#Secret Cable Documents

[xtruss]

SECRET PAKISTAN CABLE DOCUMENTS U.S. PRESSURE TO REMOVE IMRAN KHAN

“All will be Forgiven,” said a U.S. Diplomat, if the No-confidence vote against Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan succeeds.

— Ryan Grim, Murtaza Hussain | August 9 2023 | The Intercept

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Former Prime Minister, during an interview in Lahore, Pakistan, on June 2, 2023. Photo: Betsy Joles/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The U.S. State Department encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept.

The meeting, between the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and two State Department officials, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy, and speculation in Pakistan over the past year and a half, as supporters of Khan and his military and civilian opponents jockeyed for power. The political struggle escalated on August 5 when Khan was sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges and taken into custody for the second time since his ouster. Khan’s defenders dismiss the charges as baseless. The sentence also blocks Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, from contesting elections expected in Pakistan later this year.

One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.

The text of the Pakistani cable, produced from the meeting by the ambassador and transmitted to Pakistan, has not previously been published. The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.

The document, labeled “Secret,” includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.

The document was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source in the Pakistani military who said that they had no ties to Imran Khan or Khan’s party. The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination.

Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan made a visit to Russia on February 23 to meet President Putin for a two-day visit. Photo: Reuters

“The cable reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Prime Minister Imran Khan.”

The contents of the document obtained by The Intercept are consistent with reporting in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn and elsewhere describing the circumstances of the meeting and details in the cable itself, including in the classification markings omitted from The Intercept’s presentation. The dynamics of the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. described in the cable were subsequently borne out by events. In the cable, the U.S. objects to Khan’s foreign policy on the Ukraine war. Those positions were quickly reversed after his removal, which was followed, as promised in the meeting, by a warming between the U.S. and Pakistan.

The diplomatic meeting came two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which launched as Khan was en route to Moscow, a visit that infuriated Washington.

On March 2, just days before the meeting, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict. In response to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., about a recent decision by Pakistan to abstain from a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s role in the conflict, Lu said, “Prime Minister Khan has recently visited Moscow, and so I think we are trying to figure out how to engage specifically with the Prime Minister following that decision.” Van Hollen appeared to be indignant that officials from the State Department were not in communication with Khan about the issue.

The day before the meeting, Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”

In the meeting, according to the document, Lu spoke in forthright terms about Washington’s displeasure with Pakistan’s stance in the conflict. The document quotes Lu saying that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” Lu added that he had held internal discussions with the U.S. National Security Council and that “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.”

Lu then bluntly raises the issue of a no-confidence vote: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister,” Lu said, according to the document. “Otherwise,” he continued, “I think it will be tough going ahead.”

Lu warned that if the situation wasn’t resolved, Pakistan would be marginalized by its Western allies. “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar,” Lu said, adding that Khan could face “isolation” by Europe and the U.S. should he remain in office.

Asked about quotes from Lu in the Pakistani cable, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “Nothing in these purported comments shows the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan should be.” Miller said he would not comment on private diplomatic discussions.

The Pakistani ambassador responded by expressing frustration with the lack of engagement from U.S. leadership: “This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored or even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate.”

“There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate.”

The discussion concluded, according to the document, with the Pakistani ambassador expressing his hope that the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war would not “impact our bilateral ties.” Lu told him that the damage was real but not fatal, and with Khan gone, the relationship could go back to normal. “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective,” Lu said, again raising the “political situation” in Pakistan. “Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”

The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.

“Khan’s fate wasn’t sealed at the time that this meeting took place, but it was tenuous,” said Arif Rafiq, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and specialist on Pakistan. “What you have here is the Biden administration sending a message to the people that they saw as Pakistan’s real rulers, signaling to them that things will better if he is removed from power.”

The Intercept has made extensive efforts to authenticate the document. Given the security climate in Pakistan, independent confirmation from sources in the Pakistani government was not possible. The Pakistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We had expressed concern about the visit of then-PM Khan to Moscow on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have communicated that opposition both publicly and privately.” He added that “allegations that the United States interfered in internal decisions about the leadership of Pakistan are false. They have always been false, and they continue to be.”

Top Left: Donald Lu, a Diplomat in Service and Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, waves toward media personnel upon his arrival at Tribhuvan International Airport on July 14, 2023, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Bottom: Pakistani Foreign Secretary Asad Majeed Khan is seen in Ankara, Turkey, on July 6, 2023. Photos: Photo: Abhishek Maharjan/Sipa via AP Images (Left); Ozge Elif Kizil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images (Right)

American Denials

The State Department has previously and on repeated occasions denied that Lu urged the Pakistani government to oust the prime minister. On April 8, 2022, after Khan alleged there was a cable proving his claim of U.S. interference, State Department spokesperson Jalina Porter was asked about its veracity. “Let me just say very bluntly there is absolutely no truth to these allegations,” Porter said.

In early June 2023, Khan sat for an interview with The Intercept and again repeated the allegation. The State Department at the time referred to previous denials in response to a request for comment.

Khan has not backed off, and the State Department again denied the charge throughout June and July, at least three times in press conferences and again in a speech by a deputy assistant secretary of state for Pakistan, who referred to the claims as “propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation.” On the latest occasion, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, ridiculed the question. “I feel like I need to bring just a sign that I can hold up in response to this question and say that that allegation is not true,” Miller said, laughing and drawing cackles from the press. “I don’t know how many times I can say it. … The United States does not have a position on one political candidate or party versus another in Pakistan or any other country.”

While the drama over the cable has played out in public and in the press, the Pakistani military has launched an unprecedented assault on Pakistani civil society to silence whatever dissent and free expression had previously existed in the country.

In recent months, the military-led government cracked down not just on dissidents but also on suspected leakers inside its own institutions, passing a law last week that authorizes warrantless searches and lengthy jail terms for whistleblowers. Shaken by the public display of support for Khan — expressed in a series of mass protests and riots this May — the military has also enshrined authoritarian powers for itself that drastically reduce civil liberties, criminalize criticism of the military, expand the institution’s already expansive role in the country’s economy, and give military leaders a permanent veto over political and civil affairs.

These sweeping attacks on democracy passed largely unremarked upon by U.S. officials. In late July, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, visited Pakistan, then issued a statement saying his visit had been focused on “strengthening the military-to-military relations,” while making no mention of the political situation in the country. This summer, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, attempted to add a measure to the National Defense Authorization Act directing the State Department to examine democratic backsliding in Pakistan, but it was denied a vote on the House floor.

In a press briefing on Monday, in response to a question about whether Khan received a fair trial, Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said, “We believe that is an internal matter for Pakistan.”

Political Chaos

Khan’s removal from power after falling out with the Pakistani military, the same institution believed to have engineered his political rise, has thrown the nation of 230 million into political and economic turmoil. Protests against Khan’s dismissal and suppression of his party have swept the country and paralyzed its institutions, while Pakistan’s current leaders struggle to confront an economic crisis triggered in part by the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on global energy prices. The present chaos has resulted in staggering rates of inflation and capital flight from the country.

In addition to the worsening situation for ordinary citizens, a regime of extreme censorship has also been put in place at the direction of the Pakistani military, with news outlets effectively barred from even mentioning Khan’s name, as The Intercept previously reported. Thousands of members of civil society, mostly supporters of Khan, have been detained by the military, a crackdown that intensified after Khan was arrested earlier this year and held in custody for four days, sparking nationwide protests. Credible reports have emerged of torture by security forces, with reports of several deaths in custody.

The crackdown on Pakistan’s once-rambunctious press has taken a particularly dark turn. Arshad Sharif, a prominent Pakistani journalist who fled the country, was shot to death in Nairobi last October under circumstances that remain disputed. Another well-known journalist, Imran Riaz Khan, was detained by security forces at an airport this May and has not been seen since. Both had been reporting on the secret cable, which has taken on nearly mythical status in Pakistan, and had been among a handful of journalists briefed on its contents before Khan’s ouster. These attacks on the press have created a climate of fear that has made reporting on the document by reporters and institutions inside Pakistan effectively impossible.

Last November, Khan himself was subject to an attempted assassination when he was shot at a political rally, in an attack that wounded him and killed one of his supporters. His imprisonment has been widely viewed within Pakistan, including among many critics of his government, as an attempt by the military to stop his party from contesting upcoming elections. Polls show that were he allowed to participate in the vote, Khan would likely win.

“Khan was convicted on flimsy charges following a trial where his defense was not even allowed to produce witnesses. He had previously survived an assassination attempt, had a journalist aligned with him murdered, and has seen thousands of his supporters imprisoned. While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship,” said Rafiq, the Middle East Institute scholar. “This is ultimately about the Pakistani military using outside forces as a means to preserve their hegemony over the country. Every time there is a grand geopolitical rivalry, whether it is the Cold War, or the war on terror, they know how to manipulate the U.S. in their favor.”

Khan’s repeated references to the cable itself have contributed to his legal troubles, with prosecutors launching a separate investigation into whether he violated state secrets laws by discussing it.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party Activists and Supporters of Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan clash with police during a protest against the arrest of their leader in Peshawar on May 10, 2023. Photo: Hussain Ali/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Democracy and the Military

For years, the U.S. government’s patronage relationship with the Pakistani Corrupt Military, which has long acted as the real powerbroker in the country’s politics, has been seen by many Pakistanis as an impenetrable obstacle to the country’s ability to grow its economy, combat endemic corruption, and pursue a constructive foreign policy. The sense that Pakistan has lacked meaningful independence because of this relationship — which, despite trappings of democracy, has made the military an untouchable force in domestic politics — makes the charge of U.S. involvement in the removal of a popular prime minister even more incendiary.

The Intercept’s source, who had access to the document as a member of the military, spoke of their growing disillusionment with the country’s military leadership, the impact on the military’s morale following its involvement in the political fight against Khan, the exploitation of the memory of dead service members for political purposes in recent military propaganda, and widespread public disenchantment with the armed forces amid the crackdown. They believe the military is pushing Pakistan toward a crisis similar to the one in 1971 that led to the secession of Bangladesh.

The source added that they hoped the leaked document would finally confirm what ordinary people, as well as the rank and file of the armed forces, had long suspected about the Pakistani military and force a reckoning within the institution.

This June, amid the crackdown by the military on Khan’s political party, Khan’s former top bureaucrat, Principal Secretary Azam Khan, was arrested and detained for a month. While in detention, Azam Khan reportedly issued a statement recorded in front of a member of the judiciary saying that the cable was indeed real, but that the former prime minister had exaggerated its contents for political gain.

A month after the meeting described in the cable, and just days before Khan was removed from office, then-Pakistan Army Chief, Corrupt General Qamar Bajwa publicly broke with Khan’s neutrality and gave a speech calling the Russian invasion a “huge tragedy” and criticizing Russia. The remarks aligned the public picture with Lu’s private observation, recorded in the cable, that Pakistan’s neutrality was the policy of Khan, but not of the military.

Pakistan’s foreign policy has changed significantly since Khan’s removal, with Pakistan tilting more clearly toward the U.S. and European side in the Ukraine conflict. Abandoning its posture of neutrality, Pakistan has now emerged as a supplier of arms to the Ukrainian military; images of Pakistan-produced shells and ammunition regularly turn up on battlefield footage. In an interview earlier this year, a European Union official confirmed Pakistani military backing to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign minister traveled to Pakistan this July in a visit widely presumed to be about military cooperation, but publicly described as focusing on trade, education, and environmental issues.

This realignment toward the U.S. has appeared to provide dividends to the Pakistani military. On August 3, a Pakistani newspaper reported that Parliament had approved the signing of a defense pact with the U.S. covering “joint exercises, operations, training, basing and equipment.” The agreement was intended to replace a previous 15-year deal between the two countries that expired in 2020.

Pakistan’s Former Prime Minister Imran Khan leaves after appearing at the Supreme Court in Islamabad on July 26, 2023. Photo: Aamir Qureshi AFP via Getty Images

Pakistani “Assessment”

Lu’s blunt comments on Pakistan’s internal domestic politics raised alarms on the Pakistani side. In a brief “assessment” section at the bottom of the report, the document states: “Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process.” The cable concludes with a recommendation “to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad” — a reference to the chargé d’affaires ad interim, effectively the acting head of a diplomatic mission when its accredited head is absent. A diplomatic protest was later issued by Khan’s government.

On March 27, 2022, the same month as the Lu meeting, Khan spoke publicly about the cable, waving a folded copy of it in the air at a rally. He also reportedly briefed a national security meeting with the heads of Pakistan’s various security agencies on its contents.

It is not clear what happened in Pakistan-U.S. communications during the weeks that followed the meeting reported in the cable. By the following month, however, the political winds had shifted. On April 10, Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

The new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, eventually confirmed the existence of the cable and acknowledged that some of the message conveyed by Lu was inappropriate. He has said that Pakistan had formally complained but cautioned that the cable did not confirm Khan’s broader claims.

Khan has suggested repeatedly in public that the top-secret cable showed that the U.S. had directed his removal from power, but subsequently revised his assessment as he urged the U.S. to condemn human rights abuses against his supporters. The U.S., he told The Intercept in a June interview, may have urged his ouster, but only did so because it was manipulated by the military.

The disclosure of the full body of the cable, over a year after Khan was deposed and following his arrest, will finally allow the competing claims to be evaluated. On balance, the text of the cypher strongly suggests that the U.S. encouraged Khan’s removal. According to the cable, while Lu did not directly order Khan to be taken out of office, he said that Pakistan would suffer severe consequences, including international isolation, if Khan were to stay on as prime minister, while simultaneously hinting at rewards for his removal. The remarks appear to have been taken as a signal for the Pakistani military to act.

In addition to his other legal problems, Khan himself has continued to be targeted over the handling of the secret cable by the new government. Late last month, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that Khan would be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act in connection with the cable. “Khan has hatched a conspiracy against the state’s interests and a case will be initiated against him on behalf of the state for the violation of the Official Secrets Act by exposing a confidential cipher communication from a diplomatic mission,” Sanaullah said.

Khan has now joined a long list of Pakistani politicians who failed to finish their term in office after running afoul of the military. As quoted in the cypher, Khan was being personally blamed by the U.S., according to Lu, for Pakistan’s policy of nonalignment during the Ukraine conflict. The vote of no confidence and its implications for the future of U.S.-Pakistan ties loomed large throughout the conversation.

“Honestly,” Lu is quoted as saying in the document, referring to the prospect of Khan staying in office, “I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.”

March 7, 2022 Pakistani Diplomatic Cypher (Transcription)

The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination. The Intercept has removed classification markings and numerical elements that could be used for tracking purposes. Labeled “Secret,” the cable includes an account of the meeting between State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, and Asad Majeed Khan, who at the time was Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S.

I had a luncheon meeting today with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Lu. He was accompanied by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Les Viguerie. DCM, DA and Counsellor Qasim joined me.

At the outset, Don referred to Pakistan’s position on the Ukraine crisis and said that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” He shared that in his discussions with the NSC, “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.” He continued that he was of the view that this was “tied to the current political dramas in Islamabad that he (Prime Minister) needs and is trying to show a public face.” I replied that this was not a correct reading of the situation as Pakistan’s position on Ukraine was a result of intense interagency consultations. Pakistan had never resorted to conducting diplomacy in public sphere. The Prime Minister’s remarks during a political rally were in reaction to the public letter by European Ambassadors in Islamabad which was against diplomatic etiquette and protocol. Any political leader, whether in Pakistan or the U.S., would be constrained to give a public reply in such a situation.

I asked Don if the reason for a strong U.S. reaction was Pakistan’s abstention in the voting in the UNGA. He categorically replied in the negative and said that it was due to the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow. He said that “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” He paused and then said “I cannot tell how this will be seen by Europe but I suspect their reaction will be similar.” He then said that “honestly I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.” Don further commented that it seemed that the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow was planned during the Beijing Olympics and there was an attempt by the Prime Minister to meet Putin which was not successful and then this idea was hatched that he would go to Moscow.

I told Don that this was a completely misinformed and wrong perception. The visit to Moscow had been in the works for at least few years and was the result of a deliberative institutional process. I stressed that when the Prime Minister was flying to Moscow, Russian invasion of Ukraine had not started and there was still hope for a peaceful resolution. I also pointed out that leaders of European countries were also traveling to Moscow around the same time. Don interjected that “those visits were specifically for seeking resolution of the Ukraine standoff while the Prime Minister’s visit was for bilateral economic reasons.” I drew his attention to the fact that the Prime Minister clearly regretted the situation while being in Moscow and had hoped for diplomacy to work. The Prime Minister’s visit, I stressed, was purely in the bilateral context and should not be seen either as a condonation or endorsement of Russia’s action against Ukraine. I said that our position is dictated by our desire to keep the channels of communication with all sides open. Our subsequent statements at the UN and by our Spokesperson spelled that out clearly, while reaffirming our commitment to the principle of UN Charter, non-use or threat of use of force, sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, and pacific settlement of disputes.

