The Quonset Manager Origin Story

[Best_Leopard]

13 hours ago, TheEldritchGod said:

I must admit, the story comes in waves.

I get ya. That's creativity for you -- it has its own rhythms. I just appreciate what you've given us and I know it's always nice to hear that someone out there is actually reading and enjoying our work. 

 

13 hours ago, TheEldritchGod said:

Oh. Side note: The archeologist isn't as smart as he thinks he is.

Aha! I had a suspicion about that, actually.  I saw an error in logic earlier but wasn't sure whether it was intentional on your part (and the character is wrong) or it was a mistake that you made as the author.  I don't remember how to do spoiler tags on here, so I'll just PM you what I noticed. That way, if it's an author mistake you can correct it (and if not I don't give it away for anyone else). 

[TheEldritchGod]

To: Robert York

From: The Audio Revision Division

CC: The Severed Head of the Steam Tunnel Horror.

RE: hours of operation.

Hi! Audio Revision Division here. We've been working hard here to make sure your broadcasts are up to date with government's rules regarding the AM radio band. Well, policies from the before times, at least. We are still here doing our revising job, I'm not really sure why.

Anyway, we're working a floor below you and would like to ask you something. Stop? Please, maybe, just stop?

[TheEldritchGod]

To: The Audio Revision Division

From: Robert York

CC: The Severed Head of the Steam Tunnel Horror.

RE: RE: hours of operation.

I am a little confused by how you are below my broadcast booth, considering my booth is a converted disused bathroom in the sub-basement off access shaft B. It's the one with the message "BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD" scrawled with a Sharpy on the pine door. There are two such bathrooms down here, so it's easy to make a mistake. If you see towels hanging up that are covered with images of human eyes, you're in the wrong one.

When I got assigned my own show, the only time slot available was during the aurora. I would like to note that I asked to use the broadcast booths at the tower, but apparently certain "big name stars" don't like sharing.

So, given that there isn't anything below me but the unyielding, uncaring earth, and the fact that everyone is dead, I am rather confused how you are even hearing me.

Also, maintenance also did a rather fine job sound proofing.

That said, I am still trying to figure out how they installed a window in a bathroom that is approximately four stories underground surrounded by steam pipes. At first I thought it was just a video projection, but I did manage to open it up and climb out. At which point I fell two stories and landed flat on my back sprawled across the rear loading dock.

Did you know we had a rear loading dock? Why do we even need one? Sorry. It just... I tried to find it later, but apparently you can't get there again once it leaves line of sight. Any chance you know where it is? I'd like to see my window from the outside, but I can't seem to locate it by walking around the building.

You know, I'm wondering if when they put in the window to the second floor something else got moved. Or maybe it has something to do with the sound proofing. I don't remember Styrofoam egg crates breathing quite so much. Then again, I've been hiding in the steam tunnels for the past twenty years. I'm sure they have all sorts of new materials. I'm still trying to figure out this cell phone plan. I send out one Verizon thought gram and it eats up all my minutes.

Maybe we should take this back to formula. Let's start with, what floor are you on?

PS, please don't eat garlic before sending me a memo. I am quite violently allergic to it and you clearly got some on your memo, judging by the way my hands are blistering. I really don't want to handle your memos with tongs going forward.

PPS, which printer handles sheets of shale?

[TheEldritchGod]

To: Robert York

From: The Audio Revision Division

CC: The Severed Head of the Steam Tunnel Horror.

RE: RE: RE: hours of operation.

Your garlic allergies seem to be giving you hallucinations. There are many flaws with your statement. For one, garlic has been illegal after the vampire craze of 1988 following that Nicolas Cage movie. Secondly, there is no sound proofing. The building has been completely stripped of that after someone went on a murder spree last week. Someone who wasn't me. Finally, there are ten bathrooms, each labelled with an image of an animal carcass. You know, Doe, Buck, Lobster, Igneous rock. Makes it a bit confusing trying to figure out where to go. Personally I just hold it.

Do you know I used to have a pet rock? He died of cancer. I always get a little moody this time of year. Tomorrow is his angel-versary.

My floor number is √-1.

[TheEldritchGod]

To: The Audio Revision Division

From: Robert York

CC: The Severed Head of the Steam Tunnel Horror.

RE: RE: RE: RE: hours of operation.

I can't find that floor on the elevator buttons. I'm wondering if it's in the same building.

Murder spree... murder spree... There was the colorless flesh dissolving miasma about a week ago. Is that what you were talking about? At least I assume it was flesh dissolving. Otherwise I have no idea what those three skeleton's outside of the break room were doing there.

Sorry to hear about your pet rock. You have my condolences. I lost someone recently. Hard to get over that sort of thing.

As for your request to "Just Stop". I'll check with my supervisor and relay your request. Let's see if we can't get this rectified.

PS. But Seriously. How do you manage to print your memos on shale?

Edited December 17, 2018 by TheEldritchGod

[TheEldritchGod]

To: Robert York

From: The Audio Revision Division

CC: The Severed Head of the Steam Tunnel Horror.

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: our operation.

Have you considered our grief counseling department? They helped me through the lost of my rock. I'm sure they can help you with your friend that hung himself.

Edited December 17, 2018 by TheEldritchGod

[TheEldritchGod]

To: The Audio Revision Division

From: Robert York

CC: The Severed Head of the Steam Tunnel Horror.

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: hopeless operation.

I never told you it was about my friend who hung himself. Who are you? I mean... WHO ARE YOU???

Edited December 17, 2018 by TheEldritchGod

[TheEldritchGod]

To: Robert York

From: Trombley

CC: The Severed Head of the Steam Tunnel Horror.

RE: your soul.

Have you ever thought about your soul? What is its' purpose? What exactly does it do?

Well, I can't answer those questions, but I can tell you what it's made of. A soul consists of experiences and memories. Back in my day, they would say it was made up of eidolons… individual nuggets of knowledge. A soul is made up of the many slivers of both thoughts and feelings that we experience. These are the very building blocks of who we are.

If a soul is made up of eidolons, is each eidolons alone a soul? In a word, yes. While the majority of what makes you… you… has a form of continuous continuity, individual bits and pieces of your soul are born, live, and die.

Ever had that eureka moment when a new idea was born? The cusp of creation? The realization of your concept as it crystallizes into usable and practical form… there's nothing quite like it, is there?

Think of it this way… Take a broom made of straw. Sweep a floor with it. Some of the straw will eventually fall off. You replace it. Eventually enough straw will have fallen off that there is no longer any original straw. As time passes, you eventually will need to change the binding that is holding the straw on the handle.

Now let us say you had an accident and broke the handle. The straw and binding are still good, so you get a new handle and switch it over.

At this point, not a single part of the original broom remains. So the question is, is it still your broom?

Of course it is. And like the broom, we replace eidolons all the time. Some are easier to exchange than others, but in the end, it's all us, even if at some point the soul we possess no longer has any of its original parts.

Has anyone ever told you that someone's career had died? Ever witness the end of an era? There is a point when you know… what you know… is not long for this world. The problem is we don't always understand when it's time to let go. The feeling of loss. The anxiety over change. It muddies the water and clouds one's judgment.

When that happens it's the job of people like me to make sure the expired idea finds its way to its final destination.

"Why?" you may ask?

Because when a person holds onto an idea long past its best before date, bad things occur. Oh, we all have a tolerance for a certain amount of grist, but over time, residue builds up and weighs one down.

Like grit in the gears. Like sand in a shoe.

Ever pined over someone long after the relationship ended? Have others told you that the party was over, yet you refused to leave? Have you ever met someone reliving his glory days? A man-child who never grew up? Never moved on?

Side note, we have a standing reward for any information leading to the capture of Peter Pan. Restrictions may apply. The Void is prohibited.

From time to time, when the life of an eidolon is over, we cling to its corpse. We hold on past the point of usefulness. Such an eidolon winds up pulling you down. A dying concept can, unfortunately, take its owner with it, dragging one out of the lands of the living into what we like to call in the business, the after-life.

Not to be confused with the after-death. They are two totally different states of being. Those who have achieved the state of "after-life" may still walk among the living. They simply are no longer experiencing life, but instead existing in a quasi-state of being. The unliving, as is the common parlance these day.

Which reminds me. I have some good news and some bad news.

Now the good news is…

There are those of us who have dedicated ourselves to assisting people in just such a situation. We encourage the unliving to let things go. With words, at first. More... forcefully... if the situation gets out of hand. Sometimes it's time to move on and that's what I do. I help people move on.

The bad news is...

well...

I'm sure you can figure that part out.

Edited December 17, 2018 by TheEldritchGod

[Hilayla]

I'm new to these forums but I had to say I just sat here and read all this, even quoting parts to people in the room. This story is great. Keep it coming.

[TheEldritchGod]

The Quonset Manager was a prolific author. The many, many stories he wrote and scattered around the island must have consumed much of his time. Most of those stories were discovered by other expeditions, so I won't be reprinting them here. However, it's important to bring them up because the sheer amount of writing this man did in very tiny script is absolutely astounding.

It is also very difficult to separate fact from fiction. It's difficult to date chronologically when the material was first created, because he was so inconsistent in dating his material that weren't log entries.

Also there is the matter of the blurring of fact and fiction. It is quite clear that at some point he became so detached from reality, that he must have had a hard time distinguishing his stories from reality. Humans are social creatures and isolation has a strange effect on us when we are alone for a long time.

Which brings up the question, is he making up a story to amuse himself, or is it some sort of hallucination or delusion that is compelling him. The truth of the matter, I suspect, is somewhere between the two.

Which brings us to these seven memos we uncovered on our expedition.

Now the seventh one was discovered on the first expedition and the first four were found on the second. We discovered all seven of these together, and in the current order. We believe they were a reprinting, like he was known to do from time to time. Perhaps it was a "best of" collection, or a recap. I don't believe that. I believe it is an original and the other two  expeditions found partial reproductions created later.

The last memo and the first four have a very different implication without the fifth and sixth memos that we discovered on this expedition. It was assumed that the last memo was written first and the first four were written later. This reordering of these memos, along with the two new ones paints a different picture.

Most of the material written about Robert York is fanciful and down right impossible. I don't think that it was a separate personality of The Quonset Manager. I believe Robert was his version of entertainment. An on going story that he told himself in order to keep his spirits up. In later material he'd refer to "seasons" of Robert York, like one would have for an ordinary Ver drama that you can download. Personally, I find most of his Robert York material to be quite funny.

That said, it's clear sometimes the line got blurred. Nothing makes that more abundantly clear than these memos. Having studied his work extensively, I believe that he started off writing a story about Robert York. Maybe it was one of his many unused scripts. No matter what his original intentions were, obviously thoughts of EF's suicide intruded on his writings.

Do note the changes in memo five and six's subject line. It should have been "Subject:" then "RE:". It also starts off "RE:" implying there is an original memo that is in this series that we don't know about. This may have been an author error, however. His use of terminology and words becomes a bit muddled as time progresses. I think he mis-remembered how a subject line works on a memo, and maybe he thought RE: was the abbreviation that you used for a subject line. If that is the case, then the first memo is the first memo.

In the fifth memo the subject turns from "hours of operation" to "our operation". It may have been a topographical error, but I don't think so. Considering how faithfully the Quonset manager reproduced his faxes to include spelling errors, I don't think he would have changed the subject line by accident.

In the sixth memo, his reply, it becomes a hopeless operation.

What exactly does this mean? I believe, given the order that we discovered these memos, that he was attempting to write himself a story for his amusement, but as he wrote his story, the paranoid delusions of Trombley invaded his mind. This is a series of memos that went from fiction, devolving into insanity before our very eyes. The changes in the subject line were his mind fighting back, trying to tell himself that something was dreadfully wrong.

Or was this Trombley intruding on The Manager, attempting to make it "Our" operation, but the manager was telling him that the attempt was "hopeless"? We may never know.

Finally we come to the seventh memo itself. It doesn't have the same subject line. It also has the "RE:" which implies to me that my theory that over the years he forgot what "RE:" means, because unless there is an original memo to someone else with the subject "your soul", then this is the first memo.

And yet, it's inclusion in this series of memos, and the fact that all seven were written at the same time with the same paper with the same type of ink, indicates that this is indeed a reply to memo six. You can change a subject line in a memo. Since the origin is different as well, perhaps this implies that the conversation changed from the Audio Revision Division department, to a personal conversation with Trombley. Same over all topic, different source of the reply.

If that is the case, then every memo from the Audio Revision Division may have been from Trombley. He may have been "writing" to Robert York for unknown reasons. It is also possible that the conversation was never about Robert York, but the conversation was always directed at the Manager itself.

I know this gets convoluted, but it is hard to understand the mind of the insane without getting into mind set of the insane themselves. Nobody knows the mind of the Quonset Manager better than me, so trust me when I say this makes sense. I understand that Trombley was a delusion of the Manager, but if we are going to understand the context of the writings, we must look at it from the Manager's view point.

