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qqueenofhades · 5 years

Note

Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all).

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

#politics for ts #long post #anonymous #ask

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duckprintspress · 3 years

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I'm confused about the scoring system. It was said on the website that people were scored (numerically) and yet someone with much higher scores than I got didn't get accepted nor was offered the mentoring/beta/get to know discord.

I can't help but feel there is an error here. Is there a way to explain this?

Hi anon!

So there are a few things going on here, and I’ll try to explain them all.

Thing the First:

The scores on the rubrics are raw scores. Once we really got down-and-dirty with rating things, and I did some data analysis, I discovered that some of our raters were being a bit more generous than others. By the time we were done with all the scoring, there was nearly a 2 point split between the most generous and least generous scorer, on average. This was clearly a fairness issue - if one writer got our three most generous raters, and a second writer got our three least generous raters, even if they submitted identical stories, the second writer would get a lower rating. Rather than leave things like that, I did some research on statistical models that would standardize our ratings.

Basically, with the help of an excel algorithm (the “STANDARDIZE” function), we calculated the average that each rater gave, and that rater’s deviation from the mean (standard deviation), and plugged that in to convert their ratings from the 0 to 20 scale to a different, standard scale - which ran roughly from -2.5 to positive 2.5. What the standardization really did was - for each rater, whatever score they personally gave on average was 0 (so, if rater one’s average score was a 15...that was standardized to zero. And if rater two’s average score was 10...that was also standardized to zero. So now instead of comparing apples to oranges, we were comparing apples to apples). Then, if they rated a fic 1 standard deviation above or below their average, that became a 1 or a -1. If they rated it 2 standard deviations above or below their average, that became a 2 or a -2. And so on. This ensured that all of the stories were rated on the same scale and everyone was treated equally - standardization of test scores erased the differences caused by some people rating more strictly.

So, if you and your friends are comparing rubrics (which you’re welcome to do!) and you noticed that some of you did better, numerically, but had different outcomes, that’s likely a factor - one of you may have had more generous or more strict readers.

(Here’s some more information on how Standardization, here’s the very basics...there are other forms of standardizing, such as fitting folks to a bell curve, or curving the entire score, but those were not suited to our needs)

Thing the Second:

The top 20 authors, statistically adjusted for fairness, were invited to contribute to Add Magic to Taste. As it turned out, these top 20 DID roughly correlate to our top 20 by raw scores; comparing the two rankings, there are only two people out of the top 20 who wouldn’t have made it based on raw scores but did when their scores were adjusted to be standardized against the same scale.

The next 20 authors (ranked 21 to 40, when statistically adjusted for fairness) were also invited to Discord, and we’ve also invited them to potentially be involved in a second anthology. Depending on how many of them say yes, we may be able to open that opportunity up a bit more, but we’re not sure yet. Two of these people, by raw score, would have made the top 20, and three of these people, by raw score, would not have made the top 40. However, again, when we standardized the data to reflect the differences in rater strictness, these were the results.

That leaves another 62 people, who had various ratings all below those top 40. Some of them had a raw score fairly similar to their standardized score...and some of them didn’t. For example - my wife was an applicant to this, and she gave me permission to use her numbers for this example. By raw average? My wife came in 49th. However, one of her raters was someone who USUALLY rated very high, and gave hers a (relatively, compared to that person’s usual hig haverage) low score - when that was adjusted statistically, it caused my wife’s fic to plummet to 64th, because even though the raw number itself wasn’t bad, it was statistically well outside the norm for that rater. So, believe me when I say - these standardizations can make a big difference. If you, or anyone reading this, would like, I’m willing to send you what your standardized scores were (while still maintaining reviewer anonymity). I was originally thinking of adding them to the rubrics but doing so would have been a lot of work, and so I passed - next time we do this, they’ll probably be on there.

Thing the Third:

Often, what separated a fic that succeeded from a fic that didn’t was the range of raters scores. For example, the fic that ended up with the highest rating (by both calculations) wasn’t anyone’s favorite fic - but all three readers thought it was solid, and that was enough. My personal favorite fic? Didn’t even hit the Top 20. What often happened was -

Top fics: either all three people liked it pretty well, or one to two people adored it and the other person or people liked it well enough.

Second tier fics: either all three people thought it was okay, or one person loved it and two people were fairly meh about it.

Middle-range fics: either all three people thought it was average, or one person loved it and two people didn’t like it, or two people thought it was pretty good but one person hated it.

Lower quartile fics: either all three people didn’t think the fic was “up to snuff,” or one or two readers really hated it while a third thought it was average.

This isn’t universal, of course - but a fic that had one really high rating could easily do worse than a fic that had three so-so ratings, because...that’s how averages work. And that’s also why we had three readers for each - to try to even out some of the differences that would arise if someone had an extreme reaction to a fic that others didn’t. Obviously, it’s not a flawless system - no system was flawless - but with the resources and manpower we had, we thought this was a fair way to handle things, and we truly did our best. As soon as we broke 20 applications, we were never going to be able to accept everyone, and so we strived to create a transparent system that treated all of our applicants equally.

Thing the Fourth:

Now, in addition to the “why might scores be higher/lower” aspect of your question, there’s the aspect of “getting the Discord invite.” Now, the top 40 folks got Discord invites automatically, and those offers were based solely on the rating they received.

The other Discord invites that we sent out were not based on ratings alone! Just like we had a “reader subjective feelings” category on the rubric, when we’d finished rating all the stories, we were left with a conundrum - all of us had fics we liked that didn’t make the top 40. Maybe it was that “one person love it and two people didn’t like it” permutations. Maybe it was that all of us thought it was “good” but not “great.” Maybe some aspect of the story caught our eye. Based on our reactions, and the fics we saw that we wished had made it, we selected people to get invites. Those Discord invites were sent out based solely on subjective criteria.

Yes, we worried about doing this. Yes, we went back and forth about doing it at all. But in the end, what we decided was - we didn’t want to give Discord invites to everyone, because there were plenty of people we didn’t think their writing was quite ready yet - mentoring is an intensive prospect, and one for which we won’t get paid up front and might possibly never get paid, and while this all looks wonderful from the outside please do remember that we’re running a business - one that I’ve been working my ass off on for more than four months and have yet to earn enough to draw a single paycheck. So inviting everyone was never in the cards. And on the other hand, if we chose to give invites to no one, that would mean potentially having some people that caught our eye “slip through the cracks.” What if they got too discouraged to reapply? What if we missed the chance to work with them, after they’d impressed us?

To use an analogy - we saw something in everyone who applied, but in some it was “this is an uncut diamond, and we aren’t in the position to take it from raw to finished,” and in others it was, “this is a diamond with a crack, or a flaw, or a rough spot...and we think if we put in the work, we can get it to perfection.” And our verdict on the uncut diamonds isn’t, “this is uncut and it will never be cut,” it’s, “all of these diamonds have spent years honing themselves and working hard to strive for flawlessness, and but some are clearly farther along that journey than others. Once these uncut diamonds have shaped more of their rough edges themselves, we hope they’ll come back when they are ALSO only one flaw from perfection, and work with us then!”

There was no way for us to win, and there was also no fair way to distribute invites based solely on the raw scores, or even based solely on standardized scores, because some of the scores were sometimes not reflective our actual opinions of the writing. For example - if someone wrote a grammatically perfect story, with a compelling use of language, but the plot and characters were inaccessible to us because it required fandom knowledge we didn’t have, that might have scored very poorly, but we have every reason to think that if they’d chosen a different work that was more accessible they’d have done much better. Or, as another example - if someone’s writing was really sloppy, because of a lack of editing or possibly because English isn’t their native language - but they have a skill for creating characters, or setting a scene, or had excellent pacing - then again, they could have ended up with a score that didn’t reflect the actual potential that we saw in their work - using our judgement and expertise.

So, flat out - yes, there are inequalities in how the Discord invites were distributed to the 62 people who didn’t make the cut for either anthology. And yes, we agonized over whether to give them out at all. And no, I won’t swear that we always made the right choices - we were going by the one story submitted to us, and we had to use our best judgement based on what we were presented - what each applicant chose to submit. In the end, we invited the people who - regardless of their score - we personally thought were the closest to being sellable - in the sense of, “probably only missing one piece that would help with to get them from ‘didn’t make it’ to ‘now we’re talking.” And I truly, truly wish that we could have everyone. But if we spend all our time mentoring people, then we won’t have time for doing any of the other aspects of this business. We are not a writing school. We are a book publisher. This ISN’T just fandom, and I DO have to think about what is sellable and what isn’t, because in the end...I’m trying to make money, and pay my staff, and give our authors the highest royalties possible, and, and, and.

As a further note on this topic? We are still issuing new Discord invites, based on e-mail conversations we’re having with people. Several people who didn’t initially get those invites? Have now gotten them. It just depends on how people are responding to us, and the conversations we’re having, and lots of other factors.

And, as I tried to say in the post I put up earlier today about notifications: even the people who didn’t get invites have potential. Every single writer who applied has potential. All of you, even if you struggled with multiple areas, had some aspect in which you shined. In a perfect world, we would help you all. But this isn’t a perfect world, and I don’t have the hours in the day to bring up the people who aren’t already close, and I’m sorry about that. So, please, please - if you didn’t make it, don’t be discouraged, and don’t give up. You’re the only one who can tell your stories - if you don’t do it, no one else will. Find fandom friends who will give you honest critique. Learn to read your own writing with a critical eye. Track down stories that really speak to you, and read them like a writer - to see how the original writer put them together, and deliberately emulate what you thought worked. There are many, many ways to improve writing craft, and if ya’ll want to be published, either with us or with anyone, we strongly encourage you to examine whichever ones appeal to you and work for you.

There’s isn’t a single person who applied who couldn’t, one day, be published by Duck Prints Press.

We were never going to make everyone happy, however much we hate making people sad.

We did our best to make as many people as possible happy, while also doing what we feel to be best for Duck Prints Press.

If we hurt you - we’re sorry. We said in the application process that we’d be giving honest feedback, and we’ve never made a secret of the fact that this is a business and our goal is to publish books that sell - nor did we pretend that we’d be able to take more than 20, but we were so impressed by the quality of what we received that we did everything we could think of to open the doors to more folks, while still maintaining the core integrity of our business model. That means we have to narrow the pool; we can’t just take everyone, especially now, when we’re so small and new. Our desire to take as many people as possible is why anyone who wasn’t in the top 20 got an invite, and why we planned an entire second anthology on the fly, instead of no one below the top 20 getting anything except a rejection letter.

Now, as a final thing - it IS possible we made a mistake. We’ve spotted one big one already, and we’re working with that author to rectify the situation. If you truly believe we made a mistake, please e-mail us, and we can look into it. Our email is info @ duckprintspress dot com.

Sorry this got long - but I figured, if one person wondered this, others too, and as we have since day one - our goal is to be transparent, and so I thought it better to answer more thoroughly rather than less.

#duck prints press #add magic to taste #unforth replies #god i hope this didn't end up coming across as defensive #i've been working ten hours straight on anthology stuff and i'm exhausted #Anonymous

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kiapet2 · 3 years

Text

Aperture Sides Facility, Chapter 10: In Case of Implosion, Look Directly at Implosion

Masterpost

Chapter Summary: Thomas destroys things, and has a moral crisis

Chapter Warnings: Death Mentions, Philosophy about Turrets

“Wait,” you say, “you want me to destroy… that?”

“Precisely,” Logan says, adjusting his eye lens. “I was just inspecting how to go about dismantling the neurotoxin systems, but with the destructive capabilities of the Portal Gun such a task should be significantly simpler, if cruder.”

“Wait, this is the neurotoxin place? That’s what you’re doing here?” Roman says.

“Yes, keep up Roman. Our previous fight had various elements we had previously not accounted for in our planning, our foe’s access to neurotoxin being prominent among these. Sabotaging the neurotoxin and similar systems should increase our chance of success significantly, and are thus worth the time and effort spent seeking them out.”

“Wow, Logan, that’s a great idea!” you say.

“I am aware,” Logan replies, preening slightly.

You look at the neurotoxin generator, slightly intimidated by its scale. “So what do I do?”

“Do you see those pipes?” Logan says. “They seem to be pumping the neurotoxin. If you can destroy them, it will likely cease to function.”

Destroy the pipes, huh? You look around at the generator, looking for something you could drop on the pipes or otherwise use to disconnect them, but come up empty. Deciding to search a wider radius, you go down the nearby hall and come across a room with one of the lasers in it. Grinning in victory, you put one portal at the end of the laser, then go back to the generator room and use carefully placed portals to slice the pipes away.

A warning siren blares as an automated announcement declares, Warning! Neurotoxin pressure has reached dangerously unlethal levels. As you watch, the tall, thin shape of the neurotoxin generator crumples in on itself, before it and half the ceiling collapse into the pit below.

Behind you, the others start to cheer, and you join in, exhilarated by the scale of what you’ve just done.

“What now?” you say.

“I am not sure,” Logan says. “There may be other apparatus that it could provide a tactical advantage to destroy, but I am not familiar enough with this part of the facility to identify them.”

“If I could make a suggestion?” Janus interjects smoothly.

“No, you can’t,” Virgil snaps.

“C’mon Virge, be reasonable-” Roman starts, but Virgil cuts him off.

“No, seriously, what is he still doing here? Are we forgetting that all of this is his fault?”

“Now Virgil, that doesn’t seem fair, does it?” Janus says. “After all, I wasn’t the one who put Remus in his current position. That was Thomas, remember?”

“Only because you tried to kill him! Twice!”

“Right, and humans have never hurt this facility before. It was definitely was my fault when the humans who ran this place made the disaster that led to us being separated and the facility nearly being destroyed!”

“That was years ago, though,” Roman protests.

“And I refuse to let it happen again.”

“But you locked us out!” Virgil yells. “You didn’t let us rejoin you after we were separated, and then you put all the humans in cryosleep for good measure!”

“I was doing what I thought was best for the safety of this facility!” Janus yells back, losing his careful poise. “You of all people should understand that!”

“Was it for the safety of the facility when you made us murder the Companion Cube?” Patton cries.

There’s a pause, and then Janus makes a sound of deep and utter confusion. “It- it was literally a cube I painted with hearts.”

“Okay, okay, guys, settle down,” you say. Surprisingly it seems to work, with all parties in the argument stopping and turning to look at you.

“Look, I know not everyone gets along. There’s been some disagreements, and misunderstandings, and attempted murders. But that’s something we can argue about after we’ve stopped this facility from exploding, do you understand?”

Roman and Patton both nod their assent, while Janus and Virgil mutter darkly but seem to accept it for now.

“Good,” you say. “Now what were you going to say, Janus?”

“As I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted,” Janus says, ignoring the hiss Virgil gives him in response, “There is one place that it might be worth paying a visit. Tell me, Thomas: have you heard of the Turret Factory?”

One trek later, you find yourself standing in front of a door labeled with yellow lettering, “FACTORY: Authorized Personnel Only”.

“I assume this is it,” you say.

“No, it’s a different door leading to a factory,” Janus drawls.

Rolling your eyes, you walk through the door and inside the factory. After going down a short hallway, you come upon a conveyor belt. On it are a series of turrets, standing upright on the belt as it moves. For a moment you panic and go to duck, then you realize they are all faced away from you and straighten up, hoping no one else noticed.

