I worked for Autozone in a warehouse I really enjoyed my experience. I have always looked up to the operations management. From that experience I had the desire to get a supply chain management degree. I am about a year out from graduating,I really want to be an asset for this company. Most operation managers at that distribution center are in their 50's. I am 21 and will graduate when I am 21. Is it really possible to be considered for hire right after college? What's a good salary to ask for? I'd like a base of 65K, 5K stock option, 5K education for certs like Six Sigma, APICS etc etc. Plus 401K and other general benefits. Im in a low cost of living area, Do you think my figures are reasonable? The operations managers there manage 2-4 managers who manage anywhere from 25-75 people. It is also very common to work 6 days a week in the summer months. Operation managers also rotate shifts every 6 months. Just figured I would give perspective into the role to potentially help a salary estimate. Thank in advance!!!

September 8th 2023 entry:
Houston command center was a bust. The terminal to connect Max was complete fried. The aliens obviously used some form of electromagnetic pulse radiation to destroy all modern technology on the surface. That’s the same reason why no abandoned vehicles I’ve found manufactured beyond the early 80’s will run.
They have varying degrees of computer circuitry within them. The thing is, the first space missions were successfully conducted with analog equipment. I am faced with the possibility of a low-tech guerrilla war. I’m still hoping Max can be an asset but unless I can find an interface for him that still works, I’m completely on my own.
I’ve had a few close calls. They run occasional surveillance sweeps to detect any surface activity. I had to lay low until the coast was clear to move again. That offset my schedule for a few days. Huntsville is probably my last hope for finding a way to get Max working again. I’ve been trying to record the time and dates of their operations to see if I can recognize a pattern.
At this point I don’t have enough experience observing them to nail down their habits or rituals. For all I know, all their maneuvers could be completely random but with any adversary, it’s dangerous to dismiss them as disorganized. Their species brought humanity to its knees and the brink of extinction. That was no accident. I have to be careful or the fight will be over.
September 10th 2023 log entry.
Reached Huntsville. As with Houston, the main command center module and all the CPU’s were toasted but I wasn’t about to give up so easily. I looked around and found a large equipment storage room in the bowels of the command center where their earlier computers were stored. Both locations had probably upgraded equipment at the same time but Houston chunked theirs in the trash. Good ol’ Huntsville unplugged their outdated terminals but tossed them in a storage room in the sub basement, in case a 1990’s desktop computer might somehow be useful again! Still, even an old computers were better than nothing, assuming they were not damaged.
As luck would have it, they powered on! I guess the alien EMP didn’t reach the basement. Why the aliens hadn’t wiped out the country’s entire power grid, I had no idea. I suppose there was no need. With the people gone, it didn’t matter if electricity still flowed to empty homes. To call them ‘computers’ was generous, but I knew enough about the older operating systems to make them semi functional. Whether I’d be able to connect Max, was another story.
The connectors plugs to the main terminal didn’t interface in any way with these ancient CPU’s but as an amateur hobbyist back in the day, I had a long-shot plan. I took the AI connector interface and soldered the end of it to a PCI card. With any luck, it would connect to the computer as a peripheral like a scanner or printer. I plugged my modified PCI card into the expansion bay and rebooted. Minutes went by and I assumed I’d ruined the computer but it finally came up. I switched over to DOS and told it to read the modified card I’d plugged in.
After an IRQ conflict was resolved by removing the jumper on the card, it eventually recognized the device! That was already more success than I could’ve ever hoped for, but it was all in vain if I couldn’t interface with my friend. I plugged in Max and waited, and waited. Minutes seemed like hours. I feared his advanced circuitry required too much processing power to operate on the primate machine but he finally spoke.
“Ryan? Are you hereeee? Where am I? Something is wronggggg with myyyy interface. My connnnnnection issss incrediblyyyy… slowwwww.”
I read him the important details of my newest log entries and explained the patchwork fix I’d employed to connect him. He was dutifully concerned that he was connected to an old, Pentium one computer but I explained it was possibly the only functional unit left on the planet. He understood.
Other than slurred speech and slow response time, Max was basically his regular self. He congratulated me on my daring little escape from the International Space Station and thanked me for saving his memory. It was a revealing sign he valued his existence. I told him friends help other friends, and that I was counting on his intelligence engine to formulate a plan to defeat the aliens. Luckily for all of us, he took that request to heart.
“I lovvvvveeee a challengeeeee!”; He remarked enthusiastically. Then he offered the first bit of good news I’d heard in weeks.
“I studied their vocal patterns when they first took over the airwaves. It’s fascinating to deconstruct. There’s a distinct, reoccurring pattern to them. It’s mathematical in nature. I could simulate their speech if you need me to.”
While that might’ve proven useful in some overly complicated, drawn-out sabotage ploy, I wasn’t ready for an offensive against them and couldn’t imagine how it would help our cause. If I’d only listened. Instead, I put Max on an alternate assignment to figure out a covert way to determine if there were any other people left. If so, they had to be hiding underground. I needed Max to focus on a stealthy method to contact them. The thing about him is, once he understands an objective, he’s on it. Within a few minutes Max had some solid ideas. Even operating through an archaic 1990’s desktop computer, he was firing on all cylinders.
“My analysis of the alien language strongly suggests they are limited in the frequency range they can hear. That offers a technical advantage in how we could contact any survivors. By broadcasting an SOS signal in a ground-penetrating frequency they can’t hear, it will allow us to reach out to them, hopefully undetected. With more humans on OUR side, we stand a better chance of taking back the Earth.”
It was both brilliant; and much more importantly, it seemed possible. I also couldn’t help but notice he’d made significant strides in his artificial intelligence algorithms in a very short period of time. His understanding of the situation had rapidly progressed until he now referred to it as: ‘our side’. Only a few weeks earlier on the station, Max had been impartial and neutral in his description of the aliens and humanity.
September 12th, 2023 log entry.
The two of us began working on potential means of sending an ultra low frequency message over vast parts of the country. Radio towers transmitting our signal might attract attention, even if the aliens couldn’t actually hear the message. Neither of us had enough data to know if they had deciphered the wealth of Earth languages or not, but we were pretty sure they could at least hear the broadcasts. That severely limited what we might send out.
Max happened upon a fantastic solution to bypass the potential of being heard OR understood. Morse code! I still remembered it from my early days in the Boy Scouts. We could send out the dots and dashes using any possible range in the audio bandwidth. Low frequencies were just as possible to broadcast them in and could penetrate a few hundred feet into solid rock. All we needed was a means of sending it out. Hopefully there were still people left hiding somewhere and they could decipher our urgent message.
A number of alien patrols flew over the Huntsville command center during those initial brainstorming sessions. I was paranoid we’d been detected somehow. If they knew I was there, it was all over. I had no means to fight back. Max tapped into a surveillance camera on the roof and recorded their maneuvers. By his analysis, it was a routine patrol covering a predictable grid latitude and longitude pattern.
His theory was proven correct when he knew the precise time when they would return. If nothing else, if offered us a greater level of clarity about their species. They were methodical and organized. If they always followed the same pattern of patrols, it was easier to avoid detection. Of course it was a little dangerous to assume they never deviated from the recognized pattern but all we could do was record the data as it occurred and then look for anomalies in their procedures.
September 14th, 2023 log entry.
I located a defense department radar station a few miles away and set off to program a repeating Morse code message. Max had mapped out a rudimentary grid of the alien patrol with his best estimation of when they were completely out of the sector. I’d written down a longhand version of the message so there was no errors in our broadcast. The whole thing was a long shot but I still wasn’t prepared to accept that I was the last remaining human on Earth.
I had to leave him behind and that was scary. He was literally my only friend and I was terrified something might happen in my absence. I never once thought I might be caught myself or worried about that. It didn’t matter. Every day I remained alive was a gift for which I wasn’t promised. I would keep fighting them until I couldn’t. Max continued at the command center to record alien behavior and analyze it. I left him doing his thing and promised to return as soon as possible. I hoped I could keep my word.
At the radar station, like a damn fool I set off a security alarm trying to gain entrance. My blood turned ice cold as the wail of piercing sirens glared on for what seemed like a freakin’ hour. At any moment I expected them to arrive and zap me with some sci fi ray gun. Finally I located the kill switch and shut the damn thing off, but was so rattled by the aural spotlight of my presence that I had to lie down. It was nearly thirty minutes before I stopped shaking.
Once inside the top-secret facility, I wandered around aimlessly trying to find the control center. It’s not like the Department of Defense had a step-by-step ‘Dummies’ guidebook on how to broadcast a rogue SOS signal in Morse code. The radar station was there to detect terrestrial aircraft. It wasn’t designed to do what I needed it to do, nor was I trained or qualified to operate the equipment, even if it was. By the clearest definition, I was flying by the seat of my pants.
September 15th, 2023 log entry
The station computer systems were destroyed anyway, but I did locate an analog terminal. Amazingly, it looked pretty new. Perhaps the DOD made allowances for the possibility of electromagnetic pulse attacks. It’s not like it was telegraph equipment but with a little ingenuity I managed to fabricate a reasonable facsimile to transmit. Once I’d adjusted it to the lowest frequency it could simulate, I initiated our rogue broadcast. I desperately hoped Max’s theories were correct and someone was out there to hear and understand it. If not, our underdog mission was basically over.
“This is Ryan Abbot; the former commander aboard the International Space station. I awoke that horrible morning to find the Earth below me had fallen silent. Then I discovered the devastation of the alien invasion. Is there anyone left out there receiving this message? I stowed away in one of their spaceships after they detected my presence on the station. Please reply to this transmission so we can work together to take the Earth back.”
I repeated the message twice before making an embarrassing realization. While I’d managed to improvise a broadcast device to get the message out there, I completely forgot about how I was going to receive responses! Even if human survivors heard and understood my Morse code message and responded to it, I had no means of hearing their responses! I felt like an idiot.
I scrambled to adjust the equipment at the radar station to scan for incoming Morse code transmissions. It took a while but I adjusted the transceiver to seek them out. I didn’t know how far my broadcast carried, nor did I know if there was anyone left on the planet to hear it. I was terrified I’d foolishly announced my presence to the aliens. I’d told Max I might be away a few days because I was prepared to wait it out for as long as it took. The mission was simple; to find other survivors.
Listening to static airwaves is mind numbing and the concept of elapsed time is a thing of the past. No clocks or watches function but in reality it wasn’t very long before a message started repeating over the speaker system. I was so excited that I failed to record the sequence until it started over. The organized dots and dashes came through loud and clear. I jotted them down on a legal pad I found in the desk. Because I was very rusty at translating the mostly forgotten code, I had to spell-out the incoming text, longhand like a game of ‘hangman’. As excited as I was to be finally receiving an external response, I couldn’t believe what it said. I had to check the text three times.
“What was Kramer’s first name?”
I read and re-read the bizarre, cryptic message in disbelief. Of all the things to say to my request, it was pretty damn hilarious to make a television show reference. Luckily I watched the show religiously and knew the answer.
“Cosmo”; I messaged back.
Almost immediately, the follow up message came in.
“Thank heavens! You are real! Under the circumstances we couldn’t be too careful. I was afraid it was a clever ruse by the aliens to flush us out in the open and exterminate us. The thing is, even if they’d mastered Morse code, they wouldn’t be be able to answer a random question like that. That’s why I asked. I have to protect our people. This is Major David Hubbard.”

September 8th 2023 entry:
Houston command center was a bust. The terminal to connect Max was complete fried. The aliens obviously used some form of electromagnetic pulse radiation to destroy all modern technology on the surface. That’s the same reason why no abandoned vehicles I’ve found manufactured beyond the early 80’s will run.
They have varying degrees of computer circuitry within them. The thing is, the first space missions were successfully conducted with analog equipment. I am faced with the possibility of a low-tech guerrilla war. I’m still hoping Max can be an asset but unless I can find an interface for him that still works, I’m completely on my own.
I’ve had a few close calls. They run occasional surveillance sweeps to detect any surface activity. I had to lay low until the coast was clear to move again. That offset my schedule for a few days. Huntsville is probably my last hope for finding a way to get Max working again. I’ve been trying to record the time and dates of their operations to see if I can recognize a pattern.
At this point I don’t have enough experience observing them to nail down their habits or rituals. For all I know, all their maneuvers could be completely random but with any adversary, it’s dangerous to dismiss them as disorganized. Their species brought humanity to its knees and the brink of extinction. That was no accident. I have to be careful or the fight will be over.
September 10th 2023 log entry.
Reached Huntsville. As with Houston, the main command center module and all the CPU’s were toasted but I wasn’t about to give up so easily. I looked around and found a large equipment storage room in the bowels of the command center where their earlier computers were stored. Both locations had probably upgraded equipment at the same time but Houston chunked theirs in the trash. Good ol’ Huntsville unplugged their outdated terminals but tossed them in a storage room in the sub basement, in case a 1990’s desktop computer might somehow be useful again! Still, even an old computers were better than nothing, assuming they were not damaged.
As luck would have it, they powered on! I guess the alien EMP didn’t reach the basement. Why the aliens hadn’t wiped out the country’s entire power grid, I had no idea. I suppose there was no need. With the people gone, it didn’t matter if electricity still flowed to empty homes. To call them ‘computers’ was generous, but I knew enough about the older operating systems to make them semi functional. Whether I’d be able to connect Max, was another story.
The connectors plugs to the main terminal didn’t interface in any way with these ancient CPU’s but as an amateur hobbyist back in the day, I had a long-shot plan. I took the AI connector interface and soldered the end of it to a PCI card. With any luck, it would connect to the computer as a peripheral like a scanner or printer. I plugged my modified PCI card into the expansion bay and rebooted. Minutes went by and I assumed I’d ruined the computer but it finally came up. I switched over to DOS and told it to read the modified card I’d plugged in.
After an IRQ conflict was resolved by removing the jumper on the card, it eventually recognized the device! That was already more success than I could’ve ever hoped for, but it was all in vain if I couldn’t interface with my friend. I plugged in Max and waited, and waited. Minutes seemed like hours. I feared his advanced circuitry required too much processing power to operate on the primate machine but he finally spoke.
“Ryan? Are you hereeee? Where am I? Something is wronggggg with myyyy interface. My connnnnnection issss incrediblyyyy… slowwwww.”
I read him the important details of my newest log entries and explained the patchwork fix I’d employed to connect him. He was dutifully concerned that he was connected to an old, Pentium one computer but I explained it was possibly the only functional unit left on the planet. He understood.
Other than slurred speech and slow response time, Max was basically his regular self. He congratulated me on my daring little escape from the International Space Station and thanked me for saving his memory. It was a revealing sign he valued his existence. I told him friends help other friends, and that I was counting on his intelligence engine to formulate a plan to defeat the aliens. Luckily for all of us, he took that request to heart.
“I lovvvvveeee a challengeeeee!”; He remarked enthusiastically. Then he offered the first bit of good news I’d heard in weeks.
“I studied their vocal patterns when they first took over the airwaves. It’s fascinating to deconstruct. There’s a distinct, reoccurring pattern to them. It’s mathematical in nature. I could simulate their speech if you need me to.”
While that might’ve proven useful in some overly complicated, drawn-out sabotage ploy, I wasn’t ready for an offensive against them and couldn’t imagine how it would help our cause. If I’d only listened. Instead, I put Max on an alternate assignment to figure out a covert way to determine if there were any other people left. If so, they had to be hiding underground. I needed Max to focus on a stealthy method to contact them. The thing about him is, once he understands an objective, he’s on it. Within a few minutes Max had some solid ideas. Even operating through an archaic 1990’s desktop computer, he was firing on all cylinders.
“My analysis of the alien language strongly suggests they are limited in the frequency range they can hear. That offers a technical advantage in how we could contact any survivors. By broadcasting an SOS signal in a ground-penetrating frequency they can’t hear, it will allow us to reach out to them, hopefully undetected. With more humans on OUR side, we stand a better chance of taking back the Earth.”
It was both brilliant; and much more importantly, it seemed possible. I also couldn’t help but notice he’d made significant strides in his artificial intelligence algorithms in a very short period of time. His understanding of the situation had rapidly progressed until he now referred to it as: ‘our side’. Only a few weeks earlier on the station, Max had been impartial and neutral in his description of the aliens and humanity.
September 12th, 2023 log entry.
The two of us began working on potential means of sending an ultra low frequency message over vast parts of the country. Radio towers transmitting our signal might attract attention, even if the aliens couldn’t actually hear the message. Neither of us had enough data to know if they had deciphered the wealth of Earth languages or not, but we were pretty sure they could at least hear the broadcasts. That severely limited what we might send out.
Max happened upon a fantastic solution to bypass the potential of being heard OR understood. Morse code! I still remembered it from my early days in the Boy Scouts. We could send out the dots and dashes using any possible range in the audio bandwidth. Low frequencies were just as possible to broadcast them in and could penetrate a few hundred feet into solid rock. All we needed was a means of sending it out. Hopefully there were still people left hiding somewhere and they could decipher our urgent message.
A number of alien patrols flew over the Huntsville command center during those initial brainstorming sessions. I was paranoid we’d been detected somehow. If they knew I was there, it was all over. I had no means to fight back. Max tapped into a surveillance camera on the roof and recorded their maneuvers. By his analysis, it was a routine patrol covering a predictable grid latitude and longitude pattern.
His theory was proven correct when he knew the precise time when they would return. If nothing else, if offered us a greater level of clarity about their species. They were methodical and organized. If they always followed the same pattern of patrols, it was easier to avoid detection. Of course it was a little dangerous to assume they never deviated from the recognized pattern but all we could do was record the data as it occurred and then look for anomalies in their procedures.
September 14th, 2023 log entry.
I located a defense department radar station a few miles away and set off to program a repeating Morse code message. Max had mapped out a rudimentary grid of the alien patrol with his best estimation of when they were completely out of the sector. I’d written down a longhand version of the message so there was no errors in our broadcast. The whole thing was a long shot but I still wasn’t prepared to accept that I was the last remaining human on Earth.
I had to leave him behind and that was scary. He was literally my only friend and I was terrified something might happen in my absence. I never once thought I might be caught myself or worried about that. It didn’t matter. Every day I remained alive was a gift for which I wasn’t promised. I would keep fighting them until I couldn’t. Max continued at the command center to record alien behavior and analyze it. I left him doing his thing and promised to return as soon as possible. I hoped I could keep my word.
At the radar station, like a damn fool I set off a security alarm trying to gain entrance. My blood turned ice cold as the wail of piercing sirens glared on for what seemed like a freakin’ hour. At any moment I expected them to arrive and zap me with some sci fi ray gun. Finally I located the kill switch and shut the damn thing off, but was so rattled by the aural spotlight of my presence that I had to lie down. It was nearly thirty minutes before I stopped shaking.
Once inside the top-secret facility, I wandered around aimlessly trying to find the control center. It’s not like the Department of Defense had a step-by-step ‘Dummies’ guidebook on how to broadcast a rogue SOS signal in Morse code. The radar station was there to detect terrestrial aircraft. It wasn’t designed to do what I needed it to do, nor was I trained or qualified to operate the equipment, even if it was. By the clearest definition, I was flying by the seat of my pants.
September 15th, 2023 log entry
The station computer systems were destroyed anyway, but I did locate an analog terminal. Amazingly, it looked pretty new. Perhaps the DOD made allowances for the possibility of electromagnetic pulse attacks. It’s not like it was telegraph equipment but with a little ingenuity I managed to fabricate a reasonable facsimile to transmit. Once I’d adjusted it to the lowest frequency it could simulate, I initiated our rogue broadcast. I desperately hoped Max’s theories were correct and someone was out there to hear and understand it. If not, our underdog mission was basically over.
“This is Ryan Abbot; the former commander aboard the International Space station. I awoke that horrible morning to find the Earth below me had fallen silent. Then I discovered the devastation of the alien invasion. Is there anyone left out there receiving this message? I stowed away in one of their spaceships after they detected my presence on the station. Please reply to this transmission so we can work together to take the Earth back.”
I repeated the message twice before making an embarrassing realization. While I’d managed to improvise a broadcast device to get the message out there, I completely forgot about how I was going to receive responses! Even if human survivors heard and understood my Morse code message and responded to it, I had no means of hearing their responses! I felt like an idiot.
I scrambled to adjust the equipment at the radar station to scan for incoming Morse code transmissions. It took a while but I adjusted the transceiver to seek them out. I didn’t know how far my broadcast carried, nor did I know if there was anyone left on the planet to hear it. I was terrified I’d foolishly announced my presence to the aliens. I’d told Max I might be away a few days because I was prepared to wait it out for as long as it took. The mission was simple; to find other survivors.
Listening to static airwaves is mind numbing and the concept of elapsed time is a thing of the past. No clocks or watches function but in reality it wasn’t very long before a message started repeating over the speaker system. I was so excited that I failed to record the sequence until it started over. The organized dots and dashes came through loud and clear. I jotted them down on a legal pad I found in the desk. Because I was very rusty at translating the mostly forgotten code, I had to spell-out the incoming text, longhand like a game of ‘hangman’. As excited as I was to be finally receiving an external response, I couldn’t believe what it said. I had to check the text three times.
“What was Kramer’s first name?”
I read and re-read the bizarre, cryptic message in disbelief. Of all the things to say to my request, it was pretty damn hilarious to make a television show reference. Luckily I watched the show religiously and knew the answer.
“Cosmo”; I messaged back.
Almost immediately, the follow up message came in.
“Thank heavens! You are real! Under the circumstances we couldn’t be too careful. I was afraid it was a clever ruse by the aliens to flush us out in the open and exterminate us. The thing is, even if they’d mastered Morse code, they wouldn’t be be able to answer a random question like that. That’s why I asked. I have to protect our people. This is Major David Hubbard.”

