Professor Mago didn't know what to expect from the new classes at Alexylva University. Sure, the university was renowned across the empire as a hub of paratechnology. He could thank the Triumvirate for them, as shadowy as their operations were, but alas, the Triumvirate sometimes made really, really, questionable decisions. From what he'd heard, they were doing something quite unheard of: rather than losing the occasional device or two to the Phitransium's baseline, they began to communicate to those on the baseline. A man who called himself Anderson, and said he was a master in automaton masonry. Granted, he'd never seen Anderson, nor had anyone else on campus, but considering how much focus the Triumvirate was putting into these classes, he was no doubt some celebrity.
The area surrounding Alexylva's main office was always a centrum of hubbub. Students getting schedules, relaxing with friends, and the all too common franticism of faculty when getting new class assignments. Mago shifted past the Praetors, their scowling faces scooting by to offer him access to the wall where professor class assignments were posted. Adjusting his glasses to the tip of his nose, Mago ran a finger down the cold stone tablets, stopping once he saw his name: Mago, Fulvius, assigned to a new course. AN/AX-054, “The Pinocchio Question,” alongside one “Hannibal Locke.” How peculiar. He shoved through the rest of the faculty scrambling to read the tablets, and headed through the open doorway of the main office. Passing a fresco of Tanit, he ran a hand through his quickly graying and fraying hairs, as he came up to the front desk.
“Excuse me,” he harrumphed, causing the attending receptionist to look at Mago in distaste, as if he'd just told her that her goblet of wine had been spilled into East Sylvanos' oceans. “I require my lesson tablets, please.” Sighing, the secretary put down her mug of coffee, and flipped through a large filing cabinet towards the back of her desk, before fishing out the required materials. Handing them over, she urged him towards the door, where a few students had begun to toss around a football.
Scowling, he yelled as the football struck his tablet, nearly shattering it upon the floor. “Hey! You heathens! Throw your ball onto the floor, or I will report thee to the Triumvirate!” He rose his fist as the students turned tail and ran, the lilting sounds of their laughs floating in the wind. Shaking his head and muttering a few ancient Carthagian curses, Mago made the long trek to his room, nestled in a small corner of the brick Parascientific wing. Shuffling his papers and reviewing his tablets, he prepared for the long class to come.
The next weeks went by quickly. Each day, hundreds of eager new faces shuffled through his class, and out the door. Each seemed a model student in Mago's head, all simply itching to learn. He was proud of his class, all of them, for they were true Romuli and Remi, each vying for the perfect grade, wanting to lap up every last drop from the mother wolf's teat. And his teaching showed how grateful he was. Mago regaled the class with his tales of his escapades when he was younger, back when his beard wasn't quite so long, when his hairs weren't quite so gray, and when there were more of them. He enjoyed this, this idea of being the figure that everyone turned to. That people looked up to. That people thought was cool for being knowledgeable. And like a dragon, he spit his knowledge like sparks, and the students' brains were like tinder. Their curiosity's flame blazed bright.
Stroking his beard whilst grading the last final of the second course, Mago looked up as he studied the peculiar machine in the back of the room. Its single eye stared at him unceasingly, as it stood proudly upon its three legs. Its ears were folded back, as if it could spring to life at any time. Sadly, its operator wasn't here at the moment, but the professor still didn't trust the machine at all. It looked like nothing he'd seen before, and worked in mysterious ways. A camera, the Triumvirate called it, and it was capable of capturing his soul's essence and replaying it back for all to see. Well, all who had access to something the Triumvirate and his brief co-professor called the Internet. From what he had heard, the place sounded absolutely wonderful. A place for the zeitgeist to access any knowledge, at any time, and it was free to almost everyone in the baseline. The mere thought of it tickled Mago's ear hairs.
He looked back to the assignments. Mago had always thought, over the past two semesters or so that the class had been running, that the final projects were a tad… strange. Building entire automatons? Ones that looked like professors? When he had come up to the one that Aquilia and Gaius had made of him, he was struck by a sense of uncanniness when he poked and prodded the automaton's hair and eyes. They blinked, and to his surprise, vocalized in a voice familiar to him.
“HELLO PROGENITOR,” it spoke. “I AM UNIT M4-G0, DESIGNED TO REPLICATE YOUR ACTIONS AND THOUGHT PROCESSES.” Mago had nervously shaken its hand, to which it had responded, “FABULOUS GRIP OLD BOY,” in the same deep, grandfatherly tone which the professor used. He refused to see anymore and gave the two students perfect scores. He in fact, couldn't look at any of the professor's copies, for they only gave him a lingering sense of dread. The feeling that something was simply… off about them. 'Of course something's off about them, the damn things are automatons. Talos would be proud,' Mago thought, as he recollected the experience.
He was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Come in," Mago cried. He believed it was one of his students. Most likely, he'd mistakenly given one a bad grade after peering at their automaton. The experience proved most jarring. Though not quite as jarring as Mago looking up to see an automaton, though incomplete.
"YOU ARE BEING RESCUED," it clicked, and Mago could see gears, bells, and whistles, clank and turn as the automaton's incomplete shell gave away its artificial nature. "PLEASE DO NOT RESIST, FOR YOU WILL NOW JOIN KNOWLEDGE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SACRIFICE," it continued buzzing, before raising an arm. As the professor reached for his glasses, Mago could hardly see the automaton's arm swing down to strike him over the head.
Then, all was black.

The light flashed. The predators howled. The metal clanked.
And he woke.
Once Mago awoke, he struggled, for he was bound in chains. His eyes revealed only fear, as he looked with wide eyes, and saw his students eagerly noting his reactions. Gingerly poking at his flesh, excited to examine it with no more than a knife and scalpel. Mago roared and rattled his chains. The students did nothing but dutifully take notes upon their tablets the dirt. And then they came for him. They sliced his skin open, pulled back his wrinkles with their scalpels, pinned down his tissue to the bed with tacks.
Mago did not hear the android state that faculty replacement had begun, nor did he realize he was only the first in a long line of those to be put under the knife. But he realized one thing as the saw drew blood across his body, as his ear hairs and eardrums tickled for the last time at the students whispers at what a great job Aquilia and Gaius had done.
No, it was not the blade which killed him. Rather, curiosity killed the cat.


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A Business Dinner
Collabcon entry involving MC&D and Oneiroi Collective
Authors: AlanDaris & Arbelict
The second part of the storyline: SCP-4363
~~ More Alan Stuff ~~

Jack Aldrin flinched and looked up from his tablet as the car swerved at an intersection. The man shook his head and continued to view the documents. Page after page of latest shipments, exhibited and sold items, commodities negotiated over with other, smaller dealers flickered on the screen. Each and every document bore Aldrin's digital signature.
This week's results were rather mediocre for the sales representative. He could only hope that everything will go as planned at the upcoming meeting. Aldrin opened the bookmarks and frowned as an item's description appeared on the screen:

YFH54/DS197/0F002

Status
Withdrawn from the auction due to discovered flaws

Demand
Medium

Value
12,000$ for a copy

Availability
Supply contract is avoided. Five available copies are placed in stock.

Description
A 30-cm vinyl record from 2018. The product is a copy of the purchased item YFH54/DS197/0F001, presumably produced by the "Oneiroi Collective". The recording features various sounds that are capable of inducing a state similar to lucid dreaming in the listener. The contents of the record tent to change slightly in-between the listenings, the record itself does not require a “restart” and keeps playing until the user leaves the dream voluntarily. The product is highly valued by customers as an effective means of stress relief and treatment of sleep-related disorders. A non-anomalous player comes with a copy as a gift.

