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Michigan Life
2022.04.13 02:04 RozellaTriggs Michigan Life
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submitted by jatingill to u/jatingill [link] [comments]
https://www.halloessen.de/restaurants/city-pizza-service-gera
2023.04.01 09:08 BlueFishcake Sexy Space Babes - The Video Game
The gas giant loomed large in the viewport, ballooning as the ship coasted toward it, the colorful blue hues of its swirling bands reflecting the glow of the system’s star.
Darren could make out the bright, scarred surface of an ice moon drifting lazily past, framed against the rivers of flowing hydrogen and helium. Silhouetted against the Jupiter-mass object was their destination – Halfpoint Station.
Having come from Earth, which was still a backwater when compared to many of the Imperium’s more developed worlds, the sheer size and grandeur of the structure took his breath away.
It was hard to gauge its true scale in the vacuum of space where there was no atmospheric haze, and there were no landmarks for reference, the unfiltered light creating harsh shadows. As they drew nearer, however, he was able to pick out some of the massive fuel tankers that swarmed its ports like clouds of gnats.
Those vessels put anything created by Humanity to shame – their purpose being to dip into the upper atmosphere of the gas giant, harvesting its resources to fuel the ships that made their berth here.
Calling it enormous was an understatement. It must have been nine miles tall, the main hull of the station forming a long, relatively thin vertical shaft. Surrounding that shaft were half a dozen rotating rings, each one connected to the central column by spokes, the pinpoints of innumerable windows glinting as they slowly turned.
At its apex was a dome of immense proportions, sitting proudly atop the structure, the crystalline material that made up its transparent hull glittering in the starlight. Inside, he could make out glimpses of regal skyscrapers and patches of parkland – an entire city encapsulated in a habitat that had a breathtaking view of the planet.
Darren pursed his lips as he looked down at the device on his wrist, the tiny display showing the familiar text of an article he must have read at least a dozen times by this point.
Halfpoint Station was situated on the outskirts of the Imperium’s sphere of influence, a region of space known only as the Periphery. This put it soundly outside of Purp jurisdiction, but the place still saw a lot of traffic, as the station was right in the middle of a relatively well-traveled shipping route between the three big powers.
While it had started its life as little more than a place to fuel up and get resupplied, being located outside any of the major spheres of influence had its benefits, and the station had garnered a bit of a reputation for its more permissive policies. Now, it was said to be populated by hired guns, smugglers, gamblers, and anyone else who might appreciate discretion.
The Human frowned as he looked out the window once more and tried to reconcile the gleaming edifice before him with the dark reputation the article in his hands presented.
He didn’t have long to dwell on it before the pilot’s crackly voice came through a hidden intercom in the cabin, informing the passengers that they were commencing docking procedures.
The woman spoke in accented Shil. What that accent was, Darren had no clue, but he knew it wasn’t the same one spoken by his professors – linguistic or mechanical.
He glanced around at his fellow travelers, seeing a few species that he didn’t recognize, along with the more familiar Shil’vati. The aliens were easily identifiable by the purple hue of their skin, their sharp tusks, and their seven-foot height.
Several of them returned his gaze, some curious, some covetous.
Males were rare in the Imperium.
Hell, males were rare, period.
By the standards of most races out in the galaxy, Humanity were the strange ones for having an equal number of men and women. Even six years into the occupation, most were still struggling to adapt to the new paradigm brought on by that reality.
Darren was no exception.
Still, he managed to ignore the stares, turning his attention to the smart display on his wrist, bringing up his itinerary. He was headed to Hab-Ring Five, and the only information that he’d been given beyond that were some coordinates to who-knew-where.
He sighed, wishing – not for the first time – that he might have a fellow first timer to converse with.
Unfortunately, that was a pipe dream.
The lack of other Humans on his ship wasn’t surprising. The Imperium had only recently relaxed enough to begin authorizing travel visas allowing Humans to leave Earth, and his kind were still a rarity on the Galactic stage.
As to why he was out here out in the ass end of space?
He’d been offered a job.
He was an engineer by trade, at least according to his degree, and he specialized in the combination of alien and Human technology. It might seem like an oddly specific skillset, but it was one that was in high demand, as just about every industry on Earth was trying to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the Imperium’s literal space-age technology.
It was complicated work, but he was quite good at it, if he said so himself – and his professors seemed to agree. His gift had catapulted him through university and had apparently landed him a very lucrative offer to take up a position on Halfpoint.
How they’d heard of him, he wasn’t too sure. Nor did he truthfully know exactly what the job entailed. Apparently, he was to be briefed on-location.
Regardless, off-world work was a rare opportunity for any Human, let alone one fresh out of school, and visiting an alien space station was a lot more interesting than backpacking around Europe for a year.
Whatever happened, it was going to be an adventure.
The ship matched velocity with one of the rotating rings, the structure at least half a mile tall in its own right, covered in tiny windows that made it look like a whole city block had been condensed down into the shape of a donut.
Now that he was a little closer, Darren could see that the station was actually far from pristine. Its hull was pocked with haphazard repairs, the newer sections shining brighter than their older counterparts, its armored panels pitted with little craters from space debris and micro-meteorite impacts.
The ship lined up with a docking port, and an umbilical walkway began to extrude from the ring, reaching out towards them. It looked like the jib of a crane, covered over with a flexible material that bore a suspicious resemblance to a grey tarp.
Surely it wasn’t actually a tarp? No, it had to be some kind of alien supertech – too advanced for him to recognize at a glance.
Right?
His thoughts did little to reassure him as the umbilical connected to the shuttle’s airlock with a tangible thud.
Shaking his head, he retrieved his travel bag, then made his way down the aisle to join the queue of passengers who were waiting to disembark. More of them crammed in behind him, and he tried to ignore their uncomfortable proximity.
He hadn’t actually spent a lot of time around aliens during his schooling. One of his professors had been a Shil, but she had been professional to a fault and had always kept a healthy distance from her students.
Of course, she had still managed to be rather intimidating despite that, her head seeming to scrape the ceiling every time she stepped into the classroom. However, Darren was rapidly discovering that being surrounded by women who stood head and shoulders above him was a different experience altogether.
It was nothing to get worked up over, though. He just needed to-
The Shil standing behind him pressed close – uncomfortably close – Darren swearing that there was room enough in the aisle for her to keep her distance. Suddenly, he felt a sharp twinge in his rear.
Had she just...pinched him? No, it had to have been a mistake.
He turned to glance over his shoulder, looking up at the towering Purp. “Sorry, Ma’am, I must have bumped into you.”
Her sly smile faded as she furrowed her brow in confusion. Before she had time to formulate a reply, the intercom above the exit beeped.
“Oh, looks like we’re moving again!” Darren chimed as he began to follow the queue. “Sorry!”
He followed the procession of towering women into the passenger ship’s airlock. Both of the pressurized doors were open, and before him stretched the umbilical. The worryingly thin material that protected them from the deadly vacuum of space was wrapped taut around a metal frame, and the walkway beneath his feet was made up of a simple grate.
After a short walk, they emerged into a cavernous dock area, so large that it was more like standing in some kind of indoor stadium than anything that could be compared to a space station. There were stacks of shipping containers and unidentifiable machinery everywhere he looked.
It was a challenge not to stop and examine the equipment, each new sight piquing his interest, each strange device begging to be investigated. As he followed the other passengers to the far end of the room – his head on a swivel – he almost bumped into one of the containers. To his surprise, it was floating a foot off the ground, suspended on an anti-gravity cushion.
It was funny – no matter how many times he saw it, it never stopped being surreal to see something just…float.
As he stooped to look beneath it, an irritated dockworker leaned out from behind it to yell at whoever was in her way. She stopped when she saw him, raising a skeptical eyebrow. She was a Rakiri, if Darren remembered correctly. She resembled a towering werewolf, a pair of cat-like eyes peering out from beneath her black fur, her facial features strangely leonine. She was clad in dirty, yellow coveralls that hung loosely from her broad shoulders, exposing the ragged tank top that she wore beneath it. Tufts of her dark coat poked out around the faded garment, giving her a surprisingly fluffy appearance.
“You lost, boy?” she asked as she shooed him out of her path. “Stay behind the yellow warning markings unless you want to get that cute butt smushed,” she added with a nod toward the deck. She continued to push her heavy container, moving it effortlessly on its gravity cushion.
More dock workers were assembling to stare at him, perhaps having never seen a Human before. Or perhaps it was because he was male? It was hard to tell. Either way, a small crowd of yellow-clad women saw him off, a couple of them hooting at him and waving. Not sure if this was some kind of alien greeting, he shyly waved back, eliciting laughter from them after a moment of surprise.
One started to make her way over to him before a menacing growl from her superior made her freeze in place sheepishly. Darren took that as his cue to move on – he didn’t want to get anyone else in trouble by being in the way.
He arrived at a security gate, and after being asked to show his visa, he was subjected to a very thorough – and in his opinion unnecessary – pat-down. Once he was cleared, he emerged into the station proper. He stepped out of the way of the women behind him, then set his travel bag down on the metal deck, taking in the alien sights and sounds for a moment.
Far from being a sterile, clinical environment, he found himself in a bustling bazaar worthy of any city back on Earth. It scarcely felt like he was standing inside a station at all, what passed for the ceiling so high above his head that he could barely make out the crisscrossing support beams and maintenance catwalks.
It was styled like a cramped street, too small for cars, almost like the city center of some old European town had been reimagined in an industrial style. Civilian quarters that resembled apartment blocks rose up towards the ceiling, connecting to it in some places, likely leading up to higher levels of the station.
In every nook and cranny – anywhere there was room – the denizens of the hab-ring had set up little stalls where they were hawking their wares to the tourists who had just boarded. Colorful awnings fluttered in the artificial breeze from the air recyclers, and insulated cables that had been patched from the station’s systems trailed along walls and floors, powering streetside food stands and colorful neon signs.
Speaking of the denizens, they came in all shapes and sizes. Darren had never seen so many varieties of alien in one place before. He could make out a few Shil and Rakiri, but most were unknown to him, the varied hues of their skin and clothes creating a bustling sea of color.
He checked the device on his wrist again, pulling up the coordinates that his new employer had forwarded to him. This was indeed Hab-Ring Five, and he’d been given what passed for an address in this strange environment. Hefting his bag once more, he made his way into the throng, having to dodge and weave between the towering aliens. Many of them barely seemed to register his presence, probably due to his comparatively small stature, though some seemed to stop and stare in confusion.
Well, I suppose Humans are pretty new on the galactic scene, he thought to himself.
The scents of strange, alien food assailed him as he navigated the cramped streets, a few of the criers singling him out. They had sharp instincts, he’d give them that. It seemed the locals could smell a tourist at thirty paces.
Maybe it was all the staring he was doing?
Eventually, he arrived at his destination, glancing up from his display to see a dingy bar. It was open to the street, built into an overhang at the base of one of the many buildings, little more than a long counter with a few stools. Above it was a blinking neon sign in a script that he couldn’t read. As he made his way inside and struggled up onto one of the tall stools, the small handful of patrons who were sitting off to his left paused their conversation to examine him.
They were Nighkru, their goat-like horns and the bruise-purple hue of their skin giving them away. Their silver eyes were striking, almost seeming to glow in the dim light of the bar, as reflective as those of a cat. Their clothing was all tight leather and straps, their skin strategically exposed in places to show off their stunning bioluminescent tattoos, the swirling patterns trailing down slender limbs and across toned midriffs.
He kept his gaze aimed forward, knowing that their kind didn’t think much of the Imperium to which he now belonged.
…Then again, that was true for pretty much every race that wasn’t a part of the massive interstellar empire. Say what you would about the Purps, but they knew how to make an impression.
The bartender walked over to him, leaning on the counter as she looked him up and down skeptically. It was another Rakiri like the dockworkers, her feline nose twitching as she took in his scent.
“You lost, or do you want something to drink?” she asked.
“No thank you, I’m waiting for someone,” he replied sheepishly as he lowered his eyes to his device again.
He was right on time, but as he looked around, there was no sign of his contact. He was supposed to meet them here, right?
The Rakiri shrugged her furry shoulders, then left him to his own devices, moving over to the small group of Nighkru.
Perhaps one of them was his contact?
He certainly hoped not. While he didn’t have anything against a person enjoying themselves with a good drink after hours, it wasn’t a good way to make a positive first impression on a prospective employee.
Fortunately for him, the surprise on one of the trio’s grey skinned faces when she happened to blearily peer in his direction dashed that possibility. Just a trio of young women out for a drink.
Unfortunately for him, after a few hastily whispered words to her friends, the group made their way over to him.
“Don’t see many males round these parts,” one of them said, her faux leather getup creaking as she planted her hands on the bar to his left. Another leaned on the counter to his right, the third posting up behind him.
“A Human, too,” the woman to his right added with a sly chuckle. “Now, what’s a Human doing all alone out on the Periphery?”
“I didn’t think the Purps were letting their pets off the leash.” the one behind him snickered.
“I don’t know,” the first said with an exaggerated shrug. “Maybe he snuck out in search of a real woman? I think we’ve all heard how Humans can be.”
That set the three of them laughing.
All the while, Darren wasn’t sure where to look, turning his head left and right as he struggled to pick a Nighkru. He settled on the woman to his left, having to lift his head to meet her gaze, those reflective eyes shining like a pair of silver coins.
“I...uh...was actually supposed to be meeting someone here.” he stammered, a little of his anxiety bleeding through.
The Nighkru gave him a warm smile that wasn’t reflected in her eyes, leaning a little closer. He tried to pull away reflexively but found another Nighkru waiting for him, something rather soft pressing against his back.
“Well, I don’t see anyone else in here but me and my friends,” one of them said as she tutted dramatically. “Maybe they stood you up?”
“Poor form, that,” the one behind him whispered into his ear. He lurched in his seat, surprised by her proximity. “Leaving a pretty young thing like you hanging.”
The first one nodded, as if that was a piece of sagely wisdom. “I know – how about my friends and I give you a personal tour of the station to make up for it?” she asked, reaching out to brush a piece of errant fluff from his collar. “We’ll even carry your luggage for you – we’re nice like that.”
She signaled to one of her compatriots with a curt nod, who then plucked his travel bag off the deck.
“Oh, that’s really not-”
He tried to stand, but he was cut off as two of the women placed their hands on his shoulders, pushing him back down into his seat. Their touch was gentle, but firm, letting him know that he wasn't going anywhere.
Darren looked to the Rakiri bartender for help, feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the turn of events, but she was staying out of it. She was feigning disinterest, cleaning a glass with a rag that didn’t look clean enough for the job.
It was clear that he wouldn’t be getting any help from her.
Was this really going to be his first experience on the station – kidnapped by a gang of alien grifters?
Just as he was getting ready to – likely ineffectually – start swinging like his life depended on it, he heard a voice ring out in a language he didn’t recognize.
The Nighkru turned their heads as one, and he followed their gaze, seeing another of their kind step in from the street. Her skin had the same twilight hue, her silvery hair pulled back into a long ponytail that trailed behind her as she strode towards them. She wore a jet-black body suit that left little to the imagination, so tight that it might have been sewn onto her, the garment open at the front to expose a chiseled midriff and the beginnings of her cleavage. Her eyes were mesmerizing, his gaze drawn to the glowing tattoos that served to accentuate them.
Oddly, unlike the trio surrounding him, she had no horns.
The stranger walked with purpose, her heels clicking on the deck, her hair swishing behind her as she came to a stop to stare down the three other women. They were already backing off, the Nighkru who had taken his bag setting it back down gingerly beside his seat. Did they know this person? They seemed so wary of her.
“Maybe we’ll see you around,” one of them whispered, her hand lingering on his shoulder for a moment before she followed her friends out into the street.
Once they were finally out of sight, Darren breathed a sigh of relief and turned to thank the newcomer. Before he could utter so much as a word, she beat him to the punch.
“You shouldn’t wander around Halfpoint alone,” she said, skipping the preamble. Her voice had a melodic tone, one that was almost musical to Darren’s ears. She planted her hands on her hips, scrutinizing him with a skeptical expression. “You’re just asking for trouble.”
“I’m just...waiting for someone,” he replied. “Thank you, by the way. I’m-”
“Do you have a weapon on you?” she asked, cutting him off. “A handgun under that jacket? Defense spray? A pocket knife?”
“What? No,” he replied, his brow furrowing. “Why would I have a gun?”
Even with a few inches of titanium-alloy plating between everyone aboard and a messy death by explosive decompression, using a firearm on the station seemed risky.
She snorted derisively, almost as though she couldn’t believe his reply.
“For your sake, I hope that whoever you’re waiting for is smarter than you are,” she said with a roll of her silver eyes. “This isn’t Earth, boy. There are no Shil Marines around to babysit you. Next time you want to play tourist, go somewhere closer to home.”
With a flick of her long hair, she turned about, vanishing into the crowd once more to leave him sitting at the bar in confusion.
Darren felt another hand on his shoulder and turned to see an Edixi wearing grease-stained overalls standing behind him. The tool belt that hung loosely about her hips let him know that she was a mechanic before she’d even had time to open her mouth.
Her kind were evolved for an aquatic environment, and although they were fully amphibious, they retained many of their ancient features. Their bodies were smooth and streamlined, with lean, lightly-muscled frames that made them look like Olympic swimmers. Her eyes were a striking ocean-green, and her azure skin was patterned with faded tiger stripes, darkening as it neared her extremities.
“You’re the new engineer, right?” she chirped excitedly.
“Darren Fogle, pleased to meet you,” he confirmed as he extended a hand. She took it, shaking it eagerly, and he noted that her fingers were webbed.
He was a little surprised by how smooth her skin was. Given the sharklike appearance of the Edixi – and her vocation – he’d expected it to be rough and scaly. Maybe cold and slimy, too. By contrast, it was warm and soft, her small scales smooth like a snake’s rather than sharp like those of a fish.
Odd.
“Oh, it is. It very much is. The boss told me to fetch you,” she said before turning back towards the street. “Don’t get lost, you hear? There are some rough types around these parts.”
Yes, she could say that again. He stooped to pick up his bag, then hurried after her, trying not to lose sight of her in the crowd. He also belatedly realized that she hadn’t told him her own name.
Was that an Edixi thing or was she just in a hurry?
The mechanic led him through the streets, which seemed to be arranged in a kind of grid pattern, always flanked by the towering hab-blocks. It was as challenging as ever to navigate when so many of the station’s inhabitants stood a head taller than him. It made him feel like a bug that was trying to avoid being stepped on.
He could only assume he’d get used to it. His guide seemed to have no problem getting around, and she was a few inches shorter than him.
Their destination was some kind of service elevator – a large platform that seemed designed to carry heavy cargo up from the docks, wide enough that a couple of trucks could have parked on it side by side. There were still a few cargo containers stacked off to one side that hadn’t been unloaded yet.
He watched as the woman hit a touch panel beside the double doors, and they began to slide shut, the platform lurching as Darren felt it start to rise. There was no grinding of machinery, no vibrations, only a sensation of getting heavier. It was obviously gravity-manipulation tech. It wasn’t too surprising – the Shil seemed to use it for just about everything, so it wasn’t too strange that the rest of the universe did as well.
Convergent technological development, he could almost imagine his Shil instructor saying as they started to descend. Good tech is good tech.
The hab-ring’s many levels flashed by one by one, until finally, the elevator slid to a smooth stop. Darren followed the happily humming mechanic out into a garage, his eyes lighting up as he took in his new surroundings.
Were those… mecha?
The bay’s walls were lined with bulky harnesses that were obviously designed to hold the machines in place, a few of the berths already occupied by half-disassembled vehicles.
They were!
“Real life mecha,” he mumbled.
As a mechanic, he wasn’t ignorant of the genre. After all, what kind of engineer didn’t hold a soft spot for giant stompy robots? Of course, as an engineer, he also held an inherent disdain for anyone that actually thought said machines were even remotely practical outside of the realm of fiction.
The Square Cube Law was a harsh mistress.
The long and short of it was that if you doubled a machine's height while keeping it the same shape, you ended up with four times the muscle power moving eight times the mass. As a result, instead of having the same relative agility as the original, the double-sized machine actually had only half.
That was why ants could lift so much relative to their weight. If you scaled one up, you’d end up with a much less impressive power to weight ration.
And, the problem only got worse the bigger you went. Giant robots would be slow, cumbersome, and they would inevitably suffer from exploding ankles if they tried to move too fast. They’d also sink in just about any terrain that was even slightly porous.
All in all, mecha were a cool concept with absolutely zero real world applications.
Which was why he was so stunned to see some in real life. Sure, the Shil military liked to use exos, but they were really just power armor by any other name with thrusters attached. Besides, the only reason those things could skip around like they did was because they had anti-grav generators…
His thoughts trailed off as an idea occurred to him. He jogged over to the nearest machine, peering up at the twenty-foot humanoid monstrosity. Its legs had been detached, leaving only a bulky torso covered in half-stripped sensory equipment, lenses and scanners visible where their protective covers had been removed. The cockpit was open, revealing the pilot’s seat, along with the surrounding neural interface cables that hung loose like the entrails of some mechanical beast. Its weapon attachments were empty, but it was nonetheless an awe-inspiring sight.
Sure enough, there were two oversized humps on the back. One was clearly for the thing’s fusion engine – and the other must have held the anti-grav generator.
“Darren?” the mechanic asked, having only just realized that he wasn’t behind her. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Y-yeah,” he said, jogging for a few paces to catch up. “That’s a mecha!”
The blue-hued alien nodded slowly. “Yes?”
“A mecha,” he reiterated.
Which prompted another slow nod. “You’ve never seen a gladiator mech before?”
“No.”
“Didn’t they tell you what job you’d be doing?” the mechanic asked, cocking her head in a rather adorable manner.
“No?” This time it was his turn to cock his head.
Several emotions seemed to fly across the alien’s face. He saw surprise, confusion, and dismay before she finally settled on irritation.
“Typical,” she grunted. “Just… follow me.”
AN: https://youtu.be/a3Xp1WhRQ9Q
submitted by BlueFishcake to HFY [link] [comments]
Darren could make out the bright, scarred surface of an ice moon drifting lazily past, framed against the rivers of flowing hydrogen and helium. Silhouetted against the Jupiter-mass object was their destination – Halfpoint Station.
Having come from Earth, which was still a backwater when compared to many of the Imperium’s more developed worlds, the sheer size and grandeur of the structure took his breath away.
It was hard to gauge its true scale in the vacuum of space where there was no atmospheric haze, and there were no landmarks for reference, the unfiltered light creating harsh shadows. As they drew nearer, however, he was able to pick out some of the massive fuel tankers that swarmed its ports like clouds of gnats.
Those vessels put anything created by Humanity to shame – their purpose being to dip into the upper atmosphere of the gas giant, harvesting its resources to fuel the ships that made their berth here.
Calling it enormous was an understatement. It must have been nine miles tall, the main hull of the station forming a long, relatively thin vertical shaft. Surrounding that shaft were half a dozen rotating rings, each one connected to the central column by spokes, the pinpoints of innumerable windows glinting as they slowly turned.
At its apex was a dome of immense proportions, sitting proudly atop the structure, the crystalline material that made up its transparent hull glittering in the starlight. Inside, he could make out glimpses of regal skyscrapers and patches of parkland – an entire city encapsulated in a habitat that had a breathtaking view of the planet.
Darren pursed his lips as he looked down at the device on his wrist, the tiny display showing the familiar text of an article he must have read at least a dozen times by this point.
Halfpoint Station was situated on the outskirts of the Imperium’s sphere of influence, a region of space known only as the Periphery. This put it soundly outside of Purp jurisdiction, but the place still saw a lot of traffic, as the station was right in the middle of a relatively well-traveled shipping route between the three big powers.
While it had started its life as little more than a place to fuel up and get resupplied, being located outside any of the major spheres of influence had its benefits, and the station had garnered a bit of a reputation for its more permissive policies. Now, it was said to be populated by hired guns, smugglers, gamblers, and anyone else who might appreciate discretion.
The Human frowned as he looked out the window once more and tried to reconcile the gleaming edifice before him with the dark reputation the article in his hands presented.
He didn’t have long to dwell on it before the pilot’s crackly voice came through a hidden intercom in the cabin, informing the passengers that they were commencing docking procedures.
The woman spoke in accented Shil. What that accent was, Darren had no clue, but he knew it wasn’t the same one spoken by his professors – linguistic or mechanical.
He glanced around at his fellow travelers, seeing a few species that he didn’t recognize, along with the more familiar Shil’vati. The aliens were easily identifiable by the purple hue of their skin, their sharp tusks, and their seven-foot height.
Several of them returned his gaze, some curious, some covetous.
Males were rare in the Imperium.
Hell, males were rare, period.
By the standards of most races out in the galaxy, Humanity were the strange ones for having an equal number of men and women. Even six years into the occupation, most were still struggling to adapt to the new paradigm brought on by that reality.
Darren was no exception.
Still, he managed to ignore the stares, turning his attention to the smart display on his wrist, bringing up his itinerary. He was headed to Hab-Ring Five, and the only information that he’d been given beyond that were some coordinates to who-knew-where.
He sighed, wishing – not for the first time – that he might have a fellow first timer to converse with.
Unfortunately, that was a pipe dream.
The lack of other Humans on his ship wasn’t surprising. The Imperium had only recently relaxed enough to begin authorizing travel visas allowing Humans to leave Earth, and his kind were still a rarity on the Galactic stage.
As to why he was out here out in the ass end of space?
He’d been offered a job.
He was an engineer by trade, at least according to his degree, and he specialized in the combination of alien and Human technology. It might seem like an oddly specific skillset, but it was one that was in high demand, as just about every industry on Earth was trying to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the Imperium’s literal space-age technology.
It was complicated work, but he was quite good at it, if he said so himself – and his professors seemed to agree. His gift had catapulted him through university and had apparently landed him a very lucrative offer to take up a position on Halfpoint.
How they’d heard of him, he wasn’t too sure. Nor did he truthfully know exactly what the job entailed. Apparently, he was to be briefed on-location.
Regardless, off-world work was a rare opportunity for any Human, let alone one fresh out of school, and visiting an alien space station was a lot more interesting than backpacking around Europe for a year.
Whatever happened, it was going to be an adventure.
The ship matched velocity with one of the rotating rings, the structure at least half a mile tall in its own right, covered in tiny windows that made it look like a whole city block had been condensed down into the shape of a donut.
Now that he was a little closer, Darren could see that the station was actually far from pristine. Its hull was pocked with haphazard repairs, the newer sections shining brighter than their older counterparts, its armored panels pitted with little craters from space debris and micro-meteorite impacts.
The ship lined up with a docking port, and an umbilical walkway began to extrude from the ring, reaching out towards them. It looked like the jib of a crane, covered over with a flexible material that bore a suspicious resemblance to a grey tarp.
Surely it wasn’t actually a tarp? No, it had to be some kind of alien supertech – too advanced for him to recognize at a glance.
Right?
His thoughts did little to reassure him as the umbilical connected to the shuttle’s airlock with a tangible thud.
Shaking his head, he retrieved his travel bag, then made his way down the aisle to join the queue of passengers who were waiting to disembark. More of them crammed in behind him, and he tried to ignore their uncomfortable proximity.
He hadn’t actually spent a lot of time around aliens during his schooling. One of his professors had been a Shil, but she had been professional to a fault and had always kept a healthy distance from her students.
Of course, she had still managed to be rather intimidating despite that, her head seeming to scrape the ceiling every time she stepped into the classroom. However, Darren was rapidly discovering that being surrounded by women who stood head and shoulders above him was a different experience altogether.
It was nothing to get worked up over, though. He just needed to-
The Shil standing behind him pressed close – uncomfortably close – Darren swearing that there was room enough in the aisle for her to keep her distance. Suddenly, he felt a sharp twinge in his rear.
Had she just...pinched him? No, it had to have been a mistake.
He turned to glance over his shoulder, looking up at the towering Purp. “Sorry, Ma’am, I must have bumped into you.”
Her sly smile faded as she furrowed her brow in confusion. Before she had time to formulate a reply, the intercom above the exit beeped.
