Today i have a confession to make: i'm a little bit of a minmaxer. And honestly, i think that's a pretty desirable trait in a DM. The minmaxer knows the rules, and exploits them to maximum efficiency.
"But wait, what does that have to do with spell use in society?" - someone, probably.
Well, the thing is that humans are absolutely all about minmaxing. There's a rule in the universe that reads "gas expands when hot", and suddenly we have steam engines (or something like that, i'm a political scientist not an engineer). A rule says 1+1 = 2, and suddenly we have calculus, computers and all kinds of digital stuff that runs on math. Sound is energy? Let's convert that shit into electricity, run it through a wire and turn it back into sound on the other side.
Bruh. Science is just minmaxing the laws of nature. Humanity in real life is just a big bunch of munchkins, and it should be no different in your setting.
And that is why minmaxing magic usage is something societies as a whole would do, specially with some notable spells. Today i will go in depth on how and why each of these notable mentions has a huge impact on a fantasy society.
We'll go from lowest level to highest, keeping in mind that the lower level a spell the more common it should be to find someone who has it, so often a level 2-3 spell will have more impact than a level 9 spell.

Mending (cantrip).
Repair anything in one minute. Your axe lost its edge? Tore your shirt? Just have someone Mend it.
Someone out there is crying "but wait! Not every village has a wizard!" and while that is true, keep in mind any High Elf knows a cantrip, as can any Variant Human.
A single "mender" could replace a lot of the work a smith, woodworker or seamstress does, freeing their time to only work on making new things rather than repair old ones.

Prestidigitation (cantrip).
Clean anything in six seconds. Committed axe murders until the axe got blunt, and now there's blood everywhere? Dog shit on your pillow out of spite? Someone walked all over the living room with muddy boots? Just Prestidigitate it away.
This may look like a small thing, but its actually huge when you apply it to laundry. Before washing machines were a thing housewives had to spend several hours a week washing them manually, and with Prestidigitation you can just hire someone to get it done in a few minutes.
A single "magic cleaner" can attend to several dozen homes, if not hundreds, thus freeing several hours of the time of dozens of women.
Fun fact: there's an interesting theory that says feminism only existed because of laundry machines and similar devices. Women found themselves having more free time, which they used to read and socialize. Educated women with more contacts made for easy organization of political movements, and the fact men were now able to do "the women's work" by pushing a button meant men were less opposed to losing their housewives' labor. Having specialized menders and magic cleaners could cause a comparable revolution in a fantasy setting, and help explain why women have a similar standing to men even in combat occupations such as adventuring.

Healing in general (1st-2nd level).
This one is fairly obvious. A commoner has 4 hit points, that means just about any spell is a full heal to the average person. That means most cuts, stab wounds, etc. can be solved by the resident cleric. Even broken bones that would leave you in bed for months can be solved in a matter of seconds as soon as the holy man arrives.
But that's nothing compared to the ability to cure diseases. While the only spell that can cure diseases is Lesser Restoration, which is second level, a paladin can do it much more easily with just a Lay on Hands. This means if one or two people catch a disease it can just be eradicated with a touch.
However doing that comes with a cost. If everyone is instantly expunged of illness, the populace does not build up their immune systems. Regular disease becomes less common, sure, but whenever it is reintroduced (by, say, immigrants or contact with less civilized humanoids) it can spread like wildfire, afflicting people so fast that no amount of healers will have the magic juice to deal with it.
Diseases become rare, plagues become common.

Continual Flame (2nd).
Ok, this one is a topic i love and could easily be its own post.
There's an article called "Why the Falling Cost of Light Matters", which goes in detail about how man went from chopping wood for fire, to using animal fat for candles, then other oils, whale oil, kerosene, then finally incandescent light bulbs, and more recently LED lights. Each of these leaps is orders of grandeur more efficient than the previous one, to the point that the cost of light today is about 500,000 times cheaper than it was for for a caveman. And until the early 1900s the only way mankind knew of making light was to set things on fire.
Continual Flame on the other hand allows you to turn 50gp worth of rubies and a 2nd level spell slot into a torch that burns forever. In a society that spends 60 hours of labor to be able to generate 140 minutes of light, this is a huge game changer.
This single spell, which i am 99% sure was just created as an excuse for why the dungeon is lit despite going for centuries without maintenance, allows you to have things like public lighting. Even if you only add a new "torchpost" every other week or month sooner or later you'll be left with a neatly lit city, specially if the city has had thousands of years in which to gather the rubies and light them up.
And because the demand of rubies becomes so important, consider how governments would react. Lighting the streets is a public service, if its strategically relevant to make the city safer at night, would that not warrant some restrictions on ruby sales? Perhaps even banning the use of rubies in jewelry?
Trivia: John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in history, gained his wealth selling kerosene. Kerosene at the time was used to light lamps. Gasoline was invented much later, when Rockefeller tasked a bunch of scientists to come up with a use for some byproducts of the kerosene production. This illustrates how much money is to be had in the lighting industry, and you could even have your own Rockefeller ruby baron in your game. I shall call him... Dohn J. Stonebreaker. Perfect name for a mining entrepreneur.
Whether the ruby trade ends up a monopoly under the direct supervision of the king or a free market, do keep in mind that Continual Flame is by far the most efficient way of creating light.

Gentle Repose (2nd).
Cast it on a corpse, and it stays preserved for 10 days.
This has many potential uses, from preserving foodstuffs (hey, some rare meats are expensive enough to warrant it) to keeping the bodies of old rulers preserved. Even if a ruler died of old age and cannot be resurrected, the body could be kept "fresh" out of respect/ceremony. Besides, it keeps the corpse from becoming undead.

Skywrite (2nd).
Ok, this one is mostly a gag. While the spell can be used by officials to make official announcements to the populace, such as new laws or important news, i like to just use it for spam. I mean, its a ritual spell that writes a message on the sky; what else would people use it for?
Imagine you show up in a city, and there's half a dozen clouds reading "buy at X, we have what you need", "get your farming supplies over at Joe's store" or "vote Y for the city council".
The possibilities are endless, and there's no way the players can expect it. Just keep in mind that by RAW the spell can only do words, meaning no images. No Patrick, "8===D" is not a word.

Zone of Truth (2nd).
This one is too obvious. Put all suspects of a crime into a ZoT, wait a couple minutes to make sure they fail the save, then ask each one if he did it. Sure its not a perfect system, things like the Ring of Mind Shielding still exist, but it's got a better chance of getting the right guy than most medieval justice systems. And probably more than a few contemporary ones. All while taking only a fraction of the time.
More importantly, with all the average crimes being handled instantly, the guards and investigators have more time to properly investigate the more unusual crimes that might actually involve a Thought Shield, Ring of Mind Shielding or a level 17 Mastermind.
There is a human rights argument against messing with people's minds in any way, which is why this may not be practiced in every kingdom. But there are definitely some more lawful societies that would use ZoT on just about every crime.
Why swear to speak the truth and nothing but the truth when you can just stand in a zone of truth?
Another interesting use for ZoT is oaths. When someone is appointed into an office, gets to a high rank in the military or a guild, just put them in a ZoT while they make their oath to stand for the organization's values and yadda yadda. Of course they can be corrupted later on, but at least you make sure they're honest when they are sworn in.

Sending (3rd).
Sending is busted in so many ways.
The more "vanilla" use of it is to just communicate over long distances. We all know that information is important, and that sometimes getting information a whole day ahead can lead to a 40% return on a massive two-year investment. Being able to know of invasions, monsters, disasters, etc. without waiting days or weeks for a courier can be vital for the survival of a nation. Another notable example is that one dude who ran super fast for a while to be the first to tell his side of a recent event.
But the real broken thing here is... Sending can Send to any creature, on any plane; the only restriction being "with which you are familiar". In D&D dead people just get sent to one of the afterlife planes, meaning that talking to your dead grandfather would be as simple as Sending to him. Settling inheritance disputes was never easier!
Before moving on to the next point let me ask you something: Is a cleric familiar with his god? Is a warlock familiar with his patron?

Speak With Dead (3rd).
Much like Sending, this lets you easily settle disputes. Is the senate/council arguing over a controversial topic? Just ask the beloved hero or ruler from 200 years ago what he thinks on the subject. As long his skeleton still has a jaw (or if he has been kept in Gentle Repose), he can answer.
This can also be used to ask people who killed them, except murderers also know this. Plan on killing someone? Accidentally killed someone? Make sure to inutilize the jaw. Its either that, being so stealthy the victim can't identify you, or being caught.

Note on spell availability.
Oh boy. No world-altering 4th level spells for some reason, and suddenly we're playing with the big boys now.
Spells up to 3rd level are what I'd consider "somewhat accessible", and can be arranged for a fee even for regular citizens. For instance the vanilla Priest statblock (MM348) is a 5th level cleric, and the standard vanilla Druid (MM346) a 4th level druid.
Spells of 5th level onward will be considered something only the top 1% is able to afford, or large organizations such as guilds, temples or government.

Dream (5th).
I was originally going to put Dream along with Sending and Telepathy as "long range communication", but decided against it due to each of them having unique uses.
And when it comes to Dream, it has the unique ability of allowing you to put your 8 hours of sleep to good use. A tutor could hire someone to cast Dream on him, thus allowing him to teach his student for 8 hours at any distance. This is a way you could even access hermits that live in the middle of nowhere or in secluded monasteries. Very wealthy families or rulers would be willing to pay a good amount of money to make sure their heirs get that extra bit of education.
Its like online classes, but while you sleep!
Another interesting use is for cheating. Know a princess or queen you like? She likes you back? Her dad put 400 trained soldiers between you? No problemo! Just find a 9th level Bard, Warlock or Wizard, but who am i kidding, of course it'll be a bard. And that bard is probably you. Now you have 8 hours to do whatever you want, and no physical evidence will be left.

Raise Dead (5th).
Few things matter more in life than death. And the ability to resurrect people has a huge impact on society. The impact is so huge that this topic needs topics of its own.
First, diamond monopoly. Remember what i said about how Continual Flame would lead to controlled ruby sales due to its strategic value? This is the same principle, but a hundred times stronger. Resurrection is a huge strategic resource. It makes assassinations harder, can be used to bring back your officials or highest level soldiers over and over during a war, etc. This means more authoritarian regimes would do everything within their power to control the supply and stock of diamonds. Which in turn means if anyone wants to have someone resurrected, even in times of peace, they'll need to call in a favor, do a quest, grease some hands...
Second, resurrection insurance. People hate risks. That's why insurance is such a huge industry, taking up about 15% of the US GDP. People insure their cars, houses... even their lives. Resurrection just means "life insurance" is taken more literally. This makes even more sense when you consider how expensive resurrection is: nobody can afford it in one go, but if you pay a little every month or year you can save up enough to have it done when the need arises.
This is generally incompatible with the idea of a State-run monopoly over diamonds, but that just means different countries within a setting can take different approaches.
To make things easier, i even used some microeconomics to make a sheet in my personal random generators to calculate the price of such a service. Just head to the "Insurance" tab and fill in the information relative to your setting.
With actual life insurance resurrection can cost as little as 5gp a year for humans or 8sp a year for elves, making resurrection way more affordable than it looks.
Also, do you know why pirates wore a single gold earring? It was so that if your body washes up on the shore whoever finds it can use the money to arrange a proper burial. Sure there's a risk of the finder taking it and walking away, but the pirates did it anyway. With resurrection in play, might as well just wear a diamond earring instead and hope the finder is nice enough to bring you back.
I got so carried away with the whole insurance thing i almost forgot: the possibility of resurrection also changes how murders are committed.
If you want someone dead but resurrection exists, you have to remove the vital organs. Decapitation would be far more common. Sure resurrection is still possible, but it requires higher level spells or Reincarnate, which has... quirks.
As a result it should be very obvious when someone was killed by accident or an overreaction, and when someone was specifically out to kill the victim.

Scrying (5th).
This one is somewhat obvious, in that everyone and their mother knows it helps finding people. But who needs finding? Well, that would be those who are hiding.
The main use i see for this spell, by far, is locating escaped criminals. Just collect a sample of hair or blood when arresting someone (or shipping them to hard labor which is way smarter), and if they escape you'll be almost guaranteed to successfully scry on them.
A similar concept to this is seen in the Dragon Age series. If you're a mage the paladins keep a sample of your blood in something called a phylactery, and that can be used to track you down. There's even a quest or two about mages trying to destroy their phylacteries before escaping.
Similarly, if you plan a jailbreak it would be highly beneficial to destroy the blood/hair sample first. As a matter of fact i can even see a thieves guild hiring a low level party to take out the sample while the professional infiltrators get the prisoner out. Keep in mind both events must be done at the same time, otherwise the guards will just collect a new sample or would have already taken it to the wizard.
But guards aren't the only ones with resources. A loan shark could keep blood samples of his debtors, a mobster can keep one of those who owe him favors, etc. And the blood is ceremoniously returned only when the debt is fully paid.

Teleportation Circle (5th), Transport Via Plants (6th).
In other words, long range teleportation. This is such a huge thing that it is hard to properly explain how important it is.
Teleportation Circle creates a 10ft. circle, and everyone has one round to get in and appear on the target location. Assuming 30ft. movement that means you can get 192 people through, which is a lot of potential merchants going across any distance. Or 672 people dashing.
Math note: A 30ft radius square around a 10ft. diameter square, minus the 4 original squares. Or [(6*2+2)^2]-4 squares of 5ft. each. Hence 192 people.
Getting hundreds of merchants, workers, soldiers, etc. across any distance is nothing to scoff at. In fact, it could help explain why PHB item prices are so standardized: Arbitrage is so easy and cheap that price differences across multiple markets become negligible. Unless of course countries start setting up tax collectors outside of the permanent teleportation circles in order to charge tariffs.
Transport Via Plants does something very similar but it requires 5ft of movement to go through, which means less people can be teleported. On the other hand it doesn't burn 50gp and can take you to any tree the druid is familiar with, making it nearly impossible for tax collectors to be waiting on the other side. Unfortunately druids tend to be a lot less willing to aid smugglers, so your best bet might be a bard using spells that don't belong to his list.
With these methods of long range teleportation not only does trade get easier, but it also becomes possible to colonize or inhabit far away places. For instance if someone finds a gold mine in the antarctic you could set up a mine and bring food and other supplies via teleportation.

