Featuring some of the leaders of Beowulf, Incorporated:
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TINY, THOMAS, DR. NONNE, NEMO, and LADY sit along the back wall of a dimly-lit room. In front of them, DR. SHORT sits in his wheelchair, facing them. Behind him, a screen is lit by a projector.
DR. SHORT: The following is a presentation examining the entity known as Cthulhu, its history on our planet, and the dangers it represents to the people of Earth. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Miss Lady Orleans, Dr. Quincy Nonne, and Miss Marvel Morgan, without whose expertise I would have been wholly incapable of-
THOMAS: This isn’t Cambridge, Davydd. You can dispense with the formalities.
TINY: (arms crossed, looking comically uncomfortable in a chair that is too small for him) Please.
DR. SHORT: Old habits die hard, Mister Blackwood. I am afraid that you will simply have to bear with me. It should also be borne in mind that a significant portion of the information which I am about to present has been acquired through the utilization of conjecture, and should be taken only as our best understanding at the moment, rather than absolute fact. Dr. Nonne, if you would.
DR. NONNE begins to set a series of slides on the projector. As DR. SHORT speaks, the screen behind him shows a number of sketches and paintings in differing artistic styles—Oriental, tribal, ancient looking, comparatively modern, et cetera. Each shows a semi-humanoid figure with two arms and legs (generally clawed), a thick torso, a pair of wings on its back, and an octopoidal face. Though each image is unique, they are all clearly artistic renderings of the same being. The images are distinctly unsettling.
DR. SHORT: Some version of this being has been worshipped by primitivist cults across the globe for millennia. The names ascribed to it vary, though they all share a certain similarity: Cthulhu, Tulu, Katulu, Khlûl-hoo, Kutulu. Indeed, it is a possibility that none of these are the entity’s true name, or even that it is impossible for the human vocal apparatus to create the sounds necessary to truly replicate what it calls itself in its native tongue. It has been decided that for our purposes, we will refer to it as “Cthulhu”, as this is the term employed by the Theron Marks Society.
THOMAS: Damn it, Davydd, I know what its name is. What is it?
DR. SHORT: (ignoring him) Though worshipped as a god, it should be noted that Cthulhu is not a god, at least in the cosmological sense. Rather, it is an entity of such power that (when exposed to it) mankind appears compelled to worship it as such, in much the same way that ancient man, exposed to a volcanic eruption, is forced to conclude that they are experiencing an instance of divine retribution. Cthulhu is indeed a potent force, but it is not omnipotent.
TINY: How potent are we talking about, here?
DR. SHORT: Cthulhu has been referred to as “The Mountain That Walks”. I am given to understand that this is not an exaggeration.
TINY: …yeah. Okay.
DR. SHORT: In addition to its impressive size, it is said to possess great cunning, an incomprehensible mastery of supraphysical thaumaturgy-
TINY: Super-what?
LADY: Magic, Jack. Magic.
TINY: Well, just say “magic”, then.
DR. SHORT: …and is said to be composed of extradimensional matter which renders it wholly unkillable, at least without an immediate and extraordinary expansion of our understanding of space and time.
TINY: So what you’re saying is, we’re fucked.
DR. SHORT: Please stop interrupting me, Mister Diamond. And no, that is not what I am saying. I mentioned before that Cthulhu’s might, though considerable, falls short of omnipotence. This was not a statement of theological speculation. We know that Cthulhu is not an omnipotent being, because it has been defeated before. On this very planet, as a matter of fact.
The room is silent, but both TINY and THOMAS are grinning in anticipation. DR. SHORT allows this statement a moment to sink in, then continues.
DR. SHORT: The next slide, Doctor Nonne.
DR. NONNE changes the slide. The projector now shows two sketches of a grey-colored, barrel-shaped being, one from the side and one from an aerial view. It possesses radial (rather than bilateral) symmetry. Its central mass displays five vertical ridges, between each of which wing-like membranes extrude from interior cavities, each approximately as long as the being is tall. Five arms are spaced around the central body mass, each ending in a small conglomeration of tentacles or tendrils. A five-pointed starfish-like head rises from its bulbous neck. Sprouting out of the head are five long stalks ending in eyes. At the top of its head is a large aperture not unlike a mouth. Below the being’s central body are five legs, each ending in a flipper-like appendage.
THOMAS: (stares, slightly unsettled) I… I’ve seen that before. Somewhere. What in the ever-loving Christ is it?
DR. SHORT: This, Mister Blackwood, is one of a race of beings known to mankind only as the Ancient Race, or the Elder Things. They were also, if Miss Orleans is to be believed, the first sentient race to populate our planet.
LADY: It isn’t conjecture, Dr. Short. I’m sure of it now.
THOMAS: But what do you-
DR. SHORT: Indeed, it is my understanding that we now have proof of the truths of these myths in the form of reports from two of our agents. Though both of them seemed to believe that they had traveled to an alien world, Miss Orleans assures me that they had in fact ventured millions of years into the past, to a city of the Ancient Race. There, they saw mosaics which confirmed the accounts whose veracity had been up to that point suspect. Dr. Nonne.
DR. NONNE begins to set a series of slides. On the wall behind DR. SHORT is projected in succession several dozen crude sketches, little better than stick figures. In them, strange barrel-shaped figures war with hideous octopoids.
DR. SHORT: It is likely that much of the following will fundamentally restructure or challenge your understanding of the history of our planet. Kindly do not allow your surprise to cause you to interrupt me. It will be easier for all of us if I get through this part quickly.
Long, long ago … Hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions of years in our distant past, the Ancient Race came to our planet. We do not know from where. At that time, Earth was largely barren of life. Over millions of years, the Ancient Race fully colonized the planet, creating massive cities both on its land surfaces and in the oceans. They mined the planets resources, conducted various scientific experiments, and held absolute dominion over the Earth.
Thomas sets his jaw firmly, willing himself not to interrupt. His hands ball into fists on his chairs armrests. Tiny has less self-restraint.
TINY: So you’re telling me-
DR. SHORT: Mister Diamond, please.
TINY: (grunts)
DR. SHORT: After countless aeons, a great cataclysm occurred. Countless cities of the Ancient Race were destroyed, and new, strange land masses rose from the depths of the sea. Ponape. R’lyeh. These names may mean little to you, but to the scholar of metaphysical history, they hold much weight. Shortly thereafter, Cthulhu and its kin arrived on our planet and settled these new lands. Though it is unclear whether there is a causal link between this cataclysm and these beings’ arrival, the timing seems suspect, at the very least.
It is here that the Ancient Race becomes directly relevant to the subject at hand. On arriving on this planet from unknown regions of space and, perhaps, time, Cthulhu and its servants (thought to perhaps be lesser members of the same species, though it is unclear) immediately began a war of dominion against the Ancient Race… A war which, by all accounts, they lost. A treaty of sorts was eventually struck. Cthulhu and its armies were permitted to keep the limited surface territories they possessed, and the rest of the planet remained the domain of the Ancient Race.
THOMAS: How did they do it?
DR. SHORT: (smiling gently) I had anticipated such a question. Doctor Nonne?
DR. NONNE replaces the slide. On the wall behind DR. SHORT is projected a series of three bullet points beneath a header which reads “WEAPONRY OF THE ANCIENT RACE”. The first bullet points is: TECHNOLOGY. The second bullet point is: THAUMATURGY. The third bullet point is: BIOLOGY.
It is our understanding that the chief strengths of the Ancient Race (beyond superior numbers) were these three points: Technological mastery, thaumaturgical-
TINY: (muttering) Magical…
DR. SHORT: … thaumaturgical mastery, and biological innovation. Our knowledge of each of these branches remains limited, yet there are still key insights which might be relayed. We begin with the domain of Technology. Doctor Nonne?
DR. NONNE: (changes the projector slide so that it now reads “TECHNOLOGY”, then abandons his position beside the projector and carries a rifle-like object composed of alien-looking, silvery metal to the front of the room. He holds it up.) At the m-m-moment, this artifact remains the s-s-singular piece of Ancient Race technology which we have thus far c-c-captured. Though initially d-d-d-dam- … found in a state of disrepair, I was able to p-patch it together to the point where it is more or less functional. (He sets the device on the table in front of him, pointing to the reverse-bell protruding from one end of it.) When the triggering mechanism is p-p-pushed, a concentrated beam of electroplasmic en-en-energy is shot out from this material concentrator, causing sig-sig-sig … extraordinary damage to the target.
It was my initial hypothesis that this device represented an alternative version of the weaponry c-c-captured from the beings referred to by the Theron Marks Society as “Mi-Go” in the gatehouse located in Hartford, Connecticut. However, th-th-this t-t-turned out to b-b-be untrue. Th-th-though the effect of the weaponry is broadly similar, the mechanisms by which said effects are achieved are widely dissimilar. However, both devices appear to be powered by miniaturized batteries of highly compressed energy, which would hypothetically limit their firings, unless these batteries were replaced or recharged. Though I’m w-w-w-wor-wor … Attempting to understand the technology involved, I am still in the extreme early stages. It appears to utilize both magnetic fields and a sort of atomic (or possibly extra-dimensional) energy converter, the fundamental properties of which modern m-m-mathematics has no apt descriptors. Each technology also ap-ap-appears to em-employ certain principles utilized by the sh-shielding device created by the Mystery Child of the Greenwood Asylum.
It is my assessment that the Mi-Go appear to be at a roughly equivalent technological level as the Ancient Race. With this in mind, it may b-b-behoove us to make the c-c-capture of further Mi-Go technology a priority. The c-c-capture and interrogation of a M-M-Mi-Go scientist would also likely prove i-i-immeasurably useful. With sufficient knowledge, I am sure that a t-t-team of engineers could replicate s-s-similar weapons designed for human use, or p-p-perhaps even larger-scale versions. Th-though this is f-far from a certainty, I would h-hazard a guess that an electroplasmic cannon would prove highly effective against Cthulhu and his m-m-minions.
DR. NONNE, finished, smiles awkwardly, looks around, then walks back to his place by the projector. LADY stands, pats DR. NONNE warmly on the back, then approaches the front of the room. DR. NONNE replaces the slide. Behind LADY is projected the word, “THAUMATURGY”.
LADY: The Ancient Ones knew a great deal about this universe and the fundamental processes by which it is governed. Far more than our human society, or even those of us who dabble in spellcraft. At a civilizational level, what we term “magic” was believed to a mechanical process which could be learned, taught, and understood, with many of the arcane and ceremonial frills therefore largely removed. As a result, the extradimensional element of the Cthulhoid forces could be broadly countered-
TINY: Hold on, Lady. There’s so much gobbledygook and jargony handwaving here, I can’t understand half of what either you or Quince are saying. What in the hell does “extra-dimensional” mean?
LADY: There’s no simple way to answer that with any true accuracy, and a mathematically complex answer would have us here for hours. Suffice it to say that we experience but one of countless iterations (or planes) of reality. Extradimensional beings may move between these levels, or even exist within multiple planes at once.
TINY: Planes?
LADY: (ignoring him) These latter beings, if they should be ‘killed’ on this level of reality, may yet maintain an existence in others. By this method, they are functionally immortal, unkillable unless an individual were to find a way to destroy the being on each plane in which it holds existence. Failing to do this, even the absolute destruction of such a being on this level of reality would simply be a minor hindrance to it.
THOMAS: Christ.
LADY: However, for beings knowledgeable of the inner workings of the universe, extra-dimensional creatures may be bound, trapped, banished, or even killed through the utilization of certain thaumaturgical principles. I believe that the Ancient Race were able to weaponize these abilities, developing magical principles which enabled them to fight Cthulhu and its spawn to a standstill.
THOMAS: And how many of these spells do we currently have knowledge of?
LADY: Hardly any.
THOMAS: (sighs)
LADY: You must understand, as I believe it, the development of these principles was the outcome of an entire civilization of beings to which thaumaturgy was merely another branch of science devoting itself to the innovation and manufacture of weaponized spellcraft. By comparison, all we have to go off of are a handful of writings from mad sages and deranged poets. But theoretically, these mechanisms were discovered once, and could be discovered again.
Without giving any other sign that she has finished, LADY strides to her chair and sits down. After a moment, DR. SHORT clears his throat, and DR. NONNE changes the slide. The projection on the wall now reads, “BIOLOGY”.
DR. SHORT: This brings us to the final strength of the Ancient Race, that of biological innovation. As I understand it, they delighted in experimental manipulation of genetic information. In point of fact, there is some evidence to suggest that the Ancient Race were the very progenitors of all Earthly life as we know it today.
THOMAS: You’re not saying these ancient alien fuckers birthed humanity out of test tubes.
DR. SHORT: Not at all. But, evidently, there are some writings to suggest that they created our antediluvian ancestors.
TINY: …anti-
LADY: Old, Tiny. It means old.
TINY: (muttering) Then just say “old”…
DR. SHORT: All of this is a digression from the subject at hand. In addition to the manufacture of specialized viral agents (though that is almost purely the result of an educated assumption, rather than any hard evidence to indicate such), the Ancient Race were known to employ the usage of specialized biological slaves, known as “shoggoths”. A highly adaptable entity, capable of molding itself into whatever form the situation calls for, the shoggoth almost certainly proved a highly capable and nigh-indestructible force on the battlefield. One may imagine legions of the things, balls of biomass twenty feet in diameter rolling menacingly across mountain ranges or the sea floor, unhindered by an environmental difficulties, unsleeping, uneating, single-mindedly hunting their opponents. A formidable weapon, indeed.
THOMAS: (abruptly, and loudly) Damn it, that’s where I’ve seen those barrel things before! In Dr. Freygan’s lab! (NEMO flinches, almost imperceptibly.) He had a giant mirror, and they were… they were making-
DR. SHORT: Yes. It is the belief of both myself and Miss Orleans that Dr. Freygan had created a window through time in order to observe the Ancient Race and their manufacture of shoggoths, with the intent of replicating the process.
THOMAS: So you’re saying that we met the world’s foremost authority on the creation of this biological superweapon, and I-
DR. SHORT: You shot him dead, and shrewdly destroyed his primary source of information gathering. Yes.
THOMAS: …fuck.
DR. SHORT: Yes, “fuck” indeed. However, despite this significant loss of knowledge, we were still able to capture Dr. Freygan’s extensive notes, and we maintain access to those parts of his laboratory you failed to destroy. With this in mind, it might be said that we are now the de facto authorities on the manufacture of shoggoths, should we ever turn our attention and resources to such a project. In fact, it is not inconceivable that we could even create a window into the past similar to the one you destroyed, for observational purposes.
NEMO: (flatly) So, to summarize, in order to defeat Cthulhu and his armies, a united civilization spanning the entire globe utilized technology we don’t understand, magic we can’t begin to comprehend, and biological weaponry which we haven’t even scratched the surface of figuring out how to create (let alone control), and with all this they were only able to fight them to a standstill?
DR. SHORT: That is my understanding, yes.
NEMO: So, to quote Tiny, what you’re saying is, we’re fucked.
DR. SHORT: Not at all, Nemo. We have one advantage which the Elder Race did not possess.
THOMAS: And that is?
LADY: “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
There is a brief silence.
TINY: Come again?
DR. SHORT: “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” We have a single advantage which the Ancient Ones did not. Millions of years ago, a second cataclysm (again, of unknown provenance) sank the microcontinents of Ponape and R’lyeh into the depths of the Pacific Ocean. For a hundred million years, there Cthulhu and his armies have slept.
TINY: For a hundred million years. Asleep. Folks, how sure are we that they didn’t all just vaporize in this cataclysm thing?
LADY: “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.” Cthulhu and his brethren but sleep. Even dormant, the Great Old Ones’ influence seeps into the dreams of those able to channel it. The cults of Cthulhu did not arise independently across the globe from mere happenstance. His malevolent will calls out, even from the depths.
TINY: And when are these Great Old Ones gonna wake up?
DR. SHORT: “When the stars are right.” Or, more concretely, when somebody wakes them.
There is a brief silence.
THOMAS: (clearing his throat) Well, then. It seems to me that until such a point as we are able to unite humanity in utilizing ancient magics and incomprehensibly alien technologies against an apocalyptic extradimensional threat, it would be wise for us to do absolutely everything in our power to ensure that Cthulhu and his minions stay exactly where they are.
DR. SHORT: That is an accurate summation of my position, yes.
THOMAS: In that case … (he takes a moment to retrieve a cigarette from his pocket, lights it, inhales, and exhales) …in that case, I suggest that we get to work.