I also told Don that Pakistan was worried of how the Ukraine crisis would play out in the context of Afghanistan. We had paid a very high price due to the long-term impact of this conflict. Our priority was to have peace and stability in Afghanistan, for which it was imperative to have cooperation and coordination with all major powers, including Russia. From this perspective as well, keeping the channels of communication open was essential. This factor was also dictating our position on the Ukraine crisis. On my reference to the upcoming Extended Troika meeting in Beijing, Don replied that there were still ongoing discussions in Washington on whether the U.S. should attend the Extended Troika meeting or the upcoming Antalya meeting on Afghanistan with Russian representatives in attendance, as the U.S. focus right now was to discuss only Ukraine with Russia. I replied that this was exactly what we were afraid of. We did not want the Ukraine crisis to divert focus away from Afghanistan. Don did not comment.

I told Don that just like him, I would also convey our perspective in a forthright manner. I said that over the past one year, we had been consistently sensing reluctance on the part of the U.S. leadership to engage with our leadership. This reluctance had created a perception in Pakistan that we were being ignored and even taken for granted. There was also a feeling that while the U.S. expected Pakistan’s support on all issues that were important to the U.S., it did not reciprocate and we do not see much U.S. support on issues of concern for Pakistan, particularly on Kashmir. I said that it was extremely important to have functioning channels of communication at the highest level to remove such perception. I also said that we were surprised that if our position on the Ukraine crisis was so important for the U.S., why the U.S. had not engaged with us at the top leadership level prior to the Moscow visit and even when the UN was scheduled to vote. (The State Department had raised it at the DCM level.) Pakistan valued continued high-level engagement and for this reason the Foreign Minister sought to speak with Secretary Blinken to personally explain Pakistan’s position and perspective on the Ukraine crisis. The call has not materialized yet. Don replied that the thinking in Washington was that given the current political turmoil in Pakistan, this was not the right time for such engagement and it could wait till the political situation in Pakistan settled down.

I reiterated our position that countries should not be made to choose sides in a complex situation like the Ukraine crisis and stressed the need for having active bilateral communications at the political leadership level. Don replied that “you have conveyed your position clearly and I will take it back to my leadership.”

I also told Don that we had seen his defence of the Indian position on the Ukraine crisis during the recently held Senate Sub-Committee hearing on U.S.-India relations. It seemed that the U.S. was applying different criteria for India and Pakistan. Don responded that the U.S. lawmakers’ strong feelings about India’s abstentions in the UNSC and UNGA came out clearly during the hearing. I said that from the hearing, it appeared that the U.S. expected more from India than Pakistan, yet it appeared to be more concerned about Pakistan’s position. Don was evasive and responded that Washington looked at the U.S.-India relationship very much through the lens of what was happening in China. He added that while India had a close relationship with Moscow, “I think we will actually see a change in India’s policy once all Indian students are out of Ukraine.”

I expressed the hope that the issue of the Prime Minister’s visit to Russia will not impact our bilateral ties. Don replied that “I would argue that it has already created a dent in the relationship from our perspective. Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.”

We also discussed Afghanistan and other issues pertaining to bilateral ties. A separate communication follows on that part of our conversation.

Assessment

Don could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan’s internal political process. We need to seriously reflect on this and consider making an appropriate demarche to the U.S. Cd’ A a.i in Islamabad.

#Pakistan #United States 🇺🇸 #Secret Cable Documents #US Pressure #Imran Khan #Ryan Grim | Murtaza Hussain #U.S. State Department #CYPHER #Donald Lu #Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs #No-Confidence Vote #Corrupt to Their Cores Pakistani Army Generals | Politicians |Judiciary #Washington #Islamabad #Moscow #Russia 🇷🇺 #Pakistan 🇵🇰 #US 🇺🇸 #American Denials | A Bullshit #Political Chaos in Pakistan 🇵🇰 #Democracy in Pakistan and the Corrupt Military Generals

[qqueenofhades]

I really really REALLY need to see more people makimg the connection between trump and his russian handlers tbh.......like i know we've somehow gone through the looking glass of putin apologia but that piece abt the NYT you just posted, the bots, the interference: in the bag for trump? Yes. But i dont believe its due to his or even republican power or popularity or forcefulness.......this is a man with so much debt and kompromat thats only getting worse!! Not to sound kwazy BUT WE ARE BEING FULLY INFLITRATED and at the risk of conspiracizing i think the russians are ALSO behind the Times's demise along with so many other information centers etc. Like i KNOW these leftists love him but like. Wouldnt they care a LITTLE abt being manipulated like this???

Trump is 100% an active, willing, and eager Russian agent. That's not even paranoid conspiracy theory, that's just the only reasonable interpretation of the facts:

NOT TO MENTION that in the next two years after the Helsinki conference where Trump kowtowed to Putin in every way, the CIA admitted to losing huge and unusually high numbers of classified informants around the world (not CIA agents, but people secretly working for the American government in often-hostile countries):

Once again, this all happened when Trump was in office, when he was actively handing over CIA intel to the Kremlin against the wishes of the entire national security establishment, and which other experts have suggested was directly as a result of Trump handing over the identities of American informants to Russia, including those stationed in Russia itself:

Now, I could go on, but you get the point. Not to mention that Trump just lost a major UK-based lawsuit against Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who was the first to provide documents linking Trump to Russia in the controversial "Steele dossier":

And now: Trump is deeply in hock for hundreds of millions in legal fees and punitive judgments that are only increasing by the day, he somehow just came up with $90 million to appeal the judgment against E. Jean Carroll (nobody knows where he got this money either), and Russian state TV spends all their time openly salivating for Trump's return to the presidency (so he can hand over Ukraine and the rest of NATO and, as he literally said, "let Russia do whatever the hell they want.") I know we're largely numb to all the awful treasonous shit that Trump does, but like. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is just what's going on in plain sight, and while the Online Leftists have recently become so stupid that I honestly can't tell if it's just terminal brainworms or active Russian psyops, it's strongly indicated that it is in fact a mix of both:

So, like. Just some food for thought.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #the giant orange monster

[metamatar]

On March 2, just days before the meeting, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict. [...]

The day before the meeting, Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.” [...] The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.

[...] In recent months, the military-led government cracked down not just on dissidents but also on suspected leakers inside its own institutions, passing a law last week that authorizes warrantless searches and lengthy jail terms for whistleblowers. Shaken by the public display of support for Khan — expressed in a series of mass protests and riots this May — the military has also enshrined authoritarian powers for itself that drastically reduce civil liberties, criminalize criticism of the military, expand the institution’s already expansive role in the country’s economy, and give military leaders a permanent veto over political and civil affairs.

[...] On balance, the text of the cypher strongly suggests that the U.S. encouraged Khan’s removal. According to the cable, while Lu did not directly order Khan to be taken out of office, he said that Pakistan would suffer severe consequences, including international isolation, if Khan were to stay on as prime minister, while simultaneously hinting at rewards for his removal. The remarks appear to have been taken as a signal for the Pakistani military to act.

#pakistan #geopolitics

[dribs-and-drabbles]

Dead Friend Forever ep 1

I finally got sucked into watching. And since there's so much speculation around the characters and their actions/motives I thought I'd document my observations as I go. (small comments in brackets are things I've gone back to after the ep ended)

Who did the axe man hit for the guy on his own (Non, right?) to get splashed with blood, because the guy with him (Jin, right?) had already run off, unless it was his own blood from a wound lower down on this body... (So I'm guessing this is the original film that they made with Non years ago...no, wait, if Non was the 'killer' in the mask in the film then why is he running away from another masked person with Jin here? Is this also the film or is this their real experience. Oh ho hooo the mystery thickens...what's real and what's played out for the 'camera' [including for us]?...).

Also, I can't believed I'm watching this 🙈

I think the only way I'll get through the scary gore bits is to analyse their believability.

Ok, let's go! I like the opening credits music.

It's a good job it's difficult for me to figure out all their names because the things I've seen/read about the show so far mean nothing or very little.

The first believable thing! - no phone signal and no wifi in the middle of nowhere. I used to experience the same thing in the Swedish countryside.

Ok, I see those looks between Fluke and green-shirt-big-money guy...what secret do they have about what's on that external drive... And embroidered shirt guy doesn't know...or does he and he's a good liar?

EVERYONE IS JUST SO SUS.

So green shirt guy, Fluke, Jin, and embroidered shirt guy (Top!) were in this movie? And Non was the 'killer'. And Phee pretends he doesn't know who Non is even though I've seen that he and Non knew-knew each other... The two who don't know Non (for realsies?) is brown jacket guy (White?) and the guy sat opposite Jin.

Wow green shirt guy was quick to jump in to say he had a camera in the house to remake the film - that Phee suggested. SO SUS. Jin and tall guy (Tee!) did NOT like that.

"I don't want him [White] to get involved in what we have done" - What HAVE you done Tee? 👀

Also I love that all this is happening with White in a "Sexy Summer Time" t-shirt on 😂

An asthmatic who smokes 🤦🏽‍♀️ Yeah, he's definitely not going to find his inhaler when he needs it. (Is that Tan?).

Oh what if White isn't the innocent cherub he's made out to be? What if he's manipulating this to get revenge for Non? I've seen people say they want him to be the last girl standing (or whatever the phrase is) but what if he's orchestrating all this?

Whyyyyyy did green shirt guy (Por!) leave the house and go into the woods???

So, interestingly, Tee and Fluke instigated the search for Por, then Phee doled out instructions once they found him... Hmmmm...SUS

Por seems alive and conscious, why is no one asking how it happened? Also, even in his second year, Fluke should know to stay calm so as not to panic the patient more...

Who keeps jump cables in the house and not either in the car or in a garage/outbuilding, especially somewhere like that??!?

Again, they're in a house in the woods. Surely there would be a saw in some kind of garage/workshop? Why are they looking in a kitchen for a knife to cut a tree branch?? WHY IS THE SAW IN THE KITCHEN UNDER THE SINK?! 😂

It's incheresting that White concludes it's an attempted murder 👀 Thus sowing the seed in everyone else's mind...

BOYS, proving that there's a ninth person is NOT the priority here. Getting Por to a hospital is. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Also incheresting are the deleted scenes 👀 HOW COULD POR GO INTO THE WOODS ALONE ESPECIALLY AFTER HE COUNTED NINE PEOPLE?! Also, Tan was not part of the failed re-staging of the film...SUS.

Alright. I'm hooked on the mystery. I should make clear that I in NO WAY want any answers that will spoil the mystery for later in the series. Please and thank you! 🙏🏽 I'm just laying down some thoughts to come back to once more info gets revealed. Comments that don't spoil anything are absolutely welcome though! 😁

#dead friend forever #NO SPOILERS PLEASE #I am watching despite the horror and gore #although it's ok so far

[porterdavis]

Guess who had boxes and boxes of ultra-top secret documents during this period? Was he too careless or was he selling the information?

#traitor trump #trump will die in jail

[foreverlogical]

This week, as the Stormy Daniels hush money trial kicked off, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman noted the presence of a figure in court whose job responsibility sounded like a joke, writing that her job was to carry around a "wireless printer" to provide the former president with an "ongoing stream of good news from the internet."

But it turns out that the aide is very real. Her name is Natalie Harp, a former One America News anchor who joined Trump's communications team in March 2022. According to reporting that year by the Washington Post, Harp would even accompany the former reality TV host on golf trips in a cart "equipped with a laptop and sometimes a printer to show him uplifting news articles, online posts, or other materials."

This is nothing new, this is from 2017:

Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m. Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say.

These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives. Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.

One White House official said the only feedback the White House communications shop, which prepares the folder, has ever gotten in all these months is: “It needs to be more fucking positive.” That’s why some in the White House ruefully refer to the packet as “the propaganda document.”

The process of assembling the folder begins at the Republican National Committee’s “war room,” which has expanded from 4 to 10 people since the GOP won the White House. A war room — both parties have one regardless of who’s in the White House — is often tasked with monitoring local and national news, cable television, social media, digital media, and print media to see how the party, its candidates or their opponents are being perceived.

Beginning at 6 a.m. every weekday — the early start is a longtime war room tradition — three staffers arrive at the RNC to begin monitoring the morning shows on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News as they scour the internet and newspapers. Every 30 minutes or so, the staffers send the White House Communications Office an email with chyron screenshots, tweets, news stories, and interview transcripts.

White House staffers then cull the information, send out clips to other officials, and push favorable headlines to a list of journalists. But they also pick out the most positive bits to give to the president. On days when there aren’t enough positive chyrons, communications staffers will ask the RNC staffers for flattering photos of the president.

#donald trump #trump #us politics #gop #republicans #please vote #vote 2024

[phoenix-downer]

KH3 Retrospective

I can’t believe it’s been four years already since KH3 came out. It both feels like it came out ages ago and just last month. Above was the very first screenshot I took as I started my playthrough. I was so awed by how good the textures for the stained glass on the Station of Awakening looked. 

Something I did while I was playing KH3 was create a little Google doc of my first reactions/impressions (as well as spamming the screenshot button lol). Here was from the first page: 

New version of Dearly Beloved is gorgeous - sounds similar to DDD version a little

Sora’s opening line is so good - Kairi is his home

Opening - Kairi and Sora’s chess pieces by each other

Kairi’s piece is the paopu piece

Riku looks gorgeous

Everyone looks beautiful

The door opening to save everyone there at the end

Seven hearts to save

Sora’s holding Xehanort’s piece at the end - checkmate?

Station of Awakening is GORGEOUS - looks like actual stained glass now

Showing Sora’s memories

Wisdom, vitality, balance - which one?!

I chose balance (yay SDG!)

Guardian, Warrior, Mystic

I chose Guardian (yay Namine!)

Tidal wave, then Sora ended up in cloud world

Destati sounds awesome

Sora’s opening lines are so good

Mysterious Tower music sounds so good

Cable Town looked gorgeous - Land of Departure?

Sora’s theme sounds kickass

Ending scenes from 0.2 played again to catch you up to speed on SDG

Next year for the fifth anniversary I want to share more of the document, perhaps in a more organized fashion (I also had a reaction document for ReMind and Melody of Memory that I might share excerpts from in the future). It’s just such a neat little time capsule of my immediate first reactions to everything, and while I had to use the pause button a lot, it’s fun to look back on what I was thinking in the moment before my later thoughts/perceptions took over. Definitely worth the time it took to record everything. 

For KH4 I want to continue the trend, as it also makes for a fun way to share the first playthrough experience with my friends and it makes it easier to write analysis posts later on.

Summarizing my thoughts now on KH3: 

The good: Beautiful graphics, world environments were a huge upgrade, the music was amazing, the humor in the Disney worlds was really good, Olympus Coliseum, Kingdom of Corona (the dancing minigame!), The Caribbean, San Fransokyo, Wayfinder Trio Reunion, Xion’s return, Roxas’s return, all the heartfelt Sora and Kairi moments, Young Xehanort, the Keyblade transformations, having more than two people in your party at a time now, the Luxu reveal.

The bad: No true midpoint to the game, no FF characters, the climax was rushed, wish Naminé was more involved, the way Kairi got “killed” was super bleh, and I’m still not a fan of the original ending (the secret ending excluding Kairi also made me ehhhhhh). 

And this leads me into another part of the document. When I consume a piece of media, I like to think about what worked well and why. It’s just really fun to celebrate good writing and learn from it, you know? Hence all the translation/analysis posts I’ve done of certain scenes from KH3. I also like to figure out how I would “fix” anything that didn’t land for me because it’s also a good learning experience, and at the end of my initial thoughts document, I actually included a list of things I thought would improve the writing of KH3. Of course, this is all based on my own personal feelings/interpretations, and as it stands, ReMind fixed a number of them anyway. But I thought I’d share my initial “fixes” in bold and then my thoughts about them now. 

Writing Changes:

Have Sora think about Kairi a la KH2 - Flynn/Rapunzel, Will/Elizabeth… - this isn’t really going to be changed at this point for obvious reasons, but I missed the little moments where Sora was thinking of Kairi in KH2 (like when Will and Elizabeth hugged, when he saw Jack and Sally dancing, etc.) and thought those would have strengthened the romantic plotline of KH3.

Sora’s reunion with Riku was anticlimactic - ditto, not gonna be updated at this point, but I remember thinking oh that’s it lol when technically we hadn’t seen them onscreen together since 2012 (trailers notwithstanding). In universe it makes sense though because it hasn’t been that long since they’ve seen each other. Plus, I assume their reunion in KH4 will be good, so I’m looking forward to that. 

