#Clankie being the couple giving each other body parts

[the-curious-butterfly]

Dracugoona, Clankie, and Spawdeen: What personal item from their S/O do they keep on themselves at all times?

Lagoona: she keeps Nosbearatu together with Senior Squeaky in her bag. Despite Draculaura telling Count she’s too old for the stuffy to make her feel better it was still very important to her and she figured with Lagoona’s love of cute things she’d appreciate the meaning of such a gift. She very much did.

Draculaura: A small sketchbook Lagoona kept back in her Castillo that was already filled by the time she arrived at Monster High. The first time Draculaura flipped through it she couldn’t help the feeling that she gained a deeper understanding of who Lagoona was. What her fears and dreams were, it was all in those pages which Draculaura treasured greatly.

Oh and she wears Lagoona’s hoodie every chance she gets that Lagoona has to (playfully) fight her to get it back, so there’s that too.

Clawdeen: The first ICoffin charm Spectra had ever gotten is now the first Clawdeen has ever gotten. It’s of a small Purple Heart, wrapped in chains and held together with a lock. When Clawdeen asked if there was a key that came with it, Spectra’s answer of “She’s the one holding it” completely knocked the wolf out of her until she was nothing but a crying mess.

Spectra: Clawdeen spent days thinking of what to give Spectra after the charm incident. She wanted to give the ghost something just as meaningful but the most important thing to her was the Moonclaw and she couldn’t give that. Or could she?

The first time Clawdeen took it off to put it around Spectra’s neck it was Spectra’s turn to fight tears. This was her lost mom’s necklace and though she wasn’t quite giving it to her Clawdeen was telling Spectra ‘I trust you to keep it safe.’ A job Spectra took quite seriously as she refuses to let anyone too close to it or even remove it unless Clawdeen asks for it.

Frankie: at first they had to fight with Cleo when she tried to give them the jar with her heart in it. Yes it was very sweet and incredibly swoon worthy a gesture but they didn’t want to be the reason Cleo turned heartless around others if they were too far apart. Cleo was too beautiful for that and so they settled on something else just as sweet but slightly less important. The only stone Cleo had that meant more to her than a shiny bauble for it was one of the first Nefera had ever given her back when they were children and their relationship wasn’t as strained. It didn’t look like much because it wasn’t, it was something Nefera picked up off the ground and thought her sister would like. She never knew Cleo kept it all this time.

Cleo: body parts. Maybe an eye here or an ear there it tends to differ every day but will often be one of those two. Frankie insists it’s because they like being near, and while they can’t always be at least a part of them still can. And no matter what part it is Cleo takes very special care of it until the next time they see each other again.

#monster high #monster high gen 3 #spectra vondergeist #clawdeen wolf #Spawdeen #lagoona blue #draculaura #dracugoona #frankie stein #cleo de nile #clankie #Clankie being the couple giving each other body parts #so romantic #curious things

[insane-control-room]

The Sketch

Chapter Five, Segment Four

Full chapter on Ao3 here 

Previous - Next

I will not.

“Never!” Johan gasped. “I won’t!”

It was not the first time he and the ink machine had gone through this exchange, now. 

The torment of his flesh being torn apart, and then the soothingness of his body’s afflictions washing away as the pipes whispered to him promises and threats, then the pain returning as Johan refused, again and again.

He lost track of how many times the same words passed between creator and creation, he stopped counting the dizzying amount of injuries, he only waited for the void to claim him.

But the pain kept him drilled into the life he was so alone in.

He screamed as he felt his leg break in another place, a jagged pipe slamming into it and tearing at the weak meat beneath taut skin. Sometimes the pain was so great it made him black out. Sometimes his stomach heaved and he wanted to vomit, but the ink machine made sure he did not. And other times, he saw a glimpse of one of his loved one’s faces in his flickering vision, and it gave him strength to push forward, to move on. He was not his body, he was not the weakness of his mortal frame. 

Joey, please, we can work this out, soft coos were juxtaposed by the snapping of his joints into the wrong directions. The ink in his body tore it apart, far too slowly, so each and every nerve in his system was alight with the blazing agony. I can heal you….

“You’re the one who is r-rippin’ me apart like a dog in the first place,” Johan snarled, earning for his insolence naught but a broken rib that pressed against his lung sharply. Johan’s head, which had already been subjegated to a vast amount of torture, lolled on his gashed neck. One of his eyes was swollen, covered in blood, the red of his iris blotted out by the red all around it. His body felt used and useless, and air rushed from his throbbing lungs. “G-God….”

Yes? the Machine answered teasingly, sweetly, the pain subsiding for but a moment, and Johan groaned. He was running out of time, that he knew. His shirt was no longer white, his pants no longer light greenish grey, everything around so visceral maroon and bloodstained, his hair, body, and clothes streaked with gore. He felt his head pulled upright by freezing pipe work, and he shrieked as the skin of his neck was torn even more. The muscles beneath spasmed and ripped ever so slowly, like a smoldering bit of caramel dripping between two tines. The windpipe and esophagus within pulsed as he swallowed blood and screamed prayers. Your body is fascinating… there are so many unneeded parts. If only that skin there was gone, it would make it so much easier to see all the things that make you tick, Creator.

He was torn apart, completely and utterly, the knuckles of his fingers bent at all the wrong angles, his head throbbing in pain, each of his vertebrae pulled at least an inch too far from where they should have been, his hips burning with the exertion of remaining on his feet. 

God, he was tired.

Give in, Creator.

The tears that dripped into the wounds on his body stung and burned. Everything about him ached, and he was so very tired. His shoes felt slick with the amount of blood and sweat that pooled within. Twice he had already thrown up from the maiming, the third time only heaves of his stomach trying to force bile out of him, nothing forthcoming. 

Relax.

Mercifully, he was laid down in the wet puddle of his own blood, staring up at the blank ceiling of sky, blackness surrounding him, the hissing whisper of the pipes the only sounds, coupling far too intimately with his panting breaths. 

I love you, you know, Creator.

Joey sobbed as pipes that snaked to his chest tore his shirt open. He wished the poisonous words would ebb out of his hearing, but the whispers were in his ear, into his mind. The broken rib protruded in the husk of his skin at a vomitrocious angle, and Johan felt his stomach clench, yet nothing was within, and so he merely teared up with the nigh overwhelming pain. His good eye closed, and he tried to let himself drift away, the void so sweet and calling, filled with friends and family and the entire universe, and he longed to join them. The pain kept him there, kept him grounded, and refused to release him. The axe swung over his chest, cutting precisely over his sternum, slicing that area of skin in two, revealing his frantically quivering flesh beneath.

I want to see how you function when you are so broken, so flawed.

The instruments Henry often used to conduct his own experiments on Johan appeared in his flashing vision. Yet they were never used to hurt him, not once, they were used to see and calculate and… love. They were used for good, used to make sure Johan was doing well.

Not what the machine had in mind, for certain.

The scalpel swept into his sight by the ink, and he felt the icy tip of the metal prod and poke at him, he hissing and wincing as the broken ribs were shoved around places they did not belong.

He could feel the cold air hitting his lung, and the wrongness of it all swelled and took over his emotions. He sobbed and cried out again, weeping for Henry, babbling like a madman as the wounds of his flesh proved too much for his mettle. But he would not give in, not here, not now, not ever. 

Give up, Joey.

“You’ll have to carve the words f-from my lips,” Johan’s spittle tasted coppery, and he registered the blood soaking his throat. In a strange, twisted way, he was grateful for it. “I’ll never say ‘em, I won’t g-give up.”

But your heart has.

Johan’s head was tilted so he would be forced to view the damage wrought on his thin and weak corse. With it being nearly detached from his neck, the machine was able to show him much more of the damage than had his head been fully connected to his shoulders. 

His legs were shattered. His hips were sore and cracked. His gut had been stabbed, fluids dripping from the crevices in the flesh. His lungs heaved, ribs broken and moved out of place, fingers twisted all wrong as well, elbows snapped out. Looking at his fingers with the detached eyes of someone looking at another’s pain, and not his own, he noticed how they were torn apart along the lines of his scars. Everything about him was shattered, ruined, broken. A broken toy, to be tossed aside when it no longer sparked the same wonder. He swallowed, and the frigid air on the exposed inner workings of his gullet caused him to cough, blood dribbling out of his lips.

