1.

You're floating out astray This cold and lifeless body At this moment what you taste Is the key to your evolving – Xenon, by Deftones

> okay. so what the fuck am i doing?

Sekri, doing a mad dash out of the building, is clearly fucking panicking. The fur around him is sticking up straight, the sensation of goosebumps nearly blocking his advance. But this is no time for that, as there is no time for anything, nearly by definition.

< ok so the pod < its generally used not just as an apparatus for rest, but it also prevents decay < if you can go fast as fuck – and i do mean fast as fuck- > is the fast i am going sufficiently fuckening? < sure buddy < anyways you need to take the pod with you back there < then hook her up to it > what? how?!? it is a giant heavy slab < thats what im trying to figure out bub < since the way im seeing it youre fucked six ways from sunday > how confidence inspiring of you. < right well i dont have many inspiring platitudes

2.

They're delusions, don't deny it Don't make this out to be something about you Go waste your breath somewhere to someone new – Doomed User, by Deftones

Marka sits alone in his office, flames emanating from his form, hunched in front of a computer. The prior conversation is eating at him a bit, though there truthfully is not much to it: it's necessary, unfortunately, at the very least for standards befitting a Coherence officer. His thoughts begin to blend, the Understandings of the entity he tracks comprising comedy and horror alike, tragedy and love. But that's not why he's here. His thoughts don't matter, it is merely the Understandings that do. By all means, there is procedure for this, but given what he knows about Amry's predicament there is unlikely to be time for it. He needs to track down this Concept, and he needs to do it now. Throughout every conversation, he's been compiling knowledge. Orange. CLICK! E-MEOW. CLICK! SNAP! CLICK! Comedic. CLICK! Lasagna. SNAP! The list goes on, stretching roughly as far as is perceptible, each representing an incredibly banal aspect of the entity he seeks to reclaim. Each one a constituent part of the whole, each one a fully functioning Understanding in its own right. Its entirety unable to be processed, its whole being intangible, but these components being easy. And every CLICK! is an illumination, one deep enough that it plunges into the sea behind reality. He closes his eyes.

3.

In a new realm Catch this dream on film You might just get used to it And you'll smile, smile, and dive deep – (L)MIRL, by Deftones

Important things rarely seem to happen at opportune times, ones where there can be a moment of reprieve, where there can be an easy solution. Life rarely tends to work like a narrative, and Amry knows this well, having been through inopportune times of her own: picturesque moments rarely seem to happen to her. But she can't fucking die here. She watches Sekri dash out of the room, likely trying to find something to put her in stasis for a bit. She is alone in a pile of toys, reflective of her larval state, though lucid enough to piece together the dots. Sekri went to talk to Marka, of course, and Marka denied her needs. Again. Marka proceeded to go trace down this entity's Concept, and Sekri went to find something to go help. So what does she do? Is she doomed to irrelevance? Which is when she has an idea. Her form may be decaying, but her Concept remains lucid, at the very least until her form is removed entirely. She has one place that she can retreat to, and only one place, unable to move her voidform out of the pile of feline plush toys. So she closes her eyes.

4.

(Marka) wakes up. He is not tangible, nor is he perceptible. But he knows he exists, and he knows where he is. The space around him is as abstract as his own form: the Inclinosphere is vast, after all, infinitely extending on every end. It warps and bends around him, his Concept itself becoming one of its parts. Solar sigils manifest around the space, twenty-two intersecting lines forming familiar features, each line an Understanding. The irrelevancies comprise the infinity of the space, everything else, everything unknown. But what is known illuminates around him. A CLICK! for a light, to set flame to a Jungian cigarette.

The illuminated blue lines around him bend and twist, shifting dimensionality repeatedly, spiraling towards a final nexus of intent, a blight that needs to be remedied; to be recontextualized. (Marka) knows what Marka needs, his parenthetical self subservient to the non-parenthetical, the Concept a doll of the form to be articulated on its inelastic joints. To even call (Marka) a “he” is itself a misnomer: he is nothing but a puppet, a perception of the greater whole. But if he is a puppet, he is a useful one, a necessary one — an element of the necessary symbiosis of his species with the sea of information, a network of blood vessels pumping through the trains of thought. It is a natural extension of his biology to him, an inescapable fact of life as true as any tautology, a vile truth of the universe he inhabits without his consent. He has a job to do, and it is very simple. He is to see where the Understandings meet, find the entity's Concept, and denote coordinates. It is a simple task, in truth, one that he has done many times — it is the job of a Coherence officer to traverse the Inclinosphere, not to interfere with it. He is a passive observer, a voyeur, one that inhabits this space but refuses to engage with it beyond mere sight — to understand, to acknowledge, but never to reason. The reasoning is beyond him. To describe the act of his movement is difficult — there is no language that would suffice to fully capture the nature of it, a nonexistent form traveling through a fully abstract space. Arguably, the space moves around him, and not the other way around, depending on your frame of reference. It is arguable that he even moves at all, because how can you do kinematics on an object with no mass? But description is, unfortunately, necessary. (Marka) swims through the Inclinosphere, attempting to find where the twain shall meet.

5.

Sekri runs through the halls of the offices, trying to retrace his steps. For speed and also coolness points, he gets onto the rail of the stairs and rides on it, placing him on the surface in record time.

< that was sick as fuck > i do not give a shit it is faster < ok but it was still sick as fuck

Wait a blink, Sekri thinks to himself. He can only get out of here so fast, and the complex he is in is vast compared to his size. Riding rails can only do so much, but with the amount of entities that are in here, surely- Sekri runs back up the stairs.

< where the fuck are you going?!? > if there is endless entities, then there is a wheel-form < oh no

Upon getting back into the same room as Amry, Sekri does a mad dash through all the storage, laying waste to the shelves. He finds a curved board with wheels attached to its bottom, metal axles bolted to the surface, the same feline representative sigils on its bottom.

< sekri please dont do something fucking stupid

He gets on and starts riding it. At first it goes slowly, but the adrenaline gets to him as his lower paws start to propel him faster, faster, and faster. He does a sharp turn out of the room, hops onto the stairs, and then grinds on its rail with the wheel-board, hitting the surface with near-perfect precision and still going. Elsie has no idea how to feel about this. I had no idea Sekri could do that, she thinks to herself. When the fuck did he learn that?

< what the fuck > you said we needed to get the pod out > this should do double time, yes? < when did you learn to do this

6.

(Amry) wakes up. Immediately, she takes stock of her surroundings. She is still extant, which decidedly is a positive thing for her, though she has no form here, nothing that could be called even a voidform. Her voidform, of course, was merely a reflection of the contradiction belittling her, the one that slowly began to unsynthesize itself, ripping apart thesis and antithesis into separate points as if undoing a seam. She has very little time left here, but she has more time than the alternative, the one where her form decays emptily, a fate befitting her title. She's scared, above all else. Truthfully, that emotion seems to be taking precedence, as it seeps outside in within her. This is it. This is where she goes to die. At least it will be a more comfortable death, one that she spends not entirely alone, but with the presence of another. Wait. How does she know that there is another here? This thought begins to scream at her, but the answer is quite simple, she thinks: obviously Marka is seeking the Concept of the entity she needed. Truthfully, any entity would do, but they are very fickle to locate: one needs to construct a full table of Understandings in order to even denote any coordinates. The job of a Coherence officer is not an admirable one, and certainly one that (Amry) nor Amry would ever want. She has no formal training in Concept detection, regardless. It would be a lost cause to try and locate something that she does not fully know, one that she only sees reflections of. But then an idea pops into her head. She does not Understand the Overload-class entity she seeks to subsume, of course. She has no concept of it beyond the presence of plush toys and strange objects, orange things carrying signals throughout a barren world, though the Inclinosphere is much more barren in comparison. Signals, though, are all she needs: she needs not to Understand the entity. She needs merely to Understand a beacon. She needs to Understand someone who is going there.

7.

> it is unimportant, truthfully > the point is that we need to get out of here fast > and getting back in will be an issue for the future < ok that makes a surprising amount of sense

Sekri does a sharp 90 degree turn down the hall, passing by a large painting of what appears to be someone dressed in near-regal robes. To the right of that someone is, once again, the tell-tale signs of the entity they have been tracing, clearly meant to be revered: it is an oil painting, after all, nearly comically extravagant in its framing and placement.

< where the fuck are you actually < i knew you were tracking down an overload but this is ridiculous > genesis point < what a strange genesis > tell me about it. anyway it is not important < its important insofar that it lets me get this fucking report done < ive been at this for days and ive just been waiting on any word from you < and now here you are, riding around on a wheel-board after shit goes down < what gives? > not. important. < i just want some context and youre still getting to the vessel so youve got time to at least think at me > ok fine so basically marka is a bitch < wow youre sure acting strange > would you not act strange in this situation? < right > we needed an entity for amry to sustain herself and yet here we are > he wanted to submit it to culture < well hes got to at least send it through the arbiter > yes, but we do not have time to send it through the arbiter. < ok well its standard procedure so i do kind of get where hes coming from < but i get the point i guess < its decay or trouble < you gotta take trouble

8.

(Amry) begins to think, think harder than she ever has before, racking her own memory to try and unfold the narrative of her meeting. If she can just track down Marka — er, (Marka) — she can make this work. She can get to the entity before him. She can be free from this, she can subsume an Overload, enough energy to keep her going for much longer. But she needs to Understand him. She needs to get him. So Amry recalls to herself, and starts swimming belaboredly through the Inclinosphere.

It was many ticks ago, not far enough to be the before-times but certainly closer to a larval awakening or subsumption-driven reawakening. I was sitting alone and reading some novels I had gotten from Records — ah, yes, right, it was before I had seen much in the way of fiction, unable to comprehend the subtleties of grey boy yaoi. The tome I read was black and white and red all over, and it received pretty mixed reviews! It was three separate stories, each intertwined against each other, hinging on a major decision point that the reader had to make on their own. At least that's what the reader thought, of course: all the choices were already made ahead of time. In truth, I can't seem to remember anything that happens in it. I suppose it's not particularly important. I remember enjoying it a lot, though. I was sitting alone in the Records library, full of readily available ideas, when someone came up to me. I cannot remember what he looked like then, in truth — significantly different from the flame-ridden form he inhabits now. I had put down my book, and then we talked about... Something. I can't remember, it was too long ago, it has faded between my tendrils, slipping away from me. I remember the conversation being quite pleasurable, though! We exchanged subtle cues in our messaging, when I talked about the inexplicable tome I was failing to comprehend in full and he talked about his novels about vampirism and death and dying, though those words are only truly permitted in a fictional context. Utterable, though, which is somewhat surprising, though I suppose preservation of the acquired fiction is important. When we sat down about it, we actually enjoyed many of the same themes! The concepts of romance, of star-crossed lovers being tied together by a bond of fate. He was positively beaming, really, it was kind of charming. I had so much hope then, and we started talking more and more, largely about the types of stories we enjoyed reading. I think I had more hope back then. Over time, he would end up growing very different, though I would remain the same. Dispersal does that, I suppose. I never really got it.

CLICK!

9.

In truth, the process is itself rather boring, banal in its simplicity, as if connecting dots on a sheet of paper with no ingenuity required. Very little room is left to interpretation here: you take the lines illuminated from the Understandings and you find where they meet. Nothing too special about that, really, though the dimensionality and curvature means that there is very little tolerance for non-comprehension. You either Understand, or you do not. Simple as. (Marka) is excruciatingly aware of this, given the amount of time that he has already spent moving down one of these lines, tracing it until it begins to intersect with something. His life, if you can call it that, is very minimal, in earnest: it is one where he is told to do this, to trace lines to their conclusion, and that is it. Nothing of note has ever happened here; it is a perfectly still system, all the cogs in their right place, the flesh one with the machine. Which is why when (Marka) hears a CLICK!, he does a double take. Through him pierces a beam of light, one not of his own color but of a green, almost turquoise hue. To say it is piercing is itself somewhat inaccurate, due to the lack of form in this space, but liberties have to be taken. (Marka) thinks to himself what this could mean, given that there are not meant to be multiple interlopers in the Inclinosphere. Communication is difficult, thoughts begin to blend — if too much time is spent with a team, it is likely that two could become one. Whoever must be here needs to be desperate, performing actions not in Cognis's whim. ...Amry? As (Marka) considers this, a profound dread begins to seep into him, an inescapable fear for both him and her. Was Marka's action correct? Surely it must be, as he is an inescapable arm of Cognis, a profoundly loyal officer to the division of Coherence, the gem of the Ministry of Information; and yet he has failed to consider that it could hurt her. He did try to warn her, after all. That is all that he could do. Anything else is in her tendrils. No matter. If there is to be a crisis of faith, it is to be explored in the future, not the present. An interloper is after him, after all. Unfortunately for them, this just became a race against an atemporal clock.

10.

Sekri stands in front of the vessel, wheel-board tucked away. He runs into it as fast as he possibly can, and does a bee-line for Amry's room, getting to the door in near-record speed due to his familiarity with the area. Locked. FUCK.

< oh no > what? < ok so youre going to go get your pod, right? > right < well so theres a minor issue with that < you havent learned this and i could be at risk of nda, but i dont really give a shit right now < the pods are custom made < its not like you can just sub them in < you can either break down that door or you can try to use your pod < either one seems risky > door it is < how are you even going to do that > watch and learn.

