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I (14f) and my now ex (15m) broke up because we didn't have the same goals he wants kids and a big family where I don't, we didn't have any of the same interests other then enjoying reading and listening to music, and I was his whole support system and that wasn't fair to me. For context my ex and I were together for almost 3 months. We had a pretty healthy relationship and had open conversations with each other about boundaries, what we needed from the other person etc. The school I go to is fairly small and lots of people are in some way related (mainly cousins) I was talking with some of our mutual friends in art class about why we broke up amongst other things. One of my exes cousins (2nd cousin I think) came to our table (which he does quite a bit) and told be he was sorry that my ex broke up with me, in response I told him that it was the opposite and I broke up with him to which he said "Oh good for you, he's a pretty weird guy" my friends and I called him out on it I called him an asshole cause my ex is nowhere even close to being a "weirdo". He then left after that class when I was cleaning up my stuff he approched me and asked why I had broken up with my ex, I then told him "I have my reasons" he tried to push for said reasons and I told him that it wasn't any of his business. He told me that because they are related that it was his business and that he wanted to make fun of my ex for being dumped (as if that would make me magicaly want to tell him). That same day my ex reached out because I was having a pretty shitty day and ended up crying in our last period class, he told me even though we broke up he was still here for me. I told him I appreciated that and I'm still here for him as well. He also asked what happened in my art class because as I said the people I was with were our mutuals and gave him a kind of run down I guess. I told him what happened and he said he'd have a chat with the guy, I told him to be careful and remember that he shouldn't use his fists. He later told me that he had talked with the guy and things were cleared up. I still have feelings for my ex but we just weren't on the same path and that's ok, I know he's dealing with some mental health issues (I am too) and I ended up being his whole support system which wasn't fair to me to feel like his well-being and happiness was all on me, so I decided to end things before it got to a point where nither of us were happy (I was happy in the relationship I just didn't want to end up not being happy) am I the asshole?
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I’m currently living in a nursing home and rehab facility recovering from a hemmorhaggic stroke that has paralyzed my left side and left me wheelchair bound. I’ve been here nearly three years (thanks for that curveball,2020!)& have made a handful of sweet old friends in their sixties, eighties, and ninetie. On the weekends we would get together so that I could show them movies that I thought they should watch- ‘Hook’,’Jack’, ‘Lilo&Stitch’, ‘Frozen’,’Encanto’,’Moana’,’Jumunji’, the entire‘Harry Potter’ series and whatnot. Unfortunately my friends have been dying one by one, starting last June with my sweet66 year old friend and neighbor, Daniel- he had a health crisis last May and was hospitalize, his wife said that she would have him come back to this facility once he was released from the hospital - I’m unsure of what actually happened with him but I do believe that it was something to do with his blood sugar (though he was not diabetic-but his family brought him a lot of sweets and sodas that he would go through at an alarming rat)& then once he consumed all of his goodies, he would constantly ask the staff for snacks and whatever so I believe that his wife was worried that the staff would not stick to his new diet or something and took him to another facility where he ultimately passed away at, then in at the beginning of March, my fellow stroke survivor and neighbor who was young and either in her thirties or fourties’ passed after having another stroke, later in March, my new friend, Joan passed away after a stint in the hospital I was told that she didn’t die but that she would not be coming back to the facility- I assumed that she maybe needed more care than this facility provided but after a week in the hospital, she did in fact return here but was a mere shell of who she had been- to me she already looked dead, her face was sunken and she couldn’t close her mouth so she just gasped and wheezed instead of talking - I didn’t think she would survive the night she returned but she did and she passed a few days later. Early April my 99 year old friend, Ellen passed unexpectedly in the night, she was always a bit depressed but she was in good health and always ready to mock my hiccups the moment I got them lol. Late April, my 85 year old diabetic friend, Lisa was hospitalized with liver failure and passed a week and a half later- the last time she had called me from the hospital, her tv was blaring so I couldn’t stay on the phone with her because it was hurting my ears and I couldn’t hear her anyway- her text to m a mere12 hours before she died was gibberish and I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say, so I tried calling her but it just went to voicemail, I was told the next morning that she had passed that morning… anyway, the housekeeper was in my room this morning wiping down my footboard and sadly said “oh you don’t have anyone you can talk to now.” - I don’t think she meant any harm in saying that I think she said it because she was sad thinking of all of the deaths. But damn, now the reminder has made me sad because I don’t have anyone to watch movies with on my iPad on the weekends and my old, younger friends have their own lives and better things to do than come visit their “old”friend in a nursing hom, jezee lady, thanks for the dose of depression today …