Major Image (6th level slot).
Major Image is a 3rd level spell that creates an illusion over a 20ft cube, complete with image, sound, smell and temperature. When cast with a 6th level slot or higher, it lasts indefinitely.
That my friends, is a huge spell. Why get the world's best painter to decorate the ceiling of your cathedral when you can just get an illusion made in six seconds?
The uses for decorating large buildings is already good, but remember: we're not restricted to sight.
Cast this on a room and it'll always be cool and smell nice. Inns would love that, as would anyone who always sleeps or works in the same room. Desert cities have never been so chill.
You can even use an illusion to make the front of your shop seem flashier, while hollering on loop to bring customers in.
The only limit to this spell is your imagination, though I'm pretty sure it was originally made just to hide secret passages.
Trivia: the ki-rin (VGM163) can cast Major Image as a 6th level spell, at will. It's probably meant to give them fabulous lairs yet all it takes is someone doing the holy horsey a big favor, and it could enchant the whole city in a few hours. Shiniest city on the planet, always at a nice temperature and with a fragrance of lilac, gooseberries or whatever you want.

Simulacrum (7th).
Spend 12 hours and 1500gp worth of ruby dust, and get a clone of yourself. Notably, each caster can only have one simulacrum, regardless of who the person he cloned is.
How this changes the world? By allowing the rich and powerful to be in two places at once. Kings now have a perfect impersonator who thinks just like them. A wealthy banker can run two branches of his company. Etc.
This makes life much easier, but also competes with Continual Flame over resources.
It also gives "go fuck yourself" a whole new meaning, making the sentence a valid Suggestion.

Clone (8th).
If there's one spell i despise, its Clone.
Wizard-only preemptive resurrection. Touch spell, costs 1.000gp worth of diamonds each time, takes 120 days to come into effect, and creates a copy of the creature that the soul occupies if the original dies. Oh, and the copy can be made younger.
Why is it so despicable? Because it makes people effectively immortal. Accidents and assassinations just get you sent to the clone, and old age can be forever delayed because you keep going back to younger versions of yourself. Being a touch spell means the wizard can cast it on anyone he wants.
In other words: high level wizards, and only wizards, get to make anyone immortal.
That means wizards will inevitably rule any world in which this spell exists.
Think about it. Rulers want to live forever. Wizards can make you live forever. Wizards want other stuff, which you must give them if you want to continue being Cloned. Rulers who refuse this deal eventually die, rulers who accept stick around forever. Natural selection makes it so that eventually the only rulers left are those who sold their soul to wizards. Figuratively, i hope.
The fact that there are only a handful of wizards out there who are high enough level to cast the spell means its easier for them organize and/or form a cartel or union (cartels/unions are easier to maintain the fewer suppliers are involved).
This leads to a dystopian scenario where mages rule, kings are authoritarian pawns and nobody else has a say in anything. Honestly it would make for a fun campaign in and of itself, but unless that's specifically what you're going for it'll just derail everything else.
Oh, and Clone also means any and all liches are absolute idiots. Liches are people who turned themselves into undead abominations in order to gain eternal life at the cost of having to feed on souls. They're all able to cast 9th level wizard spells, so why not just cast an 8th level one and keep undeath away? Saves you the trouble of going after souls, and you keep the ability to enjoy food or a day in the sun.

Demiplane (8th).
Your own 30ft. room of nothingness. Perfect place for storage and a DM's nightmare given how once players have access to it they'll just start looting furniture and such. Oh the horror.
But alas, infinite storage is not the reason this is a broken spell. No sir.
Remember: you can access someone else's demiplane. That means a caster in city 1 can put things into a demiplane, and a caster in city 2 can pull them out of any surface.
But wait, there's more! There's nothing anywhere saying you can't have two doors to the same demiplane open at once. Now you're effectively opening a portal between two places, which stays open for a whole hour.
But wait, there's even more! Anyone from any plane can open a door to your neat little demiplane. Now we can get multiple casters from multiple planes connecting all of those places, for one hour. Sure this is a very expensive thing to do since you're having to coordinate multiple high level individuals in different planes, but the payoff is just as high. We're talking about potential integration between the most varied markets imaginable, few things in the multiverse are more valuable or profitable. Its a do-it-yourself Sigil.
One little plot hook i like about demiplanes is abandoned/inactive ones. Old wizard/warlock died, and nobody knows how to access his demiplanes. Because he's at least level 15 you just know there's some good stuff in there, but nobody can get to it. Now the players have to find a journal, diary, stored memory or any other way of knowing enough about the demiplane to access it.

True Polymorph (9th).
True Polymorph. The spell that can turn any race into any other race, or object. And vice-versa. You can go full fairy godmother and turn mice into horses. For a spell that can change anything about one's body it would not be an unusual ruling to say it can change one's sex. At the very least it can turn a man into a chair, and the chair into a woman (or vice-versa of course).
But honestly, that's just the tip of the True Polymorph iceberg. Just read this more carefully:
> You transform the creature into a different creature, the creature into a nonmagical object, or the object into a creature
This means you can turn a rock or twig into a human. A fully functional human with, as far as the rules go, a soul. You can create life.
But wait, there's more! Nothing there says you have to turn the target into a known creature on an existing creature. The narcissist bard wants to create a whole race of people who look like him? True Polymorph. A player wants to play a weird ass homebrew race and you have no idea how it would fit into the setting? True Polymorph. Wizard needs a way to quickly populate a kingdom and doesn't want to wait decades for the subjects to grow up? True Polymorph. Warlock must provide his patron 100 souls in order to free his own? True Polymorph. The sorcerer wants to do something cool? Fuck that guy, sorcerers don't get any of the fun high level spells; True Poly is available to literally every arcane caster but the sorcerer.
Note: what good is Twinned Spell if all the high level twinnable spells have been specifically made unavailable to sorcerers?
Do keep in mind however that this brings a whole new discussion on human rights. Does a table have rights? Does it have rights after being turned into a living thing? If it had an owner, is it now a slave? Your country will need so many new laws, just to deal with this one spell.
People often say that high level wizards are deities for all intents and purposes. This is the utmost proof of that. Clerics don't get to create life out of thin air, wizards do. The cleric worships a deity, the wizard is the deity.

Conclusion.
Intelligent creatures not only can game the system, but it is entirely in character for them to do so. I'll even argue that if humanoids don't use magic to improve their lives when it's available, you're pushing the suspension of disbelief.
With this post i hope to have helped you make more complex and realistic societies, as well as provide a few interesting and unusual plot hooks
Lastly, as much as i hate comment begging i must admit i am eager to see what spells other players think can completely change the world. Because at the end of the day we all know that extra d6 damage is not what causes empires to rise and fall, its the utility spells that make the best stories.

Edit: Added spell level to all spells, and would like to thank u/kaul_field for helping with finishing touches and being overall a great mod.

Inheritors of Eschaton, Part 42 - Answers

First | Previous

^{Kings often dwell on subversion, although mostly of a different sort than what I find myself contemplating on quiet evenings. For subversion of the self, the issue is the degree of change one is willing to accept from a single source. The inevitable minor changes from life go mostly unnoticed, the gentle wearing of waves on rock or wind on a crag. Major change may be a tragedy, a friendship, a marriage. Many a man has been dragged to a new course by a determined wife or comrade, but do we term this subversion? Only in grumbled jests from the man’s abandoned drinking partners.}
^{Should I consider myself compromised by the touch on my soul? I submit that its extraordinary nature does not lend it any particularly sinister aspect. I am not even the more malleable of our pair. Our conversations draw and redraw the mark upon me with every passing day, and were there eyes to see none would spy the companion who left with me for Sjatel in my dreams of late.}
^{Excerpt from the collected letters of Goresje Di Sazhocel Selyta, Royal Archives, Ce Raedhil.}