“Oh, looks like we’re moving again!” Darren chimed as he began to follow the queue. “Sorry!”
He followed the procession of towering women into the passenger ship’s airlock. Both of the pressurized doors were open, and before him stretched the umbilical. The worryingly thin material that protected them from the deadly vacuum of space was wrapped taut around a metal frame, and the walkway beneath his feet was made up of a simple grate.
After a short walk, they emerged into a cavernous dock area, so large that it was more like standing in some kind of indoor stadium than anything that could be compared to a space station. There were stacks of shipping containers and unidentifiable machinery everywhere he looked.
It was a challenge not to stop and examine the equipment, each new sight piquing his interest, each strange device begging to be investigated. As he followed the other passengers to the far end of the room – his head on a swivel – he almost bumped into one of the containers. To his surprise, it was floating a foot off the ground, suspended on an anti-gravity cushion.
It was funny – no matter how many times he saw it, it never stopped being surreal to see something just…float.
As he stooped to look beneath it, an irritated dockworker leaned out from behind it to yell at whoever was in her way. She stopped when she saw him, raising a skeptical eyebrow. She was a Rakiri, if Darren remembered correctly. She resembled a towering werewolf, a pair of cat-like eyes peering out from beneath her black fur, her facial features strangely leonine. She was clad in dirty, yellow coveralls that hung loosely from her broad shoulders, exposing the ragged tank top that she wore beneath it. Tufts of her dark coat poked out around the faded garment, giving her a surprisingly fluffy appearance.
“You lost, boy?” she asked as she shooed him out of her path. “Stay behind the yellow warning markings unless you want to get that cute butt smushed,” she added with a nod toward the deck. She continued to push her heavy container, moving it effortlessly on its gravity cushion.
More dock workers were assembling to stare at him, perhaps having never seen a Human before. Or perhaps it was because he was male? It was hard to tell. Either way, a small crowd of yellow-clad women saw him off, a couple of them hooting at him and waving. Not sure if this was some kind of alien greeting, he shyly waved back, eliciting laughter from them after a moment of surprise.
One started to make her way over to him before a menacing growl from her superior made her freeze in place sheepishly. Darren took that as his cue to move on – he didn’t want to get anyone else in trouble by being in the way.
He arrived at a security gate, and after being asked to show his visa, he was subjected to a very thorough – and in his opinion unnecessary – pat-down. Once he was cleared, he emerged into the station proper. He stepped out of the way of the women behind him, then set his travel bag down on the metal deck, taking in the alien sights and sounds for a moment.
Far from being a sterile, clinical environment, he found himself in a bustling bazaar worthy of any city back on Earth. It scarcely felt like he was standing inside a station at all, what passed for the ceiling so high above his head that he could barely make out the crisscrossing support beams and maintenance catwalks.
It was styled like a cramped street, too small for cars, almost like the city center of some old European town had been reimagined in an industrial style. Civilian quarters that resembled apartment blocks rose up towards the ceiling, connecting to it in some places, likely leading up to higher levels of the station.
In every nook and cranny – anywhere there was room – the denizens of the hab-ring had set up little stalls where they were hawking their wares to the tourists who had just boarded. Colorful awnings fluttered in the artificial breeze from the air recyclers, and insulated cables that had been patched from the station’s systems trailed along walls and floors, powering streetside food stands and colorful neon signs.
Speaking of the denizens, they came in all shapes and sizes. Darren had never seen so many varieties of alien in one place before. He could make out a few Shil and Rakiri, but most were unknown to him, the varied hues of their skin and clothes creating a bustling sea of color.
He checked the device on his wrist again, pulling up the coordinates that his new employer had forwarded to him. This was indeed Hab-Ring Five, and he’d been given what passed for an address in this strange environment. Hefting his bag once more, he made his way into the throng, having to dodge and weave between the towering aliens. Many of them barely seemed to register his presence, probably due to his comparatively small stature, though some seemed to stop and stare in confusion.
Well, I suppose Humans are pretty new on the galactic scene, he thought to himself.
The scents of strange, alien food assailed him as he navigated the cramped streets, a few of the criers singling him out. They had sharp instincts, he’d give them that. It seemed the locals could smell a tourist at thirty paces.
Maybe it was all the staring he was doing?
Eventually, he arrived at his destination, glancing up from his display to see a dingy bar. It was open to the street, built into an overhang at the base of one of the many buildings, little more than a long counter with a few stools. Above it was a blinking neon sign in a script that he couldn’t read. As he made his way inside and struggled up onto one of the tall stools, the small handful of patrons who were sitting off to his left paused their conversation to examine him.
They were Nighkru, their goat-like horns and the bruise-purple hue of their skin giving them away. Their silver eyes were striking, almost seeming to glow in the dim light of the bar, as reflective as those of a cat. Their clothing was all tight leather and straps, their skin strategically exposed in places to show off their stunning bioluminescent tattoos, the swirling patterns trailing down slender limbs and across toned midriffs.
He kept his gaze aimed forward, knowing that their kind didn’t think much of the Imperium to which he now belonged.
…Then again, that was true for pretty much every race that wasn’t a part of the massive interstellar empire. Say what you would about the Purps, but they knew how to make an impression.
The bartender walked over to him, leaning on the counter as she looked him up and down skeptically. It was another Rakiri like the dockworkers, her feline nose twitching as she took in his scent.
“You lost, or do you want something to drink?” she asked.
“No thank you, I’m waiting for someone,” he replied sheepishly as he lowered his eyes to his device again.
He was right on time, but as he looked around, there was no sign of his contact. He was supposed to meet them here, right?
The Rakiri shrugged her furry shoulders, then left him to his own devices, moving over to the small group of Nighkru.
Perhaps one of them was his contact?
He certainly hoped not. While he didn’t have anything against a person enjoying themselves with a good drink after hours, it wasn’t a good way to make a positive first impression on a prospective employee.
Fortunately for him, the surprise on one of the trio’s grey skinned faces when she happened to blearily peer in his direction dashed that possibility. Just a trio of young women out for a drink.
Unfortunately for him, after a few hastily whispered words to her friends, the group made their way over to him.
“Don’t see many males round these parts,” one of them said, her faux leather getup creaking as she planted her hands on the bar to his left. Another leaned on the counter to his right, the third posting up behind him.
“A Human, too,” the woman to his right added with a sly chuckle. “Now, what’s a Human doing all alone out on the Periphery?”
“I didn’t think the Purps were letting their pets off the leash.” the one behind him snickered.
“I don’t know,” the first said with an exaggerated shrug. “Maybe he snuck out in search of a real woman? I think we’ve all heard how Humans can be.”
That set the three of them laughing.
All the while, Darren wasn’t sure where to look, turning his head left and right as he struggled to pick a Nighkru. He settled on the woman to his left, having to lift his head to meet her gaze, those reflective eyes shining like a pair of silver coins.
“I...uh...was actually supposed to be meeting someone here.” he stammered, a little of his anxiety bleeding through.
The Nighkru gave him a warm smile that wasn’t reflected in her eyes, leaning a little closer. He tried to pull away reflexively but found another Nighkru waiting for him, something rather soft pressing against his back.
“Well, I don’t see anyone else in here but me and my friends,” one of them said as she tutted dramatically. “Maybe they stood you up?”
“Poor form, that,” the one behind him whispered into his ear. He lurched in his seat, surprised by her proximity. “Leaving a pretty young thing like you hanging.”
The first one nodded, as if that was a piece of sagely wisdom. “I know – how about my friends and I give you a personal tour of the station to make up for it?” she asked, reaching out to brush a piece of errant fluff from his collar. “We’ll even carry your luggage for you – we’re nice like that.”
She signaled to one of her compatriots with a curt nod, who then plucked his travel bag off the deck.
“Oh, that’s really not-”
He tried to stand, but he was cut off as two of the women placed their hands on his shoulders, pushing him back down into his seat. Their touch was gentle, but firm, letting him know that he wasn't going anywhere.
Darren looked to the Rakiri bartender for help, feeling more than a little overwhelmed by the turn of events, but she was staying out of it. She was feigning disinterest, cleaning a glass with a rag that didn’t look clean enough for the job.
It was clear that he wouldn’t be getting any help from her.
Was this really going to be his first experience on the station – kidnapped by a gang of alien grifters?
Just as he was getting ready to – likely ineffectually – start swinging like his life depended on it, he heard a voice ring out in a language he didn’t recognize.
The Nighkru turned their heads as one, and he followed their gaze, seeing another of their kind step in from the street. Her skin had the same twilight hue, her silvery hair pulled back into a long ponytail that trailed behind her as she strode towards them. She wore a jet-black body suit that left little to the imagination, so tight that it might have been sewn onto her, the garment open at the front to expose a chiseled midriff and the beginnings of her cleavage. Her eyes were mesmerizing, his gaze drawn to the glowing tattoos that served to accentuate them.
Oddly, unlike the trio surrounding him, she had no horns.
The stranger walked with purpose, her heels clicking on the deck, her hair swishing behind her as she came to a stop to stare down the three other women. They were already backing off, the Nighkru who had taken his bag setting it back down gingerly beside his seat. Did they know this person? They seemed so wary of her.
“Maybe we’ll see you around,” one of them whispered, her hand lingering on his shoulder for a moment before she followed her friends out into the street.
Once they were finally out of sight, Darren breathed a sigh of relief and turned to thank the newcomer. Before he could utter so much as a word, she beat him to the punch.
“You shouldn’t wander around Halfpoint alone,” she said, skipping the preamble. Her voice had a melodic tone, one that was almost musical to Darren’s ears. She planted her hands on her hips, scrutinizing him with a skeptical expression. “You’re just asking for trouble.”
“I’m just...waiting for someone,” he replied. “Thank you, by the way. I’m-”
“Do you have a weapon on you?” she asked, cutting him off. “A handgun under that jacket? Defense spray? A pocket knife?”
“What? No,” he replied, his brow furrowing. “Why would I have a gun?”
Even with a few inches of titanium-alloy plating between everyone aboard and a messy death by explosive decompression, using a firearm on the station seemed risky.
She snorted derisively, almost as though she couldn’t believe his reply.
“For your sake, I hope that whoever you’re waiting for is smarter than you are,” she said with a roll of her silver eyes. “This isn’t Earth, boy. There are no Shil Marines around to babysit you. Next time you want to play tourist, go somewhere closer to home.”
With a flick of her long hair, she turned about, vanishing into the crowd once more to leave him sitting at the bar in confusion.
Darren felt another hand on his shoulder and turned to see an Edixi wearing grease-stained overalls standing behind him. The tool belt that hung loosely about her hips let him know that she was a mechanic before she’d even had time to open her mouth.
Her kind were evolved for an aquatic environment, and although they were fully amphibious, they retained many of their ancient features. Their bodies were smooth and streamlined, with lean, lightly-muscled frames that made them look like Olympic swimmers. Her eyes were a striking ocean-green, and her azure skin was patterned with faded tiger stripes, darkening as it neared her extremities.
“You’re the new engineer, right?” she chirped excitedly.
“Darren Fogle, pleased to meet you,” he confirmed as he extended a hand. She took it, shaking it eagerly, and he noted that her fingers were webbed.
He was a little surprised by how smooth her skin was. Given the sharklike appearance of the Edixi – and her vocation – he’d expected it to be rough and scaly. Maybe cold and slimy, too. By contrast, it was warm and soft, her small scales smooth like a snake’s rather than sharp like those of a fish.
Odd.
“Oh, it is. It very much is. The boss told me to fetch you,” she said before turning back towards the street. “Don’t get lost, you hear? There are some rough types around these parts.”
Yes, she could say that again. He stooped to pick up his bag, then hurried after her, trying not to lose sight of her in the crowd. He also belatedly realized that she hadn’t told him her own name.
Was that an Edixi thing or was she just in a hurry?
The mechanic led him through the streets, which seemed to be arranged in a kind of grid pattern, always flanked by the towering hab-blocks. It was as challenging as ever to navigate when so many of the station’s inhabitants stood a head taller than him. It made him feel like a bug that was trying to avoid being stepped on.
He could only assume he’d get used to it. His guide seemed to have no problem getting around, and she was a few inches shorter than him.
Their destination was some kind of service elevator – a large platform that seemed designed to carry heavy cargo up from the docks, wide enough that a couple of trucks could have parked on it side by side. There were still a few cargo containers stacked off to one side that hadn’t been unloaded yet.
He watched as the woman hit a touch panel beside the double doors, and they began to slide shut, the platform lurching as Darren felt it start to rise. There was no grinding of machinery, no vibrations, only a sensation of getting heavier. It was obviously gravity-manipulation tech. It wasn’t too surprising – the Shil seemed to use it for just about everything, so it wasn’t too strange that the rest of the universe did as well.
Convergent technological development, he could almost imagine his Shil instructor saying as they started to descend. Good tech is good tech.
The hab-ring’s many levels flashed by one by one, until finally, the elevator slid to a smooth stop. Darren followed the happily humming mechanic out into a garage, his eyes lighting up as he took in his new surroundings.
Were those… mecha?
The bay’s walls were lined with bulky harnesses that were obviously designed to hold the machines in place, a few of the berths already occupied by half-disassembled vehicles.
They were!
“Real life mecha,” he mumbled.
As a mechanic, he wasn’t ignorant of the genre. After all, what kind of engineer didn’t hold a soft spot for giant stompy robots? Of course, as an engineer, he also held an inherent disdain for anyone that actually thought said machines were even remotely practical outside of the realm of fiction.
The Square Cube Law was a harsh mistress.
The long and short of it was that if you doubled a machine's height while keeping it the same shape, you ended up with four times the muscle power moving eight times the mass. As a result, instead of having the same relative agility as the original, the double-sized machine actually had only half.
That was why ants could lift so much relative to their weight. If you scaled one up, you’d end up with a much less impressive power to weight ration.
And, the problem only got worse the bigger you went. Giant robots would be slow, cumbersome, and they would inevitably suffer from exploding ankles if they tried to move too fast. They’d also sink in just about any terrain that was even slightly porous.
All in all, mecha were a cool concept with absolutely zero real world applications.
Which was why he was so stunned to see some in real life. Sure, the Shil military liked to use exos, but they were really just power armor by any other name with thrusters attached. Besides, the only reason those things could skip around like they did was because they had anti-grav generators…
His thoughts trailed off as an idea occurred to him. He jogged over to the nearest machine, peering up at the twenty-foot humanoid monstrosity. Its legs had been detached, leaving only a bulky torso covered in half-stripped sensory equipment, lenses and scanners visible where their protective covers had been removed. The cockpit was open, revealing the pilot’s seat, along with the surrounding neural interface cables that hung loose like the entrails of some mechanical beast. Its weapon attachments were empty, but it was nonetheless an awe-inspiring sight.
Sure enough, there were two oversized humps on the back. One was clearly for the thing’s fusion engine – and the other must have held the anti-grav generator.
“Darren?” the mechanic asked, having only just realized that he wasn’t behind her. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Y-yeah,” he said, jogging for a few paces to catch up. “That’s a mecha!”
The blue-hued alien nodded slowly. “Yes?”
“A mecha,” he reiterated.
Which prompted another slow nod. “You’ve never seen a gladiator mech before?”
“No.”
“Didn’t they tell you what job you’d be doing?” the mechanic asked, cocking her head in a rather adorable manner.
“No?” This time it was his turn to cock his head.
Several emotions seemed to fly across the alien’s face. He saw surprise, confusion, and dismay before she finally settled on irritation.
“Typical,” she grunted. “Just… follow me.”
AN: https://youtu.be/a3Xp1WhRQ9Q
2023.04.01 09:00 Justanother-redditor Looking for temporary stay recommendations in Pune
Hi folks! I'm moving to Pune in mid-April from my home city. I'm looking for a temporary stay for roughly a month within 5 kms of Bund Garden Road (KP, Kalyani Nagar, Sangamvadi or any other areas that are close by). A monthly stay at an Airbnb is not economical for me (Open to spending up to INR 22K w/o food for a month). Looking for recommendations for serviced apartments or private rooms in those areas (I'm not open to a shared room).
A couple of other questions:
submitted by Justanother-redditor to TwoXIndia [link] [comments]
A couple of other questions:
- Is my budget realistic? If not, what would be an estimate?
- Are StanzaLiving, Nestaway, CoLive and similar managed properties any good? I often hear terrible things about them in my home city.
2023.04.01 07:07 DescriptionOwn6184 Greetings! New body here for a year.
I and my girlfriend (I'm an American national and my girlfriend is Russian) have just relocated here after a year in Guadalajara, Mexico. I'm a former US Army Ranger, fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Went to school for history (specializing in Judeo-Christian history as well as Islam and also US military history and meso-american studies). I love immersing myself in different cultures and soaking everything up like a sponge. This place has some crazy history to it and I know next to nothing. Excited to study up a bit.
I'm stoked on the cuisine here. Oh man. I'm seeing an odd mix of cultural food out here that is utterly fan-fucking-tastic. Khachapuri was great. Khinkali too. Can't wait to see what else I discover! Food in Mexico was great but eh...not a lot of variation.
Other than food, I'm looking for for a few specific things and it'd be awesome if you guys could please advise.
1) DnD! Do you even game, son? Had a great group out in Guadalajara for a year, was rolling through the Out of the Abyss campaign before we had to switch gears. Would be great to play with a new group! English-speaking preferred 'cause my Georgian is ass at the moment.
2) A decent coffee shop in my area to work on my book. I'm on the final revision of my first book. 99% done! I need somewhere cozy and quiet with a relaxing atmosphere and space to plug in my laptop.
3) A "thing-delivery service." When I lived in Guadalajara we used Amazon.mx. In Beijing, China we used Aliexpress. What do people use here?
4) A grocery store that won't kill my account. We went to the nearby "City Mall's Goodwill" and spent 300+lari on not much at all D:. I get way more "bang for my buck" in Mexico/ China/ Indonesia, etc. I know there's cheaper alternatives out here but don't know where.
5) Meetups/ cool people to hang out with! I've travelled the world a bit and lived an even crazier life and there's nothing better than swapping wild stories over an ale or what have you.
6) A "Wal-mart" type store where one can buy home amenities. Like an IKEA. Sheets, pillow-top covers, folding table, bathroom shelves, etc. (our mattress is like a plank of wood and while I love camping/ sleeping on the dirt...not so much in-home haha).
I live out in Saburtalo (girl picked this place and I dig it a bit. A bit expensive tho at $700 for ONE room. In Mexico that gets you a 3-bed 3-bath) in what I've dubbed "The Necropolis." Graveyards behind AND in front of our building! It'd be great to meet other people and see how far along my Georgian language develops over this next year. I speak a bit of Espanol, Mandarin, Bahasa, French, and am fluent in English.
Have a great day and keep warm out there!
submitted by DescriptionOwn6184 to Sakartvelo [link] [comments]
I'm stoked on the cuisine here. Oh man. I'm seeing an odd mix of cultural food out here that is utterly fan-fucking-tastic. Khachapuri was great. Khinkali too. Can't wait to see what else I discover! Food in Mexico was great but eh...not a lot of variation.
Other than food, I'm looking for for a few specific things and it'd be awesome if you guys could please advise.
1) DnD! Do you even game, son? Had a great group out in Guadalajara for a year, was rolling through the Out of the Abyss campaign before we had to switch gears. Would be great to play with a new group! English-speaking preferred 'cause my Georgian is ass at the moment.
2) A decent coffee shop in my area to work on my book. I'm on the final revision of my first book. 99% done! I need somewhere cozy and quiet with a relaxing atmosphere and space to plug in my laptop.
3) A "thing-delivery service." When I lived in Guadalajara we used Amazon.mx. In Beijing, China we used Aliexpress. What do people use here?
4) A grocery store that won't kill my account. We went to the nearby "City Mall's Goodwill" and spent 300+lari on not much at all D:. I get way more "bang for my buck" in Mexico/ China/ Indonesia, etc. I know there's cheaper alternatives out here but don't know where.
5) Meetups/ cool people to hang out with! I've travelled the world a bit and lived an even crazier life and there's nothing better than swapping wild stories over an ale or what have you.
6) A "Wal-mart" type store where one can buy home amenities. Like an IKEA. Sheets, pillow-top covers, folding table, bathroom shelves, etc. (our mattress is like a plank of wood and while I love camping/ sleeping on the dirt...not so much in-home haha).
I live out in Saburtalo (girl picked this place and I dig it a bit. A bit expensive tho at $700 for ONE room. In Mexico that gets you a 3-bed 3-bath) in what I've dubbed "The Necropolis." Graveyards behind AND in front of our building! It'd be great to meet other people and see how far along my Georgian language develops over this next year. I speak a bit of Espanol, Mandarin, Bahasa, French, and am fluent in English.
Have a great day and keep warm out there!
2023.04.01 07:05 asaharyev Matchday Thread 4/1
Major League Soccer
MLS 360 StreamLive Updating Comment Stream
NWSL
USL Championship
USL League One
NISA - NISA Live Streams
| Home | Away | Time | TV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chattanooga FC | Gold Star FC Detroit | 3:00 PM | Eleven Sports |
| Maryland Bobcats FC | Flower City Union | 7:00 PM | Eleven Sports |
| Savannah Clovers FC | Michigan Stars FC | 7:00 PM | Eleven Sports |
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Bot not working? Here is a guide to making match threads.
2023.04.01 06:48 TwistedCourtea AITA for starting a GoFundMe for my future service dog?
I have 2 dogs currently. One is my current service dog and one is my service dog in training. They will be referred to as SD and SDIT for this post.
I (F27) got a standard poodle puppy in February to train for when my current SD retires. My SDIT is only 6 months old currently. I got him on Feb 18th. On Feb 27th he was not acting right. Not eating and salivating and not wanting to move. Just not a puppy. I then noticed his gums were pale so the next day I called and was able to get him in at a vet clinic in my city. The vet assumed he had a stomach issue and gave him a shot for nausea and some antibiotics and sent us home with a few cans of gastric food. That visit was $200. The next day he looked worse.
That night I decided to take him to the emergency vet. They did fecal and blood tests and found out he was severely anemic. Hemoglobin was 4 when it should have been at least 12! While the cause is unknown they suspected parasites. We wormed him for every type of worm under the sun and he got a blood transfusion. In total this visit was $1141.99.
I live alone and don't make a ton I am above poverty but I almost live paycheck to paycheck. I have enough to provide for me and my dogs but this was a expense I wasn't prepared for. His puppy insurance wasn't even valid yet. So my Mom helped. She used money she had set aside for house taxes and helped me. She knows what these dogs do and will do for me so she was so willing to help.
Fast forward to work after this incident. I work in a doctors office so my particular issues that cause me to need my SD can be monitored and if needed helped by the nurses and doctors. My SD does not come to work with me due to me working in a office with surgeons so sterility is a concern.
My coworkers knew about this trouble with my SDIT due to me having to leave work for the vet appointment. They asked me how moose was and what happened and so I told them. Some were supportive but a few were judgmental. "Its just a dog....Why not just surrender him if you couldn't afford the care...Your risking your moms house for a dog..." I told them that while I do plan to pay her back I had started a GoFundMe and make gear (vests, patches, etc) for service dogs to sell. (it hasn't pulled in that much with start up costs)
I got so much judgement for the GoFundMe. This time it was "There are legit people on there who need help...there are people on there losing their houses or dying and you made one for your dog?"
So reddit...AITA?
submitted by TwistedCourtea to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]
I (F27) got a standard poodle puppy in February to train for when my current SD retires. My SDIT is only 6 months old currently. I got him on Feb 18th. On Feb 27th he was not acting right. Not eating and salivating and not wanting to move. Just not a puppy. I then noticed his gums were pale so the next day I called and was able to get him in at a vet clinic in my city. The vet assumed he had a stomach issue and gave him a shot for nausea and some antibiotics and sent us home with a few cans of gastric food. That visit was $200. The next day he looked worse.
That night I decided to take him to the emergency vet. They did fecal and blood tests and found out he was severely anemic. Hemoglobin was 4 when it should have been at least 12! While the cause is unknown they suspected parasites. We wormed him for every type of worm under the sun and he got a blood transfusion. In total this visit was $1141.99.
I live alone and don't make a ton I am above poverty but I almost live paycheck to paycheck. I have enough to provide for me and my dogs but this was a expense I wasn't prepared for. His puppy insurance wasn't even valid yet. So my Mom helped. She used money she had set aside for house taxes and helped me. She knows what these dogs do and will do for me so she was so willing to help.
Fast forward to work after this incident. I work in a doctors office so my particular issues that cause me to need my SD can be monitored and if needed helped by the nurses and doctors. My SD does not come to work with me due to me working in a office with surgeons so sterility is a concern.
My coworkers knew about this trouble with my SDIT due to me having to leave work for the vet appointment. They asked me how moose was and what happened and so I told them. Some were supportive but a few were judgmental. "Its just a dog....Why not just surrender him if you couldn't afford the care...Your risking your moms house for a dog..." I told them that while I do plan to pay her back I had started a GoFundMe and make gear (vests, patches, etc) for service dogs to sell. (it hasn't pulled in that much with start up costs)
I got so much judgement for the GoFundMe. This time it was "There are legit people on there who need help...there are people on there losing their houses or dying and you made one for your dog?"
So reddit...AITA?
2023.04.01 06:02 AutoModerator Monthly Discussion Thread - Month of April, 2023
It’s a new month and welcome to the next Monthly Discussion Thread!
Use this thread to talk about what’s going on in & around New York City, or any topic both small & large, if you’d want to chat, bring up touristy questions/requests, air your grievances, so on. If something doesn’t merit its own post, you’re free to share here. Some example topics may include:
Useful info:
News of the Day:
NY Daily News NY1 NBC New York
Alternate Subreddits, if you need further help and/or find the right community for you.
Self promoting
And finally…
For your viewing preference, comments here will by default be sorted by “new”. Keep in mind of the rules when commenting here, keep things SFW & self-moderate yourselves, and finally be courteous to your fellow neighbor. Hope you all find this thread useful!
submitted by AutoModerator to newyorkcity [link] [comments]
Use this thread to talk about what’s going on in & around New York City, or any topic both small & large, if you’d want to chat, bring up touristy questions/requests, air your grievances, so on. If something doesn’t merit its own post, you’re free to share here. Some example topics may include:
- Regularly asked questions (hint, you can also ask on AskNYC)
- Recommended spots for a meal (consider asking on FoodNYC), walk, bike ride (also consider asking on NYCBike or MicromobilityNYC) drink in/near NYC.
- Volunteer opportunities.
- Tourism questions/inquiries.
- Talk about city specific politics & other hot topics of the day.
- General topics that may not need its own thread due to brevity/simplicity/low-effort.
NY Daily News NY1 NBC New York
- AskNYC - Your one stop shop for questions, suggestions and/or answers for tourist inquiries, basic NYC life, or those tip-of-the-tongue requests even locals have sometimes.
- The 5 borough subreddits: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, StatenIsland, Bronx for niche content pertaining to Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx respectively.
- NYCpics - per rule 10, photo submissions that aren’t art/historical shouldn’t be shared there on weekdays (Monday-Friday), and would be a better fit on the aforementioned borough subreddits, or NYCPics instead.
- Ideally for the time being, unless if it’s a pervasive issue, please consider sharing your self promotion posts/events here, it’ll help keep the subreddit tidy, and you can find what you’re looking for and/or want to promote, whether it’s your event, comedy show, etc.
For your viewing preference, comments here will by default be sorted by “new”. Keep in mind of the rules when commenting here, keep things SFW & self-moderate yourselves, and finally be courteous to your fellow neighbor. Hope you all find this thread useful!
