RR link
Previous chapter (RETRO COSMOS)
​ #2 - THE TWISTED HEIST ​
A star had just gone out in the distance, sending its entire system, planets and moons, into oblivion. So, what was a simple life compared to a sun? Did the human existence that earthlings highly cherished in the past deserve so much fuss?
I would say no, of course, because I’m a cat. Our condition to us felines will never have to pale in front of a shiny astronomical object. Mine specifically, don’t you think?
Oswald Avery was merely a Homo sapiens. A retired buccaneer, fermenting his adulterated wine on the carcass of a drifting supercargo; all under the remodeled features of a former Galactic Trade Company’s pilot. Alas, regardless of the genetic disguise, the FID rarely lied. It hadn’t fooled us and the masks had fallen off. Just like him.
I’m such a poet.
Anyway… Avery had had a long life of crimes and adventures. He was full of energy in his youth. And as in the universe, nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed, this energy was reincarnated in a nice amount in our bank account once the old picaroon flatlined.
“We finally got it! And it was a traditional Martian contract. Payable remotely, on condition that the FID is validated. How about that?”
“God… Lee … you’re talking to yourself and it’s only 8 a.m.,” Ali grunted behind me.
My couch potato of an associate had her head still stuck in the cereal box she was nibbling before falling asleep binge-watching Captain Caveman on ABC.
“To begin with, it’s 8 p.m., Martian Time. And we do have a positive balance in our bank account for the first time in months! Do you know what that means, partner?”
“Shopping, bitches!” she shouted as she hurled herself into the void, gliding to the bathroom in the weightlessness.
With the cardboard box on the top of her head, this sugar bishop was swimming after the remnant cereals that floated on her path like Ms. Pac-Man.
“Hell! Have I just opened Pandora’s box?”
The liner Danaë and its forty-eight post-nuclear Baltimore-XVIII heavy reactors made its annual cruise from Lunapolis to the suburbs of Ceres, in the belt. Its figurehead with the effigy of the Greek princess was a two hundred meters long, green ceramic statue. The size of the ship exceeded some inhabited asteroids’ diameter so it possessed its own substantial gravitational field.
“It’s quite a symbol of the decline of humanity,” I said to Ali, pointing with my chin at this unique work of art.
“Why?” my partner asked without caring whatsoever. “Spill the beans, Plato.”
The Kitty had obtained permission to dock and began its approach. I concluded then:
“Humanity no longer erects great and beautiful things without turning them into a shopping mall.”
The gold and ivory Danaë was one of the most luxurious epicenters of human decadence in the system; comprising hotels, casinos, megastores and amusement parks spread over a dozen centrifugal rings. There was something for everyone’s wallet, ready to be emptied, whether one was welcomed at the port or had joined during the crossing.
And to my great regret, the cape of the Danaë was just passing by us that week.
“I believe we should keep our savings for the maintenance of the Swallow. The dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree. Some parts need to be changed…”
“You’re such a bore with your adult talks,” my partner said as she left the fitting room of a luxury chain overlooking the main deck. “What do you think of that? Sexy as fuck, right?”
Her camisole didn’t hide a single inch square of flesh and I subtly pointed it out to her:
“It’s a bit of a back-alley Sally.”
I took a blow on the nose which, this time, was amply justified.
“There’s nothing chicer than Borderline. You don’t know anything about fashion. It’s crazy!”
She was furious. It was entertaining. But she was right. The human female fads were way over my head and I wasn’t a good adviser. Mostly because I didn’t care. At all.
Fortunately, the upscale shopping mall where we were staying had provided us with a free assistant who was even more servile than a decerebrate canine. As usual, the robot carrier that accompanied us did the job by flattering her with its unbearable honeyed tone:
“I find you charming, Madame. Here we have the latest fashionable lingerie on Mars. It’s an ephemeral collection that appears to have been specially made to mold your discreet curves, which seem to have been sculpted by the seraphim.”
Ali gave me a satisfied look that I pretended to ignore. Then she backtracked into the fitting room to put her black suit and pink jacket back on.
I took the opportunity to climb on the shoulders of this silly robot, servant of our servants and last link in this hierarchy whose origins go back to Ancient Egypt.
“One more move like this and I’ll turn you into a gum dispenser.”
The automaton apologized before my partner’s head emerged from behind the silk curtains which were far too fragrant for my taste.
“I just checked; it’s too expensive anyway. I ain’t buying it,” she announced. “Can you order a taxicab to take us to the hotels’ ring? You’d be a sweetheart.”
Happy to leave this irascible human with her robotic slave, I proceeded to the nearest service terminal. By the time I requested a vehicle, a flying cigarette dispenser could light me a Lucky.
“It’s forbidden to smoke in our store, Monsieur.”
The customer attaché, in his blue silk suit with elephant legs, had appeared out of nowhere. Yet, with such a shiny tie, this punk should have dazzled me from the Kuiper belt.
“Please be kind and get me a Pepper Coke instead of ruining my eyesight…” I grumbled in response.
I was in an awful mood. I definitely hated shopping. And people. Yet the pedestrian avenues of the Danaë had a very exceptional population density. Perms were making a strong comeback, as were neon tattoos and overly open flowered shirts. Under the false UVA/B sun, it was a true dance of flesh, steel and plastic bodies with assumed nudity. Implants and surgery erased the hazards of the genetic lottery for better or worse. It was so superficial. So futile. So human.
“Hello, handsome!” Ali cried out, a large smile across her face. “Lee? You didn’t tell me you knew Christophe Lambert! You know I'm a huge Highlander fan!”
My partner had just joined me, arms loaded with bags massive enough to live in it, start a family and park my chromic Pontiac Firebird. All were filled with C$400 t-shirts and sneakers that she didn’t need and would only put on once.
“No smell. Hologram,” I conclude by throwing my cigarette butt through the smiling ghost.
“Shame!” Ali sighed.
She then looked at her terminal, and continued:
“Do you think I have time to grab a watch module? There are sales in the Japanese aisle! I saw some GD-8 that would go well with my new Game Pocket! This boat is fucking rad!”
Ali could not stop humming Who wants to live forever. I had to rub my temples to avoid a migraine before the arrival of our taxicab five minutes later.
These were miniature limousines with double fake leather benches, facing each other at the back. There was a minibar with expensive multicolored drinks and sugar-soaked snacks, the sapiens’ primary source of calories and high Gs space travel drug. For the sensitive, the smart-fridge provided diet sodas with aspartame, but no one took it. Finally, there were free Gauloise cigarettes next to the ashtray on the armrest. And even Tylenol!
“What a time to be alive!”
Right after leaving the fashion district, a soft voice of a young woman, who appeared to us through the armored porthole separating her from her customers, finally emerged from the cockpit:
“Good evening! I’m Miss Meera. At your service. Hotel de Saint-Malo, correct?”
I nodded. She smiled at us. She was beautiful with her incredibly dark night metal skin that contrasted strongly with her silvery-white hair. She also had charming ivory eyes with absolutely no reflection. They were a mesmerizing void of light.
In fact, it was so rare to deal with a real person, and not an AI, that we engaged rapidly in a lovely and honest discussion with Meera. We were mostly talking about life on the Danaë. As she stated, the rules on board were very strict, even military. All was done to make sure that the customer had the most pleasant time at the expense of everything else. Finally, according to her, her condition wasn’t the most to be pitied in the cosmos. And she was fully satisfied with this precarious semi-nomadic existence.
“And what about you? Are you here on vacation or in transit for work?” she eventually asked. “What do you do for a living?”
Should we have told her that we were executing infamous people so Ali would collect expensive t-shirts and I could fulfill my nicotine addiction?
“Don’t get me wrong but I saw that you had a gun. Are you in the police… or are you pirates?”
It wasn’t the first time someone asked us this question. Although weapons were allowed on most ships and stations, it wasn’t wise to display them unless you were looking for trouble. Unfortunately, hiding such a large caliber under such a tight vest was a Herculean task.
“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone”, simply quoted Ali, her forehead against the window covered with scented stickers.
Meera laughed before continuing:
“Very well, Al Capone. I understand that you’re not the type to let yourself be taken advantage of.”
The taxicab entered the central expressway after the water park then suddenly swerved violently to the left.
“What is going on?” I gasped.
After crushing the safety railing, we fell from one rotating bridge to the other in a frantic cavalcade. Judging by Meera’s swear words, this ride wasn’t part of the show.
Avoiding the stalls of an art market and a group of children coming out of an arcade, the driver finally managed to recover in extremis. It was about time, because within seconds we were passing through the transparent protective wall of the hotels’ deck.
“A thousand apologies! Another one of those mor… clients from the Middle System who doesn’t know how to use a rental car,” she shouted through the window. “Are you guys hurt?”
“No, thanks to you,” I replied, my tail spiked over my head, taped to Ali’s neck now decorated with bloody scratches.
