Sports Betting Odds Guide: Maximize Your Winning Chances

The Denver Broncos will look to snap their two-game losing streak to start the season against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High (2:25 p.m. MDT kickoff). The Broncos will be hosting approximately 5,700 fans as the team opens the stadium’s doors to Broncos Country for the first time this season.
Game Previews

• Buccaneers vs. Broncos Preview: All eyes on the quarterback position | Broncos Weekend - Video
  
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Denver Broncos | Week 3 NFL Game Preview - Video
  
• Team Stats Comparison - Article
  
• Mile High Roundtable: Broncos vs Bucs | Week 3 | Predictions and Picks - Article
  
• Broncos vs. Buccaneers Week 3 picks, odds: Point spread, total, player props and betting trends - Article
  
• Broncos vs. Buccaneers score predictions: Everyone counting out Denver in Week 3 - Article
  
• Can Broncos maintain exclusive status against Tom Brady? | Ready for Kickoff - Video
  

TV/Radio - TV Broadcast Map

• FOX: Adam Amin, Mark Schlereth and Lindsay Czarniak
  
• Local Radio (KOA - 850 AM/94.1 FM and The Fox - 103.5 FM): Dave Logan, Rick Lewis and Susie Wargin
  

Game Notes

• Line: TB -5.5 · O/U: 42.5
  
• Weather: Partly Sunny, 57°F at kickoff
  
• The Broncos have won four consecutive games against Tampa Bay (2004-present) and own a 7-2 (.778) all-time regular-season record against the Buccaneers.
  
• Denver owns a 9-8 all-time overall record and 6-7 regular-season record against Tom Brady. Denver is the only NFL team with an overall winning record against Brady.
  
• Broncos own a 7-4 overall record at home against Brady, and has defeated his team three times in the AFC playoffs, including twice in AFC Championship Games (2013, ‘15).
  
• Jeff Driskel is expected to make his first start with the Broncos on Sunday. In relief of the injured Drew Lock in Week 2, Driskel nearly completed a Broncos comeback, connecting on 18-of-34 passes (52.9%) for 256 yards with two touchdowns and one interception (84.9 rtg.)
  
• Driskel joined John McCormick (1966) as the only two QBs in Broncos history to throw for at least 250 yards and multiple touchdowns in a game they didn’t start.
  
• Noah Fant, who has a touchdown in each of the team’s first two games, ranks fifth in the NFL among tight ends with 138 receiving yards through two weeks.
  
• Fant needs one TD reception to match Demaryius Thomas (6) for the second-most TD catches in team history through his first 19 games. Also needs one receiving TD to be the first Broncos TE to record at least one receiving TD in three consecutive games since Julius Thomas.
  
• Jerry Jeudy has made eight catches for 118 yards (14.8 avg.) through his first two games. His 118 yards rank third in the NFL among first-year pass catchers.
  
• The Broncos have played in 11 one-score games, tied for the seventh-most such games played in the NFL since the start of 2019. In games decided by 8 points or less, including both of the team’s losses to Tennessee and Pittsburgh this season, Denver is 4-7 (.364).
  
• Melvin Gordon has tallied 148 rushing yards on 34 attempts this season, 124 more than the Broncos' next-leading rusher (Phillip Lindsay, 24). Gordon also has five receptions and has accounted for 41.9 percent of the Broncos' touches this season, fifth highest in the NFL.
  
• Melvin Gordon needs one scrimmage touchdown (rush or rec.) to become the fifth active running back with 50 combined scores.
  
• The Broncos 2020 rookie class has combined to play 601 total snaps—the second most in the NFL—through Week 2.
  

Team News/Injury Report - Final Injury Report

• Broncos sign QB Blake Bortles, make two other roster moves - Article
  
• Injury Report: Phillip Lindsay returns to practice, doubtful to play in #TBvsDEN - Article
  
• Broncos promote QB Brett Rypien, DL DeShawn Williams to active roster - Article
  
• Injury Report: Mark Barron, DeMarcus Walker could be activated off IR later this season - Article
  
• Injury Report: Courtland Sutton to miss remainder of 2020 season, Drew Lock out multiple weeks - Article
  
• Broncos place Courtland Sutton, Dre'Mont Jones on injured reserve - Article
  
• A guide to attending a game at Empower Field at Mile High under COVID-19 precautions - Article
  
• A closer look at Empower Field at Mile High’s COVID protocols - Video
  
• 'I just have to do better': HC Vic Fangio pledges to improve commitment to wearing face covering on sideline - Article
  

Last Meeting

• The Broncos and Buccaneers last met on October 2, 2016 at Raymond James Stadium - Box Score
  
• Paxton Lynch made his NFL debut sooner than expected Sunday, stepping in for injured starter Trevor Siemian to help the Broncos remain unbeaten with a 27-7 victory over the Buccaneers - Recap
  
• 2016 Broncos vs. Buccaneers Game Highlights
  

Notable Team Connections

• Buccaneers OLB Shaquil Barrett spent his first four NFL seasons with the Broncos (2015-18), appeared in 64 career games and was a member of Denver’s Super Bowl 50 team.

Please check back throughout the week as I’ll update the news/injury report daily.

So a lot of you will know that I regularly post guides and tips about match betting, However since the same questions always come up in the comments, I decided to make one big, very thorough Mega Guide in order to eliminate as many doubts as possible for you guys. Like I said before, This guide is a handy way to sort out a month's rent for 5 or 6 hours work, so I really hope it can be of use to someone. Anyway, Here it is:
PART 1: MATCH BETTING EXPLAINED; HOW TO MAKE £500 IN 5/6 HOURS
Having done my research and having been able to turn a really nice profit in such a short time, I wanted to make a short guide to eliminate people's doubts and simplify things a little. Since it really doesn't take a lot of time to hit that £500 profit mark, it's a shame not to try it out. Anyway, Here it goes:
I was sceptical as hell about Match betting because a friend showed me the Facebook groups and it just looked like a giant gambling pyramid scheme. It turns out there is a decent chunk of change to be made from it, you just need to follow the guides and never ever actually gamble with your money.
Never ever Gamble? Yes That's right, you are going to be using Gambling sites to complete the various offers, but the whole idea behind match betting is that every time you "make a bet", you match that same bet on the exchange. So for example, if I bet £10 for Real Madrid to Win on the Bookie Site at odds of 2.5, I then also make a Matched bet on the Exchange (This is a separate site such as Smarkets or Betfair) where I bet for Real Madrid not to win at odds of 2.5 (or as close as I can get to those odds). In this way I am covered in all outcomes, and it allows me to fulfill the requirements of the bookies offer (For example Bet £10 and get £30 in Free bets)
What's the difference between the Bookie Site and the Exchange? On the Exchange Site you are basically being the Bookie and just like a Bookie, you have liability. If I bet £10 and my bet wins at odds of 2.5 then I win £25, so the bookies liability for this bet is £15, the extra money that they would have to give me if I win. There are calculators on the Match betting sites which you can use to calculate what Liability you need to enter on the exchange each time you make your matched bet. There is also software to help you find what games have the closest odds on both the bookies and the exchange, which is very important.
What do I do when I get my free bets? It's the same process again, You find a game that has very close odds on both the bookies and the exchange ( You can do this by eye or by using odds matching software. A good site with this software is called OddsMonkey). Only this time when you use the calculator to work out your liability, you will set it to "Free bets SNR" so it knows you are not using real money. It will tell you how much Liability to use in the exchange and off you go.
How does this make me money? The fact that you have a free bet to use is what makes you money, For example a £30 free bet at odds of 5.5 in the bookies will win you £135 (30x 4.5, because the original free bet stake of £30 is not returned to you). Now let's say that the closest odds I can find in the Exchange for the same game are 6.0, I will need a liability of £112.50 to match my free bet in the bookies ( I use the calculator on oddsmonkey to work this out)
£135- 112.50 = £22.50 in Profit.
Alternatively if my bet on the exchange wins, I will lose the free bet of £30 (but it's not actually a loss to me because It's not real money) and I will win £22.50 on the exchange. Either way, I make a Profit of £22.50
What about providing card details? You can use a separate, virtual bank account for all your match betting, In this way your main banking information is not shared with any of the sites you sign up to. A good one to use is Monzo, the app is easy to use and it only takes 5 minutes to open an account. It's free to open an account and last I checked they actually have a referral scheme where you get £5 if you sign up through a referral link.
Non Referral here: https://monzo.com/
Where can I learn to do it? There are some sites that you have to pay a monthly subscription to but I found one called Team Profit that is free and has a full guide of all the different offers you can complete.
I worked my way down through the list of offers, nice and handy, and having completed 20 offers at 15 minutes per offer, I came out at £470 for 5 hours total of work.
If you are new to this site and are opening a free account I would really appreciate if you use my Referral (£10)
Here is the non referral link to the page with all the offers: https://www.teamprofit.com/welcome-offers-list
TLDR: You do not need to "gamble" to match bet, in fact by definition, the bet you make is "matched" on the exchange, so it is not a gamble in any sense.
​
PART 2: MAKING £500-£1000 EVERY MONTH.
You may sometimes see people commenting saying they have made a lot more money since finishing the welcome offers, £1000-£1500 a month and such, but never saying exactly how...
Personally I have made a lot more profit every month since I finished the welcome offers, Usually around the £1000 per month mark.
People say that Match betting drys up once you finish the welcome offers but this is simply not true, it's a matter of being more organised and checking your email for new offers, while also checking the Reload Offers section on Team Profit every morning (Takes literally 5 minutes)
Below is an Example from last month where I made £300 in one week. Bare in mind that the amount you make weekly will vary with the amount of sport that is on, but as long as there's sport, you will always be able to earn. This example is simply to show you the potential Match Betting has long after you've completed the Welcome offers:
Here's exactly how I did it:
Coral: Money back as a free bet up to £50 if your team is ahead in the first half but doesn't win the match in the end: Matched 5 Premier League games, 3 were successful. I received three £50 free bets which I matched and turned into £130 profit risk free. £130 in 30 minutes
William Hill: Money Back as Cash if your horse comes 2nd- 2 of the 6 horses I matched came 2nd, I was also able to make a profit by just matching the bets because my odds were higher on the bookies side by using the Happy Hour odds (between 12pm-1pm, 3 horses with enhanced odds) and also the 3 daily bet boosts on Horse raising( to boost my odds on another 3 horses). £20 in 5 minutes
Paddy Power: Money Back up to £10 if Horse comes 2nd 3rd or 4th, Matched the horse with the lowest odds and sure enough it came 3rd, got my £10 free bet. £8 in 3 minutes
Skybet: Money Back as cash up to £10 if Horse comes 2nd 3rd or 4th, Matched the horse with the lowest odds and sure enough it came 3rd, got my £10. £9.50 in 3 minutes
Skybet: Wednesday Super odds: Matched the three super odds on the exchange and due to the difference in odds (If the odds on the bookies are greater than those for same bet on the exchange you are automatically profiting). £10 in 3 minutes
Boylesports: £10 Free bet if your bet loses(Premier League Match): £8 in 3 minutes
Paddy Power 2up: An offer where you get paid out early if your time goes up by 2 goals, the profit varies depending on what the odds on the exchange are when you back the team you orignally lay against, but this offer can make you a lot of profit (You will need to download the team profit calculator app and use the early payout calculator). Last week it Made me £35. £35 in 5 minutes
Novibet: Deposit £100 and get a £50 free bet. Very easy because you just have to deposit the money, get your free bet, withdraw your £100 straight away, then match the free bet on the exchange. £40 in 5 minutes
Coral: Bet 3x £5 in play and get a £5 free bet-Availble everyday. Just match these at half time so the odds are stable, Make sure you also place mug bets every couple of days if you do this one a lot, I would reccomend doing it 5 times a week tops. £20 in 30 minutes
Paddy Powe Skybet Bet clubs: Bet 5x £10 bets in a week to get a £10 free bet with Paddy Power. Bet £25 in a week to get a £5 free bet with Skybet. £10 in 30 minutes
​
Above you can see the reality of making profit long after you've finished the welcome offers, but it comes down to organisation.
So in Summary, these are my 6 Rules for making a monthly Profit:
(1) Check your email daily for offers, many times bookies will send you personalised offers just for you, and these can be very VERY generous.
(2) Check the Reload Offers section on Team profit every morning to see what offers are available that day.
(3) Offers change all the time- Don't let this put you off. There are always new offers to replace the previous ones. There are also Weekly/Daily offers ( Coral £50 free bet, Paddy power refund if 2nd 3rd 4th, William hill money back if second, Paddy Power 2up, Bet clubs etc) which are constantly available when sport is on.
(4) Make Mug bets ( Explained more in PART 3)
(5) It all adds up. Don't think "It's only a £5 free bet, not worth matching". I get around 15 £5 free bets every week, If I ignored them all I would be down £200 at the end of the month.
(6) Don't spend all day at it. Once you've checked your email and reload offers, you know what offers you need to do that day. Set alarms so you can make your matches before each event starts, but don't spend ages sitting at your computer waiting for "the perfect match", for your own mental health, set a time limit of 1 hour per day at most.
​
PART 3: FAQ
(1) How much money do you need to put in to start?
When you go onto the offers page on Team Profit after signing up, there is an option to start with £25, £50 or £100. You can select one of those three options And it will show you a different number of offers according to your selection. I started with £100 because I wanted to get things moving a little quicker. I did this so that I would have enough money for liability to do a bigger earning offer at the start. One year later, and having see the potential for profit, I keep around £500 floating between my accounts. This is useful for large sporting events where I may want to do around 10- 15 offers in a short time.
(2) Is it in anyway going to impact my credit score?
Using gambling sites doesn't effect your credit score unless you borrow money to fund it. I do all my match betting through a virtual bank (Monzo) in order to keep that stuff out of my main bank on the off chance that it raises any eyebrows. You'll be using Monzo like a cash card, where you can only spend the money you put into the card. This is why it won't affect your credit score, because you wouldn't be taking out an overdraft or using credit for example.
(3) What is Mug Betting?
Mug Betting is where you make bets that have no relation to any offer or promotion in order to appear like a regular punter. If you are doing a lot of offers on one site, it's a good idea to make mug bets in order to avoid being "gubbed" (Gubbed is a term for when bookies realise you are only taking advantadge of promotions and close your account permanantly). Of course you will also Match these "Mug bets" on the exchange. Make 1-2 Mug bets on Each site every week(On the sites you are using a lot for offers and promotions) in order to ensure your accounts last longer than 1-2 years. I have been matching for well over a year and have never been gubbed. Take the extra couple of minutes to Mug bet, it's worth it.
More on Mug betting here
​
Ok so that's everything I can think of to share with you guys, The link to sign up to your free Team Profit account is at the bottom of Part 1 of this guide.
TLDR: You do not need to "gamble" to match bet, in fact by definition, the bet you make is "matched" on the exchange, so it is not a gamble in any sense.
I really hope this guide will help someone out because It really is a solid way to sort out a months rent for quite a modest amount of work.
Thanks for Reading.

