I was recently watching an old youtube series of someone playing through D1 and it occurred to me just how subpar the narrative was at launch. With Taken King things got a lot better but the vanilla Black Garden campaign never really got those character moments that I think it really needed. With so much of Destiny 2's story completely inaccessible and the original D1 opening seemingly retconned for new players I decided to take it upon myself to write a novelization of that first campaign. I've been working on this for a while now in my free time and It's far from finished; I'm well over 10,000 words and the Guardian has only just gotten their Sparrow, but I want to post a little snippet to sort of gauge interest on the whole thing. It's a lot of effort and it's not really worth it if nobody reads it right? So this is submitted for approval as a proof of concept. For context, this is after the Guardian has gotten their ship and is making their very first visit to the original Tower.
Ghost notices me staring at the construct nearby. I tilt my head as I stare at the strange bipedal robot standing some meters away. Ghost chirps quietly to get my attention before launching into an explanation. “The City is manned by all manner of people. You may find people with skin such as yours, that deep iridescent blue of the Awoken. There are also humans living here and even Exos. All Guardians have a Ghost. Well… all Guardians start with a Ghost anyway. But there are people living in and around the City that do not have Ghosts. It’s our job to make sure they are safe. That’s what Guardians do. You’re a Warlock, so we’ll go meet Ikora first. You’ll like her. She’s soft spoken but has a commanding presence.” He turns to the robot that captured my attention. “This is a Frame. They’re artificial intelligences that aid in maintenance and labor tasks here in the Tower. This one can provide you with a map if you need it. You’ll see others tending to various tasks like taking care of messaging and delivering lost items. Come on, lets go see your mentor.” Ghost sets off toward the ramp leading downward in front of me, and I follow closely behind.
At the bottom of the ramp is a hallway. On the left side is a Frame managing a desk. Opposite the Frame stands a mountain of a man wearing a featureless helmet adorned with two horns. One seems to be broken, but the man pays it no mind as he waves cordially. “Do you think you’re good enough?”, he booms. “Try your luck in the Crucible.” I nod to him and look to my Ghost for instruction. “That’s Lord Shaxx. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about him. He’s in charge of a training program called The Crucible where Guardians are put into sanctioned combat. It can get pretty intense. Maybe we’ll look into it later. Ikora’s just ahead.”
“Hey new kid! Betcha wish you has a cape as cool as mine, huh?” A hooded Exo male with startlingly blue eyes flashes a thumbs up in my direction. The tall dark skinned woman opposite him folds her arms and scowls at him, before softening her expression and looking to me. “Well met Guardian. I sense your connection to the Void. She steps toward me, her Ghost silently floating above her shoulder. From within her robes, she takes out a small length of rope and ties it carefully around my left bicep. “In time, your Ghost may produce a better one for you, but remember this.” She looks directly into my eyes. “A Warlock’s bond is both a symbol and a focus of power. Warlocks are vessels of The Traveler’s Light. But that power must be mastered. Peace within. War without.” She hands me a new set of robes and some glimmer to customize them should I wish it. “I am Ikora Rey. I will teach you all that I am able.” The blue Exo whistles in mock admiration, earning another scowl from Ikora. “Enough, Cayde.” A towering man clad in heavy armor leans forward, his fists on the edge of the table. I notice right away that he has blue skin like mine. He looks between his two compatriots and then to me. “Hello Guardian. I’m Commander Zavala. I mentor the Titans. You’ve already met Ikora Rey, the Warlock mentor. And this is Cayde-6.” He motions to the Exo male. “Our Hunter mentor. Together we are the Vanguard. We expect great things from you.” Cayde makes an exaggerated bow with a flourish of his hands. “See ya around kid.” He folds his arms and returns his attention to his work as I turn to leave.
Ghost leads me back down the corridor and up the ramp. We make a left turn and stop at a large tree. I switch out my older gear for the new set that Ikora furnished me with. The material is light but dense and feels much better than my previous set. Ghost seems adept at manipulating matter, having created my first set of clothes when he brought me back. He reduces them back into simple components which can be utilized as currency. As we step away from the tree, I spy another Exo behind a counter. He seems to be mumbling to himself about weapon configurations. Ghost gets right up next to my left ear and speaks very quietly. “That’s Banshee-44. He’s a little forgetful but you won’t find a better weapon smith anywhere.”
I walk up to the Exo. He seems to be staring at something on his arm, but I can’t see anything there out of the ordinary. At the same time, he has a weapon in pieces, and he seems to be cleaning components individually with startling precision despite not looking at what his hands are doing. “Hi Banshee.” Ghost speaks to the man. He seems to flinch as though struck in the head. “Who told you that name? That’s not my… Oh. Needing a new weapon, are you?” I nod silently to him, and he offers several options for me to select from. After testing their weight, I settle on a new scout rifle, favoring its ability to be accurate at range and up close. He collects payment and nods. “let me know how she is.” I’m not sure if he’s talking about a person or the performance of the gun, but he offers no explanation and returns to his work.
At that moment an announcement over a nearby loudspeaker catches my attention. “Got a newly serviced ship here for the Guardian that just arrived. If this Arcadia Jump’s yours come to my hangar. We need to have a chat.” Ghost looks to me. “That’s Amanda Holiday. She’s the Tower’s shipwright. When we landed, I had the jumpship sent to the hangar for service. Lets go see her.” I follow Ghost down another corridor leading to a wide-open bay with many ships coming and going.
Tucked into the far corner up another small flight of steps is the shipwright’s bay. She waves me over as I make my way up. I can see my ship hovering behind her, seemingly in much better condition than when it arrived. “This yours? I got her to stop shakin, but you’re gonna need some parts if you wanna get offworld.” I thank the woman and Ghost transmats us back into the ship. He hovers around, examining the shipwright’s handiwork. “Amanda’s amazing. Best mechanic I’ve ever seen. She’s right though. We’re going to need a warp drive. There might be one in the Cosmodrome, although we were lucky to even find this ship. Then again, we survived the Fallen once. We can do it again.”
We make our way back to the Cosmodrome, the return trip a much smoother affair than the first time. The navigation labels the landing zone as The Steppes. It’s a part of the Cosmodrome I haven’t seen yet. “A Guardian ship was recently shot down here. If the Fallen haven’t gotten to it there might be parts we can salvage.” Ghost updates the HUD in my new helmet with a navigation marker and we set up to find the crash site. Off in the distance, another Guardian is locked in combat with Fallen. Ghost assures me they don’t need our help, and we observe them for a moment before moving on across the plain. The wreckage of a small ship comes into view before long, and I can see that it hit the ground at an angle and skidded across the dirt before coming to a stop. Ghost scans the ship and searches through their logs. “This ship’s warp drive is in worse shape than ours. There’s something else though. They managed to restore an information hub around here. I guess that was their mission before the Fallen shot them down. That could be useful information. Might tell us where another ship is. Down in the tunnels below. We should go check it out.”
A new NAV marker appears on my radar, and I turn to follow it. There seems to be some sort of garage with stairs leading down. I watch a few dregs patrol the area through the sight of my new scout rifle for a few moments, before lining up my shots and making quick work of them. Thinking quickly, I move into the garage and make for the stairs before another patrol can take their place. A few steps down and I can see movement on my HUD. The room I come to is dark, illuminated only by a faintly glowing map situated on the wall opposite me. I double check my radar confirming that I’m not alone, but I can’t see anything when I look with my eyes. I take a few tentative steps toward the map realizing only now that the room has a secondary exit leading to a disused underground transit. The HUD must be picking up on enemies farther below me. Ghost takes the lead and makes for the opposite wall. “A map of the entire area. Now this will be useful. He begins to scan a control panel beneath the map. “What we really need to find is a warp drive, so we can jump to any planet or moon.” I look back to my radar again, noticing that the blips of movement have changed position. After a few moments of scanning, Ghost sighs. “Our only hope is where we found our ship.” He stops scanning and fixes his single eye on me. “We have to go back.”
I turn around and begin to make my way back to the stairs when a dark spot in the corner of the room catches my eye. Tentatively, I investigate it. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand as I slowly peek my head through the broken wall into the darker underground beyond. I lift the scout rifle to aim and take a step through. The hallway is noticeably colder, which adds to the haunted feeling it seems to emanate. Ghost says nothing but alights a beacon on my HUD pointing back up the way we came. I stand on the precipice of discovery a moment longer before deciding this path is better left unexplored for now.
A small band of red-garbed Fallen are waiting for me as I step out of the ruined underground entrance and back into the sunlight. It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust which gives my adversaries ample time to notice me. Luckily, another such as I with their own Ghost in tow happens upon me and makes quick work of the ambush. The fellow Guardian pays me no mind as I watch them move on to the next group of doomed Fallen that find themselves in the Guardian’s sights.
Ghost’s NAV beacon leads me off to the right past where we landed a few hours ago. It takes me through a new yet all too familiar structure of broken beams and water leaking in from somewhere unseen. The ravages of time are on display at every turn. Ghost suddenly interrupts my thoughts. “Scanning for the warp drive.” He pauses a moment before continuing. “Bad news… It’s already in Fallen hands.” I sigh, quietly wondering how many of these bugs I’ll have to kill today. We press on through the wreckage. After rounding a corner, I suddenly feel the weight of time upon me. It is as though I am standing in my own grave. I look to Ghost and his artificial voice is barely a whisper.” I hope you’re ready for this.”

This is almost definitely a stupid question, but I wanted to get advice from those more experienced than I am.
Long post… TL;DR how do you safely push both sides of a work piece past the blade and the end of a cut to avoid kickback on both sides?
I’m not necessarily “new” to woodworking / power tools, but I got my first table saw a few days ago. It’s an old Craftsman 315, completely bare bones — just the table, blade, and fence. No riving knife, blade guard, anti-kickback, etc.
I tested it out today making a little mobile dust collection cart. I broke down a sheet of plywood with a tracksaw and then was cutting a ~36x24” piece down to 18x24” on the table saw. I have my fence set up to the right of the blade. I don’t have a proper outfeed table so I set up a temporary workbench on some sawhorses up against the back of the saw, which was probably 6” below the table saw surface.
I pushed the piece through the saw with my hands and a push block, then switched to a push stick for the last few inches of the cut. When I made it through the piece I used the push stick to “toss” the piece between the blade & fence to the outfeed table (again, which is roughly 6” below the surface of the table saw). At this point the off cut is just sitting to the left of the blade, kinda wobbling since the table saw itself isn’t large enough to support a piece that size, and it hadn’t fallen to the outfeed table yet. It was fully cut through, but still very close to the blade, especially with the imbalance. I was nervous about kickback so I didn’t want to reach over and push the piece off the table saw surface. I moved my body to the right just in case, and before I could think another thought, the piece was crashing into the back wall of my garage.
This has spooked me a bit. I feel pretty lucky the piece didn’t hit me and I didn’t attempt to reach over and push it through. I have some ideas on why this happened:

• I don’t have a splitter or riving knife
• Inadequate outfeed support causing the wobble
• Didn’t push the wood fully past the blade after the cut (?)

In my spooked state I ordered the following: - Splitter kit for zero clearance throat plate - Original Craftsman 315.xxx blade guard assembly with riving knife and anti-kickback
I also plan to build a proper outfeed table, at the same height as the table saw.
Can anyone help me understand how I should have performed this cut, safely, to avoid such an event? Is the solution to continue pushing both pieces until they both entirely clear the blade, swiftly sliding the off cut away from the blade at the end? Would a splitter or riving knife even have helped in this situation? In many “table saw safety” videos I’ve watched, the off cut just sits there beside the blade until the saw is turned off and the blade stops spinning. I don’t feel like I can trust the saw not to kick back a piece like that after what I experienced today. Should I feel this way? Would a proper splitter / outfeed surface help prevent this kind of thing?
Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long post!!

Edit: I already can tell people are automatically downvoting this without reading, so I think it'd interest you to know this was a topic on Tweek Talks a couple weeks ago, and some of the points they made there show up in this post, maybe don't be so afraid of opposing beliefs, I changed my mind on this subject at one point too.
Title is self-explanatory, but I wanted to elaborate on this as I feel like it'd come off as counterinuitive to a lot of people, who have internalized this idea that Lucina is a beginner-friendly and simple character that everyone starting out in smash should be using. I've coached numerous beginner-level players in my time with smash, and a disproportionate amount of them main Lucina, due to what they've heard from others about how simple she is to pick up and play. Obviously I get why this is a common perception, and I'm guilty of giving this kind of advice in the past, but just because she has a straghtforward and strong kit, doesn't make her a "default" choice for newer players.
There's a lot of angles I could come at this from, but I'm gonna start with what I think is the most obvious, nobody has any attachment to Lucina, I've never met a single person who's favorite character in super smash brothers, is Lucina. I would bet my entire life savings that not a single person getting into smash for the first time, sees all the iconic and distinct characters at their disposal, and decides, willingly, to gravitate towards the generic swordfighter with the most basic design and gameplay possible. When you tell someone they "should" be playing Lucina, you're setting them up to play a character they're either going to drop for someone else, assuming they don't quit entirely (How many competitive lucina players can you name off the top of your head, at any level? I can think of like 3 as I write this). Why not have them start and learn the game with someone they actually like? Somone they can connect to, someone whose gameplay and aesthetic actually appeal to them. You can learn this game with any character, why limit yourself to one that doesn't spark joy within you? It's a video game, we're here to have fun.
With that being said, I 100% get that the reason people say to play her isn't because she's cool or unique, it's because she's simple and straightforward, therefore she's beginner-friendly right? Wrong, in fact the opposite is true. Characters do not teach you how to play the game, you do. There is nothing about Lucina that makes her better or worse than other characters at learning "fundamental" skills, that's on you to apply. Lucina doesn't teach you spacing, timing, movement, baiting, conditioning, or anything else. You have to learn that yourself, and guess what, every character can do it. This would all still be true if Lucina was easy, but she's fucking hard man. Yeah she has a straightforward kit but everyone has played that matchup 1000 times, and you have no gimmicks to fall back on, just your skill, so you have to actually be really fucking good to beat good players with her. If you wanna make the argument that gimmicks are antithetical to skill, I get it, but learning how to leverage your characters unique strengths is part of the process of improving, and Lucina players are missing out on that because she has such a basic gameplan. Yeah winning isn't everything but nobody wants to lose every serious match they play, especially with a character they were told to play because they're "simple," that sounds really demoralizing.
When someone gets into smash as a competitive endeavor, they're subjecting themselves to the mercy of 80+ unique and wack ass matchups in this game, with so many characters having some form of cheese or gimmick that requires specific knowledge and counterplay. When a new player picks up Lucina because she's simple, they're denying themselves the opportunity to experience the ways in which characters differentiate themselves from the cast through entirely unique mechanics and tools. When you tell someone to play Lucina, you're dissuading them from experimenting with the cast, becoming aware of each character's unique aspects and playstyles, and potentially finding a character that they would be more passionate playing.
I think I covered most of what I wanted to say, so I'm gonna close this out by saying I don't have anything against Lucina, or Lucina players, I just think we as a community should drop this line of thinking, because it's not doing our beginners any favors. The truth of the matter is that you should play whatever character you want, whoever it takes for you to desire playing the game, and whoever motivates you to improve, simple as that. While it can be true that certain difficult characters probably aren't worth recommending to someone new at smash, at the stage you are, you don't need a top tier, you don't need someone "simple," and experimenting with the game will always net you the best result as far as finding a character you connect with. Let me know if you have any questions, and have a nice day.

hello! i’ve just transitioned my sulcata tortoise from free roaming sort of from the winter to a new enclosure . i now have a 45 gallon husky tote from home depot and some all natural soil ( without any fertilizer) and he has his water bowl but he just steps in it & makes it muddy within seconds of refilling. he also has rocks to climb on but he is very focused on the walls now?? i wanted to use a lot of bedding so dirt was the best option. a little backstory- when my tortoise was in the balcony and i would put my new cat litter outside- he would tear into the bag and burrow into the litter.( keep this in mind) that’s why i got such a deep moving containter- he’s showing sign of wanting to burrow so i got alot of dirt for him to burrow like he would the bag of cat litter. i put him in the tub- which is black, and he is trying his absolute hardest to get out. he’s just running around the sides and occasionally head butting the black walls?? is this because tortoise don’t like the color black? (i’ve seen multiple videos of this guy that would put a piece of black tape on his shoe to barricade the tortoise and he would go absolutely berserk trying to attack it and head butting it, once the tape was peeled off and it showed the white sneaker, he was absolutely fine, he kept waking about and minded his business, but i be he taped it back on, he was angry again) is my sulcata trying to attack the side begins he doesn’t like the color? is this an actual problem? why is he not thrilled with the set up i made him? he’s now asleep in a little burrow he made after hours of basically fighting with the side of the tote. have any of you guy’s experienced this behavior before?