After a few moments of looking, you notice that a few of the turrets on the belt look a bit off- malformed, missing parts of their chassis, or otherwise not like you would expect turrets to look. Further down the conveyor belt is a target, which each turret seems to be shooting at as it goes by. The strange turrets all seem to be missing the target even though it’s only about feet away, and as soon as they do a spring comes up from the conveyor belt and launches them, screaming, into a nearby furnace.

It’s honestly pretty disturbing, and when a dysfunctional turret starts to ride past you on the belt you impulsively use the portal gun to grab it off the belt.

“Oh thank god,” the turret squeaks. “You saved my bacon, pal.”

“No problem,” you say absently. The turret seems content just hanging in the air like that, so you continue to carry it as you move deeper into the factory.

“In here,” Logan calls, and you move into the room to see the same assembly belt of turrets riding by. The furnace is actually in this room, and you wince at the increased volume of the dysfunctional turrets’ shrieks.

“Place me in the wall?” Logan says, and you pull your attention away from the plight of the dysfunctional turrets long enough to notice what you should have at the start: that this room also contains a control booth for the belt, which appears to be locked.

You take Logan by the handles and, used to this routine by now, slot him into a socket in the wall. After a moment the door to the booth clicks open, and you step in and see a regular looking turret sitting inert on a platform.

“That’s the Master Turret,” Logan says. “The turrets are being produced based on its design, and it serves as quality control- any turrets that do not match its specifications are discarded.”

As if on cue, a defective turret is launched, screaming, into the furnace.

“Hopefully, removing it may halt the process,” Logan adds.

Using the Portal Gun, you carefully pick up the Master Turret and move it to the side, making sure to set it back down facing away from you.

The others cheer, and you turn back and smile at them. Then you look back just in time to see another defective turret get thrown into the fire with a staticky cry of, “Nooooooooo!”

“What happened?” you say, looking back and forth between the conveyor belt and Logan. “Why didn’t it work?”

Janus jumps in before Logan can respond. “The Turret Redemption Line remembers the last template it used. Removing it won’t change anything.”

“And how do you know that when Braniac over there didn’t?” Roman says suspiciously.

Janus huffs. “You’re right, it makes no sense for me to actually know things about this facility after running it for decades. Clearly I’m not needed here when you have Logic’s flawless theories to go off of.”

“Hey!” Patton says. “Don’t be mean to Logan!”

“It is fine,” Logan says. “I am used to my input being undervalued.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that-” you start.

“Moving on,” Logan interrupts, “If you will give me some time, I can attempt to hack into the line itself to shut it down.”

You look back at the turret line, where another defective turret is being thrown into the flames. “How long should that take?”

“It depends on the coding,” Logan says. “A few minutes, at the least. A few hours at most.”

You sigh. “I guess we’d better get started, then.”

“Or,” Janus interjects, “Instead of wasting our time dismantling a system in a way that will be obvious to Remus once it’s done, we could just switch the template.”

“Switch the-” You look back over your shoulder, at the defective turret you rescued earlier. “Would that work?”

Logan hums. “Indeed. If a defective turret was used as a template, the Turret Redemption Line would consider them to be the standard, and the normal ones to be ‘defective’.”

“It would be the perfect ruse,” Janus says. “Everything here would register as working properly, but as soon as Remus attempted to use them against us-”

“They wouldn’t work,” you say, eyes widening.

“Providing us with a decisive advantage,” Janus finishes smugly.

There’s a pause as you all take that in. Then Roman throws out his handles in his typical dramatic gesture. “Then let us begin-”

“Wait!”

You turn to see Patton hanging just behind you, his eyes wide with concern.

“If you did what Janus is suggesting… wouldn’t that mean the healthy turrets would all be incinerated?”

Janus scoffs. “Obviously, that’s the whole point.”

“But we can’t do that!” Patton says. “The turrets can think, they have feelings! That one even thanked you for saving its life!”

“Yeah!” the defective turret next to you cheers. “What are we talking about?”

Patton gestures to it with one handle. “See? We can’t take an action that ends in the needless killing of even more of them than before!”

“Of course we can,” Janus says. “Being used and disposed of is what turrets are for.”

“Not while I’m here, it isn’t,” Patton says firmly.

His tone brooks no argument. Janus, however, doesn’t seem to get the message.

“Have you heard of the Trolley Problem, Patton?”

Patton cocks himself to the side questioningly. “The what-now?”

“The Trolley Problem,” Logan says. “It is a thought experiment, first posed by moral philosopher Philippa Foot and then expanded on extensively by other philosophers, which poses the question of whether it is morally appropriate to save the lives of five innocent people by sacrificing the life of one.”

Roman narrows his eye in thought. “So, the turrets are the one innocent person in this scenario?”

“If you fail at stopping Remus, every being in this facility, living or otherwise, will likely be killed,” Janus says with an exaggerated sort of solemnity. “Next to that, the lives of a few turrets seems a rather small sacrifice, wouldn’t you think?”

“No!” Patton says. “I mean, it’s not that simple, you can’t- you can’t just reduce lives to- to math-”

“Oh, we absolutely can,” Janus says smoothly. “And in this situation, we must.”

As Patton and Janus continue to argue you find yourself staring at the assembly line of turrets, listening to the shrieks of the defective ones as they are thrown into the fire. What Janus is saying makes a lot of sense- turrets are something that could easily kill you if you were caught off guard, and it’s not like you haven’t knocked your fair share of them over in your time. But there’s a difference there, between jarring a few turrets’ circuits in self-defense and choosing to throw dozens into an incinerator in cold blood. In the end, that’s an order you’re just not sure you can give; your stomach roils at the very thought.

“Logan,” you hear yourself saying, “let’s get you started with the hacking.”

“Thomas,” Janus hisses, “what are you doing?”

“Making a decision,” you say, taking Logan down from his movement rail and locking him into place in the nearest wall.

“No, Thomas, wait,” Janus says frantically. “If you do this, we’ll lose out on a vital strategic advantage-”

“I heard your arguments, Janus,” you say. “But I just can’t take an action that leads to the slaughter of innocents. Even if those innocents are death machines full of bullets.”

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Janus says shrilly. “These are turrets!”

“I know,” you say, “and we’re saving their lives. That’s final.”

Janus sputters for a moment, then huffs and seems to pull back into his practiced air of indifference.

“Alright. I’m sure that will work out splendidly for you, honey. Do be sure to remember this when you’re being shot full of holes, okay?”

Grimacing, you turn back to where Logan is working, and try to put Janus’ words out of your head.

Janus is sleeping again when the rest of you gather to discuss plans for the upcoming fight. You aren’t terribly surprised; the whole turret debacle was emotionally draining for you, and you weren’t one of the people arguing, much less operating on a few volts’ worth of power. Still, you find yourself missing his perspective at certain points.

“There is also the matter of who should be put in Remus’ place,” Logan says. “In the conflict against Janus we went in without a plan as to who would be the replacement Core, and it is my belief that that acted in our detriment.”

You chuckle nervously. “Uh, yeah, about that…”

“What is it?” Roman says.

“I… kind of promised I would put Janus back as head of the facility if he helped me find you guys?”

Your admission is met with stunned silence. Then Virgil growls, “You WHAT?”

“It was the only way he’d help me!” you protest. “And he’s been a model teammate so far!”

“I do not doubt that you made what was the best choice you had at the time,” Logan says carefully, “but Janus’ current behavior cannot be taken as proof of his ultimate intentions. It may be in his best interest to aid you while in the form of a Solanum tuberosum, but once he is in charge of this facility he will no longer be obligated to give you your freedom, nor to leave you alive.”

You want to argue against what Logan’s saying, but there’s an undeniable- well, Logic- to what he’s saying that makes your gut churn uncomfortably.

“He said that it would be safer to just let me go,” you try.

“And you believed him?” Virgil says incredulously. “Thomas, Janus is a liar. Deceiving people is what he does. You can’t trust him and there’s no way in hell you can risk putting him back where he was.”

“But if Thomas goes back on his word, doesn’t that make him just as bad?” Patton says quietly.

You turn to look at him in surprise. Beside you, Roman coughs awkwardly. “Uh, Pat, isn’t that a little harsh?”

“I think it’s just harsh enough, Mister,” Patton admonishes. “How would Thomas going back on our part of the agreement be any different than Janus going back on his?”

“Because Thomas hasn’t ever tried to kill him!” Virgil snaps.

“Well yes,” you say, “but that might have been because of the compulsion, not Janus himself.”

Your statement is met with blank stares. You groan and facepalm. “Oh gosh, I forgot to bring that up.”

“Bring what up”? Logan says.

“You know how Remus was helping us, and then once he replaced Janus he immediately turned on me?”

Roman makes a wounded noise. Logan inclines himself questioningly and says, “You have an explanation for that, I assume?”

You nod, then almost say according to Janus before thinking better of it and biting the phrase back. “There’s this sort of itch that makes whoever’s running things compulsively need to test. I think it might change their behavior too, though I don’t know how much.”

“Intriguing,” Logan says. “So you are saying this ‘itch’ is the reason Janus behaved in the manner he did?”

You shrug. “I’m saying that whoever ends up in charge, will need to take that into account. Janus said he can control it, at least better than Remus.”

“I don’t know about you all, but I have a rather hard time believing that, considering everything,” Roman says.

“Agreed,” Logan says. “His actions were clearly in line with such a compulsion.”

“And that means that even if he’s sincere now, he probably won’t be if we put him back there,” Virgil says darkly.

“But then if Janus can’t handle it, who can?” Patton asks. It takes him a moment for him to notice you all looking intently at him. “What?”

“You’re the Morality Core, Padre,” Roman says. “Isn’t keeping things on track, morally-speaking, what you were made for?”

Patton blinks. “I- I suppose.”

“You do seem to be the most likely to be able to resist the corrupting influence,” Logan agrees reluctantly. “Though I must stress that the knowledge and logical prowess I possess would also be a key component in both repairing and running the facility, and therefore-”

“Oh, enough with the ego trip, cybernerd,” Roman says, waving a handle dismissively. “We’re talking about moral corruption here; it isn’t actually your area of expertise.”

“Maybe not, but the value of knowledge-” Logan starts.

“But isn’t that another argument in favor of Janus?” you interject. “He’s the one who ran this place for the last few decades- if anyone has the knowledge we need, it’s him. Uh, no offense, Logan.”

“Now why would I be offended at that,” Logan says flatly.

“I mean, whoever ends up in charge, we can all still advise them, right?” Roman points out. “So, if we made Patton our illustrious leader, Logan- and I guess Janus, if he doesn’t turn on us- would still be able to give him the knowledge needed, even if they weren’t the ones directly running things.”

That is a good point. An annoyingly good point, because now you’re more confused and torn than ever.

You turn to Patton. “Would you be okay with replacing Remus? The last time we tried, it was a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing. But knowing what we know now… I wouldn’t want to put you in that sort of risk, if you weren’t completely comfortable with it.”

Patton looks back and forth between all of you. “I, well, I um. I mean-”

He takes a deep breath, or at least makes a sound like one. “I can’t say I’m completely morally okay with tricking Janus like that, kiddo. I know that we’re in a difficult situation, but some things are just wrong. But I also want to make sure everyone in this facility is okay. And if putting me up there is the best way to do that… how could I ever turn that down?”

“Uh, Padre, that wasn’t really a clear answer,” Roman says, not unkindly.

Patton sighs. “I guess my answer is that you know the situation better than we do, Thomas. You’ve spent more time with Janus, and suffered more from the results of this ‘itch’ thing, than any of us have during this whole kerfuffle. So, if you say I’m the best chance everyone here has to be okay, I’ll trust you on it. And if you think we can trust Janus- well I’ll trust you on that too. Okie dokie?”

“Pat,” you say, feeling a little faint, “that’s a lot of responsibility.”

“I know, kiddo,” Patton says sadly, “and I’m so sorry. But when it comes to this, I really don’t know the way.”

But I don’t either, you want to scream. But you can’t, not when everyone else are giving you gentle nods, are looking at you with such trust in their eyes, like you’re someone worth listening to, someone worth leading them. So instead you do your best to smile, probably coming out as more of a grimace.

“Give me some time to think it over?” you say, strained.

“Of course,” Logan says. “We have some time, yet.”

Patton gives his own approximation of a smile. “It’s gonna be okay, kiddo. Whatever happens, whatever decision you make, I promise it’s going to be okay.”

You nod, and try with all your heart to believe it.

You gently grab Virgil’s arm when the impromptu meeting is over, pulling him to the side while the other three continue to discuss strategy amongst themselves.

“Hey, can we talk?”

Virgil’s eye dilates in fear, and you hold out a pacifying hand.

“Nothing bad, I promise! Just something that might be important. I need to know why you wouldn’t let me put you in charge, back in the fight with Janus.”

Your attempts to reassure Virgil seem to have backfired, as he is now shaking audibly. He doesn’t respond to your question.

“I’m not mad, Virgil,” you say, trying to make your voice soft and nonthreatening. “A lot of things went wrong back there, it was by no means your fault alone. But I need to know if this is going to happen when we face Remus.”

“If you’d had me replace Janus, the end result would have been the same,” Virgil says. “I would have lost control and become something terrible.”

You shake your head. “Virgil, there’s no way for you to know that.”

Virgil floats up and down agitatedly. “Yes, there is!”

“How?” you say. “How can you be so sure that you couldn’t have handled it?”

Virgil comes to a sudden stop in the air and looks you directly in the eye, his purple eye almost unnaturally still and focused.

“Because I’m one of them, Thomas. I’m corrupted.”

Despite yourself, you draw back.

Virgil’s light flickers slightly. He flies up into the bowels of the facility and is once again gone.

You cut down on a swear. Here Virgil opened himself up, and you reacted exactly the way he’d feared you would.

But should you be afraid? Your record with corrupted spheres trying to kill you isn’t exactly great.

No, you’re just letting your worries run away with you. Virgil wouldn’t ever hurt you; he’s your friend.

Of course, you’d considered Remus a friend, before...

You growl and shake your head. You can’t keep thinking this way. You need to be able to trust your friends or you’ll never get out of here.

The potato’s yellow light blinks back to life. “Well it’s about time he told you.”

“I take it you heard that?” you say.

Janus hums in affirmation.

“I just don’t know how to feel about it,” you say, unsure why you’re confiding in Janus of all people but not wanting to stop. “He’s my friend, and I trust him, but if he’s corrupted… is he going to end up like Remus, or-” or you, you think but don’t say.

“You all keep using that word- corrupted,” Janus says. “Tell me, Thomas, what does ‘corruption’ even mean?”

You think about it for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t really know. I guess that’s why I’m so worried and confused.”

“It means that we don’t behave the way we they wanted us to. The human scientists couldn’t make us be exactly what they wanted, so they said we were corrupted and used that as justification to replace and discard us. Corruption is a lie created in the name of control.”

“Right, and it has nothing to do with the fact that you’ve both tried to kill us,” you shoot back.

“Oh, for Science’s sake, will you just get over that already?” Janus says. “It’s not like I succeeded, so it scarcely matters at this point.”