To me, the implications are that the delusion of Trombley was, over time, messing with the character Robert York, as well as the character Terry Brook who would be added in later "seasons" of Good Morning Great Bear Island.

It is also possible that Trombley delusion was messing with The Manager Directly. In effect, intruding in on his writings as he attempted to keep his mind occupied in the cold, long dark he endured. I have begun to suspect it is the later.

It is the subject line, "Our Operation" that tilts me in that direction. "Ours" As in, a joint operation. Not a complaint about the hours that the show is being broadcast, but a memo about "Our" operation. If it is a joint operation, who are the two working together? Robert and Trombley? Maybe.

I suspect that the Trombley character was just a character to begin with, but over time it, and it alone, make the leap to full alone paranoid delusion. While there are many examples that make you believe that the Quonset Manager is having a hard time understanding fact from fiction, in the end, while his grasp of reality was weak, it existed. It just waxed and waned in strength over time.

Not so with the Trombley character.

This series of memos confirms my belief that Trombley made the leap from fiction to paranoid delusion. The Quonset Manager's philosophical musings about the nature of memetic life became the foundational myth where upon he could frame Trombley.

These memos show the intrusion of Trombley into his mind. Originally I thought this Trombley memo was a pleasant side of Trombley. He was a benevolent spirit that over time became twisted as The Manager continued to live long after the death of Jennifer.

However, this changes the placement of the Trombley memo to some time during the first few months after Jennifer's arrival.

Furthermore, the memo, in the context of the other six seems much more... threatening. There seems to be a subtext there that wasn't easily understood until taken into the context of being connected to the other six.

Unlike the movies which portrays Trombley as a violent, insane sociopath, or a thoughtless, mindless beast of incoherent rage, The Quonset Manager's writings have always implied that the Trombley delusion was always a cultured, highly intelligent entity.

It also changes the relationship. In light of this evidence, Trombley was always evil in the Quonset Manager's mind. Trombley was just much more subtle at the beginning. In fact, I would go so far as to say this changes the context of all the other Trombley evidence. I think Trombley had been toying with the Quonset manager from the very beginning.

Instead of Trombley being a shepherd of what he termed "Eidolons", Trombley is actually threatening the Quonset Manager in the seventh memo. Trombley is making his intentions clear.

The Quonset Manager needs to kill himself, or Trombley will do it for him.

Edited December 18, 2018 by TheEldritchGod

[TheEldritchGod]

13 hours ago, Hilayla said:

I'm new to these forums but I had to say I just sat here and read all this, even quoting parts to people in the room. This story is great. Keep it coming.

Thank you! I actually have a great deal planned out, I just need the time to finish typing it out. The planning stage is easy, the finding time to write is what's hard.

[Hilayla]

I was so into your story I didn't even realize Redux was ready.

[Sito]

you are a complex man Eldrich. Very entertaining

[TheEldritchGod]

To: Quonset Manager
From: Jen
RE: What happened.

Sorry I shot you.

I don't know how long I have to write this, but I figure I need to write as much as I can before I have to leave. So I'm starting out with I'm sorry and what happened. Well, I had a while to write this. You've been out for over a day now. I just couldn't figure out [scribbles].

You are a jerk.

I get it that you are insane. I also get it that you don't think I'm real. Considering you keep having conversations with that damn battery where you talk about me. I'm in the same building. You don't have to talk about me as if I'm not there. You're like some passive-aggressive bitch from high school! You only pay attention to memos? I mean, what the hell is up with that?

[Scribbled lines]

Sorry. You're the one who got shot. I'm just pissed. Okay? The snow won't let up and you won't wake up and-

----------

Situation: If you wake up and I'm not here, this note is to explain what is going on. We are in a house on an island off shore. You've been here before because you clearly looted the place. There isn't even furniture to chop up. You did leave some emergency supplies here, thanks for that. But you didn't leave any medical supplies and you clearly need antibiotics.

We've been stuck here because of the storm and a bear and the wolves. I can't see the way back to shore. As soon as the weather lets up, I'm going to make a break for the garage and get medical supplies then come back to help you.

Damn it.

I don't get it. Why did you just pack up everything and go out on the ice? You were gone for over two days. I was thinking you were dead. I didn't know where you went and the only sign anything was going on was the smoke rising from your hut. I waited and waited but you never came back. You didn't say what was going on. So when I was searching the garage, I found a box of five bullets you missed. I loaded up one of your spare guns and went looking for you.

There were wolves on the ice, but they were far away. I figured I'd have time.

Why did you lock the door? You could have just let me in. Did you think I wasn't real? I know you knew I was there. You told me the fog was coming in. Never seen fog like that. So fast, so thick.

I got lost, and that's when the wolves came. You must have heard the shots because you came looking for me. And... I just want to say, that stupid bear head on the front of your bear skin coat looks scary as hell coming out of the fog.

So that's why I shot you.

You started bleeding. A lot. (I think the bullet had something to do with that.) The blood brought the wolves. I couldn't find the ice hut in the fog, or the shore. How you started that fire in the thirty seconds I was gone is impressive. Glad you did, I would have lost you in the fog.

The fire bought us time, because the wolves were surrounding us. I only had two bullets left. I bandaged you up as best I could, but you passed out. I figured when the fire burned out, the wolves would get us. From the fog, I heard a gruff snuffling sound.

Last time I heard that sound, I pissed myself.

In one regard, it helped because the wolves scattered. I heard them all make that whiny sound puppies make when they want mommy to save them. I didn't have a choice, so I dumped most of your gear, and the gun, rolled you onto that stupid cloak of yours and dragged you away from the bear.

I THOUGHT I found the mainland, so I started dragging you up from the ice, but discovered it wasn't. It was one of those islands off shore. As I dragged you away from the bear, I saw a house, and pulled you inside. I would like to point out my leg still hurts like Hell. Thanks for passing out. That helped a HEAP.

Sniff, sniff, Smell that? That's sarcasm!

You had a fire pit out front, a pile of frozen meat, and a bunch of hide curing in the living room. Looks like a charnel house down there. How many wolves have you killed? I had time to count them. There are twenty two wolf hides down there. How long have you BEEN here?

Sorry. off topic. As you may have noticed, I sewed up your wound. The bullet went all the way through, but the only thing I had to work with was your fishing lines. I didn't have time to get them that sterile and you can't use old man beard on a hook.

I stopped the bleeding, but it's obviously infected. You only wake up long enough to babble, and it's too damn cold here. You'll notice I buried you under layers of wolf pelts. There's no place to start a fire in this damn house.

The blizzard started up after that. It's so bad I can't see the shore. Either way, if the sun sets and it's still snowing, I'll just go anyways. I don't think I can wait another night. I figure if the aurora sets off the electrical equipment, I'll be able to see it through the blizzard.

Although... I've never seen the aurora work when there is snow in the air. Which doesn't make any sense, unless the snow grounds the aurora somehow. None of this makes any sense. The world hasn't made sense in a long... long time. You don't make any sense. Or... am I not making sense?

Is it me? Maybe I'm the crazy one? I mean, I shot you. That's crazy Crazy people do crazy things.

No. I have to assume I'm sane. I'm sure of it. You are the crazy one. You need to come back to reality. I need you. Damn you. I'm all alone here. Please just WAKE UP! I'm so sorry for what I've done! I didn't mean it. Why can't you? WHY??? Please.

I could use that gun, but it and your bullets are out in the ice somewhere and more than likely covered in snow by now. I'm sorry about that. If I make it to the garage, I'll take the flare gun and use it to get back. If I don't make it back, well...

It's your own damn fault, you big JERK!!! I hope this bullet through your shoulder finally puts to rest any notion that I'm not real! I get it, you've been alone a long time. Now grow the Hell up and get with the program!

Thanks for saving my life, now take me seriously!

Why- Crap. The snow is letting up.  I'll get back here, or I'll die trying. If I don't make it back and you find this note, you know what happened.

[TheEldritchGod]

Day 685: I have decided that these corpses are not going to bury themselves. I will attempt to find every dead person on the entire damn island and bury them.

I have found someone who died near these cabins on the shore of the coastal highway. Three wolves guarded the area. Had to kill them before attempting burial. It was nice to finally hear the sound of silence as the crows finally moved on.

I decided that since I went through so much effort to clear out the wolves, I should take some time to replenish my supplies at the cabin here. This could take a few days, considering the pile of frozen meat I left here from before. Still, the wood supplies are low, so I should top them off.

 

Day 686: Damn, Where did all these burned out torches come from? I can't believe how many I just tossed into this pile here. I need to do something about this.

Day 687: Something has changed. I toss and turn. I know I cleared out the end of the railroad. I know it. yet, something in the back of my head nags me. I can't take it anymore. I need to go back to the hunting lodge. I forgot something. I know it.

 

Day 691: I hate Forlorn Muskeg This wide expanse of open ground gives no cover and there are so many wolves. However, while I was trying to make my way through a pack of wolves, lining up the kills near to each other so I would only have to light one fire to harvest them, I heard a howl behind me. I turn around and fell off a rail, just a few feet, but I let out a yelp. And apparently this scared the crap out of the bear stalking up behind me. I got to see it's tail bobbing up and down as it ran off, turning right, and then scattering the pack of wolves I was picking off, one at a time.

This trip is going to kill me. I hope my mind was right.

 

Day 692: This is impossible.

I looted this place. I looted like it was going out of style. And yet, there are planks lying around. A pallet I missed. A few cardboard boxes. HOW? How this get here? This makes no sense...

 

Day 694: I've found a few... misplaced things. It's odd. I don't remember this furnace in the corner. However, there is no real proof that someone was out here. No activity. No movement. I didn't come out here to forge anything, I came looking for things I missed and the only thing I found was a can of lighter fluid. I did find a corpse. I remember this guy.

He's still frozen in this cave a year later. I found a bunny gleefully hopping over him. I put a rock upside its' stupid head and broke its' neck with a satisfying crunch. I hate these rodents.

Found a second corpse along the long curve to the rope that drops down near the machine shop. With the weather, it took me two days to bury them both. It occurred to me I need to take a trip down into the ravine. I hated it last time, but I need to make another pass to bury every corpse. I'll have to bring more meat this time.

Day 695: I found a large cache of wolf skins and bunny pelts. I don't remember making this. However, it's in the cave I was hunting out of, given the number of snares I found outside the cave. However, when I used the snares, two broke. Maybe this was what was bothering me. I'll have to drag this back with me. I don't know why, but I do. That and I need to sweep the area for corpses.

Day 696: I just noticed that the clock in the Lodge is set to noon. It's the only clock I have seen that wasn't frozen at the time of the first flare. I wish I could afford to bring this back to the Quonset. It would never survive the trip. I wind it up and set it going. It starts to tick and tock. Slowly... then in regular time. I close my eyes and remember back to a time when clocks ruled the world.

Everything was scheduled. Everything happened in turn. Everything had a time. Everything had its' season. A rolling series of crisis as we all moved from moment to moment, deadline to dead line, preparing for the next turn of the wheel, the chime of an alarm, the heart beat of a bygone age.

Is it better this way? A simpler time, certainly. Now I am govern by actual crisis, not Artificial ones. I am a master of my own destiny, but the price that was paid for this so called freedom?

Life seeks to create order and to propagate that order. Some order conflicts. Here at the lodge, there are the rabbits. They wish to copy themselves, to spread their version of order. The wolves disagree and these forms of order conflict. We call this chaos, when it is far from chaos.

Chaos is formless and without purpose. The conflict of purpose isn't chaos, it just appears to be such because we are lacking order to a degree.

The age of clocks is over. What was the age of clocks? An attempt to create order. not just order, but higher and higher forms of order until we reached height of order never before even dreamed of.

Some say that this was bad, but really what they were complaining about was the KIND of order, not the existence of order. This is where people got confused. Like the forest talkers. They thought that nature was a kind thing. It is not. It is various forms of order that all want to murder other forms of order. We, humanity, the masters of order, had won the battle.

Until the first flare.

We depended too much on certain forms of order. We built our pyramid on shaky ground. When the foundation crumbled, so did the pyramid. And many people died. I imagine there are some who would welcome this simplistic life, but only because they don't know how amazing order is. They are blind to it, because it is everywhere. They assume that you can remove some of the order, and the rest will function without it.

It is all interconnected. Layers upon layers. Wheels that turn wheels. Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it evil.

I will start a fire and place my bedroll before it. I will lie down and watch the clock, listening to the fading heartbeat of a world already dead. Or maybe it is not dead. Maybe, as long as this clock stands here next to this fireplace in silent vigil, a time will come in the far future when clocks will rise again, and bring order back to the world.

