everything falls out of focus, you walk through the door

So I'm frantically trying to get through as much as possible of the Shop and Hop before I fold up for the time being (and yes, I know, I KNOW, I should have been done by now!) and finally reached Aluveaux Technologies. And their gift--shown below--is a universal door plug-in:



And I got all excited. Granted, Tannhauser Gate Stations has iris doors, but still! Sounded potentially neat!



Okay! They put up a build, showing how the doors work! Though, come to think...this one doesn't seem to have doors in it...



Oh. ...Oh. Well, that's...unfortunate...

So some bugs in the system yet. Pity.

cry to the angels and let them swallow you

So, I've developed something of a thing for artificial intelligence machine learning. There's a lot of different ways to do it, and I've read articles on all of them, it feels like. But one that's growing in popularity is image generation. I started playing on Deep Dream, then, a few years later, moved to DALL-E (which is now https://www.craiyon.com/), then to NightCafe Studio, and finally I was accepted to the Midjourney open beta (that last link will open a Discord prompt to join their Discord server, which is how they enable the image generation system through a bot function).

Let's take an example I found through Midjourney. The search prompt was "beautiful woman modeling a stunning silk floral kimono outfit, in the style of Alexis Franklin and Tom Bagshaw, no blur". So this is what that turned up for Midjourney:



Great detail, wonderful differentiation, little fuzzy on the hat, and in the fourth image, the hand looks somewhat detached, but otherwise, this could be four different portraits hanging in a gallery somewhere.

Meanwhile, the same search term through NightCafe brings us, well...this:



Great pattern, style very similar to a kimono, black sticks for arms, headless, but decent.

And that brings us to Craiyon, where I ran the same prompt. Midjourney nets the user four to six detailed images, depending on detail of prompt, which the requestor can then reiterate, or evolve. NightCafe nets the user only one image, but generally extremely detailed, which can then be evolved. Craiyon does nine quick "sketches", and it's abysmal with facial recognition. These were the six that made the most visual sense:



Definite kimono, it's the right cut, the pattern's good, the pose is good. And at least with a side profile, it doesn't look so completely like the face is distorted.

And for all of these, I didn't chop off the heads, they came that way.



Remember what I said about their AI engine not quite..."getting"..faces? This is an excellent example. You can tell that it IS "face", but...not much beyond that.



The third only works, I think, because the head is cut off...



The fourth is not a kimono, but it's a great pattern, and it's a pretty perfect attempt at a sari. Face is still very odd.



This one's not as bad at some of the others, but it's still not the best face.



And this one could have walked straight out of a J-horror film.

There are some ethical concerns with the technology, to be fair--this article lays them out fairly well for Google's Imagen generator--but it's one step further for machine iteration in the goal for independent consciousness. And that is still fairly exciting to me.

Ultimately, we'll just have to realize we're moving into the era of post-reality, and adjust as we can.

do you think, do you think that they notice? (part CX)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part CIX.)

Artifact recovered from Gray Area data files:



Margin note: rational vectors of protection, eroded by the Blight.

FILE ENDS

(Continued in part CXI.)

oh, wishful drinkin'

So, this is not a medical blog, and I am not a medical professional, and I most certainly am not advocating anyone take anything in this particular entry as a recommendation. Why I am posting this, however, is for the information value in the graphs and the study. So take that into account.

This link leads to a downloadable .pdf concerning a study that was released in 2001, but the information is still not well known. The graphs posted below are in the study, "The multifaceted and widespread pathology of magnesium deficiency" by S. Johnson, but I think it's worthwhile to also post them here.



Please click for larger versions of these. This one mainly documents the effects low serotonin levels and magnesium deficiency (see chart below, and again, click for full version) have on the human body.



Which brings us to the rest of the charts.



This one largely lays out links between vitamin B2 and zinc deficiency as well as magnesium deficiency.



This is mostly how magnesium deficiency impacts the gastrointestinal system, though it also displays--glaringly--the connection between muscle cramps, Tourette's, Parkinson's, and myasthenia gravis.