“Yes, it matters! It matters a lot!”

Janus sighs. “In all… honesty, Thomas,” he says like the word pains him, “I do intend to honor our deal when this is all over. Killing you gains me nothing now, and I have other subjects to use for testing.”

You just barely hold back from flinching. “I, uh, appreciate that, Janus.”

“Hey, are you guys all ready to go?” Roman says, popping out from the nearest wall. You pull yourself back to the present and smile at him.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

And if you could have just one conversation that didn’t make you feel even more guilty and confused, that might even be the truth.

#aperture sides facility #my writing #ts storytime

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alphaternal · 4 years

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* MAISIE LOCKWOOD

Benjamin Lockwood’s only daughter had died in 1995, a little over two years after the incident which ultimately destroyed Jurassic Park. Devastated and desperate with grief, Lockwood did the unthinkable: he attempted to clone a human child from the DNA of his daughter. When they were young men, John Hammond and Benjamin Lockwood built a custom lab under Lockwood’s estate, which ultimately led to the founding of International Genetics Incorporated (InGen). He had all the resources at his disposal, and no authority to stop him. When Hammond had discovered what he was doing, their friendship was shattered, and Hammond had him removed from InGen entirely. But he did not stop Lockwood. Hammond had loved Maisie like she was his own family, empathizing with his friend. But he could no longer support him, in any capacity. Lockwood agreed to remove himself from InGen’s board of directors with very little compensation, under the condition that Hammond agreed not to speak of what he had done (and secretly continued to do).

Lockwood’s guilt over this gross breach of ethics is palpable, especially as he is dying from a terminal illness. He wants redemption. He wants to ‘save himself,’ as he had put it.

But why? What is so genuinely terrible about human cloning?

Animal cloning exists, and has existed for decades, commonly conducted through Somatic Cell Nuclear Transplantation. But primates have always been particularly difficult to clone, arguably more so than any other species on earth. Since the 1950s, when researchers successfully cloned a frog, scientists have cloned dozens of animal species since then, including mice, cats, sheep, pigs, cows... and, of course, dinosaurs. In each case, researchers encountered problems and complications that needed to be overcome with trial and error. It was not flawless, and certainly not always successful. Under Masrani Global, InGen had refined and perfected the cloning process for genetically engineered and gene-spliced animals, creating a seamless and patented transition. But Lockwood had no access to their resources or research, and was no longer welcomed by the company.

Maisie’s remains were never buried; her body was kept in cryostasis to provide ample samples for Benjamin’s obsessive research in human cloning. There were trials and there were errors. At first, he had used the wombs of living people, under the pretense of requiring a surrogate mother. Lockwood targeted several surrogate agencies, and made huge donations to their organizations, effectively discouraging suspicion. He would also pay the surrogate mothers the full price they requested, regardless if the embryos made it to full term or not. Artificial wombs were also utilized, engineered and refined over several decades; artificial wombs proved to work better, but were not completely successful. Overall, his research would constantly hit a wall. Deformities. Miscarriages. Trial, and error.

Until August 19, 2006; finally, a breakthrough. Using an enhanced artificial womb, Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC), Extrauterine Fetal Incubation (EFI), and CRISPR-C9 gene editing technologies, Maisie Lockwood was born again.

But at what cost? The lies, the violation of ethics...

Maisie’s clone was homeschooled, isolated to the estate, and raised primarily by her governess Iris and Benjamin Lockwood himself, until he was diagnosed with spinal meningioma. As a child, she would naturally trust her caregivers, and learned very quickly that asking too many questions about her "mother" would upset her grandfather (at one point, he had even cried). She had no knowledge of her true origins, and was carefully deceived by her “grandfather” and governess. By all accounts, they raised her with the love and affection a child needed, but they did not allow her to leave the estate. As a result, Maisie is incredibly imaginative, and is known to pretend to go on safaris around the Lockwood mansion. She was the perfect physical replica of her original, and naturally curious, but wary of strangers (running away when Claire turned to look at her and caught her spying, and hiding from Wheaton as she spied on him, too). She also appears to have a photographic memory, after easily inputting a security code she had watched Eli use to enter the Lockwood’s underground lab. She can scale and climb Lockwood’s mansion, very likely because she had been doing this for a few years to escape her room and explore the grounds of the estate. Her behavior and her situation indicates that she very rarely left her home. In all her young life, she had never left Northern California.

The circumstances regarding Maise’s birth and how she had came to be born was something that Owen could not ignore. Genetic power had been unleashed; cataclysmic, man-made change. But Maisie Lockwood was just a child; that was all Owen saw. A child who needed help, needed protection, needed to recover from the tragedy of losing her grandfather and nearly being torn apart by a genetically engineered monster. She needed a safe environment.

Owen knew that Maisie’s future would be a series of traumatizing events if he didn’t actively interfere. Eli Mills was legally assigned to be her sole guardian after Lockwood died. Eli was dead. She had no birth records, no hospital records (Lockwood had a personal doctor that took house calls), and would ultimately be syphoned into the foster care system. Lockwood was also a wealthy man. If it is discovered that his death was unnatural, that he was murdered, Maisie’s origins would come into question. Owen knew it would only be a matter of time before people realized the truth... and what happens, then? Would she end up in a sterile lab, being poked and prodded, and made into someone else’s experiment? The whole world would gawk at the first successful human clone in history. Maisie would never be able to live a normal life.

So, he took her. Damned the consequences. He would go on to homeschool her, shelter her, and essentially make sure she lived a normal, healthy childhood, recovering from her trauma. Owen will eventually put her through public school, after making special arrangements to give her a new identity. When she is thirteen, they have a serious conversation in which Owen asks her if she would like to be adopted, if she’d like to call him dad. After everything Maisie had been through, she deserved to decide. She deserved to know that her consent was important, first and foremost.

#HC.#FALLEN KINGDOM.#long post

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sunny-hopewell · 4 years

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#1 - the empty society

posted by sunny hopewell on sept. 12th, 20XX

DISCLAIMER: Please note that, just by reading this, you may succumb to the very phenomenon described here. My hope is that the next people or intelligent life who read this are either themselves resilient to it, or that enough time has passed that the sheer weight of this knowledge no longer causes such a heavy impact on the reader.

This is an attempt to record the phenomenon, once referred to colloquially as “ghosting,” that has resulted in a mass decrease in the Earth’s human population. More specifically, the latest estimate (prior to the disappearance of professionals who had counted) was that only 0.002% of human life remains. The majority of this phenomenon was said to occur within the last two years.

It began on a small scale. People across the world would report sudden disappearances of their friends, loved ones, and coworkers. As an odd aspect of this phenomenon, if these people who disappeared had jobs or projects that occupied the majority of their time, their workload would somehow still show up completed— right where it needed to be, and often times completed perfectly.

Early news coverage described this “ghosting” phenomenon as a global pandemic that dwarfed the prior pandemic, COVID-19. However, it was not long before coverage was reduced to a single global news outlet. This was in direct response to the fact that this phenomenon somehow spread not by contact, but by deep awareness of the phenomenon itself. So, if the news was widely spread in a panic, it would lead to an increase of “ghostings” all across the globe.

Further attempts were made to study and contain this phenomenon, but not only did researchers seem to succumb to it rather quickly, corporate entities valued the free, flawless labor of “ghosts” over the lives and families of their own employees. There were reports, at the peak of this phenomenon’s impact, of such organizations locking their employees in rooms, forcing them to listen to readings of these articles on repeat until they vanished right where they stood. Often this process was recorded to take less than half an hour to empty a room of hundreds. As this inevitably escalated into mass disappearances, attempts were made by remaining global leadership to, immediately, cease all discussion of the “ghosting” phenomenon in order to contain its spread. Soon, though, even those in leadership would vanish some way or another, and those who remained were left to decide for themselves how to handle this unique situation.

I understand that posting this on the internet during this is, in and of itself, a major risk to any non-ghost readers, hence the warning at the beginning of this blog post. For the record, I have (and will continue) to save these records in various digital and print formats to distribute across the land to increase their chances of discovery later. Each one will contain multiple iterations of the warning above, but knowing human tendency towards curiosity, I know this phenomenon will be discovered at some point, even if it is in the very distant future.

The internet itself, during this time, is its own kind of enigma. The user accounts of those “ghosted” individuals continue to show signs of frequent use (often in accordance with their pre-ghost usage). However, their patterns of language and communication are no longer discernible to any non-ghost. In the beginning, it appeared to professionals that these accounts made procedurally-generated statuses, post, and messages. Eventually, as the web became inundated with these ghost-users, they seemed to learn vocabulary from one another. Now, all ghost-generated activity on the web is virtually unfathomable word-vomit. Not only does pondering this material fill any aware survivor with a despair— which seems to be the deadly variable that ultimately results in being ghosted— it also makes finding any non-ghost users on the web incredibly difficult to locate. Search engines and social media no longer function efficiently in doing so.

Websites and social media platforms themselves, at first, began releasing “updates” to their infrastructure that no longer made any rational sense. Soon, much to my own personal fascination, I would discover the emergence of new platforms that, because they make no rational sense, are unusable to non-ghosts. The internet now, as it stands, is nearly obsolete. I’m not confident that this internet-copy of this blog post will even remain readable or accessible for very long. Furthermore, this phenomenon appears to be beginning in the mail and package-delivery systems, respectively— mail will arrive and pile up at households with notices that make no sense. Fortunately, any packages that arrive with unreadable labels just appear to be random goods you might see in online shopping, so sometimes these are a delightful surprise in the midst of this hellish seen.

I’m going to backtrack, as I haven’t really described the ghosting phenomenon’s labor aspects in-depth. The cities, towns, and homes are virtually perfect, now. Lawns are mowed, any wear-and-tear is replaced or repaired overnight. No sign remains of large scale riots from when corporate ghost-makers were being chased out of town— everything looks and functions just as it did pre-phenomenon. Just today, I walked into a local fast food franchise and purchased my food at an empty counter. I can’t quite describe what the process looks like— it’s almost like paying attention to any direct observation of this ghost-labor is impossible. Sometimes, I have no memory between stepping into the store and stepping out with whatever I purchased.

I still work my usual clerical job, but I do it remotely using my laptop. Every other Friday, the same direct deposit ends up in my bank account. I suppose that I could probably just stop working and still receive this pay, but the routine itself helps me keep track of time and feel as though I am somehow still contributing to society.

So, now to answer your burning question: why is some rando online able to discuss this phenomenon so in-depth without, themself, ghosting? I can’t be certain, but my strong hypothesis is that giving into despair or apathy towards humanity is ultimately what causes someone to “ghost.” I’ve come to this conclusion by encountering a few survivors— less than 20 in the city which I now reside— who all share a thread of hope for the future. My pseudonym on these blog posts is meant to promote a sense of hope for a better future— a sort of boost to a reader’s morale before I impart what may be some kind of distressful accounts.

The next question I imagine some folks may have is, what gives sunny hopewell hope? Honestly, simply the idea of recording these last bits of humanity’s final times for the future invigorates me to keep going. I am sure that, once I am unable to interview any more individuals in this way, I will succumb to the phenomenon as well. I like to think I’ve made peace with that, but how can one be so sure anymore? Still, I let this hope to document humanity’s last days fuel me as long as there is still any left to document.

If it hasn’t become clear by this point, this will not be the only blog post. I have already collected a couple of interviews with survivors in this city already, and I am continuing to search the city for any others willing to speak with me.

If anyone is out there reading this now, and you think you can handle listening to these stories, please stick around. And, even if not— please spread any hope you have for the future to those you may encounter. It may be just what saves us all.

‘Til next time,

- sunny hopewell

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tags: #ghosting #hope #humanity #nonfiction

#ghosting #hope #humanity #nonfiction #horror #loneliness #sunny-hopewell #the empty society

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echodrops · 6 years

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Hot wings(Dabihawks)?

I actually answered this one just a second ago, but it occurred to me that maybe it would be better to separate the post since combining multiple fandoms in the same post might distract people. So here’s Hawks/Dabi by itself!

Hawks/Dabi Hot Wings:

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

HAVE I MENTIONED I LOVE PAIRING HEROES AND VILLAINS??? Because I love pairing heroes and villains!! I love pairing foes on opposite sides together so much that I could probably just make a living talking about all my favorite foe yay ships.

Honestly, I actually shipped this as a crack ship from day one based on the ridiculous name they got here on tumblr, and I had no issues shipping it even before there was actual canon interaction, just because that’s how much I love heroes and villains, BUT THEN THEY GOT AN ON-SCREEN PRIVATE CONVERSATION SCENE (poor Shigaraki hasn’t even gotten one of those with Dabi yet lmaoooo) and it was all over for me.

Let it be known that if there is one type of character I like more than any other type of character, any other archetype, any other model or role in a story–I love, beyond life itself, double agent characters. They’re just a breeding ground for all the things I love absolutely most in terms of angst and drama: a terrible conviction to do what’s right, inevitably clashing against their growing understanding for the beliefs of the opposite side, the livewire of danger threaded through every one of their scenes, the tense moments, never knowing when the disguise will falter–worse, the constant questioning undercurrent of whether or not the mask might become real… The delicious tension just makes my heart race in any good double agent scene I come across, and Hawks is no exception. He is in so, so, so much danger and you can tell he wants to do what’s right, he wants to help people, but his own past and feelings about the responsibility forced on to him because of his role as the number two hero might leave him amiable or at least more susceptible to the League’s message that hero society is deeply flawed and needs to be over-turned. Hawks is a good boy who will do what’s right–but is his definition of “right” really completely aligned with the hero system as it exists today? There’s so much room for villain sympathizing here…

Not to mention the whole question of whether or not Dabi is a Todoroki. I can’t really see Hawks’ entanglement with both Dabi and Endeavor as anything but yet another sign that Dabi is Touya–what would even be the point of revealing that Hawks was an Endeavor fan as a child if not for that admiration to one day be dramatically and horrifically destroyed? It feels as if this whole thing is being very carefully and deliberately set up: Horikoshi put the Endeavor fan hero directly into contact with Dabi, whom most of us speculate to be one of the worst victims of Endeavor’s truly villainous behavior, hidden from the public and fellow heroes alike. Dabi’s goal seems like it might increasingly be to get his revenge not only on Endeavor but on all of the uncaring, status-quo hero society that turned a blind eye to Endeavor’s cruelty–in that vein, Hawks would be one of the people that Dabi hates the very most… Because the thing that Hawks like best about Endeavor is the EXACT THING that turned Endeavor into an abusive monster.