Where this tournament began.
If you're lost or wish to know more; Here's some extra info on our fighters provided by the NFC.
Where we left off: For every victory, there's an even greater consequence.
-
There was only one person among the crowd not applauding, not celebrating and not cheering.
Nelle had been trembling since she looked over the distorted form of Wendy and had barely calmed down now that things had settled.
Together, we looked at the descending screen showcasing the fight between Malphas and Zunkle, the countdown to their match and the title fight following it. There was a moment of silence before she put her hands on my arm, gripping the bicep tightly.
“We need to talk. I think it’s time to be honest about some things. Bring your equipment, even the music player. We'll need it.”
I stared back and went to open my mouth, but thought better of it and nodded as we took off for her intended destination, darting & weaving through the crowds as deftly as we could. Nelle refused to let go of my arm the entire time. Though if it was out of necessity or fear, I couldn’t tell you.
Passing through the third ring of the venue, something bumped into us and sent me hurtling to the ground, smacking my skull on the concrete and struggling to get up amid swathes of eager audience members looking to make a bet, grab a snack or discuss tactics. Each time I tried to get up, eyes blurry and ears ringing, something would knock me back over.
A gruff hand took me by the shirt and hoisted me effortlessly to my feet, dusting me off. “It’s gonna happen soon, Sal. Protect ‘em, like you promised.” A cocky, brash voice called from behind me as a furry head nuzzled against my hand for the briefest of moments. Before I could turn back, the figure pushed me forward, through the crowd and towards Nelle, who’d only just spotted me.
“Up here, we’ve got the area to ourselves. Just the three of us.” She muttered, leading me to a wall adjacent to the pit, an embedded ladder leading to a hatch above.
“Three? You mean the guy and his dog who just picked me up?” I asked, following her up the steps and the promise of fresh air filling me with vigour. She twitched when I said that, frozen in place as if stabbed with a dagger. Without looking back, she shook her head.
“No, not them… You’ll see.”
With that, she hoisted the hatch open and climbed up, helping me to my feet as we traversed the concrete and over to a pair of sofas and a coffee table opposite the edge of the building. The stars above rhythmic in their blinking, constellations I couldn’t recognise swirling in the inky blackness, promising secrets untold if I just sat down to decipher them. Across from the building, we could see a pair of lit up billboard’s, one highlighting the: "Natural beauty and mystique of Sturgeon: the nations black pearl!" The latter offering a stay at the eponymous Hotel Inertia, the pair of finely crafted Olive Tree doors sporting an ouroboros serpent across the length of them, a radiant woman standing in front. Middle-aged, a shaven black head and a trim frame adorned by a blue suit with not a single button out of place, smiling wide with the motto of the establishment beneath her.
“The Hotel Inertia; A room for Sturgeon’s finest. A floor for every occasion.”
I felt something the longer I stared at the billboard. Prying my eyes away felt like the smart thing to do as I followed Nelle over to the couches. She propped her feet up and winced, wounds still tender from her brush with death.
“It always finds a way to keep me going, though I’d hoped I’d never have to have this conversation. Least of all with you…” She pinched her nose and let out a bitter chuckle.
“Fate is cruel, isn’t it, Sal?”
She gestured for me to sit down and mechanically, as if I was awaiting grim news, I did so. Setting up the recording equipment and hitting play, I fell back into my usual role as a broadcaster.
I spoke my mind.
“Madame Lockwood… Nelle… what is it you need to tell me? So much of my time here has been spent in secrecy, voices calling from the shadows and people who know ME but I don't know them. I... I need some answers. I need them from you." I asked, keeping it blunt was the best course of action to begin with. Open questions allowed for better answers. She sighed and without looking at me, began talking, her lip quivering.
“We talked about the monk & the nun before, the idea that there is a constant cycle of birth, pursuit, struggle, death, regret and forget. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by stating that it's JUST a story, we both know it’s not. But since this began, both the story and this…”
She gestured around her, signalling the NFC tournament.
“You’ve been kept in the dark about the various roles at work. Some of those threads will unravel themselves before the night is done. Some will be obvious and some will… inevitably hurt. But, the one thread I suspect you wouldn’t know of without intervention, is the one I hold onto…”
She reached over the table and grabbed the music player, scrolling to her chosen playlist and hitting play.
Slowly, she pulled out a locket from around her neck alongside the ear she’d severed from the lycanthrope, placing it on the table with a small thud.
“This is the ear of Buck Nasty McGraw… Sir Simon “Buck Nasty” McGraw, to be specific… He got the two tiered moniker from taking out his first abomination… a Lycanthrope that’d been eating the denizens of a local indigenous village. It bucked and kicked around while he frantically held on, laughing heartily like there was nowhere else he’d rather be… from that day on, he was Buck Nasty McGraw. Never a dull moment or cruel bone in his body, he’d only take down what was a threat.” She smiled wistfully, eyes glazed over with years of pain and regret. “He was my confidant, my friend and my everything. Far away from the eyes of Sturgeon in another world entirely, we hunted down a rogue group of individuals seeking a power no-one should ever wish to behold. They’d housed themselves in the lives of unsuspecting townsfolk, whispering in their ear to do unspeakable things and bring them items to cause unmitigated disasters. When the elder reached out, he called them “The Order of 8” but they had a more direct titling…”
She looked over as the hatch swung open and a battered, tired Wendy hoisted herself up and walked over, arm still bandaged up and face-mask once again in its rightful place as she finished Nelle’s sentence.
“The Unbounded. The same scourge that dogged us in The Hotel. They were called “The Order of the 8th floor” before we came to know them intimately.”
There was a chill that ran through my bones, the very phrase standing my hairs on end, and made the surroundings feel like they rattled for a moment. Nelle nodded.
“Buck and I went in there to stop them. Buck was special, you see. He had an innate ability to see what nobody else could, to befriend any creature that had the capacity to love and to identify the weaknesses of those who would seek to do us harm. But in this particular instance, it was my specialities that were needed. In the life before I became The Compendium Keeper, I was known as something else. A Sin Eater. The last Sin Eater, to be exact.”
She took pause and passed the locket over, the faded image of a younger Nelle in her 20s, dreads tied back in a bun with dimples in her cheeks as she smiled ear to ear. A dashing man in his 30s winking at the camera with his muscular arm draped over her, adorned in tattoos and a thick black beard, sporting a stetson and a gold tooth that shone brightly even from the sepia toned photo, his ears adorned with piercings and a stretched lobe on the right. She directed my attention to the severed Lycanthrope ear on the table. Adorned with piercings and a small hole at the bottom of the skin.
“We went in there and began extracting them one by one, before something happened and we were left with a choice; Buck could give up me or something just as precious… he chose the latter, leaving me with a world devoid of him and a new purpose: Seek out the evil that subjected him to a fate worse than death, help end the cycle and guide the next group in their time of need. Such is my role. Buck lost me, but you can still save Nora.”
I looked at her dumbfounded, wondering how on earth I fit into any of this.
“Nora Zayne does not need saving from anyone, she’s clearly a beast who knows how to fight. I’m just an ordinary guy.”
She smiled at me, clearly in a place of far greater understanding than I was, but without that air of superiority. She simply offered warmth when she spoke.
“She knows as well as you do how strong she is, but that isn’t the kind of saving I’m referring to. She will need you at a critical moment and how you respond will change everything afterwards.” She sighs and tucks the ear away, keeping the locket out. “And as for you being ordinary? Right now, yes. But much like Buck, Sully, Sigurd & Sema before you, you’ll become something wonderful. When the time is right. She left you a note, didn't she?”
I blinked, thinking back to the note I'd seen on top of The Compendium right before Nelle's fight:
"Sal,
This tournament is coming to a close and you’re going to see things you don’t want to. Things that will hurt. But if you believe in anything while you’re here, make it this:
You are only as powerless as you let yourself feel. You are only as in control as you allow yourself to be. You can be the background noise in a busy room or the light that punctures the darkness.
But either way, you’ll always be my friend.
- N”
"You mean... that wasn't..." I breathed, but she shushed me softly. She leaned forward and kissed my forehead, a motherly affection running through me as she cupped my cheek and patted it gently before walking off to the hatch.
“In the right light, you even remind me of him…” She grinned and I saw years peel away in the wake of her joy. I just nodded, still dumbfounded. “I’d best get our notes prepared for the exhibition match and have a word with our eponymous Nora. You still have the interview of a lifetime, right?”
Turning back, Wendy was already splayed out on the couch, arm draped over her eyes and one leg crossed at the knee bouncing in rhythm.
“A promise is a promise, Sal. I’m sure all those at home will get a kick outta this…” She took her good arm away from her face for just a moment, long enough to give the Hotel Inertia billboard the finger. “Fuckin’ hellhole, I wonder how the fuck it’s even still standing?”
“So you were a resident in this Hotel? What happened? How did you get from there to… here?” I took out a notepad and began hastily jotting down shorthand, something I’d learned to do from my younger days as a fight analyst on live broadcasts. Certainly not for the bum-fights, regrettable as those were to be a part of.
“Resident isn’t the right word. I wouldn’t have even said I was from Sturgeon prior to meeting the gang, because to me: Sturgeon didn’t exist. Every floor in that fuckin’ structure is its own reality. Its own world. One floor, where we met our friend Robin, contained an entire tent community basking in the sickening sounds of a grand gazebo atop the hill that made them all docile, sickly and weak. When we stopped the sound, they began tearing each other apart. The last thing we saw was the elders skull being caved in as the doors closed.” She sat up and leaned forward, putting a finger up as if to stop me from asking something.
“To be clear: The elevator stopped inside the tip of a rooftop terrace, not unlike the one that we have here with the hatch. There was NOTHING above but black skies, the expanse beyond this floor was endless. And yet… we ascended when we got back in, not descended. That entire Hotel houses things you could never dream of. Including where I came from, a cul-de-sac of domesticated monsters…”
For the first time, I saw a deep pain in Wendy, even more pronounced than the initial anger after seeing Nelle fall. She was shaking, fists balled up so tight that the fingers cut into the palms, eyes alight with passion.
“I don’t remember being a child. I just remember waking up in the middle of this prissy, far too perfect cul-de-sac with monsters pretending they weren’t monsters. That bitch over there on the billboard picked me up, my body just filled with the kind of impending doom you feel when you see someone driving dangerously on the road in front of you or walking down a street at night and the only other guy on the footpath has his hood up and is making a beeline for you… just absolute fucking dread. As she knocked on the door of the people that would come to be my “adopted family”, I remember her looking down at me with wide eyes, tiny pupils and a grin that looked like it was on tenterhooks. She said: “you’ll be a fantastic offering for the others” before everything faded to black…"
She shivered and I felt the same disgust and dread she felt. The idea of being somewhere you didn't recognise, the last face you see that of utter malice and sinister intent emanating from their being. I'd been there...
"Some time later, I found a crazy guy named Sigurd laying in a crumpled heap by the elevator doors. I tended to him and he got to see firsthand what role I played in the hungry family… that of their endless meal. I don’t know what it was about him, but something in the way he behaved, spoke to his friends or maybe his will to survive… but I swear to god that it was the first time I truly woke up.”
She ran a hand through her hair, breathing out dramatically and sniffing.
“Man, if and when I see him again, I need to thank him properly. He helped me see something in myself that I knew was always there but had been too stuck in my own head to realise…”
“Freedom” I asked, tapping my pen against the notepad. She shook her head.
“Value."
There was a silence and I grew a stronger respect for her, not even realising the importance of self worth in the strong until that very moment.
"After that, we acquired some new friends; one in the town of sickly sounds, a guy in a lone radio tower, and so it went. We’d eventually take on The Order Of The 8th Floor and all their horrors, before we ended up reuniting with The Concierge on the top floor, worse for wear and with a couple of losses in our wake. When all was said and done, we had her beat and Sigurd walked over to put an end to things. I’ll never forget how she smiled when the lightning struck or the last thing she ever said…”
The wind picked up and I felt a bitter snap behind it, either my empathy was through the roof and I could feel what Wendy felt… or something ominous was in the air.
“One down. Seven to go.” She finished, getting up and shaking her head. “I’m only just now understanding what she meant, but that question would lead me to rumours about the NFC and their tournaments. I decided to make myself a target for the upcoming Openweight tournament and seek out more answers, maybe get my wish along the way if I happened to win… of course, that didn’t happen and it leads me to a question for you, Sal.” She leaned down and looked me dead in the eyes, that mask more intimidating up close, power radiating from every pore of her skin.
“Who made me feral? Who took out Qwong Xiao? Who is pulling the strings and why? You don’t see it as convenient that Eustace De Kolta, well known Wendigo hater, ends up facing a version of me that couldn’t see sense? That former challenger Nora Zayne is in there too?”
“They’re setting up for something more…” I breathed, the tapping of my pen stopping. “But what?”
“All I know is I’ll be on hand to help, however I can. Something tells me that we’re all gonna be needed when this is over. Beyond that, I have a feeling this exhibition match is going to be… interesting.” She cracked her back before walking off, holding up a lazy thumbs up with her good arm. “Thanks Sal, takes a skilled guy to do what you do and to let me run my mouth like that, hope it was worth it!”
“I hope you see Sigurd again, Wendy. I’m sure he’d be proud of what you’ve done here. I know I am.” I blurted out, almost on command. She stopped in her tracks and didn’t turn back, but I saw her hand shaking as she put it back in her pocket.
“Hell, now you know my wish. Good luck, Sal. You’ll need it.”
-
Sitting there and gathering my notes, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed in the moment, as I had done so many times throughout this tournament. It’s not so much that the world revolves around me, because it doesn’t, but to even consider I have my own part to play in this is a lot to absorb for someone who is used to calling the action from the safety of a booth or behind a computer screen.