Although my human forehead now had a bump on it the size of a golf ball, it was true that Meera had just saved our lives. This young girl had unsuspected driving talents despite taxicabs’ lack of handling. She didn’t belong here, playing the steward in a yellow circus uniform. This woman should have been a fighter pilot; or a NASCAR driver on Canyon Creek.
“In any case, here you’re almost in front of your hotel,” she replied. “You don’t have to pay anything, and I apologize again for the scare.”
From the outside, the taxicab now looked like a can of nutrigel after going through a crusher. Yet, it still worked. May God Darwin bless Venusian steel.
After thanking her, we wished Meera a good day. But the cockpit window suddenly went down on the passenger side. The smile of the driver had faded. She had tears at the corner of her white eyes.
“Wait!” she asked. “This weapon… do you really know how to use it?”
So, life on the Danaë wasn’t so sweet. As Meera explained to us in a secluded alleyway, a trio of criminals had come to threaten her a few days earlier, after finding she was a bodacious driver. They were preparing a heist in one of the flying city’s fifty casinos. The young woman was now ready to pay the price to settle the case.
“What is your opinion about this whole situation?” I asked Ali, once in our room, a small yet cozy suite whose glass walls overlooked the vacuum of space.
My human had applied a brownish ointment on her hump, which disappeared soon after, leaving only a slight pinkish hematoma.
“Meera said she would provide us with more details tomorrow. However, if she ponies up the cash, I don’t see why we would refuse. We ain’t mercs but these three guys must have a bounty on their heads. Let’s do our job, right?
“Indeed…”
All we had to do was wait for more instructions. Fortunately, it had been months since we had been able to take days off except on miserable gas stations full of drug addicts, implants scavengers and prostitutes.
After another morning of shopping, Ali went to the thalassotherapy center of the neighboring hotel. Her main occupation? Overeating sushi made by 3D nutrigel printing while getting massages.
Alas, I didn’t have the time to bask under the false sun of the lakeside resort and get my belly stroked. As a good captain, I had to go to the maintenance to fix the numerous damages of the Kitty. As always, the bill would be higher than expected.
Everything was orchestrated so that we would never hold a positive balance in this corrupted system. We had to chain contract after contract.
But Meera’s gig didn’t sound right. There was something I didn’t like and I couldn’t catch it yet. All my cat sensors were in the red. Unfortunately, the bounty hunter’s ones only saw the green of the bills.
Don’t judge me.
The young taxicab driver had finally contacted Ali again by holoconference in the early afternoon, shortly before I joined her at the exit of the tanning booths. Or as I called them: human toasters.
“Have you finished roasting like a Thanksgiving turkey?” I asked her as she plunged into the icy water of the adjacent basin, under the lustful gaze of a group of cadets from the Marine Academy.
“Meera will pick us up with a new taxicab in the hotel parking lot,” she whispered once back to me. “Alongside her, we will meet two of the criminals at the burglary location, shortly before midnight.”
“Go on.”
“We take care of these guys and we catch up with the last one: the band leader, in the storage cavities of the hangar reserved for the ship’s logistics. Below the last rotating ring.”
In Eve’s costume, Ali came out of the basin, not without deliberately drenching me. The water had a nasty chemical taste from being filtered day after day.
“Do you have any intelligence on these jokers?” I insisted while lighting a cigarette.
“The Broadway Gang. Three brothers. C$45,000 for the trio. We will also be able to recover at least C$10,000 of Techno-federal tax on their ship depending on its condition. Easy cash with the dollar credits that Meera promises us…”
Now sitting on the ledge, my partner splashed her feet to demonstrate her eagerness to head back swimming.
“Excellent! This will pay for the maintenance and allow us to save some money on our way to the belt.”
“Can I go now?” she asked, sliding back into the water.
“You may,” I had concluded before seeing her leave for her absurd wanderings that would fill her afternoon.
I myself was very busy making eyes at the wealthy guests of the hotel restaurant to glean a few pieces of Peking duck or juicy crabs. They were real farm animals from Mars. Not nutrigel. It was worth abandoning a little dignity aside.
With a full belly, I finally joined Ali in the middle of the evening. Arriving in the corridor of our suite, I crossed the group of cadets noticed near the swimming pool. They seemed tired but blissfully smiling as they just discovered the nirvana. And I knew why…
“Ali? Are you ready?” I said as I walked through the half-open bedroom door.
Her dressing gown had been thrown on the floor. Her gun and badge were resting on the bedside table against a giant bottle of Koala Springs soda and a pyramid of little Yoyo Mints.
To be honest, I expected a bigger mess.
“Gimme five minutes,” she replied while in the shower.
An hour later, we met Meera in the staff parking lot behind the recycling stations. Without further discussion, we joined the expressway in the taxicab. Between two noisy info-ads, the radio played Sweet Transvestite then the rest of the mythical Rocky Horror soundtrack.
“I wonder what Tim Curry’s up to these days,” asked Ali while browsing the intraweb on her implant.
“Being legendary as usual,” I answered.
Afterwards, the casino was in sight. But once on the forecourt illuminated by the gold and silver bulbs, we heard gunshots and screams. My partner and I quickly realized that this was a violent robbery rather than a modest heist.
“What the fuck, Meera?” Ali asked, turning to the porthole that separated us from the cockpit.
There was a hint of irritation in her voice.
Meera remained mute, her hands on the wheel and her gaze forward. In the rear-view mirror the young woman looked panicked.
The right door of the vehicle suddenly opened and two men sat down in front of us. They were wearing theater masks: the first was Melpomene, the sad grimace of tragedy; the second, Thalia, the twisted smile of comedy. Each brigand carried a huge metal block under his arm; drawers that were sure to be full of cash. On the other hand, they held their still smoking ZeG-4 machine guns even more firmly.
When they saw us, they both gasped, in unison:
“What the fuck, Meera?”
One… two. One… two.
Four holes in their faded tuxedo. Four bullets as big as a cat’s eye that silenced them forever, before slowly repainting the bench in red.
“What the fuck was that? You killed them!” Meera shouted this time, as she started the electric engine. “You had tasers at your disposal, you psychos!”
She had finally turned around. Her voice was quivering. She was no longer panicked, but angry.
The tasers must have slipped between the seats because I hadn’t seen them. My partner raised her eyebrows and it made me realize that their use had never been in mind.
“We’re bounty hunters, not 9 to 5 social workers!” continued Ali. “Now, you gotta motor, otherwise the cops will shoot our ass on the spot before we could even meet the third dude!”
Meera put her foot on the pedal and one could almost hear the noise of the thrusters melting the white asphalt.
“I can perceive the sirens, Ali,” I concluded before Meera entered the ring's external road reserved for logistic transport.
We then had the shortest car chase we had taken part in. The Danaë security forces may not have had the best elements in the system, but Meera’s talents didn’t give them a chance. We had crossed half a dozen rotative bridges to the rhythm of Take on Me, zigzagging between expressways and maintenance tunnels to arrive before the song ended at the deserted logistics hangar.
It was similar to a huge supermarket with honeycombed shelves. Each of these garages, dimly illuminated by red LEDs, housed a delivery or transport vessel. There was the most impressive fleet I had ever seen.
In one of the first level’s cells stood, between a set of clamps, a Swift-0 scout, from Peugeot Corp, with wings spread. The Swifts were small and very high-end single-seaters. They could be modified to integrate weapons systems, but their primary characteristics were velocity and evasion.
Leaning on the flank of the mono-turbine, the last of the three criminals, a tall blond man with a “Chevy Chase” prominent chin was looking down on the approaching taxicab.
“Were they planning to escape on that ship? The three of them?” I remarked when the vehicle stopped a few meters from the small vessel.
But Meera ignored me.
“Hand me the money, I’m going out. That was the agreement.”
The porthole opened at its base, allowing us to pass the steel cash drawers. Once the taxicab’s ignition was turned off, only their holographic numbers glowed in the dark.
“It’s all over if his cronies don’t stick their noses out of the car,” Ali replied, finally giving the second drawer away. “He’s going to figure out that it went south. He will kill you!”
Outside, the man was getting impatient. Blinded by the taxicab’s headlights, he came closer before exclaiming:
“Zéphyr, are you there? Where are my brothers? Security is closing all the departure modules. We will be stuck here, for fuck’s sake!”
He now had a gun in his hand. A machine gun identical to those of his companions currently bathed in their blood, nailed to the seats.
“Zéphyr? Wait… I know that name!” I meowed to myself.
The doors and portholes of the taxicab were locked. Ali and I were now stuck in the back with the two flatlined and most wanted criminals on the ship.
“Sorry guys, but I’ll handle the rest.”
Miss Meera, alias Zéphyr, smiled at us through the armored glass just before leaving the cockpit by the driver’s door.