2023.04.01 05:19 ThrowAway7s2 $2,000 Worth Of Equipment Lost on Ice Floe, from the April 3, 1925 Door County Advocate
 | Headline from the April 3, 1925 Door County Advocate submitted by ThrowAway7s2 to DoorCountyALT [link] [comments] — Twin Cities Fishermen Watch Shanties Disappear After Narrow Escape from Going With Them — MARINETTE—More than $2,000 worth of nets, a dozen or more shanties and as many ice sleighs besides the ice tools and fishing outfits of a dozen or more fishermen of the twin cities sailed out into Lake Michigan Thursday night with the ice breaking up on Green bay. Not a bit of ice on Green bay was visible from this port this morning, the earliest breakup in years and a month and three days earlier than last year when the ice went out on April 30. The year previous the breakup came on May 5. Had the fishermen got on the ice a half-hour earlier than they attempted to Wednesday morning they would have undoubtedly have been with their nets and shanties somewhere out on Lake Michigan. They quit their nets and outfits Tuesday afternoon while lifting when warned by the roar of the rushing water and cracking ice that the break was coming and hurried for shore encountering a crack 10 feet wide which they bridged with planks, getting their horses across although several horses went into the water before [they were] rescued. The crack gradually widened until there was no hope of getting back to the nets that night. Watch Shanties Disappear The next morning at four o'clock the fishermen following the shore line north of the city could see their shanties in the distance and near Arthur Bay went on to the ice field which was pressing the shore. They immediately, however, sought safety on shore as the ice moved out and they barely got off of it before a large space of open water separated it from shore. Had they reached the spot a half hour earlier they declare they could surely have attempted to reach their outfits and would have been caught on the drift. Records of 26 years at the city water station show that only once in that time has there been an earlier breakup than this year and two years when the breakup came on the corresponding date of this year. The breakup in 1902 was an March 27 and again in 1910. In 1921 the ice left the bay on March 25. The latest breakup was May 20, 1923. The usual date, the records show, is between April 16 and April 26. —*— [Arthur Bay is about the same latitude as Gills Rock. In today's dollars, the loss would be over $34,000. Sunken treasure!] This is thanks to the Door County Library Newspaper Archive. The link is https://archive.co.door.wi.us:443/jsp/RcWebImageViewer.jsp?doc_id=1e8fc801-90a4-4104-8e86-19a1ea0947dc/wsbd0000/20131118/00000007&pg_seq=4. |
2023.04.01 05:17 Admirable_Birthday39 45 [M4F] -New York City; Blk male. seeking longterm serious relationship and children. 6'5" live alone work single no children.
45 [M4F] -New York City; Blk male. seeking longterm serious relationship and children. 6'5" live alone work single no children.
Hi I am 6"5 single black male no kids age 45, live alone work in Manhattan. Seeking a Woman that either lives or lives within a hour from the city. I am not seeking a pin-pal or long-distance relationship.
Also you must have a job be independent, single and have no children but is serious about starting a family. Non-smoker but 420 friendly. If you drink that is a plus.
My hobbies include cooking, art, sculpture, painting playing video games and going to the movies. Also I am interested in traveling. And binge watching various streaming services. I consider myself a movie Buff.
I do not discriminate and I am mostly attracted to Black, White, Asian,Latin and East Indian women.
I enjoy Asian, Soul Food and Mexican food When you DM me please include a description of your personality,height,age, ethnicity and your location and a good place we should meet up for our first date.
Thank you.
submitted by Admirable_Birthday39 to interracialdating [link] [comments]
Hi I am 6"5 single black male no kids age 45, live alone work in Manhattan. Seeking a Woman that either lives or lives within a hour from the city. I am not seeking a pin-pal or long-distance relationship.
Also you must have a job be independent, single and have no children but is serious about starting a family. Non-smoker but 420 friendly. If you drink that is a plus.
My hobbies include cooking, art, sculpture, painting playing video games and going to the movies. Also I am interested in traveling. And binge watching various streaming services. I consider myself a movie Buff.
I do not discriminate and I am mostly attracted to Black, White, Asian,Latin and East Indian women.
I enjoy Asian, Soul Food and Mexican food When you DM me please include a description of your personality,height,age, ethnicity and your location and a good place we should meet up for our first date.
Thank you.
2023.04.01 04:56 Admirable_Birthday39 45 [M4F] -New York City; Blk male. seeking longterm serious relationship and children. 6'5" live alone work single no children.
John Wick 4 at Lincoln Square 13 was pretty good would like to see it again at another IMAX with someone new
45 [M4F] -New York City; Blk male. seeking longterm serious relationship and children. 6'5" live alone work single no children.
Hi I am 6"5 single black male no kids age 45, live alone work in Manhattan. Seeking a Woman that either lives or lives within a hour from the city. I am not seeking a pin-pal or long-distance relationship.
Also you must have a job be independent, single and have no children but is serious about starting a family. Non-smoker but 420 friendly. If you drink that is a plus.
My hobbies include cooking, art, sculpture, painting playing video games and going to the movies. Also I am interested in traveling. And binge watching various streaming services. I consider myself a movie Buff.
I do not discriminate and I am mostly attracted to Black, White, Asian,Latin and East Indian women.
I enjoy Asian, Soul Food and Mexican food When you DM me please include a description of your personality,height,age, ethnicity and your location and a good place we should meet up for our first date.
Thank you.
submitted by Admirable_Birthday39 to r4r [link] [comments]
45 [M4F] -New York City; Blk male. seeking longterm serious relationship and children. 6'5" live alone work single no children.
Hi I am 6"5 single black male no kids age 45, live alone work in Manhattan. Seeking a Woman that either lives or lives within a hour from the city. I am not seeking a pin-pal or long-distance relationship.
Also you must have a job be independent, single and have no children but is serious about starting a family. Non-smoker but 420 friendly. If you drink that is a plus.
My hobbies include cooking, art, sculpture, painting playing video games and going to the movies. Also I am interested in traveling. And binge watching various streaming services. I consider myself a movie Buff.
I do not discriminate and I am mostly attracted to Black, White, Asian,Latin and East Indian women.
I enjoy Asian, Soul Food and Mexican food When you DM me please include a description of your personality,height,age, ethnicity and your location and a good place we should meet up for our first date.
Thank you.
2023.04.01 04:54 Dismal-Jellyfish Federal Reserve Alert! Governor Christopher J. Waller in speech 'The Unstable Phillips Curve': "When Central Bank promises are credible, the Phillips curve should be relatively flat. Since January 2022, the Phillips curve is essentially vertical."
 | Good evening and Happy Friday Superstonk, resident jellyfish back with this interesting nugget. Let's get to it! submitted by Dismal-Jellyfish to Superstonk [link] [comments] Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller At the Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy, a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, San Francisco, California Source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/waller20230331a.htm Highlights:The Phillips curve:
New Keynesian model:
In both these stories, expectations of future inflation play a critical role:
This explanation is all about the short run:
What do economic data tell us about this relationship?
What would cause inflation expectations to be unstable?
What have we seen in the data?2000-2019 (stable):The Phillips curve was very flat for the 20-plus years before the pandemic, consistent with the story that the Federal Reserve was credible at keeping inflation low.Data for 2021: The Phillips curve suddenly looked relatively steep:The Phillips curve suddenly looked relatively steep. That is, the labor market became extremely tight as the U.S. economy emerged from pandemic lockdowns.What Changed? Inflation!!!
Since January 2022, the Phillips curve is essentially vertical:The unemployment rate has hovered around 3.6 percent, and inflation has varied from 7 percent (in June) to 5.3 percent (in December).What happened to the Phillips curve that it is acting so differently now than in the pre-pandemic period? 3 trains of thought:
1.Freshwater macroeconomistsWould once again argue that this difference shows the Phillips curve is a statistical anomaly and should not be used as a foundational element guiding monetary policy.2. As aggregate demand increases, labor demand will increase as well relies on inflation expectations becoming unanchored and causing the short-run Phillips curve to shift around:https://preview.redd.it/34v34bjwp6ra1.png?width=765&format=png&auto=webp&s=db39bdc581f28f67a463f8c24fd91472d1f5c978
3. New Keynesian Phillips curve where there is a sudden increase in the frequency of price changes:https://preview.redd.it/m8kcn1ioq6ra1.png?width=687&format=png&auto=webp&s=b7255c8306a271981926c4f01c1e5302f496b5d6
What does this suggest about the relationship between inflation and labor market slack and the implications for monetary policy?Two charts on inflation expectations from the Federal Reserve's March 2023 Monetary Policy Report.
Data on the frequency of output price changes in 2021 and 2022:Preliminary work by Montag and Villar Vallenas (2023) uses U.S. Consumer Price Index micro-data to examine about 90,000 individual prices each month and determines if there was a change and, if so, was the change an increase or decrease.
What does this analysis mean for monetary policy makers?
TLDRS:
Full Speech:Thank you, Sylvain, and thank you to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for inviting me to speak tonight. After listening to many dinner speakers through the years, I am well aware that after the entrees are served, no one wants to hear someone blabber for 45 minutes. So, I will try to keep this short to leave enough time for a robust discussion afterward, which I hope my remarks will generate. |
2023.04.01 04:36 Admirable_Birthday39 45 [M4F] -New York City; Blk male. seeking longterm serious relationship and children. 6'5" live alone work single no children.
45 [M4F] -New York City; Blk male. seeking longterm serious relationship and children. 6'5" live alone work single no children.
Hi I am 6"5 single black male no kids age 45, live alone work in Manhattan. Seeking a Woman that either lives or lives within a hour from the city. I am not seeking a pin-pal or long-distance relationship.
Also you must have a job be independent, single and have no children but is serious about starting a family. Non-smoker but 420 friendly. If you drink that is a plus.
My hobbies include cooking, art, sculpture, painting playing video games and going to the movies. Also I am interested in traveling. And binge watching various streaming services. I consider myself a movie Buff.
I do not discriminate and I am mostly attracted to Black, White, Asian,Latin and East Indian women.
I enjoy Asian, Soul Food and Mexican food When you DM me please include a description of your personality,height,age, ethnicity and your location and a good place we should meet up for our first date.
Thank you.
submitted by Admirable_Birthday39 to r4rinterracial [link] [comments]
Hi I am 6"5 single black male no kids age 45, live alone work in Manhattan. Seeking a Woman that either lives or lives within a hour from the city. I am not seeking a pin-pal or long-distance relationship.
Also you must have a job be independent, single and have no children but is serious about starting a family. Non-smoker but 420 friendly. If you drink that is a plus.
My hobbies include cooking, art, sculpture, painting playing video games and going to the movies. Also I am interested in traveling. And binge watching various streaming services. I consider myself a movie Buff.
I do not discriminate and I am mostly attracted to Black, White, Asian,Latin and East Indian women.
I enjoy Asian, Soul Food and Mexican food When you DM me please include a description of your personality,height,age, ethnicity and your location and a good place we should meet up for our first date.
Thank you.
2023.04.01 03:49 Cosmicspider87 Epsteins Art Fashion connections
Art/Fashion
submitted by Cosmicspider87 to MisterEinvestigating [link] [comments]
- Herve Aaron (Didier Aaron Inc.
- Lorinda Ash Fine art dealer. Also, ex-wife of Peter Ezersky, current director at Hargray Holdings LLC (provider of telecommunication services) and Grupo Corporativo (food and agriculture provider in Spain. Associated with Grupo Vips). Possible ties with Maite Arango.
- Charlotte & Vitterio Assal
- Saffron Aldridge Model
- Miranda Brooks: Contributing editor to Vogue and successful landscaper.
- Christopher Brooks (Artist)
- Joan Juliet Buck: Former editor-in-chief of French Vogue turned actress.
- Hamish Bowles: Editor-at-large for Vogue magazine.
- Pietro & Alejandra Cicognani: Pietro is a high-end architect based out of NYC.
- Lindka Cierach: British fashion designer. Her clients include the British Royal Family.
- Ferranti, Hugo: Hugo de Ferranti is an art dealer. He is also a Director for Action on Addiction, a UK-based charity for people with drug and alcohol addiction issues. Kate Middleton has served as patron of Action on Addiction since 2012.
- Fiennes, Suzzana: A British artist who works exclusively with Prince Charles. Susannah is the twin sister of Martin Fiennes and cousin of actor Ralph.
- Fraysse, Isabel: Isabelle Fraysse is a former Style Editor for Vogue. Founder of ISI Style Consulting.
- Deborah Green Founder and Creative Director, Studio Bright Green currently but previously she was the director of The London Group
- Jagger, Hatti: Former fashion director for Vogue, Harper’s, and Tatler. Also works as a celebrity stylist and at fashion shows.
- Kellette Frayse, Caroline: Fashion editor at Vogue and Tatler (both magazines constantly come up in Epstein’s contacts). Former girlfriend of Imran Khan, whose name has come up frequently. Passed away in 2014. Her husband, Jean-Marc Fraysse, is a French investment banker.
- Lang, Caroline: An art expert and Chairman at Sotheby’s Switzerland.
- Malek, Harry & Didi: Diddi owns a fine art consultancy company that gives guidance to buyers and collectors. No info on Harry.
- Manfredini Alessandro: A sculptor and graphic artist who turned to modeling in his 40s (https://made-to-measure-suits.bgfashion.net/article/14889/77/Alessandro-Manfredini-the-man-who-became-famous-with-his-beard).
- Marterier, Astrid: A fashion consultant who used to work as VP of Global Sales and Merchandising for several brands, including Von Furstenberg, whose family makes several appearances on this list.
- Martins, Peter: Leader of the New York City Ballet who was forced to retire in 2018 because he was accused of sexually abusing his dancers, dating back decades (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/arts/dance/peter-martins-resigns-ballet.html. Of course, he was eventually found to be innocent of these charges. Coincidentally, it seems as though Epstein target dancers at NYC studios, including one who was approached by an intermediary after ballet class (https://www.pointemagazine.com/jeffrey-epstein-dancers-2640183763.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2
- Marzotto, Matteo: Fashion mogul. Marzotto’s family owned Valentino fashion before selling in 2006. He used to date supermodel Naomi Campbell
- Mazandi, Yassi: Sculptor and painter.
- Mclane, Shannon: Fashion designer
- Miller, Nicole & Kim Taipale: Miller is a millionaire fashion designer and businesswoman. Taipale is her husband. They were married by Rudy Giuliani in 1996. Nicole is a good friend of disgusting perverts, Ghislaine Maxwell and Tiffany Dubin (https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_8672/), wife of even more disgusting pervert Glenn Dubin.
- Pickering, Jane & William: Jayne is a very famous fashion editor. William is her ex-husband.
- Pigozzi, Jean: Heir to the CEO of Simca, a French automaker. Pigozzi is also a photographer and fashion designer. Pigozzi regularly attends The Billionaires’ Dinner (https://www.edge.org/the-billionaires-dinner), where he has been pictured with Paul Allen and Princess Olga of Greece. Other regular attendees include Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, John Brockman, Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons and pervert who received a foot massage from 16 year old Virginia Giuffre), and Rupert Murdoch. Pigozzi lived about a mile away from Epstein in NYC. Pigozzi is also a good friend of Ghislaine Maxwell’s (https://www.patrickmcmullan.com/photo/1539229
- Prevost, Catherine: Fashion designer.
- Pucci, Laudomia: Daughter of fashion icon, Emilio Pucci. Works as Image Director for the eponymous company.
2023.04.01 02:39 ag5airplane (SELLING) Friday night HD code party, B4G1 FREE, 4K Catwoman: Hunted
All movies $2.50 unless noted otherwise. Payments via Venmo, or Paypal family and friends.
All HD except for some 4K at the top.
Buy 4 get 1 free.
4K (MA unless noted)
HD Complete Series & Seasons
MA (HD)
Vudu / iTunes (HD)
Other (HD)
submitted by ag5airplane to DigitalCodeSELL [link] [comments]
All HD except for some 4K at the top.
Buy 4 get 1 free.
4K (MA unless noted)
- Catwoman: Hunted $4
HD Complete Series & Seasons
- Little House on the Prairie season 2 (Vudu) $4.50
MA (HD)
- 300 Rise of an Empire
- A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas
- American Sniper
- Argo $2
- Marvel Avengers (3 movie lot - Avengers, Age of Ultron, Infinity War) $7
- Avengers Age of Ultron
- Avengers Endgame
- Avengers Infinity War
- Battleship
- Bourne Identity $3.50
- Central Intelligence
- Concussion
- The Dark Tower
- Deadpool
- Despicable Me 2
- The Dilemma
- Dolphin Tale 2
- Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
- Fantastic 4 (2015) $3
- Fast and Furious 2
- Fast and Furious 4
- Fast and Furious 6 (extended)
- Fast and Furious 7 (extended)
- Fast and Furious 8 (Fate of the Furious) $2
- Fast and Furious 8 (Fate of the Furious, extended cut)
- The Fault in our Stars
- Fifty Shades of Grey (unrated) $1.50
- Free Guy $3
- Frozen $2
- Getaway (Ethan Hawke 2013)
- Ghostbusters (2016, theat + extended)
- A Good Day to Die Hard (extended)
- The Good Lie
- Grudge Match $2
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
- Hail, Caesar! $3
- The Hangover II $2
- The Heat
- Heaven is for Real $2
- How to be Single $1
- How to Train Your Dragon 2
- The Incredible Burt Wonderstone $2
- Independence Day
- Independence Day Resurgence
- Iron Man 3
- Jaws $3
- Joy $2
- Joyful Noise $2
- Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle
- Jurassic Park
- Jurassic World
- Kingsman The Golden Circle
- Kingsman The Secret Service
- Life (Jake G.)
- Life of Pi
- Logan $3
- Looper $3
- The Lucky One $2
- MIB International
- Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again $2
- The New Mutants $3
- New Year's Eve
- Night At The Museum Secret of the Tomb
- Pacific Rim
- Pacific Rim Uprising
- Parental Guidance $1.50
- Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales
- Philadelphia (code only for use in region B)
- Pineapple Express unrated $3
- The Pirate Fairy
- The Purge Anarchy $3
- Raya and the Last Dragon
- Resident Evil The Final Chapter
- The Revenant $3
- Riddick Director's $3
- Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows
- Skyscraper
- Son of God
- Spider-Man No Way Home $3.50
- Split $3
- The Star (2017, animated) $3
- Star Wars Force Awakens $2
- Star Wars The Last Jedi
- Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker $3
- Star Wars Rogue One
- Straight Outta Compton unrated $3
- Ted (unrated)
- This is Where I Leave You
- Thor Ragnarok $3
- Trolls $3
- Trouble With the Curve $2
- Walking With Dinosaurs The Movie
- War for the Planet of the Apes
- X-Men Apocalypse $3
- X-Men Days of Future Past
Vudu / iTunes (HD)
- 13 Hours (Vudu)
- A Quiet Place (iTunes)
- A Quiet Place (Vudu / iTunes)
- The American (iTunes)
- Anchorman 2 (iTunes) $1.50
- Bad Grandpa (iTunes)
- Book Club (iTunes)
- Bridesmaids (iTunes)
- A Cabin in the Woods (Vudu / iTunes) $3
- Contraband (iTunes) $1.50
- Cowboys and Aliens (iTunes) $2
- Daddy's Home (split code - Vudu or iTunes)
- Daddy's Home 2 (iTunes)
- Deepwater Horizon (Vudu / iTunes) $3
- Dirty Grandpa (iTunes)
- Dredd (iTunes)
- Escape From Planet Earth (animated) (Vudu) $3
- G.I. Joe Retaliation (iTunes) $2
- Hercules (The Rock) (iTunes)
- The Hunger Games (ALL four movies) (split codes - Vudu or iTunes) $6
- Hunger Games (split code - Vudu or iTunes) $1.50
- Hunger Games Catching Fire (split code - Vudu or iTunes) $2
- Hunger Games Mockingjay 1 (split code - Vudu or iTunes) $2
- The Hunger Games Mockingjay part 2 (Vudu or iTunes) $3
- I am Vengeance Retaliation (iTunes) $1.50
- Identity Thief (iTunes)
- Independence Day Resurgence (iTunes)
- Kick Ass (iTunes)
- Killer Elite (iTunes)
- Knives Out (code ONLY valid to redeem in the UK)
- The Last Stand (iTunes)
- The Man with the Iron Fists (iTunes)
- Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
- Mile 22 (iTunes)
- Most Wanted (Vudu / iTunes)
- Neighbors (iTunes)
- Noah (split code - Vudu only)
- Now You See Me (split code - Vudu or iTunes) $1.50
- Now You See Me 2 (iTunes)
- Poms (iTunes)
- Red 2 (iTunes) $2
- Robin Hood (Jamie Foxx) (Vudu / iTunes)
- Safe (iTunes)
- She's Having a Baby (Vudu / iTunes) $3
- Sin City A Dame to Kill For (Vudu) $3.50
- Sleepless (iTunes)
- Spongebob the Movie, Sponge Out of Water (split code - Vudu only)
- Stand Up Guys (Vudu) $3
- Star Trek Beyond (split code - Vudu or iTunes)
- Star Trek Into Darkness (iTunes)
- Super 8 (iTunes)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bay) (Vudu / iTunes)
- Transformers Dark of the Moon (split code - Vudu or iTunes) $2
- Twilight Breaking Dawn P.2 (split code - Vudu or iTunes) $1.50
- Warm Bodies (Vudu / iTunes)
- What Men Want (iTunes)
- Wonder (Vudu / iTunes)
- You're Next (Vudu)
Other (HD)
- Appleseed XIII Complete Series (Funimation) $4
- One Piece Stampede (Funimation) $4
- ULTRAMAN (from cards from USA blu-ray sets - USES Spree website):
- 01 $4
- Ultra Q 01 $4
- unknown Spree code, probably an Ultraman series, unused $3
2023.04.01 01:23 Adventurous-Map-9400 Growing Up Alien Chapter 17
A homeless teenager reaches out to the Shil’vati on first day of the invasion of Earth.
This is a rewrite of my original story ‘Loyalist’.
Credit to u/bluefishcake for writing the original SSB story.
Pizzaulostin who has been beta reading since the beginning.
and u/BruhMomentGEE
Credit to u/HollowShel for getting me started with this!
This story is based in the SSB universe.
Previous
First
next
as always, comments are welcome.
I regarded my handcuffs with professional disapproval. They had a longer than regular chain for ambulatory movement and inmate processing, by the deep, I could even use them as garrote if needed. They had revealed the limits of their rank with that apology.
“No need to worry. I am sure this will be a formality in less than an hour,” I told them, if there was one thing that was in abundance on the planet Sky it was Interior and undercover commando trainees. I hoped this would probably be their most interesting case all month.
“So, would you care to explain how you are raising a human, that is also considered a military asset?” The agent inquired as she pulled out her slate.
“Of course, Klein surrendered himself and requested medical aid and refugee status. He was willing to answer essential questions regarding human culture that aided in liberating humanity into the Shil’vati Empire. He wouldn’t be safe on Earth anymore, and I mentioned that he was still important in writing my reports. If I had my slate, I could give you the relevant documentation,” I said in a conversational tone, without any of the emotions that weighed the story, and glossing over the specifics.
“No need. I have everything you submitted to the Interior, including his asset designation, the interrogation transcripts, and even his doctor’s contact info. To be honest with you it’s the only reason we haven’t interviewed you yet, even after a dozen calls about a ‘possible trafficked human’ since he arrived. Your information is corroborated with several other departments. The issue now is what the medivac scans found.” The agent pushed a slate towards me with medical notes bolded for emphasis ‘probable severe abuse’.
“The report shows a recent history of blunt force trauma, abrasions, and even muscle tearing, in short. It looks like the human has been systematically tortured for months. You also have recently requested restricted training armor in the human’s size.” The agent explained.
Ah, that was my mistake. I had been treating Klein as another child, just with some unique needs. It looks like there were other considerations, ones that I failed to see.
“I really do need my omni-slate to illustrate this, it’s on my desk right now if one of your assistants could get it?” I asked, hoping they got the suggestion to not leave me with only one interrogator in the room so they wouldn’t be graded too harshly.
They thankfully acquiesced without comment, and with my omni-slate in hand I pulled up the latest video of Klein practicing with me, the speed and brutality was difficult for me to sit through. Then, Klein pulled off his helmet seconds later, laughing in the rain. Unconcerned that, without armor, we could have just killed each other- I was grateful he had, else it might’ve been interpreted quite differently. “The bruising mostly from everyday participation at a Rakiri gym, and some remnants from before I got proper gear for baton practice. He heals extremely fast, and more so, he isn’t happy unless he exercises for at least an hour or two a day.”
I pulled up another video. Klein was sitting at the table bouncing his leg at an ever-increasing pace while trying to focus on a decently complex equation. He finally stood up and started pacing mouthing words as he skipped in time to an unheard rhythm.
“W-what’s he doing?” The agent asked, looking just a tad disturbed by the display of what seemed erratic behavior.
“A sort of dance while playing the song ‘a fine mesh net’ on his headphones. There was a monsoon that Shel weekend, and even I’m not crazy enough to fight in a thunderstorm like that. He does that around the house for an hour, and then finally settles in on a video game,” I explained to the agents, who were looking at me dubiously.
“So, you oversee an adolescent who is an intelligence asset, but also seems poorly fitted for Shil’vati life. Why the baton practice? Wouldn’t that make him even more dangerous, more of an outsider? Are you trying to sabotage his integration? Why not take him shopping, instead, or teach him beauty and self-care routines?” They were antagonizing. Countering every argument to see how I reacted. It seemed they could at least interrogate decently well.
“I hardly call a few quirks ‘poor fitting’. The baton practice is for obvious self-defense. Its intention is to make him dangerous,” I explained, letting the interviewers lead the conversation.
The back and forth went on for a while, but I presented a highlight reel of the last few months. Including a Rakiri gym video when Klein tried to flourish a wall climb and smashed his shoulder on the ledge while face planting into the mud.
The agents would not be arresting me today. They would need medical reports, and would require Klein, Hario, and Compassion Through Deeds to attest while truth scanned that these were sports injuries, and not some conspiracy to commit torture. We were also going to need to see an ICAD agent every two weeks for counseling. I had no idea what ICAD was, but I would investigate them later.
Finally, the agents appeared they were closing up the interview. I tried not to brace myself as they asked the complicated question. “One thing we need to know is, what is Klein to you? If he is just a crucial asset, then why haven’t you contacted a local volunteer family foster? Or was the military asset just a cover to find a male heir?”
I sighed, the truth wasn’t incriminating, but if I didn’t word it right, I would look like the worst sort of military tourist. “I had, originally, taken care of Klein as a key intelligence asset. Within that first week though, I had found that despite the decades of preparation, there wasn’t a process for someone to claim asylum as a child during first contact. He would be in military bureaucratic limbo without an advocate. We both know where he would end up.”
The room cooled by several degrees, which was a pity, I almost got the talkative agent to laugh at Klein’s antics. “Out of duty I investigated ways I could bring him home until I could find resources to place him in a stable situation with all the resources to help a xeno without a community. I found someone who was willing to help in exchange for reports on Klein’s adaptation to Shil’vati lifestyle. That’s Klein’s purpose as a military asset in my home.”
I continued. I was saying more on than I needed to, but if they did a follow up investigation later for some other incident, which was a when, not if, then I wanted this on record. “Klein has become part of this household though, despite, or maybe because, of his oddities. He may not be Shil’vati, but he seems to have integrated well. It’s why, while it was never my intention, when he is an adult, I will offer him full adoption, and title of home guardian.”
I watched the agents exchange looks, then the agent made a few taps on her slate. ‘Upper left, middle center, probably a message app’. I then listened for the telltale taps of a yes as a micro expression of a self-satisfied smile crossed the agent’s face. I decided to stop playing interviewee.
“So, you won the bet on if I would claim the human as my son, how long has that pool been building?” I asked folding my hands together.
The agent answered before she could think. “Two months… Wait!? How did you-”
The agent was cut off by the squawk of the slate’s speaker. “Agents you did well enough with the interview portion, however; you absolutely failed to secure the subject. Could you please illustrate to them why I stressed caution {petal of death’s veil}?”
The code name wasn’t one I had heard in decades, but I wasn’t going to snub an old handler. I kicked on my fast reaction mods to max speed and lunged over the table past the still sitting agents. I pirouetted and twisted the restraints into a loop as I brought them down over the left agent’s head and pulled back carefully, lightly touching the chain of my restraints around the neck of the agent before she could even react.
I kicked off my mods and caught my breath as time returned to normal. Both agents’ eyes went wide with shock as the one not about to be strangled tried to get away to pull out her weapon. “W-who are you!?”