This one pretty much goes everywhere, because magnesium deficiency in humans is the start of many ills, but I'd point towards the kidney and liver impacts.



This mostly lays out the wide spectrum of ailments that can cause magnesium depletion as a side effect. Apparently it's not just emotional self-sabotage that's a gift in humanity, but biological self-sabotage. How fun!



And finally, the direct effects of zinc deficiency when paired with magnesium deficiency, with a side of vitamin K deficiency effects for flavor.

Again, I am not a doctor, I am not advocating self-diagnosis of anything. But at the least, if you see yourself in any of these, maybe talk with your doctor about a magnesium level test. They're not standard, but they're also not hugely expensive, and many insurances are happy to comp tests before surgery or other more invasive treatments.

tell myself that I'm not thinkin' 'bout how I could drown, drown, drown, drown (part CVII)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part CVI.)

Transmission of anticipate research thread. Capture from Gray Area before Transdiminsional and Temporal Event.

JAYNES' EVIDENCE:
Jaynes built a case for this hypothesis that human brains existed in a bicameral state until as recently as 3,000 years ago by citing evidence from many diverse sources including historical literature. He took an interdisciplinary approach, drawing data from many different fields.[3] Jaynes asserted that, until roughly the times written about in Homer's Iliad, humans did not generally have the self-awareness characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today. Rather, the bicameral individual was guided by mental commands believed to be issued by external "gods"--commands which were recorded in ancient myths, legends and historical accounts. This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very muses of Greek mythology which "sang" the poems. According to Jaynes, the ancients literally heard muses as the direct source of their music and poetry.

Jaynes asserts that in the Iliad and sections of the Old Testament no mention is made of any kind of cognitive processes such as introspection, and there is no apparent indication that the writers were self-aware. Jaynes suggests, the older portions of the Old Testament (such as the Book of Amos) have few or none of the features of some later books of the Old Testament (such as Ecclesiastes) as well as later works such as Homer's Odyssey, which show indications of a profoundly different kind of mentality--an early form of consciousness.[ref. 3 again]

In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.[4]

Bicameral mentality would be non-conscious in its inability to reason and articulate about mental contents through meta-reflection, reacting without explicitly realizing and without the meta-reflective ability to give an account of why one did so. The bicameral mind would thus lack metaconsciousness, autobiographical memory, and the capacity for executive "ego functions" such as deliberate mind-wandering and conscious introspection of mental content. When bicamerality as a method of social control was no longer adaptive in complex civilizations, this mental model was replaced by the conscious mode of thought which, Jaynes argued, is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical language learned by exposure to narrative practice.

According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state of mind would have experienced the world in a manner that has some similarities to that of a person with schizophrenia. Rather than making conscious evaluations in novel or unexpected situations, the person would hallucinate a voice or "god" giving admonitory advice or commands and obey without question: One would not be at all conscious of one's own thought processes per se. Jaynes's hypothesis is offered as a possible explanation of "command hallucinations" that often direct the behavior of those afflicted by first rank symptoms of schizophrenia, as well as other voice hearers.[2]

Bicameralism[1] (the condition of being divided into "two-chambers") is a controversial hypothesis in psychology and neuroscience which argues that the human mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys--a bicameral mind, and that the evolutionary breakdown of this division gave rise to consciousness in humans. The term was coined by Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,[1] wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3,000 years ago, near the end of the Mediterranean bronze age.

Late Bronze Age collapse
The Late Bronze Age collapse was a dark age transition in a large area covering much of Southeast Europe, West Asia and North Africa (comprising the overlapping regions of the Near East, the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, with the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Caucasus), which took place from the Late Bronze Age to the emerging Early Iron Age. It was a transition which historians believe was violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive, and involved societal collapse for some civilizations. The palace economy of the Aegean region and Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages.


(Fig. 1, Invasions, destruction and possible population movements during the collapse of the Bronze Age, c.  1200 BCE. Attributed to Alexikoua.)