“What a fucking piece of shit… Lee? Do you have a plan? I think the windows are bulletproof. I don’t feel like testing. Especially if it’s bouncing around with us inside, we will be turned into ground beef!”
“Did you forget who I am, my dear?”
I was already crawling under the seat, between a pair of Méduse shoes and half nibbled fried rat wings. It was time to demonstrate all my infiltration skills learned from Ninja Gaiden. Unfortunately, both the crab and the duck slowed me down and my belly remained for a few seconds stuck under the driver’s seat with my head on the brake pedal. How outrageous!
From the porthole, I saw Ali watching what was happening in front of us, near the ship. Our eyes met for a brief moment and I could read on her lips: “diet kibble”.
“Better off dead!” I shouted.
My paw reached the bottom of the dashboard, activating the mechanical opening of doors and windows. And, accidentally, the loudest horn in this dimension.
“My bad!”
My sapiens immediately jumped outside, pointing her gun to Zéphyr. Surprised by the thunderous din, her target pivoted towards us, uncovered, turning her back to the human with the magnificent chin and his ZeG-4 who yelled:
“What in the whole universe is that? Wait! I know her! Did you bring us bounty hunters? You were clearly planning to double-cross us!”
The man shouted and his gun produced a rain of bullets. It first hit the windshield of the taxicab, passing through the conductor compartment where I was. The rounds bent the windscreen, but it held. This wasn’t, however, the case for the hood, protecting the engine and the reservoir full of coolant, which ended up covering the seat and my face.
Fortunately, the sticky alcohol allowed me to escape from this trap and jump out of the vehicle through the window I had previously opened. But, once again, a fire ring enveloped the ZeG-4’s cannon.
“This is how I die…” I meowed, eyes closed.
I was violently tackled and hit the ground. Zéphyr had saved me at the last moment, just before bullets obliterated the front of the taxicab.
Other projectiles ricocheted off the metal money drawers on the floor and got lost in the ceiling, activating the fire sprinklers. This incident triggered a silent light alarm throughout the hangar while the mobster prepared a new salvo.
“Don’t hurt my pilot, you narbo!” roared my partner.
Ali, this time taken as a target, retaliated. She fired a single shot towards the rascal with a formidable precision. No one knew how to handle such a heavy gun as she did. She was my human. She was the best in her field: murder.
And I taught her everything. Almost.
The leader of the robbers tried to reload the magazine of his weapon, unaware that his heart had been punctured a few seconds before. Adrenaline was doing its job. But the blood loss caused by the explosion of the aorta at its base, near the ventricles, gradually stopped him in his gesture. His pressure dropped and the bloodstream no longer reached the brain sufficiently. He was already in a coma when his shoulders touched the ground. He was luckier than the average Joe and died a few seconds later.
“Is everything all right?”
My voice was trembling, still in shock from this disaster. I was wet and frozen.
Zéphyr got up with difficulty. Next to us, one of the metal drawers was opened, revealing a bunch of green bills and a much stranger booty: an eight-inch gold diskette with suspicious Chinese symbols.
Well… I couldn’t read them but Chinese symbols on stuff are always suspect, aren’t they?
But there were more important matters. Because my partner, on the other hand, stayed on the ground. Blood was dripping from her black suit and mixed with the clear firefighting fluid that was falling like an endless rain.
I tried to talk to her again but my voice was lost in a groan.
“Why are you whining, you big baby? It’s just blood.”
With her nose in a puddle, my sapiens smiled at me. Her left hand was compressing her abdomen. The bullet had passed through the external oblique muscle, far from the stomach.
It wasn’t that bad after all but she had scared me. And that deserved a scratch on the wrist that made her scream:
“What the fuck?”
“And the medical expenses? Have you thought about medical expenses? We don’t have insurance!”
“God, Uncle Scrooge! I hate you!”
“We won’t be able to fix the Kitty with your heroic outbursts!” I fulminated to mask my joy of seeing her in one piece.
“I will kill you, Muppet! I almost died! I don’t give a fuck about your rusty trash can which flies like a brick!”
It was true that we hadn’t had a fight for a long time.
“Guys…” intervened Zéphyr.
“What?”
Ali and I had spoken together.
“These three ruffians had planned to steal the diskette drive from me once I got back. I needed a hand, so… thank you… I guess.”
“You’re welcome,” my human answered dryly while sitting.
Although Zéphyr saved me, I didn’t share the same kindness:
“Wait, we’re not letting him go! Do you know who he is?”
Zéphyr. Prince of thieves. And yes, he wasn’t much of a princess either. Just an androgynous cyborg. A breakout king wanted throughout the entire system for his affiliation with the Data Brokers’ Guild. With an incredible bounty of C$800,000, she or he… whatever… was the knight of the brokers’ chessboard.
“I think we’ve had enough for today,” Ali said. “Unless you hope to go after him with these big fat guts of yours.”
“By the 79 moons of Jupiter, you shall pay for this, woman!” I meowed, angry.
My ears were backwards and my hairs were spiky. But soaking wet, it just made Ali and Zéphyr laugh.
Disgrace!
“He’s so cute when he’s furious,” he joked.
Now on his knees, the night-skinned androgynous was blotting Ali’s wound with a torn piece of fabric from his driver’s uniform.
“But more seriously, I need to go. With the bounty, you’ll be able to repair your vessel. As for the hospital fees, I will contact a good friend who will take care of you for free. She’s the ship’s chief medical officer.”
“Thank you,” I simply replied as he helped my partner get back on her feet.
“It’s the least I can do. I wasn’t interested in money. More important information is contained in this,” he said as he was picking up the floppy disk.
This golden diskette must have been worth a lot of cash for Zéphyr to play a taxicab driver to ensure coverage. I had perceived that something was fishy!
Then, halfway to his Swift-0, Zéphyr stopped. I witnessed his hesitation.
“There was nothing personal, you know. We’re all just trying to make our way. The best we can…”
And he ultimately left before adding:
“Maybe we’ll see each other again! You seem like fun.”
Before fleeing away, Zéphyr abandoned one of the boxes near the criminal’s corpse. Thus, he validated the theory of a robbery that had gone wrong. When the security arrived a few minutes later, we were the heroes of the day. And with a little bribe, nobody cared about Zéphyr’s missing ship.
This whole story surely left us a bitter taste. A feeling of defeat and humiliation that the swimming pool under the synthetic sun couldn’t make disappear even a week after.
“He undoubtedly played us as we were rookies, with his little face of a young innocent girl in distress,” I said to Ali right after the end of the daily Brett Maverick.
This old show was dispensed on a couple of giant screens suspended by drones.
Until now, Ali had remained silent on her deckchair; with a brick of sour juice stuck between her breasts and a pair of straws between her teeth. Only inaudible grunts emanated from her mouth since the departure of the sexually unclassifiable mugger.
“I wonder what information this fucking cyber-Tootsie could have been looking for in that casino,” my human mumbled as she squeaked her rainbow flip-flops.
“Admit that it’s not really that question that puts you in such a state…” I answered, now well installed on my motorized buoy that I had gotten as a gift in a diet kibbles package.
“You bet! I will have a nasty tan mark on my stomach with these bandages!” she exploded, spitting out her plastic straws with infinite curls.
My float slipped towards the ledge as a robot came to bring us our next glucose overdose.
Ali finally added:
“I swear that if we run into him again, I’ll smack his fucking angel face.”
Back to business!

Hello, you may know me from DD posts about IVZ and 3DP. I'm still heavily in these. But today I bring you SBW.
Ok for real, this might be the laziest DD you've read because it was copy pasted direct from hotcopper. But it will also be the best DD you've read (no offence to u/bigjimbeef recent DD on this but he's always drunk and while his DD did get me interested in this, I think maybe some people didn't take his post seriously because the post read like he had a beer in one hand and his dick in the other).
But I've been thinking lately... wouldn't it be nice if I could, for once, jump on a stock, before it rockets? Like... Every stock I've been in so far has holders who are already 10 bagging. How do they find these stocks and how can I become one of them?
Well, here is your chance. Full disclosure, I'm in at 26.5c, closing price today is 24.5c. It IPOd at 35c so we are still at bargain prices. No rocket yet. If you can think of a reason not to buy, please say so, before I take a larger position tmw morning, as I am trying to keep myself from getting overly keen on yet another stock but so far I can't find a good reason to put money anywhere else.
Copy pasta below:
I thought it was about time that I made the “Ultimate Guide to SBW” and consolidated months of research and analysis into one comprehensive post. Then we can add bits to it from there as more positive news develops.
Let us start with capital structure.
Capital Structure and Why This Is Important!
There are currently 139 million shares on issue, sitting at a price of 32 cents.
This gives a Market Capitalization of approximately ~45 million AUD.
Keep this in mind when we discuss partners and peers later - it’s arguably a more important metric than share price.
The Top 20 shareholders of SBW (which includes key management as the Top 2 holders) have about 90% of the stock on issue. The interests of management are well-aligned with shareholders.
