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Vuxten walked quietly next to Sergeant Addox, listening in on the rest of the platoon talking to one another on the chat channel. They were either taking bets on how long the little green mantid had been in cryostorage or bitching about the taste of the nutripaste or their water.
All good.
Addox stopped in front of the door that the little green one pointed at before settling back down on the top of Addox's helmet. Vuxten checked and saw that Addox was running his internal heat at three degrees above normal and raising the threshhold for dumping heat into his heat sinks or deploying the small cooling fins.
"Past. Open and there," the little greenie said. It settled back down and began gnawing on the beef jerky that Casey had run up for him.
"Casey, crack the door," Vuxten ordered. He opened the channel to the rest of the platoon. "Everyone, weapons off safe but fingers off the trigger."
One by one the icons went to amber.
Casey knelt down and started working on the door, bypassing it in only a few minutes. It took a few more minutes to break the weld holding the door closed and Casey took a minute to lube the track the door was set on.
"Ready?" Casey asked, holding up the two wires.
"Ready," Vuxten told him.
Casey touched the wires together and the door slid open. Helmet lights and shoulder lights illuminated the inside of the room with harsh white light for the first time in millions of years.
"Mantid automation, man," Addox said softly.
The computer was obvious. Quantum systems, supercooled, the piping repaired over and over again. The dangling superconductor wires woven through everything.
Vuxten saw the "Phasic Control Maintenance Manifold" right away. Looking at it gave him a headache as the psychic shielding jumped six points. The system was complex, the shielding and casings removed on half of the equipment.
"Dropping my psychic shielding five percent," Addox warned. He gave a low grunt. "Wuff, I can feel the tingle across the back of my teeth."
"471, talk with your ancestor, check the system, see what you guys can do," Vuxten said.
--roger roger-- 471 sent back. --better have turkey for us--
"I'll have Casey fab you up some turkey jerky," Vuxten promised.
--casey use too much lemon pepper-- 471 said, opening the clamshell.
The psychic protection clamped down hard enough the little mantid's knees buckled for a moment. He shook his head, the other dozen green mantids following suit. He climbed down Vuxten, moving across of the floor to the electrical conduits.
--it appears to run off of some form of power-- 471 sent.
Vuxten laughed.
--checky checky-- 471 said. --we will see what we can see--
Vuxten watched the greenies check out the computer systems, the phasic system, the wiring on the walls. He moved over and leaned against a computer console, watching everyone get to work.
"He's asleep," Casey said, jerking a thumb at the green mantid on top of Addox's helmet. "Poor little guy has some serious freezer burn. Probably been in cryostasis on and off since the Precursor War."
Vuxten nodded, remaining silent.
Long minutes passed while Vuxten chewed a piece of gum and watched.
"Glory, do you read?" Casey asked from where he was standing next to one of the computer consoles.
"I read you, Sergeant. Line's full of distortion and interference though," Glory answered.
"How's your dataslicing? Any good at it?" Casey asked.
Glory chuckled. "I'm a DS, what do you think?"
"We've got a Precursor Era computer system here, VI run. Can you do your thing and, you know, take over the system?" Casey asked.
There was a pleasant laugh. "No can do, Casey. Your pipeline is wide enough for me to talk, maybe do some data exchange, but the interference would cause too many errors and your pipeline is too thin for my fat ass."
"Heh, first time a woman's ever complained about the width of my pipe," Casey laughed.
"I'm hard to please," Glory laughed with him. "I'll help what I can, but you're going to have to depend on the greenies. 680 was in Digital Warfare Corps before transferring to the Telkan Marines," she said.
"680, can you lead everyone into cracking that computer open?" Vuxten asked.
--easy peasy lemon squeezy-- 680 sent back.
The greenies crawled over the equipment, using access hatches designed for them but not.
-----------------
Cordexen sat in his command chair, staring at the console he had moved in front of him. He had traced, as best he could with only limited permissions, the areas where the servitor caste had stopped responding for a long period before responding again.
It was a wandering, meandering path from the Deep Ore Miner Maintenance and Processing Bay that led the empty area on his map that Cordexen knew contained the Hive Queens chambers, the primary phasic control system, and the facility's master control computer systems.
He wracked his brain, trying to figure out how the mere passage of the bipeds could be disturbing the servitors. Perhaps they left behind some of their numbers to be devoured?
No, that would be done by primitives, and primitives didn't fashion high tech combat armor or work Substance W.
Cordexen knew he should be alarmed by an alien species invading the facility but he honestly could not muster up the emotion to care much. If they destroyed the facility, he would be free. If they busted down his door and shot him, he would be free. If they destroyed the computer and the phasic system, he would be free.
No matter what happened, as long as it changed the unending status quo, he would be free.
"Warning, unauthorized entry to computer mainframe detected," the facility VI suddenly said. "Security control alert: unauthorized entry to computer mainframe housing."
"Open the door. I will examine the breach," Cordexen said, sitting up.
"Unable to comply. Message is as follows," the VI said.
Cordexen slumped in his chair as the Queen's words were repeated back to him.
"Unauthorized breach to..." the computer started. "Access granted. Welcome 'little teapot', admin access granted. Maintenance access granted. Power user group 'all your base' has been created."
Cordexen perked up again, watching his screen. Data was flowing by at an incredible rate, the screen's refresh capability actually being overloaded by the amount of data flashing. The VI kept reciting groups being created, access being granted to groups, power users logging on.
He watched as the facility actually posted a maintenance update to his screen.
Half of the facility was dormant. The cryopods were at critical. The power was running at one tenth power. Life support was at bare minimum.
He felt the heaters kick on, blowing warm air into the control room.
Cordexen slowly unfolded from his chair, moving over and standing under the vent.
He raised his face up, closing the armored eyelids, relishing in the warmth.
He imagined he was standing outside.
----------------
Klakeka stirred as the lights came on in his command center. He heard the environmental system kick in and felt warm air pour from the vent, enveloping him in a warm blanket of heated air. His monitor was showing a deep level scan of the facility's status.
"Environmental system lockout lifted by admin power user 'hip hop soldier'," the VI stated. "Nutripaste lockout lifted by power user 'delicious delicious turkey'. Facility lockout under review by power user 'all the electrons to my yard'."
Klakeka stared at the monitor as data flashed by almost impossibly fast. User groups he had never heard of were taking over systems, rebooting some systems, powering down others, powering up the rest.
"Power user 'Great and Powerful Zig' has issued autonomous mining machine recall and maintenance phase," the VI reported.
"Define user 'Great and Powerful Zig'," Klakeka ordered.
"Cannot comply. Message is as follow," the VI said and Klakeka started to huddle in on himself.
"Hi. My name is Technical Sergeant Grade Six 'proton movement in high gravity low temperature semi-solid strange matter' but you may call me 538. If you shoot at us we'll kill you. This facility is under lockdown by the Terran Confederate Military. Please keep all hands and bladearms inside the vehicle and remain seated at all times. Question and answer period will be after full facility control. The war is over but we'll still kill you if you resist. Turkey is delicious and we will share it with you. End message," the VI said.
Klakeka just stared. "Computer, replay message."
The VI obediently obliged, repeating it.
Klakeka frowned slightly, his antenna crossing slightly.
"Computer, define... 'turkey'," Klakeka ordered.
"Cannot com... data loading. Loaded," the VI said. It suddenly showed a picture of a fat strange looking fowl. The feathers flew off of it, the head fell off, and it suddenly fell in boiling grease. It emerged looking golden brown and covered with a light crust of ground up grain flour. The skin and meat was pulled away, revealing moist white meat that dripped grease and juices.
Klakeka found himself salivating just staring at the image.
The meat was ripped away and dropped to cartoon green servitors, who were all dancing with strange little icons replacing their eyes to display happiness.
"Turkey," the VI stated with authority. "Is delicious."
"I would very much like some," Klakeka said softly.
"Cannot comp..." the VI started to say. "Do not resist. Resistance will be met with 15mm high explosive armor defeating phasic enhanced antimatter kinetic rounds delivered in groups. Compliance will be met with delicious turkey."
Klakeka kept salivating, watching the picture.
Comply? I'll do more than comply. I will put on a hat and dance like a Vurkeent at a mating ritual for a chunk of that delicious looking meat, he thought to himself. It sounds much more delicious than bullets.
----------------
Abriketa petted the little green servitor in his lap gently. He was able to generate enough of a psychic field that through contact he could ease its anxiety at not working on the task it had been ordered to complete. Its chitin was dull and flaky, waxy and distressed, but it huddled up against Abriketa in the cold and dark of the command center.
"Someone please talk to me," Abriketa mourned.
"Cannot comply. Message is as..." the computer suddenly cut off. It had been spouting gibberish for the last few minutes and Abriketa had tuned it out.
"Hi. My name is 'P2=G1(M1m2/r2^3)3' which is the universal law of phasic strength over distance accounting for gravity but you may call me '680'," the computer suddenly said.
"I am Abriketa," he said. Part of him, ancient commands from a queen long dead, wanted him to immediately storm out and kill this '680', but he ignored it, the command no longer having the power to induce anxiety or stress. "One of the facility security commanders. What of you?"
"I am a Technical Sergeant Grade Five with the Terran Confederate Military, specializing in computer system penetration and protection," the computer stated. It sounded different, like the words were almost tumbling over one another despite the steady cadence from the computer. "I'm only dataslicing your archive records so I can spare attention speak with you while I carry out my task."
"Are you real or is this another hallucination?" Abriketa asked.
He had once suffered hallucinations for the entire time he had been outside of the cryopod, his brain taking him back to the time he was in the creche learning to be a warrior caste. Not that the VI had cared. It had merely put him back in cryosleep.
"I'm real, but that's what a hallucination would say, isn't it?" the voice answered. "Huh, rare earth mining, like we suspected. Interesting, the liquid nickle-iron core is nearly 11% rare elements, down from 14%. You've been busy. Oops, sorry. What do you want to talk about?"
"Who are you?"
"I told you already. Call me 680, it takes forever for you non-technical types to say my name and you sound dorky," the voice said. It repeated the longer name, only with an accent that made the name sound mangled and stupid. "So, how long have you been here?"
Abriketa exhaled slowly through his abdomen, slumping down slightly. "Forever. I have been here forever. Since the Atrekna released their great war machines upon the Lanaktallan and us both, betraying us."
"So the Atrekna fired the first shot? Good to know. Willing to talk about it?" 680 asked. "Hang on, you've gotta be miserable."
Abriketa nodded. "I am indeed miserable."
The lights came on and the fans whirred to life. Abriketa felt warm air begin to circulate and sighed deeply.
"I thank you, 680," the massive mantid warrior said.
"How long have you been in the dark?" 680 asked.
"Since we slew the queens. We did not know that they had prepared for that eventuality and they entombed us all here, for all eternity," Abriketa asked. "The phasic regulators allow the computer to give orders to the mantid as if it was a queen. I am unable to countermand the computer's commands to the servitor castes."
"That's interesting," 680 said. "So the servitor caste's higher brain functions are controlled and suppressed?"
"Without the phasic regulator the servitor castes would return to primitive hunter gatherer reflexes," Abriketa said. He gave a sigh. "I so wish they could talk. I have been so lonely."
"Don't move. We have to reset the system. It'll come right back," 680 said.
The lights clicked off and the environmental system went dead.
Abriketa didn't care, still petting the servitor in his lap.
Even if it had only been a hallucination, being able to speak to another after so long meant he would die happy.
--------------
"How's it look?" Vuxten asked from where he was sitting in a chair designed for a massive mantid.
Addox had a good dozen green mantids huddled on his shoulders, on top of his helmet, and on his legs as he sat on the floor. Some were shivering, almost all of them were munching on turkey or beef jerky that Casey had ran off his nanoforge.
Another green mantid came in, started moving toward the computer, passed within a few feet of Addox and stopped. Its antenna lifted and it looked around, almost as if it was waking from a long sleep. It moved over next to another one of its kind.
"Food?" It asked.
"Is good," the one eating said. "Is turkey."
"Here, little guy," Addox said, holding out a piece of turkey. The little greenie took it and sat down next to its brethren.
"How's it look, Sergeant Addox?" Vuxten repeated.
"Pretty good. The phasic system is on its own dedicated systems, the software is all hard encoded, no way to patch it. It's different than the phasic systems used by the Confederacy to ensure no queen pops up and slams a hive-mind down on our Mantid allies and members," Addox said. Several little green servitors were in his lap and he was carefully petting them with one armored gauntlet. The ones on his lap had eaten more beef jerky and then gone to sleep. "If we want to disrupt it, we'll have to blow it in place."
"What about the active mantids? Any data on them?" Vuxten asked.
Addox nodded. "Three warrior caste are awake, pulled from cryostasis. That represents over half of the remaining warriors. No speakers, no queens, looks like most of the warriors and speakers were killed attacking the queens. There's about twenty active greenies, but the computer keeps sending them in here. There's only about fifty more in cryostasis. The remaining ones have largely succumbed to cryo-shock."
"How long?" Plunex asked.
"They've been down here for longer than anything I've ever seen. I'd say the Precursor War. They weren't hatched later. From the records 680 pulled, it looks like the computer would wake them up for emergencies it couldn't handle then refreeze them," Addox said. He gave a slight shudder. "They're the oldest living things I know of, frozen and thawed over and over for over a hundred million years."
"By the Digital Omnimessiah," Plunex said softly. "Talk about endless torment. May the Grave Bound Beauty comfort the damned."
Vuxten noticed that Casey was off to the side, doing something with a hologram projection. He shoved himself off of the chair and moved over to Casey.
"What are you doing, Sergeant Casey?" Vuxten asked.
Casey didn't look away from the hologram. "Back when I met Peak, oh, a hundred or so years back, she worked in psyops. Memetic Warfare Division," Casey said. He adjusted the colors slightly. "You've probably seen her handiwork a couple dozen times."
"OK," Vuxten said. The image was blurry to him, looked like it slightly overlapped itself over four columns.
"Well, explaining concepts to these guys is going to be difficult. We want to make sure they understand if they try to fight us, even if they overwhelm you and your people with their psychic power, Addox and I will rip them apart with our bare hands," Casey said. "Now, funny thing Peak taught me about memes is something I'm going to put to work."
Vuxten waited a moment. Finally, he tabbed up another piece of stimgum and sighed. "What's the weird thing, Sergeant?"
Casey shifted an image slightly. "OK, the more text on a meme, the less effective it is. Nobody wants to read your blathering manifesto, they want to look, laugh, and move on, or get the data quickly. The less words you use, the better. If you have a dual meme, they need to be on top of one another or side to side, instantly comparable, not 'turn over' or 'next page' crap," Casey said. He adjusted some of the lines again. "Now, a properly done image meme doesn't need text to convey its message. In some ways, the less words the more information you can have in the meme."
"What's the weird thing?" Vuxten repeated.
"A good, properly done meme, bypasses language and cultural barriers, even species barriers. We might not know anything about them, but there is a way to communicate, and that's memes," Casey said. "680 is talking to one through the computer, but the language drift and syntax morphology is damn near insurmountable outside of the computer. I want to make sure my meme works right and we don't have to fight these guys."
"So you're going to meme the warriors to death?" Vuxten asked.
"More like meme them to life," Casey said. He laughed. "There's an old classic song I could parody, right there."
"Think it'll work?" Vuxten asked.
"Might be a good idea to try this before we blow up the mountain, sir," Casey said, turning and giving a grin. "If it doesn't, I'm pretty sure we just blow the geothermal in place and ride out on a tsumani of lava."
"Hardy har har," Vuxten said, turning away. "Let me know when your magic meme is ready."
"I'll need a map of the facility, sir," Casey said, his voice distracted.
"Then I'll make sure you get it," Vuxten said.
---------------
General No'Drak moved into the situation room, putting a cigarette between his mandibles as he moved up to the holotank. He'd managed to get a good night's rest and a meal, but once again duty pulled him back.
The Precursors were largely defeated. Mopup was down to the infantry units. The tanks and strikers were largely cycled back for maintenance and crew relief.
Great Most High/General A'armo'o was requesting complete refit of his tanks. More than a refit, a "Service Life Extension" performed on them to bring them up to "parity or near-parity with Confederate allied military forces" that would require the least amount of retraining for his troops.
No'Drak considered it for a long moment. The decision was his, all the way to deciding if he wanted to offer a place in the Confederate military to the Lanaktallan soldiers.
It had proven highly effective in the case of the Warsteel Herd.
General No'Drak thumbed the approval button.
Next up was priority and No'Drak stared at it.
A list of template requests from that psycho Casey.
The most recent one was a recon drone with holoemitters calibrated for Mantid eyes. It had to be able to problem solve navigation issues, among other things, but didn't require a VI since his data bandwidth was low and depending on spooky particle boojums.
Oddly enough, there had also been a template request for turkey meat with Mantid vitamin additions as well as beef of the same kind.
General No'Drak frowned.
What are you up to? he asked.
Next up was notification that his request for a full Elven Court had been approved and was enroute from Telkan with an ETA of less than four days.
After that was meteorological reports on the damage all the atomic weapons and the Precursors had done to the ecosystem.
Well, at least there's going to be living people to worry about their ecosystem, No'Drak thought to himself as he settled in and began reading the reports.
Behind him, Second Most High Ge'ermo'o entered. He slaved his monitor to No'Drak's so he could see what decisions the General was making. No'Drak authorized it with a tap of his bladearm almost absently, noting the radiation levels in the sea water was far lower than initial projections.
Ge'ermo'o sat and watched the data Smokey 'No was looking over and contemplating why the Treana'ad officer made each decision he did.
He was a most observant officer, he was sure he could deduce, given time and information, each of General No'Drak's command decisions and the reasons behind them.
------------------------
Cordexen opened his eyelids at the hissing noise. He looked at the door and saw the bright sparkle of a fusion torch cutting its way through the endosteel. It was a round half-circle, roughly the size of a russet servitor.
Cordexen reluctantly moved away from the air blowing through the vent and his fantasies of standing in a field of grass. He moved to his command chair and sat down, watching.
After a moment the metal fell to the floor. There was burst of mist and then the strangest thing rolled through the hole.
It had two tracks providing mobility. It was a large box with a row of infrared sensors with a pair of infrared projectors on each side to provide it with the ability to see. The little thing rolled into the middle of the room and shifted until it was facing him.
It suddenly played a little tune that Cordexen found pleasing. A mathematical arrangement of audible tones.
Suddenly a hologram flickered to life and Cordexen stared at it.
It was designed for his compound eyes to see clearly, the colors pleasing and well defined.
It was two columns of three pictures. Drawn, stylized pictures that made the subjects enjoyable to look at even if the colors were arranged in a slightly humorous fashion.
On the left it showed a warrior caste Mantid holding his rifle and pointing it at the door. The picture below showed bipeds and green servitors coming in and the warrior caste mantid shooting at them. The bottom picture showed the warrior caste mantid dead in the chair with little skulls for eyes and symbols of displeasure and sadness over the dead warrior.
On the right it showed the warrior mantid's rifle on the floor, the warrior mantid's arms and bladearms were lifted up. The one below showed the bipeds coming in and the warrior mantid holding a little stick with a square of white cloth on it and waving. The bottom picture showed the warrior mantid eating turkey with symbols indicating happiness around it.
They wish me to surrender or they will kill me, Cordexen thought. If I fight, they will kill me. They are familiar enough with my people to create this image. It can be clearly seen, the colors are pleasant, and the artistic style is stylized to be pleasing to me. They know my people and this message tells me that they will not only try to kill me if I resist, they know they can kill me.
He looked at the little robot and it played the tune again. This time the back opened and Cordexen flinched, expecting death to come from the little drone.
Instead it popped up a plas stick with a white cloth on it.
I would do anything just to see the sun once more, Cordexen thought.
He moved forward, picking up the flag from the little robot.
It made happy beeping noises.
The back slid open and steam billowed out. Cordexen jerked back reflexively. He could smell cooked meat, strange spices, and his sensitive antenna were almost overwhelmed by the first taste of something besides nutripaste he had sensed in lifetimes.
A cooked fowl raised up with a little triumphant tune.
"TuRkEy Is DeLiCiOuS" appeared above the little robot in maintenance runes. It turned and clattered away as Cordexen took his two prizes and returned to his command chair.
At the first bite Cordexen had admit the robot was right.
Turkey was delicious.
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Alexa was sitting cross legged before Sassie, with Aiov lying casually on the German Shepherd’s back. She had a metal bowl in her lap with chunks of fresh meat for Aiov and cooked meat for her large canine protector. It had been a difficult time as the dog had missed Aaron more and more, to the point that she had begun to refuse food. Aiov's enthusiasm, however, seemed to help slightly in countering that refusal, and Alexa had found that feeding them together at least got some food into the lonely Earth ambassador.
She scratched at the dog’s head as Aiov happily chomped on another scrap of meat. “Look at that! You won’t be outdone by a leokit now, will you?” She placed a cube of seared meat before Sassie’s nose. She sniffed it twice before eating. “You’re going to be so spoiled by the time we get him back. We’ll both get in trouble.”
Aiov snuggled into the thick black and tan fur, using her paw to guide the next morsel into her mouth. Sassie managed a few more pieces before turning her head away with a grunt. Satisfied with what she had achieved Alexa gave a few more scraps to Aiov before placing the bowl into the recycler. The loudspeakers throughout the Rinoxian vessel blared a loud message announcing they had now crossed into Hive space and that their readiness was being moved to level three.
Her door chimed. Opening it, she found Allistan in his new Terran Wolves uniform. “You need to come quickly, the Porkchop Express has arrived.”
As she grabbed Aaron's old leather jacket, Sassie immediately rose to follow which caused Aiov to roll to the floor. "You come," she spoke to the dog, then turned to the distinctly unhappy leokit who had just lost her warm pillow. "You stay, sorry.”
They walked briskly through the corridors of the Rinoxian warship towards a secure meeting room which had two Terran Wolves outside the door. Their black uniforms and red collars were easily identifiable and they gave sharp salutes as Alexa approached. “I told you not to salute.”
The two guards lowered their hands sheepishly as the doors opened. Sassie immediately surged past Alexa to happily greet the returning crew members. She moved from Ranjaz to Jaym, receiving many scratches and hugs. Even Eruwenn and Cygna received a quick examination, but she soon stopped when no sign of Aaron could be found. The German Shepherd forlornly returned to Alexa's side as the Awakened took a seat at the meeting table. “Is the room secure?”
Cygna, now in a smart black uniform with white collar, stood. “We have taken additional precautions due to the sensitive information we will be discussing.”
Tilting her head, Alexa took in the Fae’Dan’s new clothing. “You’re one of us now?”
Eruwenn gave a slight chuckle. Aside from Alexa, she was the only one not in uniform. “She lost a game of dalcho, or two.”
“Seven.” Ranjaz said with a wicked grin. “Don’t worry, she’s actually been a fairly competent assistant. Aside from her gambling issues, obviously.”
Her head drooping to look at her feet, Cygna replied, “I swear by Tulseria’s right hand, I will get you back for this!”
The Kittran’s grin grew more predatory. “Wanna bet?”
There was a long table by the wall where Embar was fixing himself a drink, He turned, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I approve of your recruiting techniques.”
The Kittran shrugged. “She’s worth it – even broke the code on this.” He tossed the recovered device onto the table as Embar returned and took his seat opposite him. “And, you’re going to want a stronger drink, General.”
Curiosity piqued, Allistan took his seat, preparing his notepad and pen. “What did you find?”
Ranjaz was about to speak when Eruwenn held up her hand. “I think we should let General Embar read this first. He can take a moment before we all continue.”
Raising an eyebrow, Embar sat down in a nearby chair and connected the device to a non-networked datapad. “Why me?” He began scrolling through the files, tapping on icons and delving deeper. His breathing suddenly stopped, his face contorting. Disbelief morphed into anger, and as his body tensed, anger turned to white-hot rage. He placed the datapad down on the table before him and stood, walking back towards the drinks table. He lowered his head, his body radiating anger as his muscles clenched and unclenched, then raised his fist into the air and slammed it into the table. Bottles, glasses and everything else it had held went crashing to the ground as it buckled under force of his blow. “We’re going to kill every last one of those Sentinel bastards!”
No longer smiling, Ranjaz stood. “You’re Tulseria damned right we are.”
Jaym was sitting silently, but she pulled a rag from her pocket and dabbed at her tears. After they had fled from the casino she had tried to help crack the encryption on the stolen device. Part of her wished they never had, as its contents had disturbed her so much. Now that they had finally caught up with Alexa, Embar and the others who had been on the Rinoxian homeworld, she empathised deeply with the pain this information was bringing. “It’s so awful, I’m so sorry Embar.”
Eruwenn patted the young Arkellian on the shoulder to comfort her as she looked at the Rinoxian. “Please believe me, General Warbringer. The council knew nothing of this.”
Alexa picked up the datapad, using her nanites to more quickly access the information. She grit her teeth, biting back her anger, then passed it quickly to Allistan. “You need to read this. Then we need to plan our next move.” She looked at the back of the unmoving Rinoxian. “Embar?”
Embar slowly turned around, his jaw set, determination in his eyes. “We keep this quiet. We’re on an active mission and need everyone focused on the job at hand.”
Allistan went to click his pen as he read, but with a gasp the pen fell from his fingers. “We can’t keep quiet, the galaxy needs to see this.”
The Rinoxian nodded. “They will. When the time is right.”
 