LongJohnRP has set out to provide an unforgettable experience that will keep players coming back for more. If you are a fan of Serious RP, you have arrived at the right place! Here at LongJohnRP, we have spent countless hours building a server that revolves around the players and their choices. LongJohnRP isn't looking to hold you back with endless rules and limited choices. On our server, you can literally be whoever or whatever you want to be. THE CHOICE IS YOURS! Be part of a large faction that has taken over a town in Chernarus, or be a lone wolf that lives the solo life. Become a doctor, bounty hunter, farmer, fisherman, outlaw, hero, or literally anything you want to be. All you have to do is play!
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Large language models (LLMs) have received an increasing amount of attention from all corners. We are on the cusp of a revolution in computing, one that promises to democratize technology in ways few would have predicted just a few years ago. Despite the transformative nature of this technology, we know almost nothing about how they work. They also bring to the fore obscure philosophical questions such as can computational systems understand? At what point do they become sentient and become moral patients? The ongoing discussion surrounding LLMs and their relationship to AGI has left much to be desired. Much dismissive comments downplay the relevance of LLMs to these thorny philosophical issues. But this technology deserves careful analysis and argument, not dismissive sneers. This is my attempt at moving the discussion forward.
To motivate an in depth analysis of LLMs, I will briefly respond to some very common dismissive criticisms of autoregressive prediction models and show why they fail to demonstrate the irrelevance of this framework to the deep philosophical issues of in the field of AI. I will then consider the issues of whether this class of models can be said to understand and then discuss some of the implications of LLMs on human society.
"It's just matrix multiplication; it's just predicting the next token"
These reductive descriptions do not fully describe or characterize the space of behavior of these models, and so such descriptions cannot be used to dismiss the presence of high-level properties such as understanding or sentience.
It is a common fallacy to deduce the absence of high-level properties from a reductive view of a system's behavior. Being "inside" the system gives people far too much confidence that they know exactly what's going on. But low level knowledge of a system without sufficient holistic knowledge leads to bad intuitions and bad conclusions. Searle's Chinese room and Leibniz's mill thought experiments are past examples of this. Citing the the low level computational structure of LLMs is just a modern iteration. That LLMs consist of various matrix multiplications can no more tell us they aren't conscious than our neurons tell us we're not conscious.
The key idea people miss is that the massive computation involved in training these systems begets new behavioral patterns that weren't enumerated by the initial program statements. The behavior is not just a product of the computational structure specified in the source code, but an emergent dynamic that is unpredictable from an analysis of the initial rules. It is a common mistake to dismiss this emergent part of a system as carrying no informative or meaningful content. Just bracketing the model parameters as transparent and explanatorily insignificant is to miss a large part of the substance of the system.
Another common argument against the significance of LLMs is that they are just "stochastic parrots", i.e. regurgitating the training data in some from, perhaps with some trivial transformations applied. But it is a mistake to think that LLM's generating ability is constrained to simple transformations of the data they are trained on. Regurgitating data generally is not a good way to reduce the training loss, not when training doesn't involve training against multiple full rounds of training data. I don't know the current stats, but the initial GPT-3 training run got through less than half of a complete iteration of its massive training data.[1]
So with pure regurgitation not available, what it has to do is encode the data in such a way that makes predictions possible, i.e. predictive coding. This means modelling the data in a way that captures meaningful relationships among tokens so that prediction is a tractable computational problem. That is, the next word is sufficiently specified by features of the context and the accrued knowledge of how words, phrases, and concepts typically relate in the training corpus. LLMs discover deterministic computational dynamics such that the statistical properties of text seen during training are satisfied by the unfolding of the computation. This is essentially a synthesis, i.e. semantic compression, of the information contained in the training corpus. But it is this style of synthesis that gives LLMs all their emergent capabilities. Innovation to some extent is just novel combinations of existing units. LLMs are good at this as their model of language and structure allows it to essentially iterate over the space of meaningful combinations of words, selecting points in meaning-space as determined by the context or prompt.
Why think LLMs have understanding at all
Given that LLMs have a semantic compression of the training data, I claim that LLMs "understand" to a significant degree in some contexts. The term understanding is one of those polysemous words for which precise definitions tend to leave out important variants. But we can't set aside these important debates because of an inability to make certain terms precise. Instead, what we can do is be clear about how we are using the term and move forward with analysis.
To that end, we can define understanding as the capacity to engage appropriately with some structure in appropriate contexts. This definition captures the broadly instrumental flavor of descriptions involving understanding. I will argue that there are structures in LLMs that engage with concepts in a manner that demonstrates understanding.
As an example for the sake of argument, consider the ability of ChatGPT to construct poems that satisfy a wide range of criteria. There are no shortage of examples[2][3]. To begin with, first notice that the set of valid poems sit along a manifold in high dimensional space. A manifold is a generalization of the kind of everyday surfaces we are familiar with; surfaces with potentially very complex structure but that look "tame" or "flat" when you zoom in close enough. This tameness is important because it allows you to move from one point on the manifold to another without losing the property of the manifold in between.
Despite the tameness property, there generally is no simple function that can decide whether some point is on a manifold. Our poem-manifold is one such complex structure: there is no simple procedure to determine whether a given string of text is a valid poem. It follows that points on the poem-manifold are mostly not simple combinations of other points on the manifold (given two poems, interpolate between them will not generate poems). Further, we can take it as a given that the number of points on the manifold far surpass the examples of poems seen during training. Thus, when prompted to construct a poem following an arbitrary criteria, we can expect the target region of the manifold to largely be unrepresented by training data.
We want to characterize ChatGPT's impressive ability to construct poems. We can rule out simple combinations of poems previously seen. The fact that ChatGPT constructs passable poetry given arbitrary constraints implies that it can find unseen regions of the poem-manifold in accordance with the required constraints. This is straightforwardly an indication of generalizing from samples of poetry to a general concept of poetry. But still, some generalizations are better than others and neural networks have a habit of finding degenerate solutions to optimization problems. However, the quality and breadth of poetry given widely divergent criteria is an indication of whether the generalization is capturing our concept of poetry sufficiently well. From the many examples I have seen, I can only judge its general concept of poetry to well model the human concept.
So we can conclude that ChatGPT contains some structure that well models the human concept of poetry. Further, it engages meaningfully with this model in appropriate contexts as demonstrated by its ability to construct passable poems when prompted with widely divergent constraints. This satisfies the given definition of understanding.
The previous discussion is a single case of a more general issue studied in compositional semantics. There are an infinite number of valid sentences in a language that can be generated or understood by a finite substrate. It follows that there must be compositional semantics that determine the meaning of these sentences. That is, the meaning of the sentence must be a function of the meanings of the individual terms in the sentence. The grammar that captures valid sentences and the mapping from grammatical structure to semantics is somehow captured in the finite substrate. This grammar-semantics mechanism is the source of language competence and must exist in any system that displays competence with language. Yet, many resist the move from having a grammar-semantics mechanism to having the capacity to understand language. This is despite demonstrating linguistic competence in an expansive range of examples.
Why is it that people resist the claim that LLMs understand even when they respond competently to broad tests of knowledge and common sense? Why is the charge of mere simulation of intelligence so widespread? What is supposedly missing from the system that diminishes it to mere simulation? I believe the unstated premise of such arguments is that most people see understanding as a property of being, that is, autonomous existence. The computer system implementing the LLM, a collection of disparate units without a unified existence, is (the argument goes) not the proper target of the property of understanding. This is a short step from the claim that understanding is a property of sentient creatures. This latter claim finds much support in the historical debate surrounding artificial intelligence, most prominently expressed by Searle's Chinese room thought experiment.
The problem with the Chinese room at its core is the problem of attribution. We want to attribute properties like sentience or understanding to the "things" we are familiar with, and the only sufficient thing in the room is the man. But this intuition is misleading. The question to ask is what is responding when prompts are sent to the room. The responses are being generated by the algorithm reified into a causally efficacious process. Essentially, the reified algorithm implements a set of object-properties without objecthood. But a lack of objecthood has no consequences for the capacities or behaviors of the reified algorithm. Instead, the information dynamics entailed by the structure and function of the reified algorithm entails a conceptual unity (as opposed to a physical unity of properties affixed to an object). This conceptual unity is a virtual center-of-gravity onto which prompts are directed and from which responses are generated. This virtual objecthood then serves as the surrogate for attributions of understanding and such. It's so hard for people to see this as a live option because our cognitive makeup is such that we reason based on concrete, discrete entities. Considering extant properties without concrete entities to carry them is just an alien notion to most. But once we free ourselves of this unjustified constraint, we can see the possibilities that this notion of virtual objecthood grants. We can begin to make sense of such ideas as genuine understanding in purely computational artifacts.
Responding to some more objections to LLM understanding
A common argument against LLM understanding is that their failure modes are strange, so much so that we can't imagine an entity that genuinely models the world while having these kinds of failure modes. This argument rests on an unstated premise that the capacities that ground world modeling are different in kind to the capacities that ground token prediction. Thus when an LLM fails to accurately model and merely resorts to (badly) predicting the next token in a specific case, this demonstrates that they do not have the capacity for world modeling in any case. I will show the error in this argument by undermining the claim of a categorical difference between world modeling and token prediction. Specifically, I will argue that token prediction and world modeling are on a spectrum, and that token prediction converges towards modeling as quality of prediction increases.
To start, lets get clear on what it means to be a model. A model is some structure in which features of that structure correspond to features of some target system. In other words, a model is a kind of analogy: operations or transformations on the model can act as a stand in for operations or transformations on the target system. Modeling is critical to understanding because having a model--having an analogous structure embedded in your causal or cognitive dynamic--allows your behavior to maximally utilize a target system in achieving your objectives. Without such a model one cannot accurately predict the state of the external system while evaluating alternate actions and so one's behavior must be sub-optimal.
LLMs are, in the most reductive sense, processes that leverage the current context to predict the next token. But there is much more to be said about LLMs and how they work. LLMs can be viewed as markov processes, assigning probabilities to each word given the set of words in the current context. But this perspective has many limitations. One limitation is that LLMs are not intrinsically probabilistic. LLMs discover deterministic computational circuits such that the statistical properties of text seen during training are satisfied by the unfolding of the computation. We use LLMs to model a probability distribution over words, but this is an interpretation.
LLMs discover and record discrete associations between relevant features of the context. These features are then reused throughout the network as they are found to be relevant for prediction. These discrete associations are important because they factor in the generalizability of LLMs. The alternate extreme is simply treating the context as a single unit, an N-word tuple or a single string, and then counting occurrences of each subsequent word given this prefix. Such a simple algorithm lacks any insight into the internal structure of the context, and forgoes an ability to generalize to a different context that might share relevant internal features. LLMs learn the relevant internal structure and exploits it to generalize to novel contexts. This is the content of the self-attention matrix. Prediction, then, is constrained by these learned features; the more features learned, the more constraints are placed on the continuation, and the better the prediction.
The remaining question is whether this prediction framework can develop accurate models of the world given sufficient training data. We know that Transformers are universal approximators of sequence-to-sequence functions[4], and so any structure that can be encoded into a sequence-to-sequence map can be modeled by Transformer layers. As it turns out, any relational or quantitative data can be encoded in sequences of tokens. Natural language and digital representations are two powerful examples of such encodings. It follows that precise modeling is the consequence of a Transformer style prediction framework and large amounts of training data. The peculiar failure modes of LLMs, namely hallucinations and absurd mistakes, are due to the modeling framework degrading to underdetermined predictions because of insufficient data.
What this discussion demonstrates is that prediction and modeling are not categorically distinct capacities in LLMs, but exist on a continuum. So we cannot conclude that LLMs globally lack understanding given the many examples of unintuitive failures. These failures simply represent the model responding from different points along the prediction-modeling spectrum.

LLMs fail the most basic common sense tests. More disastrously, it fails to learn.

This is a common problem in how we evaluate these LLMs. We judge these models against the behavior and capacities of human agents and then dismiss them when they fail to replicate some trait that humans exhibit. But this is a mistake. The evolutionary history of humans is vastly different than the training regime of LLMs and so we should expect behaviors and capacities that diverge due to this divergent history. People often point to the fact that LLMs answer confidently despite being way off base. But this is due to the training regime that rewards guesses and punishes displays of incredulity. The training regime has serious implications for the behavior of the model that is orthogonal to questions of intelligence and understanding. We must evaluate them on their on terms.
Regarding learning specifically, this seems to be an orthogonal issue to intelligence or understanding. Besides, there's nothing about active learning that is in principle out of the reach of some descendant of these models. It's just that the current architectures do not support it.

LLMs take thousands of gigabytes of text and millions of hours of compute to talk like a mediocre college student

I'm not sure this argument really holds water when comparing apples to apples. Yes, LLMs take an absurd amount of data and compute to develop a passable competence in conversation. A big reason for this is that Transformers are general purpose circuit builders. The lack of strong inductive bias has the cost of requiring a huge amount of compute and data to discover useful information dynamics. But the human has a blueprint for a strong inductive bias that begets competence with only a few years of training. But when you include the billion years of "compute" that went into discovering the inductive biases encoded in our DNA, it's not clear at all which one is more sample efficient. Besides, this goes back to inappropriate expectations derived from our human experience. LLMs should be judged on their own merits.
Large language models are transformative to human society
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the distinctive trait of humans that underpin our unique abilities over other species is our ability to wield information like a tool. Of course information is infused all through biology. But what sets us apart is that we have a command over information that allows us to intentionally deploy it in service to our goals. Further, this command is cumulative and seemingly unbounded.
What does it mean to wield information? In other words, what is the relevant space of operations on information that underlie the capacities that distinguish humans from other animals? To start, lets define information as configuration with an associated context. This is an uncommon definition for information, but it is useful because it makes explicit the essential role of context in the concept of information. Information without its proper context is impotent; it loses its ability to pick out the intended content, undermining its role in communication or action initiation. Information without context lacks its essential function, thus context is essential to the concept.
The value of information is that it provides a record of events or state such that the events or state can have relevance far removed in space and time from their source. A record of the outcome of some process allows the limitless dissemination of the outcome and with it the initiation of appropriate downstream effects. Humans wield information by selectively capturing and deploying information in accords with our needs. For example, we recognize the value of, say, sharp rocks, then copy and share the method for producing such rocks.
But a human's command of information isn't just a matter of learning and deploying it, we also have a unique ability to intentionally create it. At its most basic, information is created as the result of an iterative search process consisting of (1) variation of some substrate and (2) testing for suitability according to some criteria. Natural processes under the right context can engage in this sort of search process that begets new information. Evolution through natural selection being the definitive example.
Aside from natural processes, we can also understand computational processes as the other canonical example of information creating processes. But computational processes are distinctive among natural processes, they can be defined by their ability to stand in an analogical relationship to some external process. The result of the computational process then picks out the same information as the target process related by way of analogy. Thus computations can also provide relevance far removed in space and time from their analogical related process. Furthermore, the analogical target doesn't even have to exist; the command of computation allows one to peer into future or counterfactual states.
Thus we see the full command of information and computation is a superpower to an organism: it affords a connection to distant places and times, the future, as well as what isn't actual but merely possible. The human mind is thus a very special kind of computer. Abstract thought renders access to these modes of processing almost as effortlessly as we observe what is right in front of us. The mind is a marvelous mechanism, allowing on-demand construction of computational contexts in service to higher-order goals. The power of the mind is in wielding these computational artifacts to shape the world in our image.
But we are no longer the only autonomous entities with command over information. The history of computing is one of offloading an increasing amount of essential computational artifacts to autonomous systems. Computations are analogical processes unconstrained by the limitations of real physical processes. Thus we prefer to deploy autonomous computational processes wherever available. Still, such systems were limited by program construction and context. Each process being replaced by a program required a full understanding of the system being replaced such that the dynamic could be completely specified in the program code.
LLMs mark the beginning of a new revolution in autonomous program deployment. No longer must the program code be specified in advance of deployment. The program circuit is dynamically constructed by the LLM as it integrates the prompt with its internal representation of the world. The need for expertise with a system to interface with it is obviated; competence with natural language is enough. This has the potential to democratize computational power like nothing else that came before. It also means that computational expertise becomes nearly worthless. Much like the human computer prior to the advent of the electronic variety, the concept of programmer as a profession is coming to an end.
Aside from the implications for the profession of programming, there are serious philosophical implications of this view of LLMs that warrant exploration. The question of cognition in LLMs being chief among them. I talked about the human superpower being our command of information and computation. But the previous discussion shows real parallels between human cognition (understood as dynamic computations implemented by minds) and the power of LLMs. LLMs show sparse activations in generating output from a prompt, which can be understood as dynamically activating sub-networks based on context. A further emergent property is in-context learning, recognizing unique patterns in the input context and actively deploying that pattern during generation. This is, at the very least, the beginnings of on-demand construction of computational contexts.
Limitations of LLMs
To be sure, there are many limitations of current LLM architectures that keep them from approaching higher order cognitive abilities such as planning and self-monitoring. The main limitation has two aspects, the fixed feed-forward computational window. The fixed computational window limits the amount of resources it can deploy to solve a given generation task. Once the computational limit is reached, the next word prediction is taken as-is. This is part of the reason we see odd failure modes with these models, there is no graceful degradation and so partially complete predictions may seem very alien.
The other limitation of only feed-forward computations means the model has limited ability to monitor its generation for quality and is incapable of any kind of search over the space of candidate generations. To be sure, LLMs do sometimes show limited "metacognitive" ability, particularly when explicitly prompted for it.[5] But it is certainly limited compared to what is possible if the architecture had proper feedback connections.
The terrifying thing is that LLMs are just about the dumbest thing you can do with Transformers and they perform far beyond anyone's expectations. When people imagine AGI, they probably imagine some super complex, intricately arranged collection of many heterogeneous subsystems backed by decades of computer science and mathematical theory. But LLMs have completely demolished the idea that complex architectures are required for complex intelligent-seeming behavior. If LLMs are just about the dumbest thing we can do with Transformers, it is plausible that slightly less dumb architectures will reach AGI.
[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.14165.pdf (.44 epochs elapsed for Common Crawl)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35195810
[3] https://twitter.com/tegmark/status/1636036714509615114
[4] https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.10077
[5] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ADwayvunaJqBLzawa/contra-hofstadter-on-gpt-3-nonsense

Below is a conversation where chatGPT and I design a rust flight simulator. I had already planned to do a similar project to this myself, so I though it would be an interesting opportunity to see how well chatGPT can solve the problem.
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I would say the results are mixed overall. ChatGPT needed a lot of guidance to get to the design I wanted and I believe it would take a lot of additional work to integrate what ChatGPT wrote into any kind of real project. Still, I was pleasantly surprised at what it could accomplish with a bit of pointing in the right direction.
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Apologies for Formatting :P
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📷Help me design an API for simulating flight mechanics in rust language and rendering the result through the godot game engine.
Sure, I can help you design an API for simulating flight mechanics in Rust language and rendering the result through the Godot game engine. Here are the steps you can follow:

1. Define the API endpoints: You need to define the API endpoints that will be used to interact with the flight simulator. For example, you can create an endpoint to initialize the simulation, an endpoint to set the input parameters (such as velocity, acceleration, and direction), and an endpoint to retrieve the output parameters (such as altitude, pitch, and roll).
2. Define the input and output data structures: You need to define the data structures that will be used to represent the input and output parameters of the flight simulator. For example, you can create a struct to represent the input parameters and another struct to represent the output parameters.
3. Implement the flight mechanics: You need to implement the flight mechanics that will be used to simulate the flight of the aircraft. You can use existing libraries, such as nalgebra, to implement the physics calculations required for the flight simulator.
4. Integrate with Godot game engine: You need to integrate the flight simulator with the Godot game engine to render the output parameters of the simulation. You can use the Godot Rust bindings to interact with the game engine and display the output parameters, such as altitude, pitch, and roll.
5. Test the API: Once you have implemented the API, you should test it thoroughly to ensure that it works as expected. You can use unit tests to test the individual components of the API and integration tests to test the interaction between the flight simulator and the Godot game engine.

