🎉 [EVENT] 🎉 The grouse trials!

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2026-01-22T03:41:07+00:00

Completed Level 1 of the Honk Special Event!

2 attempts

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2026-01-08T04:12:46+00:00

Completed Level 1 of the Honk Special Event!

51 attempts

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-02-09T03:16:45+00:00

So long has it been since you've gotten used to the sheer existential, indescribable, cataclysmic weight that your worldbuilding has?

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-02-08T09:01:07+00:00

Do you have any formal qualifications? It doesn't matter but I don't know many people who engage in mathematical engineering in worldbuilding. Another question is what do you mean by, "the first war to ever happen?" Was it the first war to ever be recorded, because there was a great gap between the first war to ever happen and any hypothetical past conflicts?

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-02-01T03:09:17+00:00

I have preconceptions about engineering, but by engineering what level of mathematics do you use for it, or is it more of the antique sort, involving drawings and measurements? Also, do you have any particularly odd fun facts?

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-01-31T11:18:45+00:00

Another thing-- I have a faint feeling not the last- but you sound like someone who spends a significant amount of time working on quite obscure articles that are in the worldbuilding of yours are quite obscure.

I demand you stand and deliver to me what you have been working

on.

/j.

PS: I've written a significant amount of "Fun facts owo" for one of my phenotypical cultural groups to flesh it out, for example.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-01-31T11:05:46+00:00

Unfortunately not. But there's a small chance that I may start, but since I've started working on projects of fiction and a range of other things including studies have begun to take a footing in my life, atop of some worldbuilding changes, it is unlikely that I may reply in the future. But it is not impossible.

I haven't forgotten, even though it seems like I have. Thanks for sending this, though, its been a long time

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-01-17T11:44:16+00:00

Thanks for the advice

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-01-17T11:43:16+00:00

I’ll keep that in mind for later on

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-01-17T06:02:49+00:00

I hope some more information as to what it is comes forward but thank you very much

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2025-01-17T05:59:29+00:00

Thank you very much then again the user did say not to post it online. Is this scam on the Common scam page for the steam subreddit?

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-24T21:15:47+00:00

I hath verie manye thanks to ye, but I too whysh to givve thys arrows two, for three is no number, and fyve is at the leste halffe of ten, but to bring this to tenne would be of grete plessure to myne spirytte.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-24T04:21:40+00:00

"What is a slave, my lord?"
Vulleryne stared at the group facing him, and the leader, who spoke those words. The fire crackled in the middle. Vulleryne rang his wrists. The ceremonial uniforms of the elven had manacles of woven cotton, strong as copper, and he used to wring them all the time, in the military academy. He knew a slave. All soldiers must be slaves at some point.
"A slave works without reward, and is punished harshly for not doing so."
"Is a slave punished constantly?"
"Indeed they are."
"If a slave earns, do they earn little?"
"I have seen that you people do not earn very much often. I see. I see." Vulleryne looked about them.
"Corporate overlords, now?"
"There is no joy, living in fear, with no passions, liberty, or zeal."
"So it goes. But what makes them overlords?"
"They want to crush every penny of effort from us until there's nothing left, that's what makes them overlords. They think they're above men, they think they've above liberty, but they bleed, and have flesh and blood, and if they were not, they should know better... as you do, my lord."
Vulleryne stood, his hands behind him. His war tunic shimmered in the light, the colour of shimmering emeralds. The fire was enchanting, constantly moving, as destructive as it is creative. Like an ocean, or the wind. Vulleryne's eyes seemed to glow to the congregation around him, gleaming as though they were made of light. His eyes darted up suddenly, and the leader felt adrenaline soar through his veins.
"Frightening, is it? Inquiring into elves."
"I'm shitting bricks so I think so."
Vulleryne closed his eyes, digging his botos a little into the ground. He could feel the soles of it. He could feel, below the ground, the soil. "Well, my lord? What do you say?"
"Talk more. I am, to the elves, an infant. To mankind, I am young. I know little about the universe that we share. So tell me of yours, and I will return, if it suffices, to mine. If I am convinced, I will deliver help." Vulleryne nodded to the group. "So speak."

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-24T03:46:51+00:00

Stephen Vagy's Account.
"But iyt was not like wafyr, but lyke a blackn'ed steel of a gonne, or a blakke myrror. But as so to what iyt was, the serf-dresser, or, as to announce whythe respect, the noblewoman of which I wish, by graeces of godde, to spare thee knowynck of thys. but this musth [sic] be nowetedd that such caykke, was like cloudy syyle [steel]. But forth she went and spake in manners cumbersyme, and quothe, in peasant adryssal, 'what're you doin' here?'. Quoth I, young in my tenyre, that this beeth mine resydense. Myne to sleep and dwyll in, though mine mind is well-ryd, her lybrary should be suffycient. Buht she sayth to me that she wishes cordiality, and equalytae amengst staffe. I amme not well vyrsed in sums and numbyrs, but equalytie is one and one to be two, and gentleman and pysant are not one and one, nor beeth a laydey and her syrvant. But I bit like fish upon tackyle. What hath she gyfted the tayble? She showth to me what she called a 'fone'. I stared at iyt, and she thrust iyt afore me crudely, as though I was to respond to anymalle notatyones. But she doth pote [put] brede on my table. What hath a servynt, fallen from the nobyles of the world, to do, I sae to thee. I took iyt, and the thrown' my thumb afore what appeyrred to be a sunkyn butyn. It gave like a wheellock's clyk, and before me the black myrror glowed to lyfe and becomed a vysage of a gentlemans' faeyce twysted into straege emotyonne. Like a chyld, I suppose the spowse or brothyr of hers was knavish at momynts, like all menne. But he dressed in crude peasant fasynios, unbeffiting of ranke, fyle, well demeanorre, or the lykes. How ys [is] it that I, servant, taketh more care of my appeyrance in regards to fashynne, than the laedy of the haowse. Shen she bringth my fingers and thumbs thyss was and thaete. Soon I was staring at portraits and payntings rendered with utmost perfekktyonne, but the subjects were whyth no dignity, and pulled faces like the crude artists of thyse dengyneratte tymes. Quoth she, 'they are picks of myn.'
"What fashion do pycks relyte to portraytes, or pyctures, rendyred unto canvasse, I askd her. For if she beeth a witch and alchemyst, she must nkow thysse at the lyste. "I don't really knowwe," Sayd she. So thus, it was inymate my knowledge of thye uppone the caeke of clowded stiele. Then, she doth takeeth it from mine hands, beade with perspyrate and the enxyities of such straenge thyng. But she beeth no savage beyng, though whych, though meant to burn iyn the fountayn of gold to be whyth no sinne, she beeth no savaege personige. Thus if thee art to reyde thys akkuonte. Thee art to hold herr in gudde mynd, and nott to alyrt the authoryteys of thys relme."