Why someone as decidedly dull and boring as me has a place here among killers is beyond me, but the more time passes, the more I feel that surge of emotion and desire to do SOMETHING.No matter what happens next, I have to do my part. I just wish I knew what that was.
Picking up my things, I realised Nelle had left her locket and, not wanting it to get stolen or lost, I picked it up.
A flash of memories hit me like a freight train. Holding onto a great beast as a younger Nelle screamed in fear, a conversation shrouded in darkness with a pair of sunken eyes floating in front of Nelle as I stood there, powerless. A deal with a gold toothed shadow, the handshake that sent shockwaves through my body…
“Hurts, doesn’t it, Sal?”
Whipping round, the voice seemed to come from all directions and I immediately recognised it as that of Moirah, one of the sisters. A tapping that sounded as if it was pounding on my eardrums reverberating around us, the thick air ripe with the smell of sulphur.
“All those places, all those memories jostling for position. Like a mass in your skull… It builds strength, malice and accumulates the experiences you build over time before one day bursting and taking you with it. Life isn’t like a box of chocolates… no, it’s like an aneurysm; You never know which moment will be your last.”
Hands gripped my shoulders and thick yellow nails dug into the soft flesh, pulling up at my tendons and moving me without my consent. My arms reaching out for the locket, Moirah giggling in my ear and Clodagh’s incessant banging making my eyes throb.
“We are tired of waiting. Tired of constant mis-steps by you and those associated. If you cannot willingly understand the truth, we shall force it out of you. There is too much at stake for failure.”
Hands grasp around the locket and the images begin to burn into my skull; Downing a drink that burns my insides. A lightning strike surging through my body. A gunshot to the head. A plane crash. A white snake curled in my arms as I slip away. The tear-stained face of someone I know strangling me as I helplessly struggle and buck my hips for dear life. Everything ebbs out of me and my knees buckle to the floor. All I see is red, my nose dripping blood and the world fading into nothing more than a pink hue.
“She… she needs me.” I gurgle, the hands pushing down on me with extreme force, the tapping evolving into a thunderous chorus of aggression at my resistance.
“She needs nothing from you. She only needs to play her part and that will be achieved with or without you. You are inconsequential. You are moments from fulfilling your purpose.”
More flashes as a deep shade of red fills my peripheral vision. A young woman laying in her apartment, blood everywhere and an empty crib. The sounds of despair as the woman on the other end of a phone is beaten to death. Nelle crouched over a body and sobbing… Nora. Nora’s warm face as she hugs me before her last fight in the NFC. Why is she hugging me?
“It’ll be fine. Trust me. I’ll win it for both of us.”
Something in me snapped. A protective instinct I didn’t know I had. Pulling at the hands and feeling the pain surge through my chest, I didn’t care in that moment, I just knew I had to get up.
“No. I have to… I’m all she has. We bring each other strength… you can’t stop that!” My body moved before I gave the command. My left leg flew out from under me and drove itself upwards, front of the foot colliding with the face of Moirah behind me. Bone fragments and blood accompanying a loud groan as I felt my body freed and the thunderous booming returning to a tap. Not waiting for a retaliation, I swiped the locket into my bag with my sleeve and dashed for the hatch, nearly tumbling down the stairs as I hit the bottom, breathing heavily.
What the fuck did I just do?
I took my time walking back to the venue, nobody giving me any trouble or even a dirty look for once. If anything, people seemed to go out of their way to avoid even looking at me. Which, after what had transpired previously, was welcomed.
I sat down just as the 2 minute bell called out and the exhibition match was announced.
This was going to be bloody.
-
As the lights dimmed, Alduin walked over to me, cape billowing behind her and a manic grin on her face as a cinderblock hand slapped my back and damn near winded me.
“Sal! Glad I caught ya, loving the musical vibes you’ve been putting out there. SO much so, that I have a few… additions for ya. I mentioned to Madame Lockwood there n’ she said they were already on the device. Damned if I know how… technology ain’t one of my friends. But, if ya could play these during those ever so pivotal moments in the upcoming fight and during mine & Nora’s entrance, I’d be pretty damn grateful… Oh, speaking of: since I’m the one fighting, I’m gonna need ya to do the announcing. That won’t be a problem, will it?” Her eye flashed, and the eyepatch rumbled, the exhaustion of what transpired out there suddenly setting in, making me feel decidedly ordinary as I nodded.
“You got it, Commissioner. Whatever you need.” I croaked, fumbling with my bag as everything spilled onto the table, Alduin laughing as she walked off.
“That’s why I like ya, Sal. You just do it. You’re certainly a changed man! Ha!” She stretched as she sauntered off to get the microphone. I guess even warming up wouldn’t stop her from showmanship.
I reached out for the locket when Nelle grabbed it first, as if she knew I shouldn’t touch it. Whisking up my notes with far quicker hands and placing it on the table, she thanked me before silently pointing to the recording material as the lights dimmed.
“Fight fans, before we reach the conclusion of this night under the NFC banner, we have two very special matches for you. Our first is one forged in blood and spilled just as much. It’ll be a battle between Father and Son as the former attempts to help the latter see the error of his ways and perhaps seek a little justice for the lost lives here tonight. Without further ado, we throw it over to Commissioner Alduin Von Trier for the official introductions.”
I pointed to Alduin, who grabbed the mic with gusto and began her spiel.
“Without further do, let’s get this blood feud on the road! In the corner to my left: He is the Jersey Devil, our resident chef and the Father of violence… Put your hands together for Zunk!”
I looked down at him. He was in a tank top with fighter shorts, his gargantuan frame only accentuated without the chef’s outfit and apron. His usually pleasant expression replace with a cold indifference as he stared a hole in the opposite direction. Towards his opponent.
“And in the corner to my right: He was a standout fighter in this year’s tournament and one that brought us violence at the very start of the proceedings, so it’s only right we end with him. He was formally paired with his entourage, Mr. Stares, but he’s now back in his usual form; The Black Dog Of Jersey: Malphas!”
She gave both an eager look before leaping out of dodge and to the safety of her perch as she walked off, understandably to train, but throwing her hand in the air and bellowing “BEGIN!” For the match to start.
NFC EXHIBITION MATCH: “JERSEY DEVIL” ZUNKLE VS “PUPPET MASTER” MALPHAS
Malphas, unchanged from the last time we saw him, took furtive steps forward, cocking his head to the side as he grinned, the nails in his lips now nothing more than bloodied holes which stained his teeth.
“Well pops, we knew this was gonna happen at some point. To be the baddest, you have to take out the best and the weakest. You taught me that.” Zunk stood his ground, unflinching in his resolve and unwilling to move.
“I didn’t teach you a damn thing. I tried to channel your anger and hatred into something productive. I thought you’d grow out of it.” He clenched his fist. “But you only got worse.”
-THUMP-
Without warning, Zunk struck himself square in the stomach with all his might, his eyes widening in pain and a wheeze leaving his lungs as Malphas continued to walk him down.
“Well, you didn’t teach me directly… But I sought out info, determined to find out what was so WRONG with me. Until I was found, reborn, and told the most important piece of wisdom I’d ever get. Do you know what that was, Dad?” He twitched his fingers and Zunk pulled his head back, fingers pulling on the hair so tight it threatened to pull out thick black tufts. Malphas leaned forward, inches away from his father’s bloodied face.
“The sins of the father will always impact on the son. But you can so easily reverse that, if you’re willing and open to doing what needs to be done.”
He curled his hand; the fingers twisting and Zunk’s body doing as he obeyed. His arm volleying back for another unprotected shot at his face, but his head also being forced forward by the other hand in a macabre torture technique.
“He’s using him as a goddamn punching bag… literally a human puppet. Is there anything he can do, Nelle?” I look over to her, the book is closed, and she’s resting her elbows on it, hands clasped and over her mouth.
“Not if he wants to keep what little of his soul he has left, Sal.” She replied, as if speaking from experience. I felt a lump in my throat as I looked back, Malphas laughing giddily at the prolonged beating his Father was sustaining.
“Marvellous, now let’s try taking out that tongue, no more bullshit spewed from your mouth!” He clapped his hands, observing the battered father figure and framing him like he’d done with Rex. “Hmm… or maybe we should just take the head entirely? Hard to say when you’re having so much fun!”“There’s really no hope for you, is there, boy? If I brought you back to your Mother… what would she think of you now?” Zunk called through gritted teeth and smatterings of blood. Malphas just laughed.
“She’d probably wonder how she came back to life and why she’s nothing more than a bag of bones! Still, better than being a sack of meat, right? I’d have probably had to cut her up too. So safety the or-“
A punch flew from Zunk that instead of hitting his own face would connect with the stomach of his son. The force of which sent him flying back, feet dragging through the pit floor and dropping him to his knees.
“Hey, Sal. There’s a song of mine on there, think you could do me a solid and uhh… y’know? Oh and don’t put it on an odd number.” He didn’t even look at me, instead muttering the prime numbers in quick succession under his breath.
Sure enough, I scrolled down and saw a single song under his name.
It simply said; “Blizzard.”
The deep bass rang out and Zunk cracked his neck as he walked towards Malphas. Who, to his credit, was up to one knee and one hand on his stomach, the other twisting in front of him.
Again, Zunk saw resistance, his right arm striking at him repeatedly and smashing his ears, jaw and nose. But each shot just made him more determined to walk forward, spitting out blood on the fourth punch.
Malphas backs off and places his hands and legs against the wall, a cornered and frightened animal as Zunk walks him down, determined.
“You always thought The Jersey Devil was some goat-like creature of the night, didn’t you? I never told you that it was always just me… a part of me that I kept firmly locked away and promised to never touch again when I met your mother. After we had you, bad people came after me. Very, very bad people. They got to her while I was away, made you watch what they did to her. Christ, you were four…”
Zunk stopped in front of his son, pity across his face.
“I went after them, did what any husband and father would do, but worse… Still, you changed so much after that. But I believe there’s still hope for you. Some glimmer of what your mother was in there. You just need to take my hand and we can put this behind us, a few broken teeth, and some fractured ribs are nothing to a family like ours.”
He outstretched his hand and Nelle shook her head in dismay.
Malphas stretched his own out and for a moment, I thought we’d see our first good ending to a bout.
To my horror and disgust, I was wrong.
Malphas leaned forward and sank his teeth into Zunk’s hand, biting at the fingers until he tore off one of the digits at the mid-point, the blood spraying across his face and the canvas. He spat the finger out and coated his hand in it, giggling as he crawled along the wall and away from Zunk.
“There is only ONE family and it sure as hell isn’t yours. With your blood on MY hands, I can show you just how good I am at control. As I did with Zanaya, Rex and the rest. I am DAMN good at carrying out my master’s will, and as long as I get to carve people up, I’ll keep on doing it!” He held his hand up and Zunk’s face grew vacant, his mouth hung open and he bore the same expression the others had done before him.
This was the prelude to the end.
“I can’t believe this. Of all the sick things I’ve seen in this tournament, biting the literal hand that feeds has got to be one of the worst! Malphas should be ashamed, but given his prior antics, I don’t think that’s possible! Get up, Zunk! Move for god’s sake!” I pleaded, my hands shaking, and the fear of losing someone else with no means to save them filled me with such dread, but there was nothing I could do.
Nelle didn’t move from her analytical stance and the crowd bayed for blood as the techno music swelled.
Malphas walked over with confidence, pulling a weapon from his back and brandishing it playfully as he got closer. He showed no hesitation as he drove the blade deep into Zunk’s chest, dark blood running down his torso to the delight of his son.
“Guess blood ties do run deep, huh?” He looked at the trail and laughed. “Best of luck, dad. I’ll keep your legacy going and improve on it!” He patted the shoulder of his still standing but vacant father as he began to walk back, never seeing the surging knee coming for his temple as he turned.
Malphas flew through the air and crumpled into a heap on the ground as Zunk lowered his leg, sadness and disappointment riddled across his face.
Malphas tried to scramble, but Zunk was quick. He picked him up by the head, his gargantuan hands cupping the younger man in them as if holding a coconut. He slammed him down once to pacify him before hurling him towards the centre of the pit, no longer able to crawl away.
Every step Zunk took bore the weight of what he was about to do, echoing the gravity of the words when he spoke:
“As of late, you’ve been doing terrible things. Things I cannot forgive, forget or ignore.”
“Please… dad, I’m sorry! I’ll… I’ll leave the services of my masters... of the order and I’ll stop what I’m doing… I’ll change. I swear! Oh god… please, help! I deserve better, I did what was asked of me! Are ANY of you gonna help me?!” He snivelled and darted frantic eyes around the venue, but none would intervene as his father honed in like a lion ready to make the kill.
“There is no other avenue left for you, Malphas. But, let me offer you one final piece of fatherly advice…”
Zunk raises his fist, his entire body twisting back with the force he’s generating and his eyes glowing like that of the Jersey Devil he is synonymous for. Malphas’ whimpering a mere backdrop to the swelling beat and his father’s chilling final words.
“Leaving this world is not as scary as it seems.”
With that, he drove the fist down onto Malphas’ face with such force that the venue shook. When the dust cleared, there was a divot left where Malphas’ head resided, the decapitation marks on his neck clear as day, something resembling scorch marks across the neck lining as Zunk raised his bloodied fist from the hole and walked back without a single word.
It was over.
I looked at the broken body of a man who had spent this entire tournament dismantling the enemy, pulling their strings and making sure at least three families were torn apart by his insatiable lust for destruction. But my mind wasn’t on that, nor was it on what was going through the mind of a man who had just rekindled the flame of his old violent moniker to take out his son. Hell, for a moment, it wasn’t even on the upcoming title fight that would determine everything.
It was on what he said in those final moments of bravado that stuck with me.
The claims of pulling the strings, making sure everything went to plan for his “masters”.
But before I could ask Nelle what she thought, I was handed a slip of paper that contained the details for the bout. Standard things like the fighters names, monikers and the match stipulations.
There were two things on that slip of paper that caused me to break out in a sweat and my heart to jump into my throat and stay there. Just two simple sentences changed my world and raised the stakes of the title fight exponentially so.
The match type? 3 Stages of Hell. First to 2 victories wins the belt.
The names? NFC Champion Von Trier and Sabotta.
Nora Sabotta.