Marshall, Carter and Dark, LLP

The man put his tablet aside and began to sort through possible concessions, demands, and proposals in his head. Failure was not an option. His career perspectives directly depended on this agreement. Aldrin opened his planner and tried to find an entry about this business dinner — what if he got the time wrong? His thoughts were interrupted by his driver's soft voice, announcing that the car drove up to the tower of Millennium Trade Center. The man sprinkled a breath freshener into his mouth and headed to the meeting.
The tower's high-speed elevator reached the top floor in no time; the upscale restaurant “Classique” was situated on the roof. The maître d' met the familiar visitor with a smile and led him to his favorite table on the very edge, which provided a wonderful view of the neighboring towers as well as the dazzling web of night streets. Stars in the sky were shining brightly despite the city's glow. The waiter, wasting no time, brought a bottle of Aldrin's favorite white wine. The man didn't want to drink this night, but still accepted the compliment.
"A wonderful night, isn't it, Mr. Aldrin?" sang the maître d', sincerely smiling.
"Indeed, Mr. Trigul. My guest will be here any minute, I'll refrain from ordering until then."
"Don't worry, Mr. Aldrin. Mr. Temnikov was very worried about your personal time, so he called and informed us about his preferences,” the maître d' snapped his fingers and pointed the waiters to Aldrin's table. "He also apologized for his possible slight lateness. Please."
The sales representative ordered a seafood dish and began to look at the glowing city. Quiet applause rang out as the pianist finished another piece and bowed his head politely. Aldrin didn't recognize the next melody, yet it seemed strikingly pleasant and very familiar. Just like the pianist's appearance.
A voice with a slight accent called the sales representative by name. The man turned around.
"Good evening, Mr. Aldrin, I apologize again for this delay."
A blue-eyed man in his forties, dressed in a snow-white suit with a gray handkerchief was standing near the table. Aldrin hurriedly got up and shook the guest's hand.
The men sat at the table. As the waiters poured wine and placed the dishes, the guests sat silently with friendly smiles on their faces. Finally, the staff left their table.
"Mr. Temnikov, I'm very glad to see you. I'm sure this long-awaited meeting will benefit us all."
"Of course. We're also full of optimism," Temnikov responded with a smile.
"To success!" Aldrin raised his glass.
"And trust," his guest added.
The guests put aside their glasses and began to eat. The dish Oneiroi representative ordered turned out to be a rabbit in white sauce.
"To be fair, it is very unusual to have a conversation with a member of Oneiroi collective in such a simple way. This is an honor for us. I believe signing this agreement will benefit us all"
"Yes, Mr. Aldrin, as we informed you in the preliminary letter, Oneiroi are interested in your offer on the distribution of our items. The collective has long been looking for methods to properly distribute some… ahem… tools. Your offer is very generous, giving us an opportunity to distribute our wares through a reputable organization. The financial part is also important for Oneiroi, despite everything the uninitiated might tell you."
Both guests laughed and drained their glasses. On the stage, a small jazz band finished performing a blues-style composition and was rewarded with a round of applause. An attractive woman in a red dress got up from the nearest table along with her companion and went dancing.
"Mr. Aldrin… Mr. Aldrin…" Temnikov gently called his interlocutor.
"Oh, sorry, I got distracted by this beautiful couple," Aldrin gave a guilty smile and returned to the meal.
"Actually, we have another proposal for your collective. You see, because of our unscrupulous suppliers, we now have a rather irritating problem."
"I'm afraid I'm not authorized to conduct additional negotiations. But I'll gladly hear your suggestions," said the Oneiroi representative while finishing off the veal and starting with the dessert.
"Mr. Temnikov… Recently, a certain vinyl record found its way into our hands. Probably, of your production. A very valuable item. We didn't sell it, but…"
"Decided to forge it instead," said the other man, making an expressive gesture with his ice cream spoon.
"Ahem… Well, yes. Needless to say, our suppliers couldn't handle this task properly. Our customers have suffered. And now MC&D's reputation is hanging in balance."
"And what is your suggestion?" Temnikov pushed the pudding away and glared at Aldrin.
"We need your help. They are stuck there, in a dream. Nothing can awaken them, not even stopping the records. We value all customers, but these are especially important. A senator, an Archbishop and a CEO of a large corporation. Frankly, we really screwed up, Mr. Temnikov."
"I hear you, Mr. Aldrin. Oneiroi are aware of this problem, but I'm afraid you have little understanding of what happened there. In simple terms, this problem does not have an on/off button."
"Marshall, Carter and Dark LLP will reimburse all costs and pay generously for troubling. Please get them out of there," Aldrin pleaded.
"Good. We are ready to provide such a service. Once," Temnikov said with pressure, "as a gesture of goodwill and a demonstration of reliability. I guess we can sign the collaboration agreement right now."
"Here? But how? We need to draft a document, and, I think, we still need to negotiate some other points…"
"Everything has long been agreed upon and all necessary documents are here with me. Let's finish right here," Temnikov knocked on the now empty table with his knuckles. "Otherwise, we will have to wait for the next night."
Temnikov smiled broadly. Aldrin abruptly jumped up from his seat, gazing at the Oneiroi representative with fright.
"Yes, Mr. Aldrin, that's right. But I want to assure you right away that this dream is fully yours. Everything around." The man spread his arms. "Is your creation. Probably, in your dreams, our meeting should look exactly like this. And actually, this stands true for me as well"
"So you're not real!?" Aldrin exclaimed in terror. Frightened by his own scream, the man looked around. The jazz band, waiters and maître d' disappeared. The restaurant was now completely empty.
"What a strange, yet at the same time, obvious question to ask in a dream. Is any of it real?" Temnikov smiled, "I won't play games with you, Mr. Aldrin, I'll just say it as it is. I'm just a dream. An Idea. My voice, my appearance, my manners, even my name, are all made up. By you."
Aldrin sat down and turned his head towards the city. The view had slightly changed.
"So, this meeting is an empty shell, just my ordinary dream…" the sales representative grubbed his head, "I'm so confused."
"This is the only place where we could meet safely," said Temnikov, putting aside his cup of coffee, "As a demonstration of our trustworthiness, Oneiroi decided not to visit your dream personally, sending me, a representative, instead. Some people are not pleased when strangers penetrate their heads. Especially people of high standing, such as yourself."
"But you did penetrate!"
"And we return to the question of me being real. Your head is clear, the Oneiroi simple gave you their conditions and provided a place where you can consider them. A perk of our trade," Temnikov smiled.
Aldrin fumbled for his cigarette case and reached for a cigarette. Gently, but resolutely, Temnikov covered the silver box with his hand, shook his head and said:
"You don't need neither fire nor smoke in dreams."
Aldrin obediently closed the cigarette case.
"I don't remember anything prior to our meeting. How did I get into the car, how did we agree…"
"Your people were looking for a way to meet with us for quite a long time. At some point, we decided to make contact. Our courier gave you a package with instructions and everything you needed. Since we are talking right now, that means you have risked this meeting and, it's worth saying, you are a very brave person. Or maybe this deal matters a lot to you."
Temnikov finished his coffee and began to look at the city. A rumble of thunder rolled somewhere in the distance.
"Oh, what a nuisance. We need to hurry. You know, we are investing a lot of money in international research to reduce noise pollution, but it's pointless to go against the forces of nature."
Temnikov grabbed Aldrin by the wrist and leaned forward.
"Listen carefully, Aldrin. Your dream will soon fall apart, so there is no time for ceremonies. We're all in favor of honest dialogue, so we won't give you a reason to think that we're trying to deceive you on our own territory. Yes, your dream only lasts several pitiful minutes, of which you'll remember mere seconds, but we'll give you what you need. After waking up, you will find a transcript of everything that happened here. Word by word. And a ready-made collaboration agreement. You are business people, right? You love these papers."
Temnikov took out two folded documents from his inside pocket. The wind rose around the tower. Glittering lightning illuminated the platform and the rain began to pour.
"So, do we have a deal!?" Temnikov gave Aldrin a pen.
A hurricane twirled pieces of dust and raindrops around the tower. The rain gradually turned into a storm. The water flooded everything around, streamed from his wet hair to his face, getting into his eyes. Temnikov covered the papers with the flap of his jacket. Another flash illuminated his contorted face.
"Make up your mind!" screamed Temnikov.
"I… I can't! To make such decisions in a dream… This document can change at any moment just like everything else did!" Aldrin quickly looked around.
"It was you who composed it! This is your dream, your contract!"
Sounds of crushing concrete and breaking windows echoed through the roof. With deafening noise, the neighboring towers began to crumble. Lightning strikes were getting louder and louder. Aldrin couldn't hear Temnikov's screams and leaned close to his lips.
"We have no issues with it! We can sign our copy here!" Temnikov shouted over the roar of wind and thunder, "and you can sign yours at home! No risks!"
Aldrin gave a thumb up and nodded. Temnikov began to quickly put squiggles on the papers. The platform started vibrating, seemingly ready to fall down at any moment.
"Hurry, hurry!" Screamed Aldrin to Temnikov who then stamped a seal on the contract.
"Done," said Temnikov in a loud and unexpectedly calm manner. The man handed over both copies to the sales representative and shook his hand.
"Sleep well and have a great day."
After these words, the roof instantly collapsed and Aldrin fell into the dark, vast void.

Jack Aldrin flinched and got out of bed. Squared windows of his room were generously watered with streams of rain, thunder could be heard in a distance. The man looked at the clock, it showed 4 AM. There was still plenty of time to sleep.
Aldrin got up and went to the kitchen to pour himself some milk. The bright light of the refrigerator slashed his eyes, forcing him to squint.
"What an interesting dream it was", thought the sales representative, searching for a pack of milk in the fridge, "An Oneiroi representative, a dinner in "Classique". A pretty good dinner. But then that rain… Wait a minute. A dream? Oneiroi?"
Aldrin looked around in dismay. The man put the glass aside and walked around his mansion, looking into several rooms. After calming down and rejecting his grim thoughts, he returned to bed and fell asleep again. Hidden by the gloom, a stack of damp papers was laying on the bedside table.


Despite all the strange, dangerous, and downright ridiculous things that Omega-7 dealt with on a near daily basis, hearing the words "team building exercise" out of Able's mouth had to be one of the weirdest occurrences yet. And they had fought a hoard of octopus headed zombies just the other week, and subdued a dangerous cult of 'spidertaurs' (centaurs but with spiders) the week before (a messy job). And even in comparison to those events, it seemed terribly strange.
That was until they all found themselves standing across from him in one of the site's gym halls with foam balls, the weapon of choice for this battle, scattered across the ground. No-one was sure of the motive for teaching Able how to play, but it was unanimously agreed that it was probably something to do with Dr Bright. But Able wasn't telling.
Able's idea of a team building exercise, simply put, was this: the whole of Omega-7 vs him in an (almost) no holds barred dodgeball match. And no-one was stopping until someone opposing him finally got a hit in on him. It was bound to be chaotic. The only rule was no aiming for the groin (something something honour ect). (And you had to sit off to the side, on the colloquially named bench of shame, once you were hit. Poor A-A was spending most of his time there.)
Able -despite only being told the rules approximately three hours ago, according to his own words- had learned exceedingly quickly and turned out to have some lethal accuracy when it came to throwing balls that nearly matched his accuracy in throwing weapons, though one could argue that a foam ball did count as a weapon in his hands. After all, if a nerf sword had counted, surely a dodgeball would too. The bruises were inevitable, and there would be many of them. Training the day after was going to be hellish.
Round one barely even lasted a minute.
Yaakov got hit square in the forehead in round three, and was knocked out for several seconds before Bayou helped him up and he joined A-A on the bench of shame. It was about then that Omega-7 realised that with enough speed and the right angle, one of these foam balls could easily spell serious injury. Or maybe even death, with enough force behind it.
A-A actually lasted a little over ten seconds in round four, and then was promptly hit in the left side with some considerable force when he excitedly turned to Lucas, commenting "Hey, I'm actually not doing too bad!". Able yelled at him for not paying attention as he hung his head and returned to his rightful place on the bench. In that same round Julian's hiccups, which had been persisting since halfway through the previous round, were cured by an extremely forceful hit to the chest which also left him winded for several minutes.
Round six involved Iris making an extremely undignified sound after tripping up on a ball aimed at her feet and landing on her ass, which it later turned out had resulted in a bruised coccyx, and Lucas using Vaughn as a human shield after shouting "Every man for himself!". Vaughn did get put out with a ball to the leg toward the end, but not before sidestepping a ball aimed for him and letting it hit Lucas, who muttered something about 'betrayal' and 'treachery' as he walked off the play area.
Round 14 put Julian on the bench for the forseeable future; A ball hit her hand and bent it back at a awful angle, accompanied by a noise that she would rather not have heard.
Able only called for a brief break after twenty rounds, in every one of which he absolutely decimated the rest of Omega-7. While everyone sat on the bench, tired, panting, and thoroughly battered, he stood in front of them. He hadn't even broken a sweat.
"You're all missing the point of this exercise." he growled, unimpressed, "You are meant to work together. Communicate!"
"With all due respect…" Bayou looked up from tiredly studying the floor, "Dodgeball isn't really a great team game. It's like Monopoly. It practically breeds hatred."
Vaughn chose that moment to give Lucas a very pointed look.
"Well you'll have to come up with a strategy. Together. We aren't stopping until you people defeat me at least once! Understand?"
A chorus of tired "okay"s and "yes, sir"s followed. Able squinted critically at them for quite some time, and a feeling of nervousness crept up on all of them under the close scrutiny. It was like a uniform inspection before school photos by a notoriously strict teacher; thoroughly uncomfortable.
"You have three minutes." he said finally.
"Only three?" A-A exclaimed.
"Think of something. In a real battle you wouldn't even have that long!"
Able crossed his arms over his chest and walked to the opposite side of the room, leaning against the far wall and silently counting the seconds.
Vaughn sighed, "This is useless. How the hell are we supposed to beat that?"
"He's not our commander for no reason, that's for sure." Yaakov took a swig from his water bottle and sat back, determined to get the most rest out of the two minutes as possible.
"So…" A-A said, cautiously optimistic in the fact that maybe not all hope was lost, "Does anyone actually have a plan?"
"Nope"
"Not a thing."
"Nada."
A-A's cautious optimism was fading embarrassingly quickly, almost as quickly as their remaining time. A couple of seconds of awkward silence followed, until it was broken.
"Actually," Iris piped up, "I might have an idea… Everyone huddle in, I only have time to say this once."

