you all a drink.”
At first, they were rather skeptical when she had mentioned ‘drink’ but were pleasantly surprised when they had sat down on the second level of the dome to find an actual bar-like area. Lso’na had ordered something called ‘cituce’, which she’d explained was the juice of a hard shell fruit, for all of them.
“You know, I’m really happy there’s at least juice. I don’t know how long I could have gone on with just water.” Jean-Francois returned to his drink, emptying it in a few quick gulps.
“I’m glad you like it. These ones are a bit expensive though so maybe don’t get too used to them. They’re only grown on a planet very far from here so availability isn’t very common. There are other types of juices that cost a lot less.”
“Oh yeah, how does money work for you guys? Like, does every species have their own thing or there’s some kind of universal currency?” Barry had put away his drink, focusing all of his attention on Lso’na.
“It’ll vary by where you find yourself. Everyone accepts CNPC, which stands for Carbon Nanotube Plating Credit but most also have their own currencies. Governments have agreed on a standard measurement for a plate of this material, whose value derives from being used in almost all space constructions of large scales due to its tensile strength. 1 CNPC is worth 1/31th of a plate but we don’t actually carry those around, we have digital devices that store them.”
“So a bit like when we used to have the gold standard. How rare are these carbon nanotubes?” Inquired Laura.
“They’re not rare, they’re useful. Speaking of money however, Barry there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, in private.” Lso’na got up, beckoning Barry to follow her.
The others began making small talk as the two of them left, occasionally looking at the replay of the match on a screen above their table.
“Well, I suppose we should find a way to earn some of those CNPC. I’m intrigued at what the exchange rate would be like for Euros.” wondered Jean-Francois.
“Assuming we can even make this material, likely high but it’ll depend on what the standard measurement for a plate is.” added Laura.
“Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. One species could be willing to pay a lot for something native to Earth. The trick will be finding out more about what every species wants and likes.” Izumi said as she stood up. “But for today, I’m just going to go to sleep. It’s been a long one.”
Laura and Jean-Francois waved goodbye to Izumi as she walked towards the elevator. They waited a bit but Lso'na seemed to be having a rather long conversation with Barry, who was listening and not talking. Looking at his laptop, Jean-Francois realized there were only 7 odd hours left before the start of the next classes.
“Well, I suppose I should get going as well. Today was fun, I hope we get to do it again.” He waved goodbye to Laura, heading to his room.
​
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Apparently there's some debate on the plural of Euro. Some countries say 10 euro, others 10 euros. France uses Euros as far as I could tell. I might try to do a drawing of the dome but ngl, I'm pretty bad at art.

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      In the aftermath of Grrbraa’s contentious victory the crowd sat in respectful silence. It was rare for a previous champion to die, let alone in the first round. The audience wasn’t fully aware of all the Guild regulations in place to prevent such an act from occurring, they just knew champions were supposed to be better than newbies.
      There were some acolytes down on the field cleaning up Tomrha’s remains with a fair bit more respect than they’d given to Joseph. The thought of another champion dying so easily—even an eldrin—made Draevin uncomfortable. “What doesn’t make sense to me,” Draevin commented, “is how nobody saw this coming. I thought Caelnaste was supposed to be a world renowned seer.”
      Sylnya slouched in her seat while slowly ripping up a ticket stub. She looked about ready to kill someone and Peter was sitting remarkably still. “Don’t even get me started. I just lost a ton of money and I can’t even complain about it properly since Caelnaste lost her husband.”
      “You sound like you’re complaining about it to me,” Draevin said. The look she gave him right afterward made him regret the comment. But only a little.
      “So are you going to explain how that worked Peter?” Draevin asked the human, it couldn’t hurt to remind Sylnya that this was all Peter’s fault. “Why did Tomrha’s mind control break like that? I was under the impression cerebromancy was easier to cast on less intelligent targets.”
      “It’s a little complicated,” Peter said, while rubbing the back of his neck.
      There was an unspoken implication in Peter’s words that Draevin didn’t appreciate: the implication that Draevin wouldn’t be able to understand the trick. “Try me,” Draevin said flatly. He didn’t keep the hint of irritation from his voice.
      Peter cleared his throat. “Okay, but don’t get upset if you can’t follow along. The first step was to yell out his name. People tend to notice when they hear their own name. That was just to distract him.”
      “I’d figured that part out,” Draevin said.
      “It almost seems like cheating to me,” Sylnya cut in. “You helped that beast fuckin’ eat him!”
      Peter studied his shoes and mumbled, “It’s not against the rules. I checked.”
      Sylnya tossed the shredded remains of her ticket stub into the air in front of her and shot out of her seat. “I’m gonna go check on Caelnaste,” she announced in a huff and stormed out of the booth.