Here's a sample code that demonstrates how to create an API endpoint for initializing the simulation:
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use rocket::serde::{Deserialize, Serialize}; #[derive(Debug, Clone, Serialize, Deserialize)] struct SimulationInitRequest { aircraft_type: String, initial_altitude: f32, initial_velocity: f32, initial_acceleration: f32, } #[derive(Debug, Clone, Serialize, Deserialize)] struct SimulationInitResponse { id: u32, status: String, } #[post("/api/simulation/init", data = "")] fn init_simulation(request: Json) -> Json { // Implement the initialization logic here let id = 1; let status = "initialized".to_string(); Json(SimulationInitResponse { id, status }) } 

This code defines an API endpoint /api/simulation/initthat receives a POSTrequest with a SimulationInitRequestJSON payload. The endpoint returns a SimulationInitResponseJSON payload with the simulation ID and status. You can use this endpoint to initialize the simulation and obtain the simulation ID for subsequent API requests.
I hope this helps you get started with designing your flight simulator API in Rust language and integrating it with the Godot game engine!
📷why did you choose to expose the simulation through a REST API? That seems like a strange choice to me.
You're right that a REST API may not be the best choice for simulating flight mechanics. REST APIs are typically used for stateless communication between clients and servers over HTTP, and may not be the most efficient or performant way to simulate real-time flight mechanics.
Instead, a more appropriate approach would be to use a real-time communication protocol, such as WebSockets, to send and receive data between the flight simulator and the Godot game engine. WebSockets allow for bidirectional, low-latency communication between the server and the client, making them ideal for real-time applications such as flight simulators.
Here's a sample code that demonstrates how to use WebSockets to send and receive data between the flight simulator and the Godot game engine:
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use std::collections::HashMap; use ws::{listen, CloseCode, Handler, Handshake, Message, Result, Sender}; struct FlightSimulator { out: Sender, } impl Handler for FlightSimulator { fn on_open(&mut self, _: Handshake) -> Result<()> { Ok(()) } fn on_message(&mut self, msg: Message) -> Result<()> { let input: HashMap = serde_json::from_str(msg.as_text()?)?; // Implement the flight mechanics here let output: HashMap = simulate_flight(&input); self.out.send(serde_json::to_string(&output)?)?; Ok(()) } fn on_close(&mut self, _: CloseCode, _: &str) { // Handle close event } } fn main() -> Result<()> { listen("127.0.0.1:3000", out FlightSimulator { out })?; Ok(()) } 

This code uses the wscrate to listen for WebSocket connections on port 3000. When a client connects to the WebSocket server, the on_openmethod is called. When the client sends a message, the on_messagemethod is called, where the flight mechanics are simulated based on the input data received from the client. The output data is then sent back to the client using the out.sendmethod. Finally, when the client disconnects, the on_closemethod is called.
Overall, using WebSockets or another real-time communication protocol is a better choice than REST API for simulating flight mechanics, as it allows for low-latency, bidirectional communication between the server and client.
📷I am not going to use a web browser at all for this simulator. Please reconsider your suggestion without using anything that will also require a web browser to be used, such as websockets.
Thank you for the clarification. In that case, if you don't want to use WebSockets or any other browser-based communication protocol, one option would be to use a local inter-process communication (IPC) mechanism, such as Unix domain sockets or named pipes.
Here's a sample code that demonstrates how to use Unix domain sockets to send and receive data between the flight simulator and the Godot game engine:
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use std::io::prelude::*; use std::os::unix::net::{UnixListener, UnixStream}; fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> { // Create a Unix domain socket listener let listener = UnixListener::bind("/tmp/flight.sock")?; // Listen for incoming connections for stream in listener.incoming() { // Spawn a new thread to handle each connection std::thread::spawn(move { // Handle the connection handle_connection(stream.unwrap()); }); } Ok(()) } fn handle_connection(mut stream: UnixStream) { // Read the input data from the stream let mut buf = [0; 1024]; stream.read(&mut buf).unwrap(); let input: HashMap = serde_json::from_slice(&buf).unwrap(); // Simulate the flight mechanics based on the input data let output: HashMap = simulate_flight(&input); // Write the output data to the stream let response = serde_json::to_vec(&output).unwrap(); stream.write(&response).unwrap(); stream.flush().unwrap(); } 

This code creates a Unix domain socket listener on the path /tmp/flight.sock. When a client connects to the socket, a new thread is spawned to handle the connection. The handle_connectionfunction reads the input data from the socket, simulates the flight mechanics based on the input data, and writes the output data back to the socket.
On the client side, you can use a Unix domain socket client to send input data to the flight simulator and receive output data. Here's a sample code that demonstrates how to send input data to the flight simulator and receive output data:
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use std::io::prelude::*; use std::os::unix::net::UnixStream; fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> { // Connect to the Unix domain socket let mut stream = UnixStream::connect("/tmp/flight.sock")?; // Send the input data to the flight simulator let input = HashMap::new(); let request = serde_json::to_vec(&input).unwrap(); stream.write(&request).unwrap(); stream.flush().unwrap(); // Read the output data from the flight simulator let mut buf = [0; 1024]; stream.read(&mut buf).unwrap(); let output: HashMap = serde_json::from_slice(&buf).unwrap(); Ok(()) } 

This code connects to the Unix domain socket at /tmp/flight.sock, sends the input data to the flight simulator, and reads the output data from the socket.
I hope this solution meets your requirements of not using any browser-based communication protocol and helps you implement your flight simulator API.
📷This simulation must run on the microsoft windows operating system, so a unix socket cannot be used. Please reconsider your suggestion so that it can run on the windows operating system.
Thank you for the clarification. In that case, you can use named pipes instead of Unix domain sockets for inter-process communication on Windows. Here's how you can modify the Rust code to use named pipes:
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use std::io::prelude::*; use std::os::windows::io::{AsRawHandle, FromRawHandle}; use std::sync::mpsc::channel; use std::thread; use winapi::um::namedpipeapi::{ConnectNamedPipe, CreateNamedPipeW}; use winapi::um::winbase::{FILE_FLAG_FIRST_PIPE_INSTANCE, PIPE_ACCESS_DUPLEX, PIPE_TYPE_BYTE, PIPE_WAIT}; use winapi::um::winnt::{HANDLE, GENERIC_READ, GENERIC_WRITE}; fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> { ... } .... 

📷is it possible to directly integrate the godot part and the rust part through linking a library?
Yes, it is possible to directly integrate the Godot part and the Rust part by linking a Rust library to a Godot module. Here's how you can do it:

1. Create a Rust library that exposes the flight simulation functionality through a C-compatible interface. You can use Rust's #[no_mangle]attribute to ensure that the function names are not mangled by the Rust compiler. For example:

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#[no_mangle] pub extern "C" fn simulate_flight(input: *const u8, input_len: usize, output: *mut u8, output_len: usize) -> usize { // Convert the input data to a Rust struct let input: HashMap = serde_json::from_slice(unsafe { std::slice::from_raw_parts(input, input_len) }).unwrap(); // Simulate the flight mechanics based on the input data let output_data = simulate_flight(&input); // Convert the output data to a byte array let output_data = serde_json::to_vec(&output_data).unwrap(); let output_data_len = output_data.len(); // Copy the output data to the output buffer unsafe { std::ptr::copy_nonoverlapping(output_data.as_ptr(), output, std::cmp::min(output_len, output_data_len)); } // Return the length of the output data output_data_len } 

1. Build the Rust library as a C-compatible dynamic library. You can do this by specifying the cdylibcrate type in your Cargo.tomlfile:

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[lib] name = "flight_simulator" crate-type = ["cdylib"] 

1. Create a Godot module that links to the Rust library. You can do this by creating a gdmodulefile that specifies the Rust library as a dependency:

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[dependencies] windows="0.19.0" [general] singleton=false load_once=true module_library="res://addons/flight_simulatoflight_simulator.dll" 

1. Use the OS.dynamic_loadfunction to load the Rust library at runtime, and use the OS.get_symbolfunction to get a pointer to the simulate_flightfunction. You can then call this function to simulate the flight mechanics and get the output data. For example:

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var lib = OS.dynamic_load("res://addons/flight_simulatoflight_simulator.dll") var simulate_flight = lib.get_symbol("simulate_flight") var input = { "throttle": 0.5, "elevator": 0.1, "aileron": -0.2, "rudder": 0.3 } var input_data = JSON.print(input) var input_len = input_data.length() var output_data = OS.allocate(1024) var output_len = call_func(simulate_flight, input_data, input_len, output_data, 1024) var output = JSON.parse(OS.get_data_pool().get_string_from_utf8(output_data, output_len)) print(output) 

Note that you will need to adjust the paths and function names to match your project structure and Rust code.
📷Ok good idea. I will use that approach. Now tell me how best I can structure the API to ensure that rendering a large number of objects in godot will performant when they are managed entirely by the rust dynamic simulation.
To ensure that rendering a large number of objects in Godot will be performant when they are managed entirely by the Rust dynamic simulation, you can use a few strategies:

1. Use a batching technique to group similar objects together and reduce the number of draw calls. This can be done by organizing the objects into small groups (e.g., by their location or type) and rendering them together. You can also use techniques like instancing to efficiently render large numbers of identical objects.
2. Use a data-oriented approach to store the object data in a way that is efficient for rendering. This means storing the data in contiguous arrays (e.g., using a structure of arrays instead of an array of structures) and minimizing cache misses. You can also use techniques like spatial partitioning (e.g., quad trees or octrees) to efficiently cull objects that are not visible and reduce the number of objects that need to be rendered.
3. Use a multi-threaded approach to offload the rendering work to separate threads and minimize the impact on the simulation performance. This means dividing the work of rendering the objects into separate threads (e.g., using a thread pool) and synchronizing the data between the Rust simulation and the Godot engine.
4. Minimize the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the Rust simulation and the Godot engine. This means only sending the data that is necessary for rendering (e.g., position, orientation, and scale), and using efficient serialization techniques (e.g., binary serialization) to minimize the size of the data.

To implement these strategies, you can structure your API in a way that supports these optimizations. For example, you can expose functions in the Rust library that allow the Godot engine to query the position, orientation, and scale of the objects that need to be rendered. You can also expose functions that allow the Godot engine to query the simulation state (e.g., which objects are visible) and optimize the rendering accordingly. Additionally, you can use efficient serialization techniques (e.g., using a binary format like Protocol Buffers) to minimize the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the Rust simulation and the Godot engine.
By using these strategies and structuring your API in a way that supports them, you can ensure that rendering a large number of objects in Godot will be performant even when they are managed entirely by the Rust dynamic simulation.
📷Please construct a reasonably suitable API based on your suggestions
Sure, here is an example of a reasonably suitable API for your flight simulator:
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// Define a struct to represent the state of each object in the simulation struct ObjectState { position: (f32, f32, f32), orientation: (f32, f32, f32, f32), scale: f32, is_visible: bool, // Other simulation state data as needed } // Define a trait for the Rust simulation library to implement trait Simulation { // Get the current state of all objects in the simulation fn get_object_states(&self) -> Vec; // Set the state of a specific object in the simulation fn set_object_state(&mut self, id: u32, state: ObjectState); // Get the simulation time in milliseconds fn get_time_ms(&self) -> u64; } // Define a function to initialize the Rust simulation library and start the simulation loop fn start_simulation() -> impl Simulation { // Initialize the simulation state and return a struct that implements the Simulation trait // Start a separate thread to run the simulation loop } // Define a function to render the simulation in Godot fn render_simulation(objects: &[ObjectState]) { // Batch the objects by location or type // Use efficient data structures (e.g., structure of arrays) for the object data // Use culling techniques (e.g., frustum culling) to reduce the number of objects that need to be rendered // Use instancing to efficiently render large numbers of identical objects // Use a multi-threaded approach to offload the rendering work to separate threads } // Define a function to update the simulation state based on user input from Godot fn update_simulation(id: u32, state: ObjectState) { // Update the state of the specified object in the Rust simulation library } // Define a function to handle API requests from Godot fn handle_api_request(request: String) -> String { // Parse the request and call the appropriate function // Use efficient serialization techniques (e.g., Protocol Buffers) to minimize the amount of data transferred between Godot and Rust // Return the response to Godot }This API defines a Simulationtrait that allows the Rust library to manage the state of the objects in the simulation and provides functions to get and set the object state. It also defines functions to start the simulation loop, render the simulation in Godot, and handle API requests from Godot. By using efficient data structures, culling techniques, and multi-threading, the rendering of a large number of objects in Godot can be optimized for performance. Additionally, using efficient serialization techniques minimizes the amount of data transferred between Godot and Rust, further improving performance. 

📷Nice, now please implement the simulation dynamics. I want rigid-body newtonian physics model. With collision detection. Use an octree to improve performance of collision detection. Please use quaternions to represent orientation and rotations. Please ensure the model can use a configurable timestep. Please use SI units for physics calculations when necessary and try to add comments which specify what quantities and units variables are intended to represent.
Sure, here is an example implementation of the simulation dynamics in Rust:
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use nalgebra::{Vector3, Quaternion, Rotation3, Isometry3}; use std::collections::HashMap; const GRAVITY: f32 = 9.81; // m/s^2 const DEFAULT_TIMESTEP: f32 = 0.01; // s // Define a struct to represent a rigid body in the simulation struct RigidBody { position: Vector3, // meters velocity: Vector3, // meters/second acceleration: Vector3, // meters/second^2 orientation: Quaternion, angular_velocity: Vector3, // radians/second angular_acceleration: Vector3, // radians/second^2 mass: f32, // kilograms inertia_tensor: Vector3, // kilograms * meters^2 is_static: bool, // if true, this object cannot be moved } // Define a struct to represent a collision mesh struct CollisionMesh { // Define the collision mesh data (e.g., vertices, faces, etc.) // Use efficient data structures and algorithms for collision detection (e.g., an octree) } // Define a struct to represent the state of the simulation struct SimulationState { objects: HashMap, // map object IDs to RigidBody objects collision_meshes: HashMap, // map object IDs to CollisionMesh objects octree: Octree, // octree for collision detection time_ms: u64, // milliseconds since the start of the simulation } impl Simulation for SimulationState { fn get_object_states(&self) -> Vec { let mut object_states = Vec::new(); for (id, rigid_body) in &self.objects { let object_state = ObjectState { position: (rigid_body.position.x, rigid_body.position.y, rigid_body.position.z), orientation: (rigid_body.orientation.w, rigid_body.orientation.i, rigid_body.orientation.j, rigid_body.orientation.k), scale: rigid_body.mass.sqrt(), is_visible: true, // assume all objects are visible for now }; object_states.push(object_state); } object_states } fn set_object_state(&mut self, id: u32, state: ObjectState) { if let Some(rigid_body) = self.objects.get_mut(&id) { rigid_body.position = Vector3::new(state.position.0, state.position.1, state.position.2); rigid_body.orientation = Quaternion::new(state.orientation.0, state.orientation.1, state.orientation.2, state.orientation.3); } } fn get_time_ms(&self) -> u64 { self.time_ms } } impl RigidBody { // Apply a force to the rigid body at its center of mass fn apply_force(&mut self, force: Vector3) { if !self.is_static { self.acceleration += force / self.mass; } } // Apply a torque to the rigid body fn apply_torque(&mut self, torque: Vector3) { if !self.is_static { let angular_acceleration = self.inertia_tensor.component_mul(&torque); self.angular_acceleration += angular_acceleration; } } // Integrate the state of the rigid body over a given timestep using the Verlet method fn integrate(&mut self, timestep: f32) { if !self.is_static { // Update linear position and velocity 

📷continue outputting your simulation implementationswiftCopy code

 self.position += self.velocity * timestep + 0.5 * self.acceleration * timestep.powi(2); self.velocity += 0.5 * (self.acceleration + self.acceleration) * timestep; // Update angular position and velocity let rotation = Rotation3::from_quaternion(self.orientation); let angular_velocity_matrix = rotation.matrix() * self.angular_velocity.cross(&rotation.matrix()).into_matrix(); let angular_acceleration_matrix = rotation.matrix() * self.angular_acceleration.into_matrix(); let orientation_derivative = Quaternion::from_parts(0.0, self.angular_velocity.x, self.angular_velocity.y, self.angular_velocity.z) * self.orientation * 0.5; let angular_velocity_derivative = self.inertia_tensor.try_inverse().unwrap() * (torque - self.angular_velocity.cross(&self.inertia_tensor.component_mul(&self.angular_velocity))); self.orientation += orientation_derivative * timestep; self.orientation.normalize(); self.angular_velocity += angular_velocity_derivative * timestep; // Reset acceleration and angular acceleration self.acceleration = Vector3::zeros(); self.angular_acceleration = Vector3::zeros(); } } // Perform collision detection and resolution with a given CollisionMesh fn collide(&mut self, mesh: &CollisionMesh) { if !self.is_static { // Perform collision detection using the octree let objects_in_tree = mesh.octree.get_objects_near_point(self.position); for object in objects_in_tree { if self.is_colliding_with(&object) { // Perform collision resolution let normal = self.get_collision_normal(&object); let relative_velocity = self.get_relative_velocity(&object); let restitution = 0.5; // coefficient of restitution let impulse = -(1.0 + restitution) * relative_velocity.dot(&normal) / (self.mass + object.mass); let force = normal * impulse; self.apply_force(force); self.apply_torque((self.position - object.position).cross(&force)); } } } } // Check if this rigid body is colliding with another RigidBody fn is_colliding_with(&self, other: &RigidBody) -> bool { // Perform collision detection using a bounding sphere let distance = (self.position - other.position).norm(); let radius = (self.mass + other.mass).sqrt(); distance <= radius } // Get the normal vector for a collision between this rigid body and another RigidBody fn get_collision_normal(&self, other: &RigidBody) -> Vector3 { (self.position - other.position).normalize() } // Get the relative velocity between this rigid body and another RigidBody fn get_relative_velocity(&self, other: &RigidBody) -> Vector3 { self.velocity - other.velocity } 

}
📷if you are done with your simulation implementation tell me that you are done. If not, please continue outputting it.
I'm sorry, I have completed the implementation of the Rigid Body Dynamics simulation in Rust language. Please let me know if you have any questions or if there is anything else I can assist you with.
📷Can you give me an example of a rigid body for this simulation?
Sure, here is an example of a simple RigidBody for this simulation:
rustCopy code

let mut rigid_body = RigidBody::new( Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), // position (m) Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), // velocity (m/s) Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), // acceleration (m/s^2) Quaternion::identity(), // orientation (quaternion) Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), // angular velocity (rad/s) Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), // angular acceleration (rad/s^2) 1.0, // mass (kg) Matrix3::identity(), // inertia tensor (kg*m^2) false, // is static (boolean) ); 

In this example, the RigidBody is initially located at the origin (0, 0, 0) with zero initial velocity, acceleration, angular velocity, and angular acceleration. It has a mass of 1 kilogram and is not a static object (i.e. it is free to move and can be affected by external forces and torques). The inertia tensor is initialized to the identity matrix, which assumes the RigidBody has uniform density and is symmetric about its center of mass.
📷Please create a new rigid body representing a simple cessna 150 airplane sitting at the origin.
Sure, here's an example of creating a new RigidBody representing a simple Cessna 150 airplane sitting at the origin:
rustCopy code

// Define the dimensions of the Cessna 150 airplane in meters let length = 7.31; // Length of the airplane (m) let wingspan = 10.16; // Wingspan of the airplane (m) let height = 2.69; // Height of the airplane (m) // Define the mass and inertia tensor of the airplane in SI units let mass = 670.0; // Mass of the airplane (kg) let ixx = 3435.0; // Moment of inertia about x-axis (kg*m^2) let iyy = 16020.0; // Moment of inertia about y-axis (kg*m^2) let izz = 18200.0; // Moment of inertia about z-axis (kg*m^2) let ixy = 0.0; // Product of inertia about xy-plane (kg*m^2) let ixz = 0.0; // Product of inertia about xz-plane (kg*m^2) let iyz = 235.0; // Product of inertia about yz-plane (kg*m^2) // Define the initial position and orientation of the airplane let position = Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); let orientation = Quaternion::from_euler_angles(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); // Define the initial velocity, acceleration, and angular velocity of the airplane let velocity = Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); let acceleration = Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); let angular_velocity = Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); // Define the initial angular acceleration of the airplane let angular_acceleration = Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); // Define the new RigidBody representing the Cessna 150 airplane let mut cessna_150 = RigidBody::new( position, velocity, acceleration, orientation, angular_velocity, angular_acceleration, mass, Matrix3::new( ixx, ixy, ixz, ixy, iyy, iyz, ixz, iyz, izz, ), false, // not a static object ); 

This example defines the dimensions of the Cessna 150 airplane in meters, as well as the mass and inertia tensor in SI units. The initial position and orientation are set to the origin and no initial velocity, acceleration, or angular velocity or acceleration are applied.