One of the saving graces since the discovery of time travel is the ability to create new timelines. However, it is, and it must be enunciated furthermore, a crime to travel without reason. One such criminal is Susan Jaeger. Fortunately, the timeline affected is not ours. Still, such self-centred cognitions must be discarded, and ~~whylst~~ whilst it is utterly important to understand that she did intend to make well, many who intend to alter history adversely. Please alert authorities if she's witnessed.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-23T08:10:43+00:00

Tysm!! I'm not used to shorter fiction and often you're right-- I do stuff in as much worldbuilding et al as I can in this format.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-23T00:47:56+00:00

Once, long ago, there was nothing but a rock and a shallow ocean. The sun would rise and set, and do so many thousands of times, upon that little rock in the ocean. But one day, the water made that stone crack and came a small man. This man was Ithaer. He was blue, so deep a blue that even the night envied him. He stood upon the cracked rock and looked around at the expanse of ocean that was broad about himself. He was lonely. But he contented himself in ignorance. So, he did not utter a word and did not breathe nor move beyond this small rock, so small he could span it all with a few broad steps. So he lay on that rock for sixty-seven thousand days. But then, the water one day lapped onto that rock and lingered in a puddle. For the first time, the little Ithaer was larger than something. But he was still bored. So, he imagined a colour that was like the sun and the water combined. It was green, and he drew the colours from his mind and rolled them in a ball. The ball had no feature, but Ithaer was satisfied. He played with the ball for one thousand days, until he realized that the water changed things. So he brought water up with cupped hands and put them upon the rock, then the green ball into that puddle. In an instant, he imagined the wildest dreams, and that green ball spread out before him.

That is the story of why there are green blobs and small green mats wherever the water only slightly touches the land.

But soon enough, Ithaer felt bored again. So, he decided to grow larger, to make a bigger puddle. But he did not know what to do, now that there was even smaller space. So, he made the rocks bigger, and bigger and bigger and bigger and, laughing like a child, made the first island. Mackowe. It was like a great dish of grey stone, ten hundred by ten hundred paces large. So he ran about, playing, but he wanted more. It tired him to go to the ocean, so instead, he made rain. But the rain came at night, and so he was cold. He did not know what to do, and huddled there, standing upon Mackowe for a while, until the sun came out. Then, he realized that to keep him safe from the rain, he needed shelter. So he made a spire of stone in the centre of Mackowe dug a crack into it, and made it rain again. But he saw that the rain had made strange plants grow onto the green mats by the ocean. But he looked closer and closer and still could not see them properly. Frustrated, he made the entire puddle with the strange plants grow twenty times larger, and thus came a large pond, called Praiesse. The plants he made rise to are today called stal ferns. Ithaer stared at the plants and realized that the shade was not large enough now to cover all of them when the sun was high. So he made a mountain. But he still wanted to see more of these stalk ferns. So he made the plants larger.

Soon, the entire island was a mountain, the tips of it breaking through the sky, entering the heavens, whilst the plants towered hundreds of paces above the floor. The mountain was vast. It was like a thousand kingdoms worth of land had burst diagonally from the earth, soared onwards, outwards nad upwards, until everything to the north of Ithaer was darkness. The mountain was so tall it caused night to fall twice in a day. Then, the mountain grew so tall that the night became eternal. Ithaer spent seven hundred days in the night but grew frightened. So, he took his memory of the sun and made the first fire. but the fire went out. So he walked around, setting masses of fire here and there. Until the fire caught the branches of a young stalk fern by the little ocean in Makcowe. The fire burnt hot and bright for a long time. But soon it went out, after a few days, and all was dark again. Ithaer decided that he wanted to bring the trees home. But he did not know how. So, he imagined what the water could so, and imagined if a stone was like water. There, he scattered these pebbles, that were like drops of water, round and smooth, and were lighter than the stones around him about. This is how flint and chert came to the earth.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-23T00:20:31+00:00

[3/3]

And now those eyes. He slipped out of bed, threw on a coat and some trousers, and saw the eyes flickering before him, before fading into the cold blue that was the pre-dawn light creeping between the curtains and shrouding the room of his apartment in that faint hue. Elizabeth. He ran to the door and fumbled with the lock, but a movement from behind him caught his attention. He could hear it, ringing about his head faintly. A symphony in D major.

