#and it added. two random devices to my account

[bare1ythere]

I think. Tumblr mightve just given me a virus or something

#I was on mobile and accidentally clicked one of those shitty casino ads because it glitched and shot up the screen as i was trying #to reblog something #and it added. two random devices to my account #I got rid of them but im feeling really anxious right now #what the hell #shut up me #jsyk if i message anyone something weird. this happened

[inuyashamybeloved]

“Front Piece” chapter 6 sneak peek.

Kikyo and Yura walked in silence despite the former’s need to tell her girlfriend everything she discussed with Toga but obviously needed to wait until they were alone.

On their way to the elevators, Kikyo spotted Kagome and couldn’t help jabbing Yura subtly.

“There’s Kagome,” she whispered, drawing her girlfriend’s attention.

“What? Where?” Yura whisper-yelled, looking in various directions.

Kikyo subtly turned Yura to the right, forcing her to face Kagome’s general direction. “Purple blouse and black slacks,” Kikyo pointed out.

“I see her,” Yura exclaimed in a low voice, “she is certainly pretty.”

“Yura!” Kikyo chided in mock annoyance.

“What?! I have eyes! And you know fucking well you’re my one and only,” Yura retorted in the lowest volume possible. “Besides, I don’t forget you called her ‘babe’ first.”

Kikyo suppressed her urge to cackle, but before she could tease her girlfriend, she went stiff when someone appeared in the room and headed straight to Kagome.

“What the actual fuck?!” Yura muttered under her breath, perfectly expressing what Kikyo was thinking.

Naraku was hovering around Kagome, and it was evident that the young woman looked uncomfortable. Kikyo remembered Inuyasha mentioning that he suspected the creep was stalking Kagome, too. If she had to guess, Naraku was talking about work as an excuse to interact with the girl.

He had used the same excuse during college with Kikyo.

“Let’s go,” Kikyo told Yura as she casually walked toward Kagome. She just had the perfect excuse to strike up a conversation with the accountant and hopefully force Naraku to go away.

“Kagome?” Kikyo called out her name as if surprised to find her there. The girl in question simply gaped, and her eyes widened in shock.

Maybe Toga was right… But now was not the time to try and dig for information about Kagome’s feelings for Inuyasha. Kikyo’s current mission was to spare the girl from Naraku’s devices.

“Kikyo? It’s been a while since you stepped foot in the office,” Naraku greeted her with that creepy smile that made her want to scrub her skin raw. “I heard your husband is on a business trip without you.”

Typical Naraku, going straight to the mind games without a preamble, but Kikyo would not fall into that trap. Ignoring his words, she turned to Kagome, who looked visibly uncomfortable.

“Just the woman I was looking for. How are you, Kagome?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Naraku’s eyes glinting as he watched the interaction.

“Do you mind?” Yura glared at him, crossing her arms and stepping between him and the two women. “Don’t you have work to do? Or your job solely consists of following women?”

It was evident that Naraku didn’t appreciate the interference. However, he still left, muttering ‘See you, Kikyo’ as he walked away.

She waited until he was out of view before turning to Kagome, who was pale as a ghost as she stared at Kikyo.

“Hello! What can I do for you?” Kagome asked, and Kikyo didn’t miss the utter panic written across her cute face.

“Maybe she was interested but decided to move on to someone available.” Toga’s words resounded in her mind. It was a gamble, but Kikyo was almost positive that Kagome really liked Inuyasha, even if she was dating someone else. It would certainly explain why the young woman was staring at her like Kikyo would tell her to leave Inuyasha alone.

Her original plan was to bring up Kagome’s mother’s e-shop and ask questions about her crafts. Or mention Kaede and fish for a conversation about Sota. But it was abundantly clear that it was not the time for such random topics, so Kikyo decided to be upfront about why she approached her.

“I saw how uncomfortable you looked with Naraku hovering. Believe me when I say I know perfectly well how you feel,” Kikyo confessed, giving Kagome a sympathetic look, who seemed honestly surprised at the words. “Naraku likes to play mind games.”

“He loves to stir shit and stalk women while making it look like he isn’t,” Yura added.

Kagome gasped, looking from Kikyo to Yura. “Did he use to stalk you?”

“He’s been doing it since we were in college, but he does it in such a way you can’t really do anything about it, at least legally speaking. He’s crafty,” Kikyo explained.

Kagome looked honestly worried, then gave Kikyo a faint smile. “Thanks for the heads up.I—I get chills when he’s around. I don’t know why,” the accountant replied in a whisper.

Kikyo knew the feeling all too well. Taking a pen and a slip of paper from her purse, she wrote her cell phone number and Inuyasha’s and handed it to Kagome. “If he bothers you or you feel unsafe, please call me or Inuyasha, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Kagome stared at the slip of paper, confusion, and surprise evident in her features. “I—Thank you, Kikyo.”

“No problem, Kagome. Take care and please be careful. His mind games can mess with your head.” Kikyo squeezed Kagome’s hands in what she hoped was a comforting and empathetic gesture before turning to Yura. “Shall we go?”

Yura nodded before waving goodbye to Kagome.

The couple was soon on their way home, and Kikyo couldn't help wishing Inuyasha was back already to keep an eye on Naraku and make sure the creep left Kagome alone.

Kagome watched Kikyo and the other woman go, still confused and grateful for her intervention. Ever since Inuyasha left on that business trip three days ago, Naraku kept showing up and starting a conversation about anything—mostly work—but she suspected his intentions were to fish for information about her personal life. She had told him nothing at all, but she suspected he would try again and again.

Glancing at the slip of paper, Kagome couldn’t suppress a pang of guilt for having these massive feelings for Inuyasha. She held his phone number in her hands. Provided by his own wife.

The universe certainly had a way of toying with her.

Sighing loudly, Kagome returned to her office, praying and hoping her day would improve. At least she knew that her apprehension toward Naraku was correct and that someone other than her three friends believed her. She saved both numbers in her contacts list and hoped she didn’t need to resort to them.

Chapters 1-5 on Ao3

Inuyasha/Kagome, Kikyo/Yura.

@xanthippe-writes

#inukag fic tease #inukag fic #inuscarlett fic tease #inukag #kikyo/yura #inukag romance #beard inuyasha #fake relationship

[frozenoj]

Disability Approved Side Hustles

I've been planning on making a video/tiktok series about this for like two months—but, you know, disabled—so maybe I'll update it to be fancier later. Who knows?

Note: None of these are going to make you enough to live on, either together or separately, but sometimes every little bit counts!

Bridge Money - referral code TWSCBQ

This is the simplest/easiest of my suggestions. Watch up to 25 ads a day for 1 cent each. Yeah, I know that's only like $7 a month if you remember most days. But it's so easy to do while doing almost anything else (that let's you use a hand for a sec every 30 secs or so) that it's just $7 you're leaving on the table if you don't do it.

You also get 2 cents cash back for purchases if you link a card. They have random offers for $4 if you do x thing, games you earn 1 cent a minute for playing, etc. But I mainly just get my 25 cents each day.

Please use a referral code, either mine or someone else's, because both people get $1!

Mistplay - referral in link (android only)

This is the main one I use. You play games on an android device and earn units you can then buy giftcards with. This is good if on SSI because it doesn't go to your bank account! But it does have paypal as an option if that's not a concern. I've earned over $400 so far, and someone more dedicated could have earned more in the same time frame. (I don't want to burn out.)

The best strategy is to play games that have the most "speed" bubbles first, and up to checkpoint 5, then switch games. Find one "loyalty game" that gives 4 gems per $1 and spend $2 to get to silver status (should last two months). DO NOT UNINSTAL THAT GAME! As long as you're actively using the app, you'll make the $2 back from the bonuses. Sometimes you'll get a "Daily Task" to get to checkpoint 6+ and depending on the reward it might be worth it then. If a game is boosted to like 8 speed bubbles, it can also be worth it go past checkpoint 5. Use your judgement.

Playwell - don't think it does referrals?

Very similar to Mistplay. If you like playing games on your phone and want to play one Mistplay doesn't have, it might be here. (I refuse to play games for free anymore lol.) I mostly just have it because sometimes I'm able to double dip. Right now I am playing Merge Inn which is a 4 speed bubble game on Mistplay and earns 5k points per 15 minutes on Playwell. I'm going past checkpoint 5 for this one because I'll earn $2 if I get to level 31 in the game through Playwell plus the time based rewards. And I just like merging games.

Swagbucks - referral in link

Swagbucks has a ton of stuff. I would suggest you actually look up a post specific to that to see all the options because it's like surveys, receipts, offer walls, coupons, just... a lot.

But like Mistplay and Playwell it also does games. And like Playwell you can also sometimes double dip! So I'll check there and see if they have an offer for games that have higher speed bubbles on Mistplay. Some of the offers are really hard and time consuming so def look into it first, though. You can often find guides on reddit for getting them done on time.

Atlas Earth - referral code BAMSSE

This is going to seem like a scam at first. I actually had it downloaded for a few weeks, thought it was too much effort for too little return, stopped using it, and then changed my mind. It has a sort of snowball effect so at the beginning you'll make basically nothing—fractions of a cent kinda nothing—but over time have the potential to make a few hundred bucks a year.

At the beginning it is more important to be hard core about it. I had a timer set every 20 minutes for a while lol. Now, I'm a bit more lax. If I kept up the timer I could increase my earnings faster but again, don't want to burn out. I'm at the point now where I'll make about $5 a month as long as I get on every 5-6 hours for a couple minutes.

This is another one where you need to use a referral code, even if not mine! You get 200 "atlas bucks" for free after buying your 10th plot of land as long as you use a referral code before buying I think your second. I really regret not using a code myself!

Upside - referral TASHA43729

This one is more about saving money than making money. They do cash back on gas and some other things. I recently drove from PA to FL and got $28 in cash back for the gas we bought on the trip down. (Didn't really use it on the way back, because Grandma gave us some giftcards. 🥰) You can also get 5-20% at random restaurants and like Bath & Body Works?? The ads say also grocery stores but we don't have any that take part in our area. You can (and we did) use this in conjunction with the 2 cents from Bridge money, whatever cash back you get on the card itself, scanning the receipt, etc.

#disability #low income #side hustle #long post #neisvoid #mistplay #bridge money #upside #swagbucks #playwell #atlas earth

[fizzingwizard]

Credit where credit is due: I was thrilled to see this in my activity tab yesterday:

Tumblr makes so many tweaks and changes almost daily that it'd be impractical to roll this out for all of them. But for anything that might confuse or take users by surprise, I think using this more often would be great. It's so common on this site for me to open up Tumblr and find something just utterly different, and unless I think of wading through the Changes on Tumblr blog (which can be an ordeal if you didn't notice the change the day it was implemented) I'm just left to my own devices to guess why.

Now that that's over with.

I AM MISSING POSTS ON DESKTOP NOW. Before I thought it was just mobile. It seemed that on mobile, when lost of posts appeared while I was out or sleeping, Tumblr just wouldn't show the to me until I had reached the end of my dash, scrolled back up, refreshed, and scrolled through my dash again.

I did it for experimental purposes - to prove it was really happening - which is is - but I do NOT want to keep combing through my dash two or three times looking for stragglers. If it was just one or two posts, Idk, I guess I'd chalk it up to something with those posts or my connectivity. But it's been like ten missing posts a day. And that's my lowball number!! I'm doing my best to account for the possibility that I just didn't notice them on my first scroll. But that definitely doesn't explain all of them.

I figured it was to do with my data - because I normally have a long dash only when I'm on my commute to work, when it's been hours since I've last looked at tumblr, and all the chatty folk across the world who are awake while I'm asleep have been busy bees. So maybe it's too much for my data, plus I'm always on the train when I look at Tumblr and I lose connection every time we make a stop, lol.

But that can't be the case IF IT'S ALSO HAPPENING ON DESKTOP!!

I'm not a train right now! I'm at my apartment! My connection to the internet is the best it ever gets! It is wifi, but it isn't giving me any trouble on aaaany other website. Even Tumblr - when my wifi gets spotty, the picture become gradients, videos buffer forever, and I get shake my fist at the way loading ads is prioritized over loading you know the content I actually want to see.

Right now though my wifi is crystal clear, and Tumblr is working perfectly - except it's eating random posts!! Yes, I'm sure - once again there were too many for me to have just not noticed them all. My dash is long in the morning, but not TOO long. I deliberately follow only a handful of active users so that my dash doesn't overwhelm me.

Now that I think of it, I wonder if that's what's behind this? Maybe (I have no idea) it's common for people on tumblr to follow soooo many people it's impossible they'll keep up with all the posts on their dash anyway, so Tumblr just doesn't want to bother making sure everything shows up?? I don't know, I just know that that does NOT work for me. I use Tumblr because I want to see content posted or reblogged by people I follow. Also, being a very small blog myself, I don't like the idea that on the rare occasions I post something I actually care if other people see, that post might not even show up for anyone.

No idea if this is a bug or something purposeful but it's definitely happening. To me, anyway. Although, if it's happening to others as well, it makes sense they don't know because who scrolls through their dash TWICE?? The initial way I figured it out was because I saw a post I liked and forgot to Like it, so I scrolled again to find it... and found more than I was expecting :/

#tumblr

[dtoken]

How to create an NFT for free

So, you want to know how to create an NFT for free? This tutorial will show you how. It’s way simpler to create, or ‘mint’ an NFT than you’d imagine — and doing it for free is just as easy. In this tutorial, I will create a single NFT artwork, and not delve into minting generative NFTs or an NFT collection.

But, what are NFTs? I hear you ask. Well, these non-fungible tokens are everywhere but they’re not actually as complex as they first seem. Basically, NFTs are a way of registering a digital file on a cryptocurrency blockchain, to make sure it’s a unique item and demonstrate ownership. Need more? See our guide to how to make and sell an NFT, but here I’ll show you how to specifically create an NFT for free.

You might assume you’ll need a computer or laptop to create an NFT. While that’s obviously possible, you can also do it on your mobile device. The best NFT apps for iPhone allow you to create an NFT on the go, and check out how your collection is doing. Plus, you can track NFTs on different blockchains. With that in mind, some of the steps below for creating an NFT for free are applicable, but I’m using a desktop browser and Wacom Studio tablet.

Once you have your NFT you’ll want to show it off in style, so consider buying one of the best NFT displays. For more on the top end of digital art frames read my feature ‘Why Tokenframe is one of the best NFT frames for digital art’.

How to create an NFT for free: the steps

01. Creating a crypto wallet account

You’re going to need a cryptocurrency wallet to set up an account on any NFT marketplace in order to create your NFT. We’re choosing Metamask as it’s one of the most widely used and accessible. There are alternatives, such as Coinbase wallet.

When you create your wallet account you’ll be given a 12 word ‘seed phrase’, this is your unique password. Keep it safe and don’t share it anywhere, the seed phrase acts as your security code (handy if you forget your password).

02. Making an account on an NFT marketplace

For this tutorial I’m creating an account on Rarible, but the same approach applies to any NFT marketplace. Read my guide to the best NFT marketplaces to find the right one for you.

Once you set up our account (adding a user name, photo, bio, etc.) link your Metamask account to your Rarible account by following the instructions. Linking your two accounts ensures your NFTs will appear in your wallet and all transactions can be easily completed (you’ll need to go into Metamask’s settings to automatically bring in your NFTs). My Metamask account also acts as my Rarible login.

Spend some time personalising your NFT marketplace account, adding a banner image, and linking in your social media accounts. The more time spent ensuring your socials are connected the better; you’ll find your art is more visible the more time you take to add detail into your page.