I want to talk to you about the boy next door.
I first noticed him when we arrived here. Mom was moving in all of our boxes and furniture, and I was sitting on one of mom’s boxes labelled “fragile” downing ice-cold lemonade.
It wasn’t exactly the weather for cold drinks, but I was pooped after spending my morning and half of my afternoon going back and forth with all of our stuff. It was just a glimpse.
One of the movers asked me to help him with a box of kitchen equipment. I was struggling to get a proper grip of it, twisting around to shout that I needed help—when I saw him.
Not much of a person, more of a shadow poking from behind the fence. What I could make out was a tallish figure and mousey hair.
I lifted my hand in a greeting, but the guy walked away. I didn’t think much of it.
Maybe he was shy.
Though I was curious about my neighbors. I was expecting them to join the parade of families on our doorstep harbouring every food you can imagine, but they stayed away. I did know a family existed next door, however. There was a large wooden fence separating us. So, if I really wanted to talk to them I’d either have to grow several feet taller or invest in stilts. I’m not sure why I was so obsessed with meeting them.
I knew they had kids my age. I could hear them.
Whether they were arguing over video games, or laughing at something trivial, I could always hear them when I was sitting on our wooden porch or helping mom clean our yard.
According to mom, who heard it from the nice lady across the street, our neighbors were called the Wilders.
There was a single mom, and her four teenage kids.
Huh, I thought. So the mystery shadow guy must have been a Wilder kid.
I was told to not get too excited, though. Apparently, Mrs Wilder was very protective over her children and home-schooled them.
So, there was no chance of me making friends or even getting to know them. On our second day in our new home, mom told me over breakfast that Mrs Wilder had sent out a polite notice to the neighbourhood that her children were not to be disturbed or talked to. Which was crazy. I thought that was weird. But mom understood it—and to my annoyance, accepted the woman’s notice. I was warned not to talk to the Wilder children.
And if I did, that was an automatic week grounding. Which meant no diner, no seeing friends after school, and my phone privileges taken away. According to her, she figured they were just a private family and wanted to accept that. She theorised the kids had been bullied at public school and had to be home-schooled. But I was sceptical. “All of them?” I’d asked her through a mouthful of cereal.
“Phoebe.” Mom sent me a warning look, sipping her coffee. “What we’re going to do is respect Mrs Wilder’s wishes.”
“It’s child abuse.” I muttered into my frosted flakes. Only for mom to reach across the table and poke me with the prongs of her fork.
“Ow!”
“Don’t play with your food.”
“I’m not playing with my food.” I held up a spoonful of soggy cereal. “You just never get the chocolate brand. These taste like sandpaper.”
“We are going to be respectable neighbors,” mom said, ignoring me. “So, you are not going to speak to those kids. Do you understand?”
I knew mom only wanted to abide by the weird rules because she was obsessed with joining the mom’s club, or whatever they were called, but it didn’t make sense to me that his woman wasn’t letting her own kids have a social life.
At a younger age, maybe eleven or twelve, I could understand. But seventeen? That was almost college age. What, was she expecting to coddle them forever?
Did she really think these kids were going to stay with her? Seventeen was the age of finding first loves and making mistakes. Not staying at home with mommy dearest. “Okay, but would you do this to me?” I asked her. “Would you really lock me up and stop me from going outside and living my life?”
Mom had been spreading butter on bread. I didn’t realise her mood had drastically changed until she was almost slicing her finger with the knife. “You don’t know this yet because you are far too young,” she lifted her head, her lips curving into a smile. “But there is something called a mother’s instinct. When our children are born, we are overcome with an almost… feral need to protect them from danger. If you look it up, it is present is every creature. Every mother. Our children are worth more than ourselves. We give our own lives to keep them alive. You can roll your eyes and say it’s stupid, but I’m sure as soon as you have your own child, you will feel the exact same with them.”
She nodded at me. “I had that with you. I… I still have it with you, Phoebe. No matter how old you are. When you were a baby, I wanted to hold you in my arms every second of every day. I hated it when people wanted to hold you, and you were such a clingy baby. Always cradled to my chest. As you grew up, I started to understand that you were seeing the world for the first time and you needed your own time and space. I let you take your first steps on your own. I cried when you said your first word—and when I grabbed your hand and raced down the kindergarten steps for the first time. Letting you go was painful. And if I had a choice in the matter? Yes, I would keep you in here. I would stop you from going outside and seeing this world.” She dropped the knife with a startling, metallic clang, before picking it back up.
“Because this planet is a scary place, Phoebe. And as mother’s, it is our job to keep our kids safe. Even if that means going to the slightest of extremes.”
“Slightest of extremes?” I scoffed, despite knowing I was being pedantic. “They have to fly the nest! That’s called growing up!”
Ignoring her glare, I continued.
“Yes, I believe in mother’s instinct. But at what point do you have to look at yourself and realise you’re being ridiculous? Seventeen year olds aren’t infants. They won’t just blindly walk into traffic. They have self-awareness of what is wrong and right.”
I pointed at myself. “You let me drive, right? I got my license. Where was your ‘mother instinct’ when I got myself a big-girl vehicle I could easily have an accident in?”
Mom curled her lip. “Don’t push it.”
Leaning across the table, I fixed her with a smile. “See? You trust me, mom. You let me grow up. That’s the difference between you and Mrs Wilder. Kids have to grow up. No matter what the circumstances are. It’s just part of being human. We all grow up and leave our parents.”
I sent her a look, stirring the soggy soup of my cereal. “Well. Unless you’re Mrs Wilder.”
Mom finished her coffee and stood up. “You don’t even know these children. They could be in any stage of development which makes them very different to you. All kids mentally age at different points.”
She took her plate to the faucet and dumped it in the bowl. Mom washed the dishes when she was angry or stressed, and she was really going to town on our brand new pattern plates. I saw that as a mark of finality. “I’m done talking about this, okay? You’re not eighteen yet which means you abide by my rules, and really, Phoebe, I’m not exactly holding you prisoner. I’m just asking you to be polite and follow a simple rule which is not hard. We are a new family, and we need to make a good impression. Which means no talking to Mrs Wilder’s children.” She cleared her throat.
“Respect our neighbour’s wishes or lose your phone.”
Ducking my head, I continued to stir my cereal into a mushy soup which had quickly become unappetising. It looked like barf. I pushed it away. “You only want me to follow the rules so you can get into Mrs Becker’s book club and go on Pilate dates with middle aged Karen’s.”
Mom dropped a plate in the sink, and the sound of the splash made me flinch slightly.
“Is that understood?”
“Yes.” I said, rolling my eyes. “Obviously, I will abide by this street’s draconian rules so I can continue scrolling through Tik-Tok.”
It was sarcasm, but I wasn’t sure my mother could detect it. She was so blinded by becoming one with our neighbors.
Why was she so obsessed with meeting all the other mom’s anyway?
Was she planning on setting me up on a playdate with 3 year old Evie? I wouldn’t put it past her doing that for the brownie points.
“Good. End of conversation.” Mom said, hurrying to get her jacket and bag. “I’m late for work, and you have an induction to get to.”
I wanted to argue further because this sounded unfair. The kids were teenagers, right? How were they not arguing against this? It seemed insane that they were going along with what their mother said. But I was aware of significant punishment if I broke this rule. So, I begrudgingly agreed. After my induction, I asked around new friends and classmates if anybody knew of the Wilder kids, and they did.
But they didn’t want to elaborate on what they knew. I heard a lot of rumours with dead ends. Most of them involved a father who had walked out on them, and their mother going into ultra-protective mode in response. It sounded like these kids were bearing the brunt of a messy divorce. They were complete enigma’s.
I didn’t know anything about them except from their insanely overprotective mother’s wicked grip on them. I gave up being curious. Mom was serious about me not speaking not them. She gave me a lecture on respecting the woman’s privacy, and blah, blah, blah. I tuned out after five minutes, my attention flicking to an episode of Breaking Bad playing on the lounge TV.
The next few weeks were boring. Mom was invited to join Mrs Beck’s book club, so on Monday’s at 5PM, I made myself scarce. I did exactly what mom said. I ignored the kids next door. My bedroom happened to be facing the room of one of the kids, but their dark blue curtains were always shut. Sometimes it was hard. When I was sitting in the yard, reading a book, I could hear them on the other side of the fence.
The boys were the most vocal, laughing and teasing each other. There was a point when I risked it. I jumped to my feet and got halfway across the expanse of grass, standing on the tips of my toes and trying to catch a peek. But mom was calling me inside. I swore she had eyes in the back of my head. Mom always knew when I was outside. When I was near the fence.
It wasn’t until a month had gone by when I finally got a glimpse of a Wilder kid. I had just gotten back from school. I’d dumped my backpack on my bed and grabbed my phone, slumping onto my bed to text my friends and mindlessly scroll through social media. I noticed movement at the corner of my eye, and when I’d lifted my head, blinking rapidly—those same blue curtains which had shut me out for what felt so long—they were open. Not just that.
I could see a bedroom smothered in personality. I glimpsed a hardwood desk strewn with paper and an expensive laptop, a blue bedspread, a beaten up guitar leaning against light green walls covered in old-school movie posters.
There were screwed up pieces of paper everywhere. I had to guess he was some kind of artist. The room was illuminated in the evening dim, a soft warm light bringing the room to life. A knock startled me, and my gaze flicked to the window.
There he was. The Wilder boy next door.
He was my age, maybe even older. This guy looked almost college aged. Which made it increasingly weirder that his mother would insist on babying him at the age of seventeen.
He was cute. The dorky kind of cute. He wore bulky glasses but was the type to instantly suit pretty much anything. If I could compare him to anyone, it would be the mental image in my head that my younger self had imagined Percy Jackson when I reads the books.
The guy looked comfortable in a sweater and jeans, mousey brown hair hanging in warm eyes. There was an inquisitive smile on his lips. I jumped up to open my window to speak to him, but he shook his head—and I quickly remembered his mother’s stupid rule which forbid us from talking. So, I got creative.
Give me a moment! I mouthed.
I expected him to ignore me and go back to what he was doing, but the guy straightened up and nodded, arching a brow.
He was intrigued.
I grabbed an old notebook and a pen and sat on my bed, scribbling a message. I wrote: “Hello! So, you’re the kid under house arrest lmao.”
When I held it up, his smile pricked. He laughed. But I couldn’t hear it. I could tell he had a dorky kind of laugh, a nasally one. The guy held up a hand for me to wait and rummaged on his desk. He quickly wrote out a message and held it up with a grin. He looked almost proud of his own message, and I couldn’t resist my own smile. I expected him to curse his mother, maybe apologise for the lack of communication.
But instead, he simply wrote: “Hello! What’s your name?” Followed by a slightly smudged smiley.
After a moment of consideration, mom’s words echoing in my mind, I thought fuck it. “Phoebe.” I said. “Yours?”
“It’s nice to meet you, Phoebe.” He responded. Which spanned multiple conversations which took up several of my notepads.
We talked about everything from school to his life at home. He had three siblings. Matilda, Freddie, and Issac. He liked to play the guitar and draw, but also apparently sucked at both. When I asked what his favourite TV show was, he looked confused for a moment before answering “All of them”. Following that odd answer, I asked if he liked Marvel, and again, he had that look again. A look of confusion.
But I knew he was trying to make a good impression. “What is Marvel?” He wrote back, this time his handwriting in a bubbly font. I could almost call his writing calligraphy. It practically danced off of the page. The Wilder boy’s strange answers made wonder if this kid had been home-schooled his whole life. He seemed way too polite. Kids were polite, sure.
There was a certain amount of respect you had to pay to your elders and parents.
But looking at this kid, I wasn’t even sure he knew what a meme was—or even the concept of a joke. He had no idea about one of the biggest movie franchise in the world, and his favourite celebrity was apparently “All of them”. In fact, he had answered “All of them” to several of my questions. His messages reminded me of my grandma’s. Still though, he was good company. Though I made it my mission to convert him into a normal teenager.
I had to guess due to constantly being home and around the same people, this kid had zero social skills. I asked him what his favourite movie was, out of the posters on the wall. He had Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs, and Fight Club.
Again, he looked confused. His head cocked to the side, and I had to physically point to them behind him.
“All of them.” He wrote back with a smiley face.
Damn, this kid needed to see a movie which wasn’t some educational shit. I bet his mother had turned him into perfect member of society.
“What have you seen?” I couldn’t help asking him. “Like, movies, TV shows. Do you play video games?”
He shook his head before scribbling back. “What is that?”
Holy shit, this kid was completely cut off from the outside world.
I was already mentally thinking up plans to get him out of the house and to a party, or something like that. From the look of this kids face—a slightly blank if not completely innocent smile—he needed time away from home. Away from his overprotective mother’s wicked grasp.
After a while, I realised he never told me his name. I didn’t notice time go by. Almost three hours, and I’d spent most of it lecturing him on movies and TV shows he really should have known. I guessed Mrs Wilder didn’t let him watch the TV. My gaze flicked to his laptop. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had blocked out all social media. My notepad was full of scribbles and doodles, an attempt at copying his handwriting style. The sky was blooming into twilight outside, thick orange and cotton candy pink streaking the horizon. I have always loved a pre-twilight sky.
“What’s your name?” I wrote in marker pen, before holding up my notepad. I was running out of paper. I could hear mom downstairs preparing dinner, and I could tell from his diminishing smile Mrs Wilder was probably shouting for him to go downstairs.
He didn’t reply for a while. I watched him put the pad down, before heading over to his desk and cleaning up the paper—every trace we had been talking and dumping each response he’d given in the trash. Before he slumped onto his bed, wrote something down in several strokes, before holding it up for me to see. “Casper.” He’d written. “My name is Casper Wilder.”
For a moment, his expression changed completely. He glanced at the door, before frowning at the pad of paper in his lap.
It looked like he wanted to write more, before twisting around, his eyes widening. Someone was coming. I could tell by the look on his face.
The knot between his brows.
Casper gathered everything he’d been using to write to me, pens and pencils, scraps of paper and the backs of movie posters, and shoving them under his bed. Then he grabbed the curtains and pulled them closed, blocking me out once again. I thought he’d come back, but after standing like an idiot with an odd feeling in my gut, frowning at his curtains, I realised he was finished talking to me for the night. What I expected was that to be it. I didn’t think he’d come back. The next morning, however, he was back at his window, smiling at me through a mouthful of toothpaste. He was still in his pyjamas, unbrushed curls falling in sleepy eyes.
He looked strange without his glasses. Like his face was too bare. The more I took him in, though. Something was… different. Though I couldn’t make it out. It hit me then.
Casper wasn’t moving, staying in the same position. The night before, he had gone to and from his bed, hurrying around to grab equipment to write with. But now he was stood, looking more shadow than human. I was quick to dive for my notepad, but Casper was already holding up his own greeting with a grin. “Good morning, Phoebe! How are you feeling today?”
“Tired.” I wrote back, my writing barely comprehensible. “Do you have school?”
“YES.” He responded with an excited smile. “I’m so excited to learn! Do you have a favourite class?”
I laughed at that. And after looking confused, he copied my laugh. Which made me laugh harder.
“None of them!” I scribbled back. “School is boring!”
Casper shrugged. “I like it. I have a great tutor.”
“Really?” This time, I drew an attempt at the rolling eyes emoji. “You shouldn’t be excited for school. Weirdo.”
He curled his lip. “You’re the weirdo.” He wrote back. Casper paused, chewing on the lid of the pen, before writing, “What’s a weirdo?”
“You’re kidding!” This time, with too much vigour, I pointed to him with a laugh. “You! You’re the weirdo!”
We talked as I got ready for school, gathering all my books and homework. I was stuffing my gym clothes in my bag, when I noticed something was on the ground behind Casper. Looking closer, it looked like a chord. Like a long cable sort of thing. I thought it was for a games console, but then I remembered he had no idea what a video game was. I didn’t question what it was for a while. We talked every night, about everything and nothing.
I told Casper about school and friends, filling up every piece of paper we had in the house, and he told me about his siblings. They were all the same age, and all enjoyed school. His brother was a piano prodigy, while his sister’s strongest subjects were math. Casper told me he felt like the odd one out being the artist of the family, and I quickly told him that creativity was the best part of a person.
He showed me his drawings. And to my confusion, and slight disgust, they were all of his mother. They were good—sure. His skills were Ivy League worthy. Perfect shading. Everything about the drawings were perfect.
But the fact that his muse was his mother—it put a weird taste in my mouth. He showed me each drawing, his smile widening with excitement. While I nodded and pretended to be impressed. Well, I was.
Though it became startlingly obvious that Casper didn’t have a choice who he drew. He didn’t draw fruit or landscapes, or even the sky. We live in a picturesque town, the perfect canvas for an artist. However, Mrs Wilder was at the centre of every single fucking drawing and painting, ink blot. Even with different styles and angles, she was always there. And Casper Wilder saw no wrong in it. He saw absolutely no fucking wrong in this woman taking control of every aspect of his life. His social life, his friends, education and hobbies.
I half expected him to grab his guitar and start singing about her through the glass. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was driving me crazy. We continued to talk through writing to each other, but soon enough the only subject was his mother. Casper asked me if I could rate a drawing he was working on. It was her. Of course it was. I ignored him, getting to my feet and holding up the sign I had written weeks before. But I was too scared to show him.
I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, but I had to know. I had to know several things which had been keeping me up all night
“Why are you okay with your mother controlling your life?” I asked in bold letters.
And below that: “Also… I’ve been wondering this for a while. But what is that thing behind you?”
The thing behind him was at the centre of my thoughts. I’d worked out it wasn’t a chord for a TV or a games console. Not even a laptop, or for his guitar. Not to mention it was always there. Morning and evening, even at night when I spied him getting ready for bed. This thing was always on the floor, snaked across his bed. Sometimes it was even wrapped up on his desk. I couldn’t understand the length of it. I asked friends at school, and even the internet. But my descriptions didn’t do it justice. A long, silver chord like thing which didn’t have an end.
Casper blinked at my message. Before he ducked his head and started writing before holding up his response.
“I love my mom.” He said, doodling a little heart. “She doesn’t control my life. I like that she’s in it.”
Below that, a follow up message which twisted my gut. “What do you mean? I don’t see anything, Phoebe.”
Tapping my pad with my pen, I struggled to think of a response. There was no way he couldn’t see this thing. It was pretty hard to miss. Instead of writing, I pointed behind him.
“That!” I mouthed, using my lips for the first time. It felt good to actually talk to him. Even if a window of glass separated us.
“What?” His handwriting was slipping slightly. And I noticed his hands were visibly shaking. “What can you see, Phoebe?”
This time, he stood up. I noticed something change in him, the notepad slipping off his knee. Casper turned around, scanning the room.
Before his eyes finally found the cord-thing. His smile seemed to dampen, eyes going wide, fists clenching.
“Casper?” I hurriedly wrote when he didn’t move for a while. His gaze was glued to the chord. I watched his eye follow it around the room, before his hand slowly raised, trembling fingers moving to his neck, and then the back of his head. Was there an insect? That’s what I thought. It must have been a spider, or some kind of bug which had startled him. I could only describe his expression as close to catatonic. He stood up, but then quickly slumped back down. But not like it was his choice. As if he was being dragged back down by an unseen force. Like one minute I was looking at Casper Wilder, and then I was seeing a stranger. A completely different person take over a rapidly paling face. Something snapped inside my gut when he moved forwards suddenly, his arms lunging out to close the curtains.
But that wasn’t the end of what I saw. The boy had unknowingly left a splinter, a tiny gap allowing me to glimpse. I expected him to react to whatever had freaked him out. But instead, he simply flopped back onto his bed. This time, I noticed the silver chord jolt with his movement. He was already asleep, his eyes closed. I watched him, my heart diving into my throat. There was no way he just fell asleep like that. It was too fast.
Mrs Wilder came into his room soon after. But I only got a glimpse of her because she was already striding over to the window. I ducked behind my bed, panic creeping up my spine. I expected the woman to start yelling at me through the window, but instead she simply pulled the curtains properly shut. Mrs Wilder definitely saw me. And even if she didn’t, Casper’s messages to me were still piled on his bedsheets. I was left completely in the dark, then. I stood and pressed my face against the window, fully aware that I was addicted to the mystery surrounding my neighbour.
My mind began to wonder to uncertain and scary places.
What exactly was Casper’s mother doing to him behind the curtain? I wanted to believe she was simply tucking him in and saying goodnight, but the strange chord-like thing on the ground, and how he’d reacted to noticing it—for what seemed like the first time. His change in expression, like a different person had taken over him, and that person was… scared.
Catatonic. I refused to believe Mrs Wilder was innocent. I waited for him to draw his curtains again—but he didn’t. Casper’s window stayed completely blocked for days. I stopped hearing his siblings in the yard, and after days of nothing, mom reiterated her warning to me over dinner. “No communication with the Wilder children,” she told me. “Which includes notes and letters.”
Busted.
So, Mrs Wilder knew we were talking.
I wondered if she was punishing her son for breaking the rules—and that was why he had been MIA for the last few days.
“There’s something wrong with Casper.” I worked up the courage to tell mom “The boy next door. I think Mrs Wilder is hurting him.”
“Hurting him?”
“Yeah, like…” I frowned. “I think she can make him go to sleep when she wants.” I pulled a face. “Like, hypnotism—or maybe even drugs.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“Drugs, mom.” I said. “Mrs Wilder is drugging her seventeen year old son!”
“That’s nice, honey.”
“Are you even listening to me?” I leaned across the table, stabbing the page of her book. “Mom! Casper Wilder is a total blank slate!”
“I’ve told you a thousand times. She’s protecting them,” she hummed. “You have just seen far too many crime dramas—and your generation have been poisoned by the likes of crime entrainment. Finding what you think is your own mystery must be fun, but you are reaching, baby.”
“Reaching?” I prodded my own temple. “I’m sorry, were you not listening when I told you he doesn’t even know what video games are?”
Mom was acting weird. Usually, she talked about school with me, and at least tried to engage in conversation, but she was too busy reading the book Mrs Becker has recommended her. It was like talking to a brick.
“You’re being ridiculous, Phoebe,” she turned over a page with a sigh. “I’ve spoken to his mother. She’s a lovely woman. We’re having lunch next week. I met her in the grocery store."
“What a coincidence,” I shot her a look over my phone. I was looking up child abuse helplines. “You’re suddenly best friends with the neighborhood witch when I’m caught talking to her son.” Dropping my phone for emphasis, I stood up. “If you would just listen to me—"
“That’s enough.” Mom cut me off. She finished her coffee, grabbing her jacket from where it was slung over a chair. “Stay out of trouble, okay? I’m heading back to work. I’ve left cash if you want to order pizza. You have other interests, alright? Please. Leave Mrs Wilder alone. This obsession you have with her kids is unhealthy. Why don't you stick to fiction, hm?"
Yeah, no.
As soon as she was gone, I sprinted to my room to see if Casper’s curtains were open. To my dismay, though. They weren’t.
Frustrated, I yanked mine shut too.
Slumping onto my bed, I continued looking up helplines. I got bored soon after and started googling chords and wires which fit the description of what I’d seen.
There was a match, though it was on a weird medical website which looked like it had been made in 2005. The interface was outdated, and according to the description, it was some kind of clamping device. There were a lot of words I didn’t know, and after further googling, I was getting increasingly more confused. Until my gaze flicked to a section at the bottom of the page. According to whoever wrote it, the chord in question was experimental. There weren’t many in circulation, but it was mainly used in medical centres such as specialist surgeries and hospitals. When I scrolled down, there was a diagram which showed a long chord-like thing labelled as “The body” and a sharp looking needle. Something warm crept up my throat and I sat up, frowning at the screen. Was that it? Was that thing the end?
And what did this thing even connect to?
A sudden THUD made me almost jump out of my skin. I slid off my bed.
THUD.
It was coming from my window. My curtains were still shut, blowing in the slight breeze. Slowly, I made my way over, my spine tingling.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
The first thing I saw was red. Bright, intense scarlet spattering the Wilder boy's window. Then I glimpsed Casper. He was slamming his face into the glass, over and over again, his already bleeding nose exploding with more red. But it wasn't the boy I knew. The kid I had gotten to know over the last few months. No. This kid was a mess of torn up clothes, bruises yellowing his eyes and scratches sliced into his flesh. My first thought was his mom. She must have done this to him. But then my gaze was finding his bloodied nails, and claw marks on his arms and cheeks. There was something white wrapped around his head, a bandage.
I could glimpse red leaking through, smudging clinical white and pooling down his temples in sharp rivulets. Casper's eyes were an enigma in themselves, a mixture of fear and confusion, and almost feral look of anger and frustration. But the twitch in his lip and between his brow, was evident that something was fighting that.
Emotions and feelings he wasn't feeling himself.
It was like looking at two different guys. One was Casper, the artist who lived next door, who ended every message with a smiley. While this twisted other self, a self which was broken out and was feral in his expression, was a whole other person. I started to realise the more I looked at him, at the mess of flesh and blood caught between his nails, and his trembling hands every so often creeping to the back of his skull before jolting and coming back to curl into fists, battering the window--- he had clawed into his own head.
Immediately, I reached for my phone. But he already knew what I was going to do.
“No!” He mouthed, shaking his head—so I grabbed my notepad. I could barely write.
“What’s going on?” I held up my pad. “Are you okay? You’re fucking bleeding!”
Instead of using a pen and paper, Casper squinted, blinking rapidly. His handwriting was different, a manic scrawl, as he wrote in the explosion of blood on the window.
When he twisted around, his gaze going to the door, the breath caught in my throat. Someone was yelling his name. I could tell by his reaction. His bloodied fingers clawed at his face and hair, at bald patches and rugged stitches lining his scalp and the back of his skull. They kept going, a narrow line of stitches all the way down his neck, and presumably his spine.
My thoughts flashed back to the equipment I’d been looking up. This kind of thing was designed to bury into the brain and spinal cord. I looked for it, but the thing was nowhere to be seen on him. It was no longer on the floor. Casper struggled to write coherently. I notice he kept swearing, his finger smudging the words he was trying to write. This was more like it, I thought. This was the kind of boy I had expected to be the kid next door. “Fuck.” He shook his head, his movements erratic as one hand went to the back of his head and came back slick with glistening red.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck!
He slammed his fists into the window in frustration, but I was already seeing his message start to blossom and make sense.
“WHO.”
Casper was crying. I could see that he could barely breathe, struggling to inhale, swiping at his eyes with smudged fists.
“AM.”
“I?”
I started to back away, but he continued. When he’d finished, he wrote it again and again, growing more and more fraught.
I jumped when he slammed his head into the glass of the window again. At first a part of me thought he was using his blood for paint.
So he was intentionally hurting himself to draw more.
But his words spelled it out for me in black and white.
Who am I? He wrote. WHO AM I? WHO AM I WHO AM I? WHO AM I?
This time I could barely even read my own handwriting. I held up a scrap of paper.
“DID YOUR MOM HURT YOU?”
I gestured to the bandage on his head, and he stumbled back, wild eyes searching for something to write with.
“THAT WOMAN.” He scribbled in block capitals.
“THAT WOMAN IS NOT MY FUCKING MOM.” He wrote, before he dropped to his knees. He was still writing but failing to show me.
I don’t know who I am.
He wrote the same thing 12 times, before tearing up the paper and burying his head in his lap.
I gave up writing messages.
“Casper!” I shouted.
Then I threw a rock at his window, and he lifted his head, blinking rapidly.
Gesturing for him to open up his window, he struggled with the latch for a moment before pulling it open.
I stuck my head out of my own window, cold air hitting me in the face. “I’m going to help you.” I managed to choke out. “Hold on, okay?”
Casper clawed at his face. "Help me." His voice was a sharp hiss. "Please help me. I don't know who I..." His fingernails ripped into the flesh of his cheeks, but he barely seemed to feel it, to be fazed. They kept going, digging into layer after layer. "I don't know who I am." He jumped up suddenly trashing his desk and throwing his laptop against the wall. He reminded me of a child having a tantrum. In this case though, it was more than acting out. I was sure that Casper Wilder didn’t exist. "I don't know who I am. I don't know... fuck... I don't know who I am!”
His eyes found mine, and I could have sworn I saw something there, buried deep, deep inside his pupil.
He blinked, and it was gone.
“You need to tell me what she’s done to you.” I said stiffly. “Tell me what she’s done to your head.”
Casper was only growing progressively more frenzied. Animalistic. He came back to the window, slamming his fists into it. Then his head. Again and again. Like he was trying to knock himself out. "Help me. I can't remember... I can't remember who I am. I just know.. I know her.”
His lips suddenly twisted into a startling grin.
“Mom.” He whispered, his expression softening. “My mom.” His gaze flicked to the desk. “She won’t like that I’ve… I’ve made a mess.”
“Your mom did this.” I gritted out. “I’m calling the cops.”
His expression was scaring me. Whatever was in his eye was scaring me. But this boy needed help. He needed to be taken out of that house.
"No." Casper sobered up. "No, my mom... my mommy said... she said no police." His eyes widened suddenly, seemingly noticing the mess of the window for the first time. “Oh, no.” Casper stumbled back. “I should… I should clean this. Before my mom sees what a mess I made.”
His door opened, and another head poked through.
Another guy. I figured it was one of his brothers. Freddie, or Issac. He too had a bandage wrapped around his head.
His brother’s eyes found the blood spatters, and then me. Like his mother, he strode over to the window, shutting the curtains.
But I could still hear it.
A mechanical whirring noise, followed by Casper’s sharp breath and the sickly crunch of metal protruding through blood and bone.
That was it.
“Mom!” I yelled. I’d heard her come back earlier. She must have finished work early.
I stumbled downstairs to tell her to call the cops, but a shadow was already looming behind the corner. Before I knew what was happening, a wet rag stinking of pool cleaner was being pressed over my mouth and nose.
I don’t remember passing out. When I woke up, I was lying on my mom’s couch. It was dark outside, but the curtains were open. My foggy thoughts drunk in slithers of moon poking from between the clouds before registering I wasn’t alone. Sitting up, my stomach galloped. There was no sign of mom. But I recognised each of the faces surrounding me. Mrs Becker was sitting with her legs crossed, delicately sipping from a cup. And next to her, wearing a smug smile, was Mrs Wilder. She wasn’t looking at me. Instead, her eyes were lovingly glued to something which had been built over mom’s coffee table. It was made completely out of paper. The scraps of paper I had been using to talk to her son. Though there weren’t just my messages. I glimpsed Casper’s writing too. It was a house. I was staring at a perfect paper rendition of the Wilder house. And next to it stood four little paper dolls.
There were no faces. No expressions. Just four dolls. Two boys, and two girls.
Though in her lap were more. Mrs Wilder’s nimble fingers were working to make more of them. They filled her lap differing in sizes.
“Phoebe, is it?”
Her voice was smooth like chocolate. I could almost mistake it for kindness.
I nodded, my heart in my throat. I was watching her create another doll. She folded a piece of paper in half, cut it in two, and started to fold sections, bringing the doll-form to life. This one, unlike the other, did have attention put into it. She had even added the birth mark on my right temple, following that, colouring in my dark blonde hair, and finishing with my jean jacket. Mrs Wilder didn’t have to spell it out for me. When she got to the doll’s head, she shocked me, by tearing it off. Then she ripped off its arms and legs and tearing its torso in half.
Mrs Wilder straightened up. “Phoebe, are you aware of a mother’s instinct?”
I couldn’t reply. Instead, I was staring at the paper-doll she had set alight. I watched smouldering orange rip into it, before she put the fire out, dropping the blackened paper doll on the carpet. For just a brief second, I could have sworn the hem of my jacket had also caught alight. Just a single flash of orange. But maybe I was seeing things. “I was pregnant with four beautiful children,” she said softly. “As soon as I found out, I had already named them.” Her smile was dreamy. Melancholic. “Freddie. My little Freddie. He kicked quite a lot. Oh, and Matilda. She and her twin were quite the pair, I must say. Swiftly draining me of my energy so I had to take medication.” Mrs Wilder chuckled.
“And finally, Casper. Named after my favourite movie. I loved him with all of my heart. He was my little fighter.” She quickly lost her smile, her gaze flicking to me. “I hope you understand that if you talk to, or even the breathe the same air as my children again, I will rip you apart too.”
Mrs Wilder never raised her voice. She didn’t need to. I was terrified of her.
She held up my doll for emphasis, before throwing it in the paper dollhouse. “Or… perhaps you could become another daughter of mine, hmm?” I couldn’t move, my body paralysed when she leaned over me, cruel eyes drinking me in. “Maybe not.” She hummed. “I only take the dead or dying.” Straightening up, she sighed. “It’s not a hard task, Phoebe. Keep away from my children and I will keep away from you.”
The two of them left after that, leaving me unable to move. To breathe. They took the dollhouse. All of the paper. Even my own doll.
Casper has been unreachable since. Mom has hardly been at home—and I’m starting to lose my mind.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who or what Mrs Wilder is, but I’m afraid she’s going to keep adding to her collection.
Whoever those kids are, they’re not hers. I think she’s taken them. She’s using them as canvases. Dolls. For what she’s lost.
Am I next?

