Have a story. Haven’t forgotten about that (yet). I’ll update with more information on everything later.

The story’s about a woman talking to her imaginary friend. Had an interesting time noticing that I’m developing an idiosyncratic style.

Status: “let it go…”

Me: “Like this.”

She dropped the stone into the pond, watching the ripples lazily sprawl over the water. She turned to her with an inquisitive look.

“You try, now?”

She was wearing a coat and a beanie of sorts, appearing inquisitively bespecled while sitting back from the water.

“It’s okay.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “Why are we here, again?”

Tentatively, she tossed a stone farther out, tracing a gentle arc through the air before again plummeting into the frigid expanse.

“Just because; it’s nice to get out once in a while, right?”

“Well, you usually only talk to me when you’re bored or stuck. Well, now at least. Which is it this time?” She leaned forward, resting her chin on a fist.

“I’m throwing stones into a pond: what do you think?”

“I think you’re still bitter about it.”

She scooped up a stone and tried to skip it. 3 skips. I never was really good at this, she reflected.

“Can’t we talk about something else? We used to talk about everything when we were younger.”

“Well, that was then.”

4 skips. Pond such as this had too much grass, and not enough stones laundered by the surf to skipping perfection.

“I mean, you haven’t talked to anyone about it since it happened a month ago. You really need to-” she hefted a rock, and threw it overhand “-get it out.” The rock buried itself in the park turf on the other side of the pond.

“Well, then let’s talk about it.”

“I would rather you talk to someone else about it. It’s not good to keep these sorts of things internalized.”

She almost pegged a dog playing frisbee. Obviously, the shoddily clothed youth playing with it would be willing to wade into the pond to retrieve the disc. Probably should hit him in the head and put him out of the misery he would certainly

“Hey!”

She had gotten off the bench and was waving her hand it front of her face with a slight look of concern. She grabbed her wrist, and gave a tug.

“Let’s go before you hurt someone.”

The park wasn’t crowded yet: it wouldn’t be until after 3. They walked for a while along the path, heading towards the nearest buildings rising over the trees. Back to the jungle of concrete and steel. Back to an empty apartment. Home.

“Okay, so tell me what’s on your mind. You’ll have to talk to someone else, obviously: I haven’t been someone to talk to for 10 years now.”

She squeezed shut her eyes, thinking: “It’s him I’m thinking about. I’m… just, so angry. Still. I… just…” A single tear.

“Don’t worry, hun. I know all the details.”

Small smile. “Yeah, I keep forgetting about that.”

“I think,” she pondered for a bit, “you just need to learn to

Okay, I just felt like I had to do one. Here ya’ll go.

Status Update: feeling lucky to be single :)

Response:

"You're doing it wrong."

He wiped some of the dust out of his eyes, probably a bit of the bank that used to be a few meters to the left. He *thought* that a city block or more had just been leveled, but stranger things have happened before when he was in this state.

"What do you mean?"

"You just have to scream it in desperation a bit louder, and it'll be true", throwing off the last phrase with a flash of a smile.

He still couldn't believe that she had survived, or that she was real; pulverized concrete was swirling around their bare ankles, settling onto the now-deserted street. Even stubborn chunks of rebar were still dropping from the sky, which meant that he hadn't blacked out for more than a few seconds, if that.

"I wasn't screaming; if anything, it was a hoarse whisper."

He was pretty sure he hadn't actually said anything, but who knew? He couldn't honestly remember his exact actions, barely a minute into the past.

"Oh, no, your intentions were quite clear, and your efforts at suppression were pretty elementary. Ya'know, you're pretty easy to read." Again, a smile, accompanying a bashful sway.

"What of it?", grating the words as they came out.

"Oh, nothing, nothing." He wondered why she was so damn cheerful. "Just, you know, it's the oldest story in the world. Separation follows a join, most of the time." Cocking her head to the side, she seemed to enumerate the violations of her on-the-spot made-up rule.