"Your time is up!" Able barked across the room as he strode back to his side of the court and tossed a ball in Omega-7's direction, breaking up the squad's huddle, "For your own sakes, I hope you've come up with something."
The team looked at each other and nodded. Suddenly it all seemed a lot more serious; with any luck this would be a real chance to impress. However, if they screwed this up, they'd look anything but competent. Also, Able now seemed more pissed off than usual, meaning the chance of injury was now significantly higher.
A-A was the first out: no surprise there. He got a ball square in the chest, but seemed oddly happy about taking his seat on the bench. The rest were lasting well; Able even yelled some praise at Nicole after a particularly impressive dodge, and was so focused on the game that he barely registered the flash of light to his right side, assuming it was nothing but the sun glinting through the window. He aimed a ball at Iris, only to find it blocked by Yaakov's arm, putting him out instead. And after he'd been doing so well, too. That self sacrificing attitude would do him no good in the field.
He barely noticed the tiny white shape that slid across the floor.
He did notice how most of the team had moved to one side of the room. A foolish move on their part, and he couldn't help but shake his head. They were making themselves a bigger target! With his attention on the valuable lesson about spacing he was about to give his team, he was delayed in noticing the ball rolling behind him. When he turned his head, it was gone from where it should have been-
And just a second later, he felt it hit his back.
He whipped around, confused. There had been no one at his flank, so how in the hell had he been hit from behind? And then, his eyes landed on his team who were cheering and crowding Iris, who was laughing and holding a slip of paper in her hand. No, not a slip of paper. A photograph.
All at once it all fell into place; A-A's upbeat attitude when he was put out, the flash to his right, the thing that slid across the floor. Able realised that he had lost. He strode over and took a seat on the bench of shame as Iris was hoisted up onto Vaughn's shoulders. All it took was a loud cough into his fist to have the team's attention back on him. He could tell from the look on their faces they thought he would chew them out for cheating, but he would do no such thing. After all, the only real rule he had laid down was no aiming for the groin.
Well, that and the rule that said once you were beaten, you were to sit on the bench of shame.
"You have all done well." he announced, "That was a truly unique strategy. Who was it that spawned it?"
Iris shyly waved from atop Vaughn's shoulder's.
Able nodded approvingly, "You have bested me yet again, girl. Looks truly are deceiving." he stood with a bow, "You have all bested me."
The celebratory cheers returned. Iris punched the air, and near lost her balance on her perch after a particularly good high five from Bayou. Able laughed and headed for the door. He should have known better than to look down on his team in such a way. After all, they were his chosen elite.
"Your victory calls for celebration!" he proclaimed with a sharp toothed grin, "Come, to the cafeteria!"

"Um, Commander? Julian's wrist is broken."

"…Alright, to the infirmary! And then the cafeteria!"


Exaggerations were never beneath her — she always tended to have an eye for whimsy — but castles that rise up into the sky? Stars that shine as bright in the day as at night? Land of honey? Whatever she described, it was not New York.

Author's Note: This Tale has FOUR different chapters. Please see the navigation links at the bottom of each page to view the next part of the article!

Land of Honey
Authors: KindlyTurtleClem and Lt Flops (Author Page)
This article was written by FIRE TURTLE (Clem & Floppy) for the 2019 Collaboration Contest! The two primary Groups of Interest featured are Fifthism and Church of the Second Hytoth.
Go here for the second entry!

Special Thanks:
To the following fine critters for their great feedback on this work:

UraniumEmpire
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Image Sources:

Iteration 2: Photo of Women – The Library of Congress, No known copyright restrictions
Iteration 3: UIU Logo – CC BY-SA 3.0
Iteration 3: Charles Ponzi/Marina – Public domain
Iteration 4: Construction Paper – Public domain

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F.A.Q.

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Letters sent by one Patrick O'Sullivan.

FEBRUARY 27, 1915
DEAR MOTHER,

I am writing to you from a cellar on 155th Street.

It borders two places: One named Harlem, and another named Washington Heights. I arrived off the steamer from Liverpool to Ellis Island, scurried past the clerks and watchers, and hastily made my way from Jersey to Manhattan. I spent several days trying to find work and rent, settling for housing in a winery with four other migrants. I can say with utmost certainty that Dublin had less Irish than New York. Everywhere I've gone, all — or at least, almost all — have looked like me. They are all poor and ragged and running like pigeons to work for bread.

The streets here are not paved with gold; in fact, some are not paved at all. At night they are overrun with rats as thick as dogs. The belching smoke from the chimneys chokes the air and makes rainy days all the more suffocating.

Those shipbrokers and emigration agents lied to me when they told me of "vast volumes of gold" and the "buildings made ivory." So did the letters from Maggie.

She was nowhere by the docks when I came, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of her since I took lodge beneath the winery.

Please, do not send Father or Uncle here, and do not come here yourself — not before I have found work with a decent wage. A Pole that I room with said that a nearby factory favoured Irishmen over Germans and Italians. I will head there by the morning.

Greet everyone at home for me. For the time being, tell them that Maggie is safe with me.

-P. O'Sullivan

MARCH 19, 1915
DEAR MOTHER,

I worry for Maggie.

The letter she sent a year ago made no sense. Exaggerations were never beneath her — she always tended to have an eye for whimsy — but castles that rise up into the sky? Stars that shine as bright in the day as at night? Land of honey? Whatever she described, it was not New York.

I remember when we were young, we would read the posters and poems and newspapers from Father's small print shop. She was always frail and soft-spoken. Short fiction and poetry were where she found her true voice — bereft of her stutters, her timidity, her nervous ticks, and her ennui. Her thoughts were so-often filled with tales of worlds that were seas away from Dublin, rich with all manner of exotic feasts and people and culture.

When she came down with an outbreak of typhus, it made her write more feverishly, often writing by candlelight into the early morning. By the grace of God, she recovered and had penned a series of stories that grew increasingly incoherent from page-to-page — an anthology of hectic, angry stars, screaming into the night. I remember when you and Father could not make heads or tails of it and recommended she take a nursing job, instead of becoming a writer.

Afterwards, I do not know why she took the steamer first to America. Perhaps, she saw Lady Liberty on a postcard and her mind went west.

I miss her.

Yesterday, on my way to work at the factory, I walked past a very young pale thing that looked exactly like her. The small girl had feathers in her hair and smelled far too clean for the city. She snuck into an alleyway, knocked five times on a handleless door, and was allowed in by someone behind it.

I noticed men often flocked there by night. Others were women — in groups of no more than fifteen and no less than eight — who went in from time to time, and they often came out bruised or limping.

It appears that the degradations of man do not fear our Lord here. It appears that the Lord is blind to the alleyways.

Maggie has no place here; I pray for her safety.

Greet everyone at home for me. Tell them Maggie has found work as a nurse.

-P. O'Sullivan

MAY 12, 1915
DEAR MOTHER,

The summer swelters here.

I regret to inform you that I, your son, Patrick O'Sullivan, lack the funds to purchase tickets for all of you. I regret to inform you that I have had little time to pursue the whereabouts of your daughter, my sister, Maggie. It is a man's duty to provide, and it is this duty that I feel I have failed in.

I have worked long and hard for meagre wages. The foreman keeps us busy from dawn until dusk with little more than two dollars per wrought iron sheet. The large Bessemer converters that help process raw ore often cause accidents amongst the unfocused labourers. I wish that neither you nor Father will have to see a man's arm melt from mishandled leakage. It is enough to make a man believe in the murmurs of anarchists and the whispers of communists, both of whom demand unionization.

At work, I always take the machines by the windowsill. The window is affixed with black-iron bars on the exterior, further obfuscated by a red-bricked wall. Between the crevices of two buildings, I see the alleyway — the one I had mentioned previously — as if the Lord confronts me and the Devil goads me. I can view them as they come out — faceless and blurry, further obfuscated by the old window.

They wear street worker's outfits. I shall not speak on the details of such, but some possess these queer feathered wings strapped to their backs. Maybe it is the heat or the sweat from my brow. Perhaps, I may be seeing things, but some seem to drift ever so steadily above the concrete floor.

All appear as Maggie does.

Perhaps, this is divine providence — a sign — or perhaps, these images are simply fuelled by my regret and frustration. By tomorrow, I will visit that place in the alleyway and knock five times on the door.

Greet everyone at home for me. I will find Maggie.