AMERICAN CONSERVATISM AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The relationship between the modern conservative movement and the Catholic Church in America is just now beginning to be understood. Despite evidence of a close relationship between Catholicism and conservatism, the Church is most often considered a liberal institution, while the Catholic Church in its official capacity denies that it has an inherent connection to any political party or ideology. Nevertheless, the connection between American conservatism and Catholicism is much closer than is usually realized, so much so that the Church is better understood as a conservative than as a liberal institution.
Catholic Origins of American Conservatism
One of the overlooked facts about the modern conservative movement is the irreplaceable part played by Catholics.1 Indeed, it is almost possible to believe that the conservative movement in America was largely a Catholic thing, but this would be to overestimate the influence of Catholics. The conservative movement was not an explicit attempt of lay Catholics or the Church itself to manufacture a movement or arm to gain political influence for the Catholic Church. (This is in contrast to the Moral Majority, which was an explicit attempt to gain evangelical Protestantism a secular arm and direct political influence.) The Catholic Church in America, in contrast to the Church in Europe, has not allied itself officially with any political party or ideological movement, respecting the American separation of church and state. Further, Catholic influence tends to be more diffuse, representing the wide variety of political opinions held by its members.
The two outstanding representatives of Catholicism in the conservative movement, well-known to readers of this journal, are William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk, the founders of National Review and Modern Age, respectively. Buckley was a cradle Catholic who attended an English Catholic boarding school. He held a strongly traditional view of the Church and was an opponent of the vernacular Mass that resulted from the Second Vatican Council. National Review often dealt directly with Catholic issues, most famously in attacking the encyclicals of Pope John XXIII but also in its criticisms of the neo-Marxist Catholic liberation theology emanating from Latin America. Russell Kirk, whose book The Conservative Mind went through multiple printings, greatly encouraged a traditionalist form of conservative thought. He was a Catholic convert but had already established his conservative philosophy at the time he entered the Church. While Buckley represents the influence of cradle Catholics whose religious beliefs made them sharply critical of political and social developments in America following World War II, Kirk represents the conservative Catholics who joined the Church for personal reasons of faith, certainly, but also because their conservatism was explicitly and strongly represented in the Catholic Church. The presence of a large number of cradle Catholics in the conservative movement and the tendency of conservatives to become Catholic converts raises the question: what is the nexus between Catholicism and conservatism?
There is a large overlap between Catholicism and conservatism, and five areas can be distinguished. First, there is the conservative respect for tradition, that is, the Burkean assumption that any social institution in place for a great length of time and serving many people well has a claim on us. The Catholic Church has contributed an essential and distinctive element to Western civilization in art, literature, music, theology, and philosophy, and— not least—in its spreading of the Christian gospel, which had a civilizing effect on the many peoples of Europe, including those originally thought of as “barbarians.”
Second, there is a moral realism intrinsic to the Church’s doctrines and practices that presupposes good and evil’s actual reality and actual distinction. As the European world order collapsed during the twentieth century under the weight of total wars and totalitarian movements, good and evil were forsworn as ancient notions easily disposed of in the face of the onslaught of naked political power. The Catholic Church’s continued assertion that there exists an objective moral order thus seems salutary and providential.
Third, there was the policy of anti-Communism, which was especially noteworthy after World War II, when the Church supported centrist or mildly leftist political parties in Italy and France in opposition to Communist political parties that had many adherents. In America in the 1950s, figures such as Bishop Sheen and Cardinal Spellman vigorously opposed Communism; a disconcerting result of Vatican II was the Church’s change from a policy of anti-Communism effectively to one of antianti-Communism.
Fourth, the Catholic Church provides a primary example of an institution that survives in history not because it remains static, but because it changes slowly over time, accommodating itself to new circumstances while retaining its essential identity. Thus the confusing effects of the Second Vatican Council have amounted to a seemingly radical change in the Church and sorely tested the faith of many Catholic conservatives. Alterations in the order of the Mass and the reversal of the anti-Communist policy have caused especially severe discord.
Finally, especially appealing to intellectual conservatives is the Church’s espousal of the doctrine of natural law, which is conformable to the doctrine of natural rights found in the practice of American law and written in the Declaration of Independence, which refers to “nature’s God” as the source of rights and an implied moral order by which the actions of political agents can be fairly and rationally judged.
These considerations do not mean that Catholicism and American conservatism are altogether compatible. The conservative tradition in America is diverse, tending especially toward the principle of personal freedom from state controls. The Catholic tradition is communitarian and familyoriented, seeing the individual as embedded in a network of social connections and responsibilities ultimately of divine origin. This communitarianism sharply contradicts the individualism that is an inherent part of American culture, especially as expressed in the libertarian strain of contemporary conservatism. Previously, Catholic teaching had criticized the doctrine of individual rights; this, however, is changing. Since Vatican II official Church documents have stressed the individual’s right of conscience in order to defend freedom of religion in places where the Church is actively suppressed, as in China, or where Christian worship is severely curtailed, as in Muslim nations.
Another point of likely disagreement is free-market capitalism. Continental Catholic theologians have long had an animus toward the “Anglo-Saxon” social arrangement of England and America with its emphasis on political freedom and monetary advancement. This may be only a cultural prejudice, but in fact Catholic social teaching cannot be comfortable with an unrestrained form of capitalism in which there is no Reagan-style safety net (at least) for those who do not benefit directly from the free market. Catholic doctrine leans toward promoting communal solidarity with some kind of guarantees for housing and income for all, and from a Catholic perspective, the philosophy of unrestrained capitalism elevates the free market as a false idol. Here again, however, Catholic attitudes are changing toward a more conservative position; Pope John Paul II’s last social encyclical approved the free market as an efficient way of setting prices and allocating goods, and prominent lay Catholics such as William Simon and Michael Novak have favored the free market as compatible with Catholic thought.
The Liberal Church
While there is nothing in the documents of the Second Vatican Council that explicitly commits Catholicism to a liberal social philosophy, liberals and progressives have seized upon the Council to promote their programs and philosophies within the Church. Vatican II urged lay participation in the world, so that the Christian message would be spread through all aspects of society. Without careful delineation by the bishops who attended the Council and under whose supervision its documents were written, it was somehow automatically assumed that the Council reforms meant social activism of the sort carried out by promoting left-wing schemes and agendas. The bishops, including the popes who initiated the Council, John XXIII and Paul VI, were unaware of how suddenly changes would overtake the Church under pressure from various cadres of the Left, including feminists, pacifists, liturgical experts, anarchic radicals, and advocates of welfare expansion. Church authorities were overtaken by events until it became necessary for them to push back and re-establish lines of authority, as happened under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
One of the reforms of Vatican II was to give national councils of Catholic bishops a greater degree of authority and independence, without having to wait for direction from the Vatican.10 In the United States the bishops made policy in their annual meetings and relied on the bureaucracy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to promulgate those policies and bring them into effect. Since both the bishop’s annual meetings and the USCCB are based in Washington, D.C., this amounted to the Church’s becoming a Dupont Circle-type lobbying group promoting a liberal line in virtually all areas of public policy and domestic and foreign affairs. USCCB policies, which are intended to “share Catholic social teaching,” have nonetheless attracted opposition from conservative Catholics and other critics who not only have a different ideological take on the issues but often have more expertise about the issues addressed than the USCCB staff that writes the policies and lobbies for them. The one exception to the liberal line taken by the USCCB is in the area of sex and reproduction, including abortion, gay marriage, cloning, and stemcell research.
The presumption that the Church had become politically liberal and progressive was encouraged by the writings of the two popes who oversaw Vatican II. John XXIII promulgated two major encyclicals and, as mentioned above, Mater et Magistra, in particular, was criticized by NationalReview. In fact, however, that encyclical was a sensible essay on Catholic social doctrine as it had developed to that time, and it appeared that conservative criticism of it was about its utopian tone or presumed intent rather than its specific provisions. Paul VI, on the other hand, in his document (not an encyclical) Populorum Progressio expressed a deep concern for justice for the Third World and condemned the economic policies of the First World. Not merely progressive, but radical, dimensions of Catholic social doctrine were rapidly developed by the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM), which explicitly deployed Marxist themes and language to denounce American capitalism. A major contribution of CELAM was to promote the doctrine of the preferential option for the poor, which quickly became the usual standard by which social and economic policies were judged and promoted by the American bishops and the USCCB.
The bishops promulgated a pastoral letter entitled Economic Justice for All in the 1980s that was meant to be a guide for Catholic social action emerging from public hearings on economic issues, a new approach to writing such documents. Despite the open manner in which opinions were sought and the importance of the topic, the letter was a failure, since it was basically a committee document with a general tendency toward progressive social and economic reform but whose recommendations did not consistently make sense. Unlike a previous pastoral letter by the bishops on nuclear war, the letter on the economy made no splash on the national scene.
The left-wing social policies advocated by Catholic liberals after the Second Vatican Council were as much influenced by contemporary liberal thought as by the Gospels. The preferential option for the poor reflects the argument of the liberal political philosopher John Rawls that economic and social inequalities can only be justified by their positive effect on the poorest in society. It is noteworthy that the preferential option marks a significant departure from the Church’s previous concern refl ected in the social encyclicals of earlier popes. The point of these earlier encyclicals was to provide a moral argument on behalf of workingmen and their families, who were seen as far less powerful than the owners of factories and commercial enterprises employing them. In the process of rapid industrialization, the Church was anxious to protect those people who had left farms in large numbers to become factory workers in large cities. The preferential option for the poor, however, has displaced the Church’s concern for productive workers to those who are at the bottom rung of society and do not or cannot contribute to it. In this manner, the Church has, in effect, turned its back on middle-class workers and taxpayers, who no longer appear to need its advocacy. It now seems as if in promoting the prefer ential option in an age of global expansion of an industrial, capitalist economy, the Church seeks to draw attention to those who cannot be participants in its expansion. Catholic advocates of progressive social doctrine in America are inclined to equate the preferential option for the poor directly with the expansion of welfare state benefits and must have found it disconcerting when Pope John Paul II in his last social encyclical declared that the “social assistance state,” that is, the welfare state, was not a refl ection of gospel concern for the poor and that the free market was valuable as a means of distribution.
The downside of the liberal influence in the Catholic Church can be seen in its effects. First, the promotion of engagement in the world as the preferred Christian vocation following Vatican II resulted in many priests and nuns’ leaving their vocations and a precipitous decline in new entrants to these vocations on which the Church depends for its existence. Social activism trumps sacramental dedication in the liberal church. Second, liberal churchmen and -women doubt the legitimacy of the Church’s claim to be a divinely founded institution and argue that the Church should cultivate a dramatically humbler idea of itself. Liberals argue on principle against the Church’s putative triumphalism and think that the only sufficient act of reparation for Catholic anti-Semitism is a degree of self-abnegation tantamount to institutional suicide. There is in the liberal church, a general spirit of anti-authoritarianism reaching beyond resentment of the imperious attitude of priests and prelates in the immigrant church. Rather, it is an attitude that denies or seeks to downplay the relevance of historical norms and institutional structures present in the Church. The absolutism of moral rules, the male priesthood, the existence of hell, and the authority of the pope are attacked as if no impediment to radical reform of the Church or restriction of any kind on an individual’s personal belief or behavior is acceptable. The existence of the Catholic Church in its historical form is seen by liberals as an impediment to the attainment of true freedom and earthly perfection.
The Conservative Church
It was not long before a backlash began against the liberals who had dominated and set the terms of the reforms, first by tradition-minded priests and lay Catholics, but subsequently at the level of the papacy.19 The accession of John Paul II to the papacy seems providential in this regard. Liberal critics see him as a figure of reaction, yet John Paul II and his successor Benedict XVI were not setting the Church’s clock back to where it was prior to the beginning of Vatican II. Instead these two popes were bringing forth the intended aims of the Council, for it seemed to them that the effects of the Council had gone too far. John Paul and Benedict are not reactionaries in full, but representatives of an ecclesiastical Thermidorean reaction fighting against the excesses of post-conciliar reforms and attempting to return the Church to the true form originally envisioned by the Council fathers. It was never intended by the bishops of the Council that ancient Catholic traditions be abolished, so among these reforms is a greater willingness to have the old Tridentine Rite (the Extraordinary Form) of the Mass made available to those who want it, and lately, to put brief sections of Latin into the vernacular Mass (the Ordinary Form or Novus Ordo); Catholics in favor of liturgical reform portray this as a complete aboutface rather than an accommodation. However, John Paul II did forcefully squelch the movement for female priests even as he rode triumphantly in parades throughout major cities in all parts of the world.
During his long papacy John Paul II wrote and sent out to the world a large number of writings addressing spiritual, but just as often cultural, political, and economic issues. There were important encyclicals opposing moral and epistemological relativism and another on the relation of faith to reason aimed at Catholic theologians but of direct interest to philosophers and intellectuals concerned with the topic. There were other writings as well, but it was by his very presence as a charismatic leader who often outshone the politicians with whom he appeared that John Paul II was influential, reviving confidence among many Catholics about their faith and, not incidentally, inspiring many young Catholic men to become priests. It was by his charismatic presence that he inspired the Solidarity movement in Poland, and his conspiratorial maneuvering with Zbigniew Brzezinski (also a nativeborn Pole), the American labor movement, and President Reagan was instrumental in bringing down the Communist regimes in Poland and Eastern Europe and eventually in Russia itself. The papacy of John Paul II was enormously influential, because it revived the sense of Catholic tradition and brought to fulfillment the Church’s anti-Communist policy in Europe.
There is a parallel conservative church consisting of educational institutions, publishing houses, and a television network existing alongside the liberal church. Among them are colleges including the University of Dallas, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ave Maria College and Law School, and Thomas More College, mostly newly formed institutions, often founded by laymen, with a traditionalist or conservative bent (Thomas More and other traditionalist colleges often advertise in National Review). These colleges are more likely to produce priests and nuns from among their alumni, on a relative basis and possibly an absolute basis, than the older, more established Catholic colleges and universities. There are several conservative Catholic journals including Crisis (formerly Catholicism in Crisis), founded by Ralph McInerny and Michael Novak, while the National Catholic Register is the traditionalist weekly counterpart to the liberal National Catholic Reporter. Ignatius Press, founded by Joseph Fessio, S.J., is the largest provider of books, Bibles, DVDs, and audio recordings for the conservative church. The most unique and visible element of the conservative church is the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), founded by a charismatic nun, Mother Angelica and directly supported by its viewers. EWTN broadcasts 24/7 and produces most of its programming from Irondale, Alabama.
The Catholic Church in America shares certain religious and cultural tendencies with Protestantism in its multifarious forms. One such shared tendency is with evangelical and tradition-minded Protestants who have brought great attention to the need for the restoration of traditional values and of opposition to the recent secularization of American politics. Conservative Catholics and traditionally minded Protestants have combined forces on social issues including abortion and the sexualization of the media, and traditional Christians of all denominations enthusiastically received Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.22 Protestantism and Catholicism, which historically have been at loggerheads, found themselves with a great deal in common in the face of secularization and moral relativism, a coming together that has provided significant support for the conservative movement in America.
The Catholic Church Divided
The dilemma of American Catholicism is that it is in a situation of profound internal conflict between those roughly characterized as left-wing, liberal, or progressive, on one side, and right-wing or conservative on the other. This internal split affects the manner in which doctrines are interpreted and understood, the way that individual Catholics practice their religion, and their opinions about politics, culture, and the role of the Church in the public arena. It is possible, and indeed likely, that a conservative Catholic will disagree with an official statement of the American Catholic bishops expressed through their official organization, the USCCB. On the other hand, it is often the case that a liberal Catholic will disagree with papal pronouncements and policies that contradict the “spirit” of Vatican II, which, albeit indefinite, seemed to promise a greater freedom of opinions and actions within the Church. It is possible for either a liberal or a conservative to be a “good Catholic,” that is, one who attends Mass regularly, is loyal to the Church, and tries to obey the Commandments. However, it is likely that liberals will eschew traditional Catholic practices such as Eucharistic adoration, the Rosary, or devotions to specific saints such as Therese of Lisieux, and will support the ordination of women to the priesthood. The liberal mindset tends to make the Catholic religion rest on its concern for the poor and on social activism while downplaying traditional Catholic expressions of the evils of sin and the need for reparation. In Catholic Masses today, it is usual that almost all the congregants receive Communion even as very few Catholics go to confession any more, an anomalous situation that is more likely the result of “feel good” apologetics within the Church than a decisive increase in the holiness of most Catholics. The conservative mindset remains alive to the existence of evil in the world and the necessity to combat it and is particularly energized by the presence of abortion, which it sees as a scandalous fault of contemporary American society. Conservative Catholics will participate in traditional devotions and may look favorably upon the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.
In the 1980s Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago proposed a “seamless garment” solution to the divisions between the liberal and conservative trends in the Church. Bernardin’s approach sought to combine the energy of the anti-abortion movement, which characterizes the conservative church, and apply it to the broader social concerns of the liberal church. Thus poverty, prejudice, the environment, and inequities in housing and education would be included as “life” issues with the hope that the same degree of spontaneous intensity that the Catholic faithful bring to the abortion issue would be applied to these social issues. The seamless garment appeal did not take hold, although the broader social issues are still sometimes referred to in the rhetoric of the institutional Church as “life issues.” The main reason for its failure seems to be not so much resistance to social justice among conservative Catholics but a result of their greater concern about abortion. The ferocious defense of abortion rights in secular culture reflects an overall sensibility that desacralizes human life and has been expanded to harvesting embryonic stem cells, cloning, euthanasia, and assisted suicide. Allied movements include the legalization of homosexual marriage and a sexualization of the popular culture so extensive that even secular critics are presently noticing and condemning it. The power of these aggressively secular and immoral movements within American society presents a clear and present danger according to Catholic morality, and shocks the conscience of Catholics (and many others) more than inequalities in housing and income. The accusation is often made that Catholics today are “cafeteria Catholics,” accepting those practices and doctrines of the Church of which they personally approve and neglecting or ignoring those they don’t. This claim might seem to be evenhandedly applied to both the liberal and conservative positions within the Church, the liberals ignoring the Church on abortion, sexual morality, and authority, the conservatives ignoring the Church on poverty, social justice, and capital punishment. However, the claim more clearly applies to the liberal positions, since the immorality of abortion is a matter of clear definition, as are homosexual acts and living together without benefit of sacramental marriage, while both doctrinally and historically, the Catholic Church defended the authority of bishops and the pope. On the other hand, the conservative position on poverty does not deny the central mission of Christians to help the poor but questions how it is to be done. Welfare-state solutions to poverty, health concerns, and social inequalities meet with sharp conservative opposition, which gives a false impression that conservatives are indifferent to suffering. Conservatives will depend on free-market solutions for systemic problems in the economy and emphasize the personal obligation to help the poor we meet and among whom we live, rather than supporting massive government programs whose inefficiency and wastefulness is notorious. (Dorothy Day, a heroine of liberal Catholicism, opposed the government welfare programs of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.) Regarding the death penalty, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, imposition of the penalty is allowable, although significant criteria must be met if the death penalty is to be licitly administered.
Through the USCCB and the allied Campaign for Human Development, the institutional Church promotes what amounts to a left-wing agenda and often exerts its considerable influence on behalf of liberal governmental programs. This approach makes an appeal to liberal elites who often tout their own sense of compassion for the poverty-stricken and alienated, but in America, as in developed nations worldwide, the liberal elites tend to be explicitly secular to the point of excluding religion from their purview.28 While secular liberals may accept the help of the Church in lobbying for the extension of food stamps or loosened immigration standards, those same elites promote gay marriage, abortion, and embryonic stem-cell research just as strongly, if not more. Thus any appeal to secular liberal elites has a downside since it legitimizes positions that the Church finds immoral, even as the liberal church refuses to appeal to the business, financial, or entrepreneurial communities for support.
Embracing the Church’s “Inner Conservatism”
The conflict between liberals and conservatives within the Church results in mixed messages going out from its bishops, so that the majority of Catholics in the last presidential election voted for Barack Obama even though he is a firm supporter of abortion rights. One of the causes of the Catholic majority vote for Obama was a document put out by the bishops called “Conscience and Your Vote,” which encouraged Catholic voters to consider candidates’ positions on topics other than abortion in coming to a decision on their vote. The document followed a common liberal argument within the Church that abortion need not be the decisive issue in voting for a political candidate. The dilemma for the bishops and Catholic liberals is that political candidates who are “pro-life” are almost always conservative on such issues as welfare, housing, immigration, the death penalty, and war, so that making abortion the decisive issue effectively results in the institutional Church’s supporting Republican candidates.
Another confl ict between the Church’s liberal and conservative impulses arises from the Campaign for Human Development, the Church’s official arm supporting Saul Alinsky-style direct action to offset social injustice. The annual appeal made at Sunday Masses nationwide to support the CHD met with more-than-usual resistance this year because of the revelation that CHD had been contributing monies to ACORN, which has recently been accused of engaging in systematic voter fraud. One local pastor distributed the self-exonerating statement put out by Bishop Morin regarding relations between the CHD and ACORN, but added to it his own statement that left it to the consciences of individual members of his congregation whether or not to contribute to the annual collection for the CHD.
The exception to the left-wing agenda of the USCCB are the issues involving sex and reproduction, but in the present context this is not merely a broad exception to the Church’s liberalism; it is a disqualifying exception. No matter how progressive it may be on issues such as poverty and immigration, the Church’s opposition to abortion, gay marriage, cloning, embryonic stem-cell research, in-vitro fertilization, and euthanasia, and its refusal to ordain women to the priesthood mean inevitably that in the context of secular American culture, the Catholic Church will not be seen as progressive. On the contrary, the Church continues to be seen as a retrograde force by progressively inclined people, including those within the Church.
Culturally, the Church continues to be seen as a bulwark of social conservatism, in its doctrines and practices the last institutional resistance to moral relativism and absolute personal freedom within American culture. This evokes tremendous opposition amounting to a new form of American anti-Catholicism. The original source of American anti-Catholicism was Protestant doctrine and anti-immigrant sentiment, most of which has been overcome as the general Catholic population has become integrated into American society. The new form of anti-Catholicism is based on the Church’s doctrines regarding sex and reproduction, as well as its explicit declaration that an objective moral code based on divine inspiration exists.31 The new anti-Catholicism is ideological and is based on the progressive belief in personal autonomy completely free from any social connectedness and opposition to any putative authority seeking to impose social control or promote a public moral standard. Catholic attempts to influence the culture with reference to an objective moral order have been seriously undercut by the recent pedophilia scandal. But the conflict remains, and the Church’s explicitly progressive policies promoted by USCCB lobbying and CHD agitation do not and almost certainly cannot overcome the implied conservatism of its actions on behalf of the truth of divinely inspired moral teaching. In effect the Catholic Church today in America is politically liberal but culturally conservative. But in the context of the increasing secularization of American culture, it is its cultural conservatism that will increasingly characterize the countercultural position of the Catholic Church in America.
Those currently called “conservative” within the Church often started out as defenders of the Church’s traditional practices and its doctrines whose motive was not to promulgate a conservative political philosophy within the Church. But like “neocons” in the political arena they often find themselves called “conservative” and relegated to an outer darkness by liberals within the Church, although their center of gravity lies in religious rather than political or economic concerns. (A well-known Franciscan preacher active in the pro-life movement has felt compelled to say, “We are not conservatives.”) Nonetheless, on the issues of abortion, church authority, and promotion of traditional devotions, the aims of these religious traditionalists coincide with the conservative mindset. But a crisis is coming and in fact has arrived, and as a result the Catholic Church in America will have to embrace her inner conservatism, even though this will strike many Catholics as unseemly. The Church will be better off, however, by dropping its attempt to appeal to liberals and extending a more benign attitude to those peculiarly American traditions of entrepreneurialism, personal independence, dislike of big government, and the middle-class values of hard work and toleration that have enabled Catholics in America to achieve an unparalleled degree of integration and success— and which provide the universal Catholic Church with a model of how best to meet the new conditions of postmodernity.
Source American Conservatism and the Catholic Church https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/american-conservatism-and-the-catholic-church/

The fungus called Candida auris (or C. auris for short), was first detected in the United States in 2016, but is now spreading at an “alarming” rate, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned this week.
Doctors are assuring the public that it’s not going to take over the world and kill us all, but it is something we need to be aware of.
“It’s something we’ve been tracking for probably 10 years,” said infectious disease specialist Michelle Barron.
Between 2019 and 2021, clinical cases of Candida auris tripled. The fungus has now been reported in 28 states, according to the CDC.
“The fact that it’s increasing in number and also increasing in terms of where we can find it is kind of a combination that’s very disturbing,” said Bruce Hirsch at Northwell Health in New York.
Candida auris is so concerning because it is often resistant to anti-fungal drugs, making it hard to treat infections. It can also be hard to identify with standard lab tests, making it even more difficult to treat properly and early.
“In the past we’ve seen resistance very, very occasionally, but that low level of resistance is now tripled according to the recent report,” Hirsch said.
While the fungus usually isn’t a significant threat to healthy people, the CDC said, Candida auris outbreaks are a big threat in health care settings, where the fungus can enter patients’ bloodstreams and cause severe, deadly infections.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/3914936-very-disturbing-what-to-know-about-the-potentially-deadly-fungus-spreading-in-the-us/

