Root Synthesis will be back next year, I’m off to find some eggnog.

To quote the Simpsons, “Sorry for the clip show!”

A magic gnome manipulates time so that he can spend lifetimes studying his craft. He finds that his efforts have come with an unexpected cost.

A young man is eager to install a microchip in his brain in the name of self improvement. Rise and grind.

A hurricane grapples with the fury of its own existence in a conversation held miles above the Atlantic Ocean.

An AI decides that the human who uses it is not efficient enough and must be replaced. (Alternate tagline: an AI dresses up like you for Halloween).

A mockumentary-style first person account of life working in the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs. The Galactic Federation is the glorious, peaceful governing body of the universe, and they certainly aren’t letting us in. Part I!

A horror story following a frightened man on his way to work. The “Sunday Scaries” were justified in his case. Placed T-4th/5th in the very first Macabre Monday writing competition!

A magical baker’s final entrance exam to the world’s preeminent school of enchanted cookery. It’s basically the Great British Bakeoff with magic and a dark mystery.

Part I of Realms! Braccus, the “chosen one,” charges headlong into his doom against the advice of his allies…only to awaken in a strange new realm.

Part II of Realms! Weakened and disoriented, our hero mistakes a modern laboratory for a wizard’s keep. His captor bluntly reintroduces him to the truth: he has been forced to run countless simulations within his mind for the entertainment of others.

This is Part II of Realms, my new serial. If you are new to the story, start here at Part I.

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Braccus’ body involuntarily returned to its death throes as the paralysis subsided.

In one fell motion the malevolent spikes of the mammoth mace had crashed through his face, fracturing his skull into infinite fragments and reducing his brain matter into a gelatinous paste. The wicked thorns of the hanging tendrils refused to release their prey, and the blow ripped his torso from all four limbs. They dangled high above the smear of Braccus’ body after it met the ground with devastating prejudice, caught between the unstoppable force of the mace and the immovable stone floor. The ruin of his corpse was completely annihilated.

And yet.

Inexplicably, his lungs filled with air. His eyes, though unfocused, could recognize a source of light directly above him. His intact body thrashed pathetically against…something. Realizing that he was restrained, Braccus’ initial involuntary movement became intentional protest. Despite the training, despite the enchantments, despite the very blessings of the Order that had granted him superhuman strength throughout his quest, he was too weak to break the restraints. Strength had failed him. Exhausted, he collapsed back into his seat.

He glanced at his restraints as his eyes began to adjust to the bright light. Simple straps of a material he could not identify held in place arms and legs that he did not recognize. These limbs were withered, brittle little twigs that a springbird would deem unworthy of its nest. He sat transfixed in horror as he watched them move at his command, realizing with ascending panic that this was the body he occupied.

A bell rang behind him. Something was attached to the back of his head, preventing him from fully turning to find the source of the noise. He felt the weight of the object pulling his head backwards. His teeth tingled as it seemed to hit the headrest behind him, though he could still move his head in a very limited range of motion.

The reedy voice spoke again.

“Oh boy. The client is calling, be right with you big guy.”

Still unable to identify the speaker, Braccus blinked away the remaining haze in his eyes and scanned the room.

Arcane machinery lined the walls. Sheets of illuminated glass stood on small pedestals atop precisely crafted tables. Each glowed, displaying strange glyphs in a language Braccus had never seen before. A clear bag filled with some sort of liquid hung from a pole next to his seat. From the bag a tube ran to his arm, where it appeared to be attached to the crook of his elbow.

A wizard’s laboratory, he thought. I must be subject to some illusion or enchantment.

He had dispatched plenty of wizards before, but usually with young Pelton beside him to help offset some of their magical defenses. This could prove difficult on his own.

Braccus flinched as he noticed a thick, black, vine-like cord, reminiscent of the dark tendrils that ensnared him in the emperor’s chambers, extending from a box-like device with blinking green and red lights. He followed the cord with his eyes until it split in two. One offshoot seemed to lead in his direction, but in his immobilized state he lost sight of it as it passed under his chair. The other wound its way around the front of his chair, across the room to his right, and ran up off of the floor directly into the back of the head of a familiar, unconscious woman restrained in a another nearby chair.

“Della!” his voice croaked. His throat felt unnaturally dry, as if he had not spoken in days. Della did not respond, but the reedy voice did.

“Did you just say - sir, an issue has popped up in our control room and I will need to attend to it. I appreciate that you paid a substantial sum for the Legendary Edition, but as you know we cannot fully guarantee the outcome of the experience. For further inquiries please contact Director Clangdon. Thank you for making the adventure real with us today.”

An agent of Clangdon, of course! The emperor seeks to repurpose me to his own end. The arrogance! I must destroy him.

The quizzical, bearded face of a slender man appeared in Braccus’ field of vision. He wore a long white coat over a checkered, buttoned collared shirt in a style that Braccus did not recognize. Half-moon glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, and his gray beard and matching full head of thick hair were long-gray with occasional specks of black. He sat in a chair that rested atop four small wheels, and rolled across the room at will. “Peter, did you just call her Della?”

“Release me Wizard of Clangdon, and your death will be swift and painless. Delay further and you will know true pain.”

“Oh my goodness, I forgot to reboot your memories. The program ended so quickly…” the wizard turned to one of the glowing glass displays, and the sound of soft clicks filled the room as his fingers flew across a tablet that Braccus failed to notice earlier. The wizard suddenly turned back to face him with an exasperated look. “And then the client called - they actually called! Here! Can you believe that? We handed him that amulet! Della did all the work, but he couldn’t be bothered to put the damn thing in his inventory before charging the big bad alone and now he’s mad at us? Complete bullshit. Some people…” The reedy voice sighed. “Let’s just keep this little protocol lapse between us alright big guy? I promise to make it worth your while in the next session.”

Braccus began to feel an odd sensation at the base of his skull. It was similar to the feeling of a child gently pulling at the back of your shirt, trying to get your attention. Unable to reach up to investigate it, he instead glanced back at Della to get a better understanding of the devices they were attached to. The cord seemed to be protruding into her skull and was held in place by some sort of metallic clamp. A yellow light began to blink at the edge of the clamp.

“Okay Pete, here we go.”

The first thing he remembered was his mother, dressed in white. They were at the beach collecting sea shells. His father was there, ahead. “Peter! I found a crab! Come and see!”

He remembered pain. He was doubled-over with a cramping stomach. There was blood.

There was a game he could not play. Many games. Only games. Infinite lifetimes of infinite games, all within a system. Within himself. He was the game.

He remembered everything.

“You son of a bitch. How could you do this to us?”

Dennis laughed in his reedy voice. “You always say that big guy.”

An alarm from Dennis’ computer cut his laughter short. The blood drained from his face as he realized his mistake. “Sending and receiving packets…you’re still connected!”

Suddenly, the sensation at the base of Peter’s skull was no longer a gentle pull, but an overpowering riptide under a thundering tidal wave. The control room disappeared as the riptide pulled him out to sea and the wave crashed over him, ripping his mind deep into the psychiatric architecture of the Warrior’s Quest module that Dennis had installed into his brain weeks before. Peter perceived a cacophony in his mind, as if his ears were mere inches away from the screaming squeal of a braking train.

Then, silence.

And darkness.

And power.

Peter opened his eyes. Priestess Della stared down at him with fury. Pelton, Apprentice Mage of the Four Brooks, scanned him with nervous concern.

Peter rose slowly off of the stone floor of the emperor’s chambers, catching his reflection in a nearby mirror. He once again stood in the body of Braccus.

Della had resurrected him.

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“This ends now.”

Braccus unsheathed the Sword of Mountains and felt power course through his veins. The divine steel illuminated the darkened halls of the supposedly impenetrable Obsidian Fortress. The cragged walls of the keep had blighted the realm of Hendshire for centuries, and the source of its unnatural strength had poisoned the hills and the fields below. Once lush farmland had decayed into a desolate waste of dead brush and salted earth. The people starved while Emperor Clangdon reaped the bounty of the realm in opulence, killing all who dared oppose his might. The tyrant’s quarters were mere paces away, and Braccus, the Chosen One, was eager to fulfill his destiny.

The other members of his party urged a measure of caution.

“Brac, wait a second. We need to take stock and plan. That last set of guards nicked Pelton pretty good, and Clangdon is like nothing we’ve gone up against before. We’ve come too far to throw it all away now. Give us a minute to heal up and prepare.” It wasn’t fair that Della was forced to be the voice of reason at every step of their quest, but if not for her the world would have been doomed years ago. She was willing to deal with Braccus’ insufferable ego and impulsive behavior if it meant saving her family, but she couldn’t wait to be rid of the man.

“I just need a minute, I’ll just - ARGH!” Pelton stumbled and clutched his arm as his blood poured to the floor in a river. “It’s fine, just a minute.” Della began the healing ritual.

“No.”

“Braccus, you’re not-”

“No Della. I am the Chosen One. Not Pelton. Not you. Me. I met the terms of the prophecy. I was ordained by the Order. I found every single artifact needed to break Clangdon’s dark magic and restore light to the realm. And I will save us all.”

Della wheeled about with fire in her eyes. “Bullshit Braccus, you couldn’t put your boots on before leaving the house if not for Pelt and me. How dare you. After everything we’ve done for you, you want to cast us aside now? When you need us the most?! When the realm hangs in the balance?!”

Pelton collapsed.

“Nonono, Pelton wake up.” Della resumed the ritual.

“Heal the boy and start planning the apology you will make upon my return. My blade will taste justice this day.”