First Chapter
Chapter Fifteen
“Thank you, Ms. President, and Mr. Secretary-General. It’s my privilege to come and speak to everyone present during such a momentous time in human history. One which, I hope, will lead to a brighter future for us all…”
US President Correa’s boilerplate beginning flowed out as she scanned the room. Behind her rostrum sat a larger dais tiled with green marble, behind which sat the UN President, Secretary-General, and Under-Secretary-General. Two huge screens flanked the dais, and those screens now showed Correa’s face as she continued.
“…and we are committed to our country’s pledge to finding a peaceful and just way for Coalition technology to be incorporated worldwide, and to not attempt any reverse-engineering of our own. Make no mistake; we do not do this out of any sense of altruism or fairness, as pleasant as that may sound. We will hold this pledge sacred for the simple reason that, if the United States were to attempt such efforts the rest of the world would, without a doubt, find out. That, of course, would lead to a great instability.”
‘Great instability’ was diplomatic-speak for ‘the rest of the world then gangs up on the USA and then everything goes to hell’.
“I know there has already been a great deal of debate in this august hall as to the best way to proceed forward, in a fair and impartial manner. We believe that we have found what one might call a ‘trial run’ which will allow us to work out such matters.”
The general murmuring from the many semi-circular rows of desks in front of her increased.
“To begin with, during the first weeks after first contact we wanted to make sure our guests from the Coalition would not starve to death. Much like humanity’s own ships during the Age of Sail, Coalition exploration vessels store enough provisions for years…but such provisions never last. They have very advanced recycling, but mostly for water and even that is only a stop-gap measure. It is unknown even at this time as to how long it will take to repair the Exultant Finger of Rithro, and we did not want to risk the crew running out of food.
“Therefore, we undertook an emergency effort to have their ship’s medic examine various Earth foods to determine their compatibility with our guests’ varied biochemistries. I am pleased to report that there are quite a few Earth foodstuffs which are indeed compatible, although there are some specific items which act as allergens amongst some of the Coalition species. During these efforts, we did learn a bit about how their alien biochemistries work…information which has been duly published and is now openly available. We also began to get glimpses of something wonderful, and asked the Coalition crew for more details. They supplied us with some general ideas of what their medical technology can accomplish; I must emphasize that we do not possess any knowledge of how they can perform such miracles.”
Now the murmuring got quite a bit higher, but not quite to the point where they’d have to call for order.
“Yes, I use the word ‘miracles’ advisedly. For example, take Captain Sadaf. You have all seen her, and how she moves like a person in the prime of their life. Now. What if I told you that she is a little over four hundred years old?”
The murmuring died down into a shocked silence.
“Her species, the auhn, is no more long-lived than we are…but they are able to regenerate and remove the effects of aging. I hope the esteemed ambassadors can see what I am driving at. I propose that we set up a research institute, international in scope, to be placed at a neutral location which is still to be determined. The purpose of that institute will be to study and adapt Coalition medical technology for use in humans.”
Now the murmuring started again; she hoped they were actually listening instead of hatching side-deals with each other.
“You all have families and friends. I’m sure you have at least one family member, one good friend, who died of some horrible and unnecessary affliction. Think of what this means to the world, to us. It is also an excellent way to determine the inevitable issues and frictions which will arise from such a concerted international effort, and that, in turn, will inform our efforts in mutual reverse-engineering of other Coalition technology.
“I know this is, in many ways, a frightening time. Change can be frightening. But I am convinced that you will all know the right way forward, and that you will all see the need for us to unite in this matter, even if others may not be so clear-cut. I thank you for the opportunity to speak.”
As she stepped away from the rostrum, the UN President cleared his throat.
“We will now begin the debate on Madame President Correa’s proposal. Paper copies, with specifics of the proposal, are now being distributed to you all. We’ll now begin the debate period…yes, the gentleman from Portugal…?”
__________
Correa’s Chief of Staff was a shorter, tubby man with an olive complexion by the name of Pablo Rosas. He and Correa sat in a White House conference room, staring at a big screen which now showed the results of the UN vote. “Well, I suppose that went about as well as we could expect,” said Rosas.
“Yep. I was surprised they even agreed with our asking them to kick in some money.”
Rosas chuckled. “Keep in mind that all of this new medical tech will be available for anyone patent-free. Should be air-tight legally, since nobody here on Earth invented it; we’re merely adapting it. I think that was the sweetener we needed to get it passed.”
The president gave a brief nod, then tapped a few keys on the controls in front of her. The screen now showed a world map. “Now we just have to figure out where to put the damn thing without everyone getting butt-mad about it.”
“Hmm.” Rosas laced his fingers over his substantial gut as he regarded the map. “Someplace not ‘the usual’, then.”
Correa growled in frustration. “I keep thinking Switzerland, but I know there’s gonna be a lot of shit flung about that it’s too European-centric. Taiwan would be great; they’ve got both a good tech base and excellent transport infrastructure.”
“But way too controversial, for obvious reasons,” replied Rosas. “Japan?”
“China will, again, kick up a fuss. Huh. New Zealand?”
“That might work. They tend to be more neutral…but then again some might say they’re in too close with Australia, and that this whole effort is too Western-centric.” His eyes flicked back to north on the map. He was about to move his gaze elsewhere, but then he paused. “What about Iceland?”
“Iceland?” Correa almost scoffed, then looked more thoughtfully at the map. “Okay, they’re a NATO member which is a minus. But they tend to remain mostly neutral, which is a plus. Decent transportation infrastructure…don’t we have a naval air base there?”
“I think so, let me check…” Rosas tapped at his phone. “Hey, Jack? What can you tell me about any US naval air bases in Iceland? Just the highlights.” After a couple of minutes, he responded with a curt, “Okay, that’s enough, thanks.”
He put his phone away. “We kinda-sorta have one, at a place called Keflavik. The base there used to be a lot bigger during the Cold War. Then we shut it down after the Soviets were no longer a going concern. Iceland uses it now, and they allow us to fly submarine-search aircraft out of there, but a few years ago they nixed the DOD’s request to rebuild it into a more permanent base.”
“That does work in their favor. It makes for better optics if they’re known for keeping NATO at arm’s length.”
Rosas sat up. “Think the UN will go for it?”
“We can only try. I’ll have our ambassador in Reykjavik make some discreet inquiries, let’s see if they’d be okay with our proposing them as a candidate.”
The Chief of Staff smiled. “If it goes through, this institute will be pumping well north of a billion dollars per year into their economy. That should make it more than ‘okay’.
__________
Agent Cécile Savoie sat in a secure-location breakroom, silently grumbling as she held an as-yet un-drunk mug of coffee in her hands. As the agent-in-charge of the security detail during the Camp David incident, she’d been put on administrative leave, right alongside every other agent who’d been there. But it wasn’t like she had much down time; the inquiry board into that incident now summoned her damn near every other day for yet another round of tedious questioning.
“Hey,” said Hanson as he strolled in, looking just as sour as she felt.
She looked up in surprise. “Hey yourself. I thought you were assigned to the alien detail.”
“I was,” he said as he seated himself across the circular table from her. “Guess being in Alabama when the shitshow went down wasn’t far enough away to be completely out of suspicion. I just finished running my own gauntlet. But the rumor is, I’m getting it easy compared to everyone who was at Camp David, including the special forces people. Especially you.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty much a colonoscopy every day,” she muttered. “Going over the timeline, where I was at which times, who I had direct line of sight on, who I was in radio contact with.” She finally sipped her coffee.
Hanson’s sour expression deepened. “Do you really think it was one of us?”
She sighed. “It has to be. My gut tells me that there’s more than one mole and I told the inquiry board as much. The fuckers who got in knew too much about our patrol patterns, where everyone was, when they’d have a clear shot at an infil. That means someone with access to our methods and comms, and as to the latter we don’t use CB radios.”
The other agent leaned back. “Fuck. I wish I knew why any of us would do that. We’re supposed to be quiet professionals, not frothing radicals.”
Savoie turned the mug in her hands. “Not to tell tales out of school but, through the whisper network, they’ve been leaning hard on the captured dudes from the attack. Apparently one of their main ‘objections’,” and here she made some one-handed air quotes, “is that they think the whole Breaker thing is a ruse. It’s all smoke and mirrors, so that we’ll beg the Coalition to come and save us. And then…well, it gets vague after that but I guess they claim that at best we’ll get turned into the galactic equivalent of a Native American reservation. Worst case, we all get harvested for our precious bodily fluids.”
Hanson stared at her for a moment in disbelief. “That is, if you will forgive the uncouth term, utterly retarded. For chrissake, the Hubble got some beautiful shots of their ship once they’d spun that shield around to reveal it to us. I mean, I’m no spacecraft expert but even I could tell it had gotten the shit pounded out of it.”
She responded with a shrug. “Hey, Flat Earthers are still a thing.”
“Flat Earthers don’t stage FUCKING mortar attacks in our nation’s capital,” snapped Hanson. Then he subsided and spoke more softly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be so on edge. This whole thing just pisses me off.”
“Join the club,” said Savoie as she sipped more coffee. “I just don’t get it, though.”
Hanson made a gentle ‘continue’ wave of his hand.
She leaned forward. “Okay. Our comrades in the CIA managed to identify the four who made it into the compound. They were all mercenaries, each with at least ten or fifteen years of experience in kicking ass around some of the worst hot spots in the world. Syria, Burma, bunch of places in Africa. One of ‘em even turned out to be ex-Wagner group.”
“Okay?” It was a leading single-word question, but not an unkind one.
“So why was the rest of the attack made up of nothing but a bunch of goddamn shit-kickers? And that includes the aborted attempt in Decatur. I’ve seen the files of those we rounded up in the Camp David attack. They were all low-life idiots just banging around, maybe they might have once held a gun in their lives. Hell, from what I’ve heard, the shootings that triggered the alarm at Camp David were an accident; those intruders were supposed to sneak around that patrol, not kill them. They all had the same top-of-the-line kit, so we know whoever is behind this has deep pockets. Why not hire an entire bunch of competent people instead of doing it onesy-twoseys?”
“It is a puzzle.” Hanson got up and set a styrofoam cup of water into the nearby microwave. As the cup turned within its electromagnetic prison, he leaned against the nearby counter and pondered her question. “Maybe the team in the woods was intended just as a distraction?”
“That’s what I thought at first, but then I reconsidered. I mean, what if the four who went in failed? You’d still need a proper backup plan. Same thing with the Decatur bunch. By the way, did they ever catch them?”
Hanson let out a dark chuckle. “Decatur PD found a pile of vests and rifles, hastily wiped down. They were able to pull a few partial prints off of ‘em. My guess is they’ve fled to the proverbial four winds, hoping to lay low for the rest of their lives. We’ll nab ‘em eventually.”
The microwave dinged and he retrieved his hot water, then pulled a tea bag out of his jacket pocket as he re-seated himself.
Savoie smiled. “I never figured you for a tea guy.”
He unwrapped the bag and with a bit of ceremony dunked it into his cup. “Well, I used to be a coffee guy, but my gut doesn’t agree with the acidity.”
“We do have tea here, you know.” She pointed to the storage bins behind him.
“Yeah, but it’s cheap-ass stuff. The brand I like is expensive, but worth it…” Hanson’s eyes widened as he trailed off.
She raised an eyebrow. “Hanson? Do you smell burnt toast?”
“They couldn’t afford it,” he said in a near-whisper.
Savoie was about to tell him to stop being overly dramatic, then she realized he might be on to something and that she didn’t dare distract him. “Keep talking.”
He leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “Okay. Imagine you’re a hard-bitten mercenary. You’ve been in the literal shit, in every nasty conflict anyone cares to name. Somehow, someone finds you and comes to you. They say ‘hey, these aliens are bad news, do you want to kill them?’ Even if you, as the hypothetical mercenary, are down with the cause…”
“From what the intruders were yelling, they were,” said Savoie.
“Yeah but even then, our mystery financier is asking you to infil and exfil out of one of the most heavily guarded pieces of real estate on the planet. Oh, and kill a bunch of special-forces-maybe and aliens-definitely in between. What do you do then?”
She replied with a grim smile. “If I’m that mercenary, then I ask for a metric fuck-ton of money. And there were four of them, they would have all done the same. Hell, they must have been doing collective bargaining.”
Hanson dunked his tea bag as he thought it through. “Okay, so our mystery mastermind has a lot of money, but not billions on hand to hire a literal army of hard cases. Huh. So those other dipshits might indeed have been a distraction.”
“Maybe. They must have also spent quite a bit on the mortar attack. That wasn’t made by some hobbyist in their bedroom, they knew what they were doing. Given that nobody saw them set up the launcher or leave, they were more pro.” Savoie hoped that the FBI’s efforts to track the various mortar components turned up something soon. Thus far, those efforts were bogged down; as it turned out, quite a few companies had ordered the identified components, and tracking the subsequent second-hand purchases was time-consuming.
“And those mortar-making pros would be more expensive.” Hanson sipped a bit of tea. “Did they ever get anything off of the launcher itself?”
“Sadly, no. Turns out the whole damned thing was homemade, constructed out of tubing and other off-the-shelf components. It was also wiped down thoroughly, no prints. Like I said, pros.”
“But limited in resources,” said Hanson. “Which explains one of the things that’s bugged me. Namely, that our OPFOR didn’t use some proper artillery. If they have a couple of moles in the Secret Service, then it should be easy to recruit and pay some military dudes to slip ‘em some gear and alter the logs. They could stow a howitzer inside a semi-tractor-trailer. You could park that thing anywhere up to 25 miles away. Use a single 155mm Excalibur GPS-guided munition, boom. That would have pretty much obliterated the stage and everyone on it. Then you just re-stow the howitzer and toodle off all innocent-like, right when everyone is freaking the hell out.”
“So they couldn’t afford that type of arty strike,” she said. “Or they simply didn’t have the contacts to pull that off. Hmm. I wonder if our moles are getting paid at all?”
Hanson resumed his thousand-yard stare. “The mortar attack must have been planned first. The other two attacks feel much more like rush jobs.”
“Eh? Oh, I get it. Sadaf’s speech was known well in advance. It was going to be one of her first big public appearances since the initial presidential speech. They were broadcasting it online to the world. Having her get turned into chunky red salsa, in real time, would be one helluva statement. So that’s what they focused on.” She drank a bit more coffee, and now it was time for her eyes to widen. “Our mole or moles didn’t arrive at Camp David until after Sadaf’s speech was announced.”