      “Is she mad at me?” Peter asked Draevin after she left. “I didn’t plan on Tomrha getting killed. I didn’t really think about what would happen after the circlet came off.”
      “She’ll get over it,” Draevin reassured the human. “She’s always a poor sport like that when she loses a bet. Don’t take it personally. By the time she gets back from her match she won’t even remember how upset she was. Now, were you going to explain why that mind control spell suddenly failed?”
      “Right,” Peter nodded. “That was just a theory I had regarding the Embrelian model of consciousness. I didn’t know if it would actually work. Clearly it did.”
      Draevin really didn’t want to admit he had never heard of this “Embrelian model” before. “It’s been a few centuries since I graduated, you might have to jog my memory about the Embrelian model.”
      “Oh, it’s fascinating stuff! Scholar Embrel was way ahead of his time!” Peter’s entire demeanor shifted. He was making eye contact and gesturing animatedly with his hands for the first time since Draevin had met him. “So he had this theory of consciousness that attempted to explain infantile amnesia based on a fundamental shift in the structure of the mind.”
      “Infant-what?”
      “The reason babies can’t remember anything until they’re around four years old.” Peter answered Draevin’s question quickly so he could keep going. Draevin didn’t bother to point out that it took significantly longer than that for elf babies. “So basically, what he said is that once a baby learns speech their mind starts to work in an entirely different way. Before speech they’re all primal feelings, tastes and smells; but after speech they have names for everything. Embrel thought that their older memories could no longer be accessed because their mind worked in such a fundamentally different way. He called the two minds the primal mind and the higher mind. Grrbraa is able to instantly switch between the two minds by removing his circlet.”
      Draevin wasn’t quite following along, but he nodded anyway. “So…” he trailed off intentionally so Peter would jump in. He didn’t have to wait long.
      “So when he removed the circlet he switched to the primal mind and Tomrha’s connection was severed. That pretty much proves the Embrelian theory correct!” Peter finished excitedly. Draevin wasn’t nearly as excited; in fact, having this human talk circles around him left him feeling the exact opposite of excited. “It’s too bad Embrel will never know he was right,” Peter said in a softer voice.
      History wasn’t really one of Draevin’s strong suits, except where the arena was concerned, so he didn’t feel bad about not knowing the fate of some random scholar. “Yeah a real tragedy,” he agreed. “Now do you think we can talk about those glasses of yours?”
      “Glasses?” Peter asked with perfect innocence.
      Draevin fixed him with a steady glare. “Don’t think I didn’t notice earlier. Your glasses changed colors. You have some kind of illegal enchantments on them don’t you?” Actually when he thought about it that didn’t make any sense. Peter had competed once already against Korack. “How come the alarm system didn’t go off when you stepped into the fighter’s box?”
      Peter avoided eye contact. “There’s nothing illegal about my glasses, they just malfunction every once in a while.”
      “Malfunction? So they do have enchantments on them!”
      Peter removed the glasses and stuck his fingers through the holes. “That’s because they’re not actually made with glass. I just mounted an illusion enchantment on wooden frames to bend light.”
      Draevin shook his head. “What? That doesn’t make any sense, regular glasses are way cheaper. Enchanted glasses would cost… you might as well just hire a visceramancer to fix your eyesight!”
      “I had access to artificing tools at the time, so I made them myself. And it’s not against the rules to wear enchanted glasses in the arena. When the Guild was new every wizard with eyesight problems wore them and the rules still allow for them.”
      “So you actually registered those glasses as a second item then?” Draevin asked, just to be sure.
      Peter nodded. “They were inspected and everything.”
      Draevin shrugged. “Fine then, if the Guild’s okay with it then they’re probably fine.”
      Down on the field the next contestants were getting ready for their match. Brorn was hard to miss given the voluminous hooded black robes he always wore.
      “Why is he wearing that?” Peter asked. He pointed to the fighter’s box where Brorn was standing. Brorn’s body was covered so thoroughly not even his skin tone could be discerned.
      Draevin knew it was technically Sylnya’s job to answer all of Peter’s questions, but with how much information the human had been sharing with him it only felt right to at least return the favor when there was an easy answer. “You remember how we told you Brorn can only bring one corpse?” he asked.
      “Yeah.”
      “Well he switches it up every year and wears something like that to hide it.”
      “Why would it matter if people saw what body he was wearing?” Peter asked, he scribbled down some notes in his pad then tucked it away. Now that Draevin was paying attention to the strange behavior it was really starting to make him curious, but he saved it for later. He still had some more pressing questions he wanted to extract out of this human, like how he had mastered sensomancy so quickly.
      “Someone might recognize the body,” Draevin told him. “He likes to wear previous champions or contestants. He actually buys lots of remains when contestants die so he has options. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t already made Caelnaste an offer for Tomrha’s remains.”