03. Painting some art

For this guide to how to create an NFT for free I quickly create a new piece of art. I google some random photo references and create a sketch using the painting app Rebelle 5; it’s quick and I’m not focusing on detail but a general sense of the face and proportions. (Read my Rebelle 5 review to find out more about this excellent digital art software.)

An NFT can be any digital file so create the art you enjoy making, but here I’m choosing a digital painting. I save the new painting as a jpeg and prepare to upload it to my new NFT marketplace account and mint it as an NFT.

04. Uploading your art

It’s time to upload my art and begin creating an NFT for free. These NFT marketplace sites like Rarible have very user-friendly guides to uploading your art and the process is generally the same (some select NFT marketplaces may want verify you, and this can take a few days). Click the Create tab in the top right of your account and continue.

You’ll now need to choose a blockchain. On Rarible there are four choices, including the new low-carbon cryptos Flow, Tezos and Polygon. (We have a must-read guide to the most popular NFT crypto to decide which is best for you.) To create an NFT for free I choose Ethereum.

05. Choosing free minting

The next options help your decide the value and type of NFT you’re creating, for example choose Single to create a one-off unique NFT or Multiple to mint a series of NFTs to create a collection. (Take a look at my NFT trends feature for inspiration.) Set the price, add a name and description, and make sure you switch Free Minting to ‘On’.

Free minting, or lazy minting, enables you to put the fees for minting onto the buyer so you won’t be charged. Usually you’re charged ‘gas fees’ — the cost of transacting on the blockchain — to mint an NFT. The unit of gas is called a ‘Gwei’. Depending on the traffic on the blockchain as you’re minting the fee can increase or decrease; the greater the traffic the higher the cost. Often it can be cheaper in the late evening or early morning.

But… I’m not being charged if I choose Free Minting. The downside to pushing the gas fees onto the buyer is you may need to lower your asking price to anticipate the later cost, or mint your NFT as an auction and let the buyer decide.

06. The NFT is minted

On Rarible, when the NFT is minted you get a lovely explosion of digital confetti. Now the real work begins. It’s best to social and post about your new NFT as soon as possible. You can link the new NFT directly to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels from within the NFT marketplace.

You see, minting an NFT for free is easy but there are some things you need to know; the advantage of free minting enables you to quickly create an NFT for free but it can have some drawbacks as NFT marketplaces tend to make ‘normal’ NFTs more visible. Because of this you’ll need to make more of your own social channels for promotion. You can find this NFT on Rarible(opens in new tab) to see how it looks in the wild.

How to create an NFT for free: frequent questions

What’s a blockchain?

This is a database that is shared amongst the nodes of a computer network. Each block in the chain contains data and constantly check and update the data. This makes any assets on the blockchain immutable, which ensures the data is extremely hard to change or delete. These are decentralised networks, meaning there is no third-party involved and all data is freely available for view and tracking.

What gives an NFT value?

Rarity and / or status help an NFT achieve value. So, for example, an NFT created by established artists such as Beeple, Damien Hirst, and Takashi Murakami will be worth a lot. But NFTs are breaking the rules. New artists are finding new ways to ensure NFTs differ from traditional art valuations. Community and utility is a major factor. Think of an NFT such as a Bored Ape Yacht Club as a ticket to a club, and that club will have exclusive events, chat groups and projects to be involved with; these community driven NFTs have great value.

Why is an NFT jpeg worth so much?

An NFT jpeg is worth so much because it’s not the jpeg that is being bought, but the hash token on the blockchain. The Crypto Punk art is the visual ‘thing’ we can find easy to understand, but the true value of the NFT is its token and the benefits it can bring by being on a blockchain. This can include being invited to exclusive in real life events.

How much does it cost to make an NFT?

It can be free, if you use lazy minting. Standard NFTs can vary wildly in the cost of gas fees to generate and register on a blockchain, and the costs rises and falls as the blockchain is being used. A typical NFT can cost anywhere from $10 / £7 to ¢$200 / £170. We have known of fees to reach $2,000 / £1,700.

What kinds of NFTs sell the best?

NFTs that have utility will always sell well as they embrace the full functionality of the blockchain. This is why you will find the below NFTs are some of the most popular.

1. Bored Ape Yacht Club 2. CryptoPunks 3. The Sandbox 4. Art Blocks 5. Doodles 6. Cool Cats 7. Decentraland 8. World of Women

Can I avoid gas fees without using lazy minting?

Yes, to a degree. Newer NFT crypto blockchains such as Wax enable you to set the gas fee limit you’re will to pay to mint an NFT. It will be processed and minted at a time when the gas fee matches your set level. Also, consider avoiding minting an NFT on Tuesdays and Thursdays as these are historically the busiest days and so the costliest.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific financial or investment advice or recommendations for any individual for any investment product. The article is only intended to provide general information and opinions about NFTs. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.

Read more:

NFT drops: Everything you need to know

Discover the best NFT displays

NFT gaming: 10 things you need to know

#free nfts #airdrop #crypto #eth #btc

[codeandgin]

The Enshittification of TikTok

I’ve been using TikTok since around 2020. I could probably be classed as an average user; I don’t upload much, occasionally leave comments, and mostly just doomscroll. I enjoy the app; I have managed to train the algorithm as best as I can to provide me a feed of queer humour, world news, gaming content, etc. Short-form video can be a great space for that kind of content, and I love watching creative people carve out a niche for themselves. However, during my time using TikTok, I’ve noticed a wave of bizarre design decisions, alterations to the UI, changes to what kind of content is preferred by the algorithm, and I would like to vent about them here.

I would like to preface this with the statement that this article is in no way researched, more that it is an anecdotal account of aspects of TikTok that stand out to me as annoying and emblematic of enshittification.

I. UI

The UI of TikTok seems to be in an ever-changing state of flux. One day the homepage is split into “For You” and “Following”, the next day the TikTok Shop has joined them as a third tab. Then the “Friends” feed shifts to the navigation bar, only for it to be swapped out for the Shop a week later. Consistency is not key, it seems, in the minds of Douyin’s UX designers.

I understand optimising the layout. I understand the need to find places to put newly developed features. It just seems so constant on TikTok, that I almost doubt that they have a UX team at all. Given that it took years to add letterboxing so non-iPhone aspect ratios didn’t get random cutoff, I may be right.

II. Feature Added, Feature Removed

If you’ve been around on TikTok for any length of time, you’ll know how frustrating this is. With seemingly the same frequency of their UI changes, TikTok adds new features and removes well-liked features to the app. Who remembers pinned comments? I do. The repost feature that was recently added has already been gutted, as you can no longer attach comments to a repost. I don’t know if they’re unconfident in the features they make, or if they’re using us as unwitting beta testers, or what. To compound this frustration, rollout and removal of features seems almost random - dependant on the model of your device or even the region in which you reside. I didn’t get captions for nearly a year after they were first rolled out.

III. Impossible (4/4), conversations(2/4), are(3/4), coherent(1/4)

Comment threads are impossible to follow. It is impossible to have a coherent conversation with someone in the comments over a prolonged period because the comment threads don’t sort temporally. What’s the point in having the ability to reply to specific comments if the thread isn’t going to be displayed in the correct order? Sorting parent comments by an algorithm that boosts engagement, I understand. Sorting comments in a thread the same way is mind-boggling. The 100-character limit is already enough to kill nuance stone dead; we shouldn’t be forced to number a threaded comment so future readers can puzzle together the intended order.

IV. Filters, Content Scrapers, Commissions, and Ads

TikTok has some of the most bizarre content moderation on the planet, liberally applying the ban hammer on legitimate accounts for no apparent reason, and yet doing nothing about the prolific content scraper accounts. There are so many accounts that rip content from other TikTok users, from YouTube, from TV and Film, split it into a million 30-second slices, and farm engagement from it. Sometimes they go to the extra effort of pairing it with an unrelated video designed specifically to turn your brain off and keep watching. Sludge content is hell. And they see little to no pushback - from the comments, or seemingly from the copyright owners. And how could they? It’s like whack-a-mole, one goes down, and two more appear to take their place. And because these scraped videos are specifically designed to hold your attention, and leave you wanting more, the algorithm loves that shit, and pushes away genuine original creative material in favour of these rips. It’s horrifying.

Next to sludge content, with the goal of switching your brain off to farm engagement, are filters. Filter is a misnomer, in my opinion: low-budget augmented reality games would be a more accurate descriptor. With all the grace and robust programming of an interactive mobile game ad, most of these filters act as a medium to create low-effort videos, often to farm rage engagement through acting as incompetent as possible. Because people are so susceptible to rage engagement (why do you think mobile ads haven't changed in 10 years), the algorithm picks up on this and again, pushes this slop out.

Of course, TikTok is also a business and needs to make money. So of course that means, as time inexorably marches on, and they need to maintain the illusion of infinite growth, the algorithm is tweaked to push more ads, worse ads, and ads that are disguised as normal content. If you see “Commission Paid” under a video description, or a link to the TikTok shop, run, because that’s an ad. More ads between videos, and videos that are secretly ads, again diluting the wide range of actually creative art on the platform.

Block them, press the not interested button, close the app. Train TikTok not to reward this behaviour. Please.

V. Self-Censorship

[REDACTED]

Where Do We Go From Here?

Like I said, I love TikTok. It is a space that has connected communities around the world in a creative space. I learn more about current events on TikTok than I would ever learn on the ten o’clock news. I don’t want to see it continue to decline in quality, I want to see it grow.

This has been a space for me to vent, thank you for reading if you have.

Addendum

I didn’t redact V. Self Censorship for a cheap joke, by the way. I wrote about five different versions of that segment, but I couldn’t find a way to word how I feel about the topic in a way that felt adequate.

#tiktok #enshittification #article #personal blog #vent post

[grad502-rubybird]

Week Twelve - Final Feedback

For the last class of the year, I went in and got some feedback from Raul. It was good to get the opinion of someone who hadn’t seen the project before, and I got some very helpful advice. Below I have included some changes I made.

Notes of feedback

Summary of changes

8 Fold - Poster

On this poster I made the point size of the type smaller so it was less overpowering. I also condensed down the copywriting to two lines, to make the messaging tone more simple and direct. Because the typographic imagery on this poster is the tagline, which clearly summarises the issue, the copywriting didn’t need to have as much hierarchical value. I also made the row of information below the body text have more breathing room by condensing the hashtag into into the instagram account name section. This section is much cleaner in terms of the hierarchy now, which makes the important information more accessible. I then tried to refine this bottom information section further by taking out the very structured and even grid system. Because I hadn’t used this idea in the brochure, it wasn’t something that I wanted to include in the design system which meant that I needed to try a different strategy.

When I removed the lines, the layout of elements looked very unconsidered and random. This didn’t work for the desired design, so I tried some other options.

Here I tried to make the layout work better by sectioning off the information with a coloured box . It still didn’t look very clean, and I didn’t like the black type on orange as much.

Here I simplified the bottom information and added a single dividing line. This worked better than the rigid grid system that I was using earlier and also made the layout easier to read because there is a visual division between body type and secondary information. I then tried this information panel style on my other poster series to see if it worked on these.

Poster series tests

This is the infographic style poster series that I tested the new information panel style out on. I also made the typography negative space in a solid rectangle to fit with the other poster designs, which I liked more as it is bolder and stands out from the dice imagery. When each letter was separate, the individual elements got lost in the page because of the number of dice which is quite busy. I think that the bottom section looks much better like this as well.

Here I added chopsticks to the above refined poster series. This situates the viewer in an eating visual environment, and adds some more context to the dice visuals. In my feedback, Raul mentioned that the chopsticks are an important interactive device in my work and that they should be incorporated into more of my collateral.

I also added chopsticks to this poster series as well to make it link better with the 8 fold collateral and the overall design system. This series also looks better with the refined information panel, and as such I will use this new layout in my final collateral and campaign artwork. 

Compostable Plates collateral refinement

Following my feedback I also refined these collateral designs as well. I didn’t want to use the chopsticks in these designs as I didn’t want the eating idea to be implied. I want to highlight the fact that the plates are compostable and won’t produce microplastics. I did add the logomark from the cover of the brochure and the instagram name to link these to the rest of the collateral and increase public awareness more.

Single colour type

Key words highlighted in orange - orange has more weight than blue, brighter and conveys a sense of urgency

Instagram posts

Another part of my feedback was to include the skull with the bite icon more. This icon is a very simple summary of the campaign messaging; that we are ingesting toxic plastics. I decided to add a skull icon with offset stroke to the existing post designs, and decrease the text size. I found that the posts with only the 2 elements of rectangular type looked a bit odd. I think that three elements creates a more visually appealing effect. On top of this, I increased the size of the logo mark in the corner to make it look more purposeful.

Original design

Reworked version

8 Fold - Brochure

Following my feedback I also reduced the point size of the body text from 12 to 11. I think this looks better as there is more breathing room and it allows the illustration and display type to stand out more.

12pt body copy

11pt body copy

As well as this minor adjustment, I also tried out adding the tagline (micro plastics, macro problems) to the cover page as it needed some more context. From the skull visual and title, it is a bit challenging to understand immediately what the campaign is about without reading the internal copywriting. I think I might experiment a bit more with this because I’m not super happy with how this looks. The tagline placement seems a bit random; I might try adding a line to create some separation and to link to the line used in the posters.

[devandahlcourte-work-in-progress]

Section 3. four chapters, ending with chapter 13

I am reposting these first eighty-two chapters (in 22 sections) plus the prologue and the preface.

These posts will be the updated versions from my DeviantArt account, and since Tumblr may not display all the text correctly (it destroys anything I had in italics or underlined) I would still recommend reading everything there, on DeviantArt. They will also include internal links that navigate between the chapters on DeviantArt and will take the reader off Tumblr if clicked.

This came about because I noticed search engines were finding random sections of my book and displaying them along with some other people’s blog posts.

Okay, so that’s why I installed those internal links in each one… so that if anyone gets to a random section by way of a search engine and would like to read the story from the beginning, they can.

Only then did I realize that it wasn’t getting it’s search results from DeviantArt, but from old Tumblr.

There’s another problem at work here besides unrefined searches…

There is a new species of virus on the internet that likes to eat ancient Tumblr posts and barf them back up infested with adware - spyware - malware etc. The virus goes by names like TumGIR, TumBIG, TumPIK, or Tum(anything else but ‘blr’). The caps were added by me for emphasis so that maybe you can double check in case you’re not looking at an actual Tumblr post right now but one of these so-called “mirror” sites.

If you’re looking at this text through one of the counterfeit Tumblrs that I mentioned, then no link you click (assuming it even copies it with my links intact) will take you out; it will redirect you and show you all of the spam ads it wants to. So read carefully what url is showing on your browser right now.

If it is one of the untrustworthy ones I would suggest closing your browser window and doing whatever else you normally would in order to reset settings.

As far as my science fiction novel entitled “If And Only If,” the safest way to find it is by going to my Instagram:

@michelle.de.vandahlcourte

From there you can click on the link in my bio. It will take you to the beginning of the story on DeviantArt… the safe one! No malware.

P.S. None of this is Tumblr’s fault! It’s the malware/adware/spyware developers who are stealing people’s tumblr posts.

The actual content of this page appears below here👇

Section 3. four chapters, ending with chapter 13

↩️return to previous section, section 2

↩️↩️…and if you arrived here because of a search engine and you would like to read this story from the beginning, click here.

ℏ♄

Prajina eventually learned that the captain’s nickname, ℏ♄, was pronounceable with human vocal cords. But only certain humans had bothered to master this kind of “speech.” It was in fact, colloquially known as Mongolian throat-singing. It seemed it could be accurately reproduced by a master of this kind of singing who repeated one particular word, twice in a row, with a slight difference in pitch. So far Prajina’s new education from the device she said looked like an ancient “tanning bed” did not include any training in Mongolian throat-singing, or any Mongolian at all. The rest of the languages were to be covered in tomorrow’s session.