“That…oh, yeah, that makes sense. Originally the mortar attack is the OPFORs’ only focus, but yet somehow they’ve suborned one or two Secret Service agents and they have ‘em in their back pocket. Then one, or better yet both, of the moles gets assigned to the Camp David detail, and they realize that now that they have a golden opportunity to get at the other aliens as well. So they go off and hire four pros for the actual attack inside, plus a bunch of chucklefucks to act as a distraction, because that’s all they can afford since the four pros are asking for some serious money.”
Savoie leaned forward. “When did Chao and Grakosh leave Camp David?”
“It was, ah, three? No, four days after we got everyone settled, both the aliens and the special forces types.”
“Okay, so then the OPFOR gets word, courtesy of our moles, that one of the aliens is now heading to Alabama. But now they’re stretched so thin that they can’t afford anything other than to hire another bunch of dipshits to make a run at them and hope for the best.”
“And then the second bunch lets the FNG drive.”
They both laughed, but that humor settled down as they both thought through the chain of inference.
“It is pretty thin,” said Savoie at last. “There’s a lot of assumptions in there.”
“Yeah. But I do like the idea of our moles getting assigned at the last minute.”
She rubbed her forehead. “We had a bunch of new people come in when they decided to stow the Rithro crew there. Seven, no eight in all.”
“It’s a place to start,” said Hanson. He finished his tea. “C’mon, let’s see if we can get a meeting with the inquiry board.”
__________
A little while later and not very far away, three people sat in a well-lit but otherwise deadly dull room. At least the chairs were somewhat comfortable. Matt and Martinez sat at two chairs against one wall, while across from them McCoy sat sprawled sideways on another with a foul look on her face. She glowered at the far beige-painted wall. “This completely sucks. Why can’t we have our phones? I could at least play some mahjong.”
“This is a secure location, Corporal,” replied Matt. “Ixnay on the onephays.”
Martinez’s leg jittered. “How long are we gonna sit here? They said they’d call us in, like, an hour ago!”
“Dunno, it’s some kind of last-minute interview thing,” replied Matt with Zen-like calm.
The corporal looked over at Matt. “I don’t get you, man.”
Matt grinned. “Nobody gets me. I’m like the wind, baby!”
“That’s not…I mean, I watched you open up a dude like he was a bag of fuckin’ Doritos using nothing but a fuckin’ knife. Now you’re being all Caine from ‘Kung Fu’.”
“It’s good to know that the classics are still appreciated,” said Matt.
Martinez pointed at him. “If you start calling me ‘Grasshopper’ I will shoot you.”
McCoy turned her glare to the ceiling. “Maybe it’s a psychological test. They want to see if we crack under pressure and start yakking secrets.”
“I mean, I’m sure they’re recording us right now,” replied Matt. “But it’s merely as a precaution. I am also five-nines certain that none of us are suspects. We weren’t integrated into the compound’s overall security, and thus it would be unlikely that we could have let our four attackers in.”
“Not to mention, we were the ones to kill ‘em,” added Martinez. “Well, except for the one that Takh took care of.”
“Yep. This is…I won’t call it a formality, but the board just wants to know where you were and what you saw. Walk them through your personal timelines, understand? Tell them only what you know. If you don’t know something, then say so.”
McCoy turned herself around so that she now sprawled the other way. “This whole bullshit just bugs me. Takh and the others are off with a bunch of strangers and I…I mean, we aren't there to help protect them.”
Matt and Martinez shared a meaningful glance. “From what I heard, Takh is quite capable of taking care of himself,” said the latter with a grin. “You told me he pitched that one dude across the room like he was throwing a softball.”
For once, the petite corporal looked a bit flustered. “Yeah, but, I mean, what if some other potential bad guy gets the drop on him with a gun? I don’t like not being there. I just wanna know that he’s okay. I should be there, just to make sure.”
The smaller man snapped his fingers in the face of the taller, who sighed and took out his wallet. With great ceremony, Matt pulled out a five-dollar bill and placed it upon the now-upraised palm of Martinez.
“Told ya,” said Martinez with a grin.
She sat up and glared at them both. “That doesn’t mean anything! Takh is a good guy!”
“Nobody said he wasn’t,” replied Matt as he stowed his wallet. “He is indeed a good guy.”
“Yeah, seriously, we’re glad you two hooked up,” added Martinez. “Takh’s solid. Hell, I’d let him date my sister.”
“I. Am. Not. Hooked Up. With ANYONE.” McCoy now looked furious enough to chew nails.
Martinez stroked his chin. “Kissing might be a problem, though.”
Matt performed a similar chin-stroking action. “Hmm, indeed, Corporal, I do believe it might be a serious issue. One has all of those mandibles to contend with.” He hooked his fingers next to his mouth in an approximation of an udhyr’s face. “Still, I think that, with enough will and effort, one could figure it out. Like the man said, life finds a way.”
“But how much tongue is he packing?” posed Martinez. “You know what the man also says. Big dude, big tongue. Could make things more interesting, all around.”
The woman did not look amused. “Martinez, Toke? You are now both officially gigantic flatulating assholes.”
“C’mon, McCoy!” protested Martinez. “Think of it this way. A few years from now, let’s say we filthy humans are now part of the Coalition and I’m at some meet ‘n greet, and I just so happen to spy me an oh-so-very-fiiine udhyr mamacita from across the room. Now, I wanna do my bit for my species and approach her, and get some good old inter-species cultural interaction going on. But there’s all sorts of questions. How do I compliment her without insulting her culture? How am I supposed to get in good with her? How do the mechanics work? How do the various bits line up? We need details! You’re at the tip of the spear, we all need good intel!”
McCoy slumped back into her seat. “Over seven hundred billion Dimmadollars of defense spending, and yet somehow I wind up stuck in a room with you two fuckos…oh, by the way, Toke,” she added, pointing a finger at Matt, “why the hell can you and Sarge never go back to Okinawa?”
“Nice distraction, McCoy,” said Martinez. “My guess is some sort of wet-work shit.”
Matt just smiled. “Oh for fuck’s sake, I don’t kill everyone I meet. I was a Second LT at the time, managed to somehow leapfrog my way into officer ranks all the way from enlisted. Anyways, the Okinawa affair was merely a case of, well, one particular case of rye whiskey. The good sergeant…was he a sergeant then? Oh yeah, we had done some other stuff I can’t tell you about in someplace I can’t tell you where, and we were celebrating Shaw getting his third stripe. We’d got ahold of the previously-mentioned case of whiskey and then we began toasting to each other’s good health. We did a lot of toasting. Quite a lot of toasting. As you can imagine, the toasting went on and on until we, um, well we did some unwise things. It started out with us sparring-for-fun with each other in public and escalated from there. No locals were harmed, and nothing we did was hella illegal, or I would’ve never made Captain. Buuut the local government would definitely throw a shitfit if me or, God forbid, both of us set foot back on the island.” He chuckled. “Hell, the Okinawan customs people probably still have both of our pictures taped up inside their booths with a big old sign saying ‘DO NOT ADMIT THIS PERSON, YOU FOOL’ written above them.”
“What did you do?” asked Martinez. His eyes were big and soulful, like a kid asking for yet one more story before bedtime.
Matt shrugged. “I mean, I don’t remember much for obvious reasons. I’m almost sure we didn’t piss on any monuments, that would have definitely been cause for a serious demotion. We did do a number on some shrubbery, that I do remember. We decided it needed to be trimmed back, and so we did so. Using our bare hands. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
A fearsome light came into McCoy’s eyes. “Martinez, do you know what this means?”
He looked at her all uncertain. “Um, Toke and Sarge have cast-iron livers?”
“No, you fool. Blackmail material.”
Matt pointed back at her. “Hey, now, I told you that in confidence. Besides, Shaw has a lot more to contend with right now.”
The reminder of the sergeant’s current crippled state brought the elevated atmosphere of the room back down. McCoy nodded as her smile faded. “Right. Hey, did you see the Prez’s speech at the UN?”
“Yep,” said Matt. “From what I’ve read, the political wrangling after it seems pretty tame compared to the usual.”
Martinez snorted. “No shit. Did either of you see the laundry list of shit that we might be able to do? Anti-aging, limb regrowth, cancer treatments which work well and which don’t half-kill the patient…hell, maybe even Alzheimer’s could be in our rear-view mirror. The grand high muckity-mucks are falling all over themselves to get that out into the world, for themselves if nobody else.”
“You’re way too cynical, Martinez,” said Matt.
“Oh fuck off. What if…okay, I know this sounds like a cheesy sci-fi concept, but what if they hoard all of the good shit for themselves and we peons get just the crumbs?”
Matt lapsed back into his meditative demeanor. “In that case, my dear corporal, you or I or McCoy or someone like us will show those hypothetical elites that, while they are indeed long-lived, they are not in fact immortal.”
The trio fell into silence for a few minutes. Then Martinez leaned over towards Matt. “Ah, a little birdie told me you were involved in questioning the prisoners we nabbed at Camp David.”
“I merely facilitated certain conversations,” replied Matt.
Martinez sighed. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies…Corporal.”
McCoy let out a growl. “Well, I heard these terrorist assholes are saying that the Breakers aren’t real, that it’s all fake videos from the Coalition.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate,” said Matt, “our AI image and video generation is already getting to the point where, soon, we puny humans could manufacture such evidence.”
“What?” Martinez looked as if he was about to launch himself at Matt.
Matt held up a calming hand. “I’m not saying it is fake. The Hubble pics are damned convincing.”
Martinez hiked up one foot to place it on his seat, then rested his chin on his knee. “Fuck. I guess it didn’t convince everyone.” He mused for a few moments. “Wait. What if we made it even more convincing?”
“How?” asked Matt.
“We send some humans up to the Rithro. Two or three at least. The boats can still make it up to the ship, right?”
For once Matt looked uncertain. “I think so? Dunno how many times they can come and go without recharging, we’ll have to ask ‘em.”
“Right, so we set up an even better publicity stunt than the Hubble pics. Choose a few people, from all over the world. We have ‘em travel up to the Rithro, take pics and video up close showing the damage. Even take ‘em inside the ship and get a full tour, maybe…if the crew is okay with that, of course.”
“Huh.” Matt sat back and pondered the idea. “That’s a really good idea, Martinez. I guess you aren’t as dumb as you look.”
The corporal responded with a slight smile at the verbal jab. “We’d need to choose the right people, though.”
“They’d have to be trustworthy…or at least someone that the entire world will consider trustworthy,” said Matt.
“Well known,” added McCoy. She no longer looked vengeful. “With recognizable faces and voices, and then they can go on all the talk shows after and say that, yes indeed, I got a tour of the ship and it is indeed quite banged up.”
Martinez stared at the far wall. “Some kind of celebrity? Heh. You think Tom Cruise would be up for it?”
Matt laughed. “That beautiful maniac? Hell, he’d insist on shooting an entire movie up there, with at least one action scene where he’s hanging off of the outside of the ship.”
They all smiled at the resulting mental image.
“Chao could work,” said McCoy into the silence. “She’s kind of a celebrity now. After all, she was the first human to come into contact with aliens, eh?” She gave Matt a big and very un-subtle wink.
To skirt the rather…unconventional methods used to achieve a positive First Contact, Matt’s role had been very much demoted in the official story. Now every recounting of the tale included a bit of ‘…oh, and there was also another person who stumbled across our brave woman in the midst of her attempts at informational exchange with the aliens…” His exact identity was also not published, under the screen of ‘he wishes to remain anonymous’.
“Oh bite me, McCoy, it’s fun,” replied Matt. He waggled his eyebrows. “Besides, I work better in the shadows!” He threw his forearm across his face like a half-assed Count Dracula trying to hide behind his cape.
Then he dropped his arm. “Yeah, Chao would be good as a current social-media darling. Of course, she might not want that. She strikes me as more of the wallflower type, for the most part.”
“We need more people,” said Martinez, as he stared at the floor. “Chao might be good on her own, but she’s got that motor-mouth talking thing when you get her going. It’s one or the other. Either she’s trying to shrink into a corner and take up as little space as possible, or suddenly you’re getting pulled into another corner for a doctoral dissertation on how minimal-energy transfer-orbits work.”
Matt pondered for a moment. “Wait, when did she do that? I never sat through one of those lectures.”
Martinez looked away and…well, Matt hoped that their supposed overlords were indeed recording this particular moment in time because the hard-bitten Hispanic special-forces corporal actually blushed.
McCoy, of course, realized a golden opportunity for payback and immediately pounced. “Why, Corporal Martinez,” she purred. “Doooo tell us. When did Chao Me Chu, heh, pull you into a corner? Hmmm?”
“She’s…she’s just real nice, that’s all,” replied Martinez. “I asked her a couple of questions, and she answered them. That’s all. We both love classic sci-fi, like Asimov and shit. I guess we bonded over that.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Aaaaand may I remind you two and everyone listening in that we have all been cooped up nuts-to-butts for awhile? Don’t mistake familiarity for romantic bullshit.” He pointed over at Martinez. “But you. If you can follow at least half of what she talks about, then you are absolutely without-a-single-fucking-doubt wasted as a corporal, even if you’re in a low-drag high-speed outfit like this. You hear me?”
“Um, yes sir.” It was the first time in McCoy’s memory that anyone had addressed Matt as befitting his perhaps-former rank.
“Good. You get your ass into college, somehow. You’re a smart guy, you’ll figure all that shit out. And as for Chao? Just give it room to breathe. Let her know you’re interested, but don’t press the matter.”
“Let her know?” For once Martinez looked completely lost. “How do I…” he trailed off. “I mean, I like her…and yeah, I mean I like her in that way, but she’s so damn smart and pretty and I’m just some dipshit meathead.”
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short,” said Matt. “You’re our dipshit meathead.”
McCoy’s vengeful smile faded. “Martinez…no, Luca.”
Martinez looked up in surprise at her use of his first name.
She continued. “Just talk to her. Neither of you have any clue as to what ‘normal’ social interactions look like. In your case, it’s because you’ve been a soldier for all of your adult life. In her case, it’s because she’s, well, because she’s Chao. So just walk up to her and be straightforward. Trust me, it’ll be like a breath of fresh air for her to not have to navigate social cues. Just say something like ‘Hey, I really like you, do you like me and do you want to go get a coffee sometime’? Start with that. Chao’s good people, the worst thing she’ll do is say no. She won’t yell at you or talk shit about you online. Buuuut, some sixth sense is telling me she won’t say no to getting some coffee with ya.”
Matt smiled. “McCoy, I think you might have a calling after you leave the military.”
She snorted. “Oh yeah, I’ll hang up my match-making shingle on the internet and start raking in the big bucks. Martinez is right, though. If we try to do a publicity stunt up at the Rithro, then we’ll need somebody alongside Chao to win the world over. Somebody well-known, but preferably someone not in the traditional Western pop-culture sphere. That’ll make it more palatable…”
Her voice trailed off and she stared into space. The two men now looked at each other in genuine concern until she spoke again a few moments later.
“Guys? I think I just had the best idea ever.”