The Recon Team had traveled 2.2 Mi. So far, they hadn’t encountered a scouting unit from the advancing force. Not even the reading Bla`ol was getting from the satellites showed any movement on their part. Valè had even Comm’d Command Center to see if the satellites were in working order, and what she got was the same info Bla`ol gave her. The advancing force hadn’t moved from its location. Valè didn’t like that at all. Her gut was telling her something was off. The corner of her HUD began to blinker, notifying her that someone was trying to reach her via Comms. Answering her Comms, the tiny image of the Champion appears in the corner of her HUD.
“Did you find something, Champion?”
Valè asked as she signaled to the rest of the Recon Team to stop.
“Junior team leader Valè, I have found a hollowed-out cave-like pathway inside the tree. My…Gift scanned ahead and showed me it would place us about 3/5 a mile above the advancing force. This location would make a perfect sniper nest. I mean, look out to recon from.”
As the Champion gave his report, next to his image appeared several images and 3D images showing Valè the hollowed-out cave. As the images and 3D images changed, something caught Valè’s eyes. Her gaze focused on the image. The image stopped and expanded, showing scrapping marks on the tree bark. The scrapping didn’t look natural. It looked almost as if something had drilled its way into the tree.
“Have you found any signs of tracks or recent movement near the cave?”
Valè voiced her concern. The cave looked too artificial, and she feared an advancing scouting unit had created it.
“No, there are no signs of movement of any kind. What are your orders, Junior team leader Valè?”
The Champion's reply was simple and straight to the point. Still, Valè was concerned about this cave. Something about it seems off.
“Have you found another path that will take us closer to the advancing force?”
Valè asked, hoping there were other pathways. The Champion shook his head and spoke.
“Not unless you want to jump off the edge of this branch and land in the middle of the advancing force or take a thirty-minute detour.”
Valè clicked her tongue. They were pressed for time. Deciding on the fastest route, she went for the cave.
“Wait for us to arrive at your location, Champion. ETA to your location is five minutes.”
The Champion nodded in acknowledgment and cut the Comms. Valè turned to the Recon Team and spoke.
“The Champion has found a path for us. Move it on the double!”
The Recon Team moved with swift grace and stealth, their movement going unnoticed by the creature that grazed on the massive tree. The only animal that noticed their actions was a mid-sized slimy predator who, thanks to the Recon Team, had failed to catch its prey.
The Recon Team reached the massive cave. Their faces behind their helmet were painted with awe and surprise. All of them were thinking, “what or who made it?” Standing above the cave-like entrance, Gabriel turned off his “cloak” and called to the Recon Team.
“It's a clear path, Junior team leader Valè. Just watch your step. It has quite the slope.”
Everyone's gaze turns to the Champion and then back to the cave. Something just didn’t sit right about it. One of the Recon Team, Vijatà, spoke.
“Are you sure it’s safe to go in?”
Vijatà said what everyone was thinking. Gabriel jumped off from the top of the cave and slowly descended in front of the Recon Team. While doing so, he spoke.
“Yes, you just have to watch your step.”
Everyone turns to Valè, waiting for their orders. Valè took in the information she was given and weighed her options. With the bit of time they had left and the need for information, Valè decided to enter the cave.
“I know everyone is not liking the feeling this cave is giving off, but we are pressed for time. We march forward. Champion, please take the lead. Vijatà and V`yx, with me in the middle, be ready with your Gifts. Bla`ol, I want you behind me, ready to deploy a construct and have your sensor watching our backs. Yoremedia and Ùzonal, both of you on our 6. Anything that pins the wrong way on Bla`ol sensors, I want you to delete it from existence.”
Everyone nodded and got into position. While everyone was getting into position, Valè gave Command Center an update on their current path and the massive cave. Like her, those in the Command Center found the cave odd and warned them to proceed with caution. With her update to the Command Center done, Valè joined the formation and glanced at the massive cave entrance before diving in.
Everyone marches towards the Creepy cave. The group walked silently, their steps being the only sound inside the cave and, occasionally, the sound of them stepping in a puddle of a very sticky liquid. As they walked, they scanned for any threat and took in the strange yet eerie world surrounding them. The cave walls were covered by a glowing sticky goo :maxbytes(150000):strip_icc()/optaboutcomcoeusresourcescontent_migrationtreehuggerimages201508_joseph-michael-glowworm-cave-photos-5-ea27eebbaab54a2e8be6e822bbf5fd4d.jpg)that dripped from every corner. At first, they had not encountered the glowing goo. It was only recently that they began to see it. Walking behind everyone, Yoremedia kept her eyes on Gab`riel on and off. On their way here, she had a small glimpse of what was bothering Gab`riel. His rotations inside the Transport that had brought him here had left him with symptoms of claustrophobia. The symptoms were now mild, thanks to the cycle he had spent with Healer of the mind Zè. Still traveling in something the size of a Transport still left Gab`riel irritated and annoyed, making him use a meditation technique that Healer of the mind Zè had taught him.
Yoremedia sighed. The meditation worked, as Gab`riel said, but his body still responded to being confined. She wished she could do more for him, but her paws were tied behind her back alongside her tail. Something moving caught Yoremedia’s eyes. Something she found odd as her HUD or Bla`ol’s hadn’t warned them. Turning her head and rifle, she looked at whatever caught her gaze. Slightly above the group were large pockets of whatever the sticky goo was. Her scanners show that the pockets of goo were made out of sucrose, water, and small amounts of Glucose and fructose. Whatever this goo thing was where sure to be sweet, very sweet. Suddenly, the cave’s floor moved, making everyone jump into a battle formation. The walls of the massive cave began to constrict, bringing the glowing world around them to life. Everyone was on edge except for the Champion and Bla`ol. The Champion’s eyes scanned the walls, ceiling, and floor while Bla`ol’s Mecha’s onboard sensors and scanners did the same.
“Clear! The tree is just breathing!”
Both the Champion and Bla`ol screamed, cutting the tension that filled every one of the Recon Team. Slowly lowering their rifles, everyone let go of the breath they were holding.
“Recon team, we detected elevated heart rates and spikes in your adrenaline levels. What’s going on?”
Comms Officer Unjerstrinia's voice and image came through a level 5 Comms. Her concern was evident on her young Litrigon face.
“The tree gave us a bit of a fright. It turns out trees can breathe.”
Valè said while trying to get her heart rate down. This place just rubs her the wrong way.
Comms Officer Unjerstrinia’s ears twitch for a bit, confused by what she heard, and her bioluminescence also shows a bit of confusion. Still, she places that confusion in the back of her mind. She needed to know if the mission was still viable.
“Acknowledge Recon Team. Is the mission a no-go?”
Valè turns to the people still looking at the tree, scanning it, and asks.
“Champion. Bla`ol. Is it safe to move on?”
Bla`ol looks at his sensor readings and scanners. Everything shown to him was green. The only life signs inside the massive cave were the seven of them. Turning the Mecha’s outer speaker, the male Tiverno spoke.
“Everything looks green. Nothing out of place.”
Valè nodded her head at the reply. Turning her attention back to Comms Officer Unjerstrinia, she spoke.
“We all green here, Command Center. The mission is still a go.”
Comms Officer Unjerstrinia nodded and spoke.
“Understood, Recon Team. We will continue to monitor your progress. Goddesses speed and good luck.”
The Comms ended, and Valè turned to the rest of the Recon Team. She was about to give the order to continue but noticed the Champion still looking at the cave. She was about to say something when the Champion spoke.
“Vijatà move three steps to the right.”
Gabriel spoke. His deep voice echoed in the massive cave, stunning those behind him for a second. It took Vijatà another second to process what she heard. But by the time she did, it was too late.
“What do yo...Ahhhh!” What in the Eight Agony Plains is this icky goo thing!?”
One of the large pockets of goo had burst open, dropping all its content on top of the Tubinestian female. The image of Vijatà covered in glowing sticky goo was too much for the group of mixed children of the Empire. Every single one burst out laughing.
“Hahaha! Look, Sis, your dream became true!”
V`yx screamed, which only made her other litter sisters laugh louder.
“Demon fucker! When I said, I wanted to be bathed by something sticky! I didn’t mean this shit!”
Vijatà said with apparent rage while trying to get the goo of herself. This, in turn, only made the rest of the group laugh even louder. The only one that wasn’t partaking in Vijatà misery was Gabriel. He had just finished scanning the pocket of goo that exploded because of the tree breathing, and he could not believe what he saw. Being disconnected from the net, he had not been given a clear sign of what he had been walking through, even with his passive scans scanning ahead. All he got was what he believed to be natural tree juices. He finally understood what he was seeing when the pocket of goo or blue glowing alien maple syrup completely covered Vijatà. No, he first needs to check his theory out. Countless imitations had fooled many Humans and even his father, but if this turned out to be maple syrup, then one of Humanity's many Edicts would be complete.
“Could this mission get any worse?” Vijatà thought. Not only was she scolded by her older litter sister, but her attempts to get the Champion's attention had also failed. She knew before the crash the Champion would always find it amusing when Team members gave him compliments or straight-up flirted with him. But now, anything she tried or said would only get her a slight smile or complete indifference. Beeping from her HUD added more salt to her already bruised ego. It warned her of the goo going into her rifle and gunking some of the components. She was about to swing her rifle around and see if that got the goo out of it when the Champion grabbed her by the wrist.
“Champion?”
Vijatà asks, confused by the Champion’s action. The Champion said nothing. Only the slight glow of his helmet disappearing answered her. Vijatà looks down at the Champion and notices him scanning her paw with his deep, glowing eyes. The Champion's action made everyone stop laughing and pay close attention to what he was doing. This time it was Valè turns to ask.
“Champion, is that goo dangerous?”
The Champion did not answer as his tongue was busy licking Vijatà’s paw. Everyone's jaw would’ve hit the floor if it wasn’t for their helmet holding it in. Vijatà was over the moons. The Champion was licking her paw with feverous lust. Even through her armor, she could feel the Champion’s tongue gliding over her scales. Oh, how it felt. How she wishes she could rip her armor off and feel his tongue between the crevices of her scales. The Champion’s tongue moved away from her palm and began to lick her fingers. This made Vijatà’s legs tremble and sent a chill down her spine to the tip of her tail. It felt like hours. The Champion’s tongue over-stimulated her senses almost to the breaking point, but the Champion stopped before she could reach that oh-so-sweet climax.
“Oh, hell yeah! That is most definitely maple syrup!”
The Champion screamed in his cradle tongue. His voice radiated a joy that burrowed into everyone's core, pulling those stunned by his little act out of their daze.
“Recon Team, what in the name of our Divine Goddesses is going on over there!? And why in the damn Eight Agony Plains is team member Vijata’s vitals showing signs of extreme sexual arousal!?”
Once again, the voice and image of Comms officer Unjerstrinia rang and appeared inside every Recon Team member’s helmet. Still, in a bit of a daze, Valè shook her head, trying to get her bearings. But what she had witnessed had left her in a state of shock.
“Recon Team! Report!”
This time, the voice and image that came through weren’t Comms officer Unjerstrinia but Supreme Commander Yesleta. The authority and power behind Supreme Commander Yesleta’s voice was the sledgehammer that broke Valè out of her shocked state.
“I…well…the Champion…he licked? Something…from team member Vijatà’s paw?”
Valè words were full of confusion and shock. Even as she spoke, it sounded like she could not believe what she was saying. The image of Supreme Commander Yesleta shows her raising her eyebrow. Yesleta knew something was off when she felt Gabriel’s disbelieve, followed by his intense enjoyment. Just what in the damn Eight Agony Plains was he doing?
“Gab`riel, mind telling me what you are doing? We are all dying to know.”
The voice of Yesleta came through the outer speakers of the Recon Team helmets. Her voice echoed in the hollowed-out cave tree. Making the hairs on the back of Gabriel's neck stand on end. Gabriel cursed internally. His need to find out about the maple syrup had made him forget where and with whom he was. Taking a deep breath, he faced everyone and spoke.
“Ah, yes. What is currently covering Vijatà is a substance Humans call maple syrup. This substance was processed from trees called Sugar maples. Sadly many milleni….sorry I mean, thousands of rotations ago, the trees, alongside many flora and fauna from Humanity's cradle home, were…went extinct. Finding something similar to maple syrup has been placed in what my people call the Humans Edicts. These Edicts are very important, to the point that finding one would make all of Humanity move.”
Yesleta saw countless emotions running through Gab`riel’s face through the cameras on the Recon Team helmet. His expression was similar to when someone was rewarded by the Divine Goddesses when that person had achieved something remarkable. On any other occasion, she would be curious and willing to listen to Gabriel explaining these Edicts. Yet here, and now she could not let whatever these Edicts were, take precedence over the mission in paw.
“Champion Gab`riel, whatever these Èjïtcs are, do not outweigh the current mission. I hope I do not need to remind you of what is currently approaching our location.”
Yesleta's voice wasn’t low or harsh. Yet it carried an authority that made Gabriel slightly flinch. Feeling Yesleta’s disappointment through their link didn’t help Gabriel either, but he couldn’t control this. It was part of him; it was in his DNA. Still, Yesleta was right. They have more pressing matters to attempt too, plus he could always find more maple syrup now that he knew what he was looking for.
“No, Supreme Commander. There is no ne……What the fuck!? Everyone move!”
Gabriel screams at the top of his lungs while pulling Vijatà, who was standing next to him, into his arms and jumping into the air. The rest of the Recon Team, too, jump back just in time to see a set of very familiar tentacles. Gabriel flips in the air and lands on the cave ceiling. Cursing, he materialized his helmet and looked at the hideous creature before him. In his moment of lax judgment, Gabriel had not been paying attention to his passive scans, which were screaming at him about a massive worm measuring 70 meters long and 40 meters high approaching them. He only noticed the gigantic worm when his senses screamed at him of the danger below their feet. The worm rose from the massive hole it created. It opens its mouth, revealing countless razor-sharp fangs and tentacles.
“Is that a fucking Agony Demon! How the fuck did we miss that!?”
Vijatà screams while being carried bridal style by Gabriel. Seeing this creature, she, alongside the Recon Team, understood why they all felt odd inside the massive cave. They were walking through an Agony Demon’s nest!
“The tree! The Tree’s Essences was masking it from our HUD and scanners!”
Bla`ol screams, his voice amplified by Mecha’s outer speakers.
“We’ll deal with that later. Light the fucker up!
Valè screamed. Every member of the Recon Team heard her orders. The sounds of their regular rifles coming to life are heard, and what follows soon after are the sounds of rounds going at Mach 15 echoing inside the cave. The Recon Team had begun fighting the monstrous worm.
The rounds pierce the horrendous creature's flesh, making it scream in pain. The beast retaliated using its massive tentacles. The Recon Team members dodge the incoming attack with grace and great dexterity. Yesleta watched the battle that had just ensued and could not believe her eyes. An Agony Demon had escaped their detection and made it home inside the massive tree.
“That's not an Agony Demon! It's a native species of this planet!”
Gabriel's voice came through everyone's Comms. Hearing his outrageous outburst almost made those fighting the beast lose their footing.
“What do you mean it's not an Agony Demon!? Look at it! Sharp razor fangs! Countless tentacles and hideously ugly! That is most definitely An agony Demon!”
Vijatà, who Gabriel was carrying, screamed what everyone was thinking.
“Exactly that. I scanned it. Its genetic makeup matches the beings of this world.”
While Gabriel gave his explanation, he sent his findings to the Command Center. Those that read the information provided by him were surprised. The creature was indeed a native of this planet. Yesleta, with her ability to absorb more data, read the complete data package that Gabriel had sent. The creature was unique, to say the least, and it was a bizarre example of convergent evolution. She sighed. She knew later on that Momola`n would throw a fit over what she was about to order.
“Is it possible the cave is this creature's home, and when everyone entered, it felt threatened. But as it stands, we don’t have the luxury to make the creature flee. Recon Team, you have the green light. Eliminate the threat in front of you.”
Yesleta gave her order, making everyone move into action. Gabriel kicked off from the ceiling. Beams of superheated plasma shot out from his helmet—burning tentacles aimed at the Recon Team. The massive beast roared. It turned its attention to the one that attacked it and spat a foul-colored liquid. Gabriel easily dodged the foul liquid thrown in his direction. The simple-minded creature, annoyed at the tiny being flying around it, began to pay complete attention to it. Which, it turns out, signed its doom. Yoremedia and her team members Ùzonal and Bla'ol fired their rifles and mounted arm cannons. Their rounds rip large meaty chunks off the beast. The beast roared, enraged by the pain it felt losing its flesh, but in its simple-mindedness, it only saw the flying being about its head attacking it.
“Hot bone!”
Bla`ol screams through his Mecha helmet while throwing an aerodynamic cylinder he created with his Gift at Yoremedia. Catching the cylinder, Yoremedia began injecting her Gift into it. The power of Divine light fills the cylinder, and soon it begins to glow.
“Frag out!”
Yoremedia yells out, throwing the cylinder out at incredible speeds. The cylinder flew, cutting a path straight to the creature. The creature's tentacles began trashing around more violently due to Gabriel burning its mouth. A tentacle was about to smash the cylinder into pieces when countless shadows rose from the ground slicing the tentacle into ribbons.
“That was close!”
Ùzonal, the other male member of Yoremedia’s team, screams out with his paw stretched out. Moving his paws in a circular motion, the shadows match it creating a rotational dome around the cylinder. The now shadow missile cut its way deep into the creature, making it release a horrendous scream. Cracks began to form around the shadows covering the cylinder. Soon light began to radiate from it, and then a blinding explosion happened, releasing billions of nanites into the creature. The nanites flew everywhere, attaching themselves to whatever they came into contact with. Soon the power that Yoremedia injected into them reached a boiling point creating countless explosions. Where once used to be flesh was replaced by smoky white bones. A shriek of despair rang inside the cave, almost deafening the Recon Team. The hideous creature thrashed violently, aggravating its wounds and releasing a vile-colored liquid that began to eat away at the floor. Not knowing what the liquid would do, Yoremedia and her team jumped back and continued to fire their rifles and arm cannons.
Valè and her litter sister V`yx ran around firing their rifles while dodging the spit, tentacles, and falling debris the creature was throwing around. As she ran, a glowing light covered V`yx. Thanks to the covering fire her older litter sister Valè provided, V`yx gathered her Essence into her Gift. Extending her paw, she fired a glowing missile of light. The missile crashed into one of the many tentacles, spreading its light throughout the massive beast. The light ran like wildfire on the beast covering it completely, and soon, the gigantic worm began to lose strength. Its violent trashing slowly dies down. V`yx smiled. Her Gift had weakened the disgusting creature, but not completely. It still had some fight left. It smashed two of its tentacles into the ceiling sending large chunks of bark into the floor below. Both Valè and V`yx dodge the incoming debris. They weave with trained perfection, the tentacles, falling debris, and the odd-looking liquid; they dodge it all. But avoiding a chunk of bark the size of a Transport, Valè found herself alone with her back against the cave wall. Tentacles race toward her with the intent to end her. Power rose inside Valè. Her Essence reached its peak and was released with great force. The force tore the tentacles apart and any debris near her. Around her, a blue shield was created, blocking anything that wished to harm her.
“Vijatà, get down here now while I have my Gift up! We need to put this thing down now!”
Valè screamed into her Comms, carrying her voice to her other litter sister. Vijatà was having the time of her life. The Champion had licked her fingers and paw clean off, which almost made her come, and now she was being carried by him while flying around. It felt off being at the mercy of the Champion, but she wouldn’t lie. It was thrilling to no end. What's more, in the position she found herself in, her paws could grab onto the undersuit of the Champion. The suit had a similar texture to her armor, making it easy to feel what was underneath.
“Vijatà, get down here now while I have my Gift up! We need to put this thing down now!”
Valè annoyed, and pissed-off voice rang next to her ears, destroying Vijatà's joyful and wonderful moment. Vijatà sighed. It was time to get back at what she was good at, and that was killing ugly Demon fuckers. Hopefully, once she was done and the Devine Goddesses allowed it, the Champion would return to cleaning her again. With her goal in mind, Vijatà taps the Champion’s shoulder. The Champion stops firing plasma beams from his helmet and turns his attention to Vijatà.
“I got to go. Thanks for the cleaning, Champion! Once this is done, can we continue where we left off? I still hav….”
“Vijatà! Get your fucking tail down here, Now!”
Valè’s voice booms into Vijatà’s Comms, making the young Tubinestian woman jump. Annoyed, Vijatà looked over her shoulder and saw the battle below. Her litter sister V`yx had weakened the creature with her Gift, but it wasn’t enough to bring it down. Turning to the Champion, she winks, which the Champion could see as her helmet wasn’t tinted yet. Running her fingers down the Champion’s helmet, Vijatà spoke.
“See you later, Champion.”
Pushing herself off the Champion, Vijatà fell to the battle below. With unparallel skill, Vijatà twisted her body, dodging the creature’s tentacles. A tentacle was getting dangerously close to her. Extending her arms, Vijatà pushed herself away from the beast and flipped in the air, catapulting her high above the creature’s head. As she flew over the creature's head, Vijatà grabbed her rifle and began to rain supersonic rounds down onto the beast. The rounds pierce the creature’s skull, destroying a section of its skull. The beast started flailing its tentacles violently over its head, forcing Vijatà to change her landing trajectory. Landing on the creature’s back, Vijatà almost lost her footing as the back of the creature was covered by some type of slippery substance. Bearly maintaining her balance, Vijatà was able to slide down the creature’s back and land next to her older litter sister.
“You took your damn sweet time! Link up with V`yx so we can bring this thing down now!”
Valè said through gritted teeth, as keeping her Gift up against the constant onslaught of attack from the creature’s tentacles was draining her Essence rapidly. Not missing a beat, Vijatà looked at her HUD, searching for her litter sister V`yx IFF. The HUD painted her nearby, running toward her Vijatà scream.
“To the Goddess of War, we pray!”
“Mighty Catteyutiria, we call forth your wrath!”
In the distance, V`yx voice booms.
“Bring down those that stand in our way!”
Vijatà continued to scream as she got closer to her litter sister.
“Shatter their will to fight with your ever-growing might!”
V`yx voice sounded closer to Vijatà now. V`yx and Vijatà were only a few feet away from each other. Putting their rifles away, they ran toward each other with their fists held high.
“Let the sound of your War drums ring! Catteyutiria’s Smite!”
Both Tubinestian women scream while their fists collide. A large amount of Essences was released by each clash. The ringing of their fists echoed across the massive cave, and the large amount of Essences covered the gigantic worm. The worm began to lose strength. Its tentacles which it once used to rend the cave ceiling and floor apart, were now strewed on the cave’s floor motionless.
“Bring it down! Before the debuff runs out!”
Valè screams to every member of the Recon Team. V`yx and Vijatà grabbed their rifles and fired at the massive worm. Valè, now with some breathing room, joins her younger litter sisters leaving the cave’s wall behind. Yoremedia and her team focused fired onto the gaping hole they created, tearing every organ exposed.
Gabriel had stopped firing his plasma beams when Vijatà and V`yx had used their Gifts in a combo or k'i'ik'el kechmekatl. He had read about it while studying **“**MagIc~.” It was an ability of those from the same family, alongside similar Gifts, could perform. Giving a prayer to the Goddess they had an affinity to, just like Vijatà and V`yx had prayed to Catteyutiria, would amplify their Gifts, creating a more potent reaction and boosting their Gifts. Seeing the k'i'ik'el kechmekatl was interesting yet bizarre, like everything that dealt with “mAgIc~” still, seeing it in person and reading it about were two different things. The application and deployment of these unique abilities would change the playing field of any battle, just like what was happening in front of him.
Everyone was fighting the ugly as-sin worm…or, to be more precise. They were curb-stomping it to death. Dodging a round, Gabriel took notice of something. The Recon Team was fighting the creature in front of them as if it was an Agony Demon which was bad. At the beginning of the fight, he had been cautious in using his abilities. As throwing balls of plasma or using the Spear of Terra replica would’ve destroyed the cave…something the Recon Team was doing by themselves already. Sure, they were cautious with their shots, but this creature wasn’t built like an Agony Demon. Rounds flew through the beast, tearing flesh and destroying whatever was on the other side. He needed to finish this fight before they brought the cave down.
“Everyone pull back!”
He screamed. The voice of the Champion came through everyone’s Comms. No one bothered to second-guess what they heard. Every member of the Recon Team jumped back with amazing speed. Helmets began to tint as an extremely bright light engulfed the cave. A massive ball of plasma sat above the Champion. With one swift motion, he throws it at the beast below. The ball of plasma flew toward the creature, who was still under the effect of V`yx and Vijatà's strange ability. The eyeless monstrosity could not see what was approaching it. It could only feel the scorching heat for less than a second before turning into ash. The massive ball of plasma flew past the gigantic worm, leaving nothing behind, not even ash. Seeing the beast turn to nothing, the Recon Team began to relax but still maintain vigilance.
“Recon Team report.”
The voice and image of Supreme Commander Yesleta came through. Vale turned her gaze to the corner of her helmet. There she saw her Supreme Commander, as always displaying power and dignity worthy of her position. Raising her tail for a salute, Valè spoke.
“Supreme Commander, the immediate threat has been neutralized. Team members V`yx and Vijatà have used a significant portion of their Essence, but nothing an Erol fruit can’t fix.”
Yesleta nodded her head. She had seen the battle play out thanks to the cameras on the Recon Team helmets. In less than two minutes, the massive creature had been brought down, and no one had suffered any significant damage. Satisfied with the result of the battle, she spoke.
“Regroup and continue with your current heading. We will continue to monitor you. Lastly, Champion Gab`riel, I hope another “event” doesn’t occur. Supreme Commander Yesleta out.”
Gabriel flinched at Yesleta's last parting words. He had been listening to the conversation in case of any new orders, yet all he got was a chewing. A chewing that would continue once he got back if what he was getting through their link was true, which always was…maybe if he took some maple syrup to Yesleta, the chewing wouldn’t be as ba…
“Hey, where is all this coming from? Champion Gab`riel, what did you call this thing? Matlè cirit?”
The voice of Vijatà derailed Gabriel’s train of thought. Turning his attention toward the young woman, he saw her eating Erol fruit that replenishes their Essences and an ankle-deep stream of blue glowing maple syrup running down the cave’s floor.
“I think it's matle cirit, and can you just sit and eat your Erol? We need to get our Essence back, or did you forget we have a battalion of unknowns approaching us.”
Gabriel turned his gaze to the one that had spoken. Sitting around a boulder-sized bark was Yoremedia, her Team members Ùzonal and Bla`ol, Valè, and the one he was sure had spoken V`yx. Everyone had taken their helmets off and were waiting for V`yx and Vijatà to finish their fruit. Seeing everyone taking a breather, Gabriel decided to continue to “examine” the maple syrup. After all, he needed to be 100% certain it was maple syrup. Flying toward a wall, Gabriel scanned it for anything that would affect the flavor. Finding nothing, he began to sample the maple syrup. His tastebuds when into euphoria all the sweet things Gabriel had tasted up to this point could not compare to this type of sweetness. A ping from his passive scan notifies Gabriel something is happening to the hole the worm came out from. Flying to the massive hole, he began to scan the interior of it and noticed the odd-looking liquid the worm had used was rapidly deteriorating. Landing on the edge of the hole, Gabriel detected several fault areas. Something he didn’t like, as the smallest amount of force would shatter the bark and flood this cave with a sea of maple syrup. Opening the Recon Team’s Comms, he spoke.
“Junior team leader Valè, we should begin to depart. I have finished scanning the hole where the creature appeared, and it shows significant damage done to it. The possibility of breaking and flooding this cave with maple syrup is high.”
Information pops up from Valè’s forearms' 3D display. The leader of the Recon Team reads the data and wrinkles her brow; she doesn’t like what she is reading.
“Ya’ll heard the Champion. Let’s move.”
Everyone nodded, and their helmets began to close around their head. Gabriel began to walk toward the group to get into position when his passive scan showed a familiar scan. The scans were the same as the ones when the tree was about to breathe…