-P. O'Sullivan

/

Letters from O'Sullivan

NEXT: Letters between Castelli and De Luca

rating: +107+–x


Terras-Mons is under siege.
It began with a pamphlet containing unspeakable secrets, passed from Terran to Terran in a small building. The experiments conducted that night would have been considered impossible eons ago, even moreso considering its conclusions. Retries of various kinds were performed again and again in an attempt to disprove the results, to no avail. The knowledge they gained, unknown to the world at the time, cursed all who learned about it.
Scientists and medical men were baffled at the perplexing and horrific results they were shown. Scuffles of infighting and theories plagued the scientific community for days on end. Chaos — a new beginning, to some — unraveled all science that was held as unfaltering fact for so long. Not much time was left to contemplate the meaning of this before the preliminary siege had begun.
As the news disseminated to a wider audience, events with terrifying implications occurred. The Spire of Yeon, a magnificent testimony to world unity, ceased to exist in a brief flash. My eldest son was there as a maddening scream echoed from the tower — then the structure disappeared entirely. All weather of any kind ceased, causing worldwide water and crop shortages. Countries began to reform amidst the conflict, and tensions began to rise in competition over resources. My husband was forced by lottery into the newly-founded militia of the Better Terras-Mons Union.
I received barely enough electrotokens from the quasi-government to support my family. I was crippled and couldn't work, relying entirely on my spouse to bring in income. I was indebted to him for helping me so much, but could do nothing as he was taken away. I remember staring out the window towards the purple waves, wondering how the world went mad so rapidly. It was stupid of me not to connect the dots earlier.
More strange things occurred. At first, it was only big things: the planet Terras-Mons orbited would change color; a number of lightning bolts repeatedly struck the same spot; nobody could remember visiting specific areas. But as time went on, I too began to experience them. Clouds disappeared at random, books had their words shuffle randomly, and clumps of sand at the beach outside my home would fling themselves at me sporadically.
It was the twenty-second night of Presque-Vu when we finally crossed the threshold of damnation. A thick silence, quite literally unbreachable, encompassed our entire world. The quiet suppressed all noise, no matter how loud one's voice was. Hours passed, but nothing happened, and the world seemed to slow down briefly. I went outside to relieve myself of stress, only to discover the sky was completely empty.
The siege began.
The screaming of millions ruptured the shield instantaneously, a piercing wail that could be heard for light-years. A wave of something slammed me backwards, forcing me to retreat inside. Unrelenting in its persistence, with screeches from every direction invading my senses, I couldn't handle leaving my house. I laid in my bed and cried as my sons and daughters sobbed, begging to something that I did not have the strength to get up and see.
I do not know what happened in the following hours, but when I awoke, only my youngest daughter, El'Lie, had remained of my children — what happened to the others, I don't know. She lay huddled next to me, tears leaking from her eye and her choked cries mingling with the screaming. The painful wails in my head had moved beyond the walls of the home, yet I understood that at any moment it could breach the vestibule and enter. I shuddered.
My daughter began to speak to me, but I quieted her down, afraid to answer whatever she would ask. I listened intently, and heard pleading, as well as cries in languages I did not understand. They were close. I thought of my family, wondering where they were and what happened to them. I prayed not to know.
"Mommy," El'Lie had abruptly said to me, "are we going to be okay?"
"Yes," I lied, "we will."
She didn't believe me, of course, and buried herself within my embrace. A sporadic sob joined hers, and it was only then I realized that it was my own. Faced with an impossible threat — by both definitions — I had resigned myself and all I knew to death. My ears filled with a faint static, no doubt from the dimming of the energy-less lights.
It has been four days since then. I am writing this by candlelight for no reason other than peace of mind. The screaming has not stopped — and I doubt it ever will. My rations have run down, and there are no substances left to sustain me. A gaping wound of reality in the shape of my daughter beckons towards me from the unlit corner of my room, smiling a smile which does not exist and that I can only assume is my fractured mind creating order of chaos. In just a few moments, I will join her.
Our limited minds were not made to deal with the horrors of unreality. From the first day we discovered forbidden knowledge, they had begun to seep into the cracks of our consciousnesses. We stopped to gape and mock all that was, congratulating ourselves on conquering a mountain, though we merely stood on the edge of a slope. Our predecessors pushed us forward, and the ancestors of an unknown kind dragged us back into the abyss.
Much can be learnt from this encounter with a kind from beyond the veil of reality, if only there was anyone left to analyze it. Unbidden, we tread into the territory of the unknown, and unbidden these non-creatures arose to defend it. Perhaps they were like us, alien to a universe of cosmic horror, though no one had stopped them. I don't know, nor do I want to. Once I have gone, they will return to their slumber, and madness shall end until the cycle repeats.
Henceforth, I, Wi'Poi, mother of none, shall scream until the ends of time.


The light returned to Three Portlands the way it returns to a movie theatre once the credits stop rolling: sheepishly, as if embarrassed by the popcorn-strewn wasteland it had become over the course of the film.

« Intermission ||

When the apocalypse comes, there tend to be three types of people.
First, there are those who have been preparing for this their entire lives. They look out across the desolate, destroyed landscape, whisper something self-congratulatory, and then retreat into meticulously engineered bunkers filled with all the canned beans one could eat.
Second, there are those who have been preparing for this their entire lives. They look out across the desolate, destroyed landscape, jump for joy, and then don their bondage gear and ride out on their diesel motorcycles to raise some hell.
Finally, there are people like Casey, sitting in pitch-blackness with a dead flashlight.
"Um," he whispered. "It's gone out again."
"Yeah, I can see that." Someone snapped their fingers, and then those fingers caught fire. The faint light illuminated the face of Adam Rowe. "Is it the batteries?"
"I'm guessing it's the batteries, yeah." Casey knelt on the sidewalk. His makeshift kneepad crunched a piece of glass against the concrete, and he cringed. He fiddled with the battery casing until it popped off, then examined it in the fingerlight. The batteries were arranged correctly. Of course, if they weren't the flashlight wouldn't have worked in the first place, so Casey wasn't sure what exactly he was hoping to accomplish by performing this autopsy.
A hand clapped down on his shoulder. Vera Garcia was behind him, peering down at the flashlight. "See anything interesting?" she chirped.
Casey shook his head. "Nope. Just bad batteries. Why doesn't Eustace have one of those hand-crank flashlights, anyway?"
Adam crouched in front of Casey, making it an official huddle. "Does my dad seem like the kind of guy who owns a hand-crank flashlight?"
Casey raised an eyebrow. "Is that a distinct category?"
"I pegged him for it," Vera pitched in. "In my experience, there are three types of-"
Beep, beep, beep. Monotone blares interrupted Vera's budding nugget of wisdom. Adam fumbled for his belt radio with his injured arm, then held it aloft in non-flaming fingers.
The tinny speaker produced a voice. "Attention, all residents of Three Portlands. This is an emergency broadcast, from Special Agent Robin Thorne, of the FBI's Unusual Incidents Unit, Three Portlands Office."
Adam rolled his eyes. The radio continued undeterred. "All those with the capability to do so should relocate to the city centre. An area of refuge has been established in Three Portlands Plaza. We have food, shelter, water, and the armaments to protect you from looters and wildlife. The outskirts of the city are not safe."
Casey was acutely reminded of his place in the world. Not just metaphorically, but also literally: kneeling on the ground in a pitch-black street, completely unaware of anything that might be lurking outside of the modest fingerlight radius, and armoured only by scavenged rollerblading safety equipment. He shivered.
Thorne neglected to comment on that, either. "Additionally, as we have been receiving reports of temporal disturbances, I am noting the current time: 10:30 AM Three Portlands Time, August 30th, 2024. Thorne out."
Adam nodded as the radio faded to static. "I'm glad they specified that this was Three Portlands. I was starting to fear we were in Cleveland. Now that would have been worth a broadcast."
Casey twisted his mouth. "Are the updates really that bad?"
Adam threw up his hands as best he could with one in a sling and the other on fire. "They're not updates! They're all the same! In three weeks they've barely changed the words!"
"Well, they do also state the time now."
"Great! That'll save all the people who lost their watches when the city imploded."
"I don't mean to interject," Vera interjected, "but the sky seems to be coming back."
Adam blew out his fingerflame, but stayed visible. The darkness was lifting at last.
The light returned to Three Portlands the way it returns to a movie theatre once the credits stop rolling: sheepishly, as if embarrassed by the popcorn-strewn wasteland it had become over the course of the film.
Almost the entirety of Three Portlands' bowl-like curvature was visible. The formerly neat concentric streets that marked the city's rings were warped; great mismatches in the roads covered the city like scar tissue. Entire neighbourhoods were obscured by strawberry smog, punctuated by the sparks of raging fires. The visible districts fared no better, their paths lined by toppled buildings and uprooted bedrock. The swirling sky flashed angrily with reds and purples. A condo floating high above their heads was caught in an eddy and spun idly.
Adam shook his head. "I swear, it gets worse every time I see it."
"Likely because it's getting worse," Vera explained.
Casey glanced at his surroundings. The bombed-out art galleries that flanked them seemed abandoned, for now. "Can we get our bearings, please? Before it gets dark again."
"Good idea." Vera reached into the bag slung round her shoulder. From it, she produced a folded pamphlet that fanned out into a roughly octagonal map. She held it in front of her face for a moment, then peered over to look at the cityscape spread before them.
"That," she said, pointing into the distance, "is the Docks District, correct?"
The district was diametrically opposed to the group but still visible. The dry canals that defined the area were filled with glowing white fog, and were even wider than the last time they'd glimpsed the landmark. More cracks were springing from the ruts, countless hairline fractures in the city's foundation.
Vera traced her finger on the map, down from the Docks District to Three Portlands Plaza. The plaza was barely visible beneath a cloud of smoke that still lingered from the fire that had nearly consumed it almost three weeks ago. If one squinted, they could just make out the clusters of tents that had popped up around it. At least some people were heeding the warning of the FBI-in-exile. Some people.
Bearings firmly attained, Vera extrapolated to their intended destination. "Then, we should only need to go two blocks corewards and about 30 degrees clockwise, give or take, to reach the building. Assuming it hasn't moved since we last saw it."
Casey peered over her shoulder. "How far away are we, then?"
She shrugged. "If the roads ahead are as bad as the roads behind us, it could take a few hours."
Casey sighed and slotted his broken flashlight back into his belt. "We've been moving for two days. We can handle a few more hours."
The trio set off down the hill.