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Casino	States	What to do to get paid by me	Referral Offer	Signup Bonus	Approximate Cash Value	I Pay	Terms and Conditions
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Hello guys, I have several offers for various US Sportsbooks (gotta be 21 years or older).
I will pay you for just achieving the simple referral criteria outlined below.
In addition to the bonus for doing my referral, these sites have additional signup bonuses that are very generous as well. Using the above method, you can turn the signup bonuses into ~$1000 risk free. Just make sure to be aware of the the terms and conditions. If you tell me what offers you are doing, I can direct you step by step on what to do to maximize the offers. This link here provides more explanation on the types of bonuses..
Many of the rewards for these signups are in the form of free bets. They can be converted to cash risk free with a process known as matched betting. Basically what you do, is bet on one side of an event at one casino with a free bet, and then bet on the other side at another one. This results in a guaranteed profit regardless what outcome. For using my link, I will pay you for the sign up as well as talk you through how to convert the bonuses into cash.
 
You have to be physically located in the states listed, as the websites all use geolocation.
 
To figure out how much to bet on each side, just insert the odds into this calculator and play accordingly. When you bet with a freebet, your stake amount does not get returned and you only keep the winnings. As a result your free bet should always be placed on the underdog (Odds with a positive number). I am for around +250, -270. You should easily be able to find events that will give you 60% return on the free bet (ex. $100 free bet turns into $60)
 
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask and I can help. I am in the process of writing a guide as well.
 
In addition to the bonus for doing my referral, these sites have additional signup bonuses that are very generous as well. Using the above method, you can turn the signup bonuses into ~$1000 risk free. Just make sure to be aware of the the terms and conditions. If you tell me what offers you are doing, I can direct you step by step on what to do to maximize the offers. This link here provides more explanation on the types of bonuses..  
In addition after you sign up on to these sites, they have regular promotions all the time that you can continue to take advantage of these and make additional money risk free using the above mentioned technique. .
 
I will pay by venmo/paypal/cash app once I receive the bonus on my end.
 

Casino	States	What to do to get paid by me	Referral Offer	Signup Bonus	Approximate Cash Value	I Pay	Terms and Conditions
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Here is a list of sites for online work that anyone can use:
​
Appen - Paid Projects, up to 20 hours a week. Decent pay of about $14 dollars per hour but depends on the project you can get
Lionbridge - Paid projects, great projects on offer
TeamWork - Paid projects, good site.
ClickWorker - Surveys and Writing..payments vary per task....Very good site.
Neevo - Tasks , up to $1 per task approx
Vipkid- Teach English to kids online, $15-$25 per hour or so
QKid- Same as vipkid teaching English online- I think this pays up to $20 per hour
gogokid- Teach English Online $14-25 per hour
Prolific.co - Surverys, pays very well!
Mturk - Microtasks- Pay is ok, haven't used it myself but seems fine
Rev - Transcription
TranscribeME - Transcription
GoTranscript- Transcription
Qmee- Surveys, varying payout on each one...pretty good site.
Swagbucks- Surveys, good paying.
Timebucks - Various surveys, good site.
GG2U- Surveys, good site with good payout, probably average of 1$ per survey
Serpclix - Good one for tasks/surveys...intall on your browser and it will let you know when there are some available
BrandedSurvey- Surveys
20Cogs - You complete 20 offers to get the payout, you will have to cancel a few subsciptions after some tasks but it's a good way to make about £200-£300
Panelbase.net - Surveys, Mostly they pay £1-£4
YouGov - Surveys, good site and pay is decent.
populuslive.com - Surveys, pay is decent.
Ysense - Surveys and other tasks
Prizerebel - Surveys and other tasks
Microworkers - Various tasks
HideOutTV- Watch videos and get paid
HoneyGain- You get paid for browsing the internet every month , maybe $40 or so
​
This got a very positive response when I posted a few months ago so I thought I'd put it out there again, Personally I use a combination of these sites to earn around £1000-£1500 a month. Hopefully it can be of help to more people, shoot me a message if you have any questions
​
EDIT: Ok so the reason I said I use a combination of these sites is because I have used all of them at one time or another, but here is my current combination:
Appen/Lionsbridge- Most recently worked as a social media evaluator which payed $15 per hour and gave me around 10 hours per week
Clickworker- I use the UHRS section,“Universal Human Relevance System”. It’s a partner website that can be accessed over clickworker.com and where you can process additional jobs. You can earn a lot more this way
Neevo- Various tasks , up to $1 per task approx
VipKid and other english teaching sites- I also put ads on a spanish site called tusclasesparticulares offering skype classes. Here is a link to a lot of different English teaching sites you can use from different countries
GG2U- Surveys, good site with good payout, probably average of 1$ per survey
20cogs- A good way to earn £200+ in a relatively short time
Serpclix - Good one for tasks/surveys...intall on your browser and it will let you know when there are some available
Qmee- Surveys, good site
Prolific- Surveys- Can pay very well
HoneyGain- You get paid for browsing the internet every month , maybe $40 or so
These would be my go to sites, and I sporadically check for work on the others too if I have the time.
I spend 2 hours a day doing this to earn £1000 per month but it's usually higher than that. You have to earn £33 per day in order to hit the £1000 per month mark, which is very doable when you have 20 or so sites to work with.
For me at the moment it's usually a one hour class which makes me £15 and then a combination of projects from Lionsbridge (which currently pays about $15 dollars for an hour) and then a couple of random short tasks or surveys from one of the other sites, or more if I don't do a class...Takes a while to fine tune it and I'm always modifying the combination but believe me it's more than doable. As I say, you just need to hit that £33 a day, which is actually even easier to hit in dollars if you prefer to think of it that way.
​
Also, and this is only useful to people in the UK, I am currently doing "Matched Betting" because the Premier league is on now and more and more sporting fixtures are making a comeback. Match betting is where you bet on one outcome in the bookies and then bet against that outcome in the exchange, with both bets at almost the same odds.
So for example, If you bet £10 for Real Madrid to win at odds of 2.5 on the betting site, and then bet for Real Madrid not to win(i.e bet against them) on the exchange at the same odds, you are covered in all outcomes, win lose or draw.
This means you have fullfilled the requirements of the betting sites offer (for example, Bet £10 and get £40 in free bets) without actually gambling, since there is no risk of losing the £10 you bet since it's matched. You then do the exact same thing with your £40 free bets, and this is where you make the profit since you're not using £40 of your own money.
Yes It's totally legal, just a loophole in the system really, although I was very suspicious of it at first. I wrote a guide explaining how to do it, you can find it at the top of my profile if you are interested. I have made about £700-£800 per month from doing this, on top of the money from other sites, but obviously this means putting in more time!
I hope this is of some help, If you have any other questions don't hesitate to ask!