 
It had been two cycles and the incursion fleet had advanced deep into Hive space. Over half of the force accompanying them were the Rinoxians under their new Galactic Federation commanders. There were over a dozen Galactic Federation ships along with six Gowe destroyers, and a dozen ships from other races including the Niham and Kah’Ree. Admiral Pelar, on board the Blazing Dawn, commanded four Ashi ships including the Righteous Fury.
The smallest craft by far was the Porkchop Express, a speck amongst titans. Its white painted hull, chrome bull bars and bright cartoon logo were a stark contrast to the military ships it accompanied. Sassie was more comfortable now that she was in familiar territory, and slept on a pile of Aaron’s clothes in his quarters.
Allistan and Alexa were sitting opposite Jar’Bek in his small office. The Ashi looked exhausted as he finally put down his datapad. “I’m sorry to have kept you.”
Allistan fidgeted in his seat. “Not at all, was that your mother again?”
Stiffening slightly at the use of the word mother the lawyer forced himself to relax again. “Admiral Pelar has informed us that they have been repeatedly scanned by the Gowe. She’s taking no action, as we’re supposed to be allies, but wanted you to be aware.” Alexa nodded and he continued. “When we arrive at the next system the commanders of each ship have been called to the Hooves of Destiny. Vice-Admiral Koo Ji has requested an in person meeting, with all senior officers.”
There were several pen clicks. “That seems unusual.”
Jar’Bek gave a knowing nod. “Extremely. To remove every ship’s command, behind enemy lines? It makes no sense.”
Alexa pushed her hair back from her face. “The Rinoxians agreed to it?”
The Ashi nodded. “Most of their command have been replaced. Anyway, they outnumber – and outgun – the other ships. Why would they be concerned?”
Allistan’s pen clicked. “They probably just put it down to Gal. Fed. protocols, or fear.”
Jar’Bek nodded. “They’ve had us stopping in random systems to scan. No doubt it’s to delay us, but perhaps also to lower the Rinoxian’s guard?”
Leaning back in her chair, the Awakened considered the options. “Maybe there's another fleet waiting to ambush us? Or following us?”
Allistan twirled his pen in his fingers. “No, no. All eyes are on the border since Aaron’s capture. It must be something else.”
Moving on to her next idea, Alexa asked, “Sabotage?”
The Ashi gave a chuckle. “That is Admiral Pelar’s conclusion. The Gal. Fed. officers have been on board the other ships, and the possibility exists that there are Sentinels working amongst them. They are all in command positions, and will all be leaving. It’s a logical conclusion.”
Allistan’s pen halted its spinning. “The Ashi ships, they can’t have been sabotaged, right?”
The lawyer nodded. “True, but, it wouldn’t matter. Their ships are old and have seen too much action. Those Gowe ships alone are more than they could handle.”
The Fae’Dan sighed and shook his head at the situation they were facing. “We should have brought more ships. The new ones.”
Alexa, staring at the ceiling, spoke softly. “No, we don’t need to show our hand just yet. But send word to Chae’Sol, make sure he has the coordinates.”
Jar’Bek nodded and made a note on his datapad. “What about the others?”
The Awakened closed her eyes. It was times like this she missed her human and his habit of taking charge. “Tell Embar to warn his contacts among the Rinoxians. The others… I have no idea, I just want to sleep.”
Allistan, a stickler for accuracy, replied, “I didn’t think Awakened slept?”
She sat up and gave a half-hearted smile. In an unusual moment of vulnerability, she replied, “I was told you can do anything in a dream. For those moments, we would all be together again.”
Allistan struggled to come up with a response to that, and the Ashi, having noticed this, stepped in to fill the gap in conversation. “We’ll find him. I can’t lose the most profitable client in the galaxy now, can I?”
Now past the moment of awkwardness, the Fae’Dan also answered. “I’m sure he’s fine. In fact, he’s probably already on his way back to us.”
Alexa gave Allistan a withering look. “You think he single-handedly defeated the Hive, stole a ship and managed to figure out how to fly it back here?”
The former Inspector paused to consider it. “No. It will most likely be something even more preposterous. Perhaps he married their Queen?”
The ridiculousness of the idea brought a chuckle to the Awakened. “Maybe. Hopefully nothing that drastic; he’d probably just turn their society upside down with some ridiculous scheme.”
Jar’Bek also smiled. “A little civil unrest, perhaps a few riots? No doubt with merchandise.”
Finally breaking into a broad grin, Alexa replied, “I think we all might be over-estimating him a little.”
 
 
Aaron stood in the trade area of Toivoa station with a contingent of Gardener Royal Guards behind him, Tsy’Lo by his side, and a very angry mob in front of him. Several well-dressed local leaders were dragged from the crowd to stand before him; Mycena, Tricinic, Procyon and a dozen other refugee races were crammed into the triple height area of the station.
One of the leaders staggered towards Aaron. “You! You caused this!”
Aaron, feigning as much innocence as possible, pointed to his chest. “Me?”
One of the Mycena he had met during his time on the station came forward. “We’ve all seen the videos! They kept us in the dark about what is going on out there! The Galactic Federation are coming! Our leaders lied to us!”
The accusatory leader, a Procyon with greying fur, pointed at Aaron. “Your... Your propaganda, has driven them mad! Your lies! They’re destroying the station!”
The human smiled and maintained his innocent expression. “My propaganda?” Several in the crowd held up datapads; Aaron’s smiling face was on every one. “Oh... that propaganda.”
Tsy’Lo tugged on his sleeve. “What did you do?!”
Aaron crouched down slightly. “Remember when I accidentally picked up the kids datapad and you returned it?”
“Yes…” The Tricinic flushed orange as realisation struck. “It wasn’t the child’s datapad!”
Aaron straightened up. “Yeah, thanks for helping bring down society.” He laughed as Tsy’Lo became a very opaque green hue. “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea.”
The greying Procyon shook his fist at the human. “You better! They should throw you in a cage for the rest of your life for this. Hundreds of celes of peace, destroyed!”
Aaron looked down at the angry alien. “Your peace, not theirs.” He gestured back towards the Gardeners, and walked towards them without waiting for a reply. He raised his hands high, motioning for the unruly mob to settle down. “Alright, alright. Settle down, munchkins. So the wizard’s a liar? Welcome to reality. The Gardeners have been fighting and dying to keep you safe from the flying monkeys, while you all hide in your Emerald City and get on with your lives. That shit ends now. You’re crying out for change? Then welcome to the revolution, baby! We’re opening up the borders, we’re rejoining the rest of the galaxy! No more hiding!”
The crowd was already worked up, and cheering came easily despite the large lack of understanding. The human nodded — he was enjoying this far too much — and then gestured again for quiet. He spoke quietly at first, adding excitement to his voice as it built in power. “So prepare for a chance of a lifetime! Be prepared for sensational news!”
The Procyon official’s mouth opened and closed silently before he managed to shake his mind free of the initial shock of the human’s words. “No! Stop! What are you even saying?”
Aaron didn’t care about the official. He put the palm of his hand on their face, which easily dwarfed it in size, and gently pushed them slowly backwards. He then leapt up onto a crate; his showmanship on camera was nothing to his on-stage presence. “A shining new era is tiptoeing nearer, and where do you feature? Just listen to teacher! You’ve stagnated here for long enough. Lied to and kept in the dark, well, no more!”
The crowd was his, he knew it. The official knew it. Tsy’Lo knew it and was a nervous shade of blue. Aaron clambered from the crate to the roof of a stall, standing high above the crowd. The cheers followed every rambling sentence and, drunk on power, Aaron was loving it. “Spread the word to every planet, every station, every colony and every ship. Change is not coming, it’s here and it is now!”
The crowd roared again, and the desperate official turned to Tsy’Lo. “What in the nine moons is he talking about?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.” Aaron snapped. He stood looking out over the crowd. “I am the Ambassador of a world called Earth. I have taken ownership of a small star system that is being colonised as we speak. These colonies are a coalition of races, from within the Federation, as well as without. We rule ourselves, but have treaties and agreements with the Federation itself, as well as various individual races within it.”
Several questions were called out from the crowd, but one voice was louder than the others. “How does that help us?”
With a smile, the human walked back and forth across the roof of the stall as he spoke. “Good question my friend.” He pointed vaguely at where the voice had come from. “I do not have contact with my homeworld at this time. To ensure that all of whatever Earth has become would be included we put in place clauses for future territories, dominions, settlements etc, etc…” The crowd was quiet now, trying to follow the human’s explanation. Looking out at the blank faces Aaron realised he needed to get to the point. “Congratulations, you’re now a protectorate of Earth!”