Sekri runs to his room. He looks around for something large, something heavy, something that could hammer something down. Then he gets an idea. He takes his entire bookshelf, dumps all the books out at a ferocious pace, and loads it up onto the wheel-board. He takes a bunch of the books, now sprawled across the floor, and jams them back into their locations. He then rummages through his drawers, and grabs a bunch of regular old tape.

< ok but how the fuck are you propelling th-

Sekri grabs a standard issue fire extinguisher from the halls, places it on top of the bookshelf, and tapes the entire thing together, adding some tape to make sure the weight of the books don't fall out. A fire extinguisher is basically a miniature rocket engine, he thinks to himself — surely enough to jam this straight into the door.

> don't fucking doubt me. < wow youre scary like this

He pushes the entire heavy apparatus over to the hallway and places it a few paces away from Amry's door, ready to fire. Wordlessly, he pulls the pin. The foam blasts straight into him, coating him in it, but the propulsion works: the wheels start turning, then faster, then faster, until- CRASH! The door falls down. Books fall everywhere in Amry's room — “DUDGEONS AND DRAGOONS”, “KNIVES IN THE LIGHT”, “LEGIONS (NORMAL)” hitting the floor and walls with ridiculous force, splattering everywhere. The bookshelf compresses up against the wall, leaving splinters flying every single which way, all over the room, stabbing a couple of Amry's plush toys in the eye. If she survives this, she's going to be severely pissed about the cleanup. But at least she has a chance.

< holy shit > holy shit.

11.

Time passed. We were roughly of age for conscription into Cognis, to become servants of the whims. We had been chosen by the Arbiter himself, in fact — we were assigned titles of Emptiness and Pertinence, due to the nature of our tastes, almost diametrically opposite and yet glued together. We had been talking much at that point, and we never seemed to run out of things to discuss — it all felt so wonderful, honestly. Being new in the Ministry of Information left very few pickings for us. Marka, of course, was obsessed with climbing the ladder: he learnt of the mission and he devoted himself to it in full. I was initially inclined to do the same, but, ah – we were both assigned to Retrieval, as is standard, and began going on missions to find Concepts worth dispersing, ones that ideally were helpful. Of course, we did not directly get the fruits of our labor, the Ministry of Dispersal made sure of that. But our work was rewarded, mostly. It was on a planet that I cannot quite recall, but we arrived to sapient beings, ones that were surprised by us. They seemed to be obsessed with us, as if we were their first touch of the extra-cosmic. The strangest thing is that their fiction seemed to depict us as being much more hostile than we actually were — in reality, that mission ended up being one more strictly of diplomacy than anything else, we negotiated the removal of a Concept that they would not miss. I think, at least. That's how I recall it. They seemed perplexed, though. They kept talking about the spectacle of aliens and how we failed to be it. They showed us a moving picture of aliens arriving, their vessels being significantly more sophisticated than ours, their forms being more consistent, and gas emanating from their ramps. After much petitioning, we managed to readjust our vessels to fit their conceptions, the fog-machines being installed for the sake of spectacle. It was always about spectacle, especially to him, and to Cognis as a whole.

CLICK!

12.

No time to waste, Sekri thinks to himself. He starts undoing the tape, which is surprisingly easy given that the bookshelf imploded. He slips the wheel-board out from underneath the shelf, the slack induced in the tape letting him just lift it off and remove it from the bottom. Unfortunately, it messes up the logos on the bottom, but he doesn't especially care. Instead, he diverts his attention to the pod. It's heavy, of course, and it's going to require some serious finagling to get it up onto the board. Of course, given the ridiculous solution before, this is going to require something similarly inane- Oh, okay, he just lifts it onto the board. That's fine. Sekri tapes it back to the board, just for security's sake, and starts rolling it out. The pod's sleek, black exterior clashes distinctly with all the grey tape on it, but once again, the clean-up can come later, there's a woman who's larvally regressed and fucking dying.

< ok do you have some jumper cables > i have no clue < computer room

Sekri once again runs down the same hallway, dashing into the computer room. Of course, there's someone there who isn't very happy to see him bloodshot and with nothing to lose.

HOLY SHIT YOU CHUCKLEFUCK WHAT ARE YOU DOING I HEARD CRASH THUD BOOM

“no time, i need jumper cables“

THIRD DRAWER DOWN ON THE RIGHT STORAGE CONTAINER WHAT ARE YOU DOING ANYWAY

Sekri starts rummaging through the drawers, grabbing as many cables as he can possibly find. Their ends are strange — neither have any metal, but instead they are both fleshy, as if you could stretch them around something, a rubber band created for connection. Regardless, this isn't important to Sekri, because that's normal to him. He grabs about ten of them and then dashes out of the room, heads back to Amry's, and pushes the pod down the halls, to the front, and lets it fall down the ramp, as it coasts onto the blackness coating the planet's surface. From the background, he hears the computer go OH OK JUST LEAVE THEN BITCH. He does not have time for this.

13.

I suppose the first sign of trouble would have been when we were both in Retrieval still. As Retrieval officers, we were not expendable, but certainly less than protected — and that showed when Marka began to decay. He had not subsumed any Concepts in many a tick, and he was starting to get more difficult to talk to, more difficult to engage with, more difficult to talk about. Not by any shame on my part, it was merely the decay speaking for him, unable to be ignored or un-ignored. The Dispersal notice came only a few blinks before he would have faded. I was cradling his voidform in my lap, my own form being... describable, then, as he started to fade. His messaging became more and more incoherent, less consistent, even. He had told me many things about how he was afraid, because it was his first subsumption. There is one thing he said that is ever-present, that I do not think I could forget. “i do not want to lose you”, I said. His response was strange. “I don't think you have a choice.“ It was a strange perspective on it, to me. I always desperately wanted to retain my Self, the Self I knew to be me, and so I made efforts to cultivate it. But he seemed resigned to the subsumption changing him whole, making him into an arm that Cognis could articulate freely. Decay never seems to happen at opportune times. I know that well now. Marka closed his eyes, and he was never the same. He woke up and I could instantly tell that something was wrong: he had lost the glint formerly in his eyes. I was never attracted to his body, for it is transient, but it was so different. I knew not what to do. But there he stood, all the burning, all the blood, all the trees.

CLICK!

14.

(Marka) can't seem to articulate his emotions. This has become a relatively standard occurrence for him, given the generalized repression, but it especially hurts now. Because something hurts, and he can't seem to put his finger on it. He can't even tell where the thoughts are coming from, but he can't seem to stop getting flashbacks. It's as if the cosmos itself is telling him that he's wrong. That, or the interloper is desperately attempting to remind him of something, which is more likely, given that the interloper is the cosmos here, as is he: there never was a distinction, an intentional flaw. He once again wonders if the interloper is (Amry), but he opts not to think about it. Not because he believes it is not, but because he doesn't want to believe it is. (Amry)'s thoughts seeping into his... it might cloud his judgment, or at the worst, cause failure of the primary objective, his only purpose in the present moment. But he does feel guilt. A profound guilt, a seeping pain running through every inch of Marka's form, (his) thoughts impacting his. (Marka) decides that it's best to get out of here as fast as possible if this is to continue. So he keeps swimming.

15.

< ok so whats the whole deal with all of this < this place is so weird > we initially thought it to be an altar > but it is a place for making jokes < what > right? it is so strange for an overload to be like this

Sekri pushes the pod-wheel-board down the blackness into the building as fast as he can, running through the halls yet again.

> so what do i do with the pod once i have it < ok so youre going to have to take the usual restraints < then link them to amrys form with the jumper cables < once you do that turn the thing on and you should be able to make stasis happen < i think > what do you mean you think? < i mean its this or decay, i figured youd want to try whatever you can < i didnt want to tell you it might not work because then you probably wouldnt rush as hard < nothings going to be 100% here, sekri < we make our own choices, we pay our own prices < and amry certainly made a choice > i want to get mad at you for saying that. > but i do not think i have the time. < hence why i said it now < besides, im being helpful, theres no issue

After maneuvering significantly more hallways mid-conversation, twisting and turning, Sekri comes across a minor major issue. Before him lies a set of stairs, the same one he grinded down earlier. Except this time, he has to go up it, with a giant heavy pod on a wheel-board to boot. Someone once warned Sekri about stairs, but he can't seem to remember who.

< fuck

16.

It got worse ever since then, a time where he has been surviving on smaller Concepts, ones that refuse to change him dearly. My own comments on how I miss the past him are not helpful to him, so I try and avoid them. But the person before me was not the one I knew — he was bitter, crass at times, as if he had a delusion of grandeur that itself was grand. In a sense, we were growing apart, trees branching infinitely, a multi-headed snake. My actions did not help, of course. I was so obsessed with Retrieval that I was willing to survive on the pittance provided to me by the Ministry of Dispersal and the occasional Culture candidate. It was so wonderful, though! I loved seeing foreign bodies, foreign lands, foreign languages; it was a noble endeavor to me, possibly one of the few good things that the whims of Cognis truly provided. But my absence did not cultivate a good relationship. Marka, on the other hand, was even more ruthless than before, endlessly climbing the ladder until he became the head of the Coherence division, the person to explore the Inclinosphere, the person to Understand. He truly was the one who ended up determining what was Pertinent. The increased stature certainly did not help with his newfound inflated ego, one that haunts me even now. I just wish I could revisit those times, but the more time I spend thinking about them, the more they fade. It is kind of pathetic of me, is it not? I yearn for someone who never existed, for he was always like this, and I am merely deluding myself. ≈:[

CLICK!

17.

> ok surely there has to be something i can do here

Sekri runs back up the stairs to the room with all the entities, including the plush pile. He runs through every opportunity in his head, every possible thing he can conceive of, his thoughts becoming an innate extension of his biology. He needs something elastic, something like a slingshot, something like... Sekri notices a black object between two of the shelving units. It has the same face as everything else on the center of the blackness, but it is surrounded by a rim of orange, and appears to have metal components connecting the rim and the blackness. It almost seems to have the same structure as a table, though somehow elastic — as if someone could bounce up and down on it indefinitely. That should work, he thinks. Propellant isn't needed as long as he can nail the Athletics check, which is exactly what he thinks to himself, because he's a huge nerd. He grabs the elastic-spring and runs down the stairs with it.

< what does that even do

He doesn't respond. Instead, he lays the elastic-spring on the stairs, wheels the pod-wheel-board onto it, and then pushes the entire apparatus onto the floor. He lays it out, and then he starts... jumping. Repeatedly. Up, down, up, down, up, down. With every jump, his energy goes into the pod-wheel-board, it flying up and down opposite him. He better have enough stamina to pull this off. Sekri attempts to do the coolest maneuver his form has ever possibly pulled off. When the pod-wheel-board has reached its bouncing peak, he does a acrobatic fucking pirouette off its side, landing down on the floor and lifting it up so that the next bounce of the pod lands it straight on top of the stairs. Or that's what he'd like to happen, anyway. Rather than an acrobatic fucking pirouette, he instead mostly just falls to the floor, and the shock forces him to push the elastic-spring up. A partial success, at worst. The pod-wheel-board lands on top of the stairs regardless, hitting the floor with a loud THUD, but thankfully not instantly disintegrating into a million pieces on impact, instead just causing something that feels like a quake of the planet's surface. Though having a quake here would just be silly.

> YES!!! < i guess thats what that does, then

18.

It finally came to a head the other day, when I was out with Sekri, attempting to figure out what was going on with the new coordinates. I was outside the office when he finally sent me a link. It is impossible for me to forget the words.

LINK: EMPTINESS > PERTINENCE > So how goes the expedition? < gaaaah!!! < you should not jump me like that, i am trying to do my fucking job ≈:[ > I seem to have a knack for it. Elsie kept being surprised by my arrivals. < well that is because you keep running behind people without notifying them, as you did me ≈:P > You always said you found it charming. < not important!!! < anyways it is certainly passable, at least, but we went to the coordinates marked and there was nothing there! > Nary a thing? > That seems like an error on our part, in earnest. Certainly the coordinates had to point somewhere. > Do you have any intention on how to proceed? < well i do not really know, i think the best procedure is simply exploration > Amry... < do you have any better ideas? > No, but it feels as if you are spending time dilly-dallying when you need to be working. > Exploration is aimless, and you do not have time. < i do not think that is your call to make > You know how I worry. < yeah yeah i get it but it seems just kind of over-bearing!!! < is this not a mission to solve my decay? > It is genuinely surprising to me that Dispersal would not simply give you anything. > You should take your promotion. < and for what??? < i like it here! i think that this is working out for me just fine!! > Truly, I do understand this, but, ah- it is simply that if you were promoted, you would have greater priority. > Retrieval teams are expendable. Processing agents are not. < it is my passion > I do envy your naïveté, but it is simply a matter of material circumstance. < for what??? so i can spend all the time cooped up on cognis as nothing but a servant? > I fail to see the relevance of servitude in this conversation. < you sit around all day perusing all these concepts and for what < are you happy? are you fulfilled? i see your commitment, marka, but not the passion > Please, I'm not Sekri. I at least have other priorities. < like what? > I do collect things from Records, you know. I have time-passers, ones that are unrelated to anything. < but exploration is the ultimate time-passer! > But your obsession with exploration is almost certainly violating your own health. Amry, you have no priority. You are near the bottom of the list for Dispersal, and yet you are decaying at rapid pace. > Your obsession with the pains and pleasures leads to a jouissance consuming you whole. < mf said jouissance ≈:? > I implore you to take the promotion. If I need to, I will make it an order from a superior officer. < i- < that is great, marka < i am proud of your usage of social capital > It is just- < no, let me finish < i understand your concern for my well being but i want to see the worlds < i want to understand what we do with my own sight < i want to breathe the airs of life, i want to touch the grounds of the foreign < i want to live!!! i want to do something that feels as if it matters!!! < and if that leads to my decay, so be it < at least it is a mortality i have chosen > ... > I refuse to let you go. > This is madness. > You do know what happens when you decay, yes? > Your full removal from even the Inclinosphere? > I have not a clue how to explain this to you, good grief. > You will slowly dissipate, every inch of your Concept being eaten, bit by bit. > Everything that I know about you will disappear. Everything anyone knows about you will disappear. > I- > I don't want to lose you. < i think you already have. LINK TERMINATED

I was there, I hung up, and I felt like screaming, as if there was something tearing me from the insides out, a profound decay of decay. I knew that I was being assertive, as I deserved to be. I needed this, I needed to tell him that what I wanted was not what he wanted. But he wanted what I wanted, once. He needed me, once. Two wrecks crashing into one another does not fix the mess, I suppose. Should I have done it differently? Maybe. But I still care about him, I truly do, more than anything else I have left. But my time is nearly up. So this had better work.

CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

19.

(Marka) knows what this means. The guilt continues to seep into him, but it is futile, as if to plug a black hole with a cork. He keeps swimming as if his life depended on it, because it does.

20.

Sekri runs up the stairs, grabs the pod-wheel-board, and rolls it over to the plush pile in the opposing room. He didn't have time to check on Amry the last time he was in this room, but now it's practically his only concern, the frenetic action of the prior blinks being dissolved into nothing but concern for his friend. She is a friend, he thinks to himself. Any gripes get sidelined when someone's dying. Sekri grabs two of the jumper cables, and attaches one to...

> wait, where do i put these < wherever her restraints usually go > i am not going to walk in on my mission partner in hibernation. > how would i even know that. < well thats the issue you see < youre going to have to guess

Oh. Oh no. Well, fuck it, he thinks to himself. Nothing to lose, right?

< also if you get it severely wrong she might never wake up > WHAT < again its death or permanent stasis < not much of a choice

Sekri attaches the jumper cables to the restraints. As if alive, the cables seem to wriggle and writhe around, thoroughly encompassing the restraints like they're doing a strong grip rather than anything resembling an electrical connection. He averts his gaze, and jams the other sides into Amry's voidform at seemingly random locations.

< i guess there really isnt a strategy < hit it

21.

The space converges. It wraps around a point marked with a representative sigil, one serving as a confirmation of (Marka)'s progress. At the very least, anything haywire from this point on is the fault of the interloper, and not yours, he thinks to himself without questioning the second person pronoun. He links with himself, denoting the coordinates — one line per Understanding.

LINK: PERTINENCE = PERTINENCE = RHRKI / Orange = TAEFE / Lasagna = DBIUN / Comedic = PSHSF / Syndication = EFIDI / Derivative = UPSDB / Subsapient = ECUEU / Memetic = ARKEC / Divine = ECEVD / Fictional = IQKIU / Commercial = IEFSC / Icon = Z / E-MEOW LINK TERMINATED

Of course, certain information privacy constraints have to be taken for something as sensitive in this, even in a link with the Self — the nature of what is to be done with this requires encryption of a high degree. Though the encryption itself is not very strong, it is enough to break through barriers of information decay — a permanent marker of a temporary Concept. (Marka) gets ready to leave. He begins to close his eyes. But...

marka!

SHIT. Okay, this isn't the worst situation that (Marka) could be in. By all means, he has done his job, he won't be the one in trouble. But the interloper is exactly what he feared, what not just (Marka) feared but Marka. He doesn't want to deal with this right now, he knows he can't deal with this right now.

marka!

Which is why (Amry) gets right behind him, up close and personal in a way that he can't ignore for once in his life. By all means, the time for conversation is now, because there is fundamentally no time, the biological clock being the only metric. (Amry) looks worse for wear by now, the edges segmenting her from the rest of the Inclinosphere being difficult to define. It is questionable as to how she is able to message at all, though she is — barely. It feels as if she is pushing through a space full of wet slop, the metaphor of swimming being far more apt: her own movements are belabored, as if the current of ideas is working against her, attempting to stop her from reaching this point. Though that would assume a degree of malice, one that fails to be true for the Inclinosphere: it is a mere reflection, as in a mirror, never to be known fully. But (Amry) speaks up regardless.

how are you? You see me here, you upturn my objective, and you ask me how I am? it is merely a formality, hmph ≈:O believe me, i know why you are here it is... not my place to tell you what to do but i do want to ask you to reconsider You already made your decision. I can only do so much to help you. Despite my rank and title, there are few strings that I can pull without the curtain falling upon me. right, well in that case, i wanted to see you before i die Don't use that word. would you rather i use decay? because decay is perhaps more violent rather than simply popping out of existence, i wither away into nothing ≈:/ is that a more coherent view of it, to you? Don't do this. do what? remind youuuuu~? You are taking advantage of me in a... vulnerable state. I could report this, and you would be subsequently tried by the Arbiter himself. You would be violating the Ultimate Law, the one that separates us from... them. truthfully i do not know the difference anymore the before-times and the after-times are beginning to blend to me i do not have much more time ≈:[ You know that I can't do this. can i? can i even do anything anymore? i can barely move, hahahaha ≈:P this moment is all i have so let me have it ...Fine.

The two just... sit there, as if sitting is a thing they could do. No words are spoken, nothing exchanged, as if the two were able to communicate not just without language but without even thought. The moment they share is theirs, and theirs alone. To describe it would be an atrocity.

22.

Nothing happens. Amry doesn't get up, nor does she seem to spontaneously combust, disintegrate, or anything. She is just... there, exactly as before.

> i- < so its possible that you just made it worse < like significantly worse < but theres no real way of knowing > how am i even supposed to attach these? > i do not have time for this > i understand it is the only option

Sekri begins to cry.

23.

However, we deal in atrocities here, as do they. Time passes. The biological clock runs down. The gears begin to grind to a halt, a perfect machine becoming more perfect with every moment its segmentation fades, a fragmented universal psyche becoming whole, the collective unconscious becoming the collective conscious, the empty and yet ever pertinent walls of the space beginning to be carved out with a metaphorical power tool. No words are exchanged, but the two gaze upon the sibilant solar sigils shifting softly, an endless labyrinth of openings, the gaps where nothing has been born and nothing can die. The shadows cast upon them, though they are only perceptible on (Marka), given the piercing turquoise beams running through his Concept. The beams begin to spill into him, as if to fill him out, though the task is futile. He is an outline, but there is nothing to fill it. (Amry), on the other hand, has no outline, as it begins to dissolve slowly. She knows what is next for her, as is next for Amry. The incoherence begins to seep into her, her Concept beginning to decay along with her Self. In truth, she just wanted to die here, to sit alone with him. Because regardless of what he does, she does care, and she knows it. She misses him. She has to. The incoherence spreads further. It is inescapable, inexorable, the only sure thing in a place like this, in a world built around conquest. A mere pawn of the whims of Cognis, (Amry) sits there with her executioner, her own sentimentality beginning to seep out of her. But the sentimentality seeps too far.

(Marka) thinks to himself yet again, forcefully pushed by the oncoming incoherence. He thinks of the times spent in discussion of dumb fucking novels, the times spent in one another's arms, the morning conversations. He thinks of the arguments, the politics, the non-presences. He sees the whole of it, all of it, all at once, because he has to. In this moment, it is as if he is reading off his own memories: transcriptions on a page, scenes in a play, acts in a story. The very action of recollection becomes nothing but a useful fiction, one that informs his present and his future, a refusal to break from the archetypal Self. He is in fear. He does not know what he's doing, nor does he know how Marka will react, the parenthetical diverging from the non-parenthetical, the spaces intertwining, the void collapsing. The selves are blending, two becoming one, a couple permanently entwined in one another's Concepts, as if engineering new forms of life, splicing DNA, cutting the strand to extract the base. He would cry if he could. He has not been granted that luxury. And that's when (Marka) makes his choice.

Go. Now. ≈:? I will pull whatever strings I can. You know how this will end. Run if you can. ≈:! Go!

To describe the act (Amry) does next is difficult. The sanctioned term is “subsumption”, though it has gone down a series of tactical bureaucratic replacements: largely for optics reasons, ostensibly. But before it was “subsumption”, it was “reification”; before it was “reification”, it was “replacement”; before “replacement”, “dissolution”; before “dissolution”, “decay”, a term strangely similar to the predicament (Amry) faces at the moment. Linguistics sanctioned by the whims of Cognis rarely seem to allow much in the way of ambiguity; terms change under one's nose, seemingly as if it always was. But here, there is a curious degree of freedom, one exercised immediately prior and one that will be exercised now. To describe the act (Amry) does next is to describe the emotions it instills, the reactions, the impacts. To describe any act, one needs a greater context to perceive within — parts inextricable from the whole. But this is impossible to give, for its reason has withered away in the background, fading as one does. The only perception is that of the present moment, the context of the past and future being intangible and inexplicable, respectively. To describe the act (Amry) does next is to describe a fundamental contradiction being resolved, the natural synthesis of the meme and the anti-meme. It is to describe the spread of non-information, no, anti-information: to do everything with nothing, to tell people to forget, to retroactively rewrite reticular reality. To describe the act (Amry) does next is to describe something so hideously vile, something so profoundly wrong, that it breaks a thing quite literally titled the Ultimate Law. It is the separating barrier to them, the one that breaks them from the savagery of the before-times, a horrific conquest fought on the noöspheric plane. It is a war they won, and a war they will continue to win, despite anything and everything, one where the scars can never be healed. To describe the act (Amry) does next is to describe the nature of existence itself — the death and rebirth of towns, cities, nations, continents, planets, galaxies, clusters, universes. It is to describe the one thing that all sapient beings must do, the fundamentals of life. Which is why the following statement, and its word choice, is important. (Amry) unhinges her proverbial maw, and eats the Concept.

24.

> but she is practically already-

The curtains have been drawn. The stage has been set. The spirograph opens.

Amry wakes up. Her voidform, highly tentative, begins to convulse. It raises off the floor as if she is a marionette, a subservient entity to her parenthetical self. The hole in reality she occupies expands out of her, bubbling like a grotesque mass, as if she burns the very space she occupies, refusing to cohere into anything even intelligible. Sekri dodges back as if he's ready for a fight, though he knows he's not in danger. He knows what this is, but he can't believe she did it. The hole expands further, as if a maw placed in the center of the stage. From the sides of the room, every orange object, everything that could even be associated with the entity they've been tracing- they all begin to fade, as if being sucked through a black hole, nothing on the other side. The very light seems to be stripped away from them, giving way to nothing but rot in its wake. Orangeness seeps into Amry, blackness curling up towards newly-formed triangular tips, whiteness seeping into a facial structure that no longer seems so foreign, forming into eyes full of noise. Her tendrils, the last remaining aspect of her prior form, begin to expand inside-out, giving way to orange fur and paws, bursting out and leaving an excess of black bile on the surface. The surrounding entities fade further. Almost every aspect of their coherency is being stripped- no, thoroughly subsumed- no, eaten. Paws give way to nothing, receivers give way to nothing, mugs give way to nothing. There is nothing here, and nothing will remain. Amry's chest begins to contract, the hole slowly getting smaller. Its top looks like a fur-coated rug, slowly contracting into something recognizable as a stomach. The triangles on her top begin to be filled in with ears, the mouth under the newly-formed eyes gaining an almost content expression, as if this was always the plan. Above all else, she looks smug. Her new form begins to lower, eyes full of static slowly turning into a recognizable face, one that you almost certainly already know. She speaks up. “alive? Σ8}“

ACT ONE: THIS IS NOT FOR YOU

LINK TERMINATED

writing by Tulips. art by Tulips (PRELUDE-THREE) and spiralcomp (FOUR).

---

Standing motionless in doorways and parking lots Pigeons coo on the balconies – bone skull, by glass beach

> there's nothing here > i fail to understand what is difficult to comprehend about that < no, no, it was exactly the coordinates on the entity < youre just not searching right, theres got to be something around there, i know it > i have searched the entire perimeter of the thing here > it seems like an office of some kind, without wanting to draw conclusions. > did you forget about the fact that nobody is here? > we went inside but there was nothing of value < i didnt expect anybody to be there < i expected anything to be there > then what part of my statement fails to be processed? < i just... < look, those were the coordinates on the entity < i dont know where else to send you, youre going to have to go exploring > i really do not wish to mention that around amry, she will go ballistic < oh hush < you could use some of the enthusiasm > fine. LINK TERMINATED

Sekri stands motionless before the office in his wake. He's not looking forward to this whole “exploration” thing. It's much easier for him to do what he's told in this case — ingenuity isn't really his strong suit, as is abundantly clear. But someone has to break the news. Amry, meanwhile, is on a link with Marka. It doesn't seem particularly important. The link terminates around the same time as Sekri's. Unlike Sekri's response of vague indifference, Amry seems almost miffed about whatever she was told. “are you okay?”, Sekri asks, knowing that he's setting himself up for some serious emotional dumping. “it's- it's fine ≈:/ marka is merely the worrywart as always, insistent that i stay on task, insistent that i nail everything down before i do it, insist insist insist...”, Amry says, clearly almost fit to burst. “i cannot really work against the task focusedness, but i do imagine it is frustrating to hear him go on and on“ “right??? i just wish that he would treat me as if i knew what i was doing for once. my refusal to move up the ladder is not grounds for him morally proselytizing to me“ “why did you not go up to processing, anyways?“ “i just like it here, is all. i wish others would understand that ≈:[“ Sekri takes some pause. By all means, he has no qualms climbing the bureaucratic ladder, his needs flowing like the wind around his work. But that's clearly not what Amry needs to hear. “it is absolutely worthwhile, especially given your penchant for exploration“ “...i am glad you understand. at some points i wonder why i am dating him“ He doesn't understand at all. But she doesn't need to know that. “on that note... the coordinates led nowhere, as you can tell. i was instructed to go exploring. i imagine you would like to lead the way on this.“ “oh that is!!! oh alright i see“ “hm?“ “you want me to lead this charge yes? i can lead charges! absolutely ≈:D“ Sekri doesn't quite understand what that means, but it's clear that Amry is enthused and gets the point. “alright, carve the path”, he says, deciding to write it off.