What does this mean in plain English? It means management are extremely incentivized to perform, and are not just idly sitting by collecting an easy paycheck like so many other ASX companies. They have as much at stake as you do! Probably more.
The Core Business
The core business is a profitable operation which has been selling weighing systems to both retail and healthcare sectors – with reliable recurring revenue from customers including, but not limited to, household names like Toshiba and Fujitsu.
SBW have a combination of weighing + artificial intelligence + advanced mathematics which cannot be easily duplicated. The company was first founded in 1971 and was one of the first to shift from mechanical to digital weighing and ultra-thin IoT load sensors.
If you are interested in reading up on some of their patents, please see this link:
https://patents.justia.com/search?q=Shekel scales
I found 11 separate patents here, which are probably not an exhaustive list, but ranging from weighing vehicles in motion, to load cell devices (this is the flagship technology), point of sale apparatus and infant weight systems (for their medical customers)
SBW's three main technology pillars, including patented ultra-thin high precision load sensors, can distinguish between Coke, Fanta & Pepsi - even if they are all in 1.5 litre bottles!
The Hitachi Project (Hitachi’s Market Cap = roughly ~33 billion USD at time of writing, SBW = ~45 million AUD)
http://hlds.co.jp/product-eng/1079
[Translated from Japanese] Hitachi-LG Data Storage. Inc. exhibited in “NRF 2020 Retail’s Big Show” which took place at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York from 1/12-1/14/2020, where Unmanned Store solution using 3D LiDAR(TOF) was jointly exhibited with Hitachi America, Hitachi Vantara, and Shekel Brainweigh (Israel).
Some quotes I found from Hitachi themselves
“Micro-markets are the fastest growing segment of convenience shopping. We see them exploding in high traffic areas, such as workplaces, campuses, train stations and airports,” said Hideki Hayashi, Sales and Marketing Manager, Hitachi EU Ltd.
“Deploying the joint Shekel-Hitachi solution enables retailers and micro-market operators to provide the 24/7 frictionless shopping experience consumers demand without sacrificing accuracy, performance or profitability.”
“As the manager responsible for LiDAR products in EMEA markets, I consider the R&D and commercial collaboration with Shekel Brainweigh to be the perfect partnership as we both bring our respective capabilities to develop a seamless consumer shopping experience. We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Shekel Brainweigh, which we believe is the best digital weighing technology developer globally."
“The collaboration builds on our expertise in optical motion sensors, together with Shekel’s advanced Product Aware Technology, and further strengthens our commitment to overcome the challenges, and address the significant opportunities, in global retail store automation.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-uxk2Ycoqw
The Open Retail Initiative
https://www.lfedge.org/2020/02/13/n...ensor-fusion-for-intelligent-loss-prevention/
For the one-year anniversary of ORI, six initiative members Edgify, Flooid, Shekel and LF Edge members HP, IOTech and Intel inspired by the initiative, worked together on a demo for the Intel booth that showcased the value of Real Time Sensor Fusion for a loss prevention use case at self-checkout. The retail environment has become incredibly complex. The latest technologies enable data-driven experiences and unlock business value like never before, yet there is still a lack of interoperability making it difficult for retailers to deploy integrated solutions with speed and ease. The demo illustrates how integration roadblocks can be a thing of the past.
The demo pulls together real time data through the EdgeX middleware from different common systems including POS real-time transaction log, CV-based object detection, scale solution, and RFID, and data fusion—all in a single pane of glass.
Here are some PowerPoint slides of IBM, Intel & Hewlett-Packard talking about the joint solution
https://wiki.edgexfoundry.org/downl...amp;modificationDate=1579904283000&api=v2
The Fast Track Project
https://www.edgify.ai/retail/
Reduce time at till and selection at self-checkout by up to 98%. Computer vision-based product recognition, that continuously learns directly on the till, so the accuracy of the detection always increases.
Friction-less stores are great in theory but extremely complicated to scale in practice. Our edge training solution makes autonomous stores scalable, by having all the AI train directly on the camera. No infrastructure costs and no added complications.
Reduce incorrect selections by up to 90%. Either intentional or unintentional, use computer vision that is trained directly on the SCO itself to reduce loss by more than half!
No barcodes, no packaging, no worries. Simple USB cameras can detect the produce at close to 100% accuracy. Use as a decision support for cashiers, or to avoid consumers having to go through long and confusing menus.
https://www.edgify.ai/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Retail_Intro.pdf
https://twitter.com/Edgify_AI/status/1277859718413930505
https://twitter.com/Edgify_AI/status/1230534216133332997
Shekel’s Visual Recognition Platform embedded with Edgify’s machine-learning training framework is the world’s first cloudless software that automatically recognises products, including fresh produce, at a retail self-checkout.
This ~45 million AUD Market Cap company allows retailers to potentially bypass expensive cloud services from Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
Sending data to the cloud is a very costly process with the Google Cloud Platform charging 1,000 stores more than US$7.2 million in cloud computing power per annum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrpZ56IdFtg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpqwqQ1tJ4A
You can see the Shekel system 35 seconds in.
Patnership with Madix (2nd Largest Retail Shelves Manufacturer in NA)
https://www.bloomberg.com/press-rel...ade-product-aware-cabinets-to-retail-industry
NEW YORK -- January 13, 2020
Madix Inc., the second largest retail shelves manufacturer in North America, and Shekel Brainweigh Ltd. (ASX: SBW), the leader in advanced weighing technology, today announced the availability of ready-made Product Aware shelves and solutions for the retail industry.
“By seamlessly integrating Product Aware shelves into our hardware, our customers are armed with accessible data giving them reliable inventory visibility and assisting them in addressing over-stock and out-of-stock problems, as well as better control over shrinkage” said Steve Kramer, VP Sales, Madix.
“For the retail industry, this is a defined competitive edge that promotes the opportunity to increase profitability.”
Conclusion
So, remember - the core scales business is what drives the revenue we see today, but the innovation division is where the real potential resides. That will take a few more months/years to play out. I think most people are buying for the fully autonomous frictionless retail technology which comes with a huge addressable market. That’s still being undervalued in my humble opinion.
Considering there are quite a few ASX-listed tech companies with no revenue and over 100 million market cap (some even @ 1 billion market cap right now…
I don’t see why SBW couldn’t move past ~45m market cap in the near future.
Now if you read all this - links included- I commend you for your diligence. It should be obvious now that the Capsule (in partnership with Hitachi) is the “crown jewel” or “holy grail” of retail disruption technology plays (look at the success of Amazon GO for example).
So you are probably thinking: "This sounds great @verce but it’s all just aspirational and hypothetical. When will it be put into operation?" Well I’m glad you asked. The answer might surprise you. And it may be sooner than you think.
The SBW Half Year Report from 31 August 2020 had a little snippet that I think a lot of people missed. Specifically, the following text:
“Flagship micro-market project Capsule is in an advanced stage of pilot in Europe, and expected to be open to the public for trial in the second half of 2020.”
Now you are probably wondering: "That’s great but what if it’s just some obscure insignificant corner store somewhere?" Again, the answer may surprise you, and requires a little digging.
Enter Groupe Casino. A historic player in French retailing since 1898, the Casino Group is one of the world leaders in food retailing with more than 12,200 stores worldwide, located in France, Latin America and the Indian Ocean and a turnover of 37.8 billion euro.
In their Annual Report this year, they mentioned an exciting new disruptive project they were working on with a relatively obscure company.
https://www.groupe-casino.fwp-content/uploads/2020/06/RapportActivite_Casino_2019_EN.pdf
And we have some commentary from SBW featured on Page 42-43 of their Annual Report plugging "the first fully autonomous store in Europe". I'll leave it to readers to determine the significance of being mentioned in the Annual Report of a leading mass-market retail group with billions of Euro in revenue.
The same group who claim to be the source of many innovations such as the first distributor's brand in 1901, the first self-service store in 1948 or even the display of a sell-by date on consumer products in 1959. They are always pushing the boundaries of innovation, and it's an exciting partner to have.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that issuing shares are not the only mechanism by which to raise money. And that a placement at a premium to a sophisticated cornerstone investor can yield great results. Kind of like what happened with 3DP and IHR.
If I was them, I’d be asking Hitachi to chip in.
SBW also have the luxury of generating enough revenue (we are talking USD millions) in 2H20 from the core scales division, that a capital raising may not actually be necessary at this point in time. So they can wait for a better outcome.
Source: “Post 30 June 2020, the business has seen a resurgence of orders for Shekel’s products, resulting in July 2020 sales exceeding July 2019 sales by approximately 18%.”
The final thing I would like to add (if you have in fact read my other two posts which are worth reading) is coming to an appropriate valuation. This is the tricky part, especially with microcap stocks which are valued on their future potential.