“I’m going to slowly release you and put my hands up, is that everything you needed {hated old friend}?” I directed my question to the slate, using the code High Shil word to show I was playing along.
“More than enough. Agent! Holster your weapon and come back to the safe room. We need to go over security procedures,” the slate responded, and the very brief confrontation was over.
The agents walked out, and Siltan stomped in looking like she could bring about a thunderstorm by pure force of will. “We weren’t the only ones to get visits from the ‘majesty’s’ Interior today. Cee let me know that the Interior is also interrogated Reqellia as well.”
I now understood why these two rookies were here. It was a distraction for me. I grumbled as I picked up my slate and called Reqellia. Her face appeared a second later.
“By the Deep, it’s been a long day,” Reqellia breathed out as I heard a door slam, then she cursed some more.
“Tell me everything. Is Klein ok?” I asked.
“Cee says he’s fine and is waking him up. Klein might be getting a mod himself before she closes him up though because, oh- looks like it’s my day is going to get longer still. ICAD is here, and it’s a Hydrean in a Gearschilde clinic.” Reqellia hung up, and I stared at the phone in confusion.
It was time to find out what ICAD was.
I started to panic as I turned my head, focusing on lettering on a terminal, tried to sigh, and felt what few muscles I could control turn to lead as I sank back on the medical bed. Thank the goddess, it was Shil and Gearschilde lettering on the slate and medical supplies.
“Good afternoon Klein, are you okay? Your heart rate spiked.” I heard Cee, or full name Compassion Through Deeds, speak and turned my head to see her. She wore a dark red lab coat and regarded me with unblinking cybernetic eyes. Most of her orange skin had been replaced with dark steel etched with stylized waves and swirls of silver. Her face still emoted in a pleasant smile, but had that uncanny valley look of unblemished synth skin. I looked down to see a dozen micro surgical tools still inside me.
I should have been screaming at the sight, but all I felt was relief and joy. “Yeah, I just worried for a half second that I had hallucinated the last few months and was actually on a back on Earth on some black-market operating table getting my kidney stolen.”
Cee was aghast. “Does that happen on Earth?”
I would shrug, but again, I couldn’t move, instead I responded. “Rumors of it happening, but I never knew anyone personally.”
Cee reassured me. “Well, good news Klein, you are on Sky, you are in a Gearschilde clinic where stealing vital organs is a legal, moral and religious crime of unrepentant severity. What I have done is remove your appendix, and let the sedatives wear off so we can discuss what you want in its place.”
“In place of my appendix? Why?” I asked, it wasn’t like I really needed the vestigial organ turn internal hand grenade.
“Customary in Gearschilde for surgery is to be about giving a better life than just taking from the body. So, any ideas of what would make your life better?”
I thought about the bruising, the constant having to put healing patches on, and the annoyance of doing so. I thought about the near fatality of almost blowing my appendix, and if something could have fixed the issue before it got out of hand. “What about a healing dispenser? I keep having to put on patches and gel at the end of the day, and if I miss a spot, I will pay for it later.”
Cee gave me a grateful expression. “That’s a perfect first implant. I was worried you were going to ask for something more aggressive. When I was your age, I got my first defensive mod, a retractable forearm knife. Of course, my next surgery was being stitched back together after accidently stabbing myself with it.”
I tried to chuckle, but I didn’t have control of my diaphragm for it. “So, what’s next?”
Cee explained. “Well, the fabricator in the other room is right now creating your implant. It shouldn’t take long; are you ok being immobilized for the next hour or so?”
I thought about it, and honestly, I was still surprised I wasn’t panicking. “No, but I’m going to get really bored just laying here, do the Gearschilde have any good myths or stories?”
I knew I was fishing in an untapped pool that was guaranteed to have something. I wasn’t expecting my doctor to be gleeful at the thought though. “Oh blessed be you child, I am a surgeon priest, half the reason I am in this vocation is to tell stories. I take it you know nothing about Gearschilde mythology, or even our history?”
It was on my list of rabbit holes to get into, but instead I binged the rest of Prince Of The Stars and cried, it was nice. “No, but I would love to hear them.”
“Well if you want to, every Shel we have open services and brunch. But since you are new to Gearschilde mythology we should start with one of my favorites. The story of the Hopestrider.”
The ceiling lights dimmed, and the sterile operating room felt surprisingly cozy as I leaned my head back. Listening to Cee starting up the tale. “Our sect requires us to lead what can best be called ‘child technician classes’. Learning to take care of machines, which includes us by the start of adolescence, if not before. It’s a critical life skill, and teaching it is considered an important part of our religious studies.”
‘Cyberpunk VeggieTales’ Squirrel brain chittered.
No one wants your opinion squirrel brain. I thought back.
Cee paused for dramatic effect. “Then, everything changed.”
“The ground shook, and the mountain kingdoms erupted in fire and molten rock. Radioactive dust from these now volcanoes made the centers of civilization barren and deadly. Only the wasteland colonies in the poisonous mists provided any refuge, and so king and commoner alike huddled in the once disposable outposts of a ruined world. Our story starts a generation after the calamity with an unlucky child.”
I heard a ding, Cee stopped as the ceiling lights came up. “Oh dear, let me stop for a second to get the implant.”
I leaned back and thought about her nightmare world. When Cee returned, I didn’t even bother to open my eyes, too engrossed in the imagery of the story. “What happened to the child?”
I could hear the whirring as she started to work. Her voice I realized had taken a more scripted cadence. She must have automated her voice so she could focus. “In a metalworker’s home, a child was born with broken legs and brittle bones. It was common in those days for such a child to die that way. It was their first born and the parents did everything they could to save them. A surgeon was called. The child lost their legs, but kept their life.”
“The child lived in the workshop. Kept warm by the hearth’s fire, even unable to walk, they were curious. Day in and out, they watched their parents construct machines that helped the community make food, filter the air, and defend the homes from the starving, mutated, monsters that circled the fortress walls. The child felt helpless though. Only able to crawl within the confines of the home or be carried around like cargo about the maze-like town of winding stairs and narrow passageways.
“They spent much of their time learning, sitting near the hearth to keep warm, they did the careful work of filing gears and wheels needed to control what could be automated as each hand replaced was another that could be spent doing something else critical to keep the community alive. Still, the child wanted to do more. They could not deliver what they made, and had to rely on others to help them at every turn in life.”
“Little did the child know that in the hearth a machine spirit lived, getting by eating scrap metal that fell in and sleeping at night on the bed of embers. The machine spirit saw the child’s wish, an invention without form, and turned it into a dream for the child, since new machines would mean new machine spirits to play with.”
That night the child saw themselves flying over the cold gray landscape on a pair of machine legs. Traveling the dangerous paths to other towns, and giving the isolated towns hope and community. The child awoke with joy and crawled over to his workbench littered with scrap metal, now children….”
Cee stopped talking and her voice went back to an unscripted rhythm. “I just realized we can’t do the practical part of this story. In class each kid gets a hope strider stuffy with snaps to attach legs they make. We give them bits of copper. Show them how to bend and hammer it, and how to bond it by wrapping the joint in solder and then applying heat with a soldering iron heated in their own toy ‘hearth’ with a safety cover. Still we get a daily small burn or cut, but that in itself is a valuable lesson in tool safety.”
It sounded adorable in a weird, steampunk way. “Sounds fun, so, new legs?”
Cee got the que, as much as I loved the story, and the talk about kindergarten metal shop, I was still immobilized on the operating table. I heard surgical whirring, and the scripted voice came back. “Yes, the child works all night until they fit the new legs on, and for the first time stand up on their own! The parents are overjoyed as they watch them move about the house and that afternoon, with the help of an iron bar as a cane, they walk around their community by themselves.”
“However, it isn’t long before the legs start to see wear and tear, but the child persists, not wanting to stop and fix the creaking joints, until one day the legs stop working altogether and they fall down in a twisting staircase. Carried back to the workshop, they rest for days to heal before they are able to work again. Constructing a new set from the remains of the old. Now…”
My whole body had that pins and needles feel and I tried to move my fingers, but it was sporadic and jerky. Cee distracted me by explaining my new implant. “So, this implant is very basic. It can only be requested to send diagnostic data. The implant only administers more healing serum at a safe, steady rate if, and only if, it doesn’t detect any in your bloodstream. There is an injection site with a color change circle around it. It uses standard go, caution, stop colors to let you know if it’s functioning. I want to wave your omni-pad over the site and check the diagnostics at least once a day. It should hopefully catch if something like this is happening again.”
I tried to not move as I felt my body twitch. My gut felt like I had been run over, repeatedly. I asked, “why didn’t my medical monitoring implant catch this?”
Cee explained. “That’s only good for basic vitals. Near universal indicators of life and activity such as heart rate and blood pressure. The new implant will be able to scan for elevated protein counts. So, if one of your other internal organs starts to malfunction you can get a more unambiguous message that I hope you won’t ignore before getting medivac’d through the city.”
I chuckled a little at that, and it hurt. “Ow, ok, no movement. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or something.”
Cee looked down at me sternly, and her voice took on a deeper, more authoritative tone. “Child, more than enough Gearschilde have died thinking they can just, push themselves past their organic parts failing, if you have a torn muscle that hurts after you’ve used healing gel, then it’s serious enough you need to come see me, or another xeno-doctor, immediately. That’s why I hope your new implant can fix things before it gets to that point.”
Cee brightened after that and went back to the explanation of my implant. “Now that I scolded you, there is a color changing circle over your implant’s location. It will change color when the healing serum runs low, or and will start to flash in color, and try to ping your omni-pad if it detects a malfunction. The implant uses a standard Shil’ implant autoinjector, and it will reject anything not meant for red blood standard biology, but still be careful, it’s not a perfect filtering system. Today I’m giving you a set of autoinjectors I want you to use throughout the week. It's fortunate that your implant’s primary function will speed up your recovery time.”
Ok, that’s cool to know, but.
‘What happened to Hopestrider?!’ Squirrel brain demanded.
“So, the story, what happens next?” I asked as Cee helped me sit up. My stomach still hurt, but the feeling was in the overworked muscle category rather than a gut punch.
Cee started to explain as I put on what was essentially gym clothes. Soft, baggy pants and shirt with easy pull away tabs if they needed to remove the clothes quickly for checkups and surgical intervention. “Well, we don’t have time to go over the Hope Strider as a story, or even a summary, but if you want to, my husband teaches the child technician class during open services on Shel, you could sit in and listen.
Right now, I will give you a family crafted picture book that tells the core story of Hope Strider growing up, and making their first delivery. After that it’s a loose selection of legends that are attributed to Hope Strider as they grow older and more accomplished, but while I get that book, I need you to speak to someone.”
Cee led me out of the operating room, and into a comfortable looking lounge where a… Hydrean was sitting in an Imperial business uniform reading an omni-pad. My brain pulled everything I knew of Hydreans out. A rabbit hole I had dug into one rainy Shel on the public information repositories.
She, they, single gendered I reminded myself, looked up and smiled at me calmly, mouth closed for politeness. Their skin was grass green with artful patches of bark on her face and neck, the result of cosmetic scarification. They looked human, or Shil’oid, but that was purposefully done. Even the somewhat standard looking ‘desert walker’ Hydreans normally had more, or less, limbs than standard. Biological modification was at the root of all Hydrean technology, ancient as the stone ax to other species.
I thought about how contentious Hydrean/Shil relationships were said to be. Their arid home planet was off limits to all but certified personnel who had been trained how to handle the dangerous mix of flora/fauna that instead of being different groups, was just a single taxonomy that had no distinction between predator and prey. With their complex biology, a Hydrean needed to undergo extensive body modification just to exist off their home world.
Cee left the room with a friendly goodbye and offered assistance “Hello Klein, I am Ka’tel. It’s wonderful to meet you. I am with the Imperial Child Assistance Division, or ICAD. My job is to help interspecies fosters and adoptions. How are you feeling today?”
I caught a glimpse of her teeth as they spoke. Triangular, and made of burnished metal meant to tear off chunks of animal, plant, or even rock, whole and let their stomachs’ mix of acids dissolve it into something the rest their body could use.
‘The agent in charge of your welfare is a plant/animal hybrid with a diet of ‘yes’, your doctor is a wholesome orange 40K mechanicus, and your crush is a were-lion, you are not ok .’ Squirrel brain remarked.
“I’m actually pretty good, despite the surgery, it’s actually a common issue for humans.” I said to Ka’tel, because my life was weird before the aliens, squirrel brain was just being a pessimistic asshole.
“Really? Do you know what caused it?” Ka’tel asked.
“It just, happens? Gets irritated or infected and then you need to get it removed.” I said nonchalantly. Ka’tel made a mark on her omni-pad.
“How did you know? It seems dangerous if it can happen suddenly, and you mentioned it before you passed out.” Ka’tel asked tone friendly and conversational.
“Oh, the side of your stomach hurts. I was hoping it was just a pulled muscle bec- Dammit!” I just remembered what happened before I woke up here.
“The raid game! Ko’tasa would have had to substitute for me and she’s not well balanced for our team mix.” I said with a exasperated sigh.
Ka’tel cocked their head to one side, but the tone in her voice was humorous. “You were willing to ignore a possible life-threatening condition for a game?”
I explained, though I felt idiotic now. “I couldn’t tell. I get sore muscles all the time from gym, and sparing, and even from the auxiliary work, honestly my commandant doesn’t really know where to put me sometimes. Last week I helped with road clearing for the new town to go up a few [miles] away, and the girls could barely keep up with me.”
Ka’tel seemed to be enjoying my rambling. “Sounds like you really get put to work.”
“Not really? The auxiliary is the only work I do, and if I wanted to stop I just, can. It’s not like I need to worry about buying food.” I knew what I was saying seemed strange while living in the Imperium.
It was the first hint that Ka’tel was controlling her expressions when she seemed more attentive and… relieved? “That’s delightful news to hear! Is there anything about your living situation that bothers you?”
I paused and thought about it, and really couldn’t see anything. “Not really?”
“Anything, or anyone, you miss from Earth?” Ka’tel asked, stressing that last bit, dropping a mental bomb on my head and I froze, mouth partly open with a half formed response. When was the last time I even thought about Earth as more than an abstract concept? It hadn’t been [six months] since I left but…
I didn’t feel anything.
The last year I lived on Earth, it was like being a ghost. I saw people, I even talked to people, but it was like a thick plate of glass all around me. Today I felt color, and life, and things, but that last year on Earth?
Like radio static.
I looked at Ka’tel, and their expression was one of controlled neutrality. Why was I not freaking out?
I had a sensation of the room spinning. I asked, “No, I don’t really feel anything about Earth, is that normal?”
“I don’t know Klein, by most sentient standards what you went through was unusual, and from what little I know about humans that isn’t propaganda, it’s unusual for humans as well. What I do know is right now you seem happy and healthy, and that’s my top priority.” Ka’tel said as they stood and offered me a stiff plastic card with their contact details on it.
“We will be chatting every other week to see how you are adjusting. I might ask to visit you at the youth auxiliary depot, the gym or at home. I really am glad to see you are doing just fine, but if you ever need a way out, that card has an emergency signal function, just pull the plastic tab.” Ka’tel told me, and was about to open the door before I spoke up.
“How should I refer to you?” I asked, and once they realized, Ka’tel gave me a genuine, toothed, smile that was both menacing and goofy at the same time.
“Most people don’t learn enough Hydrean biology to ask. Her, that’s how everyone in the office sees me, and it’s more convenient socially.” She said, opening the door to an anxious looking Itaro standing next to a serious Ruhal and Reqellia.
“I need to speak to you Ruhal, and Reqellia, you should join us for this conversation as well.” Ka’tel said as she ushered me out.
Cee led us into a gaming room with a long table on one side, and a set of couches facing the wall to wall display on the other. She handed me an overloaded plate of cookies with bottle of water, and stepped out, closing the door behind us. “Eat those, your stomach has healed, but it’s going to need calories to fuel the recovery.”
Only then did I realize I was salivating at the smell of warm sugar, and flour made of Kasan grain, if I was identifying the green color correctly. I put the plate of cookies on the table, and snarfed them as I sat down.
After swallowing the fourth cookie semi-whole, I looked up to see Itaro’s face fighting a war between impatient, apprehensive, and hopeful. I stopped, realizing what I was doing, and sipped some water to stall for time.
I was about to pull my omni-pad out from my pockets when Itaro suddenly put her hand out to stop me. “Wait! Klein, I need to tell you something…”
She was silent for a long moment, what was she worried about?
“I… Like you, as, I find you…. Attractive, and I may have gotten a little…. overprotective when you got hurt.” Itaro said, her voice stuttering.
‘Oh, that makes things easy.’ Squirrel brain was for once, right.
“I like you too.” I said as I leaned over and kissed her.
submitted by Adventurous-Map-9400 to HFY [link] [comments]
This is a rewrite of my original story ‘Loyalist’.
Credit to u/bluefishcake for writing the original SSB story.
Pizzaulostin who has been beta reading since the beginning.
and u/BruhMomentGEE
Credit to u/HollowShel for getting me started with this!
This story is based in the SSB universe.
Previous
First
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as always, comments are welcome.
Chapter 17:
Thanks to the author of Alien-Nation for editing this chapter!Ruhal:
“We are sorry about the restraints. Your dossier has a security lock from the Office of Interior that I can’t even read, and all our supervisor could tell us was ‘interview with caution’,” one of the two agents explained.I regarded my handcuffs with professional disapproval. They had a longer than regular chain for ambulatory movement and inmate processing, by the deep, I could even use them as garrote if needed. They had revealed the limits of their rank with that apology.
“No need to worry. I am sure this will be a formality in less than an hour,” I told them, if there was one thing that was in abundance on the planet Sky it was Interior and undercover commando trainees. I hoped this would probably be their most interesting case all month.
“So, would you care to explain how you are raising a human, that is also considered a military asset?” The agent inquired as she pulled out her slate.
“Of course, Klein surrendered himself and requested medical aid and refugee status. He was willing to answer essential questions regarding human culture that aided in liberating humanity into the Shil’vati Empire. He wouldn’t be safe on Earth anymore, and I mentioned that he was still important in writing my reports. If I had my slate, I could give you the relevant documentation,” I said in a conversational tone, without any of the emotions that weighed the story, and glossing over the specifics.
“No need. I have everything you submitted to the Interior, including his asset designation, the interrogation transcripts, and even his doctor’s contact info. To be honest with you it’s the only reason we haven’t interviewed you yet, even after a dozen calls about a ‘possible trafficked human’ since he arrived. Your information is corroborated with several other departments. The issue now is what the medivac scans found.” The agent pushed a slate towards me with medical notes bolded for emphasis ‘probable severe abuse’.
“The report shows a recent history of blunt force trauma, abrasions, and even muscle tearing, in short. It looks like the human has been systematically tortured for months. You also have recently requested restricted training armor in the human’s size.” The agent explained.
Ah, that was my mistake. I had been treating Klein as another child, just with some unique needs. It looks like there were other considerations, ones that I failed to see.
“I really do need my omni-slate to illustrate this, it’s on my desk right now if one of your assistants could get it?” I asked, hoping they got the suggestion to not leave me with only one interrogator in the room so they wouldn’t be graded too harshly.
They thankfully acquiesced without comment, and with my omni-slate in hand I pulled up the latest video of Klein practicing with me, the speed and brutality was difficult for me to sit through. Then, Klein pulled off his helmet seconds later, laughing in the rain. Unconcerned that, without armor, we could have just killed each other- I was grateful he had, else it might’ve been interpreted quite differently. “The bruising mostly from everyday participation at a Rakiri gym, and some remnants from before I got proper gear for baton practice. He heals extremely fast, and more so, he isn’t happy unless he exercises for at least an hour or two a day.”
I pulled up another video. Klein was sitting at the table bouncing his leg at an ever-increasing pace while trying to focus on a decently complex equation. He finally stood up and started pacing mouthing words as he skipped in time to an unheard rhythm.
“W-what’s he doing?” The agent asked, looking just a tad disturbed by the display of what seemed erratic behavior.
“A sort of dance while playing the song ‘a fine mesh net’ on his headphones. There was a monsoon that Shel weekend, and even I’m not crazy enough to fight in a thunderstorm like that. He does that around the house for an hour, and then finally settles in on a video game,” I explained to the agents, who were looking at me dubiously.
“So, you oversee an adolescent who is an intelligence asset, but also seems poorly fitted for Shil’vati life. Why the baton practice? Wouldn’t that make him even more dangerous, more of an outsider? Are you trying to sabotage his integration? Why not take him shopping, instead, or teach him beauty and self-care routines?” They were antagonizing. Countering every argument to see how I reacted. It seemed they could at least interrogate decently well.
“I hardly call a few quirks ‘poor fitting’. The baton practice is for obvious self-defense. Its intention is to make him dangerous,” I explained, letting the interviewers lead the conversation.
The back and forth went on for a while, but I presented a highlight reel of the last few months. Including a Rakiri gym video when Klein tried to flourish a wall climb and smashed his shoulder on the ledge while face planting into the mud.
The agents would not be arresting me today. They would need medical reports, and would require Klein, Hario, and Compassion Through Deeds to attest while truth scanned that these were sports injuries, and not some conspiracy to commit torture. We were also going to need to see an ICAD agent every two weeks for counseling. I had no idea what ICAD was, but I would investigate them later.
Finally, the agents appeared they were closing up the interview. I tried not to brace myself as they asked the complicated question. “One thing we need to know is, what is Klein to you? If he is just a crucial asset, then why haven’t you contacted a local volunteer family foster? Or was the military asset just a cover to find a male heir?”
I sighed, the truth wasn’t incriminating, but if I didn’t word it right, I would look like the worst sort of military tourist. “I had, originally, taken care of Klein as a key intelligence asset. Within that first week though, I had found that despite the decades of preparation, there wasn’t a process for someone to claim asylum as a child during first contact. He would be in military bureaucratic limbo without an advocate. We both know where he would end up.”
The room cooled by several degrees, which was a pity, I almost got the talkative agent to laugh at Klein’s antics. “Out of duty I investigated ways I could bring him home until I could find resources to place him in a stable situation with all the resources to help a xeno without a community. I found someone who was willing to help in exchange for reports on Klein’s adaptation to Shil’vati lifestyle. That’s Klein’s purpose as a military asset in my home.”
I continued. I was saying more on than I needed to, but if they did a follow up investigation later for some other incident, which was a when, not if, then I wanted this on record. “Klein has become part of this household though, despite, or maybe because, of his oddities. He may not be Shil’vati, but he seems to have integrated well. It’s why, while it was never my intention, when he is an adult, I will offer him full adoption, and title of home guardian.”
I watched the agents exchange looks, then the agent made a few taps on her slate. ‘Upper left, middle center, probably a message app’. I then listened for the telltale taps of a yes as a micro expression of a self-satisfied smile crossed the agent’s face. I decided to stop playing interviewee.
“So, you won the bet on if I would claim the human as my son, how long has that pool been building?” I asked folding my hands together.
The agent answered before she could think. “Two months… Wait!? How did you-”
The agent was cut off by the squawk of the slate’s speaker. “Agents you did well enough with the interview portion, however; you absolutely failed to secure the subject. Could you please illustrate to them why I stressed caution {petal of death’s veil}?”
The code name wasn’t one I had heard in decades, but I wasn’t going to snub an old handler. I kicked on my fast reaction mods to max speed and lunged over the table past the still sitting agents. I pirouetted and twisted the restraints into a loop as I brought them down over the left agent’s head and pulled back carefully, lightly touching the chain of my restraints around the neck of the agent before she could even react.
I kicked off my mods and caught my breath as time returned to normal. Both agents’ eyes went wide with shock as the one not about to be strangled tried to get away to pull out her weapon. “W-who are you!?”
“I’m going to slowly release you and put my hands up, is that everything you needed {hated old friend}?” I directed my question to the slate, using the code High Shil word to show I was playing along.
“More than enough. Agent! Holster your weapon and come back to the safe room. We need to go over security procedures,” the slate responded, and the very brief confrontation was over.
The agents walked out, and Siltan stomped in looking like she could bring about a thunderstorm by pure force of will. “We weren’t the only ones to get visits from the ‘majesty’s’ Interior today. Cee let me know that the Interior is also interrogated Reqellia as well.”
I now understood why these two rookies were here. It was a distraction for me. I grumbled as I picked up my slate and called Reqellia. Her face appeared a second later.
“By the Deep, it’s been a long day,” Reqellia breathed out as I heard a door slam, then she cursed some more.
“Tell me everything. Is Klein ok?” I asked.
“Cee says he’s fine and is waking him up. Klein might be getting a mod himself before she closes him up though because, oh- looks like it’s my day is going to get longer still. ICAD is here, and it’s a Hydrean in a Gearschilde clinic.” Reqellia hung up, and I stared at the phone in confusion.
It was time to find out what ICAD was.
Klein:
I blearily came to, as high powered, piercing white light flooded my half open eyes. I tried to move my arm to shield my face and found I couldn’t. Actually, I couldn't move or even feel anything from the neck down.I started to panic as I turned my head, focusing on lettering on a terminal, tried to sigh, and felt what few muscles I could control turn to lead as I sank back on the medical bed. Thank the goddess, it was Shil and Gearschilde lettering on the slate and medical supplies.
“Good afternoon Klein, are you okay? Your heart rate spiked.” I heard Cee, or full name Compassion Through Deeds, speak and turned my head to see her. She wore a dark red lab coat and regarded me with unblinking cybernetic eyes. Most of her orange skin had been replaced with dark steel etched with stylized waves and swirls of silver. Her face still emoted in a pleasant smile, but had that uncanny valley look of unblemished synth skin. I looked down to see a dozen micro surgical tools still inside me.
I should have been screaming at the sight, but all I felt was relief and joy. “Yeah, I just worried for a half second that I had hallucinated the last few months and was actually on a back on Earth on some black-market operating table getting my kidney stolen.”
Cee was aghast. “Does that happen on Earth?”
I would shrug, but again, I couldn’t move, instead I responded. “Rumors of it happening, but I never knew anyone personally.”
Cee reassured me. “Well, good news Klein, you are on Sky, you are in a Gearschilde clinic where stealing vital organs is a legal, moral and religious crime of unrepentant severity. What I have done is remove your appendix, and let the sedatives wear off so we can discuss what you want in its place.”
“In place of my appendix? Why?” I asked, it wasn’t like I really needed the vestigial organ turn internal hand grenade.
“Customary in Gearschilde for surgery is to be about giving a better life than just taking from the body. So, any ideas of what would make your life better?”
I thought about the bruising, the constant having to put healing patches on, and the annoyance of doing so. I thought about the near fatality of almost blowing my appendix, and if something could have fixed the issue before it got out of hand. “What about a healing dispenser? I keep having to put on patches and gel at the end of the day, and if I miss a spot, I will pay for it later.”
Cee gave me a grateful expression. “That’s a perfect first implant. I was worried you were going to ask for something more aggressive. When I was your age, I got my first defensive mod, a retractable forearm knife. Of course, my next surgery was being stitched back together after accidently stabbing myself with it.”
I tried to chuckle, but I didn’t have control of my diaphragm for it. “So, what’s next?”
Cee explained. “Well, the fabricator in the other room is right now creating your implant. It shouldn’t take long; are you ok being immobilized for the next hour or so?”
I thought about it, and honestly, I was still surprised I wasn’t panicking. “No, but I’m going to get really bored just laying here, do the Gearschilde have any good myths or stories?”
I knew I was fishing in an untapped pool that was guaranteed to have something. I wasn’t expecting my doctor to be gleeful at the thought though. “Oh blessed be you child, I am a surgeon priest, half the reason I am in this vocation is to tell stories. I take it you know nothing about Gearschilde mythology, or even our history?”
It was on my list of rabbit holes to get into, but instead I binged the rest of Prince Of The Stars and cried, it was nice. “No, but I would love to hear them.”
“Well if you want to, every Shel we have open services and brunch. But since you are new to Gearschilde mythology we should start with one of my favorites. The story of the Hopestrider.”