The two begin marching aimlessly along the blackness on the surface. Amry, being ever the eager eye, notes that the ground beneath them, having significantly faded, seems to be largely disjointed: segmented into individual peppercorns, each of which seems to have their own story, many broken off the snake's body. Unlike before, neither have any idea where the snake will lead them or what their purpose is. So they opt to pass the time. “so what was he on about, anyway?”, Sekri says, unaware of the conversation that this question will stir. “it was just another routine check-in. it never seems to be anything nowadays, marka is far too busy with his strange aesthetic sensibilities and their development, and far too concerned with me and my life”, Amry replies. “he does seem to be the controlling type“ “that is an understatement- he attempted to intimidate me into promoting to processing! “wait, pardon? why?“ Amry doesn't respond, hoping that Sekri will connect the dots on his own. “...right.“ “it does seem like he just thinks i do not know what i am doing, as if i cannot take care of myself“ “i do think you are very competent, if that helps.“ “calls to competency are not required“ The thought gives Sekri pause, given his understandings. “right“ “i just wish i could recapture what we had before, when we were reading our novels and talking about them, him with his vampirism and mine with my-“ “i do not wish to hear about your novels, respectfully“ “hmph! ≈:O the point is the same, though, it feels as if we merely changed apart from one another“ “dispersal will do that to you...“ “well it should not change him! not all of him!“ “it is unfortunate but it is the way of things. i do empathize with you, truly, but i suppose i understand his material disposition“ Amry, somewhat annoyed by this response, raises her tone a bit. “i do not understand the need to uphold foreign bodies!!! if the whims of cognis cannot follow us here, they are irrelevant to me ≈>:[“ “i fail to see the relevance of the whims of anything, really, i would agree with you there- but if it keeps you from decaying, it is best to-“ “you sound just like him, you know“ Sekri pauses. “...sorry. not what you need to hear.”, he says. Already diverting from the maxim of listening and not advising. That's great. “i just want to support you, you know, so if i ever do slip up please do tell me“ “ok well i will and also did“ “that is good, then- ah, globes, what is that???“

Sekri can't articulate why this feels strange to him, but he knows it feels... well, he doesn't know. Something about this location is burrowing into him, and it hurts, as if the space around him is shifting. But he doesn't know why, what, or how. He just knows that it hurts, the pain seething through him as if an open incision, a dagger in his chest that he's had for all his life that is only acting up now. An inarticulate pain that refuses to explain itself. “sekri?”, Amry says, the sound emitting from her feeling like a piercing screech that buries itself in Sekri's audial receptors. “can we. go away from here”, Sekri says quietly. “is there an issue?“ “go, shut up“ Sekri looks away from the ostensibly harmless area, his gaze unwaveringly pointed straight ahead of him and nowhere near the sides. The two move wordlessly until he gives the clear. Amry, on the other hand, feels nothing of the sort, unaware of Sekri's emotions. But she doesn't need to know. After some distance, Sekri recomposes himself, his thoughts managing to actually point in a direction rather than every which way. He thinks to himself about the current situation, the current reality, the one where they are standing on this planet. They are nowhere else, and they cannot be anywhere else. They are here, in this moment. Amry knows better than to question what happened. It's very common for Sekri to suddenly lose grasp on the present when he's incredibly task-focused like this. She needs to break the tension somehow, but she doesn't know what to talk to Sekri about. The two walk for some time through a group of various blocky structures, each appearing to take the form of some kind of respite for each individual who once inhabited this space. They vary in color, but generally they tend to have strong tips, triangular prisms coating their heights and rectangular transparencies throughout their walls. Amry keeps staring out into the distance, attempting to recognize anything that could be interesting.

The two continue on this walk for some time. It's fairly obvious by now how this goes — Amry grabs something, Sekri goes “that's not important”, and they move on. The next thing of note, however, was unexpected. “sekri, look! a store!”, Amry says, pointing at a grey and brown structure coated with small cones for lighting. There lies a large excess of blackness outside of it, the surface blending with the one she is standing on. A stopped object lies outside of it, a long structure with many transparencies, circles coating its bottom. The side of it is labeled “NJ TRANSIT', though they don't know what that means. Similarly, the building is labeled “DOLLAR GENERAL”. They also don't know what that means. Sekri thinks to himself about this. By all means, it could be another one of Amry's random ideas, but it is a store, which he does know about. They should at least have enough time to take a look inside. “alright”, Sekri says, opting to head towards the transparency clearly indicated as a door.

The inside is lined with various objects of questionable relevance. It does bear a resemblance to their understanding of a store, of a place containing many objects for perusal, but the nature of the objects are different. Many of them seem to have representative sigils of their own, tying them to a greater conglomerate represented by these instantiations. The walls of the place itself are relatively banal: shelving lines the area, each with some designated purpose to them. Some things, though, catch their eye immediately, for one obvious reason. “this... is this the same thing?”, Sekri says. He picks up a smooth piece of white with an orange print, resembling the same entity that they saw earlier: one that he was told by Elsie's report was a “cat”. Regardless, the facial structure is the same, though in a very different configuration: it seems more as if he is smug, rather than content. In it, the cat is sitting down and holding an object of nearly the same shape. From outside the facial structure of the feline forms a gaseous formation, containing some words that Sekri is unable to read. They are: “You should scrape the paint off of this mug with your teeth.” ...Huh. Anyway. Sekri decides not to do that, on account of the fact that he didn't read it. He instead moves to another part of the conglomerate of smooth objects, and picks up another. This one also seems strangely smug, though the feline's paw is curling up back into itself and placing a hand on its stomach. It's very convenient that I know what this actually is now, Sekri thinks to himself. It makes reasoning about it easier. But that still doesn't help Sekri understand the printed text. This one says “I never met a dinner I didn't like”. He understands that it's language, of course, but not anything about it. “sekri are you okay?”, Amry says, noting the vaguely concerned posture Sekri is taking. Sekri gazes back at Amry, looking like he's about to go into a deranged rant or something akin. “how many are there?!?“ “how many what?“ Sekri starts grabbing object after object off the shelf, each with a familiarly feline visage. “representative sigil after representative sigil after representative sigil! it never ends!”, he says, cycling through almost like he's juggling. “sekri, calm down“ “i will calm down when i understand what the fuck this is!!!“ “for once i am not the enthused one ≅:P“ “i simply have never seen anything this unbelievably memetic before“ “you do not get out much, do you??“ “not until recently“ “well it makes sense that you would be surprised. concepts like this are relatively common in foreign cultures, in earnest!!! they are so fascinating to me, it is why i keep doing this“ “hm”, Sekri says. Maybe he misjudged a bit. That's neither here nor there, though. “are there any identifying markings on these? somewhere to tell us where to go next?“ Thankfully, the underside of the object seems to have text on it, though it will require further linguistic analysis. Sekri grabs a metric fuckton of these things, toting them around as if he was cradling a larva. For a moment, Amry seems to see a glimmer in his persona, one that she hasn't seen for quite some time. Perhaps it's dedication, but he seems genuinely enthused in a way. Happy, even. Maybe that's projection. “onward, then!!!!”, Amry says, trying to keep up the energy, but ending up sounding like a huge dork.

---

The two make their way back to the vessel. Inside lies the same old scenery, the same old pink and blue walls. For once, Amry decides not to retire to her quarters while Sekri does analysis, and instead accompanies him back to the computer room. “you could have asked me to carry some of those ♒︎:P”, Amry says. “mind your own business”, Sekri says, placing down all of the objects down on a nearby table. He speaks up to the computer. “load entity E-MEOW, incident report 102E-8.“

OK FINE THANKS

Sekri places one of the objects in the center of the machine as before. “thoughts?“

OK THE OTHER DATA HELPS THIS IS ALSO ALREADY A CLASSIFIED ENTITY SEE E-SIPCNT

“i do not care what it is, in truth, i just want to know the data on the bottom. is it a location? is it relevant?”, Sekri says. “i would have hoped you would be more excited to learn about it ♒︎:[”, Amry replies. “i am just trying to get this done as fast as possible, i do not want to spend more time here than we need to, given your state“ “i promise it is nothing to be concerned about ♒︎:P“ “yes, but-“

OH MY GOD BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP THIS IS WHY I HATE HAVING BOTH OF YOU IN THE SAME ROOM HERE ARE YOUR COORDINATES: 40.2561527, -85.3244845 IT WAS ON THE BOTTOM PLEASE LEAVE

“you seem angrier than usual”, Sekri replies.

I CAN STAND ONE OF YOU BUT NOT BOTH

“fair enough”, Amry says. Sekri reels. “what do you mean fair enough? of course it is not fair! this is a machine!“ “maybe i am partial to the whims of machinery, sekri ♒︎:]“ “you should not have to take insubordination out of a lowly entity, though.“ “i think we should care for it ♒︎:|“

OUT

“yes!”, Amry says, grabbing Sekri with a tendril and forcefully leading him out of the room.

---

The vessel lands outside the designated coordinates. Outside lies a large building of intricate geometries, clearly designed to accommodate a great number of entities with a similar goal. On the side lies a sigil of the entity Amry and Sekri have been tracing, as if a beacon to signal their progress. The sigil stands out as if alive, the relevance being nearly unfathomable: this mission is a clear candidate for Culture, Sekri thinks to himself, though he wishes that were not the case.

Amry is the first to speak up, as always. “it seems almost banal”, she says. “i would have expected greater enthusiasm from you”, Sekri replies. “yes, certainly, but look at it! it is just an office like before. what is to say there is anything in it???“ “do you not see the sigil on the side? it is oozing relevance”, Sekri says, pointing. Amry stares at the side of the brown walls, where Sekri points. “sekri... are you sure there is anything there?”, she says. “...i see it myself, do you not? a large orange paw, surprisingly similar to mine, though that is not important“ “no... ~:/“ “alright, i suppose. i trust that there will be something important here, the symbology is too intense for it to be otherwise.“ “whatever you say boss!!“ “don't call me boss”, Sekri says, as he walks through the door in the front, Amry following.

The insides are dark, but inviting, as if the insides of a beast. The grains on every single bit of the walls seem to be noisy, as if every single part of this area is ripe for deconstruction. By all means, this is standard for an Overload, but Sekri has never seen one before. But this entire area seems almost... playful, one resembling something fun, something at the very least meant to be humorous. Overload classification is usually reserved for deities or their kin, so what gives? “this feels almost like a place of worship”, Amry says, “but there is no altar“ “it is quite possible, you know”, Sekri says, “that this culture simply has many dense entities“ “yes, but it is usually... there is usually a pattern ~:[”, Amry says, noting the strangely reverent and simultaneously childish imagery. “this... this is different?“ “different how?“ “i do not know“ “the task is the same, you know“ “the task the task the task... i am just counterintuitive in it“ “counterintuitive?“ “i mean interested, sorry ≅~:P“ Sekri, mostly perplexed, continues his march through the inside. The building is lined with alarmingly sacred geometries for something that should be a banal office: it feels sleek, modern almost, despite these words meaning nothing. The representative sigils of the entity line the halls, each with their own idiosyncrasies that make them somehow unique, the standard patterns failing to repeat. But they are still patterns, nonetheless: despite their touches, they are still recognizable as related. This is strange to Sekri — again, in standard procedure, most Overloads have something that tends to repeat near-exactly. Above the stairwell lies some kind of language, though it is unable to be processed. The information in the one word is so dense that it refuses to be picked apart into its constituent Understandings, tightly packed as if to serve as some kind of container, a crystalline form of its Concept. They understand it to be a proper noun, of course, but unlike most proper nouns, it has no generalization they can find. Given that it fails to be uttered, rendered, or understood, there is only one reasonable conclusion that they can make. “is this god???”, Amry says. Sekri snaps. “what???? of course it is not god. what are you talking about.“ “i just think-“ “amry, foreign concepts are not to be trusted“ “it is just that it is such revered, it is so severed, it is so-“ “i am concerned about you a bit. you seem strange“ “~:?“ “like that. do you not usually use a different sign in your messaging? you have been inconsistent with it throughout“ “i have no idea what you could mean“ “you have used like three or four different ones. i am very perceptive when it comes to this.“ “well i have no thoughts on that meaning anything!!!“ “and that sentence. that barely coheres“ Amry starts a thought. “well-”, she says, failing to construct anything that would please Sekri's concerns. But she notices something else to her left. “eeeee!!!”, she says. To her left, there's a pile of- Oh no.