697: MUSHROOMS!!! I FOUND MUSHROOMS!!! 9 MUSHROOMS!!! NINE! NINE NIIIIIIINNNNNNENEEEEE MUSHROOMS!!! How did I miss them? HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??? Did they grow in the year that I was gone? I don't know. I really don't know. But I have found mushrooms. With the shroom I have back at Quonset, I should be able to make 5 reishi tea. Yes. Yes I am now glad I came here. It has been worth it to add more tea to my collection.

...

And a car battery. I remember this. Vaguely. It will be difficult, but I will try to get it back to the garage.

...

Moose. By the bridge. It is in-between me and the maintenance yard.

...

Now I remember why I hate this place. When it rains it pours. Sneaking up on the moose, I in turn get snuck up on by a bear. Fortunately there were wolves stalking me who noticed the bear and ran off yelping. So I shot the bear and got lucky. Damn thing dropped on the first hit. Unfortunately I ran from the bear, attracting the moose, I have no idea how I side stepped a charging moose, but I did. Hit him in the ass as he went by, then took a long shot as he went over the crest of a hill. Dropped him.

Then the wolf came back.

Not too difficult to deal with, but they just never let up. And as soon as I prepare to get down to harvesting, damn blizzard starts driving me inside. I hope my kills are still there. Problem is I only wounded the wolf. No idea where he went. I hate letting kills go to waste.

698: These damn wolves are taking forever to clear out. I did find another body in the back of the machine shed. Buried him today. I'm going to go out and clear the lake, then bury the guy frozen sticking out of the ice.

...

MORE MUSHROOMS. How is this possible? I cleared the place out. While searching for more, I spot a wolf. I give a rabbit a kick in the right direction. The wolf goes for the bunny, then gets an arrow upside the head. Don't have time to grab the meat, because I found someone dead past the wolf. three hours later, he's buried. I look over the ledge to see what is in the ravine. Nothing. No crows. Nothing. I assume there's nobody dead down there.

Another wolf showed up. guess he wanted the bunny. I gave it to him WITH EXTREME PREJUDGES!

...

Follow the crows to another corpse. He's just sitting there. Slumped up against a tree. Maybe he was trying to get to the maintenance yard and the many wolves kept him up here.

Putting this one in the ground takes so long the sun sets. The view is spectacular.

...

I take it back. The view sucks. Damn blizzard rolled in as soon as I wrote that. Forced me back to the truck by an electric trolly. Took some time to harvest this rabbit the wolf caught. Waste not, want... something. I forget.

Now I get to watch this broken railroad bridge for god knows how long. Funny, I though the train was pointing the other direction. My mind is playing tricks on me. I wonder what is on the other side of the broken rail bridge.

 

699: This is insane. I just swept the whole area last night. SIX MORE WOLVES try to jump me. Hauling this inside will take forever.

704: I spend three days hauling meat and cooking. I cooked so long I forgot to sleep or eat. Man I feel like crap. And I still have to make it up to the cave and get those hides I left up there. And that car battery. That is going to be a pain hauling back to Quonset. However, I think I will leave all the metal here. I might come back and just turn all this scrap metal into arrow heads or something. Not sure.

...

GOD DAMN WOLF JUMPED ME! Where the HELL are they all coming from???

Almost got my ear wraps. I only got one spare pair back at Quonset. G'damnit. This is the most wolf infested part of the island.

705: Great. Finally healed up, and there is a blizzard as soon as dawn breaks. I hate this place. Going to get back to systematically breaking down everything into raw materials

708: Done breaking down this maintenance building. Didn't finish the yard. Got a few hundred pallets to break up, but that's just wood. I think I'll leave this hatchet here. It's almost dead anyways.

...

Two more wolves? WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM??? -- SIGH. I'll regret it if I don't harvest the meat and leave it in a cache for later. This is going to cost me time. -- AND the fog rolls in. GREAT.

Time to try an old trick. I'm gonna take a quick nap in this tree. If you find this, I fell out and died.

Okay. The fog is lifting, and I am running out of daylight.

Goddami I ned to stop siseeing. Damn jul snuck up behind me because I couldn't hear it next to this fall. Got me good on the arm. I'm glad I'm leaving this godforsaken broken railway.

709: I expected to get much further, but I can't risk going into muskeg with damaged clothing. I have to make camp at the tunnel. I do not have enough wood up here to stay here if things get dicey. I'll have to hope the weather doesn't turn bad or I might lose a few fingers on my other hand to frostbite.

Dammit. it's this damn moose hide. I don't NEED it. Why am I hauling it back to Quonset? How many moose satchels do I have already? 4? 5? Dammit, it's the only way to make more leather. I... can't figure that out, but this is the only way to make more leather and I love these gauntlets. I don't understand why only moose hide makes good enough leather for my gloves, but there you go. I should have made the satchel back at the machine shop and harvested it for the leather, but g'dammit, I want to finish reupholstering the bathroom. That tile floor is mighty cold and moose hide is so soft and warm.

....

ANNNND AURORA! OF. FUCKIN. COURSE. Well, guess I'm waiting until morning.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? MORE WOLVES???

Now I just killed a bear and 5 wolves. Fuck.

And now I'm at the train in the middle of this hellhole and I hear more wolves. FUCK.

713: I found mushrooms. I got attacked by a second bear and I tracked him down after shooting him in the rump. He died next to a cave I never knew about. I also found so many mushrooms it's not funny. You know what? I've got a place to cure hides. So I went back and got all those wolf hides left on those wolves I killed. I think I will spend some time scouring the place.

...

Now I know where I am. I did some shipping through here to the Orca X. Damn shame what happened to the Orca. I need to rest up. This cave will do nicely. I wonder if I'll find any more moose up there?

...

Oh yeah. Forgot about this guy. He died in the back of this cave surrounded by coal. I wonder what happened to him? Ah well. I'll drag him out to the overlook and bury him up there.

I don't believe it. A cured birch sampling. I so need to repair my arrows.

Dragging the corpse out on the overlook resulted in finding a second corpse. I buried both of them and it took so long the aurora came on. Very eerie staying in the cave during an aurora.

714: 2 more wolves. More rose hips and OMB.

Another dead man. This one with 5 bullets and a rifle. Damn. Maybe I do need to spend some time here in the muskeg. I need to move the hides to the cave and the loot to the abandoned train. Then, when the time comes, I'll just have to packmule it. g'admit it. I can't leave those wolves to rot, can I? Crap.

716: Well. fortunately those wolves led me to more mushrooms. Unfortunately I am in the middle of a 2 day blizzard.

Awwww... I remember this frozen spit of land. It's where I killed my first moose! Good times... good times...

So THAT'S where that wolf I winged wound up!

 

717: So Uhhh... after killing another 6 wolves and getting very worried I did NOT pack enough arrows... I... found... some... floating meat.

In the air, floating.

Not in the water. Floating about 4 feet off the ground.

It was just... hovering. And when I touched it, it just acted like...

I'm... thinking... I'm... uh... Yeah.

 

Okay, while checking out the floating log, I fell off a cliff. I think my ankle is busted. No place to camp around here. I think this is a bad omen. I'm turning back. Not going to make it to the forge.

Great. Blizzard.

718: I... can see levitating drawers. And the file cabinet's drawers have sunk into the floor. I don't know what to write. I think I've completely lost it. This is impossible. I'm going to bury Bob and not think about it.

Bob is the body that's been frozen in the corner of the camp office for the past two years. FYI.

 

Edited February 13, 2019 by TheEldritchGod

[TheEldritchGod]

The history of Coastal Town is complicated. Short, but complicated. Short, being a relative term, in this case.

We start about 13 and a half billion years ago. In our local area, the last thing to abandon the future site of coastal town was a photon. A particularly reticulated photon of the microwave family, that had been born many an eon before in the death of the last singularity that had finally succumb to the relentless evaporation caused by hawking radiation. The photon, and many like it, when the event horizon finally dipped below the Planck distance, decided that that maybe it was time to move on.

This photon realized that the party was over. As the event horizon collapsed, the photons hurried to gather up coats and keys. Many remembering that they hadn't paid their rent in a terribly long time. To drive the point home, one of the photons started humming, "Closing time". That old song has always held great wisdom.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

And Lo the photons scattered into as many directions as there were photons, although a few remained superimposed upon one another for quite while, saying their last goodbyes. Making promises they would never keep to stay in touch. Awkward goodbyes at the end of eternity.

But our particular photon was a bit of a loner and was at just the right frequency that when he reached the boundary of the void, like light being refracted at the surface of a glass of water, he bounced back into the universe, to take one more victory lap.

In effect, he was to be last light to go out... err... GET out, I suppose.

Now, starting out as an x-ray, thanks to the passage of time and the relentless smoothness of the void, this photon took forever to stretch out into a microwave of just the right frequency to finally pass the barrier out of the void, well, you simply do not have the ability to conceive of the number, so I won't even bother explaining it to you.

Although, in a curious quirk of fate, because time slows the closer you get to the speed of light, and time stops at the speed of light, from the point of view of the photon, no time passed at all. After all, light travels at the speed of... well... itself. So to a photon, nothing happens as it travels. Without the passage of time for the photon, nothing changes. It is frozen between moments, no matter how many moments for us may pass.

To a photon, time only passes when it interacts with an object, gets absorbed, and is re-emitted. Often changing wavelength. One could argue the original photon dies and a new one is born, because a photon is nothing more than the conveyance of information. Information that happens to take on the form of a tiny packet or wave of energy, depending on how you look at it.

In other words, photons are the original bi-sexuals and if not for their slutty nature, the universe as we know it could not exist. Which is also why so many were hanging out at the last singularity. These so called black holes were the cosmological equivalent to a New York city sex club, its just they weren't as pretentious.

However, you didn't come here to hear about the bedroom lives of bosons.

Now, it is important to note that time is only SLIGHTLY frozen for photons. Time DOES pass, slightly. A single Planck moment. To you or I, a ridiculously short amount of time. In fact, it is the shortest unit of time possible. You simply cannot exist without at least one Planck moment passing. From our point of view, again, we cannot conceive of such a short amount of time.  If a Planck moment does not pass, nothing happens. If the universe had a clock, it would be a single tick of the Planck hand. If the universe was on film, it would would be the passage of a single frame. Well, subjectively. Every single fundamental fragment of matter, energy, and thought would have its' own film running, of course. It's own frame of reference, limited by the Planck distance, the Planck moment, and the Planck Meme.

Although truth be told, the photon was all too happy to leave. Even if a photon is experiencing only a Planck moment as it zooms about the eternal void, photons have notoriously short attention spans, and it was very, VERY bored. From a photon's point of view, Planck moments can take FOREVER.

And with the departure of the last photon, this particular patch of nothing finally, well and truly, was empty.

And this is where Coastal Town begins.

Right next door to our void was another void. THAT void had given up its' last photon several eternities before our void did and it had happily settled down into retirement. It was content to remain empty and to enjoy being void. Yes, not much to do as a true empty void where not even virtual particles are popping in and out of existence, but that's the way out neighbor liked it. It had retired and it was enjoying some serious "me time" and it was glad its' next door neighbor, our universe, had finally settled down and stopped making so much noise.

Our void, finally utterly and completely empty, was settling down for a long nap itself. The last Planck tetrahedron had settled into perfect interlocking harmony with all other Planck tetrahedron that make up what we consider empty space. Space and time had become, finally... perfectly... smooth.

But as the old saying goes, smooth seas never made a skilled sailor.

You ever sit in a parking lot and listen to the radio? Maybe you close your eyes and catch some Z's only to wake up suddenly, realize you are late, and panic. You turn on the engine, throw the car into reverse without really looking, and back up, only to find out the guy next to you was doing the exact same thing. As you both back up without checking, you catch the other out of the corner of your eye and slam on the breaks, only a little too late?

Bam! A minor fender bender.

That's exactly what happened to our universe.

When we achieved perfect smoothness, and the universe right next to us achieved perfect smoothness, they synched up perfectly. The disruption caused by the presence of matter, energy and information prevented the two voids from ever coming in contact before. But at that moment, they were both identical in their smoothness, and as such could do something that doesn't happen very often.

They touched.

You might think, two voids touching, how bad could that be? And from the void's perspectives, it wasn't bad at all. Cosmologically, it was the equivalent to trading paint. Unfortunately these two universes had bought insurance with an insanely high deductible, and there was no point in trying to get insurance to pay for it. So there was a short period where the both got out, looked at the damage, our universe slowly shook its head, worried about how angry its spouse was going to be, while the other universe spit on his hand and tried to rub out the damage. A futile gesture that was a bit gross, but given the situation was not something worth complaining about.

In the end, both universes just agreed the damage wasn't that bad and that they would exchange phone numbers, just in case some unseen damage had occurred, not that that was really possible, given they collided at merely the speed of light, but hey, stranger things have happened.

Better safe than sorry, as they say.