Background
Canary Islands is a Spanish archipelago of volcanic nature located in the eastern Atlantic ocean, just west of southern Morocco. The chain of islands extends for approximately 490 kilometers (300 miles).
Canary Islands is both geologically and climatologically almost identical to Hawaii, and as such, international tourism has been the main pillar of its economy since the 1960s.
The Event
At around 10:15 PM of June 22nd, 1976, emergency services in all the main seven islands received a flood of calls, with people reporting having seen a strange and frightening phenomenon taking place in the night sky. Most of these callers described what they were seeing as 'a gigantic explosion of light' or 'a massive ball of fire', and all of them said the phenomenon seemed to be taking place somewhere far in the west. These accounts were quickly confirmed true by local authorities, since the 'explosion of light' in question shone for several minutes before dissipating.
Many witnesses also added having seen one or two much smaller red lights moving strangely before the 'explosion' took place -rising from the horizon or from behind the mountains at very high speed, although others added that the lights flew following 'a zig-zag trajectory'.
No sound was heard or reported regarding the phenomenon, and no consequences seemed to follow except for a frightened population.
A foreign tourist vacationing in the island of Gran Canaria took the only known legit picture available of the phenomenon, from the balcony of his hotel room in Maspalomas. Here you can see a bigger version of the picture with enhanced contrast.
Here's a drawing extracted from an official report made by the Spanish Air Force. The drawing depicts a description of the event made with the information gathered from witnesses reports in the western coast of Gran Canaria. The mountains in the drawing are a depiction of the silhouette of Tenerife, the island immediately west of Gran Canaria. In order to understand the extreme magnitude of the 'explosion of light', please take into account that Tenerife is 70 kilometers (44 miles) away and its tallest peak -Mount Teide, which is in fact Spain's tallest mountain- is 3,718 meters tall (12,198 feet). Here's a real picture of the landscape depicted in the drawing, for a better perspective.
Hong Kong's bulk carrier vessel Osaka Bay was sailing from Capetown (South Africa) to Southampton (United Kingdom). The event took place when she was some 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of the island of La Gomera, and her crew did also witness the phenomenon. Here's a drawing made out of their witness reports.
The crew of the Spanish Navy's corvette Atrevida (F-61) observed the phenomenon as she was sailing just south of the island of Fuerteventura. Her captain's account of the event;
"At 22:27 local time of June 22nd it was seen, for the first time, a bright light of an intense bluish yellow color, taking off and rising in altitude towards our position... Once it reached certain height (15º-18º) it stood still, turning its light projection and showing its light source. It remained like that for approximately two minutes, before bursting into a large circle of bright bluish yellow light that remained in that position for forty minutes even after the original preceding phenomenon had faded away.
Two minutes later the light source split, its lower half being smaller and standing in the middle of the circle of light, turning into a bluish cloud as the split half that had originated this bluish mass faded away. The upper half gained altitude while describing a fast but irregular spiraling trajectory, vanishing afterwards. None of these movements had any effect whatsoever on the initial circle of light, whose features remained the same, partially illuminating land and sea, which leads to believe that it wasn't an object far in the distance, but rather close".
Here's the translation of local newspaper excerpts detailing the event;
"It was spotted between 10:15 and 10:30 PM and, according to one of our journalists who has his residence at Valle de Aridane (La Palma island), at that time he observed something that looked like a rocket emerging from the sea and flying towards El Time peak shining with an intense red light. The same phenomenon was spotted in Tazacorte (in La Palma island too). The ferry Villa de Agaete, sailing from Las Palmas, could observe a great shining at exactly 10:20 PM, shortly before docking in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The shining, which lasted about five minutes, appeared like a rocket that had come out of the sea". - El Día (June 23rd, 1976)
"Last night, at around half past ten, a strange object was spotted from several points of our region, especially in the areas of Gáldar and Telde (Gran Canaria), where most phone calls we received in that regard were from. Our callers explained to us that it was a round object that grew massively in size as it rose, clearly defined before it began to fade.
The aforementioned phenomenon began as a couple of red objects that moved in zig-zag, forming into some sort of spiral whose lower half ended in three clearly differentiated but overlaying stripes with some degree of separation between them. They were of a very bright red color and faded gradually. On top of these stripes there was what looked like two powerful blue focal lights, which began to diminish in intensity too before turning into a thin haze afterwards". - La Provincia (June 23rd, 1976)
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Thanks to these accounts and description of the events, calculations could be made in order to ascertain the phenomenon's origins. At the moment of its beginning (which many witnesses described as a rocket taking off) the sun was already 13.7º under the horizon and its azimuth angle was 307º (northwest). Setting a hypothetical POV in the geographical center of the archipelago (28.50º N, 15.75º W, just north of Gran Canaria, it was calculated that during it's first phase (the 'rocket lights') the phenomenon was located some 762 kilometers (473 miles) straight west, at an approximate altitude of 46 kilometers (28 miles). By the end of its final phase (the 'explosion of light') it had traveled to a point located at around 1,062 kilometers (662 miles) west and had risen to a final altitude of 90 kilometers (56 miles).
These calculations became a very important piece of data, we'll get back to them later.
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The UFO/Aliens narrative (AKA the press cherry-picks the statement of one particularly imaginative witness in order to sell a story of very questionable credibility)
Being the 1970s, almost immediately certain sectors of the press began talking about UFO -and subsequently about aliens, even though there was no further evidence to suggest such thing. The local authorities (the Army especially) focused their efforts into reassuring the population that there was nothing to fear, while at the same time gathering all the information they could gather in order to investigate the phenomenon.
In June of 1994, exactly eighteen years after that night, the Spanish Army declassified the 107-pages long investigation report of what by then it had been baptized as the "OVNI de Canarias 22/06/1976" ("Canary Islands' 06/22/1976 UFO"). Back then very few people in Spain had internet access, and as such the release of these documents went unnoticed for most people. However, many journalists rushed to get a copy of the report, and many of these worked for UFO/paranormal magazines of dubious scientific accuracy. And, aware of the kind of reaction they wanted to generate from the public they target, they focused in just one part of the report; Dr. Padrón's story.
Francisco Julio Padrón León (who passed away in 2013) was a general practitioner that lived and had his office in the rural municipality of Gáldar, which is located precisely in the northwestern part of the island of Gran Canaria (and precisely, where a lot of people reported witnessing the phenomenon. Unlike most witnessed, however, Padrón told Spanish authorities a much more extravagant version of the events.
That night he had been called in person to check on a local patient at her home, and the doctor had called a taxi in order to reach the patient's residence; Padrón lived in the town of Guía, and the patient lived at a small parish some 10 kilometers away (6 miles) named Las Rosas. Padrón, his companion and the taxi driver claimed having observed the phenomenon when the car was covering the last two kilometers of the route (at that point, a very narrow and barely paved rural road). Or more specifically, Padrón and the taxi driver claimed having bumped into it; because, according to the statement, at that moment the car's headlights illuminated a sphere that was floating right in front of them. The Padrón and the taxi driver described it as measuring some 30 meters (98 feet), slightly bright and slightly translucent. They (the doctor, especially) described seeing two humanoid entities inside the sphere, surrounded by what looked to be inner aluminum structural parts of the sphere. These figures were, per their statements, between 2.5 and 3 meters tall (8'2" to 9'10"), one taller than the other, and they were dressed in red skin-tight suits. Padrón claimed that these beings stood facing each other, apparently interacting among them but didn't seem to notice his or the taxi driver's presence. It then began to grow in size until (his words) "becoming as big as a 20-story building" and began ascending. At this point of his statement he said he went to check on her patient, after which he told all people present at the patients' home, inviting everyone to go outside and check by themselves what he claimed he had seen. By the time everyone joined Dr. Padrón to watch, the sphere was already very big, standing high in the sky and then it flew away at extreme speed ("faster than any aircraft I've seen in my life", Padrón said in the report) leaving a trail of blue smoke behind before vanishing in the distance, towards Tenerife island.
In his individual report, the taxi driver made just a very skimp corroboration of Padrón's statement, omitting most details of his version of the phenomenon. It was just a few sentences long. The taxi driver was a man in his sixties (and wore glasses) of very little formal education -in fact, his preliminary handwritten statement had to be redacted to correct numerous grammar and spelling mistakes.
As for the companion (a relative of the patient, who was traveling in the backseat), this man only describes seeing "intense bright light everywhere" and noticing "both the doctor and the taxi driver's agitation". He claimed the amount of light, plus the fact that by sitting in the backseat the taxi driver and the doctor's bodies blocked his view, hadn't allowed him to see what Padrón claimed having witnessed.
The declassified document contained many more witness reports gathered from the same area, but none of them matched Dr. Padrón's story about a sphere with two humanoids figures in it; every other description -most of them provided by locals- mentions the same enormous disc of light in the west night sky. A car mechanic and his wife described it as "a car's headlight thrice as large as the full moon". A school teacher mentioned having seen it from his house's window through a pair of binoculars when it began to fade, noticing its "fog-like appearance, and the night stars could be seen through", and mentioning what looked like a couple of bluish beams inside. A farmer explained in his statement that it looked like "a fire spot", he too mentioned seeing "two blue lines" in it. Not even the sick woman Padrón had come to provide medical attention to nor her relatives confirmed the Dr.'s description of the phenomenon, matching instead everyone else's.
That didn't stop the journalists working for UFO/paranormal-themed magazines or even some journalists working for reputable newspapers from disregarding all these credible witnesses and instead focusing on the most outlandish one; Dr. Padrón. In summer of 1994, several of these Spanish magazines like Enigmas, Año Cero or Más Allá rushed to publish a drawing depicting Padrón's description of the 'humanoid figures dressed in red' in their articles, not only making absolutely no mention of any of the other witnesses but also claimed that the propulsion system of the alleged 'alien spacecraft' had scorched a nearby onion field -the area is full of that type of crops- and that posterior chemical analysis of the scorched terrain had yielded wildly unusual results. We'll come back to this point later.
Sketch depicting Padrón's (unique, literally) description of the event. Yes, someone from the Army - more specifically from the Air Force- was tasked with sitting down next to this guy and spending a good deal of time drawing whatever ludicrous thing Padrón felt like coming up with.
Something worth mentioning; these publications made heavy emphasis on Padrón's education -he was a GP, after all. As in, as extraordinary as his claims were, these were being made by a man of a high level of education, intelligent and therefore (in the eyes of many) automatically worth of credibility. In fact, the patient's relative traveling in the taxi's backseat -a farmhand that had never received formal schooling and was illiterate- said in his witness report that one of the reasons why he did not question Padrón's statement was precisely the abysmal difference in education between him and the doctor, and kind of assumed that if an educated man like Padrón said that such thing had indeed happened, then it must have been true.
A local newspaper interviewed Dr. Padrón shortly after the documents were declassified. And by then, eighteen years after that night, Padrón added some more details to his already bizarre account, providing these journalists with something that wouldn't have been out of place in an episode of The X-Files (which back in 1994 had begun to be broadcasted in Spain, with significant success). Back in 1976 Padrón had already added in his statement that he did not feel fear but 'a strange sense of wellbeing and excitement' in his encounter with the alleged spacecraft; now he was also saying that these beings -which never communicated with him in any way, per his account- had not only the ability to erase anyone's memories off their brains, but they also can "make you see whatever they want you to do for months or years, replacing an 'energy' [his word] in your brain". If these statements weren't absurd enough, Dr. Padrón warned the journalists about not taking him seriously, because in the last three years he "had observed that anyone who had been skeptical of my statements and hurt my credibility in public has passed away within six or seven months, all of them to cancer, eight people in total so far".
Although the documents that included the description of his ludicrous story hadn't been declassified until 1994, ever since 1976 many journalists had managed to get in touch with Padrón and hear his story -the doctor himself wasn't exactly quiet about it either -and some of these are allegedly the cancer victims Padrón would've been referring to. There's no way to check the veracity of that, since the only source of that statement was Padrón himself.
Between 1976 and 1994 the doctor's story circulated in a somewhat obscure manner, being referred to in some UFO articles here and there -and adding their own artistic depictions of his outlandish story. Padrón was already telling any 'paranormal' journalist willing to listen about the scorched onion field. Turned out, back in June of 1976 a farmer in the municipality of Guía did indeed notice an area in one of his onion crops that seemed to have been burned, but that man had specified that that hadn't happened until the morning of June 24th, a good day and half after Padrón's alleged 'alien encounter'. What is more, although the cause of these burns couldn't be ascertained, they were indistinguishable from fire damage. To this day it's thought that these burnt onion plants were nothing but the result of vandalism or a prank. Some UFO skepticism authors have raised the possibility of the doctor himself being responsible.
Picture of one of the many onion fields in Guía and Gáldar. To this day, Dr. Padrón's 'scorched onion field' remains a running joke among the older residents in these municipalities.
At the time Padrón even managed, out of sheer insistence, to get that soil tested. Surprisingly to no one, all chemical, physical and radiological analyses performed yielded no unusual results. The sampling and testing was conducted by Hungarian-Spanish physician Alejandro Carlos de Gyorko-Gyorkos, who at the time was curious about paranormal phenomena and had interviewed Padrón many times in 1976. According to a journalist for Naukas (A Spanish online science and technology magazine that specializes in skepticism and debunking of pseudoscience), in 1992 Gyorko-Gyorkos described Padrón as a man that "interprets everything he comes up with as real". By 1994 Padrón was also claiming that the Spanish Air Force had threatened him with legal action to silence him, and that Gyorko-Gyorkos was a man whose "ethics he'd rather not talk about". Padrón had never mentioned these alleged legal threats at any point before June of that year, precisely once the documents were declassified, a coincidence that hadn't gone unnoticed.
Some skepticism authors have elucubrated about the possible inspiration for Padrón's 'tall men in dressed in red spacesuits'. Not exactly very original.
​
​
Explanation (1994 and 2001)
The 1976 document concludes that the origen of the 22/06/976 UFO -although in reality the Spanish Air force used then the acronym FANI (Fenómeno Aéreo No Identificado', 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon') when referring to it- was unknown. In 1994 these paranormal journalists presented such conclusion as an automatic evidence of aliens, or at least UFOs in the sense popular culture depicts then. In reality, as anyone can notice upon checking the report, 'unknown' means precisely that; unknown. At no point in the report the authors bring up rebuttals for any possible logical or rational explanation, but rather they conclude that back in 1976 there was just not enough evidence to provide an accurate explanation of its origin.
The same report contains the transcription of precisely Dr. Gyorko-Gyorkos's opinion about Dr. Padrón's reasoning (safe to assume, by then had already made up his mind about the man) in a military court. In the transcription, and in what looks like a generous maneuver to dismiss Padrón's claims without going as far to humiliate him, Gyorko-Gyorkos explains a military judge that that night Dr. Padrón, possibly overworked and sleep-deprived, misremembered what had seen and his fatigued psyche had create a mixed recollection with what he had seen and what had crossed his mind. As for the taxi driver, this man was probably highly impressionable -apparently the Dr. had behaved in a very excited manner during the phenomenon- and thus in a way Padrón had 'passed' his delusional belief onto him. The military court ruled that "Padrón's credibility could not, for the time being, be corroborated".
Of course, at this point of this writeup a question still lingers; what was whatever thing close to a million and half people saw in the night sky back on June 22nd, 1976? First, let's go over the world's state of affairs at the time, because this is one of these 'mysteries' in which history had been hinting at the answer almost from the beginning;
In 1976 the world was still amidst of a low-key conflict between two superpowers with lots of political tensions; the United States (plus NATO) versus the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (plus other members of the Warsaw Pact). AKA, Cold War. As part of the Western Bloc, at the time Spain had been a long-time ally of NATO. However, the country wouldn't become a NATO member itself until 1982 -which was so controversial within Spain that a referendum would be held in 1986 questioning Spanish people's desire to remain in the military alliance.
As such, while Spain was a Western ally, back in 1976 it was not really 'in the game' yet, especially when taking into account that, unlike in other countries, NATO membership wasn't that welcome. Please notice the year the Spanish army declassified the documents; 1994. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 (and with it , the fall of the Iron Curtain) helped lower the stakes this international poker game, and as such the world would learn about all sorts of crazy things that had been going on at both sides of the conflict in absolute secrecy.
Earlier in this writeup there is a data-based description of the phenomenon's behavior, but most importantly, it's ballistic trajectory. Adding to that, countless witnesses had described seeing either one or a couple of lights 'taking off like a rocket'. Let's remember; it had been ascertained that it originated at about 700 kilometers west and had moved further west in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean while reaching an altitude of 90 kilometers -which is about the lower thermosphere. This had already raised the first suspicions among the members of the Spanish intelligence services, suspicions that gained weight in 1994 -and that likely led to the declassification of the report- when much clearer and straightforward communication between the United States' government and Spain's allowed for a more open investigation of the sort of testing the Americans were engaging in. In 2001 an article of research journalism, coauthored by science journalists Ricardo Campo and Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos finally identified what was behind the 1976 aerial phenomenon.
Campo and Ballester had already noticed its ballistic trajectory calculated in 1976. In 1999, suspecting already who (country) was the 'culprit', they accessed Jonathan McDowell's database of ballistic missile launches. Previous to that Campo and Ballester had failed to find any useful information in NASA's archives, as none of the launches in their registry matched the evidence, and prior to that -right after the 1994 declassification, in fact- they had traveled to Moscow looking for the possible explanation there. Russian military authorities had adamantly denied their involvement in the phenomena, which directed the investigators towards other leads (while at the same time not disregarding the possibility of Russia being behind it after all.
Finally, Campo and Ballester bumped into these two rows of the database. First column indicates the launch identification number. Second and third, the date (in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Fourth is GMT time (which, adjusting for a compilation error, coincides with Canary Islands' GMT+1 local time when the phenomenon took place). The fifth column tells the type of missile, the sixth on identifies the launch platform and finally the seventh one indicates who was responsible for the launch.
Simply put, the information in these rows means; on June 22nd, 1976, two Poseidon C3 thermonuclear missiles were launched from US Navy's submarine USS Von Steuben), at 20:16 and 20:17 GTM.
The database does not include location (that information remains classified) but during their research Campo and Ballester learned from McDowell himself that the US Navy's eastern test range covers from Cape Canaveral (Florida, US) all the way Ascension Island. The location of the 1976's phenomenon falls well within such range.
From here, Campos and Ballester offered an explanation of its optics. The Poseidon C3 missile carries several 40-kiloton nuclear warheads (normally ten) -for comparison, Little Boy was a single 15-kiloton bomb. Once the two 400-kiloton missiles detonated in the thermosphere, the quick expansion of extremely hot atmospheric gases reflected the sunlight back to Earth, even though by then in Canary Islands the sun was already well below the horizon and the sky was pitch black; at 90 kilometers of altitude, these expanding gases were still in direct path of the sunlight. This reflection is what made the phenomenon appear so bright and big in spite of the 700+ kilometers of distance between witnesses and its source.
Campo and Ballester's article provided also an explanation for other similar events -albeit not that espectacular as the one pertaining this writeup- that had taken place in the islands between 1973 and 1979. All except one were found to be the result of other American thermonuclear tests, with the exception of this one seen south of the archipelago in 1979 -and finally acknowledged by Russia in 2017, although they did not explain what exactly it was.
Conclusion
TL;DR: It was a couple of thermonuclear missiles launched in secrecy by the US Navy in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The 'aliens' witness was, to put it mildy, an individual with an extreme tendency to make ludicrous statements and a marked need to be the centre of attention.
​
Campo and Ballester's work is available online for free, and anyone who speak Spanish can check the story of their investigation for themselves.
This is not to say that the whole 'aliens' narrative died down. To this day, the story of the 1976 phenomenon continues to be shared sometimes in media as 'proof' of UFO/aliens, even though it's literally neither -coincidentally, failing to mention the vast amount of evidence pointing at a thermonuclear test. In June of 2016 several newspapers published articles remembering the phenomenon in its 40th anniversary, and pretty much all of them reminded the reader right from the headline that the 'mystery' had long been solved.
Links and Sources
"Two red giants riding a missile" - Excellent article in the aforementioned online magazine Naukas written by Ricardo Campo himself on the phenomenon (Spanish)
The Spanish Army's declassified document on the event. It can be downloaded for free as a 107-pages long PDF
2016 Article (Spanish)

I’m looking for recommendations of places to camp in the Long Branch Beach area. I’m willing to pay for a campsite, but am interested to know if any locals know of some hidden gems, even if it’s free. I would love a private/ secluded place, and somewhere a campfire could be had.
I am a seasoned & respectful camper.

Alcorn State Alcorn State @ Monmouth Monmouth
Game Start Time: 8:00 PM ET
Location: Kessler Stadium, West Long Branch, NJ
Watch: MASN
Alcorn State Alcorn State

Total Passing Yards	Total Rushing Yards	Total Yards	Interceptions Lost	Fumbles Lost	Field Goals	Time of Possession	Timeouts
0 yards	80 yards	80 yards	0	0	0/0	1:20	3

Monmouth Monmouth

Total Passing Yards	Total Rushing Yards	Total Yards	Interceptions Lost	Fumbles Lost	Field Goals	Time of Possession	Timeouts
27 yards	0 yards	27 yards	0	0	1/1	1:26	3

Drive Summary
away for 0 yards in 0 seconds ending in turnover_touchdown
away for 0 yards in 0 seconds ending in delay_of_game
away for 0 yards in 0 seconds ending in delay_of_game
home for 27 yards in 64 seconds ending in field_goal
away for 80 yards in 61 seconds ending in delay_of_game

Team	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Total
Monmouth	10	0	0	0	10
Alcorn State	22	0	0	0	22

Game thread
Plays

Game complete, Alcorn State wins!

First Prev
Patreon Arxur POV of the Cradle Series wiki Official subreddit Discord
---
Memory transcription subject: Captain Sovlin, United Nations Fleet Command
Date [standardized human time]: January 15, 2137
I was claiming an unwanted milestone with this voyage; I was certain I was the furthest below water of any Gojid, who hadn’t already been dead and sinking, in history. Some predators were monitoring their scanners for the slightest sign of activity, though I was told an entire team was dedicated to sonar monitoring in a separate chamber too. Sitting in a dark room with headphones for hours, with no idea what was happening, sounded awful. The supervisory officials and secondary team here got a much better deal.
Additionally, fire control technicians oversaw guidance systems on the bridge. Most of their work was grounded in electronic and digital concerns. From what Onso had told me, this vessel had underwater missiles which were connected to the ship computer by wires. Once the payload got close enough to the target, an onboard homing mechanism took over.
By watching the various stations, I was beginning to decipher bits and pieces from their screens. Judging by the learning curve, anyone with training in starship sensors could adjust to sonar after a few days, in a pinch. Onso seemed aware of most duties, having studied up on the intricacies; I was grateful for his explanations. All the same, it was of some comfort that Tyler, Samantha, and Carlos were in unfamiliar territory too.
“We’re getting close to the presumed location of the Farsul base,” Carlos whispered. “There’s no telling what they’re hiding down here. Maybe it’s everything that’s been done to every species!”
Onso flicked his ears. “A proper database would help with bringing our culture back, exactly as it was. They’re the historian species, so it’s a good place to go digging. They have a weapon as great as any Kolshian tech: information. The baseline for every civilization that has ever lived.”
“I wonder what they have on humanity. Perhaps one or two things that are true?” Sam snickered.
Tyler pinched the bridge of his nose. “What made them so certain we died in nuclear Armageddon? How much did they hide about us?”
“I don’t know, but my ship’s doctor wrote a paper in an ethics class about why it was morally just to execute you for your aggression. They didn’t teach anything good about you,” I offered.
Samantha beamed with mock excitement. “Wow, what a splendid ethics class, and a rousing thesis by the good-hearted doctor! Meanwhile, our physicians swear an oath to do no harm. I’m glad that prey are so much more well-versed on right and wrong.”
Tyler struck a puzzled expression. “I took an ethics class in college, before I dropped out of that shit-hole to piss off my old man. Best decision of my life. Anyhow, there were some interesting dilemmas they brought up in that class. The trolley problem is about if it’s ethical to ever do harm, but for good, you know?”
“I don’t. What’s the trolley problem?” I asked.
“There’s a train going down a track toward five people. You can pull a lever so it only hits one dude on another path instead. Should you?”
“Why does anyone have to get run over by a train? Did Onso make this garbage up?”
The Yotul flashed his teeth with a growling sound, pinning his ears back against his head. I didn’t see why my question was objectionable; he was the one with an affinity for outdated trains, to the detriment of advancement. The marsupial made a point of lamenting railroad destruction when we first met.
“Oh, fuck off.” Tyler rolled his blue eyes, and raised his hands in exasperation. “Your ethics classes wanted to genocide our whole planet!”
Carlos nodded. “And us predators talk about killing the least amount of people. Even I see the irony.”
“The Federation has no redeeming attributes,” Sam hissed. “Guess we’re gonna get to see Baldy’s real culture soon. Then we’ll know if the rest of the galaxy used to have a brain.”
My spines bristled, at the thought of uncovering the original Gojid culture. While I knew that the Federation committed similar atrocities as omnivorous and predator races, it was still painful to think of our real history being flaunted in front of me. What if the Terrans could throw past atrocities in my face, and hammer home the fact that a species’ empathy wasn’t a prevailing factor against cruelty? I couldn’t imagine how it felt for the predators to continually defend their past.
If our past culture was depraved, I don’t want it rebuilt or brought back. We could’ve been like Onso’s kind, killing our own people over food.
The fact that I was worried about our discoveries meant I’d accepted the ludicrous idea that the Farsul had institutions beneath the waves. Perhaps I trusted the humans too much, but it was a rare occasion when they were off the mark. They’d been a reliable source of information, even if they weren’t often forthcoming. I studied Captain Fournier as he presided over the bridge; his words on submarine capabilities left me shaken.
Understanding why the predators behaved with such a laissez-faire attitude toward extinction was a moot point; worrying for them was the emotion I couldn’t squash. I knew the three humans from my shuttle were all from different tribes on Earth. If we won this war and peace prevailed in the galaxy, what was to stop the Terran settlements from pointing doomsday weapons at each other again? Would Samantha and Tyler be trying to kill each other?
There were certain crevasses in humanity’s history that were like a mirror, when the comparisons were spelled out in plain fashion. However, in this area, I wasn’t worried about similarities being unearthed. There was an inherent difference in our species’ aggressivity that was evident, given our contrasting sensibilities. It bothered me, knowing that Terrans were not suited to long-term cooperation with each other.
“Can your aggression ever truly sto—” I started to blurt.
A sonar supervisor barked words in a commanding voice, after receiving a broadband communique from her team. “Two matching acoustic signatures, 2000 meters out. We’ve put a tracker on them and forwarded the data to weapons.”
Captain Fournier clasped his hands behind his back. “Two contacts, 2000 meters out. We’ll log the sound patterns in our database. Maintain battle readiness and prepare to fire on my command.”
With enemy submersibles sighted, the crackpot underwater base theory looked more plausible. Onso’s eyes lit up, as the human shipmates coordinated various actions. I could see a security feed of the torpedo bay, where predators were prepared to physically load replacement weapons from racks. The munitions looked massive, even compared to a predator’s unyielding frame. Other Terrans were tending to pre-loaded tubes, hooking up communications cables.
The wires do seem a little primitive, but it’s stealthy and immune to interference. The predators have extravagant tech, yet it’s only used when it’s optimal.
Much of the necessary procedures and checks could be done by weapons specialists on the bridge. Captain Fournier growled the order to fire two torpedoes, and fire control ejected the munitions through the muzzle doors. Without a viewport, I could only judge the launch’s success from received data. From what I could tell, the twin projectiles were propelling themselves in the wrong direction.
Onso had noticed my confused gaze. “Yeah, they’re aimed off-kilter, just at first. Makes it difficult for the enemy to tell where the missile came from…to track it. It’s like interfering with targeting on a starship.”
The Yotul’s explanation proved correct again; fire control routed the torpedoes back on course, after their initial journey. The Farsul submarines were oblivious to the incoming weapons, and with our minimalist noise, they might not detect anything until their vessels were annihilated. The predatory nature of this sneak attack wasn’t lost on me. The humans operated unseen, not alerting foes to their presence until it was too late.
The cables were cut once the torpedoes were in seeking range; the warheads’ active sonar was inescapable in close proximity. The pings tipped off the exact enemy locations, and allowed last second course corrections. Human engineering was perfect in orchestrating a kill, as I never should’ve doubted. They’d risen to every challenge hurled at them, from bringing drones into spatial warfare, to shield-breaking missiles. The ocean was an old, familiar hunting ground to them, so this fight was both natural and intuitive.
Sonar screens lit up with bursts of noise, painting a story of metal cracking like a dropped fruit. The power of our munitions contributed to the explosion’s loudness too; that level of energy output was anything but quiet. Stealth was no longer necessary though, with our submarine’s proverbial fangs planted in the Farsul’s throats. I could imagine the two submerged vessels being spliced into shrapnel, as the detonations clashed against their plating.
Captain Fournier conversed with the sonar supervisor, before turning to the bridge. “Two confirmed kills. Continue on a descent course, in the direction of those ships.”
“We go toward them, we’ll find the base,” I muttered.
Onso wagged his tail. “We find the base, we save the Yotul. We rid ourselves of their influence once and for all!”
Samantha raised an eyebrow. “Assuming they don’t wipe digital data or blow up the base, when all is lost. They love scorched earth, lightly suggested by the whole exterminator hoopla. Better destroyed than used by predators.”
“You are irony-poisoned.” Carlos shook his head lightly. “We get to the Archives, and we find what we can. Even if they wipe servers, who says our techies can’t recover it?”
Our submarine descended ever deeper, pressing ahead toward the real Farsul Archives. Talsk’s moon was falling above us, and space fleets were clashing around the deorbiting body. All the same, the real battle was a handful of stealth ships here, dishing out silent strikes. We remained vigilant for other enemies, knowing we were close to the base’s suspected location. If they spotted us first, then they would have a chance to strike before we could.
Is there any way to defend against an oncoming torpedo, if the Farsul have such weapons? It seems like you never sense them coming, and you can’t…look out a window.
Captain Fournier pursed his lips. “Sweep the area with an active sonar ping. We need to get a read on the terrain and hopefully, the base’s exact location.”
The sonar supervisor relayed the orders, and Onso tensed up a little. The Yotul whispered to me that active pings gave away our position, by transmitting our own sound into the water. However, sailing blind into unknown territory could end us crashing, or missing the base altogether. We had to hold our breath, and pray the Farsul wouldn’t pick us up. Their capabilities were unknown, but they must possess listening devices for deep-water travel to be possible.
Knowing that we were more than a thousand meters below water, I didn’t want to find out what would happen to us if the ship imploded. It was impressive that it wasn’t crushed by the outside pressure already, come to think of it. At this depth, atmospheric pressure couldn’t be suitable for land lifeforms. That was a fear I didn’t need to dwell on.
The acoustic energy illuminated the terrain for our sightless submarine, allowing the predators to map their surroundings. I listened to the bridge chatter, as they scrambled to classify nearby points of interest. Echo sounding confirmed we were close to the ocean bottom; it was level apart from a few elevation shifts. Deep-sea invertebrates sprouted skeletons on the sea floor, wherever space was available. The most promising sign was a wide area of unusual signal absorption, which was believed to be the base.
As nervous as I was about getting attacked, well out of any sun’s eye, it seemed like we’d gotten away with the emitted ping. Perhaps it was foolish to assign human competence to the Farsul. Why would they expect to see other vessels on the seafloor, armed with a predator’s tech? How could a prey animal even think of using detection methods, which hunted other ships down for making the slightest noise?
The sonar supervisor stiffened. “Torpedo in the water!”
Oh stars. At least the humans had picked up a telltale propulsion system from the torpedo, but that meant the Farsul knew we were here. While there were other UN submarines en route, none were flanking us or backing us up. The predators better have some insane defensive tactics, or we would wind up in a million pieces. I didn’t like the prospect of my lungs being crushed.
“Brace yourselves for inbound munitions!” Captain Fournier growled into a microphone. “Return fire toward the source.”
The Farsul submarine was patrolling just shy of the Archives base, and wasn’t, to our knowledge, joined by any comrades. While taking immediate defensive steps, the Terrans dubiously focused on getting their own torpedo into the water. Skepticism marked itself on my face, but Onso leapt to the predators’ defense. The Yotul claimed this counterstrike was to prevent the enemy from firing again. I could feel my heart crawl into my throat, as our own projectile was spit back with haste.
Our submarine reoriented itself in the opposite direction, away from the base, and fled at maximum speed. The incoming torpedo had the edge in speed, so it seemed futile to run away. I guessed that the munition had limited fuel; even so, its tank wouldn’t run dry quick enough. We dove as close to the seafloor as we could risk, and the sharp descent almost made me tumble down the bridge.
The Farsul’s torpedo was gaining ground, threatening to sink us. Captain Fournier, just like his counterparts in the stars, was cool under pressure; he waited for the munitions to lock onto us. The bearded leader shouted for a sonar decoy to be deployed. As the deceitful device jetted away, I squinted for clues on nearby screens. Per Onso, it unleashed a cloak of bubbles and jamming frequencies, scrambling the missile’s sonar-seeking systems.
“Did it w-work?” I wrapped my claws around Carlos’ arm with the bear tattoo, remembering not to cling to Samantha again. “I hate water. I’ll take death by vacuum any day.”
Carlos squeezed my paw awkwardly. “I don’t know if it worked. We always hope for the best, but no combat situation is a guarantee. Just breathe, buddy.”
Our submersible attempted to skirt the torpedo’s search area, while it was hung up on the false targets our decoy provided. We veered well off to the side, and ensured absolute silence. The Deep Core looped back around, tiptoeing past the range we’d been chased from. There was no sign of an inbound contact following us. I realized we had successfully fooled the munition’s homing logic; I released Carlos’ arm at last.
Perhaps it had been wise of the Terrans to impart a shot back. Our foes were too preoccupied to send more trouble our way; one torpedo was enough.
Those thoughts reminded me that we had taken offensive actions to counter theirs. Sniffing out the vessel that attempted to sink us was a priority. The torpedo we’d fired at the Farsul submarine hadn’t found its mark, as the enemy managed to pull nifty evasive maneuvers. However, their engines stirred up ample noise, with that sudden haste. Though they had avoided our first missile, I thought we had a clear target for our next round.
However, it was not necessary to expend another weapon on this nefarious submarine. The Terran torpedo missed its target the first time, but it doubled back for another pass without warning. On the second attempt, it struck true into the hapless Farsul’s frame; another hostile was ravaged in the blink of an eye. The humans had a perfect sinking score, proving themselves to be the more devious prowlers.
I doubted the Farsul expected anyone to get this close to their lair; all we had to do was poke at their defenses from a few angles. If this mop-up was representative of our disparate power, the other UN submarines must be closing in on the base too. In space, losses and hardships could be inflicted upon the predators. However, land and sea appeared to be their chief dominion, where their exceptional talents put them miles ahead of the competition.
The oceanic path to the Farsul Archives had been cleared, and soon, humanity might begin to reclaim the actual history of the multitude of Federation species.
---
First Prev
Patreon Arxur POV of the Cradle Series wiki Official subreddit Discord