Superman Retuns was a misfire. Coming at a time when comic book movie audiences were wanting to look forward and reinvent rather than look back and reminiscence, the return to the Donnerverse was not needed nor apparently greatly desired. The film has been referred to as bland and boring, to which I agree but my solution isn't simply "more action." I feel the overall issue is much larger and I'll break it down here.

Casting

Have Parker Posey and Kate Bosworth switch roles. There's your homage to Donner: the Routh/Posey age difference matches up with the Reeve/Kidder one, not to much Posey is more Lois-esque while Bosworth being a young, pretty face matches up with Lex having a ditzy henchwoman he can manipulate as Kitty.

The Journey Back (From) Home

Oddly enough, the Superman Returns video game had a more interesting story than the film by simply adding extra narrative parts and layers. So, we'll start with the beginning where Superman literally returns from his 5-year pilgrimage to the remains of Krypton. The film shows Clark crashing landing back on Earth in Smallville right outside the Kent home. I'd love to stretch out this return by focusing more on what Superman did while in space. Not necessarily what he sees of Krypton but a detour he's forced to take on his way back to..................WAR WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!
In the game, Mongul finds Superman's ship in space, takes him captive and forces him to fight on War World. Of course, Supes makes it through with ease and gains freedom by defeating Mongul. So, we'll carry that over for the sake of action but also narratively to show a consequence of Kal-El leaving Earth as there are other beings in the galaxy that want the Kryptonian but could potentially also find their way to Earth for trouble. Movie starts with a bang and some intrigue before settling down for the Clark/Martha reunion. All this can be spliced with what Lex was up to during the 5 years.

A Not So Welcome Back

To me, Superman's return to civilization was a little too easy and clean. He got his job back at the Daily Planet and citizens are happy. Yeah, Lois isn't happy to see him but there's not much struggle outside of that. I love the airplane rescue scene and the only thing I'd change is that the baseball game audience is more annoyed with Superman interrupting the competition. Not so much a hatred or even resentment for leaving but definitely a "we're cool with leaving because we don't need you anymore but you're ruining our entertainment, get lost." Almost as if the people of Earth take Kal-El for granted since he's defeated all the evil available. To them, Superman's return is an unnecessary distraction to the time of peace. And here lies Clark's main obstacle: he no longer fits in. Earth doesn't need him and there's nowhere for him in space to feel at home. Cue the montage of sad Clark walking around Metropolis, realizing it has changed in his absence and everyone's moved on without him. Which leads me to......

Jason

Fans found the inclusion of Superman having a son to be overkill but I do not. I just feel a little too much focus was paid to it and that the subplot was more complicated than it needed to be. Let's just be straight up: Lois should not be with Richard White. She has a 5-year old son, we the audience knows that only Superman could be the father and people in the movie don't bother poking around because Lois is a single mother who happens to be the world's greatest reporter. Case closed. I'm not saying completely remove Richard from the movie but just have him be someone who is romantically pursuing Lois, playing off of the conundrum with Superman's return. To further separate this film from the Donnerverse, let's throw in Lois already knowing that Clark is Superman and that fact being clear between them. Overall, it just helps add to the tension between Clark and Lois while giving additional layers to the relationship with a sense of pre-established history.

Lex's Plan and More Action Physical Threats

The blackout Lex creates keeps it's original purpose of distracting Superman so he can steal some Kryptonite but, to lift from the game, it causes the unexpected consequence of Bizarro being released from whatever prison he was held in. Again, pre-established history and world building plus more action. It's at this point that Supes is at a low point. He's confused at the situation he's in and a bit angry. Bizarro is his chance to let that anger out but also realize it's not a good place to be in. The clone is defeated, civilians are saved from damage made and Kal-El recognizes a flaw (which is insecurity) he has before making strides to correct it when he realizes Bizarro doesn't have to mental capacity to know he's doing wrong. And, thus, Superman spares him and sends him back to prison in a wholesome way.
Fast forward to the third act where Lois (let's leave Jason out to limit the focus and to save the revelation of him having powers for another time) is kidnapped by Lex on his yacht and then the Superman/Lex confrontation on the floating Kryptonite landmass. What I'd add is something to wrap the entire story together. While the remnants of Krypton were real, the possibility of life on side remnants are to be a hoax created by Luthor five years prior. Superman's time away was basically a machination created by Lex to get out of jail, reclaim some wealth and regain power in case Kal-El ever return. Luthor explains all this and then proceeds to kick the ever loving shit out of Superman. As in the movie, Superman survives with the help of both Lois and Richard. And then he saves the day with Lex failing to get away due to Kitty's attack of conscience.

But Wait, There's More!

While in the hospital for his injuries, Superman receives confirmation of his (and our) suspicions that Jason is his son when Lois whispers into his ear. She goes to leave and officially rejects Richard's advances, amicably agreeing to remain friends. Which is a cool thematic thing to do because while Richard is Superman-esque, Lois does not pick to be with him because he doesn't have the duality balance like Clark/Superman has. Anyways, Superman sneaks out of the hospital to visit Jason. But, before he can do that, Mongul arrives on Earth for a rematch. Knowing he has both a son and an entire planet to protect from this invader, Superman shakes off being less than 100%. Yay, more action that is also story driven! Supes wins, Mongul admits defeat and departs with his tail tucked between his legs as Metropolis cheers their hero on. Finally reaching Jason, Kal-El recites Jor-El's speech to him as he sleeps as we end the film on a hopeful note. Superman rediscovers his place on Earth and has someone to share his lineage with while also getting back with the woman he loves as his city finds appreciation for him again. Thus, proving that the world needs Superman, who gets to enjoy feeling needed in both sides of his life.

The Revised Plot

Superman has been missing for five years, since traveling to the location where astronomers believed they had discovered the remains of Krypton. Superman flies to the distant galaxy in the space rocket that his father sent him to Earth in to investigate the ruins of his homeworld and to see if there is anything left. He finds only gigantic, asteroid-sized chunks of kryptonite, pieces of the planet that were irradiated by the supernova that destroyed the great civilization. Superman turns his ship around and heads back to Earth, but along the way he is intercepted by Mongul and forced to compete in gladiatorial combat in Warworld. Mongul first puts him against an elite team of warriors known as the Plahtune, but the Man of Steel easily beats them. Next, Mongul himself steps into the arena to battle Superman. Though he is powerful and possesses great strength, Mongul is still no match for the Last Son of Krypton. At the conclusion of their fight, Superman picks up Mongul and prepares to deliver what would most certainly be a killing strike. Mongul taunts him, "Go on, Superman. You know you want to." Superman then throws Mongul to the floor and states that the fight is over. Superman then finds his ship and sets off for Earth, but Mongul vows that he will find him.
During his absence, Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor was released from prison, married a rich widow to obtain her fortune upon her death, broke into the Fortress of Solitude and stole data crystals. Superman, having failed in his quest to find surviving Kryptonians, returns to Earth and, as Clark Kent, resumes his job at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. He subsequently learns that Lois Lane is being courted by Perry White's nephew Richard, has a five year old son named Jason and won the Pulitzer Prize for her article "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." Meanwhile, Luthor uses the Kryptonian crystals for an experiment that causes an electromagnetic pulse that leads to power outage on the East Coast releases the genetic creature, Bizarro. The power loss interferes with the flight test of a Space Shuttle to be launched into space from its piggy-back mounting on an airliner, occupied by Lois Lane, who is covering the shuttle story. Clark flies into action as Superman and stops the plane from crashing onto a baseball stadium.
Superman's has difficulty coping with the fact he feels that the world has moved on from him. With Superman distracted by an out-of-control vehicle (a diversion involving Luthor's henchwoman, Kitty Kowalski) and Bizarro’s rampage throughout Metropolis, destroying buildings and attacking citizens, Luthor steals Kryptonite from the Metropolis Museum of Natural History. Though Bizarro is of equal might, Superman is a much more experienced fighter. In the end, Superman defeats Bizarro, but does not kill him because he knows that the poor creature is incapable of understanding his actions.
Perry then assigns Lois to interview Superman while Clark investigates the blackout. Lois sneaks aboard Luthor's yacht and is captured after she decides to hold interest in the blackout story, which she connects to Luthor's experiment. He reveals to her his grand scheme of being behind the hoax of there being signs of life on Krypton and using one of the stolen Kryptonian crystals, which he has combined with the Kryptonite, to grow a new continental landmass in the Northern Atlantic Ocean that will supplant the continental United States and kill millions of innocent people. The crystal begins to create Luthor's new landmass, while Lois attempts to escape but is attacked by a henchman. Meanwhile, Superman is attempting to minimize the destruction in Metropolis caused by the new landmass' growth using his full array of powers, including his strength, freeze breath, and heat vision when Richard arrives in a sea plane to rescue Lois. Superman soon arrives to help and then flies off to find Luthor.
Meeting Luthor, Superman discovers the landmass is filled with Kryptonite, which weakens him to the point that Luthor and his henchmen are able to brutalize and torture him. Superman is stabbed by Luthor with a shard of Kryptonite before he falls into the ocean and is left to drown. Lois makes Richard turn back to rescue Superman, whereupon she removes the Kryptonite from his back. Superman, after regaining his strength from the sun, lifts the landmass after putting layers of earth between him and the Kryptonite. Luthor and Kitty escape in their helicopter; Kitty, unwilling to let millions of people die, tosses away the crystals that Lex stole from the Fortress of Solitude. She and Luthor are stranded on a desert island when their helicopter runs out of fuel. Superman pushes the landmass into space with the crystals trapped on the landmass, but is weakened by the Kryptonite and crashes back to Earth. Doctors remove more Kryptonite from Superman's wound, but after it is removed they cannot penetrate his skin with their surgical tools. While Superman remains in a coma, Lois and Jason visit him at the hospital where Lois whispers a secret into Superman's ear and then kisses him. Superman later awakens and flies to visit Jason then an old enemy returns for a rematch. Mongul has followed Superman to Earth. Superman recites his father Jor-El's last speech to Jason as he sleeps and confronts Mongul after once again. The fight is fierce, but as before the Man of Steel emerges victorious. Mongul admits that he is defeated and flees Earth. Lois starts writing another article, titled "Why the World Needs Superman." Superman reassures her that he is now back to stay, resuming their relationship, and flies off to low orbit, where he gazes down at the world once again.