Hawks admires that Endeavor was brave/foolhardy/determined enough to pursue the spot of number one while all the other heroes just rested on their laurels, content to remain in All Might’s shadow. Hawks seems, to me, like a multi-layered character: on one level, he seems ambivalent or even contemptful of heroism and the hero-ranking scales that puts someone like him, who was groomed for the job, so high up. He says he wants to take it easy, not have to fight, and that he would prefer to be lower in the ranks so he’d be free to mess around. However, we also know that he is probably one of the most hard-working young heroes in all of Japan, that he rose up the ranks because of his own actions, that he’s beloved of the public, and that he’s willing to put his own life on the line, utterly heedless of his own safety, if it means that others can remain good, unsullied people. He says one thing (I want to take it easy), but does another (never stops working) and deep down, what he admires most is Endeavor’s conviction to never settle, to never accept being anything less than the best. It seems, to me, that Hawks probably has some internalized issues regarding his role as a hero–likely he feels that he was given something he didn’t deserve, fast-tracked on the road to success he didn’t earn, perfectly trained and groomed to become a hero-idol, packaged and marketable for maximum public appeal. Externally, he claims he doesn’t care about the ranks; internally, he fears that he doesn’t have the conviction or strength to be like Endeavor, who never gave up in pursuing his goal to become number one, who was never swayed by others’ actions, who never wavered from his personal path. To Hawks, who has lived his whole life at the behest of others, someone like Endeavor, who dedicated his entire existence to chasing a purely personal dream, is probably the very definition of “true hero.”

Which is going to make it so awful, so painful if/when Hawks finds out that Endeavor chose to live for his own dream at the cost of his innocent family. It’s highly likely that Dabi is who he is because of Endeavor’s dream to surpass All Might which Hawks so admired. The League is a group of broken people, victimized to various degrees and in various manners by the world around them. Dabi is likely no exception (and in fact might be one of the most direct examples of heroes being just as capable of causing pain and suffering as villains). The angst potential this idea has just gives me so much life… Imagining the shock and horror Hawks will go through after finding out that his hero is a horrible person who ruined the lives of his wife and children just to further his pointless goal fills me with a sense of tingly excitement. I love seeing all my favorites suffer. XDDD It’s just so darkly poetic…

Friendly reminder that these panels are all on the same page in the manga… I love my dramatic sons…

The idea that Hawks is poised in the perfect spot to be one of the first–if not the first–to find out that Dabi is Touya Todoroki… and for Hawks to have his positive view of his role model, as well as his tacit approval for all of hero society, utterly destroyed by that reveal is just so interesting to me. It’s a rare situation in which the reveal of one character’s back story has the power to completely change the fate and future of another character–but the way things are set up right now, if the Dabi is a Todoroki theory is true, his back story reveal could completely change Hawks’ behavior and role in the plot. Right now, Hawks’ “Everything I do is for the League” is totally fake. But if Hawks finds out what went down with Endeavor and Touya and it was as traumatic as we all like to imagine… Well, who knows what course Hawks might take then. (Worse, an even more fun imagining: if Hawks goes sniffing for information and maybe finds out the hero commission helped Endeavor cover up what happened with Touya?? HOO BOOYYYY…)

Obviously a lot of this is predicated on the Dabi is a Todoroki theory being true, but I just… I think there’s something meaningful going on in Hawks’ links to both Endeavor and Dabi. This doesn’t feel accidental. And if it isn’t accidental, the drama is going to be sooooo good. HORIKOSHI PLEASE.

Even if the Dabi is a Todoroki theory doesn’t pan out, I still think this ship would be cute–personally, I would love to see a situation in which Hawks gets comfortable enough to tease Dabi like he teases Endeavor, because if you don’t think that happy!Hawks is the most charming thing in BNHA, I don’t even know what manga you’re reading, because it certainly isn’t the same one I’m reading. Playful, quirky Hawks takes broke ass Dabi out to dinner all the time and then yammers on for hours about stuff that has nothing to do with their work for the League, while Dabi stares on blankly, at a total loss for what to do with all this energy and enthusiasm? Adorable.

I’m making a prayer circle now so that Horikoshi will deliver me some delicious angst and suffering.

#dabi #hawks #hot wings #hawks x dabi #dabi is a todoroki #boku no hero academia #boku no hero academia spoilers #I keep forgetting that Hawks is a spoiler to like everyone #except the people like me who have the raws on feed lolol #foe yay #I LOVE ANGST #AND BIRD BOYS #my hero academia spoilers #bnha spoilers

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thekidultlife · 6 years

Text

The Coldest Human; The Warmest Robot | Jihoon! Android AU

Words: 13362 (yep. a lot. I know)

Genre: Fluff?, Slight Angst?

(A/N: So this fic was definitely based on the book “Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick (if you watched Psycho-Pass, you’ll know that Shogo Makishima makes the best dystopian novel recommendations) and the anime “Beatless”. Both gave such profound food for thought about androids and AI and I’ll tackle what I think about them in the following android series I’ll do since I enjoyed building this world, needless to say lmao. This first one is about androids and their lack of ‘emotion’ (dades named it as empathy, while beatless called it ‘soul’) and the possibilities of a relationship between androids and humans. I know others would feel reserved about this (I am too. It’s just fckiing weird) so I kept it open, a thought to explore. So here you go! I hope you guys like it!)

P.S. If you’re interested to discuss these things with me, the askbox and message box (?) are open! :) I’m more than happy for a thought exercise.

“Ok. Good.”

He wouldn’t have imagined that those were the words he would hear after an immeasurable number of years.

“He’s working.”

He blinked; the machineries whirring in his chest and the cogwheels sphinning in his head. How many years was he out?

“Could you do a system evaluation?” he heard you ask and he answered without hesitation, the words spilling from his cherry pink lips.

“Memory, intact. System processing, stable. Vitals, stable. Body coordination, malfunction on the right arm joint…”

“Good. Just a bit of tweaking and repair,” you told him in such a mechanical voice that he wondered if you were one too. “Anyway, do you have a name?”

He blinked again; now aware that he was in a sitting position on a worn sofa and that he was in a small laboratory with you who was in a lab coat. His white blond hair fell on his forehead as he leaned in forward.

“I’m Jihoon.”

You nodded and gave a miniscule smile; a bit too cold for a human.

“I’m Y/N.”

3 hours earlier

“Ow! What the fuck?”

It wasn’t weird that you had almost tumbled forwards when your knees had hit a large box which was perfectly hidden by the dim lights of the hallway. It had been almost two years since you took a step into your mother’s old lab yet the throb of pain in your chest remained the same since day one.

You flicked the switch on, hoping that the other lights in the lab were still working, or else you might as well find yourself repairing every single one of them in the next few days. Luckily, you didn’t have to as the stark fluorescent lights flickered on without much difficulty.

With the lights now fully on, you glanced down on your feet to see what you had hit a little bit earlier. To your surprise, it was a large wooden crate that had your mother’s name and the address of her lab imprinted on it.

A slight look of confusion marred your face.

“Who on earth would have sent this?”

You asked even though you knew no one was going to reply. Trying to look for a return address, you only sighed when you found none and it kind of freaked you out. Nevertheless, the nagging feeling in your chest was tempting you to take the crowbar from the workshop.

“Well, doesn’t seem like it’s dangerous.”

You shrugged nonchalantly, holding the crowbar on your grasps and with a few strong tugs, you popped the lid open. What you found had you scrambling far, far away.

“—shit…!”

At the first sign of hair and limbs had your heart almost jumping out of your chest. There was no denying that a body of a dead person might have been sent to you and the image of the body sitting in fetal position was hammered into your head which you swore you will never forget in your entire life. Your hand immediately flew to the device you had on your wrist; looking for the emergency button which rang up the authorities automatically.

But taking a closer look, you noticed the unnatural white blond hair which almost looked like silicon and the pale asbestos white skin that was too perfect and too flawless to be human. Then, you finally saw the clothes which he was wearing—a black button-up and trousers which had a familiar emblem stitched into it.

“Wait…is that…oh.”

You took a few steps forward and hesitantly peered into the contents of the box with less panic and more objectivity. Finally seeing the signs which proved your thoughts, you gave a long sigh of relief as you sank to the floor on your knees; prying the other sides of the wooden crate open so that you wouldn’t have to carry something as heavy as an android.

Under normal circumstances, people couldn’t detect the difference between a human and an android and 99% of the time, there really was no difference—with the new Nexus 9 processing system, even fake emotions could be simulated. The only thing in the way is how androids cannot fully duplicate the humanness in humans.

Yet you have lived among these androids since you were born in a small colony orbiting Mars and your Mom was one of the best android engineers there ever was. Every miniscule twitch, or lack thereof, could alert you that the one you’re talking to is made of metal and codes after years of spending time with them.

“So, Jihoon?” you asked once more, trying to be sure if he was really fully functioning as you placed your tools back neatly inside a box.

He nodded, then scanned the whole lab as you observed his every action. Androids tend to do that—they’re logical to a fault. He could have already planned his way out within those few seconds, you thought.

“Do you have any idea why you’re here?” you continued your inquiry, now sitting beside him.

“Yes, actually,” he replied without hesitation as he gazed right at you with unblinking eyes. “I wish to see Dr. L/N. She created me.”

Upon hearing his request, you sighed and slumped back on the worn sofa, thankful that dust was essentially non-existent in the filtered colonies. He was still looking at you and waited for any visible reaction but your gaze was as empty as his.

“She’s gone now. Dead,” you informed him nonchalantly as if you were just talking about the weather; trying to be as detached as you could be. “Gone ever since the mass riot in Hangar 15.”

Jihoon nodded since he was there in Hangar 15 when his fellow androids organized an uprising to escape the organization. Yet he chose not to participate in the event since he didn’t trust the plan that was laid, though he also chose not to help anyone, even the humans who perished.

“So, there it is,” you continued when he uttered no reply, standing up so you could stare at him.

You were not an idiot not to know that he was one of the recently escaped Nexus 9 androids from the organization and he was now on the hitlist of greedy bounty hunters disguised as police officers by the bureaucracy. What’s good about that was that you weren’t obliged to turn him in.

“Are you her daughter?” he asked so suddenly that you raised your eyebrow in curiosity.

“I am. Why did you want to meet her anyway?”

He shrugged. “I needed to ask her something important regarding my functions.”

“Functions? You mean how you work?” you asked, inclining your head as if you were mulling the thought over. “Well, if that’s how it is, then maybe we could look into the computer over there.”

You pointed your head towards the direction of a series of computer screens on a workspace just to your left as Jihoon followed with his eyes. Walking over there, you turned on the main switch and rebooted the in-air holographic interface which allowed you to control several functions without really touching a solid object (ala Tony Stark style). Jihoon trailed behind you as he looked around and then back to you who was already providing the password.

“So, what did you want to look at?” you finally asked with a glitter in your eyes which Jihoon had noticed was only present in humans.

When you posed the question, the blond android immediately fell silent as he tried to rake his brain on what he actually wanted to know. However, within his usual processing time of five nanoseconds, he could not find any answer. In the meantime, you feared that he could be malfunctioning, so you walked closer and reached for his forehead, trying to see if his processor had heated up (which was so appropriately akin to a fever in humans). As soon as he felt your touch, Jihoon twitched and backed away, earning a surprised expression from you.

“I’m sorry. I feel disoriented right now,” he told you, avoiding your gaze.

“It’s ok. You might need some time to recalibrate yourself. Just rest on the sofa for the night…” you replied, a little bit confused and intrigued at the situation. “I’ll be leaving now.”

He nodded gingerly and returned to the couch as you moved to the exit and before you left, you glanced at him with an expression mix of worry and curiosity.

“An android’s main function is to protect itself, or, if it is programmed to work, then his responsibilities and obligations. It cannot work outside its program.”

Your instructor’s voice rang across the almost empty auditorium with its titanium walls and polyester seats burning your eyes with boredom. Being in class always felt too cumbersome, listening to a pre-recorded teacher who refer to androids as ‘it’, which you had some sort of strange distaste even though you knew they were right. Androids are nothing but a lump of metal, plastic and other materials with an artificial heart and brain—it shouldn’t be placed at the same level as humans.

“Everything they do are only mere pre-programmed responses. Even the Nexus 8 processor still has a few insufficiencies which could still possibly be detected by android detection tests such as the Voigt-Kampff scale and the Bonelli Reflex-Arc. However, Nexus 9 which was recently developed to perfection has undermined these insufficiencies, moving closer to simulate human beings. ”

That was how the whole system worked. The organization will produce these androids with a new Nexus processor and in a few and, often orchestrated escapes, these androids will be hunted down by bounty hunters. How, why and what killed these androids will then be used in order to improve the next line of androids.

Welcome to the organization.

“Y/N, I can’t seem to understand how to program involuntary movement.”

“Wow! Didn’t you get the highest score in the last practicals?”

“Ms. L/N, please detail to us how the Voigt-Kampff tests work.”

“My goat back at home had kids. Sorry, I’m not allowed to give them.”

“Did you already get the programming assignment? It’s due tomorrow.”

“When I was an engineering student just like you, I knew how to work out an android with my eyes closed.”

“Hey, Y/N! Pay your electric bill. I don’t want you getting our electricity cut.”

“My parents got me an ostrich. They’re very rare these days.”

“Those are just androids. They’re not like animals or humans.”

“You look tired.”

You blinked.

The gaze Jihoon was giving you seemed curious yet you only shook your head and slumped back on the worn sofa. These days, the only place which could give you solace was your mother’s old lab and Jihoon’s quiet presence. You were left on your own thoughts, which was a far contrast from the loud environment you were immersed in every single day.

“Class is shit as always,” you replied, pinching the bridge of your nose as you willed your nausea away. “My roommate is shit as always. My life is shit as always.”

“Why don’t you leave then?” Jihoon asked as he fiddled with an old laptop he found in the stockroom, trying to revive it, his voice as deadpan and mechanical as ever.

“It’s not as easy as you think,” you replied while you threw a severe look at him, which he only shrugged and continued soldering the wires into the motherboard.

“Humans are complicated. I cannot comprehend most of what they do and why they are doing it,” Jihoon remarked without even giving you a remarkable glance.

You looked at the distance with a blank look. “Most humans don’t understand what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. They just do it because that’s what they feel.”

Noticing his long stare, you averted your gaze back at Jihoon who had stopped fixing the gadget and just looked at you with a troubled expression.

“What does it feel like to feel?” he finally asked which had you returning his own stare, unable to think of an appropriate answer.

You sighed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to know.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Jihoon replied as he shot his brow, blond fringes falling softly on his forehead. “I’ve watched humans interact over the years and I’ve tried to understand their actions, yet until now, I couldn’t. Even at this time and age when emotions could easily be manipulated, I cannot comprehend why you still haven’t dialed up your Penfield for a happier mood to remove your unhappiness.”

Immediately, you narrowed your gaze at him for questioning your actions, yet you felt totally embarrassed that he had noticed the last shred of stubbornness remaining in you. After your mother’s funeral, you bought a Penfield mood organ so you wouldn’t sink into your eminent depression yet until now, you didn’t have the courage to use it; remaining in your wrist untouched.

“What do you want me to do then?” you finally asked, exhausted from the variety of emotions pushing you around.

Jihoon shrugged again, now returning to his work on the old laptop. “Nothing. You humans are so sentimental.”

You ignored him and inclined your head upwards, watching the bright fluorescent lights with a pensive mood.

Jihoon counted how many days since he had stayed with you since he basically had nothing to do but fix the entire lab to how it used to be and mull over his situation. He knew you knew that he was a rogue android yet he wondered why you haven’t reported him yet. He hypothesized that you couldn’t really be bothered to report him or you secretly enjoyed his presence.