You might think that would be the end of it, but on OUR level of reality, that much void colliding with an even BIGGER void, well... that might be a whole lot of nothing, but even an empty universe still has quite a bit of heft to it.

This is where most people get the whole big bang thing screwed up. They walk the clock back to a single point, when in reality it was more like getting side swiped in a parking lot.

In that instant, an unimaginable amount of energy was released and the current incarnation of the universe was bone. This was about 13.5 billion years ago, by our particular point of view. The vast majority of the Hydrogen atoms that combine with water were created at this point. Later the hydrogen and a few stray helium atoms would collapse into galaxies, then stars, then some would form huge super giants that would burn hotter and hotter, fusing hydrogen into helium and helium into lithium all the way up to iron, where upon the whole reaction would suddenly collapse as more energy went into the process then came out.

Where upon the supergiant would collapse and explode, which in our local area included triggering a neighboring supergiant to explode as well. This is when the vast majority of the elements that make up the earth were created. Slowly they collapsed back into a disk, and then the solar system, and right after all that the sun got going, then a few other stars nearby exploded, clearing out our neck of the interstellar woods.

It's nice to have a clear view. Really helps the property values.

Then the earth formed. Right after that, earth got smacked upside the head by a chunk of rock about the size of mars and as a result, the moon was formed. Originally this got a ton of complaints. Which is understandable, because nobody likes change. However, given that the collision stirred things up putting a ton of heavy elements within arms reach of humanity, not to mention the fact that a large chunk of crystalized iron roughly the size of mars spinning in the middle of your planet makes a wonderfully protective magnetic field, in the end, this has been seen as a good thing.

Then Pangea formed and a good time was had by all. Almost immediately there was drama and a break up that put MTV's the real world to shame and next thing you know, the continents are drifting apart. That sort of thing happens after college. Then some chemicals got the idea that self-replication was what all the cool kids were doing, and order started to break out all over the planet.

Unfortunately, many forms of this self-replicating order quickly discovered there's only so much crap on the planet you can use to replicate yourself. This resulted in various disagreements which were increasingly resolved through the process of digestion.

Then Chlorophyll showed up, started shitting oxygen EVERYWHERE and made a right mess of things. Fortunately at the same time, a particular ambitious bit of self-replicating order that was to become modern day mitochondria thought, "Hey, maybe Oxygen ain't so bad." and got in on the ground floor of aerobic respiration, thus becoming the first capitalist.

And with the boundless energy provided by burning digested bits of other creatures, not possible before oxygen or mitochondria, a couple of cells figured if they remained in a clump, there was strength in numbers and they could seriously kick everyone else's ass, thus becoming the first socialist.

And Ironically, it was the first living creature with an ass to kick. Sort of a chicken and the egg situation. Or a self fulfilling prophesy. Not sure which.

Now, when it came to this particular form of order self-replicating, originally most multi-celled organism tried to stick with Binary fission, but that became impractical over time, so they moved onto fragmentation, and eventually budding. Still, there were issues. While asexual reproduction has the advantage that you are technically immortal, it just wasn't polling well.

And so a small group cells got priority over all the others and started running the show, telling everyone else to "take one for the team" while putting themself first. Specially, I speak of genitalia.

And as soon as the first form of self-replicating order started thinking with their junk, shit got real. About this same time, the nervous system became a thing, and before you knew it, skeletons, both external and internal started trending on twitter.

Now this resulted in spines and brains, both good things, but the problem was that all the programing stored in these nervous systems were hard coded and the firm ware was notoriously hard to upgrade. People got annoyed every time they wanted to adapt to the environment, they had to throw out the old model and buy a new one.

Knowing a pyramid scheme when he saw one, the first human decided to fuck that noise and grew a frontal lobe. Now, while this thing is still in beta testing, the frontal lobe has been truly amazing, what with "free will" and "self-reprograming", while admittedly quite buggy, being a huge advantage. Yes, it does result in some whacky output from time to time, like religion, The Kardashians, and fart jokes. The frontal lobe has, over all, been a huge success, having a 93% audience score on Rotten tomatoes.

And the next thing you know, humanity spread across the planet like wildfire. And like wildfire, burned down everything in its path without a whiff of mercy or concern. After all, if you were in humanity's way, you clearly had it coming.

Which almost brings us to Great Bear Island, but lets back up a bit.

Just after Pangea broke up, the North American Craton had some deep butt hurt by that chain of events and was really ticked off that he never got back his deposit on the apartment they all shared, and basically stomped off in a huff. He did keep in contact with south america, but only because they were drinking buddies. In the process, North America built up the west coast accretion belt. When combined with some serious deep sea continental shelf on oceanic plate action this resulted in a number of islands being created on the west coast of Canada.

Canada is very sorry about all that. They will try and to keep the noise down.

About this time Humanity was cutting loose and a bunch of humans wound up on Great Bear. After discovering the place was way too cold and covered in bears and wolves and other shit constantly trying to kill you, as well as the many many many earthquakes from being smack dab in the middle of two of the largest geological structures on planet earth trying to get "jiggy with it", those humans left for safer places.

And lo the humans that wound up settling on Great Bear and eventually founding Coastal Town would be Canadian.

Originally settled as a company town, the first administrator, Todd Granby, incorporated Coastal Town under the name "Coastal Town" Because he wrote the name of the town in the description, and put the description where the name should have been. Once the name of the town was officially recognized by the federal government, it became way too much of a pain fix, and thus went uncorrected.

Most likely for the best, because Granby was about as creative as Sir Issac Newton. Which is to say, his creativity has been rotting in the ground for centuries, and is best left undisturbed.

Coastal Town has waxed and waned over the years, becoming quite the boom town in the early 20th century. However, in an unknown year, but estimated to be around 1903, there was a forest fire that swept through the area after a particularly dry summer. Pine resin, when dry, becomes extremely flammable, and under certain circumstances, capable of detonation.

That night would forever more been known as "The Night of A Thousand Exploding Trees"

After the fire swept the island, devastation was left in its wake. Coastal Town lost every major building, which included a 45 room hotel, a general store, and a nine hole golf course.

The town's use to the mining company vanished over night and the companies just moved to a new area less prone to arboreal ignition. However, many locals survived the fire by simply rowing out to the island off shore, and they were determined to rebuild in their beloved town.

A number of houses sprung up, but the main building that the town would now center itself around was Quincy's Quonset Garage, so named because of the metal dome that forms the main part of the garage. Nobody knows who Quincy was. It is suspected that the person building the garage really liked the TV show with the same name. Which was quite the feat, because the show wouldn't air it's first episode until 1976.

While one couldn't call Coastal Town thriving, one could say it was surviving. In fact, its small size was instrumental to its survival of the Spanish Flu epidemic when it swept through the island.

Many accredit the survival of the town to Todd Granby, now known as Old man Granby, who was a heavy drinker. He claimed a sip of moonshine every half hour kept you immune to the Flu, and handed out alcohol to everyone. His skill at making alcohol kept everyone rip roaring drunk, although it is thought that a few instances of people going blind may have been caused by his alcohol, I'm afraid I have no confirmation of this anecdotal story.

Todd Granby was well known all over the island, being one of the few people brave enough to enter the homes of those who died, to drag the bodies to the Stone Church and bury them. Todd died at a ripe old age of 103, remaining the mayor until his passing.

In the resulting power vacuum, two rivals started to fight over who would be the next mayor. Percival Carr and George Blarney. Apparently their rivalry wasn't just political, but also for the affection of the Town School Teacher, Margaret Maud.

Alas, Margaret enjoyed playing the two men against each other, enjoying the attention and loved to openly flirt with both. 2 days before the election to determine would would be the new mayor of Coastal Town, She had a fight with Percival. Later she would claim to George that Percival had hit her, and this resulted in George hunting down and shooting Percival dead.

Margaret would later confess that she lied, would never forgive herself, and moved away from the island. Her eventual fate remains unknown.

After George went to jail, William Quincy, inheritor of the Quonset Garage would step up and become the town mayor.  William, Town scoutmaster, and head of the island's masonic lodge, would be mayor for another 18 years before he died un-expectantly in a tuna trawler accident. Control of the town would pass to Albert Flem, who also took over the island's masonic lodge. He appointed his lodge brother J.R. Shields as chief of police, and the other members of the lodge became the Coastal Town Planning Board.

They would become the most corrupt political force Great Bear had even seen. Their ties to organized crime and smuggling became a thing of legend and the worst kept secret on the island. While everyone knew what was going on, they also made sure everyone's palms were well greased, and no local was willing to stand up to them. They then shifted the town's focus to fishing and tourism as a means of laundering their money and helping to cover for being a way station for smugglers coming from Asia.

A running joke was that the cabin rental company was called Key Rentals, because when you rented a cabin, it came with a key of cocaine.

Things were going very well until 1988, when the entire Masonic Lodge was meeting in the Stone Church one Saturday evening. Someone had planted a fragmentation device and the resulting explosion killed everyone and blew out the corner of the church. In the resulting federal investigation all the smuggling operations had been uncovered and while no one would ever be arrested for the mass murder of masons, it is thought that a rival drug cartel ordered the hit.

In the aftermath, the town almost disappeared, only to be brought back to life in the year 2000 when large tracks of the mostly abandoned coastline were bought up by Myron Rogers, Who would join forces with Sarah Quincy, the then owner of the Quincy Quonset.

He made a deal with local logging interests and worked to build up an ACTUAL fishing and tourist industry along the coastal road. He started the annual Ice Fishing competition that, while never super popular, did bring in a good deal of much needed off island funds to the local economy.

The annual ice fishing competition was well underway when the first flare hit. The subsequent earthquake that occurred along with the flare dislodged a fish mounted on a wall, hitting Myron in the head and killing him instantly. Everyone agrees, that is exactly how he would have wanted to go out.

Since the flare, the town was abandoned until The Quonset manager came into town, reincorporated the town, assumed squatter's rights, and reopened the Quonset Garage. Since then the old town planning board has returned as shadowy apparitions, hell bent of the resurrection of Coastal Town, at any cost.

In a surprising turn of events, local Car Battery, CB, was elected to be the new town mayor, thus being the youngest, and most inanimate object to hold the office. CB is very progressive in his view of the future of Coastal Town, where as the Town Planning Board are rather reactionary, what with them being the physical manifestation of hate filled darkness. This has caused the planning board and the mayor's office to butt heads over more than one zoning issue.

Still, while Coastal Town's past may be grim, the future is looking bright. The mayor's office has many new plans to help the town. For example, he plans on claiming the coastal town is a riverboat that ran around in hopes of applying for federal disaster relief.

Whereas the Planning board thinks that opening a new curling rink would be a better way to go. When asked who would actually use the curling rink, considering everyone is dead, the Planning board's jaws became unhinged and dropped open, stretching their faces to impossible lengths. Their tongues, that could only be described as "The Color Of Spite", lashed out and flayed the soul of the person who dared to ask the question. In a flash of un-light, he became a statue made of grey ash, that softly and silently crumbled away, leaving behind only a nondescript smudge as evidence that he ever existed.

So I'm going to put that down as a "No Comment".

Edited February 27, 2019 by TheEldritchGod

[FunkyFuggerson]

2 hours ago, TheEldritchGod said:

The history of Coastal Town is complicated. Short, but complicated. Short, being a relative term, in this case.

We start about 13 and a half billion years ago. In our local area, the last thing to abandon the future site of coastal town was a photon. A particularly reticulated photon of the microwave family, that had been born many an eon before in the death of the last singularity that had finally succumb to the relentless evaporation caused by hawking radiation. The photon, and many like it, when the event horizon finally dipped below the Planck distance, decided that that maybe it was time to move on.

This photon realized that the party was over. As the event horizon collapsed, the photons hurried to gather up coats and keys. Many remembering that they hadn't paid their rent in a terribly long time. To drive the point home, one of the photons started humming, "Closing time". That old song has always held great wisdom.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

And Lo the photons scattered into as many directions as there were photons, although a few remained superimposed upon one another for quite while, saying their last goodbyes. Making promises they would never keep to stay in touch. Awkward goodbyes at the end of eternity.

But our particular photon was a bit of a loner and was at just the right frequency that when he reached the boundary of the void, like light being refracted at the surface of a glass of water, he bounced back into the universe, to take one more victory lap.

In effect, he was to be last light to go out... err... GET out, I suppose.

Now, starting out as an x-ray, thanks to the passage of time and the relentless smoothness of the void, this photon took forever to stretch out into a microwave of just the right frequency to finally pass the barrier out of the void, well, you simply do not have the ability to conceive of the number, so I won't even bother explaining it to you.

Although, in a curious quirk of fate, because time slows the closer you get to the speed of light, and time stops at the speed of light, from the point of view of the photon, no time passed at all. After all, light travels at the speed of... well... itself. So to a photon, nothing happens as it travels. Without the passage of time for the photon, nothing changes. It is frozen between moments, no matter how many moments for us may pass.