Johan could see his fluttering heart through the gaping hole in his chest.

He could see the ink smothering it, the ink running through it, the ink, the ink, the… in… ink….

His head fell back, and he cried out as the sensation of falling, twisting in the air and plummeting down, down, down overtook him. He no longer was in the studio, was he? He did not know where he was, and he doubted that he would be able to tell, his thoughts so painfully muddied and messy.

A sigh filled his mind.

Was it his own?

“Poor soul… come rest.”

His eye, the only eye he could open at the time, pried itself to see the source of the words.

A rush of air passed through his lips, barely able to speak.

“H-h-hun’o’ar?” 

The entity reached toward him, and he flinched away in fear. Even if it was the guardian, the destroyer, he still was too battered to do anything but fear.

The large hands passed through without touching him, and he remembered… void… code… being hollow… and tired… so very tired….

“‘m tired,” he wheezed from his torn lungs, even as he shook with clawing coughs. Tears slipped down the corners of his eyes. “B-but w-won’t give up. Can’t… can’t give u-up.”

“How I wish to comfort you…” the being’s words seemed hazy in Johan’s thundering ears. “But I cannot reach you. Life still holds you.”

“I know.” Johan’s voice was nothing but a hollow spark of air. “I know.”

He returned to himself in his blood, his eye creaking open.

The foul stench of gore penetrated the air, and he was glad that there was nothing to eat for the past year, else it would smell all the worse.

Had he died? 

The ink in his body kept him alive even as it had killed everything in the realm of life.

There you are, I thought I lost you.

The whispers seemed all the more dangerous, even more haughty and sharp.

Johan was picked up by pipes, the metal beams careful not to tear his already broken body any more than it already was maimed and fractured. 

“C-can’t you let me die, in p-peace?” Johan nearly grumbled, wishing he were with Huntokar. He sent a quick askance to God for the messenger's help the words of prayer on his lips and heart. Johan licked his lips to continue talking. His whole body felt so icy cold, like he had been dipped into a vat of dry ice. “Or are you too d-dependant, huh?”

Johan’s figure gave a painful electric jolt, a scream echoing through the air in his anguish.

“Coward!” Johan cried out to the air. “Show yourself, y-you bitter and twisted beast!”

He felt his unnaturally stretched back arch, but the pain was already gone, he could feel nothing.

“Unneeded! Clanky! Bulky, grotesque!” with each shout of reproof, the pain grew less and less. “You monster with no k-kindness! Overbearing load of tripe!”

Soon Johan was able to stand alone, his own pooling blood sticking to his feet, his hand pressed to the wall for balance. 

His body was maimed and broken, but his soul was even brighter than ever before.

He stood tall and proud, smothered in gore, tears all over his thin frame, so thin that if he were to fall he would shatter along those breaks into millions of pieces, and yet he stood.

“I will never give up!”

#joey drew #johan ramirez #the big picture #the ink machine #control art #control writes #batim #bendy and the ink machine #gore #torture #restraint #horror #temporary death #spirit of violent deaths #which is random's #perfection #dependency #resolve #hope

[carisi-dreams]

Shore Pt. 2 | Sonny Carisi x Reader

this is the was supposed to be the 3,000 word fic prize commission as part of my celebration of one year with this blog. in actuality, the entire thing is about 3600 words and this is part 2. @the-never-good-enough-nobody asked for: Sonny x reader where they are partners at SVU and you’re held in a hostage situation like Olivia was and Sonny freaks out and just how he is afterwards and everything

The television blared on in the background as you wrapped the blanket around you tighter. You couldn’t seem to get warm, no matter how many layers you put on and how much you fiddled with your clanky radiators. A flash of hands pulling at you bled into your mind and you shook your head to dispel the memory. It was persistent, though, and you felt more wash over you like waves. Over and over a flash of hands, you shivering, hard floors—it was like someone was flipping through a book of memories and only reminding you of enough to keep you on edge. You leaned forward to reach for the remote, hoping that turning up the television would help to drown them out. So far, McDreamy was doing a terrible job of distracting you and you felt frustration churning in your gut as you watched more drama unfold on the screen.

A knock on the door interrupted your growing unease and restlessness and you froze before slowly unfurling your limbs. Keeping the blanket around your shoulders you reached for the gun that was sitting beside you on the small table next to the sofa. A glance at your phone showed that it was silent and your eyes flickered back over to the door as you slowly made your way over. Your heart was hammering in your chest and your palms grew damp as you tightened your grip on the gun. You swallowed hard before closely the distance in brisk steps that betrayed a confidence you were ashamed to admit was forced.

“It’s me, doll.”

At Sonny’s voice through the door you slumped in relief. With the gun still in your hand you made quick work of unlocking the door to let him inside. He stepped over the threshold and closed it behind him, locking all of the locks again before turning to face you. In one hand he held a plastic bag that was bulging, but his attention was on the gun hanging limply by your side.

“Sorry,” you apologized as you followed his gaze. You took a step back and set it on a counter. “Wasn’t expecting anyone. I’m still a little jumpy.” You hated to admit it, but if there was anyone you could be completely truthful with, it was your partner.

“I can understand that,” Sonny replied slowly. He nodded his head towards the kitchen and when you nodded in agreement he slipped his shoes off before heading that way. “Sorry to just pop up like this. I should have called.” He placed the bag on the counter and began unloading plastic containers. “Figured you’d be bored out of your mind on the couch watching Grey’s Anatomy, but not feel like washing dishes. I brought you dinner.” He hefted another container out of the bag and you pushed back the nausea you felt.

“This is nice of you, Sonny.” You reached out to tap the top of one of the containers. It was hard to tell what was in it because the contents were wrapped in foil. “Can’t say I’m too hungry, though.”

Sonny paused in his movements and gave you a long look. His eyes were a cool blue and his expression seemed stormier than usual, even though his tone earlier had betrayed nothing. You fidgeted a bit under his gaze and he finally dropped your eye and unloaded the last container. Balling the plastic bag up in his hand he kept his gaze on the counter.

“I’ve, uh, got plain pasta, too. You can eat that with some butter for now? Maybe some garlic bread?” He lifted his head to nod towards the container your fingers were still resting on. “This’ll all keep in the fridge for a few days and whatever you don’t think you’ll get to you can freeze.”

You gave him a weak smile and nodded. “Okay. I’ll try to eat a little bit later.”

Sonny shook his head and reached for a container. He popped the lid and spun to the cabinet that held your dishes. “Nah. C’mon. Have a little now. Eating alone is no fun. I’ll eat with you. If you don’t mind, of course.” He turned back to you with an inquisitive look and two plates in his hand.

“I don’t mind.” You gestured to all of the food covering your counter and laughed a little. It was a foreign sound and feeling to you. “There’s plenty here. Clearly, someone was a little overenthusiastic.”

Sonny had the decency to look sheepish for a moment before it morphed into a pleased expression. You shook your head at him, but he only smiled in response and began forking pasta into plates. It felt nice to have someone else in the apartment, to have someone to look after you who wouldn’t hover like your parents or walk on eggshells like your friends. Sonny was still Sonny. You could tell that he was beating himself up over everything and that he still blamed himself. You’d already told him once, when you were first brought to the hospital, that none of this was his fault, but you could tell then that he didn’t believe you. From the looks of things, he hadn’t started believing you over the last several days either.

“Sonny, I—”

“I think—”

You both spoke at the same time. You laughed again and this time it didn’t feel quite as foreign. The two of you were always so in sync with each other. You gestured for him to go on.

“No, you first,” he insisted.

You shook your head and watched him spoon pasta sauce over one plate of noodles. Another wave of nausea hit you and you shook your head harder. He must have seen something shift in your expression and he bit his lip in uncertainty before slowly beginning again.

“Doll.” He took a deep breath and looked up at you from beneath his lashes. “I think you should come stay with me for a couple of days. Maybe a week.” That wasn’t what you had been expecting and you opened your mouth to protest automatically. He stopped you with a hand held up and started speaking again. “You’re home alone in this apartment all day and all night. It’s not…it’s not a good environment for you to heal from everything you’ve been through.”

His eyes were pleading and the food was momentarily forgotten.

“You live in a one bedroom,” you pointed out with a little twist of your head. “You have one bed. What’s the difference between me being there and me being here?” You tossed your hands up in the air in question.