Two days and several miles earlier, they were gathered in the kitchen of Eustace Rowe.
A dragging growl filled the cluttered, dimly-lit room. It rose in pitch until it became a frustrated yell.
Eustace cast his helmet across the room. The steel dome careened toward the table, halting in midair at the last inch. It levitated to its place atop the kitchen counter, resting on the tubes that connected it to the organic supercomputer lurking in the corner like an abandoned vending machine.
A grimace pulled the man's wrinkled face taut. "God damn it," he grumbled. "It's not working."
There was a pause. From where he sat across table Casey spoke up. "The creepy brain computer isn't working?"
Eustace shook his head. "Hevel should be working fine. I have been feeding him nothing but the best meats. He should be able to open a Way with his ventricles closed." He paced around the room in a square.
Casey raised his hand. "Can we not anthropomorphize the organ computer?"
Vera looked up from the knife she was casually sharpening against the counter. "I have to agree with Casey on this one."
Eustace sneered. "Oh, I bet that was hard for you."
The room was quiet for a moment. Vera squinted at him, and he sighed. "Sorry, sorry. Not productive. It's just so frustrating." He sat down at the table and buried his head in his hands.
Vera raised her eyebrow at Casey, who shrugged. Eustace rose again from the seat. "The Mayor is dead. It's barely been three weeks, and half the city is already rubble. And the greatest wizard in Three Portlands-" he punctuated each word by smacking the table with his fists "-can't even open a Way to escape."
Casey glanced about the kitchen, searching for a solution buried beneath a pile of dishes. "Well, where are you having trouble?"
"The Mayor kept Three Portlands anchored to the Ancestor Portlands on Earth," Eustace lectured. "Without the connections, we're adrift. Any conventional Way has to bridge the ever-widening gap, which I've been doing easily. But once the tunnel gets to Earth, it's not finding purchase. Something's blocking me. Preventing anyone from escaping Three Portlands."
Adam frowned. "Whoever's behind this wants to make sure there are no survivors, and they've got the tech to guarantee we all go down with the ship."
Eustace went on. "I just need something capable of penetrating the barrier. Like a-" he paused and lifted his head, eyes bright with a new clarity. "Like a drill. I might have an idea." He stood up and raised his arms straight out in front of him. Blue and purple sparks flew from his fingertips, coalescing into the image of a spoked wheel — a scale model of Three Portlands.
"I've been monitoring this city since the Mayor died. Keeping an eye out for magical activity associated with Ways, teleportation, and the like. Normally there's too much going on to get a clear picture. Now that everyone's dying, the data is much easier to parse." Staggered flashes of light lit up parts of the map. "Most of the activity is in discrete bursts. Probably wizards defending themselves or robbing liquor stores. You get it."
"Those are the two wizard activities," Vera pitched in.
Eustace sneered at her before continuing. "This pattern has been fairly constant, with one exception. There is one location in the city that has been emitting constant, low-level readings, the kind that might represent a Way that runs internet cables to Earth. But unlike every other cable system in Three Portlands, it's still going." A single pillar of light shot up, close to the centre of the wheel and about ninety degrees counterclockwise from Eustace's home.
He pointed to the glowing pillar. "That is the Three Portlands headquarters of Oneiroi Incorporated. I don't know what the hell is going on in there, but they're still online, and if they can keep a pinhole out of Portlands going… well, if we take their tech, graft it onto Hevel, and put it under the control of a powerful wizard, we might have a shot at opening a portal out of here."
Casey nodded, slowly. "How are we supposed to bring their tech back, though?"
"You don't need to," Eustace grinned. "If Vera's way-opener still works, all you need to do is find it and pull the trigger. I can portal all of you back here and take care of the rest. Easily."
Adam twisted his mouth. "That's a long trip to take on foot, especially now. Once we get there, how do we even get into the building? If their interdimensional cable is still up, security systems might be up too."
Eustace shrugged. "Maybe you'll run into a helpful employee. Or someone you know will be there."
Adam squinted at him. "Dad, does this plan rely on the essential goodness of random strangers to save all of our lives?"
The old man threw his hands up. "I don't know, okay? I can't tell you. We're too far off the tracks now." He frowned and looked down at his wrinkled hands, knotted together on the table. "I know that you were right back then. About the Mayor being in danger, and all that. And I know that maybe, if I had listened, if we had acted sooner, the Mayor might have been saved. And we wouldn't be in this mess. But I didn't, and we are. So I'm doing the best I can. I guess that'll have to be enough."
"Yeah," Casey said, squeezing the lining of his jacket until his knuckles turned white. "I guess so."

"Wait, dad still doesn't know?"
Adam sat atop a dislodged trolley door, now half-embedded in the partially melted asphalt of the intersection. In his good hand, he had a cheese sandwich. They had originally brought along some canned fruit as a morale booster, but after two days on the road the cans had abruptly corroded, leaving nothing but a slurry of fruit and rust that had deeply stained Vera's duffel bag. Thankfully, she had insisted on bringing backup sandwiches.
Casey chewed on his own lunch numbly, leaning against the undercarriage of the wrecked streetcar that blocked off half the street. "There wasn't really a good time to tell him. I couldn't just walk up and say, 'Hey, turns out the conspiracy wanted us to try and warn the Mayor, and turns out we actually let the assassin in. So it's actually all our fault. Whoops.'"
Adam shook his head, speaking around a mouthful of wonderbread. "Not all our fault." He swallowed. "We can't beat ourselves up for not predicting the future. We can't keep things from each other, either."
Casey spat a mouthful onto the mushy pavement. "I don't know what he'd do if he found out. Right now, for the first time ever, he's actually being nice to me — or at least, he's trying. I've never seen him try before."
Adam frowned. "Because he thinks it's his fault. We can't play guilt roulette."
There was a metallic thud. Vera plopped herself down on the edge of the streetcar's side, gripping a pair of binoculars in her lap. Her legs dangled next to Casey's head. "Working for Directorate K, I've seen many secrets. The longer one keeps them, the more dangerous they are when they get out. Maintaining the lie is only a good idea if you reveal it when the target is at their most vulnerable, distracting them with your betrayal while you drive the knife between their ribs." She made a stabbing motion in the air, then froze and slowly lowered her hands. "But that probably doesn't apply in this instance."
Casey nodded. "Hopefully." He tucked the remains of his sandwich away.
Adam grabbed Casey's hand and squeezed. "I know you've been through a lot. We all have. If I could just pretend that I had no part in what went down, I would. But sometimes driving things into the light is the only way to-"
A loud revving broke the silence. It reverberated across the buildings, echoed across the street behind them. Adam groaned. "Ugh, I was going somewhere with that."
Casey let go of his hand. "Are those engines?"
Vera held her binoculars to her face, peering straight down the perpendicular street. "Looks like bikes."
Adam grimaced. "Not a good sign. We should hide." He clambered to the front end of the wrecked streetcar, slipped under the railings, and crouched inside, where the roof had warped enough to reveal an eyeline. He whispered: "Vera?"
There was a series of soft thuds above them. Vera swung down through an inverted window and knelt across from the two. She patted the duffel bag slung around her back.
Adam nodded. "Let's stay put." He turned around and peered through the jagged crack in the metal.
There were bikes, alright. Two riders sped straight down the road. From what Adam could tell, it was a man and a woman, each equipped with an ugly pastel jacket that shielded them from compliments more than dirt or injury. Their motorbikes were decorated with bags and attachments, crude modifications for vehicles that were decidedly homebrew.
They skidded to a stop, flanking the streetcar on their jury-rigged bikes. The woman yelled, "Where's the signal coming from, Davis?"
The gangly man grabbed a small, shiny device off his belt. "Should be here. Unless this thing's acting up, which I ain't gonna rule out just yet." Davis' bike punctuated his statement with a sputtering cough and a stream of green exhaust. "Ach, shit." He hopped off, and the bike clattered onto its side.
The heavy-set woman crossed her arms, unamused. "Stop screwing around and search the area. If there's no loot here, it's your ass."
Davis clipped the device back onto his belt, then retrieved a small pistol from his pocket. "Sure, sure. I'm betting there's at least two stragglers here, maybe more." He gradually raised his voice. "And if you can hear me, know that this'll be much easier if you just come out! For all of us. Mostly me, though." He left his bike behind and bounded toward the intersection, gun held aloft. He was out of Adam's sight now.
A moment later, he started cackling. "Got something! Backpack. Got some goodies, too." He crossed back into the field of view and passed it to the woman, who began rifling through.
Adam's blood went cold. He had left his backpack on the ground. The way-opener was inside. And now they had it.
Strands of possibilities raced through Adam's mind. Two people, at least one armed. He'd have the element of surprise, but it wouldn't be an easy victory. Especially with that gaping wound on his arm slowing him down. No, better to go with something else. A distracting illusion. Something subtle.
That was just fine. His father had once told Adam he excelled at subtle magic. In context it had been cruel sarcasm, but now was not the time to worry about such technicalities.
He shed mundane concerns from his mind and blinked away the fire and smoke covering Three Portlands. The physical world was lost, but the spiritual world came alive. The brightness of the realm stung Adam's eyes, and he flinched. The air was positively teeming with spirits, sparkling with a sheer density of death greater than Adam had ever observed. They were fresh. Recent additions. They trembled with the traumatic history of the crumbling city's past few weeks. Like the living, they were trapped in Three Portlands, unable to reach their final peace outside the orphaned pocket dimension.
Their power seeped into Adam, and he shuddered. He hadn't expected such a raw outpouring of energy. Such outpourings are rarely subtle, and one inopportune gasp could give away the trio's location. The wound on his arm glowed red hot and the surrounding skin was seared. It was too much to use, too much to even grasp.
Adam gritted his teeth. The countless dead were trying to force their way into him, soak his mind and use his voice as their own. He clenched his eyes shut but it did nothing to stem the blinding onslaught. He was roasting alive, mere moments from setting his surroundings aflame.
He felt hands firmly clasp his shoulders. He forced his eyes open, and there was Casey, staring silently at Adam, imploring him to come down. Giving him something to focus on. Adam took a deep breath. The energy left his body like hot steam, leaving him shivering but quiet. The bikers outside were none the wiser to his aborted plan.
Beep, beep, beep. Adam's eyes went wide. Special Agent Thorne's voice blared from his belt radio. "Attention, all residents of Three Portlands—"
He snatched it from its clip and tossed it against the wall, where it smashed into silent shards.
"Hrh?" Davis turned his attention from the half-collapsed buildings to the streetcar. He cocked his gun pointedly.
The woman smiled. "Let's make this easy. Come on out and this can be real amicable."
Before Davis could take another step, a siren rang out, and he covered his ears. A distorted, booming voice followed.
"TRESPASSERS DETECTED. YOU ARE ON PRIVATE PROPERTY. IF YOU DO NOT VACATE WITHIN FIFTEEN SECONDS, ARMED MERLIN DRONES WILL BE DEPLOYED."
The looters froze. "Oh no," the man muttered. "Must have tripped an automated security system. C'mon, help me-"
The woman had already spun her bike around and sped off. Davis shouted, "Oh, come on!" He started to run, but his foot caught on the overturned motorbike, and he tumbled down, sending his gun skittering across the pavement. He paid it no mind as he scrambled back to his feet and sprinted after his fleeing partner.
Adam, Vera, and Casey stared at each other in silence.
Then another, softer voice called out. "Okay, you can come out now."
Casey poked his head out of their hiding spot. A woman in dirty slacks stood in the middle of the street, holding a megaphone in one hand and a bag in the other. Her left eye was covered by a large, black eyepatch. "Pretty convincing, right?"
Casey furrowed his brow. He stood, clasping Adam's hand to bring the shaking man to his feet beside him. As Vera slipped past them, the glint of metal caught her eye. Davis' dropped pistol was just lying there on the road.
Might as well. She knelt, looked both ways, flipped the safety on, then slipped the gun into her duffel bag.
The one-eyed woman dropped the megaphone into her own bag, then gave the trio a mock salute. "My name's Darcy. Darcy Dale. You can call me deus ex machina." She paused. "That was a joke. Please don't call me that."
"I'm Casey Malik."
"Adam Rowe."
"I am Vera K. Garcia, and it is a pleasure to meet you."
Darcy bowed to each in turn. "What does the K stand for?"
Vera tilted her head. "What an odd question."
"Oh, of course," Darcy said. "I'll ask when we're inside. Follow me." She had already made strides away from the intersection.
"Wait, wait," Casey called. "Inside where?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "Oneiroi Incorporated. I work there."
Adam rubbed his temples. "God damn it."