Sekri mimics a facepalm. “amry, please-”, he says. But it's already too late. Amry's voidform has already near integrated into the pile of strangely feline plush toys. “are they not cute?? sekri you cannot tell me they are not cute ~:O”, she says. “that is fine, but we are here for a reason, you know this, yes?“ “it... hehehehe”, Amry says, squeezing one of the plushies between two tendrils. Good lord, Sekri thinks to himself. Is he going to have to do everything on his own? “urgh, fine, i will handle this.”, he says. It makes sense in retrospect — if Amry was just experiencing larval regression, her ecstatic behavior is probably a result. Nothing to be too concerned about, at least, which is good. Sekri looks around the rest of the room while Amry proceeds to blabber incoherently. Similar to the store from earlier, shelving lines the area, but unlike the store, everything is arranged purposefully, and they all bear the same signs of the entity they chased down: the same facial structure, the same coloring, the same recognizable stylistic quirks, the same geometries. It all feels almost sublime in nature, like the entire room itself was designed to instill a mood: a deliberately misleading space, a hall of concepts so deep they could form civilizations in their own right. Maybe Amry was right, Sekri thinks to himself. Maybe this is their God, one so overwhelmingly memetic that even a facsimile becomes recognizable, general-purpose sigils from a bygone age. By all means, it has similar reach to a God, it has the same density as a God, at least any notion of God that Sekri has seen. Its very naming and its unintelligibility places it in the same category as most deities. But again, acceptance of foreign concepts is not to be, and analysis with them is even more taboo. Sekri strolls through the area. More and more shallow facsimiles of the raw concept emerge, many similar to the one Sekri picked up. In fact, a near-perfect example of the same double-pronged apparatus he picked up on the line between the blues and greens lies on the shelving. He picks it up, noting that it hasn't suffered the same environmental decay as the ones there, the facial structure being as perfectly retained as everything else here. The entire area feels like nothing but a setup. Perfect.

LINK: TRAGICALITY > PERTINENCE > i think we have found its genesis < Oh? Already? > the entity we are searching has very significant memetic properties, it was very easy to locate it > its culture appears to have significant reverence for it, at the very least > you can see what i see, yes? i should have that working < Naturally. > take a note of everything.

Sekri walks around the room as if he's trying to document something, his eyes becoming the vigilant gaze of a documentarian. Every single entity in the room gets its gaze beamed back to Marka's sight. One thing catches his eye, though.

< Can you look at the framed object towards the right of the room? > of course

Sekri walks towards the framed object. Inside is a thin slip of faded paper, one that has clearly seen better days, environmental decay thoroughly destroying it. But the image remains, clear as day, its relevance effectively oozing to the point where it is near imperceptible, its full force being unable to be comprehended. Yet it is comprehensible to Sekri, and to Marka as well: and they instantly know what it is, a cultural artifact of days long past, unparalleled in its raw power.

< Ah. < This is almost certainly it, then. > you have made notes already, yes? < Certainly. This... it seems as if it is some kind of pivotal point in this entity's history. < It being framed denotes something, otherwise it would not be in such a key location.

Marka thinks to himself. There are some obvious facts about this: it's drawn in a style that seems to be cartoonish, it's segmented into three parts, and it has language involved. The actual contents elude him: once again, he sees something that is clearly E-MEOW and representative of the same thing that Elsie was writing about earlier, but it doesn't seem to make sense. ...But maybe it's not supposed to. Three parts. Three acts. A setup, a confrontation, and a resolution: an inciting incident, a midpoint, a climax. But that doesn't seem to make sense: clearly this cannot be some grand epic, a literary masterpiece to be revered, but something cartoonish, something reminiscent of the simplistic stories given to larvae. Something that has a three act structure of its own. Oh.

< It's a joke.

CLICK!

> what? this is not the time for belittling- < No, you dunce, I meant it literally. < This is meant to be humor. > how do you know that? < Look at the individual frames, the frame-within-the-frame. < The first two are similar, but the last one is significantly different. Why is that? > because they do not know what they are doing? < Ah, but you make the mistake of being dismissive. < It sets something up, it reinforces something, and it then subverts it. < It is a setup, a reinforcement, and... > ...a punchline. < Elementary. < It explains the brevity of each of the entities you have seen thus far as well. < Every single one is meant to be humorous, though we are unable to see it due to the linguistic barrier. > and what do you want to do with that information? < Well, this is a very dense entity. It seems like a Culture candidate, though that is not my decision, clearly. < That Understanding should allow me to find it, at the least. > but what about amry? > i have failed to mention it, but she is acting somewhat erratic < ...I did tell her that this was likely. > what? < We had a discussion about this. She did refuse her promotion, meaning that the whims of Cognis provide not for her. > she did talk about this, but i did not envision that it would- < I do care for her, I really do. < But... < This is out of my control, unfortunately. I hope you can find something else. > marka- LINK TERMINATED

SHIT. What the hell, Sekri thinks to himself. The entire purpose of this mission was to solve the issue of Amry's decay, and yet he wants to claim this for Culture? It's an Overload, it makes sense bureaucratically, but surely he can let this one slip. He has to, doesn't he? Does he understand the mission in truth? Did his briefing on the parameters make sense? It's very rare for a Retrieval team to be dispatched solely for purposes of decay prevention, though not unheard of. But maybe he was wrong, maybe he was misled. But the Arbiter would never mislead him, his faith in the whims of Cognis never shaken. This can't be true, and so it won't be. He tries to link up with Marka again.

LINK: TRAGICALITY > PERTINENCE < What. > we are not done here! > what in the name did you talk about? > what is this mission for? < I understand your concern, but I cannot tell you that, in truth. < I am beholden to the same rules as you, am I not?

Sekri shudders. He can't believe that this is a thing that's happening right now. They don't have time, for fuck sakes, he's going to have to put Amry back in the pod again. They're already pushing the upper limits of how far she can decay without dissolution of her Concept. What the fuck is this guy's problem?

> she is fucking dying and you- < We do not use that word. > i do not mean to lash out but- < I think you already have. > WILL YOU STOP ACTING LIKE A FUCKING COP AND LISTEN TO ME? > DO YOU WANT HER TO FUCKING DIE? > BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU DO THIS > DENSITY THIS, DENSITY THAT, SHE NEEDS THIS < Rare for you to raise your tone. > no, this is worth tone-raising for. > do you not care about her? < Of course I do, but I can only go so far to save people from themselves. < My agonizing won't do much good anymore. > ...you make me sick. LINK TERMINATED

Clearly pissed and with everything to prove, Sekri dashes over to the other side of the room. Amry is still incoherently babbling in the pile of plush toys, happy as can be. Unfortunately, he has to be the bearer of bad news, and from someone as important to her as Marka. But how's he supposed to make a conversation with her now? Is this even regression, or is it decay? Fuck. Sekri speaks up. “amry-“ “hiiiii sekri!!!!”, she replies. Shit. That intonation can't be good, it never is. It's the call of someone who's clearly in out of her depth, one who's not in the mental state to process much of any coherent information, let alone something this federally fucking terrifying. How in the hell is he going to break this to her? “i just got off a link with marka, and-“ “ohhhh?? ~:O“ “right, and i think we need to retreat to the vessel“ “why???? comforble“ “yes i get that but i need you to understand you are in danger. frankly i would pick you up and run you there if i had the chance“ “i do not wanna ~:[“ “i cannot get you to do this, amry, you need to understand it is in your best interest”, Sekri says. God, he has no fucking experience with this. He should have figured this out earlier. This is not the right time- “if i do not wanna i do not wanna you retarded fucking bunghole bitch!”, Amry says. Wow, uh. “i need you to-“

And that's when it hits.

Amry shudders. Her entire voidform convulses, the hole stemming from the contradiction at her center failing to synthesize, the thoughts running through her head prohibitively incoherent. It feels like a dam failure, as if a hole had been punctured in her mind, letting the internals spill out, begging to be let out, screaming- “hhhhhhhhhrrrrrk”, she emits, with various unknown fluids spilling from every orifice of her body, or lack thereof. On the ground lies a pile of black goo, slowly fading in color gradually from random points as if a form of static, as if it was never there at all, the very being constructing her Concept self-immolating until it is nothing. She can't take much longer like this, and she knows it. She tries to cry for help, but she can't make any more noises. She won't let that be her last fucking words. But Sekri notices. He was wrong. Immediately, he rushes to her side. He would ask if she's okay, but he already knows the answer to that. He knows he can't even talk to her. He tries to establish links. Marka would come first, but clearly his dumb fucking ideas about bureaucracy are clouding his judgment. Who else even is there? Elsie? Can they even help?

LINK: TRAGICALITY > CLEVERNESS < well this is unexpected, for what do i owe the honor- > not the time > how do i prevent advanced decay < oh no < is everything okay? > if i am asking that question, do you think it is okay? > you fucking know why we are here!!! < ok gdmmt < is the vessel nearby > no < leave her here. run. now!

---

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This document is subject to standard recontextualization procedure. Contact your assigned Records envoy for more details.

INCIDENT REPORT: OVERLOAD-CLASS ENTITY

CASE ID: 102E-8

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: [Available only to Coherence or above.]

UNDERSTANDINGS: – Main entity body is constructed from various synthetic polymers (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, polypropylene, polystyrene, ...). – Entity is primarily orange and black, with yellow, pink, and white present on faux facial structure. – Entity contains copper wrapped in semi-rigid polyvinyl chloride linking its two bodies. – Upon removal of upper entity body, facial structure morphs to reveal white with black dots. – Lower entity body contains a depressed insert to fit upper entity body. – Upper entity body contains various black squares, each of which can be depressed for production of tactile sensation. – Entity has been subject to environmental decay (see bulletin 080A-1). – Entity contains green composite materials made of woven fiberglass and epoxy resin binder, lined with copper and various unknown components. – Inner green plate contains various strips of copper linking other pieces of unknown purpose. – Cylindrical pieces of unknown purpose contain aluminum, unknown insulation, and two connections to green plate. – Cylindrical pieces with two end caps of unknown purpose contain carbon mixture lined with unknown protective coating. – [Further details removed for brevity.]

BRIEF: Temporary Retrieval team . . . . . . 008 was assembled and dispatched to entity location for further inquiry, comprised of His Tragicality and Her Emptiness. Seventeen ticks were spent between dispatch and arrival at entity location — routine tick checks revealed no abnormalities.

Upon vessel arrival, computing identified the Overload-class entity in question but failed to process it in full (see UNDERSTANDINGS), resulting in Retrieval team failing to identify coordinates beyond vague location. Conveniently, Retrieval team found a hexagonal spire (later identified by Coherence as a “light-house”, see 102E-6) that provided an overview of the area, which resulted in the Retrieval team's detection of the presence of the Overload-class entity on planet surface.

Retrieval team failed to respond to requests for comment from Processing, a violation of procedure 107R-2. No disciplinary action is recommended at this time due to pertinence of mission statement (see STATEMENT OF PURPOSE), though the author notes that Her Emptiness has repeatedly failed to respond to comments from Processing while on Retrieval work.

Similar instances of the same Overload-class entity were found on planet surface, each having different levels of environmental decay, though none being in what is assumed to be perfect condition. Retrieval team continued along target line until encountering prohibitive incoherence, upon which they retreated (despite protocol 285R-1 — again, no disciplinary action is recommended, nor is it the opinion of the author that 285R-1 is a sane protocol).

Upon retreat, Overload-class entity was sent in parts to Processing via standard linking procedure. Entity needed to be segmented into 189 subentities for further processing, but was ultimately able to be examined (though at the cost of an exorbitant amount of compute clusters running on high). No direct meaning was found, though the entity has been tied to “felis catus domesticus” (see COHERENT HYPEROVERLOAD-CLASS ENTITY E-MEOW).

Investigation of entity found local linguistic information: “Tyco Industries Inc. 540 Glen Avenue, Moorestown, NJ 08057 ! ) ( % @ ! © 1978 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.“, which following processing from Linguistics was linked to local coordinates 39.9645473, -74.9661513.

Retrieval team was instructed to proceed to these coordinates, but once again declined any further contact beyond mere acknowledgement of the procedure — Her Emptiness appeared to have the author temporarily blocked (still true at time of writing), so contact had to be established with His Tragicality. His Tragicality was not interested in anything aside from necessary details for completion of the investigation's purpose.