ENLISTMENT
I joined in the summer of 2020. I just dropped out of college after switching my major two times (no college debt) and I needed a "career" fast. One day while on YouTube I saw an ad for the USN. It looked interesting so I decided to go on the website and see what they could offer. I decided fuck it I'll join the Navy for 4 years and get out and use the "skills" I gained from the Navy to get a good job. I went into the recruiting stations and did all the necessary paperwork and was told all the same lies you guys probably heard a million times but I didn't know any better. Boot Camp came and went. (Bootcamp was the most fun I had in the Navy and that's saying a lot). Shipped to A-School to learn my rate and this was the first time I had started feeling regret, but I thought it was just homesickness. It doesn't help that my now ex-girlfriend broke up with me during that time. I graduated A-School and received my bonus and headed to the fleet (I was assigned to a ship in Virginia).
THE FLEET
When I first arrived the feeling of regret I had during A-School faded away. I met a lot of good people and made some dope friends. I bucked down on getting Quals and I was trying to be a good sailor so I can gain rank. (Oh btw I came into the fleet as an E-1). We were in the yards for about 6 months when I first arrived but when it was time to move back to the big Norfolk base that was when shit got real. I thought I would like Underway but the long hours, shitty food, terrible CoC and living conditions pissed me off. I hated being in the fucking berthing's, people act like they didn't know how to clean up after themselves, etc. Also, I met my now girlfriend and I couldn't stand being away from her for long periods. She always kept me in a positive mood and always had my best intentions for me. I moved into a house with some roommates and they were the worse people I ever lived with. Never cleaned up after themselves, didn't take out the trash, leave food everywhere it was fucking nasty and I HATED them. I also HATED my job. On paper, my job will 100% transfer over to the civilian world but the catch was I didn't even feel like I was doing my job 90% of the time. I was very big on self-learning so I decided to take some college courses to give myself a fighting chance once I did get out. I asked my CoC plenty of times to approve my chit for NAVY COOL for certifications related to my rate. They would always preach "We want the best intentions for yall and want yall to succeed outside the military" BS. My NAVY COOL chit never got approved and I was devasted. I felt lied to. I wasted so many hours being a good little "sailor", getting quals, passing boards, etc. When I finally wanted some of those sweet perks they couldn't even do that for me. My ship had a lot of suicides, SA, and alcohol abuse. I didn't want to be in an environment like this anymore. So I decided to just leave. I waited till the holidays and completely vanished throwing all my navy shit away in a dumpster. Changed my number, blocked everyone I knew from the Navy, changed hairstyles, and went to a different state far far away.
GOING UA
Now before I went UA, I did a lot of research. I called GI Hotline and they told me a bunch of information on what type of punishment I could receive if caught, discharged and etc. My goal was to go UA for more than 120 days. Why? In the Navy, if you're UA for more than 120 days you can be qualified for a "discharge of absentia". Meaning you won't have to turn yourself back into a military base, MP, or your command. You could simply walk into any recruiting station. The hard part was not being caught in those 120 days. After 30 days a warrant for your arrest is issued, so no getting pulled over by cops for ANY reasons. During those 120 days, I stayed low I didn't leave the house for any reason unless it was important and if I could walk I would. It felt nice not waking up early or saying the stupid sailor creed every morning. During my UA period, I kept going to school online and even got a few certs. It was time to look for a job because bills are still due, I was a little bit scared because of background checks but lucky none of that shows. I got offered a position making 50k a year. (Literally twice what I made in the Navy. I made 28k in the Navy). For people asking why I didn't take the other route of getting out well smoking weed is unpredictable I could smoke a joint on Monday and get tested on Wednesday or get tested 3 months from then. Mental health also took too long, a buddy of mines is still getting processed out and it has been damn near 8 months. I felt like going UA was the quickest regardless because if caught before the 120 days I would still get kicked out but just have to return to the ship. On my 120th day of UA, I called NACIC, to ask about my status and "turn myself in" and to my surprise my command forgot to do my paperwork so this whole time I didn't even have a warrant out lol but I still qualified for the discharge of absentia. From there I went to the nearest recruiting station and turn myself in. All I had to do was muster over the phone every morning. I tuned myself in on Monday and on Friday the paperwork was signed and the process of getting out of the Navy would start. It's been a total of <150 days from start to finish. I am still waiting on my DD-124 but that's all,
CONCLUSION
I plan on finishing college and getting more certs. I feel like a new man but I know I have more work to do. The Navy changed me and I need to get back to my old self. I plan on living my life and doing what I want. Don't need a "Chief" telling me what I can and can't do. I'm here to help anyone, I'm not saying you have to go UA but this community is here for a reason. The military is BS and please don't kill yourself over this shit.