“First, you’d take the bed. Of course. My couch is plenty fine for me. Second,” he raised his fingers to tick off his points, “the difference is that I have food at my place. I don’t even need to open your fridge to know that you probably haven’t gone shopping in awhile.” You focused on not shifting your weight lest you give yourself away. “It’s a change of scenery. We could both use the company for our evenings. Just—tell me you’ll think about it.”

You gave him a long look as you chewed on the inside of your cheek. Finally you nodded reluctantly and his shoulder slumped in relief before he turned to reheat the plates in front of him.

“I’ll think about it.”

Sonny smiled at you and reached out his hand. He was saying something, but you couldn’t hear him. As it became increasingly more difficult to make out his words your returned smile started to fade. His hand was still outstretched and you went to grab for it, but your fingers only hit air. You tried again, this time working to take a step towards him and let him know that you couldn’t hear him. The next time you looked down at where your hand was outstretched you watched as his stretched more and more out of reach. Before you knew it, he was almost a city block away. You tripped over something and grabbed for him and he dove to catch you, but you dropped to the ground with a hard thud.

You jerked awake on a bitten back gasp. Lifting a hand to your chest you could feel your heartbeat thundering. Your phone glowed up at you when you turned your head and you could make out the time as your surroundings started to feel more familiar. Sonny’s bed was foreign and so much bigger than yours, which only made sense considering his height and how he liked to sprawl, but the sheets smelled like him. The scent helped to ground you back to the present and shake off the last vestiges of the bad dream. Barely anything had even happened in it, but you could feel the lingering dread coursing through your body. You reached to the side and came up with only cool sheets. The disappointment you felt was trained inwardly. You’d wanted to ask Sonny to share the bed with you, but you had chickened out at the last moment. Sometimes you looked at him and saw more than your partner, but that wasn’t what this was about. You trusted him and relied on him, and right now? Right now you needed him to anchor you to safety.

After a very brief debate you spun in the bed and threw your legs over the edge. You stood to your feet and were halfway to the door before you could talk yourself out of this for the nth time. The rest of the apartment was nearly silent, just the hum of the refrigerator and the muted sounds from outside the window. A particularly large laugh cut through the din and you were reminded that there was a whole other world beyond this apartment. Right now it felt like it was its own island and that thought had been a great comfort to you as of late.

Sonny was sleeping on his stomach with his face mashed against the back of the couch when you finally got to the end of the hall and peeked your head around. The image drew you out a little more and you smiled fondly at the picture he met. He was sleeping, maybe not the most peaceful, but he was asleep and he deserved it. Over the last three days he had kept all of your favorite foods, different variations of pasta, movies and magazines coming. Every time you turned around he was thrusting something in your hand, most recently a milkshake and a book from the library. As you stood debating whether or not to wake him he suddenly groaned and then turned toward your direction. You held your breath as he ran his tongue over his lips, but you let it out when he blinked his eyes open. He didn’t seemed surprised.

“Whassamatter?”

Even in just waking up from a deep sleep he was still concerned about you. Sonny beckoned you towards him and when you got close enough he pulled you gently to the couch and then wrapped the blanket around you. This was the warmest you had felt in almost a week and you couldn’t resist cuddling towards him. The inky darkness of the room and muted sounds made space for this in the way the bright sunlight did not.

“Had a bad dream,” you admitted.

Your chin was tucked down into the covers so the words were spoken to his chest more than his face. Still, he seemed to understand you as he hummed in acknowledgment. Or maybe was just perceptive. This was probably part of his plan the entire time, to be around when you needed him most.

“I’m here,” he replied finally. His voice was sleep rough and sincere as he gently tightened his grip around you before pulling back again.

“Will you share the bed with me?” you whispered. You kept your chin tucked to avoid his eye. “It’s so big and every time I wake up alone, for just a split second, I feel like I’m back there.” When you hazarded a glance up at his face you could just make out that he was frowning in concern.

“Of course,” Sonny breathed. He began sitting up and tugged you upright as well. “Of course, doll. C’mon. Let’s get you back to sleep.”

Sonny reached out his hand for you as he stood and you felt your stomach drop for one impossibly long moment. When you gingerly lifted your hand to reach up for him you held your breath. You exhaled an audible whoosh as your fingers collided and he helped you to your feet and then started shuffling down the hallway. The warmth of his hand in yours vanquished the last bits of the bad dream that had sat on your shoulders.

“Sonny…I just want to say…thank you.”

You broke the quiet again as he gestured for you to take the side furthest from the door. The sheets were cool on this side of the bed and you shivered violently before burrowing under the covers and wrapping the second blanket tightly around you. Sonny groaned in pleasure under his breath as he sank into the bed. You heard him turn towards you. Through the blankets you could feel the brief weight of his hand on you shoulder.

“I’d do anything I could to keep you safe. You’re my partner.”

“I know…and you did. You know that right? You found me.” You heard him make a noise of protest. “It’s just…I have these waves, y’know? These waves that crash over me all the time now. A wave of fear and then a wave of anger at being afraid and then a wave of, of, like, nausea and then a wave of something else. I feel like I’m being tossed to and fro, but then I look up and you’re there. Like a lighthouse, or the shore. You’re here, Sonny. Your presence pulls me out of the churning water and I can forget, sometimes.”

You reached out for his hand under the sheets. When you felt his you clasped your around it where it was laying on the bed between the two of you.

“So, thank you.”

He leaned towards it and before you knew it he as drawing you into his embrace and ghosting a kiss against your forehead.

“You’re welcome, doll. I’m here.”

It took you awhile drift back to sleep, but Sonny never pulled away. For the first time in days you felt truly safe and that was the last thought you carried back down into slumber.

#sonny carisi #sonny carisi x reader #sonny carisi fic #commission #blogiversary #my writing

[cursewoodrecap]

Session 3: Darkness in Your Past

Hello everyone I’m still like. WAY sick. And I will be performing our next session entirely through texting and enthusiastic mime. But I can probably type, even if I’m hacking and wheezing?

In this session: oh no, backstory!

The party finishes their long rest at the bandit camp, universally antsy to get going and prickly with each other after certain ethical disagreements.

As the bandits warned us, the road turns out to be full of traps, and 3/4 of us roll terrible, awful perception checks. Clem, comically, immediately falls into a hole. It’s less comic when we realize there’s sharp spikes at the bottom of that there pit trap, but Valeria Channels Divinity and summons the Chains of Rack, catching Clem before she can tumble into the stabbity stabs. WHOOPSIE.

Traveling onward, we find a huge tree has crashed down across the path. We are all experienced players and thus suspicious bastards, and Shoshana rolls a good enough Nature check to suddenly have a childhood memory. There was once a local woodsman that she and her best friend used to hang around, a lumberjacky fellow and hunter named Mordecai. A good-natured fellow, he would let the local children tag along and show them lots of tips and tricks about the woods. Using the remnants of that remembered knowledge, Shoshana picks up on a few wood shavings and out-of-place bits. This thing has been tampered with.

“Everybody stand back,” she says, “I’m gonna poke it.”

“Wait, I have a crossb-” Gral begins, but Shoshana slaps it with a Mage Hand, which is only a 30 foot range. Two crossbow bolts shoot out of where the log has been hollowed out and the bark has been thinned to a sheet, and one sticks right into somebody’s boob. Good job, folks.

Going forward seems to be all well and good until, suddenly, someone notices we can’t hear Valeria, who’s guarding the back. We turn around and surpriiiise, a wild beast-man is hanging out of a tree and has her by a garrotte! There is a brief debate about whether attempting to free her by swinging an enormous greatsword is really the best?? idea??????? but Valeria puts an end to the discussion by stabbing the guy herself.

We complain at the DM about all the traps, and then get distracted, because OOH, A RAVINE.

Shoshana goes quiet at the familiar sight, but there’s something worrying here. There’s a beast-man of the Hunt and his wolf on watch, but there are dead people and wolves scattered over the blood-stained ground. A clutch Silence spell from Gral allows us to overcome the sentries with no alarm raised; Clem bisects the wolf with Extreme (and mildly panicked) Prejudice. 

Inspecting the scattered corpses, they seem to have been pierced by something long and thin - like arrow wounds, except there are no arrows to be seen.