Hi all,
To say thank you for all the great advice here, I'm going to put down everything I've found about PST over my 10 years of use. If others want to contribute, or find something that is wrong or shouldn't be in here, I'll be happy to make updates. I won't be discussing or responding to any questions about sourcing.
* DISCLAIMER: While I've run this guide past a medical professional who is a part of the sub, NONE of this should be taken as medical advice. Everything I've put down here is simply my experience as a 10 year user of PST, and 15 year user of opiates and opioids. Remember this: PST is liquid opium - morphine and codeine - drugs that have killed many people. It's not a toy, and it's not a competitive sport, like a 'smoke-a-thon'. If you don't use poppy seeds with intelligence and respect, they can kill you.
I don't use meth, and wouldn't write a guide for it. But speaking as somebody with chronic pain caused by an auto-immune disease, and the failure of doctors to properly support me, I have to look after myself. Many here are in the same boat. I am able to lead a relatively healthy life with PST, so I can attest that there is a legitimate use for it. Please understand that I'm coming from a position of using PST as pain relief. If you're a purely recreational user without pain, understand that because of a number of factors, primarily availability and a wild variation in strength between sources and batches, PST can be incredibly addictive, dangerous, and the odds are against you being able to use it as a purely recreational experience without becoming addicted.
EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT
Not everybody gets the same effect from PST. I personally get euphoria & pain relief, followed by a sustained amount of energy. Others will be sleepy and nodding. Others get varying amounts of itchiness. Some never have a problem urinating, others can't squeeze a drop.
True story: I've met a person who was able to get a HUGE effect from just 2-3 tablespoons worth of the tea that I prepare for myself, when I'd drink 2-3 cups at that strength. Literally a tablespoon of average seeds had them on the ropes. The most important point here is that you can't take what one user advises as gospel.. including me. I'm trying to err well on the side of caution, particularly after seeing what 2% of my dose can do for someone without tolerance. Always stay safe.
TOLERANCE - START SMALL
Every supply will have differences from batch to batch. I've even noticed a difference from the top to the bottom of a large pack due to free opium dust making it's way to the bottom of a pack. If you're not 100% certain you know how strong your seeds are, start VERY small, at perhaps one ounce of seeds. I've had an extremely strong euphoric effect from 1/4 cup of seeds from a new supply combined with a new preparation method, where I was using 2 pounds per dose the previous day. The washing of seeds prior to sale varies, some may not be washed at all. This is the equivalent of taking a pharmaceutical tablet not knowing whether it's 30mg of Codeine, or 80mg of Oxycodone.
Following on from that, keep tolerance in mind, and monitor it as much as you can. While increasing tolerance is a pain in the ass, it does give you something of a buffer if the worst were to happen. A sudden decrease in tolerance can be VERY dangerous if you don't keep it in mind. If you were to use PST on Saturday and Sunday, then abstain during Monday to Friday, your tolerance will drop through the week. For those without solid experience and tolerance, and even experienced users at times, this can be treacherous. Don't use a large dose after even a few days off. Start small.
A great piece of advice is to split up a batch of tea, drinking a small amount, and waiting to see what effect it has. 60-90 minutes will be enough for you to feel the effects. Unless you know your seeds and what you're doing, don't gulp down your entire batch of tea in 30 seconds flat.
DOSE TIMING
If you're only using PST recreationally, I would recommend no more than 1 dose per week. At this level, you may have a chance at keeping this as a recreational thing without it spiraling. But the second you're starting to feel a compulsion to increase the frequency, addiction is at work and you're on the downward slope.
In my position, I regularly use 2 doses per day for pain management. The first is often one larger dose, with 1-2 much smaller follow-up doses to get to where I need to be for pain relief and energy. In the afternoon after work, I'll use medium sized dose to top me up for the rest of the day. As with other painkillers, you will get extra pain relief if you're only spacing doses by a few hours, but if you're trying to get a second buzz for the day, I'd recommend no less than 8 hours between doses, and no more than 2 doses per day. This seems to be the amount of time your body needs to 'reset', it's been my rule of thumb for 15 years, it works for me. Even then, if you follow this daily, it won't take long before you're increasing your dose or needing a day or two off to lower your tolerance.
Something I can say with reasonable certainty is that you can't take an initial dose, then do the same thing again in 2 hours time and expect another buzz. The body doesn't have unlimited chemicals to pump out every time you want to push the button. If I take my first dose of the day and it's weak, I know I can take a second dose which will elevate my energy levels, and that'll get me through the day. But it'll do little else.
It's very important to keep in mind that PST is longer acting than many other forms of pain relief. Some people have said they get a full 24 hour effect from a dose.. I personally get a solid 6-8 hours. If you aren't spacing out your doses enough, you are putting yourself at risk of an overdose. Add in a second dose when the first is still acting on your system, and you're at risk of overdosing. This is common in methadone users, because of the long acting nature of that bastard of a drug.
PREPARATION
Any time I mention how much seed I personally use for a dose, this is NOT a recommended dose for anybody else. This is what I personally use at the 15 year mark to control significant pain. It is a STRONG dose, taken by someone with SIGNIFICANT tolerance and LOTS of experience. The seeds are quite viable, but definitely not 'strong', not even close to some of the pictures I've seen of other sources. As per the story at the beginning, my dose could quite easily kill somebody.
START SMALL or don't start at all.
Most people including myself stick to the bottle method. Some do this on a stove top but I've never tried, so I won't comment there. I personally use either a 1.5, or 2.25 litre Coke bottle and fill with seeds to the bottom edge of the wrap-around label. I use either room temperature Coke Zero / No Sugar (for the high pH), or hot tap water with some sort of flavoring. While I've had many good highs from using cold water or cold Coke, warm/hot liquid does seem to reliably increase the strength. Because of variable seed strength, you may not get a consistently better effect from hot water over cold, but I do think that hot water is the most effective. There has always been some disagreement over whether boiling water destroys the alkaloids, so to err on the side of caution I don't put anything with the seeds that would burn my hand.
The seed-liquid ratio is hard to suggest, but you need to be able to freely shake the bottle without the mixture feeling like a slurry, or worse, wet cement. You need those seeds moving around without clumping up. Generally once I've shaken my bottle, the seeds will settle and there'll be roughly an inch of water above the seed line.
The bottle needs to be shaken hard, for around 1-2 minutes. The objective is to strip as much of the alkaloid on the outside of the seed off as possible, and getting it strained into a cup, without taking so long that the seeds will be to absorb liquid (and alkaloids).
As above, start small, drink 1/4 - 1/3 of your batch and see how you feel in 90 minutes. As you get more experienced you'll know what works.
TASTE
Poppy seed tea tastes like crap. It's hard to compare it to anything, but it should taste earthy, dirty, bitter. I've never met anyone who had anything nice to say about it. I've used sugar-free Coke for mine instead of water for a long time, and only just recently switched to plain water. You can add all sorts of things to make it taste better, fruit juice concentrates, teabags, sugar. Without any flavoring, you should be able to drink it with your nose blocked, unless you have a weak stomach. It's not nice, but no great drug tasted nice.
The bitterness can sometimes indicate that you've made a strong batch, but DON'T put too much faith in that. I've had batches that were incredibly bitter and did nothing, while I got caught out with one that tasted about as strong as a 5th or 6th wash (not that I wash that many times), yet it knocked me on my ass out of nowhere, to the point that I wouldn't have been able to work without being obviously high.
If you've water that is too hot, shaken the bottle for too long, or try to make a batch with yesterday's seeds, you'll get a distinct taste. It's hard to describe, but it tastes.. wrong. You'll notice a slightly fatty texture which is the seed's oils, and a vaguely organic decomposing smell. One smell/taste you can describe is the licorice odor that seeds give off when they've been in a bottle for a few days and started to pressurize the bottle. You'll smell it if you don't dispose of your seeds in 24-36 hours. Obviously these seeds are WELL beyond useless. Also, if you taste or smell anything 'chemical', get rid of the seeds.
COLOR
There are plenty of pictures on this sub showing what the color of good tea looks like. It should be cloudy, possibly with dirt and plant matter, and a beige to dark brown color. Two things to look out for - if it's milky white, that usually means seed oil, you've shaken too long or used water that is too hot. And if the water is completely clear, it's possible the seeds have been completely washed prior to sale (or worse, been used for tea and dried, then resold).
NAUSEA
Some people will experience stomach discomfort or nausea when taking recreational doses. Not all stomachs will thank you for dumping a large amount of foul tasting swill into them. It's worth noting this here, because a little nausea and discomfort isn't always an overdose symptom. You can usually ease the nausea by eating a small meal or a glass of milk prior, or during. Because of the reports of fat being able to increase opiate bioavailability, I would steer clear of really fatty foods here, carbs or protein will be safer.
OVERDOSE
I'm not an expert here, and the onus is on you, the user, to do your research on overdose symptoms before you experiment with ANY drug. But there are a few obvious ones that should never be ignored. Vomiting, slow breathing, reduced heart rate, vomiting, and nodding. If you're not familiar with nodding, it's nodding off to sleep. Think the stereotype of a heroin user in a movie. If your head is dipping, you're finding it hard to keep your eyes open, dropping off to sleep briefly.. you're in dangerous territory.
IMPORTANT: Like any opiate, you should never take PST with any other CNS depressant drug: alcohol, benzodiazepines, other opiates/opioids, or sedatives. They can dramatically increase the likelihood of respiratory depression and OD. In layman's terms, this will likely play out with you nodding, falling asleep, your breathing will slow to the point of stopping completely, and you will die without intervention.
PLEASE - spend 15 minutes looking into opiate/opioid overdose symptoms, and have a plan if you find yourself in trouble. Smart users have Narcan on their possession and somebody available to administer it. A large amount of overdoses happen when the user is alone, with nobody available to step in when things start going wrong.
DISCRETION
It can be difficult (but feasible) to keep preparation secret, if you're in that position. Shaking is noisy, but can be mitigated by wrapping the bottle in a blanket, masking with background noise, etc. Straining a bottle can cause cracking noises from deforming plastic, so my suggestion is not to squeeze the bottle too much. Squeeze out perhaps 10%, then with your hands wrapped around the bottle, you can manipulate the sides to suck in air and return to it's original shape, relatively quietly. If you squeeze to the point that the sides are touching, you'll make all sorts of cracking and snapping noises trying to get air back in so that the last of the liquid can be strained.
I also try to keep the bottle upside down from start to finish, so that the liquids are always toward the exit. If you have to put the bottle down, try to place it with the cap down (and obviously closed). It seems intuitive to have the bottle right way up to refill with air, but this can cause problems getting every last drop out.
The very last of the liquid will come out bubbling. This tells you you're at the end, and it can get a little noisy. When you hear this, squeeze gently or just call it, there's not much coming out at this point.
Poppy seeds are small and get EVERYWHERE. Keep an eye out for them. If they're regularly showing up around a sink, toilet or elsewhere and spotted, they could tip somebody off.
POTENTIATION
There are numerous threads all across the internet with lists of potentiators that can increase the effects of your PST. I personally haven't found anything groundbreaking here. Dosing on an empty stomach is well known and does seem to be quite noticeable over dosing after eating. In my experience, I can only guess that, at best, there might be an extra 5-10% increase up for grabs using common potentiators quoted online, which I don't find very noticeable. If you're using responsibly and have the potentiator on hand, you might find something that works, but generally speaking, there aren't any silver bullets that'll make your PST appreciably stronger. Dextromethorphan (DXM) is purported to keep tolerance from rising, but only if you're using it daily in a therapeutic level, as recommended on the packet.
Grapefruit juice is commonly recommended as a potentiator, and while it doesn't work for me, the medical professional who looked over this guide can attest that it does work. The simplified explanation is that it blocks the livekidney system from filtering the drug at the speed it normally does, thus increasing the amount in your blood. It's also important to note that Grapefruit juice has a wide range of interactions with other medications. It's not uncommon to see a prescription label with a warning not to drink Grapefruit juice while taking the prescribed medication. As with everything here, do your research. Definitely don't jump into potentiators until you're comfortable using PST on it's own.
There are some things that will decrease, or negate the effects of PST. To start with, I get a better result with less liquid used. If you're using larger amounts of seed, you can halve the amount of liquid by splitting the seed between two bottles. Shake the first, strain into the second, strain into a cup. This puts the available alkaloids up for grabs across less area in the stomach. Consuming a large wash, followed by a large second wash, is likely to decrease the intensity.
It's been said that eating a fatty meal after your dose can increase oral absorption of morphine somewhere in the range of +30%. In a thread in this sub, one user reported using peanut butter to achieve this. I'm yet to try this one. There are plenty of threads on potentiation to research if you want to go down this path.
The safest bet is to prepare your tea, drink it, and wait. If you need to, sip some water, but do your best to just let your stomach do it's job without interruption.
CONSTIPATION
Constipation is a big part of opiate use, and it can be quite extreme with PST. I highly recommend the regular use of a gentle stool softener like Coloxal & Senna. Magnesium tablets are well known to have a laxative effect. Coffee has always helped me. My first of the morning generally gets things started. I can't really qualify this, but I've noticed personally that if I don't stay regular, then I won't get as much euphoria and energy from my dose. It's as though there needs to be free bowel space for the body to utilize the drug. YMMV. I personally don't fret if I miss a day, but I will postpone a dose if I haven't moved anything by day 3.
There can be MAJOR consequences to constipation, the most immediate being fecal impaction. Do your research, this is important and if you're using PST regularly, you will have to deal with it.
URINATING
The majority of people I've talked to have had varying degrees of trouble peeing while on PST, mainly on heavier doses. I can't speak for women, but if I have problems (rare these days), one option is to pee with your pants down, at least around your thighs. You want to lose any restriction around your waist. I've also countered the problem by trying to get as far as I can standing, switching to sitting, and keep alternating, and things eventually get moving. There seems to be a mental aspect to this.. it's not something I can explain but I fare better in a private stall over standing next to a co-worker at a urinal. Keeping your mind clear helps.. I've found that sudden changes in thought or little body movements can cause all the pipes to snap shut.
DISPOSAL
Disposing of used seeds can be problematic. I've heard cases of clogged plumbing from washing them down the sink or toilet, and even a case where seeds stuck in the pipe below a sink beginning to sprout through the sink hole. I haven't come up with any good alternative that doesn't leave them out there for someone to find. I personally empty my bottles into a sink with good plumbing and a garbage disposal, with LOTS of running water.
My major problem during much of my time has been that I prefer using Coke over tap water. There's a trap here: rather than using one designated bottle for seed, emptying it of seed, cleaning and re-using it, you just keep using the newly empty bottles of Coke, and get in to a loop where you accumulate a bunch of bottles filled with used seed. In a pinch, it can be hard to get rid of the large amount of seeds, clean the bottles out, and dispose of them discretely. I've been in numerous situations where I've accumulated a pile of full seed bottles and had to think fast in order to keep things secret.
Keep on top of your used seeds regularly, and don't leave them around for someone to find, either in the house, or out in the world. Don't throw bottles full of seed in the garbage, empty them, wash the bottle and put them in the recycling.
Be smart - that last thing anybody should be doing is advertising PST and putting a target on it.
WITHDRAWAL
Everyone is different. Withdrawal can be brutal, or in my most recent case, quite manageable. In my own experience, I know I'll need a few packets of Immodium (Loperamide) to handle the rebound diarrhea that happens when you come out of forced constipation. Exercise helps. Drink plenty of water. The sweats are made worse if you don't shower regularly. I've gotten quite lucky by being on the lower end of the scale here, but some people really suffer. You should consider this when before you decide if you want to try PST. Using it regularly, I guarantee you WILL end up in positions where you have to go through this. It happens in a hundred different ways and it's not a fun way to live if you don't have to.
Protip: If you haven't got Immodium on hand, you can get a similar effect from a few tablespoons of Cornflour mixed with water or milk. It won't help with any other withdrawal symptoms, but it will help with the diarrhea.
SCAMS
Please do your research when buying seeds online, particularly from sites set up specifically to sell poppy seed.
If someone is actively giving you a source for seed, then they'll either be genuine good peoples, which will come across in your messaging with them, or they have a vested interest. They may be legit, but at worst it may be an outright scam taking your money with no product to send, or they're trying to earn commission somehow.
If a source is advertised or communicated here, look for other users with post history that can verify that they got their order and it was good quality.
FINAL THOUGHTS
One last time - PLEASE START SMALL, OR NOT AT ALL. I've spent more time on PST than other painkillers, and I can guarantee you that it WILL end up taking over your life. While I've managed to get through to manageable lifestyle on PST, it didn't come easy. Lots of supply dropout and forced withdrawal. Lots of time grappling with the need for pain relief versus feeling like a piece of shit drug addict. Lots of time considering how it's affected my life's story. The many compromises you need to make in your every day life to accommodate a drug habit.
Don't advertise PST. Don't talk about it freely, unless you're with someone who also uses it. PST flies under the radar in many countries, but it's not completely invisible. This is Fight Club, don't talk about it.
Thanks to everybody here who has contributed to the general body of knowledge.. you've all had a positive impact on my life.
Stay safe and be kind!
\** Note: If the Mods are happy for this post to remain up, I'll try to make a few edits for better reading, and make any changes that other Redditors/Mods thing should be made.*
EDIT 1: Added section on Scams.
EDIT 2: Added warning about CNS depressants to Overdose section. Thanks, Sunscript.