Not looking for advice, just others to commiserate with :)
After taking a mental health break, I've returned to dating in earnest over the past month or so, and like clockwork, my anxiety is through the roof. I went on a date last Tuesday that went well, and we made plans to meet up again this Monday. I'm excited about it, but the in-between is driving me crazy. We've chatted on-and-off over the past few days, and all signs point to it going well so far, but I just cannot seem to turn my brain off. Will he text me back? Am I coming across too clingy? Am I not acting interested enough? What if he ghosts me? What if I lose interest and hurt his feelings? Oh god, why hasn't he texted back? It's exhausting.
I'm in therapy, partially to address this anxiety, as it's been a problem for me my entire life. It doesn't help that I'm a teacher who just went on summer break, so I have quite a bit of time on my hands to dwell on it. Anyone else relate?

• About me
I am 14 years old. (15 soon and I'm still going through puberty.)
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And my height is: 4'9-5'0.
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• I'm British, I also don't smoke, or drink anything.
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• No meds, or therapists etc.
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• I'm pale, and have a bad diet. (Eating like rubbish) • and i never go outside. (i'm pale.) • and my sleep routine is horrible.
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So basically, my dad died back in 2019. From lung cancer. I was 10 at the time, and I already knew he was gonna. You know. And after he died. I couldn't really believe it? but the grief didn't click in, until September / November, of 2019. But then at the time, I started going through really stressful, things like, bullying. Name-calling. Harassment. (These had happened online. I know it may not seem like such a big deal but it ruined my self-confidence, and mental health.) And it got worse in 2020, because I got abused online as well And my mental health, got worse to the point where I had urges to kill / harm myself, (I hardly have them anymore, which I'm glad about.) Family issues? Stressing, and constant crying
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(The reasons why I'm saying this, is because it could explain why I'm dealing with the stuff I'm about to put down.)
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December, 8th, 2020, was the time I got sick.
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It was in my stomach, and I though "oh I'm just sick it will pass", but it just got worse. And it would keep, growling, and I lost my appetite fully and didn't even wanna eat. But the thing I realised was that I was stressed / worried about it. Because I though it was stomach cancer. (Still do.) And it would make me feel like I was gonna throw up,
And in 2021. I still had. It. No appetite still, no nothing. Just feeling sick. But I still ate, and drank everyday. But online stuff happened again. (Which I think made it worse? I don't know. And my mental health worse.) But then I started thinking my stomach was gonna collapse. And I started worrying more about it.
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And in this year, same stuff. With my stomach. But in April 2022. I had a panic attack? I also had left arm aches / pains. So basically went downstairs, and told my mum about it. And we started talking, about stuff. And i stood up from the chair, and then all sudden, my head started feeling SUPER weird. And I said "mum my head feels weird!" And she said "your probably having a panic attack." And then i started panicking, and said "mum, mum I think I'm dying!!" And I went down on to the kitchen floor.and my brother said "your fine." And my mum said "this is because of your dad." And then she went to open the door for me to get air. And I still felt weird. And my hands were shaking. (I can't remember but I think my mouth /lips was dry.) But the thing is I felt like I was forcing the shaking. Because I was making myself shake (but again I probably wasn't. I did not do it for attention, I know that would of been bad. etc I was seriously scared, that I was gonna die in front of my mum and brother.) . But when I stopped my body felt like nothing. And my breathing was a bit weird a swell. And my mum was trying to talk me out of it. And then a few minutes later, I went to stand up, and go upstairs, but my whole body, and legs felt weird. Very weird. But then I felt the whole night, watching tiktok to distract myself. But then next day, my mum told my older brother that I was having panic attacks. That same day, I felt like I was freak, out and call an ambulance, because I felt like I was going to die. And I was worrying about my health. (Still do.)
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OLD SYMPTOMS.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • and i am also getting forgetfulness.
• feeling like something is in my throat for a few minutes, • and feeling sweaty,(doesn't last long.) when i panic over something. • stuttering. • headaches. • weird head feelings. • and weird feeling slightly under my stomach by my hips. • dry mouth / lips sometimes. • and feeling like i will gag? on my foods / drinks. • no appetite. • stomach growling. • constantly seeking reassurance. • heart fluttering, and dropping. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY NEW SYMPTOMS THIS YEAR.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • stomach growling, even tho im not hungry. and it makes me have a sick feeling. (Still have.) • feeling a fuzzy feeling at the side of my face. (It feels like he fuzzy ealing you get in your hands sometimes.) • still no appetite. • constantly feeling strange. (Like I might die, or something will happen inside my body and ill die.) • forgetfulness. (Still have.) • hair falling out, slightly. (Just smallish.) • weird cold chills at my back and arms. (The slight weird cold chill you get when you're sick, or something.) • constantly seeking reassurance. • weird breathing. (Like when you walk around and your breathing gets heavy in a way.) • my heart sometimes making a dropping feeling, and it beats again. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And my symptoms kept changing.
And now this year, my symptoms have changed like they have been.
but my stomach still keeps growling for no reason I lost my appetite, 2-3 years ago when this started, but I feel weird, like very weird like the weird feelings you get when you feel like you're about to end up in a hospital? I can't explain my weird feelings, and I feel like I can't think straight? But I can? But I keep looming at things without blinking for a few seconds and my face was just been blank? In a way, and I'm getting weird fuzzy feelings at the side of my face. and I'm scared I'm dying, or it's an illness. But the weird feelings do go away, but they come back after a few hours, or minutes, I know I need therapy, and help but the waiting lists. I'm trying to learn to cope with it. Because I know it won't go away just by ignoring it, and I know as much as I'm worried for my health know I been through a lot of stress, etc and now I been going puberty for a couple years.Anxiety feels like a nightmare, and I hate it. I wish I could stop feeling constantly weird, and strange etc. It's a very very weird and strange feeling and it's odd. I can't explain anything.
But I can't keep letting it get the best of me because I will just need to learn, to accept it as much as its hard to. I'll just accept it and I'll keep telling my mum for therapy or even see a doctor It's terrifying but i know I can get through this oll run around my house etc etc etc for distractions etc until I can get a therapist which I know will take long, but I hope I won't be like this forever and ever.
And I also have a white patch on my tongue it kinds looks like milk? And sometimes I feel a very weird weird feeling that something will happen? And most times I breathe I feel something in my throat lime its my heart beat? Or if my heart skips a beat or something when I breathe sometimes?
But also a good thing is, is that I can drink and eat fine, and I'm not in any bad pains at all, I just physically feel weird, and I can't explain the feelings. But when I sleep, I wake up In the middle of the night for no reason, so that might be from stress.
Does anybody else experience or know what I mean? I don't know why I keep worrying about my health I constantly seek reassurance and it kinda makes me feel a attention seeker.but i also have this weird cold feeling at my back (the cold feeling you get when you're sick?) but i have it at my back, and i don't have a lot of symptoms of anxiety and it's scaring me. are people different with anxiety and stress? do they have different things with it? because i know everybody is different but i'm still scared.
has anybody else had this? i feel like i'm the only person. i think i actually have a illness or something i just feel sick and strange constantly. but i'm planning on getting stress/anxiety gummies i'm terrified.
and i'm thinking about therapy? but i just wanna take small steps for starters.
and i also never see anybody with this same thing as me so i'm scared.
and my hear also makes a drop feeling, even when my heart isn't racing etc it happens out of nowhere, and it's weird, and when i breathed in, i like felt it in my throat? and i just feel awful, and weird constantly, it sucks. it really does suck. i just feel like i'm gonna die or if i have some type of serious/deadly illness etc, i just want it to stop. i don't even have a clue if this is normal or not. i just hope others have, had the same things/thing has me. it sucks i feel alone. it feels like something is wrong inside my body and i can't explain it i'm so sick of it. i feel like i'm about to die any second.okay my body just did something weird and i think my body just bought something up into my throat? i can't explain it i'm scared. am i okay?
I'm sorry if I'm bothering anybody, I know others have more serious problems but I'm just scared.
should i change my diet, and sleep routine? and get anxiety/stress gummies from amazon? (they probably won't work but i wanna take small steps.)
And I think all this has something, to do with my stomach. Because my stomach was the first thing that felt sick back in december 8th 2020, so I don't understand. Is my stomach okay? And it also feels like my body might bring something up or something? I don't understand why did this happen, so suddenly? Did I do something wrong?
But even if I am like this I can still• eat, and drink fine. (Sometimes feel like I might throw up but yeah, I can eat and drink. But i also have a bad diet, and i eat and drink horribly.)• I can still go bathroom, just fine. (Never really any problems with that.)• I can still sleep fine. (But I do wake up around 1-2 times. Which is probably stress, but my sleep routine is also horrible.)▪︎ I can also, walk around fine even tho my legs and body still feel sick, and weird etc.So I don't understand what's going on? Why am I getting these weird physical symptoms? Because I don't know if it is anxiety, or is just from stress or some kind, of trauma? I don't know but I feel like this could also be because of my dad dying.
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Things that maybe caused this:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • But maybe it's because, I'm to stressed out? • Maybe I have low blood sugar from not eating and drinking well? • maybe because I'm on the Internet 24/7 and I never go outside, and I'm pale? • maybe I'm not healthy. And I'm not drinking or eating healthy the way I should? • maybe it's because I'm still going through puberty? • maybe because of the online bullying? Or my dad's death? • maybe my bad sleep routine? • constant stressing? • maybe trauma? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And I know I'm not the only one. I'm just scared incase I was because I didn't wanna suffer with it alone. If it makes sense But I realozes when I'm calmed down or something, and then I don't feel sick? But still feel a bit strange? I'm fearing that I might have a stroke due to the fuzzy feeling at the side of my face, or I'm having a medical problem etc but I'm trying to stay strong. Even tho it's hard and it feels like a nightmare.
And I don't have any medical problems at all, I've always been healthy, so I don't understand why this suddenly happens.