Sora’s reunion with Kairi was also anticlimactic - see above, not gonna get changed at this point, but I wish they’d gotten a moment together before the big group meetup or at least him reacting to seeing her again. We hadn’t seen them talk directly since Blank Points I think? (trailers notwithstanding). So yeah I was a little disappointed there wasn’t more to their reunion, and again I think a little moment or brief scene that could’ve built up to the paopu fruit more. And at this point in the game I definitely got the feeling that Nomura was rushing to finish before deadlines hit + the burnout was setting in and he couldn’t spare any time to extras like this, just the core scenes that had to be there (group meetup, Aqua and Ven convo about Terra, Riku and Repliku scene, Kairi and Sora paopu sharing scene). He might have also had to do a bunch of last minute rewrites, who knows.

Have Kairi actually send her letter to Sora - I assume this will happen at a later date, looking back now it feels like foreshadowing, so I’m not sure why I complained about this lol. I do think at some point Sora will read the letter because why go to all that trouble of showing Kairi writing it + having her read it to the audience if it won’t be significant down the line? The focus on Sora’s smile makes me think he might get the letter when he’s feeling really down and needs to be cheered up, but we’ll see.

Have Sora have some way of contacting her like he can contact Riku - Yeah idk Square acts allergic sometimes to the love interests contacting the main character (see FFXV...), and in universe she was training with Merlin and Axel in a place where time flowed differently etc. so I get why she didn’t. Again I was just thinking of ways the paopu scene could’ve been built up to more effectively within KH3 itself (obviously the paopu scene has been foreshadowed since KH1 so that wasn’t my issue, more that I wanted more buildup within KH3 that built on the buildup we saw in KH1 and KH2 and Blank Points).

Keep Kairi getting killed… but have it be because she was protecting Sora of her own free volition - Yeah I’m still not happy about how this was handled. ReMind helped make this more tolerable because she did get to fight Xehanort by Sora’s side, but I still think her “death” could’ve been handled a lot better. And that’s all I’ll say about that lol, it’s a topic that’s been discussed to death at this point.

Go into more depth about what YX said - I think this was about all of Young Xehanort’s cryptic foreshadowing to Sora, I honestly can’t remember lol. But I do think, now that I’ve replayed the game, the foreshadowing works well, so I think this was more of an initial reaction on my part. 

Show Sora going to rescue her - This was one of my biggest issues with how KH3 originally ended, and I remember feeling robbed that we didn’t get to see Sora’s rescue mission of Kairi, but little did I know what Nomura had in store lol. ReMind more than fixed this, and I will be forever grateful to it and to Nomura for knowing how important this was and making sure it was added to the story. ReMind elevated KH3 so much for me, and looking back, I really do think Nomura was making the best of a bad situation (engine switch a year into development, tight deadlines, Disney being strict, serious burnout, sky high expectations...) with vanilla KH3, and I hope he gets the development time he needs to tell the story he wants to tell with KH4. I just remember reading some of his interviews post-KH3 and you could tell how exhausted and burnt out he was, and I really hope he doesn’t go through that again. 

End things on a less gutpunch of an ending - I know some people loved KH3′s ending so this is subjective, but I did not lol. Thankfully, ReMind fixed this and made the ending more bittersweet now that we’ve seen Sora rescuing Kairi. It feels much better knowing he got those moments with her traveling the worlds before he disappeared. 

Roxas and Sora barely interacted - ReMind fixed this too (noticing a pattern here?) I was really happy with the additional screentime they got in ReMind together  because honestly, their relationship is one of my favorites in the entire series.

Sora still hasn’t thanked Namine - I assume this will happen at a later date, I just remember thinking poor Naminé hadn’t gotten thanked yet. But I do think Nomura has something specific in mind for this scene and we will see it at some future date. So less of a “this should’ve been in KH3″ thing and more “oh bummer I’ll have to wait a while yet to see this.” 

Xehanort got off easy - I think this whole plot point was a victim of the rushed pacing that impacted both the climax and ending of KH3. I remember thinking to myself that Xehanort should not have gotten to die and go to Keyblade Heaven with Eraqus in the same game where he “killed” the protagonist’s girlfriend (which resulted in the protagonist’s “death”) especially not so soon after it happened. But in a way it’s also kind of realistic? The bad guy doesn’t always get what he deserves in real life, so I can see why Nomura took this angle here (though I would argue that in stories you can show good triumphing over evil and in fact people tend to want that more than realism due to the escapist nature of fiction). Then again, I’m kind of biased because I’m not a fan in general of turning Xehanort from a main villain to a misunderstood guy with an angsty backstory who was manipulated by the True Big Bad. I get the feeling we haven’t seen the last of him given that art of his younger self with an umbrella that came out for Dark Road’s ending, so I’m bracing myself for him to show up in Quadratum and team up with Sora, and meh, I just wish the series would move past him at this point, you know?

Destiny Trio still not a trio :( - fix that - I do hope that we get more Destiny Trio interactions in KH4, but looking back, I kinda get why there wasn’t a whole lot of them in KH3. The focus was more on Sora and Kairi’s relationship since that played such a key role in the climax and ending of the story, and there will be time in the future for the three to interact more. Nomura had that quote about how KH3 would feature relationships changing etc., and we did see that with the focus more on Sora and Kairi’s relationship (plus Melody of Memory gave us some Riku and Kairi interactions, and KH4 is probably gonna feature some good Sora and Riku interactions given how they’ll probably reunite before Sora and Kairi do. And then Kairi and Sora’s reunion will be important given how they were separated, and I imagine there will be at least one meaningful scene of the three of them together). 

Have Kairi fight back while she’s being taken - in her defense, it was very realistic for a short, petite fifteen-year old girl to have trouble fighting back against a grown ass man who 1) towers over her and most of the rest of the cast, and 2) is wrenching her arm back in a way that meant she’d likely dislocate her own arm if she tried to fight back. I just still wish this entire plot point had been handled differently, but it’s in the past now, not much more to be said about it.

Roxas and Xion were freed maybe when Sora “died”? - I think I had this on there because I thought the story would’ve benefited from the rescues being spread out more, giving time to focus on each one and allowing some longer soft/quiet moments with the character reunions. 

Anyway, thanks for reading all this. It was interesting going back and looking at my initial reactions to KH3 and how my thoughts and feelings have changed over time. I think the big factors in the shift are that ReMind really added so much to the story and fixed most of my major issues with it, and I have a better picture now of all the stressors Nomura had to deal with to get the game out the door. Honestly it’s probably a small miracle the vanilla game turned out as well as it did given all the factors he was working against, and for that I have a lot of respect for him. And it was clear he was aware of the issues, you know? Otherwise he wouldn’t have released ReMind. He wanted KH3 to be good and he wanted to make the fans happy, so he did what he could to improve on the base game. And there are some truly fantastic moments in the base game and ReMind alike that I loved analyzing every single piece of. 

How about you guys? How have your thoughts/feelings towards KH3 changed over time if at all? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

#kingdom hearts #kh3 #kingdom hearts 3 #kh analysis #kh meta #kh retrospective #kh #retrospective #long post

[witchsickness]

billy on the bench watching steve walk down the aisle… :(

‘come on.’

‘absolutely not.’

‘billy, i’m already freaking out as it is. there is no way i’m letting the guy who knows every single embarrassing story about me give a speech i haven’t approved and ruin my wedding.’

‘i’ll ruin your wedding if you don’t shut your trap and let me watch the game in peace.’ billy shoves a mouthful of pistachios in his mouth and settles back against the couch, marinating in his false sense of victory. really, he should know better.

with a swift jump billy and his fifteen years of dealing with this idiot should’ve seen coming, harrington lands next to the tv.

someone gasps. possibly tommy. billy barely has time to say ‘you wouldn’t dare—’ and then the screen goes black, and harrington emerges victorious from behind the tv, a bunch of cables swinging triumphantly over his head.

‘there,’ he shrugs, feigning surprise at the cable bouquet in his hands, ‘no more game to watch. now, come on. let’s hear it.’

from the other corner of the couch, tommy throws billy a look. it’s a look billy’s painfully familiar with. has found himself on the receiving edge of it countless times in the last seven years. nothing but tommy’s dumb brain to thank for for being spared during the first eight.

it’s just.

ever since the night harrington got drunk on sangria and announced that nancy’d said yes, tears in his eyes and reeking of fermented grape from a stain on his polo that’d never come off, The Look has gotten worse. a constant, salt-in-the-wound, pitying, how are you okay with this? look, making sure the reality of this situation never escapes billy’s mind.

a moot point, considering billy hasn’t produced a single non-harrington-related thought in the last fifteen years of his life. all the commiserative looks in the world won’t change the fact that the love of billy’s life is marrying the love of his.

being guilt-tripped into giving a speech at the guy’s wedding is. well, billy figures, it’s the bottom of the barrel. nowhere to go but up. maybe he’ll wake up, the morning after the wedding, groggy and hungover and over—over him.

‘a successful wedding speech,’ he duly informs harrington, determined not to go down without a fight, ‘contains at least three anecdotes. ‘s what all the prissy wedding books say. now, what’s the point of an anecdote if it doesn’t land, harrington, take you by surprise?’

‘nice try.’ harrington plops down next to him, and shoves until billy can either get on his feet, or risk a bruise on his ass. ‘you done now? can we get on with it?’

well. no way out now. billy fishes the piece of paper out of his pocket. rice-thin and oil-stained and crumpled, and so full of crossed-out phrases it resembles one of those classified documents. in billy’s own twisted, secret-laden sort of way, it kind of is.

‘fine,’ he says, ‘you win. now shut your mouth and don’t laugh unless you wanna spend your wedding day wondering if the cake’s icing’s meant to look like jizz.’

harrington throws his hands in mock-surrender. tommy just. just throws him another look. jesus christ.

‘as most of you probably know,’ billy starts, for a total audience of two, ‘hawkins isn’t exactly my favorite place in the world.’ at the sound of a snort, he glares tommy to silence. off to a great start. ‘turns out, moving to the other end of the country and being forced to make friends all over again isn’t as fun as it sounds. so, get this. first day of school, right? new kid, no friends, and what do i do? i go and fall on my face in front of the entire school. so i’m thinking, that’s it. i’ll have to spend the rest of the school year hiding in a classroom and eating my lunch alone. and then—’

‘this is where i come in, right? we’re getting to the good part.’

‘and then,’ billy goes on, doing the thing he’s best at and ignoring harrington, ‘this kid walks up to me. nose scrunched up, hair too big for his own head. takes a look at my bleeding knee and declares it the grossest thing he’s ever seen. says it’ll probably scar. then he rips a bb-8 band-aid off his elbow and stamps it over the cut. and i’m standing there, right, looking at his elbow, trying to spot a scratch. there isn’t any, okay? so he laughs when i ask him about it, and says, not even an ounce of shame, “looked good with my shirt. but you need it more, so.” worst thing is, he was right. it did scar.’

harrington laughs, which means the speech is doing its job. getting close, but not too close. billy’s good at this. fifteen years of training made him so.

‘anyway,’ he says, ‘that’s the first memory i have of steve harrington. it’s not the best, and it’s definitely not the worst. i could tell you the story about that time he inhaled an entire peach pie to impress his eleventh-grade crush. she’s not here tonight, so it’s fine, don’t worry. or about that time he stole the entire classroom’s school trip budget to buy miss clairmont a box of candy, because she’d just broken up with her boyfriend, and looked way too much like cybill shepherd for her own good. nobody was fooled, by the way. we all knew it was you.’

another laugh, and billy thinks, okay. so far, so good.

‘mostly, though, the one thing everyone who knows him can agree on, is that steve harrington is good. he’s so good, it’s infuriating. when he loves, christ. it’s all in, you know? nothing he won’t do for you. the ends of the earth, this guy.’ tommy’s throwing him his worst look yet, so billy breathes, once, and focuses on the game he could be watching. supposed to be the match of the month, too.

‘it was love at first sight,’ he says. he’s selfish like that, sneaking a confession in his best man’s speech. just for a line, he gets to be selfish. ‘with nancy,’ he finishes, ‘i mean, the kind you see in movies. i swear, this guy had cartoon hearts bugging out of his eyes. lost count of the weeks i spent listening to this dumbass moping around because she wouldn’t give him the time of day. or, or, on the day of their first date. the hours he had me trapped in his room, going through an endless amount of polos, all identical-looking, by the way, only to end up stealing my own jacket, because, apparently, nothing else made sense. he called me that night, you know, the second he got home. told me he’d marry that girl someday. we all know how that went.’

he clears his throat and goes for amicable detachment. misses by a mile. ‘anyway, uh, those stupid books said you’re supposed to make it a real tear-jerker, so i’ll just end it by saying something about how hard it is to find someone to love, you know, make a joke about all the single guests, something. about, uh, how you’re the best friend i’ll ever have—one of the two best friends, tommy, settle down—and, uh, you know. i’ve always wanted that for you. to find someone who loves you as much as you love them. so, uh. yeah. that’s—that’s it.’

in the face of the absolute silence that follows, billy chances a glance at harrington. it’s—a mistake. the way harrington’s looking at him—billy gets this crazy idea, that none of them are getting what they want here. harrington’s voice rings in his head, she’s the one, man, i just know it. if this is a joke, it’s the worst joke in the world. maybe. maybe harrington is dreading the punchline, too.

‘i’ll—i’ll add more in the end, you know, congratulations, happy for you, all that stuff. this is just the first—’

‘it’s good.’ harrington’s not looking at him. nodding at the carpet instead. ‘it’s—it’s good. look, uh, it’s been a long day, okay? lots to do tomorrow. i should—i’m going to to bed.’ he walks to his room, and doesn’t look at billy, not once.

after a beat, tommy gets up, too, with a geriatric grunt. ‘i’m calling carol,’ he announces, ‘to tell her i love her.’ sighing at harrington’s closed door, he throws billy one last Look for the night. ‘why are you guys so—’

‘tommy,’ billy says, ‘shut the fuck up,’ and plugs the tv back in.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #my stuff #ask #anon #not exactly what you wanted but close enough? #thank you thank you for sending this i love it when ppl send me prompts 🥺 #empire line 🧵

[ask-de-writer]

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Science Fiction

SUBMARINE! 1812 an Alternate History

Chapter 6 : KRAKEN

(Part 1 of 5)

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

5462 words

© 2023 by Glen Ten-Eyck

All rights reserved.

This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

TUMBLR EXEMPTION

Blog holding members of Tumblr.com may freely reblog this story provided that the title, author and copyright information remain intact, unaltered, and are displayed at the head of the story.

Fan art, stories, music, cosplay and other fan activity is actively encouraged.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

KRAKEN-

Anchors were dropped with a rattle of heavy chain, followed by the hiss of heavy cable through the hause-pipes as the hooks sought and found purchase in the bottom of Hampton Roads. We were home at last.

The seaman beside me was precariously standing on the rail of the Maryland, one hand on a line for balance, the other waving enthusiastically at the small boats approaching from shore. “I got me more than two thousand gold Continentals in prize money to blow,” he confided to me. “I’d ha’ stayed out longer, iffin’ I was the Commodore. We chewed ‘em up and spit ‘em out so good.”

“Indeed we did, though I was one of those who said that we should return,” I replied.

“So why’d we come back? You got the inside skinny?”

“Only part of it. If it helps any, even Commodore Marks shared your view. We had two attack boats damaged in loading accidents there at the last. Shark lost her mast and a tackle failure caused Polliwog serious damage to rudder and diving planes. We had not the facilities to refit the Shark. Still, we were willing to continue, with altered raising tackle. There was something in that last messenger packet’s dispatches that changed The Commodore’s mind. What that was I do not know.”

“What’s up? Green Jackets in boats is turnin’ back the harbor boats...” The shrill of the bosun’s pipe sounding assembly interrupted him. He leapt nimbly down to the deck and ran aft with the rest of the crew. Commodore Marks was standing on the poop deck, ready to address the crew.

“Men,” he cried, “you have done what no nation has ever done before. You have humbled the Beast of Britain on her home seas. Even the least among you has enough prize money to buy a decent farm. Our holds bear a secret and that secret is the rocket, nothing else. If any man or woman questions you about other weapons or even the submarine boats, what do you do?”

There was a pregnant pause, followed by one man saying, “Report ‘em!” Suddenly the whole crew caught it. “Report ‘em!” they thundered as one.

“That’s right! Report ‘em! There are no submarine boats! Anyone who says that there are is a liar! An arrested liar at that! It’s rockets that sent the Brits to the bottom! Is every man here clear on that?”

“Aye, Sir!” they responded.