I stared up at the magazine cut out of a Maxim model that was crudely pasted on the underside of the top bunk. Her pert breast shimmied ever so slightly as Pete tossed and turned above.
She was platinum blonde with legs long enough to wrap around me twice. Or so the camera angle made it seem. I felt a stirring below, that yearning for a woman’s touch… which I hadn’t felt in six years, three months, and eleven days.
I rolled to my side, stifling it. It was the wrong time to seek out an orgasm, and I knew after the release I’d just spiral into self-loathing anyway. I focused on a crack in the cinder block until my eyelids became heavy.
Static pushed the thought of women from my mind as I slipped into sleep. The smell of cigars and oil flitted through my mind in a memory. My dad’s repair shop. The one I was meant to take over, before the arrest…
------
“Aaaarrgghh!”
A cry echoing from somewhere deep within the prison startled me awake. My heart thundered in my chest like a rabbit thrashing against its cage.
I rolled over to see Pete crouching low, his face pressed against the bars.
“What’s going on?” I croaked.
“They’re taking Benny.” He whispered.
“Fuck, really?” I pulled myself to the top corner of my mattress, just enough to peer around the edge of the bars.
Two guards wrestled the young latino onto a gurney as a man in a lab coat watched from a distance. He fought against them but it was futile. Once the straps were locked in he screamed once more, pleading for help.
Dozens of eyes watched from dim lit cells, none of which stirring to offer assistance in the slightest. We knew there was no helping him. We knew what happened next…
His cries were muffled as the doctor jammed a syringe into the base of his neck. Benny’s muscles tensed and pulsed in the fit of a seizure, but then lay still. The cell block was silent once more as they wheeled him down the hall and into the catacombs.
I did a cross over myself but didn’t bother to pray. Once they took them, they never came back.
“A damn shame…” I muttered.
“Yeah, he was a good kid…” Pete stood and leapt back onto the top bunk.
A fire burned in my chest. I wanted to say something. To cry out about the injustice of what was happening to us. That committing a crime shouldn’t damn a man to whatever terrible fate they had instore for us below three feet of steel and a quarter mile of dirt.
But I didn’t… What good could it do? Other than drawing attention to me in a very negative way.
Once they took you to the lab, you were never seen again.
All you could do was hope that your number was never called, and that you got out of here before they visited your cell late into the night.
—-----
87…88…89…90…
My chest was on fire as sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. I couldn’t go back to sleep last night. Kept thinking about Benny.
91…92…93…
So began the push-ups. It was the only way to clear my head.
94…95…96…
My therapy.
97…98…99…100.
I rolled to my back, out of breath.
Three years, six months and change.
So much time left to go.
Benny had only been here for a little over a year. It made no sense…
None of us could figure out exactly why they took who they took. There seemed to be no method to the madness.
Just a couple weeks ago they took old man Tom Finch. He’d been here longer than any of us. A lifer on the account of premeditated murder back in the 70s. But they didn’t come for him until he’d served most of his adult life behind bars.
The red beacon suddenly swirled above. A buzzing sound hummed as the cell doors clicked and slid open.
Breakfast.
—----
I pulled my tray along the bar to be loaded with oats, powdered eggs and bread.
Meager rations.
I grabbed a small carton of milk and made my way over to sit with Pete. He was already nibbling on his toast while perusing a crossword puzzle.
We exchanged nods and I went to devouring the entirety of my plate.
Calories build muscle after all.
Which was something Pete had no interest in. He was a bookworm through and through. Rail thin too. When we’d met, I’d assumed it was from the drug problem he’d had on the outside, which ultimately landed him in incarceration. But come to find out it was just his metabolism and general lack of appetite.
“John…” He whispered.
I looked up from my feast.
He was looking to the corner of the cafeteria and I followed his gaze to see two men in lab coats surveying the crowd.
I grunted and squeezed the handle of my fork until my knuckles went white. The impulse of burying it into their throats was almost overwhelming.
“Their activity has been ramping up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been seeing them much more frequently as of late. They must be close to a breakthrough.”
“Breakthrough of what?” I furrowed my brow.
“Who knows? Whatever it is they are doing down there. They’ve been taking us more often as well.”
Pete sighed at the twist of confusion on my face.
“Think about it… Benny last night, then Tom two weeks before that. Then Eric ten days before that, and Deonte maybe three weeks prior. It’s never been that close together. Until recently, they only came perhaps once every other month. Sometimes only once a season.”
Shit… he was right. I hadn’t realized it before.
“So what does that mean?” I asked, shoving another hunk of egg into my mouth.
“I have no idea. But I’d say our odds of survival have been reduced dramatically.”
—-----
Pete might as well have been an oracle, peering into our grim and desolate future.
Over the next several months we started seeing the lab coats weekly. Sometimes even more often than that.
The prison yard felt empty. Sure there were still plenty of us left, but our population had been noticeably trimmed. One gang in particular only had two members left, which didn’t bode well for them. The others slowly circled them like sharks. I had no affiliation with any of them and kept to myself. But still, I could see their fate a mile away.
Although, despite the business as usual dog eat dog atmosphere, there was an undercurrent of fear rippling through the general pop. You could smell it, like a scent of decay and desperation. Hard faces that had once promised violence, now almost flinched around every corner and jumped at each shadow.
The energy of a couple of hundred men that felt like an animal backed into a corner was palpable.
But what could we do?
I didn’t know but I sure wish someone would tell me… I threw myself into my workouts and Pete hardly ever looked up from a book. Escapism was our only reprieve.
I went to bed with a prayer on my lips, hoping I wouldn’t hear those iron bars moving in the late hours of the night.
—-----
A loud clanking followed by footsteps pulled me from sleep.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut hoping it was the cell next to mine.
But it wasn’t…
Three guards hovered behind a fourth that was unlocking our cell. The bars clicked and began to slide open.
I jumped to my feet and backed up against the wall. I pulled my fists up into a boxing stance, I wasn’t going to go without a fight. My muscles tensed and flexed like coiled steel.
“In the corner inmate! We’re here for your cellmate.” A short and stocky corrections officer barked with his hand gripping the baton at his waist.
Pete squirmed into a ball at the corner of his mat and looked at me with wide, pleading eyes.
I put my face in the opposite corner as instructed. A mixture of fear and relief roiled in my gut, and I hated myself for it. It made me feel like a coward.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I heard Pete squeal from behind as guards flooded the cell.
I peaked over my shoulder and watched as they pried him from the top bunk. Pete tried to resist, but there was nothing to him. A bag of bones that they easily wrestled down.
That same fire ignited in my chest. Anger washed over me, cleansing away the cowardice. For God’s sake, he was my only friend.
All I could see was red.
I spun around bringing the back of my fist across a guard’s face, shattering the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted from it as he dropped Pete’s legs.
With a giant step forward I brought an uppercut into the portly officer’s abdomen, dropping him like a ton of bricks.
I shoved a third into the corner, pinning him there as I screamed for Pete to run. He scampered out the opening and the last thing I heard were his footfalls as a baton smashed across the back of my skull. Everything went black before I even hit the ground.
—-----
I spent a month in solitary.
The room was so small it should have been inhumane to house a human being inside of it.
Still… I made the best of it with dips, pushups and situps. Countless reps of them. It was all I could do.
Some mornings I’d wake up with horrible migraines. I assumed it was a slight concussion from the impact of the baton.
I only hoped Pete could have somehow made it out. But somewhere deep down I knew that would have been impossible. Hopefully he at least gave them some hell before they took him below.
I stopped praying before bed. It didn’t seem like it did any good.
If there was a God, he didn’t exist inside these walls.
We were abandoned.
The unheard.
—-------
When I finally got back to my cell it had been emptied of everything. Pete’s books, artwork from his niece and even my Maxim cutout.
Just like he’d never existed. My heart sunk at the sight.
Later that day I’d learned from others that he had been captured just moments after escaping the cell.
But our actions weren’t wasted in vain.
We were the first to fight back against the abduction and it sparked something in the others.
They started talks of an uprising a few weeks back. A prison riot.
They even had a guard on the inside. C.O. Matthews. He was a very religious man and was just as horrified by what was happening as we were and had been looking for a way to help.
“It’s going down tonight John, just before lights out. Be ready.” Jerry whispered at the picnic table.
I gave a nod that I understood and headed off for my daily jog around the courts.
It wasn’t about getting out. Getting free. That wasn’t going to happen. It was about sending a message.
I let my mind go blank, filling with static as I enjoyed what could be my last day outside.
—------
The beacon swirled overhead in the common area.
“Inmates to their cells. Lights out.” The intercom buzzed.
There were over fifty men in cell block B, and not a single one of us moved.
The voice on the intercom repeated himself angrily as guards began to shuffle in closer. Nods passed like dominoes from one inmate to the next. We were ready.
“Get to your cell inmate.” a guard growled as he clamped his hands down on my shoulders.
I threw an elbow behind me into his groin, he howled in pain as he hit the floor. The other inmates sprung to their feet and flew off from their leaning places to join in the brawl.
Fists, feet and batons flew wildly across the cell block as we engaged in war with the uniformed officers.
I grappled with one until I was able to submit him in a choke until he went limp in my arms.
I stomped another in the face, spilling blood and brains on the concrete floor.
It had looked like we were winning until they sent the special response team in. We formed a line, many of us battered and bloody, in front of the row of riot shields.
We waited for their charge for what felt like an eternity.
But suddenly they backed out from where they’d come and slid the cell block doors closed.
What the hell…
The red beacon swirled once again overhead as a clicking sounded out behind us.
The rear entrance that the lab coats had always used swung open. I spun around to see…
“Mary, mother of God.” I gasped.
It was Pete…
But there was something horribly wrong with him.
His skin clung loosely to his body and had a terrible jaundice looking hue to it. His eyes almost seemed to glow and his hands… they were impossibly large like contorted branches.
I held my hand up to my mouth in disbelief.
A scientist stepped out from behind him.
“As you can see, we have a few kinks left to iron out, but we are making great progress. Would you all care to see what he can do?” He looked into each of our eyes inquisitively.
“If you don’t, head back to your cells now. You have ten seconds and then I shall release him.”
It was so silent you could hear a pin drop. But a violent and hungry energy filled the room, emanating from what used to be my friend.
Suddenly, over half the remaining inmates bolted for their cells out of fear. Not that I could blame them, my knees wobbled and threatened to buckle just at the sight of him.
But I stood my ground, as did a handful of others.
“Very well then. Specimen 3-1-0, engage.”
A growl reverberated through the cell block.
“Everyone rush him at once! It’s our only shot.” I hollered.
And we did, but it didn’t matter. It happened so fast. It was over before I could even comprehend it.
He moved like an animal, picking each of us apart almost in unison.
I lay on my back, unable to feel my legs as I watched Jerry be disemboweled. He was trying to shove his intestines back inside the tear in his abdomen before the creature came back to finish him off.
I did a cross over myself but didn’t bother to pray.
As Pete stood over me, with dead eyes, I knew there was no God.
He didn’t exist inside these walls.
We were abandoned.
The unheard.

I stared up at the magazine cut out of a Maxim model that was crudely pasted on the underside of the top bunk. Her pert breast shimmied ever so slightly as Pete tossed and turned above.
She was platinum blonde with legs long enough to wrap around me twice. Or so the camera angle made it seem. I felt a stirring below, that yearning for a woman’s touch… which I hadn’t felt in six years, three months, and eleven days.
I rolled to my side, stifling it. It was the wrong time to seek out an orgasm, and I knew after the release I’d just spiral into self-loathing anyway. I focused on a crack in the cinder block until my eyelids became heavy.
Static pushed the thought of women from my mind as I slipped into sleep. The smell of cigars and oil flitted through my mind in a memory. My dad’s repair shop. The one I was meant to take over, before the arrest…
------
“Aaaarrgghh!”
A cry echoing from somewhere deep within the prison startled me awake. My heart thundered in my chest like a rabbit thrashing against its cage.
I rolled over to see Pete crouching low, his face pressed against the bars.
“What’s going on?” I croaked.
“They’re taking Benny.” He whispered.
“Fuck, really?” I pulled myself to the top corner of my mattress, just enough to peer around the edge of the bars.
Two guards wrestled the young latino onto a gurney as a man in a lab coat watched from a distance. He fought against them but it was futile. Once the straps were locked in he screamed once more, pleading for help.
Dozens of eyes watched from dim lit cells, none of which stirring to offer assistance in the slightest. We knew there was no helping him. We knew what happened next…
His cries were muffled as the doctor jammed a syringe into the base of his neck. Benny’s muscles tensed and pulsed in the fit of a seizure, but then lay still. The cell block was silent once more as they wheeled him down the hall and into the catacombs.
I did a cross over myself but didn’t bother to pray. Once they took them, they never came back.
“A damn shame…” I muttered.
“Yeah, he was a good kid…” Pete stood and leapt back onto the top bunk.
A fire burned in my chest. I wanted to say something. To cry out about the injustice of what was happening to us. That committing a crime shouldn’t damn a man to whatever terrible fate they had instore for us below three feet of steel and a quarter mile of dirt.
But I didn’t… What good could it do? Other than drawing attention to me in a very negative way.
Once they took you to the lab, you were never seen again.
All you could do was hope that your number was never called, and that you got out of here before they visited your cell late into the night.
—-----
87…88…89…90…
My chest was on fire as sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. I couldn’t go back to sleep last night. Kept thinking about Benny.
91…92…93…
So began the push-ups. It was the only way to clear my head.
94…95…96…
My therapy.
97…98…99…100.
I rolled to my back, out of breath.
Three years, six months and change.
So much time left to go.
Benny had only been here for a little over a year. It made no sense…
None of us could figure out exactly why they took who they took. There seemed to be no method to the madness.
Just a couple weeks ago they took old man Tom Finch. He’d been here longer than any of us. A lifer on the account of premeditated murder back in the 70s. But they didn’t come for him until he’d served most of his adult life behind bars.
The red beacon suddenly swirled above. A buzzing sound hummed as the cell doors clicked and slid open.
Breakfast.
—----
I pulled my tray along the bar to be loaded with oats, powdered eggs and bread.
Meager rations.
I grabbed a small carton of milk and made my way over to sit with Pete. He was already nibbling on his toast while perusing a crossword puzzle.
We exchanged nods and I went to devouring the entirety of my plate.
Calories build muscle after all.
Which was something Pete had no interest in. He was a bookworm through and through. Rail thin too. When we’d met, I’d assumed it was from the drug problem he’d had on the outside, which ultimately landed him in incarceration. But come to find out it was just his metabolism and general lack of appetite.
“John…” He whispered.
I looked up from my feast.
He was looking to the corner of the cafeteria and I followed his gaze to see two men in lab coats surveying the crowd.
I grunted and squeezed the handle of my fork until my knuckles went white. The impulse of burying it into their throats was almost overwhelming.
“Their activity has been ramping up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been seeing them much more frequently as of late. They must be close to a breakthrough.”
“Breakthrough of what?” I furrowed my brow.
“Who knows? Whatever it is they are doing down there. They’ve been taking us more often as well.”
Pete sighed at the twist of confusion on my face.
“Think about it… Benny last night, then Tom two weeks before that. Then Eric ten days before that, and Deonte maybe three weeks prior. It’s never been that close together. Until recently, they only came perhaps once every other month. Sometimes only once a season.”
Shit… he was right. I hadn’t realized it before.
“So what does that mean?” I asked, shoving another hunk of egg into my mouth.
“I have no idea. But I’d say our odds of survival have been reduced dramatically.”
—-----
Pete might as well have been an oracle, peering into our grim and desolate future.
Over the next several months we started seeing the lab coats weekly. Sometimes even more often than that.
The prison yard felt empty. Sure there were still plenty of us left, but our population had been noticeably trimmed. One gang in particular only had two members left, which didn’t bode well for them. The others slowly circled them like sharks. I had no affiliation with any of them and kept to myself. But still, I could see their fate a mile away.
Although, despite the business as usual dog eat dog atmosphere, there was an undercurrent of fear rippling through the general pop. You could smell it, like a scent of decay and desperation. Hard faces that had once promised violence, now almost flinched around every corner and jumped at each shadow.
The energy of a couple of hundred men that felt like an animal backed into a corner was palpable.
But what could we do?
I didn’t know but I sure wish someone would tell me… I threw myself into my workouts and Pete hardly ever looked up from a book. Escapism was our only reprieve.
I went to bed with a prayer on my lips, hoping I wouldn’t hear those iron bars moving in the late hours of the night.
—-----
A loud clanking followed by footsteps pulled me from sleep.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut hoping it was the cell next to mine.
But it wasn’t…
Three guards hovered behind a fourth that was unlocking our cell. The bars clicked and began to slide open.
I jumped to my feet and backed up against the wall. I pulled my fists up into a boxing stance, I wasn’t going to go without a fight. My muscles tensed and flexed like coiled steel.
“In the corner inmate! We’re here for your cellmate.” A short and stocky corrections officer barked with his hand gripping the baton at his waist.
Pete squirmed into a ball at the corner of his mat and looked at me with wide, pleading eyes.
I put my face in the opposite corner as instructed. A mixture of fear and relief roiled in my gut, and I hated myself for it. It made me feel like a coward.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I heard Pete squeal from behind as guards flooded the cell.
I peaked over my shoulder and watched as they pried him from the top bunk. Pete tried to resist, but there was nothing to him. A bag of bones that they easily wrestled down.
That same fire ignited in my chest. Anger washed over me, cleansing away the cowardice. For God’s sake, he was my only friend.
All I could see was red.
I spun around bringing the back of my fist across a guard’s face, shattering the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted from it as he dropped Pete’s legs.
With a giant step forward I brought an uppercut into the portly officer’s abdomen, dropping him like a ton of bricks.
I shoved a third into the corner, pinning him there as I screamed for Pete to run. He scampered out the opening and the last thing I heard were his footfalls as a baton smashed across the back of my skull. Everything went black before I even hit the ground.
—-----
I spent a month in solitary.
The room was so small it should have been inhumane to house a human being inside of it.
Still… I made the best of it with dips, pushups and situps. Countless reps of them. It was all I could do.
Some mornings I’d wake up with horrible migraines. I assumed it was a slight concussion from the impact of the baton.
I only hoped Pete could have somehow made it out. But somewhere deep down I knew that would have been impossible. Hopefully he at least gave them some hell before they took him below.
I stopped praying before bed. It didn’t seem like it did any good.
If there was a God, he didn’t exist inside these walls.
We were abandoned.
The unheard.
—-------
When I finally got back to my cell it had been emptied of everything. Pete’s books, artwork from his niece and even my Maxim cutout.
Just like he’d never existed. My heart sunk at the sight.
Later that day I’d learned from others that he had been captured just moments after escaping the cell.
But our actions weren’t wasted in vain.
We were the first to fight back against the abduction and it sparked something in the others.
They started talks of an uprising a few weeks back. A prison riot.
They even had a guard on the inside. C.O. Matthews. He was a very religious man and was just as horrified by what was happening as we were and had been looking for a way to help.
“It’s going down tonight John, just before lights out. Be ready.” Jerry whispered at the picnic table.
I gave a nod that I understood and headed off for my daily jog around the courts.
It wasn’t about getting out. Getting free. That wasn’t going to happen. It was about sending a message.
I let my mind go blank, filling with static as I enjoyed what could be my last day outside.
—------
The beacon swirled overhead in the common area.
“Inmates to their cells. Lights out.” The intercom buzzed.
There were over fifty men in cell block B, and not a single one of us moved.
The voice on the intercom repeated himself angrily as guards began to shuffle in closer. Nods passed like dominoes from one inmate to the next. We were ready.
“Get to your cell inmate.” a guard growled as he clamped his hands down on my shoulders.
I threw an elbow behind me into his groin, he howled in pain as he hit the floor. The other inmates sprung to their feet and flew off from their leaning places to join in the brawl.
Fists, feet and batons flew wildly across the cell block as we engaged in war with the uniformed officers.
I grappled with one until I was able to submit him in a choke until he went limp in my arms.
I stomped another in the face, spilling blood and brains on the concrete floor.
It had looked like we were winning until they sent the special response team in. We formed a line, many of us battered and bloody, in front of the row of riot shields.
We waited for their charge for what felt like an eternity.
But suddenly they backed out from where they’d come and slid the cell block doors closed.
What the hell…
The red beacon swirled once again overhead as a clicking sounded out behind us.
The rear entrance that the lab coats had always used swung open. I spun around to see…
“Mary, mother of God.” I gasped.
It was Pete…
But there was something horribly wrong with him.
His skin clung loosely to his body and had a terrible jaundice looking hue to it. His eyes almost seemed to glow and his hands… they were impossibly large like contorted branches.
I held my hand up to my mouth in disbelief.
A scientist stepped out from behind him.
“As you can see, we have a few kinks left to iron out, but we are making great progress. Would you all care to see what he can do?” He looked into each of our eyes inquisitively.
“If you don’t, head back to your cells now. You have ten seconds and then I shall release him.”
It was so silent you could hear a pin drop. But a violent and hungry energy filled the room, emanating from what used to be my friend.
Suddenly, over half the remaining inmates bolted for their cells out of fear. Not that I could blame them, my knees wobbled and threatened to buckle just at the sight of him.
But I stood my ground, as did a handful of others.
“Very well then. Specimen 3-1-0, engage.”
A growl reverberated through the cell block.
“Everyone rush him at once! It’s our only shot.” I hollered.
And we did, but it didn’t matter. It happened so fast. It was over before I could even comprehend it.
He moved like an animal, picking each of us apart almost in unison.
I lay on my back, unable to feel my legs as I watched Jerry be disemboweled. He was trying to shove his intestines back inside the tear in his abdomen before the creature came back to finish him off.
I did a cross over myself but didn’t bother to pray.
As Pete stood over me, with dead eyes, I knew there was no God.
He didn’t exist inside these walls.
We were abandoned.
The unheard.