To a photon, time only passes when it interacts with an object, gets absorbed, and is re-emitted. Often changing wavelength. One could argue the original photon dies and a new one is born, because a photon is nothing more than the conveyance of information. Information that happens to take on the form of a tiny packet or wave of energy, depending on how you look at it.

In other words, photons are the original bi-sexuals and if not for their slutty nature, the universe as we know it could not exist. Which is also why so many were hanging out at the last singularity. These so called black holes were the cosmological equivalent to a New York city sex club, its just they weren't as pretentious.

However, you didn't come here to hear about the bedroom lives of bosons.

Now, it is important to note that time is only SLIGHTLY frozen for photons. Time DOES pass, slightly. A single Planck moment. To you or I, a ridiculously short amount of time. In fact, it is the shortest unit of time possible. You simply cannot exist without at least one Planck moment passing. From our point of view, again, we cannot conceive of such a short amount of time.  If a Planck moment does not pass, nothing happens. If the universe had a clock, it would be a single tick of the Planck hand. If the universe was on film, it would would be the passage of a single frame. Well, subjectively. Every single fundamental fragment of matter, energy, and thought would have its' own film running, of course. It's own frame of reference, limited by the Planck distance, the Planck moment, and the Planck Meme.

Although truth be told, the photon was all too happy to leave. Even if a photon is experiencing only a Planck moment as it zooms about the eternal void, photons have notoriously short attention spans, and it was very, VERY bored. From a photon's point of view, Planck moments can take FOREVER.

And with the departure of the last photon, this particular patch of nothing finally, well and truly, was empty.

And this is where Coastal Town begins.

Right next door to our void was another void. THAT void had given up its' last photon several eternities before our void did and it had happily settled down into retirement. It was content to remain empty and to enjoy being void. Yes, not much to do as a true empty void where not even virtual particles are popping in and out of existence, but that's the way out neighbor liked it. It had retired and it was enjoying some serious "me time" and it was glad its' next door neighbor, our universe, had finally settled down and stopped making so much noise.

Our void, finally utterly and completely empty, was settling down for a long nap itself. The last Planck tetrahedron had settled into perfect interlocking harmony with all other Planck tetrahedron that make up what we consider empty space. Space and time had become, finally... perfectly... smooth.

But as the old saying goes, smooth seas never made a skilled sailor.

You ever sit in a parking lot and listen to the radio? Maybe you close your eyes and catch some Z's only to wake up suddenly, realize you are late, and panic. You turn on the engine, throw the car into reverse without really looking, and back up, only to find out the guy next to you was doing the exact same thing. As you both back up without checking, you catch the other out of the corner of your eye and slam on the breaks, only a little too late?

Bam! A minor fender bender.

That's exactly what happened to our universe.

When we achieved perfect smoothness, and the universe right next to us achieved perfect smoothness, they synched up perfectly. The disruption caused by the presence of matter, energy and information prevented the two voids from ever coming in contact before. But at that moment, they were both identical in their smoothness, and as such could do something that doesn't happen very often.

They touched.

You might think, two voids touching, how bad could that be? And from the void's perspectives, it wasn't bad at all. Cosmologically, it was the equivalent to trading paint. Unfortunately these two universes had bought insurance with an insanely high deductible, and there was no point in trying to get insurance to pay for it. So there was a short period where the both got out, looked at the damage, our universe slowly shook its head, worried about how angry its spouse was going to be, while the other universe spit on his hand and tried to rub out the damage. A futile gesture that was a bit gross, but given the situation was not something worth complaining about.

In the end, both universes just agreed the damage wasn't that bad and that they would exchange phone numbers, just in case some unseen damage had occurred, not that that was really possible, given they collided at merely the speed of light, but hey, stranger things have happened.

Better safe than sorry, as they say.

You might think that would be the end of it, but on OUR level of reality, that much void colliding with an even BIGGER void, well... that might be a whole lot of nothing, but even an empty universe still has quite a bit of heft to it.

This is where most people get the whole big bang thing screwed up. They walk the clock back to a single point, when in reality it was more like getting side swiped in a parking lot.

In that instant, an unimaginable amount of energy was released and the current incarnation of the universe was bone. This was about 13.5 billion years ago, by our particular point of view. The vast majority of the Hydrogen atoms that combine with water were created at this point. Later the hydrogen and a few stray helium atoms would collapse into galaxies, then stars, then some would form huge super giants that would burn hotter and hotter, fusing hydrogen into helium and helium into lithium all the way up to iron, where upon the whole reaction would suddenly collapse as more energy went into the process then came out.

Where upon the supergiant would collapse and explode, which in our local area included triggering a neighboring supergiant to explode as well. This is when the vast majority of the elements that make up the earth were created. Slowly they collapsed back into a disk, and then the solar system, and right after all that the sun got going, then a few other stars nearby exploded, clearing out our neck of the interstellar woods.

It's nice to have a clear view. Really helps the property values.

Then the earth formed. Right after that, earth got smacked upside the head by a chunk of rock about the size of mars and as a result, the moon was formed. Originally this got a ton of complaints. Which is understandable, because nobody likes change. However, given that the collision stirred things up putting a ton of heavy elements within arms reach of humanity, not to mention the fact that a large chunk of crystalized iron roughly the size of mars spinning in the middle of your planet makes a wonderfully protective magnetic field, in the end, this has been seen as a good thing.

Then Pangea formed and a good time was had by all. Almost immediately there was drama and a break up that put MTV's the real world to shame and next thing you know, the continents are drifting apart. That sort of thing happens after college. Then some chemicals got the idea that self-replication was what all the cool kids were doing, and order started to break out all over the planet.

Unfortunately, many forms of this self-replicating order quickly discovered there's only so much crap on the planet you can use to replicate yourself. This resulted in various disagreements which were increasingly resolved through the process of digestion.

Then Chlorophyll showed up, started shitting oxygen EVERYWHERE and made a right mess of things. Fortunately at the same time, a particular ambitious bit of self-replicating order that was to become modern day mitochondria thought, "Hey, maybe Oxygen ain't so bad." and got in on the ground floor of aerobic respiration, thus becoming the first capitalist.

And with the boundless energy provided by burning digested bits of other creatures, not possible before oxygen or mitochondria, a couple of cells figured if they remained in a clump, there was strength in numbers and they could seriously kick everyone else's ass, thus becoming the first socialist.

And Ironically, it was the first living creature with an ass to kick. Sort of a chicken and the egg situation. Or a self fulfilling prophesy. Not sure which.

Now, when it came to this particular form of order self-replicating, originally most multi-celled organism tried to stick with Binary fission, but that became impractical over time, so they moved onto fragmentation, and eventually budding. Still, there were issues. While asexual reproduction has the advantage that you are technically immortal, it just wasn't polling well.

And so a small group cells got priority over all the others and started running the show, telling everyone else to "take one for the team" while putting themself first. Specially, I speak of genitalia.

And as soon as the first form of self-replicating order started thinking with their junk, shit got real. About this same time, the nervous system became a thing, and before you knew it, skeletons, both external and internal started trending on twitter.

Now this resulted in spines and brains, both good things, but the problem was that all the programing stored in these nervous systems were hard coded and the firm ware was notoriously hard to upgrade. People got annoyed every time they wanted to adapt to the environment, they had to throw out the old model and buy a new one.

Knowing a pyramid scheme when he saw one, the first human decided to fuck that noise and grew a frontal lobe. Now, while this thing is still in beta testing, the frontal lobe has been truly amazing, what with "free will" and "self-reprograming", while admittedly quite buggy, being a huge advantage. Yes, it does result in some whacky output from time to time, like religion, The Kardashians, and fart jokes. The frontal lobe has, over all, been a huge success, having a 93% audience score on Rotten tomatoes.

And the next thing you know, humanity spread across the planet like wildfire. And like wildfire, burned down everything in its path without a whiff of mercy or concern. After all, if you were in humanity's way, you clearly had it coming.

Which almost brings us to Great Bear Island, but lets back up a bit.

Just after Pangea broke up, the North American Craton had some deep butt hurt by that chain of events and was really ticked off that he never got back his deposit on the apartment they all shared, and basically stomped off in a huff. He did keep in contact with south america, but only because they were drinking buddies. In the process, North America built up the west coast accretion belt. When combined with some serious deep sea continental shelf on oceanic plate action this resulted in a number of islands being created on the west coast of Canada.

Canada is very sorry about all that. They will try and to keep the noise down.

About this time Humanity was cutting loose and a bunch of humans wound up on Great Bear. After discovering the place was way too cold and covered in bears and wolves and other shit constantly trying to kill you, as well as the many many many earthquakes from being smack dab in the middle of two of the largest geological structures on planet earth trying to get "jiggy with it", those humans left for safer places.

And lo the humans that wound up settling on Great Bear and eventually founding Coastal Town would be Canadian.

Originally settled as a company town, the first administrator, Todd Granby, incorporated Coastal Town under the name "Coastal Town" Because he wrote the name of the town in the description, and put the description where the name should have been. Once the name of the town was officially recognized by the federal government, it became way too much of a pain fix, and thus went uncorrected.

Most likely for the best, because Granby was about as creative as Sir Issac Newton. Which is to say, his creativity has been rotting in the ground for centuries, and is best left undisturbed.

Coastal Town has waxed and waned over the years, becoming quite the boom town in the early 20th century. However, in an unknown year, but estimated to be around 1903, there was a forest fire that swept through the area after a particularly dry summer. Pine resin, when dry, becomes extremely flammable, and under certain circumstances, capable of detonation.

That night would forever more been known as "The Night of A Thousand Exploding Trees"

After the fire swept the island, devastation was left in its wake. Coastal Town lost every major building, which included a 45 room hotel, a general store, and a nine hole golf course.

The town's use to the mining company vanished over night and the companies just moved to a new area less prone to arboreal ignition. However, many locals survived the fire by simply rowing out to the island off shore, and they were determined to rebuild in their beloved town.

A number of houses sprung up, but the main building that the town would now center itself around was Quincy's Quonset Garage, so named because of the metal dome that forms the main part of the garage. Nobody knows who Quincy was. It is suspected that the person building the garage really liked the TV show with the same name. Which was quite the feat, because the show wouldn't air it's first episode until 1976.

While one couldn't call Coastal Town thriving, one could say it was surviving. In fact, its small size was instrumental to its survival of the Spanish Flu epidemic when it swept through the island.

Many accredit the survival of the town to Todd Granby, now known as Old man Granby, who was a heavy drinker. He claimed a sip of moonshine every half hour kept you immune to the Flu, and handed out alcohol to everyone. His skill at making alcohol kept everyone rip roaring drunk, although it is thought that a few instances of people going blind may have been caused by his alcohol, I'm afraid I have no confirmation of this anecdotal story.

Todd Granby was well known all over the island, being one of the few people brave enough to enter the homes of those who died, to drag the bodies to the Stone Church and bury them. Todd died at a ripe old age of 103, remaining the mayor until his passing.

In the resulting power vacuum, two rivals started to fight over who would be the next mayor. Percival Carr and George Blarney. Apparently their rivalry wasn't just political, but also for the affection of the Town School Teacher, Margaret Maud.

Alas, Margaret enjoyed playing the two men against each other, enjoying the attention and loved to openly flirt with both. 2 days before the election to determine would would be the new mayor of Coastal Town, She had a fight with Percival. Later she would claim to George that Percival had hit her, and this resulted in George hunting down and shooting Percival dead.

Margaret would later confess that she lied, would never forgive herself, and moved away from the island. Her eventual fate remains unknown.

After George went to jail, William Quincy, inheritor of the Quonset Garage would step up and become the town mayor.  William, Town scoutmaster, and head of the island's masonic lodge, would be mayor for another 18 years before he died un-expectantly in a tuna trawler accident. Control of the town would pass to Albert Flem, who also took over the island's masonic lodge. He appointed his lodge brother J.R. Shields as chief of police, and the other members of the lodge became the Coastal Town Planning Board.

They would become the most corrupt political force Great Bear had even seen. Their ties to organized crime and smuggling became a thing of legend and the worst kept secret on the island. While everyone knew what was going on, they also made sure everyone's palms were well greased, and no local was willing to stand up to them. They then shifted the town's focus to fishing and tourism as a means of laundering their money and helping to cover for being a way station for smugglers coming from Asia.

A running joke was that the cabin rental company was called Key Rentals, because when you rented a cabin, it came with a key of cocaine.

Things were going very well until 1988, when the entire Masonic Lodge was meeting in the Stone Church one Saturday evening. Someone had planted a fragmentation device and the resulting explosion killed everyone and blew out the corner of the church. In the resulting federal investigation all the smuggling operations had been uncovered and while no one would ever be arrested for the mass murder of masons, it is thought that a rival drug cartel ordered the hit.