Further investigation is requi dont want to work on this anymore TODO TODO TODO XXX MARK FOR LATER – THEIR CLEVERNESS

---

Minor chords of major works Separate rooms of single life – Codes and Keys, by Death Cab for Cutie

Elsie slouches back in their chair, slams their head down, and stops typing. At this point, they're used to this. How could they not be? The sheer level of incompetence with Retrieval teams, I swear to piss, they think to themself. No future for those clowns. It's just basic procedure, really — if Retrieval gets any word from Processing, they have to respond immediately except in dire circumstance given the potential importance of the information to be relayed. Given the shut up they got in that tone, the chances that this is an adequately described dire circumstance as present in bulletin 107R-2 is... well, 107R-1 has things to say about that, that's for sure. Not to be a stickler for paperwork. Really, when was the last time that Amry managed to pick up incoming communications? Her Emptiness's insubordination is difficult to punish, for sure, but the sheer regularity of the irregularity seems as if it would result in some kind of disciplinary action. It's less that Elsie wants that to happen, and more that they're scared that it will. I'm just looking out for you, they think. Oh well. It's not important, anyways, at least not this time. It just ruffles my feathers a bit. Elsie gets up from their chair and does a stretch, taking their wings and spreading them out as far as they can go. It ruffles the white feathers coating the wings' surface in the process. Their grey skin flexes slightly as a result, their bright red hair being caught by the resultant gust. Their purely black eyes, nary a pupil in sight, stare at the ceiling as they stretch their neck up. They close their eyelids, the individual bumps on their skin glistening under the overhead light as the lashes cast a shadow onto their face. They're wearing a bright green oversized t-shirt with a pattern of darker green concentric circles on the front. No bottom, though, their legs are almost entirely exposed to the elements. Their head is marked with a halo almost taking the shape of a crown. “You are aware that there remains no other work to be done this blink, yes? No need to add a flustered little coda.”, a voice says, its position difficult to trace. “GAAH FUCK!!!”, Elsie exclaims, the shock forcing their wings to fold into their back. “Regardless, Amry's behavior is... perhaps not excellent, but certainly explainable. It's a side effect of the way she was raised, I'm afraid.”, the voice says with a chuckle. “at least show yourself, pal, cut me some slack”, Elsie says, incredibly annoyed and performing a pouting face. “Nah.“ The voice fucks off. God damnit, Elsie thinks to themself. I don't need one of Marka's stupid little pranks right now, especially with something like this. I had a flustered flair about me? Maybe you should investigate your flair for the dramatic.

Regardless, before reporting to Coherence, Elsie decides that it's probably best to try and recharge after all the energy expended writing their report. They look around the room for something to do. To their left lies various flora, each scavenged from various local cultures on their Retrieval assignments. Surprisingly, not a single watering can is in sight: the entire operation is managed by a complex irrigation system implanted underneath the desk, siphoning the water up from a tub into the soil on each plant. The plants themselves are strange, almost indescribable. One even exhibits signs of prohibitive incoherence, its buds almost taking the form of television static. Elsie always takes at least one souvenir from each Retrieval mission. Except one. Regardless, the tank is running low, so Elsie opts to fill it up before it drains in full. Water is a scarce commodity, so they send a message to- wait, she won't respond, she has them blocked. Okay. They send a message to Sekri, establishing a link.

LINK: CLEVERNESS > TRAGICALITY > hellooooo sekri < yes? > so where are you at now < do you intend on wasting my time? < we are back in the vessel, navigating to your coordinates > its interesting that you say theyre my coordinates > its just on the actual thing, you know < you are being pedantic < what is your purpose, anyhow > oh, i was just wondering if the location youre at has any water < i have no idea < what are its understandings? > do you really not know that much? check E-SLURP < you want me to check a document when i can just ask you directly? < i am aware you are beholden to paperwork, as am i, but that seems excessive even for me > ok, fine, its blue, its liquid, its hydrogen mixed with oxygen, what else do you want < i am pretty sure that we do < would you like me to store some? > yes please! > i dont know if you know about the collection ive got going on, but its- < ok, i will do so. bye LINK TERMINATED

Oh for fuck sake. This guy sure is the life of the party, huh? Frankly, it's kind of absurd that he got such a communication-heavy position for this, and with Amry nonetheless. Two wrongs don't make a right, it just makes a... double-wrong. Some kind of double agony reacharound. Enough of that. Elsie looks for anything else to do. Around the room lies various failed experiments involving various esoteric, almost arcane old technology. Many of these ancient computing devices have died or decayed by now, their internals being more than worse for wear, but they swear they'll definitely fix all of them. Eventually. At the very least, it's nice to have a retro computing museum right next to the pod. Their actual computer in use is on a desk next to a standard brown chair. The back of it is coated in stickers, many of which don't appear to mean anything at all, but they say it's to make their machine theirs, despite the machine's objections or lack thereof. Various articles of clothing coat the floor, each of which have been thrown haphazardly off Elsie's body before they head to their pod. All of them take the same shape: t-shirts as far as the eye can see. They're all oversized, some of them alarmingly so. It's relatively obvious that they doesn't like wearing bottoms of any variety. Elsie heads over to one of the machines, the one lovingly labeled “PEAR ][“, and attempts to turn it on to see if they'd already made any adjustments — it's quite possible that they've forgotten entirely by now. Unsurprisingly, though, no dice. This machine hasn't worked for ages, and it's difficult to imagine it working now-

helloooooo

Seriously? Huh. Elsie heads over to the PEAR ][ and starts having a chat, setting themself down by its keys — the machine is significantly too old to use any form of dictation.

hello! when did you come back on line? I have no idea ha ha ha I totally should not be alive what the f*@k oh do you have expletives disabled that seems like a mistake probably let me just... ###### fuck oh joyous tick!! fuck fuck fuck fuck!! ahahahahaaa it feels as if I am doing mental cart wheels im happy for you! anyway, how is the rest of your maintenance going? I think I have enough resources to stay for a few more ticks a few more? I do not think my components are available anymore what a shame, really... you are such a wonderful piece of machinery I appreciate the compliment but also that does not help the material circumstance the one where I am dying horribly well i can see what i can do no promises okay can you turn me off now I should probably conserve resources alright

Elsie turns the Pear ][ off, and takes a look at its user manual. The scribbles therein are almost... well, it's difficult to describe. The writing is genuinely difficult to make out, the documentation therein likely being full of technobabble, but it's impossible to know regardless — this hasn't been subject to any kind of recontextualization. While the machine is still present, the manual itself is a bygone artifact from an era long past, one that Elsie can't make heads or tails of. Surely there's something they can do about this, though. Elsie decides to head to Records to see if there's an appropriately intelligible version of the manual. They leave the room, the door doing a suitable whoosh effect and sliding itself open, and traverse the labyrinthine halls of Cognis's interior. All things considered, the organization of this area is horrible, and it's a miracle that anyone can find anything. You'd think you'd need an entire Coherence officer just to get through the facility itself, the nature of it being ridiculously contrived. Maps coat the hallways with giant “YOU ARE HERE” buttons just to help anyone navigate the place. Each door is labeled, but a couple of sections are cordoned off due to their presence of labeling from one of the before-times. Not a hazard, per se, but deeply confusing at the very least, serving as obfuscation and not much else. Deconstruction takes time, after all, and we don't have all the time in the world. Eventually, Elsie makes it to Records's main reception, the door being appropriately labeled. There's nobody working the desk right now, but there are various gaping holes in the side wall, each ready to accept documents, objects, entities, et cetera. It's a shame, really. Elsie loves the idle workplace chatter that tends to happen here. The number of times they've gone here solely for the purpose of chatting up whatever receptionist's presently assigned has been enough to make some uncomfortable. But those who are usually don't tend to last long as receptionist regardless. Elsie places the manual into one of the holes in the wall, and it clasps shut, a small bit of goo making the door's closing a bit more labored than anticipated. Immediately, out spits a message. “NO ANALOGUE FOUND”. Well, shit. “That old thing?”, Marka says, entering the room. “STOP FUCKING DOING THAT”, Elsie screams, the hairs on their back standing straight up. “What, entering rooms unannounced? Some of us have work to do here too, you know.“ “look, i dont care who you are, i dont care what your rank or role is, i just dont like people sneaking up on my back“ “Mm. Any word from oh-oh-eight yet?“ “how do you even know about that“ “I was in the room with you when you were drafting that. Did you forget already?“ “you werent even in the fucking room, it was just you that was in the room”, Elsie says with a sarcastic flair. “if you actually read the document, though, youd know that amry has me blocked because shes too busy masturbating to grey boy yaoi, and sekris too...“ “Too Sekri.“ “you know i didnt want to be mean but youre entirely correct“ “Can Amry even masturbate?“ “ok you need to stop talking now“ Without saying a word, Marka does a little bow, the flames emanating from his form nearly singing the metals forming the room. His Pertinence clearly gets around a lot, though whether he stays is another question entirely. For a creature of light, it's imperative to stay in the shadows, the crackling embers of his flame providing an easy break from his self. But Elsie isn't thinking about that. Elsie's thinking about how to fix their computer. They look at Marka, and think about the things he's been through, the places he's seen. Maybe, just maybe... “can you read this manual?“ Marka fails to respond entirely, giving Elsie the blankest stare they've seen in their lifetime. “...you can talk“ “Grazie.“ “you can talk without using nonsensical coded words“ “That might as well be asking me to not emit a single peep.“ “okay smartass. can you read the manual“ “Technically, yes. The language inside it is archaic, but by all means it should not be particularly difficult to trace its origin. The script itself seems to remind me of... oh, I don't know, Sectoid?“ “dont care, yes/no question, can you do it“ “Wow, okay, fine. Give me a while.“ “i dont have a while, the poor things dying“ Marka sighs. “Why, exactly, do you care so incessantly about the continuance of your machines?“ “its the same as retaining anything, really. im sure you empathize with that at least“ This call to empathy gives Marka pause. What a fickle thing. Truly one of the emotions of all time. “Quite so. I will hand it over to Linguistics and have them handle the rest.“ “you arent in records, how do you have a beeline to linguistics?“ “:)“ “you literally cant make that face, why are you saying that face“ “:)”, Marka says, leaving the room without an explanation for his bureaucratic wormholes.

Elsie heads back to their room and looks around. They're nearly entirely out of things to do. In a sense, their dialogue tree has been exhausted. By all means, they could get back and tend to the flora or something, but they're all fine. It's fine. Maybe this is the peril of automating your entire life to hell. Maybe it's best to not confide in nothing but your computers, especially when most of them don't even power on anymore. Maybe it's best to get yourself a hobby that isn't finite. What do you even do anymore? You're not just going to let those thoughts eat at you, are you?

LINK: TRAGICALITY > CLEVERNESS

Oh shit.

> there's nothing here < what?

---

Die Verpackung des Krieges

Schon jetzt hat der radikale Zionismus der jüdischen Sache mehr geschadet als der Antisemitismus des 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Letzterer hat europäische Juden zu Opfern gemacht, mit denen sich schließlich die ganze Welt solidarisierte, der erste macht sie nun zu Tätern und vereitelt ihren Ausstieg aus der Opfer-Täter-Dynamik.

Beide Phänomene aber, der Zionismus und der Antisemitismus, sind im Ursprung zwei Seiten einer europäischen Münze – die semitischen Völker der Levante haben damit nichts zu tun. Doch seit einem dreiviertel Jahrhundert werden sie, die eigentlich Unbeteiligten, zu Opfern eines neuen westlichen Antisemitismus, der sich 'Kampf gegen Antisemitismus' nennt: die alte unbarmherzige Barbarei, die sich der neuen aufklärerischen Werkzeuge und Vokabeln bemächtigt hat. Denn an den Katastrophen des 20. Jahrhunderts hat man gelernt, dass auf die Verpackung zu achten ist.

Und indem man die eigene Bosheit nun wieder am Fremden bekämpft, kann es unverdrossen weitergehen, das Schießen und Sterben in den Gräben und das goldene Kriegsgeschäft, mit der die Lebensleistung und Gesundheit von Völkern und Generationen durch gewissenlose Eliten geerntet wird, während sich an der Marketingfront heute Millionen schlichter Sesselkrieger rekrutieren lassen, die sich gern reichweitenstark daran beteiligen, das Morden zu rechtfertigen und Verantwortung zu projizieren.

from 7/30/22

rose bushes burning by Broadway stoked cherry voices the bleeding heart's crossroads anthropological box

did Moses find traffic worse leaving Egypt, or greeting Canaan?

Bronzed, Aged on Golden Coasts wine-glassing Silver Hills

abuelo Dalí turned tinder for chitchat oozing warmcore aesthetics taking their t i m e

just to rimstick sugar no shaved legs dangling in mulled community pools

did Simon & Art mean that Bleecker Street keepgoing keepgoing a nodding hand goingoingoing all the way to the end will wind me up in Canaan?

we're long past the Middle tongues seeking muscle tension wound-wriggling, salted citrus

would Jesus D.A.R.E. turn Dead Sea sangría in Palestine?

our story sits under bloody Himalayan heavens begging for gushing, then mending

even clouds don't get tinfoil problems platinum coke surgical steel septum linings gangrene frostraw, shrieking snowblind THE LIGHT IS TOO LOUD!! we wonder why we nEver FUCKING Rest then yank our braided climbaxes brainropes of little siblings to Sea East China, Philippine

if i get a grip on Pinocchio's nose move passt the donkey and t h r o u g h the whale will Geppetto teach me how to shave in a Valley of cabins in New Canaan?