(I have only one more UFO incident for my Chinese mystery series after this one and it's back to the murders and disappearances. At least until I run out of those)
On June 23, 1990, at 3:00 AM many people across China's Henan province in Shishou, Baofeng Changge, Zhengzhou, Qinyang, Zhumadian and Luoyang all reported seeing what they thought was a row of orange and green lights in the sky. For these locales, the story ended there. But in the city of Kaifeng, the story was only beginning.
On that day only a few minutes later at 3:02 AM Xu Xiaojin. Was sleeping on the roof of a local police station due to the heat inside when he heard a loud thundering sound and saw a fire ball streak across the sky despite daylight having broke. Xu was not alone, however, most of the locals couldn't sleep due to the hot weather and instead went outside where many others witnessed the object and heard the sounds. The sky and weather were clear so even before they saw the object they were confused by just the sound of thunder alone.
Xu continued watching the fireball until something separated from it creating a small streak of light that plummeted to the ground and made a crashing noise. As the object detached over and crashed into a populated area. Xu immediately alerted all the officers under his command (who heard the sound but didn't see the object) about the incident and started a massive search effort for the object that had plummeted to the ground.
The police went door to door questioning each resident about the fireball and were soon pointed in the right direction. The object was found in the courtyard of No. 24 Zhuanqiao Street in Kaifeng. The home was owned by Xing Zhijun who alongside his brother Xing Zhixiang, witnessed the object crash onto his property. According to Xing it all from high in the sky at a fast speed before colliding with a toon tree. The object destroyed many of the tree's branches and then collided with Xing's bicycle fast enough to bend the steel frame. Luckily no one was hurt (It only barely missed Xing Zhixiang) and property damage was limited only to Xing's bicycle (handlebars and frame). The object the fragment fell from was never located and no other "crashes" were reported. The flying object was estimated to be 10 to 20 meters long and 3 to 4 meters wide. It was in a slanted upward posture at first, then turned slanted downward, and finally disappeared horizontally to the northeast. The sighting lasted only 30 seconds. The lights reported in Shishou, Baofeng Changge, Zhengzhou, Qinyang, Zhumadian and Luoyang were later determined to be the same object seen in Kaifeng and was thus moving at a fast speed transversing the entire province in 2-3 minutes
The police located the object underneath the bicycle and some branches. The object was unexpectedly cold which took the investigators by surprise since they were expecting the fragment to be at a high temperature. The fragment was 50 centimetres long and 8-11 centimetres wide with a spine two or three centimetres thick in the middle, thin edges on both sides and weighed 6-7 kg and was in the shape of a tile. The police brought the fragment back to the police station and took several photographs of it (These are not the pictures taken in 1990).
The story broke and became public on June 24 and Zhang Weimin a junior student in the Chemistry Department of Henan University and a member of the China UFO Research Association heard of the story and immediately set out toward Kaifeng. To ask the police about the object which was still in their possession. The police at first, believed that the fragment belonged to an airplane and contacted civil aviation authorities. They told the police that no planes were flying over the area at that time.
Tests performed on the object determined that it was mostly composed of 89.03% aluminum, 6.84% magnesium, 3.83% silicon, 0.30% zinc, etc. Further tests also showed that it wasn't radioactive. Zhang who was given permission to study the object himself brought it to the Kaifeng Air Force Base and showed it to a mechanic Wang Fuyu. Wang said that the object was likely not a part of an aircraft as it was of a "much better quality" than aircraft parts. According to the Air Force base and Kaifeng Airport's records, no flights occurred during the time of the incident. Russian/Soviet and American records also recorded no flights over the area. Eventually, all leads were exhausted and the investigation stalled.
The story isn't over, however. In 1991, one year after the incident. The trees in the courtyard of No. 24 Zhuanqiao Street where the fragment landed were in poor shape. Not only had the branches not grown back, but the rest of the trees and others that had not been struck by the object were withering and eventually died completely. Xing Zhijun, Xing Zhixiang and other family and neighbours were evacuated from their homes while officials conducted another round of tests and discovered no signs of radiation or danger to the public and were allowed back in their homes.
The trees were not all that were still feeling the effects. In November of 1991, Xing Zhixiang arrived at his job at the Zhengzhou National Cotton No. 5 Factory when he suddenly fell ill and suffered a stroke collapsing at the gate. He was rushed to the Zhengzhou Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine by his co-workers. The doctors who treated him diagnosed him with a cerebral hemorrhage too severe to be treated and that Xing Zhixiang would likely soon pass away
Xing Zhixiang remained in a coma for the next few days until he against all odds made a miraculous recovery and woke up. Xing Zhixiang said that he was conscious and aware when two people over two meters tall, wearing white clothes walked towards him. Xing Zhixiang described the men as aliens based on their skin being grey and their "inhuman eyebrows" He said to the two "aliens" that there was too much he had left to do and couldn't go. The two according to Xing Zhixiang then wordlessly turned around and left with him waking up immediately afterwards. Xing Zhixiang said that the two had likely cured him. Xing Zhixiang was kept in a ward with many other patients and no doctors were in at that time and the other patients said that nobody was at his bed. The doctors dismissed his story as a hallucination while he was unconscious. Although a rational explanation, for many UFOlogist and Chinese netizens this event happening to Xing Zhixiang specifically, the man who found that UFO fragment as well as his trees having not healed was deemed too much a coincidence for some.
From 2003-2006 the incident was revisited and a new investigation started. The fragment was still in possession of the Keifang police in an evidence locker. A new round of tests was performed on the object. It was suggested that the piece was 5A06 alloy which is a common aerospace material. It was suggested that the fragment may have been a part of a rocket, spaceship, satellite or missile but there were no records of any of those being launched in China on June 23, 1990,
The origin of the fragment remains unknown. The story is confirmed real and is officially listed as unexplained by Chinese officials.
The fragment is still in possession of the Keifang police to this day. Other surviving evidence includes Xing Zhixiang's hospital records remaining and in 2016, CCTV made a documentary on the case.
The documentary interviewed several people including officers from the Keifang Public Security Bureau and various local residents of Henan province all of whom stand by their claims of seeing the object. Also interviewed was Zhang Weimin, various scientists and Xing Zhixiang's doctors and nurses.
The case which is known as the Kaifeng UFO fragment incident/The Kaifeng Debris Incident is one of China's 4 main UFO cases officially acknowledged by the Chinese government and officially declared unexplained.
Sources
https://www.gdmeifa.com/ufo/6454.html
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/393344059
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1738083031195116418&wfr=spider&for=pc

Elaine Wilcox (ITV) https://twitter.com/ElaineWITV/status/1666385305505595392?s=19
Judith Moritz (BBC) https://twitter.com/JudithMoritz/status/1666378285448560641?t=qJIAyKIzIFPZzVced5ZJPA&s=19
Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/lucy-letby-trial-latest-nurse-baby-murders-prosecution-sky-news-blog-12868375
Chester Standard: https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23572442.live-lucy-letby-trial-june-7---cross-examination-continues/
Chester Standard:

The trial is now resuming, with the 12 members of the jury in attendance.
Nicholas Johnson KC is continuing to cross-examine Lucy Letby, turning to the case of Child M.
Letby confirms there is nothing she wishes to change in her evidence given in cross-examination so far.

​

Child M

Sky News:

Now the prosecution turns to his twin, Child M, who was also allegedly attacked by Letby - this time having air injected. He survived but was left brain-damaged.

Chester Standard:

Mr Johnson says for Child M, Letby - in her defence statement - said Child M 'was slotted into a space' in nursery room 1 which was 'full'.
Child M was 'apnoeic', and it was not known if he had a desaturation.
A crash call was put out, and Child M was turned around in an incubator by a nursing colleague, to get him on to a monitor.
Letby added she did not notice any skin colour changes in Child M at the time.

​

Letby said in her statement she had written notes on Child M's resuscitation on a paper towel which ended up in her pocket and were taken home with her.
Letby tells the court it would have been used to write up [nursing] notes.
Letby says Child L and Child M 'stood out' in her mind at the time, as they were the first twins delivered where she was the allocated nurse.

​ Sky News:

Child M was born in "good condition" and was breathing by himself. He had his observations taken every two hours.
Letby agrees this was the case.
"He was not an intensive care baby, was he?" Mr Johnson asks.
"No, I don't believe he was at this time," Letby says.

​ Chester Standard:

Letby agrees Child M was 'not an intensive care baby' and had been doing well.
Asked if staffing levels were a contributory factor in Child M's collapse, Letby says the "unit was very stretched" during the April 9 shift. She adds she does not know what caused Child M's collapse.
Asked to clarify by Mr Johnson, she says it "was a potential" factor.
Letby tells the court Child M had been in a corner unit in a full nursery, and "as nursing and medical staff we were very stretched that day".
Staffing "was not at a great level".
Letby says she "does not know" what caused Child M's collapse, so rules out a mistake by staff. She says it is "hard to say" if staff competencies were a factor in the collapse.

​

Mr Johnson says Dr Ravi Jayaram observed skin colour changes in Child M at the time of the collapse.
He says "because [Child M] was darker skinned, it was more obvious."
He said Child M was pale with pink 'blotches' on the torso that would 'appear and disappear'. He said he noted the most 'obvious' patches on the abdomen.
"I noted them when I got there at the start of the resuscitation".
He added he had only seen that once before, in the case of Child A.
Letby says "I did not see anything like that, no".

​ Sky News:

Lucy Letby is being asked about Child M, whom she is accused of leaving brain-damaged after injecting with air.
"Did the lighting in the nursery make it difficult to see?" Nick Johnson KC, the prosecution barrister, asks her.
"No," says Letby.
Letby previously told the police the lighting was "poor" in the space where Child M was.

​ Chester Standard:

Letby is asked if the lighting was an issue in nursery room 1.
Letby had told police in interview the lighting was "poor" in room 1, and she tells the court she has an independent memory of that event. Child M was "in a darker corner of the nursery", Letby tells the court.
She added to police: "I do remember his [Child M] colour being harder to assess as he was an Asian baby."
Letby tells the court the colour change, if any, was more difficult for her to see.

​ Sky News:

The prosecution points out that Letby has previously said she was able to see Child I had become "very pale" when in a darkened room at night, so questions why she could not see Child M in a well-lit room in the middle of the day.

​ Chester Standard:

Mr Johnson asks why was it necessary for Child M to be in a corner of room 1 if there were four babies in there for a capacity of four.
Letby says there always needs to be an incubator free for emergency admissions in room 1.
There were four babies in nursery room 2, three in nursery 3 and four in nursery 4.
The court hears the neonatal unit was "at effective capacity".

​

The court is shown a clinical note by Dr Anthony Ukoh, made at 10.25am on April 9.
Letby says she does not remember if she had involvement with Child M at this time. Child M was not Letby's designated baby on this day.
A neonatal schedule for Letby on April 9 shows a number of duties Letby had for her designated babies in room 1 between 9am-9.11am.
Letby says one of the designated babies was "not a low-maintenance baby", with complex cannulation issues, and was on the ward for a long time. Mr Johnson says Letby has an "extraordinary memory" for this baby, seven years on, but not for Child D, who had died.

​

The court is shown a 1.5ml bile-stained aspirate is recorded for Child M, following which Child M was nil by mouth, and the naso-gastric tube was put on free drainage.
Mr Johnson says at 3.30pm, a 10% dextrose fluid bag is started for Child M.
Letby agrees with Mr Johnson there is nothing to suggest insulin was put in this bag.

​ Sky News:

At 3.30pm on 9 April 2015, half an hour before Child M collapsed, he was given an antibiotic infusion, either by Lucy Letby or a colleague.
Letby is asked what her colleague was doing at the time.
"I can't say without looking."
Letby's colleague previously said she was dealing with a blood sample for Child L and was interrupted by Child M's emergency call.
"It was while [the colleague] was getting sterile that you sabotaged Child M," Nick Johnson KC, the prosecution barrister, says.
"No."
An extract from the witness statement of Child M's mother is then read to the court.
She said: "About ten minutes after we left the boys, a nurse came running up and said we had to go back and took me down in a wheelchair."
"Whatever happened, happened after his mum and family had left him," Mr Johnson says.
Letby says she does not recall "exact timings".
It is "another case where the parents are there and they leave and the baby collapses", Mr Johnson says.
Letby agrees this appears to be the case, but reiterates that she was with a colleague at the time.

​ Chester Standard (same exchange):

Letby says she cannot recall what Mary Griffith was doing at this time. Mr Johnson suggests this was when Ms Griffith was collecting a blood sample for Child L to be 'podded' and sent to a laboratory for analysis.
Letby says she "couldn't say" how long it would take to draw up a 12.5% dextrose solution, which in this case was for Child L, the twin of Child M.
Letby agrees it would have been after 3.45pm that that process would have started.
Letby denies that it was around 3.45pm that she "sabotaged" Child M.
Mr Johnson says the twins' mother said in an agreed evidence statement, she had to be taken back to the unit in a wheelchair, having been alerted by nurse Yvonne Griffiths, and she observed "one of the doctors was pressing [Child M's] chest." Mr Johnson says this is another case where a baby collapsed when the parents were away.
Letby says she was with Mary Griffith at the time of Child M's collapse.
Letby agrees Child M recovered quickly following the collapse.
Letby says she did not see skin discolouration, and it was not discussed at the time.

​

A colleague had previously told the court Child M's blood gas record sheet was disposed of in a confidential waste bin.
Asked how it had ended under Letby's bed at home, Letby says she has never taken anything out of the confidential waste bin.
Letby says she does not know how many blood gas records she has taken home. She says it has been put in her pocket and taken home with a handover sheet.
She says she "probably" put it in her pocket, and put it under her bed.
Asked why, Letby replies: "Because I collect paper".
Letby says household bills and bank statements would be shredded as they were 'there and then'. Other sheets such as handover sheets were not thought about.

​

Dr Ukoh's records on the resuscitation for Child M are shown to the court. Mr Johnson says the record is "meticulous", including six adrenaline doses.
Mr Johnson says the data for the resuscitation efforts is on the paper towel [that Letby took home], which Mr Johnson says he must have had in his hand at some point. Letby agrees.
Mr Johnson says that was in his hand at 8.25pm when he wrote up his notes.
Letby said she had to stay late that shift for the handover and writing up medical notes for Child M. She denies "waiting an hour and a quarter" to write up those nursing notes or "hanging around" to get the note Dr Ukoh had when writing up the note.
Letby denies "rooting around in the bin" for the blood gas record for Child M to take home. She also denies sabotaging Child M.

​ Sky News:

Letby says she stayed late that night to finish "all the work that needed doing". Medical records show she was still on the unit an hour and 15 minutes after her shift ended.
The prosecution claims she "hung around" on the unit to collect the paper towel, and removed confidential paperwork from the bin.
"No, I have never rooted in the bin," Letby says.
The prosecution claims she wanted the notes because she "sabotaged" the infant. Letby denies this.

​

Child N, charge #1

Chester Standard:

Mr Johnson is now turning to the case of Child N, born on June 2, 2016.
Letby, in her defence statement, says she had never encountered a baby with haemophilia before, and no-one on the unit seemed specifically to know how to care for such a baby.
She says she does not believe Child N 'collapsed', and it was not accurate to say he had screamed for 30 minutes. She denied causing any harm to him.

​

Letby tells the court she does not believe this event, for Child N, was a collapse which required resuscitation.
The court is shown the nursing rota for the night shift of June 2-3. Letby was designated nurse for two babies in room 4. Child N was in room 1 with one other baby - the designated nurse for both babies was Christopher Booth.
Letby rules out staffing levels or incompetence as factors in Child N's collapse.
Letby agrees Child N collapsed just after Christopher Booth went on his break.
Letby denies she was 'bored' or had 'time on her hands' working in nursery 4 that shift.
She agrees Child N 'was in good shape' at the start of the shift.

​

The neonatal schedule for June 2-3 is shown, with Letby's duties for her two designated babies from 8.30pm-8.38pm.
One of the designated babies received a 50ml NGT feed at 8.30pm as they were asleep. Letby says that feed can take '10-15 minutes or so'. She says she can't put a 'definitive number' on it.
Mr Johnson says other estimates for this kinds of feed have been 20 minutes.
Letby: "I really can't say."
Mr Johnson says Letby was texting her friends 'right through this shift'.
A sequence of messages is shown to the court. The first sent by Letby is at 7.33pm, followed by 7.35pm, 7.58pm, 7.59pm, 8pm ['We have got a baby with haemophilia'], 8pm, 8.01pm, 8.02pm, 8.03pm, 8.04pm [Ah ok I'll have to Google it later lol don't know much about it [haemophilia]], 8.06pm, 8.11pm [Complex condition, yeah 50;50 chance antenatally].
NJ: "That is where you got the answer from, Dr Google?"
LL: "No, '50:50' is something staff would know"
Messages are sent by Letby at 8.26pm [Ffs Mel asing me how to make up 12.5%],
Letby said she was "shocked" that a band 6 colleague was asking her how to make up such a solution, when she could have looked for herself.
8.29pm: 'No I've passed her folder but now asking if can run via cannula- she needs to look herself!'
Letby says she was "not happy" with Mel.
Another message is sent from Letby at 8.29pm, and at 8.31pm, and 8.31pm, at 8.32pm, 8.34pm.
Letby is asked how she can feed a baby at 8.30pm when she was also texting.
LL: "You can't."
Letby denies feeding the baby "very quickly" by putting the plunger on the end.