We do know that there are medium to high barriers to entry, and that SBW have accumulated a competitive edge with their technology iterated over several decades, with certain patents in place.
We also know that the opportunity is global in scope with a huge total addressable market (TAM) - and that traditional retail is ripe for disruption.
Remember when there were more human checkout lanes at supermarkets than self-checkout? Now it's the other way around. We are even starting to see self-checkout in Bunnings. The trend for autonomous and friction-less shopping - what some term "Grab & Go" - was inevitable. And coronavirus has only accelerated this trend.
https://www.ibtimes.com/5-tech-tren...-end-year-result-coronavirus-pandemic-3011819
5 Tech Trends Expected To Shape Retail Through The End Of The Year As Result Of The Coronavirus Pandemic
“Retailers and brands will need to collaborate more than ever with technology startups to futureproof their businesses and be better equipped to meet fast-changing consumer demand and behavior,” Coresight said.
Coresight reported the pandemic has piqued consumer interest in cashierless models.
Technology firm Shekel Brainweigh said 87% of respondents to its global consumer survey indicated they would choose stores with self-checkout over those with only cashier lines.
So if you ask me, when you consider all the different technology projects SBW are working on - most of which we now know are "close to commercialisation*" - is 45m AUD market cap really fair value for something that has the potential to roll out globally? I personally think it is still undervalued, but the market will eventually decide one way or the other.
Even at 70 cents per share, the implied market cap with only 139 million shares on issue is about ~97 million AUD. Which is still less than 100m. And still quite low when you compare SBW's proven technology and revenue to a lot of unproven technology companies with no real customers whatsoever. And extremely low when you compare SBW's market cap to their collaborative partner Hitachi (ranked 38th in the 2012 Fortune Global 500).
Even at 32 cents as it currently stands, we are still below the IPO price when SBW first listed at 35 cents per share. How does that make any sense?

[Epistemic status: Don’t make me laugh. Just roll with it.]
“Why do the good die young, while the rotten sons of bitches live to torment us all well into their old age?”
The ancient Norse had a pat explanation why the decent types get shanked to death and the pricks keep coming home from battle alive.
The Norse world, like the Greek world, was one that ran on fate. That which will happen, will happen, and there’s no point stressing out about it because it’s going to happen. And they happened to know that their pantheon of gods were doomed- literally doomed- to get genocided.
At Ragnarök (“ragna-“ being the ruling gods, “rök” being fate), Odin All-Father is going to gather his family and allies to stare down a bizarre pack of Frost Giants, monsters, zombies, and demons. And he was going to lose, his sons and daughters struck down beside him, and the whole world was going to come crashing down into darkness once Odin loses the battle. The story was specific, too. Odin would walk into it knew he’d get eaten by a wolf the size of Texas. The watchman Heimdall and the poison-crazed traitor Loki would slay each other. Thor would bash the World Serpent to death with his hammer before succumbing to its venom. They would all know the story they were about to enact, and go to their fate anyway.
The point is, these gods weren’t going to the grave alone. Fate is miserable, and misery loves company. The hosts of Asgard would include the einherjar (“ein-“ being lone or single or one, “herjar” being fighter or warrior), the fallen heroes of our time. This right here is why the good die young; Odin wants only the best people by his side when he falls. He sends his Valkyrie (“valr-“ being the dead who litter the battlefield by its end, “kjósa” being “to choose”) to, well, choose who dies and who lives. The courageous, formidable fighters are headhunted by the Valkyrie and die writhing on the business end of a spear. After which, they go to Valhalla as einherjar.
On the big day, their job (while the gods and goddesses are zipping around being eaten by monsters or clubbing Frost Giants down) is going to be to fight the hosts of dishonorable dead being raised up from Hel. That’s their mission in (after)life.
To which end, the einherjar train every day in Valhalla. Their dedication is total- after all, the universe is bent towards Ragnarök and there’s no way to dodge it, and if they were the kind of quivering cowards who’d duck a fight, they wouldn’t have been chosen in the first place. The einherjar don’t train by drill or by kata, or tone muscle and build stamina through PT. They simply wake up every morning, grab some swords, and gleefully hack each other to pieces. But by dinner time, they are miraculously recovered from all wounds and can dine hearty on divine bacon and booze, waited on hand and foot by the very women who had tapped their shoulders and plucked them out of the shield wall. With full bellies and with enough mead inside them to be thoroughly at peace with the floor, they drift off into a happy sleep only to do it all over again in the morning.
So. The name “einherjar” is kinda of ambiguous. We can kind of reconstruct it as “lone warriors”, except there is no indication that they’ll fight as individuals instead of as a group. Another possibility is that it means “once-warriors”, meaning they had once been alive but are now, you know, undead.
I want to focus in on another angle- “One Time Warriors”. Soldiers of only one battle. One use, mass produced, disposable, environmentally unfriendly fighters. Warriors as inherently expendable as arrows in a quiver, bread in a backpack, and boot leather on a sole. They exist to punch faces at Ragnarök and then die as mayflies, and that is it.
For your consideration, I submit the einherjar as the face of the next American Civil War. We’ve seen it as foreshadowing before. In this, the Imperial Japanese Navy was our first glimpse of our own personal Ragnarök; the callous sacrifice of their kamikaze is forever at the foremost of our folk memory of the Second World War. In more recent times, Muslim suicide bombers have trail-blazed to show us lower tech path to self-destruction. American culture traditionally held no room for suicide attacks. Valiant last stands, absolutely. Charging over the top of the trench line into enemy guns, no problem. But the plan never spent men like bullets; casualties were expected, but never counted on. But like a virulent disease evolving into less deadly strains, One Use Soldiering mellowed out until we could stomach it. The plan no longer calls for guaranteed death on the spot. Escaping the carnage to find a nice quiet spot to shoot yourself now works just as fine. You don’t even have to die, not really. Tsarnaev, Dylan Roofe, and a small platoon of other proto-einherjar have shown that you can accept imprisonment in lieu of the ultimate sacrifice, as long as you’re out of the war after you shoot your shot.
And it’s never been easier. You don’t need a bomb, only a gun, and we have more guns than humans in America. You don’t even need a gun, a car will do nicely. In theory you can even fulfill your role with a knife, if you pick an easy target. We’ve done the Norse one better, taken their system and streamlined it- we don’t need to take our chances on the shield wall and wait to see if the Valkyrie tap our shoulders. The bar for entry into Valhalla is so low that anybody can be their own Valkyrie.
I want to hammer in the details about what makes an einherjar an einherjar, and not a soldier or a militiaman.
Black and White Worldview
There is no room for ambiguity. Ragnarök is clear cut, gods and heroes on one side and monsters on the other. You needn’t burn a single calorie trying to think through the ethics of the two sides, or figure out a moral dilemma, or agonize over the common humanity of your intended victims, or anything like that. You are a soldier against the looming darkness and that is that. Above all else, Ragnarök is simple. A lot of people need simple, and a lot of those people have been fed simple by their echo chamber of choice for years.
That’s possibly the stupidest and most glorious thing. In the Second American Civil War, both sides will cats themselves as the defenders of Valhalla and the enemy as the Frost Giants. The einherjar will look upon from each other across the battlefield and see only the dishonorable dead.
Fire and Forgot
There will be no attempts to dodge the consequences of striking. Unlike the insurgents of Iraq or the terrorist gangs of Europe in 1970’s, none of them will blend into the surrounding population to hide out and plot anew. Counter-insurgency stresses out about bushwhacker gangs infesting the rear echelon and how to sort out the bad guy from the civilian; that won’t be a problem any more. A man will pick up a weapon, slay an enemy, and then sit down as spent and as cool as an empty shell casing ejected from a gun until the authorities come to collect him.
A War of Choice
The vast majority of the Norse people will not fight in Ragnarök. Only a few special chosen end up on the front lines. For most people, the end of the world will not happen in front of them. They’ll read about it, talk about it, stress about it, perhaps be unable to buy bananas at the supermarket because of it, but nothing will disrupt their lives or kick their door down. Participation in the war will be mostly voluntary, unless by a fluke of statistics you end up being collateral damage in an einherjar attack.
Think of it like a casino. You can only lose money if you place it on the table.
Nothing to Lose
The key element of being einherjar is that you have to die first. I’ve talked about this before, that the common thread of modern mass murders of all stripes is that they all feel that their life was ruined and that they might as well go out with a bang.
Lost jobs, ruined relationships, isolation from family, flunked schooling, anything will do as long as it feels like the world is finally ending for you.
You can’t sign up to be a One Use Warrior if you feel in your guts that you have something good to come home to.
Male
The einherjar will be male. It is vaguely conceivable that a few woman might somehow, possibly, end up in the ranks, but they’ll be a rounding error in terms of proportion. Men are the ones who self-destruct like this. The world isn't built for such as them, nor they for the world.