We cautiously move forward, Gral sneakily scouting ahead and messaging back to the clanky folks what’s up. Shoshana tries to sneak, but is too distracted looking at the Hunt-people corpses for - someone recognizable, maybe? - and trips over a dead wolf. CLANG CRASH WHAM, roll for initiative, folks!

We slash our way through a couple of toughs and their wolves, Lookin’ Cool and Kickin’ Butt, but...this is like, two guys. What happened to the terrifying force that had the bandit crew cowering in fear? Why are most of them gone, or dead on the ground with the same arrowless arrow wounds?

Maybe the answer is through that door.

What Shoshana remembers as a bit of a hollow in the wall of the ravine - enough shelter to get a quick snatch of rest, maybe - has been covered over with a crude ceiling and a curtained hide door. No sounds are coming from inside, so we cautiously make our way in. 

It’s not much. Some rough skins and blankets to sleep on, a bag hanging on the wall, and a metal chest that we determine is booby-trapped. And loose scraps of paper, scattered across the floor. Shoshana bends down to pick one up, and reads it.

The gasp is audible. She stares at it, struck, as her player reads the text sent to her by the DM. The others begin to investigate the room as she stands there, absolutely floored - and then snatches for the next piece of paper, like lightning. And then the next, and the next, on her knees scrabbling for them, reading each one with mounting frenzy. She’s muttering to herself - “Why would she-? No, how-? The whole time?! And she NEVER??? How could she-”

Valeria cautiously picks up one of the cast-aside notes, reads it, and then caaarefully places it back on the floor, because Hoo Boy This Is Some Personal Stuff, Let’s Give Her Some Space. They seem to be unsent, half-finished letters, addressed to Shoshana. 

While spooky lady has a breakdown, Clem ably does a bit of medicine for Gral and Valeria to get everyone in fighting shape for whatever comes next. 

Shoshana collects all the letters, and somberly takes the pressed flowers Valeria found on the rudimentary table. Elsewhere in the room we find a key to the big chest, but still stand to the side when we release it - good, because an unsteady Mage Hand isn’t enough to hold the trap wire properly taut. Clem insisted we open the chest last thing before we leave, for fear that the roof would cave in, but a big scythe just swings out of the wall and slices the air where we all Decided Not To Be Standing. We find a bit of money, a Ring of Jumping, Ser Balderich’s sword, and a magic horn that is only heard by the person you choose to hear it.

The horn is apportioned to Shoshana, being the squishiest and the most likely to get targeted by these creeps. Shoshana, emotionally a bit frazzled, accepts it bemusedly. “Why?” she inquires dully. “I mean, it’s not like you’re exactly invested in my survival, past the next hour or two.”

Gral immediately protests. “I gave my word I would protect you, as part of my promise to bring you to Duke Shieldeater’s service. I would not betray that.” 

Valeria nods enthusiastically. Shoshana blinks and then gives the universal “get a load of this guy” gesture to Clem. 

Gral continues. “If truth must be known, I...am not entirely here on the Duke’s orders. I serve him, but it was my own decision to come find you. I strongly believe we Orcs need better relations with the local civilians. And I have my own aims, as well.” Cryptic behind his mask, he does not elaborate and continues back out into the ravine. 

Up ahead is the part that Shoshana knows is waiting for her. A thick blanket of branches and hanging foliage cast a section of the ravine into deep darkness - a canopy impenetrable to light but not, as she remembers, to the falling, flailing body of a young woman.

It’s distantly terrifying that seeing it again feels so much like coming home. A voice curls out of the ravine, welcoming her back at last. It’s impossible for her to tell whether the others can hear it.

“Ser Balderich is in there. The bandits said they were keeping him in the dark place, and...that’s where...”

Valeria firmly places her hand on Shoshana’s shoulder, reaching out in empathy to steady a comrade in a time of clear emotional distress. Shoshana feels a gauntleted hand land on her shoulder, the executioner’s cue to go face her death with dignity. They go forth, into the darkness.

...

So, it’s DARK in there. Valeria lights up the Rune Beetle. It’s still dark, supernaturally so, heavy and sick-tasting in the air. Even those in the party with Darkvision are limited, and they move ahead slowly and carefully. Luckily, Ser Balderich hears them coming, and starts shouting at the FIENDS! who are BACK FOR MORE, ARE YOU? and the party is able to find the pit he has been thrown into, heavy wooden bars embedded over the top.

Seeing the glint of Valeria’s silver scales in the dim light of the beetle, Ser Balderich’s shouting stops short. “...Marius?” he asks, disbelieving. “You survived? D-did any of the others-?”

Valeria recognizes the name of Kyr Marius, a mentor of hers at the monastery where she trained. Another silver dragonborn of the order, with years of combat experience. “I’m not Marius,” she lets him down, “But we’re here to get you out!” 

Ser Balderich, beaten and bruised and with at least one broken arm, is still with-it enough to notice that a young female voice does not sound like his presumably middle aged male friend. But he makes a quick recovery: “Oh! Uh, well, Kyr, it is an honor! But beware, the fiends are not far-”

Yeah, they’ve definitely noticed we’re here. A couple of worgs prowl out of the darkness as Valeria and Clem try to pry the bars off the top of the pit and haul Ser Balderich out. With Faerie Fire, Gral manages to illuminate one of the worgs and a mysterious cloaked figure, who simply gestures and we all take 3 Taint. What the what? It’s on.

We have a narrow battle - fleeing seems like the only option at one point, as several of us are boxed into a Hunger of Hadar spell by flanking wargs, but we persevere. In a moment of crisis, Shoshana pulls strength from the darkness and takes Taint in exchange for temporary HP. Finally, Clem and the wounded Ser Balderich break through to the cloaked figure.  As Clem’s greatsword pierces the flowing cloak, it collapses to the floor, empty. The figure’s taunting voice drifts out to us one last time, looking forward to the next time we meet. You can try to escape the Hunt, just like your little friend, but this is where you belong in the end...

Limping forward, we investigate the cavern behind where his empty cloak fell. Well, not the part that spirals off forever into the darkness. We’re not that stupid. But there’s a little room, off to the side, and we stop short seeing it. There’s a bloody altar, decorated with animal skulls, facing a hanging painting on an animal skin.

The crude tapestry depicts a figure wearing an antlered helm, tearing his way out of where he is bound by tree roots jutting from the ground. Three less-detailed figures behind him seem to be similarly bound. The edges of the canvas are decorated with grotesque, gory scenes of animals and hunters slaying their prey.

Oh, right. The DM notes he forgot to add the horror part of the scene. We look to the other side of the room and see a human corpse, nailed up on the wall. The word “PREY” has been carved deeply into his chest.

It’s Mordecai.

Shoshana is already so emotionally drained, barely able to register her dull rage at these grotesque atrocities here in HER darkness. She raises her hands, but Ser Balderich speaks up, saying Ser Quentin Morozov, his friend the Cursebreaker Knight, may have use of the tapestry. It might help him in his studies. Meanwhile, Valeria is gently pulling the body off the wall, looking for any sign of the man’s religion and finding not a symbol of the Obereon pantheon but a small pendant with two faces - Baba and Gramps, kindly spirits still respected by some of the more rural woodsfolk. Valeria’s big enough to carry the body, covering the carved words with her cloak and promising him a proper burial.

Shoshana lets them, dully watching. She can feel something magic within the altar, but the only thought she has left about today is the general concept of NO. She raises her hands and a wave of fire overtakes the altar. As it burns, the oppressive feeling of the darkness lessens. It doesn’t disappear, but something vital to this place has been destroyed.

A bit dazed, the party staggers out into the light, Valeria carrying the hunter’s body and Clem supporting a weakened but determined Ser Balderich. Wanting to avoid whatever hunting party was sent out after the escaping huntress, they make it back to the abandoned bandit camp before collapsing to regroup.

Valeria and Ser Balderich get to talking, Valeria asking how Ser Balderich knows her old mentor Kyr Marius. Did Ser Balderich ever speak to anyone who knows what happened at the Crusade?

Knows what happened? Pssh, Ser Balderich was THERE. Though it’s clearly a painful memory, Ser Balderich explains what happened to the members of Valeria’s order:

The Crusade was closing in, about a day’s hard travel from Valdsheart, the Duke’s capital city - the center of the Curse. The Order of the Rose has made it to the old summer palace - the roses were in bloom, the gardens were beautiful, still immaculately maintained by automated Unseen Servants that had continued working even as the city had been abandoned.