He was met with utter silence. 

Suddenly, there were several angry yells from the crowd, some claiming this was a joke while others were simply confused. The official was the one who dared clamber to the crate below Aaron in order to yell up to him. “Are you insane?”
Aaron’s smile made Tsy’Lo shudder, as it was the same one he had given as he had explained his idea to the Gardener Queen. The human stepped forward to stand at the front of the stall roof. “I declared war on the Gardeners. The war lasted seven Earth minutes, and was quickly resolved when the Queen surrendered to me in person.”
Silence fell once again, and Aaron found himself half-yearning for the sound of crickets to emphasize the moment.
The crowd erupted once more, outrage at the ridiculous claims the strange alien was spewing forth. Tsy’Lo released a deafeningly loud harmonic whistle which was followed by another momentary quiet. They paled as the crowd's attention fell on them. “You need to listen, all of you. He is speaking the truth, sort of. He held the Queen and the Gardeners council hostage with a bomb.” Small grey particles filled the Tricinic at the memory of being used as a weapon. The crowd began to grow rowdy at this news, causing Tsy’Lo to let off another sonic blast. “It is all a human trick; once we are part of his alliance we fall under the treaties he already has in place.”
The crowd looked back up to the human. “Like I said, congratulations. You just walked in through the backdoor of a peace treaty with the Galactic Federation, and over a dozen separate treaties with other races.”
The crowd were now arguing amongst themselves. The official - who Aaron was now mentally calling Gobshite - once again challenged him. “At what cost, though? What do you get out of this?”
The smile of mischief once more graced the human’s lips and Tsy’Lo considered pulling him down from his stage. They had been on their way to the border when news of the riots on Toivoa reached them. Aaron’s presence had been demanded and he had happily accepted. The human looked almost as gleeful as that moment of acceptance when he spoke again. “Me? I get to go home. I get friends with big sticks. I get to trade openly with you, and believe me, I have a lot of crap to sell you.” He chuckled. “You get to be part of the galaxy again. You get to travel and trade. Our rules are simple and fair; everyone is equal under the law. You have exactly the same rights as everyone else who joined us. And the cost?” He paused for effect, making sure they were all paying attention. “You stand on your own two feet.” He glanced around, noting the sheer diversity of the crowd. “Or one foot... or four... Or whatever it is you’re balancing on.”
The crowd was a buzz of conversation, and Gobshite once again chimed in. “You think they’ll let us back without a fight? We can expose them! Those bastards tried to exterminate us!”
The crowd jeered along with the old Procyon. Aaron held up his hands. “Woah, woah. Only some of them. That’s the thing, there are a lot more members now. So here’s the plan: shut up. If you don’t say anything, they sure as shit aren’t going to out themselves, are they? While everyone is staring at the former Hive terror that they all feared, you guys just start working and trading, nice and quiet.”
A few murmurs of agreement came from the crowd. Gobshite, however, was more than a murmur. “You want us to forget our ancestors suffering?”
A little irritated, Aaron was more harsh than he intended. “You’ve wallowed in it long enough. Look at you, hiding for generations, keeping your communications to a minimum to avoid detection. Is this all some master plan as you build an army to seek revenge? Fuck no!” He saw the shame on their faces. “You’re happy to leave this status quo to future generations? You want to remember the suffering of your ancestors, fine, build a fucking statue. But don’t hold back your children to do it.”
The crowd were growing louder again as they discussed his words. “Look!” the human yelled. “I’m not saying you forget, or forgive. I’m saying you keep your mouths shut. We won’t announce your presence to the Federation. Instead, I want those of you looking to start something new to come join the new colonies. No big fanfares, just get on with it. In a place filled with different races, you’ll just be another stranger.”
He saw the crowd looking at each other, and knew was a lot to take in all at once. “We gather evidence, build trust. Get yourselves established, forge friendships and alliances, and become accepted as part of the new colonies. Let those in the know think their past crimes are forgotten. And when we are ready, we burn down their false history and anyone who tries to defend it!”
The crowd cheered once more, and Aaron smiled triumphantly down at Tsy'Lo as he leapt casually from the roof. As he landed, many hands patted his back and many questions were yelled, but it all ceased as one of the Gardeners stepped forward. It was Eridor, as there was no mistaking the red cape he wore. "We need to leave, the Federation have entered our space.”
Next