The ceiling lights dimmed, and the sterile operating room felt surprisingly cozy as I leaned my head back. Listening to Cee starting up the tale. “Our sect requires us to lead what can best be called ‘child technician classes’. Learning to take care of machines, which includes us by the start of adolescence, if not before. It’s a critical life skill, and teaching it is considered an important part of our religious studies.”
‘Cyberpunk VeggieTales’ Squirrel brain chittered.
No one wants your opinion squirrel brain. I thought back.
Cee’s story: Hope Strider
“Long ago our world was full of harsh life. The valleys were often filled with poisonous mists and deadly predators that could rip apart even the strongest of our people. The mountain kingdoms were brutal fiefdoms that sent many to their deaths mining precious metals from the dangerous wastes of the valleys. Drilling into the heart of the mountains provided the power necessary to purify water, and later, steam engines turned those fiefdoms into empires. Expanding into the wastes using the lowest class of people as its foundation.”Cee paused for dramatic effect. “Then, everything changed.”
“The ground shook, and the mountain kingdoms erupted in fire and molten rock. Radioactive dust from these now volcanoes made the centers of civilization barren and deadly. Only the wasteland colonies in the poisonous mists provided any refuge, and so king and commoner alike huddled in the once disposable outposts of a ruined world. Our story starts a generation after the calamity with an unlucky child.”
I heard a ding, Cee stopped as the ceiling lights came up. “Oh dear, let me stop for a second to get the implant.”
I leaned back and thought about her nightmare world. When Cee returned, I didn’t even bother to open my eyes, too engrossed in the imagery of the story. “What happened to the child?”
I could hear the whirring as she started to work. Her voice I realized had taken a more scripted cadence. She must have automated her voice so she could focus. “In a metalworker’s home, a child was born with broken legs and brittle bones. It was common in those days for such a child to die that way. It was their first born and the parents did everything they could to save them. A surgeon was called. The child lost their legs, but kept their life.”
“The child lived in the workshop. Kept warm by the hearth’s fire, even unable to walk, they were curious. Day in and out, they watched their parents construct machines that helped the community make food, filter the air, and defend the homes from the starving, mutated, monsters that circled the fortress walls. The child felt helpless though. Only able to crawl within the confines of the home or be carried around like cargo about the maze-like town of winding stairs and narrow passageways.
“They spent much of their time learning, sitting near the hearth to keep warm, they did the careful work of filing gears and wheels needed to control what could be automated as each hand replaced was another that could be spent doing something else critical to keep the community alive. Still, the child wanted to do more. They could not deliver what they made, and had to rely on others to help them at every turn in life.”
“Little did the child know that in the hearth a machine spirit lived, getting by eating scrap metal that fell in and sleeping at night on the bed of embers. The machine spirit saw the child’s wish, an invention without form, and turned it into a dream for the child, since new machines would mean new machine spirits to play with.”
That night the child saw themselves flying over the cold gray landscape on a pair of machine legs. Traveling the dangerous paths to other towns, and giving the isolated towns hope and community. The child awoke with joy and crawled over to his workbench littered with scrap metal, now children….”
Cee stopped talking and her voice went back to an unscripted rhythm. “I just realized we can’t do the practical part of this story. In class each kid gets a hope strider stuffy with snaps to attach legs they make. We give them bits of copper. Show them how to bend and hammer it, and how to bond it by wrapping the joint in solder and then applying heat with a soldering iron heated in their own toy ‘hearth’ with a safety cover. Still we get a daily small burn or cut, but that in itself is a valuable lesson in tool safety.”
It sounded adorable in a weird, steampunk way. “Sounds fun, so, new legs?”
Cee got the que, as much as I loved the story, and the talk about kindergarten metal shop, I was still immobilized on the operating table. I heard surgical whirring, and the scripted voice came back. “Yes, the child works all night until they fit the new legs on, and for the first time stand up on their own! The parents are overjoyed as they watch them move about the house and that afternoon, with the help of an iron bar as a cane, they walk around their community by themselves.”
“However, it isn’t long before the legs start to see wear and tear, but the child persists, not wanting to stop and fix the creaking joints, until one day the legs stop working altogether and they fall down in a twisting staircase. Carried back to the workshop, they rest for days to heal before they are able to work again. Constructing a new set from the remains of the old. Now…”
Klein:
Cee stopped again, but this time she had moved away from me and was putting the now bloody surgical tools into a sanitizing system. “We're done! I am going to start removing the nerve blocks, so you’re going to be sore, but if things get too painful, let me know. Please, try not to move anything but your hands right now, even then I would advise against it.”My whole body had that pins and needles feel and I tried to move my fingers, but it was sporadic and jerky. Cee distracted me by explaining my new implant. “So, this implant is very basic. It can only be requested to send diagnostic data. The implant only administers more healing serum at a safe, steady rate if, and only if, it doesn’t detect any in your bloodstream. There is an injection site with a color change circle around it. It uses standard go, caution, stop colors to let you know if it’s functioning. I want to wave your omni-pad over the site and check the diagnostics at least once a day. It should hopefully catch if something like this is happening again.”
I tried to not move as I felt my body twitch. My gut felt like I had been run over, repeatedly. I asked, “why didn’t my medical monitoring implant catch this?”
Cee explained. “That’s only good for basic vitals. Near universal indicators of life and activity such as heart rate and blood pressure. The new implant will be able to scan for elevated protein counts. So, if one of your other internal organs starts to malfunction you can get a more unambiguous message that I hope you won’t ignore before getting medivac’d through the city.”
I chuckled a little at that, and it hurt. “Ow, ok, no movement. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or something.”
Cee looked down at me sternly, and her voice took on a deeper, more authoritative tone. “Child, more than enough Gearschilde have died thinking they can just, push themselves past their organic parts failing, if you have a torn muscle that hurts after you’ve used healing gel, then it’s serious enough you need to come see me, or another xeno-doctor, immediately. That’s why I hope your new implant can fix things before it gets to that point.”
Cee brightened after that and went back to the explanation of my implant. “Now that I scolded you, there is a color changing circle over your implant’s location. It will change color when the healing serum runs low, or and will start to flash in color, and try to ping your omni-pad if it detects a malfunction. The implant uses a standard Shil’ implant autoinjector, and it will reject anything not meant for red blood standard biology, but still be careful, it’s not a perfect filtering system. Today I’m giving you a set of autoinjectors I want you to use throughout the week. It's fortunate that your implant’s primary function will speed up your recovery time.”
Ok, that’s cool to know, but.
‘What happened to Hopestrider?!’ Squirrel brain demanded.
“So, the story, what happens next?” I asked as Cee helped me sit up. My stomach still hurt, but the feeling was in the overworked muscle category rather than a gut punch.
Cee started to explain as I put on what was essentially gym clothes. Soft, baggy pants and shirt with easy pull away tabs if they needed to remove the clothes quickly for checkups and surgical intervention. “Well, we don’t have time to go over the Hope Strider as a story, or even a summary, but if you want to, my husband teaches the child technician class during open services on Shel, you could sit in and listen.
Right now, I will give you a family crafted picture book that tells the core story of Hope Strider growing up, and making their first delivery. After that it’s a loose selection of legends that are attributed to Hope Strider as they grow older and more accomplished, but while I get that book, I need you to speak to someone.”
Cee led me out of the operating room, and into a comfortable looking lounge where a… Hydrean was sitting in an Imperial business uniform reading an omni-pad. My brain pulled everything I knew of Hydreans out. A rabbit hole I had dug into one rainy Shel on the public information repositories.
She, they, single gendered I reminded myself, looked up and smiled at me calmly, mouth closed for politeness. Their skin was grass green with artful patches of bark on her face and neck, the result of cosmetic scarification. They looked human, or Shil’oid, but that was purposefully done. Even the somewhat standard looking ‘desert walker’ Hydreans normally had more, or less, limbs than standard. Biological modification was at the root of all Hydrean technology, ancient as the stone ax to other species.
I thought about how contentious Hydrean/Shil relationships were said to be. Their arid home planet was off limits to all but certified personnel who had been trained how to handle the dangerous mix of flora/fauna that instead of being different groups, was just a single taxonomy that had no distinction between predator and prey. With their complex biology, a Hydrean needed to undergo extensive body modification just to exist off their home world.
Cee left the room with a friendly goodbye and offered assistance “Hello Klein, I am Ka’tel. It’s wonderful to meet you. I am with the Imperial Child Assistance Division, or ICAD. My job is to help interspecies fosters and adoptions. How are you feeling today?”
I caught a glimpse of her teeth as they spoke. Triangular, and made of burnished metal meant to tear off chunks of animal, plant, or even rock, whole and let their stomachs’ mix of acids dissolve it into something the rest their body could use.
‘The agent in charge of your welfare is a plant/animal hybrid with a diet of ‘yes’, your doctor is a wholesome orange 40K mechanicus, and your crush is a were-lion, you are not ok .’ Squirrel brain remarked.
“I’m actually pretty good, despite the surgery, it’s actually a common issue for humans.” I said to Ka’tel, because my life was weird before the aliens, squirrel brain was just being a pessimistic asshole.
“Really? Do you know what caused it?” Ka’tel asked.
“It just, happens? Gets irritated or infected and then you need to get it removed.” I said nonchalantly. Ka’tel made a mark on her omni-pad.
“How did you know? It seems dangerous if it can happen suddenly, and you mentioned it before you passed out.” Ka’tel asked tone friendly and conversational.
“Oh, the side of your stomach hurts. I was hoping it was just a pulled muscle bec- Dammit!” I just remembered what happened before I woke up here.
“The raid game! Ko’tasa would have had to substitute for me and she’s not well balanced for our team mix.” I said with a exasperated sigh.
Ka’tel cocked their head to one side, but the tone in her voice was humorous. “You were willing to ignore a possible life-threatening condition for a game?”
I explained, though I felt idiotic now. “I couldn’t tell. I get sore muscles all the time from gym, and sparing, and even from the auxiliary work, honestly my commandant doesn’t really know where to put me sometimes. Last week I helped with road clearing for the new town to go up a few [miles] away, and the girls could barely keep up with me.”
Ka’tel seemed to be enjoying my rambling. “Sounds like you really get put to work.”
“Not really? The auxiliary is the only work I do, and if I wanted to stop I just, can. It’s not like I need to worry about buying food.” I knew what I was saying seemed strange while living in the Imperium.
It was the first hint that Ka’tel was controlling her expressions when she seemed more attentive and… relieved? “That’s delightful news to hear! Is there anything about your living situation that bothers you?”
I paused and thought about it, and really couldn’t see anything. “Not really?”
“Anything, or anyone, you miss from Earth?” Ka’tel asked, stressing that last bit, dropping a mental bomb on my head and I froze, mouth partly open with a half formed response. When was the last time I even thought about Earth as more than an abstract concept? It hadn’t been [six months] since I left but…
I didn’t feel anything.
The last year I lived on Earth, it was like being a ghost. I saw people, I even talked to people, but it was like a thick plate of glass all around me. Today I felt color, and life, and things, but that last year on Earth?
Like radio static.
I looked at Ka’tel, and their expression was one of controlled neutrality. Why was I not freaking out?
I had a sensation of the room spinning. I asked, “No, I don’t really feel anything about Earth, is that normal?”
“I don’t know Klein, by most sentient standards what you went through was unusual, and from what little I know about humans that isn’t propaganda, it’s unusual for humans as well. What I do know is right now you seem happy and healthy, and that’s my top priority.” Ka’tel said as they stood and offered me a stiff plastic card with their contact details on it.
“We will be chatting every other week to see how you are adjusting. I might ask to visit you at the youth auxiliary depot, the gym or at home. I really am glad to see you are doing just fine, but if you ever need a way out, that card has an emergency signal function, just pull the plastic tab.” Ka’tel told me, and was about to open the door before I spoke up.
“How should I refer to you?” I asked, and once they realized, Ka’tel gave me a genuine, toothed, smile that was both menacing and goofy at the same time.
“Most people don’t learn enough Hydrean biology to ask. Her, that’s how everyone in the office sees me, and it’s more convenient socially.” She said, opening the door to an anxious looking Itaro standing next to a serious Ruhal and Reqellia.
“I need to speak to you Ruhal, and Reqellia, you should join us for this conversation as well.” Ka’tel said as she ushered me out.
Cee led us into a gaming room with a long table on one side, and a set of couches facing the wall to wall display on the other. She handed me an overloaded plate of cookies with bottle of water, and stepped out, closing the door behind us. “Eat those, your stomach has healed, but it’s going to need calories to fuel the recovery.”
Only then did I realize I was salivating at the smell of warm sugar, and flour made of Kasan grain, if I was identifying the green color correctly. I put the plate of cookies on the table, and snarfed them as I sat down.
After swallowing the fourth cookie semi-whole, I looked up to see Itaro’s face fighting a war between impatient, apprehensive, and hopeful. I stopped, realizing what I was doing, and sipped some water to stall for time.
I was about to pull my omni-pad out from my pockets when Itaro suddenly put her hand out to stop me. “Wait! Klein, I need to tell you something…”
She was silent for a long moment, what was she worried about?
“I… Like you, as, I find you…. Attractive, and I may have gotten a little…. overprotective when you got hurt.” Itaro said, her voice stuttering.
‘Oh, that makes things easy.’ Squirrel brain was for once, right.
“I like you too.” I said as I leaned over and kissed her.
///// Author’s Commentary
Wow! I couldn’t find a good stopping point so I just kept writing and writing and… It turned into something over 5 thousand words. I spent the last day trying to figure out clear up a few parts. This week I have some time off! So there will probably be another chapter sooner rather than later.2023.04.01 01:21 Adventurous-Map-9400 Growing Up Alien Chapter 17
A homeless teenager reaches out to the Shil’vati on first day of the invasion of Earth.
This is a rewrite of my original story ‘Loyalist’.
Credit to u/bluefishcake for writing the original SSB story.
Pizzaulostin who has been beta reading since the beginning.
and u/BruhMomentGEE
Credit to u/HollowShel for getting me started with this!
This story is based in the SSB universe.
Previous
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as always, comments are welcome.
I regarded my handcuffs with professional disapproval. They had a longer than regular chain for ambulatory movement and inmate processing, by the deep, I could even use them as garrote if needed. They had revealed the limits of their rank with that apology.
“No need to worry. I am sure this will be a formality in less than an hour,” I told them, if there was one thing that was in abundance on the planet Sky it was Interior and undercover commando trainees. I hoped this would probably be their most interesting case all month.
“So, would you care to explain how you are raising a human, that is also considered a military asset?” The agent inquired as she pulled out her slate.
“Of course, Klein surrendered himself and requested medical aid and refugee status. He was willing to answer essential questions regarding human culture that aided in liberating humanity into the Shil’vati Empire. He wouldn’t be safe on Earth anymore, and I mentioned that he was still important in writing my reports. If I had my slate, I could give you the relevant documentation,” I said in a conversational tone, without any of the emotions that weighed the story, and glossing over the specifics.
“No need. I have everything you submitted to the Interior, including his asset designation, the interrogation transcripts, and even his doctor’s contact info. To be honest with you it’s the only reason we haven’t interviewed you yet, even after a dozen calls about a ‘possible trafficked human’ since he arrived. Your information is corroborated with several other departments. The issue now is what the medivac scans found.” The agent pushed a slate towards me with medical notes bolded for emphasis ‘probable severe abuse’.
“The report shows a recent history of blunt force trauma, abrasions, and even muscle tearing, in short. It looks like the human has been systematically tortured for months. You also have recently requested restricted training armor in the human’s size.” The agent explained.
Ah, that was my mistake. I had been treating Klein as another child, just with some unique needs. It looks like there were other considerations, ones that I failed to see.
“I really do need my omni-slate to illustrate this, it’s on my desk right now if one of your assistants could get it?” I asked, hoping they got the suggestion to not leave me with only one interrogator in the room so they wouldn’t be graded too harshly.
They thankfully acquiesced without comment, and with my omni-slate in hand I pulled up the latest video of Klein practicing with me, the speed and brutality was difficult for me to sit through. Then, Klein pulled off his helmet seconds later, laughing in the rain. Unconcerned that, without armor, we could have just killed each other- I was grateful he had, else it might’ve been interpreted quite differently. “The bruising mostly from everyday participation at a Rakiri gym, and some remnants from before I got proper gear for baton practice. He heals extremely fast, and more so, he isn’t happy unless he exercises for at least an hour or two a day.”
I pulled up another video. Klein was sitting at the table bouncing his leg at an ever-increasing pace while trying to focus on a decently complex equation. He finally stood up and started pacing mouthing words as he skipped in time to an unheard rhythm.
“W-what’s he doing?” The agent asked, looking just a tad disturbed by the display of what seemed erratic behavior.
“A sort of dance while playing the song ‘a fine mesh net’ on his headphones. There was a monsoon that Shel weekend, and even I’m not crazy enough to fight in a thunderstorm like that. He does that around the house for an hour, and then finally settles in on a video game,” I explained to the agents, who were looking at me dubiously.
“So, you oversee an adolescent who is an intelligence asset, but also seems poorly fitted for Shil’vati life. Why the baton practice? Wouldn’t that make him even more dangerous, more of an outsider? Are you trying to sabotage his integration? Why not take him shopping, instead, or teach him beauty and self-care routines?” They were antagonizing. Countering every argument to see how I reacted. It seemed they could at least interrogate decently well.
“I hardly call a few quirks ‘poor fitting’. The baton practice is for obvious self-defense. Its intention is to make him dangerous,” I explained, letting the interviewers lead the conversation.
The back and forth went on for a while, but I presented a highlight reel of the last few months. Including a Rakiri gym video when Klein tried to flourish a wall climb and smashed his shoulder on the ledge while face planting into the mud.
The agents would not be arresting me today. They would need medical reports, and would require Klein, Hario, and Compassion Through Deeds to attest while truth scanned that these were sports injuries, and not some conspiracy to commit torture. We were also going to need to see an ICAD agent every two weeks for counseling. I had no idea what ICAD was, but I would investigate them later.
Finally, the agents appeared they were closing up the interview. I tried not to brace myself as they asked the complicated question. “One thing we need to know is, what is Klein to you? If he is just a crucial asset, then why haven’t you contacted a local volunteer family foster? Or was the military asset just a cover to find a male heir?”
I sighed, the truth wasn’t incriminating, but if I didn’t word it right, I would look like the worst sort of military tourist. “I had, originally, taken care of Klein as a key intelligence asset. Within that first week though, I had found that despite the decades of preparation, there wasn’t a process for someone to claim asylum as a child during first contact. He would be in military bureaucratic limbo without an advocate. We both know where he would end up.”
The room cooled by several degrees, which was a pity, I almost got the talkative agent to laugh at Klein’s antics. “Out of duty I investigated ways I could bring him home until I could find resources to place him in a stable situation with all the resources to help a xeno without a community. I found someone who was willing to help in exchange for reports on Klein’s adaptation to Shil’vati lifestyle. That’s Klein’s purpose as a military asset in my home.”
I continued. I was saying more on than I needed to, but if they did a follow up investigation later for some other incident, which was a when, not if, then I wanted this on record. “Klein has become part of this household though, despite, or maybe because, of his oddities. He may not be Shil’vati, but he seems to have integrated well. It’s why, while it was never my intention, when he is an adult, I will offer him full adoption, and title of home guardian.”
I watched the agents exchange looks, then the agent made a few taps on her slate. ‘Upper left, middle center, probably a message app’. I then listened for the telltale taps of a yes as a micro expression of a self-satisfied smile crossed the agent’s face. I decided to stop playing interviewee.
“So, you won the bet on if I would claim the human as my son, how long has that pool been building?” I asked folding my hands together.
The agent answered before she could think. “Two months… Wait!? How did you-”
The agent was cut off by the squawk of the slate’s speaker. “Agents you did well enough with the interview portion, however; you absolutely failed to secure the subject. Could you please illustrate to them why I stressed caution {petal of death’s veil}?”
The code name wasn’t one I had heard in decades, but I wasn’t going to snub an old handler. I kicked on my fast reaction mods to max speed and lunged over the table past the still sitting agents. I pirouetted and twisted the restraints into a loop as I brought them down over the left agent’s head and pulled back carefully, lightly touching the chain of my restraints around the neck of the agent before she could even react.
I kicked off my mods and caught my breath as time returned to normal. Both agents’ eyes went wide with shock as the one not about to be strangled tried to get away to pull out her weapon. “W-who are you!?”
“I’m going to slowly release you and put my hands up, is that everything you needed {hated old friend}?” I directed my question to the slate, using the code High Shil word to show I was playing along.
“More than enough. Agent! Holster your weapon and come back to the safe room. We need to go over security procedures,” the slate responded, and the very brief confrontation was over.
The agents walked out, and Siltan stomped in looking like she could bring about a thunderstorm by pure force of will. “We weren’t the only ones to get visits from the ‘majesty’s’ Interior today. Cee let me know that the Interior is also interrogated Reqellia as well.”
I now understood why these two rookies were here. It was a distraction for me. I grumbled as I picked up my slate and called Reqellia. Her face appeared a second later.
“By the Deep, it’s been a long day,” Reqellia breathed out as I heard a door slam, then she cursed some more.
“Tell me everything. Is Klein ok?” I asked.
“Cee says he’s fine and is waking him up. Klein might be getting a mod himself before she closes him up though because, oh- looks like it’s my day is going to get longer still. ICAD is here, and it’s a Hydrean in a Gearschilde clinic.” Reqellia hung up, and I stared at the phone in confusion.
It was time to find out what ICAD was.
I started to panic as I turned my head, focusing on lettering on a terminal, tried to sigh, and felt what few muscles I could control turn to lead as I sank back on the medical bed. Thank the goddess, it was Shil and Gearschilde lettering on the slate and medical supplies.
“Good afternoon Klein, are you okay? Your heart rate spiked.” I heard Cee, or full name Compassion Through Deeds, speak and turned my head to see her. She wore a dark red lab coat and regarded me with unblinking cybernetic eyes. Most of her orange skin had been replaced with dark steel etched with stylized waves and swirls of silver. Her face still emoted in a pleasant smile, but had that uncanny valley look of unblemished synth skin. I looked down to see a dozen micro surgical tools still inside me.
I should have been screaming at the sight, but all I felt was relief and joy. “Yeah, I just worried for a half second that I had hallucinated the last few months and was actually on a back on Earth on some black-market operating table getting my kidney stolen.”
Cee was aghast. “Does that happen on Earth?”
I would shrug, but again, I couldn’t move, instead I responded. “Rumors of it happening, but I never knew anyone personally.”
Cee reassured me. “Well, good news Klein, you are on Sky, you are in a Gearschilde clinic where stealing vital organs is a legal, moral and religious crime of unrepentant severity. What I have done is remove your appendix, and let the sedatives wear off so we can discuss what you want in its place.”
“In place of my appendix? Why?” I asked, it wasn’t like I really needed the vestigial organ turn internal hand grenade.
“Customary in Gearschilde for surgery is to be about giving a better life than just taking from the body. So, any ideas of what would make your life better?”
I thought about the bruising, the constant having to put healing patches on, and the annoyance of doing so. I thought about the near fatality of almost blowing my appendix, and if something could have fixed the issue before it got out of hand. “What about a healing dispenser? I keep having to put on patches and gel at the end of the day, and if I miss a spot, I will pay for it later.”
Cee gave me a grateful expression. “That’s a perfect first implant. I was worried you were going to ask for something more aggressive. When I was your age, I got my first defensive mod, a retractable forearm knife. Of course, my next surgery was being stitched back together after accidently stabbing myself with it.”
I tried to chuckle, but I didn’t have control of my diaphragm for it. “So, what’s next?”
Cee explained. “Well, the fabricator in the other room is right now creating your implant. It shouldn’t take long; are you ok being immobilized for the next hour or so?”
I thought about it, and honestly, I was still surprised I wasn’t panicking. “No, but I’m going to get really bored just laying here, do the Gearschilde have any good myths or stories?”
I knew I was fishing in an untapped pool that was guaranteed to have something. I wasn’t expecting my doctor to be gleeful at the thought though. “Oh blessed be you child, I am a surgeon priest, half the reason I am in this vocation is to tell stories. I take it you know nothing about Gearschilde mythology, or even our history?”
It was on my list of rabbit holes to get into, but instead I binged the rest of Prince Of The Stars and cried, it was nice. “No, but I would love to hear them.”
“Well if you want to, every Shel we have open services and brunch. But since you are new to Gearschilde mythology we should start with one of my favorites. The story of the Hopestrider.”
The ceiling lights dimmed, and the sterile operating room felt surprisingly cozy as I leaned my head back. Listening to Cee starting up the tale. “Our sect requires us to lead what can best be called ‘child technician classes’. Learning to take care of machines, which includes us by the start of adolescence, if not before. It’s a critical life skill, and teaching it is considered an important part of our religious studies.”
‘Cyberpunk VeggieTales’ Squirrel brain chittered.
No one wants your opinion squirrel brain. I thought back.
Cee paused for dramatic effect. “Then, everything changed.”
“The ground shook, and the mountain kingdoms erupted in fire and molten rock. Radioactive dust from these now volcanoes made the centers of civilization barren and deadly. Only the wasteland colonies in the poisonous mists provided any refuge, and so king and commoner alike huddled in the once disposable outposts of a ruined world. Our story starts a generation after the calamity with an unlucky child.”
I heard a ding, Cee stopped as the ceiling lights came up. “Oh dear, let me stop for a second to get the implant.”
I leaned back and thought about her nightmare world. When Cee returned, I didn’t even bother to open my eyes, too engrossed in the imagery of the story. “What happened to the child?”
I could hear the whirring as she started to work. Her voice I realized had taken a more scripted cadence. She must have automated her voice so she could focus. “In a metalworker’s home, a child was born with broken legs and brittle bones. It was common in those days for such a child to die that way. It was their first born and the parents did everything they could to save them. A surgeon was called. The child lost their legs, but kept their life.”
“The child lived in the workshop. Kept warm by the hearth’s fire, even unable to walk, they were curious. Day in and out, they watched their parents construct machines that helped the community make food, filter the air, and defend the homes from the starving, mutated, monsters that circled the fortress walls. The child felt helpless though. Only able to crawl within the confines of the home or be carried around like cargo about the maze-like town of winding stairs and narrow passageways.
“They spent much of their time learning, sitting near the hearth to keep warm, they did the careful work of filing gears and wheels needed to control what could be automated as each hand replaced was another that could be spent doing something else critical to keep the community alive. Still, the child wanted to do more. They could not deliver what they made, and had to rely on others to help them at every turn in life.”
“Little did the child know that in the hearth a machine spirit lived, getting by eating scrap metal that fell in and sleeping at night on the bed of embers. The machine spirit saw the child’s wish, an invention without form, and turned it into a dream for the child, since new machines would mean new machine spirits to play with.”
That night the child saw themselves flying over the cold gray landscape on a pair of machine legs. Traveling the dangerous paths to other towns, and giving the isolated towns hope and community. The child awoke with joy and crawled over to his workbench littered with scrap metal, now children….”
Cee stopped talking and her voice went back to an unscripted rhythm. “I just realized we can’t do the practical part of this story. In class each kid gets a hope strider stuffy with snaps to attach legs they make. We give them bits of copper. Show them how to bend and hammer it, and how to bond it by wrapping the joint in solder and then applying heat with a soldering iron heated in their own toy ‘hearth’ with a safety cover. Still we get a daily small burn or cut, but that in itself is a valuable lesson in tool safety.”
It sounded adorable in a weird, steampunk way. “Sounds fun, so, new legs?”
Cee got the que, as much as I loved the story, and the talk about kindergarten metal shop, I was still immobilized on the operating table. I heard surgical whirring, and the scripted voice came back. “Yes, the child works all night until they fit the new legs on, and for the first time stand up on their own! The parents are overjoyed as they watch them move about the house and that afternoon, with the help of an iron bar as a cane, they walk around their community by themselves.”