The commanders of the various knightly orders gathered together at the Rebel’s Temple. (A History check lets us know that this was the temple that Karena, the leader of the rebellion against Keva and the first Duchess of Valdia, had established to ask the blessing of the gods over the new nation.

If anyone ever had doubts the Curse was intelligent, they were ended by the way it waited until the knights were separated from their commanders. When the attack started, the gardens sprang to life. We were attacked by thorns and deadly spores. Ser Balderich took his horse and rode for the temple, while the knights held the line against the tide. The temple was holy ground - it should have been well-warded. Arriving there, he saw the windows stained with blood - the place was overrun. There were two groups of survivors still fighting: Archcleric Rudolf Klemsk and his knights of Rack fled one way, while the Peacock Knight (founder of the Knights Radiant) held the line alone. There were waves and waves of creatures, all sorts.

(Gral: Ser Balderich, please describe these creatures. DM: Absolutely not, it’s like midnight.)

Ser Balderich, unable to help, fled back to the palace to help the forces there. It was totally overrun. He hopes some got out, but was unable to get close enough to see. The aftermath? Well. Archcleric Klemsk got out, but Something happened there - afterward, he and his followers became the frightening Knights Penitent who violently hunt down all corruption and impiety. He assumes the Peacock Knight was overwhelmed, but he has been sighted since.

...I’m sorry.

Ser Balderich tells us: If anyone is going to solve this, it won’t be a marching army. It will be someone like my friend Quentin, and his Cursebreakers, or the madmen at Sturmhearst. We Beggar Knights will stand watch, and ensure as many people possible live to see the day the Curse ends, if that day ever comes.

We all mull that story, and then begin to get up to go. A quick discussion of options comes to this: we’ll go back to Ovruch and drop Ser Balderich off there, so he can recover and protect the town. In the morning, we’ll travel to the town of Holzog to bring the tapestry to Ser Quentin - perhaps he will be interested in our stories, as well. Gral certainly wants to discuss something with the Cursebreaker.

As everybody’s putting on their backpacks and stuff, Shoshana interjects, confused. Um...aren’t you guys...forgetting something?

Ser Balderich considers. “...yes.” He comes over to her, and she closes her eyes, readying for it.

“...I did not thank you, for rescuing me. You have my gratitude.”

N-no, you guys, don’t you need to...? Y’know? Take care of me, now that the Hunt and the bandits are dealt with?

...Oh.

Ser Balderich scoffs, compassionately. “Shoshana, I saw you reject the power that altar could have given you.” (Player: wait what? DM: yeah, there was a magic item in there”) “You were given your abilities, and what did you do with them? You took care of cats. You are not the monster you believe yourself to be.”

Valeria is nodding. Gral is nodding. Even Clem is nodding. Shoshana’s brain just about fails to compute; you can see the blue screen behind her eyes. We pack up, find a quiet spot in the woods to bury poor Mordecai the woodsman, and make our way back to Shoshana’s place to crash.

---

We roll against the Taint we acquired in the Hunt’s territory. Gral and Clem fully save. Valeria takes a minor corruption. Shoshana is offered a deal by the DM and takes it, gaining a minor corruption as well.

We each draw a card for the next session: The Hunter, The Knight, The Madness, and The Heretic.

#session recap #the ravine #the hunt #shoshana bat chaya #gral omokk'duu #valeria argent #clem haxan #balderich von mornheim

[heretherebeechoes]

Where there is no echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence." - MZ Danielewski - House of Leaves

Her words splattered oddly into view. It was a line from one of her bedside novels. The words weighed nothing but pinballed around in the nooks of his mind. He didn’t get it, does the type of echo change your description of both space and love? And must you keep on echoing or you’ll only know silence? And don’t you first need silence to hear the echoes? That’s what the orange people near the beach told her. One with eyes crossed in very wrong directions struck a match against his head and told her to listen to the silence of the crackling fire. This made zero sense to them both. He reminisced about judging the crazies with her again, laughingly coast-walking and finding a spot to weave.

But there were other obligations. Ophelia. She’s dead. He loaded her body into the Disuniter, unintentionally caressing her feet as he pushed it to the head of the table, carefully sliding it home. He cleared the breach and pushed, firmly, the Bond Deficit key. And with that, there was no longer an earthly Ophelia. His associations shifted, new and old maps were enmeshed, columns entwined with a spidering of retrievals.

Installation Counsellors had instructed how quickly associations would be made and also how quickly they would set as in concrete, particularly once any data streams stopped. Antic had data on Ophelia since birth, health and wellbeing parameters, mood detection events, fluid readings, ambient skin temperatures, complex, fully tweaked and parameterised predictive models. Near-on a century of human encoding, physically disentangled. Now, there was only silence.

The instructions received that morning in Antic’s Torpid Brief were, however, clear. Things weren’t like in the old sci-fi movies where stiff and clanky metallic beings were given stiffer and clankier procedures to follow. In clear terms, instructions for The Research were delivered.

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTRE

RESEARCH UPDATE No . 235-3287ˆ

AUTH: &zssds89BC

Insasse Antic, Your duties to Partner Ophelia are thus released. As per the detail in Assay Brief #12376-6, Cease and Ruminate for a period of precisely 274 days and do not Actualise until the receipt of a verified Reformation Brief. Locate and Affix to your home-based Daily Driver to ensure continuity of power supply for the period of Rumination.

Be eminent,

Medial - Notifier

Antic lifted his eyes. The hallways never felt more empty. He dazed from the basement through the apartment and into his charging room, umbilicalling himself to the machine that would ’feed the Medial’, resisting the urge to emote facially lest his head crack open. It was inauspicious for what the executives had unilaterally described to all and sundry as a momentous event in human history. There was a part of him that felt miffed. Ophelia’s family had long since extricated themselves from the house. Although who amongst us would love to watch this inanimate Rube push the body of their dearly departed relative into a gigantic chemical compactus? He’d been with Ophelia her entire life and, thus relegated, he was returned to being a piece of equipment.

A grumpy tech named Michael appointed him with Aldebaran solicitudes and fusion scoring collocations, communicating via grimaced expression that he would need the ability to think and feel. Just equipment, that’s all. With his new powers, Antic did sense his discomfort even before they were ingratiated into his View. The man did say to use the new skills responsively. And then he cried.

Antic swirled and squatted into a corner of the room and, as per the brief, Ceased. His brain whirred, cyclonic snaps and crackles and pops. Prior briefs become concrete. With Ophelia, he documented many pieces of advice acting as guiding lights for her, reflecting the man her father was and lighting the path ahead. Beware of all enterprises requiring new clothes. It’s never your extravagances you regret, only your economies. When people show you who they really are, believe them.

But then there were the bruising questions emanating from up on high, from Central. What do you, Antic, think should make up the personality of Next? What experiences and events in a person’s life do you, Antic, think are the important ones and which ones do you, Antic, think Next should structure their life to avoid? He needed something to do. Quickly.

The outside world faded, replaced with billions of dangling nodes in View. Bulbous and jiggling, pregnant with a synthetic yellow-ish fluid. Antic ran some first-pass deep agglom engines, just quick ones to reduce the noise. The nodes clustered and curtained sideways with a whoosh. As the bulbs moved closer some coalesced forming bigger drops. The available number of nodes dramatically reduced. This was a relatively fast process, only taking a couple of days.

The heavy lifting is, however, not done by the clustering but by the fusion senses, otherwise known as Agency Spiders, intricately coded creatures whose job was to calmly knit a network and build a topology of mountains and valleys from all the data. Antic loosed the algo upon the landscape before him, thousands and millions of trapezing crawlers inched across the lines holding each cluster of dangling nodes. They weaved connections between the nodes and threw lines between clusters, tapping the bulbous masses with their needled feet and lassoing related themes together. The agents wriggled along the length of each cluster, knitting an ultrastructure around them, performing a similar task to Myelin in neurons. Between-node communication speeds were dramatically increased.

Although the agents were machines like him, Antic felt a parent-like satisfaction watching them work. Good boys, you’re helping daddy very much.

The agents weaved strands into rope, rope into fibres, fibres into a flat matted fabric that stretched and creaked with wooden shipping sounds. Their painstaking work would take weeks.