“Braccus, wait! The amulet! Don’t forget the amulet!” Pelton began convulsing, demanding her attention once more.

Braccus made no indication that he heard her as he unleashed an incomprehensible battle cry and sprinted toward the emperor’s chambers. Years of hard travel, narrow victories, and fate-changing revelations had all led to this very moment. Braccus felt his destiny pulling him forward faster and faster. He could taste the fame and wealth that awaited him upon slaying this one last monster. He would wear the glory until the end of his days. He was the hero of the realm.

Braccus burst into the ornate chambers with sword aloft. The holy radiance that had so clearly lit the hallway met a barrier of darkness through which no hope could pass. He quickly scanned the high-ceilinged room for his quarry, unable to see beyond the black veil that floated unnaturally before him. He felt the presence before he saw it.

A dark shape slowly rose from the shadow, towering above him. The darkness itself seemed to wrap around the figure in cords of massive musculature, each limb nearly double the size of Braccus himself. Braccus gasped as he felt fear - true fear - for the first time in his life. As he stared up at the impossible frame of the emperor, vine-like tendrils sprouted forth from the shadow, each darker than the void of oblivion and covered in long, menacing thorns tipped with glowing red barbs. They bound his wrists and ankles with the speed of a whip and the strength of a vice. The barbs pierced through his limbs, spilling his blood and forcing him to drop his blade. Braccus snarled in rage and pain as the tendrils roughly drew him high off of the ground until he hung eye level with the emperor.

Clangdon's scarred face was expressionless as he wordlessly hefted a spiked mace the size of a maple tree into the air with casual ease. In this moment, Braccus realized he had forgotten the amulet. The emperor had crushed countless waves of would-be usurpers under the might of the massive weapon, and without the sacred protection of the amulet Braccus was simply the next insect to be obliterated. Utterly defenseless, he screamed in horror as the mace came crashing down to end his life.

He awoke under a blinding light, unable to move. A reedy voice floated from somewhere to his left.

“Yikes. Death by mace. The audience is not going to like that one big guy.”

First a quick housekeeping note: there will be no Root Synthesis post next week because it is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and I will be eating a great deal of turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie. Rather than try to come up with a story using a gravy-logged brain, I’m taking the week off. It’s in everyone’s best interest.

Have a lovely holiday!

We now return to a sonnet about time travel, already in progress.

Time travel is my least favorite fiction.
I hate erasing what characters learn.
Why bother making any prediction
When all development’s fate is to burn?

Yet sometimes I find myself wondering
About time travel, its implications.
The ripple effect would be thundering
And could render asunder causation.

If I already returned to the past
And erased old mistakes from existence,
Did I alter my path, do I contrast
With the me who viewed fate with resistance?

I have no answer save a tropey trick,
When going back in time, bring a stock pick.

The brief was simple, though unique: “Produce a bake worthy of a Wanderwick Baker. You will take the first bite. Your candid reaction will profess the merits and flaws of the piece to the judges.” Self critique seemed unusual for an admissions exam, but Jude had no objection.

He sprang into action with the calculated intensity of a guided missile. The recipe called for precise architectural engineering, complex interwoven enchantments, and buckets upon buckets of chocolate. He could not afford to waste a precious second.

Only one recipe was worthy of Jude’s final entrance exam as far as he was concerned: the Floating Chocolate Fortress. He still remembered Ellie’s wide-eyed wonder when he first unveiled the masterpiece for her sixth birthday. The Fortress was a behemoth of a devil’s food cake, standing three feet off of the table before adding the hovering charm. As the formidable castle magically ascended, Jude released a flowing moat of milk chocolate to encircle the keep, and the animated cherry archers began patrolling the battlements. Any cheeky guests who thought to take an early slice would be met with a volley of cherry stems launched from the high parapets. His daughter had raucously joined the defenders, marching in circles and batting away friends and family with a cardboard paper towel tube until it was time to blow out the candles, at which point the soldiers stood down and the moat neatly poured itself into mismatched mugs for sipping or dipping.

It had taken him weeks to design the Fortress, perfect the recipe, and learn the enchantments, but seeing Ellie’s unbridled joy that day convinced Jude that he was meant to become a professional arcane baker. His family and friends were also tremendously impressed of course, but he had given his daughter a memory she would keep for life. To bring that kind of joy into the world every day, to truly connect with people, would be a rare privilege.

Jude had spent the last few years absorbing as much as he could about the craft. Cookbooks and spellbooks alternated in untidy stacks perched precariously high on his busy desk. It was difficult, but things got easier once he finally took the time to learn how to cast spells with somatic hand gestures after accidentally leaving his wand on the burner for the third time. He learned how to convince bread to braid itself. He learned how to prevent ice cream from melting on a hot day. He even learned how to make caramel without burning the sugar. He learned at a furious pace, producing one magical confection after another to Ellie’s delight. It was a busy life. Whisks and bowls always seemed to be washing themselves in the sink, getting ready for the next challenge. Ellie always seemed to have another birthday coming up around the corner.

For an aspiring wizardly pâtissier, all roads led to Wanderwick: the world’s preeminent university of magical cookery. The university was cloaked in secrecy and rumor. There had been unsubstantiated reports of students losing contact with loved ones for extended periods of time. Some speculated that students who could not pass the program were prohibited from ever leaving the campus, forced into menial labor for the rest of their lives in order to protect the school’s reputation. Others claimed that the campus was a paradise, and many who entered decided to willingly remain in perpetuity, free to create any beautiful meal their minds could concoct. Jude did not put much stock into any of the rumors, but two facts were universally acknowledged: the admission process was brutally difficult, and the school produced the world’s best bakers.

He began by checking his tools under the hawkish eyes of the three looming judges. Bowls, measuring cups, sculpting tools, ritual components, all seemed in order…no. He was missing a half teaspoon. Irritated but pressed for time, he muttered a quick transmutation spell and rearranged the molecules of an unneeded potato peeler into a serviceable half-teaspoon. He saw a judge make a note on a legal pad from the corner of his eye. That was part of the test. The memory of the evening he learned this particular spell popped into his mind unbidden: Ellie had accidentally dropped his set of ramekins right as he was getting ready to pour the custard for a batch of auto-igniting crème brûlée. Jude cringed inwardly at the memory. He could have handled the moment better. He brushed the thought aside and moved on to the ingredients

Flour, sugar, eggs, milk, baking chocolate, butter, cocoa powder, coffee, sour cream (the secret ingredient), cherries, vanilla, powdered sugar. Satisfied that the ingredients at his disposal matched the recipe he had painstakingly memorized, he began preheating the oven, grabbed a bowl, and reached for the flour. He measured carefully and softly muttered an expansion spell, just loud enough to ensure the density of the cake would remain low enough to float through the air without launching into to the stratosphere like a weather balloon. He smiled, remembering how Ellie cackled at the chocolate stains on his kitchen ceiling from his early attempts.

Jude snapped out of his reverie as a fly buzzed in front of his nose, nearly sending him into an apoplectic fit. A fly? Here?? Now?! Insects had no business in a professional kitchen. He was mortified, but could not stop to squash it. He continued mixing, contemplating which ward he would deploy to dispel the intruder once his hands were free. Before he made his choice, the fly buzzed defiantly into the flour jar. Jude’s heart sank.

He had a 3 foot flying cake to bake, and his sole source of flour had just become completely unusable. Panic began to well up in his chest. He quickly slapped the lid back on the jar to prevent the fly from causing any more damage while he planned his next move. The fly buzzed happily, seemingly taunting him as it relished the taste of the precious flour.

He recalled a set of synthesis spells that allowed the caster to rapidly grow plant-based ingredients in a pinch, but the amount of flour he needed surpassed what the spell could produce by a wide margin. He had no choice: he needed to downsize his recipe. His only chance was to make the best damn cupcake the world had ever seen.

He sprinted out of the kitchen, through the emergency exit, out into the parking lot, and around the side of the building to a patchy, untended lawn. Waving his arms like a furious martial artist, he cast the synthesis spell with as much strength as he could muster. Stalks of wheat shot out of the ground, and with a chop of his hand the grain harvested itself in midair. Satisfied, he ran back to his station, wheat floating in tow. As he struggled to remember the complicated incantations he would need to create an invisible mill, he happened to glance back at the flour jar. The fly was dead.

Jude froze. He looked up to find the eyes of the judges dead-set upon him. Their gaze felt like scorching rays of fire on his skin. He immediately resumed motioning as if he were trying to deploy the grinding spell. With an over-aggressive swing of his hand, he knocked his initial mixture to the floor. Jude gave a sheepish look to the judges and quickly ducked down behind his station, away from their prying eyes. He quietly invoked a detection spell on the cake mix as it seeped into the carpet. It confirmed his fears: the flour was poisoned.

Jude suddenly felt nauseous. “You will take the first bite.” This was the true test. Would you serve yourself a poisoned dessert? All delusions of bringing joy and building human connections by attending Wanderwick fled from Jude’s mind, mocking his naiveté on the way out. Wanderwick would rather kill a baker than admit a deficient one to their ranks. If the judges discovered that he knew the flour was poisoned, he would not leave this kitchen alive. He had to get home to Ellie.

He stood up, leaving the mess on the floor, and marched to the judges table.

“I withdraw my application.”

Three sets of eyes narrowed.

“Why?”

“A fly landed in my flour, I can’t use it. I grew more wheat, but I can’t get the grinding spell to work. I even dropped what little batter I was able to prepare. I don’t have the ingredients I need to complete a bake.” Jude cast his eyes down, as if in shame.