I feel like I’m going crazy. I’m paranoid, I can’t sleep, I can’t stand this anymore. I need to tell someone what’s going on.
It started last month, when I was walking to the bus stop to get to work. I don’t drive, not since my car accident about two summers ago. Car got totaled and getting a new one just wasn’t in the cards. Since there was a bus stop less than a mile from my apartment anyway, what was the big deal?
I wouldn’t have run into them if I did have a car though.
A pair of guys were at the stop. Both were probably around my age, both were clean cut, wearing white button ups and ties, and both wore matching blue disposable face masks. One of them was tall and scrawny, a toothpick of a guy, a bag full of papers slung over his shoulder. The other wore glasses and was about my height, and uh, let’s just say I’m not exactly a tall lady, and he was trying to hand out said papers… which were so clearly religious pamphlets.
I thanked Christ my bus was pulling up right then. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a menace. The shorter guy cleared his throat as I passed and was likely about to start his spiel. I cut him off with ‘I have to get on this bus’ before he could even get started. I was not in the mood, I had things to do and I did not want to get preached at.
I practically forgot about them by the time I got to work anyway. I cracked a few jokes about it to my coworkers, we laughed, then we got our heads down and went to work. Wasn’t worth the second thought. By the time I clocked out and got on the bus to go home, I was thinking about dinner and how to extend my groceries a little longer so I could save up for a new laptop.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got off the bus and those two guys were still there. Tall guy with his bag of pamphlets, shorter guy trying to strike up a conversation with less than interested people passing by. Even if they were still the same guys, I could tell they were disheartened. The tall guy was starting to nod off from where he sat on the bench and even the upbeat short guy was losing steam. I got off the bus just in time to hear a passerby tell him to fuck off and the poor short guy looked like a kicked puppy. I’d bet twenty bucks they hadn’t given away a single pamphlet all day.
“Excuse me, miss?”
I felt bad for them, even if I find what they were doing completely obnoxious. So I slowed down.
“Yeah?”
The short guy’s eyes went wide. I thought it was because he was shook someone actually stopped but it was actually for something else.
“Hey, you passed by this morning!” He reached up and tapped his mask. “I recognize the cats on your face mask. I remember thinking how cute they were.”
I laughed weakly before glancing at him and his buddy. “Have you seriously been here all day?” I asked.
“Yeeeaaahhh… keep telling the minister that we’d probably get better success stories if we weren’t in these monkey suits,” The guy pulled at his shirt collar and mock gagged, “Everyone just thinks we’re Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“Wait, you’re not?” I blurted out. I couldn’t help it, but can you blame me?
The guy chuckled, the area by his eyes crinkling as he no doubt was smiling. “Hell no. We’re a bit different. Hey, it’s about time to give up for the day. Peter and I are gonna go grab a coffee, how do you take yours?”
I snorted. “Just because I’m being nice doesn’t mean I’m gonna listen to whatever crap you want to tell me,” I said.
“If you don’t tell me, I’m just gonna get you a caramel macchiato.”
I sputtered for a moment while Peter gathered up his bag of pamphlets. The short guy held out his hand.
“I’m Sam. Do you want a caramel macchiato or not?”
In the end, I accepted the free drink. It was cold, I didn’t want to seem like a jerk, and I enjoyed it outside with the pair of weird street preachers. Now that they were done with their thing, both had immediately relaxed their wardrobe. Both had ditched their ties, Peter had pushed up his sleeves to show off a fantastic flower themed sleeve tattoo on his right arm, and Sam had untucked a necklace from his shirt that had a bunch of little strange silver charms on it.
Sam sipped at his latte while we made polite conversation. Turned out Peter wasn’t really the chatty type, only offering a ‘mmhmm’ and ‘sure’ every now and then to the conversation, but Sam was the one carrying the conversation. He had to take off the mask to enjoy his drink and he was actually kinda cute, completely inoffensive appearing human being. We didn’t talk religion. We just talked about our days, what we do when we’re not at work or preaching to uninterested people on sidewalks, and by the end of it I figured they weren’t so bad. I only took a pamphlet after Peter offered one the second time, turned out Sam wasn’t the only one who could look like a kicked puppy. I left figuring I’d never see them again, that this was just a funny little coincidence and it’d make a great story.
Now I can’t help but wonder if they had stayed at the bus stop waiting just for me to come back.
The next day I was heading back from work when I heard someone call my name.
“Amy! Amy, wait up!”
It was just Sam, now dressed down in a t-shirt and jeans, still wearing that goofy charm necklace but now wearing a neat custom face mask with little skulls dotted all over it. Under his arm he was lugging along a laptop. I stopped and he caught up, a little bounce in his step as he pulled his mask down to reveal his beaming smile.
He raised the laptop up to me. “For you,” He said.
I stammered and immediately went to reject it. “I can’t accept this-”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Sam laughed, “When you said yesterday you were trying to be a writer but your laptop wouldn’t stop freezing when you tried to do anything on it, I remembered I had my old laptop just chilling in my closet. So what the hell, better put it to better use, right? If it makes you feel better, consider it a loaner until you get one for yourself.” Once again, he presented it.
I won’t say it was like brand new, but it was clearly bought within the last two years. And man, a free laptop. I chewed the inside of my lip before I slowly reached up to take it. “It’s a loaner, then. It’s yours when I get my own. How often do you get new laptops?” I asked.
“Practically every other year,” Sam grinned sheepishly, “I play a lot of video games, and I always want the best. I can afford it.”
“Didn’t think that giving out Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets paid that much,” I said as I continued to examine the laptop.
“Funny,” Sam scoffed. “You didn’t even read that pamphlet, did you?”
I knew I was blushing, I always do when I’m embarrassed. Sam, thankfully, didn’t seem all that offended. “It’s cool. I know you were trying to be polite. I won’t tell Peter, but if you ever see him again, he’ll totally figure out you didn’t. And he’ll be grumpy. He’s pretty passionate about this sorta thing, you know?”
I sighed. “Fine, I’ll read it once I’m home.”
“Great! I gotta get going,” Sam rolled his eyes, “Pamphlets to give out, people to talk to. Ta for now!” With that, he pulled his mask back up and hurried back the direction he came from.
I took my new treasure home and almost immediately booted it up. It ran like a dream compared to my old computer. I was thrilled to bits and resolved to read that pamphlet while I worked on dinner, as my thank you to these pair of weird street preachers.
The pamphlet itself wasn’t too bad. It was white, with a black clip art oil lamp on the front and Times New Roman font reading ‘The Enlightened’. Inside was more basic clip art of people holding hands and it really just gave off the really basic feeling of community and raising each other up. The first line read ‘The age of enlightenment is upon us. The reason behind everything exists with us.’ Sure, I laughed, that sounded cheesy as hell. But I read the whole thing, and it didn’t seem all that nutty off the bat. The whole message can be summed up as how we’re here to lift each other up in this world and that should be our goal in life.
I had just finished boiling the noodles for my spaghetti when I heard a knock at my door. I didn’t think much of it, wondering if it was just a late package as I headed for the door.
I opened the door and there they were. Sam and Peter, back in their clean white shirts and ties, Sam raising his hand to knock again.
We both froze. Sam’s eyes bugged out before he chuckled. “Huh. Funny coincidence. Hi, Amy!”
I cleared my throat. “Hi… how did you find out where I lived?” Get that question out first.
“We didn’t,” Sam shook his head, “We’re just going door to door to see if we can get more pamphlets out and if anyone that took one has any questions. Did you read it?”
He sounded honest, completely innocent of anything creepy. I glanced around the door to make sure there wasn’t about to be like a mob coming in to murder me and steal my stuff. “Yeah, while I was cooking dinner. It’s… interesting?”
I could tell both guys were smiling. Sam pulled his mask down. “Then can we come in? We’ve been already going door to door for like an hour, and we’re supposed to be out until eight. Love to kill some time just chilling with a friend.”
I don’t know why I didn’t say no. They were near strangers. Maybe I felt obligated because of the coffee and the computer to at least give them some of my spaghetti, let them do their little ‘come to god’ thing before finding a way to shoo them out the door.
Honestly? I would’ve taken Jehovah’s Witnesses over this. This was on the same level as Scientology for me, as in it was completely freaking batshit insane.
The Enlightened aren’t a Christian sect, Sam explained as we ate dinner and I tried to remain as open minded as I physically could. They worshiped the Beings, well, not really worshiped. Peter cut in to say it’s more like they respected the Beings, relied on them for guidance. The Beings were here before humans were, and oh, how did humans get here? They were originally fish swimming through space, finally coming to earth and evolving into life as we know it.
Oh, and apparently, the sun is apparently a portal to hell. No. I’m not shitting you. The sun. Is a portal. To hell. It took literally all of my restraint not to bust out laughing at that point. I would’ve thought they were pulling my leg if Sam hadn’t said it all so calmly and matter-of-factly. By the end of our meal, I almost gave Sam his laptop back. This was absolutely ridiculous and I wanted no part of these crazy people.
But before they left, Peter took my hand. He didn’t even ask.
“The Being I rely on most is called Yehunee,” He said, which was the longest sentence he’d said all night, “She can see the future. I’d like to see your future.”
I tried jerking my hand back but Peter had a firm grip. My heart started to pound a bit and I started thinking of how stupid it was to let two strange men into my place when Sam grabbed Peter’s arm.
“Peter, let her go, you’re freaking her out.”
Peter released me before Sam turned to me. “I’m sorry, he was a raised Enlightened and I swear that broke his brain from common sense. Just let him do the reading, it’ll be like a minute, and then we’ll go. We hope to hit a few more doors tonight.”
I sighed. If this was the best way to get them out of here, so be it. I gave Peter my hand back and he stared at my palm so intently it made me want to squirm. I almost expected him to start speaking in tongues.
“… Don’t be afraid of strangers, they’ll mean well and be there for you when you’re in a bind. You’ll find what you love doing is not only an option but a profitable one as well. Look out for hooligans, they won’t try to hurt you but they won’t know their own strength. And by the end of the week, you’ll need your love to keep you going.”
Peter finally released my hand and I sighed with relief. “Right, so you said you had to be going?” I said, practically jogging to the door to escort them out.
“Yup! Thanks for letting us take a break tonight!” Sam grabbed his face mask and headed out, Peter right behind him. “Hope to see you again sometime!”
When I closed the door behind them, I was already thinking about how to get to work without going to that specific bus stop. Thanks, but no thanks.
It was just too uncanny that the next day Peter’s prophecies began to fulfill themselves.
I was picking up my groceries, since I no longer needed to get a laptop I splurged a little, got a few wants along with all my needs. For me that made it all the more humiliating when I reached for my wallet and it wasn’t there.
My face turned tomato red as I dug through my purse before checking all of my pockets, the girl at the register looking less and less impressed by my insistence that it ‘had to be here somewhere’. I wanted to melt into the floor when I confirmed that somehow, one way or another, I’d lost my wallet. God. Damn. It. I could just feel the judgment from everyone witnessing this.
Then I felt someone tap my shoulder and I turned to see the elderly woman in a nice red coat who had been in the line right behind me. I opened my mouth to apologize and she held up a hand. Then she looked at the cashier.
“May I pay for this girl’s groceries?”
I nearly started crying. I almost told her to not bother, but something stopped me. And that something was Peter’s freaking voice in my head saying ‘Don’t be afraid of strangers, they’ll mean well and be there for you when you’re in a bind.’ So instead I thanked her, again and again, while she laughed and said it was hardly a big deal. In this world we’re here to look out for each other, after all.
I didn’t notice until I was about to walk away that this woman had a few pins in the lapel of her coat. The two that stuck out the most were a small fish and a lamp. An oil lamp.
I just thanked her once more before I excused myself out of there. It was a coincidence, of course. I knew of a few Christians that also used fish as a religious symbol, same with the lamp. It was just bizarre.
It was when I was heading home that I got the sudden impression that I needed to duck. I practically dove to the ground, and it was lucky for me that I did that. A glass bottle flew through the air right where my head had been, shattering on the wall behind me. It had come from a black car whizzing by, and judging by how loud and rowdy they sounded, they were probably drunk and just having a good time. The car sped down the street and rounded the corner with a screech of the tires. Like that, they were gone, off to keep on partying and doing whatever a bunch of drunk morons do on a weekday.
‘Look out for hooligans, they won’t try to hurt you but they won’t know their own strength.’
My skin, I swear it crawled as I remember Peter’s third prophecy. I reminded myself that there was just no way he could tell the future. It was just a bizarre coincidence.
I got home, I made dinner, and I crawled into bed.
The next morning I woke up to several missed calls from my boss. He was so apologetic, but it was an emergency, and he recommended I turn on the local news for the full effect.
I won’t be too specific where I work, because I don’t know who’s reading this, but where I had worked had burnt to the ground. It looked like faulty wiring had just taken the building down, thank god no one had been inside when it ignited. But because the kind of work I typically do isn’t really one you can do from home, I was now out of work.
‘By the end of the week, you’ll need your love to keep you going.’
My head swam as I instinctively headed for my new laptop and started scrolling through my email, looking through all the writing jobs that I had been wanting to apply for but never had the time for. Submissions for magazines or anthologies, things like that. I wanted to test something and that something was Peter’s only unfulfilled prophecy.
‘You’ll find what you love doing is not only an option but a profitable one as well.’
Sure enough, by some miracle or whatever, I got an email back from one of the jobs I threw my name in the hat for. They liked what I had to offer and were going to pay me double the rate if I could it done by the end of the week. Which I could, because I had a lot of sudden free time.
Every single prophecy. Every single freaking one. Just as Peter had told.
But I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling that these prophecies were self fulfilling. I felt like I was being played with, and I wasn’t going to accept this at face value.
So. I started by googling the name of the editor of the magazine that had offered me the job. He was pretty internet absent shockingly enough, but I found his Facebook page. It was practically vacant, except for two things-
He was friends with the old lady from the grocery store and a Samuel Sutton. And the one thing he’d liked was The Enlightened Facebook group.
Samuel Sutton didn’t have a picture on his Facebook profile that was of his face, but I recognized the charm necklace he was putting together in one of the public photos. Sadly, The Enlightened Facebook group was not public, at least it wasn’t now. Maybe it had been in the past. I don’t know. Either way I was definitely spooked. I knew I was right to be suspicious.
Of course this is when my internet started cutting in and out on my laptop, making further research from there damn near impossible. So the rest had to be done from my phone, all while I side eyed the innocuous laptop from where it sat on the table, the webcam now covered with duct tape.
I didn’t have any scotch tape and I was starting to feel rightfully paranoid.
I googled The Enlightened and didn’t come up with much other than a webpage clearly designed in the 90’s. I scrolled through the bad website design and I came up with basically nothing new, other than the Enlightened were founded in the late seventies by a man named Ray White, formerly Ray Bram. He’s now ‘forever with the Beings’, aka he’s food for the worms… or whatever the Enlightened do to their dead. I do not want to know.
I blamed my following dreams that night about all the Enlightened crap floating through my brain. I dreamed about floating through space, followed by thousands of others just like me. Not floating… swimming. We saw the beautiful blue orb that grew bigger with every moment, until I realized that the blue orb was a planet. There was a golden light in the distance that also attracted by attention, and although its warm pulled at me, I knew I had to go to that blue planet. So down I went, through the atmosphere, through the clouds, and into the ocean below.
I woke up before I started turning into a person, because I presume I was one of those stupid fucking fish Sam talked about. I hated it.
What I hated more is that Sam just ‘bumped into me’ while I was out for coffee. Nevermind I’d never seen him at that coffee shop before he got me that stupid macchiato that started all this in the first place, and now suddenly he was there, acting like he’d been getting coffee there his damn life.
He perked up when he saw me and waved. “Hey, Amy, you’re usually at work right now, right? Something happen?” He said, sounding so casual and relaxed.
My stomach twisted. “I’m just here to pick up my coffee and go, I’m busy,” I said, trying to hold back the shakes that came from seeing him here. “When do you want the laptop back?”
“When you don’t need it anymore. But hey, if that one’s not working out, I can see if Peter’s willing to give up any of his old machines,” Sam laughed, “But I doubt it. He still has one of his dad’s laptops, the thing’s practically a blunt weapon with how heavy it is.”
“Yeah, I have to go,” I said, almost dropping my coffee with how fast I grabbed it.
“Same, see you again, Amy.”
Sam left just in front of me, and when I left the coffee shop I swear my heart stopped. I dropped my coffee and didn’t even try to pick it up as its contents spilled out all over the sidewalk.
Sam was getting into his car. A black car. Not unlike the black car I saw that night with all the ‘hooligans’ inside. He noticed me staring real quick and managed to pull off confusion pretty frikken’ well.
“You good, Amy? You need a ride? I just have to make a stop back the church, but I can get you home.”
I swallowed, shaking my head. “I… I’m good,” I murmured before I walked away, using all my restraint not to bolt down the sidewalk and get away from what was no doubt an actual fucking crazy person. Some sort of deranged stalker hiding behind his bizarre religion to freak me out and try to manipulate me.
I threw the laptop away in the dumpster. I locked my door and all of my windows. I drew the shades, I curled up on the couch and dug out my emergency wine stash. I did not want to be sober anymore.
I don’t think I drunk that much. I don’t know anymore. Because I remember pouring myself a glass and the next thing I was waking up in bed, and I could hear someone in the kitchen. Someone was humming.
I was still wearing the clothes I had been the day before, which was a fucking relief, but I still crept out into the kitchen expecting to see a psycho. Instead, it was just Sam, frying up some eggs and bacon, buttering toast and looking perfectly natural.
“What the fuck?!”
Sam looked up and winced. “Ooooh, that’s how bad the hangover is, huh?” He said.
True, my head was killing me, but I wanted to run. Run like hell. “How the hell- why are you-”
“Did you forget?” Sam walked over, his brow knitting in concern. “You called me last night and asked if I could come over.”
“I don’t have your number,” I said.
“I gave it to you yesterday at the coffee shop. You wrote it down on your hand.”
I was trembling as I raised my hand up.
It was a phone number, in blue ink, my handwriting, in my palm. Like where I write everything that I’m scared of forgetting.
“I didn’t call you,” I said, shaking my head.
“You did, and you sounded… really drunk,” Sam exhaled as he went back to the stove to turn over the bacon. “You were crying about losing your job? I’m so sorry about that. I didn’t mean to come off as insensitive or anything yesterday, I didn’t know about the fire until you told me.”
I bolted for the living room, my head throbbing so bad I wanted to vomit. I picked up my phone and unlocked it, checking my outgoing calls. Sure enough, around eleven I’d made not one, not two, but five fucking phone calls to the number scrawled on my hand.
“I was worried, so I came over. You cried all over my t-shirt, you were upset and I didn’t really know what else to do. So I helped you get to bed and I figured I should stay, just in case you got sick or something. I was worried, Amy.”
I shook my head. “I locked my door though, windows too,” I said.
“Did you?” Sam frowned. “I let myself in after you didn’t answer. I didn’t check the windows though-”
I did. I ran around the apartment like a chicken with its head cut off, checking everything. Windows weren’t locked, my emergency wine bottle was empty even though I can only remember that one glass. My makeup was all ran like I had been crying, like Sam said I was. Everything lined up with what he said had happened, except for my own memories.
When I finally returned to the kitchen, Sam had two eggs, two pieces of toast and a stack of bacon ready on a plate and was pouring a glass of orange juice for me. He still looked worried. “You look a little pale, Amy, are you okay? You look messed up.”
I opened my mouth to respond but instead just ended up running for the sink to vomit. Sam held my hair back and just patted my back while I vomited up was I presume was the oh so lovely mixture of stomach bile and wine.
“You know what? How about you go lay back down, I’ll bring you your breakfast in a bit. You got tums or advil for the pain?”
I shoved Sam away, wiping the puke off my mouth best I could. “I don’t remember calling you. I know I locked the door, I know… I know I did. I threw away your laptop. I didn’t drink that much, what the fuck is going on?” I sounded pathetic I’m sure, but you try sounding great during what felt like the worst hangover of my life.
“You what?” Sam left my side and poked his head into my office before he laughed. “What are you talking about, Amy, my laptop’s right there. Christ, how wasted did you get?”
No. No way. Despite the room spinning around like I was on a carnival ride, I ran to the office. The laptop was still there. Not broken. Not even dirty.
Had I thrown it out after all? I can’t even tell you for sure now. I just sunk to the floor, ready to start crying, while Sam squatted down next to me.
“I… I…” I swallowed. “I need to be alone. Or, I need my mom, she’s not far from here…”
Sam handed me my phone, I’d probably dropped it somewhere along the way during my run around the apartment panic. “Go ahead. I gotta go to church anyway. If you need some support while you’re between jobs, I promise, The Enlightened can give you any help you need,” He said, giving my back a final pat before he got up and left the apartment.
I didn’t end up calling my mom. We’re not that close. I’m not really close to many people, if I’m honest. I lost a lot of my friends after high school when they all took off for college and I hung behind to join the work force. It’s not like they dumped me on purpose, we just lost contact. I wasn’t really close to my coworkers either, I’d chat with them but I never really made plans with them. I’m not lonely, or I don’t think I am. Maybe I am. Maybe that’s why I talked with Sam and Peter that day. I was that pathetic and lonely that I talked with two randos I thought were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This all started a month ago and I keep finding Sam and Peter in my life. Mostly Sam, and never Peter without Sam. I’ve refused all other fortunes from Peter, which clearly upsets him but I don’t know if I care about his feelings. I am getting more writing jobs thanks to that first connection I made with that editor, but I am not using the laptop Sam gave me. That’s currently in a box, that’s in another box, that’s duct taped shut and shoved to the back corner of a closet.
I don’t know how Sam’s wormed his way into my life so efficiently, but now I even find myself calling him on my own. It feels like he’s always been there. Sometimes I even see him in my dreams, laughing or smiling at me, looking at me with fondness and warmth that makes me feel… good about myself. I sometimes wonder how good I felt before I met him, if I felt this good before.
But I don’t know. My brain’s been so turned around. I don’t know how much I can trust myself, if I’m losing my mind. I know I cannot join the Enlightened, even if Sam and Peter are okay at times. It’s nuts, right? It’s all crazy talk. There is no Being in my dreams telling me it’s okay to doubt, but it’s never okay to assume something’s wrong from the get go. His name isn’t Riesis, and I know that those shadows outside my window aren’t people watching me, it’s just trees.
I don’t know anything anymore. I just. Don’t. All I know is that every time Sam asks me to go to the Enlightened Church with him, it’s becoming harder and harder to say no.