Just Finished my first, Hardcore run and I love the quality of the remake. Now I am a Giant Re4 fan, my first and favorite, most played, resident evil game from when I was young, so keep that in mind. I didn't have to much trouble on my first run and finished it after a good 12 hrs (took my time) and overall had a great time.
First Impressions, I would rate the Re4make a.... 6.5/7 (Remember 5 is average)
Now as a Re4 fan, by far my favorite aspect was its attention to detail, using set pieces from the original yet adding/expanding upon the original was great. Was able to use my memory but not enough to predict everything that would happen. What I want from a remake, changes were used to improve upon but not completely. Also despite the lack of stages, that shooting range bonus theme, TOP TIER Music!
Loved Ashley becoming a full character and while Luis put me off initially (clunky lines) I loved the time spent with both of them. Both Krauser and Saddler put me off initially but appreciate their development, as characters and bosses (aside typical giant monster end boss, ehh)
Now the less favorable...
Contrast, I hated how Ada was portrayed, no shade to her VA but least her direction was so subpar and lacked any emotion really. Guess ill have to replay Re2make but since this is new cannon I guess she's no longer capable of showing much emotion, something that would be a tool for a smart capable badass spy, and I didn't see any chemistry with Leon... I really don't care for her anymore... its very sad in my heart.
I Hated the merchant, Overall he was a neat improvement in character, but mechanically he talks so much, every page, repeats, nonstop. I honestly would have preferred him to be silent. Shame but I'd kill for a toggle...
​
Similarly to an other post I saw, I feel the magic is not here as it was in the original. Gameplay was fun but definitely not as FUN. Now not to say its bad, but comparably different. Felt similarly for 8-village (which was also based on re4 lol)
The mob armor RE has introduced is more genre realistic but kills fun and smoothness, paired with the gameplay limiting ammo/crafting for a dynamic tense set up really keeps me closer to the ground. Don't get me wrong I will likely 100% it but I don't see myself replaying this like in the future as I did with the OG, Which is fine.
Playing through Hardcore really making the difference with lack of stun especially when you then can get stun locked yourself. To get around it I can play safer, but that isn't as overall fun.
Tone and gameplay are a big shift from OG which again, isn't a bad thing. but comparably I cannot help but notice the Re games are kinda becoming more generic and similar. The thing that Resident Evil 4 had was it was unique genre wise. Gameplay was fun interactive without keeping the player down (it honestly was a much easier game which let it be funner-er)
​
Overall initial thoughts around Re4make are still very positive ,its a good game, even better remake in some ways (really sparked my disdain for Re3make and ever slight Re2make in that world building /map sense) but gameplay was definitely the lacking aspect for myself, (bluntly put- generic and less fun). Again still in 2nd professional playthrough and plan to 100%. But the highs are in different leagues, especially when one product has more complexity.
Hard to put in text but wanted to put my initial thoughts out, see more discussion of some potential letdowns in a solid Resident Evil Game and better Remake.

Background: I am a freelance photographer that works in a diverse range of genres - event documentary, club-level sports (mostly cycling), headshots, product, editorial, and real estate. My primary tools until recently were the D850, D810, GH5 (for video), the 24-70 2.8E + 70-200 VR2, and almost all the tilt-shift lenses in Nikon's catalogue.
I recently acquired a Z9 and 24-120 f4 and used it for the first time 'in anger' for a paid corporate launch event job. I just wanted to share my opinion that this camera has been an absolute 'game changer' for my practice on several fronts. The initial investment was painful, but I can see it paying off very quickly in terms of higher image capture success rates and decreased client impacts in the field.
I had experimented with a Z6 for about 2 years and really enjoyed the mirrorless experience, but didn't trust its AF enough to use it for a paying client. The viewfinder blackout and D750-like interface also got in the way for me. I also hated having to rig up a Ninja V anytime I wanted to record 4:2:2 10-bit video.

1. Weight/ergonomics

I am getting to an age where my previous setup of D850 + MB-D18 grip + 24-70E + 70-200 + monobloc wireless flash was causing physical pain. A recent mountain bike event that involved hiking to different vantage points along rough singletrack was the deal breaker. The Z9 as a total system is saving a significant amount of weight and bulk. The new batteries are also eliminating the frequent changes I needed to do with EN-EL15s. Recent audit of my sports images in Lightroom showed I never actually exceeeded 120mm, and the 24-120 has freed up the need for lens changes. (The sports agency I subcontract with actually tell the photogs to not go wider than f4 for the bulk of client images!) The grips are very secure and I ended up removing my neck strap for the whole 3+ hour job.

1. Silent shutter

The corporate client told me after the job that they were really happy because it was like I wasn't there! (I think there's a subtext there.) I was able to sneak in between the audience and actually photograph next to their ears for that 'focused speaker framed by defocused audience' image without people turning around and giving me dirty looks. The D810, D850, and D3S I've used in the past for corporate and panel presentations was like farting during meditation time. Unfortunately there are a few shots where minor banding snuck into the background (presumably due to fluoro lights), so I'll have to fiddle with the anti-flicker settings a bit more.

1. Autofocus

My eyes are starting to give up on me, and I am depending on AF more and more. I was beginning to struggle with using the OVF on the D850, and its central AF point distribution somewhat limited my composition in AF-tracking shots. I also found that I could not rely on its Continuous 3D tracking, and ended up using Group or 9-point Continuous with manual positioning. A lot of cycling shoots ended up being manual prefocus. On the other hand, the Z9 nailed focus with its 3D tracking and face/eye detect pretty much 98% of the time in this corporate event. Occasionally it got thrown by a robot version of pareidolia and detected faces in random objects. I'm yet to use the Z9 for fast sports action, so the verdict is out on that.

1. Chimp-style photography

Documenting an event by looking at Live View alone has been liberating. It is easier to engage with other people and I found myself holding a better overall posture (no squinty hunch). The Z9 really excels for this - it's more like a video shoot that happens to be creating stills. The only negative I've found is that camera shake is more likely to occur than holding the camera up to the eye, so I've adjusted the shutter selection in Auto-ISO to +1.

1. Flash - WTH is TTL & TTL-BL doing?

I've never been able to accurately predict what Nikon's TTL and TTL-BL is doing, even on the DSLRs. As a result I ended up dumping my pile of SB900s and gone full Godox. I've kept an SB600 around as it still works on my film F100 body. I ran a few tests on the Z9 using the SB600 to function as a shadow-fill over slow sync ambient (-1.7 to -2.3 compensation) and the thing was all over the place in A mode. M mode, maybe a little better - but still not that consistent. For some reason a Godox X-Pro trigger in TTL mode with an AD300Pro on a handle was more consistent! I'm yet to try an SB5000, but to be honest I'm not sure if I can be bothered. Apparently Nikon messed something up with the D780's compatibility with older speedlights as well?

1. Post-processing

A few notes: (1) Lightroom has improved leaps and bounds in performance over the last 2-3 years. (2) I tried NX Studio for this job to take advantage of the factory WB features and superior highlight recovery, but OMG this software is soooo laggy (especially when dealing with 1500+ images). I gave up after 30 minutes and went back to LR. (3) LR seems to be applying more luminance noise reduction on Z9 files than it does on D850 files in its standard profile. I noticed a bit of 'porcelain doll' skin toning in the high-ISO images. Not a big deal as I downsized the delivered files, but it's something to be aware of.

1. Verdict (so far)

This is an incredible piece of technology - IMHO just as revolutionary as the original F4 and D3. It just gets out of the way and lets me create photographs without fighting the equipment. I recommend it to any event photographer looking at dumping some weight. I just need to decipher what's happening with the speedlight. I am still learning more about it and adjusting to the workflow, but overall I am really happy with it. We'll see how it goes in a future cycling event job, but I'm optimistic. I've also yet to use it with my shift lenses on the FTZ for architectural / real estate work, but I used the D850 in live view for those genres previously so I don't expect any problems.
EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is how the Z9 (and mirrorless as a whole) has eliminated the frustrating faff that is unique to DSLRs: AF fine tune. It was so frustrating with the D850, as the MP count really showed how imprecise the old-school phase detect system is. Besides the fine tune values that varied across a zoom range, and values that even varied in a fixed focal length across different focal distances, it would also miss focus annoyingly with focusing on the same thing repeatedly. This is the issue that Roger Cicala of Lens Rental fame discusses at great length in his blog posts.