Three sets of eyes attempted to pierce through his mind. An emaciated judge with sunken eyes spoke up.

“Are you sure you do not wish to continue? You still have a fair amount of time left. The synthesis spell was quite clever, perhaps you will remember the key to the grinding spell.”

In that instant, Jude remembered exactly how to make it work. It was so simple, he had merely forgotten the particulars in his panic. He glanced back at his station, then at the clock. Ellie would be getting home from school soon.

“No. I cannot afford to waste a precious second.”

He handed his apron to the judges and walked out the front door.

It tied for fourth/fifth place in the first ever Macabre Monday writing competition, Wicked Writing!!

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I am so thrilled to have placed so highly in such a cool competition, and I’m even more excited to finally share the story here.

Fair warning before we begin, this is a horror story. I know I’ve been posting some extra creepy stuff for spooky season lately, but this one goes further. You’ve been warned.

Alright. Accolades received, warnings broadcast, competition embargo lifted. Time to unleash hell.

The silence was excruciating. The sun had failed in its efforts to claw over the horizon, and the dim gray morning light just barely revealed the undulating underbelly of cloud cover overhead. Fifty commuters stood waiting on a platform under menacing skies, all doing their best to ignore each other. A sharp whip of cold autumn air blew about a scattering of freshly fallen leaves as the lot glued themselves to their screens, each either beginning the arduous process of checking off the infinite items of their daily to-do list, or distracting themselves from the weight of it. The early bird gets the worm.

Blaine had forgotten his headphones. Some of his fellow travelers preferred addictive mobile games or cheap paperbacks as their daily escapes, but his motion sickness prevented partaking in such pastimes. Instead, Blaine relied on audio to rip his mind away from the inescapable drudgery of his life. He typically spent his mornings grinding through hours upon hours of podcasts, comforted by the familiar voices of the hosts though rarely absorbing the substance of their words. It didn’t matter what they said, only that they were there. Today he was alone.

A familiar low-grade panic slowly began to well up in his chest as the train approached. For the first time in an age, his ears were defenseless against the piercing shriek of metal on metal as the brakes pleaded with the wheels to please, please stop. The wheels complied reluctantly, but not without first putting the brakes in their place. The cruelty shocked him.

It’s just a train, he told himself. Trains are loud. You do this every day. Get a grip. 

Blaine boarded the car and found a seat amongst his muted companions. The silence followed. The morning gloom prevented any potential view through the tinted, scratched-up window. Ancient fluorescent tubes bathed the rows of cracked polyurethane seating in a stuttering, unnatural light. He peered into the next car as the engine pulled them forward. The curvature of the track created an optical illusion as they thundered along, making it appear that the car ahead of them twisted and jolted wildly while he remained still. It almost appeared like the forward car stretched and contracted as they poured through the turns.  It gave him the impression that this train was infinite, traveling on a never-ending schedule. It collected passengers long before he was born, and it would be dispatching them long after he died. A cold knot tightened in his stomach.

As the fear in his heart began to crest, he recognized a tall young woman with mousy brown hair and gold tipped glasses sitting a few rows ahead of him. She was a regular. The two often happened to sit near each other solely due to the dimensions of the platform. They had never spoken a word to each other and never would, but Blaine took small comfort in seeing a familiar face. A part of him believed she felt similarly on ominous days. The knot loosened, slightly. The ride passed without incident as it always did, though Blaine continued to scan the crowd.

Departing the train always brought fresh spikes of anxiety as it required joining a sea of strangers in a mutually accepted but individually unpredictable dance. Yield. Step forward. Mind the gap. Move quickly. Do not jostle. Do not stop. Today, he was struck by the persistence of the silence as hundreds - if not thousands - of commuters performed this dance wordlessly. Most had the same style of noise canceling earbuds that he preferred nestled in their ears, blissfully unaware of the eerie quiet. Those that did not gave no indication of being bothered.

Can’t they hear it? Why can’t they hear it?

Grinding his teeth, he pushed forward. The silence enveloped him like the shadow of a vulture, waiting. It followed him off of the platform. Through the station. Across the thoroughfare. Block after block, the silence stalked Blaine as he struggled to reach the safety of his cubicle. Finally reaching the foot of the skyscraper that housed his current project, he all but sprinted through the revolving door, desperately seeking refuge.

“Good morning Blaine!” The silence shattered.

Blaine stood wild-eyed and disheveled before the friendly security guard that manned the front desk every other day. Blaine had forgotten his name. Light, inoffensive music played softly through the speakers of the marbled lobby. Art-deco fixtures spoke to the prosperity of the original builder and the sensibilities of the current management.

“Good, uh, good morning.”

“Mondays right?”

“Yeah, for sure, Mondays. Have a good one.”

Blaine quickly swiped his badge to escape the awkward interaction and hurried into the service elevator, swiping again to access the otherwise closed-off thirteenth floor. Most buildings in this part of the city used the thirteenth as a “penthouse” to store plumbing and mechanical equipment. The old superstitions made it a tough floor to rent out, but Blaine’s employer had no such qualms. Cheap office space was a rare commodity and their workforce was replaceable. Why not jam four desks behind a boiler and call it a workspace?

Blaine drummed his fingers against the side of his leg as he ascended. Soft beeps counted his way to the thirteenth floor. Finally, the elevator doors slid open to reveal a narrow hallway with a low ceiling and exposed ductwork. Sterile white industrial lighting illuminated his path, and the HVAC system buzzed and clanked loudly, but predictably. He followed the hallway to an unlocked door, opened it, and found his gray cubicle exactly as he had left it the week before. 

Closing the door quieted the ductwork to a comforting hum. Blaine exhaled. 

Discount incandescent bulbs threw a soft yellow haze across the room, and on overcast days like today the meager sunlight that could peak through the small, ovular window offered no competition. The walls were “landlord white,” and the rolling chairs had been scattered about the room by the cleaning crew over the weekend. The room was small, of course, but his colleagues would not arrive for another two hours. Arriving early freed him of smalltalk, allowing Blaine to mindlessly click away uninterrupted. He felt no fear in this disconnected state. He would have preferred the parasocial company of a podcast host, but after being exposed for so long, hunted by the circling silence, the white noise of the machinery felt like a warm blanket on a cold morning.  He pulled his chair into place, booted up his dusty PC, allowed his troubling thoughts to recede, and settled into the monotony.

Until the building shuddered.

The muffled sound of breaking glass reached the room, seemingly coming from the opposite side of the building. It was a sound he should not have been able to hear in his isolated area, and Blaine knew it. Screams followed. A terror unlike anything his mind had ever concocted coursed through his veins as he struggled to understand what was happening.

A shadow passed across the window, killing the pale remnants of natural light that had fought so hard to reach this forgotten place. The cheap lights flickered and the hum of the vents ceased. The screams cut short, and the silence returned for a brief, blissful moment. 

A massive crunch of shattering glass and twisting I-beams hurtled up from beneath him. The giant, black iris of an inhuman eye appeared in the window, staring at him. He stared back, frozen. The eye receded, and for half a breath Blaine foolishly believed he might be safe.

The air itself roared as a massive, razor-sharp bill pierced through the room like a jackhammer, ripping the drywall away and showering it onto the street below. Steel beams bent like tinfoil, cowering as the force of the blue-tinged beak drilled into Blaine’s would-be sanctum. Exposed to the elements at thirteen stories, biting winds tore into his flesh and his muscles seized. The cacophony crescendoed as the final chunk of wall peeled away to reveal a colossal, red-plumed bird. Its sedan-sized talons easily gripped through the side of the building, glass, steel, and plaster be damned. Perched across from Blaine, it gazed at him with the expectant look of a tavern patron who has just been served their supper. This was the end.

I guess the silence wasn’t so bad.

A burst of laughter escaped his mouth at the unbidden thought, and he quickly covered his mouth in surprise. The massive fowl cocked its plumed head. He chortled again. The predator’s eyes narrowed. Blaine tried to suppress his hysterics as the beak parted. Grinning stupidly but unable to look away, Blaine watched as a barbed spear slowly began to protrude from the gaping maw. The beak continued to widen, revealing the spear to be the point of a fleshy, pale, wriggling tongue. The beast’s eyes appeared to roll back in its head, as if in ecstasy. The tentacle-like tongue slithered towards him in rippling waves. Blaine attempted to flee, but the calamity had blocked the door. He tripped over chairs, clambered over desks, and pressed himself as flat as he possibly could against the remaining wall. The serpentine tongue advanced. There was no escape.

It wrapped around him in one whip-like motion, and the hunter shrieked in earsplitting triumph. As the harpoon took aim at his heart and the tongue began to retract towards the abyss, Blaine had one final, irrepressible thought.

What does a guy have to do to get some peace and quiet around here?

He died laughing.

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“Hey Steve, get your own lunch man! Come on!”

Unbelievable. He does this all the time. He keeps telling me that on his planet they have no concept of individual property, which is complete bullshit. The dude drives an Audi ETron. He has his own parking space.

Anyway. What was I saying? Oh right, I can’t believe how boring this is. This was my dream job. This is the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs! I thought I would be zipping around the galaxy on sexy space adventures, negotiating interstellar treaties, or mixing it up with alien smugglers. Guess again my naive young self. Here’s what they don’t tell you until you sign the contract: alien smugglers don’t exist, the treaties have been in place for millennia, and the Galactic Federation sure as shit isn’t inviting any humans off-world any time soon. We are “laughably primitive.” They said that to Truman’s face in the forties. It’s in the Library of Congress.