Across the tram tracks and past a rusted rickshaw was a grid of dark steel and blue glass, an angular building that stuck out like a sore thumb around the decrepit but rustic offerings of the neighbourhood. Within the building was the hub of memory alteration, psychic surgery, and dream therapy that was Oneiroi Incorporated's Three Portlands HQ. Despite everything that had transpired, it looked no worse for the wear. The giant, floating sign out front still gleamed:

"So that's it." Adam sighed. "We're finally here."
"Yup," Darcy replied. "Let me show you inside." The front doors slid open as she approached, and shut tightly behind them. The first thing they noticed was the air: cool and dry, starkly contrasting the muggy exterior. It was as if nothing had ever gone wrong. The dimly-lit lobby was modern and refined, with waiting benches in front of cold electric fireplaces — and a long front desk with counters of iridescent marble wrapped around the back wall. There wasn't another living being in sight.
Darcy didn't slow down. She unlocked a subtle inset door behind the desk. "Stay close." They obliged. The door revealed a long maintenance corridor. Metallic pipes snaked back and forth on the ceiling. The hallway occasionally branched, but Darcy knew where she was going.
Adam tugged Casey's sleeve. "Casey," he whispered, "They took the way-opener. It was in my bag. What are we going to do?"
Casey gulped and nodded. "Let's just keep going. Play it cool. We'll figure things out."
"But what happens once we get to the equipment and can't open a portal?"
Casey frowned. "I don't know. But right now the alternative is that we sulk for a while instead of doing anything productive, and personally I've done enough of that." He looked over his boyfriend's weary, sore body and frowned. "Don't worry about it, please. You're overextended. Let me take care of things for a while."
Adam grimaced. "Okay," he acquiesced.
Up ahead, Vera attempted small talk. "What do you do here, Darcy?"
"I'm a technician," she replied, not looking back. "Mostly, they pay me to make sure the pipes are intact, and that everything gets where it needs to go."
"What's in the pipes?" Vera craned her neck to get a better look at the crisscrossing tubes.
"Oh, we're not allowed to know that. Probably something freaky." Darcy half-turned to face her, walking backwards now. "Oneiroi has always been a tad eccentric, you know?"
"Tubes of unknown fluids do sound like a hallmark of eccentricity."
She smiled warmly. "You get it. Most of the facility runs itself, totally off the grid, so we had a figurative skeleton crew for a few weeks before the apocalypse. Now it's just me and my friends here. Those looters have been scrounging around these parts for days, but they can't get in here."
Casey matched her stride, a worried look crossing his face. "Why hide here, though? Why not go to the camp in town centre?"
"Oh, I wouldn't go there. First off, the police want me for totally bogus reasons. Second, it's a beehive down there."
Questions abounded in Casey's head. "A beehive of what? Bees? And did you say you're wanted by the police?"
She smiled sadly. "It's a long story, but I feel like you know it already." Before Casey could launch another salvo, the steel door behind her slid open.
It led into a cramped control room lined by glimmering panels, with a plastic table set up in the middle. Around it sat two people, a man and a woman. The first was tall and blond-haired, and the second wore a dirty blouse and black-rimmed glasses.
The Chaos Insurgency's Agent Troy and Redzone Security's Samantha Romain looked up at Adam and Casey, frozen in the doorway.
"Shit." All four spoke in unison.

Six tired and dirty people sat around a table. Scattered pages covered the surface, detailing concepts, places, and people of interest.
Samantha clapped her hands together. "First thing's first. I think we would all agree that we should let bygones be bygones. No good will come of bickering about whatever little things happened in the past."
Adam murmured, "You did try to have me killed over a business dispute."
"Sounds like someone's building a dam to stop the water from going under the bridge," she said.
"You can't just do that to metaphors."
Troy spoke up. "I won't make any fuss. Hell, I don't even remember what Casey and I got so mad about. Because afterwards, he emptied a can of amnestics in my face."
"How do you know it was me if you can't remember?"
"Because you left your phone behind, genius. Nice taste in ringtones, by the way."
"Oh," In all the commotion, it had never even occurred to Casey that he had misplaced it.
Samantha pounded the table. "The hatchet is buried, people. It is buried so deep that you will never find it. Let's move on."
Mumbled affirmations filled the room.
"Now, time to take stock. Agent Troy, care to clue them in?"
He sighed and walked to the mess of screens and displays. He tapped one until it came online and flashed with an overhead map of Three Portlands. A glowing red dot appeared at the position of Oneiroi Inc, and a large mass of red pulsed inside the city centre. The rest of the map was empty. "This is what I've been working on since our little run-in. Without memory of the past day and most of my data lost, I resumed my plan. The next morning, I succeeded in intercepting another mind-controlled murderer at the scene of the crime."
Darcy raised her hand sheepishly. Casey stared, slack-jawed. He had more questions than could fill the air, so he asked just one. "What happened?"
She looked at her feet. "You know how it is. One second you're enjoying an afternoon stroll, and the next thing you know, you're stabbing a police officer with a knife you didn't even know you had. I hid in a dumpster for two hours before Troy came to fish me out."
Troy nodded. "Miss Dale had access to Oneiroi Inc, and by extension some of the best predictive tech in the industry. The byzantine hallways and thin staff made it a perfect hiding place. Using Miss Dale's brain scans and some ingenuity, I hooked this up: a radar for all the memes in Three Portlands with a construction similar to the worm's. A map of potential time-bombs all across the city."
Casey stared at the map again. "Why is there so much red in the city centre?"
"That would be the beehive," Troy explained. "It's beyond what any of my models could have predicted. There must be two hundred infected people clustered in that refugee camp among the other survivors, and I doubt any of them even realize it."
"But why?"
"I don't know," Troy admitted, "And I don't want to find out. If they're all waiting for their trigger, then that's practically an army just sitting there, to be activated at any moment. That's why we're here and not there. Well, that and the equipment. It has been very useful."
Darcy perked up. "That's how we met Samantha!"
Samantha gave a forced smile. "Business was going poorly, and my bodyguard tried to murder me. Needless to say, they are not my bodyguard anymore."
Adam sneered at her. "The big one with no eyes? Now you know how it feels."
She sighed. "Yes, yes, I feel a great kinship to you. I'm glad we could bond."
"Where did they come from, anyway? How'd they get infected? I'm guessing they weren't your average Redzone employee."
"We had a few outside contractors. They offered manpower, no questions asked, in exchange for our involvement in some projects of particular interest to them. I don't know what exactly. I'm not one of the higher-ups, I'm just very good at my job."
Adam raised an eyebrow. "Special projects like the pocket dimension you made me investigate last year?"
She scoffed. "Don't be so full of yourself. Not everything revolves around your wacky misadventures."
Troy looked up from his screen. "You received an anonymous employee, and then they tried to kill you with the same memetic worm these two had? That contractor must have been a normalcy org, Sam. This is all connected."
She rolled her eyes. "Well, you point me to a normalcy org that deals solely in people without eyes."
An uncomfortable silence covered the room.
Samantha spoke again. "The point is, these two helped me escape. And now I'm here with you lovely people." Her eyes passed over the trio, then lingered on Vera. "Wait, you look familiar."
Casey glanced at Vera. "You get around a lot for someone who's never been to Three Portlands before."
Vera shrugged. "Got one of those faces."
"You were in Oregon, by the Chipotle," Samantha continued. "Did she ever tell you she was traipsing around Portland covered in bronze paint, spying on people?"
Casey shrugged. "I never really had cause to ask what she was or wasn't covered in."
Adam squinted at Vera. "Is that true?"
"Well, I wasn't spying on people," Vera explained. "I was just spying in general. It was untargeted espionage, a victimless crime."
"We're getting off track," Troy interjected from across the room, annoyed that no-one was looking at his gadgets. "We were doing data analysis. The signals were everywhere, there were dozens, if not hundreds of them. We concluded that the conspiracy had to go all the way to the top. We were going to contact the Mayor, but the city went to shit before we had the chance."
Casey furrowed his brow. "We met the Mayor. It was a trap. The conspirators used the opening to stage an assassination." In his head, something started to click together.
Agent Troy groaned. "Of course. God knows how many people were preparing to stumble into that trap. Failsafes upon failsafes. It was inevitable. And now we're stuck here, with no exit in sight."
"Well," Adam cut in. "Here's the thing about that."