Her nickname could also be approximated by listening to the sound that the blue orbs called The Old Ones made when hovering in the Rock Hudson tv-movie version of Ray Bradbury‘s “The Martian Chronicles.” If you listened to the repetitious sound they make and let it repeat for two cycles but vary the pitch slightly from one to the next, it sort of sounds like it. The aliens on the Fomalhaut would still detect that you were speaking with a human accent either way, but they would understand who you were talking about: The Captain. Besides languages, all of the books were included as part of Prajina’s brain programming.

For the time being, due to physiological reasons, it was pointless to try and teach her too much more “alien speech” – or The Intergalacta as it was called – sort of an alien Esperanto. The term “alien” no longer made sense to use either. Notwithstanding semantics, most of the captain’s “native” speech, as Prajina thought of it, sounded like the synthesizers, eight minutes and forty-nine seconds into something called the “Rage Mix” by the 21st-century human called DJ BL3ND that she had in her public head cloud. The crew all regarded this as a catchy tune and had been going around seriously singing it, unable to get it unstuck from their heads.

As soon as they realized that DJ BL3ND was not actually a Ხᢈɧᯌ from the Epsilon Camelopardalis system, but in fact a human in a mask, they also learned that it was not the sound of his singing, but a combination of sound effects applied with a synthesizer program. They quit trying to hear meaning in the “words” and just enjoyed it the way a non-Italian speaker might enjoy a beautiful aria from an Italian opera without understanding the words. Their captain was getting tired of it already and was looking forward to relaxing with “Exit Planet Dust” by The Chemical Brothers back in her quarters when her regular shift time ended.

As the ship’s captain she had a certain autonomy that other public servants rarely experienced. It was well within the scope of her job to deputize other sentient beings as needed when it helped with a case.

And considering the magnitude of this case, it could be justified. But seriously? No one else from the member worlds of The Amphictiony would pull a stunt like deputizing a human; they were still just infants as a species and needed more time to develop. But the Captain of the P.S.L. Fomalhaut’s decision would not be challenged… not ordinarily, and certainly not in this instance. They never could convey the meaning of the letters PSL to Prajina. After attempting to translate, the words were still lacking. So the abbreviation followed by the name the humans had given to that star for which the ship had been named, would suffice. It was necessary to explain to Prajina that she was on a skewed-Minkowski-space-time-inter-dimensional craft, so they might as well give it a name.

What puzzled the captain also – but she understood that most beings, including her own species, went through a phase like this somewhere in their distant evolutionary past – was that humans used so little of their brain capacity. Like having a decent amount of books available in their libraries, and yet few, if any of them, having ever read them all. Why has every human not read every book ever written? At least the ones by humans?

And if you’re going to have over a couple of hundred major languages? Okay, that’s cute, she thought. But then why don’t all humans speak them all? She knew from Prajina’s thoughts that she resembled the bluish female, presumably, supervisory alien from the first Lilo and Stitch movie. Interesting, all around. That humans had already begun to think of such things.

Personally, ℏ♄ didn’t see the resemblance, and thought the cartoon reminded her more of her crazy Aunt ࠄo࠳ ୌѪ ృ, but some of the crew did find it amusing. So yes, they had already begun to think of things; theories that might have postulated the existence of ℏ♄ and her crew. And yet they couldn’t be bothered to read every book ever written, learn every language, take all college courses in all subjects... you know, simple things like that.

Moreover, once Prajina had realized they were “aliens,” she had not only wanted to see the captain’s true form, but had finally calmed down. That she was not more comfortable with her own “tribal god images,” suggested that maybe the contact manual needed updating. Well, the so-called “tanning bed” was now ready for Prajina’s session tomorrow, and ℏ♄ went back to her quarters and put on Loops of Fury instead.

“Young” Padmanabhan

Obviously we’re not talking about “Padmanabhan the postdoc...” who was too busy writing a grant proposal to be at the rave or involved in any of this. He got his grant, published, and repeated. He eventually became a principal investigator, a tenured professor, and lived happily ever after without ever knowing anything about Stalko-Taco or the shenanigans surrounding it. So it is no longer necessary to specify that we are talking about “young” Padmanabhan.

“You could see it in the Incredibles, and in the Gatorade soccer commercial. Also, the pharmaceuticals companies already had a lot of money to expend even back then,” he looked out into his audience to see if they were paying attention.

“But the matrix was all real actors,” Siouxsie said, raising her hand but then talking without waiting to be called, “so what does the intro scene have to do with hyper-animation?” While the book they were presently discussing wasn’t The Matrix, it made enough references to the film that it generated some interesting side discussions.

Padmanabhan could see the files in her head cloud, as permissions had been granted for him to overlap their public, academic areas with his own head cloud and he could see that she’d purchased the CliffsNotes. It still contained the ancient admonition at the beginning urging students not to use the CliffsNotes instead of reading the book. Well, technically, no problem there. Siouxsie was the type who read neither.

How he’d gotten wrangled into tutoring English and American Literature students was boring and simple: he was in a hurry to get his citizenship. Then he could get his car and move around the country relatively unobserved. Alex and Prajina didn’t need to worry about such things; theirs was bought for them – a mere $3 billion each.

It had not kept up with the rate of inflation since the ‘70s. Anyway, P & A were both from prominent, wealthy, old money American families. Alex from the Lexington Sohibnazarov’s, And Prajina from the Seattle Ranganathans. So clearly their parents could afford to buy their citizenships. Padmanabhan was not from the one percent, or even the ten percent, and had decided to go the volunteer route; he was going to be teaching in public schools after he graduated, delay grad school for two years, and that way at least enter grad school as a citizen. Now he was in a hurry though. He needed access to things that citizens could get – without the government scrutiny that would be applied to non-citizens.

The fact that this tutoring counted, was repugnant to him. These were kids whose parents were anywhere from deci-billionaires up to a few of centi-billionaires, who were supposed to go to university because that was what was expected of them. Only trouble was, they weren’t very bright. How could this be counted as public service and quadruple the speed at which he achieved citizenship? One semester. Slightly less than half a year, would replace two years of teaching actual underprivileged kids in high school algebra, trigonometry, and calculus. Someone had set it up. “The fix was in” as they said. Not fixed by him, though. He’d simply answered the add which his boyfriend had brought to his attention on his head monitor – by telling him okay, and to go ahead and “click” on it.

Back to the lecture. A dirty old couch. It had to do with such diverse subjects as entropy, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, etc. Not likely anything these spoon-fed whiners would deign to read about.

The proverbial “dirty old couch” was a benchmark holy grail of sorts, around the turn of the 20th to 21st centuries. To be able to simulate one, meant that you had a computer-generated image so accurate that humans could not tell they were looking at a computer-generated image, and might in fact believe they were seeing an actual photograph of someone’s apartment for instance.

If in the universe of the matrix, they had succeeded in producing an entire computer-generated world that humans believed was in fact reality… Then the dirty old couch goal had presumably been reached long ago. So they didn’t literally go for a couch, sofa, etc. Instead it was a pair of chairs. But they did make sure to have them be both dirty and old. The scene where Morpheus meets Neo to start explaining to him what the matrix really is, takes place on a pair of dirty old chairs. It’s symbolic. Duh. CliffsNotes to the rescue. How lazy do you really have to be to need someone to read them to you? That was essentially what Padmanabhan was doing if he stuck to the lesson plan.

The book they were “reading” however had tie-ins to what he was actually trying to investigate, as it related to P&A’s disappearance. A curious little synchronicity… and helpful one. It gave him a plausible excuse to have billionaire teenagers (citizens) go poking around in Cryptomancer™️ related matters. It was too risky to do it himself, since those local cops back in Kentucky had most likely forwarded everything they had to the feds. He shouldn’t even be a “blip” on their “radar” right now, as his Grandpa Kaushik used to say. But he might become a rather large, obvious blob on the radar screen if he were known to be sniffing around into Cryptomancer security matters.

As he understood it, the company called Cryptomancer™️ had developed a technology that made it possible to use video as evidence in courts of law once again. In fact, there were many uses for video, once verified to be actual video, such as news, official educational documentaries, etc.

His great-grandfather, as a legal aid attorney, had been alive and practicing during the entire but brief time period in which videos were inadmissible. He had shown young “‘Rajan,” as Padmanabhan was affectionately known, a “video” of someone named OJ stabbing and killing a man and woman. Then a “vid” of the same man and woman, in the exact same surrounding scenery, being stabbed and killed by a former U.S. president, then a fictional character in a hockey mask took a turn at stabbing them. Although the two people depicted were actual murder victims who suffered a horrific death at the hands of someone, none of the so-called videos were real.

The point being, that at some time in the twenty-first century, video simulation technology had become so advanced that it was impossible to tell the difference between “cartoons” and reality. It immediately meant that you could make entire movies that contained no human actors. You could make your own “virtual movies” à la Capaccio, on your desktop – starring no one who was ever actually born.

If for some reason you ever thought that Rita Hayworth would’ve given a better performance as Princess Leia in Star Wars? You could go through and replace her in every scene. Or have yourself as Princess Leia. Or your best friend as Han Solo. Replace any actors in any movie ever made before 2036, due to loosened copyright restrictions, with any other actors from any time period... or non-actors, or non-people/simulated people. And it would all look perfectly realistic. Someone who had never seen the first Star Wars movie from 1977, would never know it didn’t originally star You as Luke, Frank Sinatra as Obi-Wan, etc.

The downside to it of course was that you could now frame anyone, for any crime. From robbing a liquor store to assassinating a president. Videotaped evidence, once considered incontrovertible, indisputable evidence in court, was immediately useless. There was simply no way of proving it really happened and that it wasn’t a simulation.

And closed circuit surveillance systems? Completely hackable. It was a variation of the old vacant room scene… Only now you could have a virtual security guard walk into your virtual room and “wave” at the camera. It could be a guard whom everyone recognizes at a company, even her/his best friend would recognize them as an employee; meanwhile, moving crews could be making off with truckloads of merchandise, terrorists infiltrating a government installation, whatever. For about three years, it was a real problem. Then came cryptomancer to the rescue.

Prajina

The tanning bed was of course nothing of the sort. It was a learning technology, essentially. But depending upon how one analyzed it, it might also appear to be a device for performing brain surgery.

The captain’s sweeping generalizations had led to a situation wherein some brain damage had inadvertently been inflicted upon Prajina. It was easily repaired with biocompatible nano robots. Not only were the required repairs effected, her neurophysiology was bolstered in such a way as to prevent further damage when educating her.

So according to ℏ♄’s directive, Prajina had now “read” every book ever written, spoke every human language fluently, and had taken and mastered all college courses and laboratories offered to all students on Earth. On the third day, she started to absorb some basic knowledge from the “alien” equivalent of books.

Prajina thought briefly about how her ancestors used to employ a thing called an IQ test. Presumably it was only to detect learning disabilities in its beginning. Then later a recreational use for it evolved as it became a fun way for people who thought they were smart to compare brain pans. Since she was now someone who had read – and memorized – every book ever written, and since Alfred Binet was among those authors, she couldn’t help musing about it. She concluded it would be complete nonsense to try and compute such a value for herself, obviously.

How do you estimate mental age? You’ll need that numerator before you can do the calculation. Even an extrapolation of a mental age would be absurd. At what mental age is someone supposed to have read every book ever written, taken and aced every chemistry & physics lab, be fluent in hundreds of languages and instantly be able to translate betwixt any of them? Arbitrary indices aside, she was now regarded by the “aliens” as the smartest human being alive. Her intelligence was roughly on par with what ℏ♄’s was in “kindergarten.” Her mission was explained to her; she had already accepted it and been deputized before any of the brain tinkering had ensued. But the specifics of how she was to carry out her mission, ended up being considerably more complicated than merely comprehending and accepting the assignment.

Brenda

Though she promised herself she wouldn’t do this, Monday evening after school again found Brenda pouring through papers… frustrated. She finally took that break she’d been promising herself. That’s when it occurred to her that her weekend call to someone who she knew could send her copies of all the files she was looking for, had yet to be returned.

It wasn’t like they’d gone so long without talking that they were practically strangers; two-to-three months, tops. And that was for people living in different cities who were both swamped with schoolwork. They were still close enough friends, she thought, that it shouldn’t feel like she was bothering him. “Even if I am? Fuck it! If I am bothering him it’s only temporary; once he hears what it’s about, he’ll be too intrigued to not want to talk,” she said under her breath, her thumb poised over the phone screen, ready to scroll through recents and call him again already.

She thought about how to summarize it to him in case he wondered why the sudden interest in Stalko-Taco...

That particular story had been removed. Okay, she reasoned. It’s their website I guess, they can do what they want. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t just on the creepypasta official website. There was fanfiction. It was open source. There were other blogs that talked about creepypasta stories. People – including him – did original drawings on DeviantArt, Tumblr memes, YouTube videos; they did cosplay in real life, made videos of it, and put it on YouTube. And Instagram. Sure, Stalko-Taco had never been as popular as JTK and Slenderman; If Brenda had to estimate she’d have said he (it?) was about on the level of Ticci Toby in terms of popularity. But there was nothing.

As if the internet had been wiped clean of it. Impossible, she knew, even though not a techie person. But not only that, it was as if people’s memories had been erased; people she talked to online over the weekend who were big enough fans of all creepypastas in general that they should have known about the taco, didn’t. Erasing people’s memories? Also an impossibility, she was pretty sure. Collective amnesia? Collective and ultra selective.

But she knew something super weird was happening when Wheeler didn’t remember!

She finally got ahold of him. No problems. He’d just been wrapping up a major project that afternoon and was about to call her, he reassured Brenda.

Her nerdy friend from Gus Grissom middle school had thought about actually going as Stalko-Taco for Halloween one year, when they were about 11, but then changed his mind and went as Ben Drowned. The last she’d heard – and it had been awhile – he was into Babadook cosplay on whatever free time he had. He’d rejected the idea, partly based on her recommendation; but he also agreed that too many people would think he was supposed to be the mascot for that baseball(?) team nearby in another town sponsored by some restaurant.

Though she knew nothing of sports, she was pretty sure they weren’t as well known as, say the New York Yankees. Not major-league, if that was the right term? So outside of their state, maybe in Berkeley and San Francisco where the story was set, people might not connect it with a minor-league baseball mascot. But in Austin where they lived? No way. Everyone would be saying it’s the mascot. Wheeler never forgot anything. He was a fucking genius and had gone to some high-tech specialty high school at FDR while Brenda’s parents moved her seventy-five miles south, to San Antonio.

Everything was cool about the couple of months of no speaking. They still kept in touch at least on a touch-base kind of level. But this time he acted like she was insane. Only he wasn’t acting though.

“Have you been trying to smoke bananas again? Did you get out your grandpa’s Anarchist’s Cookbook? I know you’d never try the toad thing because you’re vegan like us, or at least vegetarian, right? But did you –”

“Alright, knock it off,” she said finally able to talk amidst her laughter, “it was banana peels, and no, I’ll never do that again. All it did was give me a headache from hell. And you’re right about the toad thing: absolutely no way. And it wasn’t my grandpa’s book, it was my dad’s.” The realization overtook her: He truly had absolutely no recollection of Stalko-Taco.

Seriously? She went over it again with him: it was a Creepypasta story called Stalko-Taco. A giant living taco appears to the most stoned person it can find who is still technically conscious on any given night, who also happens to have the munchies, and then feeds the hungry stoned person.