Blame cultural evolution, blame testosterone, blame toxic masculinity. It doesn’t matter. The process will be as it is regardless of the explanation you develop.

Source | Signoff
Note: This table may potentially contain information that can be construed as self-doxxing. Please don't actually try to take advantage of this.

Questions	Answers
Hey Jeff! I'm a minimalist & find that I'm happier with less stuff & when I give/receive experiences rather than items. Do you find consumer happiness reflects this shift towards minimalism since that is a (small, but seemingly growing) trend, especially among Millennials?	Great question! There is some relatively new research looking at happiness from experiences vs. material possessions. Most of it shows that happiness from equally valued (e.g. price) experiences is higher than for possessions. HOWEVER, and this is a big however, all that work tends to ignore long run happiness with highly prized possessions. For instance, if you have a sentimentally valued object, happiness that stems from that object lasts for a long time. What most possessions don't do is provide long lasting happiness. You buy a new shiny toy and it DOES make you happy...but that happiness goes away quickly. My collaborators and I have termed this idea "Hedonic Decline."
	So as for minimalism, there is not evidence that I know of that shows that less possessions make you happier. There's plenty showing that more possessions don't make you happier, but that's not the same thing.
	One more layer of complexity: there are two routes to happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. The former is what we usually think of when we think of happiness: how much joy does XYZ bring me. The latter, however, is closer to self-actualization. It's the happiness the comes from a accomplishing something....even if there was pain involved in getting there. I wonder if minimalism can increase eudaimonic happiness.
the below is a reply to the above
That's interesting. Thank you for responding. In the minimalism community, self-actualization is reflected in endeavors such as achieving certain goals (like, paying off debt) that usually involves some amount of self-discipline &/or self-sacrifice.	I'd say that the vast majority of research in happiness excludes eudaimonic happiness, largely because it's so hard to measure. My personal, non-data supported, take is that eudaimonic happiness is far more important than hedonic happiness. The latter is fleeting, whereas the former can be life changing.
the below is a reply to the above
Beautifully said.	Thank you.
the below is another reply to the second answer
How does depression affect eudaimonic happiness compared to hedonic happiness?	Great question and I don't know the answer. Social Psychology typical studies what we very poorly term "normal" psychology, which excludes clinical conditions like depression. Sorry!
the below is another reply to the second answer
What’s your take on “pay to play” - as in, some “hedonic” purchases at are required to signal you’re in the game, making progress on eudaimonic happiness. When you get older and into your career, I’d venture many people have already figured out that hedonic happiness doesn’t do squat long-term, but there’s a balance in terms of how much hedonic happiness to have to acquire for the ultimate long-term eudaimonic happiness. Example: in sales, which I’m in tech analytics sales, companies want to spend for solutions to business problems, but they also want to see, visually, that the person they’re paying is a good representative for them. High cost equals a person that can represent that taste. Nice. Tailored suits, a nice watch and latest tech gadgets. There’s a pay to play aspect that signals to the world who I am, and that in turn actually allows me to get what I want- student loans paid off and early retirement..	I don't think there's any conflict here. If you will find some form of life satisfaction by succeeding in your career, there's no harm in also purchasing items that help you reach that goal. Those items can, in and of themselves, make you happy...nothing wrong with that. More to the point, hedonic and eudaimonic happiness don't have to be in opposition. You can have both!
the below is another reply to the original answer
I really like this response. While i can jive with basic premise of experiences over possessions...i’m find it used a lot by people who actually just want to shirk obligation. I run HHiring and there is a persistent trend of people not wanting to act like their job is important..just because it’s easier to justify bailing on work/shifts to go do things when you can say you’re doing it for the experience, not focusing on the money you make at a job. I’m trying to figure out the best way to respond to people who think i’m some big bad money grubbing boss for wanting people to do their jobs. Meanwhile, in my personal life...i feel like i’m getting a lot of push back socially from people who think i should only work where i can just make my own schedule and dip put for an “experience” whenever. At the end of the say, it feels like people will just wax philosophic reasons for demanding leisure with all the material perks of having jobs and working.	Great point. This relates to intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. The former is the desire to do something because it's inherently interesting/rewarding. The latter is doing something for compensation. This is more in the realm of organizational behavior, and you'll have to wait for my wife who is also a professor, but of organizational behavior and theory, to do an AMA for more on that :)
Hello, thanks for doing this. Are you familiar with "loot boxes" in video games? I feel like the topics of a lot of your papers would fit right into why consumers/businesses use loot boxes. How does a loot box mechanic differ from gambling and should it be treated the same? (Regulation, age restriction, etc) If they are the same, how do you feel about video games including a loot box mechanic? Sticking with gambling parallels, what are your thoughts on video game companies targeting "whales" given that gamers can be any age nowadays?	I'm not a gamer myself (though I do love TTPRGs and run a D&D 5e campaign), but I'm pretty familiar with loot boxes. Mobile games and social media platforms in general have become very good at continuous reinforcement. It can be the allure of getting a new outfit in a loot box or just an upvote on Reddit...the point is that we are wired to love small rewards, even if those rewards are meaningless. Casinos have mastered this art and loot boxes are an capitalizing of the same basic psychological mechanisms: need for positive reinforcements. So are loot boxes the same as gambling? Probably not the SAME, but damn close. As for regulation, I am strongly in favor of making gambling of all forms only accessible to adults and even then providing access to counseling for those who suffer from gambling addiction.
	I have a lot less sympathy towards wealthy adults who choose to gamble as a form of entertainment. The problem is that it's not always obvious who's a whale and who's just pretending to be one for the attention. The latter is highly susceptible to financial ruin and I'd want them protected just the same as they are with standard gambling.
the below is a reply to the above
Do you find the researcher in you observing and asking questions about the players' decision making processes in your D&D campaign? My old DM minored in psychology, and I often felt like a rat in his experiments. I enjoyed it, though. It kind of added an extra facet to the game.	More than my research, teaching has made a huge difference in being a DM. When I lecture, I am forced to be quick on my feet to understand student questions, reply accordingly, and make sure that I'm moving the lecture along. That is the same with DMing. I need to be able to understand the motives of my players, respond appropriately with NPCs, and keep the story going.
	I'm sure that my knowledge of psychology helps, but I wouldn't think it influences the way I DM (or play) that much.
the below is a reply to the above
Studying business Psychology in Switzerland and leading the yawning portal atm, seems like I need to start teaching :p	Ha! Check out this thread: https://www.reddit.com/WaterdeepDragonHeist/comments/fcc89a/the_yawning_portal_a_drinking_song_and_boss_music/
	I used that for my game and it was great.
the below is another reply to the original answer
Could I join your 5e campaign?	Ha! Sorry, no. It's just close friends and we're months into it. I'm running Waterdeep, if you're curious.
the below is a reply to the above
I'm applying to Carnegie's MBA for what it's worth! If I'm accepted, may I join then? ;-)	How about you get in and then we discuss!
Hi Jeff! What is your favorite heuristic or logical fallacy when it comes to decision making? Can you teach us about one that people might not know about?	Easy: Diversification Bias. That's where I started my career 15 years ago. I didn't discover this bias, but have built on it. Anyway, it's the idea that people choose more variety than they should. For example, if you are going to pick some snacks for the next few days, you might pick: chips, pretzels and an apple. Those are fine, but really chips are your favorite and you picked the other two because you thought you'd get tired of chips every day. Well, turns out you'd be wrong. A day is enough to reset satiation/hedonic-decline in most cases, so you'd be better off always picking your favorite option! Doing otherwise means eating snacks that are less preferred.
	A new one that my doctoral student, Julian Givi, and I recently published: The Future Is Now (FIN) Heuristic. It's the idea that people believe that future events will be like present events, even when evidence points to the contrary. An example: if it's sunny today, you're more likely to think it'll be sunny tomorrow, even if the forecast clearly predict rain. What happens is you treat information about the present as having evidentiary value for future events, even when that's just not true.
the below is a reply to the above
I really like that you give your student credit.	PhD students do all the hard work. Professors just bask in the glory :)
the below is another reply to the original answer
I think diversification bias is how I ended up with 5 shades of blue nail polish that are virtually undistinguishable from each other! Interesting to consider.	Ha! Just might be...
Tell me about your paper "Sentimental value and gift giving: Givers’ fears of getting it wrong prevents them from getting it right". From what I read of the abstract, it seems that gift-givers undervalue sentimental value, seeing it as riskier. Why is that, and how can we give better gifts?	Sure, this is a paper with my former doctoral student, Julian Givi. Basically, people are risk averse in gift giving when they shouldn't be. If I know you like coffee and I have a choice to give you some nice coffee beans or a framed photo of the two of us (presumably since we're friends), I give the former b/c it's a sure bet. But as the recipient, overwhelmingly, people prefer the latter. So givers should take the risk and give the sentimentally valuable gift over one that is more a sure bet.
the below is a reply to the above
Interesting. When giving presents, givers focus too much on the recipient's known wants, which gets in the way of giving a meaningful present. Thank you! I'll be sure to keep that in-mind next Christmas.	That's exactly it.
the below is another reply to the original answer
I sometimes hesitate at this. I don’t want to come off as the selfie culture of all about me in pictures! But relatives do love getting pics of the kids for gifts. Still, how often is this perceived as a form of narcissism by the gift receiver? Edit: pictures of my kids not just me!	One trick we do: every Christmas holiday we print full size calendars with our kids pictures on them. That's our holiday gift to all the grandparents. They LOVE it.