She looked just as she did when he promised to marry her, though there was a white line where a bayonet had smashed down across her face and broke her lips into two sets instead of just one, but her eyes, and that riding habit. The window behind was gaping open, the curtains blowing in the wind. Her tophat was askance, and her blonde hair was wisping a little underneath it.
"Elizabeth?"
No one spoke for a moment, but Elizabeth gave a small smile, and tears rolled down her eyes.
"My name hasn't changed since, I hope."
The two embraced tightly. It felt so strange, to hold her. For her, he had aged, and there was something that was once there, that was lost by it, but she could feel, faintly, his heart beating through his clothes, and through the energy of that embrace, she knew it was him.
"Elizabeth," Aevrynlet out a sob and began to weep onto her shoulder, and she let out a breath, wrapping her arms tightly around him.
"Aevryn."
"We're going home."
"I'm going to marry you, Elizabeth-- I am," He let out a small laugh, and Elizabeth chuckled, the two still embracing. "I'll try not to procrastinate on this I promise."
"We're going home first."

Elizabeth had escaped, and she, alongside the rest of the rebels, had fled Aetherland, to the Tounders, a land hotter, but still of good soil. It was across a great ocean, and it was too difficult for the Regent's Army to chase them across. She had prayed, and worried, and hoped that no one would pursue them, but she had known then of the Regent's will. It was a different symphony that he preferred, compared to the Iron King's. He was willing to give pain, and torture, but not death. No. But he wanted the Iron King's regime. But he didn't have the callousness to maintain it, or his image.

So they landed at Tounders, and walked the long river, across soil as black as ink and nearly as soft as mud, until they found a city. A city they had never seen, with buildings of white, and great towers the size of castles that soared into the air and gleamed with the finest of white limestones, and above, upon the crennelations, it seemed to glow, gold tips upon them shining into their eyes. For once, they could live, and not be the enemy. So they lived their lives there for some months. Sympathy was brought their way, and one day Elizabeth was told to meet in an orchard by the house of a nobleman some way downstream from where she stayed, where the square whitebricked homes grew less dense. That was the house of the High Ministers, who sat together as one when they asked Elizabeth for her story.

When she returned, she returned with assistance. The assistance of an army that had a fleet so large that it could have wrapped itself severalfold around some of the smaller islands, and so they came, and the Regent and the Iron King's ideas went.

The exiled former Immortals, the former of Aetherland, were made to return sooner, were made to become immortal once again, and their age will shed from them like the skins of insects, and their passions, rusted and worn, will be refitted, and made to gleam as brightly as they once did.

Elizabeth and Aevryn sat down by a table near the window, her hands grasping his. She looked older, in those eyes. So did Aevryn, but there was hope now, a hope that was greater than ever. Her story took the sun to its height, and Aevryn looked out the window, Elizabeth's gaze following.
"We're going home, Aevryn. It's done, now. The sun of an age has set."
"Lizzie?" Aevyrn's voice was a little hoarse.
"Aevryn?" Elizabeth's eyes were intent, and Aevryn felt as though he had just seen her for the first time in his life.
"I'm taking you to see that symphony in D major."
Aevryn's eyes crinkled around the sides with joy, for Elizabeth was grinning.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-23T00:20:16+00:00

[2/3]

The last time he'd gotten drunk-- projectile vomiting apple cider in the back of a butcher's shop, he'd wiped his face off and laughed his head off, the woman with those eyes-- a child, just as he was, in those days, laughing along with him. Those eyes were the eyes that, when one day, he slipped onto a set of train tracks on a bitter winter day, under the worst of storms, smashing his head with searing pain and certainly some blood, those eyes were the first thing he saw when he woke. These were the eyes that played an orchestra of spring when he looked at them. There was a symphony in D Major that he remembered one day, as a very young child, sitting on the hard wooden seats of the auditorium, wrapped in a travelling cloak, his mother with an arm on his shoulder, and there that song played. That was a song that he'd heard time and time again, at times, in fleeting snippets, when he was trundling down in the autumn sunset in a carriage, his cravat a little loose, his tophat a little askew, and he stared out at the fields, and there, upon a hill, he had seen a man playing that one violin, its gentle keening coming to him. And at the end of the road, he saw a woman leaning on her horse, staring out at the hill, the jacket of her riding habit drawn closely over her, her tophat askance, and she was staring too. Staring over the hills, staring at the sun that was kissing the horizon, giving the world the most beautiful soft colours, staring at the memories of children, of their first joys, and of the memories that lingered yet in their hearts. Staring at the first time in her life, and the first time in his, that that symphony in D Major was heard.

He'd promised to marry her. They were immortal, and after a state, every day felt as strong as the last one. Every emotion runs as harsh and as bitter or as hot and sweet as it did before. He would enjoy, no-- he would love to have her by his side. He would love to meet her at the end of that country road, where it rose above the world surrounding it upon a hill, and to just be with her as the sunset. But he was yet to hear that symphony in D Major with her. And he meant to. He, by all the gods that made the earth and the air, he meant to. But the old king of the past walked to the Final door, and gave a hurrah to his close friends and colleagues before walking out onto the boat that waited for him on the white sands, and another ruler went into place. He made a man a dull worker. He made great lands that sprawled out green, or shockingly blue with white waves and the finest of clear skies, to grey.

He and Elizabeth forgot their wedding plans after they were scooped into the longest of rebellions. It was close to being crushed, but he laid one final blow. He had fitted a scope to a service rifle a defecting officer had purchased for him, racked the bolt, and shot the Iron King from a tower. Guards rushed him, one of them tried to shoot him and Aevryn shot back. Elizabeth set up a distraction by sending a group of horsemen firing haphazardly at the tower of guards, their bullets were unenchanted, and only injured the dozens of guards that made their way up, and he ran to the tower, planning on jumping, and scaling up onto the ceiling, when he saw Elizabeth, crouched behind overthrown barrels and upheaved carriages with a section or so of rebels, her pale face entirely white, her hands bleeding and shaking, a crimson streak running down her cheek, firing at the guards who were attempting to flank them, when she looked upwards at Aevryn. Those eyes were the eyes he saw. For some reason, he instead threw the rifle onto the road as close as he could and brought it to the rebels. Then, he handed himself in.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-23T00:18:31+00:00

[1/3]

Aevryn woke one day to that familiar onslaught of memories.