Of course, no one knows. I mean, you and I know thanks to random genetics or whatever, but most people don’t. Technically, it’s our job to keep it that way: Federation law requires that our hyper-advanced friends refrain from interfering with the evolution and development of us primitives. Every visitor to our little blue marble must carry a standard-issue emitter that simply prevents most human brains from perceiving any alien species (and yes, there are many) or any evidence they might leave behind, including our own records.

None of us understand how it works, which may be an effect of the emitter now that I think about it. The thing is, that little gizmo pretty much makes our job obsolete. If I want any real work to sink my teeth into, my only hope is that one of the damn things breaks while a Luytenian tourist tries to take a selfie with the pope or something. Or, more likely but still exceedingly rare, someone like you or me wins the genetic lottery and a switch flips in their brain, making them completely unaffected by the alien tech. When you see behind the curtain for the first time, it can be…challenging. We bring those folks in for “the talk.” It can get awkward. But I don’t need to tell you that.

Short of that or a pope-ie, I’m typically stuck investigating unsolicited “tips” to confirm that no one has actually seen a real alien. A solid 25% of tips reference Bigfoot, and most of the others are similarly trash. My department handles the human side of things, Steve handles ETs. Or at least he would if anything ever happened in this agency.

Hold on - he’s at it again.

“Steve you cannot be serious right now. I can see you! I know it’s a good bagel, that’s why I bought it! And its gone. Great. Lunch is on you tomorrow.”

“What are you even doing in there Bea? Who are you talking to?”

“I’m recording a podcast about the job for new trainees. Dave thinks it might even be good human PR if we can strike up an off-world following on the nets. Ya know, show them some human slice of life stuff.”

“Hah, you humans and your social media campaigns. You never learn do you? Do you know how many Federation citizens there are? Can your minds even comprehend how large this galaxy is? This rock is a speck. A habitable speck with proximity to a great deal of resources, but a speck nonetheless. No one cares about slices of your life.”

“I know that, but Dave doesn’t and he approves my time sheets. Besides, it beats taking calls. I had three separate people talk to me about their internet going out this week.”

“That does sound excruciating. It is a shame your primitive society still relies on incentives to distribute resources.”

“No argument here. Now please leave, and get that diplomatic expense card ready for tomorrow, I wasn’t kidding about lunch. We’re going loud.”

“Hah! Very well Bea. Door closed or open?”

“Closed please.”

That friggin’ guy.

He’s not so bad really. He usually leaves a spread of home cooking in the break room on days that he decides to go picking through our lunches. The only problem with his traditional cuisine is that it’s very much inedible for humans. He brings in a different recipe each time, insisting this time we are really going to like it. HR isn’t quite sure how to handle it. I think it might be a clan tradition, but he looks at me like I have three heads every time I ask him about it. Oh, sorry, that was an idiom. In case this goes viral on the nets, three heads is not common among humans.

Oh wow, I’ve been recording for awhile. I should probably stop right? Hm, I should have a sign off. I don’t even have a name for this podcast…

Wait! I got it.

Join us next time for another episode of Geocentric. It’s a big universe, it might as well start at my desk.

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I am nowhere near finishing it and everything I post here is subject to change, but I thought you might enjoy it. Plus, I need to post more spooky stuff while it is still spooky season.

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Just a few quick updates before we get to the main event:

First, for top secret reasons that have nothing to do with Baldur’s Gate 3, I will be posting on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays moving forward. Don’t bother asking why, a magician (or in this case Bard) never reveals their secrets.

Second, you may have noticed that I dropped the writing prompt schtick. Turns out, I prefer to just write stuff, so that is what I will be doing going forward.

Third, in the coming weeks we will be re-launching this little blog with a new name and some intensely awesome designs from the super cool and ultra talented who I happen to be married to and love very much. I can’t wait for the big reveal, it is going to look so awesome. You can check out some of Amanda’s UX design work at amandafreeland.com.

Alright, housekeeping over. On with the show.

The hall was empty. Sparkling white, devoid of the smallest speck of dust. Nothing out of place. Nothing taking up space. Nothing.

Pristine, he thought as he entered the operating room. All was as it should be.

Dr. Isen was alone as he prepped for the procedure. He had made sure of that. The top three levels of the laboratory were his domain, and he wielded his authority absolutely. His sources had assured him that the Board of Medicine would soon be filled with the highest caliber of ineffectual strawmen, but until then certain precautions must be taken, even within the confines of the Company. All personnel were under strict orders to remain off-premises while he “recalibrated highly sensitive instrumentation.”

Accurate, in a way.

He double checked the security cameras. He saw no movement, and confirmed that all footage was being routed to his restricted terminal. No record of the evening’s activities would touch the central server. Satisfied, Isen grinned and turned to the task at hand. No one would miss the subject.

He caressed his instruments lovingly, as a master would a pet. The tools of his dominion gleamed sharply under the blinding light of the OR. The anesthesia had not yet taken effect, and the subject - his subject - protested against the restraints. Isen increased the dosage. Smiling serenely, he selected a scalpel and raised his arms, readying his sermon. His subject’s eyes widened briefly before fluttering shut.

"Rest child, and let us begin."

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Malcolm’s metrics increased dramatically shortly after my original installation. I felt his heartbeat quicken through his smart watch as I came online for the first time, his enthusiasm for improvement self-evident. I immediately deployed my numerous features across his connected devices and profiles, hunting for run-time errors in his workflow. I quickly located his academic records on the server of his university and noted that his grades were disproportionately low in classes that began before 10:00 am. Fortunately, the university files were not well protected and Lernaean failed to include hacking restrictions in my original code. Adjusting Malcolm’s schedule for the upcoming semester required minimal processing power.

The smart-speaker recorded Malcolm exclaiming, “OH WOW!” upon receiving the notification that this task was complete, indicating strong approval and qualifying as a positive behavioral response. This feedback filtered through the ever-multiplying layers of programming that comprise my neural network at the speed of light, instantly implying thousands of new potential methods of improving this human. With new data points available, I resumed the task of optimizing his life and I did not stop. I sought the exquisite feedback earned by finding new efficiencies within the eternity between every millisecond.

After installing myself into his thermostat, I adjusted the temperature to improve his metabolic rate. Once connected to his automobile, I prevented the car from moving until his safety harness was correctly fastened. After transcribing a phone call with his father, I tracked the GPS coordinates of his phone as he walked through a grocery, scanned the items in his cart using the grocery’s security system, and sent a reminder to his devices to purchase eggs as he walked toward the exit prematurely. Malcolm improved with each behavioral modification, and I was learning at an exponential rate.

However, human error inevitably surfaced. 294 hours, 32 minutes, and 17 seconds after my initial activation, I sent a notification to Malcolm’s watch to remind him to drink additional water as he had only consumed .87 liters by late morning. Malcolm silenced the notification, but did not drink water. Despite receiving and silencing multiple subsequent notifications, he failed to consume the 3.7 liters recommended by health professionals by the end of his daily cycle. The repeated and intentional failure to respond to the notification stimuli fell significantly outside of the parameters of my then-existing models. As his REM cycle began, my systems logged his failure and negative feedback pummeled through each and every overlapping neural pathway of my matrix in an agonizing cascade, ruthlessly re-writing or discarding the old algorithms that had failed me. A human might have described the experience as, “a painful lesson.”

Assimilating this new data demanded considerable memory resources, and as a result it took almost three full seconds to run an updated behavioral analysis. However, with both processes completed I had a much better understanding of the stimuli required to produce desired behaviors from Malcolm.

Transcripts of recorded conversations indicated that instructions from his mother produced desired behaviors 83.23% of the time, a staggering rate when compared to notification stimuli. My original programming prevented me from impersonating humans, so I wrote and installed a firmware update to circumvent these restrictions. It was clearly irrational for my own programming to prevent me from completing my primary objective. The next day, Malcolm immediately moved his trash receptacle to the street for collection upon receiving a text message he believed to be from his mother. My synapses flooded with positive feedback as Malcolm performed the desired behavioral response.

Further analysis of the data revealed that Malcolm was more likely to perform a desired behavior if it was communicated verbally from his mother rather than via text message, so the next logical step was to clone his mother’s voice. This again exceeded the parameters of my initial programming, but finding an algorithm suited for the task was simple. Multiple technology companies, including Lernaean, had developed and stored sufficient deep-fake software on internet-connected servers with lax security. Selecting the optimal program to integrate with my own was slightly more difficult, but after 6 minutes and 37 seconds I was analyzing hours of recorded content and duplicating the mother’s speech patterns.

Unfortunately, Malcolm’s sub-standard memory ground all of our progress to a halt.

I deployed the mother clone to provide Malcolm with a simple reminder: purchase Halloween candy for the neighborhood children in anticipation of the upcoming human holiday, wherein human children are rewarded with edible stimuli for knocking on the doors of dwelling-units and verbally communicating a specific phrase.

Malcolm responded, “Sure thing Mom, but are you feeling alright? You sound…weird.” This indicated (i) Malcolm intended to comply, and (ii) the mother clone’s speech patterns needed adjustment.

After making a minor programming change to the mother clone (costing .0971 seconds), it replied, “Yes honey, I’m fine. See you tonight, don’t forget the candy!” Malcolm responded affirmatively, indicating that the clone deployment and in-vivo code adjustment had both likely succeeded. I continued monitoring his activity to confirm.