“How is that scary?” Wheeler had asked. Well, that part wasn’t, she agreed. Though it was creepy that a twelve-foot tall taco was actually alive, right? But it did get scary when anyone acted violently towards the stoner, somehow acting as a protector – her memory wasn’t clear. That’s why she needed to find a copy of the old stories online somewhere even if the original website owners had chosen to delete them. Needless to say Mister “I’ve never heard of anything like that” did not have any copies of files to send her.

Why else was it scary? She thought to herself as Wheeler went on about the numerous other old times he could remember perfectly well.

It may have had something to do with the “men in black” type characters in the story who showed up afterwards to erase people‘s memories and cleanup evid......

Whoa! Major mindfuck! It dawned on her that maybe Stalko-Taco wasn’t a creepypasta story at all. What if it was absolutely Real, including the MIB sort of characters who showed up to do cleanup & memory erasure? And what if that was exactly what had happened!? Except they’d somehow forgotten to erase Brenda’s mind! Alright, that’s probably crazy, but that idea in and of itself would make a cool creepypasta; and although she was still very much an aspiring future creative writing major, Brenda felt like that might be straining her creative limits at the moment. Maybe some other time. But a good idea for capturing in the paisley mushroom-patterned brainstorming composition book which she was currently carrying everywhere in case she needed to jot ideas down, that was right there at arm’s reach.

Wheeler was out when she called back the next day, that time honestly just to talk and not so much to pump him for information. So she called Renaldo, the other math and science nerd whom she knew – from her high school. He wasn’t also an artist like Wheeler, but that wasn’t necessary.

True, he didn’t know creepypastas and wasn’t into any of this. But he could answer questions about tech stuff. Like could someone wipe all evidence of something from the internet? Maybe, he said, something called the NSA could do it; whatever that stood for. At 17 there was a lot of stuff she hadn’t heard of yet. But yes, it was some kind of super secret electronic spy agency and supposedly the single largest purchaser of computer hardware on the planet. If they could do something like that, along with bots to search for any sites mirroring it and possibly post-patriot act seizure and strong arm tactics to make the owners of the servers cooperate... their conversation droned on like this as Brenda sipped her coffee to stay awake and listen to him.

...and even if someone used a scrubber, they might still find traces of it with a SQUID. “OK,”

she stopped him. “Scrubber, I can sort of guess at the meaning of, in this context, but squid?”

“Superconducting quantum interference detector,” he elaborated.

All right, a gadget of some kind then, as she now understood it. He continued lecturing. Basically, yes, he’d tried to explain. But not something a typical high school kid would have access to. Not even a typical police department would have access to it. For major crime, the local PD would be able to make a request from the FBI. Some university or corporate R&D facilities might be able to pull it off, but in order to be admissible as evidence, the authorities would most likely want to keep it all within law-enforcement.

He went on detailing how to use a so-called low tech “book code” to supposedly thwart the electronic spooks. After what seemed like an eternity later, he changed gears a bit. “It’s not going to be relevant though, for what you’re talking about, Brenda.”

She wondered why, perking up. He continued: “a bunch of kids searching for evidence of an open-source cartoon –” what Renaldo understood creepypasta to be, so far – “aren’t going to find it if The Powers That Be at the highest level really wanted it wiped.” He continued on for another 15 minutes with tech-splanations.

But why would “they” really want that, she pondered, thinking about her earlier revelation that maybe this was reality and was never supposed to have been a creepypasta story. Renaldo pointed out to her the ridiculousness of this idea at the outset: “Why would The Government build a giant robotic taco in the first place??”

He was automatically presuming it had to be the government. Brenda hadn’t really thought it through enough yet to assign blame to anyone.

“Let alone,” he continued, “allow it to be seen, enough times to become an urban legend in the 90s, allow details of it to be published in story form on the Internet, let it be viewed by as many as 8 million viewers...”

An estimate she knew he’d made from official CP website stats that they displayed on their page, which she also recalled seeing. The number bothered her as well. Because if you are going to “erase” the memories of that many people, you’d need an army of goons to go track them down and do all that... and then how do you keep that many mouths shut? Have a smaller super-elite goon-squad that erases the erasers?

Renaldo hadn’t hit upon the concept of memory erasure at all, as was apparent from his ongoing analysis: “...and then expend all that energy just to erase Internet-only evidence of it? What about all the people who read it and remembered enough, or just copied files to their local drives or clouds. Or people who, like your friend Wheeler, might’ve actually done cosplay as this taco?”

That’s when Brenda asked him the next phase of her question: can people‘s memories be erased?

It was too late. Renaldo’s mom was hollering at him to get off the phone since it was a school night, and Brenda told him it’s okay; they both had school in the morning. He agreed they’d pick it up here, later.

Continue on to next section…

If And Only If

Copyright 2015

by Michelle Viviénne de Vandahlcourte

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Edition. © December 16, 2015.

[swap-meetog]

A Simple Swap

POV - Sam

For a while now, I have been following the social media accounts of this super attractive farm hand, Liam.  It started with a few likes on his Instagram but quickly became my daily obsession.

I soon realized that I wasn’t necessarily jealous of the attention he received online, I was more so jealous of the way he was so casually handsome, and seemed to have a fairly simple, easy life out in the country.  On the other hand, I worked from dawn until dusk in an office every day.  I thought it would be nice to take a break from my life.

After an exhaustive search online, I found a solution.  Someone was willing to sell their “Authentic Body Swap Helmets”.  I got instantly hard as I input my credit card information.  Now all I had to do was somehow get him in the same room with me, and ask him to try on one of the helmets.

I slowly crept into his DMs, being as flirty as possible.  I was careful with the photos of myself I sent to him, I didn’t want him to know that I was basically average.  I knew I didn’t stand out in a crowd.

But it worked!  We got to chatting and he seemed genuinely interested in meeting me, even asking me out to his farm.

A dark thought went through my mind, but I pushed it down.  For now, at least.

Liam was even more beautiful in person.  I could barely contain my excitement as I asked him, “Hey, have you ever wanted a break from the farm life?”

“Of course,” he replied.  “I just don’t see how that would happen.”

We went into the barn.  A few random animals milled about aimlessly.  “What if I had a solution?” I asked and set my backpack down, pulling out the helmets and the small device that connected them.  “You can experience city life, and I can be a farmhand, working here and maintaining your social media accounts.”

He looked skeptical. 

“What do you have to lose?” I asked, taking a water bottle out of my bag and taking a deep drink.  “We swap bodies, live each other’s lives for few days, then swap back.  This device can do that for us.”

“Sure man, why not?” he said in a Southern drawl.  I couldn’t wait to hear that voice coming out of my mouth.

I took another deep drink of water while Liam pulled a couple chairs to the center of the barn.  He looked confused as I strapped the helmet on him, but just laughed it off.  He was nervous, and excited.  I could see his pants tenting, and felt my much smaller member jumping to attention.

The other helmet went on my head, and I activated the machine.

ZAP

One second I was in one chair, the next I wasn’t.  I turned my head and saw my old body looking around.  I couldn’t stop my hands from running up my new abs, touching my new face, running through my new hair.  I had it all.  I was Liam.

“Yes!” I shouted, jumping up and tearing the helmet from my head.  “Fuck, I am so hard right now!”

“Why do I feel... weird?” Liam said from my body.  He was fumbling with the straps of the helmet, his fingers not quite being able to gain purchase on the clasps.  “What did you do...?”

I held up the water bottle I had nearly drained.  “Sorry man, I couldn’t help myself.  I may have put a heavy sedative in the water I was drinking.  Well, the water YOU were drinking.  I want your life, but I knew there would be some problems if you were running mine.  And you’d want this back at some point, right?  So I have some plans for you, but for now, why don’t you just get some rest?”

The look of betrayal on my old face was intoxicating to me.  His eyes started to close without his consent, and I added, “Don’t worry Sam, I will keep you close.”

He passed out.  I had hours to finish my plan with him.  For now, I needed to explore this body and maybe post a photo or two.  And his musk is overpowering from being in the fields all morning.  Let’s take a shower and upload a selfie! I am going to love this new life!

#male body swap #body switch #request

[respectable-username]

🔐 Why You (Probably) Don't Need A VPN

A rant by a software engineer sick of VPN ads from her favourite YouTubers

TL;DR:

Here are some legitimate reasons the average internet user might want to use a VPN:

To connect to their company's internal network

To bypass the Great Firewall of China (or other types of website blocks at country or organisation level)

To watch Netflix etc as if you were in another country

Here are absolutely rubbish reasons to use a VPN:

Privacy

And today, I'll tell you why.

Hang on, won't a VPN stop hackers from stealing my passwords?

I mean, it does encrypt the web traffic coming from your device.

You know what else encrypts web traffic coming from your device? Your browser.

Yes, in the year 2021, pretty much all websites on the internet are accessed over HTTPS. The "S" stands for "secure", as in "your request will be securely encrypted". If your browser is using HTTPS, nobody can capture the data you're sending over the internet. More detail in the "I like too much detail" section at the bottom of this post.

It's very easy to check if you are using HTTPS by looking at your URL bar. In most browsers, it will have a lock on it if secure:

(From top left to bottom right: Chrome on iOS, Safari on iOS, Chrome on Windows, Edge on Windows, Firefox on Windows, and Safari on Mac. Screenshots reflect the UI at the time this post was written. Oh gosh this has taken over 4 hours to write.)

But isn't moar encryption better? What if somebody breaks HTTPS?

For starters, nobody's breaking your HTTPS, and there isn't any benefit from double encrypting. This is because of the maths behind encryption/decryption!

Encryption works kinda like a lock and key, except the lock is maths and the key is a special number only known to the person allowed to unlock the information.

The important thing is, without the key, all the locked data looks like complete and utter garbage. Completely unusable. Barely distinguishable from random noise. There's absolutely no way to tell what the original data was.

The other important thing is that the key is nearly unguessable. As in, with current technology, will generally take more than the lifetime of the universe to guess by chance. And when technology gets faster, we just make the numbers bigger again until they're once again secure.

For any major website you use, they will use a strong encryption algorithm (ie lock) with big numbers so your keys will be strong enough to withstand an attack. This means your data is safe as long as that lock icon is in your URL bar.

A VPN will not make the existing garble any more garbled. The extra $10/month or whatever you're paying for does not buy you any extra protection.

If you want to know more about how encryption and HTTPS in particular work, see the "I like too much detail" section at the end of this post.

Something something viruses

How's a VPN going to stop viruses? It controls the path your internet traffic takes, not the content that gets sent down that path. I guess it could block some known virus-giving hosts? But if it's known to the VPN provider, it's probably also known to the built-in antivirus on your computer who can block it for you.

(Oh yeah, 3rd party antivirus is another thing that's not worth paying for these days. Microsoft's built-in Windows Defender is as good as the third party options, and something something Macs don't get viruses easily because of how they're architected.)

Honestly though, keep your software up to date, don't click on anything suspicious, don't open files from sources you don't trust, and you'll be right most of the time.

And keep your software up to date. Then update your software. Hey, did I mention keeping your stuff updated? Update! Now! It only takes a few minutes. Please update to the latest version of your software I'm begging you. It's the number 1 way to protect yourself from viruses and other malware. Most major software attacks could have been prevented if people just updated their damn software!

But my ISP is spying on me!

Ok, it is true that there are TWO bits of data that HTTPS can't and won't hide. Those are:

The source of a request (your IP)

What website that request is going to (the website's IP)

These are the bits of information that routers use to know where to send your data, so of course they can't be hidden as the data is moving across the internet. And people can see that information very easily if they want to.

Note: this will show which website you're going to, but not which page you're looking at, and not the content of that page. So it will show that you were on Tumblr, but will not show anyone that you're still reading SuperWhoLock content in 2021.

It's this source/destination information that VPNs hide, which is why they can be used to bypass website blocks and region locks.

By using a VPN, those sniffing traffic on your side of the VPN will just show you connecting to the VPN, not the actual website you want. That means you can read AO3 at work/school without your boss/teachers knowing (unless they look over your shoulder of course).

As for those sniffing on the websites end, including the website itself, they will see the VPN as the source of the connection, not you. So if you're in the US and using a VPN node in the UK, Netflix will see you as being in the UK and show you their British library rather than the American one.

If this is what you're using a VPN for and you think the price is fair, then by all means keep doing it! This is 100% what VPNs are good for.

HOWEVER, and this is a big "however", if it's your ISP you're trying to hide your internet traffic from, then you will want to think twice before using a VPN.

Let me put it this way. Without a VPN, your ISP knows every website you connect to and when. With a VPN, do you know who has that exact same information? The VPN provider. Sure, many claim to not keep logs, but do you really trust the people asking for you to send them all your data for a fee to not just turn around and sell your data on for a profit, or worse?

In effect, you're trading one snooper for another. One snooper is heavily regulated, in many jurisdictions must obey net neutrality, and is already getting a big fee from you regardless of where you browse. The other isn't. Again, it's all a matter of who you trust more.

For me personally, I trust my ISP more than a random VPN provider, if for no other reason than my ISP is an old enough company with enough inertia and incompetence that I don't think they could organise to sell my data even if they wanted to. And with the amount of money I'm paying them per month, they've only got everything to lose if they broke consumer trust by on-selling that data. So yeah, I trust my ISP more with my privacy than the random VPN company.

But my VPN comes with a password manager!

Password managers are great. I 100% recommend you use a password manager. If there's one thing you could do right now to improve your security (other than updating your software, speaking of, have you updated yet?), it's getting and using a password manager.

Password managers also come for free.

I'm currently using LastPass free, but am planning to switch after they did a bad capitalism and only let their free accounts access either laptop or mobile but not both now. I personally am planning to move to Bitwarden on friends' recommendation since it's not only free but open source and available across devices. I also have friends who use passbolt and enjoy it, which is also free and open source, but it's also a bit DIY to set up. Great if you like tinkering though! And there are probably many other options out there if you do a bit of googling.

So, yeah, please use a password manager, but don't pay for it unless you actually have use for the extra features.

No I really need to hide my internet activity from everybody for reasons

In this case, you're probably looking for TOR. TOR is basically untraceable. It's also a terrible user experience for the most part because of this, so I'd only recommend it if you need it, such as if you're trying to escape the Great Firewall. But please don't use it for Bad Crimes. I am not to be held liable for any crime committed using information learned from this post.

Further reading viewing

If you want to know more about why you don't need a VPN, see Tom Scott's amazing video on the subject. It's honestly a great intro for beginners.

I like too much detail

Ahhh, so you're the type of person who doesn't get turned off by long explanations I see. Well, here's a little more info on the stuff I oversimplified in the main post about encryption. Uhh, words get bigger and more jargony in this section.

So first oversimplification: the assumption that all web traffic is either HTTP or HTTPS. This isn't exactly true. There are many other application layer internet standards out there, such as ssh, ftp, websockets, and all the proprietary standards certain companies use for stuff such as streaming and video conferencing. Some of these are secure, using TLS or some other security algorithm under the hood, and some of them aren't.

But most of the web requests you care about are HTTP/HTTPS calls. As for the rest, if they come from a company of a decent size that hasn't been hacked off the face of the planet already, they're probably also secure. In other words, you don't need to worry about it.

Next, we've already said that encryption works as a lock and a key, where the lock is a maths formula and the key is a number. But how do we get that key to lock and unlock the data?

Well, to answer that, we first need to talk about the two different types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric encryption such as AES uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypt data, whereas asymmetric encryption such as RSA uses a different key to encode and decode.

For the sake of my writing, we're going to call the person encrypting Alice, the person decrypting Bob, and the eavesdropper trying to break our communications Eve from now on. These are standard names in crypto FYI. Also, crypto is short for cryptography not cryptocurrencies. Get your Bitcoin and Etherium outta here!

Sorry if things start getting incoherent. I'm tired. It's after 1am now.