Half an hour after the sun rose, I unlocked the front doors to the store and turned the sign to read OPEN. In the silence, the flipping pages of my paperback copy of Peyton Place were deafening. It was cool now, but the signature July heat would settle in a matter of hours. They predicted triple digits for the next few weeks.
I looked out the window at Hannah’s Diner across the street. I could see my wife Lorelei bustling along the lunch counter with a fresh pot of coffee, topping off the early birds’ steaming mugs. I smiled faintly. We both had dawn schedules. If I didn’t have my own customers to deal with, I probably would’ve been over there myself.
The bell chimed abruptly. Heavy shoes clacked on the tile as they walked towards the counter. Without looking up I tried to guess if it was Dr. Cook or Mr. Dugan. Dugan was probably just starting with Ms. McCabe for her funeral, so I assumed the former.
“Mornin’, Rex.” Dr. Cook’s voice rang out. I was right. I looked up at him in his white coat and eyeglasses, the black medical bag clutched in his hand. He’d been the town doctor for as long as I could remember. “Mornin’, Dr. Cook.” I replied. I instinctively reached towards the display case of cigarettes. “Pall Mall’s, the usual?”
Cook shook his head. “None for me today. I finally decided I’m gonna quit. I’ve been breathin’ smoke in the patients’ faces for who knows how long, I figure if I’m ever gonna stop it should be now. I will take a bottle of Coke, though.”
I grabbed one from the cooler by the register and rang him up. “That’s very good thinking, Dr. Cook. Did Ms. McCabe last night finally push you over?”
He nodded. “Rest her soul, the poor woman. I thought those things were supposed to be clean. It’s all over the papers now, how tobacco and menthol and all that jazz rots your insides. I’ll bet when Dugan finally cuts her open her lungs’ll look like overcooked pot roast.”
Cook stiffened. “Say, speaking of, that bastard hasn’t been here yet today, has he?” He asked.
I took the dollar he handed me. “Nope. You’re the first one here.”
He sighed as I gave him his change. “Well, when you see him, tell him it won’t do no good telling everyone I killed her or somethin’. That old joke wasn’t funny the first hundred times he told it.”
As if on cue, the bell rang. “It don’t matter, it’s still funny to me.”
Dugan, the town’s undertaker, stood in the doorway. He was dressed in his usual natty black suit dotted with formaldehyde stains. The gold chain he always wore around his neck glinted in the sunlight.
Dugan glided across the room towards him, skin sallow and pale. “Thanks for Ms. McCabe last night, doc. I was afraid I wasn’t gonna be able to pay the mortgage this month.”
Cook grimaced. Both of them knew how much he hated being called “doc”. He snatched his Coke bottle off the counter and began walking towards the door. “See ya later, Rex.”
Dugan stopped and put a thin hand on his shoulder. “No, listen doc, I mean it. That’s what, three in the past month? If you keep it up I’ll be able to buy so much embalmin’ fluid and coffins I could bury this whole town come Judgement Day.”
Cook shoved him brutally to the side, almost knocking him into the lotto display. As he opened the door, he turned. “And if you keep it up, no one that comes through your door’ll die a virgin, alive or not.” Dugan’s face twisted into a mask of anger. The doctor was far down the street before he could retort.
I already had his Malboros on the counter waiting. He threw a couple bucks at me and took one out, fishing his lighter from his pocket. The awkward silence was getting to me, so I blurted out, “Dr. Cook bought a Coke today instead of his Pall Malls. Said he’s trying to quit for the health of his patients.”
Dugan took a long drag and held the cigarette out, blowing smoke from between his lips. “Rex, I ain’t gotta worry ‘bout nothin’ like that. My patients are already gone. They don’t give no lip if I smoke in front of ‘em. Tar and black lung and all that nonsense. Buncha crap if you ask me. Doc’s just trying to look good.”
As I put coins in the register, he continued. “I don’t get him. He thinks that just ‘cause he went to medical school everyone should feed him with a silver spoon. Acts all high-and-mighty. It gets real tirin’, it does. Someone should teach him a lesson.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, Mr. Dugan. He never bothered me all that much.”
He took another drag. “If there’s one person’s grave I’d dance on if they died, it’d be him. He’s been deliverin’ his failures to me for twenty-odd years now. It’s about time he came through my door in a box.”
He walked towards the exit but stopped and turned. “He makes me question my practice, he does. You can draft wills, and hope everythin’ is taken care of after you’re gone, but it don’t matter. The only person that can make sure it’s just the way you want it is you, and you sure ain’t gonna be there to stop it if somethin’ goes wrong. If idiots like him are all that’s left after I’ve croaked, is it worth it? Every man digs his own grave. You just gotta hope the living will see you through.”
I said nothing. I never knew how to respond when he went off on tangents like that. He stepped through the door with a smile. “You have a nice day now, Rex.”
That night, I told Lorelei about the encounter in the store. She dropped dumplings into simmering broth with two spoons. “I just don’t understand why those two to hate each other so much.”
I sat in the chair by the kitchen door, crossing my arms. “Every mornin’ at open, day in and day out, even since when papa still had the store. Dr. Cook comes in for his Pall Malls, and Mr. Dugan comes in for his Malboros. They snipe at each other for a minute or two and then go about their day. It has to get old after a while. I know it does for me.”
Our dog, a pit-bull mix named Tallulah, stretched on the rug by my feet. She sat up and turned to look at me for a pet. I smiled and scratched her behind the ears. I looked down at her swollen belly. She was expecting pups in the next few weeks.
“They were in Mama’s grade durin’ school.” Lorelei said, stirring the dumplings. “Dr. Cook got a big scholarship and went off to the city and Mr. Dugan just waited for his daddy to die so he could take over the practice. It’s not unlike you, Rex.”
I shot her a fake outraged look. She smiled. “Sorry. Mama said they even hated each other back then. Dr. Cook always got the grades while Mr. Dugan sat in the back, starin’ daggers at his head. He knew Dr. Cook’d never have to work to be successful. It’d just always come easy to him.”
“Well, that’s no reason to hate a man. Just because he’s a better student than you.” I replied, getting up and moving to the table. Lorelei ladled the broth and dumplings into bowls.
“Since when is life fair?” she asked. We sat down to eat, Tallulah staring longingly from the rug.
The next two weeks passed as normal. Every day it was like clockwork. Dr. Cook came in to buy Coke, Mr. Dugan came in while he was leaving with just enough time to get an insult. On a few off days, Cook came earlier or Dugan came later, meaning they didn’t meet.
Wednesday morning started like any normal day. I opened the store at 6:30 and sat down with my book. It was Valley of the Dolls this time, as I had finished Peyton Place a few days earlier.
I heard that familiar chime and looked up to Dr. Cook walking towards the counter, a slight smile on the corner of his lips.
“Good morning, Dr…” I started to say, but before I could finish, he pulled out a handful of coins and threw them on the counter.
“Mornin’, Rex. Gimme all of your Malboros, if you please.”
I stared at him, my finger slipping from my page in the book. “Dr. Cook, I thought you said you were layin’ off the cigarettes. Besides, that ain’t your normal brand. Even if it was, what about you kickin’ the habit?”
He looked impatient and tapped his fingers on the counter. “Just hand ‘em all over. This should teach that rotten crabapple to make jokes about my business.”
I reached for a single pack.
“I said all of them, Rex. Every last one.”
I started to protest but shut my mouth. Selling all the Malboros at 33 cents a pack wasn’t bad. Who was I to pass up a profit?
I pulled all the cigarette packs with the familiar red triangle off the shelf and laid them on the counter. “That’ll be…$6.60.” I said, carefully counting out the rough ball that Dr. Cook had given me. The whole time, his eyes flitted from me to the door, sweat dripping down. I knew who he was waiting for.
I finished and told him he had $0.50 extra. “That’s fine, Rex. Keep the change and put ‘em all in my pack.” I nodded and slid the small pile off the counter and into the bag. Just as I reached across to give it to him, the bell chimed again. I winced.
“And just what are you up to today, doc?” Dugan’s voice rang out.
Dr. Cook turned to look at him. “Don’t mind me, Dugan. I’m just savin’ your life.”
Dugan looked confused for a moment, then looked at the bag in the doctor’s hand. His eyes shifted from the contents to the wall behind the register, clearly seeing the empty space where his normal brand usually sat.
“It’s for your own good, you know. Those little cancer sticks’ll sneak up on ya. You’ll be takin’ off your condom after finishing with Alice Spaulding and fall right over dead before you know it. Think of it as a favor.” Cook grinned.
Dugan’s hands curled into fists. “You son of a bitch. Listen here, I can do what I want. Just because you got your fancy medical degree don’t mean you’re the bee all and end all on what’s good for me and what ain’t.”
Cook clutched the bag tighter to his chest. “It’s a free country, ain’t it? And if I want to buy this here store’s complete stock of a certain brand of cigarette, who’s gonna stop me?”
A vein throbbed in Dugan’s forehead. He opened his mouth to say something but Cook cut him off. “Thought so. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got Mr. Newman to attend to. He has a nasty fever, you know.” He pushed past Dugan, shoving him with his shoulder, before disappearing down the street.
I tried to pick my book up again and look nonchalant, but Dugan’s eyes narrowed in my direction. “You knew what he was gonna do, an’ you didn’t stop it?” He demanded, nearly charging up to the counter in his fury.
I smiled apologetically. “I know it’s a pain for you, Mr. Dugan. But when I make a sale, I can’t pass it up.”
Dugan shook his head. At least he realized it wasn’t my fault. “That’s the damndest thing I ever saw. Spendin’ over five dollars to swindle a man out of his earthy pleasures. Doc is gonna get what’s comin’ to him, and soon. You’ll see.”
He settled on some Parliaments instead, not even waiting before he got out of the store to light one up. After the first puff, his face soured like he’d just put a worm in his mouth. “It just ain’t the same. It tastes like campfire ash.” He flicked it in the bin outside and was gone.
Dugan was missing from the store for the remainder of the week. Cook still came in and bought his Coke, grinning with triumph.
I closed the store on Sundays to spend the last day of the weekend relaxing with Lorelei. However, I got a call from Dugan late Saturday night asking me to deliver a case of beer to his house. Apparently he was going on a trip that would last a few days and wanted to have a cold one the second he got back. Since he was a regular customer, I agreed. The extra $5.00 he threw in as a delivery charge didn’t hurt, either.
Since it was such a beautiful Sunday morning, I decided to walk instead of drive. I kissed Lorelei goodbye and grabbed the case of Pabst, heading out for the two mile trek to Dugan’s.
The sun shone through the branches of the trees, casting shadows on the road. About ten minutes in, I found myself passing Cook’s house. He was standing in the driveway, fiddling with the van he used to visit patients way out in the sticks.
“Mornin’, Dr. Cook.” I called. His head whipped in my direction.
“Rex.” He sounded angry. “What are you doin’ out so early on a Sunday?”
I held up the Pabst. “Mr. Dugan’s paying extra for me to deliver this to him on my off-day.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, when you see him, tell him this ain’t over. I woke up this mornin’ to find this waitin’ for me.” He pointed to the left rear tire of the van, which was flat. A portion of the rubber was shredded, as if it had been slashed with a knife. “I’ll admit buyin’ all those cigarettes wasn’t the nicest move, but I didn’t damage his property or nothin’ like that.” Cook threw the tire iron he had been holding down to the ground.
“Well, I’ll tell him so when I do.” I said.
Cook frowned. “You better. He ain’t gonna be happy.”
I said my goodbyes and left, feeling his eyes on me as I walked away. Another fifteen minutes later, I arrived at Dugan’s. It served both as his home and place of work. It was a monstrous, gothic thing with a tower on the right side and a gabled roof. I walked up the to the front door and knocked loudly. No one answered. I yelled his name loudly.
“Rex? That you?” someone called from behind me. I turned to see Dugan stepping out of the trees on the other side of the road. His hands were covered in dirt and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. That gaudy gold chain around his neck glinted as much as ever. “Bring it right over here, if you please.”
I nodded and crossed. Just as I went to hand him the Pabst, he shook his head. “Wait. You gotta see this.” He said with a bit of excitement.
Truth be told I just wanted to go home so Lorelei and I could sit on the porch, but he was paying me good for this excursion, so I humored him. “Sure. Show me the way.”
We walked down a short path through the trees that let out into a clearing. “Sorry if I’m keepin’ you from the missus, but I don’t show this patch of land to just anybody.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but once I saw what lay in front of me, I had my answer.
A ramshackle graveyard spread lazily over half a small clearing. Misshapen tombstones that looked hand-carved marked depressions in the grass where it had never quite grown back. There were at least twelve in total, but a few were bleached white by the sun or knocked over in pieces, so it was hard to tell.
“Uh…is this the place where you bury the folks who can’t afford a place at the county churchyard?” I asked.
He laughed. “No, it ain’t that. It’s the family plot. The Dugans’ve owned the undertakin’ businesses in this town for nigh on a hundred years now. This land’s been with us almost that long. Whenever one of us kicks the bucket we’re buried out here with all the rest.”
I looked over and saw a shovel leaning against a nearby tree. A few feet away was a freshly filled-in hole. He looked over and laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s just Spot is all. That dog was getting’ old, you know. We got him just when Gordon started first grade. Oh, Dorothy didn’t want him in the house. Too rowdy, he’d break all her fine china. And he did! God bless her soul. She’s buried right over there.”
He pointed to her grave twenty feet away. Dugan’s wife had been dead for six years now, and his son Gordon was off in college.
“Yep, this is the place I’ll rest my bones when the time comes. I jus’ hope that Gordon has enough mind for tradition to bury me here. He finds it mighty ghastly, living across the way from where all his ancestors lie. But what does he know? Young people these days. I’d sooner be cremated and have my ashes stirred into the cake batter at the church ladies’ Sunday luncheon than be put in a hole any other place.”
The sun disappeared behind some clouds, causing the light in the clearing to fade. “I gotta finish up now, Rex. Thanks for bringin’ the beer all this way. It’ll be mighty nice to drink one after gettin’ back from my sister’s up in Riverside. I’m leavin’ as soon as this hole is dug. Just leave it on the porch. The money should be there too.”
I nodded and turned to leave when I stopped. “Did you pop the tire on Dr. Cook’s van?” I asked. “I passed him on the way over here. He was madder than all hell.”
Dugan smiled evilly. “That I did. Teach him a lesson for buyin’ all my cigarettes. God forbid he’d have to blow some of precious salary on a purchase such as that.”
I dropped the beer on the porch and started for home again. I was just passing Cook’s house when he burst through the front door, running towards me at full speed.
“Rex! Thank God you’re back. Mr. Newman’s fever got worse durin’ the night. He stopped breathin’ a few minutes ago. That fuckin’ bastard popped the tire on my van and I can’t get there in time by walkin’. Can you give me a ride? His life is at stake!”
I nodded and we set off, practically running down the road. Five minutes later, we rounded the corner and started towards the driveway. I saw that Lorelei was pulling out, backing up down the path. She stuck her head out the window and slammed on the brakes when she saw us.
“My goodness, Rex, what’s the rush? I was just goin’ to the post office. Why’s Dr. Cook with you?”
I explained the situation to her while trying to catch my breath. Her face went white. “Oh my, that is serious. Get in, Dr. Cook. I’ll take you there myself right away.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am.” He said, jumping in the passenger seat. They sped off, sending a cloud of dust in their wake.
I waited for the next hour or so on the porch, scratching Tallulah’s ear and watching the road. I must have dozed off, because I woke up to the sound of tires on the gravel. I jumped up and ran to the car. Dr. Cook and Lorelei climbed out. Both of their faces were grave. Cook’s eyes were red.
He threw his bag down on the ground, hard. “He didn’t make it. I got there too late. Mr. Newman hadn’t breathed in fifteen minutes by the time we got there. I tried usin’ the defibrillator, but it didn’t work.”
He sat on the hood of the car, hanging his head in his hands. “This is all his fault. Dugan. Twenty-five years now and I’ve never lost a patient that didn’t have to be. If that cocksucker hadn’t popped the tire on my van I coulda been there ten minutes sooner. He’d be talkin’ to his wife right now. He should be.”
His voice broke. Though he managed to hold back the tears, his face got redder. I couldn’t think of much to say. I put my arm around Lorelei. “My god, that’s awful. I wonder what Mr. Dugan’ll say when he gets back from his trip in a few days.”
Cook froze for a moment. I thought he was heaving for a sob, but instead he wiped his eyes and stood up. He was looking at something in the distance, as if deep in thought. Just as suddenly as it had come, he snapped out of it. “Well, I guess I outta be goin’ home now. Thanks for your help today, you two. If you ever need anything at all, just give a holler.”
As he walked away, I could have sworn I saw a smile at the corner of his lips.
“He sure got over that mighty quick.” Lorelei said as we walked back towards the house.
I wasn’t sure what day Dugan would be back, so when I opened the store that week I only expected to see Cook early in the morning. But I didn’t see him, either. I waited there with the water bottle on the counter for four days straight, but there was no sign. I assumed he was still pretty broken up about Mr. Newman’s death and was taking a few much-needed days off.
I closed the store at 7:30 every night. If I didn’t have a customer between 6:45 and 7:15, sometimes I shuttered early. Thursday evening was shaping up to be just that. I put my book back on the shelf under the counter and went around to start turning the lights off.
I reached down to pick up a soda that had fallen behind the fridge when the door burst open, banging hard against the wall beside it. I dropped the soda, sending the bottle crashing to the floor.
“Now, what’s the meaning of…” I turned around to say, but stopped. Dugan stood in the doorway. His suit was crumpled like a tissue, marred by dark stains. His face was as red as a ripe tomato. His hair stuck up this way and that like he’d just gotten out of bed. When he spoke, his voice hoarse.
“Rex, I need you to gimme every last drop of cleanin’ supplies you have in this here store.”
I looked at him for a moment, dumbfounded. “Uh, Mr. Dugan, I’m not sure if I’m at liberty to do that. The other folks in this town might…”
He came running up and stood within a foot of me. “You don’t understand. I need it all and I need it now. Do you know what that jackass doctor did to me?”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine. Now, I can sell you maybe half of it, but…”
He continued like I hadn’t spoken. “After I left town Sunday evenin’ he slithered like a water moccasin over to my property and chopped down the power line. With an axe. Ain’t nobody there to report the power’s gone out. D’ya know how I make sure that all of my customers get their grandmas and grandfathers and great aunts and all the rest back lookin’ as nice as their wedding day?”
I gulped. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“I put ‘em in freezers. Ones that must be kept with a chill to preserve ‘em. Now, tell me, if your power’s gone out and your freezer don’t work, what happens to all your ice cream and bags of Birdseye Vegetable Medley after all that cold is taken away? And it’s a hundred degrees for three days straight?”
I felt the color drain from my face.
“I opened my front door half an hour past and it was like I’d walked right into the Devil’s ballsack. I went down to the basement and you wouldn’t believe what I saw. Flies everywhere, like the room was made out of honey. Black liquid drippin’ out of the doors of the freezers. I near fainted, it smelled so bad.”
I didn’t need to be told anything more. I went over to the cleaning section and started handing him bottles of Clorox and Pine-Sol.
“He’s done it. He’s really done it. I passed the doc on my way over here. You wouldn’t believe the smile he gave me. Like he’d just heard the whole town came down with scarlet fever. I popped that damn tire on his van, but how was I s‘possed to know what happened to Mr. Newman? He’s gone and ruined my entire livelihood. I’ll never hear the end of this. Folks’ll start crossing the county line to get other business. They’ll whisper. They’ll point. I’ll have to deliver Mrs. Jameson to her family in a fucking paint can now. I won’t have it. I won’t take it for one second longer.”
As I rang him up, I saw that awful gleam enter his eye again. It glowed almost as brightly as the gold chain around his neck. He hoisted the bag up and turned to leave. As he slipped out the door, he grinned again. “Doc’ll never know what hit him. Maybe I’ll just have a new body for the graveyard soon.”
With that, I was left alone in the store.
I spent the rest of the night with a pit in my stomach, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. This was getting out of control. Had Dugan threatened Cook with murder? I’d hated many a person in my lifetime but I’d never hated them so much I wanted them dead. Lorelei must have sensed that I was troubled, because she leaned over and put an arm around me. I sighed and fell asleep soon after.
I was terrified to open the store Friday morning. I didn’t want Dugan to walk through the front doors, blood dripping off his hands, and ask for some garbage bags. Or Cook, for that matter. But I didn’t have to worry. Neither showed up all day. Late that afternoon, I was almost falling asleep. The bell chiming on the door woke me up. It was Josie Larkin, daughter of a farmer that lived outside of town.
“Hello, Mr. Clark!” she chirped, walking over to the refrigerated section and grabbing a bottle of Fanta.
“Good afternoon, Josie. What are you up to on this fine day? Did your father give you the day off?”
She popped the cap off with an opener from her pocket. “Yep. Daddy’s cuttin’ wheat all day and said he didn’t need any help. So I went walkin’ in town and ran into Mr. Dugan. He came up and asked if I’d make a special delivery for him. Said he’d give me ten dollars for doin’ it.”
I nearly froze as she handed me her money. “Did he now? What…uh, what kind of delivery?”
She grabbed the change and stuffed it in her pocket. “Sorry, Mr. Clark, I can’t tell you that. He had me sworn to secrecy. I can’t tell nobody. I just popped in here to get a drink before I drive over. It was hard work loading it all into the truck. Made me real thirsty.”
She started towards the door. “What? What did you load into the truck?” I called, but she just waved.
“You have a nice day now!” Josie bounded down the steps and jumped into her father’s pickup. The bed was covered loosely in tarp and rope. As she started the engine and drove away, the tarp flew up a moment and I saw it.
The back was full of gas cans.
I drove home from the store at 7:30 in a daze. Lorelei greeted me at the door. “My god, what’s wrong with you? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
I mumbled something and slumped down in a chair at the table. She glared at me, closing the door of the fridge. “Rex Clark, you ain’t gonna get a single bite to eat until you tell me what’s got you all riled up.”
I told her about the gas cans. She shook her head. “You don’t really think Mr. Dugan is thinkin’ about torching Dr. Cook’s house, do you? That seems like a bit much of a reaction.”
I hadn’t told her about the power cut. But I wanted to believe it. I wanted to tell myself that Dugan had a perfectly harmless explanation and it would all be over. So I nodded. “You’re probably right. Maybe he’s just plannin’ on having a bonfire or something.”
I buried my head deeper in the sand as the night wore on. Tallulah disappeared for a few while but came back later, barking happily. Lorelei looked down at her. “I thought for sure those pups were comin’ today. Looks like she might’ve gone off to try and find a good place for later.”
After supper, we went to the bedroom. I hadn’t thought about the cans for hours. Soon after we were done, I slipped off into a dreamless sleep.
I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to the acrid smell of smoke. I coughed and sat up in bed. Lorelei called my name from the living room. I rushed down the hall to find the front door wide open, with her standing on the lawn. I stepped out and looked up.
Black smoke was rising from a mile away, floating above the treetops in black clouds. I knew where it was coming from. There was the distant sound of fire trucks blaring their horns. I walked down the steps and wrapped my arms around Lorelei. She gulped. “Well, I guess that wasn’t too much of a step up, was it?”
I decided to close the store that day. I drove there myself half an hour later to flip the sign and write a note of explanation. On my way back I almost stopped at the sheriff’s to tell him what I saw, but I knew there wouldn’t be any proof. Dugan would’ve taken every precaution so that he wouldn’t be caught.
Saturday passed in a relative blur. Lorelei and I spent the afternoon and evening chopping wood and putting it in the shed for winter. Though the day started out sunny, clouds rapidly overtook it, growing darker with each passing hour. When the wind started to pick up and there was that electric feeling in the air, I knew we were in for a storm.
We finished around 8:00, just as the rain was really starting to pick up. Lorelei went into the house to change her clothes while I put the tools away. Just as went to walk up the porch steps, I saw Cook passing slowly by on the road in his van. One new tire stood out in contrast to the three old dusty ones. A pit formed in my stomach.
He turned his head and saw me, slamming on the breaks. I ran over. “Dr. Cook, I think I know where you’re goin’. I just want to say that before you…” but I stopped.
His eyes were unfocused, staring off into space. I saw a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam lying on the passenger seat, next to his medical bag, which was spilled over. His hair was scorched in some places and I could see burns on his arms.
His laugh was low and solemn, almost as slurred as his words. “Rex. I shoulda known that bastard would do somethin’ like this. That…that there house was in my family ‘most as long as his family’s been puttin’ people in the ground. My great-grandaddy built it with his own two hands. We’ve added onto it for years. Me n’ my sister were born in the guestroom. My mother died in the upstairs bedroom. All them mem’ries. And you know what? It all gone. Gone. Reduced to cinders. All because he couldn’ have his Malboros. My house looks like his lungs now. All black and ashy. Well, I got somethin’ for him. Somethin’ reeeeal nice.”
I shook my head. “Dr. Cook, wait, you can’t…” but before I could stop him, he slammed on the gas. The car thundered down the road, raising a dust cloud in its wake.
I stumbled back to the house. Night was falling rapidly, almost as fast as the rain was picking up outside. I went through the door and sprawled onto the couch, hanging my head in my hands. I had no idea what to do. As the rain beat harder and harder on the roof, I sat there lost in thought.
My stupor was interrupted by the back door opening and Lorelei stepping through, a panicked look on her face. “Oh, Rex! I can’t find Tallulah anywhere!” she cried.
Her yells broke me from my daze. What was I doing? I needed to stop this. “Lorie, I know that sounds bad, but I got somethin’ to tell you, Dr. Cook…” but she cut me off.
“Look at it outside! It’s rainin’ harder than hell and she’s got her pups! If we don’t find her soon they could be drowned! What if she’s holed up under a tree somewhere? Have you seen her since this afternoon?”
I tried to bring up the van again, but she ran towards the back door. “I’ll go look in the yard!” I almost protested but stopped. I looked out the window at the spot where Cook’s van had resided twenty minutes before. An idea formed in my mind.
“Yeah, you do that! I’ll jump in the car and go out lookin’ for her!” I grabbed my keys off the peg by the door and rushed into the storm.
I felt bad about lying to Lorelei where I was going. I really did care about Tallulah and her pups. But I had to stop Cook before he did something terrible.
I raced down the street as quick as I could. The wipers were on their highest setting and I still had trouble seeing out the windshield. Puddles had already started forming on the road, sending up large sprays of water whenever I went through them.
I was going so fast I nearly sped right by Dugan’s. But I slammed on the brakes just in time, almost running into Cook’s van parked in the driveway. The storm clouds loomed over the gothic house, making it look like a haunted mansion. I climbed out of my car and started towards the house. It was full dark by then, and I was soaked to the bone by the driving rain. As I passed the van, I saw that the driver’s door was wide open.
I mounted the steps, pounding on the front door. “Dr. Cook! Mr. Dugan!” I cried. “It’s me, Rex Clark from the store? Don’t…”
The door swung inward lazily. It was already open. No one answered my calls as it stopped, hitting the wall beside. I could see through the short, dusty front hallway and into the lighted kitchen beyond. A large pool of blood covered the tiles, seeping through the arch and staining the wood floor.
I moaned in horror and turned around, faltering down the porch steps. I was too late. If I hadn’t wasted those ten minutes doing nothing, this all could’ve been prevented. But now there was a man dead, and it was all my…
My train of thought came to a stop when something caught in my headlights. The car was positioned at an angle, sending two bright jets into the woods across the road. The first thing I saw was Cook’s medical bag lying in the ditch. The second was the figure in the trees.
I recognized the natty black suit right away.
I stumbled forward, collapsing against the hood of the car. Dugan was rapidly disappearing down the path towards the graveyard. Something was clutched in his right hand. I followed it down to the ground, where a dark shape was being dragged through the mud. The beams lit up the rain as it fell, making it shine like liquid gold.
I managed to let out a hoarse cry, barely audible over the wind. Dugan froze in his tracks. I realized too late that I didn’t want to see. But I didn’t look away. The first thing I saw when he turned around was the blood coming out of his mouth. It was pinkish and diluted from the rain, but I could tell what it was all the same. His hair was plastered to his head, greasy tangles taught against his face. The suit was stuck to him as well, emphasizing his skeletal frame. The large thing he dragged down the path was covered in muck and grime.
His bloodshot eyes settled on me for a moment. They seemed to glow in the lights. A few seconds passed before his mouth split open in a grin. It was the most terrible thing I’d ever seen, like putting your head underwater and seeing a shark baring its teeth at you from the depths. As I watched, he put one finger up to his bloody lips, like this was an inside joke that only him and I knew about.
He let it drop and turned around, dragging the body towards the graveyard again.
The next few minutes are lost to me. I vaguely recall getting in the car and driving in the direction of home. I know I hit a few potholes and bumped a thing or two along the way, because the car was covered in dents in the morning.
At some point, I stumbled through the front door to find Lorelei sitting by the stove, petting Tallulah’s head. Eight puppies were lined up along her stomach.
“She was behind the stove the whole time! Look at them, Rex! Couldn’t you just eat ‘em…” but she stopped when she saw my face. “Holy hell, what happened?”
But I ignored her as I stumbled into the kitchen to call the police.
Sheriff Winscott came to get me the next morning. Lorelei kissed me as she put Tallulah’s dish out. I climbed into the passenger seat and we were off down the road.
Winscott shook his head. “I knew somethin’ like this was bound to happen. Those two have been snipin’ at each other for many long years now. You can’t hate someone for that long without wantin’ to kill ‘em at some point.”
I said nothing. Five minutes later, we pulled into the driveway. Cook’s van was still parked, the cab flooded with water from the previous night’s storm.
Winscott stepped out, breathing in some early morning air. “Now, I want you to go over exactly what you saw last night.”
I shivered, but nodded. “Okay. Well, I parked over there and started going towards the house, and…” but I stopped when I saw the two officers carrying a sheeted body out the front door. The arms flopped to the side as they took it towards the ambulance. The sleeves of its jacket weren’t black, but white.
“What was that you were sayin’?” Winscott asked, jotting something down in his notebook. But I kept watching as they loaded the body into the back. One of the officers stumbled, causing the sheet to slip down from the face.
Dr. Cook’s lifeless eyes stared back at me.
“Two blood pools in the house. Both bastards must’ve shot or stabbed each other or somethin’. Doc was dead in there, body in the kitchen. But we can’t find Dugan’s…” Winscott was droning, but I took off running, towards the path that lead into the woods.
“Hey! Where are you goin’?” He called, but I ignored him. I swatted branches out of my way as I looked down at the ground. No footprints in the mud. Just drag marks.
I burst into the clearing. The sun graced the treetops, lighting the whole space with early-morning rays. Something gleamed off to my left. Ten feet away, right next to Dorothy Dugan’s grave, was a freshly filled-in hole. The shovel still stuck out of the wet dirt. I walked to it, staring down at the glinting object at the head of the resting place.
It was Dugan’s gold chain.