In the aftermath, the town almost disappeared, only to be brought back to life in the year 2000 when large tracks of the mostly abandoned coastline were bought up by Myron Rogers, Who would join forces with Sarah Quincy, the then owner of the Quincy Quonset.

He made a deal with local logging interests and worked to build up an ACTUAL fishing and tourist industry along the coastal road. He started the annual Ice Fishing competition that, while never super popular, did bring in a good deal of much needed off island funds to the local economy.

The annual ice fishing competition was well underway when the first flare hit. The subsequent earthquake that occurred along with the flare dislodged a fish mounted on a wall, hitting Myron in the head and killing him instantly. Everyone agrees, that is exactly how he would have wanted to go out.

Since the flare, the town was abandoned until The Quonset manager came into town, reincorporated the town, assumed squatter's rights, and reopened the Quonset Garage. Since then the old town planning board has returned as shadowy apparitions, hell bent of the resurrection of Coastal Town, at any cost.

In a surprising turn of events, local Car Battery, CB, was elected to be the new town mayor, thus being the youngest, and most inanimate object to hold the office. CB is very progressive in his view of the future of Coastal Town, where as the Town Planning Board are rather reactionary, what with them being the physical manifestation of hate filled darkness. This has caused the planning board and the mayor's office to butt heads over more than one zoning issue.

Still, while Coastal Town's past may be grim, the future is looking bright. The mayor's office has many new plans to help the town. For example, he plans on claiming the coastal town is a riverboat that ran around in hopes of applying for federal disaster relief.

Whereas the Planning board thinks that opening a new curling rink would be a better way to go. When asked who would actually use the curling rink, considering everyone is dead, the Planning board's jaws became unhinged and dropped open, stretching their faces to impossible lengths. Their tongues, that could only be described as "The Color Of Spite", lashed out and flayed the soul of the person who dared to ask the question. In a flash of un-light, he became a statue made of grey ash, that softly and silently crumbled away, leaving behind only a nondescript smudge as evidence that he ever existed.

So I'm going to put that down as a "No Comment".

I haven't even been aware of this whole "Quonset Manager" stuff, (if so, i've forgotten) seriously, what is with you and your obsession over this!??!? Its amazing and spectacular, but it also seems like a dedication akin to a junkie and his needle. Perhaps you are as mad as the man you claim to wander these snowy wastes!

[TheEldritchGod]

16 hours ago, FunkyFuggerson said:

seriously, what is with you and your obsession over this!??!?

Seriously? Okay, Seriously then.

There's an old saying: Never ask a question you aren't prepared to hear the answer to.

I mention this, because you brought this on yourself.

My mom is a refugee and my father an orphan. WW2 to be exact. I was born in America and if my grandfather on my mother's side hadn't been a genius, he wouldn't have figured out how bad things were getting in Poland and failed to get his family out before Shit hit the fan.

And by genius I mean grandmaster of chess level of genius.

And Lo the nazis and Russians cut Poland up like a pie and Grandpa joined the US army to fight for Poland. Being super smart and a polyglot, and of no small insignificance of a personage in Poland, the US army in their infinite wisdom sent him to go fight in the pacific theater.

Where upon a shell fragment entered next to his eye, went down the center of his brain and out the back. They said he was going to be a vegetable. Three days later, he was walking around. It appears the only part of his brain it got was the part that tells you to shut the hell up. Tough as nails that man.

It is from him I learned how to become the Determinator. No matter how many times you got knocked down, you get back up again. That's what a MAN does.

Anyways, Poland in the end was occupied by the Russians and Gramps was having none of that shit, so he started smuggling guns into Poland and smuggling more people out. All the jews in our family had been killed off by the nazi's, and over the years, the Russians would kill the rest. No living genetic relative of mine in Poland survived.

This is where I come in.

At the age of 8, along with a number of other Polish males born in America, we were gathered together at the Local Moose lodge to hear testimony of people who had fled Poland. We were to remember and never forget what was happening. I forgot most of it. I was only 8 and it was way over my head. However, when I asked one guy what was wrong with his hand, he held it up and the translator calmly explained they tore out all his fingernails with pilers.

That stuck with me.

Mom wanted gramps to just let things go, but Gramps always made sure to pour as much anti-communism as he could into my head. I regret not giving him more time. The stories were important to him. He needed to know the fight would not be over when he died. However, after the fall of the Berlin wall, he thought the problem with communism was finally over, and when Poland was finally free, he felt his work was over. He died about a year later.

I'm glad about that. It would hurt him to see how bad things have gotten since then.

So what's all this got to do with what I write?

I had put into my head a serious sense of responsibility. That one has a duty to the future. To pay things forward. It is a duty and responsibility of every man born to do this. You are a man and it is what you do. I failed at doing my duty for a long time, but eventually I got my act together.

Now I talk people out of suicide. I help the mentally and physically disabled. I work with people getting out of mental hospitals and over the years I am proud to say I've saved quite a number of lives. A few of them have gone so far as to call me hero. One of my hobbies is rescuing dying cats. I have a real knack for keeping cats alive for some reason. I also work very hard to put ideas in people's heads. Get them to think. Ideas that will make them stronger, give them solace when they need it most. Mostly I do this by talking to them. I also do it through my writing.

However, as of late, things have gone really... really bad.

I've had a client I worked with for years lose it and wind up in jail ruining his life.
I've had a former client finally give into the demons in her head and finally catch that train she's been obsessing about.
I've got another who's 94 years old who I've had to transfer to a facility where she's going to be warehoused until she dies.
I've got a cat who is on death's door and I fear I will have to put him to sleep soon.
All of which I don't have time to deal with, because at this very moment, my wife is in surgery having two cysts removed from her lungs. She went in about 40 minutes ago.

Those cysts are not being removed to save her life.

No no no, it's too late to save the lungs. This surgery is just to determine if she qualifies to get a lung transplant. She's got about 2-3 years to live, and the lung transplant waiting list is about 3-4 years. Let's just skip over the 2.03% chance she never gets out of the surgery alive. It is 5 hours long and her lung will be collapsed most of the time. Hard enough for a healthy person, much less someone who's lungs are covered in scar tissue from an immune system deciding that said lungs are a threat.

Oh, did I mention I moved to a new home that was a ranch so my wife wouldn't need to go up and down stairs anymore? Turns out the construction next door to my old place shifted the ground and the corner of my house sunk. Twelve grand to fix IF I want any hope of even SELLING the place. I may just have to let it go into foreclosure.

Do you have any idea how expensive it is to pay for all the medical bills just TREATING my wife? Let's not get into the cost for this surgery, or the next one, or staying in the hospital. Even with insurance, I am being bled dry.

Not that I care.

I'll let you in on a secret. If you live long enough there will be a point where gold loses it's luster, diamonds stop sparkling, and the only thing you will value is TIME. Nothing else matters, except time. You start to measure everything you say and do in units of time. How much time wasted doing X, how to save time doing Y. What is important and needs to get done, and what you can put off because there are more important things to do.

Time spent with those who may not be around to spend with anymore.

However, given the situation, I, ironically, find myself like I am right now, sitting around and waiting while other people do what I cannot. They are being paid money both directly and indirectly by me to take the course of action that will give me more time. All I do is sit here, watching time pass.

It is amazing what you will sacrifice for mere moments.

And it is also amazing what becomes important. What gets brought into sharp clarity. What was important in your life, and what wasn't.

It. Is. MADDENING.

Trust me, just sitting here can drive you insane. You might WANT to spend every moment worrying about the one you love, (who might be dead as I type, but they just haven't come out to tell me yet) But there's no point. I am helpless. I have no control. At this point, it is up to the winds of fate. The butterfly will flap its wings, and maybe a tornado destroys a trailer park in Ohio.

To sit here and obsess would weaken me. It would leave me mentally unfit. So many people depend on me. The one that I love is the one dying, not I. I simply do not have the luxury to worry about myself. I cannot allow myself to spiral into depression. I MUST remain of sound mind. I MUST hold it together. Failure is not an option.

But you cannot FORCE yourself to hold it together.

The only way to remain of sound mind when the universe is falling apart is to experience Joy. Happiness will be beyond you, but not joy. You can't hold your breath in anticipation forever. You have to keep breathing. Moments of positivity can give you just enough "oxygen". A mouthful of air.

A gasp in a vast echoing void.

When I find myself unable to sleep, and unable to do anything productive, I write. I write about the life of a man who's life is infinitely more screwed than mine. Not just because he's in the long dark, but because of far darker things that are on his island. An island in a particularly skewed world with a few laws of physics that aren't in this one. And those laws make his world a nightmare with a thin illusion that keeps most people from going insane.

Nothing I write is just for fun, although I hope you smile from time to time.

I am describing a man who is fighting against cosmic horror, because I am fighting a more mundane horror and of the two, I would prefer the cosmic one. It would make more sense. The world that the Quonset Manager lives in is a terrible place, but it also has something the real world does not.

It has a face to punch.

There is something to blame for the horrors of QM's world. There is reason. There is logic. As unfair that world is, There is a face somewhere that deserves to be punched. His world has meaning.

My world has none. In my world, good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, and there is no justice. Life is not fair in my world. And I tell myself, over and over, that this is a GOOD THING.

It is a good thing. Because if life was fair, that would mean I had it coming. It would mean I was a bad person being punished, or the people I love and care for are being punished. They are suffering because they are bad people... IF... the world is fair.

I know a man who was a first responder. He helped a little baby 18 months old. She had been raped by her step father so the mother could film it and sell the video on line to make money to buy the Heroin-Fentanyl combo that is so popular here in central New York.

Yes, I help my fair share of recovering drug addicts as well.

But his story... He told to me at 2am one night, I work the night shift you see. When the clients have problems, I'm the one who handles them. This was just him unloading about the horrors that finally broke him. When he finished describing it, I asked if the baby had it coming. He almost attacked me. And I asked again, "Did the baby deserve it?" And he screamed "No" and, "How could I ask such a thing?"

I replied, "So you know that life isn't fair. If it was fair, she would have deserved it. People want life to be fair, but not me. If life was fair, then everyone would win half the time, and lose half the time. Most people when they say they want things to be fair actually mean they want the world to be UNFAIR in their advantage."

"Me? I want everyone to win. I want everyone to be happy. Even the people who raped that baby. I wish they had been happy enough they didn't HAVE to have done it in the first place. I want to cheat. I want everyone to cheat and everyone to win. Because that would be unfair. And in an unfair world, that would be possible."

He settled down and let go of me. I waited until he had time to think before I continued, "I'm telling you this, because you want the world to be fair, and it CAN'T be fair. You can never make this right. You can NEVER punish the guilty enough in this case, and you can NEVER compensate the victim enough. If you try, you'll only fail and eventually try to kill yourself again."

"I'm sorry. I really am. But you need to accept this hell you are in and let it go. Life is a pile of good things and a pile of bad things. They don't cancel each other out. They both exist and you have to deal with both SEPARATELY. Nobody who ever won the lottery deserved it. That baby didn't deserve what happened to her either. All we can do is accept what we cannot change and try to make things better going forward."

"So you got a choice. You can drag everything down into flames and burn the world to ash, or you can try to make the world a better place. Let those who committed wrong be dealt with by the justice system. That's what it's for. It's not perfect, but it's better then the alternative."

"I don't expect you to forgive the mother or the step-father, but you need to put yourself first. Not just for you, but for those who depend on you. You aren't going to survive like this. You will keep breaking and winding up here until you find a way to let it go."

And he asked me how. I said, "I don't know. However, I have a board game over here. Let's try and get through the next twenty minutes."

...

Sometimes all I can do is get through the next twenty minutes.

And so I write. I write about silly things and horrifying things and true things and new ways of seeing things. I build a world based on truth and nonsense. It is a wall. It is a house of cards. It is a toy. It is a metaphor. It is a cross. It is... It's...

It's just a game.

A game I play to make myself forget the horror of the real world where I am powerless and helpless and alone. If I lie down nobody is coming to save me. In that respect, I identify with the Quonset Manager. In the end, nobody will save us. We get back up, or we die where we fall. That's my life. That's always been my life.

I tell myself that this is how things are, and that every other option would be worse.

This IS the best of all possible worlds, because every other option would be worse.

And occasionally I take some time to forget and to rest, not because I can't handle it. Far from it. I can handle the horror of my life just fine. The question is, For How LONG? Moments like this, where I write shit like this, is just to rest. Not because I want to, but because I NEED to. I need to relax and rest because...

Well...

Things will get worse. When things get worse, I need to be ready. I need to be at my best. I cannot allow myself to be anything less then 100% ready to do everything I can at a moment's notice. All I have right now is hope. All I can depend on is chance, and Chance is a fickle thing. if chance gives me an opportunity, I will have to be ready.