“I think we have an agreement in principle,” Arjun said, leaning back to massage his brow.
Vumo smiled back faintly. “It would appear so,” he said. “Supplies and noninterference in exchange for your assistance in preparing our defenses.”
“Where we come from, there’s a saying that the, ah - evil is in the details, shall we say,” Arjun replied. “I expect we’re envisioning two entirely separate arrangements at the moment.”
The scriptsmith chuckled softly and rubbed a hand over his bald head, looking around the table at the others. “I shall have to remember that one for the next session of the ministerium,” he said. “Very well, let us revisit some of the items in detail. Did you have a starting point in mind?”
“There’s only one place to start,” Mark said, looking at Vumo with a dark expression. “And that’s with the Aesvain.”
Vumo frowned. “They stay here, of course. I had no plans to disclose their presence to the garrison abbey, with any question of future disposition to be settled after the threat from Asu Saqarid is dealt with. As long as they offer no threat to us and remain concealed from the garrison abbey, I am content with the current state of things.”
“We’ve got some objections, for our part,” Jyte retorted. “We want safe refuge here for the Aesvain.”
“I believe that’s what I just said,” Vumo replied dryly.
Jyte stabbed his finger down on the table, glaring at Vumo. “All of us,” he said.
Vumo looked puzzled for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Impossible,” he protested. “Keeping you here is one thing, but moving all of the rest - even forgetting the supplies and manpower needed, they are in no condition-” He blanched and bit back the rest of his sentence, managing to look slightly abashed. Jyte’s glower deepened, dripping with contempt.
“The fact that they’re in no condition to travel,” Jackie said softly, “is exactly why transferring them here is non-negotiable.”
“I understand your position,” Vumo said frustratedly, “but there is simply no way to move them. Most of the Aesvain are near Idran Saal, and thanks to you we have no keystone to activate the gateway frame we’ve constructed there. Bringing them overland would kill them, and even if they could be brought here there is no way to ascend the summit without alerting Draatyn Asidram.”
He sighed and gestured helplessly. “I can route food and medicine to them, improve their quarters, perhaps even discuss relocating them farther from the front given time. Realistically, however, I cannot promise more than that, not without damaging our defense of Idran Saal.”
There was a moment of stony silence before Mark rapped his knuckles on the table. “And what if you had a gateway in Idran Saal?” he asked.
Vumo raised his eyebrow. “That would require a keystone,” he said. “We currently possess three, which are in active use in Utine, Ce Raedhil and Setimen. All three are vital cities, our war preparations rely on each of those gateways being in operation. The only keystone we could spare is the one you left in Sjatel.” He spread his hands wide. “If you were to grant us use of your keystone we would be immensely and materially grateful, but somehow I doubt that was what you had in mind.”
“Ours is off the table,” Mark confirmed. “But for reasons I don’t feel like sharing with you, we already had plans to visit Idhytse.”
“Idhytse,” Vumo muttered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “We had never attempted operations there, it was too far afield when we had Sjatel practically within our borders. You believe there’s a functional gateway there?”
Jesse nodded. “We have reason to think so,” he confirmed.
“Even so,” Vumo said, “the distance is prohibitive. I presume you had to leave your chariot back in Sjatel?”
“We did,” Mark said with a grimace. “No way to fit it through the gateway.”
“No, I imagine not,” Vumo chuckled. “Unfortunately, that means that there is no good way for you to get back to our lands from Idhytse if you disable the gateway. By land or sea, it would require that you reach Utine, transit via the gateway there to Ce Raedhil, then proceed from the capital to Idran Saal.”
“So send a chariot to pick us up,” Jackie suggested. “You guys have some, right?”
Vumo stared at her. “That would be difficult,” he said slowly. “There are a handful of functional chariots in Tinem Sjocel, but they are not all equally capable. You’ve traveled that stretch of land before, so you know that the terrain is rough and the distance considerable.” He shook his head. “None of the ones owned by the scriptsmiths could make that journey.”
Arjun squinted at him. “But there is one that could,” he guessed.
“Belonging to Citsuje Di,” Vumo sighed. “But obtaining use of a chariot owned by the king would be-”
“Difficult?” Mark said snidely.
“Awkward,” Vumo replied, giving him a cool look. “It would require disclosing things to the royalist faction that they do not currently know.”
“You, keeping secrets?” Mark snorted. “I’d like to say I’m shocked, but…”
“You may make light of it if you wish,” Vumo said patiently, “but I believe you have seen by now that sometimes knowledge is dangerous. The scriptsmiths consider carefully what we share with others, and what the implications of spreading that knowledge may be. The royalists are less mindful in that regard, so we may expect that anything we tell them will spread to all interested parties in short order.”
Arjun frowned, running a hand through his wispy hair. “You think they’ll leak word of the Aesvain’s presence here?” he said. “Is it necessary to disclose that to obtain the chariot?”
Vumo shook his head, suddenly looking very tired. “They would certainly spread that news if they knew, but I don’t believe it will be necessary to disclose it,” he sighed. “No, I was referring to the state of the impending conflict with Asu Saqarid. I told you when I arrived: we cannot risk disorder in this crucial time. It is imperative that our preparations are calm and orderly, undisturbed by the infighting that panic would bring.” He hesitated, seeming to be on the brink of speaking further before shaking his head and looking down at the table.
Arjun stared at him. “They don’t know,” he said softly. “You’ve let them think that you have all the answers, that this is some manageable border skirmish. They have no idea how serious the threat is.”
Vumo looked up and met his eyes, giving him a small half-smile. “I am the expert on the silent ones,” he said bitterly. “I am one of the few remaining who has fought them in the past, and the head of the scriptsmiths besides. If I cannot repel this threat, then who among the Sjocelym could?” He laughed again, dull and quiet. “As I said before, we are not without our resources. It may be that addressing this threat is well within our capabilities, but to say that it is certain we could repel it-”
He broke off, then shook his head. “No, not certain at all, although the thought has not yet entered their heads. Scriptsmiths’ business is handled by scriptsmiths, after all!” The smile died from his face. “Asking for the chariot would be unprecedented, and if I do the royalists will begin to suspect that the threat may be without precedent as well. They will not know, but the seed of fear is enough. Some will move to protect themselves, selfishly and blindly, and in so doing they will expose others to their fear.”
“Fear is a disease,” he said. “One that spreads through expressions and furtive glances, one man’s hurried pace or hunted eyes. Release it and we will shortly be forced to fight this war on two fronts, holding ourselves together with one hand while our other pushes back the enemy. I have no doubts about that fight’s outcome.”
Arjun opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak Mark stood from the table and walked around to sit directly beside Vumo. The smaller man looked up at him curiously, and when Mark spoke his voice was barely audible to the others.
“Let me tell you how it is,” he murmured. “You keep saying it’s going to take everything you have to win, but you’re already closing off options because you think you can salvage this. You still think that you can handle this without looking like a dumbass in front of the king.”
Mark grinned. “But you’re fucked. We’re all fucked. Maybe, if we work really hard, we might be able to get to a point where we can put a plan together. Right now we can’t even estimate how bad it is. We need intel, we need resources, and we need you to stop holding out on us because you don’t want to kill the mood at the king’s dinner parties.”
Vumo stared back for several long seconds before nodding. “I will obtain the chariot,” he said, his voice low and strained. “And I will think on what you’ve said.” His gaze sharpened. “One should always be aware of the limits of their capability. Good advice for anyone to heed.”
“Great,” Mark drawled, pointedly not looking at Vumo as he walked back to his seat. “See, this is fun. You want to keep going?”
“I suppose we must,” Vumo said, rubbing his eyes. “Very well. I have a list of artifacts that I would like to show to Maja for identification and analysis.”
Jesse cleared his throat. “You can leave them here with us,” he said, “and we will have Maja review them.” Arjun looked appraisingly over at Jesse but said nothing, while Jackie shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
Vumo paused, then folded his hands in front of him. “You have no intention of giving me a direct conversation with Maja,” he said. There was something hard and brittle in his voice, and an ugly pall flitted across his eyes.
Jesse shook his head, ignoring the attention from the others. “Not today.”
“We could have bargained for more if we gave him what he wanted,” Mark grumbled, scratching his head discontentedly. “I don’t see what the harm would have been. It’s not like she would take commands from him.” He darted a glance at the front door, as if expecting Vumo to pop through.
The elderly scriptsmith had long ago returned down the hill, looking an equal mix of hopeful and frustrated. In exchange for supplies and Vumo’s assurance of safety for them and all detained Aesvain, they would provide analysis from Maja to help the scriptsmiths best employ the contents of their deadly vault against Eryha. And as a down payment, Arjun was currently downstairs inspecting every spoke of the self-powered cart.
Vumo would return in a span of days via the gateway to bring the first batch of artifacts and to exchange intelligence on their mutual enemy - but not to speak with Maja. He had repeatedly tried to bring the subject up after Jesse’s initial rejection, but the answer had been the same every time.
Jesse nodded. “I know,” he said. “I might just be paranoid. Maybe it would have been fine to let them talk, but there’s something about the idea that I don’t like. Vumo is old and knows a lot - and he wasn’t lying when he said that a few minutes of conversation with Maja could yield big returns for him. I just don’t know that we would necessarily be able to pick up on everything he got from her - or that she got from him.”
He shook his head. “Honestly, though, that’s just a rationalization. I had ruled it out before I ever really thought about it. Whenever I think of Vumo and Maja talking one-on-one, I just get this sense like that would be something significant.”
“Significant how?” Mark asked. “Like he’s got some plan involving her?”
Jackie leaned back in her chair, staring up at the darkened ceiling. “Like it would be something that changes everything, that we could never undo,” she said tonelessly. A few beats of silence passed before she lowered her gaze to see confusion on Mark’s face and raw astonishment on Jesse’s.
“That’s exactly it,” Jesse said. “How did you know?”
Jackie shrugged. “Probably the same way you did,” she countered. “My guess is that Tija knew something, and even if I don’t know it I’ve got the memory knocking around somewhere upstairs. I couldn’t tell you why, or what might happen - I just know that we should have our ducks in a row before we let those two talk.”
“I agree completely,” Jesse said, sounding slightly dazed. “I should have figured this out earlier. Didn’t really even connect it to Jes before now. It just feels like intuition, or something you half-remember from a dream. The shape, but no details.” He paused to collect himself, looking intently at Jackie. “Then - can you remember it happening any other times, aside from just now with Vumo?”
She shook her head. “Can’t think of anything.”
“No, there was definitely another time,” Mark said. “Right after you touched the tablet a couple of nights ago, I suggested that we show it to Maja. You did the same thing, you were immediately against it with no hesitation.”
Jackie blinked. “I guess I was,” she said, sounding vaguely troubled. “I didn’t even think about it, it’s like Jesse said - I just know that asking Maja to look at it would have consequences.”
“I know it too,” Jesse said, surprised. “For the tablet, just like when I consider letting her work on my sword. Not sure how, but when I think about giving either of those items to her it feels fundamentally wrong.” He shook his head, blinking rapidly. “A whole lot of things are starting to make sense. Jackie, have you learned anything about the tablet from the fragments in your head? Something that might let us know what Tija did that makes it so important?”
“Not from the fragments in my head,” Jackie said, shivering as her eyes defocused. “But when I touched it I had a - strange experience.”
Mark frowned. “You didn’t say anything about that,” he muttered.
“It seemed crazy at the time,” Jackie said. “Still does. I wasn’t sure if I had imagined all of it or not.” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “I touched the tablet and felt lightheaded, and then all of a sudden I was somewhere else. A long, enormous room with high ceilings, and all along the sides were these alcoves decorated with statues.” Her eyes fluttered open, looking at nothing in particular. “It was otherworldly. I’ve never seen anything else like it.”
“I have,” Jesse murmured. “Let me guess - the light was cold, and nothing made a sound. The things in the alcoves hurt to look at.”
Jesse met her eyes and saw shared understanding there. Mark looked back and forth between the pair in increasing consternation.
“All right, someone fill me in,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Back in Sjatel - just before everything went south, Jes showed me something,” Jesse said. “She said that when Goresje made this sword he somehow put fragments of knowledge inside it, things that were like the parts that made up her being. They contained techniques, knowledge. What she learned from the sword helped her talk to me more effectively.” He pursed his lips, glancing down at the sword. “When she showed me what it looked like to her, it was a place like what Jackie just described. A sort of hall, almost like a cathedral.”
He looked up at Mark, who was still anxiously shifting his gaze between them. “It’s a toolbox,” he explained. “A toolbox meant for someone like Jes to use, or like what Tija tried to put in Jackie.”
Mark blinked, looking at the sword sidelong. “So when you’re moving fast or doing the trick where you impersonate one of the pillars, it’s from the sword?”
“Kinda,” Jesse said. He waggled his hand back and forth equivocally. “There’s some things that Jes can do on her own, others she needs the sword for. But the sword makes her better at everything, more powerful.” He looked at Jackie. “For me, that’s a good thing. For you…”
“Yeah, we don’t want to make anything I’ve got in me more powerful,” Jackie agreed. She rubbed at her arm under the sling, flexing the fingers on her injured hand. “There was something else,” she said. “When I was there, my arm was covered in these glowing lines from the tips of my fingers right up to where the bone broke.”
Jesse frowned. “Lines like script?” he asked.
“No, not script,” she said, shaking her head. “Like webbing or lace, just this dense pattern over my skin that glowed like a qi coin.”
“Interesting,” Jesse said thoughtfully. “I never saw anything like that, but when Jes took me into the sword she had a strand of qim. She never explained it to me and I assumed it was just for lighting at first. Later, though, I got the impression that they were protecting us from the light in the cathedral somehow. The light is-”
“Dangerous,” Jackie said, shivering as she remembered. “You don’t have to tell me. It feels like it would shine right through you, and not even bones would be left.”
“So what do we do about the tablet?” Mark asked. “We don’t want to risk what’s left of Tija getting supercharged. As much as I want to try and fix it up, it might be safer to ditch it. We don’t really need the tablet anymore now that we’ve got the regional code set up.”
Jesse stroked his chin, looking thoughtful. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But think about it. Tija wanted to use Jackie and the tablet for one purpose - to kill Eryha. So if she built a toolbox out of the tablet we can be pretty sure that everything in there will be useful for that purpose.”
“I hate that you’re making sense,” Jackie muttered. “I’ll be honest, that thing scares the piss out of me and I want to chuck it down the mountain - but I think Jesse’s right. Tija kept going on about how I couldn’t hold everything she needed to take down her sister, so I’m betting she put just enough in me to keep control and tossed the rest in the tablet.”
All three of them looked over towards the corner where the tablet was tucked away in Mark’s bag. “So, we hang on to it,” Mark said. “Actually - wait. The sword and the tablet are both scary artifacts, fine. I can see why maybe there might be some issues handing them over to Maja. But why do you both get the heebie-jeebies thinking about letting her talk with ol’ Grandpa Vumo?” He raised an eyebrow and looked between them. “Doesn’t that raise some questions about him, if he’s in the same category as the tablet and the sword? And, for that matter, doesn’t it raise some questions about Maja?”
“It’s concerning that every time we’ve had one of these feelings it’s about giving Maja access to someone or something powerful,” Jesse agreed. “Especially considering we’re planning on finding yet more artifacts to give her so that she can fight Eryha. But at the same time, when I talk about doing that it doesn’t feel the same as handing her the sword.”
“Yeah, for me either,” Jackie agreed. “I’m not sure what it means. Maybe it’s just - hell, I guess I’m an asaarim just like you now, aren’t I?” She laughed, sounding wholly unamused. “Vumo said asaarimyn were guided down a path. Maybe this is just what that feels like.”
Mark shook his head. “I would get it for Jackie, since what she’s got came from Tija. But why would Maja load Jesse up with a script that would make him hesitate to hand her powerful items? She’s definitely interested in them.” He scratched his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I - don’t know,” Jesse admitted, flexing his fingers. “I can’t figure it out either, but I know someone I can ask. Someone I should have asked a long time ago.” He patted his sword in its scabbard and gave the others a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s getting late, but I’ll try and have a conversation with Jes about it before I turn in. Now that I know the right questions, I might be able to get some answers.”
It was dark in the control room once more, and reflected starlight twinkled from Goresje’s blade as it lay across Jesse’s knees. Slowly, he lowered his fingers until they were resting on the bare metal of the flat, then closed his eyes. Inhale, exhale. He breathed slowly, trying to let the tension bleed out of his shoulders.
Inhale, exhale. Now that he was looking for it, he could spot a few times where he had made snap judgments about something without really thinking it over. Were any of those decisions truly his? It was a disturbing line of thought, and he pushed it aside for the moment. Pushed them all aside. Getting agitated would only delay his answers.
Inhale, exhale. He found himself dwelling on it and cursed under his breath. He was procrastinating. He was - afraid. He didn’t really want to have this conversation, but what good would putting it off do? It was overdue already, only happening this late because he had been too blind to ask the right questions.
Inhale, and the sharp salt tang of the sea tickled his nose. He opened them to find the familiar window open over the Ce Raedhil shoreline, stars and qim twinkling beyond it in the two halves of the world. The room’s decor had shifted again, and Jesse saw a selection of small figures on the end table - mostly animals, hand-carved out of rough stone.
“Hey,” Jes said, smiling and walking towards him from the far corner. “I didn’t expect you back so quickly.” She met Jesse’s eyes and her smile faltered. “Is something wrong?”
“Can’t you tell?” he asked.
“You know I don’t just snoop on everything,” she said, sounding wounded. “You deserve some privacy, and for me - I’ve been taking time to think my own thoughts, to try to see what they are. I can’t do that if I’m constantly exposed to yours. If you want, though, I can-”
She blinked, then stared at Jesse with tears welling in her eyes. “Oh. Oh, no, no,” she whispered. “No, it’s not like that.”
“Tell me how it is, then,” Jesse said levelly, stepping forward as the qim in the room grew dimmer. “Because from here-”
“I’m not controlling you,” she protested. “I’ve never tried to. I don’t even think I could. It’s you, it’s always been you.” She hesitated and looked down at the floor. “You know that I can’t see all the fragments I was left with,” she said. “I don’t know why. Maybe it was a mistake when I was transferred to you, maybe they’re just not meant for me yet. But I can sense the shape of them, feel around the edges. I think maybe you can too.”
“I’ve never had any insight into your mind,” Jesse said pointedly.
Jes shook her head. “No, not like I have into yours,” she agreed. “But the link is there even if you don’t have the tools to use it. I’ve always wondered if maybe you can see a little more of those pieces than I can.” She twisted her lips ruefully. “You weren’t built with blinders, like I was.”
“So you’re saying I’m accessing bits of you that you can’t see,” Jesse said, giving her an evaluating look. “But that doesn’t explain why you’ve got those bits in the first place.”
Jes went very still. The room was dark now, but Jesse could see the raw fear building in her eyes as he spoke. “It makes sense that Tija would want to keep Maja away from items of power, sure,” he said. “But why would a piece of Maja want to do that? The entire point of creating asaarimyn is to go out into the world and do things Maja can’t, so why would you balk at giving her what she wants? She clearly wants it.” He stepped closer to her, looking down at her wide-eyed face. “But you don’t, and I think you’ve known why for a while.”
Jes took in a shuddering breath. Tears marked the corners of her eyes, and she turned away from his gaze. “Yes,” she rasped. “Or at least I suspected. There were too many things that didn’t add up after Sjatel. All it took was a touch…” She trailed off, touching her right arm, then forced her head around to look Jesse in the eye.
“I should have told you,” she said. “I should have shared - but you had just started talking with me.” The words came out of her mouth in a rush, jumbled and desperate. “You accepted me, after all that time, after all those days hating me, hating what I was. I couldn’t - I wasn’t sure, I didn’t have anything other than a horrible suspicion until Jackie helped to confirm how marks from different sisters interact, how that was the only difference between… us.”
“I should have told you then, but I just-” She clenched her fists, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “I was so afraid. Am still. Afraid of what all this means, of what I might do, that you might have been right to-” She choked off and began to cry, sinking down to sit on the bed. “I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed.
She was silent, then, weeping and shuddering in the near-total darkness. Jesse stepped forward and sat beside her on the edge of the bed, and after a minute she spoke again in a small, hopeless voice.
“Do you hate me?” the fragment of Eryha asked.
Seconds ticked by before Jesse sighed and shook his head, draping an arm around her shoulders. “That would be easier, wouldn’t it?” he said. “But I don’t. I - dammit, I can’t. You told me from the beginning who you were. Not Maja, not Eryha.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and pulled her close. “You are me, and I am you.”
The room rippled with a burst of color, the qim flaring to life around them. Her arms snaked around his torso and squeezed. He felt tearstains soaking into the front of his shirt, felt the soft tremors of her relieved weeping as the tension bled out of her. Jesse returned her embrace in silence and watched the light slowly trickle back into the room.
“So what do we do?” she murmured, her voice quiet and hollow.
It was the right question to ask, but Jesse had no answer.
---
Jackie - Page 64
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I feel like we ended up asking more questions than we answered. Surely I wouldn’t choose a chapter name just for a cheap pun, right? Yes, surely not - I have more authorial integrity than that.