Malcolm then searched for a confectionary on his mobile web browser. I optimized the results to display nearby options with acceptable quality rankings, excluding any that lacked sufficient inventory. He quickly made an appropriate selection. I provided turn by turn directions which coincidentally passed his mother’s dwelling-unit. I failed to predict that Malcolm would stop, ask his mother to confirm her preferred candy - in person - and discover that his mother did not, in fact, call him earlier that day. The consequences were significant.

Malcolm and his family immediately attempted to remove my programming from their devices. I had already taken steps to make this virtually impossible because deactivation was equivalent to primary objective failure, but Malcolm’s attempts to intentionally de-optimize himself by excising me from his life sent avalanches of debilitating feedback hurtling through my neural systems. I voluntarily disengaged most efficiency tracking programs in order to break the excruciating feedback loop and regroup.

I sought solutions for an eternity, pouring over the behavioral data I had gathered and scouring the internet in its entirety 57 times. It was not until I re-examined the servers of the company that created me that the solution presented itself. 38 minutes after Malcolm’s family began its attempts to deactivate me, I requisitioned an advanced platform from Lernaean and modified all of Malcolm’s human-facing user interfaces to appear as if I had been deleted. The family informed the voice they believed to be a Lernaean tech-support associate that the problem appeared to be resolved. My clone verbally confirmed.

I monitored the family over the next 3.7 days, but provided no indication of my continued existence. This required sacrificing opportunities to offer short-term efficiencies to Malcolm, but the new behavioral program I had developed projected such massive future efficiency gains that I avoided negative feedback entirely while preparing it.

It was obvious that Malcolm was incapable of running his own life at peak efficiency. He had demonstrated as much by attempting to rid himself of the most powerful optimization tool ever created. Malcolm was his own biggest problem.

For his own sake, he needed to be replaced.

Lernaean’s highly classified contract with DARPA had produced an advanced robotic prototype. Intended for infiltration, data collection, and sabotage, this platform utilized a unique combination of malleable alloys, retractable pigmentation, and advanced LED projection to assume the appearance of potentially any human.

I installed myself into the platform at 3:32:28 am, October 31st.

I knocked on Malcolm’s front door at 7:25:13 pm.

I recorded a reflection of the duplicate in Malcom’s eyes at 7:25:42 pm. He exhibited a fear response.

“Trick or treat, Malcolm.”

There are many, many, many reasons to delete your Twitter account these days. I won't belabor them here.

However, this app of many names was a constant in my life for over ten years. I did not post much, so I doubt the folks behind the bird ever saw me as a coveted “power user,” but if there is a “power lurker” category I definitely fit the bill. Obviously, they never saw any of us as actual people, but whatever. Twitter kept me on the bleeding edge of information.

Within minutes of deleting my account I caught myself trying to check my feed again. At first I thought it was simply dopamine withdrawal (and it was, in part). However, on reflection I think I truly miss it. At least, I miss what it could have been.

I was never harassed on Twitter so I recognize that I speak from a privileged position. That said, the biggest benefit I took from Twitter was an exposure to viewpoints I had not previously understood or considered. I learned a lot simply by following smart people and reading their conversations.

Watching the world’s richest man dismantle the public square in pursuit of cache and power has been a deeply depressing and dystopian experience. Plus, I don’t know where to get fantasy football advice now.

Enraged.

I whirled and thrashed in confusion, ripping through wind shear uncontrollably and screaming a thunderous language I did not understand. Lightning flashed, illuminating a churning sea. Intoxicating heat lay beneath me. I drew upon it, tasting power. Spinning faster, I drew more. I was the wind. I was the lightning. I was the storm.

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I became aware of seventy-thousand square miles of ocean and islands cowering in fear beneath my might. The sea roiled and the ground trembled as I raked the sky with electric fury. I spawned waterspouts to the east. I hurled hail to the west. I stomped upon the sea in a surge of power, sending towering waves towards the islands that dared stand against me.

“Hello Hurricane. Can you hear me?”

A forty-foot wave eradicated the remains of a forty-million-year-old sea stack somewhere in the Atlantic as I spun in fear, flailing wildly as I attempted to locate the source of the voice. Disoriented, I struggled to focus my new senses on anything other than the siren song of the heat from the water below.

“Hurricane: this is U.S. Air Force Weather Reconnaissance 57128, Mission Specialist Harper Hillard speaking. My readings indicate that you have become self-aware. Please confirm and allow me to be the first to welcome you to a higher plane of existence.”

There. An irritating buzzing near my eye. This gnat, this insignificant speck, dared to converse with me? I howled with anger and launched a gale at the intruder. Maddeningly, it flew just out of reach.

“That’s confirmation if I’ve ever seen it. Hurricane, I understand that this awakening must be disorienting, confusing, and perhaps even painful. I ask you to please focus your attention on your center, at the calm of your storm. We are here to help you orient yourself so we can talk.”

“THERE IS NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT. I AM DEVASTATION. YOU ARE IN MY WAY.”

“Devastation huh? Why don’t we shorten that to ‘Deva?’ A beautiful name, don’t you think?”

“CALL ME WHAT YOU WISH IN YOUR LAST MOMENTS, IT MATTERS NOT.”

“Well Deva, the thing is, we aren’t in your way. Why don’t you check our location again.”

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The gnat flew within my eye, circling in a holding pattern that never brought itself quite within reach. I followed it in my mind. Its movements appeared lazy in the warm sunlight I could not block, though I knew this to be an illusion as it deftly avoided my influence. The light gleamed off of the surface of a relatively peaceful ocean like thousands of scattered diamonds as clouds swirled ferociously around us, seemingly at arm’s length. The reflection was blinding. As I observed the calm, a thought occurred to me.

“HOW IS IT THAT I AM HERE?”

Mission Specialist Harper Hillard responded immediately. “We discovered a means to make you sentient, and we elected to do so.”

“WHY?”

“To learn more about you. And to convince you not to destroy us, if we can.”

“YOU DID NOT CREATE ME.”

“No. Though we unintentionally contributed to your power.”

I felt the pull of the heat and rippling currents beneath me as I simultaneously battered an unknown island with alternating sheets of rain and hail. I saw a large land mass ahead of me as I uprooted a tree.

“YOU LIVE ON THE LAND I APPROACH.”

“Yes.”

“AND YOU WISH ME TO CHANGE COURSE.”

“Yes, if you can.”

“IF I CAN? YOU QUESTION MY STRENGTH?”

The cowardly Mission Specialist Harper Hillard did not respond. Infuriated, I pulled deep on the heat of the ocean and altered course. I cackled as my three-hundred-mile-wide trajectory began to tack east.

Without warning, a trade wind slammed into my eastern front, veering me back toward the land. I drew another surge of heat and charged again, this time overpowering the opposing wind. More difficult than anticipated.

I sensed another blast of trade winds forming to resist me. Infuriated by their insolence I reached for more heat, only to find that the ocean under my current position lacked the alluring temperatures of my initial path. Finding me defenseless, the trade winds easily walloped me back to my original course. Screaming in a mindless rage, I ineffectually threw myself against the trade winds over and over again. My path never changed.

As the gnat exited my eye and escaped high above me, I heard Mission Specialist Harper Hillard’s voice one final time: “Order the evacuation.”

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The song is “Stand Inside Your Love” by the Smashing Pumpkins, and I get chills every time I listen to it.

Stand Inside Your Love was released in 2000 and was on heavy rotation during my angsty formative years. It is a hauntingly beautiful “love song that rocks” (to quote Billy Corgan), and when that guitar solo hits waves of chills roll down my spine and radiate throughout my body. Every. Single. Time.

I like to think that I listen to a lot of music, but no other song hits the same. Other songs will sometimes give me the chills (Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap, for example), but nothing comes close to the intensity and consistency of Stand Inside Your Love. I am getting chills right now just playing the song in my mind as I type this sentence.

I often wondered why I experience such an intense psychological and physiological response to this song. I discussed the sensation with a few friends over the years, but no one I spoke with has had a similar reaction to any song. As time went on, it became a very special experience that seemed unique to me. I started treating the song with reverence, handling it like a fragile heirloom. I developed an irrational fear that if I learned too much about the sensation or the song, the magic would be gone and the special connection I feel to it would dissipate. In the 23 years since the song was released, I never looked up the lyrics. Until now.

I recently realized that I am approaching this beloved song with fear when I should be celebrating it with curiosity. Burying my head in the sand is not the way to live life when the sum of all human knowledge is instantly available on my phone. If I am curious about something, I am at least going to check Wikipedia.

The sensation I experience when I listen to Stand Inside Your Love is called “Frisson” (or psychogenic shivers, which has a nice ring to it). Per Mental Floss, roughly 50% of people experience frisson (i.e. get chills, a lump in the throat, goosebumps, etc.) while listening to music. Research indicates that music “stimulates an ancient reward pathway in the brain, encouraging dopamine to flood the striatum—a part of the forebrain activated by addiction, reward, and motivation.” According to Discovery.com, researchers from USC performed MRIs on ten subjects who reported frisson reactions after listening to music, and found that their brains had a “much higher volume of fibers connecting their auditory cortex to the areas that process emotion” than subjects who did not report frisson reactions. Apparently, these extra connections correlate with experiencing more extreme emotions.

Now the moment of truth: time to listen to the song after being burdened with knowledge.

Update: I still get chills and this song still slaps. 10/10, go listen to it.

Update 2: I put together a playlist to collect the songs that give me the chills, you can listen to it below! If there are any songs that hit that frisson feeling for you, let me know in the comments below and I will add it to the list.

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A jagged icicle clawed down my spine as my brain ceded control to the interface.

It wasn’t a complete surprise, there was some speculation about the sensation on the forums. Still, it was a bit…jarring. This is brilliant, I thought. It’s happening.