"You know, I'm okay with being single. I really am."

"Come on, say it louder."

"YOU KNOW,I'MOKAYWITHBEINGSINGLEIREALLYAM" Perhaps bellowing with all the dust in the air wasn't such a good idea: when he straighted again, he notic

"Well, the city block that you just destroyed says otherwise." Her eyes snapped into focus and it dawned on him that her summer dress actually overlaid body armor. For the first time, he felt a note of disquiet crawl into his throat. "We've decided that we need to reign in your psychic powers, and you have a decision: death or loss of your psychic abilities. Which is it? Quick, the default, death, comes."

He stared at her blankly. What? Was there no othe

Okay, so friday, right. First, I edited an arduino program so that it should read a frequency from a spinning thing-a-ma-jig (look, I’m really tired for some reason), and adjust the power delivered to the motor that spins the thing-a-ma-jig with PWM. It depends on if we can get something to switch fast enough; transistor, maybe. And since we’re using a breadboard arduino to make sure our dev board doesn’t die, that’s where the breadboard comes from.

We’re out of TP, and my roomie left for home for the weekend. Yeah, gonna have to go scrounge some up somewhere.

I spent some 2 hours (really? only?) soldering up my minty-amp, which proved to be a tedious failure: trying to bridge tiny distances with short wires is amazingly frustrating: I hereby renounce my cavalier attitude towards laying stuff on perfboard. To put it lightly, I’m not very happy with myself.

Milestone: one tube of solder almost gone! Have something like 10cm left.

Finally, there will be no friday update next week: I’ll be in the thick of the MCM, so my life will be somewhat chaotic. Go me.

Yeah, I’m tired. Have a story, I’m not gonna buffer anymore.

Friend: i haven't been this bored in a long time... hellllp

Me: write a story

you know thats not very helpful

well try something artsy fartsy with it you know something different

Tangy sea air, wafting lemon pie, musty cardboard

what is that even supposed to mean

hell if i know just take a world and run with it to somewhere youve never been before

well i gotta do homework

Light breeze, chill air with a slight bite, spongy chair, feather weight pencil, sticky eraser cruft,

homework can wait sometimes we just need to escape out of reality and have some time to ourselves

but we have to deal with our problems in reality just look at how screwed up the world is trying to seek escape into some contrived world wont help anyone

and that is where you are wrong

Filtered surf, muted grandfather clock in the living room, breeze through tall grass, distant birds clawing for a meal, percussion of bare toe on wood floor

screw this i cant finish my essay im going to go watch some tv

but you can watch tv anytime now a blank page calls to you to fill it with something anything

but i dont even know where to begin and the only thing i can think of is a direct rip off of my favorite show

the important thing is to create versus consumption its cheesy but writing is the one thing they teach us that we can easily create with

Yellowed mid-afternoon sun, two dark frames splashed against baby blue walls, ajar door leading to hushed interior, ebullient billowing drapes, congested room brimmed with empty boxes, limitless sky,

so how do you

So, after this story, I swore that I would not write a story until I had some serious inspiration, since this story is pretty damn derivative. Well, I held out until today. Have my massively derivative story.

Friend: is loading on the tea in hopes to avoid the sickness

Me: Well, it started with the SWAT team. Once they took away my green tea and threw me in the slammer, then it was all over. The beginning of the end.

First, it made you an insomniac. I'd barely figured that out, with the buzz and headaches and new calluses and constant lime green snot that also came with the bug. I couldn't tell you where it came from. Not that it mattered, since I was soon preoccupied with staying awake so I wouldn't become a killing machine. It took me a week to figure out that the reports on the progressively uninhibited murderer in the neighborhood were about me; it took me a few more days to find that green tea was the trick to staying sane when sleeping. Barricading myself into the house and watching the news over the next week yielded no more nasty murders, so I figured that whatever was happening to me wasn't communicable. The next step was to either kill myself in some sterilizing fashion, or turn myself in. I couldn't decide whether to go with gasoline or bleach when they shot the mug out of my hand and took me in.