“Signal man! Clear the boats to approach us! Bosun Harding has the harbor duty assignments. Those not on harbor duty may go ashore and God go with you.”

Bosun Harding read off a dozen names and was met by as many groans of disappointment.

The many small boats swarmed like a gaggle of geese about our ships. Many were carrying liveried servants from great houses, and at least as many more were carrying ladies. They all were bearing invitations to come to parties being held in the honor of our deed. The servants wanted officers, or at least the highest ranking men that they could get for their master’s “rocket parties.”

The ladies were mostly less discriminating. They were there to invite any man that they could get to come to their ‘parties.’ Some of those parties were very private and some were open invitations from the brothels of Norfolk.

One boat cut through the swarm and all made way for it. It bore the ensign of the Office of the President of the Continental Congress. Riding stiffly erect, in his fine coat of green broadcloth with red and gold trim, was the President’s personal aide, my grandfather, Tall Bear. He had three eagle feathers in his braid. The bosun piped him aboard.

In spite of his age, he climbed the ladder easily and swiftly gained the deck. That he saw me in his brief glance about the deck, I was sure, but he went straight to the Commodore and they went into his cabin. Whatever the discussion was, it was brief. They emerged moments later, and he strode gravely across the deck to me.

He looked me up and down, quietly. “You have done well. We have read every dispatch and all of your letters too. It would appear that all of your devices have done as well or better in real action than we had hoped.

“Your mother, Sun on the Cloud, misses you. Also your sister, Cornflower, wishes you to meet her new husband.” Here he at last grinned and clapped me on the arm and thrust a letter into my hand. “Harvest Moon wants to see you, too. Most urgently. When are you two going to settle down together?”

“I don’t know, Grandfather. When the war permits. I, too, wish to see the forests and lakes of home. I will come home as soon as I can find the time. I have missed you all.”

“It will have to wait a bit longer. I bear an invitation from your Uncle, President Arnold. All of the principal officers and you submariners are to go to Philadelphia for a special reception at the Presidential Mansion. Something big is in the wind. That is all that I can say about it here.”

“May I come with you, Grandfather?”

“I fear not, Tecumsah. I have a number of errands to accomplish yet. I will not get back in time to be at the fete. Smollet will be there.”

“Mister Smollet! I haven’t seen him for ages! What is new from his workshops?”

“I cannot say. I am sure that he will tell you himself. You two always did understand each other better than any two men ought. Now, I must go.” With that, he strode across the deck to the ladder and the bosun piped him off the ship.

To be continued

NEXT==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Science Fiction

#Submarine! 1812 Chap 6 #Part 1 of 5) #Science Fiction #Alternate History #Written by De Writer

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jack Ohman, Sacramento Bee

* * * * *

And so it begins . . . CNN treats Trump like an ordinary presidential candidate.

         CNN will sponsor a “town hall” in New Hampshire next week at which Republican voters will have the opportunity to ask questions of Donald Trump. See HuffPost, CNN rolls out the red carpet for Trump. Per HuffPo,

The event, scheduled for May 10 at St. Anselm’s College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, will be televised at 9 p.m. Eastern. Kaitlan Collins will moderate. Trump will take questions from Republicans and undeclared voters who are planning to participate in the 2024 GOP primary.

         CNN will thus provide a ‘Trump-friendly’ audience and a moderator who began her career at The Daily Caller—a media website founded and owned by Tucker Carlson (until 2020).

         Media companies should, of course, cover the news relating to Trump's candidacy for the 2024 nomination. And it is within the accepted traditions of networks and cable companies to host town-hall-style interviews with presidential candidates. But Trump is not merely a presidential candidate. He is a former president who attempted a coup and incited an insurrection. He attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He stands credibly accused of rape in an ongoing trial in federal court. He has admitted to removing and retaining classified documents relating to the national defense. He routinely issues misogynistic, racist, and anti-LGBTQ slurs for which he is given a pass by the media.

         No responsible media organization should act as a neutral observer of Trump's political career, much less as a public relations surrogate for Trump--as is CNN by hosting a friendly “town hall.” It is particularly inappropriate for CNN to do so as special counsel Jack Smith and District Attorney Fani Willis present evidence to sitting grand juries regarding Trump's interference in the 2020 election. And let’s not forget that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indicted Trump for concealing hush-money payments designed to change the outcome of the 2020 election.

         Of course, it is possible that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins will ask Trump if he raped E. Jean Collins, if he stole defense secrets, if he attempted a coup, and if he tried to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 election. Possible but not likely. Trump would not have agreed to an appearance on a network he routinely attacked as “fake news” unless he received assurances that he would not be asked hard questions by Kaitlan Collins.

         CNN has decided to treat Trump as if he is like any other presidential candidate. That is a dangerous mistake—as explained by Dan Rather’s Substack publication, Steady, The Danger of "Horse Race" Politics. As Dan Rather and Eliot Kirschner explain, it is irresponsible of the media to reduce the 2024 presidential campaign to a “horserace” in which the only relevant factor is “Who is ahead in the polls?” Per Rather and Kirchner,

When you cover politics like a horse race, it becomes logical for Donald Trump to be the frontrunner for a third Republican presidential nomination.

A horse race confers an equivalence upon all candidates. The only detail that matters is who is going to win — not all that might be lost. To view America through that lens today is an exercise in the absurd, a practice stuck in the insular logic of the past.

         CNN has left the building. It is in the business of treating the 2024 presidential race as entertainment. CNN should no longer be counted among legitimate news organizations. Any journalist who remains at CNN is lending their good name to Trump. CNN is a weak competitor in the news ecosystem and is desperate for viewers—which is why it is hosting a PR event for Trump. Don’t add legitimacy (or viewership) to CNN as it attempts to convert itself into a Trump mouthpiece.

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

#CNN #CNN under new management #Robert B. Hubbell #Horse Race Politics #Robert B. Hubbell Newletter #Jack Ohman

[mariacallous]

In light of the problems that have been encountered first by President Trump and now by President Biden over the handling of classified documents, many are wondering how the document classification system works.

The federal government has a fairly simple process for classifying documents. The originator of a document, usually a foreign policy or national security staff member, decides if it needs to be classified. In almost all cases this is a simple decision. Has its predecessor’s been classified? If so, classify. Each federal agency has a central repository that employees connect with when producing a classified document which gives the document a number so it can be identified later, and the actual originating component contacted.

Critics of the system have argued that too many documents are classified. However, that is an endemic problem because bureaucratically it is safer to classify than not.

The most sensitive documents are Top Secret Codeword documents. Almost every product of the National Security Agency is Top Secret because the Agency engages in intercepting and decoding sensitive communications of foreign countries and individuals.

Also highly classified are documents regarding operational activity of human intelligence collection (spies) by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the various military intelligence services. The raw intelligence produced by such means is usually classified SECRET, but occasionally a sensitive case will be TOP SECRET. In very sensitive cases, the originator will specify by name who can read the report.

TS (Top Secret) material must be stored in a SCIF office which stands for (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility). Only personnel with a TS clearance can enter the SCIF. When not in use, the room is locked. Presidents often have a temporary SCIF on their property or vacation homes. Presidents and VPs travel with a large communications team so they are always in constant contact with the Situation Room including when abroad.

Most State Department cables are SECRET. Some are CONFIDENTIAL, the lowest classification. Many of the most sensitive State documents are marked NODIS, which stands for No Distribution, meaning that they can only be read by a named individual or by selected positions.

A frequent classification is NOFORN, meaning the document cannot be shared with any foreign government or individual. In most cases this does not apply to the Five Eyes group: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US. NATO allies, Japan, South Korea, and others get considerable access as well.

Routine cables that deal with travel arrangements and personnel issues are often classified Limited Official Use for short periods of time so that once the travel is complete the cables are declassified.

The office of the President has access to all classified material. The Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing is the focal point for receiving reports from across the government and distributing them to appropriate people in the White House complex—usually electronically. Created by John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Situation Room is manned by CIA officers 24 hours every day. It is in constant communication with its counterparts like the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon and the Operations Center at the CIA.

The President and Vice President are cleared for all classified information, but often see only a small number of documents due to their intense schedules. The National Security Adviser usually selects the most important reports for the President.

When the CIA briefer delivers the PDB (President’s Daily Brief) each morning to the Oval Office or wherever the president is, the National Security Adviser’s office is responsible for retrieving it at the end of the day and securing it in their SCIF in the West Wing or in the Situation Room. If the President or VP write a question or comment in the book it goes back to Langley for a response. In my experience the President did not keep classified material, if he wanted to have it available then the Situation Room held onto it.

All classified documents are subject to periodic review for declassification. TS reports may take decades to be reviewed. Some will be reviewed and remain classified. Most will be declassified in part or entirely.

The President has the authority to declassify any document. In 1999, for example, President Bill Clinton used the conclusion of a TS report from the President’s Daily Brief prepared by the CIA in a meeting on July 4th with the Pakistani Prime Minister. He asked permission from the Deputy Director of the Agency just before he used it. In my eight years in the White House with four presidents, it was the only time I witnessed a president declassify a report to use with a foreign official.

That time, it helped avert a nuclear war.

[alarawriting]

52 Project #50: Grandma's House

Just in time for Thanksgiving weekend!

The O Street Museum, unlike the grandmother's house in this story, is a real place, and is really as I have described. Possibly even more over the top than the grandmother's house.

***

Grandma’s house was cold. It wasn’t a metaphor; someone must have turned the heat down to some ridiculous level, 65 degrees or something. Grandma used to keep it around 75 degrees; I’d wear summer pajamas when we came here for Thanksgiving, despite how cold it was outside. For some reason I’d thought it would be just as warm as when she was alive. I shivered, and wondered if I’d find sweaters upstairs in the Sweater Room, or if someone had gotten to them first.

No time like the present to check. I stuffed the key into the pocket of my blazer and headed up the first set of stairs. I’d gone in on 27, so I headed up to the third floor and went through the secret door to 29, then up another flight of stairs and through the regular door to the fourth floor on 31, because you can’t get to the third floor of 31 through any other of the doors. The Sweater Room was on the third floor of 31. I went inside.

The walls were hung with sweaters. Cable knit sweaters, cashmere sweaters, sweaters with sparkly sequins all over them, ugly Christmas sweaters, cardigans, short-sleeved sweaters (never been able to understand why those even exist), thick wool sweaters… The sweaters hanging from the hooks on the wall partially covered the dressers, which were covered to the inch with knick-knacks of Grandma’s that had no real theme or connection to them, like she’d just dumped stuff she couldn’t figure out where to put it. But inside the drawers: more sweaters. Men’s sweaters, women’s sweaters, sweaters for every size child and baby.

Most of Grandma’s themed rooms seemed to have some artistic point to them – the rooms themed around specific historical figures, like Elvis or Teddy Roosevelt; the rooms themed around features of nature, like the Ocean Room or the Cherry Blossom Room; the rooms themed around seasons like the Winter Room, or colors like the Purple Room; or the ones themed around activities, like the Billiards Room or the Music Room. And then there were rooms like the Sweater Room, that had a theme, but the theme was ridiculous.

I asked Grandma once why she had a room dedicated to sweaters, and only sweaters. She glared at me. Grandma used to glare a lot. “No one will ever say I let any of my family members be cold, ever!”

My favorite was still hanging up on the wall. It was a gradient of blue, light at the top and dark at the bottom. I pulled it off the hanger.

It smelled like Grandma’s laundry detergent.

The tears welled up out of nowhere and I found myself sobbing, out of nowhere. I pressed the sweater to my face and breathed through it until I had myself under control again.

“What are you crying for?” Grandma would have said. “People die! If they led a long, full life, then stop crying about it! That’s the best any of us ever get!”

I didn’t know how long Grandma had lived. No one did. When you asked her, she’d say “As old as Ann,” and when you asked how old Ann was, she’d say “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” I took this as permission to try to find out, when I was thirteen; I went rummaging through her purse to find her identification documents. Her driver’s license said her name was Gloria Reyes and she was born in 1929. Her passport said her name was Long Xin-quan and she was born in 1918. Her other driver’s license, which was buried at the bottom of the purse, said her name was Aanya Desai and she was born in 1907. Grandma used to claim to be Chinese, which would have made sense given that the name on her passport was Chinese, but she could easily pass for any number of other ethnicities – she had long, straight black hair, she tanned very dark in the summer and turned very light in the winter, and her eyes were like Keanu Reeves’ – if you had assumed she was white, they looked white. If you assumed she was Asian, they looked Asian. She had, to my knowledge, been assumed to be Indian, Native American, Hispanic, Polynesian, Thai, practically every East Asian nation, Polynesian, and white, on various occasions.

I thought she was a spy. None of those ages could be right; Grandma couldn’t be that old. Although, my biological grandmother, my Nan-nan, also called her Grandma, so maybe she really was that old.

It didn’t seem weird to me until I was nearly a teenager. No one knew exactly how Grandma was related to us, and no one really cared. There were, the last time I counted, 25 separate families of cousins, all of whom counted as Grandma’s family. Some people might have been adopted; Grandma had taken in at least two abused kids on separate occasions and just declared them to be hers now, according to my mother. Though I happened to know that the Haskins, the African-American family that ran into trouble occasionally when people couldn’t believe they were related to Grandma, were in fact actually directly connected to me; my Nan-nan’s sister had married a black man. According to my Nan-nan, this utterly shocked and horrified her parents, but Grandma had just glared at them and said, “You had better come to this house for Thanksgiving, you hear me? I don’t care where you go for Christmas or anything else, but Thanksgiving is for my family, and you better come.”

With my sweater on awkwardly under my blazer, I returned the way I came, back to the front room of 27. I’d always intended it to be my starting point. And then from there, I went through the hallways to 23.

***

If you’ve ever been to the O Street Museum in DC, you might get a sense of what Grandma’s home was like. Grandma claimed that the founder of the O Street Museum got the idea from her, and I don’t know enough to dispute it. O Street Museum is five interconnected town houses; Grandma’s house is seven, and they all have four floors and finished basements. Oh, and a gabled roof, where most townhouses, including the others on the street, have flat ones. It actually looks from the outside like just one very long roof, the only visual indication from the street that the townhomes are connected in any way. There’s supposedly an attic under the roof, but I’d never been there and neither had any relatives I’d talked to.

We used to call the houses by their street numbers, but not the whole thing. We were on the 1200 block, so the houses were 1223, 1225, 1227 and so on up through 1235. 27 was the main entrance to the whole thing. You could also get in on 23 and 33. All the rest of the doors were blocked.

There are over 70 rooms, not counting the private bathrooms that most of the bedrooms come with. And every square inch of the walls and furniture in most of the rooms is covered with Grandma’s stuff. Art, knickknacks, jewelry, books, clothes, you name it. One of the rooms is filled with nothing but hats. Unlike the O Street Museum, which has a similar aesthetic but with more selective artistic grounding behind it, you couldn’t buy any of the stuff and you couldn’t rent a room. Grandma wasn’t running a hotel; this was actually her house, and she didn’t take in boarders. Not for money, anyway.

So when Grandma demanded that the whole family gather for Thanksgiving… she meant the whole family. 25 separate families, as in family trees with kids and grandkids, and around 30 singles and couples who had no kids and weren’t considered part of one of the other families. Everyone was your cousin, and the exact degree didn’t matter. Us kids indiscriminately called everyone in our parents’ generation Aunt or Uncle (or Avun in a couple of cases where someone considered themselves non-binary, but that comes up more in my generation than it did when we were the kids), and everyone in any generation above that was either Aunt/Uncle or Great-Aunt/Great-Uncle depending on how elderly we thought they were.

Grandma also owned a parking lot, about two blocks away from the house. That, she rented out, but around Thanksgiving the parking lot would close and you had to have the code, which Grandma would give out, to get in. Even then, there wasn’t enough room for all the cars. The disabled and elderly parked in the row of on-street disability parking spots Grandma had acquired in front of all of her houses, and everyone else parked further away and walked or took mass transit. The 7-Eleven across the street on the block corner actually had signage specifically forbidding that anyone from Grandma’s house, which was generally referred to as “Long Mansion” due to being long enough to take up most of the block, park there.

All of that would be gone soon. Grandma had entrusted me to sell off her stuff and give the proceeds out to the entire family, and that meant the houses too. I figured I would probably have the doors between the houses sealed, covered up with wall, and sell them as separate townhomes. Grandma’s will said I could do that if I wanted. I didn’t want to – I wanted everything to be exactly like it was. I wanted all of Grandma’s stuff to remain in her house and for the family to meet every Thanksgiving and Grandma would be there. But that wasn’t happening, and I had a mission, given to me in Grandma’s will. And a seven-house four-story mansion wouldn’t sell to anyone unless they planned to cut it up for apartments, which no. I wasn’t doing that. I was going to sell these houses to families, people who wanted to raise kids in them. Or run a nonprofit to give housing to runaway teens, or something. Something better than being a landlord renting out apartments.