      “Why would it matter what body he wears?” Peter asked. “He can’t use the magic they could, can he?”
      “Of course he can. That’s the whole point!” Draevin exclaimed. “As long as he’s wearing a body, he knows everything they knew when they were alive and he has access to the mana pool they did. He can even use his own necromancy spells on top of that so it’s almost like fighting two contestants at once.”
      “Interesting,” Peter murmured under his breath, “that explains a lot. How much of the profits from his stores must he be spending outfitting himself for these tournaments?”
      The question didn’t seem directed at Draevin so he ignored it as the crowd was quieting down in anticipation of the match.
      “Brorn is an… elf necromancer representing Brornia.” Maeve began. She hesitated on Brorn’s race since it wasn’t as straight forward. He certainly used to be an elf, but judging by his current height he had to be a dwarf, gnome or goblin. “He is possessing the body of a wizard and his wish is for the end of all life... that doesn’t shop at Brorn Mart.” Here she actually did the pause just like in the advertisements. “Brorn wants everyone to know that he is Necro-King Brorn; his reign is eternal and his products are the cheapest on the market. ‘Shop Brorn Mart… or die!’” Draevin idly wondered if Necro-King Brorn had bribed Maeve to do the voices and pauses. There seemed to be large discrepancies in her enthusiasm for certain sponsors.
      Brorn stood in place still as a statue while he was announced. The crowd booed at him and Draevin was sure to join in. It felt sort of nice that such a diverse crowd was able to set their differences aside to heckle the universally-hated necromancer.
      “Granstil is a gnome fulgramancer representing the Independent Gnomes of Trenal. He is carrying the Winged Boots of Flight and his wish is to end the war in Trenal by establishing an independent nation of gnomes.” When Maeve mentioned his boots Granstil flew in a loop to show off rather than removing them. This earned a whoop from the crowd. “Granstil wants everyone to know that he is done complaining about the war, he has decided to do something about it himself.”
      “You’ll want to cast True Sight for this match,” Draevin reminded Peter before it started, “or else you won’t be able to follow any of Brorn’s necromancy.”
      “I can’t,” Peter said.
      Draevin felt awkward for having suggested it now. “I could cast it for you if you want,” he offered.
      “I wouldn’t have enough mana to maintain it,” Peter said. “But that’s not the point. Humans are incapable of benefiting from True Sight for the same reason we can’t sense mana in the first place.”
      “Right, sorry I said anything about it then.”
      “I’ll be fine,” Peter assured him. “But thanks for offering.”
      Draevin cast True Sight on himself just before the bell chimed to start the match.
      Granstil immediately darted straight up into the air in order to cast a True Sight of his own in relative safety. Brorn spent the time conjuring Soul Fire, which Draevin could only see in the magical spectrum. It seemed to come from within his body. He slapped a hand against his chest and pulled a burning orb of invisible yellow fire out before gently opening his hand and letting it float away toward his opponent.
      Draevin pointed towards Brorn. “He summons ghostly yellow flames called Soul Fire. One touch is lethal and they can only be seen with True Sight.”
      “No wonder Granstil flew off like that,” Peter commented. “How fast do the flames move?”
      “They’re pretty slow,” Draevin told him. “They’re also expensive to maintain.”
      “Boooo!” Sylnya’s voice called out from the waiting area. “Learn a new trick!”
      Draevin chuckled. “She’s right, it’s practically the only spell he uses year after year.”
      Granstil finished his spell and flew in closer. Brorn released a second and third Soul Fire flame from each hand and sent them in the gnome’s direction. Granstil stayed out of their range and unleashed three quick bolts of lightning of his own, each one struck home and left smoking holes in Brorn’s current body. Brorn didn’t so much as flinch. Soon Granstil had to fly away before the invisible flames got too close.
      Seeing the relative lack of damage Granstil started on a much stronger spell. Peter jumped up from his seat in anticipation. “He’s gonna do it,” he yelled excitedly, “he’s casting Levin Bolt!”
      Draevin was surprised that Peter could recognize that spell on sight alone. It was certainly a popular spell with the crowd though, so it wasn’t that surprising. The human’s enthusiasm was infectious, and soon Draevin found himself eagerly waiting for Granstil to finish his spell too. The first Levin Bolt of the day usually put on a good show.
      Brorn unleashed a fourth and then fifth Soul Fire flame and directed them in a pattern that attempted to surround the gnome. Granstil expertly weaved around the yellow orbs of death, taking full advantage of his small size and got in close enough to be sure of his aim. Then he unleashed Hell.