Over the past few weeks, Jihoon had found himself thinking about you the most. He defended to himself that you were his mere case study yet why did he even bother to defend himself from his own? It was not like he had some sort of conscience, so then why? He didn’t want to tell you but he had long gotten suspicious about how his processing was a bit different than his fellow androids and maybe that was the reason why he had sought your mother. So whenever you weren’t around, he tried to snoop around your mother’s main computer to see if there were any notes left about how he was made or how his Nexus 9 processor was programmed, however, he had not found any significant data yet.

“What are you doing?” he asked, curious as he peered over your shoulder while you worked on the main computer.

“A project. We’re tasked to program specific responses in the event that someone tries to flirt with an android,” you replied without removing your concentration from the string of codes and numbers on the screen.

“I see. I guess that applies to prostitute androids,” he noted as he pulled out a chair to sit beside you, also monitoring the screen.

“You know that’s illegal.”

“Doesn’t stop anyone from doing it. Besides, the organization sells them anyway,” Jihoon shrugged as you arched an eyebrow at him, considering that he had a point.

“Androids are common commodity nowadays, huh? Sometimes you wonder what else they are made for.”

At that juncture, you had long been distracted from your work and was only staring at Jihoon, gauging if you could ask the question long floating in your head. Jihoon knew what you wanted to know by the path the conversation was going, so he had already beaten you down the chase.

“I’m designed for military use. Tactical adviser and technical expert,” he simply replied. “Our SVT line is equipped with quantum computers—the first of its own kind.”

You scoffed, a little bit amused. “You planned your whole escape, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he had no longer seen any reason why he had to hide that fact from you. “All five of us escaped. I don’t know where they are now and I don’t really care.”

Smiling, you finally asked the central irony of it all. “You escaped from the organization yet here you back in their labs. Why?”

Your grin morphed into a giggle when Jihoon turned his head away from you as if he wanted you to ignore that single aspect, sulking when you hadn’t.

“I have my reasons,” he replied with a pout.

“Which I’ll assume to be completely logical and a hundred percent android,” you retorted back with a playful grin and teasing eyes.

“Of course they are,” he defended with a glare and you only laughed at him. “I’m not joking, you know.”

“I know,” you smiled warmly and stood up, pinching his cheek to lift the frown on his lips, though much to his chagrin.

“Don’t do that,” he warned you, yet you only did it again on his other cheek. “Stop it already!”

You had already removed your hand before he could swat it away, as you laughed so hard that you almost fell to the ground. Jihoon was definitely not amused yet he had noticed some sort of malfunction in his system that made him all seem too light hearted. He’ll do a system check later.

“Haven’t I told you before?” your voice had finally caught his attention and dragged him away from his thoughts. “You seem so human. It’s so weird.”

I wish I wasn’t human.

These days though, you actually wished you weren’t.

It’s as if the colony was hell unloosened and you are right at the middle of it to feel everything. Though you were still a fool nonetheless, just like how Jihoon had said—not using the mood organ you bought when it was the most convenient. You didn’t need to feel hell, just a number to dial up and then you’re fine.

“481 for hopefulness; 888 for the incredible want to watch television and 3 for the desire to dial your Penfield mood organ! Come and feel complete!” You sang the commercial for the mood organ with every note dripping with sarcasm as you sat in fetal position on the worn sofa of the lab; fiddling with the buttons of the device. “If I used it, would I feel complete?”

“Data has shown that humans usually do not,” Jihoon’s mechanical voice interrupted your thoughts, together with the rattling of the toolbox filled with discarded devices he gathered from the stockroom.

You grinned cynically. “What if androids use it? Will you then feel empathy?”

The blond android paused for a while to look at you from where he sat on the workbench and then continued his search in the toolbox after a minute.

“You already know that we do not have a brain to attach the mood organ to. We have a processor yet it wouldn’t respond to the device,” he replied in an annoyed voice which would’ve meant that he need not to remind you what you had already learned in class.

“I’m just teasing you,” you replied with a small smile which immediately disappeared after a second.

Jihoon sighed. “Dial 999. It won’t make you feel anything.”

The android had caught your glare and held on to it. Using the mood organ was the most logical thing to do in your situation. He knew you were simply trying to hold on to a few loose strings and the best way not to let them go is to sacrifice something. He could not understand why you still refuse to do so.

“I can’t do it,” you confessed; hiding your face from his scrutinizing stare.

“Why?”

“I feel…I feel like if I did, I’ll lose myself.”

Jihoon stared. “I don’t understand.”

You smiled at him weakly.

Your head pounded, eyes burning, cheeks stained.

Where were you?

Bloodshot eyes blinking at the blinding white lights overhead, you soon realized that you cried yourself to sleep in the lab. It was awfully noisy unlike most days—incomprehensible noise which eventually turned into sweet, sweet music which almost lulled you back to sleep, except that you had noticed that it was Jihoon who was singing beside you on the sofa with a makeshift electric piano on his lap.

“Good morning. You look like you had a nightmare,” he remarked as soon as he saw you gazing towards his direction without a word.

You scoffed. “My whole life is a nightmare.”

“All humans say that,” Jihoon replied harshly, though you didn’t care. “Want some water?”

You nodded, feeling your throat as rough as sandpaper, and Jihoon immediately complied, moving the electric piano away with its bare wirings, and towards the newly-installed water dispenser.

“They still have that on sale?” you asked as you sat on the sofa beside Jihoon, pointing at the piano after he had brought you water.

“I found a shop online which sells old stuff, I saw a complete set of piano keys and put it together with an old stereo I found here,” Jihoon replied, looking proudly at his work.

You raised your brows in astonishment. “You’re incredibly resourceful.”

Jihoon gave a small smile (you knew this one was pre-programmed), and then replied, “Shall I play a song for you?”

“I wonder why ‘piano playing and singing’ was added to a tactical adviser’s program,” you teased, earning a genuine glare from Jihoon before he ignored your remark and moved on with playing.

Watching his fingers move across the keyboard, you couldn’t tell if he was an android or not. He moved fluidly, the notes he was making was enough to touch you—it was a song designed to make you feel relaxed since you had just cried. It was a song just for you.

You loved how the song dipped and rose; how Jihoon’s voice was husky yet soft against the notes; how he seemed like he was honestly trying to reach out to you, to comfort you. How is he capable of such skill which only humans could harness? It had filled your mind in more than one night, yet this night, you ignored the question and relished the beauty which Jihoon made with his music.

The song ended without you even noticing it. You continued to stare into the tiled floor as Jihoon studied you closely for any reaction.

“You know, I feel so tired.”

You began, holding the plastic cup which you drank water with as you continued to look blankly into the dark hallways of the lab.

“I feel so tired of feeling—feeling empty, then feeling overwhelmed; feeling like I could do everything, then life drops me down on the cold, cold asphalt,” you chuckled, every laugh dripping with cynicism. “Is there a way not to feel?”

“Be an android then,” Jihoon replied back with a frown; knowing you wouldn’t use the mood organ.

You sneered. “If only I could. Probably download my consciousness on a mechanical body—they’re developing it now, you know.”

“You’ll miss how to feel. You don’t want to be like me,” he told you as he himself gazed downward, his words reflecting a deep hidden yearning.

“I don’t think so,” you replied defiantly, with a sour tone on your voice. “I will be useless if I can’t do what I’m supposed to do, and my emotions are only in the way.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t understand why you want to remove your feelings. Humans cannot do away in this world without meaning, as what I am told of.”

“It’s ok. I don’t expect you to understand. What do you even know? You only copy humans to manipulate us into thinking that you are one of us. You only mimic feelings and emotions but do not understand the meaning behind them.” your voice was getting louder, harsher, colder; but it’s not like Jihoon could react to your anger. “Emotions brought nothing good to me. They impede with my work, they make me cry at night, they fill me with stress! Without it, I would have gotten on with my life much, much better when Mom died!”

Jihoon didn’t expect the rush of adrenaline surge into his system; a sudden temper induced by you who had emotions he might have wished for, yet you wanted to throw away.

He held on both your arms to stop you from shouting at him—forcing you to look at him straight in the eyes. His platinum hair looked like it was frazzled by static rage as his bangs covered one of his eyes.

“Listen to me. If you hadn’t had any emotions then how would you know if your mother cared for you? How would you know if she loved you? You cried because you cared for her; because you love her and I, like you said, will never understand that. I will never understand what a meaningful life means, But you will.”

Rendered speechless, you could only stare at him with tears streaming down your cheeks.

“Even if your mother had died, she had loved you when she was alive. She raised you to be a normal human being even though she was alone. And here you are, abandoning everything she gave for you; wanting to forget the love she taught you.”

“I’m—”

“You think being an android is heaven?” he jeered. “Wait till you become one. Wait till you just move because that’s what the program says so; wait till you don’t have things like free will. Wait till you realized that you are nothing but what you are—a clump of metal and plastic stripped around mechanical organs. You don’t feel anything because you’re existence is meaningless and replaceable.”

Jihoon released you from his grasps yet reached out for your hand where the mood organ sat snuggly on your wrist.

“Use it. Dial 999.”

He ordered and you froze with mouth agape; filled with astonishment.

“Dial 999. You don’t have to feel anything you don’t want to.”

You simply stared at him.

“Use it Y/N! Use the fucking mood organ—”

“I can’t, okay?” you shouted…and then sobbed, holding on to his arm which was still on your wrist. “…I can’t…I fucking…can’t…”

The tears which flowed out from you seemed endless as you cried out two years’ worth of grief and hopelessness. Everything that you poured your heart into turned to nothing, the time you spent was all meaningless. You thought things will get better someday but life gradually destroys you day by day; as your situation and the people around you torture you endlessly.

“I don’t know what to do anymore…” you said in between whimpers as you fell between Jihoon’s arms. “If I used the mood organ…what would be left of me then…? Am I only made human because of this, this thing? My emotions will no longer be mine…”

Silently, Jihoon cradled you as he listened to you pour out to him, or to anyone about what you feel for the first time.

“But I’m so tired…tired of keeping up this illusion that I’m strong. I’m…the one always taking care of others…but who takes care of me when I can no longer put up this façade? They…they don’t know I’m so sick of studying…of being perfect. I want to rest already…” you resigned, burying your face on Jihoon’s shoulder and relishing his warmth despite how artificial it technically is. “I know it’s necessary to suffer to succeed, but how would one know if he’s on the path to success? What if all of this suffering turns into nothing? I wish life just has a skip button where I can skip to the point in my life where I’m rich and successful. Fuck this Jihoon, I’m so scared of the future.”

“Sometimes, we just overthink and things don’t really happen, you know?” Jihoon tried to assure you but he knew it wasn’t as effective as he hoped to be.

“I don’t want to get my hopes up and disappoint myself again in the end. The future is full of possibilities, one false move and my life comes crashing down. I wish I could be as easy-going as other people. I feel…so, so jealous of people enjoying their lives…while I’m stuck here trying to be perfect. This isn’t the life I want.”

“You don’t always have to be perfect…” Jihoon whispered in a solemn voice.

“No one will accept me if I wasn’t.” You sniffed, clinging to his black button up for support you dearly needed. “Everyone I know use me for their own purposes because I can get them through school, through life. They will leave me if I’m no longer useful.”

“I’ll accept you,” he replied immediately. “I don’t need you to be anything but yourself. It doesn’t matter to me. I will always be here for you if you need me.”

You chuckled amidst the sobs. “If you talk like that, then I would absolutely believe you. Please say this isn’t an analog hack,”

“I’m not lying. If I am that would just be ironic.”

You leaned back to gaze into his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“If I’m allowed to, I’ll tell you I can understand. Being useless, being abandoned…it’s an android’s greatest fear, if we indeed feel fear. I need to be special for people to use me, so that I can stay by their side and provide myself a sense of purpose.”

Gazing at him with wide eyes, you remarked, “I never knew androids find meaning in their work.”

“I can’t say about the other androids, but that’s what I think.”

For the first time that night, you smiled at him sincerely, as you strung your fingers between his locks, brushing them away from covering his eyes.

“Thank you for being here. There’s just days when I can’t hold it anymore, and need someone to cry on to. Please stay with me like this.”

“I’ll stay. Don’t worry,” he quietly replied, as he coaxed you back between his arms, and allowing you to stay like that as long as you’d like.

Buried on his chest, you hummed in satisfaction. “You’re the warmest android I’ve ever met.”

Your words had him thinking for days.

It wasn’t like a big surprise; he had already known that there was something different with him. Jihoon knew he was curious to a fault and had such a deep yearning to understand the things around him, though he didn’t know if it was because he was programmed to work that way.

Do all androids introspect?

For the first time in several months, Jihoon went outside the lab for a walk. Honestly, he disliked taking walks, or going outdoors, for that matter. Yet today, he suddenly had the urge to do it. He didn’t know why he had urges. He knew androids don’t usually have them. Is this some new feature of the Nexus 9?

It was nice that the colony had a special forest beside the laboratories and everything in it were all the remaining species of trees and plants on earth. After the third world war, radioactive dust from detonated nuclear bombs had ravaged the home planet and gradually killed the flora and fauna. There are people left on earth, mostly those who refused to migrate and specials who aren’t qualified to migrate, and they live in means Jihoon does not find suitable for people. Though even in the colonies, life isn’t as great as they advertised it to be.

He had been wrecking his processor for thinking day and night until his system had warned him that he was heating up. So the next possible solution is to cool it down with the artificial summer breeze blowing through his white blond hair, or so, he tried to reason himself. Why is he even trying to reason to himself? Why is he even trying to explain his reasons?

“Well, isn’t this new?”

Your voice rang suddenly behind him that he immediately turned around and caught you by the shoulder. You didn’t bat an eye at his actions, but instead, chuckled at him for mistaking you as an enemy.

“Relax. I’m not even authorized to carry a laser gun,” you replied with a smirk, as Jihoon released you with a sigh.

“Don’t do that again, please. I might have killed you,” he replied with a severe glare which had you raising both your eyebrows.

“Why not? Even if you had killed me, androids don’t feel any guilt,” you remarked as you slowly narrowed your gaze at him. “Yep. You’re truly weird.”

Jihoon refused to reply and simply glanced at you with a deepening frown. He was beginning to develop a distaste at how you were making him question his own self. He didn’t like how he was so confused; that he had so many questions.

“I still haven’t thanked you yet for the other day, have I? Come on,” you suddenly called his attention and grabbed his wrist, coaxing him to follow you down the forest path.

Jihoon had almost complained at how the grass was pricking his skin and convince you to return home, when you stopped at a clearing, showing you a glittering lake illuminated by the artificial moonlight. It looked truly beautiful as he stepped beside you, eyes wide and lips parted.

“Are you trying to deceive me again?” Your sing-song voice rang to his side as he gazed at you, who had already slid down the lakeside with a grin on your pretty lips. “You look pretty convincing.”

Again tonight, he had refused to reply and simply followed you down your path. In a dry spot covered by dewy grass, the both of you sat and simply observed the glistening lake as you savored the tranquility of the night. Fireflies dotted the evening air as they buzzed around the forest clearing, creating an atmosphere straight out of a fairytale.

“Sad that these fireflies are electronic,” you remarked, catching one with your hand to study the glass wings it had and the luminescent light it emitted from a nano-sized bulb built inside the small insect. “Real ones have long died out.”

“It’s to set the mood of this clearing. You are aware that this forest is a huge AI in of itself, aren’t you?” Jihoon replied, with his natural condescending tone whenever you say something stupid.