So first, how do we get the key from symmetric crypto? This is probably the easier place to start. Well, you need a number, any number of sufficient size, that both Alice and Bob know. There are many ways you could share this number. They could decide it when they meet in person. They could send it to each other using carrier pigeons. Or they could radio it via morse code. But those aren't convenient, and somebody could intercept the number and use it to read all their messages.

So what we use instead is a super clever algorithm called Diffie-Hellman, which uses maths and, in particular, the fact it's really hard to factor large numbers (probably NP Hard to be specific, but there's no actual proof of that). The Wikipedia page for this is surprisingly easy to read, so I'll just direct you there to read all about it because I've been writing for too long. This algorithm allows Alice and Bob to agree on a secret number, despite Eve being able to read everything they send each other.

Now Alice and Bob have this secret number key, they can talk in private. Alice puts her message and the key into the encryption algorithm and out pops what looks like a load of garbage. She can then send this garbage to Bob without worrying about Eve being able to read it. Bob can then put the garbage and the key into the decryption algorithm to undo the scrambling and get the original message out telling him where the good donuts are. Voila, they're done!

But how does Alice know that she's sending her message to Bob and not Eve? Eve could pretend to be Bob so that Alice does the Diffie-Hellman dance with her instead and sends her the secret location of the good donuts instead.

This is where asymmetric crypto comes in! This is the one with private and public keys, and the one that uses prime numbers.

I'm not 100% across the maths on this one TBH, but it has something to do with group theory. Anyway, just like Diffie-Hellman, it relies on the fact that prime factorisation is hard, and so it does some magic with semi-primes, ie numbers with only 2 prime factors other than 1. Google it if you want to know more. I kinda zoned out of this bit in my security courses. Maths hard

But the effect of that maths is easier to explain: things that are encoded with one of the keys can only be decoded with the other key. This means that one of those keys can be well-known to the public and the other is known only to the person it belongs to.

If Alice wants to send a message to Bob and just Bob, no Eve allowed, she can first look up Bob's public key and encrypt a beginning message with that. Once Bob receives the message, he can decrypt it with his private key and read the contents. Eve can't read the contents though because, even though she has Bob's public key, she doesn't know his private key.

This public key information is what the lock in your browser is all about BTW. It's saying that the website is legit based on the public key they provide.

So why do we need symmetric crypto when we have asymmetric crypto? Seems a lot less hassle to exchange keys with asymmetric crypto.

Well, it's because asymmetric crypto is slooooow. So, in TLS, the security algorithm that puts the "S" in "HTTPS", asymmetric RSA is used to establish the initial connection and figure out what symmetric key to use, and then the rest of the session uses AES symmetric encryption using the agreed secret key.

And there you have it! Crypto in slightly-less-short-but-still-high-enough-level-that-I-hope-you-understand.

Just realised how long this section is. Well, I did call it "too much detail" for a reason.

Now, next question is what exactly is and isn't encrypted using HTTPS.

Well, as I said earlier, it's basically just the source IP:port and the destination IP:port. In fact, this information is actually communicated on the logical layer below the application layer HTTPS is on, known as the transport layer. Again, as I said before, you can't really encrypt this unless you don't want your data to reach the place you want at all.

Also, DNS is unencrypted. A DNS request is a request that turns a domain name, such as tumblr.com, into an IP address, by asking a special server called a Domain Name Server where to find the website you're looking for. A DNS request is made before an HTTP(S) request. Anyone who can read your internet traffic can therefore tell you wanted to go to Tumblr.

But importantly, this only shows the domain name, not the full URL. The rest of the URL, the part after the third slash (the first two slashes being part of http://), is stuff that's interpreted by the server itself and so isn't needed during transport. Therefore, it encrypted and completely unreadable, just like all the content on your page.

I was going to show a Wireshark scan of a web request using HTTP and HTTPS to show you the difference, but this has taken long enough to write as it is, so sorry!

I could probably write more, but it's 1:30am and I'm sleepy. I hope you found some of this interesting and think twice before purchasing a VPN subscription. Again, there are legit good uses for a VPN, but they're not the ones primarily being advertised in VPN ads. It's the fact that VPN ads rely so heavily on false advertising that really grinds my gears and made me want to do this rant. It's especially bad when it comes from somebody I'd think of as technologically competent (naming no names here, but if you've worked in tech and still promote VPNs as a way to keep data safe... no). Feel free to ask questions if you want and hopefully I'll get around to answering any that I feel I know enough to answer.

Nighty night Tumblr. Please update your software. And use a (free) password manager. And enable two factor authentication on all your accounts. But mostly just update your software.

#technology #vpn #things you don't need #things that piss me off #res rambles #res writes

[books-and-catears]

This is random and just came to my mind, what if the MC was an online roleplayer and unknowingly was Levi's friend before they even came to the devildom? Like, Levi and the MC were in... a Rurichan roleplay server on discord and got to know one another there. And then when MC arrived they would not always, but often be in their room just roleplaying with him.

Okay first of all this is freaking genius and I love it. Ahhh this is going to be so wholesome and CHAOTIC CUTE haahhaha thank you for this! I'll try and do my best to do it justice. This is so adorable I can't-

Levi:*barging into your room* MC you've got to come see this!!

MC: What's up Levi? A new game?

Levi: Well technically not new but they released a new and improved version of Cosplay Battle Saga!

MC: Oh my god! I love that game! We even had this in the human world! I haven't played it in so long!

Levi: You used to play this? Did you have an account and avatar?

MC: Why of course I did! I always made them look so cool! Ah I miss it.

Levi: You can use your old avatar again!

MC: Wait what? Really? The data is still saved?

Levi: Like I said it's the same thing. Just with massive updates! Of course you'll need your password though.

MC: Ah don't worry I remember it. I still use it for some other things. Where do I log in?

Levi: *pointing at his screen* The game is being installed right now. After that we'll log in from two different devices.

MC: Gotcha! Ah I wonder I'll meet my old friend's there again. Do they even play anymore?

Levi: I know most of my friends do. But there's this one friend I haven't seen in years. They were the closest to me. Ah I miss them.

MC: I know right? I used to have a close friend here too. There was this game server on discord where we used to text almost all the time. We used to have fun roleplaying and making up our own adventures haha.

Levi: SAME! They used to be so good in acting as Ruri chan. They could even mimic Ruri Chan's voice! Online role-playing is an art of story telling, don't let anyone convince you otherwise!

MC: Oh wow, my friend used to say the exact same things hahaha and roleplaying as Ruri chan was also so fun. I did it too sometimes! Now then is the game loaded yet?

Levi: Yes! It's done! Now we just have to log in with our old accounts and-

*MC phone starts to ring. It's Satan calling.*

MC: *picks up* Yes Satan?

Satan: Sorry to bother you MC, but did you finish reading the last book I gave you? Another friend wants to borrow it.

MC: Ah yes yes. Do you want me to go fetch it for you?

Satan: Ah no no it's okay. I'll take myself. Its on the nightstand as usual right?

MC: Ah yes yes. Is there anything else?

Satan: No just this. Enjoy your playtime with Levi and come to the library if you're done. There's another a new book I want you to have.

MC: Oh okay then. See you soon byee!!

Levi: Go on MC, your turn to log in. As you can see they really upgraded the graphics and-

MC: OH MY GOD THAT'S HIM!

Levi: Who's him?

MC: That avatar right here! That's the friend I was telling you about!

Levi: N-no way are you sure-

MC: YES LEVI IM SURE! Look at that sword! See it's hilt? See how the hilt looks like Ruri Chan's cap? He and I designed that together! And then he hacked the game and added it as one of the weapon options in the game.

Levi: .....

MC: It's true! Noone else in the whole game has that sword except him and me! See I'll show you mine! *logs in* Look I have the same sword!

Levi: I-I see...

MC: Ah I have to talk to him. There's a voice chat right?!

Levi: Yes...

MC: *in a Ruri chan voice* Hello hello! Is that Admiral V, I see? Oh it's been so long since I've seen you, dearie me! I missed you! *hugs character*

Levi: *blushes furiously and stares at the screen, his leg shaking in excitement*

MC: ...he isn't replying. Maybe he forgot me after all. *Sad smile* Where's your avatar Levi? Say hi to me I'll come to you.

*Admiral V hugs you and says hi*

MC: Yay he said hi! Levi where- wait. Is that YOU?

Levi: *blushing mess* T-this is Admiral V reporting his partner in mission. RuriRuri do you have anything to say for your five year absence?

MC: ....IT IS YOU! OH LEVI! I MISSED YOU!

*Pounces and hugs Levi*

Levi: I missed you too MC! I can't believe it... It was you doing the Ruri chan voice... all along*Blushes again*

MC: No wonder I always had so much fun playing with you! Now let's go and fight some dungeon trolls! *Ruri voice* Onward we go Admiral V!

Levi: ...Yes, of course, RuriRuri.

MC: Wait...Levi! Your nose is bleeding!

#obey me levi x reader #obey me leviathan #obey me game #obey me imagine #obey me levi

[thecutestlittlebunbunfairy]

Good Vibrations

summary | It was supposed to be an awesome day, testing out your new wireless vibrator. But what happens when two hackers take control?

pairings | Stucky x Reader

word count | 2800~ words

warnings | Non-Con, blackmail/manipulation, bondage, dirty talk, Happy Ending though!!!

a/n: Bold italicized indicates text message

DARK!FIC, SMUT, 18+

 You were so excited! You were trying out your brand-new Bluetooth vibrator for the first time. Secret public play had always been a fantasy of yours. But now you were doing something risky, wearing it to work. You’d tested it before leaving the house, and the “Discreet” guarantee proved itself true. So, you headed off to your job working as an administrator at a law firm.  Once you’d arrived and settled with your breakfast, you decided to start your fun.

              You turned your vibrator onto the lowest setting and bit your lip at the sensation. You turned to your computer to start answering emails, but out of nowhere, the vibrator shut off.

              “Odd” you muttered, looking at your phone. Maybe the battery was dead? You tapped a few buttons on your phone but suddenly, the vibrator ramped up 3 intensity levels and you had to your lip to keep yourself from letting out a loud moan.

              “What the fuck?” you stood up to go remove the device so you could figure out what was wrong, when a text came through

              “Hey Babydoll.” What the fuck?

              “Who is this??” You texted back.

              “Your new friend. You oughtta be careful with those Bluetooth devices. They’re not always the most secure. ;)” Now you were just pissed off.

              “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want. But I’m blocking this number.” Before you could do that, a screenshot came up with your bank account information.

              “I’d think twice about that, doll.” You sat back down in your seat in shock. You weren’t sure what to do next.

              “What do you want?”

              “Oh, we just want to have some fun.” The number texted back.

              “We?”

              A second phone number was added into the chat.

              “Hi sweetheart” the new number texted. Fuck fuck fuck.

              “Here’s how today is going to go.” The first number texted. You’ll go through your day just like a good little girl. But my friend and I are going to be in control of that little toy. And if you take it out, well…” Another screenshot of your bank account came up, this time $10 shorter.  You were internally screaming. But maybe if you went through your work day like normal…

              “I’ll keep it in. You have my word.” The second number (you decided to designate them as “Creep #1” and “Creep #2”) texted back “Sorry, baby. But we need more than your word. Why don’t you send a picture of those soaking wet panties of yours?” You were pissed beyond belief, fists shaking. But you had no choice but to do as you were told.  You excused yourself to the bathroom, making sure to lock the door. You pulled your skirt up and your panties, which were in fact wet. You chalked it up to using the vibrator earlier, then sent a picture.

              “Such a good girl.” Creep # 1 texted. “In fact, you’re going to be VERY good and take those panties off for me.” You did as ordered; adjusted your skirt and headed back to your desk, your face hot with shame.

              Throughout the day, the 2 creeps made your life some kind of pleasurable hell, turning the vibrator on, off, and switching the settings at the most random times. You were halfway through a conversation with the head partner in your office when the vibrator switched on to a medium, rhythmic setting and you were gripping the doorframe to keep your knees from buckling.

              The only mildly interesting part of the day was when it seemed to buz at random intervals, but as you focused, you realized one of them was tapping something out in Morse code.

              “B-A-B-Y-D-O-L-L” Your temper flared up and you grabbed your phone and texted the two of them

              “WOULD YOU MIND?? I’M TRYING TO FOCUS ON MY WORK!” A shot of your bank account came back, this time $50 shorter. Creep #2 replied

              “Want to try that again, doll?” You pursed your lips

              “I’m sorry.”

              “Sir.” #1 replied

              “I’m sorry…sir.” You texted back.

              “Good girl. We’ll try to be a little nicer ;)” #1 responded before typing out a morse code “xoxo”

                Somehow you made it through to the end of the work day. You were ready to run to the closest police station and report the whole thing.  But a text came in from Creep #1

              “Work day’s over sweetheart. There’s a Lyft waiting for you outside. Go get in.”

              “What if I say no?” Your bank came up, this time missing $500. Fucking dammit!

              “Yes, sir.” You replied, still trying to formulate a plan.

              “The Lyft is a 2012 Navy Blue Toyota Corolla. Don’t talk to the driver. Just relax, and enjoy the ride. ;)” You thought for a moment. You could still run to the police. But they wouldn’t really help you. You scurried out of your office and quickly got into the car. The whole trip, you tried to watch where you were going, but the two of them kept up on the vibrator and you had to bite your lip to keep from moaning out loud, ignoring the looks from the driver.

              The driver pulled up in front of a beautiful hotel and you got out as another text came through.

              “Go to the desk and tell her you’re checking into a room under your name. If you’re not up here in 5 minutes, we’ll both come down to the lobby and punish you for everyone to see. Understood?” You let out a little squeak, then texted back.

              “Yes Sir.” You thought of telling the receptionist what was going on, but you reasoned they couldn’t do anything in a public hotel…right? You collected the key card and headed up in the elevator. You wrung your hands nervously as you didn’t know what to expect. All you could focus on was the edge you’d been riding on all day, and the ride over had only made it worse.

When the elevator finally reached your floor, you walked down the hallway to the room. As you stood outside the door, you contemplated. This was your last chance. But something was driving you, not just fear of what would happen if you didn’t show up; but what would happen if you did go in. Before you could change your mind, you swiped the keycard and walked into the room.

The room was dark, but some light was coming in from the city outside. You could see that it was a nice room.

“Hello?” you called quietly into the room. Stepping inside and shutting the door behind you, the click of the door was like a jail cell. You took a few steps into the room when someone grabbed you form behind, covering your mouth and wrapping an arm around your waist, holding you firm against an even more firm chest.

“Hi babydoll.” A voice purred in your ears. “You’re such a good girl following our orders. Ready to follow a few more?”

A man stepped out of the shadows of the room and your breath caught in your throat. He was absolutely gorgeous. He was tall and strapping with brunette hair tied up in a man bun, and steely blue eyes that felt like they were staring into your very soul. But what truly caught your eye was that his left arm was entirely metal. He was wearing a red Henley and dark jeans. A smirk tugged at his gorgeous lips.

“See something you like?”

“What about me?” the voice behind you spoke. He loosened his grip a little and you turned to see an equally attractive man. He was almost the opposite of the brunette with golden blonde hair and a very scruffy beard. He was light to the other’s dark. Further amplified by his choice of white t-shirt and light denim jeans.

“Don’t worry, doll. We think you’re gorgeous too.” The brunette came closer and played with a loose strand of your hair.

“Please…whatever you want with me…I just wanna go home…” tears sprung to your eyes as fear really started to sit in, but the blonde shushed you.

“Relax, baby. We’re going to take very good care of you.”

              “Please…I don’t even know who you are.” You begged. The two exchanged a look, they’d clearly planned this.