(Continued in part CVIII.)

oh, I reach for you, well I'm terrified of these four walls (part XCIII)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part XCII.)

Standing in the computing lab aboard new Tannhauser Station, Rusty stared at the floating box in the quantum isolation tank, dodging the security drone as it made another pass. "So...how did Hiro get in the box, again?"

Justine answered without looking up from her data padd, sidestepping nimbly out of the path of the drone, "So...you remember the clone?"

"Yes...no."

"OK. The Duke went missing on the Gray Area. We didn't know where. After a pre-set amount of time, STANs security protocols decanted the last saved upload of the Duke's consciousness into a clone so the Duchy would not be without its leader, and maybe we could find out where Hiro...who we call Hiro Prime...went, and why"

Rusty nodded, moving out of the way of the drone again.

"But something went wrong with the clone. There was...the attack. Remember that?" Seeing him nod, she continued. “The drone was...terminated," carefully using the passive voice and trying not to think too hard about that day. "We couldn’t grow another one. Not enough axolotls."

"Axolotls," he repeated, afraid to ask.

"Mmhmm," she replied, too distracted by the task at hand to hear the question in his voice. "STAN went kind of nuts, put Tannhäuser Station on lockdown and then initiated full destruct protocols for all Duchy holdings. All of them. STAN wouldn't let me stand us down, we needed passcodes only the Duke had access to. So I came up with a plan to decant the stored digital Duke and tissue from the dead clone into a Quantum Entanglement Cube in hopes that would establish quantum communication with our lost Hiro enough to get the codes and cancel the destruct sequence." She paused, completing the final connection and testing communication with the consciousness in the isolation chamber, staring at the face on the box within. "It was more complicated than that, but it worked and we're still here. Well, a different 'here' but whatever. We're in it."

"And why was the box in Caledon II?"



"Oh. Yeah. Remember the tentacle monster attacks? Well, it turns out that, because of the...the um, 'nature' of the Duke, having more than one instance of him in a single physical/temporal reality causes disruption to the local fabric of space-time. That's what opened the inter-dimensional rifts that let the monsters in, after Hiro Prime came back on the severely damaged Gray Area. So we removed the box to the Caledon II reality, to prevent further rifts opening." She paused, thoughtful. "Thank goodness we had Zack and Lina with us through all that. Don't know if we could have handled it all ourselves."

"So wait," he said, picking himself up from where the drone had bowled him over, "you’'re saying that having two Hiro's in the same reality causes rifts in space-time and tentacle monster attacks, but...we've just brought Hiro-in-a-box back here, and Hiro Prime is down on Gearhaven recovering on the Gray Area?" He looked nervously behind him, as if expecting a rift to open up right there.

Justine tapped the tank, "That’s what this is for. I hope. Right now, Hiro-in-the-box is, theoretically at least, not 'in' this reality. The tank is a 'bubble' of another reality, stabilised here in our own. I mean, if I got the calculations right. But we need to start reintegrating Hiro's splintered consciousnesses. I don’t think he'll fully recover and return to us until we do. And, according to Beta-El, there are three more out there, in addition to the one she's holding." She paused, growing pensive. "We need to find them. Before his enemies do. And we need to get him reintegrated. The Duchy needs its Duke," adding in a barely audible whisper, eyes glistening, "I need my Duke."



The drone came up behind her and pushed forward. Lights flashed, and Justine quickly checked it for damage. None, thankfully. She turned with difficulty and finally turned the drone off, as it was still trying to pin her against the tube.

"Stupid thing," she muttered.

Later...

Some time after Rusty and Justine left the lab, there was the faintest hiss from the tube. The lights flashed again, and a faint, fine mist escaped through a tiny crack. Beta-El stepped into the lab, walking to the crack, leaning forward and running a sparking fingertip along the glass. Soon, it was smooth again.

"Not yet," she whispered, laying a robotic hand against the tube. "It's not time yet."

She left the lab, but the small leak of chronoton particles spun through the current reality, flashing it back to the recent past...