• About me
I am 14 years old. (15 soon and I'm still going through puberty.)
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
And my height is: 4'9-5'0.
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
• I'm British, I also don't smoke, or drink anything.
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
• No meds, or therapists etc.
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
• I'm pale, and have a bad diet. (Eating like rubbish) • and i never go outside. (i'm pale.) • and my sleep routine is horrible.
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
So basically, my dad died back in 2019. From lung cancer. I was 10 at the time, and I already knew he was gonna. You know. And after he died. I couldn't really believe it? but the grief didn't click in, until September / November, of 2019. But then at the time, I started going through really stressful, things like, bullying. Name-calling. Harassment. (These had happened online. I know it may not seem like such a big deal but it ruined my self-confidence, and mental health.) And it got worse in 2020, because I got abused online as well And my mental health, got worse to the point where I had urges to kill / harm myself, (I hardly have them anymore, which I'm glad about.) Family issues? Stressing, and constant crying
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
(The reasons why I'm saying this, is because it could explain why I'm dealing with the stuff I'm about to put down.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
December, 8th, 2020, was the time I got sick.
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
It was in my stomach, and I though "oh I'm just sick it will pass", but it just got worse. And it would keep, growling, and I lost my appetite fully and didn't even wanna eat. But the thing I realised was that I was stressed / worried about it. Because I though it was stomach cancer. (Still do.) And it would make me feel like I was gonna throw up,
​
And in 2021. I still had. It. No appetite still, no nothing. Just feeling sick. But I still ate, and drank everyday. But online stuff happened again. (Which I think made it worse? I don't know. And my mental health worse.) But then I started thinking my stomach was gonna collapse. And I started worrying more about it.
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
And in this year, same stuff. With my stomach. But in April 2022. I had a panic attack? I also had left arm aches / pains. So basically went downstairs, and told my mum about it. And we started talking, about stuff. And i stood up from the chair, and then all sudden, my head started feeling SUPER weird. And I said "mum my head feels weird!" And she said "your probably having a panic attack." And then i started panicking, and said "mum, mum I think I'm dying!!" And I went down on to the kitchen floor.and my brother said "your fine." And my mum said "this is because of your dad." And then she went to open the door for me to get air. And I still felt weird. And my hands were shaking. (I can't remember but I think my mouth /lips was dry.) But the thing is I felt like I was forcing the shaking. Because I was making myself shake (but again I probably wasn't. I did not do it for attention, I know that would of been bad. etc I was seriously scared, that I was gonna die in front of my mum and brother.) . But when I stopped my body felt like nothing. And my breathing was a bit weird a swell. And my mum was trying to talk me out of it. And then a few minutes later, I went to stand up, and go upstairs, but my whole body, and legs felt weird. Very weird. But then I felt the whole night, watching tiktok to distract myself. But then next day, my mum told my older brother that I was having panic attacks. That same day, I felt like I was freak, out and call an ambulance, because I felt like I was going to die. And I was worrying about my health. (Still do.)
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
OLD SYMPTOMS.
​
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • and i am also getting forgetfulness.
• feeling like something is in my throat for a few minutes,
• and feeling sweaty,(doesn't last long.) when i panic over something.
• stuttering.
• headaches.
• weird head feelings.
• and weird feeling slightly under my stomach by my hips.
• dry mouth / lips sometimes.
• and feeling like i will gag? on my foods / drinks.
• no appetite.
• stomach growling.
• constantly seeking reassurance.
• heart fluttering, and dropping. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
​
MY NEW SYMPTOMS THIS YEAR.
​
​
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• stomach growling, even tho im not hungry. and it makes me have a sick feeling. (Still have.)
• feeling a fuzzy feeling at the side of my face. (It feels like he fuzzy ealing you get in your hands sometimes.)
• still no appetite.
• constantly feeling strange. (Like I might die, or something will happen inside my body and ill die.)
• forgetfulness. (Still have.)
• hair falling out, slightly. (Just smallish.)
• weird cold chills at my back and arms. (The slight weird cold chill you get when you're sick, or something.)
• constantly seeking reassurance.
• weird breathing. (Like when you walk around and your breathing gets heavy in a way.)
• my heart sometimes making a dropping feeling, and it beats again. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
And my symptoms kept changing.
​
And now this year, my symptoms have changed like they have been.
​
but my stomach still keeps growling for no reason I lost my appetite, 2-3 years ago when this started, but I feel weird, like very weird like the weird feelings you get when you feel like you're about to end up in a hospital? I can't explain my weird feelings, and I feel like I can't think straight? But I can? But I keep looming at things without blinking for a few seconds and my face was just been blank? In a way, and I'm getting weird fuzzy feelings at the side of my face. and I'm scared I'm dying, or it's an illness. But the weird feelings do go away, but they come back after a few hours, or minutes, I know I need therapy, and help but the waiting lists. I'm trying to learn to cope with it. Because I know it won't go away just by ignoring it, and I know as much as I'm worried for my health know I been through a lot of stress, etc and now I been going puberty for a couple years.Anxiety feels like a nightmare, and I hate it. I wish I could stop feeling constantly weird, and strange etc. It's a very very weird and strange feeling and it's odd. I can't explain anything.
​
But I can't keep letting it get the best of me because I will just need to learn, to accept it as much as its hard to. I'll just accept it and I'll keep telling my mum for therapy or even see a doctor It's terrifying but i know I can get through this oll run around my house etc etc etc for distractions etc until I can get a therapist which I know will take long, but I hope I won't be like this forever and ever.
​
And I also have a white patch on my tongue it kinds looks like milk? And sometimes I feel a very weird weird feeling that something will happen? And most times I breathe I feel something in my throat lime its my heart beat? Or if my heart skips a beat or something when I breathe sometimes?
​
But also a good thing is, is that I can drink and eat fine, and I'm not in any bad pains at all, I just physically feel weird, and I can't explain the feelings. But when I sleep, I wake up In the middle of the night for no reason, so that might be from stress.
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Does anybody else experience or know what I mean? I don't know why I keep worrying about my health I constantly seek reassurance and it kinda makes me feel a attention seeker.but i also have this weird cold feeling at my back (the cold feeling you get when you're sick?) but i have it at my back, and i don't have a lot of symptoms of anxiety and it's scaring me. are people different with anxiety and stress? do they have different things with it? because i know everybody is different but i'm still scared.
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has anybody else had this? i feel like i'm the only person. i think i actually have a illness or something i just feel sick and strange constantly. but i'm planning on getting stress/anxiety gummies i'm terrified.
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and i'm thinking about therapy? but i just wanna take small steps for starters.
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and i also never see anybody with this same thing as me so i'm scared.
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and my hear also makes a drop feeling, even when my heart isn't racing etc it happens out of nowhere, and it's weird, and when i breathed in, i like felt it in my throat? and i just feel awful, and weird constantly, it sucks. it really does suck. i just feel like i'm gonna die or if i have some type of serious/deadly illness etc, i just want it to stop. i don't even have a clue if this is normal or not. i just hope others have, had the same things/thing has me. it sucks i feel alone. it feels like something is wrong inside my body and i can't explain it i'm so sick of it. i feel like i'm about to die any second.okay my body just did something weird and i think my body just bought something up into my throat? i can't explain it i'm scared. am i okay?
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I'm sorry if I'm bothering anybody, I know others have more serious problems but I'm just scared.
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should i change my diet, and sleep routine? and get anxiety/stress gummies from amazon? (they probably won't work but i wanna take small steps.)
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And I think all this has something, to do with my stomach. Because my stomach was the first thing that felt sick back in december 8th 2020, so I don't understand. Is my stomach okay? And it also feels like my body might bring something up or something? I don't understand why did this happen, so suddenly? Did I do something wrong?
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But even if I am like this I can still• eat, and drink fine. (Sometimes feel like I might throw up but yeah, I can eat and drink. But i also have a bad diet, and i eat and drink horribly.)• I can still go bathroom, just fine. (Never really any problems with that.)• I can still sleep fine. (But I do wake up around 1-2 times. Which is probably stress, but my sleep routine is also horrible.)▪︎ I can also, walk around fine even tho my legs and body still feel sick, and weird etc.So I don't understand what's going on? Why am I getting these weird physical symptoms? Because I don't know if it is anxiety, or is just from stress or some kind, of trauma? I don't know but I feel like this could also be because of my dad dying.
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Things that maybe caused this:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • But maybe it's because, I'm to stressed out?
• Maybe I have low blood sugar from not eating and drinking well?
• maybe because I'm on the Internet 24/7 and I never go outside, and I'm pale?
• maybe I'm not healthy. And I'm not drinking or eating healthy the way I should?
• maybe it's because I'm still going through puberty?
• maybe because of the online bullying? Or my dad's death?
• maybe my bad sleep routine?
• constant stressing?
• maybe trauma? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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And I know I'm not the only one. I'm just scared incase I was because I didn't wanna suffer with it alone. If it makes sense But I realozes when I'm calmed down or something, and then I don't feel sick? But still feel a bit strange? I'm fearing that I might have a stroke due to the fuzzy feeling at the side of my face, or I'm having a medical problem etc but I'm trying to stay strong. Even tho it's hard and it feels like a nightmare.
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And I don't have any medical problems at all, I've always been healthy, so I don't understand why this suddenly happens.

I think my brain is the word that rhymes with mertarded . Suppose to retake blood work be on my best behavior for a week but apparently being sober isn’t fun. Drank like full bottle 1.5 liters of that Woodbridge Chardonnay. Was spinny and vomiting. It’s also my bday and I already knew I had no plans to be sober even if doctor told me to. So cheers. Woke up feeling like shit back to the same stupid shit like before, already had glass of wine the last of that bottle I got last nite . I guess I should worry about my health but being sober for a week was awful. I read on other subs u get some “pink cloud” being sober. Only pink cloud I can find is in a bottle of alcohol . I did find a nice grey cloud being sober. Oh and bf found empty stash I hid and didn’t remember from like 2 months ago I meant to throw away and questioned if I was drinking that and I had been sober well till I drank all this wine . Was bottle of that good deep eddy grapefruit vodka and he thought I was drinking that. I only wish I was. And I don’t recommend telling ppl your blood results. Keep that to yourself. Cus now my family and bf watching me so closely, which well I hate being controlled like that.

It's one of my favorites drinks and I'd hate to give it up! :( I particularly love the Health-ade Ginger-lemon one, but I know it has small amounts of alcohol. Is it best just to avoid it entirely? I'm at 5 weeks and haven't experienced any nausea yet, but this always helped when I felt nauseous during my periods. I'm definitely not the "oh I can have a glass of wine while pregnant" type. What do you all do?

I (26f) had a close friend (28f) from university who got married. When I went to the wedding I met the Bride's brother (28m) and we have since been dating a year. I don't date around and we are seeing a future together but also realists in life. They both supported the relationship, this is not the issue but a back story.
My friend from university is the main issue. She is a friend that seems 100% genuine but always wants to know everything about everyone and be in control. It's subtle and makes you question if you're over thinking or making things up in your head. She always over exaggerates stories. Over the years there have been little examples of this but always brush it off.
It came to a point when one night out our friend group was drinking. I'm usually pretty good when I drink and stop when I've got my limit and enjoy a fun rest of the night out tipsy but having no more alcohol. My friend herself does not drink but the whole night was spiking my drink with more alcohol. Even after I, in a fun way, declared I was just on the fizzy drinks she kept putting alcohol in when I wasn't looking. I even said out load to everyone "oh this tastes funny" at the time but being drunk I didn't really think too much more of it. That night and next morning I was confused as to how I got so much more drunk after not drinking anymore but as you would.. I didn't think any more about it.
Two of the guys in the group separately without my prompt approached me saying what she had done, alcohol in my drinks. I spoke to her privately and said, "hey fun night, but I didn't enjoy being that out of control so no big deal but next time don't spike my drink past me saying no more" just trying to not make it a big deal but wanting to trust going out drinking with the group again. Anyway, she denied the whole thing and spent the rest of this group trip gaslighting and discrediting me in any way. I thought this was such an over reaction as I genuinely asked in the nicest way not to spike my drink and in private so she didn't have to be embarrassed. If she had just said sorry we would laugh it off as an accident and fun night out.
From then she and her wife have been isolating me from the group and been attaking me with horrible messages and making stuff up about me to divide me from the group. I could just accept it and move on with my life wothout this group but 1) I don't feel I should have to be the one to put up with this and be treated like this, they are also my friends. And 2) I am going out with with one of the group who is also the wife's brother. So will always be tied to these people at family functions.
My bf sees the issue but says oh well just ignore it. How do I ignore that. On future meet ups they would refuse to give me the details like a meet up time knowing they could tell everyone else last minute as they all live close by but I am a 2 hour train ride away and have to book the train ticket the day before for the ticket to not be 3x the price. And when I asked everyone else in the group including my bf they would say.. I don't know the time ask them. It's enough to make you think you have gone crazy. My bf could definitely do a lot more be on my side but he has tried to bring it up with them but they shout a lot at him and threaten to talk bad about me to their mum.. What a threat? So from this he just says don't say anything to ruin the peace. How is that my problem. That is such a gaslight thing to do..isolate me then be annoyed at me when i have a problem with them being horrible to me.
My bf still hangs out in the group, in my eyes supporting their behaviour. I have lost a lot of time crying about all this so the fact he doesn't show me more support makes me more upset.
They are all telling me I'm over reacting and if I can't calm down then just leave the group. I have had to block most of them after so many horrible messages. And as good as split from the group. But am I right to be upset when my bf for still hanging with them and wanting to go on holiday of a lifetime with them all. With these people who are happy to be that horrible. If it was just his sister at a family event I might understand but this.. And knowing I'll have to see my friend and the sister at family events.
I would be willing to forget it all of they just said sorry and stop acting like this but I can't talk to them without being attacked.
Tell me if I'm losing my mind or if I am the AH.
Trust me I am trying to ignore the whole thing and be cool whenever my bf is with them but I just can't seem to. And don't think it should have to. I am always the pushover and it's weighing on my mental health
TIA
I am looking for an audiobook of Alice through the looking glass by Lewis Carol I listened to it when I was younger but lost my ipod it was stored on. It must be at least 20 years old.
I cannot find this specific recording anywhere but it is so sentimental to me I am obsessed with finding it.
It was read by a male. I believe English or at least non animated voice/style of they are American. I'd say a deep voice. Monotone almost. It was unabridged with even the intro and jabberwocky poem before chapter one.
I have searched google and obvious audiobook sites but no luck.
If anyone can help that would be much appreciated. Maybe a link or name of a reader.
Thank you in advance