​

Another message is sent from Letby at 8.38pm [Had strange message from [doctor colleague] earlier...']
Mr Johnson asks if Letby's nursing colleague was implying Letby and the doctor were in a relationship. Letby says she does not know.
Letby's colleague sent two messages: "Did u? Saying what?
"Go commando? 😂"
Letby is asked by Mr Johnson if she knows what the implication of 'go commando' means.
LL: "I don't know what was meant, I can't say right now."
NJ: "Do you think this was an army reference, being from Hereford?"
LL: "I don't know."

​ Sky News:

In one message, Letby's colleague encouraged her to "go commando".
Letby denies knowing what this means.
"What does that mean, is it a reference to the royal marines?" Nick Johnson KC, for the prosecution, asks.
"I don't know," Letby says.
"Go commando, you don't know what that means?" Mr Johnson says.
The court is shown that Letby replied with a series of laughing emojis.
"Did you think this was an army reference, you being from Hereford?"
"I don't know," Letby says.
Further text messages are shown to the court, in which Letby denies to her colleague that she was being flirty with the other colleague.

​ Chester Standard

The messages are sent by Letby at 8.39pm, 8.40pm, 8.41pm, 8.43pm [Do you think he's being odd?], 8.44pm [Shut up!], 8.44pm [I don't flirt with him!].
The text message conversation was:
Letby: 'Had strange message from [colleague] earlier....'
Reply: 'Did u? Saying what?'
Letby had replied at 8.39pm: '😂😂😂😂'
LL: 'Asking when I was working next week as wants to talk to me about something, has a favour to ask..?'
Reply: 'Think he likes u too'
Reply: 'Hmm did u not ask what it was?'
LL: 'No just said when I was working and he said wants my opinion on something'
LL: 'Hmm...🤔'
Reply: 'Hmm'
LL: 'Do you think he's being odd?'
Reply: 'Thought as flirty as u'
LL: 'Shut up!'
Reply: 'What?!'
LL: 'I don't flirt with him!'
Reply: 'Ok'
LL: 'Certainly don't fancy him haha just nice guy'
Reply: 'Ok'

​

Mr Johnson says Letby was 'texting non-stop' on the nursery room.
Letby says the feed "must have happened at a different time". She says she cannot answer when. She denies 'pushing it through' the feed.

​ Sky News:

Questioning continues about how Lucy Letby could have been texting her colleague "non-stop" while she was allegedly feeding a baby.
"I couldn't feed a baby while texting so it must have happened at a different time," Letby says.
"What must have happened?" Mr Johnson asks.
"The feed."
Mr Johnson then says: "Or the alternative is, to use your phrase, you pushed it through."
"No," says Letby.
Child N collapsed at 1am on 3 June 2016. Notes written hours later said his oxygen levels dipped down to 40%. He is also recorded as "screaming".
"Screaming is very unusual of a child of this age," Mr Johnson says.
"Yes," says Letby.
Mr Johnson then says: "This was your doing."
"No, it was not," says Letby.

​ Chester Standard:

Mr Johnson says Child N collapsed at 1am. Christpher Booth 'one episode whilst I was on my break, whereby infant was crying++ and not settling. He became dusky in colour, desaturating to 40s. Responded to facial oxygen within 1-2 minutes. Crying subsided within approximately 30 minutes and colour returned to normal...'
Letby tells the court this was not a 'collapse' as facial oxygen was all that was required, not resuscitation.
Mr Johnson says Dr Jennifer Loughnane had a 'look of surprise' in court when she had read her note she had written Child N was 'screaming', as that was unusual. Letby says she does recall that.
She denies sabotaging Child N.

​

Child N, charge #2

Mr Johnson turns to the second set of events for Child N on June 15, when the plan was for Child N to go home that week. Letby agrees he only needed phototherapy at this stage.
A feeding chart is shown for Child N, who was being fed mostly expressed breast milk.
Child N's mother had visited on the morning of June 14, and in the evening, at 5.15pm. Child N had taken a 60ml bottle feed. Letby agrees with mr Johnson this was "a very good sign".
Mr Johnson suggests Letby did something to destabilise Child N before the end of her day shift.
LL: "No I did not."
Letby says it was a "coincidence" Child N was, according to nursing notes that night "very unsettled early part of night", with observations of mottling.

​ Sky News:

Medical notes show the infant was "unsettled" for the first half of the night shift - when Letby was not working.
In a Facebook message sent to Letby, a doctor on the unit later told her: "Unsure why became unwell... They're optimistic he'll be okay."

​ Chester Standard:

Letby is asked about a message sent by a nursing colleague at 5.26am which said 'Baby [N] screened, looks like [s]'*
Letby responded: 'Oh no'
Letby denies she saw this as an opportunity to sabotage Child N during the day shift.
LL: "No, that's not what happened."
Letby messaged a doctor colleague at 6.04am on June 15: 'Wonder if I'll find my way back into 1 today then....',
This is in response to his message at 5.53am, which begins: 'What a chaotic 7 hours!
'Sorry - I may have filled NICU [...]
'Have a good breakfast 😉 I think your day may be busy.'

​

Swipe data shows that Letby is on the neonatal unit at 7.12am. Child N desaturated three minutes later and was 'crying'.
Letby says she does not recall Child N crying. She says, at the time, she was in the doorway, talking to Jennifer Jones-Key - her friend, when the alarm for Child N went off.
Letby says it "was very busy" and "a lot of intervention was needed" for Child N after he collapsed. She does not cite staffing levels as a contributing factor for the collapse, or a mistake by medical staff.
Letby says she "does not know" if issues with intubating Child N were a factor, and does not know what caused Child N to collapse.
She denies "setting up" Child N to collapse overnight.

​ Sky News

Lucy Letby is questioned about why she arrived early to her day shift on 15 June 2016, swiping in just under 20 minutes before the handover began.
She is accused of attempting to murder Child N twice that day.
"You sabotaged him on the night shift, in effect by going in early," Nick Johnson KC, the prosecution barrister, says.
"No," says Letby.
The prosecution claims Letby set Child N "up to fail at the end of the previous day shift" and then came in early "to make it look like he came from the night shift with a problem".
Mr Johnson accuses her of "making a beeline" for Child N, in nursery three.
Letby tells the court she went into the room to speak to her friend, and at this point "handover hadn't been allocated".
But a Facebook message to a colleague timestamped at 7.12am (when she arrived on the unit) disputes this.
It says: "I've escaped being back in 1, back in 3."
At 7.15am, the child was "blue" and "wasn't breathing", according to medical notes.
Mr Johnson says this happened "within a minute or two of you arriving in that room".
"Yes," says Letby.
"Just bad luck, is it?" says Mr Johnson.
"Yes," says Letby.

​ Chester Standard (same evidence):

Letby, in her defence statement, said she had gone to nursery room 3 not to see Child N specifically, but to speak to Jennifer Jones-Key, her friend.
She said Child N was 'blue' and 'not breathing'. She shouted for a doctor colleague to assist and Neopuff breathing assistance was applied.
Letby is asked about the 'Jennifer and I were talking at the doorway'. Letby says she meant only she was at the doorway, and Jennifer Jones-Key was in the nursery room.
Letby, in a Facebook message to a colleague: 'No repeat today. I've escaped being in 1, back in 3' at 7.12pm.
Mr Johnson says Letby had gone in to room 3 as she knew by that point she was designated babies for that room. Letby says she had gone to see her friend.
Letby denies sabotaging Child N.
Letby agrees it was a "serious event" which happened "within a minute or two" of her entering the room. Mr Johnson says it was "bad luck?" Letby replies: "Yes."

​

Mr Johnson asks Letby when blood was seen orally on Child N.
Letby replies "the only time definitively" she recalled that was at 3pm. she says that is on her memory "sitting here now".
Mr Johnson says if she had recorded blood observations at the time, would she accept that now? Letby says she would, although it may have been based on what people had informed her at the time.
Mr Johnson says the one who would have informed her would have been the doctor colleague she "loved as a friend".

​ Sky News:

The doctor who responded to this initial incident is someone Letby says she "loved as a friend" - she admits this colleague would not have had it in for her. (Letby has previously accused a "band of four" colleagues of conspiring against her.)
"Do you accept what [the doctor] says about this initial desaturation... about it being concerning?" Nick Johnson KC, for the prosecution, asks.
"Yes," says Letby.
Letby did not write up the nursing notes on the collapse at 7.15am of Child N - claiming she took over his care from 7.30am.
"Who discovered him [at 7.15am]?," Mr Johnson asks.
"We were both there," Letby says.
"Who discovered him?" Mr Johnson presses.
"We both heard his monitor, I went over to him," Letby says.
Mr Johnson says Letby was "hoping to create the impression on the paperwork that these were all events that happened before you arrived".
"No, I disagree."

Chester Standard:

Letby's nursing note: '...infant transferred to nursery 1 on handover. Mottled, desaturating requiring Neopuff and oxygen.'
Letby says "both" she and Jennifer Jones-Key had gone over to Child N at the time of desaturation.
Mr Johnson says Letby was "hoping to create the impression" on the nursing notes that the problems for Child N happened before the handover.
LL: "No, I disagree."
Letby tells the court she had taken over Child N's care from 7.30am.

​

Letby's note, written at 1.53pm-2.10pm adds: 'unable to intubate - fresh blood noted in mouth and yielded via suction ++'.
Letby says the 3pm blood observation was the first one she could "definitively remember".
Mr Johnson says this note is a 'good hour' before that observation.
Letby denies Child N was bleeding from when she first got involved that day.

​

Letby says she knows there was blood recorded prior to 3pm.
Mr Johnson says the doctor colleague recalled, in evidence, seeing blood before the intubation process at 8am.
Benjamin Myers KC, for the defence, rises to say that in cross-examination, the doctor colleague did not rule out the possibility the blood was present after the attempt to intubate.
Mr Johnson says there was an attempt to intubate at 8am. Letby agrees. Letby also agrees with the observation there was swelling at the back of Child M's throat. She says she "cannot comment" further on what the doctor colleague saw.

​ Sky News:

Letby's lawyer points out, in cross-examination, that this doctor said he could not be sure if blood was present before or during the procedure.
The doctor said he saw swelling at the back of the infant's throat and said it "must have been unusual for me to remember it".

​ Chester Standard:

Letby recorded in her notes, written at 1.53pm retrospectively: '...unable to intubate - fresh blood noted in mouth and yielded via suction ++'
Mr Johnson says the doctors could not see, for the blood. Letby says she cannot say what doctors observed.
Letby agrees that evidence from Professor Sally Kinsey ruled out 'spontaneous haemhorrhage' for Child N at this time.

​ Sky News:

The court is then read an extract from the evidence of Child N's father. He previously told the court:
I was at work. I then received a phone call from Child N's nurse, Lucy. [Letby] said he had been a bit unwell in the night but said he is okay now. I told Lucy that [Child N's] mum would be in in a bit to see him as usual and that was that... I did not get the impression that he was still unwell and needed to be concerned... About ten minutes later [Child N's mother] rang me and said we had to go to the hospital.
Letby disputes she made this phone call.
"I don't recall speaking to the parents myself," she tells the court.

​ Chester Standard:

Letby is asked about family communication with Child N's parents. A note by Letby at the time: 'Parents were contacted by S/N Butterworth during intubation. Both mobile phones switched off and no answer on landline. Message left. Call returned shortly after and parents were asked to attend. Have been present since.
'Both understandably upset...'
Agreed evidence said Child N's mother had said Lucy Letby had been in contact with them.
Letby says "it's a difference in recollection".
Mr Johnson says this is agreed evidence, it's the truth.
He says Letby's note "is a lie".
Letby: "no, it's not."
The mother recalled Child N 'had a bleed and was unwell', and said Letby had informed the parents of this.
Letby: "No, I disagree."
NJ: "But it's agreed evidence."
LL: "Well, I disagree with it now."
Mr Johnson says this is another account from a parent which Letby says is untrue.
Mr Johnson says Letby has been 'firing out post-it notes from the dock' during the trial, but had not raised this issue at the time.
LL: "I'm not sure."
NJ: "Is the answer no?"
LL: "It's not something I raised with my legal team."
Letby: "I don't want to comment on whats, ifs and buts."
Mr Johnson says Letby interrupted when the mother of Child E and F gave evidence, to say she couldn't hear, and wanted to leave the courtroom when a doctor colleague began to give evidence.
LL: "Yes, because I felt unwell."
Mr Johnson says: "No, no..." adding that it was because it was her boyfriend who was giving evidence.
Letby: "That's not fair."
Mr Myers rises to say the line of questioning is inappropriate, and asks for the opportunity to consider the issue raised [of a dispute in agreed evidence].
Letby adds she did not make the phone call to Child N's parents, and denies making false entries in the paperwork.
An intensive care chart is shown for Child N on June 15, saying at 10am '1ml fresh blood'. Letby says she "cannot say" if it was a vomit or aspirate. The note is in Letby's handwriting.
Letby is asked what she did about it.
Letby: "I cannot say right now."

​

Mr Johnson asks what would Letby do if fresh blood was observed in Child N's mouth?
LL: "I don't know if it was in the mouth." Letby adds such an observation would have been escalated, but she does not know who to. Mr Johnson says there is no record of it being escalated.
Letby agrees there is no "written record", but it may have been verbally escalated. She says 1ml fresh blood is not normal but not a life-threatening event.
Mr Johnson says for a baby with haemophilia, it was serious.
Letby says it would be a concern, and would be escalated.

​

A doctor in the ward does not record the bleed during the ward round, the court is told.
Mr Johnson says Letby has "invented" the blood reading for 10am. Letby: "I disagree."
Mr Johnson suggests it was all designed to give an ongoing impression for a child with haemophilia. Letby disagrees.
Letby says it's true that an NG Tube can cause "a small amount" of bleeding in the mouth.
Letby says she cannot say if she didn't escalate it [the bleed in Child N] verbally.

​

A Facebook message from Letby is sent to a doctor colleague at 11.29am on June 15.
'Small amounts of blood from mouth & 1ml from ng. Looks like pulmonary bleed on Xray. Given factor 8 - wait and see. Apnoeas have improved & gases good, colour & perfusion still not Great. If deteriorates will try to intubate.'
The x-ray report ruled out a pulmonary bleed. Letby says this report came some time later.
Mr Johnson suggests either there wasn't a problem at all, that Letby was making evidence up, or Letby was causing the problem. Letby disagrees.

​

Child N, charge 3

Mr Johnson says a statement from the parent of Child N said the collapse was so serious a priest was offered. Mr Johnson says this collapse must have been the one at 2.50pm.
Letby noted: 'approx 1450 infant became apnoeic, with desaturation to 44%...fresh blood noted from mouth and 3mls blood aspirated from NG tube...drs crash called...'
NJ: "What had you done to cause this in [Child N]?"
LL: "I hadn't done anything.

​

Letby denies "shoving a foreign object" down Child N's throat. Letby: "Absolutely not."
NJ: "It's all your work, isn't it?"
LL: "No it's not at all."
Letby agrees she was 'agitated' by the need for assistance from Alder Hey, as she had not known a case before of people from another hospital coming in to assist.
NJ: "Do you remember saying 'who are these people?' 'who are these people?'"
"Yes, because I had never experienced who these people were [coming in from a different hospital.] ...It was a completely new experience."
Child N later collapsed once more.
She denies using the doctors being in a 'huddle' as an 'opportunity' to try and kill Child N again.

Court has reached its scheduled early end for the day. Letby's cross-examination will resume tomorrow at 10:30 am local time

I just started doing ketamine treatments again today. And man I feel like shit. I’m so nauseas from the meds. The doctors did prescribe me for Zofran but ooof, it’s still kicking my ass.
When I went into the k-hole, I started thinking about how much trauma I have from the Pentacostal religion. I’ve not gone to church in YEARS. But I still carry around a lot of baggage from the religion.
Have ya’ll seen the new Happy Shiny People (I think that’s what it called)? It’s the new documentary on the Duggers. Those weirdos who had a fuck-ton of kids.
I lived in the same town with them and attended a different branch of their religion. Which is Pentacostal. And man, since the release of the documentary I’ve been so anxious. It has me absolutely triggered and my anxiety has been through roof. I haven’t gotten the chance to watch the documentary because I’ve been so fragile and vulnerable. And also heartbreaking because the girls were very sweet and kind to me when we were all young. I can’t even imagine the horrors they’re still hiding. We all knew something was seriously wrong with them but everybody in town turned a blind eye because of their tv show and their affiliation with their church. They were hot shots 🙄
I wouldn’t wish the Pentecostal religion on my worst enemy. And I fucking mean it. All of my trauma happend over 20 years ago but I carry it with me everywhere.
On top of all the ridiculous rules… never cut your hair, only wear dresses or long skirts that hid your legs, there was one time the pastor told us to break all of our TV’s because they were a gateway to Hell and demons are coming through the TV to corrupt your family. The rules were manageable for the most part. Annoying but easy to deal with. Hell… I didn’t start wearing jeans until I was 13 and caught a rebellious streak. My precious grandma was so excited to take me to buy my first pair of jeans. And it will forever be one of my favorite memories.
Okay so I’m 30 now and the stuff that happened to me between the age of 5-10 years old shaped me to be the anxious dummy I am today. I strongly believe that I was too young to experience this type of fear and my brain wires got a little crossed during development.
The church taught horrifying things. Demon possession being the scariest and what really fucked up my tiny brain. I wish I could hug the littler version of me and tell her we grew up to be really bad ass and we’ve never had to deal with “demons” . I’m almost head to toe covered in tattoos, hairs cut, and wearing whatever I want. Little me would have thought adult me is so perfect. But I can’t make it better for baby me. I can only protect my peace now.
I don’t remember a single Sunday service or Wednesday service where the preacher wasn’t screaming from the pulpit that we were all going to be dragged to a hell if we didn’t follow the rules. Most of our teachings were based around the book of revelations and iykyk. It’s scary. And especially scary to a young kid. The church would call our members of the congregation and tell them “you have a demon in you, we gotta heal you” which was always followed by a horrifying “exorcism” in front of the congregation. Even the children… we were all made to bare witness to the power of God. On top of the insane exorcisms, they were HUGE on the Holy Ghost. If you couldn’t get the Holy Ghost and start speaking in tongues, you could never be baptized and that’s your one way ticket to hell. I spent a good portion of my childhood praying and begging god to fill me with the Holy Ghost so I wouldn’t be separated from my family when the rapture happened. Sunday after Sunday, I would stand in front of the congregation with the hands of my fellow Brothers and Sisters (that’s what the adults were called) touching me while I cried and begged for the Holy Ghost. But it never happened. I was left confused and scared because kids younger than me had spoken in tongues and been baptized. My fear of being burned alive and used as a demon play toy (not my words, their words) grew stronger and stronger with each passing Sunday. I thought something was wrong with me. Why is god ignoring me? I was a good child and I studied my bible every night and I didn’t dare break the rules. It never happened tho. And at a young age I had come to terms that I must not be worthy of salvation. For a brief moment, I thought maybe I was a demon myself and that’s why god didn’t want me.
There wasn’t another little girl in the world that wanted to be baptized more than I did. One Sunday I was frustrated and scared. I was overwhelmed with how many church members were surrounding me, placing their hands on me, and speaking tongues themself. I faked it. I faked speaking in tongues because I wasn’t baptized and my preacher was always telling us that the rapture was just around the corner so we better lock in our faith. Or be damned to survive 7 years of torment on earth. I couldn’t take it anymore I had to be baptized. I didn’t wanna stay on earth while my family was going to Heaven. After I spoke in “tongues” that service, the pastor still refused to baptize me because he didn’t believe me. Do you know how crushing this was to a child? God must not love me, right? I’m not worthy of God’s love and evil, I guess.
All of my anxieties started there at the hands of a bunch of religious quacks. I’ve spent my entire adult life wanting to turn back time so I could rebel against the religion sooner than 13 years old.
Anyways… I feel a little better venting about this. I just wish I could put all of it behind me but the trauma and anxiety will probably stay with me the rest of my life. But thankfully I’ve been in counseling for years and I have the best psychiatrist. So hopefully this is what healing looks like. I might watch the documentary but it’s going to be hard because the Dugger girls were so sweet and kind to me. And seeing what they went through might make me vomit.

The start of this post would have been much more captivating with my original title.
Anyways, this is not my first post here. I posted some stuff before but I realized they all sounded too sad or too desperate, and that's not me anymore so let's toss that persona out the window (and into a recycling bin because I am not polluting my mind palace). Also, they attracted quite a few short term correspondence that didn't really go the way I hoped they would go. Mostly, that was my fault because i was not clear with what I was looking for, and what I was expecting. So I hope this post is a step to the right direction towards the right person.
My current situation in life leaves very limited time for socialization outside of my usual circle that is why I have turned to online dating and it hasn't been the best experience for me. Not just because most of the people I have interacted with there are horny (whether they admit to it proudly or not), but because I find it hard to build a connection with someone who always somehow finds a way to turn a conversation into overt flirting. Not that I have anything against flirting, but sometimes I just find it too cringey when it's too obvious and forced, emphasis on forced. I like natural conversations with great exchange of ideas, finding common interests and talking for days about it, and sharing the same sense of humor (which isn't hard for me cause I find humor almost everywhere) and just smiling and laughing a lot. I enjoy getting to know someone before really being into them so yeah, if you're someone like me (or me adjacent -- I don't know if that makes sense I just want to put adjacent on this post), please don't be afraid to message. Just put a little more effort (or a lot, since this post is long) than the usual "hi, how are you?" and the likes.
A little more about me, just so you know what you're getting yourself into: - I'm a medical student, but I'm graduating in July so technically I'm an unlicensed medical doctor. - If you were to ask a ten year old me if I wanted to be a doctor I would have told you no and never because I just watched The Mummy for the millionth time and I wanted to be an archaeologist. - Egyptology is not my favorite branch of archaeology, just one step above Lithics. - I've put way too much archaeology stuff here, I actually barely remember anything about it. - I love movies and I love discussing movies. I also love being funny while watching movies, especially horror and thriller ones, but only those that I am rewatching or watching with people who are too scared to watch by themselves. - I am way behind on what's new in movies and music because I like old stuff. - The previous facts obviously shows I'm into history, and can more passionately talk about it than medicine. - I also like gaming, but tend to like games that have the exploration element in it (think The Long Dark). I also just play for fun, I don't really get too competitive. - I read books, but mostly fiction, and mostly just feel good ones recently. I tend to shy away from heavy topics because I have to deal with a lot of emotions almost every day. - I also like nature, and would like to do a nature walk someday. Preferably through not so dangerous terrain with lots of trees and birds and berries I can safely eat, and not a lot of mud and heat. - Oh, I also like languages. I'm trying to learn German and Turkish right now.
A little bit more about me, physical appearance-wise (1 can send a normal human picture, if you will return the gesture): - I am short, by world average, but I am considered on the tall side in my country. - I can wear contact lenses and loves how it fools me that I haven't ruined my eyes, but I prefer eyeglasses. - I like to wear my hair on the long side, but have been contemplating cutting it short, just because. - I am average built, definitely not athletic. However, I have been looking for the time and resources to achieve a healthier body. - I clean up good, I guess.
I have put way too much in this post so I am going to stop now. If you have read through to this point then thank you and I hope I haven't bored you. Also, if you're interested in being friends (and maybe more in the future), I hope you respond to this post. And please, please, make that response something fun to read. And also, please don't be a catfish. I have a grandaunt in Louisiana who can give me a great recipe to cook you.