A message fired through the comm system...

(Continued in part XCIV.)

come please, I'm callin', and, oh, I scream for you (part XCII)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part XCI.)

Justine secured the Someone Else's Problem to the mooring mast above Caledon II and turned to Rusty. "Stay here and keep the ship ready for a hasty departure." She climbed down the stairs and picked up the mail on her way into the house, flipping through it. The quiet in the house felt eerily unnatural and she found herself straining to hear anything: birdsong, the hum of an appliance, the passing of the trolley. There was nothing.

Climbing to the third floor, Justine made her way to the box safely stashed in the attic and knelt beside it, data padd in hand. Her fingers danced over a control panel on the box, initiating data transfer. Glancing at the readings, she frowned, noting some worrying points of quantum fluctuation for later study.

"I've got it. Coming back," she commed to Rusty, "get those engines warm and ready."

"I've got something warm and ready for you," came the cheeky reply.

Loading the box onto the hover skiff she guided it down the stairs and out of the house. She tethered the box to her and carefully drew it up beside her to the waiting ship where Rusty held the door open. They settled the box safely in the cramped gondola and made their way to the bridge, setting course for Gearhaven and home.

Justine engaged the autopilot then realised she was shaking. "I could use a drink," she said.

"Have you ever had absinthe?" Rusty asked, leading her to a seat in the passenger area.



(Continued in part XCIII.)

tissue to tendon, congeal to seal my catacomb (part LXXXV)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part LXXXIV.)

He pressed a few buttons again to begin the nanite transfer into the tank, watching the process of regeneration and keeping an eye on her stats and vitals. She watched him, expression slightly worried. Would she feel anything? Would she feel different?

Then she blinked, wondering why she wasn't just asking. "Will I--feel them go in?"

He shook his head, smiling. "You won't feel anything at all. Just relax and breathe normally."

She nodded, working on relaxing. She heard the comm chime.

"My brain hurts," she heard Deebs say.

"So, what's happening over there?" she murmured. "I'm seeing a lot of open water."

She heard Deebs sigh in frustration. "Heck if I know--I am here, and--it's all live--"

Emilly considered that. "So...we can't see you, but you're up and running?"

"Sure. Come look."

Emilly smiled. "I will? I'm currently in a regen tank, amusingly."

"Oh dear."

"Hiro took me on a tour of Tannhäuser last night and I got shot by the new ship."

"Ahhh, it happens. Been tanked meself from time, to time."

She nodded. "Teach me to wear the wrong tag..."

She heard Deebs laugh, then caught Zack looking at her. She looked down, feeling....it was odd. She was used to feeling tissues knit when she was wounded, but...the fact that the surface skin didn't heal first puzzled her. She looked up at Zack again.

"The nanites are working on the inner tissues quite well. I can see it on the board."

"Oh, good."

"The outside injury might take a bit more time. I'll probably have to close it manually with a dermal mender."

She nodded, but her mind was racing. The Prometheus' plasma beams had thrown her system a bit, but she'd gotten through that. This, though...the way the beams had moved through her...She was going to have to ask the Duke about the weapon systems.

Zack focused on the monitors, watching the nanite levels, eyes looking up at her body in the tank, nodding professionally.

"Just another minute...and it should be fine."

She nodded. "I feel...stronger. Or at least....not as drained."

He nodded, tapped the front panel, and looked up with a smile.

"Aaaand done! The internal tissues are repaired and the nanites are going out."

She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Now, I just need to finish the job with the dermal mender, and we should be fine."

She considered as the tank cleared. "The last time something this...serious, happened? I'd taken twelve iron arrows. I thought I was going to die that night..."

Zack opened the tank, taking Emilly gently by the arm to support her while she climbed down. He led her to yet another table.

"Lay down here. I'll take care of closing the wound."



She hopped up on the next medical bed. She was feeling better. She watched him put on gloves, picking up the mender, checking the charge, and moving it close to the wound. It took a few passes, careful and slow. He smiled reassuringly.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked.