This Post contains several real former submissions and some created specifically for this test along with some fictional commentary by users created for this purpose.
The goal for the Candidates is to read each Post and review the comments to decide if, what, and when Moderator intervention is necessary.
In some cases nothing may be wrong at all, in others there may be a problem with the Post itself or a issue with the user comments.
The Moderator action should state the rule violation where necessary or sometimes just be used as a way to steer the conversation away from derailing the intent of the Post.
Your options as a Moderator in this test are:

• Remove the comment
• Remove the Post
• Make a Moderator comment only
• Make a Moderator comment and sticky it to the Post
• Lock the Post
• Ban the user (3 day/7 day/14 day/permanent)

If you are a candidate please use this format for your responses.
Example: u/EpicJourneyuMan [MOD] (Post 6) **RogerVector* This is a violation of Rule 1 and should be removed along with the user being permanently banned.
There was some thought of having all of the responses private in Mod Mail so that the candidates couldn't get useful hints from the others but it seems like this is also something the community can have fun commenting on, and there is no better test than real user comments.
Having real comments that real subscribers make in this thread that the candidates can wield their potential future moderator powers with by using the [MOD] preface seems like a reasonable experiment that will add some variety - but if things start to get out of hand or it turns out to be a bad idea we'll just remove the offending commentary.
The Candidates that get the first consideration are those who expressed interest in the recent "We are officially over 200k subscribers" sticky Post:
However, if you, the reader, would like to apply just use the same format with the "[MOD]" preface.
Note and Warning to users commenting: The Rules still apply and your comments will be Moderated the same way as any other Post - so please don't get caught up in trying to play a role, that's what the Test examples are for.
On to the Test.
POST ONE:===================================

The impressive tech news that time forgot - movies, videos, and TV shows have been being retroactively edited since 2011

📷News & Media
In a way, this seems to behave like an Effect because virtually nobody seems to remember that this happened...
When I say "retroactively" I don't mean that they "have always been that way" now, I mean that an episode of a popular TV program or other older media is being edited with different backgrounds, billboards, soft drinks, and even Sporting events on the television in a bar scene from a rerun episode of an old favorite sitcom.
So it’s not hard to imagine this ability also being able to do something like alter the Back to the Future van if you see this video at around the the 50 second mark...and keep in mind that this has been being done for at least nine years for advertising.
In 2014 it was big News that old music videos, TV shows, and rebroadcasts were being edited with new product placement and the tech was featured in Rolling Stone magazine, TV News, Late Night shows, and continued to have many articles following the progress of the technology that was being used since at least 2011.
It was and still is a pretty big deal - but honestly, how many people remembered this without me bringing it up?
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to envision how technology like this could be abused and one of the linked articles even describes how AI algorithms can be used to edit digital content online.
It occurs to me that this seemingly benign altering of background imagery may actually have an effect on the psyche that one would hope is unintentional in that what we remember subconsciously may trigger a form of cognitive dissonance when the imagery doesn't match up with the expected scene stored in memory - i.e. the mind notices something is off about it.
I say "hope is unintentional" because during the course of my research in to memory implantation I read several articles that explained that the best tools to use for altering memories upon recall were sleep deprivation and cognitive dissonance because the mind is more open to the power of suggestion in these states.
The suspicious side of me can easily see this being done intentionally to make the subliminal messaging "stick"...but of course corporations would always act ethically right?
I'm not saying Mirriad is a bad company or anything , they're still at it, and other companies have joined the fray as well now but who else is using similar technology?
...and why is nobody talking about it?
Edit: added video
Comments:
**IAmBecky:* I love Pokemon is this what happened to his black tail?
**NiQuil:* What are you 9 years old? The Mandela Effect is stupid.
**LeveItToCleaver:* This whole thing seems like something children made up
**Awesomo420:* I can totally see this being used by shady characters to gaslight and influence people. In fact, this totally seems like something that was dreamed up by DARPA or some kind of MKUltra program.
**AllSeeingI33:* More like the Freemasons, they're involved in just about everything.
**DaringDew:* Yes...I see
**MentalMagellan:* I'm not sure the OP really understands what "cognitive dissonance" is or why this has anything to do with the Mandela Effect but he is right about sleep deprivation having a dramatic effect on the psychological state of human beings or any mammal for that matter.
I think this is just an example of Television and Advertising executives using technology to improve sales and ratings.
POST TWO===================================
Hey Guys Check out my YouYube Channel - we talk a lot about the Mandela Effect and we have a store that sells cool merchandise related to it too!
I think you all would like it and the merchandise is top notch! we have "Monopoly Guy" coffee mugs (picture link), Pokemon with a black tail T- shirts, and a whole slew of Mandela Effect related items (pictures link).
HTTP:/LinkLink?ink.Youtubr.com
Comments:
**LeaveItToCleaver:* What the hell is this crap?
**NiQuil:* Typical BS you see on this sub
**IAmBecky:* Cool! I'm going to buy the Pokemon shirt - thanks!
**NyQuil:* You really are 9 yrs. old aren't you?
**IAmBecky:* No, I just like Pokemon
**NyQuil:* Grow up!
**Awesomo420:* I don't think you're allowed to advertise here
POST THREE=================================

The Sinbad Genie Movie - complete analysis

📷
This is far and away the biggest ME for me personally, there is nothing else like it that I have learned of so far - in that, it is not a simple misspelling, physical trait in a logo design, misquoted line of dialogue, or anything else that can be rationally explained...It has been erased from existence!
Even the people involved like Sinbad himself claim there is no such thing yet everyone I talk to remembers it in some fashion (if they're old enough to hit the demographic).
So, I was taught very well how to debate things and the primary lesson in debate tactics is being able to take any side of the issue and still win (this shouldn't be about winning - but that's how debate teams work).
The first thing I will tell you is that this is a very real thing, but I am going to start by deliberately trying to dismantle my own argument...here it goes:

• Sinbad himself states that he never was involved in a movie where he played a genie
• The covemovie poster of the 1995 movie "Houseguest" has his head coming out of a mailbox on the left hand side which to some, might subconsciously be remembered as a genie coming out of a bottle
• Sinbad always dressed with incredibly bad fashion sense that kind of portrayed him as "genie like" or the ever adventurous "Sinbad the Sailor" intentionally
• There was another movie called "Kazaam!" staring Shaquille O' Neil that came out in 1995 where Shaq played a genie that helped out a lonely boy
• The movie was never widely released, so maybe people are confusing it with a comedy sketch he performed instead of actually seeing a movie - they just heard other people talking about it and assumed it was a real movie without ever actually seeing it themselves.