hello everyone! for my birthday soon in a few days I’ll be flying from Florida to California , then next week I’ll travel back to Florida.
Flying terrifies me because I overthink too much about it. Once they come out with the snack cart I usually relax but I still have awful anxiety, even though I have flown many times in my life.
I worry about everything. Airplane safety, etc, but also the pilots. You guys have a stressful job and I know many pilots hesitate to report any kind of mental health issues (which is understandable given how mental health is treated in the field). I always think of that Germanwings flight and I always pray that my pilot is ok but in the back of my mind I’m like oh god what if someone is having an off day 😭 I know people say “pilots want to get home too!” Which does comfort me.
Any words of comfort are welcome and really really appreciated.
Should I tell a flight attendant I’m scared? I don’t want to bother them. I’m going without my kids and I’m going to miss them like crazy
EDITED TO ADD I don’t mean this in an insulting way!! I did browse the search bar but not all the results are coming up. The threads I am reading are comforting.
I’m flying Alaskan on the way there and United on the way home

Part 18 A Delicate Situation (Part 1) (Part 17)
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"Aho, Zim, ni je na?" Msko was the first to notice and greet the relatively short, stout, and furry being that just waddled into The Hammer’s Control Center.
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"Ah, Administrator Zimuzari, I am honored you could join us." Atxika's eyes quickly shot up from the holographic display being projected from the table she was leaning on and landed on Kyim'ayik colony leader. "Have you had an opportunity to read through the initial report we sent you?"
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"Hello there, Mkso, Admiral Atxika. It's…" The reddish-brown ball of fur paused his adorable squeaking, half covered his mouth with one of his paws, and let out such a tremendous yawn that Atxika could see both the massive front incisors as well as the not quite as large, but still impressive, set of canines behind them. "My apologies, I woke up less than half an hour ago. But it is good to see you both, as well as an honor and privilege to join you in your Command Center, Admiral."
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"The honor and privilege are mine." Atxika bowed slightly with her pleasant smile still wide. "And I would like to apologize for waking you. It will still be a few days before we arrive at our destination and this strategy meeting could have waited."
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"No, no, no, that's alright." Zim quickly replied with his species' high pitch and chirpy version of galactic common while stretching out and flicking his long, shiny whiskers as he approached the military leaders. "I've already gotten about nine hours of sleep. Skipping the last hour or two has killed me yet! And I’d rather get started on this sooner rather than later.”
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Admiral Atxika had to put in real effort to prevent herself start cooing at the delightful manner with which Zim made his way over to the holo-table and climbed the stool-like chair designed for his anatomy. The long, wide, and flat tail distinctive of the Kyim'ayik was lifted just off the ground and stretched far back to balance the rest of the being’s body weight while the relatively short hind legs carried him along in an awkward, though comfortable, bipedal gait. With the limited range of motion in the squat, fuzzy man’s leg-like arms as he stretched, it was clear his species was more intended for quadrupedal locomotion. Despite that fact, the posture of the Kyim'ayik Administrator while he walked was far more similar to her own, or a human’s, than what she had remembered from her previous interactions with the species. However, as Zim stretched out his back to its full length, adding good chunk to his overall height, and began climbing the stool so he could have a proper view of holographic display, Atxika was suddenly reminded of a domesticated species of vermin-hunting musteloid from her species’ homeworld that were quite popular pets. Even though she knew this furry little man was a well respected guest on her ship, and a being from an Ascended species, she couldn’t get over how adorable he was.
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“I hope you didn’t wake the misses.” Msko commented with a sarcastic tone while shooting the beaver-otter a cheeky wink.
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“Nah, that woman could sleep through an atomic detonation.” Hearing the galactic common word for ‘atomic detonation’ be said with such an endearing squeak was pushing the Admiral to the absolute limits of her self control.
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“I can have some food and refreshments brought, if you like.” Atxika interjected while doing her best to keep her smile from growing too wide and showing all of her teeth.
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“Oh n-” Zim was about to politely decline before Msko interrupted him with a bit too much energy.
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“Yes, please!” The War Chief blurted out. “That restaurant Tens took me to in your Amenities Section was amazing! I knew this ship had a huge manufacturing capability, but I didn’t realize you’d have freshly grown food.”
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“I’ll have the private command facilities prepare something.” The Admiral quickly replied to ensure that Zim couldn’t refuse. “How does a zetloxoni platter sound?”
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“What are-” Zim began to ask before Atxika realized her mistake and explained.
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"Zetloxoni are fish fillets, rolled in a semisweet and highly nutrient-rich grain, and occasionally topped with more fish or other ingredients." The Admiral replied while typing into the display to bring up a holographic representation of the sushi-like dish she was describing. "This is what I was thinking."
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"That actually looks amazing!" The Kyim'ayik ears suddenly perked up and eyes grew wide with delight.
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"Wonderful! It's settled then." Atxika pressed in a few more commands to place the order then tried to redirect the conversation to reason for the meeting. "I find it is often easier to address delicate situations with a clear mind and full stomach."
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"Delicate?" The squeaky reply carried a noticeably sarcastic tone as Zim shifted his attention towards the holographic representation of a planet and saucer shaped ship orbiting it. "That looks like Arnehilians. Ain't nothing delicate about the Grays, except maybe their physical forms."
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"Well, they're definitely Arnehilians but…" Msko interjected with a hesitant tone that caught his Kyim'ayik friend off guard. "We don't think they're Grays."
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There was a second of confused silence as Zim stared into the War Chief's eyes to see if this was a joke. Before Nishnabe could bring himself to explain, however, Atxika chimed in to give the proper explanation.
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"What I am about to say is Level 8 classified information from Military Command and should be treated with the appropriate amount of secrecy. Do you understand?" After an incredibly professional and understanding nod from the Administrator, the Admiral continued. "We have confirmed the existence of a non-aligned, neutral-standing collective of decentralized Arnehilian groups who refer to themselves as, quote, 'the Greens', or the Free People of Sundered Arnehil. According to all reports, they are an ecologically-minded, nomadic, agricultural society who regularly travel in such a way as to avoid any means of tracking or detection by their… less peaceful cousins. However, there are a few who regularly check in with Military Command to avoid potential confrontations. There have been no indications that any of their groups discovered so far are violent, nor even capable of galactic standard levels of self-defense."
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"I thought those rumors were just misinformation or propaganda." Zim was now much more earnest as gazed upon the holographic saucer floating above the planet. "And you say they're even ecologically-minded?"
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"Our drones haven't detected any significant environmental disruptions." Msko sounded far more nonchalant about this situation than his long-time friend was expecting. There was no aggression or anger in his movements as he indicated towards a highlight portion of the holographic planet floating above the table and prompted the display to project a new hologram. "Their settlement is using solar and wind energy to operate their infrastructure and accumulate power reserves. From what we can tell, they're only a week away from finishing their agricultural harvest and two weeks away from their power reserves being fully recharged. If we had been delayed a month, there's a good chance we would have missed them completely."
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“What kind of resource impacts would I have to account for?” The Administrator quickly followed up.
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“Maybe a couple hundred tons worth of basic elements and organic matter.” It was clear Msko had already scoured everything and couldn’t find any reason to be concerned. “But the drones' sensors can’t detect any real difference between now and six months ago. Like I said, if we were delayed a month, we might not have even known they were ever there.”
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"I see…" There was a moment of pause as Zim stared at the highly detailed holographic representation of a temporary settlement located only a couple dozen kilometers from where he had been planning his own colony.
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The two military officers remained silent to give the Kyim'ayik Administrator all the time he needed to think about what he had just been told. Each species, without exception, had some unique form of architectural design and aesthetic, and the variety of buildings Zim was looking at were no different. The extensive use of cheap, easy to produce polymers, the simple, module construction, and rounded, nearly circular, aesthetic to all of the building were all clearly Arnehilian. However, there was something humble, almost intentionally so, about the lack of silver-metal detailing combined with the way the structures simply flowed into the untouched trees around them. Rather than a budding slaver-colony run by beings who thought themselves entitled everyone and everything, this looked like the respectfully maintained dwelling of a temporary guest who wished to remain discreet. Though the Administrator knew his duty to his people would normally demand he evict these uninvited squatters from his land, he couldn’t help but feel something almost kindred in what he was seeing.
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"Have you made contact with them yet?" Zim flatly asked, though he could already guess the answer. "Do they know we're coming?"
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"No and no." Atxika promptly answered, while letting her smile fall into a more professional expression. "Their ship is inactive, seems to be in a state of disrepair, and is currently in a free-floating, low orbit. According to our scans, their ground-based sensor systems are incapable of detecting our reconnaissance drones. However, they would absolutely notice our fleet entering the system."
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"Well, we don't wanna scare them." Zim finally squeaked out with a slightly giggle that sounded more like a chirp. "Reptiles always freak out when you startle them."
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It had been nine hours of working in the greenhouse when Mayor Harideth noticed the young dark gray-skinned, olive-drab clad messenger running towards him at full speed. Though he had known this young woman her entire life, she was a member of her community after all, he had never seen her running this fast. It wasn't the speed of her approach that made him stop what he was doing, rather it was the unadulterated fear plastered across her face. As Nalhilum sprinted down the path between the vertical hydroponic racks, a few of the Arnehilians in the greenhouse took notice, though didn't stop their work. When the young woman came to a sliding halt just in front of the Mayor, it looked like she was about to keel over from exhaustion and stress.
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"My dear, please." Harideth had a genuinely concerned expression on his scaly face as he quickly moved to brace the young woman and prevent her from falling over. "You are too young to give yourself a heart attack running like that. Whatever is happening, you don't need t-"
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"Mayor, we've been detected." The dread that came out of Nalhilum's voice and the tears in her eyes as she looked up at her community leader shattered the man's soul.
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"Do not fear, Nalhilum, my dear. Please sit and rest. We will be fine. I promise." Harideth helped the young woman slowly lower herself into a seated position, plucked a just-ripe fruit from a vine he had been tending, and handed it to her before turning towards the closest other people in the greenhouse. "Maricha, please see to Nalhilum and ensure she recovers. I am needed in my mayoral duties immediately."
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In the few seconds it took for the worker to be at the young woman's side, she had already begun nibbling on the sweet treat, savoring it as this was her last opportunity, and the Mayor had given her a gentle kiss on the forehead then began running out of the greenhouse. Though Harideth felt he had a personal duty to stay at his messenger's side until she had fully recovered and ensured she wouldn't need further assistance, he had a greater duty to his community as a whole. Despite feeling the same fear that he saw in Nalhilum’s eyes, and wanting to ball up and hide with every fiber of his body, he charged as fast as he could towards the town hall building. Though he knew running this fast was not good for his health, especially in his old age and after working all day, the only thing on the Mayor’s mind was the safety and future of the people who trusted him with their lives.
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“Please don’t let it be the Oppressors.” Harideth muttered to himself as he ran as fast as his legs could take him. “By the Gods of Old, please don’t let it be them.”
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For nearly a millennium now, his people had been free of those who flew the red and gray flag and, despite the many hurdles and setbacks, they had found their own form of happiness. After the Dynastic family who had kept his working-class ancestors in literal chains had been dealt a devastating blow when their capital ship was overrun by a group of abducted, pre-Ascension beings, it sparked a revival of the Free People’s ideology in the slave population. Stories of people living together in mutual aid, love, and respect once only told in hushed whispers were shouted from the rooftops as most of the surviving members of the Dynasty were thrown from them. Once all of the slaves of the other species were freed and on their way back to their respective homes, the budding groups of Greens scattered into the interstellar winds to avoid reprisal from other Dynasties which were sure to want revenge. There was even a dream that they would find other groups of Free Arnehilians living among the stars.
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It was a blessing that their rebellion had initially gone unnoticed by the rest of the Arnehilian Dynasties and the greater community as that gave his ancestors time to disperse beyond the ability to be completely tracked down. Even if a few scattered communities eventually met their death or worse, the end of their freedom, there would be some who were able to survive and thrive. Though Harideth had assumed his nomadic village may eventually run into someone, he put a great deal of effort into minimizing that potential. In fact, he chose this very planet as their temporary stopping grounds specifically because it was far out of the way of most civilizations and people. After spending nearly a full season on this beautiful world, he had even started to grow attached to it and was looking for an excuse to postpone their migration in order to facilitate repairs to their ship. Being detected after so long, and with only a few weeks until they would have been ready to leave on their own, was something the Mayor could have never been prepared for.
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“Make a hole!” A person wearing a dull green cap shouted down a rather cramped corridor that Harideth was barreling towards at full speed before quickly pulling back and nodding towards the man as he passed.
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“Thank you, Chuzikum.” Harideth faintly mouthed while darting past the person and into the now cleared passageway that led outdoors.
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Finally outside, the man only slowed his sprint to turn a few corners and avoid running into the few unwary people who had failed to notice him coming. He was less than a hundred meters away from the town hall building housing his destination, the command and control room, and he couldn’t stop now. Regardless of how hard his heart was beating, how much he felt his body overheating from the strain, and how much he wanted to just collapse, he couldn’t fail his people. As the building got closer and closer, Harideth tried to think through all of the possibilities of who it could be that had detected them. Though none of the options that came to his mind were particularly pleasant, from Bendari pirates to Qui’ztar law enforcement or even the Oppressors themselves, he was already trying to work out contingency plans as he finally approached the already open door and his assistant waiting for him beside it.
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“Please close the door behind us, Marlati.” Harideth’s request was just barely audible as he crossed the threshold of the door and was quickly followed by his assistant who did as she was asked. “Who is it and what do they want?”
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“The communication signal we are receiving registers as the Qui’ztar Third Matriarchy, Mayor Harideth.” Marlati quickly and quietly replied as she followed the man towards the command and control room.
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“Oh, thank the Gods.” The Mayor stopped mid step and placed a hand on the wall next to lean and catch his breath for a moment. “This could still be very bad, but it could have also been so much worse.”
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“Um, sir?” The Mayor’s assistant watched him with a hint of concern as she could see how much he was overheating. “Would you like me to get you a cooling pack?”
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“Oh, no, that’s alright.” Harideth stood back up straight and continued towards his final destination, though a bit slower than before. As he turned back to his assistant, he gave a compassionate nod of approval. “You are too kind, my dear. This is just a…” The man’s voice trailed off as his thoughts began to concentrate on a plan of action.
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“A what, sir?” Marlati nervously in a manner which caused the Mayor to look back at her. “I’m sorry sir, but this is the first time this has ever happened in my entire life.”
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“First time for me too, Marlati.” Harideth admitted with a hit of nervous laughter. “But I do know enough about the Qui'ztar to not be issuing an immediate emergency evacuation order.”
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“That’s not very reassuring.” Though the whine that just came his assistant would have been grating in any other circumstance, she was right and the Mayor knew it.
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“That is the name of the game you help some of the children play, something of the magical planets?” Harideth stopped at the door to the room which separated him from his responsibilities as a Mayor.
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“Adventures of the Magical Worlds, sir?”
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“Yes! I believe there is a moral alignment chart in the rules somewhere.” Though it was clear that his assistant didn’t quite know what he was getting, it became incredibly obvious as he explained. “If I remember correctly, everything I’ve read about the Qui’ztar would put them roughly in the ‘hierarchical neutral’ category.”
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“Ah…” The assistance was quite hesitant as she knew what that actually implied. “That still isn’t very reassuring.”
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“They’re here to do a job. And as long as we comply and don’t get in their way, we’ll be fine.” The Mayor was doing his best to hold up his mask of confidence and not let this young feel what he felt.
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“And what if their job is to kill us?”
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“Then they wouldn’t have made their presence known. They would have simply shown up and sent us all to the next life.” However morbid that statement was, it actually did give the Marlati a small sense of real relief in the fact they weren't already dead as the door to the command and control room opened and the pair slowly walked in.
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"Sir! Thank the Gods you're here!" A communications specialist shouted from his seat in front of a terminal towards the Mayor as he quickly approached.
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"Of course, Telucima, I wouldn’t make you talk to them all by yourself." Harideth tried to crack a joke to the young woman behind the terminal in a vain attempt to calm her obviously flustered nerves. Though Telucima’s dark gray skin was never as shiny as a royal's, her face was especially dull and pale at the moment and the Mayor couldn’t help but empathize with her. “Now, please, give me your report. What do we know?”
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“Well…” Telucima made a gulping sound as she swallowed some of the semi-poisonous saliva that had been building up in her mouth as a fear response. “There is a fairly substantial colony fleet headed our way being escorted by the First Independent Fleet of the Third Qui'ztar Matriarchy. They have stated that we are inhabiting an unregistered settlement on a planet that has already been claimed by the Kyim'ayik. However, they have not yet made any demands, claimed our settlement is in violation of any laws, or even made any threats. I am absolutely sure they know who we are, but they didn’t explicitly identify us in their message. I’m not exactly sure what it is going on, but the signal strength and delay indicate they are still a day or two away.”
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“Interesting…” The Mayor commented with a more curious than scared tone while rubbing the top of his head in contemplation. “No demands, threats, or attempts to justify the use of force through galactic law… Is there any way we could get a real-time communications link established?”
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“Sir? You want to talk to them?” Marlati could barely contain her fear as she interjected. “I thought every species hated us, and you want to talk to them?”
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“They hate the bastard Oppressors, Marlati, though maybe not as much as we do.” Harideth knew this would be his one and only chance to make a good impression on what could otherwise be their impending doom and he was doing everything in his power to muster the inner courage needed for this conversation. “They may not know the difference between us and… them… yet. But something tells me they might.”
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“Sir,” Telucima had redirected her attention back to her terminal and was running through the system to facilitate the Mayor’s request, “I can establish a quantum link, though it would require me to activate the relay on the ship. If there are any oppressors nearby, there’s a chance they could detect our presence and attempt to use the trace to track us down.”
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“Do it.” The Mayor ordered with a tone that implied he knew the risks. “I want to see if these Qui’ztar would be willing to allow us to stay for the few weeks required to complete our harvest. Worst comes to worst, we’ll have to start packing everything up early and delay the repairs for another season.”
​
The next few moments were nearly silent aside from the sounds of a tapping keyboard and the occasional digitized ping from the terminal. Telucima had begun the task of awakening the ship, configuring the communications channel, and activating the relay through text-based commands on a simple, monochromatic screen, while the other two people clad in simple olive-drab clothing could do nothing but fester in their thoughts. While Harideth was busy planning out how he was going to grovel and beg for permission to finish his people’s desperately needed harvest of fresh food, Marlati was simply doing everything in her power not to shake in fear. When the final confirmation ping came from the terminal and Telucima began pressing her headset tightly to her ears, the faint whispers of a translated voice could be heard.
​
“Yes I can understand you…" The communications specialist, though lacking much previous experience in speaking with a member of another species, seemed to be focused solely on her job and not her fear. "Oh no, I'm sorry, this terminal doesn't have that function. It's… Yes, I can absolutely do that. Just give me one moment to set up the connection and I'll be right back with you."
​
In a flash, Telucima had taken off her headset, stood from her console, and was moving to a nearby bag resting on a table, much to the shock of the other Arnehilians. Before either the Mayor or his assistant could question the young woman, she was triumphantly holding up her personal data-tablet and was returning to her seat.
​
"What-" Harideth began before the young woman cut him off while pulling her tablet into the terminal.
​
"Ope, sorry about that, sir." The specialist cut off her mayor and began to explain in a rush. "I was speaking to a communications officer and she wanted an audio-visual feed to link to her commanding officer. This terminal doesn't haven't that functionality, but I can just just patch a link through my tablet. It's got a mic and camera and we can use it as the display."
​
“Good thinking, Telucima.” The Mayor laid a gentle, compassionate hand on the woman’s shoulder after she had placed the tablet at a good angle and sat back into her chair to type in the commands. “I knew you were the right person for this job.”
​
“It was the communications officer’s idea, sir.” Telucima couldn’t help herself but to be honest regardless of the praise. “I’m just glad there were instructions for this kind of patch in the training manual. It should just take a moment to load.”
​
When the relatively small screen came to life in front of the Mayor’s face, he saw three faces looking back at him with expectant eyes, and he froze in shock. Though none of the expressions looked out right hostile, he could tell none of those individuals would tolerate anything less than submission. Despite only ever seen descriptions of the being he was now looking at, all three could easily be identified. Even without his tail being visible, the furry, large-toothed person on the right was clearly a Kyim'ayik. The large, mostly-hairless, blue primate with pronounced tusks in the middle was, without a doubt, a Qui'ztar of particularly high rank. However, the not-as-large, similarly hairless, but copper-brown primate on the left was a species Harideth had a special fear, and particular reverence, for.
​
“Are… Are you a Nishnabe?” Harideth stammered out before even introducing himself or allowing these beings to introduce themselves, which prompted the Qui’ztar and Kyim'ayik to turn to the now confused human.
​
“Yes…” Msko replied hesitantly. “I take it you are aware of my people?”
​
“Aware…” Harideth couldn't stop the heartfelt smile from forming across his scaly face. “You… Your people… the Vanquishers of Tyrants, the Bane of Oppressors, the Unstoppable Rage, and the Saviors of the Oppressed… Your people are the reason my people have been blessed with a thousand years of freedom!”

Hello.
I will remain anonymous in this discussion but I wanted to let you all know what this message is for. It's for the sheer amount of incompetence I've experienced for my first ever rental. I live in IN and they own our apartment complex. We moved in about 7 months ago, last October.
The "tour" they give is a joke. You have to pay them to even get a chance to go into the property and then you never talk to anyone in person. Not to mention the apartment was filthy.
We decided to go ahead and take the place because the rental property said that it was ready to be inhabited now and that it was all taken care of etc.
Move-in day: we get there with all our stuff and guess what it is filthy just like before. Dirty carpet from the 80s, never cleaned behind appliances, black mold in the vents, ac panel didn't even work, all the outlets weren't functioning properly, filthy bathrooms and everything, not to mention roaches that have shown up. Never seen them before in my entire life. Also on top of this the doors weren't sealed correctly in the winter and I wasn't about to wait for their lazy good for nothing team to help with that. Fixed it myself and ofc they didn't reimburse me for the stuff I FIXED.
But of course they make you sign the rental agreement before moving in. ( My biggest mistake of my life ) but they willing and KNEW it was filthy but still said it was a habitable environment. It took us 4 months to get all of this fixed btw and we still have had issue after issue with this complex and they don't give a crap unless you mention anything about money. Then they care.
It's now closing in on half a year of living here and the only plus I would give is the home is quiet. The refrigerator is missing a light that doesn't work at all, we haven't been able to wash our clothes in a month now too, and we still have a bug issue. Oh I forgot to mention that the stove was put in incorrectly and Bec of that we had a gas leak for god knows how long too.
The kicker? Was on Christmas Eve a pipe burst and our living room flooded and we had to deal with that OURSELVES. You know the reimbursement I got for 2 days of shop vaccing our carpet? (After 2 weeks of arguing about it) $90 👏👏👏 amazing. After that, that was it. I want out so bad it's incredible how bad they are at doing anything right.
Overall NEVER EVER EVER EVER rent from these people. They will not respond to you for days and you will have to constantly email them over and over to get any response and most of the time the responses will be "we haven't heard any update, still waiting on that I'll get back when I hear something" and they never do. It's always you contacting them like a puppy trying to get food.
Everyone there is incredibly stupid, incompetent, and doesn't give a crap about you only your money.
So after all this, what do you think I should do? Break my lease and don't look back or live there till the lease ends and then dip asap. At this point I don't care either way.
TLDR: Property Management of Louisville should be avoided at all cost unless you like paying for an apartment with bug, health, and appliance issues. As well as a team that doesn't care at all unless it involves you paying your rent on time.