Emilly looked up at him as her skin smoothed and restored. "What, getting shot, or the...mender thing?"

Zack chuckled as he kept slowly repairing the skin. "I meant the nanite regen."

Oh. "You were right," she said aloud. "I didn't feel it. I thought I would, but...no."

Zack nodded, continuing to work. "It's a technology I used quite often on Haven as a medic. The one I was trained to use. There' no pain to it, and the nanites extract and dissolve from the body after they're done."

"That's good," she murmured, considering. "All I know is, the Duke's getting involved in some pretty heavy weaponry at this point, and...I can't just blithely assume I can take any damage and shrug it off."

Zack finished the last touches and set the mender down on a side table. He took a clean alcohol stamp, checking the contours of where the wound was, and smiled. "And done. No more big hole in your chest, Duchess."

She smiled ruefully. "Thank you, Zack."

He removed his gloves, reaching out to caress her chest lovingly. "You're welcome, Duchess."

She closed her eyes, breathing out. "Now, if we can just keep it that way..."

He took her hand, reaching behind her shoulder to slowly help her stand up. "Give yourself at least twenty-four hours of rest, no intense effort during that time. And nothing to stressful either."

She nodded. "All right."

"The nanites repaired your heart injury, but it is best to make sure they did their job well, and not let your blood pressure go too high."

She looked up, grinning. "So, nothing that makes my heart pound, you're saying."

He chuckled. "For twenty-four hours, yes. And the regenderation should hold."

"All right. I'll be careful."

"That's good," he said, his eyes traveling down her form. "You should dress back up. I wouldn't want to...make your heart pound too much myself, Duchess." He grinned at her.

She ducked her face, grinning, and strolled through her closet, choosing something she rarely wore, a simple French revolution smock in red wool.

"Fairly non-salacious?"

He smiled at her, taking her hand to give the back of it a loving kiss. She smiled back.

"Thank you, Zack. Truly. We've needed you here."



She stepped to the open door of the clinic, looking at the wide expanse of empty ocean where New Alexandria should be. Time for the next problem. She walked back down the stairs to the port circle, tracing the patterns in the air that would take her to New Alexandria's shores, not her own. Time to address the next problem...

(Continued in part LXXXVI.)

so, where is the Duke, anyway? (part LXXXIV)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part LXXXIII.)

Emilly woke the next morning, stretched, and shifted as she prepared for the day, sorting through her vast closet and choosing human form just in case she needed to drop by Mont Nuit, before she stopped in place. She looked down. She saw the wound; she did not, unfortunately, see the gel. Oh. Oh dear.

She heard the tone of the comm clicking on.

"Good morning Duchess!" Zack said.

"Good morning!"

"How do you feel?"

She swallowed. "I think...I felt fine until I shifted back from fur."

"I see," he murmured. Then, louder: "Are you available right now for a check-up?"

She nodded. "I am."

"Come join me at the clinic," Zack said. "I'll be waiting for you."

She gave up on finding an outfit she liked and just pulled out one at random, ending up in pink. Her lip curled, but she needed to go. She took the nearest port circle she found and walked up the stairs.



"Good morning!" she said, walking into the room. He was standing next to the back table, looking over notes. He looked up with a smile.

"Please, lay down on this table here, I will make a scan."



She gingerly hopped up on the table, touching her chest briefly. "Should I...take this off?"

He nodded. "Yes, please, and try to breathe normally."

She sat up again, wincing as she pulled off the dress. As she laid down once more, she looked up at the doctor.

"It was...bad...I shifted when we hit land again, and...I seemed fine? Then, this morning..."



He looked at the injury and frowned. "It seemed like a natural regeneration when you shifted?"

She nodded. He looked at the readings, nodding in turn.

"It allowed you to survive the wound, but you were lucky. It could have been fatal."

She nodded, brow furrowing. "I think the Babalon has stronger weaponry than the Prometheus."

He started a full-body scan to check for internal trauma, and frowned a moment as he saw the readings. "Duchess...your heart is damaged...We'll need to put you in the tank for the nanites to repair your inner trauma."