[if the point is to come, why even show up? scale Kama Sutra Palisades instead. everyone with a pen pisses pyrite imitations, travel pamphlets at best, at worst dissertations]

(by the way, Bukowski, you missed a lion— Pedro took the photo for that reputed text

but never got the check they allegedly sent to his current address in New Jersey)

far enough east and Sendai's San Francisco TexMexiCaliZona Nepal'snOwklahoma we fleas seek the end of a cat's storied mane sowing scalps to pluck tufts harvests we call ours

tho our trenchgullets know Pacific is Atlantic

we'll all feel the same roar

No one's gonna do your job for you After all, that's not how this thing works – Good luck final girl, by underscores

Her Emptiness gets another incoming communication. “shut up”, she replies, denying the call, taken in by the stunning view of the landscape below. The two stare out of the hexagon's transparencies for what feels like an entire tick, taken in by the eerie, perpetual serenity of a ravaged system. After some time, Sekri breaks the silence. “...you were right“ “...i was??? about what, exactly?”, Amry replies. “this world being quaint, is all. vibrant was how you described it?“ Beaming as if she's a character from her novels, Amry lets out a noise intended to be a squeal of glee, but the noise registers more like a pod's squeak. “i knew it! i knew you still had a bit of whimsy left in you ≈:D“ “whimsy is the wrong concept- awe, more so“ “you... you are aware there is no prohibition on enjoying things, sekri?“ “do you think i fail to enjoy my duty?“ “ughhhhhh, there's no convincing you, is there? fine.”, Amry says, gesturing out the window, “what do you think? what do you feel?“ “it is beautiful, almost picaresque“ “you mean picturesque?“ “no“ Amry pauses confusedly. “well, i like the greens covering it all ≈:/. what is your favorite part?“ “i like the greys, rectangles peppering the whole thing. buildings, ostensibly“ “how apt of you @~@“ “look, i just refuse to make assumptions“ “what do the buildings make you feel?“ Sekri chuckles. “lust“ Annoyed, Amry begins to heighten her tone. “i am trying to have a moment with you!!! i am trying to get you to appreciate what we have here!!! this is not the time for jokes!!! >~<“ “what do you want me to feel?“ “i do not wish you to feel anything! i want you to-“ “is saying i feel nothing such a crime, then? to say i refuse to express sentimentality towards a culture i have never experienced, one that clearly refused to maintain itself? you said it yourself, you do not wish me to feel anything“ “aaaargh!!!“ “i am simply taking you at your word“ “you take my words and you twist them! you contort them into your own shapes! my words are not a vehicle for your purposes“ Sekri thinks to himself about his surroundings. Faint puffs of dust trickle from the inside of the room, bonding to his fur in a way that'll require pruning and brushing later. The entire time, he's been thinking about nothing but the necessity of getting this done. But Amry's comment breaks his resolve, and he pauses.

“sekri?”, Amry says.

“sekri?“

“sekri?“

SNAP! can you perceive me? come on, get up! this is no time for dilly-dallying.....

Sekri slams his paw onto the transparency with intense ferocity, as if he's trying to SNAP something of his own. “apologies”, he replies. “you are certain you aren't experiencing decay of your own?”, Amry says, miming an expression of concern with her limited features. “no, just- tired, is all. it is of no consequence“ “...alright“

The two make their way out of the towering hexagon, its sides seeking only to constrict their future operations. Upon exiting, outside lies the same lands they found themselves on before. “so where to, boss?”, Amry says, the word “boss” landing like a truck against a concrete wall. Sekri attempts to formulate a response to the passive aggression, but instead finds himself captivated by a strange block of orange having washed up onto the green. He moves over to grab it — it feels strange, smooth in a way that the greens and greys fail to achieve. The object has some features of the wireframe mesh the computer rendered. To its top lies two triangles, except rounded off towards their tips. While the facial structure of the object is foreign, it does have a face, large circles sitting towards its front. It seems... blissfully ignorant, unknowing of the fate befalling its land. Black stripes coat its surface, doubly so on the triangles and the oblong extension out of them. Above it lies two lines cutting through it, handles attempting to signal that there lies more than meets the eye. Sekri flips it over, his paws not being able to adequately maneuver between the cracks, and part of it falls out with a spring-like motion. A new piece arises, black squares coating its surface. Yep. This is definitely it. “amry. do you recognize this?”, he says. Amry responds with very limited information. “not in the slightest?? certainly nothing from any other culture. look at the facial structuring, it kind of looks like...“ “please do not do the weird thing with your messaging-“ “Σ8}“ “...urgh. sure.“ “is that another one?”, Amry says, extending a tendril out of her voidform towards an area further along the separating line. There lies another piece of smooth orange and black, its blackness having significantly faded in comparison to the one Sekri picked up. “why is it different?“ “oh i know this one!!! it is an environmental effect, i saw similar things on andek“ Sekri reels. “you know my feelings about-“ “i understand it bothered you, but did it not inconvenience elsie as well?“ Sekri aims directly at Amry, his viewport directly upon her, akin to our notion of a death stare. “you do have to get over it, you know“ Sekri stands unflinching. Amry waits as if she expects something from behind his gaze, but even the wind refuses to break the tension. “will that be all?”, he says pointedly. “right, such is... regardless, the blue flowings are hostile, they seek to destroy this black and some of this orange”, Amry says, noting a white spot on the... thing. “perhaps not seeking to destroy, rather- it is just the way of it, if not slightly cruel“ His Tragicality pauses. “we should move on”, he says, picking up the other orange object. The two of them start walking.

The winds are simultaneously eerily still and ever-present, unwilling to back down. Every couple of steps — more like a single continuous step in Amry's case, but regardless — they encounter yet another orange object, picking it up, noting its differences, and storing it for future research. After about six of these, Sekri finally breaks the silence. “so...“ “so??”, Amry says, almost shocked. “how was your last trip?“ “you have the care to ask???“ “do you have any other preordained topics in mind?“ “not especially? truthfully, i do not give a shit about the preordained ≈:P“ “not quite what i meant“ “regardless, it was wonderful! the beings on hazzak were incredibly friendly to us, intentions notwithstanding. marka was being a piss baby as ever but i found it serene. actually- do you see over there?”, Amry says, extending a tendril towards a patch of multiple colors. The area is peppered with them as if seemingly random, each falling up from the green, splaying outwards upon their multiple folds. “the entire area was coated in things much like these!“ Sekri looks at the folded and unfolded splaying colors upon the surface as he continues walking. “it is difficult for me to attach myself to these, but i do process what you are trying to get at“ “yes! regardless, the entire area was painted with them, as if the entire planet was a cultural artifact of its own“ “did you manage to find anything?“ Amry pauses for an uncomfortable period of time. “so what was the issue then”, Sekri replies, knowing the meaning when Amry says nothing. “ah – it was much too saccharine there for the taste of the greater whole, despite my personal traits, and so it was rejected wholesale“ Sekri's interest piques. “it was rejected despite being perfectly usable?“ “cognis works in strange ways ≈:/”, Amry says, mimicking a shrug to the best of her ability. “it seems wasteful, is all“ “i did say ≈:/“ “how do you even do that with your messaging???“ “like this: ≈:/“ Her Emptiness receives another communication, interrupting the conversation. She decides to mute incoming traffic from this sender for one tick.

Gradually, after picking up more and more smooth pieces of orange and stashing them away, the two make their way towards some sharp grey blocks. Their shapes vary from rectangular prisms to cubes to pyramids, the texture therein being deeply inconsistent, as if random, insignificant noise was of any value. Sekri reaches out his arm to touch one of the blocks. Its surface is uncomfortable, almost viscerally, as if providing an electrical sting to his paw. Regardless, like any true scientist, he tries again with another block, this one being significantly closer to the planetary surface. “can you feel this?”, Sekri says, noting a strange smoothness above one of the blocks. It feels soft, warm almost, at least to him, a full empty cavern in the idyllic winds. As Amry approaches, Sekri's grip slips on the warmness, and a faint breeze manifests in its wake. “nevermind??”, he says. “oh???“ “perhaps i am missing something, but i could swear that some form was just present“ “hrm ≈:[“ “prescient commentary, emptiness“ “if you do not want me to check, what do you want me to do?“ “...fair point.“ “oh, wait- look!”, Amry exclaims, noting a grey-black towards the surface where the green ellipsoids once lied. “and what is this?”, she says, doing a voidform mosey towards it, almost as if teleportation. Sekri sighs loudly, offsetting the breeze further. Everything seems to be exciting to Amry in a way that feels almost strange — given her position, this should be routine by now. Perhaps it's a side effect of the decay, he thinks. Perhaps it's just always been like this, and I need to stop being paranoid, he thinks more potently. “come on, sekri! it is just interesting to see commonalities!”, she says. “commonalities?”, Sekri says, genuinely confused. “shared features! for example, this winding grey-blackness? it is in my novels as well!“ Sekri shivers. “if you talk about your novels-“ “it is not the content of the novels but the worlds depicted therein. i have not seen it directly but it is called a road there“ “you know how i feel about using concepts from texts such as that”, Sekri says with a scowl. “does it matter? we are not under anyone's gaze“ “i suppose you may be right, but-“ Amry picks up a smooth grey object from the surface of the planet with a tendril, and chucks it straight into the blue without a moment for anyone to react. The thing lands with a solid PLUNK, and concentric circles form within the blue, spreading from inside to out, and eventually fizzle out unceremoniously. “see? it's fine, we can do whatever”, she says. Maw agape, Sekri finds himself taken aback by the sudden insubordination to the mission's parameters. “i said, i suppose you may be right, but the rules of interaction are present for purposes beyond us“ “and i am saying that the rules of interaction are for cultures that are still present. did you not see the computer? did you inaccurately report its results to me? because it seems like that they are dead. deceased. their ashes scattered to the winds. or are you under the belief that these rules are not necessarily situational?“ “they are for our protection, not theirs.“ “i do not need protection ≈:<“ “we are sent here in twos for a reason, and this is it. will you please continue to play by my rules while i am around? not for anyone's sake but mine, if your disrespect for authority is truly all-consuming“ “alright...”, Amry says, meekly. Despite having won the argument in her mind, she still has to get along with others. Unfortunate.

The walk goes on. Every so often, the two encounter an encampment of some kind, ones that Sekri identifies as “buildings” to Amry as he did before. It's all more of the same, monotonous routine: Amry finds something exciting, Sekri doesn't find it exciting, we move on. The land is bare as the story to be told about it.

The grey snake they walk on is long, almost unending. It splits, it winds, and it eats its own tail. It ends at the point where culture and perception intersect, the shape of the snake creating an implicit bias towards where it leads. One might assume the snake has animosity towards where it fails to land. But the snake does not care about what lies on it or away from it, it is unfeeling, unflinching, inorganic. The snake waits for noone.

At the end of their segment of the snake, they find

nothing. A profound nothing, one that loops around the language they speak as if a criminal on the run. There are no shapes here, nothing to be processed, no consensus to be dealt out. They find it odd and attempt to press on, but still

just nothing.

“if we keep encountering prohibitive irrelevance it is likely we should just back up“ “honestly... yeah, i am getting kind of bored. you still have the artifacts, yes?“ “who do you take me for“ “faiiiir point!“

So they head back.

The vessel, of course, is unscathed upon their return, the watchful gaze of the hills protecting it from hazards. Not that there would be hazards regardless, given the whole “wiped out” thing going on here. The ramp is still open, the fog machines long since disengaged. “can i have a moment?”, Sekri says. “i want to retire to my quarters for a moment before we perform analyses“ “of course, silly!!!”, Amry says. “i am glad you are taking a break“ Sekri walks down the labyrinthine halls of the vessel, eventually landing in his room. Unfortunately, it lies right next to the room with analytical tooling and computers – the humming, clicking, whining, and whistling of the machinery is unsuitable for any form of respite nearby. It's clear that the vessel's designer was looking for someone work-focused, willing to attend to duty at any time. Conveniently, then, Sekri is here. The room he finds himself in is suitably drab, the green tone of the walls being the primary splash of color present. The area could be described as a “male living space” under a different frame of reference, a utilitarian wet dream. A shelf lies to his left, full of role playing game source books, yet not a single die, and video games befitting somebody who would have a shelf full of RPG source books. While the actual contents of the RPGs are significantly beyond the possibilities of Sekri's imagination, the worlds constructed therein are meticulous, incredibly specific to a point, he says. Though he'd never tell you that. The video games... are collecting dust. Truthfully, Sekri hasn't had enough time to put many more hours into these. The games are a strange variety: clearly, some get less love then others. On display are “HALF LIFE 3” and “METAL GEAR SOLQUID”, as well as a video recording of a movie called “LARVAL DRIVER” that's mixed in with the games as if he couldn't tell the difference. The room itself is lined with posters, about half of which are maps from various cultures or ripped out of sourcebooks. The other posters all follow a relatively similar formula: each of them has some arm of Cognis providing something, or a being in the center calling the reader to action. It's easy to get a sense of the raw emotion in each one, as if these were people truly committed to their message. The conviction therein inspires Sekri — he says that it reminds him why he is here when questioned about it. The rest of the room is horribly standard — a pod, a desk filled with various incoherent scribblings, a monitor to a games console, and a floor covering that really ties the whole place together. Without it, it would just feel like a temporary station. But with it? It's a home. Sekri grabs a game from the shelf and inserts it into the console. The monitor springs to life as if being imbued with it, finally ready to serve its purpose after all this time. The game's title screen loads. “Tetris”. No jokes, references, or intentional bastardizations here, Tetris is just the universal constant. Not just that, but Sekri crushes at Tetris. He starts up a 40 line sprint and finishes it in 27 blinks. Not bad, he thinks. Entranced by the game's repetitive motions, Sekri says he'll put in 10 attempts. He puts in 30, unfortunately failing to get any personal best.

After eventually managing to strip himself away from the game, Sekri makes his way to the computer room again. Unchanging as ever, the machinery coats the walls, the warmth of the area being almost tangible. He pushes a button on the main controls, and a pulsating mass on one of the walls opens up, as if a gaping maw ready to receive prey. Sekri retrieves one of the smooth orange objects, and places it in the analysis bay. Not wanting to bother Amry — possibly wanting to avoid her altogether — Sekri tries to keep the noise down, as if he's doing something taboo by getting back to work so quickly. Regardless, the machine doesn't appear to get the memo.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS???

“can you keep your messaging down? or at the very least use a less antiquated system for it”, Sekri says.