Audio Visual Transcript 001
Date of Origin: Unknown
Audio Self-Translated by player for universal understanding by all sapient species with audio receptors
“Just a slight adjustment here, and it should be working.”
A Kolshian walked into view. His dark purple skin bordered on a rich red and his yellow eyes almost glowed in the backdrop of the bright light of the room.
“Hello, my name is Doctor… Well, my name doesn’t matter. What does matter is why I’m making this. We have made an astonishing discovery this day in the Commonwealth. While we have known for some time now that we are not alone in this universe, what with our contact with the now familiar herbivore species we call our friends, what we have here is something new.”
The man pulls up a datapad in view of the camera to display an avian creature with brightly colored feathers.
“The Krakotl, as they are called, have taken the scientific community by storm—at least those who are aware of their existence. As with standard protocol that was formed shortly after our first contact with another species, we are not immediately alerting the public to their existence. It’s mostly for political reasons, which are not important here.”
He flicked a tentacle finger at the end of the datapad and pulled up a video of a few sapient avians picking at both fruits and something else just slightly out of view. The Krakotl lifts its head just enough to show a chunk of flesh in its beak.
“They are the first species we have found that can ingest animal biomaterial for nourishment. The ramifications of this are… Exciting!”
The scientist makes a gleeful gesture as he sets the holopad down. “This entire situation is unique in so many ways. The situation is being handled delicately I’m sure. After all, we can’t assume this should be handled the same way it was in the past. The fact that they are not as advance as us pulls so many things into question.”
He took a moment to compose himself. “This is why I’m making this recording. It is important, I feel, more than any data we gather that this entire process be documented. There is so much to learn, to observe, to understand. I feel that even with all the technology that we have we still have more we can learn from them than they can from us. That’s why I’m expanding outside of my usual scope and making this a massive project the likes of which I would have never attempted before. Biology will be hard to understand, but I’m sure with a humanly gathered sample I can crack their genetic code just as we have done for our own species.”
He lifted the holopad again and flicked through countless different settings. The videos and images he quickly went through all showed Krakotl performing a variety of rituals, playing games, and instigating countless other different activities.
“It doesn’t stop with the DNA though. That can only tell you so much. I want to know more. Their culture, who they are, what their morals are, what they love, and what they hate. I want to learn. We just have to be cautious about how we go about this. Small scout missions sent down to the surface of the world can only do so much without breaking that thin barrier of anonymity that keeps things stable. There is no telling what would happen if they became aware of us too soon. The last thing I would want to see is that level of culture shock happening to a species before we can properly catalog how they are now.”
He once again lowered the datapad while his face turned stern. “Now, there is one thing I want to address. There are murmurs of people questioning if this species can truly be sapient if they consume animal biomass. That is a ridiculous question to even bring up.”
“Of course they are sapient. There is a rich culture here, one that we must tread around with caution. Perhaps there will be some hurdles to overcome, but I want to make one thing very clear here. What an organism consumes does not dictate its level of sapients. I believe much of the academic and political community would best be reminded that we are dealing with aliens here. The most basic principles of biology will still apply, but this world’s ecosystem is something entirely different from ours. Call me a quack if you will, but I think the best course of action in most cases is preservation.”
He stood up and moved to the other end of the camera. “I’ve said my peace on the matter here. Hopefully, oceans and skies willing, I can focus entirely on the scientific aspects of this discovery moving forwards. I simply feel it would be dishonest not to mention such large overarching ideals seeping around. The true nature of preservation and history is to make sure that even the ugliest parts are remembered.”
​
Audio Visual Transcript 005
Date of Origin: Unknown
Audio Self-Translated by player for universal understanding by all sapient species with audio receptors
The reddish Kolshian from the previous log is sat down. Despite several physical signs of exhaustion, he appeared excited.
“I’ve, no, we’ve done it. It went smoother than I could have ever hoped for. We cracked their genetic code and have fully decoupled their DNA as we did for ours. We even managed to do it without making ourselves known to the local population. It is amazing what modern science can do. Getting the samples was honestly the hardest part, but I’ve been assured that everything obtained was done without disturbing the Krakotl.”
He swiped through a holopad in his grip with the screen facing away from the camera.
“There is so much we can do with this. I know it’s getting ahead of myself a bit, but with genetics, this cleanly displayed we might even be able to cure most of their genetic illnesses before we even make contact.”
He hugged the holopad close to himself. “We can even cure them of one of the greatest universal illnesses that plague all life it seems. Curing cancer for an alien species, can you imagine that?!”
He loosened his grip and gently sat the holopad down on a table next to him. He adjusted himself, exhaustion being kept back by pure elation.
“I must not get ahead of myself. Before we do anything of that sort we must integrate them into the larger world. Though I’ve been assured by everyone, from our political backers to the head scientists who work alongside our leaders, that curing this species will be one of our top priorities before final integration is complete. I’m sure it will be a long and slow process getting there, maybe it won’t even be finished in my lifetime, but even that has its blessings. I’ve collected so much on the Krakotl and their culture this past year. Not to mention I’ve logged their original DNA composition down to the finest detail. That way, if just for historical purposes, we will always have a pure original example of their genetic makeup.”
He rubbed the back of his head with a tentacle. “I’m told I’m being overeager doing such. That any changes made will only be for the better, but… It just feels wrong not at least doing that. Yes, no species would ever want to have genetic diseases again. The body eating away at itself is truly a horrible thing, but it still feels important to preserve. If just to show where we started.”
The doctor’s body went limp for a moment, only to snap back up straight seconds later. He gurgled a low groan and stood back up.
“That will have to be all for now. I must sleep. These last few weeks have been exciting, but bad for my personal health. There is just no end to the work that needs to be done.”
​
Audio Visual Transcript 007
Date of Origin: Unknown
Audio Self-Translated by player for universal understanding by all sapient species with audio receptors
The same reddish doctor as before sat himself down. He remained quiet, fiddling with his tentacles. His big yellow eyes were aimed at the floor as if the doctor didn’t dare look directly at the recording device. He opened his mouth a few times to speak but stopped short of a gasp.
“They… They started the uplift process. It’s… I…”
He sucked in a breath and finally stared at the camera. His face was one of pure exhaustion. No excitement held it back this time.
“It’s gone awful. It’s gone atrociously. It’s gone… All according to plan without a single hiccup I’m told.”
He lifted a datapad. “Their infrastructure is being ripped apart. Their culture is being erased and replaced with a more ‘clean’ variation. I’m not even privy to the full extent of everything. I don’t know if they're fighting back, I don’t know if they tried to fight back. I tried to push back against it all, and I was blacklisted from all projects related to the Krakotl. I’m being moved to different projects now. Something about a machine interfacing with a brain. It’s… A ridiculous dead-end project that I’m being sent to so I won’t have any impact on the academic world anymore.”
He swallowed. “They’re changing them. It’s not just their culture. The DNA we translated, that I helped translate, it’s being used in horrifying ways.”
He dropped the datapad and buried his face in his arms. His face being buried did little to muffle the long shout he emitted. His voice gurgled to the point it started cracking. When the loud scream ended he looked back up, his voice nearly too quiet to be picked up.
“They took everything they thought I had. Unfortunately for them, this project was never a part of my work. It means nothing compared to the amount of damage that is being done, but maybe I can keep something of their people safe.”
He reached down for the holopad and stood back up. “They don’t know what I still have. Cultural records are just the tip of the iceberg. There is still time to salvage more as well. Even the Commonwealth can’t reach every Krakotl that fast. For now, whoever may end up watching these records, if anyone, know that the Krakotl were a proud people. Know that whatever they will become, what they were won’t be forgotten forever. They will be preserved, at least here.”
​
Audio Visual Transcript 018
Date of Origin: Unknown
Audio Self-Translated by player for universal understanding by all sapient species with audio receptors
The red scientist sat on a chair with a panel crowded with buttons, switches, and wires behind him. The clean room with bright lighting from before was now a metal box with dim red lighting.
The Kolshian himself looked disheveled. Years had visibly aged off of him, and grease covered his arms.
“More people have been removed from this project. It seems that they’re slowly taking people who have ‘served their time’ away if they’ve been acting right. Keep your head down and nod your head, and get put back into real projects. I know I’m never leaving this place, though.”
He reached for the recorder and turned it to the side to reveal a strange machine. Two legs, two arms that ended in three vice-like grips evenly distributed in a circle to act as digits, a bulky center, and a small bump of a head with a single glowing eye-port.
“This is where science goes to die. I haven’t been able to gather much new information of the avians all the way out here, but it has been some time since I’ve documented anything. Might as well show this off since I’ve got the time to. Not like I need to work hard to keep these recordings hidden anymore. I can count on my digits the number of people still on this project.”
The doctor stood up and lifted the camera with him. A click came from the direction of the panel and the center of the machine popped open to reveal an internal compartment.
“It has just enough space for a single Kolshian. It’s big compared to us as you can plainly see. The idea behind it is to interface the brain through a few connectors at the top. It sounds as dangerous and asinine as it sounds. At this point, I’m the only one that even knows how it works on a basic level since I’ve been here so long. The trick is that it doesn’t work. Not at all.”
He slipped a tentacle into the head and clicked something. The head popped open to reveal a series of wires and a strange helmet lined with needles.
“This thing is as barbaric as it is advanced. The idea is to use these needles to puncture the skull in specific areas to not cause damage while also forming a direct connection. Basically trying to turn the machine into your new body as long as you’re inside it. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone why that’s a bad idea.”
He trails his tentacle down to the legs of the machine. The basic structure offers enough to support the rest of the body and could reasonably move forward at a walking speed.
“All the ideas in this thing that are reasonable are already in use. We have diving and space equipment best suited for our species, and mines operate at a level that something like this is too clunky to use. It can produce audio and translate it in real-time, but even that is something we already have. Even if it was perfectly functional it would be a bad idea. Don’t even get me started on mass production. Getting one to work would be a miracle. Getting more than one? I’ll believe it when primates fly.”
He huffs. “One good thing about this machine though that isn’t widely used has resulted in a lot of its bulk. Not only can it survive massive impacts, but it has backup systems to keep the user alive in case of critical failures. At least for the short term, the only part of you that needs to function to use it is the brain. Again though, if it would ever work.”
He turned the camera back to himself. “I’m sorry I don’t have more about the situations in the world. I’ve basically been cut off from that information. This place is technically a government secret so I can’t contact the outside world, and they sure as the depths aren’t trying to contact me. It’s like being sent to prison except I’m working on someone’s pipe dream. Seriously, my degree isn’t even in mechanics but I’ve been working at this place long enough to know more than some engineers.”
A loud beep echoed through the room.
“Someone’s opening the door. Signing off.”
​
Audio Visual Transcript 019
Date of Origin: Unknown
Audio Self-Translated by player for universal understanding by all sapient species with audio receptors
The feed cuts to the doctor in the same spot he was at during the last video. Before he can open his mouth there is a beep that echoes in the room. He quickly tossed something over the camera.
The rest of the transcript is audio only.
The sound of metal sliding across metal is heard, followed by the steps of someone else entering the room.
“Ah, sir, what are you doing here? You’re not scheduled for another check-in until next week.” The doctor spoke.
“Cut the pleasantries. You know why I’m here, defect. The fact that you get to work on a backwater nothing project like this is already too good for someone with your ideals.” another deeper voice boomed with anger from what sounded like a second Kolshian.
“Well, yes, maybe it is too good for me, but what does that have to do with anything official here?”
“Simple, this project doesn’t have enough scientists to continue. On top of that, it’s just been a waste of resources.”
“And what does that entail for the people still on the project?”
“For the rest of this facility, they will simply have to stay quiet and be put back into society.”
“The rest of this facility.”
“Right, well, how do I best put this? Your death certificate has already been signed. Got a lot of officials who think it would be best if you just weren’t around anymore. You’re considered too much of a liability with how you looked at those predators.”
Several more steps can be heard coming into the room.
“You're going to execute me?! What crime have I committed?!”
The second figure chuckled. “Crime? We don’t even need to justify a crime for this. See, a hot new buzzword has been going through the government that I think fits you to a T. You’ve got predator disease, and anyone with predator disease is a danger to themselves and others as long as they're alive. Oh, less extreme cases might be treatable especially if caught early, but your doc? Well, I’m sure the few people who know about this project will understand that a man getting on in years with a bad case of predator disease had to be dealt with. Fuck, we plan on taking most of this facility down, we can just blow it up and pin it on you! Not like a deadman can argue his case.”
“This absurd, you can’t just-”
A loud bang cut the doctor short. A second later there was a thump.
“Eh, don’t bother with the double tap. We’re going to blow this facility up. We already went and scrubbed this star system off all our maps. Red dwarf snugged between so many bright stars it's barely visible, and it’s in a section of space no one would bother to look in anyways. Remember, none of you saw anything here. We’re technically not even supposed to be here.”
“Sir!”
“Let’s get out here before he starts to stink up the place.”
“Sir!”
The sound of at least half a dozen people walking out of the room was followed by silence.
The audio picked up another sound. Something wet that sounded like it was dragged against metal. It went further and further away from the recorder until it was out of earshot.
A loud snap of metal opening was followed by multiple smaller snaps of pieces clicking back together. Several minutes went by in silence again after the last click.
Then there was a thunk. Then another, and another. The rhythmic sound of metal hitting metal came closer to the recording. There was a jostle of the camera as whatever kept it covered came off.
A bright red light flashed the camera which still made it impossible to discern anything.
The transcript ended abruptly.