The forest is black. Pitch black.
I pound over the dirt trail, my feet turning the pedals like twin pistons. The bicycle bounces and jolts, shuddering as it rolls across the wooden bridge. There’s something in the air tonight. A chill.
But it isn’t the chill of autumn. No, this is the chill of unease. It crawls up my spine carrying the deep-rooted knowledge that something about these woods, something about this trail isn’t right. It’s the unmistakable dread of being watched.
Pursued.
I stand up and ride harder. My lungs burn with every push of the pedals but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to get out of these woods fast. The hospital is twenty minutes away. I just need to make it there.
I’m close.
So close.
WOMP
Bass rumbles behind me. It’s followed by a rush of wind, enough to throw me forward while ravishing the forest like a tempest. Trees groan. Their frames break and kneel, surrendering to the gale. Branches and leaves come loose. They ricochet through the air like shrapnel, cutting into my cheek and and I throw up an arm to keep myself from losing an eye.
This is insanity.
It’s lunacy.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I have to make it through this. I have to get out of these woods, get back to the hospital to see my sister before the heart monitor flatlines.
She’s not doing well. Are your mother and father home?
No, ma’am.
Can you get here to be with her? She doesn’t have long.
Yes ma’am. No matter what.
The distant bass nears, growing thunderous. It’s as though the whole world is shaking, like the Earth might split in two and swallow me whole. I grit my teeth. I let loose a defiant roar, sweat pouring down my temples as my legs tremble, willing my bike forward.
Faster, dammit!
Faster!
There’s a flash. Then another.
Lightning?
No.
I’m answered by an explosion of light, so violent and bright that I can’t see a damn thing. I holler. Scream. My body jerks forward as my front wheel collides with what feels like a fallen branch. Next thing I know, I’m flying over my handlebars.
What’s the phrase?
Ass-over-tea-kettle.
Yeah, that’s it.
I brace myself for a broken arm, maybe worse, but the pain never comes. Nothing comes. It’s as though I’m floating in limbo, like gravity’s unable to finish what it started. I can’t feel a thing– not the dirt beneath me, not my face pressed against the bark of a tree. For a little while, I think I’m dead. That I’m in purgatory.
But then my eyes adjust. The world comes into focus, beginning as a blurry smudge, but soon becoming a picture-perfect recreation of my worst nightmare.
I’m not in the forest anymore.
I’m above it.
I’m looking down at the mess of trees and I’m terrified at how small they are, how much smaller they’re getting with every passing second.
I’m floating into the sky, being carried by a narrow beam of light.
​
___________________________
​
That was a long time ago. Thirty years, give or take.
A lot’s changed since then, but one thing’s remained the same: the nightmares. I have them every night. I dream about that blinding light, that same low bass and that same gut-churning horror of being eaten by the sky.
I used to think they were a coping mechanism. I figured that since the dreams came shortly after my older sister passed, that maybe they were just how my eleven-year-old brain was dealing with the grief. My therapist seemed to agree.
“You’re quite right that there may be a link there,” she’d tell me, lowering her glasses and offering a medical-grade smile. “It’s very likely that these dreams are a form of abstract healing, a means to allow your mind to come to terms with its trauma.”
For a long time, I thought she was right. Or better put, I hoped she was. Now though? Well, I think maybe we were both wrong.
Shit.
Where are my manners?
I’m over here rambling about my childhood, and you’re wondering who the hell I am.
My name is Isaiah Mitchell. I’m a boogeyman, but not the cool kind. I don’t hide in closets or haunt old houses. I’m the type that your parents rant about while watching the evening news, the sort that tinfoil hats point to whenever things go wrong.
I’m what you might call a Man in Black.
The work I do is classified. It’s the sort of work that happens behind the scenes, with shadowy people in shadowy circles. So when I tell you that last night something catastrophic happened, I’m not talking about the stock market dipping a couple percentage points. I'm not talking about increased traffic on your morning commute.
I’m talking about trouble.
Lots of it.
It’s the kind of trouble that’s making me do something I don’t generally do, which is break rules. By the end of this, I might break all of them. But this is important, and in moments like these I find myself thinking about my late sister, Hope, and how she would have wanted me to do the right thing. It’s how she raised me, after all.
So here goes nothing.
This begins with a story, but it ends with a decision. The story is mine, and the decision is yours. When I’m finished, you get to choose whether you spend the time you have left a little wiser, or laugh this off as the ramblings of a lunatic.
Whatever you choose, I’ll have made my peace.
The story is a personal one. It’s about me, but it’s also about you– it’s about everything in the universe, right down to the last atom, and how all of us are facing a horror the likes of which we can’t begin to imagine.
It’s the story of the worst night of my life, and what might one day be the worst night of yours.
It goes like this.
​
_______________________
​
The beam of light sucks me up and spits me into absolute darkness. The sensory whiplash is enough to give me a headache, something like a migraine that pulses near my temples and feels like a bulldozer inside my skull.
It’s uncomfortable.
But not half as uncomfortable as the situation I’m in.
“Hello?” I mumble to the dark. I stumble to my feet, feeling around my environment blindly. It’s cold. Hard. It feels like I might be in a room full of metal, but I can’t imagine where that would be. A warehouse?
Footsteps echo in the distance. They’re closing in.
“Who’s there?” I sputter, and I think maybe I’ve been drugged. People don’t just up and float into the sky in the middle of the night. It isn’t a thing.
That means I’m hallucinating.
That means whoever kidnapped me knows a thing or two about stealing kids.
That means they’re a professional.
What’s the phrase?
Serial killer.
Yeah, that’s it.
WOOOOMP
I clap my hands to my ears. It’s that same bass from the forest, except now it’s reverberating all around me. Another bass joins it. This one is different… coming from a new direction, with a lower tone. It’s almost like they’re communicating– like morse code.
“Please,” I beg. “Just let me go. I swear I won’t tell anybody!”
Static crackles. It’s followed by a sharp squeal of microphone feedback, then the buzz of modulating frequency. “Communication calibrated,” a digital voice says. “Subject identified: homosapien. Geographic location: New Mexico. Language model: English.”
There’s a pause, it’s long and silent enough that I can hear my pulse rushing through my veins. I’m positive I’m going to die. These things don’t happen to people who live to tell the tale.
“Can you understand us, homosapien?” the voice asks.
Yes, I say.
Can you turn on the lights? I ask.
The only thing worse than being murdered is being murdered in the dark.
Yes, they say.
I’m blinded for the third time in as many minutes. I blink, my eyes adjusting to the green glow as it fills the chamber. Wherever I am, it’s strange. Alien. Tall vats of liquid are scattered around a large, circular room, each hosting tubes that extend outward to a central console. Everything is metallic. I can’t make out any labels– any sort of identification at all.
“Is this level of light sufficient?” another voice asks, this one right behind me.
I wheel around, and my breath catches in my chest. In front of me is something that doesn’t exist– can’t exist. It’s roughly ten feet tall, and it’s got sharp teeth, sharp claws, scaled skin, and a tail. It’s a monster. A living, breathing monster.
Fuck.
I scramble backward. My back collides with one of the vats, and blue liquid sloshes against the glass. “Thehellareyou?” I shout all at once.
“We are the Chosen,” says the first voice, approaching my other side. “We are lifeforms from many galaxies away, and we have come to save humanity.”
They stare at me through giant eyes, and each of those eyes are filled with dozens of pulsing pupils. Almost like ink blots.
“I’ve been abducted…” I sputter, hardly able to breathe. “By aliens. Aliens… are real… and I’ve been abducted…”
“Correct,” says one of the aliens. I realize this one has gray scales, while the other has teal. At least I can tell them apart.
Gray looks at his arm, and a digital screen comes to life. He taps at it with a crooked finger. “Readings indicate heightened levels of cortisol and increased adrenal flow. Source: Fight or flight response. Biologically rational, but devoid of purpose.” He looks at me, cocks his over-large head to the side. “You have neither the option to fight us or flee us, so it would be best to comply. Do you understand?”
My jaw hangs open. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Are these aliens really standing there reading me my Miranda Rights? “Are you going to probe me?” I ask. “Like the movies?”
Teal blinks at me, his pupils dilating. “Negative.” He points to a vat. “We will break down your genetic tissue into usable material, harvesting your most compatible DNA strands while discarding the rest. It is for the greater good.”
I follow his finger to the tank, and now that I’m right up against it, I can see clearly what’s floating inside. My stomach twists into a knot. Inside of it is a human body. Everything from the man’s waist down has been dissolved, and what’s left of his intestines are dangling freely.
“Jesus Christ!”
“There is no cause for concern,” Teal says. He lumbers across the chamber to the metallic console that all the tubes are feeding into. “Your disappearance will be accounted for. A clone will be deployed to resume your life, preventing suspicion and avoiding social disruption.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say, trying to ignore how faint I’m starting to feel. “You’re going to kill me… to save humanity?”
“Correct.”
The room spins. My chest gets tight and my vision becomes a scrambled mess. My ears are ringing like church bells. I stumble, losing my sense of equilibrium and I think I taste vomit in my throat.
“No,” I mutter. “This isn’t happening… Can’t be happening…”
I steady myself against a vat, looking up to see a dead woman’s face staring back at me. Pieces of her skull have been eaten away. I can see the wrinkles of her brain underneath.
“Heart rate out of range,” Gray says, but I hardly hear him. He grabs my wrist, presses a device against the center of my hand.
I struggle. Fight. I try to use my teeth, but he’s strong, much stronger than me. A coldness pulses against my palm, almost like an ice cube, and soon that frigid sensation is traveling across my fingertips. Up my arm.
“What did you…” I mutter, but the sensation is rolling through the rest of my body. It’s soothing. My eyes find my palm and I see a strange shape seared into the skin, a scatter of dots surrounding a black square. Suddenly I can’t remember the thought I was trying to finish. Was any of this really worth panicking over?
It was just a few corpses in vats, after all.
“You have been administered a sedative,” Gray explains.
My heart rate slows. My ears stop ringing. The ghost of a smile sneaks across my face.
Gray’s staring at his display. “Cortisol levels reduced. Adrenal response suppressed. Biometric readings indicate subject has achieved a suitable level of suggestibility to proceed.”
“Affirmative,” says Teal, working the console.
I feel like I’m drifting through the lake on a warm summer day. My heart is full. I’m in absolute bliss, and all I can think is that Hope should get to experience this before she dies…
“Pulse is quickening,” Gray says with a frown.
Hope.
My sister.
My dying sister, alone in the hospital wondering why her little brother abandoned her.
“Sedation effect dropping,” Gray says. “98%. 94%. Emotional instability reaching unacceptable levels.”
“Hope,” I sputter, feeling like I’m coming out of a daze. “I have to get to the hospital– please! My sister is sick! She needs me!”
Gray presses the device against my other hand, and another pulse of relaxation courses through me. “Invalid concern,” he tells me. “Clone will be a perfect recreation of you, body and mind. It will retain all memories allowing it to continue your life uninterrupted. Conclusion: your expiring sibling will receive suitable emotional support prior to her decomposition.”
Fucking aliens. It takes everything I have to fight against the sedative, to make my case. “How?” I groan. “How is my DNA supposed to save humanity? What the hell is it saving us from anyway?”
Teal turns from the console to face us. His giant eyes are narrowed in a thoroughly displeased manner. “Invalid request. Information too critical to risk dissemination.”
“Rebuttal,” says Gray. “Clone’s memory can be modified. Current biometric readings indicate high levels of emotional discontent, placing likelihood of a compromised harvest at 34%. Solution: permit subject to understand purpose of sacrifice. Result: sense of closure and enhanced probability of project success.”
Teal turns back to the console. “Rebuttal accepted. Proceed.”
Gray looks at me. He places his scaly fingers against my head, and I squirm a little. “Brace yourself for disorientation,” he tells me. “You will experience physical unease and hyperstimulation. After, you will understand the horror that awaits your species in the dark.”
​
______________________________
​
For a long time, that’s as far as the nightmare gets. Gray prattles on that I’m about to see the truth, some twisted fate that justifies melting humans into sludge, but before he can deliver the goods, I wake up.
Every. Time.
Blue balls doesn’t begin to describe it.
Last night, it happens again. The nightmare, I mean. Same aliens, same tanks of human soup, but this time I wake up in a cold sweat. My phone is ringing on the bedside table. There’s a name on the screen that I hate to see.
“Whatisit?” I grumble.
“Jesus Christ, Mitchell. I’ve been calling for ten minutes!”
My boss. Lisa.
She goes off. The words are coming out like machine-gun fire, and from the background chatter I figure she’s speaking to more than just me. It sounds like there’s a crowd around her, like she’s briefing suits as she jogs down a hallway.
“Got all that?” she asks.
Something about a shitstorm. Something about an F35. The air force just shot down a UAP, which is how we say UFO these days to avoid getting laughed out of the room. Apparently it happened in New Mexico. My backyard.
This calls for a liter of coffee. Maybe two.
I stumble into the kitchen and put a pot on. I have some time while she holds the phone to her chest and barks orders at the drones around her. One cream. One sugar. My spoon clinks against the side of the mug as her voice blares through the speaker.
“Mitchell?” she says. “Still there?”
She says she’s got coordinates. I take a sip of scalding java. I’m dazed enough I barely feel it burn my tongue. My fingers punch the coordinates into my laptop, bringing up the location the supposed UAP was shot down.
I spit my coffee over my screen.
“The fuck?” I mutter, leaning forward and doing a double take at the map.
“What is it?” she’s asking.
“Nothing,” I’m saying.
But it’s a lie. The truth is, the coordinates are a dead match for the forest where I had my waltz with psychosis thirty years ago. They’re the coordinates from my dream. Right down to the rickety old bridge.
I ask her if she’s sure the numbers are correct.
“Am I sure?” she snaps. “Look, if you’re asking me if this is another Chinese spy balloon then the answer is go fuck yourself. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the past twenty minutes. This is the real deal, so suit up and get ready to go. I’ve got a bird on the way.”
The clock on my microwave reads 2:34 a.m. and my stomach is telling me to sort my life out. “Do I have time for breakfast?” I ask.
Click.
The line goes dead.
Twenty minutes later, a helicopter is landing on my lawn. I board it in a daze, and we take off in the direction of the crash like we’re trying to outrun a cruise missile. I’m watching the lights of the countryside drift by, and it occurs to me that from all the way up here, in the dead of night, they almost look like stars.
I wonder how long it’d take to snuff them out.
How long it’d take to burn a whole galaxy to ashes?
To crush a universe in the palm of your hand?
Things to consider.
The closer we get to the crash site, the worse my thoughts become. They’re bordering on obsessive. I’m tangoing with darkness. Radio chatter is coming through the com line, something about aliens and extraterrestrials, but all I’m thinking about is controlling my bladder.
I’m drowning in hypotheticals.
I’m wondering what happens if I lose my mind between here and the crash site, what the protocols are, where they’ll take me. Do I get the night off? The week?
“Everything okay, sir?”
It’s the co-pilot. She’s turning in her seat and looking at me like I’m having a medical emergency.
“You look a bit pale,” she tells me.
My muscles work overtime as I twist my mouth into a smile. “Never better,” I lie. “How far out are we?”
“Twenty miles,” she says with a reassuring grin. She turns back in her seat and I take the opportunity to let out an exhausted sigh.
I close my eyes. Take a dozen deep breaths.
Happy thoughts.
I try to ignore how dry my mouth is, how badly my hands are shaking. I try to ignore the fact that every time I look down at my palms, I see that same scatter of dots, that same faded square that no doctor has been able to explain. “I’ve never seen scars like that,” they tell me. “How’d you get them?”
I don’t know, I tell them.
I don’t know.
But I do.
I’ve known this entire time, probably, but I’ve just been too terrified to accept it. I’m not what I think I am– this world isn’t what I think it is either. It’s all of this that’s making me want to curl into a ball. It’s making me want to weep on the floor, to scream at the top of my lungs and pull my hair out with everything I have.
It’s making me want to throw open the helicopter door, take a breath of fresh air and then plunge head-first into the dirt like a human turnip. And if I thought it was that easy, I might just do it.
But somehow, I know it isn’t.
I know it won’t save me– won’t save us, from what’s coming.
See, last night I had the same dream I’ve had for the last thirty years. The same abduction. The same aliens. But last night, I got to see the director’s cut. The Extended Edition. Last night, when Gray told me he was going to show me just how fucked we all are, he actually came through.
Imagine that.
What I saw was everything.
I saw how all of this ends. How all of it began. What I saw is what’s waiting for us in the black infinity of space. And the more that I think about it, the more I think it might be driving me mad.
“Just up ahead,” says the pilot. “Ten minutes to touch down.”
Eight minutes.
Five.
“Jesus,” he says, at the three minute mark. “Are you two seeing this?”
And up ahead is a plume of smoke, rising into the night sky. There’s the faint flicker of fading fires, the haphazard glow of industrial lighting, and there, at the center of it all, is the unmistakable shape of something that shouldn’t exist.
“That… doesn’t look like it’s from this planet…” the co-pilot mutters over the com line.
“No,” the pilot replies, and his voice is shaking. “It doesn't.”
They’re right. They both are. What it looks like is something extra-terrestrial, something alien. It looks like something ripped straight from my worst nightmares.
And really, that’s just where I wish it had stayed.

Request/ISO Titles I'm Currently Looking For - The Super Mario Bros Movie, Renfield, Dungeons & Dragons, Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham, Secret Headquarters & VUDU Credits.
Currently at 4,000+ titles so I do have a great amount of movies that are commonly available through redemption but I do encourage any & all offers. I apologize in advance to anyone I'm unable to make a trade with & as always thank you for taking time out to look at my list 🙂.
All iTunes titles marked with * will port to MA.
Also to those that may be new to uvtrade sub, All Google Play listed do port to Movies Anywhere/Vudu/iTunes if you connect your accounts accordingly. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
--All Codes Split Where Applicable--
2 Fast 2 FuriousHDMovies Anywhere
2Guns (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
2Guns* (Split)HDiTunes
The 5th WaveHDMovies Anywhere
12 Rounds 3: LockdownSDVUDU
21 Jump StreetHDMovies Anywhere
21 Jump StreetSDMovies Anywhere
22 Jump StreetHDMovies Anywhere
22 Jump StreetSDMovies Anywhere
47 Ronin (Split4KiTunes
47 Ronin (SplitHDMovies Anywhere
Action PointHDiTunes
The Adjustment Bureau*HDiTunes
The Adventures of TinTin (Split)HDVUDU
The Adventures of TinTin (Split)HDiTunes
After EarthSDMovies Anywhere
After EarthHDMovies Anywhere
The Age of AdalineHDVUDU
Aladdin [1992 Disney Animation] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Aladdin [Live Action] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Alex CrossHDVUDU
Alexander & The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Split)HDGoogle Play
Alien: CovenantHDMovies Anywhere
Alien Covenant*4KiTunes
All The Money In The WorldSDMovies Anywhere
Alice in Wonderland [1951, Animated] (Split)HDGoogle Play
AlohaHDMovies Anywhere
AlohaSDMovies Anywhere
Alvin and the Chipmunks: ChipwreckedSDiTunes
Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Road Chip*4KiTunes
The Amazing Spider-Man 2HDMovies Anywhere
America: Imagine The World Without HerHDVUDU
American AssassinHDVUDU
American Assassin4KiTunes
American HustleSDMovies Anywhere
American Reunion (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
American Reunion* (Split)HDiTunes
Amsterdam (Split)HDGoogle Play
Anchorman 2 (Split)HDVUDU
Anchorman 2 (Split)HDiTunes
The Angry Birds MovieHDMovies Anywhere
Annie [2014]SDMovies Anywhere
Another Cinderella StoryHDMovies Anywhere
Antlers (Split)HDGoogle Play
Ant-Man* (Split)4KiTunes
Arrival4KiTunes
The ArtistSDMovies Anywhere
Assassin's Creed*4KiTunes
Avengers: Age of Ultron* (Split)4KiTunes
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Split)HDGoogle Play
Avengers: Infinity War (Split)4KiTunes
Avengers: Infinity War (Split)HDGoogle Play
AVP: Requiem*SDiTunes
Bad GrandpaHDiTunes
Bad Grandpa.5HDiTunes
Bad Moms* (Split)HDiTunes
Bambi (Split)HDGoogle Play
Barbie and Her Sisters in a Puppy Chase* (Split)HDiTunes
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Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb4KiTunes
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Until a couple of years ago I didn't really think too much about my life and just kinda floated by. I have a full time job, family and friends that I hang out with often but I never went out of my comfort zone unless I saw the benefit. My therapist told me about dysthymia which more accurately reflects how I feel about my life.
My diet has always been pretty terrible. Snack food, candy, very basic food(pepperoni pizza, and cheeseburger with just the meat and cheese.) I have always had trouble branching out to different foods as I will start to dry heave(but never actually vomit) if I don't like it.
I have tried a lot of things to work on myself but none have had too much of an effect. 3 hour bike once a week, massages, fixing my sleep schedule, and starting to work on my diet. So far I have cut out all things that are primarily sugar, an apple on most days, better multivitamins, and omega 3 vitamins.
I have some symptoms that come and go. Nausea, fatigue, headache, irritability and occasional lightheadedness when standing up. The nausea at times can be triggered simply by moving, flossing or yawning. About 4 years ago I did pass out twice 6ish months apart but after a few tests from my doctor she concluded it was nothing. I also have as long as I can remember had this “pull” when I am not talking to anyone or smiling that forces my face in a frown by default. I also sometimes feel like I am on the verge of tears but I never do.
About a year ago I started taking vyvanse to help with my fatigue and motivation which it definitely does but it also causes me to have a hard time eating earlier in the day and makes some of my symptoms worse, mainly nausea and irritability.
A couple months ago I got a blood test done and my glucose was 98(before eating), one under the limit for my age. I purchased a portable tester and have done a few myself. It ranges typically from ~90 to ~130. I did a couple today and it said low both times which is supposedly <20 but that might have just been me not using it properly.
The difference between not having eaten in a few hours vs after eating can be pretty dramatic. From fairly lethargic to mostly ok after eating.
Looking for advice on what the best steps I should take. If the answer ends up being “eat better” I can post on nutrition as they might have better advice on slowly moving over to a healthier diet. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Long story short, I got hurt from our faulty ADUS that they have refused to fix for over a year. Management wouldn't give me the paperwork because they said they didn't have access to the forms(CA-1, CA-16) until nearly 3 weeks after I filed out the safety form and the incident form the night it happened. The CA-16 was filled out where I could go to see a doctor and now OWCP is saying that doctor isn't good enough even though my supervisor filled out the CA-16 without checking I guess. I've tried to get help from our local branch but they don't seem to know what to do so I'm to the point I have to hire a lawyer. None of the local lawyers here do federal work comp stuff so does anybody know if the APWU has a list of lawyers they use? Any help would be appreciative I feel pretty helpless in this situation