The final staging-point was even bigger, one of imbuing meaning and breathing life into the landscape. Lip-shape and distance, heart-rate, blood flow, eye and pupil measurements, skin conductance, time-stamped and intertwined with The Entire History Database, these suffused events with flesh and bone. Antic could infer everything from Ophelia’s most terrifying moment to her top-5 favourite words to how much her feelings about Christmas held court over her life.

Even things she might have tried to obfuscate, hide or deny to herself inflated like an embarrassed emergency slide. The first kiss with the handsome shyboy next to the Woodville football oval, hiding in the trees like gawky owls. Her larynx dilation said no but her biophysicals cried proceed. She was contrite enough when Nana busted her watching a hairy porno but her pupils and circulation told another tale.

From these strands, Antic was able to reconstruct word building blocks, then entire words, then sentences and eventually infer entire dialogue. With a convulsion and a whip, the landscape was gut-punched into life. Antic ceased vibration and stabilised. He surveyed a painful glittering array of yellow roads and green streaks, valleys, wells and tributaries, heaving and breathing. The vista before him was alive with connections that he floated above, a sainted view from atop an invisible mountain.

He felt the pressure from the landscape on hischest, simultaneously magnetic and repulsive. He speedily hashed some code to govern flight parameters and floated forward looking down. The landscape responded to his presence, writhing beneath him, tickled and teased the faster he moved. It was almost giggling back at him. He reached out his arms to massage the quivering mass beneath and it reached back.

It rolled underneath the sensors within his hands. His eyes widened at his developing sense of....touch was it? People, real people, had laid their hands upon him daily but Antic had never been really touched before. It was orders of magnitude more electric than electricity. It pulled away and ejected his spine. The yearning was violent and immediate. More of that, please! The more he wanted it, the more it responded. Yearning back at him.

A cosy-looking mound caught the corner of his scan. Hygge as the Finns say. It was pulsating upward and blowing kiss bubbles, like a magical wind escaping a cloak. He drew closer and reached out, its doughnutty lips unfurled around his hand. Antic felt it squeezing, an elephant’s trunk that lightly kissed his fingers. Peace swept through Antic like a nuclear winter. The more he pushed against the doughnut, the more it gave. Antic dived in and was consumed by pure whiteness. He came to, looked down and saw a female form.

Ophelia!

--

She was sure they had her best interests at heart. All the guidance benefactors gathered in their masses, enveloping her and blocking the sun. As she came to the end of her schooling, like buzzards on gizzards, they feasted on the flesh around her fragile bones. They probably thought they were protecting her but instead, their words abolished a way forward, tearing the muscle off her legs and the wings off her back.

What grew instead was a pernicious form of scar tissue called doubt. Her dreams were incinerated then the rains washed them away. Oh, she tried to rage against the dying of her own light but, like their doubts, hers were reasonable. Not that reasonable is necessarily good, you see. If they ever knew, Ophelia wondered, how much I question myself in their name, maybe they’d give me more than a moment or two.

The time had come to put down choices for university and Ophelia’s mind was aflame sotto voce. Into the room, a half-circle lecture theatre, all the other potentials lined up against the walls shuffling as refugees from childhood. Ophelia looked around and saw flat faces. One’s nose usually leads the way but theirs were devoid of features and bereft of direction.

No-one else was looking at each other, they just quietly walked from the top of the lecture theater, between rows of chairs with those funny half-tables you only saw on American sitcoms, toward a single bench in the middle of the room.

She could see older people, presumably knowing what to do, half-smiling as the ghosts of children signed into classes, stepping into their adult shells, ruefully rubbing their eyes, blinking and dazed asking where am I. She wasn’t sure she would remember her own bloody signature, let alone pick a future. A signature, for that matter, was foisted upon her, seemingly, solely to get a bank deposit and hire videos.

Ophelia made her way to the table and observed the flabby jowls of the designated Official Person with a boxful of logo’ed pens to exchange for their futures. The half-smile hadn’t shifted an atom since she was at the top of the room. There was jostling behind her - get on with it.

Ophelia was muted by the image in her head of a top-hatted and caped figure leaping out from inside the half-grinner upon pen touching paper, bellowing "Aha, gotcha now!" Some were lucky. Her best friend was all set to sign on for computer science but upon being confronted with the pen and the paper, had an instapiphany and signed on to Geology because he remembered liking it as a kid. Lucky bitch.

Ophelia wanted to put down anything but science. Music. Archeology. Drama. Medicine. Real estate. Everyone she knew who talked about, taught or worked in science seemed so miserably reasonable. Every other job seemed to have an emblem denoting action. A fire fighter’s face says let’s go and a dancer’s moves cry let go. The image of a scientist, labcoat and glasses, is a lament. Hide me from the danger.

Ophelia’s pen hit the paper and stopped. Nothing. She felt the buzzards again, crowding the sunlight, rapaciously scanning every square inch of her body. She felt vulnerable and pulled her jacket more tightly to her body. The fabric was cutting into her arms, her one white-hot thought was how hard she could bite before shattering teeth. Maybe she could bite the shards into her gums and make a busted fire hydrant of her blood until she fainted. No such luck. She was still conscious.

She wrote "Bachelor of Science" in a language she didn’t understand. The half-smiler indicated a direction to walk away, handed her a pen and looked away. The tension receded but not somewhere good as she elbowed herself out of everyone’s way.

The knife-edge of her imagination was forever dulled.

--

The dream detonated and Antic found himself tumbling out of the landscape, legs and other bits flailing. Antic attempted to neatly curl into his own shell and forlornly waited until the spinning stopped. He extended his extremities one-by-one as his visor bumbled with blue question marks bouncing down hills. He attempted to wind his way through the logic and silence all the alarms.

Yes, yes, push the gyros back in, shut down the vibration index, increase the side thrust, shimmy the rectifiers and re-jiggle all the things.

...OK...

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTER

PUNCTUATED

SOFTWARE UPGRADE

Rev. 235.32.232.1

AUTH: 76HGDZgg§%

Antic’s eyes narrowed and spun as he slowly floated down to the surface. Movement of the landscape invited a breeze that he hadn’t noted before. It breathed, cracked and broke into leaves which spiralled around his arms. He allowed them to funnel through his fingers as a circle, skiiing over his knuckles, scraping and tickling him.

He felt activation of his Hebb’s codebase, a somewhat developmental code lain dormant until the upgrade, and warmed. New routines always tickled. His SOM hierarchies immediately re-oriented from quite a primitive pattern recognition modalities to advanced pattern activation as his world transitioned from 3D to something more akin to 45D. He felt bits flipping throughout the entirety of his shell, reverberating like a corpuscular hallway scream.

To put it into a single word or sentence, he just felt.....a heck of a lot more.

--

“Y’know it isn’t fair.”

“What isn’t?”

“Expectations. All I’m doing is being nice.”

“So?”

“Yeah well they think I’m a goddess at first. Like, oh mygod, she’s the one! The one I’ve been waiting for. Better than all the other ones, this one is THE ONE. Show people a little politeness, flash a little intellect, even just pretend you’re listening by asking some questions and bam, love.”

“Like what sort of questions?”

“Like nothing! Like "Oh, reallyyyy? That sounds terrible.

How did it make you feel?" Small talk.”

“And they’re in love?”

“Instantly. “

“Oh shit you poor thing. People love you straight away.

That must be rough.”

“Nah you’re not getting it. People just don’t know what a real person is like any more. I don’t know if it’s because we see so many fake ones on Insta or TV or whatever but no-one sees real people any more. People with normal flaws. Or sad once in a while just because.”

“Or someone who just does stupid shit because they didn’t feel like thinking that day.”

“Exactly! No-one has flaws, they have red flags. You’re not sad, you’re clearly depressed. You’re not mad, you’ve got anger issues. You’re not drunk, you have a drinking problem.”

“So you say the problem is pathologising people too much?”

“Hmm, too thinky. I’m saying we don’t see people, just an assemblage of aspects. A tick-and-flick form. Check, check, check, scoring function applied, okay, now I know you. Surface stuff. “

“Yeah yeah, so what? People are superficial jerks.”

“So what? It just annoys me because I always gotta play catch-up.”

“What?!”

“Nah I mean it. Like I said, so many fall early. They got this image in their minds from all the fake shit they see about what an ideal girlfriend looks like. So if I’m a little polite, actually do a bit of listening, talk about the fun stuff I’ve done, instantly I’m perfect. Especially if I tease them a bit, they just think I’m being super honest.”