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Kogo felt awkward sitting at the little round table in the banquet hall. Or, more accurately, she felt awkward through the entire formal, including when she was introduced in front of the entirety of the United Nations, when she issued her prepared speech, had to spend an indiscernible amount of time making smalltalk until she almost couldn’t see straight, and finally now, sitting at a small round table unto herself.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t having fun, but it had been a very, very long day, and at this point the only thing that was staving off her exhaustion was the promise of some top-end human gourmet.
“You’re looking rather rough, ma’am. How are you holding up?” Kristiansen whispered low enough that only she could hear it.
“I’m doing well, thank you.”
“Ma’am. You’ve been staring at the empty plate for the last 5 minutes. If you’re not feeling well, it’s completely acceptable to duck out so you can rest. These things can wipe out career politicians, let alone someone doing it for the first time.”
Kogo raised her head slightly and looked to her side where Kristiansen flanked her at the table.
“I’m just… I’m hungry.” Kogo managed before her view drooped back to the empty plate.
She wasn’t sure how long it normally took to make human food, but it had to take a while. Not only because of the intricate flavors of her quick, on-the-go meals were any indication, but also because they had been sitting here in the banquet hall with everyone continuing to make small talk for the last hour.
The people were nice - well most of them. All of them were certainly pleasant and amicable when speaking to her, but some of them were appreciably more blunt and less kind when they thought she was out of earshot. Humans clearly weren’t really aware of just how good Lour hearing could be. But even if the passive conversations filling the banquet hall with a dull murmur were all of the pleasant sort, it was ultimately a persistent, suffocating noise that wouldn’t go away at this point.
Life on the city-ship could be claustrophobic, certainly, and the military also afforded little in the way of personal time and quiet, but at least in those cases she could busy herself with something. Or fight it, depending.
But here it was all about appearances, putting the best presentation forward to ensure no one could form a negative view on the aliens that had until just recently been at war with them. She knew there’d be a lot of work and stress in her future, and she had certainly been coached and briefed on decorum and what to expect. But to experience it in such a regular barrage of public relations, travelling and meetings was taking its toll.
This was supposed to be the ‘end of the gauntlet’, as Hills had said, with her speech in front of the UN, but she hadn’t been able to wind down yet.
She noted movement on both sides of her, but didn’t put together what was happening consciously until Hills placed his hand on her shoulder.
Kogo roused from her fugue and looked at him.
“Come on, ma’am. Let’s go.”
“Wha?” Kogo rasped in Common.
“You don’t have to worry. We’ve already passed along you were feeling unwell, and the Chairman has been informed. Kristiansen is in the kitchen getting your food to go. Come on.” Hills said softly, but then firmly reached under her forward left shoulder and helped hoist her onto her feet.
Once she reached her feet, everything felt like it moved slowly, yet somehow entirely too fast. Hills made sure she was steady then with a hand guided her towards the door, cutting around the outside of the banquet hall’s layout. Her supporting entourage followed behind them and they silently cut their way through. Kristiansen appeared by the door holding a black bag of some sort and pushed through the door just ahead of them allowing a perfectly seamless exit.
A few moments later they had traversed the halls and were loading into their vans and taking off down the road.
She distantly heard her driver ask something but all Kogo could manage was to stare out the vehicle’s window as the lights all over the cityscape whisked by in the dark.
A short trip later and they had offloaded into the restricted parking garage of the hotel she was staying at to dodge the media, and ascended to the floor they had secured for her. Kogo managed to walk herself into the room before collapsing onto the floor.
​
Kogo awoke, and blinked, bleary eyed. Her head was still swimming a little, but she at least had the energy to lift it and look around the room. What she found was Hills, Kristiansen and a few people she didn’t recognize around the front of the hotel room, idly talking.
Hills and Kirstiansen had shed their coats and ties, and looked rather relaxed. Kogo mused it may have been the first time since being groundside she had actually seen them like that.
Kogo tried to say something, and while all she managed was a pitiful little squeak, it was loud enough to immediately draw their attention. The people she didn’t recognize were on her immediately.
“Hello Kogo, how are we feeling?” the one lady said as she knelt down by her.
‘We’, the lady had said. After a moment, Kogo recognized the inclusive speaking pattern.
“Doctors?”
“That’s right. I’m Doctor Addy and that’s Doctor Wilts. These gentlemen called us up while you were in transit. We got here just after you lost consciousness and have been keeping an eye on you since.”
“Lost consciousness? Wha- how long- I” Kogo stammered before the Doctor placed a gentle hand on the side of her head.
“Easy, Kogo. Easy. We’ve been vetted by the Coalition as the doctors to be on-call for your stay here on Earth, and got your medical history directly from Doctor Aven himself. We don’t think you’re sick or anything, but signs did indicate you were massively overstressed. We’ve got you on an IV and your schedule is cleared for at least the next few days while we keep an eye on you. Your only job right now is to rest. Is that clear?”
Kogo nodded before turning her head to look. Sure enough, she had a clear tube running off a bandaged area of her front leg, to a small stand with a digital administration system. She recognized the equipment from her stay on the Neptune forward station.
“You gave us quite a scare, ma’am. I’ve seen people overwork themselves into way worse states and don’t want to see it happen again. Hills and I will be passing along that you need a lighter itinerary. At least for now.” Kristiansen said.
Kogo couldn’t help but feel there was a little bit of a rebuke in his voice.
“I’m sorry. It was the first time I’ve ever really had to do anything like this, and… and,” Kogo began.
“Hey, hey. Easy,” Hills interjected, kneeling down next to her, “He’s not blaming you. None of us are. We’ve never had to escort an alien before, so we’ve all got a bit to learn about this, right? You don’t need to work yourself up into a tizzy over something you couldn’t control.”
Kristiansen quietly nodded in affirmation.
“For now, you can stay here and relax. Mr. Kristiansen here had informed us you hadn’t eaten last night and we think that may have been a contributing factor. From what we know of Lour, your metabolic process is fairly aggressive, so it no doubt going a long while without food wasn’t helping matters. We’ll make sure they more rigidly schedule meals to prevent similar incidents in the future,” Doctor Wilts said as he stood, eyeballing the readout on the bio monitor.
“On that note, Ma’am, your food from last night’s in the fridge, but it’s obviously cold. Now that you’re awake, I’ll order up something so you can eat. Think you’re up for eating anything?”
Kogo nodded aggressively, whacking her chin on the floor.
Hills and Kristiansen chuckled, while the two doctors kept it to a professional smile.
“Think The Wall would work?” Hills said after a moment.
“Oh damn, yeah that’d be good. She needs to get a taste of that at some point while she’s here anyways,” Kristiansen said before politely distancing himself so he could make a call.
“The wall?” Kogo asked.
“Awesome little pizza place a few blocks away. Ever had pizza?”
“No?”
“Then you’re in for a treat.” Hills gave her a knowing smirk.
​
It was a short wait compared to the night before, but given that she hadn’t eaten anything at all, her stomach was turning into knots at this point.
“How long does it take to cook pizza?” Kogo asked.
“Something like 15-20 minutes. Then they have to drive over to deliver it, but that’s not exactly a long trip. Should be here any minute now.”
Kogo nodded, but ‘any minute’ was still excruciating. Hills had offered her something to tide her over while they waited, but she had politely refused. She wanted to try this ‘treat’ and enjoy it fully.
It was about 10 minutes after she had last asked when she heard the distant, muffled sound of the elevator ding onto their floor. Kogo’s head shot up from the floor and her ears perked up.
“I hear someone coming,” she whispered, as if she didn’t want to give their ambush away.
Kristiansen nodded and moved towards the door, waited a beat and then opened it, leaving the delivery guy with his arm awkwardly in the air.
Kogo heard them begin to exchange details about payment but before she could really parse the specifics, the faintest scent of hot food hit her nose and her stomach redoubled it’s efforts to protest the lack of anything in it.
As the door clicked closed, Kristiansen and Hills carried over several wide and flat white boxes onto the nearby table before laying them flat and lifting the lids.
Kogo immediately saw a wide, flat disk. Brown on the edges and white with various meats and vegetables in the center. She rose to her feet and managed a full step forward before Kristiansen held up his hand.
“One moment, ma’am. We have to check it.”
Kogo watched painfully as he cut off a small piece of it and dropped it into a little container on a machine they kept in the room. It hummed to life and made various clicking and whirring noises for a full minute while it went to work.
Meanwhile, Kogo had begun to openly drool.
The machine chirped, and Kristiansen pressed a button on the display on the device a few times before nodding.
“Alright, all clear. No discernable toxins or harmful chemicals.”
Kristiansen plated a wedge of the food for himself, Hills and the doctors before sliding forward a plate with a slice on it for Kogo. Everyone waited for her to take the first bite.
The little slice was covered in ‘cheese’, which she was passingly familiar with on some sort of breaded crust, topped with little meat slices and pieces of cut vegetables. She could make out bits of wafting steam, but how hot it was no longer mattered. There was only the singular, driven motive in her mind. To consume that slice of pizza.
She snapped her head down and managed to close off almost the entire slice in her mouth in one go. A few ungraceful chomps later and she stopped. The heat was a distant sensation to the melody of flavors that hit her all at once. As Kogo soaked it in her eyes snapped shut and even then she could swear she saw stars.
A moment passed and she finished chewing and swallowed and stood there quiet in the afterglow.
“How was it?”
“I remember reading how there are humans that make it a primary task in their lives to go to various places and just eat food.” Kogo whispered in an odd reverence.
“Foodies, yeah.”
“I get it. I really do, now.”
Hills chuckled, “So you want another slice?”
“No,” Kogo said as she opened her eyes, filled with fire, “That entire one is mine. You can share the others.”
​
After eating, everyone was relaxing and watching the hotel’s complementary TV. Kristensen ended up making the right call to order 5 extra large pizzas, because Kogo managed to polish off 2 of them on her own.
“So there’s different flavors?” Kogo asked after letting out an impressively long burp.
“Yep. Sky’s the limit, really. You have different types of crust, different sauces, cheeses and toppings. How thick the crust is, if anything is stuffed inside it, and so on.”
“We have different foods to ensure a balanced diet, primarily based on what Lour ate back on our home planet, but we don’t really have any sort of huge history of cooking or the like. Meats we ate were often uncooked - hard to cook things without hands like you humans or the Zus - though we had a wide variety of bugs, fish, vegetables and fruits.”
“Not that different from humans then, by the sounds of it. Historically, anyways.” Doctor Addy offered.
“Wait, so do you still hunt your food on the ships?” Hills asked.
Kogo shook her head.
“No. It’s done in a controlled way for certain seasonal celebrations based on our cultural holidays, but usually the food is provided pre-made and processed. It’s good, and certainly nutritious, but it lacks the same heart as something like this.” Kogo licked the last few crumbs off her plate.
“Man, I remember when I was stuck eating nothing but MREs before getting selected out. Some of those were OK, but the others were free trips to gastrointestinal nightmares.”
“Yeah, but they’re easy and give you what you need to keep going,” Kristiansen offered.
“I’m sad that I didn’t get to try whatever was for dinner last night, but I think whatever it was would’ve been lacking compared to pizza,” Kogo sighed wistfully.
“I believe it was some sort of chicken dish. I’m sure it was great, but yeah, it’s hard to top pizza after a long day. Or several days.”
Kogo watched the TV as 2 large teams of humans were chasing after a ball while some announcer excitedly relayed everything that was happening, and chuckled.
“There really isn’t anything quite like this in the Coalition.”
“What, soccer?”
“No, well, yes. But I meant just sitting and watching entertainment on something like this with everyone.”
“What do you usually do?” Hills asked.
“I suppose at its core it’s not that dissimilar, but we don’t have an entertainment device like this. We entertain each other with stories or activities. The Zus from other districts would often come by and perform shows and plays from their culture, which were always great fun. We even once had a group of Hanuu shamans come through on a mock pilgrimage and they would sing the entire time. They had to detour on the outskirts of the residential areas because their voices were so loud,” Kogo laughed quietly to herself.
“But individuals whose job was purely to entertain are rare. There’s so much to do to keep the 3 city-ships running that downtime isn’t quite as freely available as it is for humans. I know you all work hard, of course, but I understand compared to decades ago, you all worked much longer hours each day,” she continued.
“Yeah. Cultural shifts, automation and a lot of other stuff sorta all came together and clipped how many hours the average person tends to work. There’s lots of time for sitting back and relaxing, and so there’s lots of demand for people to provide entertainment.” Kristiansen nodded sagely.
“When I was flying down to Earth, my digital assistant told me there’s an incalculable amount of music in human history. I’d imagine that focus on entertainment is part of why.”
Everyone sat in an easy silence for a bit, watching the sport unfold on TV before Kogo broke the silence again.
“Doctor Addy. I know I was supposed to rest for the next several days to recover.”
“Yes…” Doctor Addy warily answered.
“Would it be against that if I were to try playing something like this?” She directed her nose towards the screen.
The doctor thought about it for a moment, glancing to her partner. After a moment, she nodded.
“Yes, I think as long as you don’t push yourself too hard, some recreational activities like a sport would likely be a good idea. You’re only just beginning to properly adjust to Earth’s gravity, so some physical exercise would be a good idea to help bolster that. So long as these gentlemen feel it’s safe, and your condition allows it,” she answered, waving a hand towards Hills and Kirstiansen.
“I can make a call in the morning and we can get a stadium locked off, I bet. It’s off season for the local teams anyways, so… yeah, that’d probably work.” Hills answered after a moment of thought.
“It reminds me of one sport we used to play when I was young, so I want to see how different it is,” Kogo excitedly replied.
“Oh? How was it played? Did you kick it? Or..” Doctor Wilts asked.
“No. There was a central pole or column in the play area. And one would try and headbutt the ball at the top. Others would attempt to intercept the ball, often jumping off of one another to gain enough height. The most skilled could spin the ball as it was struck, causing its path to be erratic. It was intense to play, but was always fun when we had a large group. Even the adults would join in.”
“That sounds pretty awesome, actually. You’ll have to teach us some time,” Hills said.
“Deal.” Kogo smiled.
​
After the game ended, the two doctors gave Kogo another checkup, and passed along some necessary supplies and instructions to her two guards before excusing themselves to nearby rooms on the same floor.
After Kristiansen clicked the door closed and walked back over to one of the beds and sat down on it.
“Erik. Samuel.” Kogo asked.
“Ma’am?” they both responded at once.
“I’m sorry.”
“Ma’am, yo-” Kristiansen began, before being cut off.
“No. I put an undue burden on both of you, and Doctor Addy and Doctor Wilts. I should have spoken up when I was breaking down, but didn’t want to look weak in front of the other delegates. In the end, I just ended up pushing myself too hard and made it worse. It isn’t the first time,” Kogo said, as she nodded her nose towards her prosthesis that was leaned up against the wall.
“I’ll try to be more mindful of how I’m feeling in the future and let you know if something is wrong. I’ve learned a lot about humans so far, and one thing that continues to shine through is their terrifying stamina and resilience. Starting today, I’ll strive to work at a healthier pace, even if it isn’t quite as fast. And I hope I can continue to rely on you to help me out if I push too far again. No doubt our days together going forward will be busy,” Kogo said, looking back and forth between them.
“You didn’t need to ask, ma’am. We’re both behind you. But we both also appreciate you thinking about yourself. I said it before. Stuff like that can wipe out career politicians. There’s no shame in taking some time to ensure your health,” Kristiansen said while Hills sat nearby, nodding in agreement.
Kogo had been holding a little bit of guilt in since she awoke, but didn’t want to further worry the doctors who had already been called out of their way to help. But with that affirmation, she let it go. She was in good hands.
“Thank you. So, honest opinion. How was my speech?” Kogo asked.
“Honestly, pretty good. I didn’t ask before, but did you write it yourself?” Hills answered.
“Mostly. I’d been working on a draft back on the lunar base, but your local government lent some professional writer expertise to help me finalize it. I liked it, but I’ve never done public speaking before, let alone represented the entire Coalition, so I’ve been… stressing out a little in how it was received.” Kogo said.
“Well, we liked it, and I certainly saw a number of the other reps quite taken with it. If you’re really curious I’m sure there’ll be news coverage and analysis of it for the next week at least, so we can catch up on how the public is taking it tomorrow. But for now, I think it’s best if you turn in and rest.” Kristiansen said as he stood and walked over to the nearby lamp to click it off.
Kogo snorted in amusement.
“Yes, that sounds like a good plan to me.”
Kogo laid her head down on the cushy pad they laid out for her on the floor, and after only a few moments, she was asleep.
​
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I actually believed a case could barely be won on circumstantial evidence alone let alone simply word of mouth and a bad temper, if Adnons case was bad this is almost just to the point of unbelievable and laughable, on first appeal the judge should have had a good hearty laugh until your stomach hurts as he read 5he file then assumed it was a practical joke than moved on, but that is of course from what I'm hearing on the podcast, I didn't sit in the courtroom. What I do know is here we go again with bad policing and corruption with the prosecution and their heart set on a suspect with no real evidence other then a weak motive and a old school cops hard on for a particular young man. Another case that started with a lie that dug a rabbit hole so deep Joey dropped down in it and can't get out for his life. For Brianna to have even mentioned this false accusation of a shooting incident which was thrown out of court because Joey proved he wasn't even in the state at the time at the time of Issacs death is just crazy to me, I don't believe Brianna thought for a sec Joey did it, neither did the rest as the police egged them on to spit out more and more stories about Joey and his temper, teens talk, when something big happens they talk a lot, teens are almost equivalent to minor sociopaths who believe the world revolves around them and their personal relationships, I don't think Brianna thought Joey was obsessed with her at this point I think the idea that he was and he might do something made her feel good and she didn't think about the consequences, she led him like a puppy for a while because she could but he had other gf and that's when Brianna would say he was stalking her, or shooting at her, or whatever, it was all nonsense, nonesense that caused drama for Issac and Joey because she fed it to them. Joey's story for the night Issac was killed has to be the most powerfully believable stories I've ever heard as an alibi story, it never deviates, it corralates with cell phone records, witnesses etc.. How they managed to get a conviction on this case is beyond me. First of all I can not believe defense was unaware of what the original statement and reason was that led the to suspect Joey, it should have been brought up in court and used to dismiss this idea of Joey's utter hatred and put doubt in jurors minds about the accuracy of these character witness or witness statements about Joey's past wrongdoings when he was actually brought to court for a shooting charge that was impossible to have been him, at the same time it would have have an alternate suspect option. I wonder if in Joey's lawyers statements he brought up this idea of gossip and lies in small towns turning into gospel and that although Joey was no saint he definitely was not a murderer. I don't know it's a direction I would have taken just complete upfront, tell the jury from day one officer sutton had a suspect and he focused on only that one person and that person was Joey from that day forward ever statement every bit of evidence had to point to Joey in some way or he didn't bother to look into it. But I don't know the insight Joey's lawyer had. I just think that would convince a jury. It seems obvious to me that the shooter was that Heath guy but I'm purely speculating based on the eyewitness of the car. What I do know is this is such an obvious case of innocence and it is almost just sad to be doing so much work on it , we live in a system that doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is made by humans and humans naturally divide into classes and the upper class always run the system, make the system, work the system , with the help of the middle class who assist the system, teach the system, guide the system , provide the system and the lower classes follow the system, live in the system, deal with the system, obey the system, we do not get to change the system or rewrite the system and the system does not look out for us we have to work with it around it, through it.Untill one day someone who had been given a gift upper , middle,lower class says or does or writes something that starts a new way. Unfortunately not in Joey's life. I mean his case is his ex used to date this guy who somehow got shot on the highway. He had a few previous altercations with him. No physical evidence, no confession, he has phone records proving he was talking to his gf he was not driving matching vehicle of suspect his codependent was acquitted, people say he killed victims dog, and got in fights, jail house snitches rat one recants, His junky friend says he confessed but recant. Just as I said before I think the hosts are a little naive if they believe that either The prosecutor or the cop proceeded with this case in good faith. It's clear to me they both knew he was innocent. This is where prosecution is almost more at fault then the cop because prosecution has more say in who she will try. And she knew or at the very least had he doubts this man did this. This was just another in her book. But honestly I'm afraid to read the comments I'm assuming he dosen't get released. It a person is arrested based on a false confession shouldn't that therefore make the arrest warrant invalid? I understand she could say it in court that he asked his friend to lie about the alibi but it should be too late then he should be released prior to any type of court date. And unless you find the weapon or car there should be enough doubt, the judge himself should not have allowed thos in appeal.l mean the only evidence was hearsay. No taped, written confession, just someone says he heard someone say he did something . I'm just imagining I'm Joey's lawyer right now in his original trial could they not themselves have requested the photo of heaths car? Could they not have shown it to the eye witness, could they not have brought up the 9mm found on him that was in evidence and although the police report that he was involved in another shooting at the same time as this shooting took place in an incident on the highway which is remarkably odd wouldn't you say isn't it possible just slightly that the time recorded just by human error alone might have been off by a half hour or an hour, as we humans make errors and that's why we go through this process because we don't know everything but if I were a betting man I would say the odds of two separate blue sports vehicles with 2 passengers shooting a 9MMS gun at ongoing traffic on the same stretch of highway at about the same time of night on the same night but having no knowledge of each other and 2 completely different motives would be a 1 in a million chance. And if I were on the jury I would think long and hard about that despite what time the incident report states and if the eyewitness had seen that pic then I guarentee you Joey would not be in jail today. I really wanna here audio from his trial now.