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Hawk Walks Home In A Combat Zone

Sorry militarystories. I am currently working on the final Hawk story, and I realized that I had failed to post the below story here. Below is a short story, Sloppy short, about Hawk walking home in Iraq. I hope to post the final Hawk story later today. Cheers.
I have always been a very independent person. I am also not they type of person to reach out to anyone to catch up. In general, I would not expect of phone call from SloppyEyeScream. I extend this courtesy to my parents as well. My lack of communication has always been a jagged pill to swallow for my mother. My father could care less, and take that jagged little pill suppository-style and continue on with his day. However, there are still times when I am "socially expected" to return an unanswered phone call. Specifically, my birthday.
I may have been a week late, but I eventually returned my "Happy Birthday" phone call. My mother updated me on all the people that have died, despite me not knowing most of them, and transitioned the phone to my father. The conversation with my father is short, sweet, and too the point. The way phone conversations should be. However, this particular conversation was YouTube-style. You start with a clearly defined search subject, and then five minutes later you're watching people popping zits. I frequently find the "end of the internet" and I typically have no fucking clue how I got there. Well, we went from "Happy Birthday" to "Grape-Fucking-Jelly" in about two minutes.
OP: I just fucking hate grape jelly. I hate apple jelly too. Fuck jelly in general.
Dad: I don't really care for jelly either. I like jam.
OP: I am good with any jam. I don't even understand why WIFE buys fucking jelly. The grape jelly in our fridge is on it's third president.
Dad: You know the difference between jelly and jam right?
OP: Crushed-actual-fucking-fruit?
Dad: Well. Yeah. I was gonna say you can't jelly your dick into a vagina though.
What does this have to do with Hawk? Fucking nothing. You know who posted this story, and you should know by now what you have signed up for. You have already completed the first tangent of this particular Hawk story. Let my screen name, SloppyEyeScream, serve as a warning and consent form. Nobody is making you read this abomination, and we both know it's certainly not educational reading. Let's talk about Hawk.
I know there is at least one person out there asking, "Who the fuck is Hawk?" I have received numerous Direct Messages (DMs) from people stating, "I should have started at the beginning." I will simply assume you will forgo my advice to read the previous stories and take a brief moment to explain the humanoid know as Hawk.
How does a potato generate electricity and power a light bulb? Lets be clear, the potato is not, inn of itself, an energy source. The potato simply helps to conduct electricity by acting as a "salt-bridge". The potato contains sugar, water, and acid. Certain types of metal, such as copper and zinc, react with the potato when inserted inside. They essentially become electrodes. One positive, one negative, and electrons flow between the metals inside inside the potato, thus producing an electric current.
What the fuck does that mean? Hawk's Brain Housing Unit (BHU) is completely devoid of a human brain. Instead, there is a very large potato. This potato assists in generating enough electrical current to power human extremities, but lacks to ability to compute and solve complex problems. I honestly believe there is a potato at the helm. A very, very fucking stupid potato at that.
Dramatization
OP: Hawk. What is one plus one?
Hawk: One plus one Sergeant?
OP: Yes. What is one plus one?
Hawk: Jello. Final answer!
I believe this should provide you, the Reader, with enough insight about our character Hawk, and I said this wouldn't be educational. Would ya look at that! What do you say we actually get into the story?
We are in beautiful and sunny Iraq. Our Company Headquarters had departed our small Forward Operating Base (FOB) to setup shop at an even smaller FOB. The Platoons rotated in-and-out of this particular location to conduct Raids, but there was also a considerable focus on counter-mortar and counter-rocket operations. For our civilian readers; man-dress and flip-flop wearing jihadist enjoyed killing or maiming us with flying projectiles that exploded. We would employ Small Kill Teams (SKTs) in order to prevent that from happening.
There are numerous ways to skin this terrorist-cat, and I have employed numerous techniques to vitally damage a persons squishy-bits. However, sometimes it is easier to just fight fire-with-fire, and send mortars back their way. Tag, you're dead! This is a bit more complex, because we care about collateral damage, and killing an innocent civilian does not make for good Public Relations (PR). In order to avoid this, we continually "registered" our mortars. Meaning we would depart the FOB and observe the mortar registration, and provide firing data corrections. Don't worry, I occasionally ride the window-flavored short-bus also.
Mortars are an Indirect Fire (IDF) weapon system. A mortar can fire "in-the-blind". Simply, they don't have to physically see their target. Our mortar team was located within a compound and relied on math to ensure the angry metal they sent flying hit Location X. During the registration, we would actually observe it, and provide corrections if required. They shoot to Location X, and we ensure it impacts Location X, or provide corrections, and re-shoot. Got it?
My Platoon was co-located and supporting the Company Headquarters that week. There was some initial confusion at first, but I was told I needed to provided bodies. I knew it was not my turn to sacrifice my men to the brutal heat, but I obliged. I provided two Soldiers, and one of them was Hawk. One would serve as a babysitter, and the other was the potato-brained dodo bird.
Sending Hawk anywhere is like sending your child to their first day of school. It is a little different with Hawk though. We are all aware that educational progress will be hopelessly lost on him, but we should at least ensure he gets on the correct short-bus. We wave goodbye to our dumb-loving potato and pray his big brother keeps him out of trouble. Einstein stated, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I'm fucking well-aware Albert, but frankly speaking, I was was elated Hawk was out of my peripheral for a couple of hours. What OP? You're sending Hawk? You're fucking damn right I am!
OP's Logical Reasoning

"Two bodies" were requested.
The definition of a "body" is: the physical structure of a person or an animal, including bones, flesh, and organs. Hawk, at the very best, meets this very minimal criteria.
There was ample adult supervision.
What if Hawk successfully evades Darwinism, yet again, and returns hour later? Win.
What if Hawk succumbs to Darwinism and is no longer my problem? Win.

Furthermore, the Commander and First Sergeant were at the mortar registration. There was also, at least, four Squad Leaders, and numerous Team Leaders supporting this event. It was stacked with very definition of "adult supervision". What the fuck could go wrong? EVERYTHING!
They had been gone for a couple hours now. I had already successfully worked-out, showered, and returned to my room to enjoy the peace and tranquility of a Hawk-free environment. I was not even at the midway point of the deployment, but I need a reprieve. It is astonishing to think humans have continually evolved for nearly 500,000 years, but then a Hawk is birthed. What a fucking disappointment. Hawk? He won the Easter Egg hunt? He was the most worthy candidate in that load of ball-barf? I should have half expected the following conversation.
Operations Soldier (OS): Hey Sergeant OP! Do you know where Hawk is?
OP: Yeah. He is out on the mortar registration.
OS: No. He is not out there!
OP: (Face Palm) I'll play your silly fucking games. "Where is Hawk?"
This guy is getting kind of nervous. It is almost like we somehow managed to lose a fully grown human who just happens to have an assault rifle with 210 rounds of ammunition, which is also outfitted with fucking grenade launcher and 40 High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) grenades that can travel around 400-meters. Oh wait. We did lose that human.
OS: Shit! He is unaccounted for Sergeant.
OP: You guys just lost Retarded-Rambo! (Statement; Not a question)
OS: Oh Fuck!
I follow OS to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC). I am only partially worried about the misplaced Hawk. I was not necessarily needed in the TOC, but I had strong desire to watch OS's face when he radio the Commander. Most people would have been worried, but I wasn't. I was happier than a tornado in a trailer park full of meth labs. Hawk was robo-retard and he was undefeated against Darwin. I know, "What if he was captured by terrorist OP?" Fine! I'll play your fucking games Reader. Not all terrorist are dumb. If captured, they would have immediately determined that returning Hawk was more of a detriment to the American end-state. I am positive that terrorist would have wished him away after a mere one minute interaction.
Radio Traffic!
OS: Commander (CDR) this is TOC; over.
CDR: TOC; go for Commander.
OS: Roger. CODE-NAME is not here.
CDR: Did you check EVERYWHERE?
OS: Roger. CODE-NAME is still unaccounted for. Should I notify Battalion?
CDR: NO! We will continue to our search. I will contact you when we need to notify higher.
Dear Reader, this situation has just become a shit-show. Notifying Battalion, your boss, of something bad is part of the job. There are varying degrees of bad though. Losing a Soldier? It's a Category 5 Hurricane that rains tits and ass, and "they" just got hit with dicks. I am A-okay at this point. I signed over my custodial rights when I strapped that kindergarten kid in the gun truck. I was free-and-clear of any blame at this point. I stuck around in the TOC to watch this dumpster fire play out though. It was a very tense thirty minutes, and they were on the verge of finally notifying Battalion of this catastrophic blunder, and then the TOC door swings open; it was Hawk!
Hawk: I'm back Sergeant!
Cue hysterical fucking laughter! I cannot compose myself enough to even speak to Hawk. The Operations Soldier is baffled; like he was at the urinal, but just noticed he was holding someone else's dick type of look. The entire time I sat spinning in the office chair I did nothing but imagine Hawk barging through the door, ALONE! It was the most improbable outcome. However, we are talking about Hawk, which means the most improbable outcome is likely your best fucking bet!
OS: WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU? HOW IN THE FUCK DID YOU GET BACK? WHAT THE...
OP: (Talking to OS) STOP! Don't say another fucking work. (Now Hawk) Hey buddy! How was it out there?
Hawk: (Just as fucking oblivious as ever.) It was okay Sergeant.
OP: Good. Go back to the Team Room and chill out. Eat some lunch or whatever. I will come get you when the rest of the guys get back. Cool?
Hawk: Roger Sergeant
Hawk Departs!
OS: What the fuck Sergeant?
OP: Brother! I prefer to get mad once as opposed to over-and-over again. Let's just wait until First Sergeant Gets back.
The Operations Soldier immediately notifies the Commander of Hawk's whereabouts and the peasants rejoice. There were a metric fuck-ton of questions, but everyone was at-ease now. I was still bubbling with joy. I wanted First Sergeant to experience the joyous insanity he has bestowed upon me firsthand. I was not dealing with this problem alone; we were dealing with this problem together.
Fast Forward One Hour!
First Sergeant (1SG): (TOC Door SCREAMS OPEN) Where the fuck is he?
OP: Team Room.
1SG: What the fuck did he have to say?
OP: Not this time 1SG. I waited for you. We can happily question him together.
His anger almost instantly subsided. He now had a maniacal smile. We were going to hold hands and explore the inner bowels of Hawk's logical reasoning and potato-brained actions together. We were jumping off that cliff at the same time. There was no war gaming or engagement strategy developed on the walk over either. The distinctive sound of crushing gravel beneath our feet kept us company.
The Team Room
1SG: HAWK! There you are you little fucker!
Hawk: Oh, Hey First Sergeant!
My outside facial expression screamed "business," but I was laughing harder than a titanium boner at an orgy.
1SG: How in the fuck did you get back.
Hawk: I walked back! (With a well-timed and priceless giggle.)
1SG: What the fuck do you mean "I walked back?"
Hawk: I dunno. I just walked back?
First Sergeant was defeated. He gave me the "tag-you're-it" look. He evidently didn't have the ability to irrationally-rationalize and reason with the likes of Hawk.
OP: Why did you walk back Hawk?
Hawk: First Sergeant told me Sergeant.
First Sergeant stood up immediately. There was a very obvious rage in his eyes. I think wanted to "lose" Hawk again, but this time in little tiny bits spread throughout the countryside. He clearly wanted to grab Hawk's face like a bowling ball, and skull drag him to a private execution. I use the "one-armed-hand-up-I-got-this-shit" gesture. There was just so much more to learn before his death! Meanwhile, I would like to point out that Hawk is just lounging in his chair and while eating a Meal Read to Eat (MRE/Army Happy Meal). Just plain fucking oblivious.
OP: HOW-DID-FIRST-SERGEANT-TELL-YOU?
Hawk: First Sergeant came up and said, "Man! We have way too many people out here. If I was you, I'd just walk my happy ass back." So I did Sergeant.
First Sergeant is now clinching his fists so tight that I was anticipating one of his digits popping through to the top of his wrists. His face was beet-fucking-red with anger, and I just mouth, "You told (Finger Pointed Towards Head Wrist Circle Motion (Retard Hand-and Arm Signal) to go home?" There is an immediate calming realization for First Sergeant. He just realized, he inadvertently, told Hawk to leave. Yes, any rational Soldier would have realized this was a joke. We were not dealing with a rational person though. This was just plain fucking comical. It was First Sergeants fault. This is what happens when you let Lenny pet rabbits folks.
OP: (Now laughing) So. Ah! How'd you get back exactly.
Hawk: I just turned around and walked back Sergeant. I pushed through the tall grass until I got to the highway. I raised my gun so cars slowed down, and walked across the road to the Entry Control Point (ECP). They asked me for a convoy number, but I didn't have one. They let me in and I walked here. It would've been much quicker if I had a ride back. That grass was fucking thick.
1SG: Hey OP. Let's go talk outside!
OP: Roger.
Fast-Forward One Minute!
1SG: Is he fucking serious?
OP: We're talking about Hawk. Why the fuck did you tell him to leave?
1SG: I didn't "tell him leave." It was a fucking joke.
OP: You told Hawk! The literalist, "IF I WAS YOU, I'D JUST WALK MY HAPPY ASS BACK." He walked his happy ass back. Frankly, I am quite impressed he was able to follow simple instructions.
1SG: Are you saying I should be "happy" about this?
OP: Fuck! I am.
I finally cracked the boss. He was laughing hysterically. The Commander went through the same phases of anger, more anger, extreme anger, and then laughter when we relayed the story. This was just another day in the life of Hawk though. Hawk 1. Darwin ZERO.
For the anticipated questions. The mortar registration was literally right across the highway. Hawk walked approximately 400-meters and was held up at the gate because he was his own one-person convoy. No punishment was administered. Hawk was merely "following" the suggested orders from First Sergeant. I did have a fully detailed talk with Hawk, but I don't know the intellectual storage capacity of a potato. Besides, how would you recommend I punish a person who cannot comprehend what they did "wrong"? If I told Cake, "Man. The cookies your mom made look delicious. If I was you, I'd eat them all," and he fucking ate them all; shame on me! But Hawk is not a child OP! Have you met Hawk?
Cheers!