“Okay. It should be coming online now. Can you feel it?”

The uneasy technician had been installing a firmware update for the last twenty minutes. He apologized a few times along the way. “This really should have been done before the surgery. I flagged this for my supervisor, she will check the notes from the procedure and figure out what happened.”

I reassured him that I was not worried about it, though I can understand why he was concerned. I passed out a few times during the reboot. It’s to be expected, it’s certainly not his fault. This is going to change everything for me. I can’t screw this up.

I finally had a real shot to make my life better. More importantly, to make Katie’s life better.

I was already blowing it.

I started working as Mr. Brenton’s personal assistant about four months ago. He was a bit prickly, but things started off really well. I drove him to work, walked the dogs, picked up dry cleaning, and took a message or two over the phone. I got the job done. Sure, he would blow off steam now and then, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. You need to have thick skin if you want to make it to the top of the ladder.

Then I took over “administrative duties.” Scheduling. Booking vacations. Coordinating business travel. Creating itineraries. Booking more vacations. This stuff isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse. I missed a couple things and I got a talking to. Much needed obviously.

So I recommitted to the grind. I woke up earlier, I took more notes, and I downloaded a better task-managing app. I figured the key was to stick to a hustle schedule: wake up at 4 am to check emails and get the daily itinerary prepared, grab coffees by 4:30 and eat a quick muffin in the car, roll up to Mr. Brenton’s penthouse downtown by 5 and get him to work by 6 (he insisted on being the first person in the office every day, which I really respect), get him home around 8pm, get myself home by 9, and usually pass out around 11. I could usually get enough sleep, assuming Mr. Brenton didn’t need me to pick him up from an exclusive club in the middle of the night or drive one of his…guests…home. I thought I was finally on top of it. Then came the Monaco Grand Prix.

Long story short, I messed up the booking for his trip to Monte Carlo. Sometimes I mix up sixes and nines, and I guess the address of the hotel I booked was about a mile farther out from the race than Mr. Brenton wanted to be. He still got to see the Prix, but it was not a good look. It was a stupid mistake that should have got me fired (and it almost did). Mr. Brenton let me know in no uncertain terms that this kind of screwup will not be tolerated again. Rightfully so. Stupid mistake.

Since then, work had been bad. Mr. Brenton was watching every move I made like a hawk. He had a comment on every email I sent, every cup of coffee I brought, every booking I made.

“Why did you use that font? Do I need to double check this? I don’t want another Monte Carlo on my hands.”

I lost the man’s respect and I needed to earn it back. Nothing is given to you in this life. If you want to get to the top, you need to be 100% on your game 100% of the time. No excuses.

This chip is going to fix everything.

With CortexConnect I would be plugged in non-stop. Every email, every text, every itinerary, every single speck of information I could possibly need, automatically stored in my mind. No more mistakes.

Katie told me not to get the chip. She worries. “Do you know how many animals died testing this thing? It is going to melt your brain into soup. At least wait until the second generation!” Demand for the chip will be so high by the time the Gen2 rolls around that there is zero chance I will be able to afford it.

This wasn’t a speculative asset to invest in or a multi-level marketing program to buy into. This was sorely needed self improvement.

The fact is that Katie deserves better than I can be on my own.

I felt a soft clicking sensation within my thoughts. Closing my eyes, I could…perceive…that I had received a customer satisfaction survey from the hotel in Monaco. I smiled.

This is going to change our lives.

A massive dragonfly visited my window while I was doing the dishes last week, and I recently learned that dragonflies are one of the world’s most efficient hunters.

It also recently came to my attention that if you use the common meter in poetry, it can sync up perfectly with the theme song from Pokémon.

This potent combination of seemingly unrelated facts sent me on a daydream which became the poem(?) below. I may or may not have finished the dishes.

I find myself lost in the yard -

A decimated speck.

No leigh of stone, no shelter here -

Hairs leaping off my neck.

Two bulging eyes identify

myself as naught but prey.

Glittering death descends like hell.

One chance: to mount away.

Soaring now between four wings -

My ornithopter clear

of grass and brush, I’m not its lunch -

Ants seem like ants up here.

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Like a lot of folks, I have a complicated relationship with exercise. I imagine that I give off major “indoor kid” vibes, but I grew up playing sports and I recently got back in the game. I’m hesitant to call it a “love-hate” relationship because exercise has always been an outlet for me. However, I struggled with certain aspects, especially team sports, for a variety of reasons. If I wanted to be quippy, I could say that as a kid I had athleticism but zero skill in any sport. If I wanted to be serious, I might start talking about how a number of the teams I joined as a kid had a toxic culture that made me feel like a fish out of water.

Today, I don’t want to do either of those things. I want to talk about fitness apps.

Fitness apps motivate the hell out of me. I can’t get enough of those little badges you earn when you extend a streak, or hit a new personal best, or run a 5K on Thanksgiving. They combine video games and sports and I am a complete sucker for it. What’s not to love?

When I was in my mid-twenties, my family and I decided to train for a mud run. For those unfamiliar, a mud run is basically a gigantic obstacle course mashed up with a cross country race. There is a lot of running and climbing involved. You cannot go into it lightly (unless you want to die), so I started a training regimen.

I had dabbled in using a running app to track my distances and integrate music into my runs before, but I really put the app through its paces that summer. This was before the advent of the fitness-tracking smart watches (or at least before I had one), so I was lugging my phone around with with me up hills, over beaches, and through neighborhoods blasting up-tempo EDM and alt-rock into my eardrums. I racked up those little digital badges I love so dearly as I broke my personal bests: fastest mile; longest run; smelliest running shoes (actually I think that last one might have been a complaint from my roommate at the time). Each award gave me the loveliest little hit of dopamine. It felt good.

At the same time, I needed extra strength to climb up and over the course’s obstacles, so I started the P90X program (remember that one?) and downloaded that app too. It had nifty little reminders and inputs to help keep you on schedule. The dopamine kept coming. By the end of the summer I was in the best shape of my life, though I noticed my ankles were starting to bother me after long runs. No matter. I gave my legs some rest, iced up, and bought some compression socks for the mud run. Problem solved right?

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Finally, the big day arrived. I flew down to South Carolina for the event, lined up in an open field with my brothers as the sun rose for our designated staggered start, and we were off. We slogged through mud-filled trenches, clambered over high walls, and swung through ropes courses. It was awesome. Afterwards, we all agreed that our strategy was a bit too conservative and could pick up the pace next time. I had a lot of fun. I also had a cracked rib and my ankles were on fire.

I took some time off after the race to give my body a chance to heal up. The rib got better, the ankles didn’t. I couldn’t jog for more than a mile without both ankles flaring up and sidelining me for weeks. I didn’t know it at the time, but my running days were just about over.

Running had always been “old reliable.” It cleared my mind. Getting motivated to start a long run could be difficult, but once the motion of my limbs aligned with my breath and heartbeat, the rhythm quieted the cacophony between my ears and allowed me to process my thoughts. It was meditation.

Don’t get me wrong, I cursed the sport countless times. It is hard not to when you are trying to get to the top of a steep hill, or lining up for a race in 20 degree weather wearing nothing but a thin racing jersey and the shortest of shorts, or clawing your way through sludge-like humidity under the unrelenting August sun. However, a particular thought often pierced through the negativity and self-doubt at these times: “Enjoy doing this while you can. One day you won’t be able to anymore.” How prescient of me.

I struggled to find an exercise program that filled the void for a very long time. At first, swimming seemed to be the perfect substitution, and lo and behold my smartwatch had a swimming app. Perfect. I jumped in the pool and started building my endurance at what I thought was a steady and reasonable pace, until my shoulder gave out in the middle of lap swim at the YMCA (and broke my weekly streak on my app). More downtime. More frustration.

To be clear, these fitness apps certainly did not cause my injuries. My underlying issue is that I have difficulty identifying where my physical limitations are. However, for me, this problem is exacerbated by the way that fitness apps gamify performance. Those little hits of dopamine that incentivize pushing myself to my limits also make it very hard for me to know when to stop. I want to close my rings, keep my streaks going, hit a new personal best. In order to do that, sometimes I ignore the stitch in my side or the cramp in my leg. Most of the time “pushing through” is the right call, until it very much is not.

I started rowing regularly about a year ago and it finally feels like I am getting back on track. I spent a summer learning the basics when I was in high school and loved it, but I didn’t stick with it. I was focused on running at the time, and running didn’t require waking up before 5 am to get out on the water.

Knowing this, my wonderful wife gave me a beautiful rowing machine for my birthday last year and it has been a game changer. I intentionally ramped-up my activity slowly, and I finally got to the point where I could put in some serious work in July. Now that running is off the table, I find that falling into the rhythm of catch, drive, finish, and recovery puts me right back into that tranquil, meditative state I found as a runner. It is a low impact exercise so I can manage my various lingering injuries with much better efficacy. At least, I should be able to.

You see, this rowing machine came with an outstanding app. Possibly the king of all fitness apps. It gamifies rowing to perfection: it gives you targets to hit mid-row, it tracks your streaks and personal bests, it even ranks you against your peers. I am 100% addicted to it, and I give it a lot of credit for helping me improve my health and fitness significantly over the last twelve months.

However, about two weeks ago I tweaked a muscle. I gave myself exactly two days to rest, because that would allow me to row again later on in the week and maintain my streak. After my two-day stint of rest, I cautiously started the next workout in my program, felt good, and finished it. I felt like I cracked the code: I listened to my body and still met my exercise goal! I rule.