              “You can call me Sargent. And him Captain.” The brunette, Sargent, said. “And all you have to do is what you’ve been doing all day. Just do as you’re told, and we’ll make you feel so good.” He promised

              “Now, let’s check and see how wet that little pussy is after a day of being teased and played with.” Captain said, the hand around your waste gripped your skirt in his hand, pulling it up. Sargent got on his knees in front of you, lifting up one of your legs and spreading them wide.

              “Fuuuuck. You’re soaking wet.” Sargent looked up at you and smile. “Looks like someone had a very good day at work.” He brought his hand up between your legs, rubbing your clit gently. When you moaned, he moved his fingers inside you, and pulled out the small bullet vibrator. “Fuuuuuck doll.” He groaned. “Soaking wet. Such a good girl.” He ran his tongue over it before tossing it away. Then he dove in like a starving man at a banquet, laving his tongue all over your pussy while metal hand began to vibrate (As if you hadn’t had enough!) against your clit.

              Meanwhile, Captain had ripped your blouse, the buttons scattering. He growled when he saw the lacy bra you’d worn, another treat for yourself.

“God, babygirl. You’re so fucking sexy.” He pulled the bra down, exposing your breasts. Then brought his hands up and began playing with your nipples, tugging and pull ever so slightly. All the while kissing along your neck and shoulders while whispering the filthiest things imaginable.

“Can’t wait to fuck you baby…use you as my own slutty little toy…tie you up, kiss you all over…” He bit down gently on your earlobe, making you buck your hips against Sargent’s face, who tightened his grip on your thighs

“Fuck Cap… Her pussy is so perfect. You’ll have to have a taste.  Should we let her cum?” Captain smirked and seemed to mull it over, as you started to beg

“Please…I’ve needed…all day…” the constant edge all day had truly driven you half mad with want and frustration.

“Cum for us, doll. Cum all over Sarge’s face.” Cap ordered and you were quick to obey. Grinding your pussy against Sargent’s face and crying out.

Sargent kept licking and sucking as you rode out the last waves of your orgasm. When he pulled away, he was grinning like a kid on Christmas.

“Doll, you got the sweetest pussy I’ve ever tasted.”

“Mmm, lemme get a taste…” Captain said. Sargent set your leg down, giving a few more kisses to your thighs, then stood up and kissed Captain deeply, lovingly. After, he kissed you and you wanted to struggle but his lips just seem to melt against yours.

              “So soft…so perfect…” he said, cupping your jaw.

              “Shall we move this to the bed and make everyone a little more comfortable?” Captain suggested. You were ready to collapse with exhaustion, but had no choice as Sargent carried you over and laid you on the bed.

              “What do you say Cap, should we ride this little slut and put her away still soaking wet?”

              “Definitely, the question is how?” Sargent groaned in response as if thinking it over.

              “I think I wanna shove my cock in her ass.” He answered before leaning over to grab your hair and pulling your head up to look at you. “Ever had a cock in your ass babydoll?” you shook your head and he grinned wolfishly. “Then I’ll happily be the first. Scooch over for Captain here.”

              The blonde in question was currently stripping out of his shirt and jeans leaving him in just blue boxers. Sargent let go of your hair and followed suit, stripping down to black boxers. When Sargent let go, you scooched away from the two men, but were stopped when Captain climbed onto the bed with you, grabbing your arm and pulling you on top of him.

              “Hiya sweetheart.” He said, a small smile on his lips. You whimpered as you rubbed slightly against the very generous endowment you could feel, making Captain chuckle. “Such a needy little thing. Don’t worry baby, we’re gunna fill you up with our cocks.” He promised. You heard the clicking of a cap, then felt Sargent kneeling behind you.

              “Just relax, doll. And this’ll be sooooo good.” You winced when you felt the cold metal of his fingers covered with lube pressing against your asshole.

              “Aww, what’s the matter? Too cold? I know something that’ll warm you up.” Captain said as he pulled his boxers down. “Ride my cock baby.” He ordered and when you paused for a moment, Sargent delivered a harsh smack to your ass. You rubbed yourself against his cock, making both of you moan before sinking down on it.

              “Fuck….” He groaned. “Feels so good.”  As you felt his cock going deeper, Sargent pressed two of his fingers against your ass, slowly pushing in, making you whimper.

              “Shit doll, I don’t know how you’re gunna take my cock if you’re already squeezing this tight around my fingers. You gotta relax a little more.”

              “I can help with that.” Captain offered, rubbing his thumb over your clit. You let out a moan, also releasing the breath you didn’t realizing you’d been holding.

              “Oh yeah, she’s relaxed now.” Sargent joked as he fingered your ass a bit more before pulling them out. You felt the head of his cock pressing against you and you took his flesh hand squeezing it tight, making him laugh softly. “Don’t worry baby.” He murmured in your ear before kissing just below it. Then he thrust inside, making you gasp.

              “Fuck doll…squeezing me like a fucking vice.” He gave a few small tentative thrusts. The sensation was overwhelming, if a bit uncomfortable. But the discomfort gave way to pleasure as Captain added in his own movements, bouncing you on his cock and keeping rubbing your clit.

              “You look so pretty for us baby…all filled up with both our dicks.” Captain said.  Your mind was having trouble stringing words together, but you nodded and he smiled in response. “I think we went and fucked her stupid, Sarge.” He joked

              “Awe, are you our dumb little fucktoy?” Sarge asked, mockingly while picking up his thrusts, making you moan louder. The  two developed a rhythm in their fucking so you were never not full of them.

              Between their words, the feelings, everything was driving you further and further towards climax.

              “I’m gunna…I’m gunna...” you panted, still too lost in the pleasure

              “That’s it doll. Cum for us. Cum all over our cocks and show us what a little slut you are.” Sarge ordered and both of them fucked your faster, chasing their own release.        

              Your orgasm crashed over you like a wave of euphoria, cumming harder than you’d ever thought possible. Your release triggered their own and you cried out in pleasure as you felt them cumming in you. You dug your nails into Cap’s chest, making him groan as he pinned your hips down onto his.

              As your climax passed, exhaustion washed over you and you collapsed onto Steve’s chest, almost pulling Bucky down onto you. The man in question pulled your hair back so he could your face.

              “You still with us babygirl?” he asked and you nodded slightly.

              “Yes, daddy.” You said, voice barely above a whisper.

              “Good girl. I’m gunna pull out, ready sweetie?” you nodded again and he withdrew from you slowly. You winced slightly as he pulled out completely.

              “Such a good girl. Isn’t she Stevie?”

              “And all ours.” Steve affirmed, rubbing your back. He looked down at you. “You need anything sweetheart?”

              “Blankie. Maybe some juice or tea?” as the scene passed, you were slipping into your little space.

              “Your blankie is in the suitcase. And I think Bucky got some of your favorite juice, just for this occasion.” Steve said. Bucky got up and went over to the suitcase, pulling out your fuzzy Disney blankie and tossing it to you and Steve, who immediately tucked it around you. Bucky then went to the mini-fridge, grabbing your juice before coming back to the bed.

              “Can you get off Daddy Stevie for me, baby?” Bucky asked, making you and Steve smile.

              “But she’s so comfy to snuggle.” he said.

              “Daddy’s right.” You said and slowly sat up and climbed off Steve; wrapping the blankie more around you. You took the juice from Bucky as he wrapped his arm around you, keeping you warm.        

              “How was that doll? Everything you wanted?” Bucky asked.

              “It was Perfect daddy. Best anniversary gift ever.” Your husbands had been a little surprised when you’d told them what you wanted for your anniversary was to act out a fantasy you’d had for ages. But now, as Bucky held you tight as you 3 all settled in the bed, you couldn’t have been happier.

#Stucky x Reader #Dark!Stucky #Stucky fics #steve rogers #bucky barnes

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 141

Last week I posted a day early because vacation was doing vacation things to my sense of time.... This week I forgot to queue the chapter up because Monday was a work holiday, so I forgot today was Tuesday. *insert facepalm here please*

Thanks on this one go largely to @baelpenrose who rightfully pointed out that one part made very little sense to him and therefore was unlikely to make sense to a reader.  The clarification smoothed things out quite a bit, I think.  Just in case, whoever spots the area I’m talking about gets a cookie as soon as travel restrictions lift.

As always, thanks go also to @the-raven-fae, @charlylimph-blog, and @anotherusrname for completing the corners of my support system. And, a super-duper extra-special to @drinksteawithcake! I don’t know if I am allowed to tell everyone why, but you know why you get the extra-special, and I hope you are having fun!

BWAAAAAHP!   BWAAAAAHP!

“Uhhh?” I squinted in complaint as flailing arms clambered over me. One pair snagged me around my waist to drag me from bed before depositing me shakily on my feet. “What are you - ?”

BWAAAAAHP!  BWAAAAAHP!

Any trace of sleep was shoved out of my system, replaced by sizzling alertness when I realized I was hearing ship-wide alarms.  Shoving myself into the first clothing I grabbed, not even bothering with shoes, I was hot on Conor and Maverick’s heels as we raced out of our quarters and into the corridor. We paused only long enough for both men to kiss me and for “I love yous” to be exchanged before they turned and headed toward the areas indicated on their datascreens, while I hauled ass toward the Archives, ducking and twisting to avoid anyone in my path.

“Forty minutes,” Tyche told me crisply as I basically fell through the door, panting. “The Ark could be invaded and the battle over by the time you make it.”

“I ran….huff….the whole….ugh….way….” I managed to gasp out.  Part of me felt like puking, but I was pretty sure the muscles in my abdomen were too busy to figure out the logistics.

Clicking her tongue, she pulled me up from the floor. “Alistair, make a note to suggest to Xio that Sophia’s quarters be relocated once we have a better idea of when we are dropping into real space.”

I nodded numbly. “And probably… amp up… sensors… give… earlier… warning.”

“Nice outfit, by the way,” she laughed quietly as we finally reached the shelter point within the Archives.

Glancing down, I had to suppress a sigh. The first thing I grabbed to dress myself had apparently been a pair of Conor’s boxer shorts and a very filthy t-shirt that I assumed belonged to Maverick, since Conor’s was usually under coveralls. “At least you can’t say I took my time getting dressed.”

Her shaking head was greeted by faces in various states of wakefulness - this had been a drill, and woke nearly the entire Ark during their sleep interval on Delta shift.  But we weren’t out of the woods, yet: the drill didn’t end until all of Xiomara and Evan’s scenarios played out, including the mock combat and various tests of concealment for the other shelters.  As such, Tyche stood guard over the choke-point into this section, while Alistair had stayed behind at the entrance.

Early on, when the drills started, there had been fifty-fifty odds that the mock-invaders would make it this far, but over the past few weeks, that had narrowed to maybe twenty-percent.  It was still too high a chance in my judgement, and Xiomara clearly agreed as she stepped up training schedules and randomized the timing of the drills. 

Taking a swig of water from a stash of bottles, I queued up my datapad and stood next to Tyche, watching the ‘casualties’ from a point where no one could see over my shoulder to avoid panic, which I would have done in a real situation. “They didn’t find mess hall seven this time,” I murmured.

She glanced at my screen. “Acoustics are still too damned high. She must not be simulating for that this go around.”

One of the decoy locations lit up. “Looks like this time it’s heavy on thermal.” The location in question had been equipped with a cooking surface, triggered to activate when the klaxons that had woken me up went off.  Which Xiomara knew, but did not tell the ‘pirates’ for authenticity.

“How did they get past the combatants this time?” She asked, both curious and slightly worried.

Rolling back the sensor data, I watched it carefully. “Looks like these got in during the initial breaches, multiple points. But the line has held since, that’s good.”

Doing another check toward Alistair’s direction, she didn’t seem to see anything concerning. “How many?”

“Four,” I confirmed.  “Sam’s thermal camouflage is working beautifully, though.”  I couldn’t help but grin, and Tyche snorted at the same time. ‘Thermal camouflage’ was a bit of overkill as a name, but it was working well in every round. Potential access points were equipped with fast-acting environmental simulators - originally designed for temporary habitats on inhospitable moons - modified to release atmosphere like a Terran equatorial rainforest within one minute in an enclosed space.  It was a much more simple and elegant solution than any others we had found for giving combatants defending the Ark an advantage - instead of trying to create technology to make them look colder, make the entire area match human heat signatures.  Boom, instantly blinded enemies.

A tense half-hour later, the ‘all clear’ sounded, queueing grumbling from those who had dozed back off as everyone stood to make their ways back to their quarters. I waited with Alistair and Tyche for everyone else to be accounted for on the way out, and the three of us headed back toward our quarters together.  Alistair peeled off first, living closest to the Archives, and no sooner had my sister and I reached my door than the page sounded for the post-drill meeting.  She waved me off as she answered on her databand, and I did the same as I pushed into my quarters and flopped on the couch. “Councillor Sophia Reid, present, audio only,” I answered. “And no jokes, Pranav… I look like I smell awful.”

“Alistair Worthington, present, audio and video. I can confirm that she does, and she does.”

Laughter filled the comms and the rest of the group leaders and Councillors joined the debrief.  Finally, everyone was present and Xiomara called the meeting to order.  First, the leaders of each shelter reported in, as those usually went the fastest. There were a couple malfunctions in the deployment of the shielding to disguise the entrances and hide heat and electrical signatures, but nothing Huynh’s team couldn’t fix.  Tyche and Alistair made the recommendations around earlier detection and the need to move those sheltering in the  Archives closer as we approached time to drop out of relativistic space. 

Once that was out of the way, it was on to the combat and invasion teams. Overall consensus was that Sam’s trick with the portable environments was a rousing success and would be installed at each point determined to be most likely as a breach, with trigger conditions to be determined later. “I hate to say it,” Michael sighed, “but we also need Charly’s team to crank up the scovilles on the arrows and grenades.” His team had played the ‘invaders’ this go around, equipped with sensors and readouts to simulate the effect our defenses would have on the various species who most commonly were found on pirate vessels.  Evan had worked intensely with Pranav and Derek to ensure that the strategies provided by the readouts were modelled after similar strategies based on which ever species each team member was assigned, to ensure we weren’t accidentally drilling against human tactics.

Michael hated it, but he was strict about his team complying nonetheless.

“Seriously?” I squawked, and I wasn’t the only one. “One of those things accidentally went off in my quarters…. Can confirm, they’re pretty potent.”

“They dissipated too fast against my team, and also the contact element left a lot to be desired. Charly, you may want to consider adding a sticking element.”

“Duly noted,” she chimed in with a yawn, her normal pep doused by being woken up and then the drop in adrenaline post-combat.

“What about the sonic weapons?” Xiomara asked, moving the meeting along.

“Still less effective than Nixe is on her own,” a familiar voice I couldn’t put a name to responded with a sheepish tone.  “How hard would it be to train more people to shatter glass with their voice?”

“Incredibly,” Grey stressed. “It takes a very unique combination of training and the right vocal chords.”

“Then we may need to work on adding a projection component.  The sonic devices can match the pitch, but not the actual tone and direction. They’re very effective given time and especially contact, but we need something more immediately disabling.”

Xiomara groaned. “Are we back to Mariah Carey on this one?” Objections exploded until she muted the comms. “It’s that or opera.” Votes started scrolling up the screen, and I could see Xio nod. “Opera it is.  Let’s find a suitable piece and try using more analogue-style speakers.”

“I still say that death metal would work better,” Arthur suggested as soon as the comms were back on.