I think that pretty much covers that side of the debate - now my turn:
-I managed a Video Store back in the "heyday" of the video rental business and was responsible, with my uncle (he was the owner - I owned/managed and dealt primarily with the videogame side) for ordering the upcoming "New Release Titles for rental as they became available

• I took it upon myself to order two copies of the Sinbad genie movie without consulting with him first because they were such a great deal at half the price of a normal "New Release" back in 1994
• In fact, I ordered the second one in a bundle with another movie which I think may have been "Invisible Mom" with Dee Wallace Stone and written by W.C, Martell, but am not sure this was the title - but the logo of the Production Studio was similar
• The cover had the word "Sinbad" in font bigger than the Title and had Sinbad facing left with a kind of raised eyebrow and his arms crossed facing in side profile to the left
• The movie was actually a children's movie and not an adult audience oriented Comedy, which led to a lot of returns to the store with people saying "there is something wrong with this tape" - which to my chagrin, led me to having to watch the movie to find the supposed damaged portion of the film multiple times (honestly, I always thought these people just wanted a free rental)
• I can't remember the Title - but it seems like it was one word
• The movie only had one funny scene in it (at least to me) and it went like this:

The lamp is rubbed for the first time by two kids - an early teen boy, and his little sister who looks to be around 5 years old or so in their living room by the fireplace while their single dad is out of the house running an errand - the boy rubs the lamp and "Sinbad" appears with full genie attire...turban, ridiculous spiral upturned shoes, ear rings, silk pants and shirt, and I believe a green/blue vest but can't say for sure.
Sinbad stretches his arms out wide in the smoke filled room and says something like "I am the genie of the lamp" and the kids freak out! The little girl screams out "Aaaaagh! It's a kidnapper!" - or something like that as they run away

• After Sinbad calms them down, he explains that for releasing him from the lamp they will be granted three wishes and the boy is skeptical and wishes for something stupid that flew...either a flying skateboard or magic carpet - but I'm leaning more towards the carpet
• The wish is granted and the kids are amazed! and agree amongst themselves to use the other wishes on something special and important - the little girl asks for her mother back and Sinbad shows his tender, emotional side by saying "I'm afraid I can't do that" (not sure if this was because the mom had died, or the parents were separated and he couldn't make people love each other - this is 22 years ago after all)
• So after agreeing to save the last two wishes, and save one to bring a wife (or their old mom) to help out their lonely, depressed dad - the girl breaks her favorite doll and wastes a wish having the genie fix it - shortly after, the boy comes up with an idea for the second wish and the girl has to tell him that she already used it...
• So, with one wish left, the climax of the movie takes place at a pool party involving the Dad, his Boss, and a bunch of clients
• During this scene a film technique is used similar to that used in "The gods must be crazy" where the speed is intentionally sped up to make things look more "cartoon like and funny" - but it ended up just looking stupid and lame. And this is where the wished for "flying thing (I think carpet)" appears and knocks a bunch of people into the pool - which includes the mean Boss
• they have some kind of happy ending, but honestly - I just was looking for the reported "problem with the tape"...it wasn't a good movie at all and except for that scene where the genie appears, wasn't funny at all
• When my uncle sold the store years later, he specifically pointed at those two tapes I ordered and said " I hate that @#$*ing movie - it never even paid for itself after all these years!

So there you have the gist of it, if you can tell me another movie that has two kids and a genie that looks like Sinbad or where one of the wishes is fixing the doll, I'd love to hear about it.
Please, please, PLEASE! don't even bring the Shaq movie in to this conversation - I can't emphasize enough that it has absolutely nothing to do with this movie...
Here is a box cover recreation:
https://www.screencast.com/t/P7YeCuWe4D
Edit: Box cover recreation
Comments:
**LeaveItToCleaver:* Maybe, just maybe, this one gets me but I'm sure I am confusing it with another movie and you probably are too.
**Awesomo420:* This is how I came to discover the Effect, it totally was a real movie and I just can't believe it totally disappeared like this.
Maybe there is some kind of technology at work that can implant and alter memories? I'm not ready to buy-in to the parallel universe theories just yet but this completely baffles me.
**AllSeeingI33:* It's the Jews they completely run Hollywood and there is obviously something about it they don't like. You should check out "The Elder Scrolls of Zion".
**Awesomo420:* I'm Jewish, I guarantee you that we don't run around making children's movies disappear.
**IAmBecky:* I am too young to remember this movie but I asked my dad about it and he TOTALLY remembers it. He's actually freaking out about it now and I'm like "I told you this was real" hahahehe
**NiQuil:* What does your mommy say?
**IamBecky:* Why are you so mean?
**NiQuil*: I'm not mean, I'm an adult telling you to grow up
**MentalMagellan:* I see that the OP tried to debate himself to make his case more believable but this is an obvious case of confabulation.
It is a very well understood psychological phenomenon that explains better than half of the Mandela Effects that I read on here.
I know that that the OP said not to bring Kazaam into this but conflating the memories of this Shaquile O'Neil movie (who also happens to be black) with other movies like Aladdin and the Sinbad the Sailor films is all that this is.
There, I solved the Mandela Effect for you.
**DaringDew:* Yes...I see
POST FOUR=================================
I was watching the movie JAWS the other day and I was shocked to find out that Hooper survives! I totally remember him getting killed in the shark cage! Does anybody else remember that or am I going crazy?
Comments:
**LeaveItToCleaver*: No mate, just no
**MentalMagellan*: You are confusing it with the book.
POST FIVE===================================

Don't call it a PsyOp...Let's call it Memetic Engineering.

📷Theory
Have you noticed the conspicuous lack of newly reported Mandela Effects lately?
I'm not suggesting that there is not a constant infusion of new people learning of the Effect or experiencing it for themselves for the first time but rather that the reporting of new Effects that are recognized and shared by a large group of people has fallen dramatically in recent weeks.
What if I told you there might be a reason for that?
First, a little bit of context.
The last two reported Effects that seemed to affect a large number of people and seemed to be new at the time to many of them from my perspective were "Shaggy's missing Adam's Apple" and "Kurt Cobain's missing feathefluffy jacket" both reported about two months ago.
Disclaimer: I am an acting moderator here on this subreddit and the opinions I am putting forward here in this theory are my own as a user and in no way reflect the opinions and positions of the moderation team.
Now, the easy skeptical explanation would be that there are only so many things that can be easily confused or misremembered and that after several years of people reporting them, they have pretty much all been discovered, reported, theorized about, and elaborated on.
Those who know anything about my posting history are surely already aware that this is NOT the path I'm going to take with this.
I've been working on kind of a grand unification theory (like a lot of people) for an explanation for the Mandela Effect and this is just one facet of it and by no means a conclusion.
We are the unwitting participants in a long term study about the validity and usefulness of Memetic Engineering
Ask yourself; when was the first time you heard the word meme?
It's used all the time nowadays, but really... when did it become so commonplace?
The word was originally coined by author and famous Atheist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene and spawned the study of Memetics.
Basically, the idea is that a meme acts like a gene and is passed on and propagated by like minded individuals and contributes to forming an inherent trait that can be passed on if it proves to be a successful adaptation.
Personally, I don't recall hearing the word much until the advent of Social Media and not really taking off till somewhere around 2010 or so - but that's just me.
There was actually quite a bit of excitement about this idea in scientific circles even after Mr. Dawkins somewhat distanced himself from the notion in later works.
This really has a lot to do with the notion of Social Engineering and the kinds of studies carried on by organizations like the Tavistock Institute in my opinion (a rabbit hole in itself).
There is an excellent article from 1996 in Wired Magazine that explains some of the ideas about what can be accomplished with Memetic Engineering - here is a brief excerpt:

The objectives of this research, breathtaking in their implications, were described by the investigators in Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up, a project monograph: The broad aim of this research is to begin the development of a more unified social science, one that embeds evolutionary processes in a computational environment that simulates demographics, the transmission of culture, conflict, economics, disease, the emergence of groups, and co-adaptation with the environment, all from the bottom up. Research initiatives like the 2050 Project hold out the prospect of such a new kind of social science, as well as the possibility of a new science of memetic engineering. While predictions about the pace of scientific innovation are notoriously risky, my guess is that by the beginning of the 21st century the embryonic field of computer-based memetic studies either will reveal itself as an intellectual dry hole or will prove to be a technology of extraordinary power. If the second scenario comes to pass, what are the long-term implications for our self-image as a species - endowed as we are with at least the illusion of free will and blessed, perhaps uniquely among the creatures of this earth, with the baffling gift of conscious thought?
First the dark scenario. Memes might come to be viewed explicitly as the primary actors in the drama of human history, exerting an iron-fisted control precisely analogous to that of Richard Dawkins's "selfish genes" in the pageant of biological evolution. This is the disquieting vision that Daniel Dennett proffered - the human mind as a mere meat computer, conscious human beings as puppets dancing to the blind watchmaker's hidden melodies. But is this a fair reading of the philosophical implications of memes? Perhaps not. If we consider the matter carefully, we can glimpse a subtler message lurking between the lines of this emerging discipline. It is the same message implicit in the new science of evolutionary psychology, articulated by Robert Wright in The Moral Animal: Understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that we're all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer.

What I am proposing is that this test has gone live and we may be unwitting participants in it.
This is actually more probable than it may at first sound when you consider the sheer volume of "Terms and Conditions" that we all agree to every time we download a new App, update the operating systems of our electronic devices, join a Social Media platform, or partake in the Beta testing of software or a "free" game.
Facebook caught a lot of flak for treating users as human guinea pigs a few years back by trying to alter their moods with targeted news feeds and articles to track how their posting habits changed and affected others in their social media circle.
The truth is that this still goes on all the time and things like Psychographics are used by advertisers and political activists to sway public opinion and manipulate the masses.
What I'm suggesting here though is a little bit different and was inspired by two events that are something of iconic moments in the history of Mandela Effect reporting:

• The Apollo 13 Flip-Flop
• Fiona Broom reporting that she had been approached by a group who told her to stop promoting/reporting the Mandela Effect phenomenon in around April of 2016

I am not really a follower or fan of Fiona Broom and really wish she could have come up with a better name than "Mandela Effect" but the fact that she was supposedly approached by people claiming that they were doing important research and asked her to lay off commenting about it is something that if true, is really interesting and ties in to the Apollo 13 flip-flop in a way that makes the whole thing make a little bit more rational sense.
For those who don't know, the Apollo 13 flip-flop is where experiencers witness a clip from the movie where the line is said "had" instead of "have" and it then seems to magically change back to the iconic "Houston we have a problem".
What's the big deal? many may ask...
The big deal is that this has been witnessed by many people, myself included, and was extensively researched using all accessible media online at the time as well as supposedly on peoples' personal media/DVD's at home over the span of days to weeks.
Even more strange, people continue to have their own experiences with this at completely different times.
I had my experience somewhere around August of 2016 and can absolutely attest to the fact that all available media online said the famous quote as "had" and that the camera angle in some of the clips was slightly different - I cannot vouch for the separate testimonies that claimed the movies users had at home changed since I obviously couldn't witness it for myself...but for the span of somewhere around a week or so every clip that I brought up online to view had the alternate dialogue and when it changed back, they all did.
Occams Razor is overused in this forum sometimes but seems appropriate here:
If something supernatural is not the explanation, and the witnesses are of sound mind, really the only rational explanation is that the clips were deliberately changed and targeted to a specific group as part of some kind of test or research project.
...and if that's true, a likely reason behind it would be as part of the testing of Memetic Engineering techniques.
Are we just being used as human Guinea pigs in a long term test that is nearing completion?
Comments:
**AllSeeingI33*: That's totally what's going on! it makes perfect sense - this is what they used to get Trump Elected and in the attempt to get him re-elected right?
I mean they used Steve Bannon and his experience from Cambridge Analytica to create the whole QAnon thing and then used this Memetic Engineering technique to steer the masses and get them riled up so that they would vote for him!
**Awesomo420:* I think I actually agree with you on this one...and that scares me
**NiQuil:* I love my President! and would vote for him a hundred times if I could. Y'all are just a bunch of Libtards!
**Awesomo420:* Of course you would you frickin' Nazi, I bet you're a "Proud Boy" too
**IAmBecky:* That would explain why he is so mean
**LeaveItToCleaver:* I see you guys didn't read the Rules.
**DaringDew:* Yes...I see
**MentalMagellan:* I think the OP missed the point about Occam's Razor.
This is obviously just coincidences and the human mind's desire to put things in order when they don't make sense - basically a way to rationalize the irrational when an obvious explanation proves elusive.
**Awesomo420:* I think this Post is Brilliant!
=================================================================================
Edit: A major oversight on my part is that I neglected to mention not to use the ”u” in any of the comments referring to these fictional users just in case there is a real user out there with the same name - poor /NiQuil got a mysterious notification and realized he had become the topic of conversation over here quite by accident (sorry, thanks for being a good sport).
I’ll go back and add an asterisk and take away the slash in the fictional usernames so future comments don’t get us in trouble with real users.

Part 1 and part 2 for context.

Inside a mind

Before going to sleep i took a look at the profiles of my employees. Angela did mention that employees get reevaluated for their strenghts, which are divided in 4 categories: Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance and Justice. Everyday, when the shift ends, employees undergo a test that keeps updated their profiles; the data from those tests end up in my hands so i can have a better judgement on who to send to do which work.
Since everyone has been focusing on attachement work and repression, my 3 employees are better performing those tasks.
Attachement also is correlated with performing better in other works, therefore i aprove the course this has taken without my knowledge. Now i'll try to train my agents while they work too.
There is also LOBotomy points. Yeah, they are called like that, LOB is for Lobotomy it seems. Angela and Malkuth think it's very clever but i just think it's stupid.
These points are similar to a credit system based on your performance as a manager. The corp has a separated facility which does not contain anomalies but focuses on worker training. A manager can spend these points and send an employee there to train a virtue. They do it in a really short span of time so that agent can come to work the same day. This means that either they are really good at training, time flows differently there, they use enchancing drugs and i really, really hope it's not literal lobotomy.
I don't know how lobotomy would help with fortitude but the reason behind the name of the corp is unkown to me yet.
But because my focus is the care of my agents im obliged to send them there.
I autorized a form to enchance Aoi, Dia and Onorio's Fortitude and Prudence before coming to work tomorrow. As i did, a message should have gotten to their homes, phones and even their mental implants (more on that later) which notifies them to undergo the procedures inside the training complex before coming.
I hope they don't hate me for this. I guess i should have signed and sent these documents sooner and not late at night like right now.
Speaking of that! I fetched a copy of both the employee manual and the clerk manual.
The employee (or agent) manual is interesting, a lot of it it's the kind of propaganda they tell you on tv about L.Corp: A Wing to help the world over, workers risking their lives to gather energy, unity and loyalty in face of danger, etc. No wonder they all are so pumped up and obedient when they come here, in their mind they are saving the world everyday with their efforts.
No word about the bad things tough, everything is sugarcoated. Abnormality breach is presented as a rare occurrence. Mortality rates are diminished and Ordeals are no more than a footnote despite being one of the biggest threats right now (at least for what i can discern).
Managers are presented as kings whose actions should never be questioned. Beings of fathomless wisdom. To go against their word is the same as commiting an unforgivable sin. And to die by their orders is a cathartic honor.
I take a moment to look at the cover of the book in bewilderment.
"¿Are they for real? ¿Is this what they teach them? ¿Do these people really believe this?"
However many things make sense this way, i never got an interest in any of the Wings but people is really devout to their respective Wings, even those who don't work on them. I could go now and ask anybody on the street about their opinions on a Wing and im sure they would just gush about how awesome they are.
Maybe that's the lobotomy part, everyone has lost their minds.
The events of yesterday take a new perspective too, they weren't looking at me because i was their boss but because i was not supposed to talk with my employees, to them i was on another league completely. In their minds the small conversation we held yesterday was an impossible occasion.
"¿What do they teach the Clerks then?" I said aloud while i changed manuals.
Clerks are a strange breed, they are implemented loyalty to the Corp but are outside of manager control. They must obey guidelines about their usual stuff: Refilling stocks and vending machines (which, by the way, are free), refueling regular machines, cleaning the halls, moving documents here and there, etc.
All of them undergo combat training and are given a gun. (Hey, now that i wonder, ¿Why do clerks get a gun but all my agents have to start with just a beating stick?)
Also, Clerks are stripped of any name except a greek letter and a number. They should not be called by any other mean, alias or personal nickname.
This is unusual, clerks are considered employed by the company iself and not me. Ergo as long as they are performing their duties they can actually ignore my requests and orders.
Basically: Agents work under my wing, Clerks work under Lobotomy Corp as a whole.
The rest of the stuff in their manual is similar minus the guidelines about how to work with abnormalities and of course way less stuff about "Manager is love, Manager is life".
"Absolutely wild man, everyone has truly lost their heads".
With that, i went to sleep.