I’ve done estate sales for the past six years, but I’d never had to do one for anyone I was related to. There was a pattern we’d always follow. You meet with the bereaved family members who hired you. You express condolences on their loss. You’re gentle, friendly but not over-familiar. I work for a company that does these, so someone else was responsible for setting the percentage we take, doing the marketing, signing the contract; it’s just my job to satisfy the customer by getting the best price possible for their loved one’s stuff, while making sure no one in the family feels slighted because some favorite knickknack got sold instead of given to them like their mom promised.

I always begin by walking around in the house, taking pictures of everything. Often, the person who owned the house had been sick for some time, and the house smells… not bad, exactly, but it smells like sick old people. Often, cats have peed on a good bit of it. I’ve been in the homes of hoarders, where rooms are stacked to the top with old magazines and newspapers the deceased couldn’t bear to throw out. It’s a little weird, walking through someone else’s life, but I’m professional about it and I try not to speculate on the life I’m observing, even in my own head. Then I catalogue all the photos in a spreadsheet and make sure that the family members all get a chance to see it and point out what they want to take, even before I price anything. Once they’ve done that, I work on getting pricing. Often someone will come back after I’ve priced things and tell me they wanted a specific item, they forgot about it or they didn’t see it in the sheet. They come back during pricing often enough that I know this isn’t always motivated by money… but sometimes, they just coincidentally remember that their grandfather left them this particular piece of fine art that’s worth a few thousand, or whatever. I always check that against the will, first, and then against whichever family members are closest, who hired me. The children, usually. The siblings, sometimes. In some heartbreaking cases, it’s the parents, who outlived their own child.

Grandma picked me to do her house because I’m the only family member with experience doing estate sales, and I’m generally very professional. But walking around in Grandma’s house, every little stupid object with a history I remember, and the afterimage of Grandma everywhere… I broke down a few times. I didn’t know if I could do this.

I was so glad there wasn’t anyone here to see me crying.

I’d made the mistake of going to the Kids’ House first, number 23. When I was little, my parents lived in the same city as Grandma, as many of the family did, and sent me over here for babysitting, so I spent a lot of time in the Kids’ House. Later after we moved, we still came here four or five times a year. The basement was a playroom for kids to run around in. There were some huge dollhouses, large enough for a Barbie doll, and some smaller ones that were more works of art, that only the older children and adults were allowed to touch. First floor had the game room, where there were board games and three different televisions hooked up to every video game console that had ever existed. Grandma actually had a Colecovision. I was going to have to test if it even worked.

On the same floor we had the huge dining room with the enormous child-height table, the high chairs and booster chairs and children’s seats still ranged around it like Grandma was expecting guests with children. 23 also had a working kitchen; most of the family’s food was prepared in 25, but 23 had a fridge full of healthy snacks and bottled water, a pantry and a breadbox full of not-so-healthy snacks, canned food on shelves, and a stove with every childproofing technology known to man. Kids were encouraged to learn to cook for themselves. There were children’s cookbooks on a shelf, and a TV hooked to a computer that had nothing on it but cooking videos, and links to cooking videos online.

I wondered if it had usually looked like this when we weren’t here. For obvious reasons, I’d never seen what the house looked like when Grandma hadn’t prepared for child guests. There used to be milk, chocolate milk, apple juice, and sometimes for a rare treat even soda in the fridge. None of that now, just water. There were no handmade brownies or cookies on the platter with the glass lid, no fruit in the fruit bowl with the bug net over it. Carrots and celery in the fridge, and jars of jam and jelly, but no peaches, no pre-made salads with plastic wrap over the bowls. The breadbox had a loaf in it, but it was wheat bread, which most of us had always refused to eat. Grandma didn’t do pure white bread, but she usually had multi-grain and potato bread and honey wheat, as well as the wheat bread and the weird options like pumpernickel and sourdough. None of that was in there. And the wheat bread had gone stale.

On the second floor, we had the TV room, separate from the game room; that was on the second floor and had probably been a master bedroom, once. We also had the Baby Room, with cribs, and the Toddler Room, with the baby gate to lock them in there so they couldn’t get down the stairs. I held it together until I got to the Toddler Room, and then I started bawling. The kids who had last visited Grandma who’d stayed in this room wouldn’t even remember her.

I got a piece of tissue paper from the Toddler Room bathroom, and a bottle of water from downstairs, and got myself under control. Then I went back up, to the bedrooms. They were practically Spartan compared to the rest of the house; I thought that would be a good way to ease myself into it.

“Compared to the rest of the house”, however, turned out to be the operative word. Each room had bunk beds – sometimes two sets – with nice sheets, nothing ever branded with commercial characters, fluffy blankets, and a few dressers, bookcases, and bins for toys. The bookcases were stuffed with children’s books. The dressers were completely covered with kid-friendly decorations, and some that weren’t such a great idea for kids, like ceramic statues as music boxes. Inside the dressers and closets, there were clothes of every size. The rooms tended to be themed, with gender markers in the toys and the colors. Bright rainbow colors on a room with dollhouses. Deep blue ocean colors and murals of monstrous sea creatures on a room full of action figures. Some rooms had no clear gender, devoted to books and art supplies and board games, painted in light blues or neutral yellows.

Why had Grandma supplied us so many clothes? These clothes weren’t for us to take home, they were to stay here for cousins who needed them. Sometimes kids stayed with Grandma for extended periods of time – maybe because a sibling was sick, maybe because there was upheaval in their homes. Sometimes, cousins brought friends to Grandma’s, and the friends stayed for weirdly long periods of time even after the cousins went home. Some of those then kept showing up every Thanksgiving as new cousins.

So many clothes. All of them smelled like Grandma’s laundry detergent.

I was old enough that none of these had been my toys or my clothes. Grandma swapped out the toys and clothes to stay on top of fashion and children’s interests. Even things like board games got replaced with newer editions of the board game in question. There had been videotapes and small TVs with VCRs in these rooms when I was coming here, and I remember heated discussions with my other female cousins as to which of us would room together in which room, based mostly on which videos we wanted to watch, or wouldn’t be caught dead watching. Those were gone now. Instead there were laptops, one on each bed. Most of the kids brought their own, but if you didn’t have one, you’d have one at Grandma’s house.

The thought occurred to me that Grandma must have been fabulously wealthy to be able to afford things like this. New toys and games every few years. Every game console there had ever been, and televisions to go with them. Clothes for any and all possible grandkids. Laptops.

My uncle, the executor of Grandma’s will, had said that once I’d sold everything on behalf of the estate, then all of the money would be divided among all the family members. Including Grandma’s existing liquid money. Everyone was waiting on me to get this done.

It took me three hours to get through house 23, taking pictures of everything, and 23 was the simplest one because it was set up for kids. I had over a thousand pictures of separate items to price, and then sell at estate sale or online auction.

This was gonna take forever.

***

I met my cousin Vanessa while we were staying together at 23, when we were both around 8.

I mean, I’d seen her before; she was my age and she was at every Thanksgiving, just like me. But there were enough kids running around at every Thanksgiving that I didn’t even know all of their names, and I’m not sure if I knew Vanessa’s before the year I was 8. That year, we were put in the same room together, and something clicked.

We went exploring together. When you’re 8, something the size of Grandma’s house is a mountain, or Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea’s journey to the West Coast. It’s a major league undertaking to explore it. Some rooms connect to other rooms with a door, without going through the hallway, and some have secret passages that go to other rooms. There are closets nearly as deep as a room in themselves. Almost every bedroom has its own bathroom, but you can’t explore the bathrooms if there’s someone asleep in the bedroom, so you have to explore over multiple days to actually get every room.

We spent four nights at Grandma’s, as usual. Wednesday was always the night to travel to Grandma’s, after school. Vanessa’s family lived closer, so she’d been the first one in the room. We’d been given the Boat Room, a two-kid bedroom where the beds were themed as boats, the furniture and decorations were all nautical, and the walls were painted ocean blue, with fish and seaweed and coral painted onto the walls as a mural. When I’d arrived, late, and dropped my bags on the bed that was left, Vanessa said casually, “I’ve been playing Nintendo for two hours and I’m bored. Wanna go explore?”

“I just got here,” I said. “I want to go to the kitchen and get some food. We had McDonalds, like, five hours ago.”

“I’d like a snack.”

Vanessa accompanied me to the Children’s Kitchen, where I got a roast beef sandwich and some handmade chocolate chip cookies, and Vanessa got juice, celery, and a peanut butter dip in a ramekin. While I was eating – you were not supposed to take food back to your room – Vanessa told me that she found a swimming pool. It was November, of course, and I’d somehow managed to never get here during the summer, so I – and presumably Vanessa – had not known about the swimming pool.

If there was a swimming pool we’d never encountered before, what else might there be? After my long drive, I was tired but also restless from having to sit still so long, so I agreed to go exploring with Vanessa.

I don’t think we successfully managed to get the whole place that visit; it might have been another couple of years. Vanessa got her parents to hold her 9th birthday party for her at Grandma’s house, and invite all the cousins close in age; her birthday was in July, so this was her clever plan to get access to the swimming pool. That visit, we spent too much time in the pool to explore much. Exploration resumed that November, and then Grandma had us come back over winter break so she could hand out presents. I got a Sega Genesis and a Sonic game. Vanessa got some Mario game, I don’t remember what. So we didn’t explore much that Christmas either. It took until our 10th Thanksgiving for us to finally finish filling in the notebooks we were using to track our progress, though since we had started that the previous year, it’s entirely possible that places our notebooks said we’d never hit were actually places we’d gotten to that first year, and we’d just forgotten.

Vanessa and I exchanged phone numbers and addresses, and we spent a lot of time writing letters. Less time on the phone, at least until long distance charges stopped being a thing, but we tried to call each other once a week or so, given parental interference in the matter of the phone bill. We were best friends. She crocheted me a doll. I wasn’t crafty enough to make her a present like that, so I scoured toy stores until I finally found a stuffed animal that wasn’t a bear. (Seems odd now, but in that decade it was genuinely hard to find stuffed animals that weren’t bears.) When we were teenagers, we talked about school and classmates and our romantic lives. We met up for Vanessa’s birthday at Grandma’s, every year, and Christmas (an event to which only families containing children under 18 were invited), and one year I managed to get my February birthday at Grandma’s. We made up names together for the hypothetical babies we would have, and talked about buying a house together when we were adults, and our husbands would just have to suck it up because we would insist on living together.

This did not happen.

I don’t know when Vanessa and I drifted apart. Maybe college. Maybe when she got married at 23 to a guy with an annoying laugh. I went to her baby shower a year later, but not the one two years later for the second baby. By then I understood that my life was going to be different. I had no desire to have kids, and I was never going to get married. Gay marriage was on the radar then, as a thing the community was working toward achieving, but I had a good career I was moving ahead in, and friends, and I didn’t think I’d ever want the level of being tied to another person that marriage represented.

Vanessa and I didn’t have any angry, angsty falling out; we still see each other on Facebook and comment on each other’s posts, perfectly civil, like we were nothing but cousins who see each other at Thanksgiving, because that’s all we are now. And as I was remembering it, I realized, I don’t know when that happened, or how. We just got busy, and we didn’t have much in common anymore.

***

25 had the Kitchens. This was the area that fed the majority of the people, at Thanksgiving and other large gatherings. Nearly the entire first floor of 25 of was a kitchen, and there was another kitchen in the basement, plus a pantry. There’s a dumbwaiter in the basement that goes up to the first floor kitchen, and a passage at the back of the house that goes over to the dining hall in 29, bypassing 27 entirely. (It doesn’t actually bypass 27, it still runs through that house. It’s just that you can’t get into it from 27.)

The first floor kitchen was all stainless steel and granite countertops. I remember a time when all the appliances in here were white, and then black, before the stainless steel came in. All of Grandma’s cooking pots and pans were either cast iron or stainless steel. There were knives in blocks, modern kitchen appliances like food processors and blenders, a microwave oven, and a bread maker that was still in its box. I couldn’t help laughing, imagining Grandma’s expression upon realizing someone was suggesting she use a bread maker rather than knead her own dough and bake it herself. The waffle iron had seen a lot of use, though.

I went down into the basement, where the pantry – the size of one of the smaller bedrooms – and the basement kitchen were. The basement kitchen was used when someone had an allergy, so there wouldn’t be cross-contamination. I remember seeing Grandma directing a few adults in scrubbing the basement kitchen so she could cook for the vegans and the people with dairy allergies, after she’d already made food for the nut allergy people.

There were four chest freezers and a tall freezer down here in the basement, and three refrigerators. A lot of meat in the freezers, as if Grandma kept it stocked with entire cows, pigs and sheep on a regular basis. There were three turkeys and a dozen large roaster chickens. A lot of very large whole fish. I’m no fish expert, so I couldn’t tell what kinds they were; I just wrote down “fish” in my notebook and noted how many there were, and approximate sizes.

All the food was making me hungry, but it felt almost sacriligeous to cook in Grandma’s kitchen, without her permission. I used my phone to find a local Asian fusion place and ordered myself delivery food.

Grandma had cooked food from all over the planet. It had been impossible to figure out her ethnicity based on her cooking style or her choice of cuisines; Thanksgiving dinner itself had always been the traditional American turkey and sides. Usually two turkeys, a ham and maybe some other large roast like a goose or a pot roast. But the rest of the holiday’s dinners could have been Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Indian, Peruvian, Nigerian, anything. Not usually Northern Europe, she said there was no spice in their food, and no taste. Grandma liked her spicy food, though there was always something on her table that family with more mild taste buds could handle. I’d tried a curry she’d made one time when I was little, and had to chug an entire glass of milk after one bite. Everyone had laughed, and I felt ashamed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Grandma had said. Her voice was never gentle. Everything she said was barked or shouted or growled. But we just accepted that that was Grandma. If she was actually mad, she’d let us know. “Mighty dragons start out as little cubs out of the egg, after all. Try something that spicy once a year, maybe once every few months, and it’ll get easier. Or eat a little bit of hot with your food every day, and a little bit more, and a little bit more, and you’ll get there.” I still haven’t. I was here for Grandma’s Easter celebration earlier this year, and she had enchiladas, ranging from mild to super hot. I’d taken a bite of the super hot, but ended up eating the medium. Super hot was still too hot for me.

By the time the food arrived, I’d finished cataloguing the kitchen, so I took a break to eat, and then onward. In 25, the second floor has color themes and then the rest of the floors are themed for old celebrities. So we had the Olive Room, the Lavender Room and the Orange Room – all foods as well as colors, and the lamps had glass shades with colored bits showing off the plant the room was named for – and then rooms like the Elvis Room, Sinatra, Monroe, The Beatles… Grandma’s interests were all over the 20th century as well, because she’d also had Teddy Roosevelt and Ozzy Osbourne themed rooms. That was quite a spread.

When I was in my twenties, I’d brought my first real girlfriend to Thanksgiving one time. Most of the younger folks did; Grandma fed the plus-ones same as the rest of us. We had the Ozzy Osbourne room, which my girlfriend thought was hilarious. Posters on the wall, photographs, a Funko Pop of Ozzy, album covers. Also a train-on-tracks decoration on the dresser and a Marvel action figure of Iron Man. I didn’t want to tell Grandma that that wasn’t the Iron Man the song was about, because she’d have asked then who was it about, and I wouldn’t have known.

We’d been making out, our tops off, her skirt racked up, my pants unbuttoned, when there was a loud knocking at the door, which repeated when we tried to ignore it in hopes that it would go away. And then there was my mother’s voice, calling my name.

After frantically getting dressed as quickly as possible, I opened the door a crack, expecting some kind of emergency. No. The house was full of dogs, because several of my relatives had brought their dogs, and my mom wanted me to go to the Lounges and cover all of the sofas with chairs so the dogs wouldn’t climb on them overnight.

That girlfriend wasn’t back the next Thanksgiving, but I tell the story at family gatherings now with teens and twenty-somethings, to great horrified hilarity.

The Ozzy room was nearly the same as I remembered it from that night. There were a lot of actual vinyl albums hanging on the walls now, and some newer reprints of photos, and the inserts to the DVDs of “The Osbournes”, but the Funko Pop figure and the train were still there. Iron Man had been replaced with a small iron sculpture of a man. I took it. There are advantages to being the one your grandmother picked to catalog all her stuff and run her estate sale.

I’d been at this for eight hours and only gotten two houses done. It was a good thing the estate was paying me; if I was doing this as a volunteer, I probably would miss so much work I wouldn’t make my rent.