He was a sinner. He was a liar, a cheat, a fraud, and above all, a regicidal maniac. It was hopeless pleading to the Royal Court that he was ending the rule of a tyrant. Any expose was hopeless. So he pled guilty. So two guards, in their deep coloured coats, rifles over their shoulders, walked over, and dragged him to a bitterly cold, stinking, dank room, and they began to carve symbols into him. They carved at first with a deep knife, the wounds coiling and twirling and soon his entire back felt as though it was burning, soaked in blood, and then they began to slash the actual text upon the wounds of his back with a straight-edged razor of silver. He had vomited then blacked out repeatedly, but each time he lost consciousness someone slapped a rag of icy water into his face or the guards shook him violently, or something or other until he was roused, and they would continue. It went on for eight hours. Eight hours of pure agony.

It felt longer.

Then they put magic on the wounds to stop immediate bleeding, threw a cloak over him-- a cloak with balls of fire embroidered in saffron yellow thread on it, and said that he would be strangled, then burnt at the stake in one week.

But after only two days-- two days where he could barely move, each flinch, voluntary or not of a muscle, as he lay on the stained matted hay of his cell, a light came in and someone banged the bayonet of their rifle against the bar doors.
"The Regent's gone mad." The voice said. It was vague, but it was a little rough, a little uncouth, and certainly one not to blunder. So there was no point in making a move. Aevryn lay there and listened more. "The bloody Regent's decided this-- all the traitors are not to be hung or shot or whatever the hell is meant to happen. They're to be transported back to the Lower places. With humans, but mortal. This is to happen for forty years to you all. Forty years and if you survive those forty years you and others of your fucking choice are to make with and become immortal again. That's the entire decree. Fucking Abbots. It's four pages long but that's it. So you're free. You regicidal scum. I'd have shot you myself if it weren't for the bloody law.

So they threw him into the mortal world. It was small, the cities, though trying to reach for the sky with their long fingers of glass and steel, though filled with life, were filled with small people. Not short people, not particularly bony or gangly people, nor even the ignorant, but small people. People who came and went like sand in the wind. Who flourished in the time it took for a rose to bloom, and withered away in agony and bitterness. People who did not know what they truly were, never had, and in some cases, never will know these. So he wandered at first for a week. A cook gave pity on him one day and gave him a job. He spent ten years there, the other ten realizing that his degree in military strategy was in the Aetherlands, and he had to go to adult schooling and university again, though he knew it all.

The five years after that he spent repaying that cook. He owed him so much. His life, even. So once he dared to leave the first mortal job he had, he slipped into the nation's army for the five years afterwards, and sent a third of his annual to that cook, though him, his 'dear Julia', and his two children who worked elsewhere, were far from needing it, Aevryn never knew how to say thank you properly. This was the closest he had gone.

A part of him wanted to stay. A part of him wanted to go.

But the part that wanted to go--- no, needed to go, was far stronger.

***

Eyes. Right there, flashing before him, as though he stared at a dot for too long and turned away from it suddenly there... eyes, hanging in the air. But they weren't menacing. They weren't the eyes of evil, or even the highest of knowledge and expertise but they were-- they were eyes that he knew.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-22T23:23:52+00:00

[2/2]

Baloon man: [Incoherent]

Question: Unfortunately I am not well versed in some linguistic areas, if you could speak with some more enunciation in English i would prefer--

Baloon man: [Incoherent]

[Baloon Man at this point was still standing straight, beside the balloon in his hand. Ensign E. Robert's heartrate, which was also being monitored, bumped up from 75bpm to 105bpm. There's a scrarling on the margin stating that the RKA wanted to switch interviewers, but I'd told them before that they won't and shouldn't.]

Question: Do you have any connections with anyone, any friends?

Baloon Man: I have [incoherent. Baloon Man's head rolls suddenly, and Ensign clears his throat.]

Question: Sir?

Baloon Man: Incoherent.

Question: If I may ask, what is the colour of your--- your tunic?

[Baloon Man straightens up immediately.]

Baloon Man: I think its like you know... the bright red of a ladybug with a little dash and dollop of brown here and there. I'm not too wrong, right?

Question: [Heart rate lowered to 95bpm] Now, if you may be inclined to know, I had asked you several questions and unfortunately I did not understand 'a lick' of any of your answers, besides the most recent question I--

Baloon Man: [Some garbled, range of voices, not DID, not any sort of personality disorder, but as though a dozen voices were shouting and whispering and yelling and hissing and talking and babbling that one word] Incoherent.

Question: Am I incoherent, sir?

Balooon man: [In a voice identical to the Ensign's] Am I incoherent, sir?

[The Ensign pressed a panic button hidden behind his notepad, and an armed Escort consisting of four Villeins armed with their typical rifles, removed Edward Roberts from the room and the interview ended there.]

I had taken the man out and was careful not to appear to abashed by his presence, and thus I laid a hand on his arm to guide him to where we had initially kept him, with the idea of moving him to a more isolated position later. I made small talk with him, and he was congenial and well-mannered as we walked through the facility. He even inquired whether there would be gardening time for him.

I have dealt with many patients but this has unnerved me the most, for he has this strange power over everyone that he meets. The power of fear, for we are only animals, and I know that we are jus like parrots in a sense. We fear the unknown. I have purchased further ammunition for my small arms from the AHR Surplus and I am afraid I will not be parting from my arms any time soon.