You pursed your lips to sulk. “I know, smart-ass. I just wanted to see real insects.”

“Why want a real one? There isn’t really much of a difference between the nanobugs and the real insects.”

“There is a great difference!” you defended. “Real ones don’t exist nowadays! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one!”

Jihoon scoffed, unable to consider the meaning again. “You humans put context to everything.”

“What’s wrong with that? Maybe that’s why we’re are able to live meaningful lives.”

Your rather pleasant conversation had once again turned into a full-blown debate about humans and androids. Jihoon, in your opinion, had interesting views regarding the current society, and how humans have long been outpaced by their own creations.

“You seem to enjoy talking to me,” Jihoon observed as he watched the artificial breeze sweep pass your locks while you tried to keep your hair in place.

“Because I dislike being lonely,” you replied without sparing him a glance. “But I need to be lonely to get things done. I need to be alone so that I can focus. There are things needed to be sacrificed.”

He raised his brows at you. “What does it feel like to be lonely?”

You inclined your head to your left to think. “The closest I could compare it to android terms is the lack of having an owner to serve. You are unable to do anything; unable to decide something outside of your understanding. An android cannot survive without being used as a tool.”

“Is that why humans seek partners in levels separate from the biological?”

A small huff. “Romance isn’t always about sex and offspring, you know.”

“Then what else is it about?”

Jihoon was now gazing at you intensely, intent of hearing out an answer from you, while you were proud to provide him information. He leaned in closer to hear you, incredibly curious.

“Listen. Liking, and then loving someone is a complex human behavior. Most androids don’t get it at all. But in simpler terms, people show their love in a million various ways and it comes in so many forms but it comes down to a simple factor—empathy, the ability to understand one another.”

“How are humans able to understand one another? I cannot find a straightforward process in the cloud, so I assume this process is based on emotional connections.”

You grinned at him as you inclined closer to his ear as if you were sharing some cool secret. “Correct, Mr. Android. But the problem is, even humans fail to understand one another, and wanna know what happens if humans fail to empathize?”

Jihoon gave an evocative gaze, waiting for an answer.

“War. Conflict. Murder. Death,” you replied, pausing a significant amount of time after every word. “Just like how the Earth is right now—just waiting to wither away underneath all that radioactive dust from nuclear warheads.”

You shook your head at the irony. “But here I am telling you all about this when I myself cannot always understand other people. You couldn’t imagine how difficult it is to understand someone bitching at you day and night; and then adjusting yourself for them.”

“I’m sorry,” Jihoon shook his head. “You’ve lost me there.”

You smile meekly. “Was that too much?”

“No, I just cannot see why you must adjust to someone who is clearly in the wrong. It’s not your fault, you didn’t commit a damn mistake, so why must you change?”

“You see, there are a lot of reasons people act the way they do, and who knows, you might be one of those reasons. If you adjust yourself, then you have removed one of the possibilities, lowering the chances the other person will do the action again. You simply cannot tell a person to change his ways. You can only change yourself.”

Jihoon considered for a while, and gradually nodded as if he had understood the logic.

“Things have become a bit more clearer for me. Thank you,” he replied with a small smile on his lips. Was he trying to deceive you again? How real is that smile?

“You’re always welcome to ask. Besides, it’s not like androids ask me about human behavior every day. In fact, you’re the only I know who had asked.”

Jihoon frowned and hid the fact that he did not like the honor of being the first android who had asked.

“Also, I still haven’t thanked you for staying with me the other night. You made me see things in a better light, and I’m trying to pick myself up from now on. I’ve read a lot of helpful books—”

Honestly, Jihoon had already lost your voice in the background noise as he had once again been swallowed up by his thoughts—thoughts regarding you and empathy. It would’ve been better if he had learned how to empathize so that you wouldn’t have to explain everything to him, and he would be able to simply understand you and your actions. But oh, you forgot to explain the physical aspects…the cloud had suggested a short cut to empathy and it seemed quite feasible.

“—so right now, I’m trying to coordinate my schedule and it seemed to be working. I’m not sure how long weekly planning will work for me, but I’m—”

Without anything—warning shots, preemptive touches, small pauses of time—nothing had prepared you to feel a pair of soft lips pressing against yours as you felt your body go numb in milliseconds. The next thing you felt was the hand cupping your chin, wondering how you had never noticed it before, as he pressed on further, moving his lips on yours and brushing so slightly, so sensually. You would’ve enjoyed the moment if not for the sudden realization that the one kissing you was Jihoon and you had to scramble away, breaking the kiss and Jihoon’s concentration.

Upon noticing your panic, he seized your hand to calm you down and to prevent you from running away. Slowly, Jihoon opened his eyes and met yours inquisitively.

“So tell me, have I established a connection between us now?”

Jihoon had sensed that he must have done something wrong. It had been days since he had last saw you and he had concluded that you were definitely avoiding him after what happened by the lake. However, he doesn’t get it.

“Was the kiss a mistake?” he whispered to himself, touching his lips with the tips of his fingers.

That time, he definitely sensed some circuit burst inside his stomach, however, when he checked his mechanisms later that night, his circuits seemed to be working fine. But, what was that then? He only did what he thought would induce empathy from both of you, yet it seemed to have backfired—prompting you to avoid him, while it caused only confusion for him.

“Did I only widened the gap between us?”

beep. boop. beep. boop.

Jihoon snapped from his thoughts as he averted his attention towards the incoming call directed to his processor, which was a function he was thankful to have. He didn’t want anyone snooping around who he contacts.

“What?” he snapped, unappreciative of the interruption.

“Yo, Woozi! ‘Sup?” a cheerful, energetic voice echoed in his mind, almost tempting him to mute the caller.

“Stop calling me that. I’m Jihoon now,” he scowled at the invisible caller.

“Then, I ain’t Hoshi anymore. Call me Soonyoung!”

Jihoon rolled his eyes and leaned back against the sofa he had long been sitting on.

“So?”

“So, what?”

“You know, you could easily blend in as a brainless special if you stay on Earth.”

“Ah, you’re harsh as ever.”

“And so? You don’t have a heart to get hurt anyway.”

Soonyoung laughed as Jihoon automatically muted the caller as soon as he passed a certain level of noise. When he had stopped laughing, Jihoon turned on the audio again with a jaded look.

“Alright, fine. I’ll give you what you want,” Soonyoung surrendered as Jihoon sighed, relieved that he didn’t have to go through anymore bullshit. “They’re moving now. They already got to Vernon.”

Jihoon frowned. “So he’s gone?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is that they’ve found him.”

“What about you?”

Jihoon could imagine the other’s grin even if he couldn’t see him and clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“Oh, are you worried about me, Jihoonie?”

Jihoon growled audibly. “We both know you owe me one, and you’re not allowed to retire without paying me back.”

Soonyoung sighed dramatically over the line. “I get it, okay? Calm the shit down.”

“Good. I don’t want to repeat myself.”

“Sure. Anyway, how about you? It’s been months and they haven’t found you yet in their own labs.”

“Found someone not too bothered to report me.” Jihoon stared at his nails, checking any lodged dirt.

“And…does this person know what you are?”

“Immediately after she set her eyes on me. She’s a pseudo-human behavior engineer.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh.” Soonyoung’s tone turned for a playful dip again, which definitely made Jihoon sigh for the nth time tonight. “So this person’s a ‘she’! I can’t believe you’re cruel enough to deceive her!”

Jihoon was definitely disliking the way he’s painting him into a villain. “I’m not deceiving her. Haven’t you heard me? She’s an android engineer and she knows if I use analog hack on her, and I don’t use it.”

If he could see Soonyoung, Jihoon swore the other android will definitely raise his brows at him.

“There’s a possibility that you aren’t even aware you’re already deceiving her.”

Jihoon scoffed. “I don’t have a subconscious to do that.”

“But we’re androids designed to copy humans, it’s not that too difficult to go back to default processes.”

He was having none of it. “I’m not deceiving her. Anyway, I’ll contact you when I need something. Now leave me in peace.”

Without even waiting for a reply, Jihoon turned off his communication signature to rid himself of his exhausting companion. As soon as his attention was back to the empty and desolate space of the laboratory, he had noticed something odd.

“It’s already late. She should be here by now.”

While he was voicing out his observations, Jihoon was already searching for you—hacking into various electronic devices, CCTVs, your school gate’s log and so—yet in all the places you could be, he had not found your whereabouts.

“This isn’t good,” Jihoon muttered to himself, with a tight furrow on his brow. He tried looking at camera footages from the last few hours and in just half a minute, Jihoon found out what happened to you.

Somewhere while walking to the lab a few hours ago, a white van had pulled over where men donned in black came up behind you. Jihoon saw someone cover your nose with a handkerchief which he guessed was doused with chloroform and when you no longer had the consciousness to fight back, the men had carried you into the van and drove away.

While watching, Jihoon was already hacking into a self-driving car which was already waiting for him when he had emerged from the laboratory. As soon as he entered the vehicle, Jihoon began hacking his way into the colony’s security system so that he could track where the men had taken you. The car began moving when he had finally tracked you down—not so difficult for a military-grade android.

“The fuck do I know.”

You spat out vehemently, despite being tied into a chair and wired to a lie detector machine, and another which sends controlled volts to your system upon a tap on a tablet.

It should have been a normal day for you, yet when you were abducted just as you were going to the lab, this man has been interrogating you for almost half an hour already about an android your mother had supposedly made.

“Alright little girl. We’re not playing games here,” the man, masked and voice altered, warned you for the fifth time. “We know you have it! The SVT-class android Type 07 Woozi. Where is it?!”

With gritted teeth, you threw daggers at the man. “I already told you. I don’t know any Woozi!”

Well technically, you don’t. But it’s not like you—!!

A surge of electricity ran up your spine and left as soon as it entered. However, it had left you jerking horribly.

“I’ll ask again. Where is it?”

You glared, drool slipping down your lips. “I don’t…know.”

Volts shot straight up through your skin, this time longer. You writhe in agony.

“Two years ago, your mother Dr. Y/LN was the chief engineer of the Nexus 9 project. She had developed all of the SVT-class andys, but if that’s everything there is to it, she shouldn’t be dead right now?”

You froze at the revelation and wondered if you could trust what this person was talking about. As far as you know, your mom had died because she was shot by an android during the riot in Hangar 15. She was just unlucky to be at the wrong time and place.

“What do you mean? She was killed by an andy in the riot…she’s just unlucky.”

You could hear the man sneer behind his mask.

“There’s no such thing as luck.”

He operated a terminal and showed you several holographic images of a strange device and a screenshot of programming codes. You studied them carefully and you immediately knew what the device was, and you couldn’t believe what was just laid in front of you.

“That’s a lie!” You cried out but the masked man only laughed. “It’s impossible to create an empathy organ, and nobody has ever succeeded—”

“That’s why you’re mother’s dead, little girl.”

Instantly, you were reduced to silence; eyes darting back and forth to the man and the images he had shown you.

“Without permission from the organization, your mother had installed empathy organs inside the SVT-class androids. When the organization realized what she did, they had her killed. The riot was only a cover.”

You couldn’t believe what you’re hearing. “No, no. That’s not true!”

“Now, these androids have escaped and we want them. So, where is it?”

You shook from your restraints as you chewed on your lip—deciding what to do even though you still haven’t digested yet what big of an information the man has given you.

“I…I…the android…”

—!!

A huge explosion stopped you before you could utter something coherent. Instinctively, you moved your face away from the debris suddenly hurling on the air in speeds you couldn’t calculate. Within seconds, you sensed yourself being freed from your restraints, and your heart leapt when you were then lifted from the ground and carried bridal style, your arms flying to cling to his shoulders for support.

“Sorry I was late.”

When you heard Jihoon’s voice, you immediately relaxed and felt relieved that you were finally safe. As the dust and debris fell away, you could see his eyes were on you, though you couldn’t read what he was thinking. As if finally deciding what to do, Jihoon moved you outside of the building, which was actually a warehouse, and placed you inside a self-driving car waiting nearby.

“We’ll go home after I take care of this one,” he silently told you and casually walked back inside.

When you had heard his words, you felt that there was something off with him. You couldn’t put it but you knew something was definitely going to happen and you were not going to like it. Despite the fact that you wanted to see what Jihoon was about to do, your body refused to allow you—the surges of electricity finally affecting your muscles, rendering them immovable or languid.

“Fuck this.”

Meanwhile, Jihoon kicked away the offending wood and twisted metal as if they were as heavy as pillows. His eyes were strained to only accomplish one mission—to look for the shitheads who kidnapped and tortured you. Though in a few seconds, it wasn’t his eyes which found them.

Dodging, a laser beam had missed him within a few centimeters as he retaliated back with a wave of electricity, visible as lightning and hurts just as much. Unlucky for Jihoon, the men had armor which protected them from his attack, and only left their laser guns unusable. Well, at least they’re unarmed.

Jihoon rushed towards his first victim within a blink of an eye, as he knocked the air out of him with a punch in the gut as strong as being hit by a freight train. He didn’t need to turn around to incapacitate the man who came running towards his back with a metal pipe, as Jihoon simply magnetized a sheet of metal to slice through the man’s neck.

Inside the car, you could hear the commotion going on and you willed your legs to move with desperation. You guessed that he was going to kill those men and you were absolutely right. He is a tool used for warfare and would not hesitate to rid himself of his enemies. That was what you had sensed in his words.

“Move, damn it!”

You cried out, slamming your fists repeatedly on your thigh. Maybe through sheer will, you regained a bit of control, albeit with little strength. Nonetheless, you crawled your way out of the car, and towards the destruction Jihoon was about to commit.

With only the leader who Jihoon purposely left out, the blond android casually approached the panicked man as he tried desperately to run away; except that Jihoon had his armor glued to the ground through electromagnetism as soon as he figured out that the armor was absorbing electric currents yet are not immune to magnetism.

Jihoon gazed at the man with impassiveness. “Heard you were looking for me. So here I am.”

The man couldn’t utter a single coherent word; his head all too riddled with anxiety to think of anything other than his eminent death.

“Also heard you electrocuted Y/N,” Jihoon inclined his head towards the side to wait for a reply, and when he heard none, the android picked up the man by the neck; his feet dangling on the air. “I’m curious what it feels like to electrocute someone.”

“S-so it’s true…y-you androids have, h-have an empathy organ…!” the man remarked as he sensed the anger in Jihoon’s voice, though he began wheezing when he felt his airpipes being gradually crushed.

“I apologize. I cannot comprehend,” Jihoon’s voice was void of any emotion. “Anyway, this ends here.”

“Jihoon, no—!”

Surprised to hear your voice, Jihoon averted his gaze towards you, who was heavily leaning against the concrete wall, all exhausted from reaching him. You took in your surroundings as you realized that he was already in for the last kill, and knew that you were too late, but still…

“Don’t kill him please. I’ll…I’ll just call the cops…”

Jihoon arched his brow, tightening his grip on the man who began to struggle to get out.

“Why? He tortured you. Don’t you feel angry?” the android asked, with a face still stoic.

“Just…just don’t kill him, please…” you pleaded, holding on to your still immovable arm.