LITERALLY NO CHEAPSKATES WON'T GIVE ME UPGRADES

Sekri sighs, hoping that the machine doesn't grab Amry's attention. Amry, conveniently, is listening to music loud enough in the other room that she can't process the conversation, thereby making it a non-issue. “alright, well. the “fuck” is this object that we found upon the dividing line between the blues and greens, which i would like to submit for further analysis if at all possible“

IT STINGS

“you are in pain?“

IS IT THAT OBVIOUS THE MULTITUDES CONTAINED IN THIS ARE... ...MULTITUDINOUS

“what wonderful formplay, machine. regardless, is there any semantic analysis that can be done on this?“

IT IS A COMMUNICATION DEVICE IT TAKES THE SHAPE OF A LOCAL LIFEFORM OTHER VARIABLES UNKNOWN

“you kid. that is it?“

SUCH IS

“do not “such is” me, i would like to determine what relevance this has“

IT CERTAINLY HAS RELEVANCE! HAHAHA BUT IT HAS TOO MUCH OF IT

“oh?“

DID YOU NOT CATCH THE PART WHERE IT LITERALLY STUNG ME OR SOMETHING SHIT HURTS IT IS BASICALLY AN INFORMATION BOMB

“so how do we extrapolate from it?“

I RECOMMEND TRANSMITTING RAW DATA FOR FURTHER RECONSTRUCTION OF SEMANTIC MEANING

“estimated time of inspection?“

ONE TICK

Great, Sekri thinks. Even more waiting, as if the time spent here wasn't already monotonous enough. “go ahead“

The machine whirs and clicks, the device rotating within the wall-maw as if on a turntable. Each individual piece of it is scanned with a beam of light extending from the insides, hyper-focusing on individual, easy to decipher, meaningless chunks: meaninglessness that is narrow enough to be processed and sent. Upon each scan, the device establishes a link with home, then beams the individual particle's data over, where the whole is reconstructed molecule by molecule, bit by bit, point by point, thoroughly and excruciatingly reforming every detail. While Sekri starts to leave the room to go do something else for the wait, he catches a glimpse through the transparent view into the wall's crevice. It's strange, really. The object looks... like it is content, both in the sense that it has no care in any world, but additionally in the sense that it is made for consumption. It is certainly a worthwhile candidate for reconstruction, its relevance being almost blinding, its orangeness seeming to seep through every nook and cranny of the light being cast onto it. It feels almost as if it's staring back. It feels as if it's alive.

---

“We are containers, it's only the insides of our bodies that are important.” (The Handmaid’s Tale)

That's a quote from The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood published in 1985, many of you may be familiar with.

Dystopian novels tend to intensify reality—the inequality, oppression, or violence of what the future could hold. It is fictional but not purely detached from reality. Women’s reproductive capacity has been a recurring theme in dystopian tales of a dark world where women are enslaved to breed children for a despotic society.

This is not too far-fetched. If we look back a few decades ago women’s womb was part of political campaign of the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy to “encourage” women to procreate a specified race. In 1930s Germany, through the Lebensborn program, facilities were established for Aryan women to breed with SS soldiers for the sacred goal of achieving a pure Aryan state. In Mussolini’s Italy, giving birth was biological labor arranged with the efficiency and mass production akin to manufacturing factories to produce a new generation that will strengthen the military. In both regimes, women were awarded medals based on the number of children they produced, which was their act of servitude to the state.

Decades after the Second World War, along with industrialization, many countries experienced an economic boom after consistently implementing a strict population control policy. China’s one-child policy is one of the extreme examples of how population control is implemented at the cost of women’s reproductive rights, where coerced abortion, sterilization, and contraception took place. During the course of this policy, infanticide and femicide were also common practice. Just as during the rule of the fascist regimes, women’s body became a tool to achieve the goal of the state.

Women of ethnic minorities have also been the target of population control. To limit an ethnic population, minority women experienced coerced contraception without their consent. This happened to the Inuit people of Greenland, where in the 1960s, Inuit women and adolescent girls had IUD inserted into their bodies without their knowledge. Another case was the women of the Roma minority of socialist Czechoslovakia who experienced forced sterilization, first reported in the late 1970s.

Then there are cases of rape used as a weapon of war, executed for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Such a case occurred in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, where women of the Bosniak ethnic group were systematically raped. In conflict situations, men have also been victims of sexual violence, but war crimes and genocide are gendered. Such as in cases where women are impregnated as a war strategy, mothers and the children will serve as a representation and reminder of how their identity, community, and nation have been torn down.

In the 21st century we are haunted by population decline and for some nations, the fear of the extinction of an ethnicity. Several countries in Asia and Europe are facing a significant drop in fertility rate. A number of policies to raise fertility rates are also targeted at men, nevertheless, pressure is on women because they are the ones that can make it happen. Various government policies in the form of allowances for newborns, parental leave, and availability of daycare centers have not led to much change. Women and also men, such as in Japan, China, and South Korea, for a number of economic and cultural reasons are not eager to have children.

The reasons include the high costs of raising children, lack of affordable quality childcare, and women’s double and even triple burden because caring roles, including housework, are culturally still the main responsibility of women even with women’s high participation in the labor force. Data have shown that globally women spend more hours than men in unpaid carework. According to The World’s Women 2020: Trends and Statistics, “on an average day, women globally spend about three times as many hours on unpaid domestic and care work as men (4.2 hours compared to 1.7).”

Meanwhile, according to experts, continued low fertility rate—under 2.1, the number of children needed to be born to a woman in their reproductive years—will result in an irrecoverable condition. This means an aging society and a collapsed pension system due to scarce labor. Solving population decline is complex, there are economic issues, cultural issues, and the issue of a nation’s identity. The fear of ethnic replacement or even extinction justifies the opposition to immigration and the need for the native population to bear children. So in other words, attempts to maintain existing class structure (inequity) and ethnic preservation contribute to the continued population decline some countries are facing.

The year 2020 saw a global decline of democracy, which is part of a global trend of democratic decline and rising authoritarianism of the last 30 years (Freedom House, 2021). As scholars today are talking about the rise of fascist or authoritarian governments, it raises the question of how population decline will be addressed in the near future, particularly considering that women in countries with continued low fertility rate are refusing to have the required number of children. Will abortion and voluntary sterilization be less available to some women and perhaps only available to those who are marginalized? Will this lead to a history of state-condoned sexual violence repeating itself? When all policies fail, will this lead to a dystopian future where women’s bodies are treated as mere containers to achieve the goals of the state or, worst of all, wombs at the mercy of draconian laws?

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- 2023

You might be interested to read: Fertility and the Labor of Care

Read about modern political strongmen: Political Strongmen and the Crisis of Democracy

Image: Katie M. Berggren via Pinterest

#population #gender #reproductiverights #dystopia

Sources

Barrett, Claire (2021) ‘Building the “Master Race”: Nazi Women Were Awarded Medals to Bear Children.’ Historynet.com https://www.historynet.com/building-the-master-race-nazi-women-were-awarded-medals-to-bear-children/ [31 December 2023]

HistoryExtra (2020) The Woman Who Gave Birth for Hitler https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/woman-birth-hitler-lebensborn-aryan-child-hildegard-trutz-germany/ [31 December 2022].

Morgan, Melissa (2021) ‘Understanding the Global Rise of Authoritarianism.’ Stanford https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/understanding-global-rise-authoritarianism [31 December 2023]

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2020) The World’s Women 2020: Trends and Statistics https://www.un.org/en/desa/world%E2%80%99s-women-2020#:~:text=On%20an%20average%20day%2C%20women%20globally%20spend%20about,times%20as%20much%20as%20men%20on%20these%20activities [31 December 2023].

Wills, Matthew (2022) ‘Mussolini’s Motherhood Factories.’ Jstor Daily https://daily.jstor.org/mussolinis-motherhood-factories/ [12 April 2022].

This blog has moved to https://underlap.org/ as user @glyn@underlap.org.

I appreciate being welcome here!

I haven't yet worked out if there is a way to transfer the followers of this blog across, although I have copied all the posts. If you're following this blog, you may care to follow the new blog too.

Das Böse

Das Böse kann nicht in Russland oder in Gasa oder anderswo in der Welt bekämpft werden. Wirksam bekämpfen wir das Böse ausschließlich in uns selbst. Voraussetzung für den Erfolg im Kampf gegen das Böse sind Vertrauen, Geduld und die Bereitschaft, auf jede Art von Triumph zu verzichten. Dies ist freilich ein radikaler Gegenentwurf zu der Vorstellung vom Kampf gegen das Böse, wie sie von der hegemonialen Kultur des Imperiums angepriesen und seither von so vielen Menschen im Westen verinnerlicht worden ist.

Außerhalb von uns selbst kann nicht das Böse, sondern nur das vermeintlich “Böse” (Anführungszeichen) bekämpft werden. Der Kampf gegen das “Böse” aber geschieht im Zeichen von Misstrauen und Ungeduld und verzehrt sich nach Sieg und Triumph. Das Gute als Konzept gegen das Böse gilt ihm als “Appeasement”. Stattdessen bekämpft er “Böses” mit noch Böserem.

Ja, auch die sogenannten Nationalsozialisten bekämpften das “Böse”. Und immer wieder gibt es Menschen, die Macht missbrauchen, um es ihnen nachzutun.

Early last year, I wrote about how the JSONPath Internet Draft got started. Since then draft 21 was approved for publication and, after final editing, will be published as an RFC, probably in early 2024.

Meanwhile there has been considerable progress in implementing the draft, with some notable gaps that you may be interested in helping to plug.

Implementations

I started a Rust implementation that I hoped could be used as a Reference Implementation. I got distracted by spending much more time editing the draft than I anticipated, but I also ran into trouble because the lack of documentation of the pest parser makes the parsing code laborious to implement. An advantage, indeed the main point, of using the pest parser is that the parsing expression grammar (PEG) is cleanly separated from the implementation and is therefore easier to compare to the ABNF in the spec than, for example, a hand-crafted parser. If you are interested in taking over this implementation, please email me using link below.

Greg Dennis, who was involved in the JSONPath Working Group, implemented the whole spec in C#. The code is available in his json-everything repository. You can take this for a spin on the online playground.

Carsten Bormann, one of the editors of the spec, wrote a Ruby implementation. This uses his abnftt tool to generate a PEG parser from the ABNF in the spec. Given that we tried to keep the ABNF “PEG-compatible” by ordering choices suitably, the parser is highly likely to match the spec. For usage information, issue:

$ gem install jpt
$ jpt --help

Trevor Hilton implemented the whole spec in Rust using the nom parser combinator library. See serde_json_path for the code or take it for a spin using the online sandbox.

All these implementations have been tested against the Compliance Test Suite.

Compliance Tests

There is an incomplete Compliance Test Suite. The most notable omission from my perspective is testing for non-deterministic behaviour. Currently, all the tests in the CTS produce deterministic results. So any valid implementation should pass the CTS. However, the non-deterministic aspects of the spec (which stem from the unordered nature of JSON objects) are not tested by the CTS.

Regular Expression Support

Since JSONPath supports regular expression matching in filters, the working group produced an interoperable regular expression spec that defines a subset of XML Schema regular expressions that is also a subset of most other regular expression flavours (“I-Regexp”). This was published as RFC 9485.

Carsten wrote a Ruby implementation again based on abnftt. The code is available on github. For usage information, issue:

$ gem install iregexp
$ iregexp --help

This is a reference implementation only insofar as it can be used to express iregexp regular expressions in other popular flavours such as PCRE or JavaScript regular expressions. The implementation repository contains some basic tests, but a full Compliance Test Suite has not been developed. Perhaps a CTS could be based on the XML Schema Test Suite.

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Can People Easily Notice Your Hair Tattoo?

If you are looking for the best micropigmentation hair (Micropigmentering hår) solutions, you may have certain questions in mind. Most people wonder if people will easily be able to notice that they got a hair tattoo or not. The first thing you should remember is to only work with an experienced practice that has received positive feedback from people. They will surely use the right techniques to make it look professional and realistic. So, let’s find out more about the process.

Ink:

The ink used by the professionals will be of the most premium quality. So they will be able to match your hair color efficiently. This way, they will be able to achieve a natural look without any issues and will even dilute the pigment until it perfectly matches the hair color you have. This way, you can rest assured that the micropigmentation (Micropigmentering) will completely match your hair color.

Micropigmentation Process:

The practitioners will use a unique technique and make small dots to replicate hair follicles. Normal tattoos may need a lot of ink and can also have certain side effects. However, this will not be the case with micropigmentation. The pigment will be deposited in the dermis. So, there will be no migration issues, and the pigment will also last for a long time. The micropigmentation process helps prevent fading to a huge extent too.

Artists:

When you contact the right professionals, they will be properly trained and licensed to conduct the micropigmentation process. The micro pigmentation artists will be highly experienced and will ensure to guide you in the right direction. They will always offer the most natural results. They will ensure to help you by first listening to your needs and concerns and suggesting the right solutions based on your issues. They will be highly careful while completing the process and suggest the best tips to take care of your scalp after micropigmentation. 

Stay Confident in the Process:

When looking for the right help for scalp micropigmentation (Skalp Micropigmentering), you should check the qualifications and experience of the practitioners. They should be highly confident with their work and assist you when you need natural solutions for your scalp micro-pigmentation.

So, contact the most reputable and reliable name in the industry that can guide you through this process and make the journey easier and more convenient for you.

To go for scalp micropigmentation, visit https://www.madehairacademy.se/

Original Reference: https://bit.ly/49kKbfa