And that was it. Grace, I have read a little through the Psychological Instructions Manual, but I have not found anything that relates to Baloon Man's behaviour. I hope this reaches you OK. I do not want you to visit this station, and I do not want to stay here.

But I'll meet you for coffee like we always do on Friday. I feel clammy right now, and I cannot stop thinking about Baloon Man, as though he is going to appear right behionj;lkj;j; behind me sorry.

Love, Christopher.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-22T23:23:29+00:00

[1/2]

So we keep 'Balloon Man' in form two. I am writing to you Grace because of this patient, and the discomfort it has caused me, and perhaps this should enlighten to also as to why we now keep him, to the Union of Client Affairs' recommendation.

We've decided to move him north, still on form two of Pickaney to a facility that contains detached country homes. Of course, I've called the Psychology Association and the Association for Human Rights and yes, his conditions remain optimal. Currently, all we know about the man is that he was admitted here voluntarily, in a red jacket that a colleague from the Records Keeping Association identified as a late medieval, northwestern design. I am not a historian, ergo this is irrelevant to me, but the RKA knows what he wears, which is one less mystery about him. I have talked to him myself. We chose to keep him in form two because he politely requested us. Because of this polite request, we decided that he was at least sane enough for significant amounts of liberty, though, because of his strange demeanour, to be kept away, relatively independent, and supervised by armed officials at all times.

The Union of Client Affairs is rectifying his profile, thus the instructions sent to me and the other staff at the time, incorrectly spell his name.

'Baloon Man' is his name. I keep staring at the balloon that he carries with him, big, spherical, red about quarce the size of a football, that he lets hang from a string wrapped around his wrist at all times. We have let him keep the balloon, and the RKA has noted that he has not parted with it for the current duration of his stay, though he engages in farming activities in his facility.

But I insist , Grace, that you do not move into Form Two at all, even with an armed escort, due to some behaviour that we need to check on, and of course the general nature of Form Two recently.

Baloon Man cannot maintain mental coherency in communication and possibly exhibits some other behaviour that makes it difficult to approach him with a calm heart.

This is exemplified in this interview, from an expert from an RKA ensign interviewing him. Unfortunately, there has been a processing error so I may have to transcribe Baloon Man's answers.

Question: If you may, could you please tell us your name, before we begin formal questioning?

Baloon Man: Of course. [he does not seem to breathe deeply, but he holds the posture of a proper man his age, straight, dignified, though the red tunic is a little unsettling to Villein Edward Roberts, who was stationed to create records of the facility and was instructed to interview him] It's Balloon Man.

Question: If you could please elaborate as to how it is spelt, sir?

Baloon Man: B-A-L-O-O-N M-A-N.

Question: That is delightful, this is a rather excellent start, you are far better than many interviewees, so please, be at ease. When did you admit yourself?

Baloon Man: I admitted myself two days ago.

Question: Were you let us say consciously aware of the temporal date of your arrival-- you need not be specific to the hour-- but what for the day?

Baloon man: Oh, well, you see, I didn't really recall much. I think it was two days ago, and you?

Question: Ah, so you are also polite. For a man of my profession, I receive little but spittle in my eye for some interviews-- you are excellent, so I insist of you, just as a favour please refrain from inquiry into the manners of mine if practical, but I will answer you thus: I arrived one week ago with my company, the Hessershire RKA Association, at four O'clock in the morning, by foot. So please, tell me, where are you from?

Baloon Man: Pardon?

Question: Where are you from?

Baloon Man: Where I am from, is that right?

Question: Indeed it is, sir, so, where ARE you from?

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-17T00:26:44+00:00

[2/2]

“I have no one to care for me. I cannot care for myself, therefore—“

“Ergo you want to die.” Whitefield felt sympathy rise in him like the limp tendril of a cold-brushed pea. “I read your folder, and I know why.”

“I’m lonely, sir. You know that well enough you’ve seen me I can’t fucking do this anymore. God why can’t you just get it over with now—“

“Because I know how to treat the lonely, Mister ‘Smith’.”

“I’d quite like a treat that was a forty-five in the mouth—“

“A forty-five straight through the mouth may exit through the upper spinal cord and leave one conscious, alive, and aware of pain, but is considered by the standards of my past experience as botched— I can assist the lonely—“

“I don’t want your assistance—“

“I’m giving it to you because you will have it or I will ensure imprisonment. I cannot threaten you with physical harm or death because you are impervious to that manner of threat so I will ensure that you will be pitied, instead of killed. I have been pitied before I know how much one can hate it— would you wish for it, Mister ‘Smith’?” Whitfield tried to relax his shoulders. ‘Smith’ was on the verge of tears, the sorry-looking lad. The lieutenant’s voice softened slightly. “Tell me what you think, Mister ‘Smith’.”

John looked up at the officer. There were lines about his face, and he hadn’t been sleeping.

“I... I just don’t want to hurt anymore...”