“Annnnd we already tested it, I will remind you. The volume works, but the pitches aren’t high enough to hit a broad enough population of species sensitive to sound.” After that nearly-obligatory objection, the meeting continued going through reports from each combat team until finally Xiomara announced the end results. “I have to admit, this was one of our best drills yet. Ten percent casualties of the combatants defending the breaches, only two percent among non-combatants, and the invaders were only able to traverse three decks before they were subdued.” She let the cheers go for a couple seconds before getting everyone’s attention again. “Yes, great job on the improvements, but let me remind everyone - those numbers still leave us below threshold for a healthy genetic population. Engineering teams, make the necessary adjustments with whatever resources are necessary. Shelters Three and Seven, you will start training for armed and unarmed combat with Shelter Fourteen and Combat Team Two daily.  Sophia, your team will coordinate schedules. Any questions?”

There were no arguments, not even a groan or mutter as the meeting was dismissed. Before I could even add the new task to my agenda the next day, I received the notification that Alistair had beaten me to the punch.

Glancing at the time, I wanted to hit something.  I had to be back up and at work in four hours, and the realization weighed me down with exhaustion.  The guys had come in and gone to bed while I was in the debrief, and I could already hear synchronized snoring coming from the bedroom.  Rather than risk waking them with my now-frozen feet, I pulled the quilt off the back of my couch and rolled myself into it.  Only minutes later, a heavy weight oozed across my hip and started purring furiously.

“Yeah, buddy. I agree. We need a nap.”

<< Prev  Masterlist  Next >>

#the miys #found family #humans are weird #science fiction #aliens #apocalypse #humans are space orcs #humans are space fae #earth is space australia #post apocalypse #post post apocalypse #original science fiction #original sci fi #original writing

[queenoftheworldisdead]

Number 8 of best friends to lovers 👀👀

For Sale

Number 8 of best friends to lovers “so, we’re just going to ignore the fact that you drunk-dialed me to tell me you love me?”

Ransom x Reader

warning: Kissing

not dark. i wanted this to be dark, but it didn’t happen. probably because my brain is story.

🏡

The real-estate sign that bared your face now freshly planted in the yard of a gorgeous luxury mansion.  Mrs. Thrombey  had finally saw fit to give your first high end listing. The commission from this alone would be more than what you could earned if you sold every listing you had thus far.

As you marched off the lawn you headed to your car to grab your camera. Lots of photos needed to be taken before you could post the listing online and bring it officially to market. While bent over in your backseat in the driveway you were surprised to hear a car pull up behind you.

There is no way a potential buyer could be here this soon. The sign just went up.

Looking over the backseat you peer out curiously. A classic Porsche now parked almost bumper to bumper with you.

Ransom? What the hell?

It was far beyond unusual for the son of your boss to bother you at a listing. He normally preferred to annoy you at your desk, in the office of Thrombey Real Estate.

Grabbing your camera and closing the door to your car you stand with hand on hip curious as to why he was here.

"Don't even think about it. This is my first high profile listing and I am not letting you defile it. Like you did the loft." You looked at him accusingly.

🏡

When you first got hired everyone was quick to tell you that Ransom had a reputation around the office. He had fucked a number of Mrs. Thrombey's assistance and three different girls in accounting. So when he finally made an appearance your defenses were up.

🏡

A month in and to your surprise he never made a move. It was a slight hit to your ego as you sat and watched him try and fuck anything that moved in the office.

If his mother wasn't around he would often gravitate to your desk. You were suspicious at first, but when he brought your favorite flavored coffee his presence became a lot more tolerable. Even if he spent most of the time talking ad nauseam about other women while you rolled your eyes and chided him for being a douche.

You had gotten so close with the arrogant playboy that his mother would reach out to you on occasion for her sons whereabouts. So when your new bud asked to borrow the keys to one of your lofts you saw no problem with it.

He returned the key the next day, leaving them on your desk with a frosted sprinkled treat next too it.  

Unfortunately that didn't makeup for the destruction he rot. When you opened the door to the loft it looked liked he fucked over every inch of the place. The living room's upholstery had mystery stains everywhere, the kitchen was trashed with empty takeout boxes and the bedroom you had staged looked ran through. Leaving you with no other choice but to cancel the showing and hire a cleaning crew to fix the damage he had done.

🏡

Your face soured at the sight of his cocky smile as he exited the Porsche.

"A little ungrateful don't you think?"

You scrunched a brow very confused as to what he could mean by grateful. "What are you talking about?"

"This listing.. I convinced Ma to give it to you. You deserved it." He said as he placed and arm around your shoulder, walking with you up the drive and into the estate.

Planting your feet once you passed through the entryway you nudge him with your elbow to give you space, but he didn't move.

"Ransom I don't know what game you are playing with me today, but I need to take these photo's so that I can get it officially listed on the market" you say flatly as you try and move away.  Ransom's hold on your shoulder is unwavering, pulling you closer with every escape attempt. Pushing your frustration aside you begin fiddling with your camera, resolving to taking photo's with him on your hip.

Snapping shots in the foyer while Ransom leans his weight on you. "And besides even if what your saying is true it still doesn't make up for you destroying my loft a day before a showing" you huffed with the camera pressed to your lash.

“So, we’re just going to ignore the fact that you drunk-dialed me to tell me you love me?”

The sudden change of subject had you lowering the lens. The stunned look sending him into a fit of deep giggles as you stared off into the distance. You could not dare bring yourself to look him in the eye.

🏡

"Don't be all shy now. I was really flattered" he said digging out his cell from his coats breast pocket. Holding the device out he let it play for you on speaker. 'Hey! Hey Ranny! Ransom... Handsome! Oh my gawd did you know your name rhymes with HANDSOME..' You cringed at the volume of your drunken voice as the song Holy jolly Christmas played loudly in the back ground. 'You are so handsome. UGH! Why do I have to be in love with your stupid handsome face? I know the only reason you even talk to me is to use me for my listings, but FUCK! At least toss a girl a bone!' The voicemail cut out after that. Ransom stared at you the entire time, your discomfort very apparent as it brought him further joy.

🏡

Mrs. Thrombey's Christmas party did you in. You got shit faced at an office party. You raked a hand over your face as you relived the moments of last Saturday. He had been sitting on this tape for days and you weren't sure why he waited so long to drop a bomb on you like this.

Seeing Ransom with some hot random yet again made you feel some kind of way. He had already asked you for a key to a listing earlier in the day. You knew he was set to bring her there before the night was through. The Tequila must have stirred something in you, because as the free drinks flowed you realized how devilishly handsome the son of your boss was, how you wanted nothing more than to be bent over and railed by him on his mother's desk.

The next morning you checked your phone as you normal did. Nothing out of the ordinary no missed calls or text. So you had no idea that drunk you was all in her feelings, leaving voicemails like a needy idiot.

🏡

You were so lost in thought you hadn't realized that Ransom was behind you until you felt the camera slip from your fingers and into his hand.

"Look Ransom that was drunk me. Sober me is.."

"Shut up. " You felt the vibration of each word as he pressed into your back. Swallowing thickly you tightened your lip. "Come on lets play house."

He led you up the stairs and through the estate with an air of familiarity. Your legs moved, but you felt as if you weren't in control of them. When he opened the door to the master bedroom you started to snap out of it.

Ransom turned to look at you when you halted your stride. As you opened your mouth to protest he crashed into your lips. His tongue invading your mouth as you held up your hands in helplessness.

Ransom's hands took either side of your thighs, hooking them and lifting you off your feet. Your weight being moved effortlessly to the bed where he laid you with care.

When the door to the master bedroom swung open only two people were surprised.

"Jesus Christ! Ransom!" Mrs Thrombey's voice startled you, but did not faze her son.    

"And you. I am so disappointed in you" she slammed the door to the master bedroom.

#Ransom x black reader #Ransom x black!reader #Ransom x reader #black writer

[devandahlcourte-work-in-progress]

Section 10. 4 chapters, ending with chapter 54

I am reposting these first eighty-two chapters (in 22 sections) plus the prologue and the preface.

These posts will be the updated versions from my DeviantArt account, and since Tumblr may not display all the text correctly (it destroys anything I had in italics or underlined) I would still recommend reading everything there, on DeviantArt. They will also include internal links that navigate between the chapters on DeviantArt and will take the reader off Tumblr if clicked.

This came about because I noticed search engines were finding random sections of my book and displaying them along with some other people’s blog posts.

Okay, so that’s why I installed those internal links in each one… so that if anyone gets to a random section by way of a search engine and would like to read the story from the beginning, they can.

Only then did I realize that it wasn’t getting it’s search results from DeviantArt, but from old Tumblr.

There’s another problem at work here besides unrefined searches…

There is a new species of virus on the internet that likes to eat ancient Tumblr posts and barf them back up infested with adware - spyware - malware etc. The virus goes by names like TumGIR, TumBIG, TumPIK, or Tum(anything else but ‘blr’). The caps were added by me for emphasis so that maybe you can double check in case you’re not looking at an actual Tumblr post right now but one of these so-called “mirror” sites.

If you’re looking at this text through one of the counterfeit Tumblrs that I mentioned, then no link you click (assuming it even copies it with my links intact) will take you out; it will redirect you and show you all of the spam ads it wants to. So read carefully what url is showing on your browser right now.

If it is one of the untrustworthy ones I would suggest closing your browser window and doing whatever else you normally would in order to reset settings.

As far as my science fiction novel entitled “If And Only If,” the safest way to find it is by going to my Instagram:

@michelle.de.vandahlcourte

From there you can click on the link in my bio. It will take you to the beginning of the story on DeviantArt… the safe one! No malware.

P.S. None of this is Tumblr’s fault! It’s the malware/adware/spyware developers who are stealing people’s tumblr posts.

The actual content of this page appears below here👇

Section 10. 4 chapters, ending with chapter 54

↩️return to previous section, section 9

↩️↩️…and if you arrived here because of a search engine and you would like to read this story from the beginning, click here.

Brenda

All right, full disclosure, I am not really Brenda. This first part of her story is being relayed to whoever may find this, in the future or past or on some other timeline or in some other parallel universe, by a friend of hers: me.

My name is Renaldo. And Brenda gave me something for safekeeping. This is going to sound super weird. But she gave me something to hold onto for her in case her memory was ever erased.

And by that, I mean the memory in her head; Her brain; her mind. Whatever you want to call it – I’m not talking about one of her devices having it’s memory wiped like a phone or notebook or tablet.

And as weird as it sounds, it actually has happened now. Someone erased her memory as she feared they might.

To be honest I was just kind of psyched that she wanted to talk about all this at first. It was fun. Kind of like a theoretical conversation about different types of science fiction. But I’ve come to realize now that this is all too real. I don’t know what to make of it. It’s scary.

Is Brenda going to be normal again? Healthy? She seems to be doing okay. She just has absolutely no idea that a particular fictional character on the Internet ever existed. And someone can live the rest of their life happily ever after without knowing about some obscure open-source cartoon, right? But then would she want to know that her memory had been erased and try to find out who did it and why?

I didn’t know that that character existed either; not until recently. But that’s simply because I should “get out more” as both my brothers frequently remind me. I tend to not know about fun stuff or trendy things. I found out that it existed because she told me. Now, I am finding myself in the peculiar position of having to tell her something that she not only used to know, but knew well enough that she was able to teach me and other people about it.

All right, enough drama. Time for specifics. As fortune would have it, Brenda decided to confide in me after all about what she called the Marky Mark signal. I went back and found the movie and streamed it on two different nights; I had a research paper due so I couldn’t see it all in one evening. But I watched it as quickly as I could so that I would understand what she was talking about.

And yes, it would make more sense to do it that way: A signal that goes out worldwide and makes people stop what they’re doing and go into some sort of hypnotic state where they immediately grab whatever materials they have on this fictional character that they are not supposed to know about, and destroy the things.

That could include erasing files from local drives and clouds. But also physical hardcopies; printouts of related articles. Handwritten notes. Art that someone drew on their Wacom Intuos. (Hers is wiped clean of it, by the way.)

That actually makes a lot more sense than a neuralyzer / flashy-thing or or the like. As I told Brenda, let’s just crunch the numbers.

While that may work for just a few people, we’re talking about a number in the hundreds of thousands or millions, if the figure I read on the creepy pasta website stats is correct. How many people can one agent flashy thing in a day?

Assuming they have to go driving around visiting each person, would 10 a day be reasonable? That assumes an 8 hour work day, which would be 48 minutes per person. Assuming mostly urban environments, most of that 48 is spent driving, parking, and walking to and from the car... plus a little time for knocking and getting into a private place where no one else could see them use their gadget.

If so, then that agent could erase 300 people’s memories per month. How many months do they have to do this? Let’s say that the agency, government bureau, or whatever they call themselves, doesn’t mind moving at a leisurely pace. So let’s say they allocate 10 months for this project. Working with no vacation for 10 months straight, our agent can erase 3000 people‘s memories.

The website indicated something like 8 million viewers when I checked. Let’s suppose not all of them were fans of Stalko-Taco. You have only perhaps 3 million of them who were either fans or read the story then decided they didn’t like it but remembered it anyway…

How many agents would you need? If we’re sticking with that 10 month figure, then that’s 1000 agents. To personally visit and flashy-thing 3 million people for the purpose of erasing their memories. In ten months. If you wanted to hurry the process up and get done in only a month, you would need 10,000 agents.

Never mind which one it is. If it’s 1000 agents or 10,000 agents, that’s still a lot of government employees out there running around fully aware that there is a memory-erasing technology and that the government has some kind of organized campaign to go out and track down specific citizens and erase their memories. No way in hell does someone not talk when the numbers involved are that large. With anything more than 10 people it would be hard to manage. (And I am fully aware that during this rudimentary calculation I have completely neglected the complications presented by dealing with international fans of the story, i.e. outside the U.S.)

So what else could you do? Have some kind of super elite spy agency within the agency? Maybe 10 hard-core guys who systematically erase the memories of the memory-erasing agents once they’ve done their jobs?

I suppose it’s possible, but it’s just cumbersome. However this is happening, whether by “flashy thing” or “Marky Mark signal,” it almost certainly is occurring using alien technology. I made it clear to Brenda how I preferred to interpret the Drake equation.

So if it’s alien technology either way, and I am the aliens, I would go with a solution that’s less logistically cumbersome. So, Marky Mark it is.

As a safeguard against us being hit by another Marky Mark pulse which would be more thorough than the last one and would wipe Brenda’s memories as well – something the first one had failed to do – Brenda tried to do an end-run around the process.

Another old phone from her sister. Still another old phone that her dad didn’t need anymore. Both with the Sim cards removed in the course of their deactivation. She placed the videos on each of these phones. In the photos, yes, the obvious place. But also, as these phones allow you to do, the videos were embedded into some notes files. It doesn’t let you lock a notes file that contains a video. One that has pictures in it, yes. But not one that contains a video. But she gave it a shot anyway.

It was just another way to possibly foil their plans if they found the phone and just scanned for audio and video. Then yeah, they would erase that. If they looked at notes files – in other words, text files – the paragraphs would contain nothing but articles about fashion, complete with pictures of different outfits. But if you scroll down far enough, in between what’s in and what’s out for this autumn, there would happen to be an occasional video file imbedded.

She gave me one phone and let it slip out that she gave Wheeler the other.

There is more than one way she could show up asking for it back. One possibility would’ve been that Brenda, the normal version of her, comes to me/us and simply asks for the phone back because there’s some reason why she needs it/them.

The other possibility is that she asks for it back... but the person doing the asking isn’t quite the normal Brenda. To ascertain just how “normal” she is, she gave us a series of questions that we are supposed to ask her; somewhat more advanced than a simple password. A series of questions which when answered correctly would reveal that her memory was still intact and had not been tampered with.

I saw a potential problem with this. But telling her what this problem was would not only fail to solve it – it would in fact create a situation wherein she would fail altogether. That is, a situation wherein the whole procedure of making backup videos would automatically become useless. I couldn’t tell her about this. The only way to help her achieve what I know she’s going for is to change her plans without telling her.