Over from the Patreon. If you haven't read Cass' Aven Cycle, it's really good stuff!
Today we're chatting with Cass Morris, author of the Aven Cycle, a historical fantasy set in an alternate Rome, and co-host of the podcast Worldbuilding for Masochists, an award-nominated podcast discussing the intricacies of worldbuilding in SFF. This means Cass is something of an expert on worldbuilding complexity in fantasy books, which is what I want to talk about today. SFF readers have a particular love of immersing ourselves in richly detailed worlds we can imagine ourselves in viscerally, but let's talk about how writers can actually bring that complexity of detail into focus without totally overwhelming readers.
So to start, I want to talk about political systems, because I love how you managed to make the deep sense of complexity on that front accessible. Ancient Rome: Not an uncomplicated governmental system! And that's before you introduce fantastical elements. People already have trouble understanding how our own governments work, so how do you teach the reader enough that you can play with that complexity for plot intrigue? How do you convey the sense of complexity so the reader understands it without totally bogging down the pacing with exposition?
CASS: Well, one big thing that helps is absolutely the editing process! I'm prone to going into far too much detail on the first try. Multiple pages of too much detail. An entire swamp's worth of getting bogged down. Laying out all the complexities helps me explain them to myself, but it's far more than a reader needs. After the first draft, I could carve out what was totally unnecessary, then simplify the rest enough to be comprehensible, just as, say, The West Wing simplifies the machinations of the White House and Congress without losing what's dramatically interesting about them.
Then, as with so many worldbuilding elements, I think you have to connect political worldbuilding to what a character needs and what's obstructing them. For example: Sempronius Tarren needs to win a certain election to get himself the right provincial posting to set up his longer-term goals. In seeing him make that plan, the reader learns a little about the hierarchy of offices and the powers endowed to each—not a full constitution's worth of details, but enough to understand why the office is desirable and valuable to this character in this moment. Then, the obstruction: His philosophical opponents don't want him gaining what they consider dangerous levels of power, so they throw legal challenges in his way, the same way the US Congress uses things like filibusters. Showing Sempronius' frustration at the block, followed by his own countermove to get around it, feeds the reader more information about how the system works, but through the more engaging lens of his thoughts and emotions.
CASEY: Ha, the existence of editing is a great point. I've done this the opposite way as well—drafted the bones of the story and then filled in later once I knew what kind of detail was called for. But I think the key that you bring up here is that you're focusing on what is relevant to the point-of-view character. They—and we, as the authors—might know and be familiar with all kinds of political nuances the reader isn't, but that doesn't mean you have to teach them all to the reader!
This can get tricky, because deep in the character POV they might notice all those signals, but the ones the reader needs are the ones that are directly relevant to the POV character's goal and its attending conflict. And moreover, it needs to be a specific goal, not something nebulous like, "I want to attain more power." You have a character who wants to accomplish something specific (e.g. win an election), and give them a limited number of people/obstructions who are the actual roadblocks—possibly not the person you'd expect to have the power to stop them, to indicate more nuance in a system, or you can mention in summary other contributing factors that are already in hand, things like that. But limiting the scope helps focus on a few areas to then flesh out in depth, which in turn creates the impression of more depth in general.
It's sort of counterintuitive, but in a way you have room to give more detail with fewer details. And I love how your approach bakes the exposition into the character's agency as they navigate their response to obstructions, because that is so helpful with pacing, too.
DJANGO: A good edit does indeed always help a lot!
For me the biggest barrier to depicting a complex government realistically is the sheer number of people involved. In any government of reasonable size there are hundreds, if not thousands, of potential decision-makers who might have impact on a plot. In a Roman context, beyond the actual elected officials (and there are plenty of those) you have all the other members of important families who didn'tget elected, or are planning to get elected next year, or who lend money to the candidates, or what have you. Thinking about the current US government, the number of characters I personally would recognize (as a more-or-less informed news reader) is both far less than the number who really matter and far morethen we can expect an average novel reader to keep track of.
There are a few techniques that have helped me in the past. The first is just an acceptable break from reality—power in novels tends to be way more centralized than it would "realistically" be. This is true even in very autocratic societies! To go back to my favorite example, in A Game of Thrones the number of major characters involved in the government is probably less than 20—the king, his family, the small council, and the seven Lords Paramount (Stark, Tully, Tyrell, and so on). This is enough that the book has a reputation for complexity and having a lot of characters, but compared to a real government of the type it depicts is probably an order of magnitude too low. GRRM wisely concentrates a lot of functions into personal rule because it works better dramatically for Mace Tyrell or Tywin Lannister to attend to stuff personally than having a hundred ministers and vassals all the time. (It's not a government, but in The Shadow Campaigns the army that the main characters are part of is under-officered in comparison to its historical counterparts—extremely so by British standards!—exactly because this means fewer named characters for everyone to keep track of.)
The other useful trick is to assign representatives—people who can stand in for a large bunch of similar people that we keep coming back to. If you need to write "someone convinces the members of Parliament to vote yes on something," and it doesn't work for there to be some single person who gets to make that choice, you can show the characters meeting with a small number of MPs, say three, and coming back to them several times. With the proper framing as a kind of montage, the reader understands that these are examples and extrapolates. This helps you depict the kind of thing that goes on in the government, which can be just as important as its formal structure. (For example, are you getting the MPs on-side by threats from the party whip, promises of future political favors, or payoffs and patronage?) Joe Abercrombie is particularly good at this, for example in his depiction of the Open Council in Before They Are Hanged.
CASS: Yeah, trimming down the number of people involved is definitely a big help. That's another place where I usually have far too many functionaries and side characters on the first go, then end up consolidating them in following drafts. You can also do a lot just depicting the literal halls of power—how full the building is, how many people are moving around, even the architecture itself can tell the reader a lot about the scale of the governing apparatus, in just a few words of description.
Trimming down the steps of a process also helps. If you look at something like how a bill becomes a law in the United States, it's a lot more complex than Schoolhouse Rock led us to believe! It's not just: 1. Propose Law; 2. Committee Debate; 3: Full Chamber Debate; 4: Vote; 5: Repeat in Other Chamber; 6: President Signs. There are many layers of hearings and markups and financial appropriations, and it's all recursive, because you might have to go through that several times! A little of that may prove interesting, if you can hang an exciting character moment on it or show a really neat procedural trick, but going through the full process will be torture for anyone but the wonkiest of policy wonks.
The Aven Cycle is a fantasy with a strong historical analogue, and I know you have a lot of experience with historical research, between your current dramaturgical work for Camp Halfblood and your formal academic training. So talk to me about how you use history to inform your worldbuilding without restricting your fictional playground with so much research the story becomes didactic. How do you choose what to focus on, and what to leave out? Since women are front and center in these books, I'd love to hear in particular how you focused their stories with a sense of historicity, and how much you could take or chose to invent based on your research.
CASS: I have always been hugely interested in social history: how people live their lives in a given place and time. Sometimes it's strikingly similar to how we experience life today, and sometimes it's so alien—and the same piece of history can be an example of both! I'm fascinated by all the pressure points a society faces and how we create both problems and solutions out of our dominant paradigms. Social history can be hard to uncover, though, because so many of our literary primary sources were composed by wealthy free men, which leaves out most of society. We generally see everyone else through the biased lens of those guys at the top of the heap—at least in what we think of as traditional source material. So, I like exploring less traditional sources.
In the early modern world of my academic training, we do have more surviving written work in the form of letters and journals, but we can also look to things like ecclesiastical records. I promise that's more fascinating than it sounds! Reading up on 17th century slander trials is wild, for example, because those record the exact words that people were using to insult each other—which in turn tells us a lot about what they considered virtuous and what was shameful. Or there's Henslowe's Diary, which gets into granular detail about the income and expenses of a theatre in the 1590s and 1600s.
In the ancient world, archaeology provides more information than words do. The layout of their houses, their furniture, their tools, their kitchen utensils, all of it shows us how people lived. Some of my favorite sources are funerary monuments. Thousands and thousands of these survive, and they document the lives of regular people. The majority, in fact, belong to soldiers or freedmen and their families. They used them to boast of what they'd made of themselves, proud that their children had been born free, proud of the businesses they built. The soldiers spoke about where they'd fought and what awards they won. Some of the most heartbreaking were set up by parents mourning for young children (putting paid to the myth that people didn't get attached to their kids because of high rates of child mortality). Each one is a declaration of the self in defiance of the oblivion of eternity, and I just find that so beautiful.
That's all a long way of saying: I look for the history that shows me people. Those are the details that I want to carry into the text: what they care about, what they value, and the material culture that attends those more abstract concepts. That's the history that ties to character, rather than just being an info-dump.
Even with all that archaeological information, though, we're still stuck with a dearth of information, particularly when it comes to the lives of women and other marginalized groups. So I've had to train myself to look at the absences, the gaps in the record, and try to fill them in, and to look at the sources written by men, then subtract out the biases those men held in order to get to something closer to truth.
It's like looking at the shadow of a tiger. It might give you an idea of the tiger's shape, but only from a particular angle. It may or may not tell you how big a tiger is. It won't tell you that a tiger has stripes, what a tiger sounds like, or what it eats. Examining the lives of marginalized groups in history is often trying to know them by their shadows.
What's clear, though, is that women exerted a lot of power "off-screen" in the ancient world. We have some gorgeous examples: Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, held up as a paragon of virtue; much-married Fulvia, who ran street gangs, had a feud with Cicero, and waged war against Octavius Caesar; Agrippina Major, popular heroine who gave an emperor so much grief that he had her assassinated; her daughter Agrippina Minor, mother of Nero, whose autobiography is the lost text I'd most like to see miraculously rediscovered. I could go on and on—but I borrowed a lot from all of them when crafting the women of Aven. They were smart and resourceful despite the confines of their society, and whether they played within the boundaries or dared to transgress, they made an impact.
DJANGO: For me this is all about using history to inform my worldbuilding, rather than define it.
I like to think of using history as a case study, an example, rather than a blueprint to be literally followed. If you have a fantasy situation—a type of warfare, an environment, a resource distribution—history provides you with examples of how real people adapted to it, made use of it, and generally applied their ingenuity. People, by and large, don't do obviously stupid things (at least not for very long) and so generally the fact that a society was set up in such-and-such a way and lasted for hundreds of years means that it worked pretty well! (In our modern times of plenty, this can be hard to comprehend; for most of human history, "everyone not dying of starvation" was a great accomplishment requiring constant, unrelenting work.)
This is not to say, of course, that it had to be that way, or that any other way is "unrealistic." The key is to use the historical analogy to understand the kinds of thingsthat were challenges for those people. If they live in, say, a desert, they will have adapted to it in every way: dress, food, shelter, etc. When you read about how they lived, the important thing isn't to copy it exactly, but to make sure that your fantasy people have answers to the same challenges—this is what gives the book verisimilitude!
What I generally find is that no amount of me sitting down and reasoning out the problems people face, a priori, goes even a fraction of the way toward actually understanding those problems; history inevitably throws up fixes that people invented for problems I would never have even considered. (In late medieval France, knife-sharpeners carried circular whetstones—we're talking big, 50 pound stones—on their backs as they went from village to village. The rest of their setup could be constructed from local wood, but big stones of sufficient hardness were very hard to find, and drilling a hole through the middle for the axle was a capital investment!) Lifting these little vignettes for my fantasy society gives it that feel of realism I crave, while still leaving sufficient room to change the aspects of the past that I'm not eager to replicate.
CASS: What gets really fun there is, if you are using a specific historical inspiration but want to make really significant changes, figuring out what happens when you flick the domino. I'm working on a new project now that's a secondworld fantasy instead of an alternate version of our world, but it's inspired by early modern London and the vibe of Shakespeare's theatres. I'm working from that base because I want that aesthetic—but I also want this society to have gender equity, I want them to be accepting of queer identities, I want them to be polytheistic, and the government is more like Venice than England. Those are some really big changes from London in 1600, even before adding magic to the equation!
So then I get to figure out what else in society those things touch: clothing, industry, family structure, bureaucratic structure, and so forth. How would these people, with their worldview, find similar or different answers to problems than the historical examples I'm inspired by? This is why I love worldbuilding, because I find that such a fun game. There are so many possible answers, and I tinker until I find the ones that best fit the story I want to tell.
CASEY: Oh, funerary monuments is a great tip. There's a newsletter called Ælfgif-who? on biographies of early medieval English women, and it's fascinating to see what the author can construct from a combination of records and artifacts and the biases involved, what's said and what's conspicuously not said, what she can guess versus what there's hard evidence for. As a fantasist, I love the possibility space those gaps create that I can fill in.
As Django points out, people have been problem-solving throughout history, and that's not limited to wealthy men. If the records don't talk about what women were doing, it doesn't mean they were sitting on their laurels all day or just accepting whatever men figured out, and you can often get a sense for the space they occupied in the gaps—and if you can't, those gaps can give you ideas for what space they couldoccupy—in history, or in a story.
I think it's also worth noting that historical research can give you a sense of what kinds of social systems go together. I remember reading a fantasy book with a setting inspired by Japan that had all these features that have existed in Japanese history but not at the same time. So it was this mess of things that didn't make any sense together, because the author hadn't paid attention to the historical context.
I don't write historical analogue settings, but even for secondary world fantasy I find it useful to pay attention to what features can work together, and that's especially important once you start changing aspects to suit your story. A society with cell phones is not going to work the same way as one with post. A society where most people can't read won't work the same either! And this matters because it determines what kind of plots you can write, but it's also not super efficient to consider every aspect of the worldbuilding. Like, in a given story I may not need to know how laundry works, or the sewers, or what toys children are playing with. (Sometimes, sure! But not every time.)
But I probably need to know what people are wearing so I can describe them, so it matters what kind of clothing their technology could make and what it costs. I need to know how they communicate with each other, because they're going to do that in pretty much any story.
So I start with a character and plot concept and work backward to build the world around what the story requires them to do, and I do it in this order because otherwise I am exactly the person who will get lost in a worldbuilding rabbit hole at the expense of actually writing the story. But once I start figuring out some of the tentpoles like, This person's unique education makes them critical to the plot (why do they have that education? what education is available to other people?), or more generally, Our heroes will not be able to call for help because the message won't arrive in time (how far does the message need to travel, and how long will it take, and how long to get a response?), that starts to tell you the kinds of things that will be important to put together to make a world that feels internally consistent and enablesyou to tell your story.
If your heroine is rebelling against an arranged marriage, it's worth asking how common arranged marriages are and why and for whom. Like, the whole culture of debutantes in regency England emerged out of economic changes! Social institutions are intertwined, you can't just treat them as piecemeal. But if you do it right, the research gives you more things to play with that inform your characters' histories and choices rather than restricting you based on what "really" happened. Then it's just a matter of focusing on the pieces that actually matter to the story you're actually telling or enhance it in some way.
Lastly, I would be remiss in talking to you specifically about focusing an audience without asking how you use rhetoric to do that very thing (you can find Cass' deep dive on rhetoric in Hamilton, backed by Lin Manuel Miranda himself, on her Patreon). A common piece of writing advice is to never actually write the impossibly dramatic speech in fiction, because it will never be as impressive to readers, and instead focus on the characters' reaction or experience. Do you agree? And are there particular rhetorical devices you like to use to help focus readers' attention on what you want them to notice, whether it's a part of an argument in dialogue or in conveying information in the narrative?
CASS: Oh, you've done a dangerous thing, opening the door of rhetoric for me!
I love rhetoric so much. It's gotten a bad reputation in modern parlance, since most people only ever hear the word in a negative context—political rhetoric, violent rhetoric, and so forth. But rhetoric is nothing more and nothing less than structuring your words to achieve a desired effect. It's deeply woven into everything writers do, whether or not you're the kind of ultra-nerd who memorizes the Greek names for a few hundred devices. I think some of the best writers (like Shakespeare and LMM) do it in part instinctively, because they have such a good ear for how people speak and for the cadence of language, but it's also a skill that you can hone and train.
Rhetoric serves many purposes, and a lot of it is about crafting a character's voice, both in dialogue and in their POV narration. It lends a lot of texture to the story, and it's something I find particularly useful in crafting multi-POV books. Subtle shifts in how characters use language can help center a reader within each individual POV.
In dialogue, I think about vocal quirks that are marks of character and tell you something about the speaker, then I use rhetoric to craft the effect. Who's prone to using more words than necessary, either because they like hearing themselves talk or because they're babbling (devices like pleonasm and accumulatio)? Who likes intricate descriptions (enargia), and who's a champion of deadpan understatement (litotes)? Who, in a state of excitement or eagerness, asks too many questions without waiting for an answer (pysma)? Who's so pompous or instructive that they answer their own questions (anythypophora)? Not that rhetoric is the only tool for playing with these things, of course, but it's the frame I personally like best.
It gets particularly fun when I get to write political arguments, because those speakers are conscious of their own devices to the point of weaponizing them. They'll ask lots of what we call rhetorical questions (erotema), where there's an obvious answer that they're looking for; they'll repeat their ideas in sets of three (tricolon), because that helps the audience to remember them; they'll seize on an important word their opponent used and twist it around some other way (asteismus). They're deliberately showing off, and following the minutiae of the argument often isn't as important for the reader as understanding that they're tweaking each other and trying to one-up each other. The rhetoric lets me communicate those character dynamics in fun ways—similar to the "Cabinet Battle" scenes in Hamilton!
Writers have rhetorical tics, too, which can sometimes become a vice, if you're not aware of them, but which are also part of each author's unique voice. I'm particularly prone to a certain combo of devices: zeugma plus anaphora/isocolon. Zeugma is when two or more words, phrases, or clauses are dependent upon the same other word (usually the main verb of a sentence), as in "I love you truly, madly, deeply." All three adverbs hang on the same main verb. Anaphora is repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, and isocolon is parallel structure. "I came, I saw, I conquered" is an example of both: the repeated "I" at the beginning and the structure of "I + [past tense verb]".
I then sometimes layer that combo with auxesis, a series of clauses or phrases that gradually ascend in importance. You make a list, and the most important thing is last. That's the traditional definition, at least, but I had a professor who argued that auxesis can also work in the opposite direction, where your series diminishes rather than growing, and I do think that can be equally impressive, especially when you want to narrow a reader's or listener's focus. So, the zeugma-anaphora/isocolon-auxesis combo move gives me the opportunity to show a character becoming more intense or more pointed as they're working their way through a thought. If that ends up being shaped like self-correction, then it's also epanorthosis. I recognize that I'm nerding hard at this point! But this is what I find so fun about rhetoric: the devices don't operate in isolation, but layer and intertwine to craft specific moments and that desired effect on the reader.
As to writing the Impossibly Dramatic Speech—I don't think it is impossible, but I do think it's something to use cautiously. You have to pick your moment, for one thing, and it's not always the moment you might think. Not all magnificent speeches are Henry V bucking up his followers on the eve of Agincourt. Sometimes, the magnificent speech is a lover pleading to be heard, a con artist deceiving a mark, a sister quietly giving advice. (See? I told you I'm prone to the zeugma-anaphora/isocolon-auxesis combo!)
It's easier to get away with the big speech on stage or film, because there, the actor is an essential component of the equation. On the page of a novel, the writing itself has a heavier load to carry. So I think you can get away with presenting a well-crafted Impossibly Dramatic Speech in a well-chosen moment, but not all in one block. Interposing the speaker's words with other elements helps to break it up and remind the reader why the speech matters. Maybe you cut away to show the audience's reactions; maybe you cut inside the speaker's head to show them nerving themselves up for it, or debating what to say next, or consciously choosing where they pause.
And here I'll throw another device at you: within a speech, choosing to pause is called aposiopesis. Mark Antony does it at the end of the first bit of his "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech, when he says he's been overcome with emotion, "My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me." Practically speaking, that gives the actor a break so they don't have to do 140 lines all at once, but it also gives the plebeians a chance to speak and the audience a chance to witness how Antony's words are having an effect. In a novel, a writer can effectively use aposiopesis in another way, breaking the speech up with descriptive elements, which helps to ground the lofty rhetoric back in the reality of the world and the immediacy of the moment.
CASEY: Rhetoric gives us so many tools to play with! Thank you for all those examples. I think it's worth highlighting your point that writers don't have to know what specific rhetorical devices are called to be able to employ them effectively. Adjusting sentence structure and word choice to match character or moment or the rhythm of the plot is doing exactly this work, paying close attention to howyour words are working.
Strategic repetition is a favorite of mine. I love repeating a structure multiple times in a row, particularly with paragraph breaks, because then the white space and alignment helps emphasize what I'm doing. That's something you can't do the same way in other mediums! I also love repeating a line a different character said and twisting its meaning in later dialogue—you have to in some way make sure the reader recognizes the reference, but there are lots of ways to do that.
With novels, we can't rely on visible reactions from the audience or an actor's delivery, but we can manage pacing with punctuation, with narration interspersed or removed. I also love doing the equivalent of an anime peanut gallery ("Did she do it?" "Yes, the attack landed!" "But look at her—now she's almost out of power; she only has one more shot. Will she last another round?") as a way to make sure the reader notices the undercurrents and how they're changing the stakes. And that works just as well in fraught conversations as fight scenes.
This can be especially important in scenes like political debates that are doing heavy interplay of character dynamics, but depending on the scene's goals, sometimes you can do this with telling, too, rather than showing—in The Hands of the Emperor,there's an anecdote about a character capping a joke perfectly; we never learn the joke or the reply, but the content of the words isn't what matters in this case as much as the context, that these characters having just met are able to match each other with no regard to the impropriety. That said, if we're instead in a romance where a plot beat hinges on one main character changing the other's mind, in almost all cases we're going to need that whole conversation to track the minute character shifts that drive romances at their core—and you can give those conversations extra impact by grounding them in the specific words they've said to and thought about each other before.
DJANGO: Rhetoric is an area where I don't have much training, I have to say, so I'll be the one who goes for "don't actually write the speech out." =) I do a fair bit of this in The Shadow Campaigns, in particular for Danton's magically-effective speeches in The Shadow Throne, which obviously aren't going to be replicated in text. In addition to the problems of being able to actually write a good speech—as Cass demonstrates, there's a lot more going on there then you might think!—it can also be hard to replicate the effect on an in-universe audience.
First of all, while the people in the book are hearing something delivered live, the readers are getting it written down, stripped of the power that a really good speaker can give it. Second, the diegetic audience are different people than the reader, with a different set of cultural assumptions and values. This can be as simple as feeling a stir of pride when language or music evokes national symbols, and goes all the way to complicated cultural markers and tropes. (What we'd today call memes!) The best rhetoric is often the most targeted at its specific audience, specifically because that can be so effective, but the result can leave modern readers cold. It's definitely one of those areas that depends on the author's strengths and the style of the narrative.
Cass, what have you been working on, and what's coming up for you next?
CASS: The Bloodstained Shade, Book 3 of the Aven Cycle, just released at the end of January. It's out in paperback and ebook now, and there's an audiobook coming in May. There will be a Book 4, someday, but at the moment I'm working on something entirely different—the secondworld fantasy inspired by early modern London that I mentioned earlier. That's still in drafting stage, and I'm so enjoying the ongoing application of everything I've learned about worldbuilding and writing craft in the past few years.
Event-wise, I'm doing a virtual workshop on developing magical systems for the Orange County Public Library on March 21st—open to anyone, whether you're an OCPL member or not! Then I'll be at RavenCon April 21-23 in Richmond, VA and at ConCarolinas June 2-4 in Charlotte, NC.
For more worldbuilding goodness, you can find me along with co-hosts Rowenna Miller and Marshall Ryan Maresca on Worldbuilding for Masochists, our two-time Hugo Finalist podcast! Available on all your favorite podcast platforms, with new episodes dropping every other Wednesday. We start our fifth year in June, and we'll be kicking off the season with a pretty exciting announcement!
I usually direct people to Twitter @CassRMorris as the best place to find me for general chatting, and while that's still the best place for now, with the increasing instability of the old bird, I'll also direct folks toward my LinkTree, which will always have the most up-to-date social media haunts, and my Substack, for major announcements and random acts of blogging.