I hunted monsters for an international anomaly research center
Part 2
I decided instead of telling you about the next monster I’d planned I will tell you all what I did last week. I’d heard about this anomaly before, but that was because it was contained. Not by our organization but by one we work closely with. They’d been keeping it well in their Puerto Rico containment facility, but it managed to escape during a power outage. They’d insisted on trying to capture it themselves for a couple of days before they finally let me come in. Normally I’d be mad that they couldn’t catch it, but the Scape Ore Swamp Lizard Man is no walk in the park.
Standing 10 feet long, 8 feet tall, and pure muscle this thing is practically a walking tank. It has an almost inch-thick hide of small black snake-like scales. It stands on two legs but can switch to four when needed. It has a large head with a long muzzle full of sharp venomous teeth. Its face is always contorted into a scowl adding to its frightful appearance. Its back is covered in large spiked scutes which start at the head to the tip of the tail. On its two large four-fingered hands are two-inch-long nasty claws.
They deployed me the same way as always, and I landed with a light thud on the jungle floor after I was unlatched from the parachute and harness. I looked out at the darkening jungle around me. My search would be far from easy. I knew that, as I needed more information about where it was. However, after getting my sniper railgun ready I began my pursuit.
My pursuit was aimless and tiring. I had no direction, and the heat was slowly burning me alive. The jungle was full of loud squawking birds. At one point I looked up and saw in the evening light a small group of bats flying overhead.
I walked slowly and steadily scanning the quickly darkening ground for something, but as I suspected there was nothing in sight. No sigh from the lizardman. I walked on and on until finally, I found something. They were large three-toed tracks that almost looked like ones a T-rex would’ve made. My heart leaped in joy and excitement and I began following the footprints. They were easy to follow as the heavy feet had sunk deep into the wet muddy ground of the jungle. They followed no path and almost walked the way I had been walking aimlessly. Until like me, it seemed to have found something to follow.
Its path led in an almost perfect straight line, having trampled almost anything that wasn’t a tree out of its way. I noticed as I followed its tracks large claw marks in the trees. There were three and they were long and deep.
I followed for a good long while still tired but my determination had increased 10 fold now that there was a path to follow. As I walked along I began to hear something off in the distance. It was so faint it was hard to discern. At first, I thought it might be some sort of birdcall, but then it clicked in my head. It screamed. I started running as fast as I could through the jungle tripping at one point but pulling myself back up.
Eventually, I found myself running into a field. What I saw in that field I’ll never forget. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never been bothered by dead humans before. In my youth when I’d go to funerals seeing the body never disturbed me. I’d be sure but the body itself never made me uncomfortable. And after I got this job I got completely desensitized, but something about dead animals. I could never handle seeing a dead animal. I don’t know exactly why. I guess it’s because it brought me back to my childhood.
My dad was born in Mexico in 1979, but he and his family moved to Puerto Rico 3 years later. My dad lived in Puerto Rico during the horrifying but short reign of the Chupacabra. When I was little he would tell me stories about it. Fields of livestock just on the ground dead wholly drained of blood. Those stories actually started me down the route of where I am today, but I don’t think I ever really comprehended what that looked like until I saw the massacre in the field I was now in.
It almost seemed as though a sheet of blood and muscle and meat had fallen over the field. It was absolutely everywhere and dispersed throughout this massacre I could see small bits of bones. Vertebrae there, or a rib over there. It almost looked like they’d all exploded from the inside at the same time, but I know that is not what happened. I saw the footprints in the ground, I saw the claw marks in the bones. I knew the only thing that could’ve done this was the horrible beast I was hunting.
I walked around through the massacre for a while in a sort of shock. Then I finally snapped out of it and looked around again. I saw a house separated only by a now broken wood fence to the field. I instantly knew where the screams had come from and what had likely happened. I ran toward the house and a story began to unfold as I got closer. The father or man of the house must’ve come outside to defend his family because I found his body ripped apart just outside the front door.
I stepped over the body and walked into the tiny house. It was absolutely destroyed. The walls were torn apart, furniture was left shattered on the ground, and there was lots of blood. I looked over and saw a partial body on the living room floor. I grimaced when I realized the poor thing had once been a big dog. Now it was nothing but torn meat and bones. One step at a time I made my way to the back of the house down a cramped hallway. In the bedrooms were the destroyed bodies of a woman and three children. The only peace I had was that these people died quickly. I noticed at the end of the hall was a shattered glass backdoor. I stepped through it, almost slipping on the shards of glass still on the floor, and walked into the backyard. It was a tiny cleared area surrounded by trees. The ground was littered with small dog toys and in the corner was a chicken coop. The roof of it had been ripped off and shattered. I peeked in through the hole and saw lots of blood-covered eggs. It looked like, unlike the other animals, the lizardman had actually stopped eating all the chickens. Maybe all of that butchering worked up an appetite. I thought.
After calling in for the investigation crew I continued on my trail. The sun had completely set and navigated the dense jungle even with my bright headlight showing the way. Not long into it rain began pouring which completely covered the tracks. In frustration, I turned around and made my way back to the farm.
Suddenly I heard something from the treetops. It sounded almost like a faint growl and before I could do anything else the large figure of the Lizardman jumped from the trees right in front of me. It immediately slashed at my chest and left arm tearing them open causing blood to start pouring through. I let out a scream of agony and fell to the ground.
With my good right arm, I reached for a gadget on my belt and pressed it. It instantly began spraying a strong wonderful smell of flowers into the air. If there’s one thing the lizardman cannot tolerate it is sweet solid smells. It roared in anger and then sprinted in the other direction. I lay there blood seeping from my wounds wondering if I was about to die. I’m not old, only 26, but for my line of work, I’m ancient; about half the guys die on their first or second mission. If you survive the first two you will probably last much longer, but even then people die within two years meanwhile I’ve been here for 5 years.
I lay there with my eyes slowly growing heavier and heavier and then they closed and I was consumed by the darkness.
I woke up in a bright white room. The light was so blinding I kept blinking but still could hardly see anything. I noticed a woman standing in the room who was like the room wearing all white.
“Am I dead?” I sputtered out in my half-dazed confusion.
The woman let out a slight chuckle: “No you’re not dead. You’re in the medical wing of our Puerto Rican location.” She explained.
As she was talking everything seemed to clear around me. It was a small hospital room and the woman was short in a doctor's coat with dark hair tied in a bun.
“Who’s we?” I asked.
“USDAC,” She said, busy with something at her table.
I knew USDAC they were the United States Department of Anomaly Containment. They were the ones the Lizardman had escaped from.
“Where’s my organization? Why didn’t they send the team out to get me?” I asked angrily.
“I’m not quite sure. They never even told us you went down. Our investigation team was looking around the jungle when they found you.” She said with a genuinely confused look on her face.
I scanned the room again and saw on a chair next to my bed all my gear laid out nicely. I reached for my walkie, grabbed it, and pulled it off of my belt.
“This is Trigger to dispatch, do you copy?” I asked through the device.
“We copy, you aren’t dead?” The receiver asked, obviously very confused.
“Not yet. Why didn’t you send the team out to get me?” I asked more confused than angry at this point.
“They said you were gone. They said the lizardman had got you.” He said.
“Well, he hasn’t got me yet,” I said defiantly then hung up.
“Mam, I’m going to go finish what I started, but I am going to need a few things.”
I suppose a few things were a bit of an understatement. I had them get the best tracker they could find out here, which they quickly got to do. I got a whole new set of equipment more specialized for the task at hand I filed a hasty but fierce resignation letter to my organization siting leaving me for dead as the primary cause. They never even got back to me and needless to say, I was pissed. I knew the moment USDAC found out I was no longer part of the organization they’d send me away, so I decided I’d better be quick with this operation.
I pulled the small Uhaul full of supplies down the dirt road. Next to me sat Santiago, an older Native American man with a long black salt and pepper braided ponytail. He’d worked with both my organization and USDAC for a number of years and had much experience in tracking beasties like this one.
“So, where exactly are we going?” I asked looking at him.
“Well we’re going to the most recent attack and I’m hoping to get there by noon so if you could step on it that would be lovely.” He said sounding rather harsh.
I nodded and pushed slightly more on the accelerator. I would’ve started flying down this road but this truck was not built for dirt roads so I had to do my best.
As I drove Santiago busied himself with a map. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he put small red x’s on certain spots. I assumed those were the previous attacks. Occasionally he would look up from his work to make sure I was still going in the right direction and finally, after he directed me to turn onto a smaller more unkept dirt road we arrived at the farm.
It was eerily similar to the other. The house was destroyed and the field was full of massacred goats. Although the main difference was this one was swarming with USDAC investigation teams. Four big black vans were parked in front of the home, almost blocking my view. I stopped the truck and me and Santiago both stepped out. We walked over to the house and one of the investigators met us at the door.
He was tall with a weathered face and a strong chin that made him look like an actor. He had nicely done silver hair, stubble, and hazel eyes. A slight grin appeared on his face when he saw us.
“You two must be the hunters, I’m Detective Slade.” He greeted, sticking his hand out for a shake.
I took his hand first. “Hello Slade, I’m Agent Biel,” I said shaking his hand with Santiago quickly doing the same.
After we finished with formalities Slade led us around the house and into the field behind it. It felt like deja vu looking at the field. It told almost the exact same story mine did. Dozens of torn-apart goats and a small now empty chicken coop. I looked at all of it in disgust. The animals had no time to defend themselves they were just destroyed.
Santiago began scanning the mess on the ground looking for tracks to follow. Meanwhile, I stood talking with Slade.
“This is the eighth attack in four days, it looks like it’s making two attacks every night.” Slade explained, “So far it has killed 37 people, 650 goats, 242 cows, and has eaten almost 300 chickens.”
“Have you noticed a pattern?” I asked.
“Besides attacking at night not really. It usually attacks the fields first, but even that isn’t always the case.”
“I found something.” Santiago interrupted.
He stood by the edge of the field that met the jungle. I saw the large tracks of the beast leading into the jungle.

**Me and Santiago lugged the heavy equipment through the jungle we were tired and hot, but we continued knowing that the lizardman was likely close by. The sun had begun to sink low in the sky as we marched on. I was surprised at the path of the lizardman it had literally walked a straight line for miles upon miles. Only ever turning for a large tree or a hill. We were hoping we would get to the things nest before it went on its next night excursion but we weren’t extremely hopeful. I could only hope that the wretched thing was still wherever it rests.** **Suddenly their hike was interrupted by a loud call. I looked above to see a large tropical bird eyeing me from a branch. It was brightly colored vaguely reminding me of a parrot. Oddly I gave the bird a nod and then caught up to Santiago who’d ignored the bird and kept walking.** **Eventually, the sun set and we both had to turn our lights on. My body was beginning to grow heavy and I could tell it was the same for Santiago, but right as we seemed to the point of giving up we arrived at the edge of a lake. It was small and had short sandy beaches separating it from the jungle. Perfectly outlined in the sand were the feet of the lizardman. It had clear as day walked straight into the lake. We both looked at each other. He was clearly as unsure about the situation as I was. We stood there contemplating when I noticed something.** **The lake had a few logs floating in it but one didn’t look like the other. It was far too symmetrical. I scanned my light over it and realized the texture I’d thought of as bark was actually scaled. Then suddenly my light scanned over to the head and its bright red eyes opened wide. It let out a roar and started swimming toward us. I dropped my bag and hurriedly put my remaining gear on. Santiago dropped his and took aim with his rifle.** **BANG! The shot echoed through the quiet air and I saw it clearly hit the thing right in the center of the forehead. The bullet tinked off like it had hit thick steel. The Lizardman swam closer and as the water got shallower it transitioned from swimming to sprinting. The second it took a step on shore I struck. I slammed one of my gauntlet-bearing fists into the thing's face. There was a loud audible crack as it fell over. It quickly stood back up and slashed at my thick steel armor. It did nothing but scrape off some paint and I pulled my fist back and punched it again. It stumbled again and before it could recover I punched it again and again.** **Immediately after the punch it lunged forward its jaws latching on to either side of my helmet. I heard the sounds of it and felt the metal beginning to bend in on itself. I kicked the thing where I knew it would hurt. It unlatched from my face and I uppercut it right in the lower jaw. It fell into the water letting out a whimper-type noise as it did.** **I stood over the beast having misjudged it as defeated. In a second wind, it grabbed me by the leg and threw me into a tree. I heard my suit crack and crunch having been badly damaged. The lizardman started over at me threateningly and in a quick burst of speed it charged over to me.** **BANG! BANG! BANG! His first shot struck the side of its head getting its attention, and as it turned the second bullet struck it directly in its left eye. The third and final bullet struck its nose harmlessly. It roar in pain and charged towards Santiago, but I jumped up and grabbed it by the tail. I held it still for a moment before it did something that caught me off, guard. It turned around and bit off its own tail. It then continued charging toward Santiago. His bullets struck it again and again but its hide was far too strong. Quickly I dropped the tail and pulled out a canister pulling the pin and throwing it. A wonderful smell erupted from it as it soared through the air and landed right in front of Santiago.** **The Lizardman backed away from him dizzy from the overpowering smell. I pulled myself off the ground and charged towards it. I jumped on top of the thing pinning it to the ground.** **“Meds!” I yelled to him as the Lizardman was already struggling.** **Santiago reached into its mouth that I held open and shoved the tranquilizer down its throat. After another minute of shaking and struggling it finally blacked out. I pulled out my walkie and called in dispatch.** **“The lizard is down,” I said simply.** **Within minutes they had a dozen helicopters out there and had the creature properly restrained.** **I walked over to the man who appeared to be in charge. He was average height with blonde hair combed to the side, aviator glasses, and a nice gray suit. “I’d recommend you step up the security on that thing,” I suggested.** **He turned around and looked at me for a moment, almost studying me.** 

“We will be.” He said finally. “I am personally seeing that it is brought to our most secure location.”
“Good, good, I don’t want to ever deal with that thing again.” I chuckled.
He looked closer at me after I said that and it seemed to click in his head who I was.
“Agent Biel, I’m very happy to see you. I got word of your resignation at UARF.” He said sounding oddly sad.
I prepared for the worst as I was technically not supposed to be here.
“Yeah, I wasn’t exactly happy with being left for dead,” I grumbled.
“Well sir I promise if you take my offer you won’t be left for dead,” He said smiling now.
I paused for a moment unsure what he meant. Then it seemed to click he was hiring me and I took his hand and shook it vigorously.
“I do accept your offer, sir,” I yelled excitedly.
“You can call me Dr.Barclay,” He said politely shaking my hand back.
So that is how I was hired here at USDAC and I’ve already discovered that they do things quite differently here but that is a story for another day. Biel out.

I hunted monsters for an international anomaly research center
Part 2
I decided instead of telling you about the next monster I’d planned I will tell you all what I did last week. I’d heard about this anomaly before, but that was because it was contained. Not by our organization but by one we work closely with. They’d been keeping it well in their Puerto Rico containment facility, but it managed to escape during a power outage. They’d insisted on trying to capture it themselves for a couple of days before they finally let me come in. Normally I’d be mad that they couldn’t catch it, but the Scape Ore Swamp Lizard Man is no walk in the park.
Standing 10 feet long, 8 feet tall, and pure muscle this thing is practically a walking tank. It has an almost inch-thick hide of small black snake-like scales. It stands on two legs but can switch to four when needed. It has a large head with a long muzzle full of sharp venomous teeth. Its face is always contorted into a scowl adding to its frightful appearance. Its back is covered in large spiked scutes which start at the head to the tip of the tail. On its two large four-fingered hands are two-inch-long nasty claws.
They deployed me the same way as always, and I landed with a light thud on the jungle floor after I was unlatched from the parachute and harness. I looked out at the darkening jungle around me. My search would be far from easy. I knew that, as I needed more information about where it was. However, after getting my sniper railgun ready I began my pursuit.
My pursuit was aimless and tiring. I had no direction, and the heat was slowly burning me alive. The jungle was full of loud squawking birds. At one point I looked up and saw in the evening light a small group of bats flying overhead.
I walked slowly and steadily scanning the quickly darkening ground for something, but as I suspected there was nothing in sight. No sigh from the lizardman. I walked on and on until finally, I found something. They were large three-toed tracks that almost looked like ones a T-rex would’ve made. My heart leaped in joy and excitement and I began following the footprints. They were easy to follow as the heavy feet had sunk deep into the wet muddy ground of the jungle. They followed no path and almost walked the way I had been walking aimlessly. Until like me, it seemed to have found something to follow.
Its path led in an almost perfect straight line, having trampled almost anything that wasn’t a tree out of its way. I noticed as I followed its tracks large claw marks in the trees. There were three and they were long and deep.
I followed for a good long while still tired but my determination had increased 10 fold now that there was a path to follow. As I walked along I began to hear something off in the distance. It was so faint it was hard to discern. At first, I thought it might be some sort of birdcall, but then it clicked in my head. It screamed. I started running as fast as I could through the jungle tripping at one point but pulling myself back up.
Eventually, I found myself running into a field. What I saw in that field I’ll never forget. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never been bothered by dead humans before. In my youth when I’d go to funerals seeing the body never disturbed me. I’d be sure but the body itself never made me uncomfortable. And after I got this job I got completely desensitized, but something about dead animals. I could never handle seeing a dead animal. I don’t know exactly why. I guess it’s because it brought me back to my childhood.
My dad was born in Mexico in 1979, but he and his family moved to Puerto Rico 3 years later. My dad lived in Puerto Rico during the horrifying but short reign of the Chupacabra. When I was little he would tell me stories about it. Fields of livestock just on the ground dead wholly drained of blood. Those stories actually started me down the route of where I am today, but I don’t think I ever really comprehended what that looked like until I saw the massacre in the field I was now in.
It almost seemed as though a sheet of blood and muscle and meat had fallen over the field. It was absolutely everywhere and dispersed throughout this massacre I could see small bits of bones. Vertebrae there, or a rib over there. It almost looked like they’d all exploded from the inside at the same time, but I know that is not what happened. I saw the footprints in the ground, I saw the claw marks in the bones. I knew the only thing that could’ve done this was the horrible beast I was hunting.
I walked around through the massacre for a while in a sort of shock. Then I finally snapped out of it and looked around again. I saw a house separated only by a now broken wood fence to the field. I instantly knew where the screams had come from and what had likely happened. I ran toward the house and a story began to unfold as I got closer. The father or man of the house must’ve come outside to defend his family because I found his body ripped apart just outside the front door.
I stepped over the body and walked into the tiny house. It was absolutely destroyed. The walls were torn apart, furniture was left shattered on the ground, and there was lots of blood. I looked over and saw a partial body on the living room floor. I grimaced when I realized the poor thing had once been a big dog. Now it was nothing but torn meat and bones. One step at a time I made my way to the back of the house down a cramped hallway. In the bedrooms were the destroyed bodies of a woman and three children. The only peace I had was that these people died quickly. I noticed at the end of the hall was a shattered glass backdoor. I stepped through it, almost slipping on the shards of glass still on the floor, and walked into the backyard. It was a tiny cleared area surrounded by trees. The ground was littered with small dog toys and in the corner was a chicken coop. The roof of it had been ripped off and shattered. I peeked in through the hole and saw lots of blood-covered eggs. It looked like, unlike the other animals, the lizardman had actually stopped eating all the chickens. Maybe all of that butchering worked up an appetite. I thought.
After calling in for the investigation crew I continued on my trail. The sun had completely set and navigated the dense jungle even with my bright headlight showing the way. Not long into it rain began pouring which completely covered the tracks. In frustration, I turned around and made my way back to the farm.
Suddenly I heard something from the treetops. It sounded almost like a faint growl and before I could do anything else the large figure of the Lizardman jumped from the trees right in front of me. It immediately slashed at my chest and left arm tearing them open causing blood to start pouring through. I let out a scream of agony and fell to the ground.
With my good right arm, I reached for a gadget on my belt and pressed it. It instantly began spraying a strong wonderful smell of flowers into the air. If there’s one thing the lizardman cannot tolerate it is sweet solid smells. It roared in anger and then sprinted in the other direction. I lay there blood seeping from my wounds wondering if I was about to die. I’m not old, only 26, but for my line of work, I’m ancient; about half the guys die on their first or second mission. If you survive the first two you will probably last much longer, but even then people die within two years meanwhile I’ve been here for 5 years.
I lay there with my eyes slowly growing heavier and heavier and then they closed and I was consumed by the darkness.
I woke up in a bright white room. The light was so blinding I kept blinking but still could hardly see anything. I noticed a woman standing in the room who was like the room wearing all white.
“Am I dead?” I sputtered out in my half-dazed confusion.
The woman let out a slight chuckle: “No you’re not dead. You’re in the medical wing of our Puerto Rican location.” She explained.
As she was talking everything seemed to clear around me. It was a small hospital room and the woman was short in a doctor's coat with dark hair tied in a bun.
“Who’s we?” I asked.
“USDAC,” She said, busy with something at her table.
I knew USDAC they were the United States Department of Anomaly Containment. They were the ones the Lizardman had escaped from.
“Where’s my organization? Why didn’t they send the team out to get me?” I asked angrily.
“I’m not quite sure. They never even told us you went down. Our investigation team was looking around the jungle when they found you.” She said with a genuinely confused look on her face.
I scanned the room again and saw on a chair next to my bed all my gear laid out nicely. I reached for my walkie, grabbed it, and pulled it off of my belt.
“This is Trigger to dispatch, do you copy?” I asked through the device.
“We copy, you aren’t dead?” The receiver asked, obviously very confused.
“Not yet. Why didn’t you send the team out to get me?” I asked more confused than angry at this point.
“They said you were gone. They said the lizardman had got you.” He said.
“Well, he hasn’t got me yet,” I said defiantly then hung up.
“Mam, I’m going to go finish what I started, but I am going to need a few things.”
I suppose a few things were a bit of an understatement. I had them get the best tracker they could find out here, which they quickly got to do. I got a whole new set of equipment more specialized for the task at hand I filed a hasty but fierce resignation letter to my organization siting leaving me for dead as the primary cause. They never even got back to me and needless to say, I was pissed. I knew the moment USDAC found out I was no longer part of the organization they’d send me away, so I decided I’d better be quick with this operation.
I pulled the small Uhaul full of supplies down the dirt road. Next to me sat Santiago, an older Native American man with a long black salt and pepper braided ponytail. He’d worked with both my organization and USDAC for a number of years and had much experience in tracking beasties like this one.
“So, where exactly are we going?” I asked looking at him.
“Well we’re going to the most recent attack and I’m hoping to get there by noon so if you could step on it that would be lovely.” He said sounding rather harsh.
I nodded and pushed slightly more on the accelerator. I would’ve started flying down this road but this truck was not built for dirt roads so I had to do my best.
As I drove Santiago busied himself with a map. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he put small red x’s on certain spots. I assumed those were the previous attacks. Occasionally he would look up from his work to make sure I was still going in the right direction and finally, after he directed me to turn onto a smaller more unkept dirt road we arrived at the farm.
It was eerily similar to the other. The house was destroyed and the field was full of massacred goats. Although the main difference was this one was swarming with USDAC investigation teams. Four big black vans were parked in front of the home, almost blocking my view. I stopped the truck and me and Santiago both stepped out. We walked over to the house and one of the investigators met us at the door.
He was tall with a weathered face and a strong chin that made him look like an actor. He had nicely done silver hair, stubble, and hazel eyes. A slight grin appeared on his face when he saw us.
“You two must be the hunters, I’m Detective Slade.” He greeted, sticking his hand out for a shake.
I took his hand first. “Hello Slade, I’m Agent Biel,” I said shaking his hand with Santiago quickly doing the same.
After we finished with formalities Slade led us around the house and into the field behind it. It felt like deja vu looking at the field. It told almost the exact same story mine did. Dozens of torn-apart goats and a small now empty chicken coop. I looked at all of it in disgust. The animals had no time to defend themselves they were just destroyed.
Santiago began scanning the mess on the ground looking for tracks to follow. Meanwhile, I stood talking with Slade.
“This is the eighth attack in four days, it looks like it’s making two attacks every night.” Slade explained, “So far it has killed 37 people, 650 goats, 242 cows, and has eaten almost 300 chickens.”
“Have you noticed a pattern?” I asked.
“Besides attacking at night not really. It usually attacks the fields first, but even that isn’t always the case.”
“I found something.” Santiago interrupted.
He stood by the edge of the field that met the jungle. I saw the large tracks of the beast leading into the jungle.
Me and Santiago lugged the heavy equipment through the jungle we were tired and hot, but we continued knowing that the lizardman was likely close by. The sun had begun to sink low in the sky as we marched on. I was surprised at the path of the lizardman it had literally walked a straight line for miles upon miles. Only ever turning for a large tree or a hill. We were hoping we would get to the things nest before it went on its next night excursion but we weren’t extremely hopeful. I could only hope that the wretched thing was still wherever it rests.
Suddenly their hike was interrupted by a loud call. I looked above to see a large tropical bird eyeing me from a branch. It was brightly colored vaguely reminding me of a parrot. Oddly I gave the bird a nod and then caught up to Santiago who’d ignored the bird and kept walking.
Eventually, the sun set and we both had to turn our lights on. My body was beginning to grow heavy and I could tell it was the same for Santiago, but right as we seemed to the point of giving up we arrived at the edge of a lake. It was small and had short sandy beaches separating it from the jungle. Perfectly outlined in the sand were the feet of the lizardman. It had clear as day walked straight into the lake. We both looked at each other. He was clearly as unsure about the situation as I was. We stood there contemplating when I noticed something.
The lake had a few logs floating in it but one didn’t look like the other. It was far too symmetrical. I scanned my light over it and realized the texture I’d thought of as bark was actually scaled. Then suddenly my light scanned over to the head and its bright red eyes opened wide. It let out a roar and started swimming toward us. I dropped my bag and hurriedly put my remaining gear on. Santiago dropped his and took aim with his rifle.
BANG! The shot echoed through the quiet air and I saw it clearly hit the thing right in the center of the forehead. The bullet tinked off like it had hit thick steel. The Lizardman swam closer and as the water got shallower it transitioned from swimming to sprinting. The second it took a step on shore I struck. I slammed one of my gauntlet-bearing fists into the thing's face. There was a loud audible crack as it fell over. It quickly stood back up and slashed at my thick steel armor. It did nothing but scrape off some paint and I pulled my fist back and punched it again. It stumbled again and before it could recover I punched it again and again.
Immediately after the punch it lunged forward its jaws latching on to either side of my helmet. I heard the sounds of it and felt the metal beginning to bend in on itself. I kicked the thing where I knew it would hurt. It unlatched from my face and I uppercut it right in the lower jaw. It fell into the water letting out a whimper-type noise as it did.
I stood over the beast having misjudged it as defeated. In a second wind, it grabbed me by the leg and threw me into a tree. I heard my suit crack and crunch having been badly damaged. The lizardman started over at me threateningly and in a quick burst of speed it charged over to me.
BANG! BANG! BANG! His first shot struck the side of its head getting its attention, and as it turned the second bullet struck it directly in its left eye. The third and final bullet struck its nose harmlessly. It roar in pain and charged towards Santiago, but I jumped up and grabbed it by the tail. I held it still for a moment before it did something that caught me off, guard. It turned around and bit off its own tail. It then continued charging toward Santiago. His bullets struck it again and again but its hide was far too strong. Quickly I dropped the tail and pulled out a canister pulling the pin and throwing it. A wonderful smell erupted from it as it soared through the air and landed right in front of Santiago.
The Lizardman backed away from him dizzy from the overpowering smell. I pulled myself off the ground and charged towards it. I jumped on top of the thing pinning it to the ground.
“Meds!” I yelled to him as the Lizardman was already struggling.
Santiago reached into its mouth that I held open and shoved the tranquilizer down its throat. After another minute of shaking and struggling it finally blacked out. I pulled out my walkie and called in dispatch.
“The lizard is down,” I said simply.
Within minutes they had a dozen helicopters out there and had the creature properly restrained.
I walked over to the man who appeared to be in charge. He was average height with blonde hair combed to the side, aviator glasses, and a nice gray suit. “I’d recommend you step up the security on that thing,” I suggested.
He turned around and looked at me for a moment, almost studying me.
“We will be.” He said finally. “I am personally seeing that it is brought to our most secure location.”
“Good, good, I don’t want to ever deal with that thing again.” I chuckled.
He looked closer at me after I said that and it seemed to click in his head who I was.
“Agent Biel, I’m very happy to see you. I got word of your resignation at UARF.” He said sounding oddly sad.
I prepared for the worst as I was technically not supposed to be here.
“Yeah, I wasn’t exactly happy with being left for dead,” I grumbled.
“Well sir I promise if you take my offer you won’t be left for dead,” He said smiling now.
I paused for a moment unsure what he meant. Then it seemed to click he was hiring me and I took his hand and shook it vigorously.
“I do accept your offer, sir,” I yelled excitedly.
“You can call me Dr.Barclay,” He said politely shaking my hand back.
So that is how I was hired here at USDAC and I’ve already discovered that they do things quite differently here but that is a story for another day. Biel out.