      Levin Bolt was no simple lightning spell. It acted on such a large scale that it pulled natural lightning out of the atmosphere in a chain reaction that was usually significantly more powerful than the initial cost in mana. A bolt of lightning as wide as a tree crashed down from the sparse clouds up above and struck Granstil’s upheld hand, then ricocheted out towards Brorn in a blinding flash. A deafening explosion followed soon after. By the time Draevin could see again Brorn’s body was a smoldering pile of ash.
      The crowd exploded into cheers and Peter roared and pumped his fists right along with them. “Hᴇ ᴅɪᴅ ɪᴛ!” Peter cheered along with the crowd. “Tʜᴇ ᴍᴏsᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀꜰᴜʟ sᴘᴇʟʟ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ!” Draevin thought one of his own Glacier Blasts was at least as powerful, but decided not to correct him. He’d have to let the human see one for himself.
      Brorn’s soul floated out of the remains of his ruined body. Even killing him wasn’t the end of the match. Since he could still put up a fight as a disembodied soul the match wasn’t over. Granstil was panting now and with True Sight Draevin could see that he was low on mana too. Even if the little gnome could cast another Levin Bolt, it wouldn’t be able to harm an incorporeal soul.
      Peter pointed at Brorn’s disembodied soul. “That hardly seems fair. How’s Granstil even supposed to win?”
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Despite a busy schedule u/eruwenn kindly helped me be twice as productive this week, teamwork pays off. Bonus chapter!
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Aaron sat in the open air-lock on the Porkchop Express, looking out over the treetops of Eden from his perch high above the park wall. He picked up the datapad and flicked to a screen with a map and six red dots, one of which had the name Tony floating next to it. Jolie, another red dot, was nearby - she was the third leokas that had grown healthy enough to be released into Eden. After Tony had shared his kill with her, she had stuck close to him. Aaron was glad his friend had bought his date dinner first.
He was so engrossed he didn’t notice Alexa approaching until she kicked him. “We’re leaving soon.”
“Ow!” He exaggerated. “And, I know. I was just trying to spot him. Ya’know, one last time. In case he needed some biscuits or something.”
Alexa slid her back down the wall to sit beside her human, wrapping her arm around his. As her head rested comfortingly against his shoulder, she reached out with her other arm to enlarge the map. The dots of Tony and Jolie were now side by side. "You saved his life. You found him a home, and gave him his freedom. He even has a mate. You've done enough, Aaron. He is the richest leokas in the world, his merch selling on practically every planet in the Federation, and he even has a breakfast cereal with his likeness on it”
“It’s grrrrreat.” Aaron laughed half-heartedly at his own joke.
“It has entirely too much sugar in it,“ she scolded him gently. “But, the toys were a nice touch.” She snuggled into him, enjoying a rare moment when he wasn’t being chased by a member of the crew with business issues. She savoured their privacy, remembering the first few cycles with just the three of them in the animal pens onboard the Azrimad. “One day, you, Sassie, Aiov and I should come back and visit Tony. Just the four of us.”
Aaron choked up a little, realising that Aiov would eventually be another goodbye. “She has a spot reserved in Eden, once she’s grown up.”
The door to the Overlook opened and Daynd came stomping towards them. “Will you two get back in the Tulseria damned ship! I need to re-check all of these seals, since you keep using the airlock as your personal viewing platform.” He waited for them to stand, tapping the metal tool in his hand against his leg. “Hurry up, Pilot, pre-flight checks are your job as well.”
Managing to make her salute as sarcastic as possible, she led Aaron by the hand back into the ship. “He’s grumpier than usual. It's been a few celes since he was on a planet for such a long stretch... I think he likes it here.”
The human sympathised; the ship would feel pretty small after Kasur, and a little emptier without the guest in the cargo hold. As he thought about it, another member of the crew had seemed rather absent lately. “How’s Norrin?”
Alexa shrugged. "In his barrel." Her herald had been struggling to maintain his solid form, so Aaron had put a barrel in his room. It had seemed like a dumb idea at the outset, but allowing Norrin to spend time as a semi-liquid had indeed helped to slow his deterioration.
“And you?” Aaron wasn't sure whether he feared asking the question or receiving the answer more.
She released his hand and poked his undefended stomach. “I can still kick your ass if you keep looking at me with those sad eyes. Don't worry," she added, reaching up to mess with Aaron's hair, "we can get what we need on the world we were found on. There are Inorganics there who can help.”
Aaron huffed, reaching up to try to re-tame his hair by flattening it down. Kasur didn't have barbers, as fur needed no cutting, and after a long period of wearing him down Chae'Sol had finally managed to convince him to sit for a haircut. Upon seeing the results of the Niham’'s efforts, Alexa had then made an attempt to fix Chae'Sol's fix. After that, it had been up to Aaron to fix the fixed fix, using a pair of scissors as well as an animal clipper to try to sort out the back and sides. In the end, it was a haircut, but not a good one. Without careful styling, it looked like he was a cast member in Dumb and Dumber. "Good," he replied after a last press-down on his unruly locks. "Having one crew member in a barrel is quite enough.”