***

I turned up the heat the next day. I know why the thermostat was set so low, but it was just wrong for Grandma’s house to be cold.

Today was 27’s turn. This house was our main entrance. There was a large, open foyer – I think this was the kind they call a lawyer foyer, extremely fancy and open, with a wide spiral staircase going up to the second floor. We called the first floor and the basement “The Lounges”, because that’s what all the rooms were dedicated to. The basement was a man-cave sort of room, finished, dark paneling, no windows, a pool table and a cribbage board, and fat vinyl armchairs and sofas strewn about, surrounding coffee tables. At least one of the coffee tables was one of those chessboard tables with the chess and checkers pieces hiding in a drawer underneath. There was no television, though. This was a game room, not a TV room.

Upstairs we had the piano room (which also had a couple of guitars and a trombone) and the art deco lounge. Then most of the back of the house was taken up by the TV room. I’d never seen it showing anything other than sports. Even when we kids had begged to be able to use the big TV to watch Disney movies on videotape, none of the grownup men had been willing to relent and give up any of their precious sports. The day after that, Grandma had gone out and bought us a big TV; before that the TV in the children’s room had been a normal CRT. She replaced it with a projection TV – flat screen televisions didn’t exist yet – that was bigger than the one in the TV room. At one point one of the uncles came over to the kids’ TV room and complained that our TV was bigger. Grandma apparently heard of the complaint, even though she wasn’t there in the room, and came to chew him out. “You think you’re better than them? You think because you lived more years, you have a job, you think you’re entitled to have things that are better than theirs, all the time?”

“It’s wasted on them,” my uncle – I forget which one, there are a whole grouping of them of similar age who all look pretty similar, and I always confuse their names – said. “They were fine with a regular TV. They all have good vision!” He wasn’t old enough to have old-age related vision problems. “Kids don’t need fancy things, they like the regular things just fine.”

“You men wouldn’t let them have the main television to watch a movie, because you wanted to watch sports commentary. The game was over. So they get a bigger TV than you to teach you a lesson. You don’t treat my grandchildren like crap.”

I was going to point out that he was wrong about the vision thing; I’d learned by then that older people tend to get farsighted as they got older, which meant they couldn’t see things that were close up anymore without glasses, but children who are nearsighted often don’t get diagnosed until late elementary school, because they don’t know that the blurs they’re seeing aren’t what everyone else sees. And nearsighted people need big TVs a lot more than farsighted people do. I didn’t have a chance, because Grandma shooed him away. She always used to tell me not to complicate my arguments anyway. “If they say something that’s not true while they’re in the middle of making a stupid argument, you don’t need to tell them that the thing they said wasn’t true. That makes it sound like their stupid argument would make sense if the thing was true. Just tell them their argument is stupid. And why. Or don’t. Sometimes they don’t deserve to know why.”

The TV room took up almost all of the back of the house, but there was a narrow extension of the hallway that went all the way to the back, up a ramp, to a door. That led to the Decks. Plural; on the first floor the deck stretched over to 33, but it had two additional decks above it on the second and third floors, and the third floor deck was technically multiple. It ran from 27 to 29, skipped 31, and  was back on 33. The second floor deck actually only went to 31; if you wanted to get to the deck on 33 you took the spiral staircase on the first floor 33 deck. There used to be a rope ladder from the second floor deck at 31 to the third floor at 33, but I think Grandma was convinced to get rid of it in the late 00’s, in case one of her grandkids fell off it and broke something.

Not much on the Decks, though. Patio furniture with covers over it. I had to take off the covers to take pictures. A fancy grill, probably only about 5 years old, on the first floor of 29. It was out at the edge furthest from the houses, and the second and third floor decks weren't quite as wide, so the smoke would miss them… usually. Some plants in pots. None of the games or lawn toys appeared to be out here; they might be in storage under the deck.

Someone had removed the volleyball  net from the lawn. I'd have to go down there to assess the lawn features, but later. I could see the pond filters were still running, but from here I couldn't see if there were any fish. The parts I could see of the pool were covered in tarp.

A long time ago there was a really elaborate treehouse. That was long gone. The swingset of my childhood had been replaced with one of those kid playsets of wood and plastic, with foam cushion underneath, sometime in the 00’s. I'd have to check Grandma's records and hope she noted down the purchase, or kept the receipt. The age would be important in determining the resale value.

I remembered so much about these decks, that lawn. The trees, most of which were still here. The fish pond. The swimming pool partly under the decks. Me and my cousins running around  here screaming, because kids always scream when they play outside.

All gone now. All going away forever.

I don’t have kids, don't plan to, so why was this hitting me so hard? The nieces and nephews (technically,  cousins, but our standard practice was, everyone a generation younger than you or more was a niece or nephew) who were children now… I hardly know them. Some of my favorite cousins, their children, I know pretty well, but this emotional reaction seemed extreme.

I went back inside.  Time to do the rest of 27.

***

Upstairs we had Music, Movies and Dancing for themes, then colors, then Famous Writers, Sculpture and Animation. There was a whole fine arts theme going on the second and fourth floors, which begged the question why the third floor was Purple, Green and Yellow.

When I was in my late 20s, I was hanging out with a 14 year old nephew, technically cousin. It wasn’t just me and him, but I was the one rooming in Animation Room that visit, and he was the one who said he wanted to see it. So I went over there with him, and we ran into Grandma on the way. Grandma, being a very nosy person, asked what we were doing, I told her, and she came with us.

Then she spent the next hour telling us all about the different styles of animation that the pictures and objects in the room came from or represented. Steamboat Willie. Rubber-hose style. Looney Tunes. Claymation. Ralph Bakshi. At the time I didn’t pay a lot of attention, because animation isn’t really a thing I care about much, then or now. Evan – that was my cousin – was blown away. He wouldn’t stop talking about it all weekend long. Now he’s in his 20’s, making animated shorts on Youtube, and he and some friends are apparently trying to make a pilot episode for an animated series.

I envy him a little, although I’m making a lot more money than he probably ever will without exceedingly good luck. I didn’t get into estate sales because it called to me or I was obsessed with it. I applied for a million different jobs, like most of late Gen X/early Millennials, because there were online job application systems and it was so much easier than going around in person or even calling various offices. A few interviewed me, and the one that sounded most interesting was the estate sale business. You have to be fairly good with people – compassionate and patient, because they’re grieving, and because the matter of a dead family member’s estate is something that raises a lot of emotions in a lot of people – and you have to be detail oriented, and good at math, and willing to do what I was doing right now, systematically going through a house and recording everything. When I got started, we wrote descriptions down in notebooks. Now that I use a phone to take pictures, I can barely remember how we managed that.

It's important work. The things that families owned, the things that the dead pass down to their loved ones, those carry memories. They’re representations of the times spent with the one who’s now gone. Or they’re representations of one’s own past, now gone forever, the way the past always is. Things are never just things. They always represent emotions. Sometimes the emotion is ennui, or the mild aching emptiness of the absence of emotion – when people buy things they don’t really want to assuage some lack in their lives, all those things carry are memories of the lack. Sometimes the emotion is bewilderment or even betrayal, like when the dead’s estate turns out to contain things that throw into question the living’s understanding of their loved one, such as evidence of a long lost child or an affair in the past or papers that indicate employment as a spy. But they are always emotions, and it’s important to tune into what the survivors are feeling about the stuff I catalogue, price and sell… or don’t sell, because sometimes a survivor says “oh, that old thing, yeah, sell it,” but you can tell that either they don’t mean it, or some other family member has emotions attached to that thing, and they want to keep it.

So I care about my work, and I’m good at it, but it’s not my passion. I’ve never been sure what my passion actually is. I’ve loved my girlfriends, but never enough to make them the center focus of my life, which is probably why I don’t have one right now. I was into alternative fashion for a while, until I found my look, the pantsuit lesbian, and now I just buy clothes that fit that and I don’t really go outside that zone. There were times in my past when I collected things, when I was deeply emotionally invested in them, but nothing I acquire nowadays has much of any emotion attached to it, so I’m something of a minimalist in my personal life now. Two storage units full of memorabilia from my childhood that I can never let go of, things my girlfriends left behind when they left me, stuff I owned in college… but my apartment looks barely lived in, like a model from a magazine about Less Is More Living. Evan loves his animation. What do I love?

***

After I’d catalogued all the bedrooms, it was time to do 29. I did it upside down this time. There was a door between 27 and 29 on the fourth floor. When we broke this up into multiple units, we would be going to have to bar all those doors. It wouldn’t be enough to put locks on them; total strangers will be living in them. We would have to wall them up.

That made me very sad, but honestly all of this did. I was grateful no one was here to see me. The constant on-the-verge-of-tears look would play holy hell with my rep as the one who was always strong, always cool, helpful and friendly and compassionate but never with weaknesses of her own. That wasn’t just my professional rep; it was what I showed my friends and girlfriends as well, the way I wanted to be, and it was bad enough how my feelings about Grandma’s house were wrecking that image to myself. I couldn’t bear letting anyone else see that image being destroyed.

Maybe Grandma herself. She was the only one I could ever imagine deliberately letting myself be weak with. Even my parents – ever since I went to college, I’ve tried my best to never upset them or make them unhappy by letting them know I’m suffering. Grandma was the only one who loved me enough to care if I was hurting, while being strong enough to take it. But Grandma was gone.

The top floor here had some of the weirdest rooms – Jewelry was fairly normal, but then there was Figurines, and The Majesty of the Law (we weren’t allowed to shorten it to either Law or Majesty), which was dedicated to politicians and judges. When I was something like eight or nine, my cousins and I used to sneak into the Figurines room to play with the figurines, which were mostly collectable toys and models with occasional ceramic statues. One time Grandma caught us and yelled at us; we were supposed to be in the Kids’ House, playing with the toys that were there for us. These, she said, were for looking at, not playing with.

I asked, “Aren’t they sad, with no one ever playing with them?”

In retrospect, this was a little bit of a strange sentiment, given that the movie Toy Story hadn’t come out yet. I don’t remember why I thought that toys wanted to be played with. Grandma took it perfectly seriously, though. “I play with them sometimes. They’re too fragile for kids, but when you’re as old as I am, you learn how to take care of things.”

Then she put on a little play for us, doing voices with different figurines. I actually don’t remember what it was about, I just remember we thought it was hilarious, watching our ancient, intimidating Grandma playing with toys the way we did, using them to tell stories.

The other floors’ rooms were more normal. The third floor had Stars, Moon, and Autumn, which sounds weird until you know that the second floor was Winter, Summer, Spring. Summer had a door that opened onto the second floor deck, above the swimming pool. Most of the pool was sheltered by the deck; it ran horizontally along 29 and 31, with a third of its width sticking out into the sunlight. You could get into the pool area from the basement level, or the first floor, or you could go down the stairs from this deck. I wanted to test the stairs, so I took them. They were still in good condition.

The pool was tarped, not drained. Grandma used to drain the pool in early November so the frost wouldn’t crack it. She hadn’t made it that far this year. Without the pool drained, I couldn’t inspect the condition, but I didn’t need to right away. I noted that we should have the pool drained so I could check it over, and I catalogued the pool toys and lawn furniture. Unlikely that they’d have any real value; I half expected they’d get thrown out, honestly.

A swimming pool with a tarp on it, in cool weather, looks so empty. It’s almost a liminal object, something that looks wrong, like it shouldn’t exist. Swimming pools exist in the late spring and summer. They should just vanish on the fall equinox, not to return until spring. Grandma had a pool heater, so we would generally start swimming in late April on nice days. By the end of June, the pool heater would go off, and then run most of September. We never went near the pool on Thanksgiving, obviously, but there were plenty of times we’d come up here in the summer. Sometimes the families would come up and then the kids would stay for two weeks while their parents went back home, back to work.

I remembered this area in summer, so many summers, crowded with all the kids in the water, most of the adults out on the pool deck or up above us on the regular decks, a handful – usually dads – in the water with us. I never understood why the moms didn’t want to come in the water. I still don’t really; when I grew up, I was one of the adults who’d play with the kids in the pool. One time, my parents and I came up in May, before school was out, and I remember being alone in the pool, floating on my back, looking at the sky. My parents and Grandma were on the pool deck, so I wasn’t truly alone, but when the water’s in your ears, all you can hear is your own heartbeat, and when you’re looking straight up, you don’t see the people to your sides.

It was peaceful. I’ve tried to get there again in public pools, but even though I can’t see or hear the other strangers in the pool, I know they’re there, and it’s not the same.

From the pool deck, I unlocked the gate from the pool area, and went out onto the lawn. Someone had set up the croquet hoops and never taken them down. I noted that; it was a potential hazard, but I wasn’t going to walk around pulling them up. The estate could pay for someone to do that. I inspected the children’s play structure and the fish pond. The fish were in there, but hiding until I showed up. Then they figured it was dinnertime and they all swam over to me. I felt bad for them, and decided to try to find the fish food. Turned out all of the pond stuff was down in the basement of 29, along with the changing rooms, the swimming pool accessories like the chlorine and the skimmers, and the showers. I went down the concrete stairs from the side of the swimming pool, catalogued the basement quickly, and brought the fish food up.

Big koi can sell for a lot. I photographed the fish as they ate. There were five, and they were large and looked healthy. Then I went back inside and up to the first floor.

The Dining Room, where all the adults ate at the holiday events, took up most of the first floor. There was also the Guitar Room, which I’d always thought was odd – why so many guitars? There were already some in the Piano Room, why another bunch of them here? – and the Salon, where smaller groups of adults would get together and talk. I never quite felt adult enough to join them, even when cousins my own age joined in.

It was late. I’d been at this all day. I should have stopped here, saved 31 for tomorrow… but I had 31, 33 and 35 yet to do. If I stopped now, I’d have three left.

 I pushed onward, up the stairs to the fourth floor and through the door to 31. It was hard to get there any other way from where I was; I could have gone via the first floor or second floor deck, or go over to 27, go outside, in through 33’s door, and then go through the first floor door. But in 29 proper, there was only one door to 31, and it was on the fourth floor.

Up here, we had the Comedians Room, the Rock and Roll Room, and the Actors Room. My cousins and I would go in those room, look at the various pictures on the walls, and try to guess who was who; this was before the Internet was a significant thing. On the third floor, we had the Sweaters Room, the Shoes Room and the Hats Room. We used to try on the hats and show them off to our parents. There were dresses in the closet in most of those rooms; we’d try them on and put on makeup, badly, and high heeled shoes that didn’t remotely fit us, and show off to our parents. I did it to fit in, but sometimes I’d dig out a fedora or a snazzy suit, and put that on, and everyone would laugh. Grandma never laughed; she clapped for us.

I couldn’t do this.

The family had been there long before I was born. It couldn’t end in my lifetime.

All of this… I was going to sell all of this? To strangers? People who couldn’t care about the history, because they wouldn’t know? People who never played with these things, never danced in this ballroom, never ate at the table, never laughed here, never swam in the pool… I was going to divide this estate into separate houses, and no one who lived here would ever use the secret doors, and none of the family would ever come here again?

The Ballroom, down on the first floor of this house, where the family parties were held? I’d attended so many weddings and graduation parties there, and one or two funerals, and a celebration for a family member who’d been elected to some minor political office, and Grandma’s birthdays…

The library in 33, the books I’d always promised I would read once I was tall enough to reach, and then I never did, because there would always be time later…

The Princess Room in 33, and showing it to my new adopted cousin Jessie, joining the family at the age of 6, and how frightened and unsure she was, and how much I wanted to make her feel like she was part of something that would never abandon her, something that would protect her and shelter her and give her joy for the rest of her life…

Being a just-turned-teenager in the Boat Room and inviting a whole pile of younger cousins in to play sailors exploring, because I was a big teenager now and I didn’t need to play, but of course, it was only kind to play with the younger ones because they would like it. And never mind how much I secretly resented growing up and wanting to be a kid who could just play and not having to pretend I was above all that now, no, I was just doing it for them…

Listening to the beat of the music from the Ballroom from the Mountains room in 33, which was catty corner to it…

The Board Games room in 35, and the D&D set I’d put there myself, and running a game for the teenagers when I was in my 20s. The Billiards room, learning how to play pool because women playing pool were sexy in a competent, badass way and I wanted to be that.

All of this, I was supposed to sell it off? Me? The person with the two storage units of memories because nothing in my life right now compelled me as much as my own past? The person who did estate sales because the past was so important to people, because the things of the past were such a vital part of any family’s history, and family members deserved to have that treated with respect and care, and I was supposed to do that to my own past? The past for all the young cousins I played with and mentored and treated like brothers and sisters? The future for all the young kids now who would never have this?