This is what I pour into the Quonset Manager. I pour all of this into him and it fills him and then I try to break him. Again and again and again and again I shatter him against the rocks. I pound the surf into his soul and lash the wind into his back. Because if he can make it 20 more minutes, maybe I can make it 20 more minutes.

If life was fair, hope couldn't exist.

If life was fair, nothing would change, except that you would deserve all the shit that happened to you. That's all it takes for life to be fair... for you to DESERVE what happens to you. Nothing changes, just the purpose... just the reasons... just the MEANING of your suffering. So, between the two: life being fair, or life having hope, I'll take hope.

I want to live in a world where sometimes...
Things works out in my favor...
Even if I don't deserve it.

Because right about now...

 

 

I could REALLY use an unearned miracle.

 

 

(And that's why I write.)

Edited February 27, 2019 by TheEldritchGod

[TheEldritchGod]

In case you are wondering, they got the cysts, doctor says no complications, I'll be able to see her in a few hours. Went faster then expected. It'll take about a week before the pathology report comes back. Then we decide what to do next.

[FunkyFuggerson]

1 hour ago, TheEldritchGod said:

Seriously? Okay, Seriously then.

There's an old saying: Never ask a question you aren't prepared to hear the answer to.

I mention this, because you brought this on yourself.

My mom is a refugee and my father an orphan. WW2 to be exact. I was born in America and if my grandfather on my mother's side hadn't been a genius, he wouldn't have figured out how bad things were getting in Poland and failed to get his family out before Shit hit the fan.

And by genius I mean grandmaster of chess level of genius.

And Lo the nazis and Russians cut Poland up like a pie and Grandpa joined the US army to fight for Poland. Being super smart and a polyglot, and of no small insignificance of a personage in Poland, the US army in their infinite wisdom sent him to go fight in the pacific theater.

Where upon a shell fragment entered next to his eye, went down the center of his brain and out the back. They said he was going to be a vegetable. Three days later, he was walking around. It appears the only part of his brain it got was the part that tells you to shut the hell up. Tough as nails that man.

It is from him I learned how to become the Determinator. No matter how many times you got knocked down, you get back up again. That's what a MAN does.

Anyways, Poland in the end was occupied by the Russians and Gramps was having none of that shit, so he started smuggling guns into Poland and smuggling more people out. All the jews in our family had been killed off by the nazi's, and over the years, the Russians would kill the rest. No living genetic relative of mine in Poland survived.

This is where I come in.

At the age of 8, along with a number of other Polish males born in America, we were gathered together at the Local Moose lodge to hear testimony of people who had fled Poland. We were to remember and never forget what was happening. I forgot most of it. I was only 8 and it was way over my head. However, when I asked one guy what was wrong with his hand, he held it up and the translator calmly explained they tore out all his fingernails with pilers.

That stuck with me.

Mom wanted gramps to just let things go, but Gramps always made sure to pour as much anti-communism as he could into my head. I regret not giving him more time. The stories were important to him. He needed to know the fight would not be over when he died. However, after the fall of the Berlin wall, he thought the problem with communism was finally over, and when Poland was finally free, he felt his work was over. He died about a year later.

I'm glad about that. It would hurt him to see how bad things have gotten since then.

So what's all this got to do with what I write?

I had put into my head a serious sense of responsibility. That one has a duty to the future. To pay things forward. It is a duty and responsibility of every man born to do this. You are a man and it is what you do. I failed at doing my duty for a long time, but eventually I got my act together.

Now I talk people out of suicide. I help the mentally and physically disabled. I work with people getting out of mental hospitals and over the years I am proud to say I've saved quite a number of lives. A few of them have gone so far as to call me hero. One of my hobbies is rescuing dying cats. I have a real knack for keeping cats alive for some reason. I also work very hard to put ideas in people's heads. Get them to think. Ideas that will make them stronger, give them solace when they need it most. Mostly I do this by talking to them. I also do it through my writing.

However, as of late, things have gone really... really bad.

I've had a client I worked with for years lose it and wind up in jail ruining his life.
I've had a former client finally give into the demons in her head and finally catch that train she's been obsessing about.
I've got another who's 94 years old who I've had to transfer to a facility where she's going to be warehoused until she dies.
I've got a cat who is on death's door and I fear I will have to put him to sleep soon.
All of which I don't have time to deal with, because at this very moment, my wife is in surgery having two cysts removed from her lungs. She went in about 40 minutes ago.

Those cysts are not being removed to save her life.

No no no, it's too late to save the lungs. This surgery is just to determine if she qualifies to get a lung transplant. She's got about 2-3 years to live, and the lung transplant waiting list is about 3-4 years. Let's just skip over the 2.03% chance she never gets out of the surgery alive. It is 5 hours long and her lung will be collapsed most of the time. Hard enough for a healthy person, much less someone who's lungs are covered in scar tissue from an immune system deciding that said lungs are a threat.

Oh, did I mention I moved to a new home that was a ranch so my wife wouldn't need to go up and down stairs anymore? Turns out the construction next door to my old place shifted the ground and the corner of my house sunk. Twelve grand to fix IF I want any hope of even SELLING the place. I may just have to let it go into foreclosure.

Do you have any idea how expensive it is to pay for all the medical bills just TREATING my wife? Let's not get into the cost for this surgery, or the next one, or staying in the hospital. Even with insurance, I am being bled dry.

Not that I care.

I'll let you in on a secret. If you live long enough there will be a point where gold loses it's luster, diamonds stop sparkling, and the only thing you will value is TIME. Nothing else matters, except time. You start to measure everything you say and do in units of time. How much time wasted doing X, how to save time doing Y. What is important and needs to get done, and what you can put off because there are more important things to do.

Time spent with those who may not be around to spend with anymore.

However, given the situation, I, ironically, find myself like I am right now, sitting around and waiting while other people do what I cannot. They are being paid money both directly and indirectly by me to take the course of action that will give me more time. All I do is sit here, watching time pass.

It is amazing what you will sacrifice for mere moments.

And it is also amazing what becomes important. What gets brought into sharp clarity. What was important in your life, and what wasn't.

It. Is. MADDENING.

Trust me, just sitting here can drive you insane. You might WANT to spend every moment worrying about the one you love, (who might be dead as I type, but they just haven't come out to tell me yet) But there's no point. I am helpless. I have no control. At this point, it is up to the winds of fate. The butterfly will flap its wings, and maybe a tornado destroys a trailer park in Ohio.

To sit here and obsess would weaken me. It would leave me mentally unfit. So many people depend on me. The one that I love is the one dying, not I. I simply do not have the luxury to worry about myself. I cannot allow myself to spiral into depression. I MUST remain of sound mind. I MUST hold it together. Failure is not an option.

But you cannot FORCE yourself to hold it together.

The only way to remain of sound mind when the universe is falling apart is to experience Joy. Happiness will be beyond you, but not joy. You can't hold your breath in anticipation forever. You have to keep breathing. Moments of positivity can give you just enough "oxygen". A mouthful of air.

A gasp in a vast echoing void.

When I find myself unable to sleep, and unable to do anything productive, I write. I write about the life of a man who's life is infinitely more screwed than mine. Not just because he's in the long dark, but because of far darker things that are on his island. An island in a particularly skewed world with a few laws of physics that aren't in this one. And those laws make his world a nightmare with a thin illusion that keeps most people from going insane.

Nothing I write is just for fun, although I hope you smile from time to time.

I am describing a man who is fighting against cosmic horror, because I am fighting a more mundane horror and of the two, I would prefer the cosmic one. It would make more sense. The world that the Quonset Manager lives in is a terrible place, but it also has something the real world does not.

It has a face to punch.

There is something to blame for the horrors of QM's world. There is reason. There is logic. As unfair that world is, There is a face somewhere that deserves to be punched. His world has meaning.

My world has none. In my world, good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people, and there is no justice. Life is not fair in my world. And I tell myself, over and over, that this is a GOOD THING.

It is a good thing. Because if life was fair, that would mean I had it coming. It would mean I was a bad person being punished, or the people I love and care for are being punished. They are suffering because they are bad people... IF... the world is fair.

I know a man who was a first responder. He helped a little baby 18 months old. She had been raped by her step father so the mother could film it and sell the video on line to make money to buy the Heroin-Fentanyl combo that is so popular here in central New York.

Yes, I help my fair share of recovering drug addicts as well.

But his story... He told to me at 2am one night, I work the night shift you see. When the clients have problems, I'm the one who handles them. This was just him unloading about the horrors that finally broke him. When he finished describing it, I asked if the baby had it coming. He almost attacked me. And I asked again, "Did the baby deserve it?" And he screamed "No" and, "How could I ask such a thing?"

I replied, "So you know that life isn't fair. If it was fair, she would have deserved it. People want life to be fair, but not me. If life was fair, then everyone would win half the time, and lose half the time. Most people when they say they want things to be fair actually mean they want the world to be UNFAIR in their advantage."

"Me? I want everyone to win. I want everyone to be happy. Even the people who raped that baby. I wish they had been happy enough they didn't HAVE to have done it in the first place. I want to cheat. I want everyone to cheat and everyone to win. Because that would be unfair. And in an unfair world, that would be possible."

He settled down and let go of me. I waited until he had time to think before I continued, "I'm telling you this, because you want the world to be fair, and it CAN'T be fair. You can never make this right. You can NEVER punish the guilty enough in this case, and you can NEVER compensate the victim enough. If you try, you'll only fail and eventually try to kill yourself again."

"I'm sorry. I really am. But you need to accept this hell you are in and let it go. Life is a pile of good things and a pile of bad things. They don't cancel each other out. They both exist and you have to deal with both SEPARATELY. Nobody who ever won the lottery deserved it. That baby didn't deserve what happened to her either. All we can do is accept what we cannot change and try to make things better going forward."

"So you got a choice. You can drag everything down into flames and burn the world to ash, or you can try to make the world a better place. Let those who committed wrong be dealt with by the justice system. That's what it's for. It's not perfect, but it's better then the alternative."

"I don't expect you to forgive the mother or the step-father, but you need to put yourself first. Not just for you, but for those who depend on you. You aren't going to survive like this. You will keep breaking and winding up here until you find a way to let it go."

And he asked me how. I said, "I don't know. However, I have a board game over here. Let's try and get through the next twenty minutes."

...

Sometimes all I can do is get through the next twenty minutes.

And so I write. I write about silly things and horrifying things and true things and new ways of seeing things. I build a world based on truth and nonsense. It is a wall. It is a house of cards. It is a toy. It is a metaphor. It is a cross. It is... It's...

It's just a game.

A game I play to make myself forget the horror of the real world where I am powerless and helpless and alone. If I lie down nobody is coming to save me. In that respect, I identify with the Quonset Manager. In the end, nobody will save us. We get back up, or we die where we fall. That's my life. That's always been my life.

I tell myself that this is how things are, and that every other option would be worse.

This IS the best of all possible worlds, because every other option would be worse.

And occasionally I take some time to forget and to rest, not because I can't handle it. Far from it. I can handle the horror of my life just fine. The question is, For How LONG? Moments like this, where I write shit like this, is just to rest. Not because I want to, but because I NEED to. I need to relax and rest because...

Well...

Things will get worse. When things get worse, I need to be ready. I need to be at my best. I cannot allow myself to be anything less then 100% ready to do everything I can at a moment's notice. All I have right now is hope. All I can depend on is chance, and Chance is a fickle thing. if chance gives me an opportunity, I will have to be ready.

This is what I pour into the Quonset Manager. I pour all of this into him and it fills him and then I try to break him. Again and again and again and again I shatter him against the rocks. I pound the surf into his soul and lash the wind into his back. Because if he can make it 20 more minutes, maybe I can make it 20 more minutes.

If life was fair, hope couldn't exist.

If life was fair, nothing would change, except that you would deserve all the shit that happened to you. That's all it takes for life to be fair... for you to DESERVE what happens to you. Nothing changes, just the purpose... just the reasons... just the MEANING of your suffering. So, between the two: life being fair, or life having hope, I'll take hope.

I want to live in a world where sometimes...
Things works out in my favor...
Even if I don't deserve it.

Because right about now...

 

 

I could REALLY use an unearned miracle.

 

 

(And that's why I write.)

You unleashed quite the torrent of preaches, ideas, opinions, and other such philosophies upon me. This was like a present box, unwrapping it and seeing what lies inside was your own, squishy, blood oozing brain. You remind me a lot of a youtuber I enjoy heavily, perhaps you have heard of him, his name is Exurb1a. I think you your styles of writing, story telling, and other such word riddled thingamajigs are not indifferent. Thanks, this was a nice read, Im still young and dumb, so I cant quite relate to you yet, but I am quite afraid of just waking up one morning, wasting the time, stepping outside and getting killed by a car. What a way to go! Not necessarily a blaze of glory.  