Upon entering the Bridge, they found Embar and Chae'Sol waiting, already running their tests. Sassie was present as well, asleep on her back in the captains chair. Aiov was also sleeping in a legs-in-the-air pose, nestled in her small, open-topped box under the seat. Aaron tried to reclaim the captain's chair for himself, but though he tried to squeeze himself onto the seat beside his dog, the German Shepherd didn't budge.
The Niham navigator passed a datapad to Alexa. “Your checks are done.” As she nodded her thanks, he turned back to watch the power struggle unfold. “Just let her have the seat. She spends more time in it than you.”
The human frowned. “There’s space for both of us if she just moved over.” After another shove, Sassie grunted and finally allowed the human to slide her rump around. Tail swishing, she licked his face as he leaned over her, and he scratched her tummy as he sat down beside her. He wiped his face on his sleeve and tapped the screens in front of him. Danyd’s checks, he noted, were also complete. “Set a course for…” He paused, looking to Alexa. “What is your world called again?”
Alexa shook her head. “It isn’t our world, it’s just where we were found, and it has a twenty seven digit alpha-numeric designation given by the research team.”
“Eurgh. Screw that.” He raised a hand stopping her from reeling off the forgettable digits and paused to consider his options. “Set a course for planet Alpha-Numeric Designation!”
Alexa turned her seat away from him. “We have to take off first, idiot.”
“Fine! Just get on with it.” He stood up. Being the captain was a lot less fun than he had hoped. “Sassie, you have the bridge. I’ve got a call to make.”
After Aaron made his defeated exit, Alexa opened comms to the Kasurian flight controllers.
At the same time, Chae’Sol brought his Navigation console to life and checked over his calculations. “Are you nervous?” he asked the Inorganic.
“Nervous?” She looked at the controls. “No. I am an excellent pilot.”
The Niham and Rinoxian laughed together. Embar’s deep voice replied, “Not the flying. Are you nervous about taking your human home to meet mom and dad?”
“Not at all,” she lied swiftly. “And, we don’t have parents. Anyway, it’s a barren world with only a select group of my people manning a small facility. What could he possibly do?”
“True, true.” Chae’Sol rubbed his chin. “But what about your people? Before you made Norrin your herald, didn’t he want to kill you?”
Embar tapped the pistol on his hip. “We’re prepared for that eventuality.”
She couldn’t help but smile at the protectiveness of the large Rinoxian general. “Thank you, Embar. And Norrin didn’t want to kill me. He wanted to remove the parts of me that make me me; my individuality. Hopefully, we can discuss things calmly with the others of my kind.”
The navigator folded his arms across his chest. “Hopefully. However, Ranjaz is taking bets on how many we kill, and whether or not we start a war.” The silver-haired girl scrunched up her nose, focusing on her piloting so she could appear to be ignoring the Niham as he continued, “I put credits on three, and no war.”
Down the corridor and through the Overlook, Aaron closed the door to his workspace and took a seat. He propped his datapad up against some prototype cereal boxes and sent a notification to the councillor that he was available when she was.
The response was almost immediate and he tapped the datapad screen to see the councillor at her desk as always, the fish tank behind her an ever-present distraction for him. The Anatidae bowed her head in greeting. “Ambassador Cooper, thank you for making time to speak with me.”
Aaron was slightly thrown by the more formal than usual greeting, but bowed his head as he responded in kind. “I always have time for a Councillor of the Galactic Federation.”
She smiled; he had followed her cue perfectly. “Thank you, I will make this brief as I’m sure you have other matters to attend to. I understand you are preparing a selection of Earth’s media for release? I look forward to learning more about your home world.”
The human nodded. He knew that the Councillor had access to Earth’s media already. In fact, she had been the one to provide him with the data. Something wasn’t right, but he replied carefully, hoping to connect the dots as they spoke. “We have chosen a varied selection, and hopefully there will be something to your taste. I would be most interested in hearing feedback from you, should you look through the options. It would help us immensely as we prepare the next selection.”
Eruwenn continued smiling and nodding; another show for the Sentinels. “My work keeps me quite busy, but I will send you what feedback I can. Now then, down to the business at hand. We are finalising the renaming process before we update the records across the Galactic Federation. As you know, we can not stop you calling your worlds whatever you please, but for us to update the central databases it would be beneficial to have some more information, especially regarding some of the naming conventions used. For instance, you wish to rename the star Optimus Prime?”
Aaron tried not to smile. “A great hero from Earth’s mythology, he died for us and rose again. He was a great leader who believed that freedom was the right of all sentient beings.”