The group scurried down the hallway. Darcy pushed a squeaky-wheeled dolly through the corridor; Troy clutched a bundle of papers to his chest. The walls of the corridor ahead were covered in bizarre metal plates and clustered wiring. Past that, a large vault door loomed.
Darcy stopped short of the weird walls, and the others followed suit. "If any system in this building is going to withstand an apocalypse, it's this one. No-one goes in here, not least because the security protocol annihilates any soul that tries it."
Samantha smirked. "Redzone Security always kept a close eye on other data-heavy corps, especially the mysterious ones. None are more mysterious than Oneiroi Incorporated. A running theory for the source of Oneiroi's secret sauce is that it's some manner of dimensional tech — drilling into conceptual unspace to better access people's minds, suck out bad memories, or implant better ones. I'd bet that if there's some heavy duty dimensional equipment in this building, it's inside that vault."
Troy glanced at Adam. "You said you found a Way coming from around here, right?"
He shook his head. "Not me, exactly. Eustace Rowe found it. It might need some modification, but if we can get it to him, he seems confident."
"Eustace Rowe," Troy repeated, slowly. "The recluse?" He flipped through his papers.
"The very same. And unfortunately, my father," said Adam. "Everyone step back." They did. Casey stood behind him, looking on with intense worry.
Adam freed his injured arm from the sling, which he dropped to the ground. The angry red slash down his forearm looked as if it had been made mere days ago, not weeks. He flexed his arm, and it crackled with painful energy.
The dead of Three Portlands were everywhere if one knew how to look. Adam couldn't stop himself from looking, seeing every one of them. He knew them, and they knew him. He grit his teeth and raised his arms to the ceiling. A ribbon of sparks emerged from his wound, drawing from his blood to conduct the souls that surrounded him.
The dozens of sulfurous spectres formed moving sheets of translucent ectoplasm, directed down the hall. They sparked as they entered the security field, resisting the annihilation with a barrier of concentrated soul matter. The last transmitter was occluded as yet more ghosts slid between the gears of the vault door, snapping fragile metal mechanisms in two with a colossal crack.
The vault swung open. Adam barked, "Go, go!" He broke into a sprint. The door crashed into the wall and shook the building, knocking the spirit shields off-balance. Threads of shaped intelligence unwove themselves behind the six as they scurried past.
Adam reached the vault first and gripped the first handhold for support. He felt like an ice sculpture on a warm summer day. He teetered off balance, tilting into Casey's arms.
Casey blinked. The vault was dim, lit only by small recessed lights and the dim glow of numerous pure pink video screens. It was near-circular, and every inch of wall space up to the roof was occupied by panels, vibrant digital displays, and immense grids of unlabeled switches. In the centre there was a pylon, as tall as he was and about as wide. Hovering over its tapered peak was a pinprick of violet light that ever-so-slightly distorted the space around it.
"Darcy," he whispered, "what is this place?"
She had wheeled in the dolly as far as she could. "Not sure, to be quite honest. All the net traffic in the building goes through here. I assumed it was a database, maybe a supercomputer. This isn't that."
Adam straightened himself, shaking as he left Casey's grasp. He rasped, "Just need a minute. That the machine?" He jabbed a thumb at the central pylon as he leaned against the gaping doorway.
Troy brought his face close to the floating pinprick. "It's something. Darcy, Vera, check out the controls."
They nodded. Vera set her bag on the floor and circled the room as she scanned the console for anything that might have been designed for a human operator rather than whatever super-dimensional entity this setup would accommodate. Her gaze settled on six adjacent displays in one side of the pylon, each showing a complex number. Darcy leaned in. "Co-ordinates. If that pinprick is the Way, this is where it's going. But that's just… nowhere."
"Not nowhere," Casey said. "It's going to the Outside, isn't it?"
A snap came from across the room. Samantha was lighting a cigarette. "I suppose they aren't getting cable television from the infinite space between universes." She paused to take a drag. "Sorry, can't exactly step out for this."
Darcy leaned, running her fingers over a set of buttons beneath the screens. "I'm going to try adjusting them. Keep an eye on it."
There was a deflating beep, and the pinprick flickered. The screens changed shade, from pink to maroon. Casey blinked. "It's a live feed. We're staring out of the Way. Why do they have a camera pointed into the Outside?" He stared at the pinhole, and for a moment had the acute sense that something was staring back at him. "Perhaps it's best not to ask."
Troy paid no mind. "Can you point it at Earth, Darcy?"
She mumbled affirmatively. A few more button presses, and the maroon faded to static, then coalesced into an image. It was the inside of a large, white, empty tent, seen through a fisheye lens. The smoke in the vault was drawn toward the Way and a faint spherical whirlpool formed around the pinhole. Concerned murmurs emanated from it, too distorted to decipher.
Troy gasped. "That's it."
Darcy kept fiddling with the buttons, and frowned. "The picture's not changing, even if I move the co-ords."
Troy nodded quickly. "It's snared. They caught our Way, they're redirecting it." He turned to the others. "This is it. The people running the conspiracy. That's their tent." He stared blankly at the display, then down at his hands.
Darcy smiled. "And what a tent it is. What now, folks?"
Casey rubbed his hands together and knelt next to Darcy. "Okay, uh, does it detach? Can we put the pylon on the cart?"
Troy buried his head in his hands. "No, no, no. What is this? What are we doing?"
Casey glanced up at him. "If this device can project a wormhole to Earth, we can build on that. It could mean a way out. We just need to get it to Eustace."
Troy's breathing got heavier. "And then what? Thousands of people just fit through a pinprick? Even if we could, we'd just be walking straight into the conspiracy's claws. They're expecting us now."
Adam gripped the frame of the vault door and hoisted himself to a standing position. "My dad knows he can widen it enough. Maybe he can get around the snare. We can make it work."
Troy was fuming now. "So we transport this massive piece of machinery across post-apocalyptic Portlands and hand it over to Eustace Rowe? We're really going to trust the man who hasn't gone outside in a decade to share his escape route with everyone else?"
"I trust him. He's the best shot we have."
"Don't you get it?" Troy shouted, "This is the end. This entire time, they've been one step ahead of us. This is one of the normalcy orgs, it has to be. The men in black must've decided that an anomalous city was too much, that Three Portlands had to die. And now we just die with it."
"Well," Samantha spoke up. She dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath her heel. "Not necessarily."
The room fell silent. She continued. "If we have a pinhole to Earth, perhaps they can hear us. Perhaps we don't need to go down with the ship. Perhaps we could make a deal with them."
Troy squinted at her. "A deal? For what?"
"Well, what do we have to offer? Some pocket change, some skilled labour." Her voice went cold. "Two dormant assets and the only piece of equipment capable of screwing up their plans."
"No," Adam rasped, eyes wide. "You wouldn't."
Samantha narrowed her gaze. "We both know I would."
"No," Adam shouted. He raised his arm, and his wound began to glow once more-
Troy wound up a kick and released. His foot slammed into the mage's sternum. Adam flew backwards, out the open doorway.
Into the reactivated security field.
A loud sizzle filled the air as he landed on his back. His skin steamed as the annihilation field wicked life force away from his body. He tried to curl up, but it was coming from every direction.
Casey froze for an instant, then shouted, "ADAM!"
He lunged and threw his fist at Troy's head, but the man leaned aside and the blow caught only air.
Troy followed it with his own full-bodied punch. His fist connected with Casey's left eye, sending his head back into the wall with a sick thud. He crumpled to the floor.
Troy turned his attention to Vera. She was mid-lunge, but he caught her in the throat, grabbing firmly by the neck and pushing her back. She dropped her bag and clawed at Troy's arm. He didn't flinch.
Across the crowded room, Samantha had snapped up Troy's files and started to read them off into the pinhole. She chattered through lines of sensitive addresses and names. Darcy dove for her, but she leapt out of the way. On the display screen, the tent had started to fill with blurry people. Whoever was out there had clearly taken notice of the commotion.
Casey clutched his rapidly swelling eye socket. He glanced out the door, where Adam lay in the annihilation field. Swirling steam surrounded him, shedding layers of energy, but he was still kicking. Still fighting.
Troy slammed Vera against the wall. She went limp. He looked down at Casey. "So damn typical of you. One real hit and you're done. You know, you're nothing without your tricks, without your words, without someone to hide behind. You wouldn't last one second on your own."
Casey coughed. From the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he saw Vera looking at him. "Isn't that the problem, though?"
Troy scowled at him. "What?"
"I'm not on my own."
Vera hooked her foot around the strap of the duffel bag on the floor and swung it across the room. Casey caught it with one hand, and with the other, he reached inside.
Casey withdrew the looter's pistol, held it up, and squeezed the trigger.
An earsplitting bang shook the room. Troy's grip loosened, and Vera caught herself.
Plaster dust sprinkled down from the bullet embedded in the ceiling. Casey levelled the gun at Troy's chest. "Hands up, against the wall. Both of you. Now."
Troy and Samantha glanced at each other, frozen. Wordlessly, they stepped back, hands held in the air.
Casey nodded at Vera, then kicked her duffel bag back to her. "The rope. Tie them to the console." She nodded and rifled through the bag. "Darcy, try to get the pylon onto the cart." She muttered an affirmative, and knelt down next to the machine to inspect the base.
Troy spoke up, stuttering. "Okay, okay, I'm finished, but please, please, can anyone other than Casey hold the gun?"
Casey sneered. "No. Shut up."
Darcy spat at the two. "For shame, you guys. Is this really how you treat our guests, and also me?" They didn't respond.
Behind them, the sizzling and cracking from the annihilation field began to dissipate. From the fog and smoke, a standing figure emerged. Adam Rowe, clad in a protective layer of sublimating spirits, his eyes crackling with rage.
He opened his mouth as if to speak, then collapsed into a heap on the floor.
Casey slid toward him on the ground, keeping the gun pointed at the duo against the wall. He gripped Adam's good wrist and found the pulse. He was unconscious, taking some well-earned rest.
The room went red. "What's that?" Casey asked.
Darcy glanced all around. "Emergency lights. The magic must have shorted out the security system. The building's going into lockdown mode." She pressed a button on the base of the pylon, and it toppled over onto the cart with a shuddering crash. She hopped onto it and started to tie up the cart's straps. "We should maybe hurry. A lot."
Troy looked up at them with disbelief. He wriggled his wrists in the freshly-tied bindings. "What? You can't just leave us here."
Casey tossed the gun to Vera, who slid it into her bag. "Actually, I think we can. Let's find out."
Samantha gawked. "No, come on. Untie us."
Casey slid his arms beneath Adam's body and lifted him up as he stood. "I hope you're rooting for us. If we fail, no-one's gonna know where you are." He nodded to Darcy and Vera. "Let's go."
He ran, Adam in his arms and adrenaline flooding his body. Behind him, Darcy and Vera wheeled the pylon on the cart. They ran past the fizzled security grid and down the hall. Behind them, Samantha continued to call out. "That's not funny. It's not funny!"
Her cries grew fainter as they raced down the glowing red corridors. Blood pounded in Casey's ringing ears. He could barely feel the strain in his arms, or the pain of his black eye, or the fear of what would happen next. All that mattered was running.
They burst into the lobby and out the front door. The glass panels slammed shut behind them, locked.
Once more they breathed in the stale, putrid air of the dying city.
"What now?" Darcy asked.
Vera glanced up and down the streets. "Not many good options."
"The streetcar tracks," Casey called hoarsely. He pointed to the inlaid rails on the street. "We can set the cart on the rails and ride it downhill, to the refugee camp. We can get medical attention there. Maybe the feds can help us get back to Eustace."
Vera frowned. "It could be more dangerous in the camp than it is here. We don't know if Samantha's signal was understood, or what the conspiracy could be planning now that they know we're up to something."
Casey set Adam down on the cart, next to the pylon, and strapped his body in. He removed his jacket and tucked it beneath his head. "Please," he turned to Vera. "You have to let me get help."
Vera twisted her mouth, then nodded. "Then downtown we shall go."
Darcy pushed the cart onto the tracks. It easily slipped into place. She clung to the back. Casey and Vera hopped onto either side. They gave the ground a firm kick, and slowly, the cart began to move.
The cart careened down the hill, accelerating ceaselessly toward the beehive at the heart of Three Portlands.
Above them, the sky was twisted into a thundering cyclone of debris. The path ahead was littered with wreckage and refuse. The hot wind was at their backs.
"Don't worry," Darcy said, before the howling wind could overtake their hearing. "It's all downhill from here."