(not me, but curious as colleague in this situation)
Health care worker earning $100-120K a year. Looking to get a rav4 cruiser, quote approx $550 p/fn over 5 years which all includes finance, insurance, fuel and other running costs.
I'm just not sure if this is worth it vs purchasing privately? Also, if so - can my colleague sell the car straight to a dealership considering people are paying excessive just to get rav4 straight up?
My personal advise to colleague is I won't do it (perhaps due to lack of knowledge with purchasing car via salary packaging and that I find better value for money buying second hands).. but oh well.
What are your thoughts with this?

I feel an overwhelming sense that my mother doesn't love me. It's disheartening because society often portrays a mother's love as the most powerful and unconditional, but I've never truly experienced that from my own mother. The fact that she never expresses her love only adds to the pain.
To give you some context, my mother is an extremely abusive, neglectful, and emotionally manipulative person, and our relationship is practically non-existent. Coming home for summer break from college has been a harsh reminder of the drastic shift from a year of peace and happiness to a state of deep depression and emotional exhaustion. I anticipated it would be challenging, but not to this extent. I make an effort to maintain at least a surface-level connection with her, but her behavior makes me want to cut off all contact. She consistently treats me as her servant, as if I owe her my entire life simply because she gave birth to me. She claims that everything I do and all my aspirations are ultimately for her benefit, so that I can take care of her. I am responsible for driving her almost everywhere since she shows little interest in obtaining her own license. I also have to speak on her behalf because she refuses to learn English. She always makes everything I do about her and insists that my goals and aspirations are ultimately for her benefit, so that I can take care of her. She consistently prioritizes her needs over mine. While I am not a parent, I believe that parents should prioritize the well-being of the children they chose to have. I certainly did not ask to be brought into this world.
Oh and she always exploits her cancer diagnosis to manipulate and guilt-trip me into fulfilling her demands. I sympathize with her condition, but I can't ignore the fact that she brought much of her misfortune upon herself. She is a low-income single mother with no positive prospects. She had a loving husband who was willing to do anything for her and their children, but she destroyed that relationship, and now they are separated. If it were possible, I would live with my father and completely sever ties with her, but he is also ill and unable to maintain employment. I wanted to attend a college far away to escape her influence, but I have a younger sister whom I can't leave to face our mother alone. My plan is to endure as much as possible until I can become independent and live on my own, but that is many years away. I fear that I may reach my breaking point before then. During most of my childhood, I contemplated ending my own life, and I never want to feel that way again. It is my greatest fear.
Recently, I started dating a wonderful boyfriend who is the sole source of light in my life. He’s asked to meet my mother a couple of times. I do not want him to meet her. But I also do not want him to not meet her. I've tried to convey to him the complex dynamics of my relationship with my mother, but there's only so much I can articulate. He will never fully comprehend the situation, and I don't expect him to. However, I worry that my mother will never have the opportunity to meet the love of my life, and if I have children in the future, they will never know their grandmother. It's a painful realization because my mental health has been deteriorating since the day I returned home. The only things I look forward to are going to work and spending time with my boyfriend—anything to avoid being around my mother.
There are moments when I find myself sitting in my car, crying, and I cry myself to sleep at night, yearning for even the slightest indication that she loves me. It's incredibly difficult to love myself when my own mother doesn't even seem to like me. She makes me feel like a burden in her life, and she treats all her children in the same manner.
Today, she threatened to kick me out, and a part of me hopes she is serious. While I would have nowhere else to go, being anywhere else would be preferable to staying with her. I'm desperate for any advice that goes beyond the repetitive suggestions I've heard countless times before. I want to remain strong for my future, and I don’t want to let this situation interfere with my relationship. At times, I feel like I'm on the verge of exploding. Can anyone relate?

Smoothie bowls. Today was the day I was going to perfect the process. Berries, a banana, a splash of oat milk — pretty much ice cream for breakfast but good for you. A bowl of health and wellness and I-have-my-shit-togetherness.
To the blender I go.
After one long pulse, the ingredients splashed along the sides. So I did what any pro smoothie bowl maker would do.
I grabbed my spatula and jammed everything towards the blade. Then I returned the rest of the berries to the freezer while the blender did its thing.
When I came back to the counter, my stomach turned to ice. Wait. Where did my spatula go?
Is it under the banana peel? No…
Is it in the sink? No…
Oh. Oh no.
I rushed to stop the blender and lifted the lid to find smoke and a sickly plastic smell.
A gash in my spatula and my Saturday morning plans.
Guess I’ll make eggs. Fingers crossed I’ll remember to turn the stove off this time.
— — —
Hope you enjoyed the story. Remember to be extra kind to yourself today. These things happen!

I have nothing better to do so I've translated the donghua so we can all enjoy this cute little series :)
Link to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blEIPHVyCmI&ab_channel=%E6%97%A5%E5%90%91%E9%98%B3%E5%AD%90
​
Master isn't home today (episode 2)
Har-gow: Suckling Pig Roast, I really want to make hotpot.
Suckling Pig Roast: Indeed, I haven't had hotpot in a while. I’m lacking in the warmth and moisture from the soup, it’s like my body strength is being dried up.
Sichuan Hotpot: Hey I overheard you saying that you want to eat hotpot! Coincidentally, I am the best at making hotpot!
Har-gow: Oh no no no. We were talking about Cantonese style hot pot. Sichuan hotpot is way too spicy.
Sichuan Hotpot: Har-gow, how could you not eat because of the fear of choking? Although Sichuan hotpot is spicy, it also has the uniqueness of having a numbing effect and is deliciously fragrant. That’s how it became the signature dish of the Sichuan region. You absolutely cannot miss it.
[Scene change]
Sichuan Hotpot: Hotpot’s here!
Suckling Pig Roast: Did I just get a glimpse of hell?
Sichuan Hotpot: You guys exaggerate too much. This is only slightly spicy.
Suckling Pig Roast and Har-gow: Slightly spicy?!
Sichuan Hotpot: Yep.
*Har-gow and Suckling Pig Roast washes the food in their cups*
Sichuan Hotpot: Hey!
[Scene change]
Braised Pork Hock: Ha, Stinky Perch, looks like you still have to exercise more frequently. Why don’t I help you?
Stinky Perch: No… no need. I- I can do it.
Braised Pork Hock: The weather is getting colder. Be careful not to catch a cold.
Stinky Perch: If only I could eat something that is warm.
Sichuan Hotpot: Hotpot! In ancient times, it was also known as “warm pot”. It’s most suited to be eaten during the cold temperatures of winter together with a few friends, enjoying it together. And Sichuan hotpot is meticulously made - it doesn’t matter if it’s the making of the soup base, or the ingredients that you put into the hotpot, they are all of the best quality! It can also get rid of rheumatism and strengthen your physical health.
Braised Pork Hock and Stinky Perch: Ooohh.
Sichuan Hotpot: Do you want to give it a try?
Stinky Perch: Can this really be eaten?
Braised Pork Hock: Hmph a man is fearless in the face of danger. Even if I, Braised Pork Hock, am faced with something as spicy as hell, will not be afraid.
Sichuan Hotpot: What are you guys talking about? This is only slightly spicy!
Stinky Perch: How could this be? Your interpretation of slightly spicy is a whole pot’s worth of chili peppers?
Sichuan Hotpot: That’s right.
[Scene change]
Dezhou Chicken: What’s up with him?
Fuli Chicken: Could this be the “gain effect” that Mapo Tofu often mentions?
Sichuan Hotpot: This is all due to my hotpot. Do you guys want to give it a try?
[Scene change]
Fuli Chicken: *writes the character for “spicy” on the table*
[Scene change]
Sichuan Hotpot: It’s my turn today.
[Scene change]
Sichuan Hotpot: Everyone, let’s eat hotpot together!
[Scene change]
Har-gow: Cheers!
Sichuan Hotpot: Alright alright, we could’ve used a mandarin ducks pot^. But hotpot has to be spicy in order to be tasty. Spicy.
[End credits scene]
Harbin Fried Pork reading (with Sichuan Hotpot’s voiceover): How can I review it? Is it wrong of me to treat everyone with hot pot? True, it was a little bit spicy, but this numbing effect from the spice is what causes an appetite. Furthermore, it’s really nice to take a bath whilst in pain. Harbin Fried Pork has punished me by only allowing me to eat hotpot with a mild soup base. That won’t do. Fine, the next time I cook I’ll reduce the amount of chili peppers that I add.
Harbin Fried Pork: I wonder who will be next.
-END-
^Mandarin ducks pot is a hotpot pot that has a divider to separate soup bases. Usually one soup base would be of a mild flavour while the other is spicy.

My girlfriend makes me so mad sometimes lol. So it started last week. The pandemic, I'm sure has people through the ringer, by the time we were to stay inside for however long till the vaccine, my girl and I went from roommates to significant other's and now fiances over the coarse of 4 years. But the stress and family tragedies have kinda messed with my mental state a bit. My girlfriend is awesome and not only do I help support her in her anxieties but she's a really big help with mine. Recently the evil voices have come back to whisper negative thoughts. "You're autistic, relationships never work out for your kind" "You're ugly." "You make her feel like she's raising you." Yeah needless to say, my mental health has been a hot mess. "Why did you say your girlfriend made you mad?" You ask. Well, for those of you who have TikTok, you're probably familiar with the song by d4vd called Here With You. "I don't care how long it takes as long as I'm with you" Ive loved this song since it first came out last year. So one day I had a pretty much poop day. Didn't get enough sleep the night before so I was tired, and angry at myself because if I can't sleep, neither does my fiancee. Inspite of how lovely she was to me, my day still looked like it was gonna be bad. We ate breakfast, showered, my protest against doing it together fell on deaf lovestruck ears lol. She dropped me off at work and I pretty much had to deal with crap customers and crap orders, crap fragile mental state, just crap. Called an uber, and arrived home. Texted her to let her know. I did some chores, emptied and loaded the dishwasher, laundry etc. The rest of the day, I got a blanket and curled up on the couch and listened to YouTube videos on my phone. Around 4 she got home. "Hey babybird." "Hey.." She sat on the couch with me and gave me a big hug. Then suddenly, "Watch the sunrise along the coast As we're both getting old I can't describe what I'm feeling And all I know is we're going home So please don't let me go, oh Don't let me go, oh-oh-oh And if it's right I don't care how long it takes As long as I'm with you I've got a smile on my face Save your tears, it'll be okay All I know is you're here with me" I hugged her tight and we both sung along together. The next morning, I woke up to her singing it again while spooning me. She has been doing this for a week straight and I'm angry because so far it has been a struggle feel like a crap mistake. She has made me feel like maybe God was meant to put me here on Earth. And I'm so angry at her that today because its Saturday I'm just gonna snuggle with her under the blankets the whole day. And if I start feeling like crap again I'm just gonna have to wrap my arms tighter around her shoulders. I fucking love that stubbornly loving crazy, possessive goofy bitch!

I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.

Oh great wise ones,
I am but a fresh scrub and I see these two pop up with modern controls at the start of a game and it strikes fear into my heart, I appreciate it’ll just take time to learn how to fight them but if anyone has any genera advice would be much appreciated.
Feels like Marisa has so much armour on her attacks and can pummel my health bar down in a few attacks and not getting perma command grabbed from zangief anytime I’m within ten foot of him feels very hard.
I’m a filthy Ken player btw.