“However, it isn’t long before the legs start to see wear and tear, but the child persists, not wanting to stop and fix the creaking joints, until one day the legs stop working altogether and they fall down in a twisting staircase. Carried back to the workshop, they rest for days to heal before they are able to work again. Constructing a new set from the remains of the old. Now…”
My whole body had that pins and needles feel and I tried to move my fingers, but it was sporadic and jerky. Cee distracted me by explaining my new implant. “So, this implant is very basic. It can only be requested to send diagnostic data. The implant only administers more healing serum at a safe, steady rate if, and only if, it doesn’t detect any in your bloodstream. There is an injection site with a color change circle around it. It uses standard go, caution, stop colors to let you know if it’s functioning. I want to wave your omni-pad over the site and check the diagnostics at least once a day. It should hopefully catch if something like this is happening again.”
I tried to not move as I felt my body twitch. My gut felt like I had been run over, repeatedly. I asked, “why didn’t my medical monitoring implant catch this?”
Cee explained. “That’s only good for basic vitals. Near universal indicators of life and activity such as heart rate and blood pressure. The new implant will be able to scan for elevated protein counts. So, if one of your other internal organs starts to malfunction you can get a more unambiguous message that I hope you won’t ignore before getting medivac’d through the city.”
I chuckled a little at that, and it hurt. “Ow, ok, no movement. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or something.”
Cee looked down at me sternly, and her voice took on a deeper, more authoritative tone. “Child, more than enough Gearschilde have died thinking they can just, push themselves past their organic parts failing, if you have a torn muscle that hurts after you’ve used healing gel, then it’s serious enough you need to come see me, or another xeno-doctor, immediately. That’s why I hope your new implant can fix things before it gets to that point.”
Cee brightened after that and went back to the explanation of my implant. “Now that I scolded you, there is a color changing circle over your implant’s location. It will change color when the healing serum runs low, or and will start to flash in color, and try to ping your omni-pad if it detects a malfunction. The implant uses a standard Shil’ implant autoinjector, and it will reject anything not meant for red blood standard biology, but still be careful, it’s not a perfect filtering system. Today I’m giving you a set of autoinjectors I want you to use throughout the week. It's fortunate that your implant’s primary function will speed up your recovery time.”
Ok, that’s cool to know, but.
‘What happened to Hopestrider?!’ Squirrel brain demanded.
“So, the story, what happens next?” I asked as Cee helped me sit up. My stomach still hurt, but the feeling was in the overworked muscle category rather than a gut punch.
Cee started to explain as I put on what was essentially gym clothes. Soft, baggy pants and shirt with easy pull away tabs if they needed to remove the clothes quickly for checkups and surgical intervention. “Well, we don’t have time to go over the Hope Strider as a story, or even a summary, but if you want to, my husband teaches the child technician class during open services on Shel, you could sit in and listen.
Right now, I will give you a family crafted picture book that tells the core story of Hope Strider growing up, and making their first delivery. After that it’s a loose selection of legends that are attributed to Hope Strider as they grow older and more accomplished, but while I get that book, I need you to speak to someone.”
Cee led me out of the operating room, and into a comfortable looking lounge where a… Hydrean was sitting in an Imperial business uniform reading an omni-pad. My brain pulled everything I knew of Hydreans out. A rabbit hole I had dug into one rainy Shel on the public information repositories.
She, they, single gendered I reminded myself, looked up and smiled at me calmly, mouth closed for politeness. Their skin was grass green with artful patches of bark on her face and neck, the result of cosmetic scarification. They looked human, or Shil’oid, but that was purposefully done. Even the somewhat standard looking ‘desert walker’ Hydreans normally had more, or less, limbs than standard. Biological modification was at the root of all Hydrean technology, ancient as the stone ax to other species.
I thought about how contentious Hydrean/Shil relationships were said to be. Their arid home planet was off limits to all but certified personnel who had been trained how to handle the dangerous mix of flora/fauna that instead of being different groups, was just a single taxonomy that had no distinction between predator and prey. With their complex biology, a Hydrean needed to undergo extensive body modification just to exist off their home world.
Cee left the room with a friendly goodbye and offered assistance “Hello Klein, I am Ka’tel. It’s wonderful to meet you. I am with the Imperial Child Assistance Division, or ICAD. My job is to help interspecies fosters and adoptions. How are you feeling today?”
I caught a glimpse of her teeth as they spoke. Triangular, and made of burnished metal meant to tear off chunks of animal, plant, or even rock, whole and let their stomachs’ mix of acids dissolve it into something the rest their body could use.
‘The agent in charge of your welfare is a plant/animal hybrid with a diet of ‘yes’, your doctor is a wholesome orange 40K mechanicus, and your crush is a were-lion, you are not ok .’ Squirrel brain remarked.
“I’m actually pretty good, despite the surgery, it’s actually a common issue for humans.” I said to Ka’tel, because my life was weird before the aliens, squirrel brain was just being a pessimistic asshole.
“Really? Do you know what caused it?” Ka’tel asked.
“It just, happens? Gets irritated or infected and then you need to get it removed.” I said nonchalantly. Ka’tel made a mark on her omni-pad.
“How did you know? It seems dangerous if it can happen suddenly, and you mentioned it before you passed out.” Ka’tel asked tone friendly and conversational.
“Oh, the side of your stomach hurts. I was hoping it was just a pulled muscle bec- Dammit!” I just remembered what happened before I woke up here.
“The raid game! Ko’tasa would have had to substitute for me and she’s not well balanced for our team mix.” I said with a exasperated sigh.
Ka’tel cocked their head to one side, but the tone in her voice was humorous. “You were willing to ignore a possible life-threatening condition for a game?”
I explained, though I felt idiotic now. “I couldn’t tell. I get sore muscles all the time from gym, and sparing, and even from the auxiliary work, honestly my commandant doesn’t really know where to put me sometimes. Last week I helped with road clearing for the new town to go up a few [miles] away, and the girls could barely keep up with me.”
Ka’tel seemed to be enjoying my rambling. “Sounds like you really get put to work.”
“Not really? The auxiliary is the only work I do, and if I wanted to stop I just, can. It’s not like I need to worry about buying food.” I knew what I was saying seemed strange while living in the Imperium.
It was the first hint that Ka’tel was controlling her expressions when she seemed more attentive and… relieved? “That’s delightful news to hear! Is there anything about your living situation that bothers you?”
I paused and thought about it, and really couldn’t see anything. “Not really?”
“Anything, or anyone, you miss from Earth?” Ka’tel asked, stressing that last bit, dropping a mental bomb on my head and I froze, mouth partly open with a half formed response. When was the last time I even thought about Earth as more than an abstract concept? It hadn’t been [six months] since I left but…
I didn’t feel anything.
The last year I lived on Earth, it was like being a ghost. I saw people, I even talked to people, but it was like a thick plate of glass all around me. Today I felt color, and life, and things, but that last year on Earth?
Like radio static.
I looked at Ka’tel, and their expression was one of controlled neutrality. Why was I not freaking out?
I had a sensation of the room spinning. I asked, “No, I don’t really feel anything about Earth, is that normal?”
“I don’t know Klein, by most sentient standards what you went through was unusual, and from what little I know about humans that isn’t propaganda, it’s unusual for humans as well. What I do know is right now you seem happy and healthy, and that’s my top priority.” Ka’tel said as they stood and offered me a stiff plastic card with their contact details on it.
“We will be chatting every other week to see how you are adjusting. I might ask to visit you at the youth auxiliary depot, the gym or at home. I really am glad to see you are doing just fine, but if you ever need a way out, that card has an emergency signal function, just pull the plastic tab.” Ka’tel told me, and was about to open the door before I spoke up.
“How should I refer to you?” I asked, and once they realized, Ka’tel gave me a genuine, toothed, smile that was both menacing and goofy at the same time.
“Most people don’t learn enough Hydrean biology to ask. Her, that’s how everyone in the office sees me, and it’s more convenient socially.” She said, opening the door to an anxious looking Itaro standing next to a serious Ruhal and Reqellia.
“I need to speak to you Ruhal, and Reqellia, you should join us for this conversation as well.” Ka’tel said as she ushered me out.
Cee led us into a gaming room with a long table on one side, and a set of couches facing the wall to wall display on the other. She handed me an overloaded plate of cookies with bottle of water, and stepped out, closing the door behind us. “Eat those, your stomach has healed, but it’s going to need calories to fuel the recovery.”
Only then did I realize I was salivating at the smell of warm sugar, and flour made of Kasan grain, if I was identifying the green color correctly. I put the plate of cookies on the table, and snarfed them as I sat down.
After swallowing the fourth cookie semi-whole, I looked up to see Itaro’s face fighting a war between impatient, apprehensive, and hopeful. I stopped, realizing what I was doing, and sipped some water to stall for time.
I was about to pull my omni-pad out from my pockets when Itaro suddenly put her hand out to stop me. “Wait! Klein, I need to tell you something…”
She was silent for a long moment, what was she worried about?
“I… Like you, as, I find you…. Attractive, and I may have gotten a little…. overprotective when you got hurt.” Itaro said, her voice stuttering.
‘Oh, that makes things easy.’ Squirrel brain was for once, right.
“I like you too.” I said as I leaned over and kissed her.
submitted by Adventurous-Map-9400 to Sexyspacebabes [link] [comments]
This is a rewrite of my original story ‘Loyalist’.
Credit to u/bluefishcake for writing the original SSB story.
Pizzaulostin who has been beta reading since the beginning.
and u/BruhMomentGEE
Credit to u/HollowShel for getting me started with this!
This story is based in the SSB universe.
Previous
First
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as always, comments are welcome.
Chapter 17:
Thanks to the author of Alien-Nation for editing this chapter!Ruhal:
“We are sorry about the restraints. Your dossier has a security lock from the Office of Interior that I can’t even read, and all our supervisor could tell us was ‘interview with caution’,” one of the two agents explained.I regarded my handcuffs with professional disapproval. They had a longer than regular chain for ambulatory movement and inmate processing, by the deep, I could even use them as garrote if needed. They had revealed the limits of their rank with that apology.
“No need to worry. I am sure this will be a formality in less than an hour,” I told them, if there was one thing that was in abundance on the planet Sky it was Interior and undercover commando trainees. I hoped this would probably be their most interesting case all month.
“So, would you care to explain how you are raising a human, that is also considered a military asset?” The agent inquired as she pulled out her slate.
“Of course, Klein surrendered himself and requested medical aid and refugee status. He was willing to answer essential questions regarding human culture that aided in liberating humanity into the Shil’vati Empire. He wouldn’t be safe on Earth anymore, and I mentioned that he was still important in writing my reports. If I had my slate, I could give you the relevant documentation,” I said in a conversational tone, without any of the emotions that weighed the story, and glossing over the specifics.
“No need. I have everything you submitted to the Interior, including his asset designation, the interrogation transcripts, and even his doctor’s contact info. To be honest with you it’s the only reason we haven’t interviewed you yet, even after a dozen calls about a ‘possible trafficked human’ since he arrived. Your information is corroborated with several other departments. The issue now is what the medivac scans found.” The agent pushed a slate towards me with medical notes bolded for emphasis ‘probable severe abuse’.
“The report shows a recent history of blunt force trauma, abrasions, and even muscle tearing, in short. It looks like the human has been systematically tortured for months. You also have recently requested restricted training armor in the human’s size.” The agent explained.
Ah, that was my mistake. I had been treating Klein as another child, just with some unique needs. It looks like there were other considerations, ones that I failed to see.
“I really do need my omni-slate to illustrate this, it’s on my desk right now if one of your assistants could get it?” I asked, hoping they got the suggestion to not leave me with only one interrogator in the room so they wouldn’t be graded too harshly.
They thankfully acquiesced without comment, and with my omni-slate in hand I pulled up the latest video of Klein practicing with me, the speed and brutality was difficult for me to sit through. Then, Klein pulled off his helmet seconds later, laughing in the rain. Unconcerned that, without armor, we could have just killed each other- I was grateful he had, else it might’ve been interpreted quite differently. “The bruising mostly from everyday participation at a Rakiri gym, and some remnants from before I got proper gear for baton practice. He heals extremely fast, and more so, he isn’t happy unless he exercises for at least an hour or two a day.”
I pulled up another video. Klein was sitting at the table bouncing his leg at an ever-increasing pace while trying to focus on a decently complex equation. He finally stood up and started pacing mouthing words as he skipped in time to an unheard rhythm.
“W-what’s he doing?” The agent asked, looking just a tad disturbed by the display of what seemed erratic behavior.
“A sort of dance while playing the song ‘a fine mesh net’ on his headphones. There was a monsoon that Shel weekend, and even I’m not crazy enough to fight in a thunderstorm like that. He does that around the house for an hour, and then finally settles in on a video game,” I explained to the agents, who were looking at me dubiously.
“So, you oversee an adolescent who is an intelligence asset, but also seems poorly fitted for Shil’vati life. Why the baton practice? Wouldn’t that make him even more dangerous, more of an outsider? Are you trying to sabotage his integration? Why not take him shopping, instead, or teach him beauty and self-care routines?” They were antagonizing. Countering every argument to see how I reacted. It seemed they could at least interrogate decently well.
“I hardly call a few quirks ‘poor fitting’. The baton practice is for obvious self-defense. Its intention is to make him dangerous,” I explained, letting the interviewers lead the conversation.
The back and forth went on for a while, but I presented a highlight reel of the last few months. Including a Rakiri gym video when Klein tried to flourish a wall climb and smashed his shoulder on the ledge while face planting into the mud.
The agents would not be arresting me today. They would need medical reports, and would require Klein, Hario, and Compassion Through Deeds to attest while truth scanned that these were sports injuries, and not some conspiracy to commit torture. We were also going to need to see an ICAD agent every two weeks for counseling. I had no idea what ICAD was, but I would investigate them later.
Finally, the agents appeared they were closing up the interview. I tried not to brace myself as they asked the complicated question. “One thing we need to know is, what is Klein to you? If he is just a crucial asset, then why haven’t you contacted a local volunteer family foster? Or was the military asset just a cover to find a male heir?”
I sighed, the truth wasn’t incriminating, but if I didn’t word it right, I would look like the worst sort of military tourist. “I had, originally, taken care of Klein as a key intelligence asset. Within that first week though, I had found that despite the decades of preparation, there wasn’t a process for someone to claim asylum as a child during first contact. He would be in military bureaucratic limbo without an advocate. We both know where he would end up.”
The room cooled by several degrees, which was a pity, I almost got the talkative agent to laugh at Klein’s antics. “Out of duty I investigated ways I could bring him home until I could find resources to place him in a stable situation with all the resources to help a xeno without a community. I found someone who was willing to help in exchange for reports on Klein’s adaptation to Shil’vati lifestyle. That’s Klein’s purpose as a military asset in my home.”
I continued. I was saying more on than I needed to, but if they did a follow up investigation later for some other incident, which was a when, not if, then I wanted this on record. “Klein has become part of this household though, despite, or maybe because, of his oddities. He may not be Shil’vati, but he seems to have integrated well. It’s why, while it was never my intention, when he is an adult, I will offer him full adoption, and title of home guardian.”
I watched the agents exchange looks, then the agent made a few taps on her slate. ‘Upper left, middle center, probably a message app’. I then listened for the telltale taps of a yes as a micro expression of a self-satisfied smile crossed the agent’s face. I decided to stop playing interviewee.
“So, you won the bet on if I would claim the human as my son, how long has that pool been building?” I asked folding my hands together.
The agent answered before she could think. “Two months… Wait!? How did you-”
The agent was cut off by the squawk of the slate’s speaker. “Agents you did well enough with the interview portion, however; you absolutely failed to secure the subject. Could you please illustrate to them why I stressed caution {petal of death’s veil}?”
The code name wasn’t one I had heard in decades, but I wasn’t going to snub an old handler. I kicked on my fast reaction mods to max speed and lunged over the table past the still sitting agents. I pirouetted and twisted the restraints into a loop as I brought them down over the left agent’s head and pulled back carefully, lightly touching the chain of my restraints around the neck of the agent before she could even react.
I kicked off my mods and caught my breath as time returned to normal. Both agents’ eyes went wide with shock as the one not about to be strangled tried to get away to pull out her weapon. “W-who are you!?”
“I’m going to slowly release you and put my hands up, is that everything you needed {hated old friend}?” I directed my question to the slate, using the code High Shil word to show I was playing along.
“More than enough. Agent! Holster your weapon and come back to the safe room. We need to go over security procedures,” the slate responded, and the very brief confrontation was over.
The agents walked out, and Siltan stomped in looking like she could bring about a thunderstorm by pure force of will. “We weren’t the only ones to get visits from the ‘majesty’s’ Interior today. Cee let me know that the Interior is also interrogated Reqellia as well.”
I now understood why these two rookies were here. It was a distraction for me. I grumbled as I picked up my slate and called Reqellia. Her face appeared a second later.
“By the Deep, it’s been a long day,” Reqellia breathed out as I heard a door slam, then she cursed some more.
“Tell me everything. Is Klein ok?” I asked.
“Cee says he’s fine and is waking him up. Klein might be getting a mod himself before she closes him up though because, oh- looks like it’s my day is going to get longer still. ICAD is here, and it’s a Hydrean in a Gearschilde clinic.” Reqellia hung up, and I stared at the phone in confusion.
It was time to find out what ICAD was.
Klein:
I blearily came to, as high powered, piercing white light flooded my half open eyes. I tried to move my arm to shield my face and found I couldn’t. Actually, I couldn't move or even feel anything from the neck down.I started to panic as I turned my head, focusing on lettering on a terminal, tried to sigh, and felt what few muscles I could control turn to lead as I sank back on the medical bed. Thank the goddess, it was Shil and Gearschilde lettering on the slate and medical supplies.
“Good afternoon Klein, are you okay? Your heart rate spiked.” I heard Cee, or full name Compassion Through Deeds, speak and turned my head to see her. She wore a dark red lab coat and regarded me with unblinking cybernetic eyes. Most of her orange skin had been replaced with dark steel etched with stylized waves and swirls of silver. Her face still emoted in a pleasant smile, but had that uncanny valley look of unblemished synth skin. I looked down to see a dozen micro surgical tools still inside me.
I should have been screaming at the sight, but all I felt was relief and joy. “Yeah, I just worried for a half second that I had hallucinated the last few months and was actually on a back on Earth on some black-market operating table getting my kidney stolen.”
Cee was aghast. “Does that happen on Earth?”
I would shrug, but again, I couldn’t move, instead I responded. “Rumors of it happening, but I never knew anyone personally.”
Cee reassured me. “Well, good news Klein, you are on Sky, you are in a Gearschilde clinic where stealing vital organs is a legal, moral and religious crime of unrepentant severity. What I have done is remove your appendix, and let the sedatives wear off so we can discuss what you want in its place.”
“In place of my appendix? Why?” I asked, it wasn’t like I really needed the vestigial organ turn internal hand grenade.
“Customary in Gearschilde for surgery is to be about giving a better life than just taking from the body. So, any ideas of what would make your life better?”
I thought about the bruising, the constant having to put healing patches on, and the annoyance of doing so. I thought about the near fatality of almost blowing my appendix, and if something could have fixed the issue before it got out of hand. “What about a healing dispenser? I keep having to put on patches and gel at the end of the day, and if I miss a spot, I will pay for it later.”
Cee gave me a grateful expression. “That’s a perfect first implant. I was worried you were going to ask for something more aggressive. When I was your age, I got my first defensive mod, a retractable forearm knife. Of course, my next surgery was being stitched back together after accidently stabbing myself with it.”
I tried to chuckle, but I didn’t have control of my diaphragm for it. “So, what’s next?”
Cee explained. “Well, the fabricator in the other room is right now creating your implant. It shouldn’t take long; are you ok being immobilized for the next hour or so?”
I thought about it, and honestly, I was still surprised I wasn’t panicking. “No, but I’m going to get really bored just laying here, do the Gearschilde have any good myths or stories?”
I knew I was fishing in an untapped pool that was guaranteed to have something. I wasn’t expecting my doctor to be gleeful at the thought though. “Oh blessed be you child, I am a surgeon priest, half the reason I am in this vocation is to tell stories. I take it you know nothing about Gearschilde mythology, or even our history?”
It was on my list of rabbit holes to get into, but instead I binged the rest of Prince Of The Stars and cried, it was nice. “No, but I would love to hear them.”
“Well if you want to, every Shel we have open services and brunch. But since you are new to Gearschilde mythology we should start with one of my favorites. The story of the Hopestrider.”
The ceiling lights dimmed, and the sterile operating room felt surprisingly cozy as I leaned my head back. Listening to Cee starting up the tale. “Our sect requires us to lead what can best be called ‘child technician classes’. Learning to take care of machines, which includes us by the start of adolescence, if not before. It’s a critical life skill, and teaching it is considered an important part of our religious studies.”
‘Cyberpunk VeggieTales’ Squirrel brain chittered.
No one wants your opinion squirrel brain. I thought back.
Cee’s story: Hope Strider
“Long ago our world was full of harsh life. The valleys were often filled with poisonous mists and deadly predators that could rip apart even the strongest of our people. The mountain kingdoms were brutal fiefdoms that sent many to their deaths mining precious metals from the dangerous wastes of the valleys. Drilling into the heart of the mountains provided the power necessary to purify water, and later, steam engines turned those fiefdoms into empires. Expanding into the wastes using the lowest class of people as its foundation.”Cee paused for dramatic effect. “Then, everything changed.”
“The ground shook, and the mountain kingdoms erupted in fire and molten rock. Radioactive dust from these now volcanoes made the centers of civilization barren and deadly. Only the wasteland colonies in the poisonous mists provided any refuge, and so king and commoner alike huddled in the once disposable outposts of a ruined world. Our story starts a generation after the calamity with an unlucky child.”
I heard a ding, Cee stopped as the ceiling lights came up. “Oh dear, let me stop for a second to get the implant.”
I leaned back and thought about her nightmare world. When Cee returned, I didn’t even bother to open my eyes, too engrossed in the imagery of the story. “What happened to the child?”
I could hear the whirring as she started to work. Her voice I realized had taken a more scripted cadence. She must have automated her voice so she could focus. “In a metalworker’s home, a child was born with broken legs and brittle bones. It was common in those days for such a child to die that way. It was their first born and the parents did everything they could to save them. A surgeon was called. The child lost their legs, but kept their life.”
“The child lived in the workshop. Kept warm by the hearth’s fire, even unable to walk, they were curious. Day in and out, they watched their parents construct machines that helped the community make food, filter the air, and defend the homes from the starving, mutated, monsters that circled the fortress walls. The child felt helpless though. Only able to crawl within the confines of the home or be carried around like cargo about the maze-like town of winding stairs and narrow passageways.
“They spent much of their time learning, sitting near the hearth to keep warm, they did the careful work of filing gears and wheels needed to control what could be automated as each hand replaced was another that could be spent doing something else critical to keep the community alive. Still, the child wanted to do more. They could not deliver what they made, and had to rely on others to help them at every turn in life.”
“Little did the child know that in the hearth a machine spirit lived, getting by eating scrap metal that fell in and sleeping at night on the bed of embers. The machine spirit saw the child’s wish, an invention without form, and turned it into a dream for the child, since new machines would mean new machine spirits to play with.”
That night the child saw themselves flying over the cold gray landscape on a pair of machine legs. Traveling the dangerous paths to other towns, and giving the isolated towns hope and community. The child awoke with joy and crawled over to his workbench littered with scrap metal, now children….”
Cee stopped talking and her voice went back to an unscripted rhythm. “I just realized we can’t do the practical part of this story. In class each kid gets a hope strider stuffy with snaps to attach legs they make. We give them bits of copper. Show them how to bend and hammer it, and how to bond it by wrapping the joint in solder and then applying heat with a soldering iron heated in their own toy ‘hearth’ with a safety cover. Still we get a daily small burn or cut, but that in itself is a valuable lesson in tool safety.”
It sounded adorable in a weird, steampunk way. “Sounds fun, so, new legs?”
Cee got the que, as much as I loved the story, and the talk about kindergarten metal shop, I was still immobilized on the operating table. I heard surgical whirring, and the scripted voice came back. “Yes, the child works all night until they fit the new legs on, and for the first time stand up on their own! The parents are overjoyed as they watch them move about the house and that afternoon, with the help of an iron bar as a cane, they walk around their community by themselves.”
“However, it isn’t long before the legs start to see wear and tear, but the child persists, not wanting to stop and fix the creaking joints, until one day the legs stop working altogether and they fall down in a twisting staircase. Carried back to the workshop, they rest for days to heal before they are able to work again. Constructing a new set from the remains of the old. Now…”
Klein:
Cee stopped again, but this time she had moved away from me and was putting the now bloody surgical tools into a sanitizing system. “We're done! I am going to start removing the nerve blocks, so you’re going to be sore, but if things get too painful, let me know. Please, try not to move anything but your hands right now, even then I would advise against it.”My whole body had that pins and needles feel and I tried to move my fingers, but it was sporadic and jerky. Cee distracted me by explaining my new implant. “So, this implant is very basic. It can only be requested to send diagnostic data. The implant only administers more healing serum at a safe, steady rate if, and only if, it doesn’t detect any in your bloodstream. There is an injection site with a color change circle around it. It uses standard go, caution, stop colors to let you know if it’s functioning. I want to wave your omni-pad over the site and check the diagnostics at least once a day. It should hopefully catch if something like this is happening again.”
I tried to not move as I felt my body twitch. My gut felt like I had been run over, repeatedly. I asked, “why didn’t my medical monitoring implant catch this?”
Cee explained. “That’s only good for basic vitals. Near universal indicators of life and activity such as heart rate and blood pressure. The new implant will be able to scan for elevated protein counts. So, if one of your other internal organs starts to malfunction you can get a more unambiguous message that I hope you won’t ignore before getting medivac’d through the city.”
I chuckled a little at that, and it hurt. “Ow, ok, no movement. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or something.”
Cee looked down at me sternly, and her voice took on a deeper, more authoritative tone. “Child, more than enough Gearschilde have died thinking they can just, push themselves past their organic parts failing, if you have a torn muscle that hurts after you’ve used healing gel, then it’s serious enough you need to come see me, or another xeno-doctor, immediately. That’s why I hope your new implant can fix things before it gets to that point.”
Cee brightened after that and went back to the explanation of my implant. “Now that I scolded you, there is a color changing circle over your implant’s location. It will change color when the healing serum runs low, or and will start to flash in color, and try to ping your omni-pad if it detects a malfunction. The implant uses a standard Shil’ implant autoinjector, and it will reject anything not meant for red blood standard biology, but still be careful, it’s not a perfect filtering system. Today I’m giving you a set of autoinjectors I want you to use throughout the week. It's fortunate that your implant’s primary function will speed up your recovery time.”
Ok, that’s cool to know, but.
‘What happened to Hopestrider?!’ Squirrel brain demanded.
“So, the story, what happens next?” I asked as Cee helped me sit up. My stomach still hurt, but the feeling was in the overworked muscle category rather than a gut punch.
Cee started to explain as I put on what was essentially gym clothes. Soft, baggy pants and shirt with easy pull away tabs if they needed to remove the clothes quickly for checkups and surgical intervention. “Well, we don’t have time to go over the Hope Strider as a story, or even a summary, but if you want to, my husband teaches the child technician class during open services on Shel, you could sit in and listen.
Right now, I will give you a family crafted picture book that tells the core story of Hope Strider growing up, and making their first delivery. After that it’s a loose selection of legends that are attributed to Hope Strider as they grow older and more accomplished, but while I get that book, I need you to speak to someone.”
Cee led me out of the operating room, and into a comfortable looking lounge where a… Hydrean was sitting in an Imperial business uniform reading an omni-pad. My brain pulled everything I knew of Hydreans out. A rabbit hole I had dug into one rainy Shel on the public information repositories.
She, they, single gendered I reminded myself, looked up and smiled at me calmly, mouth closed for politeness. Their skin was grass green with artful patches of bark on her face and neck, the result of cosmetic scarification. They looked human, or Shil’oid, but that was purposefully done. Even the somewhat standard looking ‘desert walker’ Hydreans normally had more, or less, limbs than standard. Biological modification was at the root of all Hydrean technology, ancient as the stone ax to other species.