How to be Wrong and Still Make Money: A comprehensive guide to selling credit spreads

So I first dipped my toes into options trading a few years ago. I had previously been swing trading stocks so I had a couple years of experience before that, but the leverage and potential returns that options provided really piqued my interest. After it was all said and done, I lost almost $20,000 buying options. After realizing that someone was getting all of this money I was losing, I learned about option selling and haven’t looked back since.
I recently posted my YTD performance here, and received a lot of questions about how I did it. My strategy changed over time, but I first started with credit spreads, which may be applicable to more people since it’s a strategy that works with smaller accounts too. I got a lot of questions about how I played credit spreads and it’s tough to completely explain what I do through a comment here and a comment there so I created this guide explaining my exact approach to trading credit spreads. Here you go:
This is a wall of text, so if you're a more visual learner, here's a link to videos explaining all four parts:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Part One: The Basics

So what is a spread? A high level conceptual explanation is that you’re essentially betting on a stock to finish above or below a certain price upon expiration. One of the advantages here is that you can set this number out of the money, so if a stock is trading at $100, you can bet that it’ll remain below $110 by a certain date. This is a bearish position, so if you’re correct and it goes down, you’ll make max profit. The catch though is that even if you’re wrong, you basically have a 10% upward cushion before you start to lose any money. So the easiest way to describe it is a strategy that lets you make money if you’re right, but also make money if you’re slightly off.
How does it work? So in the above example, if we were bearish on a stock we would open what’s called a call credit spread. We could set it up where we sell a 110c for a credit of $1.50, and buy a 115c for a debit of $0.50. This means that in this transaction we receive $1.50, and pay $0.50 for a net credit of $1. That credit is your max profit on the play. If you’re familiar with options you’ll know that if the stock finishes at or below $110 upon expiration, both of these calls will be worthless. That’s great news for us because the long leg we bought (115c) for 0.50 will be a loss, but we’ll get to keep the full $1.50 from the short leg (110c) that we sold, resulting in us realizing our max gain on the trade of $1.
Why not just sell the 110c and collect the full $1.50? While it cuts into our profits, the reason we buy the 115c in this example for $0.50 isn’t to cut into our profits when we’re correct, but rather protect us when we’re wrong. If the stock in the example stays below $110, we’re good to go and we’ll hit max profit. But what if it goes to $120, $150, or something crazy happens and it hits $200. If the stock hits $150 upon expiration, that 110c that we sold for $1.50 will be worth $40, meaning that we’ll incur a $3,875 loss in pursuit of a $150 gain. We’ve seen crazy run ups from the likes of TSLA and ZM lately, and people who sold what we call “naked options” got absolutely killed. With our spread, yes our 110c will be worth $40 meaning we’re down $4,000 on that position, but the 115c we bought behind it will be worth $35 meaning we’re up $3,500 there for a net loss of $500. Additionally, we get to keep that $1.00 credit we received up front no matter what, so our loss with this spread is actually $500-$100=$400 as opposed to the $3,875 loss that we would’ve seen had we sold the 110c by itself. THAT is the value in selling a spread as opposed to a naked option.
Why are you multiplying everything by 100? Each options contract is worth 100 shares, so a contract that is trading for $1.50 actually costs $150 to purchase.
Another high level point I like to make is that there are really 5 different things that can happen when you make a play. Let’s say you think a stock will go up. It can (1) go up a ton and you’d be correct, (2) go up a little and you’d be correct, (3) trade flat and you’d be incorrect, (4), go down a little and you’d be incorrect, or (5) go down a lot and you’d be incorrect. With a bullish spread, you’d hit max profit on 4/5 , or 80% of the possible outcomes, whereas if you bought stock or purchased an option you’d only be profitable on (1) or (2). Obviously the actual outcomes are a little more complex, but for a base-level understanding of the advantages a spread provides, I think this is a good way to look at it.
So that’s the value of a spread. A lot of traders are introduced to option selling and are scared of the prospect of incurring a huge loss like we mentioned above, but using credit spreads is a great way of receiving the benefits that selling has to offer while limiting a lot of the risks. So let’s move onto actually opening a spread.

Part Two: Making the Trade

So for actually opening a spread up, we have a four-step approach we take: Pick a Stock Pick a Direction Pick a Strike Price Execute the Trade
1: Picking a Stock:
One of the most important things I tell people is to trade what you know. I have a watchlist of 25-30 stocks that I watch and get familiar with during the day. That way if I recognize a good opportunity, I’ll have a decent base of knowledge to rely on to make what I feel is a smart play. It’s super easy to get caught up in the “stock of the week” and try to jump in on a play because a ticker is in the news. If you’re not familiar with a stock, don’t trade it.
For this example (the one used in the video), Wayfair was trading in a 195-210 range for a little bit and then had a big day where it broke up out of that range and up towards $220. This was an unusual move that I noticed since it was on my watchlist, so I decided to make a play.
STOCK: WAYFAIR
2: Picking a direction:
So if we look at Wayfair’s YTD chart, it has exploded this year. A clear upward trend, but a recent trend that I noticed from following the stock was that every time it broke out like this, there would be a little bit of a pullback afterwards. Additionally, I felt the stock was overvalued on a fundamental basis (had a negative book value at the time of the trade) so I wanted to play this stock back down. This is probably the quickest and easiest step of the four, since you’ll likely already have an opinion on most of the stocks that you follow.
DIRECTION: DOWN
3:Picking a Strike Price:
So we know that we’re going to be playing Wayfair back down, but now the question is what spread are we going to set up to do that. In this example Wayfair was trading at $218.42 at the time that we decided to make this trade. In the video we illustrate a trading channel that Wayfair was at the top of. It was also approaching the ATH of $221.54. A lot of the time that will act as resistance for a stock, meaning it’ll bounce down off of it. So in order to give ourselves a bit of a cushion we decided to set our short leg at 222.50, meaning that we’re playing the stock to stay below $222.50 by the end of that week.
So with this play it means in plain English that if we’re correct and the stock goes down, we hit max profit. But if we’re wrong and it goes up, we still have a $4.08 cushion before we’re not hitting max profit anymore. So we could be a little wrong, have the stock go up a few dollars, and still walk away with max profit.
STRIKE PRICE OF SHORT LEG: $222.50
4: Executing the Trade:
I’ll be the first to tell you that when I started trading spreads I didn’t realize you could open both legs of the spread at once. I was stupid. I would like to think I’m at least a little bit smarter now. If you look at the options screen for most brokers, you’ll just see single legs. Switching over to “vertical” allows you to set up the entire spread in one trade. If you use something like RH, there’s a feature that allows you to select multiple options, so you’ll select the one you wish to sell (short leg) and the one you wish to buy (long leg).
In this example we selected the 222.5/227.5c spread, meaning that we sold the short leg of 222.5 and the long leg of 227.5. The net credit was 1.45, which is our max gain on the trade. A wider spread gives a larger credit but also increases max loss. This is a $5 wide spread but we could have made it a tighter spread with a $2.5 width. Typically the best risk to reward ratio is on the tightest spreads, but a slightly wider spread will raise your breakeven price and studies have shown that it actually results in better expected value long term.
Circling back to the credit we received of $1.45, this means that our max profit was $145 and our max loss was $355 for each spread that we sold. We know that because our broker tells us that, but a quick way to calculate it is the width of the spread minus the credit. A $1.45 credit on $5 wide spread means a $5-$1.45=$3.55 max loss.
When I evaluate trades like this I look for a max profit to max loss ratio of 1:2 to 1:4. Based on different scanners I’ve seen, the best expected values tend to fall on spreads within that risk/reward ratio. The ratio on this trade is 1:2.44.
So we put our order in for a credit of $1.45, it filled, and now we get to sit back and watch. Sometimes your order won’t fill right away. In fact, most of the time it won’t fill right away. It’s important to be patient with your fill price and not chase it downwards. We want the highest credit possible. So if the credit on these spreads dropped to 1.30 when I was trying to place an order, it usually isn’t a great idea to drop my order price down to 1.30 just to get a fill. The only time I would recommend that is if you’re trying to open a spread right before the market closes. Otherwise, hang tight. Patience pays.

Part 3: Managing the Trade

So now that we’ve made the trade, it’s time to manage it. In my opinion one of the best parts about trading spreads is that they don’t require active management. You get to sit back and watch the price. Once the trade has been opened, which is also quick, it takes very little effort.
So with the Wayfair example we used, our analysis turned out perfectly, as Wayfair touched the ATH and dipped back down to end the week safely at $214. We hit max profit on that trade, but what if the trade goes against us? That’s what we’ll take a look at in this section.
One thing we didn’t address in part two is when to open the trade. We like opening spreads on Mondays and Tuesdays, and monitoring them during the week. This is the part of my strategy that is a little bit controversial, as there is a (legitimate) school of thought that selling spreads about 45 DTE is better value. I like that idea and if you would rather do that then absolutely go for it. It’s important to trade what you’re comfortable with. All of the lessons in here still apply to that strategy. With that said though, I stick with the weekly strategy of opening them at the beginning of the week and look to close them throughout the week.
The way I see it, your % of max profit should be the metric you’re looking at when deciding what to do with a spread. Divided up equally, that means if you progressed through the week to max profit in a linear fashion, you would be at 20% of max profit on Monday, 40% on Tuesday, and so forth. A good rule of thumb I use is that if you’re ever on the fence about whether or not to close something out, do so if your return exceeds the linear return for that day of the week. The market can move quickly and I’ve had several times where I have regretted not closing a spread out. It’s important to take profit.
Another thing I’ll add to this is that this weekly strategy gets a little risky on Thursday afternoon headed into Friday. If your spread is remotely close to being in the money on Thursday afternoon, close it out. Now that I type that out I realize that may all sound a little convoluted, but it’s better visualized in the video I’ve linked for this section.
Now let's get into what happens if a trade really starts to move against you. With the strategy we use there are really two options: (1) Close the trade for a loss and move on, or (2) Roll the strikes higher.
The first option is pretty self explanatory, but a quick note I want to add here is that you can have a stock move way against you but still be able to close the trade for less than max loss. The example I use in my video is I played FB earnings, thought it would go down, but it shot way above my spread and well into max loss territory. We opened a 245/247.5c spread for a credit of $0.54. FB was reporting earnings on a Thursday night and we sold this spread that expired the following day, so there wasn’t a ton of time to manage it. Long story short, FB killed earnings and shot up to $256 that morning. Really not a prayer that it would come back down to the spread I opened by the end of the day. But despite the fact that this trade went way against us and we had almost no time to manage it since it was a Friday play, we were still able to close out for a debit of $1.90. Yes that’s a loss of $1.36 per spread, but we SAVED an additional $0.60 cent loss by avoiding a max loss debit of $2.50. That’s another benefit of spreads.
Let’s talk about option two. This is the best option to use if you’re confident that you’re correct about the ultimate price action on a stock, but you need a little extra wiggle room on the trade. For this example we’ll look at a TSLA call spread that I opened. TSLA was trading at $1542 after an incredible run, so I figured I would play it below 1600 with a 1600/1610c spread that offered a credit of $2.52. As is the theme with this section, TSLA exploded the following morning (Tuesday) and went all the way up to $1794 at one point. My spread was literally almost $200 out of the money. One of the biggest possible moves against myself that I had ever seen. Despite this crazy move, it was only Tuesday and we were able to close the first spread for a debit of only $5.25 (as opposed to a $10 max debit). We opened 6 of these off the bat so this was a loss of $1638. From there we “rolled” our strikes higher, opening 10 1750/1760c spreads for a credit of $3.45. So the closing and subsequent opening of a spread like we did here is what we are referring to when we say we “rolled the strikes higher”.
By the end of the week TSLA had finally crashed a bit and it finished at $1506. This meant the second of spreads we opened were easily max profit. And while we lost $1,638 on the first set of spreads we opened here, we profited $3,450 on the second set of spreads so we were able to still finish the week with a $1,812 profit on TSLA. The funny thing with this one is that the original spread would have hit max profit since it dropped all the way back down to 1500, but we would have had the same result had TSLA finished anywhere below 1750.
Rolling the strikes higher gave me extra breathing room and turned a potential disaster into a profitable trade. One thing I’ll add though is that with this method you do run the risk of increasing your potential max loss. Because of that, I’ll only roll my strikes higher ONCE. Anything past that is chasing a losing trade. If I roll my strikes higher and it’s still going against me, I’m at the point where I need to accept the fact that I don’t fundamentally understand a stock as well as I thought I did and move on. There is always another trade out there.
The final point I’ll add to this is ALWAYS CLOSE OUT YOUR SPREADS. The only time I’ll let a spread expire worthless is if my spread is OTM by a crazy amount and it would quite literally take a historic after-hours move on Friday to take me back ITM. Other than that, close your spreads out. Even if it’s just for a $0.05 debit. It may seem annoying but I’ll tell you why in the following section.