“Very noble.” She took a note, it seemed the human was playing along nicely. “And the first world and the accompanying moon?”
The human leaned back in his seat, putting his hands behind his head. “A childhood friend who would always come first. I named the planet Konrahd after him, and the moon is Talon X which was his online name in Gran Turismo.”
Tapping away, the Anatidae didn’t look up from her datapad. “Ah, of course. The human obsession with coming first. Please continue.”
“Sure.” Aaron leaned forward, reaching under the table to where Danyd had installed a small fridge. He took out a can and opened it loudly. “The second planet has been defaced by a meteor impact, all smashed up with an exposed and dead core. We’re calling it Alderaan, after a destroyed world in our pop culture. The two moons took quite a lot of damage as well. The lumpy one is Freak and the one with the big slash across the surface is Scar. No special meaning, one’s a bit freaky and the other has a scar, makes it easy to remember.”
“And the third planet?”
“New Terra.” He drank deeply and then stifled a burp, the development team had definitely put too much gas in this mix. “Nothing clever in the name, but it has potential. The moon is Elune, named after a lunar goddess. You’ll know more about it once we release the vanilla game.”
She looked up, narrowing her eyes. “It’s a marketing stunt for a game release?”
“An homage,” he corrected, although he already had a team working on merch and a possible theme park, with a whole line of cosplay accessories being planned.
The councillor didn't believe him for a second, and on some level was shocked he had not yet named a world Buy A Cupcake. “And that brings us to” -how she loathed this name- “Earth Two Electric Boogaloo, and I really must ask again. Why?”
He laughed, poker face slipping at her obvious discomfort. “Human joke, we add the suffix Electric Boogaloo to unwanted sequels. Plus, it really irritates Alexa.”
Eruwenn realised now why the former inspector clicked his pen so often. She would have appreciated a tactile release right now. “Perhaps she should have had more influence over the names. And the moon, El-ahrairah? Am I pronouncing that correctly?”
“Good enough. It’s named for the Prince with a thousand enemies.” His jovial tone vanished; Aaron knew what would happen to the rabbits if they began to colonise E.T.E.B. “Read the book, or watch the movie. Next.”
With that avenue of questioning closed down she moved on, marking her notes Royalty for the record. She was now quite curious as to which book he was referring to. Clearly it was an emotionally charged subject. “Next is Gaia? And the moons Lakshmi, Kratos and Milda.”
Aaron relaxed a little. “Some of humanity's old gods, I’m hoping to bring them out of retirement.”
The councillor paused. Were he intending to start a religion, it would certainly prove to be popular. She decided not to ask, in case it gave him any ideas. “And the large gas giant with seven moons?”
Now his smile returned in full. “Snow White and the seven dwarves. I can’t name them from memory unless you want some reindeer names mixed in. A folk tale; the gas giant is a perpetual blizzard.”
Eruwenn made another note, folk tale. The council would have questions and the more vague her answers were the better. “Next is Tortuga, which has a flag already, how delightful. Is that a human skull and bones?”
Aaron nodded emphatically. “We won’t actually be encouraging piracy.” He noticed the alarm in her eyes and hastily added, “Yeah, Jarby didn’t like that one either, even after my Captain Sparrow impression.” He saw the incomprehension on her face and explained further. “I did the impression for the asteroid belt as well, but nobody appreciated that either, and I wasn’t about to draw that stupid tattoo on my face.”
She looked at her reference map. “Ah yes, between Snow White and the planet Gallifrey, you have Tyson’s Belt. With asteroid mining advances you should have a steady supply of materials once your initial construction phase is completed. And those names?”
Aaron finished his can and crushed it, they may need to tweak the caffeine content down a notch as he could feel his heart racing. “Sports, and medical.”
She smiled. Naming a planet after someone from a medical field was commendable. “And who was Doctor Gallifrey?”
“Doctor who?” He recognised the wires that were crossed. “No, the Doctor was from Gallifrey.”
“Oh, my apologies. And his name?” she politely enquired.
“Who.”
“The doctor.”
“Doctor Who.”
“The one from Gallifrey!” she snapped, if she had a pen it would have been clicking furiously.
“He was on first base.” The plumage of the councillor's green crest was beginning to rise, so Aaron opened one of the cereal boxes, snacking to provide time to think. Eruwenn was still staring at the screen, confused and frustrated when finally he spoke with slow deliberation. “He was called Doctor Who. Can we move on, because the four moons around Gallifrey are Stark, Banner, Odinson and Rogers, and if you can’t follow Doctor Who I’m not getting into Marvel multiverse theories. Just put named after myths and legends or something.”
“Fine.” She did as instructed, but was still a little confused over who the Doctor from Gallifrey was and why he was now a myth. “The largest planet by far is next, and you called it Pluto.”