	We also send small photo books to the grandparents throughout the year of some of the best pictures we take.
	We have yet to send too many, but that's specific to our family.
	The best advice I always have for something like this is: just ask! People are often worried about asking gift recipients about their preferences, but our research shows that a) recipients don't care about being asked and b) you can give better gifts that way.
Hi Jeff ! I have a question regarding involvement in a purchase, is there an increasing trend to become highly involved in the purchase of even low value object ? I find myself doing this during the pandemic doing comparison searches for a bulb which costs 10 dollars. Is this an exception ? Or is there some underlying psychological reason isolated to me ?	Absolutely. Two reasons this could be happening. 1) With more free time, the threshold for what merits deep research drops a lot. 2) Many people are facing financial hardships, and so making sure every dollar is well spent becomes really important.
Hi Jeff, Thank you for the great AMA. Where do you see the future of insights departments in consumer companies? Most companies looks like giving up on ethnographic and in person research and focus on data analytics. I speculate management is under great pressure and in the meantime aspire to Google, Amazon etc. What is your take of insights departments future in large companies?	Thank you! Exploratory research like ethnographies, interviews, and focus groups is really useful for brainstorming. But they are a poor substitute for quantitative data. Now, that doesn't mean "big data"...just data that has larger samples and is better representative of populations. Surveys are still amazing. When we want to forecast an election, we don't use big data, we conduct a political poll. They work.
	But yes, right now, AI and machine learning are the hot new ideas on the block and everyone wants in on them. There is plenty of amazing applications of AI/ML, but what they can't do is tell you "why". As in, why did someone choose this option over that one? Or why are people motivated by this goal or that goal? Those types of answers allow you to apply knowledge in completely novel contexts. AI/ML needs to be trained on a specific type of data for a specific type of task. It is AMAZING at that. But as soon as you introduce a new context or new set of experiences, it fails. That's where good old fashioned surveys and behavioral experiments come in.
If a program was built to help us make better decisions, do you think we would use it? Do you think we can listen to a program’s advice better than we do from experts?	We already do. Weather forecasts tell us how to dress. Facebook tells us what to think. Tinder tells us who to date. Etc... etc...
	A program that EXPLICITLY tells you what to do won't work too well. People like to feel like they have free will. They don't, though. We are greatly influenced by our environment (not just technology) whether we know it or not. As one example: I can guess your weight reasonably well just by knowing your zip code (please don't make me actually do this as I'm not in the business of public shaming!). If we had true free will and agency, that should be impossible. Instead, we are the products of our environment.
the below is a reply to the above
60641	Chicago? I believe Illinois has 30-35% obesity (I'm doing this quickly and not looking at your zip specifically), so pretty high weight.
Hi Jeff! Since I'm a 14 yrs old and knew nothing about what you study, I have very limited questions I can ask. But as I have observed, people are often sheepish and will consume as the trend goes. What is the most unexpected trend, worldwide? P.S. will defo check out your channel	I don't expect most people to know my work (I like to think my ego isn't THAT big!), so no worries!
	You're right. Trends will drive a lot of human behavior. We are social creatures and follow what others do much more than we care to admit. As for the most unexpected trend, that's really hard to say. Maybe this is too broad, but I'm surprised by how short people's attention span is when it comes to current events. News cycles used to last for weeks, now they last for hours. I suppose I know that people don't have long attention spans, but I'm still surprised.
the below is a reply to the above
Any underlying reasoning for this?	For the short attention spans? We can invoke evolutionary psychology, which I'm not a big fan of, and it would suggest something like a tensions between exploring and cultivating. So it would argue that our ancestors needed to have some reason to leave their immediate tribe to find new resources. So perhaps our attention spans are short b/c of this and the current environment exaggerates that behavior.
Have you done(or can you point to) any research relating to the decision making/not making around getting rid of possessions? I have a relative who keeps anything that has a perceived value as in could be sold on ebay/garage sale which they never sell. They are otherwise rational, clean, don't over consume..def not hoarder territory.. but I struggle to convince them that the old digital camera that's been sitting for 3 years could just be disposed of.	Hoarding is definitely a thing. There isn't much in the study of item disposition in the empirical world of research (lots of interesting qualitative work that I'm less familiar with). The big exception to this is the Endowment Effect. The short version is that you value items you own more than if you don't own it. So a mug sitting on a store shelf is worth, say $10 to you, but as soon as you own it is worth, say, $20 to you. Nothing changed except your ownership of it. That explains some of hoarding behavior, but not all of it.
	For a qualitative research paper on the topic, see here: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mcb/216/2010/00000013/00000001/art00001
the below is a reply to the above
I suppose I have the Endowment Effect. Everytime I find something valuable i dont have the will to let it go. Even though i can sell it and re buy it later, or buy something similar haha. It's like I want to take the most of it and use it til it brakes, go missing, or whatever.	The endowment effect isn't infinite. As in, it's not that you won't be willing to sell your items for ANY price, it's just that your willingness to sell is higher than your willingness to buy.
the below has been split into two
Hey Professor, appreciate the AMA. A couple of questions: 1) Just from my own thoughts banging around in my head and observations I've made during the pandemic, do you see the pause our society went through and the economic downturn effecting the psychology behind materialism? It seems the American "push for more no matter what" mind state took a eating and I think I'm seeing some consequences of that.	1) It's possible, but my pretty strong prediction is that within 1-2 years of the pandemic ending, we will be back to where we were beforehand in terms of materialism and general behavior. Extreme events like a pandemic seem like they are life changers. For some, that's true (e.g. someone loses a loved one), but for most it's not. We are inherently myopic and think that the thing in front of our noses is the only thing that exists.
2) I'm a current medical student and we get inundated with so many studies that it's overwhelming. Trying to practice evidence based medicine is really hard in an atmosphere that prioritizes publishing with little regard to quality. Do you ha e ways of navigating that I could apply to my day to day? Thanks again.	2) I can't speak to medical research, but that problem exists in all academic fields. The best thing to do is to let science happen. There will always be flashy new findings, but the ones that really matter will get replicated over and over again...and will get built on. The BS ones tend to just die out. That's not a full proof approach to vetting research, but it's better than just assuming everything you see published is true and/or important.
I am a former CMU student. How do you feel about CMU's decision to appoint Richard Grenell as a senior fellow? And how can we do something to fight against it because it seems they are not listening the current student body? Recently, the fence was vandalized against BLM (they wrote "all lives matter" over the previously written "black lives matter"). How are you working to build a more inclusive community at CMU and to fight for those who need it? How can former students help?	I signed the petition to revoke his appointment and stand by that completely. I do understand why the university is upholding it, but I am embarrassed to have him associated with CMU.
	As for the fence, the CMU Provost sent a really great letter immediately after it all happened condemning the vandalism and supporting BLM. Personally, I try VERY hard to do things like call on students of all races and genders and not let white men (of which I am one, btw) dominate conversations. I try to make sure that examples I use to highlight ideas include more than just typically white and/or male oriented products. I have been trained in Green Dot deescalation for sexual assault and violence. I am on the university academic disciplinary committee and have direct say over infractions like harassment or discrimination. And I sit on my college's Faculty Diversity Equity and Inclusion committee with the hope of including representation and inclusion of URM and female faculty. I care about this topic a LOT and do what I can...still probably not enough.
	As for alums, if you see behavior at CMU that you think is antithetical to inclusiveness, let the administration know. Get your fellow alums to weigh in. The university wants your sweet sweet alumni donations. If you are all pissed off, they'll reply.
Hey Professor! I absolutely love to give. But I feel so awkward being thanked. And I dont really like receiving gifts. What would the psychology behind that be?	Great question. It's hard to know without more detail, but I'd guess that some of that anxiety is about attention...as in, your lack of desire for it. As for not liking receiving gifts, maybe you have just not received that many good gifts? Again, it's really hard to say without knowing a bit more about you and the gift giving contexts you're involved in. If you want to share more, I can try to answer better, but totally understandable if you don't!
the below is a reply to the above
Well, if I think more deeply....whenever I need something, I feel like it's up to me to make me happy. I usually don't really ask anyone else. Whether I need a massage, have a getaway, or get my dream dog, I just do it myself.	As an aside, self-gifts are great! You get what you need, and nothing else. No issues there.