Part 4: Additional Risks and Considerations

I will start this section by saying I’ve never been impacted by any of the following risks, but it’s important to be aware of 100% of the possible outcomes of your trade before you enter it. They’re infrequent but this really wouldn’t be a comprehensive guide if I omitted them. They are as follows: (1) Early Assignment, (2) Dividend Risk, (3) Pin Risk.
1: Early Assignment:
The best way to start this section is by talking about why your max loss is actually your max loss. We know it’s quickly calculated as the width of your spread minus the credit, but why is that?
Let’s use a 110/115c spread as an example. We’ll say we received a credit of $1. We know that if the stock finishes anywhere below 110 then both legs are worthless and we’ll hold onto that $1 credit. But what happens if we’re in a max loss position. Let’s say the stock finishes at $120.
In this situation the short leg (110c) we sold would be worth $10 (120-110), meaning that we would owe $1,000 on that position. The long leg we bought would be worth $5 (120-115), meaning we are holding a position worth $500. The net effect is a $500 loss, but remember that’s netted against the $100 credit you received, so it’s a max loss of $400. That math checks out as the width of the spread is $5, the credit is $1, so the max loss is 5-1=$4*100=$400.
So that’s how it works upon expiration. But lets say this position moved against you, you still have a few days until expiration, but the stock is at $120. Since there are a few days left, you probably could close the contract for a debit of $3.50 rather than the max loss debit of $5. However, since your short leg is ITM the person you sold the option to may choose to exercise their option. As a result, that would require you to take on a short position of $110*100=$11,000 per contract sold. You may not be able to afford to cover that, or your broker may not let you hold that position. So what happens is your long leg gets exercised as well resulting in you taking a max loss early. So while on paper you received a credit of $1 that could have been closed for a debit of $3.50 and your loss was only $2.50, early assignment results in you prematurely taking a max loss.
When does this happen? It typically doesn’t, since it requires the buyer sacrificing the remaining extrinsic value on the option, but it’s more likely with certain stocks. There are three different classifications of a stock that relate to it’s borrowing ability: Easy to Borrow (ETB), Hard to Borrow (HTB), and Not Available to Borrow (NTB). The harder a stock is to borrow, the more likely it is that a call is exercised early because it gives the buyer a way to acquire a stock which may not be available to them through their broker. So if you’re selling call spreads that are close to being ITM, make sure to check out the borrowing status of the stock.
2: Dividend Risk:
This risk relates to the first one discussed, as it’s just another way you risk early assignment. If a company is announcing a dividend, there will be something known as an “ex-div” date, which means that all shareholders as of that date are entitled to receive the divident, which will be distributed usually at a later date. Because of this, call buyers may exercise an out of the money call option in an effort to acquire those shares.
Remembering that exercising an option means that you sacrifice all remaining extrinsic value, another reason a buyer may exercise a call option before an ex-dividend date is that the value of the dividend announced is greater than the extrinsic value remaining in the option. Say a 100c is trading at $2 and the underlying (stock) is currently at 101. The extrinsic value is the value of the option in excess of what it would be worth upon expiration. So the extrinsic value in this situation is $1, since the 100c trading for $2 is just $1 in excess of the current strike price. If the company in question here announced a $2 dividend, an option buyer would likely exercise their call option because the $2 dividend is greater than the $1 of extrinsic value.
3: Pin Risk:
We know that if your spread finishes out of the money it’s a max gain and if both legs of your spread finish in the money it’s a max loss. But what happens when the price of a stock finishes between the two legs of your spread? Let’s take a look.
So using a 100/110c spread as an example, let’s say that the stock finishes at 105. Your long leg, which is there to protect you, is worthless so you wouldn’t exercise it. However the short leg at 100 that you sold will be exercised by the buyer since it’s ITM. As a result, you’re now short 100 shares at a price of 100 and you’ll be holding that position over the weekend. This can go both ways from here, but since we’re focused on risk let’s say that this stock you’re now short shoots up over the weekend and some sort of news/event brings it up to $120.
With this short position of 100 shares at $100 you’re borrowing $10,000 worth of stock. Now that the stock is worth $120 this position is now worth $12,000. Over the weekend you’ve sustained a $2,000 loss. If we received a credit of $3 when we opened this spread, we may have thought that our max loss was 10-3=$7*100=$700. Since we failed to close the spread out, this position has now resulted in a $2,000 loss net of the $300 credit that you received when you opened the position. So on a trade where you thought you could lose at most $700, you’re now down almost $2k.
I can’t repeat it enough, but THIS IS WHY WE CLOSE OUT SPREADS BEFORE EXPIRATION. That is the single most important takeaway I can give you here. Spreads are great since they’re defined risk and defined gain. When you’re buying options you have a defined loss but a potentially infinite gain. This can make it really easy to get greedy and I’ve seen countless traders lose big profits because they keep holding out for more. When you have a defined gain and defined loss it makes it easier to make smart decisions, take profits, and continuously build on those profits over time.
That was an enormous wall of text but I hope it helps explain, from a base level, what spreads are and how they work. Switching from buying options to selling options has dramatically changed my performance in the market so I hope sharing this can do the same for someone else. If you have any questions let me know and I’d be happy to answer them.

How to not get ruined with Options - Part 3a of 4 - Simple Strategies

Post 1: Basics: CALL, PUT, exercise, ITM, ATM, OTM
Post 2: Basics: Buying and Selling, the Greeks
Post 3a: Simple Strategies
Post 3b: Advanced Strategies
Post 4a: Example of trades (short puts, covered calls, and verticals)
Post 4b: Example of trades (calendars and hedges)
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Ok. So I lied. This post was getting way too long, so I had to split in two (3a and 3b)
In the previous posts 1 and 2, I explained how to buy and sell options, and how their price is calculated and evolves over time depending on the share price, volatility, and days to expiration.
In this post 3a (and the next 3b), I am going to explain in more detail how and when you can use multiple contracts together to create more profitable trades in various market conditions.
Just a reminder of the building blocks:
You expect that, by expiration, the stock price will …
... go up more than the premium you paid → Buy a call
… go down more than the premium you paid → Buy a put
... not go up more than the premium you got paid → Sell a call
... not go down more than the premium you got paid → Sell a put
Buying Straight Calls:
But why would you buy calls to begin with? Why not just buy the underlying shares? Conversely, why would you buy puts? Why not just short the underlying shares?
Let’s take long shares and long calls as an example, but this applies with puts as well.
If you were to buy 100 shares of the company ABC currently trading at $20. You would have to spend $2000. Now imagine that the share price goes up to $25, you would now have $2500 worth of shares. Or a 25% profit.
If you were convinced that the price would go up, you could instead buy call options ATM or OTM. For example, an ATM call with a strike of $20 might be worth $2 per share, so $200 per contract. You buy 10 contracts for $2000, so the same cost as buying 100 shares. Except that this time, if the share price hits $25 at expiration, each contract is now worth $500, and you now have $5000, for a $3000 gain, or a 150% profit. You could even have bought an OTM call with a strike of $22.50 for a lower premium and an even higher profit.
But it is fairly obvious that this method of buying calls is a good way to lose money quickly. When you own shares, the price goes up and down, but as long as the company does not get bankrupt or never recovers, you will always have your shares. Sometimes you just have to be very patient for the shares to come back (buying an index ETF increases your chances there). But by buying $2000 worth of calls, if you are wrong on the direction, the amplitude, or the time, those options become worthless, and it’s a 100% loss, which rarely happens when you buy shares.
Now, you could buy only one contract for $200. Except for the premium that you paid, you would have a similar profit curve as buying the shares outright. You have the advantage though that if the stock price dropped to $15, instead of losing $500 by owning the shares, you would only lose the $200 you paid for the premium. However, if you lose these $200 the first month, what about the next month? Are you going to bet $200 again, and again… You can see that buying calls outright is not scalable long term. You need a very strong conviction over a specific period of time.
How to buy cheaper shares? Sell Cash Covered Put.
Let’s continue on the example above with the company ABC trading at $20. You may think that it is a bit expensive, and you consider that $18 is a more acceptable price for you to own that company.
You could sell a put ATM with a $20 strike, for $2. Your break-even point would be $18, i.e. you would start losing money if the share price dropped below $18. But also remember that if you did buy the shares outright, you would have lost more money in case of a price drop, because you did not get a premium to offset that loss. If the price stays above $20, your return for the month will be 11% ($200 / $1800).
Note that in this example, we picked the ATM strike of $20, but you could have picked a lower strike for your short put, like an OTM strike of $17.50. Sure, the premium would be lower, maybe $1 per share, but your break-even point would drop from $18 to $16.50 (only 6% return then per month, not too shabby).
The option trade will usually be written like this:
SELL -1 ABC 100 17 JUL 20 17.5 PUT @ 1.00
This means we sold 1 PUT on ABC, 100 shares per contract, the expiration date is July 17, 2020, and the strike is $17.5, and we sold it for $1 per share (so $100 credit minus fees).
With your $20 short put, you will get assigned the shares if the price drops below $20 and you keep it until expiration, however, you will have paid them the equivalent of $18 each (we’ll actually talk more about the assignment later). If your short put expires worthless, you keep the premium, and you may decide to redo the same trade again. The share price may have gone up so much that the new ATM strike does not make you comfortable, and that’s fine as you were not willing to spend more than $18 per share, to begin with, anyway. You will have to wait for some better conditions.
This strategy is called a cash covered put. In a taxable account, depending on your broker, you can have it on margin with no cash needed (you will need to have some other positions to provide the buying power). Beware that if you don’t have the cash to cover the shares, it is adding some leverage to your overall position. Make sure you account for all your potential risks at all times. The nice thing about this position is that as long as you are not assigned, you don’t actually need to borrow some money, it won’t cost you anything. In an IRA account, you will need to have the cash available for the assignment (remember in this example, you only need $1800, plus trading fees).
Let’s roll!
Now one month later, the share price is between $18 and $22, there are few days of expiration left, and you don’t want to be assigned, but you want to continue the same process for next month. You could close the current position, and reopen a new short put, or you could in one single transaction buy back your current short put, and sell another put for next month. Doing one trade instead of two is usually cheaper because you reduce the slippage cost. The closing of the old position and re-opening of a new short position for the next expiration is called rolling the short option (from month to month, but you can also do this with weekly options).
The croll can be done a week or even a few days before expiration. Remember to avoid expiration days, and be careful being short an option on ex-dividend dates. When you roll month to month with the same strike, for most cases, you will get some money out of it. However, the farther your strike is from the current share price, the less additional premium you will get (due to the lower extrinsic value on the new option), and it can end up being close to $0. At that point, given the risk incurred, you may prefer to close the trade altogether or just be assigned. During the roll, depending on if the share price moved a bit, you can adjust the roll up or down. For example, you buy back your short put at $18, and you sell a new short put at $17 or $19, or whatever value makes the most sense.
Assignment
Now, let’s say that the share price finally dropped below $20, and you decided not to roll, or it dropped so much that the roll would not make sense. You ended up getting your shares assigned at a strike price of $18 per share. Note that the assigned share may have a current price much lower than $18 though. If that’s the case, remember that you earned more money than if you bought the shares outright at $20 (at least, you got to keep the $2 premium). And if you rolled multiple times, every premium that you got is additional money in your account.
Want to sell at a premium? Sell Covered Calls.
You could decide to hold onto the shares that you got at a discount, or you may decide that the stock price is going to go sideways, and you are fine collecting more theta. For example, you could sell a call at a strike of $20, for example for $1 (as it is OTM now given the stock price dropped).
SELL -1 ABC 100 17 JUL 20 20 CALL @ 1.00
When close to the expiration time, you can either roll your calls again, the same way that you rolled your puts, as much as you can, or just get assigned if the share price went up. As you get assigned, your shares are called away, and you receive $2000 from the 100 shares at $20 each. Except that you accumulated more money due to all the premiums you got along the way.
This sequence of the short put, roll, roll, roll, assignment, the short call, roll, roll, roll, is called the wheel.
It is a great strategy to use when the market is trading sideways and volatility is high (like currently). It is a low-risk trade provided that the share you pick is not a risky one (pick a market ETF to start) perfect to get create some income with options. There are two drawbacks though:

If the share dropped too much, you are stuck with it.

You will have to be patient for the share to go back up, but often you can end up with many shares at a loss if the market has been tanking. As a rule of thumb, if I get assigned, I never ever sell a call below my assignment strike minus the premium. In case the market jumps back up, I can get back to my original position, with an additional premium on the way. Market and shares can drop like a stone and bounce back up very quickly (you remember this March and April?), and you really don’t want to lock a loss.
Here is a very quick example of something to not do: Assigned at $18, current price is $15, sell a call at $16 for $1, share goes back up to $22. I get assigned at $16. In summary, I bought a share at $18, and sold it at $17 ($16 + $1 premium), I lost $1 between the two assignments. That’s bad.

If the share goes up too fast, you missed some opportunity for gain, potentially big gains.