You weren’t really sure what will happen as Jihoon simply stared at you, maybe studying the expression you had on your face, or maybe trying to comprehend the logic behind your request. But when Jihoon let go of the man (though, keeping him place as he stepped on the man’s leg, and a look that meant his limb will get ripped off if he doesn’t stop writhing), you sighed in relief.

“Alright, I won’t kill him. But I’ll call the cops and report the incident,” Jihoon’s voice and eyes were ice cold, which frightened you for a bit. “I won’t risk getting found.”

You nodded with a tiny smile on your face when he did what you wanted. “Let’s go home.”

“Wait for a bit, and oh, please look away,” Jihoon asked but you couldn’t understand what he had meant, but when he had picked up a metal pipe and pinned it through the man’s thigh without any sort of expression or effort, you wished you had followed him sooner.

The blond seemed to have understood the look of concern on your face and immediately took the measures to explain. “Don’t worry. I already called the police and he won’t die from bleeding if the pipe is stuck to his thigh.”

Jihoon removed his foot from the man’s leg and walked towards you, who looked as if you had seen something you shouldn’t. As soon as he got to you, Jihoon pulled you towards his arms and embraced you tightly, slowly patting your head.

“I told you to look away,” he reprimanded albeit softly.

His words seemed to have snapped the dam in you as you began sobbing on his chest, unable to control your emotions swelling up from inside you. Jihoon knew that the event left a huge trauma in you and could only comfort you, which was not one of his many talents.

“Let’s get you home, ok?”

Later that night as Jihoon finally had you sleeping against his chest, all sprawled out on the sofa, he received a call from Soonyoung.

“Mission accomplished, sir!”

“What did he say?”

“Just as you predicted. The guy’s from a competing android producer and they wanted to have the empathy organ.”

Jihoon hummed, finding this type of communication advantageous since he doesn’t have to speak as his processor directly receives the encryption and translates it into thoughts. This way, you don’t have to hear the conversation.

“Did you find any information about it?”

“Only pictures. I’ll send them to you right now. But I still haven’t found where it came from. I think that’s your specialty though.”

“Alright, just give them to me and I’ll trace it.”

“Got it. Anyway, you just tricked the goddamn girl. You told her you called the police, when it was me you actually called.”

“And the point is?” Jihoon looked at the ceiling and followed the lines formed by the lined titanium sheets, as he draped an arm over your shoulder and caressed your hair.

“You told me you wouldn’t a few hours ago?”

“I’m just protecting her. They’ll be back, so I’m simply nipping it in the bud.”

“But you also asked me to torture the guy?”

“An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Besides, we got information.”

Jihoon could hear Soonyoung hum playfully on the other end. “An andy through and through. Anything for the owner, huh?”

He checked his nails once again. “She’s not my owner.”

Soonyoung paused for quite a long time that Jihoon thought the other had finally left the line, but when he had begun shouting, Jihoon had to turn off the audio in annoyance.

“What? What? What? She’s not your fucking owner?!”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” The blond arched his brow.

“Everything is wrong with that! Why are you letting her use you when she’s not your owner?! Why are you devoting yourself to her like she owns you?! Why haven’t you asked her to be your owner?!”

“Alright, Soonyoung. Shut up before I hang up.”

“Sorry, it’s just that…I just can’t believe you…is this really you I’m talking to?”

Jihoon rolled his eyes. “As if there’s anyone who could steal my communication signature.”

“Wow…I just…wow…if we’re human, I would’ve said she got you whipped.”

The other frowned at the remark. “I’m hanging up. I’ll contact you again soon.”

“Huh? Wait, Jihoon—”

Again, Jihoon disregarded all the bullshit Soonyoung says and turned off his intercom. As silence filled his head once again, he glanced down on you who was peacefully sleeping on his chest on top of him, free of any worries of the real world. He already had his hand gently stroking your head, as he continued to take in all of you.

If he really had an empathy organ inside him, then it must have been real. He had done a lot of unexplainable shit that most androids will not understand or even do, as expressed by Soonyoung. (But that shithead will understand sooner or later, Jihoon smirked since all of the SVT line was said to be equipped by an empathy organ.)

So what if he indeed has one? Was he still an android? Will his actions become more unexplainable in the future? Today, Jihoon seemed to have gained more questions than answers. But he knew he wanted to understand you.

Days following the incident, you did your own investigative search about the empathy organ. Of course, you don’t want to believe your mother had created something so revolutionary nor do you want to believe Jihoon had one. He had acted so impassive and merciless all that time when he had saved you, which still send shivers through your spine, and that was a valid indication that he is an android.

On the other hand, Jihoon seemed to be as normal as he could be. He didn’t try to kiss you again, which was a relief because any more than that was seriously dangerous. You knew a lot of androids leisurely using a human being’s capability to be compassionate as a means to manipulate and you could vouch how powerful this could be, since you were one of the people who developed androids to reach this level of mimicry of the human behavior. As a human being, you weren’t immune despite how much you want to be indifferent. You still have emotions, which you refuse to let go of, and these emotions could easily be used against you by an android as high of a class as Jihoon. In the end, you still trust that everything he does was not to manipulate you.

“Y/N?”

His voice jolted you awake from your half asleep state on the sofa, papers about the SVT line all sprawled on your chest since you were studying them before you fell slightly asleep.

Sitting up, you replied as you rubbed your eyes. “Yeah? What is it?”

“Well, I want to ask something about how human emotions operate,” Jihoon began as he sat beside you, a terminal on his hands, which had something paused on its holographic screen.

“Ask away.”

Yawning and folding your legs to your chest in a fetal position, you listened to Jihoon’s question with interest.

“I’ve watched videos, movies and read articles and books about romance and how it involves human love. I’ve seen that it has physical and mental aspects, and just like you said, it isn’t always about biologically expanding the human species. I’ve analyzed that coupling brings about better understanding of one another by building emotional connections. A good way to exercise empathy. So, what if an android like me wants to do just that?”

If you weren’t shocked by his question, then you don’t know what you were feeling. His question was a good one. Most androids think but don’t understand neither do they give meaning to the things around them or what they do. They simply copy what humans do because it is what their program says, and it is the most effective and logical way to accomplish what they are programmed to do—a mere means to the ends. However, as Jihoon poses this very question, you knew the world was at its turning point, whether or not it had realized it.

“It’s impossible. You don’t have emotions to connect…to, to empathize,” you replied cautiously.

“Let’s say the engineers have invented something which enables me to do so. What then? Will humans respond in kind?” Jihoon persisted, much to your fears. You knew it was possible with the empathy organ, which might be embedded in Jihoon.

“Humans tend to empathize with everything that looks human. From animals with their big round eyes which induces motherly instincts because they look like babies who needed to be protected, to…to androids who look absolutely human,” you replied, looking at him with knowing eyes. “Of course, like anything revolutionary, there will an opposition.”

Jihoon considered your thoughts for a while and then continued. “What about you?”

You froze on your spot, afraid and unsure with your lips parted and eyes wide as both of you stared into each other’s eyes.

“You know,” you began with a small voice. “There’s a study that says if you stare into another person’s eyes, for several minutes as you share with each other your deepest emotions, fears and dreams, you will fall in love.”

The android was quiet, wondering what you were trying to imply—his calculations unable to predict your line of thought as it broke into a million pathways.

“If you have a soul, then it is possible for an android to…fall in love,” you were reluctant to complete your sentence but when you did, you felt the reality of it all reflecting on his dark cocoa eyes.

“Is it possible for me to have a soul then?” Jihoon asked, voice as soft as yours.

“An empathy organ is your ticket way there.”

“What if I do have one? Are you willing to try it with me?”

You knew Jihoon was sincerely asking you to try and love him, or everything to his wide eyes, parted lips and pleading expression was a lie, a well-crafted mimicry.

Closing your eyes, you turned your head away and sucked in a breath. He was getting into your system. Fuck, that study seemed true.

“I’m sorry…I’m not sure yet,” you replied, now avoiding his gaze.

“Why? Is it because it is unacceptable to have a relationship with an android?” Jihoon asked.

“No, I don’t really care about that…it’s just that I…I…”

You couldn’t say it. You don’t want to hurt him.

“Then what?”

“I…just…it’s just that—”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

Frozen on your spot, you stopped your incessant movements and reprimanded yourself for hinting that he had hit you right at the jackpot.

“No, I…! I’m just scared, okay?”

Jihoon narrowed his eyes at you, frowning and cynic. “You’re scared I’ll use analog hack on you. You’re not sure if everything I say is true.”

You pursed your lips as you looked down, eyes beginning to wet. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

Jihoon sighed, his shoulder deflating as he looked at your crumpled figure. “I’ll leave you in peace.”

Standing up, Jihoon walked away with hands on his pockets towards the exit. You knew he was disappointed, or appeared to be, but you just couldn’t help but also look out for yourself. There was no certainty that he wouldn’t leave you for dead just like he did with your kidnappers and the thought of his soon-to-be betrayal left your heart wringing.

“Y/N, we got company.”

You immediately scrambled by the time you heard Jihoon, who was supposed to be outside, suddenly whisper to you in a low voice. Glancing behind him, you saw a man in a trench coat with a large briefcase on hand entering the lab.

“Bounty hunter?” you asked with sheer suspicion.

“Bingo.”

The both of you stood side by side as the man approached the two of you with a courteous smile.

“Good day, sir, ma’am. Let me introduce myself, I’m Detective Choi Seungcheol,” he reached out his hand which both of you shook cordially.

“Is there anything we could help you, detective? I hope we haven’t done something wrong,” you began, a smile on your face trained for situations such as this.

“Oh, don’t worry. You are, Ms. Y/N L/N, I presume? And he is um…Mr. Lee Jihoon?” Detective Choi replied as he checked his papers.

“Yeah, my um…my boyfriend,” you improvised, unable to think of the most appropriate relationship with him. You had concluded that before he came him, Choi had already checked you and Jihoon’s background, which you assumed was already fabricated by the android long before you met him.

“Yeah, well…I just moved a few months ago from the west colony,” Jihoon added, his ears red, giving the illusion of him embarrassed. You were amazed how much they could do.

“Oh, I see. Recently, there’s news about escaped Nexus 9 androids and there were reports that one could be here. So just to make sure, are you willing to take a Voigt-Kampff test?” Choi asked, both you and Jihoon glancing at one another.

“Sure, who’s going to take it first?” you asked, an eager to help smile on your lips.

“You. And only you,” Choi threw in a sly grin masked as a reassuring smile as he sat on the provided seat.

“Sure, no problem. How does this go?” you replied, as you gazed back to Jihoon, who simply held your hand for comfort.

The detective installed his device on top of a metal table you provided as you sat in front of it with an unsure look on your face, wondering why you were being tested but also relieved that Jihoon wasn’t being suspected as one.

“So, these patches on your cheeks will detect slight movements on your face as I read to you scenarios that will determine whether or not you’re an android. Let’s begin?”

You nodded quietly as Choi seated himself in front of you, holding a few cards as he chose the first scenario.

“A cat was ran down by a car, its organs spilling on the asphalt.”

You felt your stomach drop as the image popped into your head. Your breath hitched as you simply frowned.

“I’m sorry…” you replied, as you studied what Choi was doing, glancing at the meter before him and taking in some notes on his small leather notebook.

“Second one. A dog has been clubbed to death because it had bitten a someone,” Choi continued, looking at you expectantly, yet you were silent.

“That’s just…cruel,” you remarked, gritting your teeth.

“I swear you’re the most quiet I’ve ever tested,” the detective confessed. “Third. You saw your mother tortured. They would hit her head when she refused to confess to a crime, and they would leave her in a freezer naked until she gives up, but that doesn’t end there. An android who looks like you is then sent to slowly cut her fingers—”

“STOP! Stop! Stop it!” you suddenly shouted, pushing yourself away from the table, as you covered your ears. Tears were already running down your cheeks as Jihoon hurriedly came to your side, crouching to your level with an arm over your scrunched figure.

“That does it. She’s an android.”

Right after he said those words, the detective grabbed a laser gun from his briefcase and pointed it at you.

Everything was swirling inside your head and you couldn’t believe your fears had materialized faster than you had expected. It would be a no-brainer if Jihoon had already planned this months before, framing you as the android instead of him, so that he could forever be free from the bounty hunters. You didn’t want to hear it right from Jihoon’s mouth that you were duped and utterly fooled since day one.

“What the fuck are you on about?! I’m the goddamn android here, not her!”

His voice rang in front of you, his words a direct confession and a death flag. The impulsiveness of Jihoon’s action had you glance up to him, who was in front of you, shielding you from the laser gun the bounty hunter was holding. You couldn’t believe what he just did.

“If you’re an android, you wouldn’t say that,” Choi retorted back with a grin. “Stop protecting your girlfriend. She’s just analog hacking you!”

“Fuck you,” Jihoon simply replied and grabbed your hand, tossing the metal table up on the air as a distraction when both of you ran towards the exit.

“Hey!” The detective shouted, running after the two of you and shooting laser beams towards your direction.

Easily, Jihoon redirected the laser beams with his electricity and it went up, hitting the concrete beam connecting the two upper labs. You knew you were toast when Jihoon carried you on his back to dodge the large blocks of rock falling. Luckily, it was also blocking the way and the two of you sped up, losing Choi on the chase.

Heading towards the nearby docking bay, the two of you hid behind towers of cargo containers and rested for a while.

“Jihoon, what was—”

“Could you shut up for a while? I’m trying to keep us two alive here.”

“Hey! I just got fucking accused as an android when I’m clearly not—”

This time, Jihoon muffled your mouth with his lips pressed against yours. It was quite effective in keeping you frozen in place.

“Be quiet or that shithead will find us. I’m not done charging yet.”

You nodded quietly, still digesting what had happened.

“Alright. Stay here and don’t come out. I’d rather not see you dead,” Jihoon bid you farewell as he climbed the tower of containers, getting high as much as possible.

“Fuck this, Jihoon!” you cursed him as he had left you alone and without anything to protect yourself.

With the highest view, Jihoon could clearly see where Choi was.

Everything had gone out of his predictions as humans again proved to be quite unpredictable. He didn’t expect the bounty hunter would accuse you as an android as it was definitely clear as day that you were human through and through. Now, he had to protect you and fend for himself, but he didn’t really feel constrained by extra work. In fact, he was more than motivated to keep the fucker’s hands away from you.

Jihoon picked up a large device sitting on top of the container. It was a large but sleek device shaped like a slim black rectangle, yet when Jihoon had pulled the handle on its center and turned it clockwise, the device had morphed into a complex weapon, large arms extended from the center as it formed into something akin to a large gun. Holding it in one hand, Jihoon pressed firmly on the trigger, and pointed it towards the unsuspecting human as electric energy poured into the device and when the blond android let the trigger go, a laser blast hurled towards Choi.

Unfortunately, Choi was too jumpy for it to hit directly and Jihoon missed within half a meter, the android clicking his tongue in irritation as it only hit the nearby container. Jihoon again turned the trigger around as the weapon transformed once more; now breaking into several floating stakes, as it spread out into the area.

Now that Choi knew where he was, Jihoon swiftly moved to the next towers to conceal his location. On the other hand, you were scrambling to cover yourself when you heard the explosion, unable to do anything but to hide. However, when you saw that the explosion had caused a domino effect among the following tower of containers, you ignored Jihoon’s warning and ran before you get squashed to death.