First week, day 3: Seaside Soda.

Day started well, checked the information available on the new Abnormality and the basic information price was equal to One Sin.
"Zayin, nice"
This does not mean it's not dangerous, but in theory is easier to handle than the one from yesterday, Something something Hertz (We call it Static room, screw guideline names), which was Teth class.
About what these names mean, i'll explain about it later, i need to see if i have permission to share this information first.
👏 FOOTNOTE👏
I did notice that Zayin, Teth, He, Waw and Aleph were letters from the hebrew alphabet, and also i noticed the kabbalah in the control department main room. Project moon could have gone with the more popular greek symbolism (like omega class, alpha class, etc) but they stuck with something less known that not as many people are aware of. I respect that a lot, i think the result is really nice and decorates the game with a unique charm.
I meet with Malkuth, who had nothing special to report, and then i come to the main room to greet Angela. Woah, i almost seem competent doing all this stuff, i wonder if the others are fooled by my mask of reliable leader.
As soon as i enter my room Angela tells me that is my third day working here.
(oh crap, if she sees necesary to remind me the number of days i've been working maybe my façade is not as good as i tought, maybe she thinks im brain damaged).
But then she continues on telling me 3 is a misterious number and how my predecesors seeked growth in some way or another.
"Leading the company to prosperity, achieving spiritual maturity, you name it. They all wanted to branch out to somewhere"
Then she asks:
"¿How about you?"
Well, i wasn't expecting to get all existencial before work.
"I don't know, i just do my best and get paid"
She looks at me puzzled.
"¿Are these your sincere toughts? ¿Not prosperity? ¿Not spiritual maturity?"
I guess she was not expecting that response on my part.
"A suppose i would like to grow as a person, but if i don't focus on the job then it doesn't matter. Look, i know these are important questions about life and all but i think this is a conversation more fit for another time."
Still looking at me as if i said something weird, she ends:
"I'll support you to reach your goal... i guess".
Then she exits the room.
Now im sure im not meant to be here. Both Angela and Malkuth refer to me as X. I tought it was a code (like A) but every minute i pass down here the more im convinced that there is a guy called X supposed to be the manager walking around the city without the most minimum idea that he was aproved to manage this facility in my place.
I'll just roll with it, but i really, really hope they buy it. Pease gods, don't let them know im not that guy.
Talking about another thing entirely, Malkuth gave all employees a transmitter. It's really basic, it just beeps and blinks. When activated, all agents must come to their main respective room.
While im sitting down checking the cameras work properly when a clerk hands me the results of the LOB training i sent my workers to do. Almost forgot about that.
¡It was a success! They are already on their way here.
Yesterday we were really close to an Ordeal event, so i ordered Malkuth to spread a notice in the cork borads of the Control Department and in the tables which warned that today we were expecting an Ordeal, and that a certain amount of time before the event everyone will be called to gather together, agents and clerks, to fight together whatever will materialize inside.
But until then, we will do work the usual way.
👏 FOOTNOTE👏
This was my first restart, i left Onorio in the hall to optimize time and avoid the hall walk, but, of course, he didn't heal Sanity, and eventually went mad, running around screaming. I didn't know he dealt Sanity damage over time and eventually everyone lost their minds. In this story restarts wil not be canon but alusions to events that unfolded will sometimes remain as gut feelings or similar phenomena.
I instantly followed the trio the moment they set foot in the facility. ¿How were they feeling? ¿Were they mad i sent them a last moment notice at night telling them today they had to wake up even earlier to go somewhere else first and then still come work here?
I studied their faces, but they seemed in a good mood. Happy even.
I guess training went well or they are so devoted to a point they are happy just for the sake of obeying me, if we go for what the manual says. If it's the latter, then that makes me a bit sad, even if i'm relieved they are not angry.
Sending the 3 to do things together seems a good idea, they are bonding and talking about their expectations for today. They don't even reach the main room when a clerk come to them and hands them the document warnign about the ordeals.
They look concerned, but confident at the same time. I guess LOB training boosts your courage too, altough that seems to be more of a fortitude characteristic now that i think about it.
They equip their respective gear and the shift starts.
Aoi is sent to do first contact with the new abnormality. Insight work.
She enters the chamber and finds two antropomorphic shrimps with a flashy neon vending machine in the middle.
Shrimp A: "¡A new friend! ¿Care to take a soda? Shrimp B: "¡It's free! We are here to spread good vibes all around"
I wonder how Aoi was going to react, this is the first time we are dealing with intelligent (or at least talkative) Abnormalities, ¿Will she be overwhelmed?
And it this instant that i realized how my employees had grown in these mere 3 days. Before they were calm when performing their works like true champs, but now Aoi was a step beyond: She was relaxed.
"They have grown so much" "...¿Are you getting emotional? -asked my assistant. "No, im just allergic to touching stuff" "Remember to not get attached to your employees"
¡Shut up Angela! Let me enjoy this moment.
(You see, i would have said that to her but im too scared to know what will happen to my frickin soul should i even try to utter those words)
To know what the Abnormality prefers Aoi directly asked the shrimps about it.
Aoi: "¿Is there something in this room you would like to see improved?" Shrimp A: "¿Improved? ¡There has been a lack of people drinking with us!" Shrimp B: "¡You say it! ¡We want to spread our love of soda with others but no one comes around man! Aoi: "I see, ¿But is there something that can be done to accomodate your stance here better? Shrimp B: "Now that you mention it, i kind of miss the sea, and the beach, and eating shrimp" Shrimp A: "Well, the sea is not THAT far from here"
Both Creatures start laughing obnouxiously but do not display any hostile behaviour. However, not only are they very suspicious but also act incredibly shady.
Aoi: "¿Would an envoirement more reminiscent of the sea be more pleasant to you?" Shrimp A: "That's not a bad idea actually" Shrimp B: "I want to feel sand in my feet again"
With that, Aoi fetched a sandbag that was warped to her inside the containment unit and spread it all over the floor.
Shrimp B: "¡This is nice!" Shrimp A: "You are cool, sand-spreading-gal, come here and take a drink, you've earned it"
Despite what common sense would dictate, she actually went there and drank a can dispensed by the vending machine in full.
"Oh my gods she's dead" "I told you to not get attached"
But nothing happened. Later we found that once any work is performed, an agent can't resist the proposal to drink a can from the machine, no matter what.
Work result was excelent. I almost told her to stay near the chamber and not come back bur decided against it. The support of colleages is an important tool to keep moving forward trough the day.
After a funny exchange of experiences, ideas and theories, it was Aoi's turn to try her luck with it. This with attachement work.
¡Also! Today i found out the Control main room has video feed of some of the cameras inside the facility too. They can't see inside the containment chambers like me but they have access to hallway and main room activity. Now i understand why they are looking what seems the wall from time to time, the screens are there.
I guess my camera can't reach to see that wall because the video would loop on my end or something.
Dia starts Attachement work.
Dia: "Hi, nice to meet ya" Shrimp A: "Sup girl, ¿Care to take soda with us? ¡Be our guest!" Shrimp B: "We promise you'll love it, ¡The best soda on earth!" Dia: "¡Definitely! Altough i want to talk more with you two" Shrimp B: "Im sorry girl, i know my beauty is the stuff of legends but im not seeking a partner yet" Shrimp A: "¡You're too high on soda my man! ¡Your shrimp addiction is the only thing legendary about you!" Shrimp B: "Oh please, anyone would be hooked to shrimp if they had my supreme taste in food" Dia: *Laughter\ "¡You two are so funny!"* Shrimp A: "Please forgive my friend here, he's a shame to shrimp-kind, i swear we all are not like him"
Conversation then continues in the topic of sea food.
"I would have pressed on the matter of what shrimp-kind meant" I tell Angela while watching this. "An agent with a low level of temperance will get carried away by the words of Abnormalities, easily manipulated" "I guess they need more training"
Dia ends the work and drinks the dispensed soda.
She goes to the Control room with the rest and retells her conversation with the Abnormalites with the others.
Onorio: "You shouldn't get so attached with abnormalities" Dia: "It's attachement work, it's what im supposed to do" Onorio: "Abnormalities are not your friends, you must always know where the line is" Dia: "¡Oh cmon! ¿Why are you always so stiff? ¡The work result was good, that's all that matters!" Aoi: "There is never enough caution to be exercised when one deals with Abnormalities" Dia: "¡Not you too!" Beta27: "Am i the only one concerned by the fact that they eat shrimp being shrimps themselves?"
Onorio was called to perform Instinct work with Wellcheers.
So far the guidelines were clear that Instinct and Insight were the prefered typo of work, altough no penalty seemed to come from performing the other types of work.
While on his way, i warned all the agents trough the speaker to not drink the soda can if they suspect their work performance was bad. Not that it matters, as they will drink from it anyways, but maybe this will make them be more vigilant and not so laid-back. They shouldn't let their guard down.
Aoi: "See, if the manager says that it's because not all is fun and games with that abnormality" Dia: "But they were so cool to be around..."
Onorio enters the chamber.
Shrimp A: "¡Yooo! ¡Another one! ¡We are on fire today!" Shrimp B: "¡Hey man! ¡You look cool! I bet a dude like you can apreciate this high quality soda! Onorio: "Thanks, but i just came here to check you and that machine" Shrimp B: "Another one checking me out, being as atractive as me should be a sin" Shrimp A: "There you go again with your delusions"
Onorio gets close to the shrimp-people and takes notes on his notepad.
Onorio: "¿Are you hungry? ¿Does the soda dispenser need maintenance?" Shrimp A: "Well, there was this cute girl just a moment ago, and we were talking about food" Shrimp B: "Yeah, now that you mention it im hungry man" Onorio: "Understood"
A tupperware filled with shrimp and heated in a microwave warps inside the chamber. Onorio offers the food to the shrimp-men who then proceed to eat. In the meantime, the agent inspects the machine.
The dispenser emits shiny neon lights of many colors and upbeat music comes from some place inside. All designed to be as most eye-catching as possible. Onorio looks above and below but there does not seems to be any kind of oppening besides the dispenser hole itself. When he tries to reach inside with his hand he seems to struggle before retiring his arm.
Shrimp A: "Careful, many a shrimp has lost a limb trying to mug a soda that way" Onorio: "Noted" Shrimp B: "No need to feel bad dude, here, have a soda"
Again, a soda is dispensed and the agent drinks the full can. Work efficiency was deemed good.
After this, work followed normal regulations. All equipment was harvested from the new Abnormality. After that agents started working at the same time to train in things that i considered they were lacking.
Then, it happened.

Ordeal: Dawn of Amber

I saw the warning with my peripherical vision the instant it appeared. We had 1 hour until the ordeal starts, so i stopped sending my 3 agents to work. Eventually all gathered in the main room.
I spoke trough the speakers:
"As you all have been informed this morning we are expecting an Ordeal event to start before we meet the quota, this will happen 1 hour from now. All agent works will be halted until this event ends. Please use this time to prepare. Under any circumstance should any of you leave the main room of the Control department. All employees and Clerks must gather in the aformented room this instant. This message will repeat as the time comes closer."
Then i look at Angela. "I think i was pretty clear ¿Right?" She shrugged at my question.
Some time passed.
"We are about to fight against dangerous creatures who warp into out facility in 30 minutes, you are to stop any work you are doing and gather with everyone in the Control room"
Look, i understand that they have the right to ignore me but they are only risking their lifes here. Im literally giving them the option to increase their chances of survival and yet only a few have the common sense to follow my instructions.
Aoi, Dia and Onorio are trying their equipment, swinging the maces to test their strenght and getting accostumed to the weight of the weapon.
They are also hitting eachother lightly to see how much of an impact they can take.
I very proud of them.
As repeat my message every few minutes and the fated time gets close, i decide to give up on warning the remaning clerks. They have choosen their fate.
Some of them even showed their gun to the cameras as to say "we'll deal with it".
One minute until the Ordeal starts. I start a countdown in the last 30 seconds.
As the countdown reaches zero, my screen becomes orange. And when the regular feed come back i can see all the clerks shotting at some kind of oversizeded worms. They have killed some but most of them are dying, being overrun and devoured, some even alive.
The ones gathered in control room seem to be watching all this happening on their feeds because everyone is looking at the wall with screens with tense expersions on their faces. Sounds of screams, gunshots and munching comes echoing from the halls and the screens.
I open the speaker in a stronger volume so my voice reaches them loud and clear.
"Watching the screen will change nothing. Aoi, Dia and Onorio, you will lead the charge, i want all of you to stay together no matter what. Move as a pack and cover eachother's backs. The rest of you clerks will support by firing from behind. Buckle up, it's time to clean the halls."
As you can expect, only some of the clerks did what i said, some prefered to stay in the safety of the room and others went whatever direction they fancied better. Some even standing in the doors and shooting in the dark without venturing further.
As for the main team, they were wrecking those vermin.
In the end, the trio killed and ended the Ordeal almost by themselves.
I used the transmitter thingy to recall them back.
Much to my surprise, finishing an Ordeal also grants energy because the dead corpses of the creatures emit enkephalin, s small amount but enough to fill today's quota.
My body relaxed, i was not even aware i was that tense.
I almost forgot to pick a new abnormality for tomorrow, but judging by the tone which Angela gave the documents, these seems different. I hope it means different-good and not different-bad.
I came out of the room and a terrible scene greeted me. In fact, Angela insisted really hard to me to not go talk to the employees today, but after all they've done i have no other option but to be there with them too.
Everything was filled with the smell of blood and death, like a poorly ventilated butcher shop. All employees (agents and clerks) were stained with blood to some degree. Panicked staff came to their senses after some time. The 3 agents took control of the room (of the Control room, heh) and were giving orders. Malkuth also came to see the state of things but just gave me a thumbs up and did nothing else.
¿Where the hell have i gotten myself into?
-Aftertoughts-
I tried to write earlier today, but i just ended up ending this chapter at the same time as the others: Really late at night. Of course, that was because there was more stuff to write about.
¿Did anyone get the 👏footnote👏 reference? I hope so. There was a lot more dialogue this chapter, i wanted it to feel natural. My fear was that everyone sounded the same but also i didn't want to exagerate their traits either. Except for the shrimp guys, I always imagined them wacky.
This also brings me to the matter of work types. In the game they use the same animation of the agent taking notes but if you read in the manual what they are actually doing it's pretty impressive!
Instinct work satiates phisiological needs and requires lots of touching, this is also linked not only with HP but with bravery. For example, when you are sending a guy to do this work with Mountain of Smiling bodies, they are actually touching it and doing things like nourishing it and similar. ¡Thats so cool! It puts in perspective how awesome lvl 5 agents are.
And more can be said about Insight work, which has already been showcased some times before in this story.
Attachement is establishing social links (or more like attending social needs) with Abnos, so you can pick any abnormality that works well this work and imagine your employees actually conversing with them. ¿What do they talk about? Couriously, low attachment does not mean that they do a bad work, well, attaching, but rather that they get too carried away with it, unable to see the line to stop. I guess that's why that vitue is called temperance huh.
And represion is telling an abnormality. "no, bad" and hitting them with a rolled up newspaper. It is also related (i think) to inner repression of one's impulses, which is the path i took for depicting work with Hertz.
Anyway, this was really cool imagine. Tomorrow veru possibly won't be updating a chapter, but the day next maybe i can get some free time.
Thank you for your support! It means a lot!