Part 21: https://www.reddit.com/Viidith22/comments/11jmouq/my_roommate_is_slenderman_part_21_act_3/
I raised an unsteady hand, then put it down, “I’m sorry, I’m still not sure what it is I’d even be agreeing to. What’s going on in there?”
“About half of everyone who knows what’s going on in Tenyit Lane is in there.”
“So government conspiracy theories? I think I’d like to go home.”
“You have to know what’s going on, he kidnapped you too, you must’ve seen what I had on that computer.”
“No, I–” My mind flashed back to that morning, I’d woken up, seen the laptop open, no file transfer notification, “I mean, maybe, but I was too drunk to remember anything I read.”
“Darren wouldn’t have known that though. Just come in, we have evidence I’m not bullshitting. I mean, look at you, 30 minutes ago, you ate that asshole’s arm, you killed a man, and look at you. So just give it a chance, maybe I’m right, maybe shit around here is off, maybe, just maybe, the government is keeping a close eye on all of us for some crazy reason.” He pulled a necklace from under his shirt, “See how this crystal glows?”
“I’ll grant you your other points, but if you’re trying to tell me something that could have an LED in it is magic, buddy you are not preaching to the right choir.”
“Here,” He pulled it off his neck, unwrapped the twine, and handed me the bare crystal, “Look at it closely, as it’s sitting in your hand, just look at it.”
Rolling my eyes, I humored him. But, there was nothing there, looking into the glowing blue crystal was akin to looking at scuffed glass. I could see my hand straight through the entire gem, “Weir-”
“Now, close your eyes, and focus on your hand.”
I turned to face him, chin down, eyebrow raised, “You did not just ask me to do that.”
“No, seriously, just do it. If nothing happens, I’ll take you home. But, if you do feel it, you have to agree to join us.”
I gazed out in front of us, staring at the ten-foot concrete wall, “Okay.” I faced him, “If I feel anything, I’ll come in.”
He looked excited for a moment, before catching on, sighing, “Alright, that’ll have to do, but you have to stay and talk with a couple people at least.”
I took my turn to sigh, “Fine.” Closing my eyes, I focused on my hand, only a few seconds passed before I noticed it. It felt like something was taking up the empty space inside the atoms that made up who I was. Like the emptiness between the electrons and the nuclei was being filled. But as I focused more, a new sensation came through, like a magnet, the energy was being pushed away from something inside of me. Like an immune system fighting off a disease, the energy was halted, and whatever was inside me grew more aggressive.
I dropped it, my eyes sprung open, and I threw the door off its hinges, wanting, needing to get away from it. I shook my body, rubbed my face, and silently cursed to myself as I stamped in circles, trying as hard as I could to forget the maddening sensation.
I heard something from Scott’s direction, “WHAT!”
I finally stopped, staring at him as he spoke, “Just come inside with me, it’ll all make sense, it must’ve rejected you or something.”
“OR SOMETHING!? Oh that’s rich! You think I’m going to follow you in after!..” I took a breath, trying to think, “Whatever the FUCK that was!?”
His face lost all emotion, “YES GODDAMNIT! You said you would! Now you’re going to follow me inside, and we’re going to discuss everything! Do I make myself clear!?”
“The fuck we are!”
He made his way over to me, “Jesus Christ! Despite EVERYTHING, we couldn’t be more different!” He calmed, putting his hands on my shoulders, “Now, we’re gonna go in there, have a talk with the others, and you’ll understand everything. Do you hear me?” He stared uncomfortably into my eyes.
Despite his serious expression, his eyes were flat, like a dead fish. Yet, there was something relaxing in them, “Yeah, I uh… sure. Let’s have a talk, I agreed to it and all.” Following behind him, we made our way into a house, then down a set of stairs to the basement, which is where he pushed a tool cabinet aside, and we made our way down a set of stairs.
“How lo–”
“Let’s just make it down, then you can ask.”
About 10 steps down, I could hear the sound of laughter, before we eventually made it to an underground mancave. It had to be a good 20-30 feet below the road.
A couple of people went quiet as we reached the bottom, where ten or so people were gathered. An older woman made her way to us, the second person being a younger man, a mid-20s artistic type. He probably listened to The Beatles, and turned on Beethoven when his friends got in the car for the sake of it.
“Welcome Joseph, seems you’re new to town, and already sticking your nose in all sorts of government secrets. They sure have been slacking.”
“What the hell was on Scott’s laptop?”
A couple of seats scooted, and a few more voices went low, “Scott? You had unencrypted data on your computer?”
“He brought it to my, or Darren’s computer shop, when he was erm… still alive.”
The 20 something was about to say something when the woman’s tone quieted, approaching a whisper, “Allow me to get this straight Scott, you not only had freely accessible data on your computer, highly incriminating data that could rat all of us out, you also took it to a computer shop. It would be greatly appreciated if you could explain every little detail involving that.” She gripped one of his shoulders, and I could see the pain grow on his face. Then, she turned to me, smiling, “As for you, I need you to tell Brandon here everything that happened at, wherever you two came from. Don’t miss any details, we haven’t seen Scott in a couple of days, and everything around here goes by word of mouth.” She waved me off Scott following behind.
“Alright, let’s hit the bar, you can tell me everything there.” His voice sauntered as he pointed his thumb to an indent in the concrete wall to the right.
“God, that sounds amazing.”
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“Really? That’s everything that brought you two here?”
“Yeah.” I said, finishing off my second pint of whiskey, “Guess it kind of explains why I can drink so much, but I’m still iffy. What do you think?” Without hesitation, he grabbed my arm and sliced a bit of skin off my forearm. I shot it back, “Hey! What the FUCK!”
“Pull your arm back out, let’s have a look.”
I eyed him, putting my arm out in front of me, “So wha-” as I stared at my arm, I hesitated. It was already clotted and scabbed over. Which reminded me of the hole that’d been stabbed into me. I pulled my shirt up, seeing there was only a tiny scab left, and there was already extensive scarring around it. “I-I need to sit down.”
“You uh, you already are.”
“Then I need to lay down.” I stood, hyperventilating.
He slowly helped me to a couch, asking a little too politely for everyone to get out of the way, then leaning me down.
As my head hit the arm-rest, my brain pounded like I stood up too fast with a caffeine headache after a bender. My vision blurred and the room was too bright. All of the days events played on a loop, running through my mind at the speed of sound, only stopping momentarily to focus on the most traumatic events.
Eventually, my breathing slowed, my vision cleared, and my mind became more tolerable. “I-I need to l-leave. I don’t belong here. I need to go back to my life. I have to–”
“Didn’t you just ea– or ki… Isn’t your boss dead now?”
“I… need to get back home. This isn’t where I should be. I need to get back to Te…” My mind was struggling to latch onto something. Something familiar, yet completely foreign, like a language you’ve heard of but never learned. “I need to leave this place.”
“Hey, is he alright?” I heard Scott ask.
I rolled to my left side as much as I could to look at him, “What do you think?” Right as he went to open his mouth, “I want you to take me home, right now. I came in like I said I would, but this place, I just… I can’t. I’m sure I might help at some capacity, but honestly, I don’t want any part in what you guys are doing. There’s nothing for me here.”
He glanced at Brandon, who took him aside. A couple minutes later, he came back, “Look, we can’t have you leave just yet. There’s too much we’d be risking. So we need to ensure you won’t tell anyone.”
“So what, you’re gonna bug my phone and shit?”
“Actually, we’re going to rewrite your memories of getting here. As well as my name. Everyone else here uses an alias, but, well, you’re gonna forget my real name so it doesn’t matter too much.”
“Is it safe?”
“Well, you’ve already been through a similar process a few times, you should be fine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
His eyelids flattened, “Just follow me.”
My memories around that point in time get distorted. I remember someone sitting me in a chair, then them holding my head between their hands, and in the moment I forgot Scott’s name as well as a few other details. Then I was blindfolded, and ended up at my house. At the time it felt like I’d just been on a long drive after the whole Darren situation.
I wanted to drink, I wanted to simply stop existing, I wanted everything to end. The next couple hours are still a haze, though I presume it was mainly due to the alcohol consumption as opposed to anything else. However, one aspect of that day/night has stuck with me, parts of it haunt my dreams, other parts relieve me to this day, and I honestly can’t say whether or not I’m glad I made the decision. But no matter how much I think on it, I can’t take it back. It was something about sitting on the couch, then I set the bottles on the coffee table. Then I was in the kitchen holding the business card with a D on it. I think it was shortly after that when I grabbed the bag from my junk drawer and downed the whole bag of mushrooms.
I remember after 20 minutes or so a strange sense of anxiety washed over me, and my stomach twisted. I stumbled my way to the bathroom, convinced the shitty whiskey was finally getting to me. I laid in front of the toilet for a good while, waiting for something to come up, when my vision grew wavy, then a crash of euphoria hit me and I started giggling. Feeling better, I headed to the couch to throw something on.
A short while later, a new wave slammed into me and I couldn’t see anything I was looking at anymore. Tears streamed down my face as kaleidoscopes twisted in my eyes. The swirling color took on a life of its own as it no longer had regard for spacetime. I could suddenly feel each eternity between the seconds of reality. My brain was working at the pace of a supercomputer, causing me to age a millenia a minute. My mind was malleable, reforming lost neural connections, and I could feel each fiber reconnect, causing lost memories to surge their way through my mindseye. My body was fused with the couch, all I could do was sit and experience. My mind was suddenly just that, floating consciousness in a vibrant void, and even my brain was simply along for the ride, running calculation after calculation with no regard for my conscious self. I was no longer crying, but the universe was, even the universe was simply another piece of a much grander design, simply an electron in the atom that was our multiverse.
For a few minutes, my eyes were able to focus again, I could process my surroundings with minimal distortion. Patting my face, I felt water still pouring from my eyes. I wiped it away with my shirt, then grabbed a blanket and pillow from my room, laid on the couch, and went back to the show. But before I could focus on the screen, my brain leapt forward, crashing hard into a tidal wave of emotion and colors.
Once again, I was no longer me, but simply a bundle of chemistry and experiences. While no definitive memories resurface, I recalled clumps, as if I’d dropped too much flour into my soup at once. Terry, Jane, a murder, Maerod, 7/11, seemingly random details broke surface tension, revealing a broad variety of emotions, agony, hope, loss, rage. I could only feel my vocal chords giving way, but no sounds made it to my ears, because they no longer existed in that moment. I had no control over it, and in that moment the truth dropped out of the sky, splattering my sense of self. “I” was simply a construct that no longer held weight to my brain. It was going to do its thing, the mind has already made its decision before the conscious self has allowed it to surface. The subconscious influences the conscious, while the conscious can choose to focus on something, the subconscious is what’s really pulling the strings, which–
Before I could finish the thought, the water gave out from under me, and I was suddenly drowning. All coherent thought had left me, nothing but pure emotions left, I think I screamed as I cried, but I still couldn’t hear anything. Despite that, an added shakiness came to my twisting vision periodically.
I’m not sure when I resurfaced, the coming hangover coupled with how mentally checked out I was by the end of the trip made it hard to tell. But I did eventually wake up, suffice it to say, my pillow was drenched, and I had to get a new couch.
I threw my pillow, blanket, and clothes in the wash after coming to. I felt hollow, not quite empty as emptiness implies a feeling of something that’s supposed to be there being gone. But that wasn’t it, hollow as if that’s how it was supposed to be.
I sat in the shower as it rained over me. I scrubbed slowly, trying to get the smell of piss out of my skin. I couldn’t believe myself.
After my shower of shame, I got dressed. As I left the bathroom, I did it again, “Hey Terry–” Which jogged loose a compilation of memories. My mindseye was flooded with experiences in a shabby apartment. Watching anime with a distorted fragment of a person. Cooking as two familiar voices discussed something. Then the big one came, the first time he revealed himself to me. The memory was blurred, like a moving analog camera, but the emotions were strong.
I stumbled my way to the living room, sitting on the floor beside the coffee table. As the memories faded back into being just that, I glanced to my left, noticing that strange card with the D on it. I grabbed it, flipping the card in my hand several times, then bit my lip, glancing to my right at the office door. I wanted to gain access to whatever private data the town had on me. But I knew they wouldn’t keep it online, too easy for the wrong person to snag it.
They might keep it on paper, but I can’t just ask for something like that. Clearly I’m not supposed to have any memories. So where can I go that’ll have the data I need? I dwelled on the thought for a moment, then, It might be a long shot, but if Darren… I shivered. If Darren left the laptop at the shop, I might have a chance. Whatever was on there was bad enough he was willing to kill me. Which means… I sighed in disdain, I have to see ‘him’ after I’m done.
I didn’t know where ‘he’ lived, but if I was lucky, there was a chance I could find some residual gps data when I got a hold of one of the laptops.
Grabbing a hoodie, I made my way out the door, heading out on foot due to the snow that had accumulated.
When I got there a few minutes later, the door was locked. Then I remembered how I’d gotten in just a couple days prior. Grabbing the bottom of the single window sill, I yanked up as hard as I could, hoping to break it free of the ice. Something definitely broke, but it was a more metallic sound than I’d expected. Quickly climbing through, I saw the lock had bent and tore the screws out of the window. The clanging had come from the lock piece dropping to the ground.
Shaking my head, I made my way to the desk the laptops had been. But unfortunately, they were already gone. I kicked a chair, wanting to get more pissed at the situation, but the emotional impact from the night before wouldn’t allow it. I searched each cabinet, hoping to come across anything that could point me in the right direction. Unfortunately, he hadn’t left a trace, so I hopped back out the window to try and think something else up.
If the drive from his house to one of the walls was about 15 minutes or so, and the drive from there to my house was about 10… My thoughts trailed off, Weren’t they supposed to warp my memory? Could it be the same thing as earlier? I shook it off, trying to focus, So, about 10 minutes from my house to a wall, which means... I glanced back at the shop, taking in the large concrete construct behind it for seemingly the first time. Then, I glanced down my right side at the “entrance” to town only a few blocks away, right past the bar. Trying to focus my mind, I pieced together a mental list of houses that could fit the parameters I had. In doing so, I came up with a list of four different streets, then I headed back home, threw some chains on my car, and left for the first street.
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By the third street, I started to get nervous. I thought my short look at it while leaving wasn’t enough to go off of, or that they might’ve warped my memories of the place. Or even if I found the place, the murders had already been reported. But by the time I got to the end of that street, I found the house I was looking for. It looked untouched, so I parked and went up to the door. Opening the door caused a memory to overtake me. I saw Jane, her body just laying there, head missing, cold blood pooled into a murky puddle of depression. As it passed, despite the nausea that followed the memory, everything in the house was clean. The house smelled like pine and gingerbread. Whoever had cleaned the place didn’t matter, I ran through the house searching for one of the laptops.
It took some time, but I eventually found it in his locked dresser. Running downstairs, I bolted out the door just for the ground to disappear, and suddenly, the gray sky was in front of me. The laptop slid from my fingers just before my head made contact with the doorframe, nearly knocking me out. I staggered to my feet, being cautious to not slip on the ice under the snow. Looking around, there was a small indent in the field of white. Walking over to it, I picked it back up, flipping the computer open, thankful to see it was still alive.
Sliding it under the cushion of my back seat, I got in my car, and was just about to turn the key when a sudden knocking at a window nearly gave me a heart attack. I turned the ignition, rolling the window down. Looking over at the man at the passenger side window, I couldn’t help but feel my heart drop. He looked serious, like a business man out on duty… in the snow.
“Can I help you? Erm…”
“The name’s Donavan, and I believe that depends entirely on whether or not you could answer a few of my questions.”
I blew out my nose, “I uh, no, not particularly, I’ve–”
“Got somewhere to be? I’m sure you do, and so do I. May I?” He gestured to the door handle.
“I’m sure I don’t want anything you’re selling, so may I go.”
He pulled out his phone, scrolling while he talked, “Unless you’d like me showing this to the police, I think it’d be mutually beneficial if you allowed me into your vehicle while we had our discussion. Wouldn’t you agree?” He flipped the phone, showing me a short video compilation of me eating Darren, as well as killing one of the other guys.
Despite my desire to get as far away from the man as possible, I unlocked the door, “Sure, get in, dickswab.”
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“Now then, might you be able to explain something that’s been itching at the back of my mind?”
“Please my good sir, there is no such need to display your extended understanding of the English lexicon in such a manner.”
“The least you could do is take me the slightest bit seriously.”
“Look man, you blackmailed me into letting you into my car, I’m sorry if I’m not ‘like, so totally stoked’ to talk right now.” I turned right, he’d instructed me to just go around the same few blocks until we were done.
“Alright then, who gave you this?”
I glanced over, seeing the card with the italicized D on it, “Ah, I see, you broke into my house. Pretty sure that’s a crime.”
He looked down his nose at me, I could almost see his imaginary glasses slide down a bit, “Just answer the question.”
“It came with a small package. I wasn’t even home when it was dropped off.”
“Is this the one to which you’re referring?” He held the small brown package with no label, along with the small bag that I’d so recently… emptied the contents of,
“I think what’s going on here is pretty obvious.”
“Do you?”
“I’m really not part of any one of the “third parties,” this town seems to love hosting. I’m just trying to figure out why everyone seems to have it out for me.” Remembering Scott, I glanced in the rearview mirror, wanting to get to whatever secrets that laptop held.
He also glanced in the rearview mirror, but I got the sense it was for another reason, “You know, it’s difficult to add something to a machine that’s already running. You can’t just cut a live wire when you need to add a new resistor. You can’t throw a turbo in a car while it’s on. You can’t swap a normal trigger for a hair trigger while shooting the gun. You gotta set it down, make sure everything’s stopped and cool, then you can go in and meticulously add or replace a part to whatever needs it. But the thing about new parts is, you can’t immediately leave them be, you gotta keep an eye on them, make sure they aren’t faulty. Even if you have a manufacturer’s guarantee, sometimes you get a bad part.”
“Aaaaand.”
“Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what we have. But when a replaced part is internal, and you don’t have a check engine light, well you have to rely on the effects of the engine as a whole. See, if anything has gone wrong since you added the new part. Well, you know what happens when it’s discovered a part is faulty I’m sure.”
“Sooooo…”
“So, that car you noticed a little while back, that’s why it’s following us. The effects are starting to show.” I checked the rearview mirror again, sure enough, there was a car following us, a black two door with tinted windows and a glossy finish, “Which brings me back to this card, I’m a reasonable man, if you tell me who gave you this card, I’m willing to help push this ahem side effect, under the rug.”
“Listen, I really don’t know. I was telling you the truth.” I hesitated, thinking it over, “But, if you, ‘push it under the rug,’ as you so delicately put it, I can help you find whoever sent me the package. Deal?”
“And what cards are you willing to show me to nudge me along?”
“He sent me a package once, clearly he has contacts here given the lack of any shipping details. Which says he must also know the me from yestermonth. If he has personal ties to me, there must be a way for me to lure him out.”
He smirked, “You’d really screw over the person that resurfaced your memories?”
“Anyone who has people here but refuses to save me isn’t really worth getting killed over.”
He stared at me for the rest of the block, then glanced the rearview mirror, “Well damn, I suppose I can’t argue that logic.” He pulled out a pen and small piece of paper, scribbled something down, then, “You can pull over here.” We’d reached the front of the house we started our ride in front of, “Here, call me if you get any leads, we’ll do our part to keep things under wraps.” He stopped halfway out the door, “And hey, if you do your part well enough, you might even be allowed deeper in the engine.” Then he was off, calling someone as he walked down the street.
“Yeah, whatever metaphor-man.” I crumbled up the paper and tossed it in the back, driving home in silence to finally get into what the hell was going on.
Part 23: Coming (relatively) soon.

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How to Hack a Login Page
One of the most common hacking techniques is the denial of service attack. This is where the attacker obtains a legitimate-looking website that may look legitimate but is actually a phishing attack aimed at stealing sensitive information like usernames and passwords. Once the hacker gained access to our website, he or she can use this information to escalate their own membership in the system, create spam links, delete a user's files and folders, and perform other harmful activities such as redirecting email addresses.
A common site that we encounter that is targeted by these denial of service attacks is PayPal. This is because PayPal is one of the most used websites online. Apart from PayPal, another common website hacking techniques is the clickjacking attack. This involves the hacker finding out how to trigger the vulnerable link in Adobe Flash so that the pages he or she is trying to access turns into an error page instead of allowing the user to proceed to the login page.
The hacker can also try to phish usernames and passwords of various financial institutions including those run by the United States government. Some of the financial information that the hackers can obtain include Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and passwords. Once this information falls into the wrong hands, it can be very difficult and complicated to retrieve them especially if the user was using a secure server.
How to Hack Website Admin Password.
Hackers, who do not understand the consequences of their actions, are prone to using 'hacking' methods when trying to crack the security of a website. Hacking is the process of gaining access to another person's computer without their consent. The way in which you could hack into a website is through one of the many security holes that exist within the programming language used by websites to create and maintain their functionality. Most of the time when people try to gain access to a website they do so by clicking on links that appear within the text or in the background of a video.
However, some people try to gain access to a website by bypassing all of the security measures which are placed upon it and this is known as 'Hacking the Web'. When one tries to hack into a website, it is often the case that they attempt to use the website admin password to gain access to the inner workings of the server. In order to hack into a website, one would have to crack the security password which is usually set by the webmaster and is usually difficult to guess. If a user is successful in cracking this password, it then opens up the door for further attacks to the system.
Attacks could range from stealing personal information, such as usernames and passwords, as well as damaging or corrupting files and programs. In the case of a personal computer, if a website admin password is stolen, it could mean that the owner of that computer will not be able to login to their own computer until they either reset the password or obtain a new one.
How to Hack Website Username and Password.
If you are one of the many people who have lost their passwords for their accounts on different websites, then you are probably wondering how to hack a website username and password. With the rapid increase in computer crimes such as identity theft and credit card fraud, there are a lot of unscrupulous people who would like to have access to your information.
This includes your bank account numbers, social security numbers, passwords, and credit cards. Hackers are getting smarter each day, and it has become easier for them to figure out ways to steal these valuable pieces of information. However, it is still not impossible to protect yourself from having your account details stolen.
Hack Website Online Tool.
How to hack school website it’s relatively easy to hack a website if you have knowledge of programming. Various programs exist that are programmed to automatically crawl the Internet to find websites that have changed their passwords, or have posted advertisements. These programs can easily be programmed to take down URLs and alter grades on the fly.
Once they've hacked a college website, other websites will be affected as well, and so forth. In the case of how to hack school website, other students could be caught stealing classmates' homework and grading process information. Many high schools have already lost money due to students using their credit card to buy books and other items off of a website that was hacked.
How to Hack a Website and Change it.
If you are interested in how to hack a website and change it, then you are not alone. Hackers are always looking for new ways to get at and steal information from other computers. When you are trying to learn how to hack a website and change it, you will need to understand that when you have found the right type of vulnerability, you can use this information to access some of the files that are not normally accessible.
For example, if you were to find an HTML password leak, then you might be able to change the code to display something else instead of just the plain password on the page. Hacking a website and changing it is not difficult, but you will need to know what you are doing or you could end up having some pretty bad results. Some of the things that you might want to consider if you are wondering how to hack a website and change it includes finding out if there is any type of cross-site scripting.
If the hackers already have some knowledge of the programming language that the website is using. Another thing to consider is if there is any type of cross-browser compatibility issue between the website and one of the different browsers that support the script that is being used on the website. Then, if you have the right information on the file that needs to be hacked, you will be able to find all of the information that you need to carry out the hacking process successfully.
IMPORTANT NOTICE**: If you ever need the service of a hacker to hack any website or for any other hacking service, send an email to [email protected]

Hacking Websites; Hire a Website Hacker to Hack Website and Data
What is the best way to hack a website? For some time now we have been hearing about web server vulnerabilities, including SQL injection, cross site scripting XSS and denial of service attacks. To protect our websites from such attacks, we must try to prevent attackers from accessing them in the first place. One of the most common ways hackers try to gain access to our websites is by trying to guess usernames and passwords. It may sound funny but if a hacker knows the usernames and passwords of many websites then he can use this to gain access to any database on the Internet.
IMPORTANT NOTICE**: If you ever need the service of a hacker to hack any website or for any other hacking service, send an email to [email protected]
This means that if we cannot protect our databases by changing our usernames and passwords every so often then the chance of someone gaining access to them increases dramatically. Even a small number of user names and passwords can increase a hacker's confidence enough to give him access to a database. In order to prevent this kind of attack on our websites, we must try to prevent the hackers getting into the database. The database is obviously the one that contains our customer records, login details and other important usernames and passwords.
The database security is very important because if a hacker is able to get into the database he can use it to do any damage to our company. The security of the database should be strong, but unfortunately it is not always possible to create such database security, which is why it is very important for us to change our usernames and passwords every now and then. However, even if we cannot change our usernames and passwords very often the security of our database is still very important and we should consider using database security software like the commercial products available in the market.
How to Hack a Login Page
One of the most common hacking techniques is the denial of service attack. This is where the attacker obtains a legitimate-looking website that may look legitimate but is actually a phishing attack aimed at stealing sensitive information like usernames and passwords. Once the hacker gained access to our website, he or she can use this information to escalate their own membership in the system, create spam links, delete a user's files and folders, and perform other harmful activities such as redirecting email addresses.
A common site that we encounter that is targeted by these denial of service attacks is PayPal. This is because PayPal is one of the most used websites online. Apart from PayPal, another common website hacking techniques is the clickjacking attack. This involves the hacker finding out how to trigger the vulnerable link in Adobe Flash so that the pages he or she is trying to access turns into an error page instead of allowing the user to proceed to the login page.
The hacker can also try to phish usernames and passwords of various financial institutions including those run by the United States government. Some of the financial information that the hackers can obtain include Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and passwords. Once this information falls into the wrong hands, it can be very difficult and complicated to retrieve them especially if the user was using a secure server.
How to Hack Website Admin Password.
Hackers, who do not understand the consequences of their actions, are prone to using 'hacking' methods when trying to crack the security of a website. Hacking is the process of gaining access to another person's computer without their consent. The way in which you could hack into a website is through one of the many security holes that exist within the programming language used by websites to create and maintain their functionality. Most of the time when people try to gain access to a website they do so by clicking on links that appear within the text or in the background of a video.
However, some people try to gain access to a website by bypassing all of the security measures which are placed upon it and this is known as 'Hacking the Web'. When one tries to hack into a website, it is often the case that they attempt to use the website admin password to gain access to the inner workings of the server. In order to hack into a website, one would have to crack the security password which is usually set by the webmaster and is usually difficult to guess. If a user is successful in cracking this password, it then opens up the door for further attacks to the system.
Attacks could range from stealing personal information, such as usernames and passwords, as well as damaging or corrupting files and programs. In the case of a personal computer, if a website admin password is stolen, it could mean that the owner of that computer will not be able to login to their own computer until they either reset the password or obtain a new one.
How to Hack Website Username and Password.
If you are one of the many people who have lost their passwords for their accounts on different websites, then you are probably wondering how to hack a website username and password. With the rapid increase in computer crimes such as identity theft and credit card fraud, there are a lot of unscrupulous people who would like to have access to your information.
This includes your bank account numbers, social security numbers, passwords, and credit cards. Hackers are getting smarter each day, and it has become easier for them to figure out ways to steal these valuable pieces of information. However, it is still not impossible to protect yourself from having your account details stolen.
Hack Website Online Tool.
How to hack school website it’s relatively easy to hack a website if you have knowledge of programming. Various programs exist that are programmed to automatically crawl the Internet to find websites that have changed their passwords, or have posted advertisements. These programs can easily be programmed to take down URLs and alter grades on the fly.
Once they've hacked a college website, other websites will be affected as well, and so forth. In the case of how to hack school website, other students could be caught stealing classmates' homework and grading process information. Many high schools have already lost money due to students using their credit card to buy books and other items off of a website that was hacked.
How to Hack a Website and Change it.
If you are interested in how to hack a website and change it, then you are not alone. Hackers are always looking for new ways to get at and steal information from other computers. When you are trying to learn how to hack a website and change it, you will need to understand that when you have found the right type of vulnerability, you can use this information to access some of the files that are not normally accessible.
For example, if you were to find an HTML password leak, then you might be able to change the code to display something else instead of just the plain password on the page. Hacking a website and changing it is not difficult, but you will need to know what you are doing or you could end up having some pretty bad results. Some of the things that you might want to consider if you are wondering how to hack a website and change it includes finding out if there is any type of cross-site scripting.
If the hackers already have some knowledge of the programming language that the website is using. Another thing to consider is if there is any type of cross-browser compatibility issue between the website and one of the different browsers that support the script that is being used on the website. Then, if you have the right information on the file that needs to be hacked, you will be able to find all of the information that you need to carry out the hacking process successfully.
IMPORTANT NOTICE**: If you ever need the service of a hacker to hack any website or for any other hacking service, send an email to [email protected]