You will have to find some other companies to do the wheel on. If it softens the blow a bit, your retirement account may be purely long, so you’ll not have totally missed the upside anyway.
A short put is a bullish position. A short call is a bearish position. Alternating between the two gives you a strategy looking for a reversion to the mean. Both of these positions are positive theta, and negative vega (see part 2).
Now that I explained the advantage of the long calls and puts, and how to use short calls and puts, we can explore a combination of both.
Verticals
Most option beginners are going to use long calls (or even puts). They are going to gain some money here and there, but for most parts, they will lose money. It is worse if they profited a bit at the beginning, they became confident, bet a bigger amount, and ended up losing a lot. They either buy too much (50% of my account on this call trade that can’t fail), too high of a volatility (got to buy those NKLA calls or puts), or too short / too long of an expiration (I don’t want to lose theta, or I overspent on theta).
As we discussed earlier, a straight long call or put is one of the worst positions to be in. You are significantly negative theta and positive vega. But if you take a step back, you will realize that not accounting for the premium, buying a call gives you the upside of stock up to the infinity (and buying a put gives you the upside of the stock going to $0). But in reality, you rarely are betting that the stock will go to infinity (or to $0). You are often just betting that the stock will go up (or down) by X%. Although the stock could go up (or down) by more than X%, you intuitively understand that there is a smaller chance for this to happen. Options are giving you leverage already, you don’t need to target even more gain.
More importantly, you probably should not pay for a profit/risk profile that you don’t think is going to happen.
Enter verticals. It is a combination of long and short calls (or puts). Say, the company ABC trades at $20, you want to take a bullish position, and the ATM call is $2. You probably would be happy if the stock reaches $25, and you don’t think that it will go much higher than that.
You can buy a $20 call for $2, and sell a $25 call for $0.65. You will get the upside from $20 to $25, and you let someone else take the $25 to infinity range (highly improbable). The cost is $1.35 per share ($2.00 - $0.65).
BUY +1 VERTICAL ABC 100 17 JUL 20 20/25 CALL @ 1.35
This position is interesting for multiple reasons. First, you still get the most probable range for profitability ($20 to $25). Your cost is $1.35 so 33% cheaper than the long call, and your max profit is $5 - $1.35 = $3.65. So your max gain is 270% of the risked amount, and this is for only a 25% increase in the stock price. This is really good already. You reduced your dependency on theta and vega, because the short side of the vertical is reducing your long side’s. You let someone else pay for it.
Another advantage is that it limits your max profit, and it is not a bad thing. Why is it a good thing? Because it is too easy to be greedy and always wanting and hoping for more profit. The share reached $25. What about $30? It reached $30, what about $35? Dang it dropped back to $20, I should have sold everything at the top, now my call expires worthless. But with a vertical, you know the max gain, and you paid a premium for an exact profit/risk profile. As soon as you enter the vertical, you could enter a close order at 90% of the max value (buy at $1.35, sell at $4.50), good till to cancel, and you hope that the trade will eventually be executed. It can only hit 100% profit at expiration, so you have to target a bit less to get out as soon as you can once you have a good enough profit. This way you lock your profit, and you have no risk anymore in case the market drops afterwards.
These verticals (also called spreads) can be bullish or bearish and constructed as debit (you pay some money) or credit (you get paid some money). The debit or credit versions are equivalent, the credit version has a bit of a higher chance to get assigned sooner, but as long as you check the extrinsic value, ex-dividend date, and are not too deep ITM you will be fine. I personally prefer getting paid some money, I like having a bigger balance and never have to pay for margin. :)
Here are the 4 trades for a $20 share price:
CALL BUY 20 ATM / SELL 25 OTM - Bullish spread - Debit
CALL BUY 25 OTM / SELL 20 ATM - Bearish spread - Credit
PUT BUY 20 ATM / SELL 25 ITM - Bullish spread - Credit
PUT BUY 25 ITM / SELL 20 ATM - Bearish spread - Debit
Because both bullish trades are equivalent, you will notice that they both have the same profit/risk profile (despite having different debit and credit prices due to the OTM/ITM differences). Same for the bearish trades. Remember that the cost of an ITM option is greater than ATM, which in turn is greater than an OTM. And that relationship is what makes a vertical a credit or a debit.
I understand that it can be a lot to take in. Let’s take a step back here. I picked a $20/$25 vertical, but with the share price at $20, I could have a similar $5 spread with $15/$20 (with the same 4 constructs). Or instead of 1 vertical $20/$25, I could have bought 5 verticals $20/$21. This is a $5 range as well, except that it has a higher probability for the share to be above $21. However, it also means that the spread will be more expensive (you’ll have to play with your broker tool to understand this better), and it also increases the trading fees and potentially overall slippage, as you have 5 times more contracts. Or you could even decide to pick OTM $25/$30, which would be even cheaper. In this case, you don’t need the share to reach $30 to get a lot of profit. The contracts will be much cheaper (for example, like $0.40 per share), and if the share price goes up to $25 quickly long before expiration, the vertical could be worth $1.00, and you would have 150% of profit without the share having to reach $30.
If you decide to trade these verticals the first few times, look a lot at the numbers before you trade to make sure you are not making a mistake. With a debit vertical, the most you can lose per contract is the premium you paid. With a credit vertical, the most you can lose is the difference between your strikes, minus the premium you received.
One last but important note about verticals:
If your short side is too deep ITM, you may be assigned. It happens. If you bought some vertical with a high strike value, for example:
SELL +20 VERTICAL SPY 100 17 JUL 20 350/351 PUT @ 0.95
Here, not accounting for trading fees and slippage, you paid $0.95 per share for 20 contracts that will be worth $1 per share if SPY is less than $350 by mid-July, which is pretty certain. That’s a 5% return in 4 weeks (in reality, the trading fees are going to reduce most of that). Your actual risk on this trade is $1900 (20 contracts * 100 shares * $0.95) plus trading fees. That’s a small trade, however the underlying instrument you are controlling is much more than that.
Let’s see this in more detail: You enter the trade with a $1900 potential max loss, and you get assigned on the short put side (strike of $350) after a few weeks. Someone paid expensive puts and exercised 20 puts with a strike of $350 on their existing SPY shares (2000 of them, 20 contracts * 100 shares). You will suddenly receive 2000 shares on your account, that you paid $350 each. Thus your balance is going to show -$700,000 (you have 2000 shares to balance that).
If that happens to you: DON’T PANIC. BREATHE. YOU ARE FINE.
You owe $700k to your broker, but you have roughly the same amount in shares anyway. You are STILL protected by your long $351 puts. If the share price goes up by $1, you gain $2000 from the shares, but your long $351 put will lose $2000. Nothing changed. If the share price goes down by $1, you lose $2000 from the shares, but your long $350 put will gain $2000. Nothing changed. Just close your position nicely by selling your shares first, and just after selling your puts. Some brokers can do that in one single trade (put based covered stock). Don’t let the panic set in. Remember that you are hedged. Don’t forget about the slippage, don’t let the market makers take advantage of your panic. Worst case scenario, if you use a quality broker with good customer service, call them, and they will close your position for you, especially if this happens in an IRA.
The reason I am insisting so much on this is because of last week’s event. Yes, the RH platform may have shown incorrect numbers for a while, but before you trade options you need to understand the various edge cases. Again if this happens to you, don’t panic, breathe, and please be safe.
This concludes my post 3a. We talked about the trade-offs between buying shares, buying calls instead, selling puts to get some premium to buy some shares at a cheaper price, rolling your short puts, getting your puts assigned, selling calls to get some additional money in sideways markets, rolling your short calls, having your calls assigned too. We talked about the wheel, being this whole sequence spanning multiple months. After that, we discussed the concept of verticals, with bullish and bearish spreads that can be either built as a debit or a credit.
And if there is one thing you need to learn from this, avoid buying straight calls or puts but use verticals instead, especially if the volatility is very high. And do not ever sell naked calls, again use verticals.
The next post will explain more advanced and interesting option strategies.
---
Post 1: Basics: CALL, PUT, exercise, ITM, ATM, OTM
Post 2: Basics: Buying and Selling, the greeks
Post 3a: Simple Strategies
Post 3b: Advanced Strategies
Post 4a: Example of trades (short puts, covered calls, and verticals)
Post 4b: Example of trades (calendars and hedges)

Flatten the Curve. Part 44. Bill Gates Rumored Doomsday Bunkers. Bill Gates Hoarding. Rockefeller Institute & Unethical Human Experiments. Toxic Dust Storms and Covid-19. It's Hidden in Plain Sight. Wake up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh. Uhm. OK.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hyperinflammatory and altered iron metabolism. Following? Good.

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

Hypoxia? Where have I heard that before?

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

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

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

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

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

And then we have this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pepper the skies with fireballs. Fall from the skies.