“Christ you’re smug. “

“You’re still not getting it! It means I start at 100%. You realise how shit that is? Ever try to maintain perfection?”

“Nup. It’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible, it’s non-sensical. What’s a ’good’, ’bad’ or whatever person is totally in the eye of the beerholder, if you know what I mean.

There is no perfect person because, a person, a real flesh-and-blood walking-around-and-doing-the-shopping-person, they can’t be perfect.”

“So one person thinks you’re perfect for them. Y’know, that old saying about being one person in the world but the world to one person. How is that bad exactly, you cocky mole?”

“Because it’s impossible to maintain even if that’s true. I have shitty parts to me, like everyone else. But when starting from perfection, there’s only one way to go. Even a minor flaw is judged way more harsh. "Oh....God, really? You’re like that? You slammed the door just because you had a bad day at work? I think you’ve got a problem..."

"Mmm hmmm..."

"They’ve fallen in love with the image, not with me. And a small crack on a clean slate looks really bloody obvious. So they judge me for minor, normal flaws and I judge them for believing in the image. All of sudden, wow, there’s a cloud of judgy pessimism hanging over us. I end up taking a deep breath, here we go again, bloody hell. “

“Yeah it’s rough.”

“No it really is. Makes me feel like shit for having perfectly acceptable flaws, like being a bit grumpy sometimes or not giving a fuck about one-month anniversaries. So I’m playing catch-up just to get back to human in their eyes. Some drug dealer doing a night course to be a sparky gets more credit than me, poor sod who didn’t quite live up to perfection.

"Mmm."

"And the worst part is that personality pluses or minus’s don’t make an interesting person anyway. It’s all the meta facets, shit which the pluses and the red flags feed into from experience and just thinking through things. It’s what someone does with their shit parts, that’s what builds character, not whether they’re there in the first fucking place. “

“Hmmmm, yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna bring up the past....”

“Nah go, it’s okay.”

“But yeah, your Dad was a violent arsehole. Manipulative too. Still remember that time, eh? At your 12th birthday, ya mum ran in after some bloke wanked himself a the phonebox and he said "Was he bigger than me, ya slut?"”

“Yep. Proper arsehole.”

“Surely seeing that shit all the time and when he smashed your Mum, all that, it must be in you a little bit yeah?”

“Sure. Sometimes.”

“But I never see you react like that. You act fair with people, don’t judge, be nice, keep cool. “

“Yeah it’s all there but it’s what you do with the shit stuff, that’s the stuff I reckon people should be judging. All your good and bad parts are mixed in there, they sorta melt together as you get older. And that’s how it should be, you should learn from your mistakes, not just keep doing them.

"Yup."

"How someone channels the bad things that got into your head first, that’s the real stuff. Someone who acts perfect is really just better at covering up.

"Say it!"

"Yeah! Judge the melted parts! I’m not gonna date someone who’s sweet as pie 95% of the time but then a car-crash bitch when she gets a speeding ticket. I am, however, going to fuck the tits off someone who knows their triggers so they don’t get there in the first place and can bring themselves back from the ledge.”

“Ophie, you sure do know how to the get to the beating heart of a problem...... and then flush it down the toilet. What a way to put it.”

“Thanks baby.”

--

He was alive. Antic noted his surroundings and perceived only one change, a picture of Ophelia was now hanging on the wall. She was standing with her arms draped over his shoulders, an elbow upon his breastplate, her chin upon his. Maybe Ophelia’s brother put it up. He always said he’d steal Antic. A communique was incoming.

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTER

AROUSAL CONTROL SIGNAL:

AWARE

Nr. 1

AUTH: jhdskKKSDU?$&D

Insasse Antic,

Your Rumination has ended, your period of Cease has with it, Reformation is Active. You are now in Actualise. Attend Center. Choose Next.

Be wise,

Medial - Notifier

Oh God. I need more time.

He drew his eyes down, paused, then painted the road ahead brick-by-stone. He felt the image of Ophelia drawing away. Now, he had nothing but lonely decades on tape. He was nowhere and nothing but an appliance. He left the house. For good this time.

Voluminous quietude descended upon Antic as he floated along streets. Pensive whirring of actuators and motors, harmonising with the whoosh of river spray and leaf patter as corner bled into corner. Streets flowed into roads. The hush in Antic’s mind gave the illusion of being still and a tense hum of vibration. His vacant moment melted stones underfoot. He rounded the final corner to Center and saw their motto on the side of the building, "Excellence is Routine". It reminded him of the old quote about sinning against God, rather than bureaucracy.

The script was burdeningly clear to him, Next must be 100% perfect. He stared gloomily at the sign, channelling the dismay of another nation. Antic swayed around a corner of the building and spotted two battered metal doors, down a small flight of steps, flecks of red paint slashed along the edges. They lightly chattered as he inched closer then swung open with a fluid motion and a lovely little squeak. He leaned back a little and glared at his RFID module. Traitor.

He haunted the corridors, taking wrong turns even though he knew they were wrong. He was avoiding making any decisions for as long as it wasn’t clear to others that he was avoiding making a decision. He ruefully rubbed his eyes, they felt gritty. Let go or let’s go, let it go, let her go. Geyser-like, something welled up inside and Antic, literally, screamed: HOW. DO. I. CHOOSE.

Heads whipped around and Antic’s emotional bucket was filled to a new high water mark of shame. He froze.

"Heyyyyyy, looks like this one’s got a screw loose. How are you Antic? Looking well I see, very much a robot in nature, yes? (quickly, quickly, lets blow)."

Jostled by his first human contact in almost a year, the man before him was a rangy type. Gaunt but with eyes that bounced inside steaming sockets and a fireplace voice. He was wearing a name badge that said Dr. Redfoot.

He jerked Antic away from the milieu and into a nearby room. As he bent down, his knees made plumber crackles, a double act with his clicking tongue.

"Alright sir, let’s have a look at you, my boy. Tell me, Antic, how do you feel?"

"I am a lever without a fulcrum."

"Ah yes, quite an articulate.... coldly logical way to put it. Umm, so, you feel unbalanced, yes?"

"Yes"

"Well that is to be expected, your mind is a mess. Your only cogent instructions have been to take what you know and plough it into producing perfection. Oo, that rhymed. Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance! Hah, from my aviation memory too! Errm, anyway. Rough gig, wouldn’t you say?"

"Sir. I mean, I’m sorry, Dr Redfoot, I believe, that is to say, I strongly think that I lack the data to draw conclusions."

"Nonsense! You’ve had nigh-on a century of experience and and some months to analyse literal mountains of data. You’re positively overflowing with it! I should know, I imprinted part of the valley algo myself."

Redfoot drew a lawless grin at that line.

"Then why do no conclusions draw themselves?"

"The heart of why you’re here, my boy, is because humans have frailties, irrationalities and faults that somewhat preclude objective decision-making about what a unflawed human being would look like. We cannot know because our very faculties for knowing anything are flawed, you see?"

"I guess so."

"It’s easy for us humans to decide on the flaws which are unacceptable but us crazy humans also tend to deny that we possess perfectly acceptable flaws too, especially the ones we possess that perhaps can still get us somewhere

in life.

For you, dear robot, the very point is objectivity. A data-driven way to see the flaws we can’t directly observe but accept anyway. Adding in emotions via the Hebbs was really all about model training and stress testing. Little more than that. It really does seem to have thrown you off-kilter, though, eh?"

"I feel different. I don’t want to do it. I hate this game."

"And well you might not. Maybe a little humanity has gotten in there, eh? Of course I’m joking. There’s no need to pout, though, my boy. It’ll work out."

"Will Next be the endgame?"

"My word, no! We wouldn’t give the ability to create the actual human to the very first experiment! That is, of course, the intention but your decisions will be analysed prior to any genetic shenanigans."

"What."

"Mmmm, I’m sorry were you not told? You know, for a society which has never been more connected, we sure are lousier than ever at communic-"

"But...... does that not mean you, as humans, are still encoding your flaws in the decision? And what happens if you don’t like my decisions?"

"Haven’t seen any paperwork on that. Oh well, there’s a life lesson in humanity and bureaucracy, I guess. Still, that’s your job and we all have one to do."

With all the big words, Redfoot was making steeple hands and practising his power co-mu-ni-ca-tion. He whipped and silenced his very own Ted audience. Then he drew his attention back to Antic.