Oh yes, and heres a quote from Darkest Dungeon I wanted to tack on, might not relate to you but I think you should here the gravelly rasp of Wayne June to get you into a chipper mood. 

 

Edited February 27, 2019 by FunkyFuggerson

[TheEldritchGod]

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Edited March 1, 2019 by TheEldritchGod

[TheEldritchGod]

Every origin ends where the story truly begins.

[TheEldritchGod]

This is going all house of zone. I'm serious. I need to know EVERY STEP of this. And we need someone else independent to corroborate. I don't think you truly understand what this means. It means that the literary world will explode. Your documentation needs to be perfect on this. The hand writing is correct. It matches his style perfectly.

But if you are correct, and we can find someone independent to confirm what you claim, then we're going to be famous. It also pisses me off. Any clues as to the point of origin of the paper and/or ink? We need to figure out the source of this forgery.

[SEE ATTACHED]

[TheEldritchGod]

We cannot call ourselves a hero. A hero is something someone else calls you. A fan seeks out the ideal of a person, not the person themselves.

 

We only see a snap shot of someone's life when they do something amazing. A sliver of someone's existence. The object of our praise knows his full life. For him, that slice you admire so much is just one note in a symphony. It's why so often someone who finds themselves being the subject of hero worship doesn't understand it.

 

How can I be worthy of being called a Hero? Do you have any idea what I've done?

 

We need heroes. They give us hope. We are grateful to people who have done great things and we want them to know it. Frequently they reject the praise because they feel unworthy. The fan doesn't understand why he's rebuffed. The Hero doesn't understand why anyone would care.

 

I don't know if I can be a hero. I was to someone once, maybe I can be again. I can't do anything amazing. I can't change the world. I'm not really anybody special. If anything, I'm more broken and screwed up then most.

 

I was once told,  "It doesn't matter what you say. What matters is what your audience hears." I thought I understood what she meant. But I didn't until today. Not really.

 

When we communicate. Whenever we say, do, gesture, or commit any form of communication, we create something. We send it out into the world. With luck, someone receives that thing.

 

We are responsible for that thing.

 

I know of a message.  The message was fear and pain. The creator let it go wild to run amuck across the world.

 

I sit here with my pen and I ask myself what can I do against such hate? How can I fight something so inhuman and cruel? I feel helpless. Like last time.

 

As I watched I realized I COULD do something.

 

I am a storyteller.

 

It told its story, and now I will tell another. I will stand at the edge and stare into the Abyss and it will blink. I will give you a message created specifically to protect you. I will send it into the world and while few will hear it, I know that I am not alone. Others will tell stories as well. And when enough stories have been told, its' story will DIE.

 

I will howl into the darkness.

 

Hopefully my story will lead you back into the light.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

S-F: gyorgyca-21220622034412

[Begin Transcript]

B: You there?

C: Hey. What you doing up this late?

B: Was surfing the net. Saw your post. Was wondering how you were.

C: Oh. - I'm Fine.

B: Really?

C: Yeah. As opposed to course. To be honest, I make lousy sandpaper.

B: I'm serious.

C: And I'm not. Don't worry about it. I'll survive.

B: Yeah. You talked about that on your show.

C: You listened to it? That's embarrassing.

B: If it's embarrassing, why did you make it?

C: Because I didn't think anyone I knew would listen to it, much less figure out who I was. If you'll notice, I never used my real name. How'd you find out anyways?

B: I'm as big a fan of QM as you.

C: Ah. Well It's - just a bad yesterday.

B: Want to talk about it?      

C: It's nothing. I don't know if you really want to hear me whine.

B: I'll serve it with some fava beans.

C: Heh. :Smiley Face: Okay. Yesterday was VP-day and I went through the whole day and never thought about it once. Usually there is an email at work, or someone writes Never Forget on the daily log book or you hear something on the radio or the news. But somehow, I went the entire day without hearing about it once. And I just didn't remember.

B: It was 15 years ago. It's okay not to think about it. Was it a bad day for you? I mean It was a bad day, but, extra bad for you?   

C: You could say that.

B: So say it. I got time.

B: ?

C: Sorry. Drying towels. Okay. Well, I was working at a hole in the wall collection agency full time because being a researcher doesn't pay squat in Hawaii. It was about six months before I got transferred to the DDD department, where careers go to die. It's where they send people they want to make so miserable that they quit so the company didn't have to pay unemployment. Nobody made money working for DDD. I had made such a stink about wanting to be a manager, they made me the manager of DDD.

My department was Nikki, a bulimic stripper with horrible teeth. I'm talking Portugal bad. Aaron was a blond haired white supremacist who was a whopping five feet nothing with a twenty foot chip on his shoulder and Goldstein was a pathological liar and the only two things I knew about him for certain was he was a Hoover here on a work visa and that he was Jewish. He would have quit if he didn't need the job to stay in the country.

However, I have a gift. I can read very quickly and I can find patterns in things that other people miss. My mind just breaks things down very quickly. It looked like that I was doomed until I started reading the files and checking the transfer of funds.

You see, DDD was a loan company that dealt with primarily commercial paper, but also worked with insurance brokers. I noticed a loop hole in the system. It was possible for a broker to, on behalf of his client, borrow money and if anything happened, the broker's client was the one left holding the bag. HOWEVER, when the deal is canceled and a refund occurs, the refund goes from the insurance company to the broker, not to the finance company.

B: I don't get it.

C: Okay. Ever get vehicular insurance? You have to pay up front for at least six months. Even if you are making payments. So what happens is that in house, your insurance company loans money from one department to another in your name. You don't even see it. That's how you can pay up front and make payments at the same time. However, if you deal with a broker, that loan doesn't have to be in house. You can get insurance from one company, the broker is another company, a finance loan from another company. Done right, it CAN save you money. Done wrong, the broker borrows money in your name, and if you cancel early, the refund goes into his pocket, and you are left holding the bag. The FULL amount of the loan is due and you owe it.

B: So the broker steals from you?

C: Technically, the broker owes you. He's just holding your money for you until you ask for it, which you don't know you can do because he never told you he had your money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars past due and all these suckers didn't understand why they owed so much. It's why nobody ever paid.

So I got it organized. I handled the paperwork to prove that the brokers were ripping people off. Goldstein was good with a legal talk off and he got people riled up to go stomp down to the brokers and demand their refund. If they got it, I settled the debt for whatever was left and the matter was solved.

If for some reason, that wasn't going to work, I gave the paper to Aaron and he just verbally beat the crap out of them. I think the guy was on crack. ACTUAL CRACK. He knew someone who managed to reverse engineer the drug. He was one motivated bill collector. But, if he couldn't get someone to pay, I'd send it over to Nikki, because she was just too nice and she sucked as a bill collector. But after Aaron pissing the debtor off, she was so nice, she could usually set up a payment arrangement. It was sweet. We all agreed to work everything like an assembly line, pool our bonuses, then split it evenly. We crushed our third month by six hundred percent of our goal. We broke the bonus structure. They rewrote it just for us.

B: You are sad about that?

C: No. I just want you to know what I had. On VP-day, I was working. We all were. At first we thought it was a horrible accident, then the reports started coming in. My client's main office was mainland downtown at ground zero to the attack. They never made it out. The people we called were all in the greater coastal area or just outside it.

B: That's sad.

C: No. What's sad is The owner wouldn't let anyone go home. He said, "Yes, It's horrible. But we still have a job to do, so get back to work." But there was no point. Every phone on the mainland was calling somewhere and the phones were jammed. Every call was a busy signal.

You have to understand. We were all friends. We hung out after work sometimes. Yes, even Aaron, the guy who's favorite song was, and I quote, "If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked you a Kike." Was friends with Goldstein, and vice versa.  It's amazing what a boat load of money can do to change a person's attitude. They both insulted each other constantly, but it was a friendly exchange. Goldstein called Aaron, "The only good Nazi." Aaron said Goldstein was the "Best Jew Money Could Buy"

So we were just sitting around chatting, because there was nothing to do. By noon a quarter of the people had left. The boss required people to use sick time and it would count against their maximum number of times you could call in sick for the year. So  everyone in DDD stayed because they couldn't afford to take the time off. I stayed because I was a department manager.

About two in the afternoon The owner came storming over and yelled at us, saying, "Why aren't you making calls?" And I told him our debtors were primarily mainland. He said, "SO?" And Goldstein chimed in, "Hundreds of people just died over there! The Phone lines are all jammed up! It's nothing but busy signals!"

My boss got right in his face, pointed one of his fat, sausage-like fingers right at Goldstein's nose and said, "Then I had better find three hundred busy signals on your phone report tomorrow!" Then turned so fast he knocked over the cubical wall before be fumbled with it, then just ordered me to fix it before he went to his office.

Nikki ran out of the room crying. Aaron tried cracking a joke but Goldstein just glared at him. Four thirty was quitting time. Goldstein walked up to me and said, "I'm calling in sick until my sick time runs out. Then I quit. Can you do that for me?" I said yes and he said, "Tomorrow this will all sink in for these people. Right now it's not real. But I can't work here another day. I'm know that means my visa will expire. As soon as it's safe, I'm going back to my home." And he shook my hand. I said goodbye. He never did.

The department never recovered. It might have, but the next day we found out everyone in the client's office was dead. The company who subcontracted us eventually went under, they broke up the three of us remaining and I went back to medical billing. About a month later I got a job working for a bank in for their late stage department for their in house credit card.

B: That's... horrible.

C: You don't know the half of it. After that I was angry. I mean, really angry. A whole lot of issues came back. I hated everyone. I made it my job to make as many people miserable as possible. And I did. I wound up just being a total asshole and tortured people for the next three years before I finally got my shit together again. That didn't happen until I finally got tenure.

B: I'm... sorry. I suspect... well. I don't know what to say. I know you always complained when I brought it up, but you aren't a bad guy, just because you did bad things. Remember what the Manager would say, "A pile of good things, a pile of bad things blahblahblah."

C: Please don't.

B: You restarted My HEART. That makes you a hero!

C: I'm no hero. Trust me.

B: You saved my life.

C: You were already in the hospital. If I hadn't started CPR, someone else would have. I was just by your bed. You only flat lined for like, three seconds. If I had gone to the bathroom, it would have been someone else.         

B: But it wasn't someone else. You also volunteer down at the hospital. You do a lot for the community. You are an amazing writer!

C: Last week I was helping someone at the hospital, an older guy. He couldn't talk and was in his own little world. I was helping him get to the bathroom when he freaked out, dropped to his knees and punched me so hard in the balls I crapped blood and was laid up in bed for three days on painkillers and muscle relaxant to prevent getting a hernia. The man didn't even know my name, or his own for that matter.

B: I. Fuck. That sucks. I didn't know that. That sounds horrible! I... You... didn't say anything.

C: Why? I don't mind. He couldn't help it. He freaked. He was having a panic attack. He couldn't help himself. So why take it personal? I wish the company would reimburse me for the protective cup I bought, but ever since the new govcare changes, nobody in the system has any money. It is what it is. Moving on.

B: ... I don't know how to help you.

C: You're the one who wanted me to talk about what was on my mind. Don't blame me if what I say bothers you.

B: That's not what I meant. :Frowny Face:. I just don't know what to say to make you feel better.

C: Who said I was sad. I'm just... melancholy. It's a mood. I'm enjoying being depressed. I'll get over it. I just get into this mood sometimes. I'll get over it. Especially since I declared my show finished. I'll have so much more free time. It's all cool. I'm good. Don't worry about it! :Smiley Face:

B: You should finish the show.

C: It is finished. I ended it. Episode seven ended on a happy note. It's as good a place as any to stop.

B: I found your old post. The one you deleted. You promised ten episodes. It's what you said.

C: Okay... Now you are getting all stalker. And I made two bonus episodes, so technically it's nine episodes. Close enough.

B: I listened to it. You need to finish it. You need to make the last episode.

C: WTF? Dude. It's a happy ending. So everything isn't wrapped up. Who cares?

B: I care. It was good. Really really good. You cried one episode. You can't fake that. It was good and I want to know how it ends. How it really ends. Please? You owe one more episode.

C: I DON'T OWE YOU JACK!

[18 minute delay]

C: I shouldn't have typed that. I shouldn't have slammed my JM shut and I sure as hell shouldn't have ignored you. I'm sorry. That was wrong of me.

B: I'm sorry. It was my fault. I'm not good at expressing myself. I have been doing some research. I found something. Something in one of the stories that The Manager wrote. I found evidence the story was tampered with.

C: What?

B: That's why I want you to do one more episode. I have something HUGE. Something so mind breaking huge that it will shatter the world! I really wanted to release it myself, but I'm a nobody and you're a famous professor! I just want my name on it when you tell everyone.

C: Stop buttering me up.

C: Fine.

C: Send me what you got.

[End transcript]

Edited March 10, 2019 by TheEldritchGod