I knew I had to die, and quickly. Shiv to the neck didn't quite work, since... well, I didn't die. I just procured a shiv in the middle of the cafeteria and didn't have the presence of mind to do it in private. Lots of blood went everywhere, but I didn't die. It took a week after I got out of the infirmary for us to overrun the prison: the bug augmented our strength, and when we couldn't kill, we infected. A whole lot of guys got spit in their faces when they thought they were safe behind bars. The authorities cordoned the area: with the number of new bullet wounds I woke up with, it seems they put up a good fight. After being infected with the bug for a while, it seemed you just couldn't die aside from complete annihiliation. Like, couple guys didn't come out of the forest after it got carpet bombed. Those days the few hours I was awake spent looking for tea. by now, I required massive amounts just to stay nurmal. You can't say I tryd to tellthe authorities, its their own damn fault the shot me in the head than listen to me By time I wake up the urban infrastructure was fallen apart. The green tea supply soon not keep meawake for than hour and night wander wide

time sleep hope their stil some out ther to rea [illegible scrawl]

In other news, we’re gearing up to machine ourselves into reprapdom. Also, I have yet to squish this site format to something more column based. Just cause we got widescreen don’t mean we gotta use it all.

Also, I’m REALLY sorry that I’m not posting anything but sucky stories. It’s kind of hard to do anything else with 30 minutes, so I’ll just keep chugging along until I have a big chunk of time.

Okay, so I have absolutely nothing to show for this Friday. I hung out with friends, and didn’t do anything productive other than burning bootloaders into 2 ATmega168 chips. And, I wrote a new story!

Friend: is reminded again that "to be lonely and to be by yourself is not the same thing."

Me: Ghosts, that's what they were. Machines dressed and taught to imitate a culture. Sure, they dressed like they were attending a high-class social function, and they spewed words in semi-comprehensible phrases, but they never actually said anything intelligent, no matter how one coaxed them. That wouldn't have been so surprising, but the fact that the palace never seemed to end suggested something deeper at work. One moment dozing over a paper: the next, waking up in a red dress with hair put up, slouched in a easy chair next to the hor'devours, facing the endless rooms full of partiers. It took only an hour to figure out that none of them were of any help; another six to steal a watch from a portly gentleman exchanging drivel with the rail-thin lady, another twelve to give up hope that this was a dream. Another ten hours to fall onto a couch, exhausted, and what seemed like 5 seconds to find a shadow of a man leaning over me, a blink to find him dissolved. After that, every day was filled with wandering and fits of half-sleep, evading the shadows that came with REM. It took a few weeks until I resorted to attacking the walls with a stout butterknife, finding ordinary plaster and wood beneath the gilded facade before the shadows were all around, whispering about something before they again dissolved. A warning? Perhaps. Would doing something drastic again change *something*? Perhaps. But there was still hope that something would change, and while that still held, doing something at all dangerous could have negative effects. I was wearing away at the edge I was on, though, several weeks having been spent in a silent, furtive walk through the murmuring crowds looking for something, anything. Now, it was again time to find a couch or chair and get some rest. Wait, that man over there isn't talking to _anyone_... looks solid enough. Maybe I'll walk over and punch him.

Edit: story needed status update that it came from.

Inspiration strikes, I post.

friend: milky way > boys

me: You don't expect me to seriously believe that, do you?

It's not a question of belief, it's a question of whether you're capable of debriefing her. She's covered around a million parsecs crisscrossing the galaxy over 90 of your years, so she'll be out of touch with current events, and you're the only one she knows and trusts that's still alive.

But, shit, she took off to see the galaxy? I mean, we thought she was dead!