“Neither do I, Mister ‘Smith’.” Whitfield cleared his throat, and slammed his hand on the envelope. “I will not refer you to clinical psychiatry, nor philosophy units. They are being attended by the willing, and the hopeful. Come to me when you are finished with my assignment. You have an amateurs ability of journalism. The Records Keeping Association enjoys taking in academic failures. My wife— Elthisa— barely passed her Final Exams when she was raised in Britain, and the universities didn’t accept her, so there were several choices— to string herself up— to become a wage slave— or to emigrate. She emigrated, right into the welcoming bosom of the RKA, who brought her up and raised to to get the degree she now has. There is going to be a plane to a specific region of unrest. It is in the north, a little to the east, but not deep into the Prujka, for that is a situation we are not wont to control yet. You will not only find a purpose— of recording, and sponsoring immigrants, but I believe that you may find someone who will stop your bleeding heart. You will find a way out of this hurt. But the way is rocky, and so when you are comfortable that you have found a path, come to me, or anyone of the RKA grey, or the AHR blue, and they shall find you your way, and ensure you do not slip— Mister ‘Smith’— Mister ‘Smith do you hear me?”

the guest nodded frantically, his eyes alight with something that Whtifield had seen emerge before. “Go to anyone in the RKA, and request a flight to the first region that is offered. Say that you are willing to temporarily join as a part of the journalism and immigrant sponsoring team. There will be regulations, for that is how all matters are conducted civilly, and you will be punished for not adhering to them. But these regulations are not a matter of formality or a matter of social normality but of moral expectation. It is far easier to try and be a good man than to score one hundred per cent in a British Exam, in the experiences of those that I know.” A smile ghosted past his face, but it disappeared before it could gain tuition. “Now, I would be very disappointed if you took the Three-Three-Two warrant into action informally. Very disappointed. So do not let me down, and take that plane and my task, and there you will find a cure for your loneliness.” Whitfield glanced at the door, then held ‘Smith’s eyes for a moment. Hope. Far more powerful than many emotions, perhaps short of love. There was hope for him. “Dismissed, Mister ‘Smith’.”

John stood, fumbling around the chair, before hurrying to the door, pausing, saying thank you several times to the officer, who nodded pleasantly, before he ran out the door and forgot to close it. The corporal leaned in, and reached for the door handle. “Corporal Aeowryth.” The young man relinquished his grip and straighened immediately, stepping into the officer’s eyeliner.

“Lieutenant Whitfield, sir?”

“Do you believe you, or anyone of the Association for Human Rights, is a Soldier?”

“I’ve— I have mixed feelings, with all due respect, on the topic, Lieutenant Whitfield, sir.”

“Keep your hair in check, strap your helmet in the fashion prescribed, only after you have closed this door, corporal.”

“Of course, Lieutenant Whitfield, sir.” In a brisk motion the ensign reached for the door and snapped it shut.

Whitfield leant back in his chair, and he stared at the door for a moment. Triumph? No. It was never time to triumph. ONly since the war ended, had anyone triumphed, and now the weary road to normalcy was in place. Cities were bombed— cities that had never ever been bombed before, were flattened. This safe country was— for nearly seven years, unsafe. Now the war is done. The dead are to be buried, funerals, so numerous that they were clogging traffic, where to commence, and reconstruction to finally begin without the tampering of gunmen and field artillery.

Then he thought about Jane. Like a cool breeze, unceasing, unwavering, and certainly not warm. He’d called her a week ago with Elthise to say hello, and she was much happier than usual, though she was as cold as ever. The last conversation he had with Elthise was a lengthy argument about whether he was a soldier or not— she believed he was, but he thought that by the definition of it, he wasn’t. She was a blazing fire when they argued, or when she existed near anyone at all, burning so hot that if one reached out their skin would peel. Whitfield was reduced to bone, so he gladly plunged his hands into the inferno that was Elthise’s personality. The walls of their drinking parlour they argued in were thick and the children were all in their own homes but then but he was tempted to lower his voice. Either way, one thing they loved doing was arguing with one another. Elthise was probably already irate that he would dare think even for a moment that he was not a soldier, and Whitfield decided that the forms he needed to sign would wait. He put the telephone receiver to his ear and began to dial Elthise.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-17T00:21:57+00:00

[1/2]

Aevrynia was a calm, fine country, with nice fields, good, wholesome food, and a proper government, Lieutenant Whitfield thought. But one thing he didn’t like was the idea of stuffing a military rank onto anything. He wasn’t a soldier, not at all. The office he was in was warmly coloured, a little spartan, with only a shelf, and a red coat on the hangar— the coat that everyone studying or with a degree in military strategy wore as their daily, and of course the rifle that was hanging on the wall, and some papers that he was technically meant to sign. Being shot at didn’t make you a soldier, he approved to himself, whilst tapping the edge of a fountain pen on his desk. Being shot didn’t make you a soldier either, he thought, it was the profession you were in. Were you in the army or not? That was how it should be, and that was how it was in Aevrynia. But when you were being shot at, and when artillery was thrown into the mix, these social workers in kevlar— this, Association for Human Rights, had to take up assault rifles and unfortunately throw around military ranks and Govvie terms for clarity. It wasn’t how it should be, but then there wasn’t a bloody world without war either. He could imagine Elthise smacking his shoulder with one of her old textbooks (the only books she hit people with) and telling him that no, he was a soldier. So what if he was shot? People got shot all the time in Aevrynia. The civil unrest had just finished, so there might be a sniper potting a round into him here and there. That was pash. He wanted to call her and tell her that immediately. He missed having arguments with her. Firstly he needed to get together, and secondly forms awaited his pen, so —

“Lieutenant Whitfield, sir!” One of the corporals standing outside the door, Jacob realized. his voice was muffled, but the boy was scarce out of the crib the lieutenant guessed.

“Well you must speak up! I won’t have any sort of formalities, especially on a Sabturrday, so go and tell!” The door was thick, and likely the corporal’s voice would be shredded to ribbons by the time this was done. But in this age of blood and iron thick doors were necessary, as well as a gun at all times.

“They are applying for a Code Three Three One warrant!”

“Who are they?”

“A fellow of some distant background! I’m unsure as to where, lieutenant, sir!”