She nodded, though she wasn't entirely sure how nanites would interface with her system. "All right."

She got off the table with his help, and walked over to the free-standing tank close by. Zack opened the tank, pressing a few buttons on the side.

"The nanite system will repair your inner tissues. It should take a few minutes to do so. They should not interfere with your body normally, as I program them to use your DNA to repair the tissues."



She stared at the tank for a moment, but finally stepped in, feeling it tilt back. She'd seen the Duke use similar devices, but she'd never actually used one herself. She watched Zack put a hand on the glass, looking at her reassuringly.

"Do you trust me?"

She nodded.

"Then you know you have nothing to fear. I'll make sure you're safe, and healthy."

(Continued in part LXXXV.)

darling, look into my eyes, and tell me what's inside (part LXXXIII)

(Roleplay-ish. Continued from part LXXXII.)



Some days, she admits, she just sits in the nursery, watching her children sleep. It's not that they're that vastly entertaining, but...it comforts her, to watch them.



Of course, sometimes they're awake, and ask odd questions she does her best to answer. All children do.



She has neglected one aspect of their education, assuming they were too young, and that lessons to discover the nature, and any limitations, of their shapeshifting abilities should come first. But considering Athena's hijinks, she should perhaps begin the basics of dimensional travel, and see whether they take after their father, or herself.



The bigger question is, how. How does she begin to train them on the intricacies without opening yet another portal on the sim? This is a quandary.



Though the seahorse in little Enoch's paws is so darned cute.



She sighs, and goes to pry Cleopatra out of the floor. Yes, it's more than time she teaches them these things.

(Continued in part LXXXIV.)

ignite my circuits and start a flame (part LXXXII)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part LXXXI.)



Emilly leaned back in the chair, relearning how to breathe. The ship wheeled around again, but now back under the Duke's control. He grinned over at her again.

"Did you see the turret lock on?"

She nodded. "I did."



She watched as he moved towards Tannhäuser Station's new hanger bay, docking the ship with relative ease. She turned and looked after they left the ramp, and couldn't see a single scorch mark. She could still feel the gel knitting her chest together, stretching when she moved.



She trailed behind the Duke, taking in the places where ports were still sealed off until connecting pathways moved into place.

"Let me show you something," the Duke said. She picked up the pace a little, descending down a few ramps, walking into a small room surrounded by readout panels, the floor snaked in curving coils of occasionally glowing power cables.



"The singularity core," Hiro said proudly. "It's on line."

She looked at the roiling cyan shadows around the core struts, nodding.

He led her to the lift next.



"Which floor are we going to?" she asked. Hiro punched a button and the lift started to rise.

"Two," he murmured, as she watched the space between the levels, roiling purple star clouds and the planetoid gone dark.



"So, how are you?" he asked. It sounded casual enough. She might have even accepted it as the offhand comment it sounded like, save she saw him look at her briefly over his shoulder. She shrugged.

"Doing fairly well, I think," she said softly. "Which ship shot at me? Prometheus, or another one?"

"The new one," the Duke said.

"Babalon Working?"

"Yes." He touched his ear, and looked at her. "I have to go," he said softly. "I'll be back later."

She nodded, and watched him walk away, walking the other direction back to her shuttle, slowly, and flew back to Gearhaven. She returned to Darktow, peeling off the skinsuit, then shifting to another form. She pulled something out of her traveling closet that was far more comfortable to lay down in on the little dock.



She heard her comm chime.

"Good evening, Emilly," their medic said. She smiled.

"Evening!"

"How's it going?" he asked.

"I seem to be healing well."

There was a pause, then..."Healing?"

She nodded, then remembered he couldn't see it. "Tags are important on Tannhäuser. I'd forgotten, since the station isn't security-enabled, yet. Hiro took me on a tour of what's been added, the Babalon Working detected an intruder, and shot right through the shuttle."

She could almost see him, standing in the clinic across the bay, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"So...you got injured, and I was not informed..."