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

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

Unleashed pt. 37

I took a short break after my double chapter, but things are back to normal again now. Once again, credit to my teammate u/eruwenn for the polish and additions.
First / Prev / Next
The arguments had gone on for what felt like an eternity, raising a lot of questions that Aaron had no answers to, and his patience was wearing thin. Eventually he threw up his hands and raised his voice. “Look, you know everything I know. They have the bio-weapon. We don’t know when, or where, it will be used. We have to push on with our own mission. To get Alexa and Norrin treatment.” Allistan raised his hand and Aaron sighed. “I’ve told you, you don’t need to do that.”
The Fae’Dan stood and looked around the group. “I think I speak for all of us when I ask; If we aren’t going to do anything, and we can’t tell anyone, or investigate, then why did you tell us?”
“Choice.” Aaron said as he looked around the table. “I’m giving you the choice, to stay or to leave.” He raised his eyebrows at their confused faces. “With a handsome retirement amount, of course.”
Embar looked offended. “You expect us to quit? We’ve only just begun.”
Aaron returned to his seat. Keeping his voice calm and even, he looked at each one of them as he spoke. “No. But, fighting the Sentinels? Spies? Plots? This isn't what any of you signed on for. You could get in real trouble, or worse." He slumped slightly. "I don't even know why you all agreed to come with me in the first place.”
“You are my home.” Alexa’s answer to his rhetorical question was without hesitation or embarrassment at the honesty of her statement. “You, and Sassie.”
Aaron reached out and took her hand. “Thanks, I wasn’t asking for-”
“I felt responsible.” Estrilla’s voice was quiet, but determined. “The way you are now – the nanites – is because we purged your body of its own defences. On my orders. And, worse still, I couldn’t fix you. I’m staying. Stopping the war will save a lot of lives and that’s a doctor’s job.”
Before Aaron could reply Ranjaz spoke up. “You stole a planet and took a fortune from the Arkellians without breaking a single law. You bet your weird pink monkey ass I’m in.” He grinned broadly. “Besides, without me you’re all doomed.”
Jar’Bek was quick to interject. “He did in fact break several laws, and is testing the elasticity of dozens, if not hundreds, more.” Jar’Bek paused as he considered his own reason for coming on this journey. “I was shunned by my people for becoming a lawyer, shunned by those within the law for being an Ashi. At first, I came because I needed money and a modicum of protection from my previous employers. Now, we’re building a new world. Writing the rules from scratch and for the first time those rules apply to everyone equally. Anyway, a war would interfere with our profit projections.”
Deciding it was wise not to mention the insane amount of money war generated on his own world, Aaron nodded his gratitude to Jar’Bek. The pair had spoken at length about their vision for the new colonies and both wanted a focus on equality and opportunity. “Especially if they begin a war with the Imperium. We don’t want to be caught in the middle of that.”
Embar spoke, a grim resignation to his voice. “Except, that’s exactly where we’re headed. Directly between the Federation, Hive and Imperium as they are steered towards war by the Sentinels. We’re the unknown quantity, being used by this councillor to do her dirty work.” He saw guilt on Estrilla’s face, but pushed on. “I’ve been a soldier most of my life; the further I got promoted the harder the decisions became. The more lives I was responsible for. And at some point they just stopped being people and became numbers. Acceptable losses. When I urged caution amongst my people upon our joining the Federation, I was given a parade. They celebrated my battle victories - my orders that brought about countless losses of life - and gave me an early retirement, dismissing my change of heart as easily as one tosses out a cupcake wrapper. All around me I saw the compromises, the gaps in what we once were as well as families with pieces I caused to be missing, and I couldn't live with these constant reminders around me. I needed an escape, so I joined the exchange program. Figured that if I didn't like the Federation maybe I could try to change it from within.” He let out a long sigh, and for the first time his world weariness showed through his intimidating exterior. “You, Ambassador, looked at the Federation and without anywhere else to go, said no. Refused to be a pawn. I can tell you don’t like the way things are. I see the anger in your eyes when they treat Alexa like an object, or Jarby as a criminal. I feel like I lost my will to fight, thought I’d tag along and borrow some of yours.”
Estrilla chuckled at the old general. “You stormed an embassy single-handed, how much more fight do you need?”
The Rinoxian let out a deep rumbling laugh. “And it was glorious!”
The human laughed as well. “Yes, it was.”
Fire kindled in Embar's eyes as his weariness seemed to evaporate. “So, you want to take on the Sentinels? Then I’m in. Let the spirit of Rambo be with us.”
Allistan’s pen was clicking furiously. “Take on the Sentinels. You all make it sound so simple.” He clicked his pen one final time, then put it down and turned to face Aaron. “You made me feel uneasy about the Federation, its rules and systems.” He glanced at Alexa, seeming halfway ashamed. "Were we wrong?" Feeling unsettled, Allistan's hand moved, halfway reaching for his pen before thinking the better of it. "I came with you to explore my own ideas, my beliefs. I may not agree with everything you have done, or everything you say, but I want to keep exploring this human way. Only through questions can we grow. As for our mission, it is our duty to help our friends, and our moral obligation to take steps to stop a war created by subterfuge. I am not leaving.”
As everyone seemed to be taking this opportunity to speak, Danyd coughed and raised his hand. “I don’t care about the Hive, or the Sentinels, or a war. There’s always a bloody war somewhere.” He shrugged as everyone looked at him in shock at his candid statement. “I joined you because you offered me a big pile of credits and, quite frankly, thanks to you I wasn’t very popular on the station anymore. They can suck Tulseria’s balls – I was stuck, and you got me out of there. As long as you’re crapping out credits and sharing them around, I’m in.”
“That’s disgusting!” Jaym scrunched up her face. “And a damn lie.” She looked at the Satryn as he scowled, his angry face telling her to be quiet. “He told me he was proud of you, proud to have a decent captain for once. When you saved Aiov, and after you set up Space Post he cried, and said” -Danyd was about to argue but she pointed at him, putting on a gruff voice in a poor impersonation- “Someone who looks out for the little guys, that’s a man you can follow into Tulseria’s embrace with a smile.’”
Danyd furiously and vehemently denied it. “I said no such thing, and I certainly didn’t cry!” He took a deep breath and calmed himself down, “I may have said it was good that someone was looking out for the smaller ships out there, and only because I know how hard that life is, but I never cried.”
Aaron decided to move things on. “It was your idea, and it was a good one. Space Post is gaining traction, especially in fringe worlds. Jaym, are you staying? This may be a little more experience than you wanted.”
It was true that she had signed on to get hands on experience with Hoban drives so she could advance her education and career prospects. She was also young and idealistic, sending home more money than her father had earned in a whole celes and taking part in the creation of new colonies. They had saved the leokas, stopped the sacrifices, and now it felt like she was part of a revolution about to sweep the galaxy. “I’m in. I want my life to make a difference and stopping a war is a pretty awesome difference!”
Her enthusiasm and naivete caused a chuckle around the table. Embar was about to speak but Estrilla cut him off. “This is going to be dangerous, you should think of your father and sister.”
“No.” Her voice was strong and final. “Arkellis is on the Imperium border. If the Sentinels succeed in attacking the Hive, that message said the Imperium was next. I’m doing this for them and everyone I love back home.”
Embar nodded as several others murmured their agreement. Ranjaz looked around, finally fixing his gaze on Chae’Sol. “Everyone else shared, your turn.”
Aaron raised his hands. “No need, if you don’t want to. I wasn’t asking, just making a point, but I am grateful you all have your own reasons for being here.”
Chae’Sol appreciated Aaron’s words, but decided to share his own truth. “I am here for Sassie.”
“What!?” Several voices cried out at once.
He gave a dashing smile. “My people have a legend of a great king, you know the type: started with nothing, eventually saved the kingdom sort of thing.” Nods spread around the table; it was a common theme on every world. “Well, this king was a friend to all, including the animals. It is said he could command beasts, and when a great enemy appeared every creature in his kingdom fought by his side. I loved that story as a kid.”
Jaym squirmed in her seat with excitement. “The King of Souls, he was amazing! He rode a flying Farnek, he had three beast companions: a small flying Len’uk called Chio, a ferocious Cronax called Duma and a clever Giloh called Sar. He once fought the Emperor of the Dead and regrew his arm mid-battle.” Several questioning looks caused her to pause. “I love Niham culture,” she said bashfully, “there have been six movies and two series about him, as well as three animated books.”
Chae’Sol shook his head in disbelief. Niham culture had exploded in popularity recently, especially their animation and pop culture. “Fantasy stories are popular on my home world - nobody thought you could actually communicate, let alone command an animal.” He looked to the corner of the room where Sassie was now curled up in one of the armchairs, snoring loudly. “I want to know if this myth could have been based on something real. Something my people have forgotten about themselves.”
Ranjaz laughed loudly. “That’s who you are!”
The Niham’s eyes narrowed. “What?” Jaym also seemed nervous.
A mischievous glint appeared in the Kittran’s eyes and his lips curled revealing his toothy grin. “Since you came on board the Azrimad something’s been bugging me. You seemed so familiar in a weird way, but I couldn’t figure out why. Honestly, I can barely tell you Niham apart.” Ranjaz shrugged at the gasps. Different species used different visual cues for recognition, and for the Kittran looking at the shape of ears, eyes and noses were less important than colour and pattern of fur. “Don’t judge me, half of you could barely tell the Kasurians apart.” He took a moment to enjoy putting them in their place. “It finally clicked.”
Chae’Sol, his eyes pleading, stood and waved his hands in front of Ranjaz. “How about you and I discuss this later? Like gentlemen?”
“Nope.”
Jaym joined in, moving her seat closer to Ranjaz. “Come on, it’s his secret to keep. At least hear him out.”
“Secret?” Estrilla said with a chuckle. “Are you talking about his career before he joined the military?”
“Doctor!” the Niham said loudly. “those files are confidential.”
Embar looked at Chae’Sol through narrowed eyes. “A secret career? A spy?”
Ranjaz joyously announced, “Oh, he’s been a spy. A detective as well, and I think he was a businessman who had never found love.”
Chae’Sol rolled his eyes, and Jaym leapt to his defence. “The businessman was allergic to women, it was the coffee shop owner who never found love.”
Estrilla shook her head, ruffling her feathers. “No, no. The ghost was allergic to women, the businessman lost his memory and forgot his fiancee.”
As Jaym and Estrilla began their in depth discussion, voices steadily rising, the others looked at Chae’Sol and Ranjaz with concern. Aaron was the one who finally realised what was happening. “You were an actor!”
Chae’Sol groaned and slumped into his seat as Ranjaz looked on triumphantly. “Oh, he was much more than just an actor.”
The Niham groaned. “Please, I have left that life behind.”
Suddenly unleashed from her vow of secrecy Jaym couldn’t hold back her excitement. “Oh my Tulseria, he was so much more than an actor! He was the most popular member of Niham Boyzz, and when his music career went solo he started acting! He was only the most famous person on the whole of Niham!”
Chae’Sol whimpered. “it was a long time ago. I never expected the recent galaxy-wide interest in our culture amongst certain demographics.” He was trying to remain polite about the strange people who had begun obsessing over the culture from his world. It wasn’t even their real culture, just a polished, idealised fantasy from the most mass market
Ranjaz was enjoying every moment of deflating the navigator. “Of course he loves the story of the Soul King, he was the star of the show!”
“Yes, yes,” the Niham said dismissively. “But, then I had to serve in the military and decided to leave that life behind. Far, far behind.”
Aaron nodded, he had suspected something was up when the former security officer somehow had intimate knowledge of the entertainment industry. “Well, it looks like it worked out in our favour. Maybe we can share some of your work another time.” He was pleased with the diplomacy of his response, giving Chae’Sol a chance to open up at his own pace.
Nobody was listening as the discussion had already broken off into many fragments. Estrilla, Jaym and Ranjaz ware in a heated, and highly animated, argument over which show should be shown first. Meanwhile, Embar was asking a sullen Chae’Sol a hundred questions about his newly-revealed past. Jar’Bek, Allistan and Danyd were left looking baffled at the impassioned arguments brewing between the doctor and assistant engineer.
Alexa took Aaron’s arm and led him away, picking up Aiov as Sassie grunted and rolled off her comfy seat to join them. The human allowed himself to be led, and as they reached the overlook he still had no idea what Alexa had planned. As they entered his quarters, though, he found himself resisting. “Why are we going in here?”
She ran her fingers through her silver hair, pushing it back from her face. “Time for some special training.”
Aaron was exhausted, lying on the floor of his quarters in a pair of shorts with sweat covering his body. Alexa lay beside him, holding his hand with a frustrated look on her face. “Stop trying to force it. Just breathe, and focus. You can do it, I'm certain.”
Aaron released her hand and rolled to his side, his back now to her. “That’s easy for you to say. It’s been twelve cycles and I can barely manage five minutes.”
She sat up and grabbed a water bottle and towel from the floor nearby. “You’re pushing too hard.”
He sat up and accepted the water and towel, quickly taking a long, refreshing drink. “I’m used to performing better, this is much harder than I expected.”
“That’s what she said.” They both laughed a little, easing the tension and Aaron’s frustration. She took the bottle from him with gentle hands. “Let’s try one more time.”
Ranjaz sat in the captain’s chair on the bridge, cautiously turning a matte black pistol over in his hands. He passed it back to Embar. “Yeah, I reckon this would probably go through most armour designed for energy weapons. It’s way too dangerous to use on a ship, though. Why’d you make it?”
Embar accepted the weapon. “Thought the captain might like it, something sitting on his hip as he talks to the Inorganics.”
The Kittran rolled his eyes. “Inorganics are like liquid, and shooting them with metal is basically giving them a snack. Energy weapons work great, he should take one of those.” He grinned. “Or five!”
Embar pulled back the slide on top of the gun, double checking to make sure the Kittran hadn’t put anything in there. “The Inorganics don’t allow them on the surface. I thought of this as more of a symbolic item, maybe a distraction?”
“A distraction?” Ranjaz pulled out his datapad. “So, you want to place a bet?”
The Rinoxian groaned and put the gun back in its holster. “No. And you shouldn’t be gambling on this. Lives are at stake.”
Sliding off the seat and moving in close, the Kittran lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Alexa has placed a bet.”
“Really?”
“Want to know what it is?”
Standing and pushing the Kittran back gently, Embar replied, “well, she would know her people best.”
“Ha!” Ranjaz jumped back on the captain’s seat, swinging his legs over the arm. “No cheating. No using Alexa for inside knowledge.”
Embar waved a hand at the irritating Kittran before returning his attention to his station. “We’ll reach planet Alpha-Numeric Designation in half a cycle. Let’s hope they have the energy to see this through.”
The wannabe captain let out a chuckle. “Aaron has been looking pretty drained lately. Special training.” He gave a knowing wink.
Embar nodded, ignoring the insinuation. “Judging by Alexa’s quietness and Aaron’s - well, his excessive combat training - things aren’t going well.”
Ranjaz put his datapad back down and turned to face Embar again. So far Aaron's managed to overcome everything the galaxy has thrown at him. Whatever this special training is, he's unable to perform." He waved away Embar's frown. "What I mean is, he's failing, and I don't think he likes to fail. He's getting pretty mad at himself.”
Tapping a system diagnostic box and swiping it to run, the Rinoxian nodded. “Just because his body didn’t reject the nanites doesn’t mean they can do this. I barely understand it myself, especially as it seems to be putting such a strain on their relationship.”
“Bah!” Ranjaz muttered, slumping back down to play with his datapad once more,“those two are like a pair of Narfs in a bog-hole.”
Embar shuddered at the image those words conjured. “Disgusting, but I get your point.”
Chae’Sol entered and pushed Ranjaz’s feet from the captain’s chair. “That’s not your seat.” He sat at his station and ignored the obscene gesture being made behind his back. Without turning to face the Rinoxian he asked, “Are you checking the weapons systems again?”
“Yes,” the Rinoxian answered pointedly. “Are you checking the Nav systems again?”
The navigator fired off a battery of tests and sat back in his chair watching them run. “Of course. We may need to make a swift escape, and it’s a long way to a friendly system. Danyd’s been taking things apart and putting them back together all over the ship. No one wants to get in trouble this far out. It’s no wonder that no-one found the Inorganics for so long in this dead space.”
A series of noises came from Ranjaz’s datapad, which were followed by a string of curse words. “Crap, I hate that level.” He tore his attention away from the screen and observed the others. “Well, we’re walking straight into trouble. Knocking down the door and marching right into its house with a list of demands.”
Chae’Sol looked at Ranjaz and then to Embar. “After this we should double check the armoury, make sure all the weapons have fresh energy cells.”
The Rinoxian nodded. “Right.”
Sassie, sitting in the back of the K7 while Alexa piloted, looked very unhappy in the custom environmental suit the Inorganic had commissioned back on the Azrimad. Fidgeting in his own helmet, Aaron understood the German Shepherd all too well. The human's issues, however, were compounded by the small container on his lap. “It feels kinda weird, having Norrin’s core in a box like this.”
Alexa didn’t look back. “He is most likely unaware of his surroundings.”
He picked up the box, tilting it slowly from side to side and observing the gentle shift of Norrin from within. “That is less reassuring than you think.”
The shuttle shuddered and listed to one side. “There's a storm," Alexa unhelpfully explained. "Be prepared, and be careful - we have a short walk outside from the landing pad to the facility.”
Aaron finally got the clasp on his helmet to lock into place. “I’m always careful.”
Once the shuttle landed and powered down, Alexa double checked their environmental suits and zipped up her jacket. “You’re sure you want to do this?" she asked as she finished her second safety pass, watching Aaron's face closely. "If we can't convince them, they will take back your nanites forcefully. They will remove our individuality. They may even kill us entirely.”
He held up the small box. “You want to end up in one of these?”
Her blue eyes, so similar to his own, stared hard at him. “I’d rather die than end up alone in the dark again.”
“Right.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “We ride together, we die together.”
She placed her hand on top of his. “Bad boys for life.”
Aaron smiled, lifting her spirits. “Hey, maybe they’ll trade their help for free EarthFlix and Premium Musicify subscriptions?” Not waiting for an answer he slammed the door release. The howl of the wind drowned out any further conversation, and they marched through the storm, buffeted from side to side by the strong winds full of grey sand. Sassie clung closely to his side, her covered tail firmly between her legs.
Looming ahead of them was a featureless square building, seeming to somehow be made of a single block of grey stone. It looked old - weathered - and even seemed fractured in places. As they approached the doorway, and were able to more clearly see through the swirling grey sands, they could tell it was already open. The dirt of the storm had been blown inside, building up to give an eerie abandoned feeling, and the feeling only deepened as sparsely-placed orange lights began to flicker. They entered, and the doors silently slid closed behind them, cutting channels through the built-up dirt.
The room was as blank as the exterior, and the flickering orange lights and dirt-covered floor gave off an oppressive, cave-like feel. Aaron looked around the small, desolate room as he kneeled to pat Sassie's side. "You're sure they are expecting us?"
The response he received didn't come from his companion. A fine line suddenly snaked down the wall ahead of them, and as it opened wider proper lighting began to stream in from the other side. As the second set of doors continued to open, Aaron's hand went to Embar's gift on his hip. He breathed deeply, quickly pulling his hand away, and stood up in an attempt to look as casual as possible.
Two bulky shadows were now visible in the light of the opening doors.
A hollow, metallic voice rang out. “FOLLOW.”
Next

Doc's Sports offers spread betting explained in a way that is easy for even novice bettors to understand. The definition of point spread is the predicted scoring differential between two opponents ... It’s time to get betting lines explained. What does the betting line mean – betting lines explained. Betting lines or point spread betting is a type of betting that was created to make the contest more even. You can compare line betting to a handicap applied to a team you bet on. Basically, the line determines certain limitations for betting. The three main key numbers in NFL point spread betting are 3, 7 and 10, representing a field goal, a touchdown or a field goal plus a touchdown. The two most common margins of victory are three and seven because of the type of scoring in the NFL. The run line in baseball betting is the equivalent to a point spread in other sports wagering. The run line is always set at –1.5 or +1.5. Example: A’s +1.5 (-130) Red Sox –1.5 (+110) In the above example, the Red Sox are a 1.5-point favorite, while the A’s are considered a 1.5-point underdog. Basically, point spread betting gives bettors an opportunity to bet on their favorite team even if they are less likely to win. Acting as an equalizer, point spread betting literally evens the playing field. Here’s an example. A point spread of seven points would be listed as follows.

Sports Betting: How to Read Point Spreads - YouTube

In this installment of Tropicana Sports Betting 101, you'll learn the basics of betting on the point spread of a game or event. Learn how to easily read the spread and breakdown the value of your ... A history of point spread betting, and a simple description of how to bet the point spread, using Super Bowl XLVII as an example. Check out more about bettin... A point spread... In this video, my brother Mark aka MFA, goes over further into sports betting and looks at the concept of point spreads, and how to read them. Video explaining how the Point Spread and Money Line work in sports betting. Go to: 00:16 The Spread 00:40 Money Line. NFL Point Spreads explained. Learn the basics of what an NFL point spread wager is, how the lines look and more!

Point Spread Betting Explained [Video] - How to Bet the Spread

On Spells and Society, or how 5e spells completely change everyone's lives.