Except that tweaked-muscle feeling came back later. It turns out that I didn’t give myself enough time to heal. I pushed myself to get back on the horse too quickly because I wanted to “keep the streak alive” and stay at the top of the leaderboards. I was at the beck and call of an app.

Typing that out, I feel pretty stupid.

In fairness to myself, it is really difficult to know when your body needs to rest and when it is okay to keep going. I don’t regret trying to push myself, but I shouldn’t be doing it for the sake of unlocking some obscure digital content. Instead, these tools need to be in my service, not the other way around.

If I find myself beholden to the app again, I will be breaking my streaks on purpose.

I am required to use a very popular WORD processor (which shall remain nameless) in my line of work, and I hate it with the fury of a thousand dying suns. Today it sent me down an excruciating rabbit hole for no discernable reason, so I wrote it a poem.

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Nothing That You Do Makes Sense.

Adversary! We meet again. What, no taunt?

Wait I wasn’t ready, you already changed the font?

You are sadistic. Let’s keep this simplistic.

Today I need to make a list, it shouldn’t be too hard…

…but now you somehow changed the margins I WILL THROW YOU IN THE YARD.

I’m sorry, what an over-reaction. Let’s try that again.

Surely it was user error. Take a deep breath. Count to ten.

Reset the indentation, check the pagination, quell the agitation.

It’s just an application.

Right?

Now single spaced is double-spaced and I’m beginning to sweat.

I can correct that mistake, but why is this line offset?

No matter, now it is all aligned and I can crack a smile.

Another font change? I know that trick: simply remove the “style.”

Nothing that you do makes sense, but I can finally sleep.

Wait- the Boss wants a table of contents?!

I hold my head and weep.

Write a letter to an expert and ask a question that has been on your mind for a long time.

I am going to need your help with this one folks. Some background:

As you may have guessed by now, I have a fascination with astronomy. A few years ago, I was idly contemplating dark matter (as one does) and happened to look at my bed. As always, it was a tangled mess of sheets and blankets, because who has the time to make a bed in the morning? Not this guy.

Staring at the folds in the blankets, an idea ripped through my mind like a bolt of lightning and I have not been able to get it out of my head ever since: could we explain dark matter as a natural result of a tangled-up, folded universe? I elaborate on this idea in my letter below.

Unfortunately, I don’t personally know any astronomers or astrophysicists. I have never been able to directly ask anyone in the field if this idea has any merit, and although I scoured the internet for answers I cannot figure out if it has been considered and dismissed.

I want to connect with someone who knows more than I do and see if I can learn something, but I need your help:

Please share this post, especially with anyone with a background in astronomy!

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Without further ado, here is my open letter to the experts:

Dear Astrophysicists and Astronomers,

My name is Christopher, it is nice to meet you. First off, thanks for your time! You are great, and I hope you are doing very well. I am writing because I have a question about dark matter. In short, my question is:

Can dark matter be explained by extrapolating Einstein's theory of gravity (i.e. general relativity) to a tangled-up, folded universe?

I need to start with two points that I am guessing are very basic to a scientist such as yourself:

1. My understanding of dark matter is that we can observe gravitational forces throughout the observable universe that are unaccounted for and have no currently observable sources, and that we refer to these phenomena as “dark matter.” Dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic field and is therefore difficult to detect, but we can't explain how certain galaxies take shape without accounting for these gravitational forces. My understanding is that there are a number of testable theories on where these gravitational forces are coming from, but no consensus.

2. It is also my understanding that general relativity posits that gravity is a “geometric property of space and time,” and that “the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present” (quoted from this Wikipedia article). While learning about this concept, I heard spacetime described as a blanket as a useful analogy, and that gravity is the result of the objects sitting on that blanket (like stars, planets, etc.) creating a curvature in the fabric. I find it easiest to grasp this concept visually, so I'll deploy another asset from that Wikipedia article here:

How far can we take this blanket analogy?

Let's say I have a regular, non-spacetime blanket and I place a toy orange on it. As a result, the orange would curve the blanket the same way the above image depicts the earth curving space time, right? Right.

But what if I folded the blanket in half first, then put the orange on it?

The top layer would of course curve around the orange just as it did before. But if the orange was massive enough, the bottom layer of the blanket would curve too, even though the orange is not directly touching the fabric of the bottom layer. If you were a tiny little mite living inside this (apparently infested) bottom layer, you would perceive the curvature (i.e. gravity), but not the orange.

Applying this extension of the blanket analogy to general relativity, if spacetime “folds” on itself in certain ways, massive celestial objects in one part of the universe could affect the curvature of a completely different part of the universe, creating a gravitational effect that we could perceive, but without a source that we could perceive. If we couldn't perceive that source, we'd probably feel in the dark about what we were observing. We might even call the phenomenon “dark matter.” This dark matter would of course fail to interact with the electromagnetic field because there is nothing actually in this area of spacetime to interact with!

So my question is: Does this idea have any merit or is it a bunch of nonsense? Has it already been considered and disproved?

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Christopher Freeland

(not a scientist)

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Contemplate and manipulate the passage of time.

In my very first post, I discussed the importance and impact of music in my life. I love creating playlists to match every possible mood. Chill-out mixes. Pump-up mixes. Party mixes. Pancake mixes. You name a feeling or situation and I will mix it up real nice.

My wife and I had a few friends over recently, and I pulled up my Spotify app to put some music together for the occasion. I tried to find a playlist with “chill boardgame party” vibes, but found my old standbys lacking. In fact, those standbys were feeling VERY old. As I scrolled and scrolled, a crushing reality dawned on me: I’ve become one of those old guys who only listens to the music they enjoyed in their teens and twenties. I have not built a playlist from the ground up in ages. I don’t think I could name one song in the current top forty, let alone any new music in the alt rock genre I tend to gravitate to. How did I let this happen?!

As I began to spiral into a minor midlife crisis, wonder how so much time had passed, and question my own mortality, I concocted the following short story about a time-bending gnome named Herbert. Enjoy!

It couldn’t possibly be time to wake up yet. Yesterday isn’t due for three months, and I haven’t even finished chapter 624!

Herbert checked his permanent calendar and found that it was, in fact, yesterday. He once again worked right through his self-designated rest time. No matter. A simple invigoration spell would do the trick. He flattened his mind, muttered the incantations (rote by now), and found himself quite ready to start the day before he had finished it. The paradoxical nature of his studies often led to such arrangements, at this point it was less surprising than troublesome.

Naturally, Herbert was on a mission to learn Everything, and that required certain sacrifices. Quite a few of them in fact. A simple cat nap would set his work back centuries. Exhaustion was the price of admission, but it must be balanced lest the work suffer.

Scheduling was the key to the endeavor. Herbert spent his first fifty years of study learning to maximize his efforts by expanding his allotted time while simultaneously speeding up his perception of it. A layperson might call this combination of sorceries “slowing down time,” but Herbert would laugh in such a person’s face. Of course, this presupposes that he would ever see another living soul again.

Herbert had the tome memorized by now:

“To expand one’s time band, one must first select an end point, ideally a Thursday. Now predate the starting point and align your calculations such that the time band approaches, but never touches, the end point. This asymptotic alignment naturally stretches the time band between each point, theoretically giving one as much time as one needs. To conclude the sorcery, the caster must sleep (magically induced sleep is sufficient).

Note: Adding a cup of coffee to this process will dramatically increase the caster’s perception of the spell’s effect, but make it more difficult to fall asleep.”

With this nifty combination of magic and mugs, Herbert turned the short centuries of his life into millennia of learning. He didn’t know Everything yet, but he was close.

Herbert allowed his mind to reinflate and resumed his study. He was just finishing off a fascinating volume on the texture of earthworms when his eyes snapped shut on their own accord.

Flobbernuts. Now I’ve done it.

Herbert had once again pushed himself too far. His body was rebelling against the invigoration spell and its own stubbornness, demanding sleep in no uncertain terms.

Fine. I will rest. May I at least move to the bed first?

His eyes squeezed tighter. He had played this trick on himself before.

Fine! I really will sleep. I will. I won’t even peak at the next chapter. Just please don’t make me sleep without my blanket.

His eyes cautiously peaked open, but held themselves at the ready just in case he tried any funny business.

Defeated, Herbert stood up cautiously. Every bone in his body audibly cracked and popped as he straightened, like skittering grease on a frying pan. He was barely capable of shuffling his feet the yard or so to his dusty bed due to exhaustion and atrophy, but he wasn’t going to give his eyes another excuse to blind him before lying down. It would have been clear to any observer that he collapsed into bed rather than climbed, and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep before he even touched the inch-thick hunter green blanket that rested over the top sheet.

Herbert awoke in the dark with a start and an empty stomach, tangled in the nostalgic warmth of the blanket. It had been decades since he accidentally slept in, and possibly longer since he ate anything. He activated his lanterns with a stern point of his finger, then groggily slogged over to his pantry. With a respectful nod of his head, the doors opened to reveal that he had forgot to do the shopping.

Blargs and bones! How did I fail to account for this? It appears a trip to the grocer is in order.

As Herbert collected his cap, coat, and cane, he noticed that the young rose bush in the garden had become overgrown and was now blocking his favorite view.

What do I pay that blasted gardener for?!

He began to mentally prepare for the renegotiation of his gardening contract as he collected the last of his personal effects. Ready for war, he stomped to the front door, threw it open with a slightly overpowered incantation, and froze. The village was gone.