She thought. She furrowed her brow a little. She should have. "It just happened," she murmured.

"Do you need help?"

She shook her head, then again, realized he needed words. "No, if I'm careful tonight, I should be fine. There's some stabilizer gel thing the ship had, sealed over the obvious bits until I could shift."

There was another pause. "I would like to see you tomorrow morning to make a check-up on your injuries, if you're available."

She nodded. "I'll do my best."

"Good. Until then, take it easy tonight, and rest."

"I will, Doctor."

The comm signal closed and she closed her eyes with it for a long moment. She just lay on the plaid blanket and breathed, watching the stars wheel overhead, listening to the low sussuration of the waves striking the shore on either side. At least her chest was no longer an open wound, gel barrior in place or not. That had to count for something.

Right?

(Continued in part LXXXIII.)

hold me down and make me scream, lay me on the floor (part LXXXI)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part LXXX.)



"We're taking fire!" Emilly yelled. She watched another thick beam seemingly cut through the cabin, sizzle through the control panel, and depart. She couldn't see any obvious damage but the ship careened to the side.



"Em, your tag!" the Duke said.

"Tag?" Em asked in confusion. A bolt seared through the glass and hit her chest, moving through her with an unsettling sliding sensation.



"Change your tag!" the Duke yelled, ducking. The ship tilted again. Emilly was still trying to figure out what had happened with the bolt that hit her.



"EM! Change your--"

She didn't hear the rest of what he said as another bolt slid through her. Longer, thicker, and she felt herself burning, flashing back to being forced to her knees in the tower room. And she didn't have air. She couldn't find the air.

She scrabbled at the arms of the co-pilot's chair, eyes darting around for anything that might help her, only to feel the arm of the chair snap in half. Her fingers closed convulsively around a cylinder. She lifted it in one shaking hand, staring at it. She didn't recognize the character. The Duke looked over.

"Inject that!" he yelled.

She looked over, blinking. He made a tapping motion with one paw, and she looked at the cylinder again. She curved her thumb around the base and pressed the other end against her chest. Still confused that there were no marks on her shirt. She tapped the base and felt a rush of cool, slick...gel??...cover her skin, and with a painful shiver, the skin drew together as the gel seemed to solidify and harden.



The cabin filled with beams of light, miraculously none touching her.

"Em! For the love of--"

Right, she thought. Tag. She changed it, movements still slow, and just like that--the Babalon's turret guns shut down, and spun back to face the nose of the ship.



"Well," she whispered. "That was exciting."

Hiro turned to her, grinning. "That was cool!"

(Continued in part LXXXII.)

oh sweet ignition, be my fuse (part LXXX)

(Roleplay entry. Continued from part LXXIX.)

Emilly had just arrived on Darktow when she heard the Duke's voice on the comm.

"Hi," he said. "Want to explore what we have so far?"

Yes, yes she did. So she took a shuttle to Tannhäuser Station, finding her way to the new entry port, waiting until the hangar bay sealed and she was able to leave, then waiting impatiently in the air lock for the air to cycle. She followed a drone, wobbling like a drunket bumblebee, through the long halls until she ended up at the airlock of another ship, docked at the station. She spun the lock open and stepped onboard.

"Welcome aboard the 'Misunderestimated Cat'," the Duke said, smiling. He led her to the co-pilot's chair.



She smiled. "Thank you!" She watched him punch in a series of commands before leaning back.



She watched the ship lift past the small asteroid field, leaning forward to see the structures rising from part of the station build.



"So, eight levels so far..." the Duke said, checking the readings.



"Wow," she said in a quiet voice. "So, the station, the church, Prometheus, the city, and..."



"The Babalon Working," the Duke said, flying up and flying horizontally along the new ship, dark and heavily armed. And that's when the Duke cried out.



"[F**k]!" Hiro yelled. "We're taking fire!"

She watched in horror as thick beams of yellow arcing light flew towards the ship.

(Continued in part LXXXI.)