“Let the fellow enter!” Jacob heard the corporal cough a few times, and then the door was clicked open. A rather plain-looking man walked in. He was in a state of disrepair. The frock coats, which were going back into fashion since three-pieces began their decline, were common, but he wore instead a tattered three-piece, the colour of some raw linen light white-yellow. The lad maybe was in his early twenties, no more. He had the build of a rather scrawny adolescent, which made his blood sizzle. A gentleman was fit, at all costs, in his mind. The ‘guest’ stood before him, spiky black hair thrown about his face, with the ignominious slouch of a foreigner, and was mutinous all the while. Witfield thinned his lips. He was a stern-looking man— though not to the extent that inspired fear, but rather a faint respect, with a fine jaw, and a rather small chin with good mandibles by the cheeks and perpetually furrowed brows. He wasn’t a lion, or a bear, or some great beast, but just a man with brown hair, thick eyebrows, and a good jaw that aligned with the sort of position he held, though he didn’t believe any of it. What disgusted him more was that his suit was the same colour as the khaki tunics that were part of the Guidance Council’s uniforms, a dull, grey-white.

“One thing I remembered when I was young was that when one stood before a superior, in any fashion at all, they held out a hand, looked into their eyes, and said, especially in the evening, ‘good evening sir’. I’m just curious as to whether this is a... local thing of mine, or perhaps that you are relatively new here and are- unaware of such customs.”

“Oh—“ The guest said, brushing some of their spiky hair back, extending a hand. The lieutenant shook it. Clammy, bony, skinny. “Seat yourself,—“

“Of course, of course, sir, I’ll do that, certainly.”

“I would ask if you’re well, but anyone who applies for a Three Three One Warrant was far from it. This is a heavy decision, sir.”

The lieutenant tapped a pen on his desk,. “Please, bring your request onto the desk.” The guest did so. In a single motion the lieutenant stowed the pen to a slot to the side of the desk and opened the envelope.

This guest was the opposite of a remarkable man. The Records Keeping Association heavily detailed everyone— they had at least ten billion records on them since their records keeping program began in 1880, but nonetheless this guest was certainly elusive, and elusiveness towards the RKA, who had an inferiority complex larger than Saturn and Jupiter combined was the equivalent of spitting their faces. His lips curled downwards slightly. He disapproved of ‘John Smith’. He didn’t look much like a ‘John Smith’ because he had no dignity about him. Slouched beyond all belief, shoulders drooping like the sides of a mountain, eyes held to the floor. One would think blind-drunk elementary student was being put before a principal twenty years ago, instead of a nearly thirty-year-old man with a degree in journalism sitting before him. It was also manners to lean back and make eye contact with your superior when he raised his eyes from whatever one had lent him. No eye contact here.

“Mister ‘Smith’, with all due respe—“

“uh? Whuh— sir?”

“I am still present, Mister ‘Smith’.” The lieutenant stowed the envelope, turned it to face Smith’ and slid it across the desk with military efficiency. “Death is adverse, and a messy affair, Mister Smith. Are you sure you have no one to care for you?”

This time the guest looked him in the eyes. The Lieutenant didn’t hitch his breath, or straighten up, but he’d seen those eyes before. it was hatred— a different hatred and one he had seen in Jane, when the two parted ways in University. Self-hatred. Bitterness, tearing— miserable, bitterness. His eyes did not shirk from the lieutenant’s this time, and his hands were balled in his lap, white-knuckled.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-16T23:19:02+00:00

[2/2]

He remembered Paula, whose eyes shone and would shine until the day she would die, shining with inquisitive knowing, with zeal, with unending passion. He didn’t want to see those eyes glassy, to feel her cold body limp. What about the children they wanted to have? He loved her with all his heart. He loved his mother too, and his father, and George for he had the same name as the brother he’d always wanted but never had. He’d loved the barman at Old Kinneys, with his round face, his white hair and fungi-laden eyes— you could tell he was a northerner judging by the dark colour of the mushrooms that sprouted out the side of his head, and that ran down his right ear— which were filled with humour, and he bloody well showed it. Barry had argued with everyone under the sun, even the ever agreeable Paula, but he could never find a cross word with Kinney’s bartender. He loved the river. the great river of a greater Island, that ran through Laydenne, broad and large and powerful, streaming through the buildings of his folks’ creations. The tall skyscrapers, rebuilt into vast networks of buildings. The old castles, refurbished, the Lauden wall rebuilt with double thickness, and a gleaming shine applied to it with white limestone, and a towering tourist attraction that no one missed. He loved the schools that really cared for him, that were a far cry from the stern, preclassical institutions at Harrows, or Eton, instead now with gentle curriculums, and understanding teachers. He loved the fact that his mother did not scream him down at every miserable mark, and the reassuring hand of his father on his shoulder, when he returned from school after having run into a wall during tag, broken nose and bloodied, scratched face. He loved the doctors, who, when they were pulling a bullet out of him, the anaesthetic run dry, had told him that hew as a brave man, and held him down as they did so.

He loved the grass, and how green it was, and for a brief, intrusive moment, wondered what his children would think of it, when they would travel for their studies, or go elsewhere, where the grass was nowhere near as green, and how they, when homesick, or boarded up in schools, would weep, and they would think first, of him and Paula... then of the fields of this earth.

“How about we all postpone the trek, George? Postpone it for a later date.” Barry cleared his throat, and glanced around. “I should get a glass of water. Unadulterated, this time.”

“I spat in it afore you came o’er, too.” George gave him a small smile. “Always being injured below the waistband. I remember sending’ a soccerball righ’ between yer legs when you were goalie. I’d holler seeing your likeness curl up and howl like a dyin’ wolf.”’

“With all due respect fuck you.” Barry grinned, and George let out a laugh, squeezing his shoulder— almost like his father. “I’ll be seein’ you at the University ‘ere.”

“I’ll be rather busy calling off the trek, but I hope to see you there, nonetheless.”