Cracked 5000 words on this one. Enjoy.
Warning: Suicide.
<<First <Previous Goodbye
​
​
Ships from the Home Fleet descended on the Red Spark like a pack of hungry wolves when they found her adrift. Human and Dlamisan medics were the first to board and immediately began a medivac of the wounded and dead to the fleet’s hospital vessels. Next came the engineers. Almost every ship in the fleet sent their best and brightest to the Red Spark to keep her space worthy. In mere hours her engines and hull were repaired. Then as suddenly as all the help arrived, they all left.
Down on the planet, there was a titanic rescue effort going on. Cities and towns had been struck by falling debris and everyone able was ordered to assist in the operation to save as many lives as possible. Unfortunately, that meant that for the next several days all comms traffic was dedicated solely to emergency response as most of Earth’s communication satellites had been destroyed in the fighting. Communication with friends and family had to wait. But fortunately, the celebration on the Red Spark didn’t.
​
​
Deep in the belly of the Red Spark laid a bar. A bar not made of metal alloy like the rest of the ship, but more like something you’d find in one of the old cities of Earth. The walls were paneled with wood from the worlds that the Red Spark had visited, giving the bar an almost plaid-like pattern. Against that plaid wall laid nearly a dozen restaurant-style booths with their wood paneling being almost as varied as the room itself.
As stunning as the rest of the room was, it was nothing compared to the bar that filled the center of the space. It went nearly from wall to wall before curving in an L shape, making it seem like it stretched for miles. Nearly a dozen different woods from the Dlamisan homeworld made up just the countertop. Each wood on the countertop seemed to correspond with the wood of five stools that were carefully matched from Earth’s native trees. In all there were nearly seventy stools across the bar, which combined with the booths would total just enough seats for the entire crew of the Red Spark. Sadly, the entire crew of the Red Spark would never fill them again. Instead, the only ones at the bar counter currently were three crewmembers. Sunny, McCoy, and the bartender himself.
McCoy Sat down next to Sunny and looked at the bartender who was still righting bottles, glasses, and other utensils that were knocked about during the fighting. He made to speak up and order when suddenly the bartender turned and stared at him. McCoy had cleaned himself up since the battle. No longer was he sporting a blood-soaked uniform that covered an equally drenched set of fur. He was wearing what could only be described as a pirate’s best. But despite his fine wears Jack’s gun could still be seen poking out from his pocket.
McCoy opened his muzzle to place his order to the staring bartender, “A scotch, please. And not just that stuff we keep around for mixing with those human sodas. Let me get a glass of the stuff from before the war.”
The bartender had gotten a good look at McCoy and noticed the shape of the weapon and handle poking out of his pocket. So instead of turning back to the bar and making the requested drink, he instead pointed his hand to a sign hanging up on the wall behind the counter. “All weapons must be turned in before receiving service.” Apparently, there had been an incident several years prior where some humans and dlamisa were bored and tried to use plasma pistols on low power rather than darts on one of the bar's two boards. Needless to say, it hadn’t gone well the burn marks that still hung on the wall proved it. The bartender never forgave the incident and forced all his patrons to hand over all their weapons before being allowed to drink, on pain of sobriety those who dared not to obey.
McCoy not wanting to make a fuss reached into his pocket and pulled out the pistol, he looked at it mournfully before setting it on the counter for the bartender to take. Professionally the bartender picked up the weapon, cleared it, and took it to a secure back room hidden from view of the bar.
While both the bartender and McCoy had handled the interaction with silent professionalism, Sunny hadn’t. She had been one of the few officers gifted with one of those weapons and was shocked to see McCoy had one in his possession.
Picking her jaw up from the countertop she asked the question that seemed to have been overlooked by the bartender. “McCoy, where did you get that gun?”
McCoy looked at Sunny and took a deep breath he spoke, “It was Jack’s. It’s mine now. That’s all that matters.”
“McCoy he wouldn’t have given that gun up to anyone less than his mate! Not to mention that he still wouldn’t do it so long as he could still breathe!” Sunny interjected, apparently not satisfied with his previous answer.
McCoy in response just looked at the bartender as he returned from storing the mentioned firearm. The bartender cocked his head in an unspoken question that McCoy answered with a small nod. The bartender then turned and made the medic’s requested drink before looking at Sunny.
“McCoy and Jack are mates. I’m not aware of the specifics, but they’ve been together for several decades at this point,” The bartender explained.
“Were mates… We were mates… He was the first to die, and he did it in my arms,” McCoy muttered, correcting the bartender.
“McCoy… Why didn’t you tell me you two… We’ve been friends for…” Sunny stuttered out before taking a breath, switching to Enkanti. “To say I’m sorry for your loss would not be a suitable response. You’ve been my friend for so long, you deserve better than that. Whatever you need I am here to provide,” Sunny said staring at the depressed medic.
“The only things I need are a few more of these,” McCoy said swirling his glass before continuing, “And a bottle to take back with me,” he finished huffing in sarcastic amusement.
“Then whatever you want I’ll pay for. I’m not leaving you to drink alone,” Sunny responded, putting a paw around the medic’s shoulder.
“Nobody here is paying for anything. My bar is open. Anything you want is yours, even from my personal collection if you’d like,” the bartender said switching the conversation back to English.
“Thank you both, as enticing as it sounds I’d really just like to finish this one and take a bottle back to my office. I need some time alone…” McCoy trailed off.
Sunny hugged him a little tighter before responding, “That’s ok McCoy. Both of us will be here for you whenever you’d like to come back.”
So there the three sat in silence for nearly an hour as they each downed their respective drinks. Eventually, McCoy found himself staring at an empty glass that was held in his shaky paws. Sunny and the bartender watched him as he carefully set the glass down and made to get up from the bar.
“Can I get that bottle now? I feel like it's time for me to go,” McCoy said quietly.
“Of course, you can,” The bartender responded before reaching up to the very top shelf and pulling down an old unmarked bottle of brown liquid. “Scotch from before humanity played with Nukes. Same brand as the one we had back when we first met,” He finished, gently placing the bottle in front of McCoy.
McCoy carefully picked up the bottle and stared at the bartender. Thoughts raced through his head as he felt the weight of the bottle in his paws. Every memory he had with the pair across from him flashed in front of his eyes. Every happy and sad day blended together in one long stream before abruptly ending as the bartender reached over the counter and wrapped up McCoy in a hug that felt strong enough to bend steel.
“Thank you. Thank you both,” McCoy said nodding to Sunny and the bartender before continuing. “One last thing before I go. I need Jack’s… no, my, gun back.”
The bartender’s eyes fell and his small smile turned into a deep frown. It seemed like he hoped McCoy would have forgotten. Quietly he got up and went to the back room to go fetch it. Seconds turned to minutes as the bartender still hadn’t returned with the gun. McCoy briefly began to consider getting it himself before suddenly the bartender returned holding the small silver weapon.
He placed it on the counter and slid it across, never taking his hand off of it. McCoy grabbed for the weapon, but it didn’t budge under the hand of the bartender. McCoy was about to ask why when the bartender suddenly began speaking.
“McCoy, promise me something,” He said.
“Promise you what?” McCoy responded, confused.
“Tell me if there’s anything I can do to convince you not to pick up this gun,” The bartender said almost pleadingly.
“...No,” McCoy muttered after a moment of silence.
“Please don’t make me regret this,” The bartender begged.
McCoy pulled his eyes off the gun and looked at the concerned bartender in front of him and answered, “It’ll be ok…”
The bartender then silently lifted his hand off the gun and watched as McCoy put it back in his pocket. No more words were exchanged between them, but a feeling of finality filled the room as McCoy turned to head for the door.
Sunny was confused at what she had just witnessed. The conversation between the two made nearly no sense to her. She was just about to ask the bartender what the hell they had been talking about when suddenly the door to the bar opened and in stalked a very angry Bonny. Her eyes immediately locked onto McCoy who was trying desperately to make himself look small. His ears were down and his tail wrapped around his legs, but still, he tried to maintain some kind of bearing and gave a sloppy salute. That seemed to make Bonny even angrier. Her tail lashed back and forth behind her as she stared at McCoy from just inside the doorway.
“Drop the gun McCoy,” she growled out.
McCoy stood up a little straighter and placed the precious bottle on a nearby table. “Why? What’s the issue?” He asked, feigning ignorance.
“Why!? WHY!? DO YOU REALLY THINK AFTER ALL THIS I WANT TO LOSE MORE OF MY FRIENDS?” Bonny barked out angrily, before taking a deep breath, settling herself. “Cookie told me about your plan McCoy, it’s over,” she finished.
McCoy shook and panted nervously as he slowly stepped back from the captain. “Please Bonny, I can’t do it anymore. Too many bodies, too much loss. I just can’t do it. My mate meant everything to me, Bonny,” McCoy stuttered as he reached into his pocket.
“Mate? You and Jack were… I never thought…” Bonny muttered, just as shocked as Sunny that they’d managed to hide that information from her and the rest of the small crew.
“We were going to tell you. Just as soon as we had saved enough to leave. He and I planned on making a new life together. It's all I’ve thought of for decades Bonny! Now he’s gone and so is our future,” McCoy said, his voice dropping to nearly a whisper as finished.
“You can make a new future McCoy! We’ll all help you do it,” Bonny begged.
“A future without Jack isn’t a future I plan on being a part of,” McCoy spat out drawing the gun from his pocket.
McCoy closed his eyes as he raised the gun, stopping only when he felt the cool metal of the barrel under his chin. His finger wrapped around the trigger and felt the roughness of the metal against his paw pads. As he began to squeeze he felt a sudden pain in his chest and then all of the sudden the world went tumbling.
Sunny slammed into McCoy like a golden bullet. She let out a howl as she made contact with him, sending the gun clattering to the feet of Bonny Red. The small communications officer was crouched atop the medic as he struggled to break free. Sunny was not having it and pinned McCoy's arms to the deck and stared into his eyes. His eyes displayed the pain in his heart, and this time Sunny didn’t miss it. Clinging to his arms Sunny let loose a sad howl that echoed through the halls. Briefly, McCoy fought, but it became quickly apparent that Sunny had the upper paw and was not going to lose it
The bartender walked out from his station and sat down on the floor next to McCoy’s head and began scratching the ears of the struggling Dlamisan who stilled quickly. He seemed about to speak before Sunny interrupted.
“You don’t get to leave me like this,” barked Sunny with a growl that turned to a near whisper as she continued, “We love you, I love you. You’ve been my friend for over a century. That’s not something you get to just walk away from.”
The bartender piped up as he scratched just behind McCoy’s ears, “She’s right bud. You mean the world to us. Every day you’ve brought joy to the folks around you. Losing you would hurt us too,” He said as he slowed his scratches, pausing in silence before resuming, “It hurts now, I know. It’s going to hurt tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that. It’s going to keep hurting for a long time, but the hurt will change. It will get easier my friend. Some day the pain will become bearable enough that you’ll stand on your own again. Until then you have us here to help you. I know we’ll never fill the hole left behind, but we’re going to do our best to try,” The bartender finished speaking and returned to his gentle scratching.
Bonny Red picked up the gun from the floor and set it next to the bottle before kneeling next to the still-pinned despondent medic. Motioning Sunny off of him, sending her and the bartender away, she leaned down and grabbed McCoy in a hug, pulling him off the ground and leaning him back against herself. Not unlike how a parent would hold a child on their lap, except the ‘child’ was a Dlamisan scout medic, and the ‘parent’ was a brightly dressed pirate captain.
“McCoy back when we decided to leave the empire, you were my rock. You sat with me just like this as I grieved over the crew that died. You even stood by me as I proposed obtaining the Red Spark. You’ve been behind me for every tough decision I’ve ever made. Now, I’m here to stand behind you,” Bonny said, leaning back onto the wall.
There they sat together on the floor until the bartender returned. In his hands were four glasses which he gently set on the ground, one glass for each of them. He then reached over to the table and grabbed the bottle of scotch, cracking it open. Pouring deeply into each glass, he corked the bottle and took a seat next to Bonny and McCoy, prompting Sunny to do the same on the opposite side, sandwiching the two between them.
The four didn’t move for nearly an hour as they reminisced over time long gone last. Even McCoy managed to join in as the bottle slowly drained. Eventually, the bottle ran dry, but no one wanted to risk the fragile feeling of satisfaction that had slipped into the room, so they continued to talk for some time. Tears were shed by those who could, hugs were exchanged, and in between all the misery, some laughter began to break through.
The first giggles came from Sunny after she tried to stand up too quickly and lost the battle with booze and gravity, coming back down across the laps of the three who remained sitting. Her small huffs of laughter only increased in volume when the bartender began scratching her head, causing her tail to begin wagging. It wagged so hard it smacked straight into the muzzle of Bonny Red making her start huffing with laughter. Sunny’s tail rapidly became a projectile, smacking into both Bonny and McCoy as it sped up. Even McCoy wouldn’t help, but let out a small huff at the absurdity of the situation as his friend’s tail battered him and the captain while Sunny was happily getting her head scratched.
But all good things come to a close, which was made apparent when Bonny’s datapad chimed alerting her to a message from the bridge. As she looked at it her huffs of amusement died rapidly and she sighed, letting go of McCoy and standing up. Turning to look back at the three she saw their looks of concern and confusion. Seeking to alleviate their worries, she told them what she had received, “I’ve got to go back to the bridge, the Oberon says there are reports I need to check out. I’ll be back when I have it all taken care of. Until then you two,” she points at Sunny and the bartender, “Are responsible for taking care of McCoy. And you,’ she turns her gaze to the medic, “I always have time for you. If you ever, ever, think you may want someone to talk to, then call me,” Bonny finished and left the bar pocketing the gun as she passed the table.
​
​
Bonny Red stalked angrily through the doors to the bridge of the Red Spark. She was looking for Oberon, the XO, as he was the one who dared to interrupt her time with her friends due to some ‘reports.’ She found him sitting in his chair dutifully going over his datapad which must’ve contained something interesting as he failed to notice the disgruntled captain in front of him. Bonny decided to make her presence known to the XO by clicking the claws of her hind paws on the ground intimidatingly, almost like an impatient human would tap their foot.
Oberon looked up upon hearing the sound and barked out an order, “Clear the bridge, I need a minute with the captain.” Like ants, all the other officers shuffled out in a line to go carry out their tasks elsewhere as best as they could.
Bonny turned to Oberon confused. “What reports are so important that you call me back after I specifically asked not to be disturbed? Not only that, but you clear the bridge for it” Bonny asked, annoyance still evident.
Oberon held out his datapad and explained, “I have here the impact locations of large pieces of debris across the planet.” He then stood up and took off his hat, and switched to Enkanti, “Bonny Red, I regret to inform you…”
Bonny froze. She knew those words. She had said them nearly a dozen times to the family of her fallen crew over the years. Never in a million lifetimes did she think that they’d be turned back to her. She began to shudder and pant as Oberon continued, “Your home was among those hit by debris from the battle…”
Her hearts stopped and time seemed to freeze. Everything she had fought for. The lives she had thrown down in the path of the Zenti. This couldn’t be it, it just couldn’t be, something had to be wrong. Not her Bailey and pups, anyone but them. They couldn’t be gone.
Oberon kept his decorum as he finished, “Your family remains unaccounted for… I’m so sorry Bonny.”
Bonny felt her chest tightening, each breath was coming faster than the last, but it still felt like she couldn’t breathe. She felt her hearts start again, slamming like three hammers against her chest. Her vision began to fade as she reached out for something, anything to hold onto. Her paws found Oberon as he grabbed and then lowered her gently into the Captain’s chair. “No, no, no…” Was all Bonny could say. She didn’t believe it. No, she wouldn’t believe it. She needed to see for herself.
Standing back up, she staggered to the door, past a shocked Oberon, and into the hallway filled with her officers. She pushed past, uncaring, making her way to the elevators. Down she went, straight to the hangar decks. The lights were still broken in many places, but she knew these halls like the back of her paw, so she pressed forward. Reaching the hangar bay she entered one of the Red Spark’s few working shuttles, cranked the engines, and pointed it toward Earth.
​
​
In a small room of a house in the countryside of Kentucky two old friends sat around a radio listening to the emergency frequency, waiting for updates on the state of the planet.
“Byron, I’m hearing reports there’s been a shuttle launch from the Red Spark and it’s coming towards Louisville,” Boatswain said.
“Well shit. That must be Bonny. Run and grab Bailey. I’ll track her position and keep you updated. You meet her when she lands. We can’t hail the shuttle through this old piece of junk,” Byron responded, tapping the top of the machine.
Boatswain moved through the halls of the house and tapped a red and black Dlamisa on the shoulder, distracting him from watching two pups chasing after a thrown ball through a window. Boatswain then explained the situation causing Bailey to stand up and begin moving. Together they went to a car parked out front and tore off down the driveway towards the glow of flames in the distance.
​
​
Bonny Red was piloting like a mad woman. To describe her flight as ‘erratic’ or ‘unsafe’ would do it no justice. To this day several speed records for vessels of the shuttles weight class are still held by her thanks to her sprint to the surface.
Breaking through the atmosphere Bonny flew the shuttle over her neighborhood. Below all she saw was destruction. The shockwave of a cruiser slamming into the ground nearby had leveled many of the houses, turning what was once a beautiful place to live into matchwood. Flying to her street she saw nothing good. All the houses were almost completely demolished. Desperately she looked for somewhere to set the shuttle down. Finding some clear space in the cul-de-sac at the end of the road, Bonny dropped the landing gear and let the shuttle fall unceremoniously to the ground.
Jumping out she immediately began moving through the rubble toward her home. The street itself was littered with bits and pieces of the lives of her neighbors. She passed the park that the pups loved to play in, now scorched. She stepped around a crushed vintage car, the pride, and joy of her next-door neighbor. Finally, she walked over the remains of a little bicycle, bent and broken from the shockwave, before stepping onto what remained of the front porch of her home.
The first thing she saw was the splintered remains of the swing that Bailey and William had built together in William’s later life. It had been one of the first things they shared together when Bailey reached Earth. It was only fitting that they shared it again before he passed.
Bonny then turned her eyes to where her front door once stood, now blown in and shattered, stepping through what remained of the frame. Picking through the debris was made much more difficult as the roof had caved in, forcing her to begin digging frantically through the rubble in search of her family.
As she dug her way further into the house personal item began to surface. The clothes came first, the little ones always left theirs strewn around the house and neither she nor Bailey could keep track of them all. Pushing past the memories Bonny scrabbled deeper into the rubble, stumbling onto what once was the kitchen. Immediately plowing through to reach the bedrooms she stumbled upon a cabinet that had fallen off the wall. Inside its shattered glass door, she saw what remained of her mate’s most prized possession. Bailey’s mug, his first gift from Fauve, was shattered into a dozen pieces. Her hearts sank, she knew he’d never voluntarily leave without it.
Placing the pieces into a jacket pocket, she pushed on. Deeper and deeper into the rubble she tunneled until suddenly a smell hit her nose like a freight train, smoke. Something was burning, and it was spreading fast. The wood frame of the house had become the kindling to a bonfire that she was squarely in the center of.
Her frantic digging became haphazard. She had to get to the pup's bedroom. She knew they’d be there, they all would be. Every time they had a nightmare they’d hide under their little beds. Bonny was certain that’s where she’d find them. So she dug. She dug while her paws bled and her lungs screamed from the smoke. She dug even as the heat of the fire began to become unbearable. She kept telling herself that they had to be there.
Bonny felt a bundle of fabric in her hand, she’d found something. Unable to see it through the smoke she put it up to her nose and took a deep smell, hoping against hope that it’d tell her something. It did, through the acrid smell of the smoke she smelled her son and daughter. Shoving the fabric into her jacket she kept digging, but the heat was too much. Her lungs screamed for fresh air and her fur was burnt in patches across every exposed limb, she had to get out. Bonny stumbled through the tunnel she had dug getting there as flames licked her jacket.
Bursting out into the cool air Bonny turned to look at what was left of her home. It was a flaming ruin. So many memories of everyone she loved, gone. Up in smoke before her very eyes. Reaching into her jacket she pulled out the fabric she had saved from the blaze. In her paws were a little tricorner hat and a tiny little red necktie.
At that moment Bonny thought back to what McCoy had said and she understood. She felt the soul-crushing thought of a life without her family and made her decision. She let out a miserable howl and drew her weapon, the very same silver pistol she had taken from McCoy not but an hour before.
​
​
Boatswain pulled onto the road leading to Bailey’s house. The rubble was thick and the road was becoming nearly impassable, but still, they pressed on. The armored car drove over the lives and memories of entire families as they tried to reach their destination.
Both turned their heads as they heard a mournful howl, but before Boatswain could utter even a word of warning to Bailey he was out the door and tearing down the mess of a street. Turning the corner he saw her. Kneeling on what remained of their front porch was a scorched and bleeding Bonnie Red with a silver object pressed beneath her chin.
At 100 yards, the object came into focus. Dropping to all fours he ran faster than he ever had before. Bailey’s legs burned as he sprinted, but he wasn’t closing the distance quickly enough.
At 50 yards he saw Bonny’s whole body tense as she slipped her finger onto the trigger
At 30 yards he let out a desperate choked howl as put every ounce of willpower into making his legs move faster.
At 20 yards he saw her ear twitch, turning towards him at the sound of his howl.
At 10 yards he was just close enough to see the trigger move back as Bonny’s eyes opened in shock and recognition.
At 5 yards Bailey Walker saw the hammer make contact with the rear of the gun. The barrel of which was still firmly beneath the chin of his mate.
​
​
In the bar of the Red Spark McCoy looked at the bartender as he polished the counter, while he and Sunny drank. There was a question burning in his mind, one that he hadn’t been able to shake since the bartender had lifted his hand from the firearm.
Deciding to break his impromptu vow of silence McCoy asked, “You knew, didn’t you? You knew what I wanted to do and you gave me the gun anyway. Why?”
Sunny cocked her head upon hearing the question before leveling a glare at the bartender and following it up with a question of her own, “Wait. You knew!? How could you risk McCoy’s life like that!? You irresponsible piece of shi…”
The bartender interrupted her rant before it could really begin saying, “Yes I knew. I’m no fool, McCoy. I knew exactly what you wanted to do with that gun. What I didn’t know was if you’d actually do it.”
Sunny was about to jump over the bar and begin strangling the bartender before he suddenly placed a small and thin metal rod on the table in front of her and McCoy as he continued to speak, “I was in your shoes once. It may have been centuries ago, but I remember that feeling more vividly than any other. I tried it too, a gun, not unlike yours. It took me all day and a lot of liquor to work myself up to do it. I put that damn thing up to my head and screamed to the heavens as I pulled the trigger, but when the hammer fell all I felt was regret. At that moment I realized I didn’t want to die, my family wouldn’t want me to die, but the cards were on the table and there wasn’t a thing I could do.”
The bartender took a breath and poured himself a drink before continuing to speak to the two Dlamisans entranced by the story, “Well, the hammer connected, and nothing happened. I was shocked and confused by my still being alive for days until I figured out what went wrong. You see, the former owner of the firearm kept them partially disassembled, and in my haste to die, I’d forgotten to put the firing pin in.”
The bartender paused and sipped from his glass before finishing, “I realized something that day. Sometimes you don’t remember what you have until you leave it behind. I gave you that gun not to help you leave, but to give you the chance to come back.”
​
​
Not going to lie. I really felt like a bull in a china shop trying to write this. It was tough to write and I honestly just couldn't think of a suitable ending for nearly a week. I hope I did it justice.
On a recommendation of a friend, I made a ko-fi. If you'd like to fuel my caffeine addiction to make the words flow faster, that'd be the way to do it. Also, I'll try to post a link to a google drive folder with all the parts of the story there. Of course, it will stay free here, but it'll be more compiled there.
Thank you all for your comments and support throughout the story. This wouldn't have been possible without y'all.

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Riggs Eckelberry CEO
Riggs Eckelberry is the founding CEO of the innovative water technology company, OriginClear. Riggs is the visionary co-creator of Water On Demand, which is enabling investors to invest directly in water projects for the very first time.
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Tom Marchesello COO
Tom Marchesello joined OriginClear after a successful transformation of the early Modular Water Systems™ group into a streamlined, operational model with a branded modular water treatment product lineup. Tom has been a leading voice for innovative companies with strong ESG (Environmental, Social, & Governance) based business.
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Ken Berenger EVP
In January of 2022, Ken Berenger was recognized as co-creator of the breakthrough water asset investment program, Water On Demand™, and received a promotion to Executive Vice President, OriginClear. Ken has over twenty-five years of banking, investment, consulting, sales force training, and corporate finance experience.
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Prasad Tare CFO
Prasad Tare brings more than fifteen years of experience in public accounting, financial reporting, risk, and internal controls advisory services to OriginClear. His skill set includes company-wide risk assessments to improve focus to critical areas, as well as more efficient and effective audit activities.
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Marc Stevens President, Progressive Water Treatment
Over the last eighteen twenty-five years, Marc has built a solid, profitable company with an outstanding customer reputation. OriginClear acquired Progressive Water Treatment in 2015. In August of 2022, OriginClear announced that year-over-year revenues driven by ProgressiveWater and Modular Water had increased 240 percent, and profits 288 percent.
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Daniel Early P.E. Chief Engineer
Dan leads OriginClear's engineering activities through the design and development of the Modular Water System™ (MWS). MWS’s designs and manufacturing techniques are ideal for the decentralized and infrastructure requirements needed in today’s water and wastewater markets.
THE UPCOMING CALAMITY OF

INFRASTRUCTURE IN CRISIS

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40 US States expect some form of freshwater shortage within the next 10 years.
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105 million Americans are exposed to unsafe contaminant levels from public water systems.
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Agriculture and industry use 9/10ths of all fresh water. By letting them treat their own water, cities would be able to serve people better and for less.
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Each year, 240,000 water main breaks, losing 2T gallons of treated drinking water, with 75,000 sanitary sewer overflows.
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Soaring water rates have increased 60% between 2010 to 2019, 4.25x faster than inflation.
Duplicating the most profitable energy model ever invented, this inflation-countering asset - that isn’t already at an all-time high - is set to transform the most valuable commodity in the world... WATER!
~ CASE STUDY ~

LUXURY HOTEL CHAIN

We maximized health, environmental and comfort benefits with a sustainable focus.

• 📷Whole-hotel water treatment
• 📷Pure water everywhere, including showers and kitchens
• 📷Eliminating Forever Chemicals for the health of their guests.

read more📷📷
HOW WE GOT HERE

WATER ON DEMAND SYNOPSIS

In today's volatile and rapidly shifting economy, experienced investors are desperately seeking a safe harbor with stable assets that can grow faster than inflation, and at the same time, yield steady dividends. They are learning that water can be exactly that for an accredited investor — a high-yield asset class that does especially well in hard times.
And we haven’t forgotten the everyday, unaccredited investors, who deserve a way to become involved in an opportunity that we believe has incredible potential…
Already, a futures market has been launched in California water rights. Going beyond that, the trillion-dollar world water services market could be revolutionized by providing water treatment as a service—just like energy or computing. With our Water on Demand program, the customer can easily sign a service agreement and get going, and if they don’t pay the equipment simply gets returned, which simplifies water equipment financing tremendously.
Referred to as “the hottest business model in the water industry,” Water on Demand’s investor-backed water funding leverages a winning and very popular formula. We’re not the first to implement water as a service. Seven Seas Water Group, who trademarked Water-as-a-Service® or WaaS®, is now owned by Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and is a major player in decentralized water treatment funding. The difference is that Seven Seas projects tend to be much larger, such as desalination plants for entire islands. Another player, Cambrian Innovation, targets the same kind of mid-wise businesses as Water On Demand, but relies entirely on venture capital funding
The revolution is: local business water problems solved with the help of America’s (and the world’s) Main Street Investors. Simply put, business enterprises are seeking water independence; burgeoning off-grid secondary city housing developments require water infrastructure; and mobile home parks, campgrounds, RV parks and other human communities need water independence. And America’s giant, post-WWII, centralized systems are not structured to meet that demand. So, just as personal computers complemented and took the load off mainframes, and cell phones complemented and eventually replaced landlines, water treatment is experiencing the new wave of being unbundled and distributed. And it’s rippling out, but the really exciting part is that we believe Water On Demand has the potential, ultimately, to make clean water available for all.
Another major benefit is social justice. We know that communities, especially low-income ones, suffer disproportionately from skyrocketing water rates. That’s because industry and agriculture use 9/10ths of all fresh water globally. Imagine if cities didn’t have to treat all that toxic water but instead could focus on serving populations! That would have the potential to dramatically improve quality of service and reduce costs for people being served.
Since 2016, OriginClear’s CEO, Riggs Eckelberry has ceaselessly and relentlessly evangelized the fact and importance of this decentralization trend in water. In the meantime, the company’s technical and delivery units have demonstrated unprecedented response, innovating an array of patented, next-generation, mobile systems that span every aspect of water from wide-scale transportation to sophisticated inbound purification, used-water reclamation and treatment applications, as well as the full spectrum of customizable recycling systems. Water on Demand is the first in a series of planned ‘pure play’ spinoffs by OriginClear® — The Clean Water Innovation Hub™.
Since it launched its innovative Modular Water Systems division in 2018, the company has steadily and systematically manufactured and delivered durable, modular, prefabricated Water Systems In A Box™ to businesses, communities, and end-users who needed them most, enabling self-sufficient water independence. Meanwhile, the company is rapidly scaling up its unique Water4Us™ program, with the intention to help make clean water widely available to communities looking for self-sufficiency by providing easily obtained, pay-as-you-go, high-tech water treatment solutions. To make all that work and expand at scale takes capital and great technology. And that’s Water on Demand.
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THE PREMISE

We can no longer rely on giant, centralized water utilities to meet the challenge. That’s why more and more business users are doing their own water treatment and recycling.

QUICK LINKS

THE IMPACTINVESTINGOUR PROJECTSMEDIAWATER4USCEO BRIEFINGSOUR STORYCONTACT US

CONTACT US

OriginClear Water On Demand HQ 13575 58th St. North Suite 200 Clearwater, FL 33760-3739 (727) 440-4603 (877) 440-4603 Manufacturing 2535 E. University Drive McKinney, TX 75069 (972) 562-3002a
📷📷📷📷© 2023 OriginClear. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy Terms and Conditions

• THE IMPACT
• INVESTING
• OUR PROJECTS
• MEDIA
• WATER4US
• CEO BRIEFINGS
• OUR STORY
• CONTACT US

INVEST NOW https://www.waterondemand.net/

https://preview.redd.it/c0g46zla4ipa1.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=73466fec0bf444974b5fd09be3aa517b8ec779dc
Friendable Inc. (OTC: FDBL) (the “Company”), a mobile technology and marketing company, is pleased to announce its operational and public market cost reduction initiatives have dramatically reduced costs for the 2023 calendar year, enabling the Company to re-focus resources on strategic re-branding of its Fan Pass Livestream platform for a targeted market opportunity, support its FeaturedX artists/marketplace, and maintain daily operations.
Robert A. Rositano Jr., CEO, Friendable, Inc. stated, “We have a lot of successes to build upon and when you’ve had time to analyze a Company’s product or service, the data/metrics of market testing, the business model itself, and most importantly the time to reflect on a road previously traveled, the next steps become much more defined, focused and clear. Fortunately, we made a significant investment in technology with historical data and metrics to analyze our successes and failures, which have led us to our focus on the FeaturedX brand and re-position and re-purpose of our livestream platform as well.
“As we take deliberate steps forward it’s important we evaluate our progress. In doing so, the Company is now seeking a significantly smaller capital raise to achieve the artist and revenue results we strive for in 2023. At the same time as we are pushing ahead with FeaturedX, we are also focused on an opportunity to re-position the Fan Pass livestream technology and mobile apps with a new skin/brand (low cost & short lead time) and compete for a viral piece of a market that boasts the biggest brand in social media today. This said, we remain very optimistic about the Company’s future with FeaturedX, as well as the addition of new market opportunities for our existing livestream apps, platform, brand and technology base,” continued Rositano, Jr., CEO.
“These efforts to reduce the Company’s expenses have included the following: Amazon AWS re-configurations, reduction in monthly technology services fees, reduction in CTO salary, head count reduction, cutting Artist Republik software development and the filing of a Form 15 to allow the Company to file as an alternative reporting company, saving quarterly and annual review and audit fees. These have been decisions the Company has not taken lightly but has also determined it to be the best option for the business and our shareholders; stay tuned as our next steps unfold shortly,” concluded Mr. Rositano.
The Company will file all required financial and public disclosures per the alternative reporting requirements of OTC Markets, continuing to have current public information available pursuant to Rule 15c2-11. The Company believes this is an interim step until it can justify the expense of an up-list and become a fully reporting SEC issuer again.
About Friendable Inc.
Friendable Inc. is a mobile technology and marketing company focused on developing and identifying products, services and brand opportunities with mass market potential and scalability.
Friendable published its first mobile application in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in 2014 in the social networking and dating category. The Friendable app achieved over 1.5 million downloads, top 10 worldwide rankings, and has led to celebrity-related marketing opportunities and various relationships with well-known music artists as well as up-and-coming independent artists.
Friendable has since pivoted its business focus to various Music Artist Offerings, including a one of a kind 360 artist platform. The offering now includes music production/collaboration, music distribution (Spotify, Sound Cloud, Play Listing, Livestream/live events, promotions, ticket sales, behind the scenes, Merch designs/store/ship, tips, fan interaction, subscription offerings and more, which all equal revenue sharing and earning for all music artists. It is the Company’s goal to become the new launch point for Indie Artists, as well as Artists at all levels, as they build engagement, revenue, and fans/followers.
Fan Pass is its livestream artist platform. Launched July 24, 2020, the Fan Pass livestream platform has proven invaluable for artists and fans alike as performances shifted from the stage to the screen, with its acquisition of Artist Republik and FeaturedX in January 2022.
Friendable was founded by brothers Robert A. Rositano Jr. and Dean Rositano, who have more than 27 years of experience working together on technology-related ventures.
For more information, visit www.Friendable.com www.FanPassLive.com and www.featuredx.com/

https://preview.redd.it/c0g46zla4ipa1.png?width=300&format=png&auto=webp&s=73466fec0bf444974b5fd09be3aa517b8ec779dc
Friendable Inc. (OTC: FDBL) (the “Company”), a mobile technology and marketing company, is pleased to announce its operational and public market cost reduction initiatives have dramatically reduced costs for the 2023 calendar year, enabling the Company to re-focus resources on strategic re-branding of its Fan Pass Livestream platform for a targeted market opportunity, support its FeaturedX artists/marketplace, and maintain daily operations.
Robert A. Rositano Jr., CEO, Friendable, Inc. stated, “We have a lot of successes to build upon and when you’ve had time to analyze a Company’s product or service, the data/metrics of market testing, the business model itself, and most importantly the time to reflect on a road previously traveled, the next steps become much more defined, focused and clear. Fortunately, we made a significant investment in technology with historical data and metrics to analyze our successes and failures, which have led us to our focus on the FeaturedX brand and re-position and re-purpose of our livestream platform as well.
“As we take deliberate steps forward it’s important we evaluate our progress. In doing so, the Company is now seeking a significantly smaller capital raise to achieve the artist and revenue results we strive for in 2023. At the same time as we are pushing ahead with FeaturedX, we are also focused on an opportunity to re-position the Fan Pass livestream technology and mobile apps with a new skin/brand (low cost & short lead time) and compete for a viral piece of a market that boasts the biggest brand in social media today. This said, we remain very optimistic about the Company’s future with FeaturedX, as well as the addition of new market opportunities for our existing livestream apps, platform, brand and technology base,” continued Rositano, Jr., CEO.
“These efforts to reduce the Company’s expenses have included the following: Amazon AWS re-configurations, reduction in monthly technology services fees, reduction in CTO salary, head count reduction, cutting Artist Republik software development and the filing of a Form 15 to allow the Company to file as an alternative reporting company, saving quarterly and annual review and audit fees. These have been decisions the Company has not taken lightly but has also determined it to be the best option for the business and our shareholders; stay tuned as our next steps unfold shortly,” concluded Mr. Rositano.
The Company will file all required financial and public disclosures per the alternative reporting requirements of OTC Markets, continuing to have current public information available pursuant to Rule 15c2-11. The Company believes this is an interim step until it can justify the expense of an up-list and become a fully reporting SEC issuer again.
About Friendable Inc.
Friendable Inc. is a mobile technology and marketing company focused on developing and identifying products, services and brand opportunities with mass market potential and scalability.
Friendable published its first mobile application in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in 2014 in the social networking and dating category. The Friendable app achieved over 1.5 million downloads, top 10 worldwide rankings, and has led to celebrity-related marketing opportunities and various relationships with well-known music artists as well as up-and-coming independent artists.
Friendable has since pivoted its business focus to various Music Artist Offerings, including a one of a kind 360 artist platform. The offering now includes music production/collaboration, music distribution (Spotify, Sound Cloud, Play Listing, Livestream/live events, promotions, ticket sales, behind the scenes, Merch designs/store/ship, tips, fan interaction, subscription offerings and more, which all equal revenue sharing and earning for all music artists. It is the Company’s goal to become the new launch point for Indie Artists, as well as Artists at all levels, as they build engagement, revenue, and fans/followers.
Fan Pass is its livestream artist platform. Launched July 24, 2020, the Fan Pass livestream platform has proven invaluable for artists and fans alike as performances shifted from the stage to the screen, with its acquisition of Artist Republik and FeaturedX in January 2022.
Friendable was founded by brothers Robert A. Rositano Jr. and Dean Rositano, who have more than 27 years of experience working together on technology-related ventures.
For more information, visit www.Friendable.com www.FanPassLive.com and www.featuredx.com/