A mixture of triumph and anger came over the human. “Yeah, fuck you NASA, Pluto’s not too small now, bitches! You can chalk that one up to revenge, it’s named after a planet from my own solar system that got downgraded on a technicality.”
The councillor had hoped to gain an insight into the human mind through the names he chose for these worlds. What his priorities and aspirations might be, and what he held dear and wanted written in the cosmos. It seemed that he was just as insane as Rilla had repeatedly warned her he was. “Fine.” She didn’t understand a word of what he said, but named after a planet from home was good enough for the bureaucrats. “And Pluto’s five moons?”
“Michael, Tito, Marlon, Jackie and Jermaine.” Much better than Alexa’s choice, she had wanted to name them after the Spice Girls. With a resigned tone he added, “just put down musicians or something.”
Between the insanity and marketing was another welcome addition, music was a beautiful thing that almost all races could share in. “Wonderful, I look forward to listening to them on Musicify.” She had listened to some of Earth’s music during her research, finding that it was as varied as everything else they produced. She had found the classical genre most pleasant, especially while drinking tea. “And finally, on the very edge of the system, the frozen world and the two ice moons.”
The human was relieved to be on the final planets, as the energy drink was buzzing through his veins. “The world is Elsa, named after a princess, and the moons are Cube and Vanilla. You can put those under music, but maybe put an asterisk next to Vanilla.”
The councillor was once again very confused, but did as she was instructed. So often when dealing with the human she felt like she was one step out of time with the conversation. “Well, that concludes my questions. I can get this sent over to our stellar cartographers and the updates will go live in a few cycles. Thank you for your patience.”
“What?” Aaron was confused, he could have done this via a written message. What was the point in the video call? “Oh, ok. Well, thanks for the call, I guess.” After some minor pleasantries it was over, and he still had no idea what it had been for. Mildly disappointed and confused he picked up the prototype cereal box he had been eating from, looking at the cartoon leokas on the front. Turning it over in his hands there was a large drawing on the back for the kids to colour in, and he laughed at another of his prestigious contributions to the galaxy.
Estrilla entered, quickly closing and sealing the door. “Here.” She tossed him a small datapad, that had clearly been modified judging by the bulky addition on the back. It began to vibrate. “It’s Eruwenn. For you.” She looked at his stupid face and snapped. “It’s a secure line, answer it!”
The crew had been called together for an urgent briefing once they had jumped out of Kasur space, and as they gathered around the central table of the lounge they noted no snacks to be tested. This was a serious meeting.
Sassie and Aiov were under the table, and the little leokit with eyes opened was stumbling about with her four-legged guardian watching over her. Despite this development, there was no joy in Aaron's expression. Next to him, in front of the screen, Estrilla paced back and forth, and the Captain gently reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. "She's your friend, you can start."
The doctor wanted to argue that they were no longer friends, but she realised her feelings had changed of late. “Fine.” She cleared her throat, shooting Ranjaz a sharp look clearly indicating that none of his usual nonsense would be tolerated. “As you all know, I am a former shipmate of Councillor Eruwenn Aix Sponsa. Many of you have even met her. We were part of a crew led by a former Imperium soldier and we worked behind enemy lines. For Eruwenn that work never truly ended, she just realised her targets were closer to home. She entered politics to engage with them on their terms, while also using her experience as a covert operative to gain whatever advantages she could.”
The yellow Kachna began to pace back and forth again. “There is a group of powerful people who want to see us return to war. They want to stir up the Hive and the Imperium and, as yet, we don’t know what their goals are. Power, profit, using one atrocity to hide another - we just don’t know, but we plan to stop them. Though this is Eruwenn's goal, if she can gain more power for her people and herself she'll likely take those opportunities as well." It was a harsh truth, but Estrilla no longer knew exactly where the Anatidae's loyalties truly lay.
Aaron walked forward and took a seat at the table. “We can delve into the lore later; let’s just show them the message.”
“Right.” The doctor picked up the modified datapad, noting some confused looks around the table. “This is a relay datapad, off the standard networks. It uses encrypted back channels or something - I’m a doctor not a spy, so don’t ask me how it works. Just know that this message is not to be talked about with anyone outside of this crew, and you are to keep no records on personal datapads. Am I clear?”
There was a murmur of consent. Even Ranjaz seemed solemn, acknowledging the gravity of the situation. Either that, or he was simply missing Skeena. Hoping for the best, the doctor stepped aside as the screen blinked on.