I thought about how contentious Hydrean/Shil relationships were said to be. Their arid home planet was off limits to all but certified personnel who had been trained how to handle the dangerous mix of flora/fauna that instead of being different groups, was just a single taxonomy that had no distinction between predator and prey. With their complex biology, a Hydrean needed to undergo extensive body modification just to exist off their home world.
Cee left the room with a friendly goodbye and offered assistance “Hello Klein, I am Ka’tel. It’s wonderful to meet you. I am with the Imperial Child Assistance Division, or ICAD. My job is to help interspecies fosters and adoptions. How are you feeling today?”
I caught a glimpse of her teeth as they spoke. Triangular, and made of burnished metal meant to tear off chunks of animal, plant, or even rock, whole and let their stomachs’ mix of acids dissolve it into something the rest their body could use.
‘The agent in charge of your welfare is a plant/animal hybrid with a diet of ‘yes’, your doctor is a wholesome orange 40K mechanicus, and your crush is a were-lion, you are not ok .’ Squirrel brain remarked.
“I’m actually pretty good, despite the surgery, it’s actually a common issue for humans.” I said to Ka’tel, because my life was weird before the aliens, squirrel brain was just being a pessimistic asshole.
“Really? Do you know what caused it?” Ka’tel asked.
“It just, happens? Gets irritated or infected and then you need to get it removed.” I said nonchalantly. Ka’tel made a mark on her omni-pad.
“How did you know? It seems dangerous if it can happen suddenly, and you mentioned it before you passed out.” Ka’tel asked tone friendly and conversational.
“Oh, the side of your stomach hurts. I was hoping it was just a pulled muscle bec- Dammit!” I just remembered what happened before I woke up here.
“The raid game! Ko’tasa would have had to substitute for me and she’s not well balanced for our team mix.” I said with a exasperated sigh.
Ka’tel cocked their head to one side, but the tone in her voice was humorous. “You were willing to ignore a possible life-threatening condition for a game?”
I explained, though I felt idiotic now. “I couldn’t tell. I get sore muscles all the time from gym, and sparing, and even from the auxiliary work, honestly my commandant doesn’t really know where to put me sometimes. Last week I helped with road clearing for the new town to go up a few [miles] away, and the girls could barely keep up with me.”
Ka’tel seemed to be enjoying my rambling. “Sounds like you really get put to work.”
“Not really? The auxiliary is the only work I do, and if I wanted to stop I just, can. It’s not like I need to worry about buying food.” I knew what I was saying seemed strange while living in the Imperium.
It was the first hint that Ka’tel was controlling her expressions when she seemed more attentive and… relieved? “That’s delightful news to hear! Is there anything about your living situation that bothers you?”
I paused and thought about it, and really couldn’t see anything. “Not really?”
“Anything, or anyone, you miss from Earth?” Ka’tel asked, stressing that last bit, dropping a mental bomb on my head and I froze, mouth partly open with a half formed response. When was the last time I even thought about Earth as more than an abstract concept? It hadn’t been [six months] since I left but…
I didn’t feel anything.
The last year I lived on Earth, it was like being a ghost. I saw people, I even talked to people, but it was like a thick plate of glass all around me. Today I felt color, and life, and things, but that last year on Earth?
Like radio static.
I looked at Ka’tel, and their expression was one of controlled neutrality. Why was I not freaking out?
I had a sensation of the room spinning. I asked, “No, I don’t really feel anything about Earth, is that normal?”
“I don’t know Klein, by most sentient standards what you went through was unusual, and from what little I know about humans that isn’t propaganda, it’s unusual for humans as well. What I do know is right now you seem happy and healthy, and that’s my top priority.” Ka’tel said as they stood and offered me a stiff plastic card with their contact details on it.
“We will be chatting every other week to see how you are adjusting. I might ask to visit you at the youth auxiliary depot, the gym or at home. I really am glad to see you are doing just fine, but if you ever need a way out, that card has an emergency signal function, just pull the plastic tab.” Ka’tel told me, and was about to open the door before I spoke up.
“How should I refer to you?” I asked, and once they realized, Ka’tel gave me a genuine, toothed, smile that was both menacing and goofy at the same time.
“Most people don’t learn enough Hydrean biology to ask. Her, that’s how everyone in the office sees me, and it’s more convenient socially.” She said, opening the door to an anxious looking Itaro standing next to a serious Ruhal and Reqellia.
“I need to speak to you Ruhal, and Reqellia, you should join us for this conversation as well.” Ka’tel said as she ushered me out.
Cee led us into a gaming room with a long table on one side, and a set of couches facing the wall to wall display on the other. She handed me an overloaded plate of cookies with bottle of water, and stepped out, closing the door behind us. “Eat those, your stomach has healed, but it’s going to need calories to fuel the recovery.”
Only then did I realize I was salivating at the smell of warm sugar, and flour made of Kasan grain, if I was identifying the green color correctly. I put the plate of cookies on the table, and snarfed them as I sat down.
After swallowing the fourth cookie semi-whole, I looked up to see Itaro’s face fighting a war between impatient, apprehensive, and hopeful. I stopped, realizing what I was doing, and sipped some water to stall for time.
I was about to pull my omni-pad out from my pockets when Itaro suddenly put her hand out to stop me. “Wait! Klein, I need to tell you something…”
She was silent for a long moment, what was she worried about?
“I… Like you, as, I find you…. Attractive, and I may have gotten a little…. overprotective when you got hurt.” Itaro said, her voice stuttering.
‘Oh, that makes things easy.’ Squirrel brain was for once, right.
“I like you too.” I said as I leaned over and kissed her.
///// Author’s Commentary
Wow! I couldn’t find a good stopping point so I just kept writing and writing and… It turned into something over 5 thousand words. I spent the last day trying to figure out clear up a few parts. This week I have some time off! So there will probably be another chapter sooner rather than later.2023.04.01 01:17 MaceLeonardo 4th Mock Draft 2023 4/1/2023 up to pick 68th
To not exclude Broncos fans I went all the way to pick 67 and 68. Ask me any questions you have on the mock haven't had the time to type out expectations. Next post will either be a Big Board or a 3 round mock with trade.
TRADES
Packers send Aaron Rodgers to the Jets for 2.42, 2024 Conditional 2nd and Corey Davis.
Philadelphia sends 1.10(369) to the New England for 1.14(325), 3.76(61) and 4.135(17)
34 points in the favor of Philadelphia
Tennessee sends 1.11(358) to Washington for 1.16(305) and 2.47(124)
58 points in favor of Tennessee
Tampa sends 1.19(278) and 5.175(7) to Baltimore Ravens for 1.22(253) and 3.86(49)
17 points in favor of Tampa Bay
New York Giants send 1.25(230) and 5.172(8) to Cincinnati Bengals for 1.28(209) and 3.92(43)
14 points in favor New York Giants
Dallas sends 1.26(223) to New Orleans for 1.29(202), 4.115(26) and a 2024 4th(13)
18 points in favor of Dallas
Philadelphia sends 1.30(196) to Pittsburgh for 2.32(184) and 4.120(24)
12 points in favor of Philadelphia
1). Carolina Panthers: CJ Stroud QB Ohio State
2). Houston Texans: Bryce Young QB Alabama
3). Arizona Cardinals: Will Anderson EDGE Alabama
4). Indianapolis Colts: Anthony Richardson QB Florida
5). Seattle Seahawks: Jalen Carter IDL Georgia
6). Detroit Lions: Tyree Wilson EDGE Texas Tech
7). Las Vegas Raiders: Devon Witherspoon CB Oregon
8). Atlanta Falcons: Christian Gonzalez CB Oregon
9). Chicago Bears: Paris Johnson Jr OT Ohio State
10). New England Patriots: Peter Skoronski OT/OG Northwestern
11). Washington Commanders: Will Levis QB Kentucky
12). Houston Texans: Jaxon Smith-Njigba WR Ohio State
13). New York Jets: Broderick Jones OT Georgia
14). Philadelphia Eagles: Calijah Kancey IDL Pittsburgh
15). Green Bay Packers: Lukas Van Ness EDGE Iowa
16). Tennessee Titans: Zay Flowers WR Boston College
17). Pittsburgh Steelers: Joey Porter Jr CB Penn State
18). Detroit Lions: Bijan Robinson RB Texas
19). Baltimore Ravens: Quinten Johnston WR TCU
20). Seattle Seahawks: Jordan Addison WR USC
21). Los Angeles Chargers: Nolan Smith EDGE Georgia
22). Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Darnell Wright OT Tennessee
23). Minnesota Vikings: Deonta Banks CB Maryland
24). Jacksonville Jaguars: Brian Branch S Alabama
25). Cincinnati Bengals: Anton Harrison OT Oklahoma
26). New Orleans Saints: Myles Murphy EDGE Clemson
27). Buffalo Bills: Drew Sanders LB Arkansas
28). New York Giants: John Michael Schmitz C Minnesota
29). Dallas Cowboys: Dalton Kincaid TE Utah
30). Pittsburgh Steelers: Dawand Jones OT Ohio State
31). Kansas City Chiefs: Darnell Washington TE Georgia
2nd Round
32). Philadelphia Eagles: Jahmyr Gibbs RB/WR Alabama
33). Houston Texans: Keion White EDGE Georgia Tech
34). Arizona Cardinals: Cam Smith CB South Carolina
35). Indianapolis Colts: Kelee Ringo CB Georgia
36). Los Angeles Rams: O’Cyrus Torrance OG Florida
37). Seattle Seahawks: Will McDonald EDGE Iowa State
38). Las Vegas Raiders: Steve Avila OG TCU
39). Carolina Panthers: Tyrique Stevenson CB Miami
40). New Orleans Saints: Bryan Breese IDL Clemson
41). Tennessee Titans: Cody Mauch OG North Dakota State
42). Green Bay Packers: Michael Mayer TE Notre Dame
43). New York Jets: Mazi Smith IDL Michigan
44). Atlanta Falcons: BJ Ojulari EDGE LSU
45). Green Bay Packers: Jaylin Hyatt WR Tennessee
46). New England Patriots: Josh Downs WR UNC
47). Tennessee Titans: Joe Tippmann C Wisconsin
48). Detroit Lions: Julius Brents CB Kansas State
49). Pittsburgh Steelers: Antonio Johnson S Texas A&M
50). Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Felix Anudike-Uzomah EDGE Kansas State
51). Miami Dolphins: Matthew Bergeron OT Syracuse
52). Seattle Seahawks: Hendon Hooker QB Tennessee
53). Chicago Bears: Luke Wypler C Ohio State
54). Los Angeles Chargers: Marvin Mims WR Oklahoma
55). Detroit Lions: Keeanu Benton IDL Wisconsin
56). Jacksonville Jaguars: Tuli Tuipulotu IDL/EDGE USC
57). New York Giants: Emmanuel Forbes CB Mississippi State
58). Dallas Cowboys: Adetomiwa Adebawore IDL Northwestern
59). Buffalo Bills: Karl Brooks IDL Bowling Green
60). Cincinnati Bengals: Zach Charbonett RB UCLA
61). Chicago Bears: Derrick Hall EDGE Auburn
62). Philadelphia Eagles: Jordan Battle S Alabama
63). Kansas City Chiefs: Isaiah Foskey EDGE Notre Dame
Round 3
64). Chicago Bears: Siaki Ika IDL Baylor
65). Houston Texans: Jack Campbell LB Iowa
66). Arizona Cardinals: Blake Freeland OT BYU
67). Denver Broncos: Clark Phillips CB Utah
68). Denver Broncos: Olu Oluwatimi C Michigan
submitted by MaceLeonardo to NFL_Draft [link] [comments]
TRADES
Packers send Aaron Rodgers to the Jets for 2.42, 2024 Conditional 2nd and Corey Davis.
Philadelphia sends 1.10(369) to the New England for 1.14(325), 3.76(61) and 4.135(17)
34 points in the favor of Philadelphia
Tennessee sends 1.11(358) to Washington for 1.16(305) and 2.47(124)
58 points in favor of Tennessee
Tampa sends 1.19(278) and 5.175(7) to Baltimore Ravens for 1.22(253) and 3.86(49)
17 points in favor of Tampa Bay
New York Giants send 1.25(230) and 5.172(8) to Cincinnati Bengals for 1.28(209) and 3.92(43)
14 points in favor New York Giants
Dallas sends 1.26(223) to New Orleans for 1.29(202), 4.115(26) and a 2024 4th(13)
18 points in favor of Dallas
Philadelphia sends 1.30(196) to Pittsburgh for 2.32(184) and 4.120(24)
12 points in favor of Philadelphia
1). Carolina Panthers: CJ Stroud QB Ohio State
2). Houston Texans: Bryce Young QB Alabama
3). Arizona Cardinals: Will Anderson EDGE Alabama
4). Indianapolis Colts: Anthony Richardson QB Florida
5). Seattle Seahawks: Jalen Carter IDL Georgia
6). Detroit Lions: Tyree Wilson EDGE Texas Tech
7). Las Vegas Raiders: Devon Witherspoon CB Oregon
8). Atlanta Falcons: Christian Gonzalez CB Oregon
9). Chicago Bears: Paris Johnson Jr OT Ohio State
10). New England Patriots: Peter Skoronski OT/OG Northwestern
11). Washington Commanders: Will Levis QB Kentucky
12). Houston Texans: Jaxon Smith-Njigba WR Ohio State
13). New York Jets: Broderick Jones OT Georgia
14). Philadelphia Eagles: Calijah Kancey IDL Pittsburgh
15). Green Bay Packers: Lukas Van Ness EDGE Iowa
16). Tennessee Titans: Zay Flowers WR Boston College
17). Pittsburgh Steelers: Joey Porter Jr CB Penn State
18). Detroit Lions: Bijan Robinson RB Texas
19). Baltimore Ravens: Quinten Johnston WR TCU
20). Seattle Seahawks: Jordan Addison WR USC
21). Los Angeles Chargers: Nolan Smith EDGE Georgia
22). Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Darnell Wright OT Tennessee
23). Minnesota Vikings: Deonta Banks CB Maryland
24). Jacksonville Jaguars: Brian Branch S Alabama
25). Cincinnati Bengals: Anton Harrison OT Oklahoma
26). New Orleans Saints: Myles Murphy EDGE Clemson
27). Buffalo Bills: Drew Sanders LB Arkansas
28). New York Giants: John Michael Schmitz C Minnesota
29). Dallas Cowboys: Dalton Kincaid TE Utah
30). Pittsburgh Steelers: Dawand Jones OT Ohio State
31). Kansas City Chiefs: Darnell Washington TE Georgia
2nd Round
32). Philadelphia Eagles: Jahmyr Gibbs RB/WR Alabama
33). Houston Texans: Keion White EDGE Georgia Tech
34). Arizona Cardinals: Cam Smith CB South Carolina
35). Indianapolis Colts: Kelee Ringo CB Georgia
36). Los Angeles Rams: O’Cyrus Torrance OG Florida
37). Seattle Seahawks: Will McDonald EDGE Iowa State
38). Las Vegas Raiders: Steve Avila OG TCU
39). Carolina Panthers: Tyrique Stevenson CB Miami
40). New Orleans Saints: Bryan Breese IDL Clemson
41). Tennessee Titans: Cody Mauch OG North Dakota State
42). Green Bay Packers: Michael Mayer TE Notre Dame
43). New York Jets: Mazi Smith IDL Michigan
44). Atlanta Falcons: BJ Ojulari EDGE LSU
45). Green Bay Packers: Jaylin Hyatt WR Tennessee
46). New England Patriots: Josh Downs WR UNC
47). Tennessee Titans: Joe Tippmann C Wisconsin
48). Detroit Lions: Julius Brents CB Kansas State
49). Pittsburgh Steelers: Antonio Johnson S Texas A&M
50). Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Felix Anudike-Uzomah EDGE Kansas State
51). Miami Dolphins: Matthew Bergeron OT Syracuse
52). Seattle Seahawks: Hendon Hooker QB Tennessee
53). Chicago Bears: Luke Wypler C Ohio State
54). Los Angeles Chargers: Marvin Mims WR Oklahoma
55). Detroit Lions: Keeanu Benton IDL Wisconsin
56). Jacksonville Jaguars: Tuli Tuipulotu IDL/EDGE USC
57). New York Giants: Emmanuel Forbes CB Mississippi State
58). Dallas Cowboys: Adetomiwa Adebawore IDL Northwestern
59). Buffalo Bills: Karl Brooks IDL Bowling Green
60). Cincinnati Bengals: Zach Charbonett RB UCLA
61). Chicago Bears: Derrick Hall EDGE Auburn
62). Philadelphia Eagles: Jordan Battle S Alabama
63). Kansas City Chiefs: Isaiah Foskey EDGE Notre Dame
Round 3
64). Chicago Bears: Siaki Ika IDL Baylor
65). Houston Texans: Jack Campbell LB Iowa
66). Arizona Cardinals: Blake Freeland OT BYU
67). Denver Broncos: Clark Phillips CB Utah
68). Denver Broncos: Olu Oluwatimi C Michigan
2023.04.01 01:08 Ok_Mycologist_5569 Work-from-home is the new normal in Canada. Just accept it Despite what some government and corporate leaders may want, work-from-home is here to stay - National Post
A study the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S. concluded that the average daily amount of time saved in working from home was 55 minutes in the U.S. and 65 minutes in Canada. Of that time saved, the study found that on average people allocated about 40 per cent of the time to their work.
Be careful what you wish for: you might actually get it. In the spring of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, governments around the world, including Canada, pushed harsh measures that have rarely been used in peacetime, including lockdowns and the closing of offices and businesses, except the most essential services. As a consequence, people used to working in offices were told they had to work from home. It was widely seen as an essential but temporary measure to keep people safe during the pandemic. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the science behind lockdowns was tenuous at best. Sweden, widely pilloried at the time for refusing to lock down and for allowing people to interact with each other based on common sense, has ended up with an excess mortality rate that is lower than most countries that locked down hard, including Canada.
The Canadian government was among the more enthusiastic when pushing work-from-home. For example, then deputy minister of Transport Canada, Michael Keenan, declared that this would be the “default” mode of working for the “foreseeable future.” Likewise, every government department and major corporations pivoted to a work-from-home model. Far from pushing back, there was generally enthusiastic compliance from the corporate world in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere. For instance, the New York investment bank, Goldman Sachs, set up remote exercise regimes and even cooking classes for employees working from home. Likewise in Canada, major corporations and banks embraced the work-from-home model.
What few, if any, realized in the spring and summer of 2020 was just how popular this model would turn out to be. Workers were now free from long and expensive commutes to work, saving on gas, parking, food costs, and even childcare expenses. If you didn’t like where your company was located, maybe because the rent was too high or you preferred the countryside to the city, you could move somewhere else. Little wonder then, at the reluctance of many workers to return to the office as the pandemic dissipated in 2022 and 2023. The federal government itself hasn’t exactly been able to crack the whip. By March 31, it expect workers to be in the office for only two to three days a week, and even then, exceptions are allowed on a case-by-case basis.
Employers contend there is lower productivity when their employees work from home. The CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, Dave McKay, has asserted that two plus years of work-from-home has had a negative impact on productivity and innovation. However, the effects of working from home aren’t all negative. Apart from all the obvious cost savings, new research has quantified the time savings associated with working from home. A January 2023 study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the U.S., looked at data from 27 countries and concluded that the average daily amount of time saved in working from home was 55 minutes in the U.S. and 65 minutes in Canada. Of that time saved, the study found that on average people allocated about 40 per cent of the time to their work, 11 per cent to caregiving and the rest to other activities. In other words, even if it’s true that working from home is less productive, people put more time into their work, so it’s hard to know how these effects balance out.
Despite pressure from employers to return to the office, the preference for working from home remains remarkably resilient. A March 2023 study, also published by the NBER, looked at job postings from 2019 to 2023 in the five main English-speaking countries in the developed world. They found that over this period, postings that allowed for remote or hybrid work rose by more than three times in the U.S. and by five times or more in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. The research shows that job postings for work-from-home and or hybrid work remain on an upward trajectory in all five countries. In other words, despite what government and corporate leaders may want, work-from-home is here to stay.
Preference for working from home remains remarkably resilient For those who can do it, remote work has been a blessing. But the reality is that, willy-nilly, the pandemic greatly accelerated the trend toward creating a new class in society — those who can work remotely indefinitely — breaking the link between where you live and where you work that’s been the norm through history. By contrast, harsh lockdowns most adversely affected people in industries where workers had to be proximate to their workplaces, like truck drivers, caregivers, cooks and delivery people, and most health-care providers. These people are potentially a new underclass, without the same lifestyle choices as those whom they are servicing who work remotely. Likewise, there are looming dilemmas when it comes to land use and zoning, given the fact that large office complexes in major cities in all over the developed world are now partially or even largely empty. High vacancy rates of office spaces don’t tell the whole story, because many offices that are rented are still largely empty.
One of the maxims of social science is the law of unintended consequences. In the spring of 2020, when governments were imposing lockdowns, no one expected that the shift to work-from-home would become essentially permanent. Most people expected that lockdowns and work-from-home would last for two weeks, the time it was thought it would take to “flatten the curve.” There’s no prospect that work from home or, at any rate, hybrid work will cease to remain the norm going forward, especially as labour markets remain tight. Perhaps, rather than fighting it, government and corporate leaders ought to accept it as the new normal.
National Post
submitted by Ok_Mycologist_5569 to OntarioPublicService [link] [comments]
Be careful what you wish for: you might actually get it. In the spring of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, governments around the world, including Canada, pushed harsh measures that have rarely been used in peacetime, including lockdowns and the closing of offices and businesses, except the most essential services. As a consequence, people used to working in offices were told they had to work from home. It was widely seen as an essential but temporary measure to keep people safe during the pandemic. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the science behind lockdowns was tenuous at best. Sweden, widely pilloried at the time for refusing to lock down and for allowing people to interact with each other based on common sense, has ended up with an excess mortality rate that is lower than most countries that locked down hard, including Canada.
The Canadian government was among the more enthusiastic when pushing work-from-home. For example, then deputy minister of Transport Canada, Michael Keenan, declared that this would be the “default” mode of working for the “foreseeable future.” Likewise, every government department and major corporations pivoted to a work-from-home model. Far from pushing back, there was generally enthusiastic compliance from the corporate world in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere. For instance, the New York investment bank, Goldman Sachs, set up remote exercise regimes and even cooking classes for employees working from home. Likewise in Canada, major corporations and banks embraced the work-from-home model.
What few, if any, realized in the spring and summer of 2020 was just how popular this model would turn out to be. Workers were now free from long and expensive commutes to work, saving on gas, parking, food costs, and even childcare expenses. If you didn’t like where your company was located, maybe because the rent was too high or you preferred the countryside to the city, you could move somewhere else. Little wonder then, at the reluctance of many workers to return to the office as the pandemic dissipated in 2022 and 2023. The federal government itself hasn’t exactly been able to crack the whip. By March 31, it expect workers to be in the office for only two to three days a week, and even then, exceptions are allowed on a case-by-case basis.
Employers contend there is lower productivity when their employees work from home. The CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, Dave McKay, has asserted that two plus years of work-from-home has had a negative impact on productivity and innovation. However, the effects of working from home aren’t all negative. Apart from all the obvious cost savings, new research has quantified the time savings associated with working from home. A January 2023 study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the U.S., looked at data from 27 countries and concluded that the average daily amount of time saved in working from home was 55 minutes in the U.S. and 65 minutes in Canada. Of that time saved, the study found that on average people allocated about 40 per cent of the time to their work, 11 per cent to caregiving and the rest to other activities. In other words, even if it’s true that working from home is less productive, people put more time into their work, so it’s hard to know how these effects balance out.
Despite pressure from employers to return to the office, the preference for working from home remains remarkably resilient. A March 2023 study, also published by the NBER, looked at job postings from 2019 to 2023 in the five main English-speaking countries in the developed world. They found that over this period, postings that allowed for remote or hybrid work rose by more than three times in the U.S. and by five times or more in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. The research shows that job postings for work-from-home and or hybrid work remain on an upward trajectory in all five countries. In other words, despite what government and corporate leaders may want, work-from-home is here to stay.
Preference for working from home remains remarkably resilient For those who can do it, remote work has been a blessing. But the reality is that, willy-nilly, the pandemic greatly accelerated the trend toward creating a new class in society — those who can work remotely indefinitely — breaking the link between where you live and where you work that’s been the norm through history. By contrast, harsh lockdowns most adversely affected people in industries where workers had to be proximate to their workplaces, like truck drivers, caregivers, cooks and delivery people, and most health-care providers. These people are potentially a new underclass, without the same lifestyle choices as those whom they are servicing who work remotely. Likewise, there are looming dilemmas when it comes to land use and zoning, given the fact that large office complexes in major cities in all over the developed world are now partially or even largely empty. High vacancy rates of office spaces don’t tell the whole story, because many offices that are rented are still largely empty.
One of the maxims of social science is the law of unintended consequences. In the spring of 2020, when governments were imposing lockdowns, no one expected that the shift to work-from-home would become essentially permanent. Most people expected that lockdowns and work-from-home would last for two weeks, the time it was thought it would take to “flatten the curve.” There’s no prospect that work from home or, at any rate, hybrid work will cease to remain the norm going forward, especially as labour markets remain tight. Perhaps, rather than fighting it, government and corporate leaders ought to accept it as the new normal.
National Post
2023.04.01 00:57 Cosmicspider87 Business/Billionaires/Entrepreneur Associates of Jeffrey Epstein (The Other 113)
- Fakhre, Danny & Christine: Danny Fakhre is the Chairman of Kochii Oil out of Australia. Christiane is his wife.
- Falletans, Olivier de: Managing partner at Bryan, Olivier, & Co., a mid-market investment bank in Technology. Olivier comes from a family of nobility dating back to at least the 13th century.
- Fanjul, Pepe: Jose “Pepe” Fanjul is a billionaire businessman involved in sugar and real estate. Vice Chairman and President of Flo-Sun. “Pepe” is a Republican. He was one of the largest contributors to George W. Bush’s campaign, is an ardent supporter of Marco Rubio, and co-hosted a large fundraiser for Donald Trump. His older brother, Alfonso Fanjul Jr., is a Democrat and was a co-chair of Bill Clinton’s Florida campaign,
- Faulkner, Terence & Cornelia: Terence Faulkner is Chairman of Leathams PLC, a London-based food distributor. Cornelia is Terence’s wife. She is Director of Leathams and a specialist decorator.
- Felix, Helena: Not much to be found on Helena. She was possibly the director of an investment firm called Edenhaven Limited. Her husband, Peter, was an oral surgeon. He passed away in 2011.
- Ferragamo, Leonardo & Beatrice: Leonardo is the son of Salvatore Ferragamo, the creator of Salvatore Ferragamo, S.p.A., an Italian luxury goods company specializing in shoes, leather goods, and watches.
- Flick Mook: Likely Friedrich Christian Flick, known as Mick Flick. The Flick family was a billionaire coal and steel conglomerate that was accused of war crimes during the Holocaust. Flick’s grandfather financially supported the Nazi Party and used 48,000 forced laborers from the concentration camps, many of whom died due to the conditions. Grandfather Flick was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and served 3 years of his 7-year sentence. Mick (Mook) sold most of his holdings in the ‘80s and retired a billionaire.
- Forbes, Chris (Kip) Astrid: Son of Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990), the former politician and sole owner of Forbes Magazine. Chris Forbes is Vice Chairman of Forbes Publishing Company and brother of former Republican Party primary candidate, Steve Forbes. His wife, Astrid (nee von Heyl), is a German baroness and a descendant of the House of Bismarck, a German noble family.
- Forte, Rocco & Aliai: Rocco Forte owns the Rocco Forte Hotels group. They own fourteen upscale hotels throughout Europe and employee 2500 people. His wife, Aliai, is in fashion design.
- Fraiser, Violet: Likely refers to Violet Fraser, a Communications and Marketing Manager that works with Moussaieff Jewellers through World Media Group. She has also worked for Dior and Bulgari.