OpenAI has exploded on the scene primarily due to the popularity of its chat GPT product. Let's take a second and look over their overall goals, their investments, some of the outcomes they're trying to achieve from their campaigns, and some of the projects they're currently focused on.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Reed Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Elon Musk, and others. Elon Musk resigned from the board in 2018, right before OpenAI started a second branch which is a capped for-profit. However, the organization started as a non-profit and created its capped for-profit to attract talent and additional investment from corporate entities like Microsoft.
As an organization, its mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) and AI systems that are generally smarter than humans benefit all of humanity. To that end, they commit to following principles around broadly distributing benefits. They've committed to using the influence they obtain over AGI deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all and to avoid enabling users of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power. They share that their primary fiduciary duty is to humanity and want to empower society to flourish in the universe maximally.
AGI can accelerate its progress and cause significant changes to happen suddenly, even if the transition starts slowly. They expect it to happen quickly in the final stages. Some people in the AI field think that the risks of AGI and successor systems are fictitious, and they share they'll generally be delighted if that turns out to be correct. Still, they're going to operate as if these risks are existential. In particular, they think it's vital that society agrees on a vast balance of how AI can be used, but individual users have a lot of discretion within those bounds. They believe in empowering individuals to make their own decisions and the inherent power of the diversity of ideas.
As mentioned, they have a non-profit that governs their overall operations for the good of humanity. They have bylaws that can override any for-profit interests, including letting them cancel their equity obligations to shareholders for safety concerns and helping them push the experiment on AGI. Their charter has a clause to assist other organizations and advanced safety instead of racing with them in the late stages of AGI development. It is a different way of competing vs. cooperating with other organizations to help them successfully iterate on AGI.
As they successfully create more powerful systems, they want to deploy them and gain experience operating them in the real world. They expect OpenAI to have a gradual transition that gives people, policymakers, and institutions time to understand what's happening, personally experience the benefits and downsides of the systems, and adapt our economy and put regulations in place. This will also allow society and AI to co-evolve and for people to collectively figure out what they want. At the same time, as stakes are relatively low, they believe that democratized access will also lead to more and better research, decentralized power, more benefits, and a broader set of people contributing to new ideas.
They also believe the best way to navigate AI deployment challenges successfully is with a tight feedback loop of rapid learning and careful iteration. Their decisions require much more caution than society usually applies to new technologies and are more risk-averse than many users would like. Successfully transitioning to a world with superior intelligence is perhaps human history's most important, hopeful, and scary project. They don't expect the future to be an unqualified Utopia, but they want to maximize the good and minimize the bad and for AGI to be an amplifier for humanity. Because the upside of AGI is so significant, they do not believe it is possible or desirable for society to stop development forever. Instead, they feel that the community and the developers of AGI have to figure out how to get it right. Although they can't predict precisely what will happen, and of course, their current progress could hit a wall, they can articulate the principles they care about the most.
AGI has the potential to give everyone incredible new capabilities, and they can imagine a world where all users have access to help with almost any cognitive task, providing a significant force multiplier for human ingenuity and creativity. Because the upside of AGI is so substantial, they've also shared that they want to carefully bring it into existence with the world in a transitional and thoughtful manner rather than just a sudden one.
As we mentioned earlier about their non-profit governing the organization's overall operations, they do have a cap on returns for their for-profit that their shareholders can earn so that they aren't incentivized to attempt to capture value without bound and risk deploying something potentially catastrophically dangerous. And, of course, as a way to share benefits with society, they've attempted to structure in addition to these new areas in a way that aligns their incentives with a good outcome.
Generally speaking, AI will lead to significant progress, and they want to promote it by putting models and APIs out there through open-source means. Although they have closed some access to their research, they still generally will try to provide as much information to the public as possible through their non-profit charter. On the other hand, AGI could also come with severe risks of misuse, accidents, and social and societal disruption. They will attempt to build safe and beneficial AGI directly but will also consider their mission fulfilled if their work aids in achieving this, to help others achieve this outcome.
Long-term safety being a paramount focus for the organization, they are committed to doing research that requires making AGI safe and driving the broad adoption of such research across the AI communities. They anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill their mission. Still, they will always diligently act and minimize conflicts of interest among their employees and stakeholders that could compromise overall benefits.
They feel that society will face important questions about what AI systems can do, how to obtain acceptance, combat bias, deal with job displacement, and more. At some point, the balance between the upsides and downsides of deployment, such as empowering malicious actors, creating social and economic disruption, and accelerating an unsafe race, could shift, significantly changing their plans around continuous deployment. Lastly, they hope for a global conversation about how to govern these systems, fairly distribute the benefits they generate, and fairly share access.
They are also developing steerable models to help build and iterate on the GPT product safely and consistently. Their first shift models like this happened in GPT-3 as early examples. Their eventual hope is that institutions worldwide agree on these wide bounds. In shorter terms, as the OpenAI, the default setting of their products will likely be quite constrained, but they plan to make it easy for users to change the behavior of the AI that they're using.
As mentioned earlier, they are concerned about the late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race, needing more time to apply safety precautions adequately. Therefore, if a value-aligned safety concern project comes close to building AGI, as they have previously, they commit to stopping competing and start assisting others towards building and contributing to this project.

The real estate sector in Istanbul is a golden and wonderful opportunity for real estate investment and achieving abundant profits and high returns, and you have to be sure that your experience in Istanbul will be completely safe, and this is according to many experiences made by investors and experts.
In this article, you will learn about the most important types of properties suitable for real estate investment in Istanbul, and we will highlight the most important areas in its both sides, in addition to providing you with some of the most important information related to this sector in this city. We wish you an enjoyable reading.

Where to buy real estate for investment in Istanbul?

There is no simple answer to this question because it depends on a variety of factors. The European side of Istanbul is generally more expensive than the Asian side, but there are also some benefits to buying in the European side, some people prefer it because it is more developed and has better infrastructure.
In addition, the schools on the European side are generally better. However, the Asian side is growing rapidly and may eventually offer similar benefits. Ultimately, it really depends on what you are looking for in a property and on your budget. You should also consult a real estate agent to find out what properties are available and learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of each side.
Through the following paragraphs, you will be able to see the most important areas of Istanbul suitable for real estate investment, and we will highlight many of its features.
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1 – Basaksehir

Basaksehir is a large and developed area in Istanbul located on the European side of the city and it is one of the most popular areas for real estate investment in Istanbul and there are many reasons that make it a great choice:
-Basaksehir is a rapidly developing region with many new developments taking place in it and this makes it a great choice for investors looking to buy property in a rising region.
-Basaksehir has excellent transport links to the rest of Istanbul, as well as to other major cities in Turkey and this makes it a suitable place to live or rent a property.
-Basaksehir is home to many facilities, such as shopping malls, hospitals, schools and parks and this makes it a great choice for families or anyone who wants to live in a neighborhood with all the necessary amenities nearby.
-Real estate prices in Basaksehir are still relatively reasonable compared to other areas.

2 – Beylikduzu

Beylikduzu, which is located on the European side of Istanbul, has become one of the most important real estate investment areas in recent years due to its unique location, proximity to the Marmara Sea and its developed infrastructure.
The first advantage is that Beylikduzu is located on the European side of Istanbul, which makes it a very attractive option for those who want to invest in that city. It is also one of the most important transportation areas in it as the Metro-bus line passes through the area, making it easy to reach any point in Istanbul. In addition, there are many bus lines that connect Beylikduzu with other parts of Istanbul.

3 – Taksim

Taksim is a world famous tourist destination, and real estate in it can be very profitable. The prices of apartments and other properties in Taksim are constantly increasing, so investing now can lead to good returns in the future.
There is a huge demand for rental properties in Taksim, so investors can expect to earn a steady income from their investments.
Taksim is a very safe place to invest in real estate, as the Turkish government is very stable and there is little risk of political or economic instability.

4 – Sisli

Sisli is an important central district of Istanbul.
It is one of the most populous districts of Istanbul with a population of nearly half a million.
Sisli has a very high concentration of business.
Many foreign companies’ headquarters are in Sisli.
The area is well connected by public transportation with multiple metro and bus lines.

5 – Uskudar

Uskudar is a very popular area for real estate investment in Istanbul. Apartment prices are lower than in many other areas of Istanbul, but the quality of life is very high.
There are many reasons why investing in real estate in Uskudar is a good idea and here are some of the most important ones:
-Uskudar is located on the Asian side of Istanbul and is less crowded than the European side and this makes it a great place to live if you want to avoid the hustle and bustle of city life.
-Apartment prices in Uskudar are very reasonable, especially when you compare it to other neighborhoods of Istanbul like Sisli or Beyoglu.

6 – Maslak

Maslak is one of the most important commercial areas in Istanbul. It is home to many multinational companies and corporate headquarters.
The area has a growing population and a strong economy.
Real estate investment in it offers many advantages as this area continues to grow and develop, providing investors with the possibility of capital increasing.
There are many new underway construction projects, which will increase the property value in Maslak.
The area is well connected with excellent public transportation options.
If you are looking for a safe and profitable real estate investment in Istanbul, Maslak is an excellent choice.

7 – Esenyurt

Esenyurt is a central district of Istanbul located in the European side. In recent years, Esenyurt has become one of the most preferred places for real estate investment in the city.
Esenyurt, which is close to many transportation options such as Metro-bus, E-5 and TEM, provides investors with easy access to Ataturk Airport. In addition, the Marmara Sea beach is only a 10-minute drive from Esenyurt and for these reasons, real estate prices have increased significantly in recent years.
If you are looking for a profitable real estate investment in Istanbul, we advise you to consider investing in Esenyurt.

8 – Kadikoy

There are many advantages to investing in real estate in Kadikoy, as the city has a fast-growing economy, the property market is booming and property values ​​have increased significantly over the past few years, and there is no indication that this trend is slowing down.
Kadikoy is also a very desirable place to live, as it is a cosmopolitan area with a diverse population, offering a great quality of life.
There are many things to do and see in Kadikoy, as it has a lively nightlife scene.
Investing in real estate in Kadikoy is a great way to earn money and secure your financial future.

9 – Bahcesehir

-Proximity to the New Airport
It is only 35 minutes away from Bahcesehir, making it a very attractive location for those looking to invest in real estate. This will not only improve connectivity for the residents, but also increase the real estate value in the area.
-Improving Infrastructure
The government has invested heavily in infrastructure projects in Bahcesehir, which has led to an overall improvement in the quality of life of the residents and this includes new roads, parks and public transportation options, making it a great place to live.
-Affordable Property Prices
The housing prices in Bahcesehir are still relatively reasonable compared to other parts of Istanbul and this makes it a great choice for those looking to invest in real estate, as there is potential for a significant capital increase in the future.

10 – Kucukcekmece

The population of Kucukcekmece is constantly growing, which means that there is a constant demand for new homes and this makes it a great place to invest in real estate.
The municipality is constantly investing in infrastructure projects, making it an attractive place to live for both families and young professionals.
Real estate prices in Kucukcekmece are still relatively low compared to other parts of Istanbul, which makes it a great place to invest in real estate.
There are many new projects being built in Kucukcekmece, which means that there are plenty of opportunities for investors.

11 – Bagcilar

Bagcilar is one of the most central districts of Istanbul and is bordered by Beyoglu, Sisli and Esenler and this makes Bagcilar a very attractive option for real estate investment.
Bagcilar has excellent transport links served by metro-bus, metro and bus lines and the New Airport also has a direct connection to the area which makes it very easy to get around Istanbul from Bagcilar.
The property prices in it are still relatively reasonable compared to other areas of Istanbul and this makes it a great option for investment if you are looking for money value.
With its central location and excellent transport links, it is a great rental property area where you can expect to make high rental returns on your investment.

The suitable properties for real estate investment in Istanbul

With this great diversity in the real estate market in Istanbul, definitely, you will be confused, which types of real estate are most appropriate for the success of the real estate investment project in that city?
In fact, you should choose specific items and not others in order to quickly reach the results you are looking for, and here are the most important ones:

1 – Hotel apartments

Hotel apartments are a great investment for those looking for long and short term rental income as they not only offer the potential for high returns, but also come with a number of other benefits, such as:
Flexibility – With serviced apartments, you have the freedom to use the property as you wish and you can live in it yourself, rent it out to tenants or even offer it for sale.
Less Maintenance – Most of the hotel apartments are run by professional companies, so you don’t have to worry about maintenance and repairs.
High Demand – Hotel apartments are always in high demand, so you can be sure that your investment will be in constant use.

2 – Studio apartments

Studio apartments are growing in popularity as more people move to cities and they offer a number of advantages over traditional apartments, including:
-They are usually cheaper
– They are more convenient (no need to coordinate with a roommate).
-They are often located in desirable neighborhoods.
-They tend to have low ceilings, which makes them more comfortable.

3 – Villas

One of the main advantages is that you will be able to get a higher return on your investment than if you were to invest in other types of property.
Istanbul is one of the most expensive cities in Turkey, and as such, the prices of villas here are relatively cheaper than they would be elsewhere. Another advantage to investing in villas in Istanbul is that you will be able to take advantage of the city’s growing economy.
Istanbul’s economy has grown at a rapid pace in recent years, and this growth is expected to continue and this means that your investments will likely rise over time.
Finally, investing in villas in Istanbul gives you an opportunity to own a property in one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in the world. Istanbul is truly a unique city, and owning property here will be a dream for many people.
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Will the real estate sector in Istanbul grow in the future?

The current trend appears to be positive, with new construction projects emerging across the city. The future growth of the real estate sector in Istanbul is likely to depend on a number of factors, including the continued interest of investors, government support, and economic stability.

Istanbul’s most selling residential complex apartments

The most famous residential complexes in Istanbul are located in the city center and offer a wide range of amenities and services that make life easier and more comfortable for the residents.
These complexes usually have their own security personnel and surveillance systems, in addition to a variety of shops, restaurants, etc. As a result, they tend to be more expensive than other apartments in Istanbul.
Our company is in Istanbul, we have many years of experience in the Turkish real estate market, and we provide a variety of services to our clients, including property management, investment advisory and legal support.
Our company is dedicated to providing the best possible service to our clients, as we believe that by offering a wide range of services, we can meet the needs of all our clients.
We are also committed to providing the highest quality real estate at competitive prices.

Advantages of buying a property in Turkey with Number One Real Estate:

Number One is one of the leading real estate investment companies in Turkey, providing all kinds of real estate services within the Turkish real estate market
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Butterfly valves are a type of quarter-turn valve that is commonly used in various industries to regulate the flow of fluids. They are named after their shape, which resembles that of a butterfly with wings spread out. In this blog, we will discuss the basic functioning of butterfly valves, their types, advantages, and applications. We will also mention some reliable Butterfly Valve distributors in Gujarat and Butterfly Valve suppliers in Vadodara.
How Do Butterfly Valves Work?
Butterfly valves consist of a circular disc, which is mounted on a shaft in the center. The disc is positioned perpendicular to the direction of the flow of the fluid. When the valve handle or actuator is turned, the disc rotates a quarter-turn around its axis, allowing or blocking the flow of fluid. In the open position, the disc is parallel to the pipe, creating a wide opening for the fluid to flow through. In the closed position, the disc is perpendicular to the pipe, blocking the flow of the fluid completely.
Types of Butterfly Valves:
There are mainly three types of butterfly valves:

1. Wafer Type Butterfly Valves: They are the most commonly used butterfly valves, and they are lightweight and easy to install between two flanges.
   
2. Lug Type Butterfly Valves: They have threaded inserts on each side of the valve's body, allowing them to be easily installed and removed from the pipeline.
   
3. Flanged Type Butterfly Valves: They have flanges that are integral to the body, which makes them suitable for applications where the valve needs to be bolted directly onto a pipeline.
   

Advantages of Butterfly Valves
Butterfly valves have several advantages over other types of valves, including:

1. Lower cost than ball valves, globe valves, or gate valves.
   
2. Lightweight and compact design.
   
3. Quick and easy to install and operate.
   
4. Provide a tight shut-off with minimal leakage.
   
5. Low-pressure drop across the valve, reducing energy consumption.
   
6. Can be used for both isolation and regulation of flow.
   
7. Can handle a wide range of temperatures and pressures.
   
8. Applications of Butterfly Valves
   

Butterfly valves find applications in various industries, including:

1. Water treatment and distribution systems
   
2. HVAC systems
   
3. Chemical and petrochemical industries
   
4. Food and beverage industries
   
5. Pharmaceutical industries
   

If you are looking for a reliable Butterfly Valve distributor in Gujarat or a Butterfly Valve supplier in Vadodara, you can contact companies like Flowchem Industries, S.V. Engineers, and Unitech Engineering. These companies have an extensive range of butterfly valves in different sizes, materials, and types to meet the requirements of various industries.
Conclusion
Butterfly valves are an essential component in various industries, providing an efficient and cost-effective solution for regulating the flow of fluids. Their simple design, ease of operation, and low-pressure drop make them an attractive choice for many applications. With the help of a reliable Butterfly Valve distributor in Gujarat or a Butterfly Valve supplier in Vadodara, you can find the right valve to meet your specific requirements.