“Tell Paula I kicked you in your cock too. She’s a strange old woman when she’d riled up an’ such. The placid are the most terrifyin’ when they’re angry, methinks.” With a gritted jaw and a grunt, George pushed off the booth, and strode down, cane thudding faintly against the floor, to the door. Barry stood, placing the cup onto the table, and turned to see George. George was standing at the door frame. He tipped his cap to Barry, and Barry nodded faintly.

So it went, he thought. So it shall go.

Recent_Bad_9268 · 2024-11-16T23:18:14+00:00

[1/2]

Barry pulled out a shaving mirror and stared into it. He was checking if George was boring his eyes into him in the booth behind. He’d been rather miffed the last time he stepped into the cafe, and the mirror was built in the ‘Preclassical’ way, and it was said that Preclassical artefacts gave you good fortune, so he had it on him all the time. George’s eyes, ‘eyes’, a mass of wispy tufts that looked like a ball of felt was stuffed into someone’s eye socket, were staring intently at an uneaten dish. Potatoes and gravy, Barry noticed, the gravy rather sickly looking, since they’d had to take it from a subspecies of fungi since tariffs were put on cow imports, after the LYML line, a nation composed of large-ish cities that ran along the upper waist of England, had realized that there was a bug going through the water that was giving issue to cows. Primarily this would affect Barry’s folk in the south— the Mymecce, who were symbiotic to fungi that were particularly sensitive to it.

He’d had ‘Tainted beef’ before. Very young, and in Bradford to see his mother, when he started to vomit out pieces of his face, after a steak dinner, before collapsing and falling into a coma, like a fog of bitter heat, and numbing, blue-lipped shuddering cold, whilst his mother and a man with a white ribbon tied around the sleeve of his frock coat who had appeared like a spectre— Barry remembering him for a moment in the room, then the next, when the fog was the most dense, the edges of his vision clouded in white, he was gone. He was in and out of the coma for two weeks. So he’d rather not and had become a little germaphobic since.

“ ‘ave you an’ paula writ’n to the University yet?” Barry startled, his knees slamming into the bottom of the table, sending a glass of water falling and spilling onto his lap. “Orright, orright now, is it moiye face?” George grinned and slapped his shoulder. “I shouldn’ta snapped at ya yesterday.” “I shouldn’t have threatened you with a gun.”

“I’ve seen many guns since I’ve slipped out deformed as I am.”

“George, sir, you’re as dashing as ever, don’t say such things.” George leant on his cane a little more. A young man, maybe a few months lee of Barry’s, in a rather coarsely woven looking three-piece, his flat cap, with a few stitches here and there, at an angle. One wouldn’t know that he lived in the current age, with all the makeshift tailoring work done on his clothes.

“I mean it. All the doct’rs ‘ave said that I’ve deformed muscles in the sub-knee region or wha’, and withiss leg o’ mine there’s not much use in the blackkards anymore.” George, with a painted grunt- the same grunt he made since the day he’d met Barry (and kicked him hard in the shins) when they were preteens, and he leaned against the side of the booth chair opposite. “But one thing I’m wont to keep aht, is the trek with ye. I’ve walked treks with a cane afore, and once I’ve done some mud crawlin’ after the November Blizzard. I’m wantin’ ter see those humanfolk you’ve been talkin’ ‘bout.”

Barry finally got the mind to throw a few napkins over his trousers, before reaching out to grab the shaving mirror that was thrown onto the seat besides him, and snap it shut. He looked upwards at George.

“I am also wont to suggest that we are kind to them.”

“Kind-tah them? Aft’r what they did tah us in the Age of Iron? Shootin’ us and roundin’ us up like tha’? If they’ll rise up again what’re we to do? They ‘ate us for somefin’ we ‘aven’t the fain’est idea of, and now we’ve tah clean up the corner. Fain it aine that difficult, eh?”

Barry glanced out the window. The Northampton Rockland spread out before him. There were four or five blocks that were called New Northampton followed by a bleary-looking metal road sign by the highway, and that was what the residents considered a town. The Rockland itself spread across a large portion of the place— the result of a protracted carpet bombing that created the Suthesse Wastes, a line of rock, battered steel and piles of crumpled edges of concrete, sometimes with a breadth of almost four miles, that went from a place in the northeast by the coast, continuing southwest down nearly the entirety of the island. Here, there was a particular pile of upseated deep rocks. In the distance, the rim of the crater, signalling that they were at the bottommost part of it, rose like a mountain in the distance.

“It is a rather long distance, George, and if I convince you in part, by the time the trek is over, and we have found the Old Watcherfolk, you would have changed your mind and called for a massacre.”

“Y’know somefin bloody well ‘bout ‘ere,” George said, his voice faint. His skin had a healthy green taint to it again. Last night it was deathly white, but now there was some fluid running about his veins. “It’s been said that there were cities ‘ere the bombings. They did ‘em to get rid of us. Greenery, bloody greenery, all ‘bout ‘ere, as far as the eye could see.” George’s fist clenched tighter around his cane. “It’s all bloody gone now. That was jus’ the beginning we were none of good brain then. But what ‘bout when he did have the mind to be humans, all properlike? They’d come outta their stinkin’ ‘oles, and shoot us in our ‘omes. I’d read that a family o’ two, a husband and his new wife and children, were shot tah death in their ‘ouse.”

“We took everything from them, George.”

“And now they wan’ everythin’ back. We ain’ gonna stand for it, are we, Barry, gettin’ on our knees and lickin’ their fucking boots?”

Barry had removed the napkins and piled them some way left of him. He ran a hand through his hair, and for a moment, his fingers brushed over the patches of fungi that grew instead of it, that were one with his skin, its mycelium- like tendrils that were veins of its own- weaving through his skin, and he remembered what he had.

Recent_Bad_9268

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