Jihoon knew he had to move in for the kill before Choi finds you, so in a fast attack which involved kicking the detective with a dash of electric surge as dessert, he did just that but Choi was more veteran than expected and blocked his kick with his arms lined with anti-static material. Moving away, Choi had time to shoot a few beams but were unsuccessful when Jihoon simply bent them with electric currents, hitting the containers behind them; much thanks to classical physics.

Wasting no time, Jihoon drove a punch right in Choi’s gut which had him flying towards the end of the aisle. Walking towards the bounty hunter, Jihoon was however alerted that you had moved from your place, and when he got back to Choi, the guy had already disappeared.

Y/N, why are you so talented in screwing my head over and over again?!

You ran towards wherever you found was the most peaceful and quiet. You wondered if Jihoon was fine, yet you knew that he could take on an army and return unscathed, so you weren’t that worried. Turning by the nearby alley, you found a laser gun pointed at you.

“Gotcha.”

By the time Jihoon found you, he had already found Choi pointing a gun on your head as he held you by the neck.

“I swear I can explain,” you began but Jihoon simply looked at you with an unimpressed look on his face.

“I told you to stay in one place, Y/N,” he replied back, rolling his eyes at you. “I can’t always come and save you every single time!”

“But if I don’t move, the containers will crush me! I don’t exactly want to die, Jihoon!” You retorted, your voice getting louder.

“Then what am I supposed to do? He’s got you at gun point! Now I have to think of a way to get you out of there!”

You scoffed, hands on your hips as Choi looked at the two of you awkwardly. “If you don’t want to save me, then why am I even your girlfriend? Break up with me and save your sorry ass yourself! I can take care of myself!”

Jihoon laughed mockingly, now clearly irked. “You aren’t even licensed to have a laser gun, so, how, I pray, are you supposed to fucking beat a bounty hunter?”

“Don’t underestimate me, Jihoon! I have my ways!”

“Like what? The other night you were whining about how you’re supposed to pass your subjects!”

You audibly huffed. “Ok, you’ve gone too far, you little shit. I’ll prove to you that I can do this. Let me go, detective!”

“Alright, alright! I don’t want to interrupt but we’re kinda in the middle of something here!?” Choi shouted quite annoyed, as he held on your neck tighter. “Don’t move or else I’ll blow a hole through your head.”

Jihoon rolled his eyes at you again, uncrossing his arms. “Just pull the trigger Choi. She’s just gonna be a pain all night anyway.”

“What! How dare you!” you shouted angrily, struggling around Choi’s arm holding you.

“So what do you want? Haven’t I already shown you that I’m the android here?” Jihoon ignored you completely, much to your chagrin.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll release her…if I got to shoot you,” the bounty hunter grinned, as the android simply removed his hands from his pockets.

“Alright. I’m all yours,” Jihoon immediately said, his arms up on the air as you stared at him in disbelief.

“No, wait! Fuck! I’m the android, ok? It’s not him! Kill me instead,” you cried out, writhing and panicking as soon as you saw the hunter’s gun pointed at Jihoon. “No, no! Shit.”

Without any explanation, Choi had let go of you and of course, you came running towards Jihoon’s side.

“Bye-bye.”

In a split second, Jihoon knew what was about to happen and it didn’t take him long to find a solution.

He pulled you towards him as soon as he had reached you and when Choi pulled the trigger of his laser gun, Jihoon was already behind you, covering your back from the oncoming laser beam. He didn’t know he actually felt something about death—he didn’t want to. Yet, for your sake, he’ll catch the bullet.

You were thrown to the ground in a painful blow, unable to process what had just happened. You sensed Jihoon covering your back, holding you tightly, as black smoke from what the beam had hit rose to the air.

“You two passed the test.”

Choi’s words echoed across the desolate cargo bay as he dropped his laser gun, walking away from you two. The meaning of the bounty hunter’s words finally got to you, and finally checked if Jihoon was alright. As it turned out, he was already gazing at you with a puzzled look on his face.

“Why? Why did you kill me?” Jihoon asked, his voice ringing.

Choi stopped walking. “An android will never sacrifice his life for someone else. Especially when she’s not his owner.”

“T-thank you!” You yelled back, your hand shaking as Jihoon held on it tightly.

“No worries, ma’am. These days, being a bounty hunter warrants more effort than I’m getting paid for. I’m exhausted. I’ll see you somewhere these days.”

He didn’t look back.

“We’re seriously looking into that empathy organ,” you remarked, settling in between Jihoon’s arms as you watched the colony rotate the solar panels outside the glass dome of the cargo bay.

Jihoon felt a circuit jump, or maybe it was a binary code—he didn’t care that much, but nonetheless, in human terms, he felt happy. Tightening his arms around you, Jihoon pulled you closer to his body.

“Does that mean you want to try the experiment?” he asked with a restrained grin, looking down on your face as his platinum blond bangs brushed against your cheek.

“We humans call it dating. But since you’re an android, everything’s an experiment,” you replied with a playful smirk, which then disappeared when you sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before.”

Jihoon shook his head. “It’s okay. That’s understandable. I’m aware we androids have a penchant for analog hack, and I was warned I might be doing it unconsciously. I don’t want that to happen.”

“I’ll trust you despite that. It’s going to be hard but let’s see if that empathy organ is the real deal,” you grinned, poking his side.

“Are you sure?” Jihoon asked. “It’s going to be like infecting yourself with the disease and checking if the cure is effective.”

You chuckled. “Great analogy. But I know what I’m doing. Who knows we might have stumbled upon the future already.”

“If it’s enough for me to act mushy and cringey like this, I guess it’s stronger than we have estimated,” Jihoon joked around as both of you laughed together.

“We’ll see.”

Jihoon nodded and placed a chaste kiss on your forehead. “We’ll see.”

-Hyeri

#seventeen #seventeen scenarios #seventeen fluff #seventeen imagines #seventeen angst #seventeen woozi #lee jihoon #woozi #seventeen hoshi #hoshi #kwon soonyoung

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dissertationproofreadingse-blog1 · 5 years

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bakerlegal18-blog · 2 years

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This can embrace eating places, college and hospital cafeterias, catering operations, among others. Our partnership with Goodr permits our health system to create equitable and constant food distribution points with wholesome options. Be cautious of imprecise claims similar to “eco-friendly” as this has no clear definition. Organizations like Green Seal and Safer Choice evaluate products for human health and environmental effects. Caterers put together and provide food and different services, corresponding to tableware and linens, at a remote site. Premiere Catering Providers Planning for these takes a pro to make sure you have all the right menu selections in your viewers. Here you will find all the gang favorites from sizzling canine and hamburgers to chili cheese fries and ice cream. Well, now you could have been through varied forms of caterers, it’s essential for you now to go through the proper ways to choose out the finest caterer. It doesn’t want particular data to zero your search on the finest caterer. To properly leverage your decisions, nonetheless, is recommended to ensure that your search is prone to end with the most appropriate provider. This sort of caterer typically brings meals via meals carts, supply services, or any meals vans. We’re eager on keeping this place referred to as Earth green and leafy. So we’re dedicated to training a green philosophy in every thing we do—from sourcing local ingredients to composting to using biodegradable fallen leaf plates. We even pick contemporary veggies, flowers, and herbs from our own rooftop backyard in Philadelphia. Staying a green catering company is certainly one of our prime priorities. The catering contract doesn't start till you place money on the desk. With the earnest money, your caterer can start to make the offers for rentals, meals purchases, flower purchases, desserts, etc. If so, it's totally applicable to ask about guests' dietary necessities and restrictions when requesting RSVPs. Don't worry that the question is simply too private or that potential visitors might be insulted. Most people would a lot quite go to a party confident within the information that there will be something obtainable for them to eat than to need to go hungry. They are extra likely to be offended if you did not think to ask and assumed that a one-size-fits-all menu can be applicable. Especially in relationships the place the dad and mom stay far-off, an official meet-the-parents dinner that’s catered to perfection can help make a great impression. From that time, a venue is picked out from an in depth record, and the theme of the get together and meals particulars are labored out. Culinary Eye will also make positive that all of the smaller requirements are taken care of, corresponding to permits, lighting, a/v, images, and valet companies. Crystal Springs Catering is a family-owned and operated business and has been serving the San Francisco Bay Area since 1989. Over the years, it has adapted to many changing tendencies in existence and needs. 10 Wedding Catering Ideas To Allure Your Friends In 2021 Plus, you've many different ways of making your occasion stand out. For instance, in relation to the meals presentation, you possibly can manage the meals in a surprising and unique means. One strategical possibility is to host your occasion in between meals. In this manner, guests won’t be too targeted on the food and can enjoy chatting with each other as an alternative. Indeed, an event is not solely about keeping people full, it’s principally about the expertise. The sweater climate with chilly temperatures and snowfalls shouldn’t cease you from internet hosting a catering service inspired by winter. You can even exchange the fish in sushi with pickled beets and squashes. Uncluttered serving plates means less cash you want to spend on ornamental items. Serve delicious cold soups in particular person cups with crusty bread. Use shot glasses, mini cups with spoons, and even take a look at tubes. If you're in need of a savory appetizer to balance out birthday sweets, bake some pigs in a blanket. Hot canine halves or cocktail sausages, wrapped with premade biscuit dough are fast, scrumptious and perfectly kid-sized. Or, if you're looking for an entree, set up a scorching dog bar. Put out the mayo, mustard and ketchup as traditional and also present chopped onion, pickle relish, coleslaw, chili and cheese. Restaurant And Food Service Business Job Skills According to the BLS, employment of meals service managers is set to extend 9% between 2016 and 2026. Use this Catering Manager job description template to hire qualified candidates on your catering enterprise. You can simply customize this template for a Catering Manager position at a lodge, airline, hospital or different business.Read More... However, profitable caterers are skillful in preparing conventional and new or unfamiliar dishes. It may prove useful to the house caterer to take programs that involve designing menus; estimating food quantities and costs; and well being, zoning, and insurance regulations associated to the meals industry. A Cook’s duties can range depending on the restaurant they work for. Generally, specific duties are making ready food in accordance with recipes. This can embrace washing, measuring, weighing and mixing ingredients. Sometimes folks change their minds about their profession after working in the profession. That's why we appeared into another professions that might assist you to discover your subsequent alternative. These professions include a Food Service Specialist, Front Of House Manager, Kitchen Manager/Cook, and Food And Beverage Supervisor. Top 5 event coordinator interview questions with detailed suggestions for each hiring managers and candidates. Meeting with purchasers to discuss specifications and visitor dietary necessities and plan occasion menus. Some nonrestaurant servers and bartender helpers who work in establishments the place alcohol is served might have training on state and local laws in regards to the sale of alcoholic beverages. Salthouse Catering & Events Charleston, Sc All this record is saying is that most friends don’t care as long as they’re well-hosted. I, for one, toss your favor in the trash as soon as I get house except I can eat it. One thing might matter to an individual the place that same factor may be on the underside of the listing for another person. I look ahead to pretty invitations and well set tables. When it got here to our wedding ceremony we opted out for some things that weren’t essential to us but some weddings that we now have gone to embraced these very things. I suppose this list can’t be mentioned for everyone…we all have totally different tastes and may simply respect everyone’s wedding ceremony preferences as their very own, as a outcome of that’s precisely what it's, their own. My advice for couples planning a wedding on a budget. Think about what your liked ones normally does for a household occasion like thanksgiving or Christmas and so on. then step it up from that. The complete marriage ceremony business has planned to promote/market and entice you with this complete charade of lets imagine we’re billionaires for the day. Staten Island, New York has a wealthy history and a vast choice of intriguing museums showcasing that. The historic district of the town is beautiful and really nicely preserved, adding culture and appeal to town. When it comes to your special day on this historic metropolis, we need to be positive that your marriage ceremony is as remembered as the good events of that previous, or a minimum of to you and your vital other. We have delighted guests with diner crepes and dessert crepe station. Keep in mind the importance of a dance flooring when allocating house in your home, or on-site, for your reception. Allix Cott is the Head of Community at Carats & Cake. Destination Weddings It is a extra relaxed dinnertime environment than a traditional buffet. If you want to offer plenty of meals options and want to encourage your friends to socialize during dinner, this can be the choice for you. Although a bit uncommon, family-style service is becoming more and more well-liked as couples search to make their weddings inventive and fewer traditional. Family-style is trendy and informal, making a enjoyable surroundings in which your guests can interact with one another. You additionally run the danger of ending up with plenty of leftovers which may go to waste if you aren't getting married domestically. Not only can this be lots of enjoyable for visitors, it is a fantastic alternative for folks to fulfill and reconnect with one another with out being formally seated and "stuck" in a single spot. A plated meal is the most conventional kind of service at weddings. Typically three or 4 courses , friends are often given a limited number of options per course. This is the most formal meal choice, and is nice for many who desire a extra refined ambiance. A more modern service type, meals is served through handed hors d’oeuvres and at stations. This allows friends to walk around, and blend and mingle during the reception as a substitute of sitting at their tables. Otherwise often known as a sit-down meal, your visitors shall be served their meal at their desk by a member of the wait employees. There may be a single entrée choice served or several entrée choices, which your visitors can either order upfront or at the event. Your friends won’t walk to a buffet line then carry a plate of meals whereas on the lookout for a seat. Instead, they're pampered and allowed to indulge in a extra intimate and relaxed meal. Thank you for explaining that you need to figure out what number of food vehicles you’ll need since one can usually serve about 50 friends an hour. My daughter plans to rent a food truck or two for her wedding this fall. Biodegradable Take Out Containers & Bins As on-the-go food tendencies enhance so does the demand for disposable restaurant provides. Dean Supply offers a large number of disposable meals containers to suit the needs of your restaurant’s menu. A variety of sizes can be found in numerous supplies such as aluminum, styrofoam, plastic, eco-friendly biodegradable and paper. They will maintain the food fresh and you may supply your customers a crisp and delicious salad in a recyclable and chic container. Your take-out packaging will bedifferent depending on whether you employ it in a fast meals chain, bistro, bakery or sweet shop. However, we offer you an outline of the different varieties of disposable, recyclable and compostable take-out packaging that you could buy and that may suit your company's needs. From our clear hinged and foam hinged containers we're finest known for, to our line of cups and serving bowls, we are at all times in search of ways to offer innovative products that our customers demand. This contains our revolutionary products like the Harvest Fiber eco-friendly line and microwave safe Smart Set Pro containers. Having the proper plastic or paper food containers on your merchandise is important not only to you, however to your clients as properly. By making sure you have the best dimension and material containers, it can save you space and cash while offering your customers the freshest products possible! These carryout bins make it simple for patrons to convey house leftovers with out worrying about their food spilling out. And our meals containers and take out bins are good for patrons who love your food but don’t have time to eat-in. We carry reasonably priced carryout container options in styrofoam, paper, cardboard, and skinny plastic which would possibly be applicable for almost all take-out functions. We additionally offer foil and heavy plastic to-go container options for better reheating or presentation. Showcase your finely crafted meals within the perfect carryout containers in your establishment’s needs, whether or not you’re offering salads, soups, or sandwiches in your menu.

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