Wow this post is late! The semester started back up, and the fun surrounding that delayed things a little.... I tried to address some of the comments I got about the Lappa, please let me know how I did! Y'all always have such cool perspectives and it gives me ideas for future nonsense....
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This is the worst idea you’ve ever had.
Well, technically it wasn’t my idea. Seaman O’Rourke came up with it, and then the diplomats got all excited about it, and then I approved it.
Which was a terrible idea.
At least no one had been killed or maimed yet?
Murphy’s law, the moment I had that thought a pair of players went crashing into a bulkhead. The ball shot out of the winded Z’lask’s grip and into Kahuanui’s waiting arms, who in turn was flattened by a charging Z’lask, who fumbled and enabled O’Rourke to steal, turn, and shoot.
Flyball. The noble sport. The zero-g, full-contact pastime of choice on all ships in the black. Some of the younger sailors, with all the judgement skills exercised by eighteen-year-olds in a bunch, had challenged the crew of the Courage of Z’raa to a friendly match. Once I had explained that flyball was not, as the highly-offended Z’lask originally thought, the human equivalent of a mock-war, and that therefore my guys’ invitation was not a challenge to their honor but a gesture of friendship, the Z’lask were only too eager to play.
I’m not sure how many gestures of friendship this alliance can stand.
I darted a glance at Commander First Rank Zeran H’laath, our new sister ship’s captain, who was watching the game in a state of high puzzlement. The idea of “offsides” was a very foreign concept to the Z’lask, as it turned out, a fact I was plotting to use to claim that the game ended in a tie, since I was fairly certain this alliance also could not stand one side losing.
Yay diplomacy!
The Z’lask keeper blocked O’Rourke’s shot with his tail and winged the ball back into play. It disappeared into a knot of viciously grappling humans and Z’lask, as a vindictive O’Rourke flew past to slam into the Z’lask keeper. Ramirez, who I had voluntold into refereeing, was studiously looking the other way.
Definitely the worst idea you’ve ever had.
Somehow, the game ended without any major injuries, and the two teams accepted the pronouncement of a tie with a reasonable imitation of sportsmanship. As far as I was concerned, this rendezvous was going fantastic.
The diplomats, however, were fretting. They were convinced that unless the two crews became best of friends during the three days allotted for the purpose, we would spontaneously decide to slaughter one another on arrival at the Council. In an attempt to avoid such poor optics, we were supposed to be playing flyball, listening to music, and having nuanced discussions about one another’s history. Which actually was, to a certain extent, more or less happening.
The sharing music point, as I predicted, was going the best. The green-eyed Z’lask had been correct when he said that the Z’lask got the same things out of our music as we did, and they were turning out to have as broad a range of individual tastes as humans. I supposed the cliché about music being the language that transcended languages was holding true. Funny how much of diplomacy seemed to be clichéd: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. If you want peace be prepared for war. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
“Captain,” H’laath had snuck up on me, looking down on me in both senses of the word. He really seemed to be one of those Z’lask who was having a lot of trouble with the idea of “shamed” not being a human category. He was standing as far away from me as he could, and angling his body backward, as though he thought he was going to catch it. It was minorly hilarious. I smothered a smirk and looked politely interested. “Our crews seem to be getting along.” He didn’t look entirely convinced that that was a good thing.
“Yes, they do,” I said, in my diplomatic voice. “This is going to be a significant adjustment, it’s good to see that they’re approaching it so eagerly.”
And they actually are. Thousands of years of adherence to the Code had made the Z’lask starved for novelty, and their curiosity about even the most mundane aspects of human culture had…endeared them to the crew. It made it feel unique, interesting, exciting, just to be human. More people than not were engaging with our former enemies, and more people that not seemed to be willing to attempt a wary sort of friendliness. I was sure we were going to have problems with the “not” portion of the population eventually, but I was holding out hope that what good manners couldn’t accomplish, fear of a new cold war might.
The Lappa had gotten a little pushier in the Council about reining in our acceptance to the wider galaxy, and the UN was starting to think they’d found their next external threat against which to unify the squabbling nations of humanity.
“Mm.” The Z’lask, with their clacking language, could make a sound of doubting ambivalence more cutting than duratitanium. And H’laath managed to somehow put distaste into his as well. “I wonder if the Lappa shall feel that way.”
So he’s thinking about them too. I didn’t know how the Z’lask felt about the Lappa’s attempts to ostracize us, it would be useful to find out.
“I didn’t know they made judgments based on emotions,” I said. “I thought they did everything logically.”
If you want the right answer, say the wrong one.
H’laath flicked his tongue, a gesture that just fell on the right side of being impatient. “They are…inexperienced when it comes to the human idea of diplomacy. They are frightened—they are confronting the unknown and for the first time their instruments tell them nothing, their theories are unable to guide them. They do not know what to do.” H’laath flicked his tongue again, this time in their equivalent of an eye roll. “They act like hatchlings.”
“Why would they be afraid of us?” I was genuinely confused, they’re supposed to be vastly our technological superiors. And if they’re so logical, shouldn’t they long since have learned to coexist with drastically different species? There was no shortage of odd inclinations in the galaxy, I would have thought that before now they’d have encountered a species so different as to be mystifying.
H’laath’s eyes brightened to resemble amber warning lights. “It is my personal belief, and that of many others in the Fleet, that the Lappa have gone soft, become used to peace. They have no Code to keep them strong, to remind them that even if no enemies present themselves, honor demands constant readiness.”
God these guys are weird.
“Without a Code to demand they test themselves, several generations have gone by wherein no Lappa was forced to endure insecurity. When confronted with the specter of it now, they have lost their heads.” He curled his tail in a gesture I’d never seen before, but had read indicated disdain. “We never considered them worthy allies, their unconcern for honor disqualified them from that distinction. However, their disgraceful recent behavior has made High Command determined not to attempt to appease them.” And he swept his tail to the side as though brushing away something unpleasant and unsubstantial.
Martinez and Adams were now attempting to teach a few Z’lask to dance. It was true that dancing could be a beautiful showcase of grace and athleticism, a wonderful expression of human art. That was not true of this particular group of dancers.
“I have been meaning to ask you something,” H’laath snapped again. “Are you familiar with the Z’lask conception of the status of those who become prisoners of war?”
You’re a direct son of a bitch.
“I am.” I made eye contact and smiled with my teeth showing. It took five one-thousands before the jaundice-eyed moron looked away.
And the record for staring contests with lizards stays perfect!
That was not the way to think right now. I took a breath. “I recognize that this must very difficult for you, the Code rarely demands such quick, drastic changes. But I see that your crew is adapting admirably.” I nodded at a pair of young Z’lask who were attempting to imitate Martinez’s moves, to general hilarity.
H’laath looked consummately unconvinced.
“Look,” I said, resigning myself. “I’m not here to try to change your mind. I’m here to transport these diplomats to the Council, and to represent my species well while I do it. Like you said, the Lappa are thinking of making themselves a threat. Therefore, my first priority is the completion of my mission, followed closely by doing it in such a manner that the Lappa become convinced that the Human-Z’lask alliance would be an unsuitable adversary. Somewhere way down the list is worrying about—and I say this with great respect, Commander—what you think of me. Think whatever you damn well please, as long as you don’t let it interfere with our mission.”
H’laath’s eyes got even brighter, and he drew himself up so I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. I smiled at him again.
I had counted to seven-one-thousand when he suddenly flung his tail above his head, then brought it slicing down to ring against the deck plating so loudly people turned to look.
“Very well, I think we shall get along nicely.” His eyes went back to a conversational shine.
“Huh?” I said.
Damn it, damn it, you said it again!
H’laath looked…relaxed? “During the war, I escorted convoys. I had the opportunity to observe the tactics of human stealth ships, of a variety of nations, hunting both singly and in packs. They frequently employed tricks that the Code deemed dishonorable, but that nevertheless exacted a heavy toll. I thought of these devices as merely the cunning of beasts, before I observed the lengths to which humans would go to assist other vessels in distress, and before I heard reports of human warships taking aboard shipwrecked Z’lask. The revelation of your Geneva Conventions cemented for me and for many a new conception of your species: as our equals in honor, if not in technology or civility.”
H’laath paused to pull a face.
“And yet, you were still different from us in every possible way. So different, that I doubted those differences could truly exist. The Code said you were our brothers, so how could you be so dissimilar? Surely it must be an act, another human silliness of deception like you so loved to employ.” H’laath’s eyes were flickering, a sign of agitation.
“I considered chief among these ‘deceptions’ to be your insistence that you did not recognize shame. I had no idea what purpose such a charade might serve, I was not interested in taxing myself to attempt to divine it. So I was quite surprised when I learned that it was no falsehood that you had been a prisoner. A shamed in command would be unthinkable even to a lunatic—no Z’lask could endure such a fate, and return still able to assume responsibility for the lives of others.”
H’laath paused again to shudder theatrically, and I began fantasizing about smacking him.
“But, evidently, for humans, it is possible.” He wiggled his tail, like he was trying to dislodge ants.
“I believe that this phenomenon is due to your development. It was deprived of a Code, so you became capable of many actions which a Z’lask could never even contemplate. Often this results in criminal behavior. But, here we see a useful example of something uniquely human. Therefore, it shall not trouble me. It is simply another thing which makes you human, like your dull hide or, with great respect, your disgusting teeth.”
“How in the galaxy are our teeth disgusting?” I was indignant. My parents paid for two rounds of braces, I wanted a damn good explanation of why my teeth were “disgusting.”
H’laath flipped his tail. “They are far too large for your mouths. They overlap one another grotesquely. And the fact that as hatchlings you lose them and then grow a second set is—is gruesome.”
“What in…you people shed your whole skins.” I said, outraged. “Under what rational system of judgement is losing teeth more disgusting that losing your entire damn skin.”
“The time of shedding is a time of spiritual renewal, coinciding with the trees’ shedding of their leaves.” H’laath responded, with great dignity. “One strips away the trials and transgressions of the previous year, and emerges pure and strengthened for the coming year.”
I flashed a big winning smile. H’laath flinched.
“Disgusting teeth for the win,” I said happily. H’laath flexed his jaw, probably grinding his stubby little not-teeth.
“What in Z’aa’s name are they doing,” he asked irritably to change the subject, pointing a claw at Martinez’s knot of admirers and imitators.
“The individual in the center is dancing,” I explained. “Moving to music. Everyone else is attempting to copy his steps, or making up their own.”
“Are…are they supposed to look as though they have been afflicted with disorders of the nervous system?” H’laath actually appeared faintly alarmed. I stifled a laugh with great difficulty.
“Er…not really, but…dancing can be difficult for beginners, with a little practice they should look…much more coordinated.” I managed to deliver that with a straight face.
H’laath nodded slowly, imitating the human gesture, while still looking extremely unconvinced, but at least he didn’t look unhappy anymore. For not the first and probably not the last time, I gave up trying to understand what the fuck was going on inside the Z’lask’s heads.
A pair of very perky diplomats came up, inquired how we were getting along. A further area of common ground appeared to be our mutual low tolerance for overeager diplomats. Once the pair had departed H’laath turned back to me, his warning-light eyes beady again.
“What have you been told of the Lappa’s grievances?”
I decided to like H’laath—he didn’t fuck around.
“I’ve been told they find humanity’s execution of scientific development unacceptable,” I said carefully. I’d already heard his rather strong opinions on their foreign policy, so I imagined that he felt even more strongly about whatever perceived wrongs motivated them.
H’laath clicked shortly, soaking more derision into one sound than most people could muster in paragraphs. “That is true. But it is deeper than that. They believe that your ‘unacceptable’ actions stem from an unacceptable nature; that you are innately and inherently uncivilized. Therefore, whether you want to or not, whether you are taught to or not, you will always behave like animals.” H’laath’s yellow eyes glowed evilly.
Is he actually angry on our behalf?
“One of their representatives, a Shar Diplomat, has even issued a challenge, for someone to produce ‘just one example of human nature causing anything other than bloodshed.’ They are beginning to add structure and specifics to their generalized, philosophical arguments. They are alleging that many of humanity’s past crimes, or actions, or technological developments, were crimes not merely against other humans but against the order of the galaxy, and therefore against every member of the galactic community. As yet, their arguments have been met with the ridicule they deserve, but the High Command worries that, with their influence, the Lappa could win over a species or two, and begin to make life difficult for us.”
“You said technological developments?” I was very confused, that was an illogical level of fear to have, and they shouldn’t fear our tech, theirs was so superior….
Oh.
“They’re not scared, they’re jealous.” I realized. H’laath’s eyes flashed like radiation warnings. “I don’t know anything about their history, but I’m willing to bet anything both of us can do, we did faster. I think they’re jealous. They’re trying to cast everything about us, even what we claim to be ‘good,’ as wrong in execution or origin if not in outcome, and contaminate everything we do. This isn’t just about fearing a result, this is also about being jealous of an ability.”
H’laath was flicking his tail, slowly from side to side, like a cat considering whether to pounce.
“Perhaps you should answer Mr. Diplomat’s challenge,” he said slowly. “I certainly would be interested to know what you have to say for humanity on that point.”
I opened my mouth, intending to object, to plead that I was much too busy, but before I could the proverbial stroke of inspiration struck me a nasty blow.
“It looks like the diplomats are ready for this little gathering to end,” I noted, watching our crews start to separate. “I’ll think about it this evening. If I get something written up, I’ll send it over.”
H’laath eyed me. “I await your response to Mr. Diplomat’s charges.” With that he rounded up his crew and returned to his ship.
I found myself writing my reply in my head as I set Lt. Levy to supervising the cleanup of hangar B, which had endured a flyball game, and cargo bay #2, which had endured interspecies diplomacy. By the time I got back to my cabin, my fingers were itching. I sat down at my desk, snatched my datascanner, and started typing.
To Shar Diplomat,
I am writing in response to your challenge to present “just one example of human nature causing anything other than bloodshed.” I decided to take your proposal one step further, and attempt to find a facet of human nature, in this case the innate refusal to accept that “this is just the way things are,” improving human society. Here is my submission to you:
“The Thirty-third World Health Assembly, on this the eighth day of May 1980;
Having considered the development and results of the global programme on smallpox eradication initiated by WHO in 1958 and intensified since 1967;