Hi! Does anyone know the policy on sending a private in basic a portable charger? I did already get the green light to send it by a former DS that i know, but was wondering if anything special needs to be done regarding how it is sent? Thanks in advance.
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I'm going to transitioning from the Navy to the Army via an interservice transfer. I have four years, a deployment, and a lot of memories under my belt. I am electing to come back in as an O-1 into the Army as I have no interest in the limited job prospects that an O-3 with no Army experience would bring me, and frankly I don't give a shit -- it's just 4 years. My (fairly promising, at least based on what the Army side said) goal is to eventually be infantry.
Coming in as a new Army officer, what should I expect, both from the position of coming from a different branch and generally as a "new guy" Army officer?
What stuff (most likely) stays the same coming a ship, specifically ship-life? What changes the most?
How best can I take care of my people while still accomplishing the mission? I know this looks very different between branches. It's always a delicate balance.
What does the "daily grind" of a combart arms community look like? What's the "unnecessary BS day-to-day" that you guys get up to? (I can think of plenty of examples in the Navy, but I'm not sure they translate 1:1).
BONUS: What are your best and worst interaction stories with your fresh LTs?
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Im 25 with a bachelors in CyberSecurity, also an Eagle Scout. Have not done much volunteer or team leadership since then. Nor do I have much work experiance.
Am I too uncompetitive for an OCS slot for 17X?
I spoke to a recruiter who mentioned going enlisted at E4 with 17C, then after 1 year of training and 1 of actual work, applying for OCS then.
Is that a realistic scenario or classic recruiter talk getting my hopes up in order to boost elistment numbers?
Prior medical history includes inactive IBS + depression from a couple years back.
Also, what are the timeframes for getting in with both of these options?
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Is it worth getting Emt certified or Paramedic certified before going Army? I got DQ at meps and was told I need to wait a year due to medication I was on last year. I'm trying to find something to fill my time for when I'm able to enlist next year. Is this a good idea or a waste of time?
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I have been recently promoted, and clothing and sales is currently out of stock of my current rank, so I am unable to update my AGSU. We have room and uniform inspections soon, and my first line is attempting to make me wear my AGSU with incorrect rank. I have been looking through AR670-1 as well as AR700-84 trying to see if there is a reg against this, but have been unsuccessful in finding one. If there isn’t, I’ll deal, but I’m not too keen on wearing a previous rank. Any help backed by regs would be appreciated
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I’m going National Guard. I’m still working through the beginning process with my recruiter. Here’s the catch: I wasn’t born in the US. I was born in Kazakhstan.
I was never naturalized because when I was adopted into my family in 2002, the Child Citizenship Act passed in 2000 stating that the amendment is “to provide for the automatic acquisition of U.S. citizenship when certain conditions have been met.” — I have met these conditions and am a legal citizen of 22 years (Section 320 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This amendment states that I also do not need a certificate of citizenship, which I never applied for as I legally do not need one.)
I have a passport, a social security card, a legal photo ID and a birth certificate. I DO HAVE a permanent resident card, but it expired years ago. I was a baby when my parents got it and they never renewed it. However, I am a US Citizen. I’ve lived here my entire life. The problem is, my recruiter insists that I must have that Permanent Resident Card up to date. I would do it in a heartbeat, but it costs $500.
Why is my passport, ID, SS card or birth certificate not enough to prove my citizenship? I’m frustrated and my parents are getting short with me constantly asking about it.
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Kind of a situational question. My wife is scheduled for C Section June 21st and it looks like I may get PCS orders before then. If I do, and the kid comes, what do I do? Soonest my wife’s doc says she can move is 6 weeks postpartum and my wife can’t look after our first kid and newborn while she recovers from surgery. Is there anything I can do to report closer to the end of baby leave? I’m a geobachelor.
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I just have a couple questions about how having a GED will affect my enlistment. I've heard it makes you ineligible for bonuses, but what about contract options? Could I still get an Option 4 contract? Option 19? If not, how many college credits would I need to move into the Tier 1 education category?
also, how do you increase your chances of going to certain schools (Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger, etc) if it's not in your contract? Going in as a 68W (Combat Medic) if that makes a difference
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Is there some regulation against sending a SM on a deployment/rotation when they are very close to ETS? Say 6 months out?
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Im a dumbass and made and said a lot of stupid ass shit that some hater who had it out for me has been basically (not really) 'blackmailing' me with that was on my laptop (private, never uploaded) which he hacked into . It was a bunch of questionable shit I said that basically makes me paranoid reasonably that I could possibly be court martial'd but I was never arrested or anything, and I'm sure the guy would upload it again if I joined the Military just to tarnish my good name. I said all this when I was 18 , but basically this dude came to my house and threatened my family with a knife and I responded, 'not so good' , and as a result, I was basically 5150'd and had lied to the people saying I was suicidal resulting in a medical documentation which has made me fearful of ever going to MEPS. So at the time I was 'isolated' so in attempt to expose the fact that there was a legitimate danger I reasonably tried to court attention on Twitter and basically did and said everything that could ever allow me to hold a security clearance before deleting it.
My perception of the event was that he was threatening my family with a knife, but to the outside world, he simply slashed my families tires. Basically he baited me and fell for it. There was much more to the story but if I could go back in time I probably would not have reacted the way I did but I was 18 and my mind was barely developing.
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I was 5150'd and I was told I could never hold public office and I am barred from the Medical field . This of course was a lie, but it's BASICALLY on my Medical record and it's a huge red flag. So naturally, unable to join the Military, I was unable to complete my mission and of course, was put on medication for some time (7 months) until I can figure out what to do. So I been working warehouse jobs ever since that day . I am 23 years old now, the incident happened when I was 18. I was and still am a cross country runner who is fit and healthy , who can complete the physical requirements just fine but the 'Moral' and 'Medical' is what's preventing me from joining, open to debate. I haven't made the same dumb mistake of reacting to my families tires being slashed since and learned from that experience .
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Obviously the Police knows what was on my laptop because this dude went around with the unauthorized material he was not allowed to have and actually put the content in DVD's around the city hoping someone would pick it up and read it , and I actually worked at a warehouse which actually had a police officer who worked there at the warehouse to check the hard drives for CP (i dont know the deal about that) , and he found the very same DVD filled with the content of my basically unhinged responses that I never uploaded to the internet .
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Basically this dude mentally ruined my life but I wasn't the only 1 he has done this to, he has hacked into multiple people's laptops and slashed other people's tires before and distributed information and he has been arrested in the past .
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I was wondering if I could be court martial'd for unprofessional conduct before I even join the military or am I just overthinking this? I basically had this huge 4 hour clip of a rant about his twitter account on my laptop that was perfectly constitutional legal but if you took things out of context it sounds like something that would have me arrested if I was in the military , and I never uploaded it, nor planned to. maybe it's just all in my head but as you can imagine , the real problem isn't my speeches that were on my laptop but the 5150'd , which was at the time and information I had at my disposable,a completely reasonable reaction to a violent threat.
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PCS’ing to Schofield tomorrow, any tips?
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Does anyone know if you still have to have a physical copy of your profile on you? I remember reading somewhere that you don't and your commander can look at it
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I recently graduated college and am looking for advice in terms of what I should expect/request in my contract for 68W MOS. I got my B.A. in cellular biology in the beginning of May and have been set on enlisting since my junior year; now that I'm in the last couple of steps with my recruiter before going to MEPS, I wanted to know if there was anything I should ask for based on my scores/degree (520 MCAT, 99 ASVAB, 146 GT) in terms of rank or guaranteed admission to schools (such as Airborne) coming in. I am looking at the 2-year contract as of now because I do want to apply to medical school down the line. If I enjoy my time, I am open to staying longer in the Army. However, there are some characteristics I currently need to work on that I know enlistment will provide (as opposed to OCS which would mean an extended contract) in addition to education benefits. Also, the alternative would have been doing a gap year in a lab or clinic which doesn't pay much better and is something I have done my fair share of. Any help is appreciated; thank you.
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This is kind of a weird question but i really want to join the army but my family is telling me that it’s impossible for me to join because unfortunately my parents passed by suicide and that alone will disqualify me. I’ve tried googling it and looking all over the internet to find a. Answer but I can’t find it. Is there any truth to that? Thanks if answered.
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I’m a drill right now and I’m looking at being Force reclassed and looking for a new MOS. I saw 51C and was curious if anyone knew what the day to day looked like? Or if anyone knew of any MOSs that were chill 9-5 jobs.
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How does the average person become an officer in the 75th or special forces? Even for support roles, don't most people have to go through the qualification training and fail?
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Do you ever feel remorse for the innocent civilians you slaughter in the name of imperialism and the military industrial complex?
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I've always had a draw to service, but my athletic opportunities usually kept me from it. Out of high school, I had the opportunity to play college baseball and passed up on trying the academy route. Once I got halfway through college, I wanted to try ROTC, but I was a starter on the baseball team and balls deep in a mechanical engineering course load, so it didn't seem feasible to add to my plate.
Now, I'm going on 24 with 2 years of experience as an ME in product development. Is there a military route for someone like me who does have a college degree, but is beyond the point of an ROTC college program? Is my specific degree useful for the military?
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I'm joining the Army soon, within a month or two. I've come up with an MOS list I made based on what I'm interested in (this is NOT a list of my available jobs based on my ASVAB score, just some jobs that sounded interesting based on the field I was looking into). I was mostly considering Logistics and Supply, but I am open to other potential fields, and jobs that aren't in the list below. Like I said, I want to do something in logistics and supply, but more so, just something non-combative that allows me to travel to most bases. What do you guys think about it? Any recommendations? I do plan to do something in law enforcement after I get out, but my MOS does not have to relate to that. Here is the list. The first two are the ones I'm currently considering, and the ones in parentheses are the ones I'm interested in.
(Cargo Specialist 88H)
(Unit Supply Specialist 92Y)
(Automated Logistics Specialist 92A)
(Ammunition Specialist 89B)
Ammunition Stock Control and Accounting Specialist 89A
(Corrections/Detention Specialist 31E)
Culinary Specialist 92G
Medical Logistics Specialist 68J
(Military Police 31B)
(Motor Transport Operator 88M)
Petroleum Supply Specialist 92F
Transportation Management Coordinator 88N
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Can someone please answer this question? If by some chance a person is granted a moral waiver for one felony possession charge on their record Will that allow you to join infantry or be around guns in general? Or would you have to have your firearm rights restored?
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Do you guys still have to have an NBC mask as part of the uniform when out in the field? If yes, do you still practice going into full MOPP gear?
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Completely off topic to Army. Has anyone used a gaems vanguard with the steam deck? Found one for cheap for field purposes but I can't find anything that says it works or not with the deck.
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30 year old with great Asvab and physical tests, no medical problems other than anxiety counseling in 2020. Problem 1: I have a large hand tattoo on my right hand. It’s a animal with some foliage and stuff. It is not on knuckles but descends from half sleeve down wrist and over top of hand.
Issue 2: I was discharged from navy boot camp in 2019. Long story. Mental health and personal reasons. I have an re-4 jfc on my dd 214. ( navy parting gift) I have authorized documents of treatment for my condition signed from doctor and no treatment or problems with mental health since early 2020 and no medication ever needed. Is there any shot I’d get approved for enlistment in the army ? @7hillsrecruiting
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Can someone please describe the process of renrolling into DLC? I did not complete it in the 720 day window however I am not barred from reenlistment (yet).
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Hey there ! I’m working things out to go to sign a 37F contract in the USAR soon since I had a high enough score on my ASVAB, but my recruiter confirmed that I would have to go to FSPC or Fat Camp due to being 2% over what’s allowed for body fat before I attend basic. I don’t mind basically getting paid to workout and learn about nutrition, but I’d love tips and just overall things to prep for before I have to ship out to it.
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i got Fort Sill as my first duty station im a 94T and i have family how is the on post housing or should i just rent a house off post
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I have a uniform question that i can not seem to figure out using ar670-1 or the pam currently i have been wearing my improvised hot weather combat uniform but the one i was issued back in 2019 apparently is the first generation that has the mesh lining in the pants and no velcro on the top of the shoulder pockets and my first line was telling me he doesnt think this is authorized anymore since a newer version was released so he asked me to look into the regulations but i cant find anything saying if i can or cant where it the most i know as of right now is the ihwcu is authorized but i have an older version apparently but its also what they issued me at ocie so im trying to find if anyone can help me out or knows if i can still where this i dont wanna buy a whole other uniform just because this doesnt have velcro on the top of these pockets
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What is the most realistic special operations group someone can join for the average person?
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Do you need a DA Form 1610 to attend the BAC? Fort Moore's website states you cannot attend BAC in a leave status, but how would anyone walk on if that's the case? And soldiers do walk on, I've heard firsthand.
I'm attempting to attend Airborne on leave before I PCS, is it possible? I just commissioned, and will be working for Cadet Command all summer before I PCS to BOLC.
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Can i join the ranger Special forces with a red/green color blind?
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Is someone able to join if blind in one eye
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As a prior enlisted, when I go to meps will the councilor just tell me my duty station I’m headed to after I pick my Mos? Will I have any say? How does that work from your experience
Any personal opinions and experienced insight is appreciated
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If someone becomes an intel officer, can they tryout for the 75th or the special forces?
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I have just returned from TDY, for Family separation pay, do I need to fill out 1561, or is it a special pay request on IPPS-A. Can’t find any answer from S-1, or other SM. Any help would be appreciative.
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I want to join the army, Can I pick a supply Mos with a ASVAB score of 41 and CL of 90 ?? The army website says yes I just wanted to know if the website is accurate. (92A/92y) Mos
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How long does it take for my rank to update in my email? I was promoted to SGT yesterday and it didn't update yet. It updated automatically for others in my unit. Do I need to update my CAC?
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I'm enlisting in the Army Reserve as a 35L and soon to go to basic in a few weeks. I have a couple of questions that are hovering over me since I'm counting down the days to basic training. I'm a lot older then most of the trainees are going to be in basic. I fear if I get injured or recycle for whatever reason. Will they change my mos because I didn't meet the allotted time slot for 35L AlT? Will I become over holdover until the next class? How frequent are the courses if held over? And also to add if any directions toward course work should I start studying to familiarize myself with?
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Anyone have an idea on what finance battalions are? Gonna be shipping out as 36B and I generally understand what the job will entail but lots of the comments I’ve read say “oh they’re reforming 36B into finance battalions”. Is this a good or bad thing?
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Prior service coming in; USMC to Army, E5. I’ve already gotten some good anti-cringe advice on general differences between the branches of service, but if anybody has advice on stuff to bring/not bring to AIT (I only got a bootcamp packing list) or tips I’m all ears.
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Is it common for people to become shorter from the ruck marches?
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Can you have nicotine in AIT, may be useful to add that I’m doing split training where I do basic one summer then do AIT the next.
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How does reclassing work? My window will be hitting soon and it’s time to move on. Will I have any Mos available to me? Duty station as well? I heard a lot about undeover strength Mos and how they affect reclassing. Any info on how it works would be great. Thanks fellas
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Is having a iep when I was in school a disqualifyer if not do I need a waivet
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I can barely do 5 push-ups, and I’m leaving for army basic combat training in 1 week, any recommendations?
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Pollen Allergies @ BCT Jackson
I am shipping out to basic training at the end of June. Has anyone had any experience with sick call during training and/or reception when dealing with seasonal/pollen allergies?
If this affected you, did you get prescribed anything or go to sick call any once in a while? I lived in GA for a stint and the pollen down south was not my friend so trying to prepare for the worst if possible. Not taking any meds right now.
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Can MPs join the 82 Airborne
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just graduated AIT, would it be possible to trade my duty station with another soldier for both of our benefits and we're both consenting ? he's got schofield hawaii and i have fort george meade maryland, im a pv2 he's a PFC and we have the exact same training and MOS? thanks.
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