- Fraysse, Isabel: Isabelle Fraysse is a former Style Editor for Vogue. Founder of ISI Style Consulting.
- Freud, Mathew: Matthew Freud is the head of Freud Communications, an international public relations firm. Matthew is also the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s first wife, Caroline Hutton, went on to marry the 9th Earl of Spencer (Princess Diana’s brother). Elisabeth Murdoch, his 2nd wife (now divorced), is the daughter of Rupert Murdoch.
- Fry, Cosmo & Amanda: Cosmo is a chocolate heir and the son of well-known inventor Jeremy Fry. Jeremy had royal connections and was slated to be the best man at the wedding of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s younger sister, but was replaced after it had been found out that he approached a man for sex. Cosmo’s owns a company that specializes in making plate racks and bookshelves. Amanda eventually went on to marry rocker Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates fame in 2009 after her divorce from Cosmo.
- Furstenberg, Alex, Alexandra V.: Alexander is an American businessman and the son of the famous fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. He remains a partner in his mother’s company. Alexandra is a furniture designer and Alex’s ex-wife. They divorced in 2002 but have 2 children together.
- Ganoza, Esteban Juan: A Peruvian businessman who said he met Maxwell in the 1980s when he lived in New York, but denied any ties to pedophilia when his contact information was revealed to be in Epstein’s ‘Black Book.’
- Garland, Michael: Likely the Chairman of investment firm C5 Capital, located in London
- Giussani, Luca: President, CEO of Dorial Telecom, Inc., a telecommunications company.
- Goldsmith, Isabel: An art collector and owner of Hotel Las Alamandas in Mexico. Goldsmith is the daughter of Sir James Goldsmith, a French-British financier, tycoon, and member of the European Parliament.
- Gomme, William & Emma: William Gomme is a former director of several furniture manufacturing companies in London. Emma is his wife.
- Gordon, Jacobo: Spanish businessman who co-founded several real estate and gaming companies with Alejandro Agag. Agag is a former politician in Spain. He became Secretary General of the European People’s Party (EPP), a tremendous political faction in Europe. Agag played a huge role in getting former Italy PM Silvio Berlusconi’s party into the EPP. Berlusconi has been charged for underage prostitution in the past. Agag quit politics to pursue financial and sporting interests. He is married to the daughter of Jose Maria Aznar, the former PM of Spain and Ana Botella Serrano, the first female mayor of Madrid. Guests at Agag’s wedding included kings and queens. Berlusconi and Tony Blair served as witnesses.
- Geary, Tim: Served in public relations and was Director of Membership at Soho House, a restaurant and private members club.
- Gelardin, Jack (jacque)Jacques P. Gelardin currently Founding Partner of J P Gelardin & Co, LLC , Lehman Brothers Inc, Member of the Management Committee,Chairman & CEO, Lehman Brothers International.
- Gertler, Eric: A venture capitalist who served as Chairman of U.S. News & World Report, a media company most known for publishing news, consumer advice, and rankings ranging from education (top universities, high schools, etc.) to job professions, healthcare, and too many others to mention. In 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo nominated Gertler to serve as President and CEO of Empire State Development, New York’s chief economic agency. In Epstein’s ‘Black Book,’ Privista is listed under Gertler’s name. Privista is a company that protects against identity theft. Gertler was President and CEO.
- Getty, Mark: Co-founder and Chairman of Getty Images, a photographic conglomerate. If you have ever surfed the Internet, you have seen several pictures/images belonging to Getty Images. From 2008-2016, Getty was the Chairman of the Trustees of the National Gallery in London. Grandson of Jean Paul Getty Sr., founder of Getty Oil Company, and one of the richest men in the world during his time. The Getty Family has a net worth north of $5 billion as of 2015.
- Getty, Pia and Chris: Pia Getty is the daughter of billionaire Robert Warren Miller, an American-born British businessman and founder of Duty Free Shops. Pia’s sisters are Princess Alexandra von Furstenberg of designer fame and Maria-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece, Princess of Denmark. Her ex-husband (1992-2005), Christopher, is Mark Getty’s first cousin. Christopher is also the grandson of Jean Paul Getty Sr. When they were married, Pia and Mark would hold A-list parties on the rooftop of their Manhattan townhouse. Their townhouse was located half a mile from Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. Many people think that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles houses an underground base and city for the elites.
- Goulandris, Dimitri: Founder of The Cycladic Group, which invests and creates businesses. Spent 8 years at Morgan Stanley in its private equity group. Goulandris is the Executive Director and a Board Member for Knightsbridge Schools, which has 3 schools (KSI Montenegro [a boarding school], KSI Bogota, and KSI Panama), all of which are primary/secondary schools for students aged 2-18.
- Grabau, Lorenzo: Spent seventeen years at Goldman Sachs before becoming CEO of Investment AB Kinnevik, a Swedish investment firm. He was fired less than 3 years after taking the position.
- Graff, Francois: CEO of family-owned Graff, one of the world’s most notable jewellery houses. The company is worth several billion dollars. Graff has been photographed with the likes of Wilbur Ross. In 2001, there was a party celebrating the opening of a new Graff’s store. Attendees included Ghislaine Maxwell, Ivana Trump, Joan Collins, and Denise Rich (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/05/style/IHT-laurence-graff-and-his-pockets-full-of-diamonds-the-buccaneer-of.html
- Grant Jamie: Likely James Grant, owner of No2 Pound Street, an award-winning wine shop that specializes in British Cheese and cured meats. He and his wife previously worked at some leading hotels and restaurants.
- Green, Jeremy: Likely the former Chief Executive of Quba Property Holdings in South Africa.
- Guccioni, Tony: Son of Penthouse creator Bob Guccione.
- Guest, Cornelia: Named Debutante of the Decade of the 1980s, Cornelia is a well-known New York socialite who comes from money. Her family made money in iron and steel and have served in British politics. In December 2015, Ghislaine Maxwell attended Cornelia’s holiday party.
- Guggenheim, Barbara & Bert Flelds: Guggenheim (not part of the Guggenheim museum family) is a partner at the well-known art advisory firm, Guggenheim, Asher Associates, Inc. They have built collections for Coca Cola and Sony, as well as Tom Cruise and alleged pedophile Steven Spielberg. Epstein victim Maria Farmer once worked for Barbara at her home before meeting Epstein. Farmer got the job through Barbara’s sister, Eileen, who has been accused of being an Epstein enabler. A petition (https://www.change.org/p/david-kratz-eileen-guggenheim-must-be-removed-for-harm-she-caused-to-maria-farmer-by-jeffrey-epstein?recruiter=30424804 to have her removed as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New York Academy of Art as a result of Maria Farmer’s allegations has over 10,000 signatures. Farmer says that Eileen Guggenheim forced her to sell a painting replicating Degas’s “The Rape” to Epstein. Two weeks after meeting Epstein and Maxwell, Guggenheim took Farmer and other art students to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico (source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/epstein-ranch-art-students-1760265 Barbara’s husband, Bert Fields, is an entertainment lawyer who has represented the likes of Steven Spielberg, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, George Lucas, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, etc.
- Halpern Jen: A British philanthropist, PR guru, and businesswoman. Her father was knighted by Margaret Thatcher.
- Hammond, Dana: Socialite and heiress to the Annenberg Publishing fortune. Hammond is friends with Ghislaine Maxwell. They have been photographed together at various parties.
- Hayworth Reggie: Heyworth runs the 160 acre Cotswold Wildlife Park, which attracts more than 400,000 people a year. He lives in the middle of the park at the Bradwell Grove estate. .
- Hefner III, Bob: Founder and CEO of GHK Companies, which specializes in oil and natural gas. Founded the Robert and MeiLi Hefner Foundation which sponsors educational trips to China for outstanding high school students. His grandfather, Robert Hefner Sr., served as Mayor of Oklahoma City, was a Supreme Court Justice of Oklahoma, was a member of the executive council of the Boy Scouts of America, and was a thirty-second degree Freemason. This article makes a connection between Jeffrey Epstein, Bob Hefner III, and a winning Powerball lottery ticket that was purchased in Oklahoma in 2008 (source: https://www.thelostogle.com/2019/08/14/no-jeffrey-epstein-did-not-win-25-million-from-an-oklahoma-lottery-ticket-or-did-he/#comments
- Heineken, Mr. Fredie: A Dutch businessman for the Heineken brewing company. Was chairman and CEO from 1971-1989.
- Helen and Tim Shifter: Helen is a former Vogue Magazine staffer. Tim is former CEO of LeSportsac and serves as Senior Advisor at Blackstone Group, a private equity firm. The Schifters are personal friends of Ghislaine Maxwel
- Hersov, Robert & Kim: Robert is a South African entrepreneur and mining heir who has worked for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and News Corp. (owned by Murdoch).. Ex-wife Kim is a London-based fashion editor and designer.
- Heseltine, Rupert: Businessman and heir to Haymarket Media Group. Son of Baron Michael Heseltine.
- Jameel, Mohammed: Saudi Arabian businessman. CEO of Abdul Latif Jameel, a collective of family-owned businesses that specialize in transportation, investing, and real estate. Royal pervert Prince Andrew infamously partied on Jameel’s yacht during the 2011 London riots (source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-andrew-frolicks-on-yacht-with-mystery-147496
- James, Susie: Founder and owner of 123 Send Ltd, a company that provides payment terminals.
- Katz, Anton & Robin Plant: Anton is CEO and co-founder of Talos Trading, which specializes in cryptocurrency. Anton and Robin are friends of and have been photographed with Ghislaine (source: https://www.patrickmcmullan.com/search/?person=5b3ef50c9f929066764df255
- Kegan, Rory: A nightclub designer and creator. Co-founder of the exclusive, celebrity-filled London nightclub, Chinawhite. Prince Andrew (source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9818190/prince-andrew-pictures-cast-doubt-epstein-sex-slave/ and Prince Albert of Monaco are regulars. Chelsea Clinton has been there, as well (source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/bright-night-for-china-white-6299739.html). Other patrons include: Prince Andrew, Kate Middleton, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and more.
- Keidan, Amanda: Owner of Keidan Jewelry.
- Kersner, Sol: South African accountant and hotel and casino magnate who died of cancer in 2020. Kerzner was a close friend of Donald Trump. They even worked together to create The Palm, a man-made island off the coast of Dubai (source: https://www.ft.com/content/46393280-d9f9-11da-b7de-0000779e2340. Kerzner was also close friends with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York (https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sarah-ferguson-the-duchess-of-york-sol-kerzner-chairman-and-news-photo/83768272), Naomi Campbell (https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/naomi-campbell-and-sol-kerzner-pose-backstage-during-the-news-photo/82869744), and Bill Clinton(https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8144647/As-Sol-Kerzner-dies-aged-84-RICHARD-KAY-looks-riotously-louche-life.html Kerzner was very good friends with Nelson Mandela and built his casino resorts with Gerard Inzerillo
- Khayat, Antoine, Jana, & George: Jana is an heiress and businesswoman. Jana is the niece of Galen Weston, a close friend of Prince Charles. George is her brother and CEO of Associated British Foods. Jana’s husband, Antoine, is a former banker and currently runs their vineyard.
- Klesch, Johnathan: Former Director of Klesch Trading, which specializes in industrial commodities. It has offices in Russia, Malta, Surrey, and in London, down the block from Buckingham Palace.
- Koch, David: Co-founder of Koch Industries, a diversified manufacturing conglomerate. Koch Industries has stolen oil from Indian reservations, committed hundreds of polluting, labor, and workplace safety violations. When he ran on the Libertarian ticket as the vice presidential nominee in 1980, Koch aimed to abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare benefits, and minimum wage. Koch and Epstein were friends. Epstein even attended a party at Koch’s Southampton home (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7270735/Jeffrey-Epstein-Trumps-closest-advisers-Wilbur-Ross-Rudy-Giuliani-Steve-Mnunchin.html). Koch has also been photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell (https://www.reddit.com/KochWatch/comments/dcjth3/david_koch_ghislaine_maxwell_getty_images/
- Kohl, Astrid: A businesswoman involved in pharmaceuticals. Married to Prince Alexander of Liechtenstein. Daughter-in-law of Prince Philipp of Liechtenstein. Niece of former German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl.
- Kotic, Boby: CEO of Activision Blizzard, a video game holding company. Used to run several electronic companies. From 2003-2008, he was a director at Yahoo! In 2012, he became a non-executive director of Coca-Cola.
- Lal, Dalamal: Director of Akron Corp. & Akron (Nig.) Ltd., a food and beverage import company based out of Nigeria.
- Laurie, Jonathan: Founder and CEO of Cheyne Capital Management, an alternate investment fund firm.
- Lavlada, Laura D.B. de: Laura Diez Barroso is a Mexican businesswoman. She sold her stock in Televisa for $726 million in 1993. Since then, she has been the head of several other companies.
- Le Fur, Jean-Yves: French businessman and magazine creator. He was once Princess Stephanie of Monaco’s ex-fiance. More notably, Le Fur was the one who discovered supermodel Karen Mulder (his girlfriend at the time) on the floor after she attempted suciide. Mulder blew the lid off the rampant rape and sexual abuse that she and her modeling colleagues had suffered at the hands of businessmen, royalty, celebrities, and government officials. She was even the protege of Epstein collaborator (allegedly), Jean Luc Brunel (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article238351108.html
- Lea, Piers: CEO of Learning Technologies Group, a workplace digital learning company.
- Lester, Dominick: Founder and owner of MortgageFlex Systems, a mortgage lending company.
- Lindemann, Adam & Elizabeth: Adam is a billionaire investor and art gallery owner. Brother of Sloan. Elizabeth is his ex-wife. She is often photographed with many other people mentioned in Epstein’s ‘Black Book.’
- Lindemann, George(Sr.) & Freida: Now-deceased billionaire father of Sloan and Adam. George was the CEO and Chairman of Southern Union, a pipeline company and served as Vice President of the Metropolitan Opera Association of NYC. His wife, Frayda, is the President and CEO of the Metropolitan Opera.
- Lister, Paul: Likely the director of legal services and company secretary for Associated British Foods
- Lorimer, John & Lottie: John works as a private investor and as a realtor. His wife, Lottie, is an interior designer.
- Macmillan, Dave & Bella: David is a publisher and the grandson of Harold Macmillan, former British Prime Minister (1957-1963). Bella is a British socialite and author. She also designed dresses for Princess Diana. They are now divorced. David and Bella made news in 2015 when it was revealed that Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony Pictures, jokingly mentioned firing the UK culture minister so that David can take over (https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/18/sony_emails_lynton_vaizey/). David and Bella were voted a top 50 power couple over the age 50 back in 2013.
- Mahler, Giovanni: Businessman in the gas industry. He co-founded Navigator Gas shipping company. The most interesting story revolving around Mahler can be read here (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/millionaires-wife-is-killed-by-speedboat-in-sardinia-305350.html). Mahler was on a motorboat on the way to his yacht in Sardinia where close friend Flavio Briatore (Briatore is Naomi Campbell’s ex-boyfriend and was photographed with Epstein victim Virginia Roberts several times - https://www.the-sun.com/news/265368/prince-andrew-epstein-scandal-accuser-virginia-roberts-posts-chilling-message-aimed-at-naomi-campbell-and-ghislaine/) waited. On the way to the yacht, Mahler and the others on board struck and killed Alex Ciardi, wife of investment banker Giuseppe Ciardi. Turns out that Alex Ciardi worked with the NSPCC, a children’s charity that several others in Epstein’s ‘black book’ (Jemma Kidd, Tim Jeffries, Mary Glanville, Clare Hazell-Ivaegh, Ben Holland-Martin) and Princess Margaret have served. The accident occurred close to Silvio Berlusconi’s villa. Berlusconi is a billionaire businessman and four-time former Prime Minister of Italy who throws infamously raunchy Bunga Bunga parties. He was convicted of paying an underage prostitute for sex, but those charges were later overturned.
- Malenga (Mandela) Machel: A managing director at Whatana Investments Group in Mozambique. His father, Samora Machel, was the first president of Mozambique. He died in an airplane crash in 1986 under mysterious circumstances. His mother, Graca Machel, runs the company. After her husband Samora died, she married Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013.
- Malina, Marjorie: Wife of Frank Malina who co-founded Aerojet, an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer. Frank went on to become head of scientific research at UNESCO before creating Leonardo**, a peer-reviewed research journal. Frank was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1990. Marjorie is the mother of Ghislaine’s brother-in-law, Roger Malina.*\*
- Malkin, Shelly & Tony: Shelly comes from major oil money. Her grandfather founded Belco Petroleum, which was bought out by Enron in the ‘80s. Tony is the chairman, president, and CEO of Empire State Realty Trust, the real estate investment company that owns the Empire State Building, and other properties around New York.
- Manconi, John: Businessman who hosts super exclusive charity polo events attended by Prince Charles, Harry, and Andrew (https://variety.com/2002/scene/vpage/royals-have-splendid-time-1117868882/).
- Manzano, Jose Luis & Alejandra: Jose Luis is an Argentine businessman and former politician. He is a partner in Grupo America, the second largest multimedia group in the country. He has given money to the Clinton Foundation and The Climate Reality Project ran by Al Gore.
- Marks, Stephen & Alisa: Stephen is the founder and chairman of French Connection clothing brand. Alisa is his gold digging ex-wife.
- Marsh, Jeremy: Has served as a managing director and president of Warner Bros. Records, Virgin, Telstar, and RCA.
- Massimo, Parisi: Founder of Baltic Model Management.
- Mattsson, Carolina: Owns a consulting company in Sweden.
- Mavroleon, Basil & Carina: Basil is still involved in shipping, working at Genco as an Independent Director.
- Mavroleon, Manoli: From the same Greek shipping magnate family. His name was listed in the Panama Papers (https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/11000305 for using offshore tax havens.
- Mavroleon, Nicholas & Barbara: Nicholas works in the family business. His ex-wife, Barbara Carrera, is a model and actress.
- Mayhew, Mr John: Owner of the famous Rules restaurant in Covent Garden. Inherited the Lartington Estate.
- McDonald, John: NYC-based restaurateur.
- Mcleod Jock & Pru: Alasdair ‘Jock’ MacLeod is a long-time executive at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. His wife, Prudence, is Rupert Murdoch’s daughter. Coincidentally, Prudence attended The Dalton School while Epstein taught there in the ‘70s (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-dalton-teacher.html). Rupert Murdoch is listed later on in Epstein’s contacts. Murdoch also goes back a long way with Ghislaine. Murdoch and Ghislaine’s father, Robert, were rivals since they both owned competing newspapers in the U.S. and abroad (https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B502J2/rupert-murdoch-media-baron-in-conversation-with-fellow-newspaper-owners-B502J2.jpg
- Merison, Guy & Caroline: Guy is co-founder of Hartees, a commodities firm specializing in energy.
- Merivale-Austen, Bruce: Managing Partner of DM Partners Asia, a private wealth management firm. Plays polo every summer with Prince William and Prince Harry (https://www.thailandtatler.com/people/brouce-merivale-austin
- Mermagon, Mr Jonathan: Businessman and close friend of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose name keeps popping up. Memagden even served as Chairman of the UK PTI Secretariat (https://news.cision.com/curzon-pimran-khan-shares-vision-for-building-a-stronger-pakistan-through-trade,c9336910). PTI is the current ruling political party in Pakistan.
- Minot, Carie & Bell, George: Caroline is a jewelry designer. George has been responsible for several Silicon Valley startup companies. Before that, he was a senior editor of Outdoor Life magazine and has won Emmys for directing and writing conservation documentaries. He also founded Outdoor Life Network (now NBC Sports).
- Montemayor, Cesar: Founder and President of InverCap, a large investment firm
- Monti Riccardo: Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG (Milan), one of the largest management consulting firms in the world.
- Morton, Peter: Co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe.
- Murray, Jean Pierre: Founder of Surf Channel and co-founder of TransCash, a prepaid Visa debit card firm.
- Nadler, Emanuel: Businessman involved in mortgage companies.
- Nagel, Adam: Works at W Nagel, broker and advisor to premier diamond manufacturers, such as De Beers.
- Nagel, William: Chairman of W Nagel. Diamond merchant.
- Newman, Mr & Mrs John: John is Hetty’s father. He achieved the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards. He later became a businessman and was director of several companies.
- Niarchos, Constantine: Billionaire son of shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos. Was once married to Alessandra Borghese of Italian papal lineage (and black nobility). He was also romantically linked to Koo Stark, Trinny Woodhall, and Kerry Kennedy (daughter of Bobby Kennedy), all of whom are in Epstein’s ‘black book’. Constantine died of an overdose with enough cocaine in his system to kill 25 men (https://www.theguardian.com/theobserve1999/oct/17/life1.lifemagazine7
- Noel, Vanessa: Luxury shoe designer, hotelier, and gallery owner. Many celebrities are clients of hers.
- Ojora, Yinka: CEO and/or Director of a number of investing groups in Nigeria
- Ong BS & Chritina: Christina is a Singaporean hoteliebusinesswoman who is heavily involved with Club 21 (a luxury fashion brand) and COMO Hotels and Resorts. She runs all of the Armani outlets in Britain, as well as the franchises for Donna Karan, Prada, and Bvlgari. Christina and her husband, Beng Seng, are worth $1.9 billion.
- Ong, Melissa: Christina and BS’s daughter
- Orlando, Fabrice: CEO of Cocoon Events Management Group, a luxury event planning company based out of Morocco.
- Osbourne Rachel: British businesswoman who has served as director for several companies. Otto, Beo & Edwige Edwige manages 2 companies (2 mandates), his main mandate is Administrator within the company 18 MONTAIGNE . Edwige OTTO works in the Real Estate business sector. Julian PORTHAULT is part of Edwige OTTO's network, he is Chairman and CEO of 18 MONTAIGNE .
- Parker, Jackie: Management consultant who sits on the board of several companies. Also the head of global philanthropy for General Motors.
- Paulson, John: Billionaire hedge fund manager
- Pedrini Tito: Jeweller
- Pekeler, Marcus: Communications consultant in Switzerland.
- Picciotto, Michael: Vice-Chairman at Engels & Volkers AG, a real estate firm. Former head of global financial activities for UBP, a Swiss private bank owned by Picciotto’s family.
- Plouvier, Diane & Denis: Denis is the owner of Trousseau linen company (https://www.denisplouvier.fblank
- Polii, Edoardo: Powerboat champion and textile entrepreneur.
- Polu, Clary: “Marketing director of Lycos and Meetic, wife of the "startup" Christophe Schaming, co-shareholder of Winamax, the online betting company co-founded by the mysterious passenger of the Lolita Express Nicole Junkermann” (http://faitsetdocuments.com/articles.html
- Porthault, Mr & Mrs: Marc Porthault runs the family linen business, D Porthault. Marc’s parents founded the company. Clients include Bill Gates, Woody Allen, the Mellons, and the Kennedys. Marc’s wife, Isabelle, is the head of human resources of Chanel in Europe.
- Porthault, Remi & Isabel: Remi is the marketing director and president of the U.S. subsidiary of D Porthault linens.
- Potter, Muffie: Socialite and former executive at Van Cleef & Arpels, a watch company. Married to famed plastic surgeon, Sherrell Aston. She has been photographed with Ghislaine and Peggy Siegal at various events.
- Prestin, Electra: Former vice president of merchandising for Ralph Lauren and co-founder of Adam & Eve clothing company. Her father, Lewis T. Preston, was chairman of J.P. Morgan and president of the World Bank (appointed by George H.W. Bush). Her great-grandfather was newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, whom the Pulitzer Prize is named after. Another great-grandfather of hers was a partner in the Standard Oil Company of John D. Rockefeller.
- Price, Judy: Founder of Avenue, a magazine about New York City.
- Puig Marc: Chief executive and president of Puig, a fragrance and fashion company.
- Quartucci, Alan: Founder of North Shore Bloodstock and North Shore Insurance, thoroughbred bloodstock companies that provide equine insurance, consulting services, racehorse management, and more.
2023.04.01 00:46 CherryBerries3218 [NYC Area] Advice to help suicidal recently homeless friend (beyond the obvious of giving money and offering a place to stay)
She told us that her grandma kicked her out. I believe her current arrangement is staying with a different student that had a spare bed in their dorm room. I offered her to stay at my place but the commute is just too long and expensive for her so she declined.
I don’t think she has a working phone. I have a tablet I plan to give her though next time I see her.
I also plan to give her a little money and some other random odd bits and stuff like feminine hygiene products I have but don’t plan to use and stuff like socks, toothpaste, etc. It’s also cheaper for me to buy stuff here than where she is in the city so I think it would be better financially for me to get the basics out where I am.
I would give her more money but I’m on a strict-ish budget myself right now until my mom’s estate is sorted out (may still be a little while).
I was looking into possible resources she can get help from in nyc. Mainly youth shelters and that sort of thing, but I’m not sure whats good. When I was 16 my mom wanted to go to a shelter were we lived at the time (domestic violence issue) but we couldn’t find anywhere good that was nearby, so I’m not sure what shelters are reliable and trustworthy or not and how to tell.
Ik our college has a food pantry that’s better than other college pantries that I have seen. And we have a health services (fairly mid, therapy sessions are limited to 3 max unfortunately which is kinda lame)
Wondering what are some good resources you guys recommend in NYC area for her situation.
Wanting to help her out since she’s always been friendly to me. I’ve never once seen her in a bad mood before this. She told me today she was in the hospital for suicide, which hurts me to hear as that is similar to how I lost my mom, and I guess I want to feel like I have more control over this situation since I lost control of the situation with my mom (Ik whatever happens here happens but I still wanna help).
submitted by CherryBerries3218 to homeless [link] [comments]
I don’t think she has a working phone. I have a tablet I plan to give her though next time I see her.
I also plan to give her a little money and some other random odd bits and stuff like feminine hygiene products I have but don’t plan to use and stuff like socks, toothpaste, etc. It’s also cheaper for me to buy stuff here than where she is in the city so I think it would be better financially for me to get the basics out where I am.
I would give her more money but I’m on a strict-ish budget myself right now until my mom’s estate is sorted out (may still be a little while).
I was looking into possible resources she can get help from in nyc. Mainly youth shelters and that sort of thing, but I’m not sure whats good. When I was 16 my mom wanted to go to a shelter were we lived at the time (domestic violence issue) but we couldn’t find anywhere good that was nearby, so I’m not sure what shelters are reliable and trustworthy or not and how to tell.
Ik our college has a food pantry that’s better than other college pantries that I have seen. And we have a health services (fairly mid, therapy sessions are limited to 3 max unfortunately which is kinda lame)
Wondering what are some good resources you guys recommend in NYC area for her situation.
Wanting to help her out since she’s always been friendly to me. I’ve never once seen her in a bad mood before this. She told me today she was in the hospital for suicide, which hurts me to hear as that is similar to how I lost my mom, and I guess I want to feel like I have more control over this situation since I lost control of the situation with my mom (Ik whatever happens here happens but I still wanna help).
2023.04.01 00:13 Dismal-Jellyfish Inflation Alert! Fed Governor Lisa Cook: "the inflation picture is less favorable than it appeared earlier this year. Part of the encouraging disinflation initially observed in the fourth quarter of last year was revised away, while inflation over the first two months of this year came in high."
 | Source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/cook20230331a.htm submitted by Dismal-Jellyfish to Superstonk [link] [comments] Highlights:
https://preview.redd.it/d9s02xdde5ra1.png?width=717&format=png&auto=webp&s=fcf8b3bd2ccf3f5f0369c9aadb291a4df81b9c53 I guess she does not want to end up like Fed Governor Christopher J. Waller with inflation? "As for what inflation does next, I think anyone who makes a forecast has to own the fact that very few of us foresaw how much inflation would increase in 2021" TLDRS:
Full speech:Thanks to President Kasey Buckles and the program committee for affording me the opportunity to give the C. Woody Thompson Memorial Lecture. It is a pleasure to be back in the Midwest. Before joining the Federal Reserve, I taught economics at Michigan State University, which I chose for its bird's-eye view of the industrial Midwest. Big 10 rivalries aside, Ohio and Michigan share quite a lot, including many of the same economic concerns and interests. |