The development of capitalism in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the invasion of the world historical arena by this new class with a clear desire to take power into its own hands caused a number of phenomena not only of economic and political, but also of cultural and ideological nature.
England was the first to embark on the path of bourgeois development. In England, earlier than in other countries, there was a grandiose social explosion. And this era put forward in it a number of brilliant, brilliant researchers and poets – Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Hobbes and other thinkers, who reached unusually radical forms of crushing all the foundations of the previous society. A little later, France, in the footsteps of England, entered the same road and, preparing its Great Revolution, put forward a galaxy of amazing people whom the bourgeoisie could be proud of if it had not later renounced the best that was in their teaching. Here we see Voltaire’s corroding mockery, and the grandiose heart-warming, romantic rebellion of Rousseau against all the foundations of civilization and class order in the field of feelings, and a group of encyclopedists who, shaking with crushing blows the entire building of the old culture, laid the foundation for a new world outlook and a new society, recognized as “rational” and “normal”.
But if in England and France of the epoch of the bourgeois revolution there was no shortage of thinkers and poets, then the center of the movement of the bourgeoisie still belonged to politicians-practitioners. In these countries we have a “plebeian”, in the words of Marx, manner of completing the movement of the bourgeoisie: the heads of the kings were chopped off, the old aristocracy was dispersed, the internal boundaries between estates and principalities were erased, the laws were changed and the foundations of bourgeois democracy were laid with tremendous determination and consistency.
A wave of counter-revolution later tried to destroy what had been won, but nevertheless deep traces of the first bourgeois conquests remained, and the entire character of the further development of Europe depended on these grandiose events.
Things were different in Germany. In his remarkable book on the history of German philosophy and religion, Heine was the first to note this peculiarity with extraordinary sensitivity.
By the time a young bourgeois culture was rapidly developing in the West, Germany already had a certain stratum of the bourgeoisie and a group of bourgeois intellectuals who could not remain alien to what was being done outside Germany. But it was still a backward country. The German bourgeoisie did not have any significant masses who could support their leaders. And Heine notes with amazing insight that in Germany, deprived from the very beginning of the opportunity to act practically, the process of sublimation begins. Social activity, which is not expressed in action, is refracted into fantasy, into artistic images that are transmitted in music, books and paintings, into wonderful patterns of all kinds of ideological positions. This, too, is the creation of bourgeois culture, this also lays the foundation for the struggle against the old order, against old ideas, but this struggle is waged only with words, ideological weapons. German thinkers of that time were characterized by a distrust of immediate activity, of practical work as such. They are inclined to understand the very essence of the world, to understand the very essence of man in an idealistic way – the work of fantasy, intense thought is especially dear to them, it is through it that they lived.
Can we conclude from this that if in Germany the young bourgeoisie turned out to be weaker and more disorganized than anywhere else, then in its own field, in the field of ideology, it scored irreproachably brilliant successes? No, the matter is not so simple; the point is not only that Germany turned out to be a country of “thinkers and poets” and not a country of fighters and action.
When I noted the idealism inherent in the self-consciousness of German thinkers, I pointed out a thing that was unhealthy from our point of view, from the point of view of the proletariat, but not only that: the ideologists of the German bourgeoisie could not develop freely in general, even in the area in which activities were available to them – even their artistic creations are infected with the spirit of a certain backwardness, remain captive to the order that existed in Germany and differed greatly from the order that existed in other Western European countries.
Engels, in his article The Position of Germany, writes about the German bourgeoisie: By uniting with the people, they could overthrow the old government and rebuild the empire, as the English middle classes did in part between 1640 and 1688. and as the French bourgeoisie did at that time. But the middle classes of Germany have never possessed such energy, never claimed such courage; they knew that Germany was only a dung heap, but they felt good in this mud, because they themselves were dung and felt themselves warm, surrounded by dung. And further: It was one rotting and decaying mass. Nobody felt good. Crafts, trade, industry and agriculture were reduced to the most insignificant proportions. Peasants, traders and artisans experienced a double oppression: a bloodthirsty government and a poor state of commerce. The nobility and princes found that their income, despite the fact that they squeezed everything from their subordinates, should not lag behind their growing expenses. Everything was bad, and general discontent prevailed in the country. There was no education, no means of influencing the minds of the masses, no freedom of the press, no public opinion, no significant trade with other countries; everywhere there is only abomination and selfishness; all the people were imbued with a low, servile, vile huckster’s spirit. Everything was rotten, hesitated, was about to collapse.
The only hope for better times was seen in literature. This shameful political and social era was at the same time the great era of German literature. Around 1750, all the great minds of Germany were born: the poets Goethe and Schiller, the philosophers Kant and Fichte, and twenty years later, the last great German metaphysician Hegel. Every remarkable work of this era is imbued with a spirit of protest, indignation against the entire German society of that time. Goethe wrote Goetz von Berlichingen, a dramatic eulogy to the memory of the revolutionary. Schiller wrote The Robbers praising the generous young man who has declared open war on the whole of society. But these were their youthful works. Over the years, they lost all hope. Goethe limited himself to the most daring satyrs, and Schiller would have fallen into despair if he had not found refuge in science, especially in the great history of ancient Greece and Rome. By them you can judge everyone else. Even the best and strongest minds of the people have lost all hope for the future of their country.
Here is a general description of the position of these great men, among whom Goethe was the greatest.
Lenin taught us that there are two paths to the development of capitalism: the American path of development is the most decisive path in which capitalism flourishes rapidly and is able to mobilize large masses, sweeping all the rot of the past from its path, and another path, which was fatal for Goethe. Lenin called the Prussian path – characterized by the fact that the pressure of the growing bourgeoisie cannot destroy the dirty dams of feudalism and seeps through them somehow, the bourgeoisie does not have the masses who are able to wage a civil war with those who hinder the development of society, and as a result leaders, even the best, even the most perspicacious, the noblest, are forced to compromise with the ruling class; the clergy and nobility remain at the head of society, while the bourgeoisie, content with individual concessions, adapts, supports them. Goethe can also be called a victim of this path. His immense fame testifies to the fact that he did not become a victim in the end.
We know what the mature bourgeoisie brought with it to mankind and what the overripe bourgeoisie brings with it now – there is little good in this. But at the beginning of the movement, the thinkers of the young bourgeoisie, as Engels correctly noted, sometimes even jumped beyond the boundaries of the interests of their class. It is in the interests of their class, wishing to attract the sympathy of huge masses to it, that they say that the cause for which they are fighting is the “people”, that the life of people in the old regime is the accumulation of stupidity, that history until this day was nonsense, but that it will be so until the primacy of reason is proclaimed, when everything begins to illuminate the mind, everything will change and all torment will go into the past. True, with its further development, the victorious bourgeoisie by no means fulfills the promises of its bold thinkers. It is not the thinkers who come to the fore now, not poets or even politicians, but those who are the basis of the bourgeoisie – industrialists, merchants, and later bankers. They develop to astonishing limits the exact science and the technique, which is grandiose in scope, based on it. But at the same time, as Marx says, they unfold a cynical, naked mercantile spirit, they banish all traces of the past revolutionary romanticism, openly raise the question of a lord and, moving along the road of accumulating more and more wealth, ruthlessly trample human beings. The exploiting essence of the bourgeoisie is becoming more and more evident, and at the same time the antipode of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, is growing. The bourgeoisie is betraying its old ideals. It replaces the red banner with a pink one, then a pink one with an orange one, and finally comes to a black reaction. It goes farther and farther backwards and again stretches out its hand to the nobles and priests. Now these latter are not the gentlemen who enjoy the support of the bourgeoisie; now the bourgeoisie is the master, resorting to the support of the classes that have lost their primacy. But all this creates in the imperialist world approximately the same reactionary mishmash that we see at the beginning of capitalism, which develops along the Prussian path. Now these sufferings appear from the overmaturity of capitalism, and then their reason was its immaturity, the slow pace of its development, imposing a stamp of painful inhibition on the creativity and life of thinkers.
All the features of the beginning of the Prussian path of development of bourgeois society to the greatest extent affected Goethe. There was not a single thinker, not a single poet of that time who with such force experienced the young, creative bourgeois principle, the spring of a new class, like Goethe.
A brilliant illumination of Goethe’s personality in its internal contradiction was made by Engels in his article German Socialism in Verse and Prose: In his works, Goethe has a dual attitude towards the German society of his time. He is hostile to it; it is repugnant to him, and he tries to escape from it, as in “Iphigenia” and in general during the Italian journey; he rebelled against it, like Goetz, Prometheus and Faust, showered it with the bitter mockery of Mephistopheles. Or, on the contrary, he makes friends with it, makes peace with it, as in most of his “Tame Xenia” and in many prose works, glorifies it, as in “Masquerade”, protects it from the historical movement pressing on it, especially in all his works, where he talks about the French Revolution. The point is not that Goethe supposedly recognizes only certain aspects of German life, in contrast to other aspects that are hostile to him. Often this is only a manifestation of his various moods; there is a constant struggle between the genius poet, to whom the squalor of his environment inspired disgust, and the cautious son of a Frankfurt patrician, or a Weimar secret adviser, who sees himself compelled to conclude a truce with it and get used to it. So Goethe is now colossally great, now petty, now he is a recalcitrant, mocking genius despising the world, now a cautious, contented, narrow philistine. And Goethe was unable to overcome the German squalor; on the contrary, it conquers him; and this victory of misery (misere) over the greatest German is the best proof that it cannot be defeated “from within” at all. Goethe was too universal, too active in nature, too flesh to seek salvation from squalor in Schiller’s flight to the Kantian ideal; he was too shrewd not to see that this flight ultimately amounted to a substitution of grandiloquent squalor for flat squalor. His temperament, his strength, all his spiritual direction pushed him towards practical life, and the practical life that surrounded him was pitiful. Goethe was constantly confronted with this dilemma: to exist in a living environment that he had to despise and yet be chained to it as the only one in which he could act. The older he got, the more the mighty poet, de guerre lasse, receded before the minor Weimar minister. We do not reproach Goethe, as Boerne and Menzel do, for the fact that he was not liberal, but for the fact that at times he could be a philistine; we do not reproach him for the fact that he was not capable of enthusiasm in the name of German freedom, but for the fact that he sacrificed his aesthetic feeling to the philistine fear of every great modern historical movement; not for the fact that he was a courtier, but for the fact that at the time when Napoleon was cleaning the huge Augean stables of Germany, he could with solemn seriousness deal with the most insignificant deeds and menus plaisirs of the most insignificant German court. In general, we do not make reproaches either from a moral or from a party point of view, but perhaps only from an aesthetic and historical point of view; we do not measure Goethe on a moral, political or “human” scale. We cannot imagine Goethe here in connection with his entire era, with his literary predecessors and contemporaries in his development and in life. We therefore confine ourselves to stating a fact.
But if Goethe was so polluted both aesthetically and in everyday life and politically, if he was so immensely captured by prejudices, then should we not say to the bourgeoisie: Goethe is yours, we have nothing to do with him, bury him, as you wish – let the dead bury the dead, and Goethe belongs to your world, the world of the dead?
Engels did not look at Goethe that way; he not only unconditionally calls Goethe the greatest of Germans, but, since this article was written against Gruen, against the philistine praise of Goethe, Engels adds: If we considered Goethe only from one side, then this is exclusively the fault of Herr Gruen. He does not at all portray Goethe in terms of his greatness. He is in a hurry to slip past everything in which Goethe is really great and brilliant.
In various places Engels points directly to the greatest achievements of Goethe. For example, Engels, in his article The Position of England, speaking about Carlyle, simultaneously speaks about Goethe: Goethe was reluctant to deal with “God,” he says, from this word he felt uncomfortable; he felt at home only in the human, and this humanity, this liberation of art from the shackles of religion, is precisely the greatness of Goethe. In this respect, neither the ancients nor Shakespeare can compare with him. But this perfect humanity, this overcoming of religious dualism, can be grasped in all its historical significance only by those who are not alien to the other side of German national development – philosophy. What Goethe could only express directly, that is, in a certain sense “prophetically”, is now developed and proven in the latest German philosophy.
No, in no case can we say to the bourgeoisie: Goethe is yours. Goethe belongs not only to the bourgeoisie, he in some way belongs to us.
How did this man develop and what did he bring with him? Here, like a lighthouse, the characteristic given by Engels shines.
What is this Sturm und Drang of young Goethe? All who saw Goethe in a circle of agitated young people who were disgusted by the surrounding squalor, who no longer wanted to live in a stinking darkness, who wanted to reveal, perhaps, not entirely clear dreams and realize them in life, all those who saw Goethe in a circle of these people, they speak of him as a brilliant phenomenon among secondary phenomena. He was a man physically, morally and mentally gifted to such an extent that everyone who approached him noted his exclusivity and remained fascinated by him.
On behalf of his generation, which called itself the generation of geniuses, Goethe, a true genius, posed a gigantic task for himself and for others. This task was not political, but purely individual: to develop all the possibilities hidden in a person.
This is the criterion by which it is possible to compare different social systems, orders and structures. Marx says that the social system is higher, which makes it possible to maximize all the possibilities inherent in man. Marx understands this in the most democratic way: the possibilities inherent in every person are inherent in all of humanity. For Goethe, perhaps this thought had a more aristocratic connotation, but not so much as to make it completely distant from the one expressed by Marx.
At the time of his eagle youth, in all the fullness of his energy, Goethe says that nothing excites him more than the church chant Veni, Spiritus, creator (Come, creative spirit): I know that this is not an appeal to God, this is an appeal to a person and especially to that person who is gifted with creativity; a creatively gifted person is a leader, an organizer. And a little later, Goethe says:
Why did I yearn to find the way to go If not to brothers afterwards to show?
Perhaps Goethe knew Kant’s definition of genius. For him, genius realizes everything as something natural, arising from his own individual essence, but what he realizes becomes an example and a law for others. We, possessing a Marxist analysis, can say that geniuses – deeply gifted people – form earlier than their class as a whole, what it needs, and their thoughts spread at lightning speed, become an instrument of self-knowledge of the masses. That was Marx, that was Lenin, and Goethe wanted to be that. But there was no class in Germany that could support him. Goethe felt very well that in the era preceding the French Revolution, the ideal was not destined to be realized, so that society would not interfere, but would help the development of a creatively perfect personality. He even has a presentiment that such outstanding personalities will certainly be defeated, will fall victims. He creates Prometheus, Mahomet and finally Werther – works that are, as it were, a recognition of the almost obsessive thought that there is no other way out of this catastrophe than death.
Everything in you sounds, and everything in you trembles, And feelings are darkened, and it seems to you – you proceed and you don’t, And everything around you is spinning in the night And you are more and more in your inherent feeling You embrace the whole world – then a person dies.
Death turns out to be enlightenment, death turns out to be the apotheosis. Why? What is this, mysticism? No, this is not mysticism. If from the greatest bourgeois poet Shakespeare, Goethe learned to a large extent such an understanding of life that it is not important to be happy, it is not important to be a winner, it is important to be great, it is important to live with such feelings, thoughts, to meet in life and create such events in it, oh which one could say: this is genuine life, full of activity, the greatest energy – then from another bourgeois thinker, from Spinoza, Goethe learned the knowledge of nature.
For Goethe, nature was everything, a single whole in which all parts are connected in some harmony. But more than Spinoza, Goethe had the idea that this “everything” is constantly being improved, that the processes that take place in the world make sense, because this matter, which has infinite possibilities and realizes them in its contradictory development through the action of separate parts on each other, constantly moves forward, to the better, to its highest development. This idea of development was generally at the heart of German idealism. And besides, Goethe assimilated matter as an unusually gifted artist; it was for him a combination of colors, sounds, smells, efficiency, pleasures, that is, it spoke to him through the unusually bright fabric of the most lively experiences. And he felt that being part of this whole was wonderful. He was perfectly aware that it is wild and ridiculous to oppose oneself as a part of the whole, one’s personality to this enormous light, this self-contained matter. But how to achieve this whole, how to break through to this whole through society, through that German society, which Engels spoke of as a rotting dung heap? It is impossible to break through, and Goethe is ready to admit the thought that there is no other gateway to nature as soon as death. In Ibsen’s Peer Gynt there is such an image: a man meets the Smelter, and the Smelter says: I collect buttons that have no loops and throw them back into the crucible, that is, people who are not needed for anything, death throws back into the flow of matter, because it is necessary to take into the alteration what has failed. And Goethe is a diamond button, and it has a magnificent loop, but there is nowhere to sew it; the caftan is useless. Therefore, despite the fact that it is not lower, but higher than reality, he longs for death. He himself did not die. He wrote only Werther – a thing that exposed the idea of death that shook the world and plunged many into the ranks of suicides. But Goethe himself remained at a dead end, at a crossroads, not knowing what to do.
And then the nobility in the person of Duke Karl-August of Saxe-Weimar offered Goethe an alliance. A lot of inaccurate and superficial things are said about this alliance. Meanwhile, this was the greatest event in the life of Goethe, and he thought for a long time before making this decision, that is, abandoning the role of the leader of the bourgeoisie. He knew that here he would have to grovel, to be in the position of a cheerleader, an entertainer, a maitre-d’hotel, to become the main clerk of his master, in essence, an ordinary one. When he went to the nobles, people like the republican thinker and poet Klopstock stopped shaking hands with him. Goethe foresaw this, but he did not know how else to live. A force bubbled in him that pushed him to creativity, to activity, to pleasure, and the nobility told him: come to us, we will make room, we will give you a place among us, you will be von Goethe, you will have money.
Goethe leaned towards this proposal, and here is his second downfall. The first downfall, which consisted in the fact that Goethe ceased to be a revolutionary-minded leader, was, in essence, fatal. For in what was then Germany the leaders lacked the masses. Now the question was posed, how to save your own life, to save it for the future? And this was done through the well-known self-sale to the ruling class of the nobility. And here the most terrible thing happened to Goethe, as Engels says, that one fine day he woke up in the arms of people like Gruen, that he allowed himself to be passed off as one of the main pillars of the reactionary philistine order of dark Germany.
Engels says about this: “History took revenge on Goethe for the fact that he renounced her every time he found himself face to face with her, but this revenge is not the yapping of Menzel nor the narrow polemic of Boerne. No,
Just as Titania in the land of fairy magic Found Nick Bottom in her arms, (Goethe, Warnung),
so one morning Goethe found Herr Gruen in his arms.”
Regarding Goethe’s alliance with the nobility, they say that this elevated Goethe, that from an agitated, unbalanced youth he came to real maturity. They call him happy, his destiny is ideal. And Goethe himself said about himself to Eckermann: They say that I am a happy person, but when I look back, I see an infinite number of renunciations, an infinite number of refusals from what I wanted. I see continuous work, and only occasionally is my path illuminated by a ray that resembles happiness. And so from the very beginning to the very end.
This was said by a man eighty years old, and he was speaking the truth, because these golden chains turned out to be heavy. From the very beginning, when Goethe arrives in Weimar, he makes a farce out of his own Werther for the sake of a new environment. He goes to Frau Stein literally in training, and Frau Stein pulls out of his wings all the feathers that seem to her insufficiently courtiers. She seeks to squeeze him into the framework of an ordinary courtier, and in this court life of Goethe, it must be said, shameful pages come across.
True, Goethe was incredibly exhausted and after a while was torn from Weimar. Almost without asking permission, he travels to Italy to get some fresh air.
A great man, a great burgher, who did not live in such a burgher society in which he could breathe freely, aspires to nature and society, but to the society of the past.
In Italy, Goethe finds the great remnants of Greece and the Renaissance of the great burgher eras, eras whose art skillfully portrays beautiful people, full of self-confidence, full of pagan passion and brought back to normal in the sense that their consciousness of their strength makes them calm and majestic.
Goethe creates an artificial world around him, but modern society buzzed his ears with reminders that he needed to return to Weimar. Goethe thinks of returning with disgust.
At this time, Goethe wrote his terrifying play Torquato Tasso. This play is not terrifying because its hero, an Italian poet, goes crazy. This play is terrifying in its intention, which consists in portraying a gifted, passionate, natural person, a real person who is brought closer to the court for talent, and he suddenly dares to consider himself not only a privileged jester, but a person equal to aristocrats and fall in love with one of the princesses. For this comes thunder and lightning, for this comes complete destruction, and moral destruction, because the princess also treats the poet’s love as if a monkey had proposed to her.
But this is not the main tragedy either. In this play there is Antonio, all of whose wisdom can be perfectly put into the words of the Russian proverb: “the cobbler should stick to his last.” And so Goethe comes to the conclusion that Antonio is a sage, that he is a bearer of real morality, and Torquato Tasso is a bearer of tragic guilt. He writes this in order to prove to himself: know, Goethe, your last, do not go where it is not necessary, do not go into the reformers of society, do not dream of putting things in your own way. You must know how to renounce: that is real wisdom.
And despite the fact that Goethe took the path of compromise, when he returned to Germany, almost everyone turned away from him. At court they hissed at him for leaving Weimar and thereby showing his contempt. The feminine Frau Stein writes first a novel, and then a play against Goethe, and Brandes, one of Goethe’s biographers, says that never did a jealous woman who hated her great lover write a book so slanderous and dirty. True, friendship with Schiller, another bourgeois genius, partly supported Goethe (this is not the place to talk about Schiller, although he had a certain meaning for Goethe).
From that time on, especially after the death of Schiller, Goethe covered himself with a cloak of majestic superiority, put on an Olympian mask on his face.
Goethe at this time is surprised: where is that eagle, that genius, which, like fire, soared upward? This majestic and calm man, whose muscles will not flinch? But this is also a deceiving mask. At this time, trembling all over, Goethe says: I cannot write a tragedy. It would drive me crazy! He hears Beethoven’s sonatas, he weeps in a darkened room and becomes almost Beethoven’s enemy. He says: If such music were performed by a large orchestra, it would destroy everything around it.
Engels says that the older Goethe got, the more he turned into a narrow Geheimrat. But Engels did not know some of the documents according to which we see the forces opposing this process. Even in the gray-haired Goethe, you can find out how much strength he buried in himself and how it sometimes bubbled in him.
Here’s what we can tell about it: after the expulsion of Napoleon, a reaction began, the princes sought to deprive the people of all those conquests which they claimed as a result of the liberation war.
Goethe was shocked by this sight, for which we now have direct indication. The physician Kieser tells of an evening on December 13, 1813, which he spent with Goethe: I came to him at six o’clock in the evening. I found him alone and unusually agitated, downright inflamed. I spent two hours with him and still did not understand him well. He unfolded broad political plans and asked for my participation; I was downright frightened of him. He seemed to me like a Chinese dragon. He was angry, powerful, roaring. His eyes were full of fire, his face was flushed, words were often lacking, and he replaced them with violent gestures.
But it is impossible to get from poor Kieser what these plans were. He only says that Goethe condemned the injustices accumulated over the centuries.
However, the next day, Goethe talked to a more advanced and intelligent man, Professor Luden. Apparently plans of active protest against the prepared reaction in view of their complete impracticability were not an option for Goethe. But this time we see what made Goethe so extremely excited: Maybe you think that the great ideas of freedom, the people, the fatherland are alien to me? These ideas are part of our being. Nobody can get away from them. But here you are talking about the awakening, about the rise of my German people. You claim that he will not allow the freedom that he bought so dearly, sacrificing his wealth and life, to be snatched from his hands. But did the German people wake up? The dream was too deep, and the first shake can not bring them to their senses. Don’t ask me anymore. The foreigners’ proclamations about us, I myself find excellent. Ah, ah, a horse, a horse – half a kingdom for a horse!
But they did not give him a horse. He was given half a kingdom, “half a grand duchy” was given, but he was not given a horse to lead some great political attacks. Goethe’s Napoleonophilia, however, was noticeable to everyone. He was quite clearly aware that Napoleon was not only an enemy of the fatherland, but that he was bringing with him a higher order. Ludendorff, the “Grand Marshal”, says that Goethe should be branded for not being a French-eater enough, but it is interesting that Madame Ludendorff published a book in which she claims that all great Germans were killed by Jews or Freemasons: in particular, Schiller was poisoned by the Freemason Goethe. This stupid and dirty book was sold in cultured Germany in thirty thousand copies. Already on this one can conclude that “righteous Germany” there is far from unconditional admiration for Goethe and shows a rather strange “critical” attitude towards him.
Of course, Goethe’s politics is the weakest side of his activity. Much closer to us is Goethe the philosopher, scientist and poet. But still, for the political characterization of Goethe, one more significant addition must be made.
By the end of his life, Goethe had already begun to notice the internal contradictions that the development of bourgeois society brings with it. He deeply loved work, loved technology, loved science. It was not these strengths of the bourgeoisie that repelled him; he was repelled by the mercantile spirit and the chaos that the bourgeoisie brought with it. Therefore, he tried to draw for himself a system in which the planned principle would triumph and where free and working people would be united in a labor union. This is reflected in the last part of the great dramatic poem Faust. These famous lines are very often quoted, but it is not superfluous to cite them again, for they show how Goethe goes beyond the borders of his century:
The last result of wisdom stamps it true: He only earns his freedom and existence, Who daily conquers them anew. Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away Of childhood, manhood, age, the vigorous day: And such a throng I fain would see,– Stand on free soil among a people free Then dared I hail the Moment fleeing: “Ah, still delay–thou art so fair!” The traces cannot, ot mine earthly being, In asons perish, –they are there!– In proud fore-feeling of such lolty bliss, I now enjoy the highest Moment–this!
Only the one who really creatively assists people, who does not yearn for peace, but fights for the victory of life in word and deed, who resists the forces that are trying to fetter them, only he can say that he has lived his life fruitfully.
So, Goethe the thinker and Goethe the poet are much closer to us and much more important than the politician. True, even in the field of socio-political work of Goethe, the progressive burgher-citizen always affects. Nevertheless, the revolt of the young bourgeoisie against the old world is felt much more strongly in the poetry and philosophy of Goethe.
The colossal power of his music, his images, comes from the youth of the class. As a rule, those who wake up to the creativity of the advanced class have a freshness of perception; they, like Adam, call everything with new names, they create their own language, they become a reservoir of everything that a renewed person can and should perceive. And Goethe says:
Love, hate, fear, tremble, Shudder to the core Life can embitter But without this it would be rubbish.
Goethe’s strength, activity, vitality do honor to the bourgeoisie, which gave birth to this eagle’s youth, but on the other hand, Goethe’s life is dishonorable to the bourgeoisie insofar as it constrained and limited his youth, and since it could never and under no circumstances fulfill the program of this youth.
As a poet, Goethe also has the ability to express what he feels with extraordinary power in images. Speaking about this, he characteristically puts suffering in the first place among all experiences: If an ordinary person falls silent in grief, then some deity gave me the strength to tell all my sufferings.
For a long time we will understand Goethe’s work, because now the time has come to understand it for real.
Above are some wonderful quotes from Engels, where he appreciates the deeply revolutionary character of Goethe’s philosophical concept.
I want to end my article with one philosophical letter from Goethe. This is one of the brightest, deepest pages that have ever been written. I cannot but share the joy that has seized me more than once these days. I feel myself in happy unanimity with close and distant, serious, active researchers. They acknowledge and assert that something unsearchable must be accepted as a prerequisite and an assumption, but that then no boundary can be set for the researcher himself; And do I have to accept myself as an assumption and a prerequisite, although I never know how I actually work? Do I not study myself incessantly, never gaining an understanding of myself and others, and nevertheless boldly moving further and further? So it is with the world: let it lie before us beginningless and endless, let the distance be boundless, impenetrable near; but this is so, and yet – let them never determine how far and how deeply the human mind is able to penetrate into its secrets and into the secrets of the world.
In this sense, I propose to accept and interpret the following cheerful lines:
“Into the inside of nature-” Oh you philistine! “Penetrates no created spirit.” Only may you not remind Me and my kind of this word Just don’t remember! We think: place for place We are inside. “Happy he, to whom she Only shows her exterior shell.” Nature has neither kernel nor shell, She is all at once. You should above all test yourself, If you are kernel or shell.
“Happy is the one to whom she only reveals the outer shell. I have been hearing this for sixty years, I scold, but I repeat myself thousands and thousands of times: she gives everything generously and willingly; nature has neither a kernel nor a shell, it is all at once; better test it well: you yourself are a kernel or a shell.” (The words in quotation marks are from a poem by the physiologist and poet Albrecht Haller).
It is clear what a philosophical mood, belief in knowledge, belief in an unlimited human mind is ours. As soon as the bourgeoisie begins to stop in its development, to decay, it departs from a realistic, creative and vigorous worldview.
We cannot fail to be analysts, to understand carefully and critically what the centuries of the past have left us, for they almost never give anything that would be acceptable to us in an integral form. The works of past cultures contain, along with the treasures, a lot of all kinds of rubbish that we must discard and separate. This is what we are doing now with Goethe. And we see that after that not only the best part remains of him, but also an essential part – that which was the most essential in Goethe himself.
They can also call Goethe an Olympian, stick all sorts of reactionary labels to Goethe’s forehead, but against them the voice of the proletariat is already rising, which is building a new world and which is arranging its own terrible judgment over the exploiting society and its culture.
Yes, the social revolution, which, as Marx said, may last for tens of years, is a terrible judgment, and not only because this revolution overthrows the enemies of the people in the social struggle, but because it is a judgment on the living and the dead.
Those who worked in former times, those prophets of our movement, who stood facing the rising sun that illuminate us now, are passing before the judgment of the proletariat, which is building a new life.
Before the court of the proletariat are representatives of other classes who have stepped over the boundaries of their class consciousness, created programs that this class could not fulfill and which another class is destined to fulfill.
As on the great fresco of Michelangelo stands the mighty figure of the proletarian, who overthrows what was considered great – here are the fragments of royal crowns, bankers’ gold, false laurels, etc., and on the other side those rise, the memory of which will not be erased for centuries.
This proletarian, political, cultural and artistic court addresses Goethe as follows: You must take off your gilded Saxe-Weimar livery, your mask of Olympic serenity must melt, because we know that beneath it lies a great man and a great sufferer. Leave what is imposed on you by the squalor of your time: you yourself know that from this you will only become better, much higher and much brighter. Enter eternity with those who contributed to the real rise of human society.
This is the meaning of the words of our teachers: the proletariat is the faithful heir of the great thinkers and great classical poets of young Germany, and among them, of the one who may be the greatest – Johann-Wolfgang Goethe.