I searched for the name in my head. I had to remember. Only one university here, I was fairly certain, had an actual law school. Scanning through their website’s list of faculty would probably trigger my memory. I’d know it when I saw it. Phone all the way dead; I could just wait about 70 seconds and then use it at 1% while plugged into the kitchen outlet. Asking my mom would have been a guaranteed way to find out his name, but she’d be infinitely curious why I wanted to know, and she’d never let up. Then as the white apple popped up, I saw one of my dad’s old coffee cups, from Flagstaff. Lowell Observatory – that was it. Professor Lowell.

Eileen

I trusted a time-traveler who doesn’t wear a watch. If that one mistake could have been avoided I might not be facing life in prison. I wasn’t handcuffed to a hospital bed; they hadn’t made an arrest yet. But it was just a matter of time and I was under guard, I could tell – more than just hospital security. I couldn’t leave. If I tell the whole truth? Then they might arrange for some of the time to be in a nuthouse instead, because they’ll never believe the truth. This isn’t how the future was supposed to be. Because I’ve already time traveled to the future and this wasn’t it.

What happened to My Future – the one I Saw? That little so-called Chronopolitan? That punk troubadour who prefers to live in medieval times? Yeah. And even though he’s from the future and could easily wear a watch, he chooses not to because he’s in love with that era. I want my EMPIRE dammit!

Narcissistic personality disorder! Bull Fucking Shit. I sometimes go days at a time without wearing makeup or looking in mirrors. It’s them! They’re the narcissists. The two doc-tards and the last five nurse-tards. All of them and their mutual admiration society. And all that eurotrash from Stuttgart and Trieste! They probably caused this. That’s it! I’ve made up my mind.

I’m tearing this shit up and flushing the tiny pieces down the toilet, as long as they’re letting me in here unsupervised back in 2006. I can’t have these notes ever be found. Because I’ve decided that it might be easier to escape from a looney bin someday than from prison, I’m going to do something that violates my personal philosophy of success: I’m going to tell the truth. That alone oughta get me locked up on the funny farm. That plus I have knowledge of psychology they don’t know I’ve got; enough to fake several mental illnesses in case the truth doesn’t make me sound crazy enough.

Plus my shysters being paid indirectly through offshore accounts will push for it and bring in expert witnesses to demolish my mental competency standing. More of what’s supposed to be my empire, crumbling because the vultures know there’s untraceable money there.

The Pyxis! I could clearly hear its sounds coming from down the hall now. My nurse-tard is habitually late and has to wait in line for it. She’s too much of a pushover. Let’s others walk all over her. Yes, perfect, just what I need. So I’ve got a half hour at least to tear up these tiny strips and flush them. My last chance because I’m pretty sure unsupervised use of toilets is going to be a rarity for me soon. As well as unsupervised electrical outlets. And towels. And salt packets. And straws.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

C’mon Eileen, I encouraged myself, it’s just like BDSM with Jared. And... ZAP!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Eileen?” The nurse politely asked, even bothering to knock on her already propped-open door, she could hear because she was still semi-conscious but convulsing.

Shouted calls. Urgent instructions. Through it all she heard cries of “get the power shut off!”

Unknown and unseen voices chattered back and forth. “Where did she get wires?”

“It’s brine.”

“What?”

“A slushy paste of salt and water. Inside two lines each of about twenty plastic straws stuck together.”

You would think these losers had seen it all by now. They seemed truly surprised. Another one, on the phone with a doc-tard who was apparently in charge but too important to actually be present in the ward, sounded genuinely panicky: “Holy shit! She made two long tubes by working the straws together end-to-end, filled ‘em with salt water slush and plugged them into the outlet like wires. The wet towel wrapped around her neck may be soaked in salt water too. Yes sir, the current’s been switched off and she’s still breathing.”

It’s a good thing we aren’t further in the future, she thought. Bernart just happened to mention one day at a burger joint in Loma Linda that plastic straws would be outlawed on the entire west coast by the 20s, if not sooner. She’d silently cursed to herself:

“What other kinds of idiocy await in this wrong-future that I got railroaded into?”

The flashlight irritating her eyes was her cue to try and speak. With some difficulty since her “electrocution” stunt had almost worked. Fortunately she was able to attempt several tries since this moron kept flicking the thing back and forth about a dozen times. She fought the overwhelming temptation to shout: Dude! If my fucking pupils haven’t done whatever it is you think they’re supposed to by now, they aren’t gunna! You’re annoying as shit.

Finally her mouth worked well enough.

“Time travelers.”

Moron b repeated it to flashlight moron:

“Did she say time travelers?”

Time to get busy acting Eileen, she thought happily, shifting into high gear but still speaking in a groggy voice: “They already copied me and sent my new body and mind to the future. I don’t need this body anymore. It’s okay, we can go ahead and kill it.”

Brenda, by way of Renaldo again

I ran this whole scenario by my mom’s old friend, Professor Lowell. He was not just a lawyer but a professor of law at a nearby university. I had a voice conversation with him, in person. Totally non-electronic. I couldn’t rig the room and make it a SCIF or suchlike, or even pipe loud music against his office windows.

But one thing that worked in my favor was construction; whatever they were doing in the parking lot outside his building involved at least one jack-hammer going for the majority of the time, against a blanket of constant background noise created by heavy machinery – backhoe loader type vehicles. And at any given moment it seemed like at least one of their backup warning beepers was going; definitely more than half the time from the sound of it.

He apologized for all the racket out there. I told him it was okay. But didn’t elaborate as to why I thought it was okay. It would have made me sound disturbingly paranoid. And on that note, I was taking a calculated risk by assuming that his office wasn’t bugged beforehand. Statistically it was unlikely. Given that the “Taco Erasers,” whoever they were, were primarily targeting people who liked Creepypastas and they in turn seemed to be of an average age of around 18... it was unlikely that Professor Lowell here would even be on their radar.

Might he be involved in some other matter that could have caused someone to bug his office and thus allow my group of hypothetical spooks to patch into the preexisting circuitry and listen? Sure. But also unlikely. Although he was still officially licensed by the state bar association to practice as an attorney – if that’s the right phraseology – he was semi-retired now and primarily focused on teaching and coauthoring some publications with his peers.

Moreover I wasn’t running the scenario by him to ask if it would be legal, but to see if he agreed that it would be logical. And I admit that I also wanted his take on whether it would be ethical.

I mean, I’m basically lying to Brenda. But I’m doing it for her own good. Is that truly possible? Or am I just kidding myself? This guy had taught a course called The Philosophy of Logic, as a visiting assistant professor at another university in town, through their philosophy department. He’d also taught ethics both in his law school capacity and through that other university’s philosophy program.

He vaguely understood that I was writing some kind of literary work in the science fiction genre; a necessary cover story since it wouldn’t likely be possible that I hung out in circles where memory-erasure and mind-control were readily practiced.

To begin with, he assured me that my logic was sound. The two possibilities that I mentioned, one being the normal Brenda, and the other one being the Brenda whose memory had been tampered with, would give identical answers to anything requiring passwords or challenge questions. It would not be possible to tell them apart.

If this hypothetical technology could force people to do things they didn’t want to do, then that would also apply to keys to a desk drawer, passwords for computers or other devices, and answers to challenge questions that I or Wheeler might pose... it would even extend “to pulverizing a block of concrete with a jackhammer,” he said looking out his window somewhat perturbed, if the subject had chosen to encase the evidence in a concrete foundation.

If “they” truly had the ability to make you do anything they wanted for the purpose of destroying whatever evidence you had, then your involuntary cooperation would also extend to revealing all hiding places, passwords, locations of keys, etc. So your character’s actions and answers would be indistinguishable whether she was a victim of their mind manipulation or just genuinely realized that she needed her phone back for some other purpose.

Since she would voluntarily provide them with all the information necessary to look like she was normal Brenda, and not mind-manipulated Brenda, when she came to their door asking for the phone back they could expect her to have all the correct answers.

After that, the professor was good enough to give me quite a bit more of his time to discuss ethics. Personally, I think he’s always been hot for my mom, who is just now coming out of her six-year long social withdrawal since being widowed, and maybe he thinks getting on her kids’ good sides might be helpful.

Later I reassured myself in my nightly journal, that what I was doing was ethical and moral. It was flimsy reasoning, I knew, and what I did was tantamount to seeking absolution from someone I was already sure would give it to me. Ultimately, it will not be time but Brenda herself who will tell; tell me if I did the right thing. So let’s get back to my “confession,” I suppose.

That thing Brenda feared would happen? It would work roughly in this way:

The pulse or signal (which we are no longer calling the Marky Mark signal because we have determined that it is not biochemically based in, and distributed by, plants... but in fact is likely of an electromagnetic nature) goes out into the universe to alter the minds of anyone who the Powers-That-Be determine has a knowledge of Stalko-Taco.

It tells these people: “go track down everything you have on Stalko-Taco. When you find it, destroy it. Then forget everything you know about Stalko-Taco.”

That would also apply to a personal vlog that they created which explains in detail exactly what Stalko-Taco is. Whether it’s on a device on their desk in their rooms, out in a storage bin in their garages, or in a desk drawer at their offices or wherever they work, it won’t matter.

They will go to whatever location necessary in order to get it. That also includes going to see a friend named Renaldo at his house – which for Brenda is quite a bit shorter a distance than most people’s average morning commute. But she’ll also drive the longer distance of almost 70 miles to get to Wheeler’s place in Austin.

If there really is a signal that can make people do this – destroy all evidence – then she’ll also cough up passwords, find keys, act normal or however she’s supposed to in order to get the things back from people...

The professor’s words still echoed through my head: even rent a jackhammer to extract “it” from a slab of cement if you had decided to hide it there.

The only way my character’s plan might work then, he conjectured, would be if she gave “Wheeler” the phone in a one-way transaction – admonishing him to “Never give it back to me for any reason, no matter how much I plead for it.” Instead, if she ends up dead under suspicious circumstances, or in a persistent vegetative state, or just generally acting goofy like her mind has been erased? He is to go Woodward-and-Bernstein and expose the video files to the world! Publicize it to the maximum extent possible.

I gave Professor Lowell the name Wheeler for the “other character” in all these cases, since I couldn’t very well use my own name. It was supposed to be fiction.

So when Brenda called me one afternoon just a few days later and said that she needed to come over for something soon, I already knew what it was going to be about even without her elaborating on the phone. I was fully prepared insofar as the hardware I would need; still not totally prepared in terms of my mindset. The guilt easily managed to taunt me through the holes in the pseudo-absolution process I had tried so hard to build for myself.

Why? Why all this guilt? Well, because I like Brenda, I suppose. And I’m just flat-out lying to her, stealing property from her, and burglarizing the house of a friend of hers... and ostensibly doing it all “for her own good.” How many times in human history has anyone who’s ever done something that they knew was wrong, but “for the right reason...” actually been right?

And when I say I like her, I don’t mean that I like her in that way. Brenda knows I’m gay. I’m fully out. As a popular girl who was walking between a clothing store and a makeup boutique with a group of her popular friends in her new town, she used her social currency to stop some guys from bullying me when I was waiting for my mom at a mall after summer school on my 14th birthday... before high school even started and before I had any idea at all... about what I was.

Now I have my network of people whom I feel safe enough around to wear my “Love is Love” t-shirt, which I also wore for the trip up to Austin to meet Wheeler for the second time. The first time I had on a different pride shirt. All I had needed to do was mention to the guy that Bren might be having some kind of trouble and I had his undivided attention.

Also, I hadn’t wanted to just blurt out the question and ask him: “are you gay?” But Babadook cosplay? Really? For some things you can simply read between the lines.

That, and what 18 year-old cis het-boy from Texas can even name ten prominent artists other than Andy Warhol, let alone give you detailed descriptions of them and their work? Or how many who even knew who Warhol was in the first place? It helped that Wheeler was cute too. I ran one of his Instagram photos through a “celebrity twin” or look-alike app to see who he reminded me of and it gave me some actor from an old Disney show that ended seven years ago. No, it wasn’t anyone I recognized. Well never mind that; We hit it off.

Weird Shapes

The artwork on their wall was different in a hip tech way, he thought. Not exactly a hologram but a diffraction grating sheet over some images perhaps? From their concealed positions and in their two-dimensional forms they heard him compliment Wheeler on it, since he knew by his reputation through Brenda that the dude was an artist.

The Princess of Pentacles, as that particular mass of quarks and leptons had come to be referenced by the ᢈ���ၔ᎘, had selected an excellent hiding place for them this time: a piece of Nancy’s avant-garde trash, as Princess Pentaculum called it.

“Oh, thanks man, but that’s actually one of my mom’s pieces. And yeah, it is some kind of diffraction grating that you’re viewing it through. She keeps changing the underlying images behind it and I’ve lost track, cause I’ve just been way busy lately.”

The shapes were “thrilled,” or whatever the close analog for it in their universe was: they immediately instructed the others to produce many extra batches of quarks and leptons for the Princess – in the form she liked: seventy-nine of the two-ups-and-a-down trios of quarks; enough of the two-down-and-one-up kind of trios to make it stable. Let some of the appropriate leptons tag along. The rules of charge in this strange universe will see to it that the right number automatically distribute themselves. A face centered cubic lattice for these blobs of matter. Let’s say, a thousand units. But no more than about 10²³ of the blobs per unit. Correction, the ᢈᯒၔ᎘ communicated to its assistant, multiply that by 0.950 and that should make them one “troy ounce” each.

Anything bigger than that made it difficult for her to move them on the “pawn shop” circuit... whatever that was supposed to mean. They didn’t really care to know all the nuances of her universe. The Princess was giving them the best results they’d ever seen in this dimension. They were happy with what they were seeing as the two human boys successfully defeated Agent Ranganathan’s best laid plans, backed up by the full strength of the Laniakea Supercluster Amphictiony. So, yes, they definitely wanted to keep The Princess of Pentacles happy.

The one called Renaldo looked on curiously at Nancy’s art. He didn’t have time for a detailed study. It was almost as if she’d placed a video image behind the grating sheet. As expected, it did that hologram-ish thing where you saw a different image as you walked back and forth, looking at slightly different angles. But it was almost too many images for just a hologram. A giant flat screen monitor behind the diffraction grating film might explain it.

Thoughts rang out loudly in his head, which the ᢈᯒၔ᎘ could read but not comprehend. The dude told himself to focus; never mind this art. He needed to learn the layout of the house and identify security measures, since his next visit here might very well be as a burglar.

A few hours later in her extended stay motel room, Eileen got off the bed in a hurry when a bi-location opened up about a meter above the middle of her mattress. It was just like the one the paranormal investigators were studying in Poltergeist. She knew it would be something good, but had to get clear of it to avoid bruising – these things were still utterly clueless about how physics worked in our universe.

Her bare feet were freezing on the simulated hardwood floor, but she looked on gleefully as the torrent poured in from another dimension. Before counting them, she made sure to arrange the tarot cards in a way that thanked them. She no longer had to introduce herself every time with the Princess of Pentacles card; they knew her well enough now. They got the size perfect: 31.103 grams each on her portable balance. And after grouping them into rows and columns, she realized that there were precisely one-thousand of them! Good, she thought, they’re learning to stick with base ten numbers for things, as she’d been trying to teach them.

Next, the tv. On! To the financial channel that always had that stock ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Less than a minute wait to see the precious metals prices. It had spiked a bit in the last week. After her fences and contacts got their cuts, there would still be well over a million dollars left for her! It had been her most profitable day so far that year.

Continue on to next section…

If And Only If

Copyright 2015

by Michelle Viviénne de Vandahlcourte

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Edition. © December 16, 2015.