« Intermission | Hub | ████ ██ █████ »


Legolass Queenqueef
⁂elvendragqueen

so now that #PrideMonth has officially begun, how long do you think we've got until the first Woke Corporate Tweet?

ECHOES 19
HUMS 202

12:56 AM - 1 June 2019

The Factory
⁂the_factory

The Factory supports #pride. The Factory loves #LGBT. The Factory is producing #rainbow merchandise. Buy the merchandise. Let others know you are proud of your lifestyle with your purchasing decisions.

ECHOES 37
HUMS 199

1:00 AM - 1 June 2019

Legolass Queenqueef
⁂elvendragqueen

⁂the_factory Literally four minutes. Welcome to hell, girls and gays, it's only gonna get worse from here.

ECHOES 43
HUMS 371

1:13 AM - 1 June 2019

Iris Dark
⁂irisdark

As a proud #Trans #Lesbian and COO of ⁂mcd, I am living proof that #LGBT people can do whatever we set our minds to. Happy #pride to all my trans sisters!

ECHOES 99
HUMS 402

11:06 AM - 1 June 2019

antigamer aktion
⁂lesbian_gengar

mc&d are bloodsucking capitalists who keep literal unicorns in cages so they can sell their horns as morning-after pills for rich fucks but their boss is a lesbian so they're Woke now

ECHOES 2
HUMS 13

12:58 PM - 1 June 2019

bluntfiend
⁂jude_k2

I'd like to announce a new Mister Against Weed. His name is Mister Pinkwashing. And his power is to make corporations stop pretending that they give a shit about the gays. Coming soon to a pride parade near you.

ECHOES 1
HUMS 3

12:01 AM - 2 June 2019

Doctor Wondertainment™
⁂wondertainment

⁂jude_k2 Hey there! Just a quick reminder that #LittleMisters is the intellectual property of Dr. Wondertainment! Any attempts to create an infringing product will be met with legal action! Have a #Wondertaining day!

ECHOES 0
HUMS 1

12:04 AM - 2 June 2019

Marshall, Carter and Dark
⁂mcd

Happy #pride! Marshall, Carter and Dark is showing our support for the #LGBT community by donating a portion of all profits this month to the #HumanRightsCampaign to support their efforts to pass the #EqualityAct and ensure equal rights for all.

ECHOES 12
HUMS 20

9:49 AM - 2 June 2019

The Factory
⁂the_factory

In honor of #pride all Factory overseer drones will be equipped with #rainbow body armor and truncheons this month. Market research suggests that you will find this soothing. Buy our products. Support the Factory. Support the #LGBT.

ECHOES 53
HUMS 261

12:00 PM - 2 June 2019

antigamer aktion
⁂lesbian_gengar

⁂the_factory i hope everyone retweeting this doesn't know what the factory actually is. it isn't joking about the overseer drones. this isn't a funny parody account, it's a malevolent extradimensional parasite, and y'all should stop giving it a platform.

ECHOES 7
HUMS 69

2:16 PM - 2 June 2019

Anderson Robotics
⁂andersonrobotics

Anderson Robotics is proud to be a sponsor of the #ThreePortlands #PrideParade! Keep an eye out for our float, which will be escorted by Kestrel-series Domestic Utility Units painted in all the colors of the #rainbow!

ECHOES 11
HUMS 86

10:44 AM - 3 June 2019

Jumping Jehosephat
⁂jockjamsvol6

Oh, sure, when the police want to march in the parade everyone says that the first Pride was a riot, but when I want to loot an electronics store, everyone conveniently forgets??? Double standard much????

ECHOES 38
HUMS 551

2:12 PM - 3 June 2019

Doctor Wondertainment™
⁂wondertainment

For #Pride Month, Dr. Wondertainment® is releasing a new line of Rainbow-licious™ Bubblebath Bon-Bons!® Show your true colors with a rainbow of fun-filled foam! They'll be available by special order from ⁂mcd, but only as long as supplies last - so act fast!

ECHOES 7
HUMS 19

7:16 PM - 3 June 2019

UIU Portlands
⁂UIUPortlands

Happy #PrideMonth from the UIU. This month, the #UIU celebrates the diversity of our workforce and recognizes the contributions our LGBT colleagues have made in their service to the country and the Unit.

ECHOES 22
HUMS 46

7:27 AM - 4 June 2019

harmpit
⁂gunch

whil ethe fbi are all busy marhcing in hte prdie parade ill be dwonloading seven teraybte sof illeagl cogniothazards on thelibrary comptuers. if tey come to stop me tehy loes their queer streetc red and hvae to statr over froml evel one, ""ally-mnius"".

ECHOES 463
HUMS 3.2k

10:33 AM - 4 June 2019

Iris Dark
⁂irisdark

Iris Dark donated over £6,000,000 to homophobic MPs because she knew that a Tory government would give her a tax cut. She deliberately removed coverage for transgender healthcare from her employees' benefit packages because it would save her money. Happy #PrideMonth!

ECHOES 237
HUMS 812

7:06 PM - 4 June 2019

Iris Dark
⁂irisdark

Unfortunately, my account seems to have been hacked. I did not post this message, and I am unable to take it down. I am currently working with ⁂VoidSupport to resolve this issue.

ECHOES 101
HUMS 650

9:33 PM - 4 June 2019

Joyce Rand
⁂joyce.rand

Whoever hacked ⁂irisdark's account should feel ashamed of themselves! She is an inspiration and a role model, and this kind of petty slander is just embarassing.

ECHOES 2
HUMS 9

7:10 AM - 5 June 2019

Kiefless in Seattle
⁂polaricecraps

⁂joyce.rand

ECHOES 21
HUMS 53

11:51 AM - 5 June 2019

Marshall, Carter and Dark
⁂mcd

Marshall, Carter and Dark have possibly the worst human rights record of any corporation, anomalous or non-. We're going to go through this in no particular order, because /man/ does McD's have a lot of crimes to answer for. Let's do this. [1/???]

ECHOES 47
HUMS 563

9:30 AM - 5 June 2019

bluntfiend
⁂jude_k2

#pridehacker Listen, if I was going to make a new Mister Against Weed, I wouldn't have posted about it beforehand. I practice better security culture than that. You can all stop @ing me now.

ECHOES 3
HUMS 11

3:01 PM - 5 June 2019

Marshall, Carter and Dark
⁂mcd

⁂mcd … not to mention the sexual harassment many former MCD employees have reported, at the hands of both their superiors and their clients. And that's not even considering how MCD treats sex workers in their employ… [13/???]

ECHOES 22
HUMS 201

4:04 PM - 5 June 2019

UIU Portlands
⁂UIUPortlands

Google COINTELPRO. Or, for that matter, just check out the FBI files on it. This isn't explicitly about gay rights, but it's not like everyone they murdered was straight, you know? https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro

ECHOES 79
HUMS 280

2:12 AM - 6 June 2019

Marshall, Carter and Dark
⁂mcd

⁂mcd … the immortal souls of innumerable queer men and trans women who died of AIDS-related complications, siphoned through an effigy located in their New York headquarters, which has since been relocated to an undisclosed location in sub-Saharan Africa… [27/???]

ECHOES 12
HUMS 20

3:45 AM - 6 June 2019

the stars are left
⁂syzygy

yooooooo the #pridehacker is in meatspace now, that big rainbow ⁂anderson ad on milk box blvd now says "office culture at anderson robotics is intensely transphobic and upper management turn a blind eye so they don't have to fire their best engineers"

ECHOES 16
HUMS 45

10:23 AM - 6 June 2019

post-optimus prime
⁂transistor

⁂syzygy It's true! I was fired by Anderson for reporting transphobic comments my boss made after I came out at work - no trans person has lasted more than 6 months on the R&D side.

ECHOES 5
HUMS 26

3:16 PM - 6 June 2019

Marshall, Carter and Dark
⁂mcd

⁂mcd … and that's all just since WWII. So yeah, if anyone shouldn't be allowed to pinkwash themselves, it's Marshall, Carter, and Dark. Happy #PrideMonth! [45/45]

ECHOES 60
HUMS 314

5:00 PM - 6 June 2019

Legolass Queenqueef
⁂elvendragqueen

The #PrideHacker is a hero - we just need them to move off of Void and onto Twitter. Mundane corporations need to be exposed, too!

ECHOES 17
HUMS 135

12:56 AM - 7 June 2019

The Sex Monk
⁂tonsuredaddy

⁂elvendragqueen

ECHOES 105
HUMS 886

6:35 AM - 7 June 2019

bluntfiend
⁂jude_k2

… Whoops

ECHOES 69
HUMS 420

7:01 AM - 7 June 2019