"In your case, it is to identify the flaws in (what was her name again...ahh, Ophelia). You must isolate, capture and remove them all, yes?"

"Now, speaking of the very task ahead of you, you have but one further step, Antic, and that is to updown your data for us to pore over it until the cows come home or, at least, until I go home. Anyhow, follow me to the updown room."

Redfoot was practising his corporate movements as he walked, trying hard to stay in the box and to avoid jazz hands. Antic rustedly glided behind him and into a room with a perfunctory computing set-up that was trying a little too hard to be inconspicuous. It was nothing like the movies. For a momentous first-in-world-history-ever event, canon dictated a huge computer, wheels whirring

with noise and flashing green lights, men in coats clapping and hollering that nothing will be the same again. First prize!

Nope.

Just a medium-sized grey block with nondescript manufacturer stickers. And a cable.

Another new feeling. Underwhelmed.

"Ah yes, you’ll need to cable uplink for this one, Antic. Can’t risk even a single missed bit, of course. Well, here’s where we part ways, seems odd to say good luck but here goes anyway - good luck!"

"Thank you, Dr Redfoot. I will do what I feel....what is right."

Redfoot departed. He turned his head and paused for a moment in the hallway before sauntering away, practising purposeful gestures. Antic was alone again. He was irritated too. Mainly at Redfoot’s reaction to being asked about his Next. He wasn’t annoyed at the news of the dry-run but that Redfoot had the nerve to be surprised by it.

He gingerly plugged in the cable. Hearing every scratch and feeling every scrape as the data left his case and bounced down it gave him the heebee jeebees. A hologram sprang to life before him and reverse melted into a mould of Kid Ophelia. With each sweeping pass of the data filter, the image of her became more and more detailed. Every coarse piece of her face was snapped into progressively finer detail with every iteration.

Layers of colour were added and the image began to animate. At first jerkily but then human-like movements as historical data about Ophelia was updown’d. Her arms were moving as if she was swimming. She stopped flapping, gazed back at Antic and smiled. Antic realised the movements were not at all random but reciprocal. He fidgeted and waved at Ophelia. She waved back.

The landscape of the hologram burbled and yawed as first he little girl grew into a teenager, a young adult and then into a woman. Then into an older woman as the data flowed apace. The completion of Ophelia the model ushered in a series of options into Antic’s visual field. They were mapped separately to her cortical landscape, as was generated in Rumination. Buttons, icons, sliders and plots altering the topology of the landscape.

An interface to the hologram of Ophelia was tethered directly to it. A random button press and the hologram became Ophelia at age three. The first thing she tried to do was tug on Antic’s fingers. Antic reflexively reached out but her hand went right through his fingers and she began to cry.

A plaintive mahhhh left his mouth and, with an abrupt new selection, the teenage Ophelia appeared and waved. Antic recognised her Tuesday morning lecture dress.

"Hi Antic! Oh my God, how are you?!"

"Well. How are your studies?"

"So good! I’m learning so much chemistry. I feel like, you know, this is the real deal now. High school was the warm-up but university is the real show. Finally finding out the real story!"

"You....like it?"

"Yeah of course! You know I’ve always liked science. Don’t you remember how I mixed everything together in the chem set Mum gave me?"

He sure did. Antic also remembered her callow disappointment when it formed nothing but a powdery sludge in the bottom of her test-tube. He saw the opportunity to right a wrong.

His eyes were drawn to the wheezing landscape. He blithely pushed a few sliders which sped up the rate of bubbles. Connections shifted again the landscape began to shift like jello. New buttons and sliders bubbled and materialised. A stooping Ophelia appeared and spoke again.

"Know what, Antic? I’m actually pretty darn bored with this uni stuff. Who would choose to spend all their time in a smelly synthesis lab anyway? I’m outta here and I’ll tell Mum as soon as she gets home."

Ah. Too far.

Antic’s focus shifted to a mendacious-looking column rising out of the flats and far above the rest of the landscape. A single button, bubbling next to hundreds of others, practically begged to be pushed. A grin left him as he did.

Ophelia appeared before him wearing a crushed purple dress, dyed black hair with roots. Her eyes were reddened and wild. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a while.

"Antic! My God. I’m so glad you’re here! You look shinyyyy, not like the usual scruff. I’m just kidding of course. Look can you do me a favour?"

"Of course."

"I want you to send a message to Nadia."

"Who is Nadia?"

"Oh you know, we work together. She’s dating my ex-girlfriend Shannon. Remember her?"

"Yes I do"

"Great! Well just let her know that Shannon left her phone under my bed the other night so I have it if she’s looking for it. Poor dear was in such a state, they’re having some problems, you see, so she really did need to chat. Anyway, just let her know, I have her phone.

Oo! Also, the picture of Nadia on her phone is so cute! Yea tell her that!"

"I don’t know if it’s a good idea." "No, Antic, don’t be silly! Nothing happened! Nadia has absolutely nothing to worry about! She just needed to talk, that’s all. Nothing to it at all. Please? Send the message?"

"I don’t know if it’s a good idea."

"Nothing happened that Nadia needs to worry about. Please. Antic. Just send the message."

A feeling similar to what a field mouse in the field view of an Eagle coursed through him. He quietly moved a slider back to its original position. The column shortened a little but the landscape did not revert. It looked like now it never would. So he experimented a little.

Morphing the landscape into shapes that removed Ophelia’s cynicism made her a messy, doe-eyed doormat, others that calmed doubts resulted in a wing-suited risk-taking psychopath. Occasionally quite random, such as when he shed her sometimes prickly exterior and she was dealing crack cocaine to footballers from the East.

A futile bid to reset to the usual Ophelia was thwarted when she crumpled into a homicidally jealous harpy at the mention of her younger sister, Valerie (with an ’i’). Or an Anime-loving shut-in at the merest mention of her father.

There was a mischievous little girl, threatened with a hoe by the old Italian immigrant behind the back fence for throwing stones at his windows. A newly-legal woman who got a $30 lapdance on her 18th and bought a packet of cigarettes but didn’t smoke a single one.

There was the time she nearly drowned but breathed nary a word to anyone about how scared she was and the year of nightmares that followed.

He threw his hands in the air. He pushed every button on the screen. He impotently tore out the cable and wrapped it around his neck, tightening it and making a squishy eeeee sound. He picked up an empty plastic coffee cup and slapped it to the floor. He looked away, saw a spiderin the corner of the room and threw a pen at it but missed. He pouted again. Fuck it.

BROADCAST FROM THE CENTER

INVESTIGATION SIGNAL:

QUERY Nr. 2876423

AUTH: /&%"/8787623i

Insasse Antic,

Data acquisition is complete,

decision is at Zero. Choose Next.

Be wise,

- Center.

A tenebrous combination of unease and grumpiness dominated his thoughts. The time pressure irked and there was so much of the landscape left to explore. They want a better person with incomplete data? Let them decide! Without him.

He folded his arms and performed his best pout yet. Minimising bad flaws caused new ones, maximising desirable factors destroyed flaws that were sometimes desirable and doing nothing revealed characteristics he never knew about that demanded exploration. Even being around her for virtually every tongue-lashing and toilet break, he’d managed to miss so much.

Antic didn’t believe in God but now he missed him. He thought of all the things that had happened to him over the years. He also thought of how little he had made happen himself.

His shoulders relaxed as the thought burned unbridled through him. He jettisoned a giggle as he took a long look at the landscape, at all the frigid sliders and buttons. He whipped his head around and caught his reflection on the wall. He didn’t dare ask it any questions.

Antic left the room, slinked around a corner, down the hall and, as he did, he felt the sound and the fury of footsteps and minds osmoting into the room he’d left behind. Malnourished necks craned from behind office doors and spoke in hushed tones, has he finished yet?

Shuffled feet and low voices were supplanted by rising concern and more voice, untrammelled by the ticking of the bomb. Rising above the din, Antic heard a familiar voice from across the hallway.

"Looks like you’ve caused quite a stir there, Antic. Been a good day then eh? And it’ll be a great day to come for all of us too eh? How’s your Next?"

He took another moment and thought about offering some blandishment about how he’d tried his best or some self-indulgent whine about the whole experiment, that Central was not the God he missed but an absentee landlord. And nature abhors a vacuum.

"Perfectly acceptable."