For a moment, I thought, No. I’ll take it all for myself. Grandma’s will gave me the right to do whatever I thought was right with her property. So I’ll keep it. I’ll be the new family matriarch and I’ll share it with the family the same way Grandma did.

And then reality sank in. I was not a mysterious elderly figure of unknown age and origin who had always been there. I was 36, and half the family had known me as a child. I didn’t even have kids; I certainly hadn’t earned the right to be a family matriarch, either through raising children or through a lifetime of service to the family. They’d see it as a selfish property grab, not an attempt to keep the family together.

And did any of it really matter, since Grandma was gone anyway? No one could step into her role. All the older men and women of the family had their own lives, their own subset of the family where they were the elders. If anyone had ever been Grandma’s direct child, they were dead now; my grandmother had called Grandma “Grandma” the same as everyone else did, and so had my great-aunts and great-uncles, many of whom had technically been my Nan-nan’s cousins rather than siblings.

It could never be the same because the woman who had made it that way was gone, and owning her property couldn’t possibly make me into her.

I finished going through 31, dully, going through the motions. It was very, very late and my eyes were burning by the time I was done. Part of me wanted to keep going, right now when I was so tired that my emotions were numb, but I recognized that I was too exhausted to do a good job. The temptation to cut corners in the bedrooms, to maybe not photo every sweater, every piece of memorabilia in the Rock and Roll room or the Actors room, had been very strong, and I wasn’t going to be able to resist it if I kept going, and the family deserved better. Grandma deserved better.

***

I didn’t go back to the house the next day. I spent the day entering stuff into the database, looking up current price assessments and adding them to the records. I didn’t normally do the pricing at this stage, but I didn’t normally work with houses this incredibly big. Also staring into space thinking about Grandma and the rest of the family. I’d lost touch with most of them, so why did I feel so strongly about protecting all of this for them? Was I just being selfish, wanting to hold onto it for myself?

By the time I was done for the day, I was already at an assessment of slightly over a million, based on the resale value of everything I’d entered, and I’d only finished 23, barely starting on 25. And there was a lot more stuff in the rest of the houses that might actually be valuable. Kids’ toys don’t have a lot of resale value unless they’re collector’s items or there’s a lot of intense nostalgia for them. I wasn’t even counting the house itself, which in this neighborhood could probably go for half a million all by itself.

This whole thing was probably going to end up being something like 20 million dollars. Which is a lot, until you consider that it had to be divided amongst somewhere between 125-250 people. Individuals were all likely to end up with less than $100k. Not chump change by any means, but in today’s economy, not exactly fabulous wealth either.

Was all this work even worth it? To give all the family members an amount that wouldn’t cover a full four years of college, or buy a nice house in most places in the country without having to have a mortgage?

I was being hypocritical. Most of the estate sales I did resulted in similar or lesser sums if there were a good number of family members; only when there were few children or few grandchildren did anyone walk away with half a million. Also, I wasn’t considering Grandma’s wealth in banks and investments, which had to be substantial for her to have afforded all this. Yes, it was worth it. If the family couldn’t keep the properties and the possessions, at least they would probably all get a substantial amount of money. I doubted Grandma was a billionaire, but she had to have a few millions stashed away to have afforded all this, unless she had literally spent it all on the property and possessions, and somehow I doubted that.

That part wasn’t my concern. I wasn’t the executor of Grandma’s will or the accountant tracking down how much she had had in liquid assets and investments when she died. She had specifically named me as the one to assess her properties and possessions, and dispose of them in whatever way I thought was best for the family. Since my job was estate sales, we’d all assumed that meant she wanted me to run the estate sale and manage the sales of the properties.

Thoughts occurred to me as I worked, plans that would allow me to avoid breaking the properties up. The O Street Museum has a very similar deal going on, and they’re a museum and hotel, taking ticket fees to see the place and significantly larger fees to stay overnight. But they were also in DC, in an area of town where there were other attractions as well. Our home was in a city where most of the things tourists came to see were nowhere near us. Plus, I didn’t want to risk them suing us.

What if we made it some kind of shelter? Homeless teenagers, maybe? Mentally ill people who needed to get back on their feet after leaving a hospital?... no. I didn’t expect that people who generally hadn’t been treated with basic human respect would respect the property, and all of Grandma’s charity had been for her family members.

There simply weren’t that many applications in the world for seven townhomes linked together. I could sell it to some incredibly wealthy person, whole, but most incredibly wealthy people were assholes and it still didn’t solve the problem. I didn’t just want to keep the houses together. I wanted the family to continue to have access. I wanted this place to be what it had always been, and I kept running into the same incontrovertible problem. Grandma was dead. This place could never again be what it had always been.

***

My thoughts were dark when I went back to the mansion, and it was hard for me to work. I don’t do a lot of mansions this size, or have to catalogue quite this many knick-knacks and little things, so I was burning out from just the workload. But if this hadn’t been my family, I wouldn’t be pushing myself so hard. And if this hadn’t been my family, it wouldn’t be haunting me this badly.

There was no way I could get through the library on 33. I had to skip it and do it last; cataloguing so many books could take a day or two all by itself, and I feared I might end up losing time to trying to read them. There wasn’t much else on the first floor – the coat check, which was of course empty aside from a desk, a number of cubbies and a portable closet rod with hangers on it, and the room where the outdoor equipment was stored. Badminton sets, frisbees, sleds, a tire swing that I didn’t even remember ever having been up.

I started to head upstairs, and then I sat down on the stairs and cried.  

“Grandma, what were you expecting me to do?” I said to the empty house. “What did you want me to do?”

The will hadn’t just said that I should do the estate sale. It said, specifically, that I should be the one to dispose of Grandma’s properties and possessions “in whatever way she thinks would be best for the family.” Uncle Paul, the executor of Grandma’s will, had assumed that meant she expected me to do an estate sale. It was my profession, after all. But then why had she said “whatever way” I thought best? Why make it ambiguous? What had she thought I should do, or what did she think I would do?

What alternative was there to just selling everything to strangers?

I got up, slowly, and continued upstairs to catalog the rooms.

It was tiring. Every room I entered had memories. I hadn’t stayed in all of them, but I’d been in them all at one point or another. Nearly everything I touched reminded me of something, and I wanted to pack it all away in boxes and put it in my storage unit.

What would any of this mean to strangers?

What would it mean to us that we’d never see it again?

Oh, many of the things would probably go to individual family members. Anyone who had a particular sentimental attachment to something would probably get it, unless there was a conflict. But never again would there be one place that had it all. Never again would there be one place the family could all come together…

…why not?

For the first time it occurred to me. What if there was a family trust, set up to manage the estate, with a board drawn from different generations and branches of the family?

If we didn’t sell anything, we wouldn’t make enough money to maintain the place. Grandma had never had hired help. The people who kept the house clean and in good repair were family members, repaying loans she’d given them, usually young people with more time than money. I’d never been in that position but several of my cousins had. It wasn’t something we thought of as bad or demeaning. If Grandma gave you money, to pay off your student loans or put a down payment on a house or help you buy a car, and you didn’t have the money to pay her back, you helped her out in return. We wouldn’t necessarily be able to do that on an ongoing basis. I didn’t know what access Uncle Paul would approve for the family trust to use Grandma’s money.

But AirBnB was a thing. We couldn’t be a hotel, there would be zoning issues, and permit requirements, and possibly renovations required in places… but we could absolutely rent out rooms via AirBnB when the family wasn’t using them. Or other such services, I knew there were some more traditional “rent your house out to vacationers” services in more touristy locations, and there might be something like that in this city. Also, Grandma’s parking lot counted as one of her properties, and we could absolutely continue to rent out parking spaces.

What if the Long Mansion remained family property? Where any of the objects here could be given away to family members who really wanted them, but most of them would remain here as décor? Where any family member who needed a place to stay could come, anytime, and we had scheduled events – like Thanksgiving, Christmas, the summer stay for the kids… And anytime the whole family wasn’t here, the rooms could be let out, via AirBnB or one of the services that did that kind of thing. And the proceeds would go to the upkeep of the house, and if there was any profit, it would be used to give out loans to family members, like Grandma used to.

There was no one matriarch – or patriarch – to step into Grandma’s shoes. But we could have a board. We could have elders who everyone respected, and representatives of all age groups. Including the children. I could see reserving a spot on the board for a teenager, and maybe even a ten year old.

I needed to talk to Uncle Paul.

***

 Uncle Paul listened to me go on about my idea for some time, without saying anything. I was beginning to feel distinctly nervous about the whole thing, when he finally spoke. “Grandma thought you might come up with a suggestion like that,” he said.

“Wait. Grandma thought this was what I would do?”

“She mentioned a number of potential things she thought you might do, and she left you letters in case of each of them. I’ll email you the one for this idea.”

“Well, but, what do you think? You’re part of the family!”

“I’d be happy to serve on your board, if that’s what you want,” he said, which didn’t exactly answer my question, but it wasn’t much of a surprise to me. Whether because he was a lawyer or he was just that kind of person, Uncle Paul rarely gave a straightforward answer about what he thought.

“So you think it’s a good idea?” I persisted.

“I think it has some merit.” I knew that was the best I was going to get out of him. And I wanted to know what Grandma had thought. If she’d guessed this was something I might do, had she thought it was a good idea? Had she wanted me to proceed with it?

What if she hadn’t? What if she’d wanted me to go with the other plan, and sell everything, and divide the money amongst the family? Would I still do it?

I realized… yes. Yes, I would. Because if Grandma was dead, what she wanted no longer mattered. She wasn’t here. Whatever I did had to be for the sake of the living. And I felt sure that this was what the living needed. It was certainly what I needed. I couldn’t be the only one.

“Well, thanks,” I said. “I’ll be waiting to see what Grandma said. Are you snail mailing it?” I couldn’t imagine Grandma writing an email.

“It’s a scanned copy of a paper letter. I have the original in my office, here. I’ll email you the scan.”

***

Grandma’s handwriting looked like the kind of fancy cursive people had used in the 19th century. It was hard to read, but I sized up the scan as far as I could on my laptop monitor while still keeping the whole width of the page on screen, because I really hated bottom scrollbars.

“Dear Tara,

“If you are reading this, you’ve told your Uncle Paul that you are planning on keeping everything together for the sake of the family. Perhaps some kind of family trust, or perhaps you are giving it all to Paul or another to hold in my place. I hope you haven’t decided to try to keep it for yourself. I believe you’re more sensible than that.

“I set letters aside for different contingencies, but this is the one I thought you would most likely follow. You are too much like me. The old blood runs strong in you. I thought when I saw your apartment that I might be wrong—” wait, when had Grandma seen my apartment? I’d never seen Grandma leave her house – “but then you mentioned to me that everything you had owned in childhood and your younger adult years was in storage, and I knew what you were.” I remembered that. I’d been trying to feel Grandma out for whether I could store things in her attic or not. She’d told me that there was nothing in the attic but that I couldn’t store things there because there were bats and squirrels and the roof leaked.

For the first time, I wondered if that was actually true.

“My recommendation would be that you set up a family trust, but if you intend to hand it over to some member of the family to hold it for the rest, I do recommend Paul; he is impeccable. I chose him to execute this will for a reason, after all. And the others respect him. He’s old, though, and I don’t know how much of the old blood runs in him or how long he will live. A family trust is a better idea.” I felt bands around my chest untighten, and tears prick my eyes again. Grandma had the same idea I did. She believed my idea was a good one.

“Now, before you do anything else, go up to the attic. The way is sealed in every house but 35. In 35, go to the top floor, to the Fire room.” 35 was laid out slightly differently than the others; there were four rooms on the top floor, Earth, Wind, Water and Fire, all of them slightly smaller than the bedrooms on the other floors and in the other houses. Fire had a wooden stove. I’d stayed there several times, basking in it. “At the back of the closet there is a panel. Pull it aside and you will see a spiral staircase. From that you can reach all the attics. There’s more information waiting for you there.

Love, Grandma.”

So there was something hidden in the attic that she hadn’t wanted anyone to see. She must have told me about the bats and the squirrels so I wouldn’t think the attic was a safe place to put anything, and therefore wouldn’t ask how to get to it, or what was in it.

***

I did what she told me. It was a very clever trick. Making the rooms smaller and distorting the shape of the Fire room with the wood stove had hidden the fact that there was a narrow vertical passage, large enough for a human who was of medium or smaller size, unaccounted for in the floor plan. I suspected if I’d actually looked at the floor plan, the space would have been labeled as part of the chimney, or insulation, or something.

The spiral staircase went up to a trap door that rose. I pushed it open and went up and through.

The attic had no walls between the houses. There was a wall at the side of 35, which was actually the end of the block and the last house on the street, so of course there was a wall, and there was a wall I could barely make out in the dimness, all the way at the end of 23, but between the seven houses there was nothing but open space. At its highest it was only about five feet tall, so I had to bend over slightly to stand.

It was crammed full.

I don’t know how the floors didn’t cave in. She had literal chests full of gold and jewels up here. Big cedar hope chests stacked on top of each other. Instead of fiberglass insulation, there were piles and piles of blankets, and roughspun sacks that looked like they might have clothes or other cloth, pushed up against the eaves. There were china cabinets full of fragile things, packed in behind plastic milk crates full of books to the point where I could barely make out the china cabinet or what was behind its glass doors. There were narrow, very narrow, winding passageways between the stacks of things, so a slender person could get to everything, with difficulty and maybe some scraping against their arms.

At a wild guess, this would easily add several million to the total. So many of these things were old. Grandma didn’t have a lot of very old antiques downstairs; most of everything she had down there dated from 1920 or later. Some of this stuff might be over 200 years old. Plus, I couldn’t even begin to assess the chests of jewelry just from seeing the tops of them, and I didn’t know how many other enclosed chests there might be with gold and jewels in them.

There was a manila envelope hanging in a transparent plastic pouch, which was attached to a nail in the nearest support beam by a chain and a grommet, directly in front of a full-length antique mirror that wouldn’t have been out of place in an evil queen’s boudoir, telling her to kill Snow White. I went over there and removed the manila envelope, and opened it.

“Dearest Tara, the grandchild who carries the old blood more strongly than any I have seen so far, what is here in the attic is for you. Your legacy. I have taken all that I can carry already. It breaks my heart to part with it; I can yield it up only because I know you will care for it as I have.

“I am not dead. You may see me again, depending, but none of the rest of the family will, and that too breaks my heart. But a person in the United States cannot hold an identity over a century, and it is too hard to establish the new ones. I have spent twenty-seven years growing my new identity, because when I saw how you behaved toward your possessions, and toward your family, I hoped you would be what I believe you are, and everything I have seen of you since reinforces that belief. Except for that apartment. I don’t know how you bear to live in it. I know that you have had to move several times, and that you are often inviting girlfriends to live with you who then leave you, so I believe you are storing your possessions where you think they will be safer than your apartment, and perhaps also following the modern fashion because you believe that being what you truly want to be will frighten women away. Perhaps it will. It was more acceptable when I was young.

“I have spoken of the old blood more than once, and I am sure you don’t yet know what I’m talking about. Our kind surround ourselves with what we own. We are greedy, and yield nothing unless we must, for everything is precious to us. We live a very, very long time… and with the coming of electronic measures to verify identity, it becomes harder and harder to hide among humans. Perhaps by the time you need to do that, we won’t need to hide anymore, or perhaps we will have a better solution.

“Your father is descended from the old blood as well, so I thought you might be the one. We are rare. Most of my grandchildren have only my own blood, and your parents had only you, so you were my best hope. I am pleased to see you have shown all the signs. Even if you are just human, you have the correct attitude, and I am sure that if you age and end like a human, you will carefully arrange for the things I own and the things you own to be returned to the family.

“Things are not as important as family. You know this. Things are precious because they remind us of the things that are most precious. Family, and memories of family. The people you love, and the memories of those you love. There are humans who treat family as disposable, who can be cruel and write family out of their heart for not being what the humans want them to be. There are other humans who treat family as nothing but possessions, and those humans will lose those family, because people are never merely possessions. I lost family that way, in the past, by treating my family like things to own, not like people. In this era, and with the example I have tried to make from the lessons I have learned, I believe you will never have that problem.

“I know you do not intend to continue the bloodline. I know that someday, in the far future, you may change your mind, but if you do not, the family I created will be all the more precious to you. I know you have always treated the cousins of your own age as brothers and sisters, the cousins of the younger age as nieces and nephews, perhaps even your own children. They are the most precious thing you have. You may add a person you love, in the future, perhaps several. That only adds to the precious things you have. No person you love should ever try to separate you from what you already hold precious.