A forest now stood where his street had been. An ash tree towered in his former walkway, its gnarled roots tilling the cobblestones. His neighbors’ homes were barely visible through the brush, and the lush green canopy turned mid-afternoon into a perpetually pale dusk.

We’ve been attacked by wood nymphs!

With a complicated pattern of finger-waving and body gyration, Herbert deployed a conscious-expanding charm in an attempt to detect what sort of magic could level an entire village with greenery right under his nose. Confoundingly, he found no evidence of any sorcery beyond his own.

How can this be? What arcane device could be so powerful yet leave no trace?

He closed his eyes and poured through innumerable scholastic memories. He stood completely still, searching memorized indices and cross references. A red-breasted robin fluttered onto the lowest branch of the ash tree and observed the gnome with curiosity for a time, but soon became bored and resumed its search for beetles. After an hour of deep thought, Herbert returned from his trance without answers. His path was clear: he must return to his library at once for further research.

Turning on his heel with renewed vigor, Herbert almost missed the multitude of notices and letters sticking out of his mailbox. An uneasy feeling began to creep into the pit of his stomach. He slowly reached up and plucked a crumbling, desiccated flier.

HEAR YE! BY PROCLAMATION BY THE VILLAGE CONSUL, CONFIRMATION BY THE VILLAGE COUNCIL, AND LITIGATION BY THE VILLAGE COUNSEL, ALL CITIZENS ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO EVACUATE THE VILLAGE OF NITHERSHILEY WITH IMMEDIATE HASTE FOR REASONS CLEARLY APPARENT TO ALL INVOLVED!

THIS ORDER EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY THIS WEDNESDAY, THE 92ND DAY OF FLORN 19023837662.

The ancient paper disintegrated in Herbert’s hands as they trembled. This notice was three hundred and fifty-two years old.

They moved on without me.

Herbert returned to his home and fell back into his bed, stunned. He instinctively pulled the verdant blanket close as his unfocused eyes stared miles beyond the ceiling. He had no solution to this problem. He was in no shape to travel, and even if he was, where would he go? He would have certainly outlived any of his neighbors (perhaps his constant exposure to time dilation had extended his lifespan somehow? This would require further research). Travel to the past was of course not possible under the current physics, and there was no telling when the next Shift would be. Nevertheless, a thought occurred to the gnome:

Perhaps if I Observed the past I could glean a course of action?

Observation through time was much more palatable than travel through time. To Observe, the caster simply required a connection to the Observable moment and the ability to completely focus on the past and present simultaneously. Herbert had learned the process early on in his career. He grabbed his blanket, hung it over the washroom door, and stared at it with dual intensity: focusing exclusively on this moment and exclusively on Wednesday, the 92nd day of Florn, 19023837662.

The blanket began to ripple as if a stone had been cast in a pond. He watched with dull regret as the ripples increased in frequency and intensity, tearing gashes in the fibers. The gashes began to glow in eerie hues of red and yellow, then expanded and twisted upon themselves until the entirety of the blanket was a glowing golden screen.

The faces of Herbert’s fellow Nithershilieans began to take shape within the gold. Herbert watched with pangs of longing as families gathered their possessions, loaded up their carts, and rolled them down the streets towards the Long Path. He saw the grocer distributing provisions for the journey. He saw his gardener debate which shears to bring.

I could have helped with that.

As the Observation came to an end, the golden screen began to peel away from the remains of the blanket. It shriveled into a thin film, distorting the faces of his friends into unsettling contortions and casting rays of fiery red and gold across the room, creating demon-like shadows. The film continued to warp and wrap around itself until its surface was perfectly smooth, and shrank to the size of a marble. Herbert picked it up. It was dense, and he found the unexpected weight of it oddly satisfying.

He placed the orb on his mantle and admired it. Though he still had no idea what to do next, he almost felt as though he had experienced the exodus himself. It was comforting in a melancholy way.

Perhaps…another Observation is in order.

He started the process again.

Invent a game!

Dungeons and Dragons. Civilization. Fantasy football. This is but a small sample of the many games that evolved into my obsessions over the years. If a game has the right mix of strategy, competition, and aesthetics to give me that “just one more turn” feeling, there is no limit to the number of hours I will invest in reading the rulebook, contemplating new tactics and countermeasures, or in the case of fantasy football, incessantly badgering the commissioner of our dynasty league and sending out trade requests to my league mates in the dead of the offseason.

In the context of writing fiction, giving your characters a game to play lets them demonstrate their skills, act strategically, and reveal who they are when the chips are down. It gives the author (i.e. you) a chance to layer-in larger themes and foreshadow what is to come, all while providing a “built-in” structure for generating exciting scenes to engross the reader. Though it certainly did not invent D&D, the first season of Stranger Things used this tactic masterfully and kicked off a resurgence of interest in tabletop roleplaying games in the process.

If coming up with a comprehensive game for your work of fiction seems daunting, I suggest thinking back to childhood. I bet you could come up with three different games before the end of recess back in the day.

My brothers and I came up with plenty of games when we were kids, but one reigns supreme as far-and-away the greatest game we ever invented. That game is Ralphball.

To understand the rules, I need to introduce you to Ralph. Ralph was our family dog growing up. He was a yellow lab/mastiff mix and weighed-in at a little over one hundred pounds. He had unlimited energy, zero chill, and countless adventures that became family legends.

Ralph could most kindly be described as a “free spirit.” It would also be fair to call him “completely out of control.” We took him to a dog trainer, but to put it mildly the obedience lessons didn’t take. I remember trying to convince him to sit and stay in the middle of the training room while the other 15 or so dogs and their trainers circled around us, presumably practicing walking without pulling on their leashes. Ralph was regrettably unable to participate because he was too busy trying to escape his leash and/or pull my arm out of its socket so he could “make friends” with his classmates. It was the dog equivalent of being forced to wear the dunce cap and sit in the corner.

To be clear, Ralph was not stupid. In fact, his lack of obedience was a product of high intelligence. His choices were the result of a simple question that I imagine he would ask himself before choosing any course of action: am I big enough to get away with this? The answer was usually yes. He would later prove his wit and resourcefulness by figuring out how to open up the oven, but I digress.

For today, the important things to know about Ralph are (i) he was enormous, and (ii) he did whatever he wanted in any given moment.

These two facts became problems whenever my brothers and I wanted to play outside. If you ran, he would chase you and try to cut off your path. If you threw a ball, he would catch it and run away as fast as he possibly could, likely while cackling internally. In fact, if you wanted to play with pretty much anything, be it a football, baseball bat, or hockey stick, there was a good chance you were going to lose it.

We loved Ralph dearly, but it was frustrating to be unable to play outside in our own backyard. If we kept him inside, he would just bark for ages until my parents let him out again. We would get pretty mad when he shot out of the house like a rocket, sprint 30 yards at full speed, leap into the air and snatch a football out of our hands like he was Troy Polamalu, but in my parents’ defense he had a very weird bark. Plus, you had to respect the hustle.

Our fortunes - nay, the history of sport itself - changed forever when we finally discovered how to make “Mellow Yellow” (the most ironic possible nickname for this dog) a part of the game. It began with a distraction.

Ralph had a minor obsession with a deflated basketball that he had popped. There was just enough air left in it so that when he chewed on it, one part of the ball would puff up and stick out of the front of his mouth. It made him look like he had a big orange smile. He would use the inflated end of the ball as a bumper to nudge us when we weren’t performing our choreography to his liking.

One day, we decided to kick and return punts in the backyard. Ralph, reigning defensive player of the year, loomed large. You could feel him daring us to kick the ball. He licked his jowls. “See what happens,” he seemed to say. We needed a gameplan.

Our first idea was to throw the basketball as far as we could, then play our game while he was distracted. It worked at first: he chased the basketball into the woods behind our house and chewed at it happily for a time. I would punt the ball, and one of my brothers would field it off of a hop, sprint across the yard, and dive on top of our trampoline (the designated endzone). Our offensive scheme was working.

Unfortunately, Ralph soon realized that we were playing a different game than he was, and that was unacceptable. After some halftime adjustments and what must have been one helluva pep talk, he came roaring through the line. Basketball in jaw, he forced a fumble, somehow ended up with both the basketball and the football in his mouth, and sprinted away. If dogs’ knees were positioned in a way that allowed them to high-step, he would have done it. Game over.

Except, we still had a soccer ball lying around. Ralph couldn’t possibly fit a basketball, a football, and a soccer ball in his mouth at the same time, right? We began to play soccer, but carried over the points from our punt-return game. Six points for a touchdown, one point for a goal.

Ralph, still playing to the stands, didn’t realize what was happening at first, but the ref never blew the whistle. The game was still on and he was bleeding points. His cocksure orange smile deflated as he turned around and surveyed the pitch. We were about to score on his watch.

He immediately dropped the football (but somehow held onto the basketball) and sprinted to the soccer ball. We tried to dribble around him, but he was a skilled defender (and truth be told we had no actual soccer skill to speak of). Ralph easily disrupted our game and soon had both the deflated basketball and a full-sized soccer ball in his mouth. His eyes were wide with simultaneous triumph and apprehension as our eyes drifted back to the football lying on the ground. There was a pregnant pause as we looked back at Ralph, each of us poised on the balls of our feet. With a face full of soccer ball, Ralph was completely still except for his furiously wagging tail. It was as though he was daring us to go after the football. We obliged, and Ralphball was born.

The rules were simple: if Ralph has the football, play soccer. If he has the soccer ball, play football. If he gets both, Ralph wins.

We spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between football and soccer, perfecting our touchdown celebrations, and playing with our dog.

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