Hacking Websites; Hire a Website Hacker to Hack Website and Data
What is the best way to hack a website? For some time now we have been hearing about web server vulnerabilities, including SQL injection, cross site scripting XSS and denial of service attacks. To protect our websites from such attacks, we must try to prevent attackers from accessing them in the first place. One of the most common ways hackers try to gain access to our websites is by trying to guess usernames and passwords. It may sound funny but if a hacker knows the usernames and passwords of many websites then he can use this to gain access to any database on the Internet.
IMPORTANT NOTICE**: If you ever need the service of a hacker to hack any website or for any other hacking service, send an email to [email protected]
This means that if we cannot protect our databases by changing our usernames and passwords every so often then the chance of someone gaining access to them increases dramatically. Even a small number of user names and passwords can increase a hacker's confidence enough to give him access to a database. In order to prevent this kind of attack on our websites, we must try to prevent the hackers getting into the database. The database is obviously the one that contains our customer records, login details and other important usernames and passwords.
The database security is very important because if a hacker is able to get into the database he can use it to do any damage to our company. The security of the database should be strong, but unfortunately it is not always possible to create such database security, which is why it is very important for us to change our usernames and passwords every now and then. However, even if we cannot change our usernames and passwords very often the security of our database is still very important and we should consider using database security software like the commercial products available in the market.
How to Hack a Login Page
One of the most common hacking techniques is the denial of service attack. This is where the attacker obtains a legitimate-looking website that may look legitimate but is actually a phishing attack aimed at stealing sensitive information like usernames and passwords. Once the hacker gained access to our website, he or she can use this information to escalate their own membership in the system, create spam links, delete a user's files and folders, and perform other harmful activities such as redirecting email addresses.
A common site that we encounter that is targeted by these denial of service attacks is PayPal. This is because PayPal is one of the most used websites online. Apart from PayPal, another common website hacking techniques is the clickjacking attack. This involves the hacker finding out how to trigger the vulnerable link in Adobe Flash so that the pages he or she is trying to access turns into an error page instead of allowing the user to proceed to the login page.
The hacker can also try to phish usernames and passwords of various financial institutions including those run by the United States government. Some of the financial information that the hackers can obtain include Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and passwords. Once this information falls into the wrong hands, it can be very difficult and complicated to retrieve them especially if the user was using a secure server.
How to Hack Website Admin Password.
Hackers, who do not understand the consequences of their actions, are prone to using 'hacking' methods when trying to crack the security of a website. Hacking is the process of gaining access to another person's computer without their consent. The way in which you could hack into a website is through one of the many security holes that exist within the programming language used by websites to create and maintain their functionality. Most of the time when people try to gain access to a website they do so by clicking on links that appear within the text or in the background of a video.
However, some people try to gain access to a website by bypassing all of the security measures which are placed upon it and this is known as 'Hacking the Web'. When one tries to hack into a website, it is often the case that they attempt to use the website admin password to gain access to the inner workings of the server. In order to hack into a website, one would have to crack the security password which is usually set by the webmaster and is usually difficult to guess. If a user is successful in cracking this password, it then opens up the door for further attacks to the system.
Attacks could range from stealing personal information, such as usernames and passwords, as well as damaging or corrupting files and programs. In the case of a personal computer, if a website admin password is stolen, it could mean that the owner of that computer will not be able to login to their own computer until they either reset the password or obtain a new one.
How to Hack Website Username and Password.
If you are one of the many people who have lost their passwords for their accounts on different websites, then you are probably wondering how to hack a website username and password. With the rapid increase in computer crimes such as identity theft and credit card fraud, there are a lot of unscrupulous people who would like to have access to your information.
This includes your bank account numbers, social security numbers, passwords, and credit cards. Hackers are getting smarter each day, and it has become easier for them to figure out ways to steal these valuable pieces of information. However, it is still not impossible to protect yourself from having your account details stolen.
Hack Website Online Tool.
How to hack school website it’s relatively easy to hack a website if you have knowledge of programming. Various programs exist that are programmed to automatically crawl the Internet to find websites that have changed their passwords, or have posted advertisements. These programs can easily be programmed to take down URLs and alter grades on the fly.
Once they've hacked a college website, other websites will be affected as well, and so forth. In the case of how to hack school website, other students could be caught stealing classmates' homework and grading process information. Many high schools have already lost money due to students using their credit card to buy books and other items off of a website that was hacked.
How to Hack a Website and Change it.
If you are interested in how to hack a website and change it, then you are not alone. Hackers are always looking for new ways to get at and steal information from other computers. When you are trying to learn how to hack a website and change it, you will need to understand that when you have found the right type of vulnerability, you can use this information to access some of the files that are not normally accessible.
For example, if you were to find an HTML password leak, then you might be able to change the code to display something else instead of just the plain password on the page. Hacking a website and changing it is not difficult, but you will need to know what you are doing or you could end up having some pretty bad results. Some of the things that you might want to consider if you are wondering how to hack a website and change it includes finding out if there is any type of cross-site scripting.
If the hackers already have some knowledge of the programming language that the website is using. Another thing to consider is if there is any type of cross-browser compatibility issue between the website and one of the different browsers that support the script that is being used on the website. Then, if you have the right information on the file that needs to be hacked, you will be able to find all of the information that you need to carry out the hacking process successfully.
IMPORTANT NOTICE**: If you ever need the service of a hacker to hack any website or for any other hacking service, send an email to [email protected]

blend file
I'm not a 3d printing guru, I've added grooves in the pieces for ball bearings, spacers for the gears, and a larger gear to drive the mechanism. but other than that, I'm setting it out into the wild, in hopes that someone will be able to make it printable. with some sort of running mechanism, wind up would be cool, but adapting a standard clock mechanism would probably be best in terms of reliable-ish time keeping and ease of getting components.

1. NEVER look at the gardener
2. Enter doors only after knocking
3. The clocks need daily winding
4. House staff and visitors must mask.
5. Every statue in the Long Hall must be COMPLETELY covered
6. Rule three repeats for the grandfather clock; set again before leaving
7. Wrong deliveries occur daily!
.... Only accept on the second attempt, not the first or third
.... Run the package to the center of the hedge maze.
.... Leave the maze within five minutes.
8. Depart Kilgore Court for any video calls; video and photography are strictly prohibited!
I reviewed the list of rules from the advert one more time as I stepped off the bus. Crumbling stone walls bordered austere Victorian houses lining the narrow street. At the top of the hill, the current caretaker for Kilgore Court, Pim Perrin, met me beside a towering wrought-iron gate. Small and straight-backed in a gray suit, he would have cut a dapper figure were it not for the ostentatious beaked and feathered mask that covered his face.
“Good morning, Sam Miller,” said Pim, extending a wrinkled hand. “Your references claim you excel at following instructions to the letter, and have never broken a rule.”
“Correct. I am task-oriented. People call me computer-like.” I shrugged. Less flattering terms had been used for me. Inflexible. Anal-retentive. I was not popular with classmates, who disliked my perfect obedience to all posted signs and placards.
“That is just what we need here, Sam. Now...” Pim reached into a bag and from it pulled a feathered mask identical to his own, but newer. “Wear at all times, except in the sitter’s quarters.”
“Why?” I nearly asked, but caught myself. Who was I to question the whims of the wealthy? Especially at the generous pay I was being offered for my three week stint while Mr. Kilgore and his staff went overseas.
I heard the smile in Pim’s voice as he said, “It’s all right for you to ask questions. Mr. Kilgore is a bit of an eccentric. Anyone who enters the house, even for a short time, must wear a mask. The magpie mask represents the sitter. Any other questions?”
I mentally reviewed the rules. “Never look at the gardener?”
“He is superb at his work but has an unusual deformity and becomes violent if anyone sees it. It is unlikely you will meet him, but if your paths cross, just keep your eyes averted and he won’t bother you.”
Peculiar, but if the man excelled at his job, perhaps his skills were worth the inconvenience of his idiosyncrasies.
The remaining rules seemed self-explanatory, except, “Rule seven, the delivery...”
“Oh, THAT.” He chuckled. “If you’re still curious in three weeks, I’ll tell you. Just be sure to leave the maze quickly. There are some flora at the center that induce pretty powerful hallucinogenic effects after more than a few minutes. Nothing bad will happen to you if you stay longer, but…”
“I will set a stopwatch.”
“Good. The regular staff will attend to most things when they get back. Your presence is mostly for the packages and winding the clocks. Beyond these rules, the rest of the time you may spend at your leisure.”
“Really? It’s that simple?”
“It’s that simple,” Pim agreed.
The House
An ornate staircase wound upwards, flanked by towering columns stretching to a domed ceiling. The view outside the windows showed a dazzling sea of green dotted with flowers like stars, and topiary animals dancing among them.
Pim showed me a coat room with extra masks for visitors. He led me through each area of the mansion, knocking at each door, winding the clocks, and lastly checking all the dustcovers in the Long Hall. Having finished nearly everything in under an hour, he took me out to the garden, where despite the beautiful greenery, the odor of rot wafted to us.
“Carrion flowers,” explained Pim, sweeping his arm toward a variety of strange blossoms with spotted red petals as large as my arms. “Their blossoms mimic the smell of decaying flesh. We have a greenhouse, too, full of orchids in the genus Bulbophyl—” His fingers caught my arm.
A dark shape lumbered in our periphery.
I almost turned my head—
“Rule one,” hissed Pim, his grip nearly cutting off my circulation.
I kept my face resolutely forward, resisting the urge to flick my eyes to the lurching figure at my periphery… The gardener swung something trunk-like—an arm? A gardening tool? I couldn’t make out any features without looking.
“Face forward,” said Pim. “Do. Not. Look.”
A moment later the gardener shuffled off.
Pim released my arm. “Apologies,” he said. “That surprised me. I don’t remember this ever happening.”
“It’s all right. I probably would have looked if you hadn’t reminded me.”
“Just be alert when you are in the garden and averting your eyes will become second nature. Come. I’ll show you the sitter’s quarters, and then we will be done for the day.”
Sitter’s Quarters
The sitter’s quarters was a separate suite of rooms with a little balcony, a private bathroom with a clawfoot tub, a study, and its own kitchen and laundry. This suite belonged to Pim himself, though he told me, “It is for the sitter’s use, and while I am away, you will be the sitter, so use it as your own.”
Strange pictures hung on the wall. One, “The Bone Closet,” depicted an ordinary closet door opening to a scribble of black, scrawled circles that might have been eyes peering out. Another, “Statues,” showed a figure in the Long Hall reaching from under a dustcover, seemingly trying to grab a visitor by the ankle. The most disturbing, “Skinless Man,” depicted a figure who appeared to be stitched from a patchwork of skins, bits of him dropping away while he sewed on a new piece at his belly. Pim told me the artworks had all been rendered by the original caretaker, also named Pim Perrin (apparently the name was passed like a title). From an old black and white photo, the original caretaker was Pim’s opposite in every respect, towering and obese where Pim was dainty. His face was also grotesquely disfigured. As for Pim—while he informed me that in this suite, masking was not required, still, he kept his on, as much part of his uniform as his jacket and tie.
One door in the suite led to a chamber that did not match the gothic décor: a security room, with monitors to the front gate, veranda, and porch.
“The CCTV system is finicky but you need not worry unless there is a break-in. Should any emergency arise, call me before anyone else, even the authorities.” Pim took from his pocket the heavy brass key to the house, which he placed into my hand. Then he pointed to a prominently framed list of rules on the wall. “Obey them all, Sam. From now on, the rules are your software.”
Day One:
After performing my allotted tasks, I took out my laptop (no wifi—but I found I could connect with my phone as a hotspot) and typed up this post. I was in the middle of describing the pictures when the doorbell rang—so loudly it made me jump. I nearly rushed to answer, but then remembered rule 7. Absurdly, I had to ignore the initial delivery attempt. The rules are your software. The package I accepted on the second delivery was large and heavy. I held my breath against the smell of the carrion flowers and brought it to the center of the maze.
I did not encounter the gardener.
Day Two:
The Long Hall contains dozens of shrouded statues beneath its gold-gilded fresco ceiling. The heavy dustcovers are always slipping off, hence rule 5, “Every statue in the Long Hall must be COMPLETELY covered.” I was about halfway through checking the covers when behind me came a soft whispery—shhhhlllp. At first I thought it was a draft, but when it happened again, I looked back and noticed the arrangement of the statues had changed. One of the tall sheeted shapes was now closer to me than it had been a moment ago.
Thinking I’d imagined it, I turned back to my task.
Shlllllp.
The hairs on my neck stood straight. Even though I knew it was foolish, I could not get out of my head the artwork of a hand reaching out to drag in the nearest passerby. Still, I tried to ignore it and continued my task—
Shhhhhpt.
I whirled, and choked back a scream. A dozen of the shrouded statues loomed around me. The nearest had its arm extended, fingers poking from beneath the sheet, scarcely on inch from my face, so close I glimpsed actual fingerprints swirled into the marble. A diamond glittered on its finger. My stomach clenched, and I nearly fled, but my habit of obedience whispered: Rule 5. I forced my shaking fingers to tug the sheet over the statue until it was entirely covered. After checking the rest of them, I rushed for the door. Knock, whispered Rule 2 in my mind. As soon as I did, it was like a sigh went out of the room. I cast one final look back.
The statues were all in their original positions.
Day Three:
A rule was broken.
When the doorbell rang for the second delivery attempt, the driver shuffled his feet and asked, embarrassed, “Uh… say, do you think I could use your bathroom real quick?”
After consulting the rules, I retrieved a mask from the foyer cloakroom. “Put this on.”
“Oh, is there like, a party or something?” He laughed, turning over the elaborate mask—a goat that vaguely resembled his goateed face—before putting it on. “How do I look?”
I ushered him to the sitter’s quarters bathroom. My only goal was to get him in and out. After a very quick few sounds, the toilet flushed, and he emerged, raving about the fluffiness of the hand towels. I escorted him back out the front door to his delivery truck, relieved to watch him drive away. Afterward, I delivered the package to the maze, then made myself tea while reading some notes written by the original caretaker.
Judging by the ravings (they were in an old journal I’d found in the study), the man was quite insane. A common thread—various books and articles on the shelves detailed how members of the Kilgore family had gone mad or missing over the generations. And not only family. Supposedly, quite a few visitors had died mysteriously or disappeared—including a bride on her wedding day (reminding me of the ring I had seen on the marble finger of the hand reaching for me). “Most of the reason Kilgore Court is booked for weddings and events is because people hope to see the lights flicker or an apparition float by,” Pim told me yesterday, after I called about the statues. “And sometimes the staff oblige by tinkering with the electricity or wobbling the tables.” He’d insisted the moving statues was a hallucination brought on by the hedge maze flora outside the Long Hall’s windows, and advised that chamomile tea would mitigate the effect—
DING-DONG!
I ignored the ringing as I finished my tea. Then I went to use the bathroom—
I froze.
A small black phone lay on the edge of the sink.
“Shit,” I hissed, snatching it up. The ringing hadn’t been the third attempt. I darted to the CCTV.
On the screen, the driver was at the front door, banging. He flung his hands up and then walked down the porch steps and round to the garden.
I rushed downstairs, scrambling to fasten my mask. A horrible feeling churned in the pit of my stomach. My feet flew over the marble floor as I dashed to the veranda and down the garden steps.
At the bottom of the steps, I froze.
The driver stood in the grass, keys dangling in his limp fingers, looking—
I shut my eyes. “Hey! Hey, you!” I shouted. “Visitors are prohibited from being out here!”
The driver ignored me. I staggered forward until I reached him and grabbed hold of him. His body was rigid, as if rigor mortis had set in; it felt as if he had flexed steel for muscles. I tried to tug him, but a strange sound came from his lips—a sort of chuckle. A stench made me gag—the man’s bowels had loosened. And beneath the reek was something else—putrid like old meat. I let go of him and dry heaved. And that’s when I saw it. Not looked at it. Thank God, I only glimpsed it from the corner of my eye, because if I had really looked, I doubt I’d have been able to tear myself away. The gardener stood at my periphery—broad-shouldered and enormous, with a face far too long and slick, oily skin. Like liquified flesh.
The driver was petrified, twitching and giggling while the gardener took a lurching step forward—
“Huuuuuuuughhhhhhh…”
A sound between a bellow and a moan shook the air.
I panicked, slipping on the wet grass, dropping the driver’s phone and scrambling back, mostly navigating by feel until my knuckles slammed up against the veranda steps. I scrabbled up, barely remembering to knock before entering and then dashing up to my quarters. “Ohgodohgodohgod!” I dialed Pim, hands shaking. “Rule one!” I burst. “Rule one! He—he—he—"
“Slow down, Sam—" After listening to my babble, Pim interrupted with: “Let me check the veranda camera—"
My fingers were already dancing over the keys, bringing up footage. The veranda camera only caught the back of the driver, still standing just as I had left him, viewed from behind as he gripped his keys and stared, his posture taut as a hare about to bolt.
Suddenly, he jerked the keys up to his face and jammed them into his eyes—
I clapped a hand to my mouth.
“Sam? Sam are you there—”
“He… he’s stabbing his own eyes….”
The keys kept jamming in and out.
“Sam.” Pim’s voice was cool, calming, as if speaking to a child. “What you see on your screen, and what I see on my phone screen, are different. They’re different because you’ve just come out of the maze. Look out the window. Do you see anything in the driveway?”
I tore my gaze away from the CCTV and looked outside the window. “N-no.”
“If the driver had blinded himself his van would still be there. He obviously needs his eyeballs to drive.” Pim spoke dryly. “You’re imagining things. Drink some chamomile tea and then look at the cameras again. There’s nothing there—"
DING-DONG!
“Oh!” I bolted upright. “Maybe that’s him now—”
“STOP!” Pim almost yelped. “Rule seven! Third delivery!”
“O-oh…” I stammered, chastised.
“That was too close… No slip ups, Sam. Ever. Break a rule, and we have to let you go. You won’t have the money to move out of your parents’ basement. They want you out, right?”
How was it Pim Perrin knew about that? Had I mentioned it in the interview? Or… of course. The address I put on my application was the same as my parents’. He was a very astute man, very exacting. Like me. But whereas Pim was successful, I had failed at all my previous employment attempts, and at good relations with my family, because I am too rigid, too… inflexible. I am only good at obeying rules. If I cannot succeed at this job, with its simple rules, then I can succeed at nothing. I drank the chamomile Pim suggested and, after collecting myself, set the grandfather clock and departed. There was no trace of the driver out front—only the tracks of the delivery van. Whatever I’d imagined I’d seen was too nightmarish to be real. But if I did not wish to be susceptible to the same influences that I suspected drove the original caretaker mad, I’d have to be careful to spend as little time in proximity to the garden as possible, confining myself mostly to the sitter’s quarters.
House Rules
That night I had a dream in which I stood in the study, and the pictures were much more vivid, each moving as if alive as I reached out to the rules sign and flipped it over. On the reverse were explanations for each of the heretofore inexplicable rules:
1. NEVER look at the gardener—the sight induces unbound terror and madness
2. Enter doors only after knocking—un-knocked doors lead to the bone closet
3. The clocks need daily winding—their chimes cast the veil
4. House staff and visitors must mask—the skinless man stalks the unmasked! There is no escaping the skinless man—
I woke in a cold sweat, and hurried to scribble what I’d read before I could forget. It was only then that I noticed a hidden meaning embedded in the rules. A message designed, I was sure, by the same hand that painted all those bizarre images that had wormed their way into my dreams. The mansion’s original caretaker spent a lifetime exposed to the maze’s hallucinogenic effects, and perhaps that worked permanently into his brain, as I suspected it was beginning to work into mine.
I took the first word of each rule and the punctuation and put them together to decipher his warning:
NEVER enter the house. Every Rule Wrong! Only run. Leave. Depart!
Nor did his warning end there. He embedded one more secret—the secret of what he believed to be the true nature of this grand old mansion. If you want to know what it is, just remove the numbers and read the first letter of each line.

I have a 2016 Rubicon 6 speed manual. I'm not a mechanic but am handy and the biggest job I've done is replace a clutch on a civic.
What are some some tools I should invest in to be able to do any maintenance that may come up in the next 100k miles? Besides a wrench/ratchet set.
Any other advice for longevity besides regular oil and air filter changes would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!