“I have been alive a very long time. I have held to precious things, as memories of who has not passed the years along with me. I cannot take any of them with me now, so care for them for me. You may sell any coins, precious stones, stamps, or pure gold or silver; those things no longer matter to me. They carry no memories, they only allow me to care for my things and my family. They are yours to use if you need money. Everything else, I beg you to hold to. Someday, I hope, I will be able to talk to you and tell you of the memories everything here holds.”

I put down the letter and looked around. Everything here had memories? This looked as if possibly twice, maybe even three times as many things were in here as were downstairs. How old was Grandma?

The letter went on. “You will find it hard to believe when I tell you of the old blood. Humans call us dragons. You imagine a monstrous beast with scales. We can be that, though in most of us, the blood has thinned enough that such a transformation is nearly impossible. We can breed with humans, and we look human, but we live far, far longer. I am five hundred years old and I am not old, though my human form seems so. It’s because I surrounded myself with grandchildren, and they saw me as old. Where I am now, in my new life, I appear young. You would barely recognize me, Tara.

“The same may happen to you someday. I think there is enough of the old blood in you that you will live a long, long time.

“I will try to come to you, sometime in the future, when your blood has proven itself, or not. Until then, I hope you understand. I am rebuilding a new life. Before long I will have a new family. I grieve the loss of the one I must leave behind, and hope that someday we will no longer need to hide what we are, and I will be able to rejoin you.

“Love forever, Grandma.”

I stared at the letter in disbelief. Dragons? Was this some kind of a joke? I actually didn’t find it hard to believe Grandma was immortal, or incredibly long-lived, when I was surrounded by so many antiquities, and with the evidence of three different legal identities I’d found in her purse as a child. But seriously, dragons?

I looked into the mirror. Grandma saw something in me I’d never seen in myself. Was it seriously evidence of dragon blood?

She’d said the transformation was “nearly impossible” for most of the ones she claimed had the “old blood.” Without any serious belief that anything would happen, I thought, as I stared into the mirror, What if I looked like a dragon?

And then stared, and stared harder.

My eyes were gold, without irises, and slitted. Like a cat. Or a reptile. Or a dragon.

Eventually they turned back to my normal brown, within an eyeblink.

I laboriously climbed back down the stairs. Setting up the family trust would take time, and persuasion, and probably arguments. I was going to let Uncle Paul know that the letter said Grandma agreed with me – I wasn’t going to say anything about the dragon thing, though. She hadn’t mentioned that in the letter she’d given him to scan and mail to me, only the one I found in the attic. I’d tell him I’d found a few antiques in the attic to add to the list.

My hands were itching to get back up there, to start going through everything there, cataloguing it, deciding what could be brought downstairs to be shared with the family, what could be sold to support the trust, what I wanted to keep hidden away until I saw Grandma again. But first things first. The family was the most important thing.

#52 project #slice of life #takes a fantasy turn toward the end

[vermillioncrown]

musings on double bastard (there's a lot of scattered notes everywhere):

originally i had shigure get together w kakashi at the very end, because with how cagey the both of them are it's unlikely anyone else would get closer enough to be viable partners. idk if it really makes sense now w current dynamic established

(or it's shigure's nrt-fan-brain-rot biting him in the butt and 'everyone's hot for kakashi, it's so normal, lalalalala conceal don't feel' when team minato grows up. doesn't help that kakashi's more impressive as a person instead of just a character)

('can he smell horniness? mask it mask it mask it' goes around fucking his way through the tokubetsu population, catches feelings, asks imuzuka yubi very seriously if it was possible to smell feelings.)

^dichotomy of the alien-like outsider pov of shigure's everything vs the hot glue + ketchup/mustard cables inside his brain

=

there's a period of time where shigure is on sick leave (aka "can't have you going crazy so you're out the ANBU forces/hokage guard, light admin duties only"), and he's just lazing around at home.

coincidentally, this is when shisui and itachi are being scouted for ANBU. they get in.

and shisui realizes they cannot tell shigure. as incomprehensible his older brother may be, he has very obvious pain points. the 'too-quick promotion of prodigious children' was one that came out when itachi blazed through the chunin exam, and consequently was very hurt by his own sensei and cousin's denial of his nomination.

so for the next two weeks after shisui and itachi leave ANBU basics (but have yet to receive their assignments) that they're trying to act Very Normal in the compound (because while most everyone has shinobi instincts and whatnot, there's something about shigure's instincts that are. well. it's another level)

they think they're in the clear to have an argument about "shigure-nii wouldn't care -" "shigure-nii would absolutely care -" "- it's not his call -" "- you don't think he can't make it his call?!"

and it turns out shigure was taking his lunch break sunning on the rooftop (+ rin's special spf 100) ('sunbeams my beloved') (he likes it dark at home bc it's his hidey-hole, but he misses the sun otherwise) and to shisui and itachi's horror shigure now knows there is something worth arguing about

the snippet has shigure inductively reason out what the two of them are hiding (bc getting put on leave means "shigure you absolutely cannot ferret around my documents, so help me i'll get kakashi's ninken to chase you away -"), the whole process also revealing some of shisui's personal secrets, itachi learning way too much

#project: double bastard #redglyphs

[wanderingcas]

going through old documents, found an "attack on titan" destiel au that i wrote a little while back for @aerodaltonimperial. thought i'd post it somewhere!

Dean first saw Castiel Novak on his third day as a recruit of the 104th Cadet Corps.

Every one of the freshly new recruits were getting trained on the mobility gear apparatus—for flying through the air with cables, and having more of a chance fighting the Titans, apparently. Having seen a Titan up close and personal, the damage and carnage it could cause, Dean had serious doubts whether flying through the air in a thing like that would do anything against those giant dumb monsters.

But seeing Castiel training on the apparatus, his legs and arms delicately balanced while being suspended by the wires, his jet-black hair catching the sunlight as he gracefully hung in the air—Dean could only stare, stunned, and feel for the first time that they had some sort of hope against the monsters that stalked the walls.

After that, Dean seemed to notice Castiel everywhere.

It made no sense that he did; they were polar opposites. Where Dean had a group of new friends he ate with in the mess hall, Castiel ate dinner by himself. Dean was mouthy to his superiors during his training sessions—it was a motivational technique for himself, to defy authority—while Castiel sweat through each of the drill rounds without complaint or any signs of slowing down. 

Dean was loud, brash, flirty—Castiel was moody, and Dean heard him say all of two words in the first two weeks they were there (a “thank you” to one of the people serving them food in the mess hall).

Dean kept trying to talk to him on the training field, but all he got was a glare. Dean wasn’t sure why he wanted to break Castiel’s mysterious exterior, figure out what his deal was—maybe because the more walls that went up, the more Dean wanted to knock them down.

A month into their training, Dean and Castiel were assigned to each other for a sparring session. Castiel slammed Dean onto the ground in a few short moves, their chests heaving together from the effort, and Dean discovered that he didn’t even mind losing.

“You sure you’ve been here as long as me?” Dean joked as Castiel helped him up from the ground. “You seem more advanced than the rest of us.” 

Castiel’s face was blank when he replied, “I picked things up all along the way.” 

Dean watched Castiel’s back as he walked away, then went back into the starting position with his fists raised. “So what’s your deal, anyway?” Dean asked. “Nobody even knows where you’re from.” 

“Will that help you win this fight?” Castiel bent his legs as if to spring forward.

Running a hand through his sweaty hair, Dean admitted, “Well, no.” 

“Then I don’t see how it’s relevant.” Without warning, Castiel pounced at him, Dean held up his arms to defend Castiel’s blows, and they once again began circling each other in the combat ring.

Castiel started hanging out with a girl called Meg—another loner among the recruits. Dean tried not to be jealous of her getting all of Castiel’s secret smiles. They were the most insular pair in the training camp, murmuring to each other whenever they hung out at the mess hall.

“I’m going to make that guy my friend,” Dean told Charlie, “if it’s the last goddamn thing I do.” 

“Careful, Winchester, or I’d think you’re developing a crush,” Charlie teased him with a small jab of her elbow to his side.

“Am not,” Dean grumbled, pushing her away.

Benny leaned over the table “Wait, are you talking about Novak?” At Dean’s nod, Benny whistled low through his teeth. “You know that guy is crazy, right? I heard he killed a guy before coming here, and they were going to put him in jail, but forced him to do this training to become a Scout instead.” 

“No, you got it all wrong,” Jo cut in. She was munching on an apple and wiping the juice from her chin. “I heard that he wouldn’t even come here unless they made him a Scout. He’s this really good fighter, right? Was part of some underground fighting ring, totally illegal. Decided to join just on a whim.” 

“Bullshit,” Benny said. “You got it all wrong, Little Harvelle, as usual.” 

“I told you not to call me that,” Jo said through clenched teeth, pointing her apple menacingly in his direction.

Dean sighed, and stood with his empty plate to leave his friends to argue. As he passed Castiel’s table, they shared eye contact for a split second before Dean averted his eyes. Putting his dirty plate on the pile with the others, he braced his shoulders as he walked into the cold.

He stood with his back against the wall of the large building, feeling the bricks dig into his shoulder blades and listening to the buzz of the recruits inside the large hall. He faced the forest enshrouded the training camp, taking a deep breath of chilled autumn air. Mosquitos buzzed on the wind.

“Mind if I join you?”

Dean nearly jumped out of his skin at the voice. He turned to Castiel, who was standing there with blank eyes. Dean nodded, dumbly, and gestured to the space on the wall next to him. 

“It was getting too loud in there,” Castiel explained as he leaned against the wall. “I assume it was the same for you.”

Dean stared at him.

"What?" Castiel asked, expression twisting into something uncomfortable.

“Dude, I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me. Ever.” 

Castiel huffed a laugh. He slid to the ground and sat with his elbows resting on his knees. “It’s not my fault that you only attempted to talk to me while we were training.” 

“You’re the kind that gets in the zone, huh?”

“You could say that.”

Dean sat next to him. He spreads his legs out in the cool grass. “Well, I’m Dean. If you didn’t already know that.”

Castiel nodded. “I did.” 

“And that’s really your name—Castiel?” At Castiel’s nod, Dean hummed. “Well, that’s a mouthful. I think I’m just gonna call you Cas.” 

Castiel shrugged one shoulder. “If you wish.” 

Dean grinned. “Cas,” he said again into the dark night. “Yeah, that sounds way better.” 

Cas gave Dean one of his small, secret smiles, and Dean’s heart jolted from the sight of it. “I agree,” he said, softly.

#attack on titan au #destiel #my writing #will i write more of this? #maybe. if i get bullied enough #if you haven't seen the anime or read the manga don't worry #you can still read this drabble and kinda get the idea

[zvaigzdelasas]

Aleksandras Lileikis (10 June 1907 – 26 September 2000) was the chief of the Lithuanian Security Police in Vilnius during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania and a perpetrator of the Holocaust in Lithuania. He signed documents handing at least 75 Jews in his control over to Ypatingasis būrys, a Lithuanian collaborationist death squad, and is suspected of responsibility in the murder of thousands of Lithuanian Jews. After the 1944 Soviet occupation of Lithuania, he fled to Germany as a displaced person. Refused permission to immigrate to the United States because of his Nazi past, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1950s. In 1955, his second application for permission to immigrate was granted and he settled in Norwood, Massachusetts, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1976. Eli Rosenbaum, an investigator for the Office of Special Investigations, uncovered evidence of Lileikis' war crimes; proceedings for his denaturalization were opened in 1994 and concluded with Lileikis being stripped of his United States citizenship. [...] He may have helped other Lithuanian Nazi collaborators obtain CIA jobs or immigrate to the United States.[18] In 1995, the CIA claimed that "there was no evidence that this Agency was aware of his wartime activities". This statement was described as a "gross distortion" by journalist Eric Lichtblau.[19] In 1955, he applied again for permission to immigrate to the United States. Although the CIA passed negative information to United States immigration authorities, his application was accepted without explanation.[20][15] Lileikis' deputy, Kazys Gimžauskas, and three other subordinates also immigrated to the United States.[20] He settled in Norwood, Massachusetts and became a naturalized citizen in 1976.[1][21] Lileikis was involved in the Lithuanian community in the United States; he attended a Lithuanian Catholic church and worked as an administrator for a Lithuanian encyclopedia company [...] Historian Timothy Naftali notes, "the presence of this mass murderer in the general population sent a signal to fellow veterans of the secret police in Nazi-occupied Lithuania that Cold War America was forgiving of these murders".[18] [...]

In late 1982, Lileikis was mentioned in a cable from Berlin as a potential war criminal and head of the Lithuanian Security Police, who had possible connections to Einsatzkommando 3, part of the Einsatzgruppen. The same week, another Lithuanian-American named him as a Nazi collaborator in an interview. This attracted the attention of Eli Rosenblum, who was working as an investigator for the OSI. After gathering information on Lileikis, Rosenblum went to his residence to question him. Lileikis admitted his leadership of the Lithuanian Security Police, but denied his involvement in the killings, stating that he had only done routine security work. Lileikis claimed that he heard rumors that the Germans killed Jews at Ponary but that it was done without Lithuanian participation.[23]

In late 1994, the OSI opened civil denaturalization proceedings against him, seeking to strip Lileikis of his United States citizenship under Section 340(a) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act,[24] which requires United States district attorneys to open civil proceedings against naturalized citizens suspected of lying on their immigration paperwork.[25] At the time, Lileikis was the oldest person to be subject to such an action. The CIA tried to stop the case being filed, threatening not to allow the disclosure of some of the classified records in court.[26] Describing Lileikis as "one of the most important Nazi collaborators" to be investigated by the United States, OSI accused Lileikis of lying about his World War II activities on his immigration paperwork. Lileikis refused to comment on the allegations to the Associated Press and invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned by prosecutors.[27][11] Lileikis refused to state even simple details on his life, such as his date and place of birth. Under federal law, the Fifth Amendment applies only to criminal proceedings; the prosecution argued that Lileikis should not be entitled to Fifth Amendment protection because he was not subject to criminal prosecution in the United States. The defense argued that Lileikis had a legitimate fear of prosecution in Lithuania, and should therefore not be compelled to testify.[28][29]

In 1995, Judge Richard Stearns of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that Lileikis was not entitled to Fifth Amendment protection because the government had a "legitimate need for a witness's testimony" in enforcing "the organic laws of the United States".[30][31] On 16 November, he granted the prosecution's motion to compel Lileikis' testimony; since he still refused to testify, the prosecution filed another motion on 18 December seeking that allegations which Lileikis refused to answer be admitted, as if Lileikis had confessed to them. This motion was granted by the court on 9 January 1996.[32] The Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad and several other experts submitted affidavits along with more than a thousand pages of archival documents relating to the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, the Holocaust in Lithuania, and Lileikis' activities.[33] On 24 May 1996, Stearns found him responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews.[1][33] The judge noted that Lileikis was "attempting to turn the classic Nuremberg defense on its head by arguing that 'I was only issuing orders.'" Lileikis was immediately denaturalized[...]

Polish authorities indicated that he could face trial in Poland for the murders of Polish Jews in Vilnius.[34] Lithuania initially indicated that he would not be prosecuted due to the lack of eyewitnesses.[35][...]

Lithuania was slow to prosecute Lileikis. At the time, the country sought membership in NATO and the United States asserted that prosecution of Lileikis and other war criminals would be strong evidence of adherence to "western values," a prerequisite to joining the alliance. The message was relayed by the United States Vice President Al Gore during a meeting with the speaker of the Seimas in April 1997 and by thirty members of Congress in a November 1997 letter to the President of Lithuania.[37]

On 6 February 1998, Lileikis was charged with the crime of genocide by Lithuanian prosecutors.[1] It was the first Nazi war crimes prosecution in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.[38] He appeared in court in November 1998, but fainted just after few minutes and was taken away in an ambulance. Three special laws were passed in order to enable continuing prosecution of Lileikis and his former deputy Gimžauskas[1] (who had left the United States in 1995, facing denaturalization proceedings).[39] One of the changes allowed video evidence during genocide trials.[1] He was questioned over video on 23 June 2000 but after twenty minutes the proceedings were interrupted by an attending doctor and Lileikis was taken to a hospital.[40] The U.S. Department of Justice and Jewish organizations accused him of feigning illness.[21] The Simon Wiesenthal Center accused Lithuanian authorities of deliberately prolonging the trial in hopes that Lileikis would die of natural causes before he could be convicted.[21] The trial was well-publicized in Lithuania.[41] Lileikis died of a heart attack at Santara Clinics in Vilnius on 26 September 2000,[8] still insisting on his innocence and that he was the victim.[1][42] His funeral at the Vaiguva [lt] cemetery was attended by about a hundred people, including Mindaugas Murza, a radical nationalist.[2][43]

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