The view was obscured at first, and nothing could be heard except heavy breathing. Then glimpses of a corridor could be seen between someone's fingers - the camera was being carried at a run. The view cleared, sweeping along the corridor to reveal scorch marks from energy weapons and several bodies on the floor. A sibilant voice echoed down the hall from elsewhere, and the camera shifted. "Shit," said a different voice, and a Lacertan came into view, still on the move. "They'll find me soon, I have to be quick. I have a small drone hidden in the debris field and I'm uploading to it. Long after this is over it should head to a relay and send this message on your network. I pray this reaches you in time."
The camera operator pushed through a door, still breathing heavily. "This is the lab," she said as the camera panned around slowly. More scorch marks adorned the walls, and the bodies this time were wearing high level bio-hazard suits. "They were working on a weapon, some sort of pathogen, to kill the Hive."
Energy weapon fire could distantly be heard, and the Lacertan leapt behind one of the counters. As she huddled into a ball, she began crying. "Tell my mother I'm sorry. You'll do that, won't you?" Her terrified eyes were pleading with the camera. "I promised her I'd come home safe. I promised. Tell her I'm sorry for ever complaining about the pink packages and that I loved every single one. Tell her I love her, and that I'm so sorry.”
The sobbing intensified, and the camera sagged in her grip. The security uniform with a badge reading Amel came into view - she was a lieutenant. There came a deep breath, and the camera swung back up to her face. "Sorry. I was prepared for this when I volunteered, don't blame yourself. Just... stop them." Her eyes were now ablaze with anger as she tried to share as much information as she could. "They have a plague from this cursed shithole we've been orbiting for cycles. Last time I stopped them when they got too close to the answer they were looking for... by releasing it. Killing some researchers. People I knew, and worked with. I'm sorry for that, but it worked to stop their progress and I thought they would give up.”
She shuffled further around the counter, trying to get as much cover as she could. “Almost a full bost ago a Sentinel paid us a visit, bringing with him some new data. The diseases on this world are thousands of generations away from the original plague, but this data was the real deal. Their research surged ahead, and I didn’t have time to react. Tulseria curse them to eternity, some brainless Doctor Dix defrosted a patient on the edge of Tulseria-knows-where, and now these assholes are going to start a war and kill billions. You have to stop them.”
Voices and footsteps could be heard in the corridor and her voice became hushed and frantic. “They have to be close to release it, and somewhere with a lot of traffic so it reaches deep into their territory before they realise. It isn't finished. It was supposed to target only the Hive, but I heard Doctor Glimnop talking with his assistant about that not yet being the case. It mutates fast, too. It it gets out it could devastate the galaxy. You have to stop them.”
She leaned back against the counter, her breathing becoming ragged and her voice cracking. “They needed more time.” She was gasping. “I needed more time, I could have stopped them. The Sentinel said something about new colonies, and the need to tidy up. I knew, then.” Her gentle sobbing returned. “I ran.”
The sound of the lab door opening caused the slits of her pupils to widen with fear, and it was a moment before she whispered again. “Don’t come to Darnis, we’re already dead.” The camera panned down to her stomach, where her uniform was burned away and the scaled skin beneath charred and split, bleeding profusely. “Stop them releasing it, promise me!”
Angry yelling could be heard and the camera spun to show a Niham in a smart grey suit, his weapon raised. He fired twice. The camera fell to the floor for a moment before being picked up by the killer. “Damn it!” he cursed, “Find where this is transmitting to!” Then the video cut out.
The silence hung for several tiks as everyone processed what they had just watched. Estrilla gave them the time they needed. “They didn’t find the drone, and other than Eruwenn and her assistant, we are the only ones to have seen this.”
“You hope,” Embar said carefully. “They may have traced it, and then used the drone to follow the signal. Anyone who’s seen this is dead if the Sentinels find out.”
The doctor nodded. “That would only lead to the councillor, not us. She won’t talk.”
Embar was more dubious. “Torture can loosen lips. You think she can tough it out?”
Estrilla looked the general in the eye. “She has before.” He gave a polite nod, veteran to veteran, and she moved on. “We don't have much to go on. Sentinels have their past erased, and are good at staying off of the grid. With only a picture and a voice sample, our chances are slim... and if we look too closely, we'll give ourselves away.”
“His name is Krast.” Everyone turned to look at Ranjaz, who savoured the moment. “He’s the bastard who paid me to break into the military research centre. Asshole thought he was smart. He was going to steal something else, and use my job to cover it up.” All eyes were on him and he gave a mean grin at the memory of betrayal. “But, I beat him to it. Took the lot, and that’s when he set me up. I knew that fucker suspected me, so I kept my mouth shut. Played it innocent while he was watching from the shadows, did my time in Xeno-Biology Protection like a good boy.”
Allistan’s pen was clicking furiously. “What in Tulseria’s name did you steal?”
Everyone was looking intently at the Kittran, and he reveled in the attention for as long as he thought he could get away with before he shrugged. “No idea.”
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