Sorry, we weren't going to be in the sector for long, and once she told us you wouldn't be coming, which was probably for the best, we had to leave somewhat abruptly. Deadlines, you know.

She told me?! Wait, shit, I guess she did. That was pretty confusing. One moment I'm playing some fps, the next she has a huge smile plastered on her face, babbling about something like wormholes or variable cee, and asking if I want to go see some Pleiades up close. Hell, I thought she was talking bout sitting close to the screen for some movie I hadn't heard about. Told her no, didn't think nothing of it.

But this has nothing to do with whether you can reintroduce her to your current society.

Why's it have to be me? We left on bad terms 90 years ago, although I guess someone leaving for 90 years would put a strain on any relationship-

Ah, she could have been gone for much longer. She only biologically aged about a year since we left, so she could have continued with us. It is her good luck that we received an assignment in this sector with enough leeway to let us drop her off.

-anyways. Go talk to some government official or something, right? I'm not really qualified to talk to someone that's just been traveling around with a bunch of aliens, you know?

She specifically requested that, ahem, you show her around the 'new Earth'.

Hell, I guess I will. Nothing much to see, though. We're still fighting for the same godforsaken hunk of rock we've always been on, being shitty to each other. Heck, if she's coming back, I guess I could take back some of those, erm, not so nice words. And retroaging might be a surprise to her.

Ah, we're sending her down now.

Say, how did she get into contact with you in the first place?

We contacted her. She was in the best position to deliver a certain artifact to us, a shipment of (digs in pocket) these.

Milky ways?

Ah, yes, that is their name?

Huh, no wonder she seemed to be hoarding them. And why the suits called about some boat after she disappeared. Huh.

Ah, she's here.

Oh, um... hey, honey! It's been such a longOHMYGODISTHATALASERCANN-

EAT SHIT AND DIE YOU SAD SACK OF FERMIO-

Instead of sleeping, I wrote a new story. Here’s an older, experimental one:

Friend: feels highly unmotivated - no inspiration right now.

Me:

I know just what you need! How does a juvenile sea dragon sound?

The salesman came from behind: facing the wall, there was no way out without breaking several generally held social contracts. Escape would have to wait until he made a mistake.

Such a pet will highly motivate you! If you don't feed it, it will eat YOU! Ha! Ha! Is that not hilarious?

Maybe such an egregious man was not bound by the contracts, and striding off would be a possibility. Or not. Better not find out. If only she were here

Eh? Juvenile sea dragon not good enough for you? Well, adult sea dragon wont be good, too violent. Gotta get em young!!!!

So young. Excited, able, fascinated. the world seemed to slow its spin, and nothing was impossible Knowing is one thing: experiencing is another. It was so long ago when she left, when, looking at the calendar tells only a year of passage. Damn hounds.

Gia't man-eatun sea slugs?? Dem shore can make yer busy!!!!1 Deyal sukers ur brains straight out if you dunt keep bobbin!!1!

So this is what it comes down to A hollow shell Trying to keep secrets closed and keep the weapons out of the wrong hands. the hounds are closing in though and nothing will keep them back when they find this city Maybe she got off easy.

YUPPERS!!!! WEZ SHURE GOTTEM! KILLUR CHIHUAHUAS!1 YESH SHUR REE!% WE GOSH DURN LUVS!!! DEM 2 DEZ!$2 HAR HAR HAR KEEP UR 0N UR TOS!!!!!!!!11

spark of inspiration to fight to protect she would have done it but inspiration runs thin and drips drips drips from the eaves and the hounds come maybe it is not so bad they will wash the world and make it new and make it new where she died just before safety but now no one is safe why did none of the agents know she was the only operator

OMGWZTFFF IGUSNUTIN%%LIK3#DISMANS SHERATA!!!NGABEA!UTSHOR3 3333N0UMMYUPHAYITZ R HOUNDZUPUPOMGWTFBBQWAI WUTIZDATOMGWHATAR e

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