1. DECLARES SOLEMNLY THAT THE WORLD AND ALL ITS PEOPLES HAVE WON FREEDOM FROM SMALLPOX, WHICH WAS A MOST DEVASTATING DISEASE SWEEPING IN EPIDEMIC FORM THROUGH MANY COUNTRIES SINCE EARLIEST TIMES, LEAVING DEATH, BLINDNESS, AND DISFIGURMENT IN ITS WAKE AND WHICH ONLY A DECADE AGO WAS RAMPANT IN AFRICA, ASIA AND SOUTH AMERICA;
2. EXPRESSES ITS DEEP GRATITUDE TO ALL NATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THE SUCCESS OF THIS NOBLE AND HISTORIC ENDEAVOR;
3. CALLS THIS UNPRECEDENTED ACHIEVEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC HEALTH TO THE ATTENTION OF ALL NATIONS, WHICH BY THEIR COLLECTIVE ACTION HAVE FREED MANKIND OF THIS ANCIENT SCOURGE AND, IN SO DOING, HAVE DEMONSTRATED HOW NATIONS WORKING TOGETHER IN A COMMON CAUSE MAY FURTHER HUMAN PROGRESS.”

I felt it necessary to include all three statements, and to call your attention to the fact that when they were made, the First Cold War was still quite icy, with the potential to turn quite hot.
It should be self-evident, Mr. Diplomat, that the impact of humanity is determined by the individuals exercising their humanity. You cannot hold up a person or a party or even a nation and declare “they were evil, so too is their race” any more than you could use such an example to claim us a species of saints. For all your logic and your lauded ability to follow where your data leads you, you seem utterly unable to grasp the principle of self-determination. At risk of giving offense, I shall presume to attempt to further explain it to you.
It is true that individuals are shaped by their surroundings. It is true that psychology is based upon physiology, and that there are certain stimuli which are irresistible. It is true that some human beings, by reason of insanity, coercion, or other such exceptional circumstances, are deemed to not be in control of their actions. However, this is—as stated—exceptional, and not true of the vast bulk of humanity. From this fact proceeds human morality.
Under our morality, it is more important to be right than to be logical. Herein lies the difference between our two species. We will have to somehow construct a bridge over this divide, somehow explain why it is that that which is logical may not always be right.
Our foundational legal documents, upon which all other systems hang, recognize that while humans themselves are sacred, nothing made by them is. Therefore, a human being has value, has rights, has responsibilities above the mortal creations of logic or laws. It is for this reason that “human rights” are not declared to proceed from a government, but from, as it was once quaintly put, “nature and nature’s God.”
Therefore, while it may be logical that the entire world shares guilt for one man’s crime, he nevertheless must answer for it. He took an action, and he must be responsible for his actions. This, then, is on display in the war crimes tribunal at The Hague: the sorting out of facts, the assignation of culpability, the rendering of judgment. It is holding human beings responsible for their actions. It therefore transcends, in certain respects, logic. It therefore will not appear wholly logical, because it is not. It therefore will irk the Lappa, who recognize no higher force than logic.
We, however, wish to submit to you that this…deficiency of logic will not make us intolerable neighbors. You argued that our inability to apply logic meant that we were not in control of our actions—that we would behave irrationally, and that such irrationality would take the form of crimes, destruction, and violence which beggared your imaginations. As I have stated, the project of human civilization, and the very recognition of the concept of humanity, contradict this conclusion. To be sure, our institutions are not perfect, but this is no different from any other species in the galaxy.
Therefore, you need have no fear of us. Human beings are responsible for their actions.
If you still find interaction with us to be uncomfortable, we will accommodate you. We would not dream of causing undue distress to another species. If, however, you choose to disregard our human rights, we will not appease you. We have far too much experience with the consequences of appeasement to permit it to be our policy. You, too, may wish to familiarize yourself with those consequences, and the innovations, as you would term them, that were created to overcome them.
I do not point to our history as a threat, as it is so often assumed, but as data, as information for you to study. Insanity is often defined by humans as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I imagine that the Lappa would concur with this assessment, and would agree that to view the outcome of an experiment, and then believe that running that same experiment would somehow yield different results, would be insane.
Surely a race as enlightened and successful as yours can adapt itself to the accommodation of a species that bears no ill will toward you, even though it is alien to you.
Yours very sincerely,
Capt. Charlotte Sorensen, USN
I sat back. That was probably a little strong. I should definitely edit it down a little before sending it to H’laath, but it was a good enough start.
I wanted the Lappa to see that we, as a species, were not a threat, either to their existence or to their self-perception. Their project would always be research, and while many humans would share that conviction, passion, and devotion, the species as a whole would not. The Lappa would always be able to claim it as their distinction; humanity had a different pursuit. I hoped I could indicate it, communicate it, make it apparent enough to the Lappa so that they could do the mental gymnastics to see us not as competitors, but as participants in a different event, who might demonstrate some similarities in skill but who sought a different goal.
I was suddenly furious.
We’d already fought one war, already wasted hundreds of millions of lives and ruined hundreds of millions more. So fucking much had been destroyed, lost, sacrificed to repel the Z’lask. All because the High Command made a stupid decision.
And now the Lappa, the supposed most intelligent race in the Council, were falling head over heels to do the exact same stupid, stupid thing.
Was there any way we could induce the Lappa to see that? Was there any way that what I had to contribute to that discourse could be a meaningful contribution? I’d done it before, but I’d had help….
Oh, fuck.
There was precisely one Z’lask I could think of who might be able to assist with changing the minds of an entire species. I’d just hoped never to have to talk to him again.
What are you, afraid?
I was always afraid. I just never let it stop me.
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Hee hee hee, guess who will be back! What did y'all think? And who REALLY won the flyball game? Y'all stay safe out there!