	To your question, though, I do wonder if you just haven't receive that many great gifts. Yes, gifts can fall flat and the recipient might not love them, but when they hit, they not only provide the value from the gift itself (e.g. a great bottle of wine) but ALSO the sentimental value from the associations that the gift brings up (e.g. who gave it to you and under what circumstances...like for a birthday or graduation).
Hi Jeff, I have a job application at a place where they do conjoint analysis, something I have never done before. Got any tips? Do you have any thoughts on the technique in general? Personally as someone who takes surveys I find it very abstract (e.g. "Would you rather buy a $5 toaster with two slots vs. a $20 toaster that takes bagels?" I don't know!).	First, good luck with the job application! Conjoint is a really useful tool when used correctly (like any tool, I suppose). The short version is that it lets you extract utility weights for different dimensions (e.g. price, product size, product speed, etc...) without directly asking people to answer questions about those dimensions. So instead of saying "how important is price to you?" you would come up with product profiles that have varying price (among other things) and then have people choose between those profiles. You can then extract, using nothing more than regression analysis (though, practically, no one does it that way...they use software like Sawtooth or SPSS Conjoint), how important those dimensions are for any given person.
	the technique is tedious in that respondents have to make LOTS of pair-wise comparisons, but the end product can teach you a lot about what people actually value.
	One key is to make the task as simple and realistic as possible. So the example you gave is confusing and wouldn't work too well. But I asked you to choose between a $20 toaster with 2 slots vs. a $30 toaster with 3 slots" that would work (in reality it would be more complex than that). You'd be forced to tell me if you prefer a cheaper toaster with fewer slots or a more expensive one with more slots. There's not right answer, but I would learn about those two dimensions for you. I'd need a lot more pair-wise tradeoffs to do this right, but that's the general idea.
Do you find that there are significant differences between particular groups? Does age influence gift giving habits more then sex, or some other factor? Just curious about the general trends of gift giving between groups. Super general question I know, so feel free to just call me out on it	Definitely difference across genders as you would expect. More jewelry given by men to women. More gadgets given by women to men. Not so much in terms of age, though I've never really directly looked at that. The reality is that most gifts aren't that exciting. They tend to be things that are popular in a given year or old standbys like gift cards and ties. There certainly are amazing gifts and gift givers out there, but the vast majority of actual gifts given are pretty mundane. But that's not a bad thing if the recipient still likes what they get!
the below is a reply to the above
Yeah, sounds about right. And yeah if everyone is chipper it's all good :) Is there a sort of gift quality vs quantity data? Like is it better to get more frequent smaller gifts or largemore expensive gifts less frequently?	Smaller more frequent gifts every time. I have some new work on obligatory vs. non-obligatory gifts. Basically, you can make someone very happy by giving a small gift on a random Tuesday compared to a much nicer gift on their Birthday. More random-tuesday gifts every time!
the below is a reply to the above
Thank you! :) will the results of that be on ur channel?	Probably not. The channel isn't about my research, but rather about how to understand data more broadly. But the results will hopefully be published soon!
How extensive are the consumer psychology divisions in companies like apple?	Lots of variation. Places like apple, google, amazon will have a lot of depth in terms of psychologist and consumer behavior researchers. But those are the gold standard. Most will rely on consultants to help out
How does education on finance and economics affect consumer behavior? Does knowing the way our brains make consumer decisions or how businesses try to get you to buy change how you shop?	If you understand better how firms are trying to entice you to buy their products, you can absolutely counteract that better. For instance, $1.99 is really just $2...we all get that. But it turns out, having a 9-ending price really drives demand. That's nuts, but it does. IF you understand that, you stand a shot and not being duped by something so trivial. So educating yourself can be a big help. On finance and econ eduction, also really helpful, but in other ways. When you go to get a 30-year mortgage for your home, understanding how interest rates work, how inflation might affect home prices, how amortization tables work, etc... will help you make a much more informed decision about what is right for you.
hi! how do you predict consumer happiness/decision making etc during unprecedented times like this, when such a scenario may not have taken place before and you do not have much data to go on? also since the research you do and the data you collect are relevant to sales, do you see advertisements being affected by the pandemic in the long run from any changes in consumer mindset?	It's really hard to predict much of anything right now. There are some basic behaviors and experiences that we can expect during a pandemic (e.g. increased anxiety, defaulting to familiar experiences, increased online shopping), but the reality is you're right...we just don't know. There's virtually no data on pandemic psychology/behavior, and all the pop-science stuff you read is just guessing at what will happen.
	As for advertising, I think that once the pandemic is over, life will be back to what it was beforehand in almost every respect. People are amazing to adapting to changing circumstances. We are all doing that now with the pandemic and will all do that again when it's over. I don't think that advertising will be any different. Give it a year after we're all vaccinated (or whatever winds up being the solution) and most people will largely forget that we even had a pandemic. Yes, some will have big changes like lost loved ones or lost jobs, but for most people, life will return to what it was before Covid hit.
the below is a reply to the above
thank you for answering, that is very interesting! the data you collect seems to be applicable to so many different fields. i asked about advertising as a student interested in media, but i can see it being useful in various types of companies be it internet security, food, travel etc. your job sounds really cool and i will definitely check out your YouTube channel :)	Thanks!
Did you ever get to meet Herbert Simon? Wasn't he interested in similar things?	I wish! I've been at CMU for 11 years. Simon passed away in 2001, so I missed him by a few years.
	And yes, Simon was one of the original researchers into what's known as Bounded Rationality, it's the idea that humans don't act like computers and process all information simultaneously, but rather use heuristics and shortcuts to accomplish most tasks.
How influential was the work of Daniel Kahnemann to your current teaching?	VERY! I don't know Danny personally, but my advisor got his PhD at Princeton when Danny was there, so lots of indirect influence that way. More generally, the field of decision making was build on his (and others) work, so hard not to be influenced.
Do you have any opinions on investors behavior during covid 19? More specifically how certain financial firms may have targeted people who have or would dabble in market that have recently lost work due to the pandemic?	Caveat: I am not a finance professor. That said, my read is that fear of missing out (FOMO) is driving a lot of unexpected behaviors. The market has rallied like crazy since the March low and everyone wants in on that. It's hard to sit by and watch others make a killing while you don't.
	As for practices like getting people who don't typically to invest to do so, there's two sides to this. On the one hand, getting more people involved with investing is a great thing. It used to be only that the very wealthy could invest and reap the benefits of the market, but now with places like Robinhood and fee-free trading on Schwab and the like, everyone can participate. On the other hand, MANY people don't understand risk well at all. They just see the possible upside and ignore the possibility of losing a lot (see that guy that committed suicide b/c of a terrible options trade...that's horrible). So firms and gov't have a responsibility to both educate investors and provide safeguards against uninformed behaviors.
the below is a reply to the above
Hello, I just want to specify something in your comment! The young college student who committed suicide did so because a misprogrammed number on the trading site, Robinhood. Of course at the time he did not know it, but the value loss that was near $800,000, was showing the loss of the entire option, not his equity in the option, which was -$1,000 - -$2,000 if I remember right. It was Robinhood's terrible interface, not his misunderstanding of risk, which is horrible. If you would like a misunderstanding of risk on trading platforms, look no further than wallstreetbets, of course as you said FOMO is a huge factor, or if you're interested, some trading platforms intentionally advertise to consumers without properly representing risk. Thank you very much for this AMA, it has been quite insightful!	Thanks so much for that clarification!
I have a question re: dating sites / apps. Is there a way to structure incentives so that the company is motivated to find good pairings between users? It feels like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, etc. don't have such an incentive currently	I think they do have an incentive to make good pairings. Word of mouth is their strongest asset so having good matches is key. The challenge is that good matches are hard to come by and not everyone agrees on what good is. Is good marriage? Is it a fun night? Not clear.
Hello Professor and thank you for taking this time. As a professional that works in marketing and a person who suffers from mental illnesses, it is often disheartening for me to see so much valuable research and findings be easily made available for use by companies for marketing and consumer exploitation while it is so difficult for those who are struggling to find information that could be beneficial to living their lives more freely. What are your thoughts on this, and do you think there are ways we could change the system to better benefit individuals needs directly?	The connection between marketing academia, marketing industry, and consumers just sucks. No one outside of academia reads marketing academic journals. Few in academia care if their work has applications (even in an applied field like marketing). And consumers can't be bothered (rightfully) to read through academic work to learn.
	Some solutions that I've seen that work: - Marketing Science Institute: this is an organization whose entire goal is link academia and practice. They have conferences where they invite folks from both sides to collaborate. More of this please! - Pop-science social science books like Freakonomics, Blink, Predictably Irrational, etc...: They all have plenty of shortcomings, but the authors all do an amazing job of conveying the ideas of academia to the public. I think that's fantastic. More of this too please! - Consulting for non-profits. I do this and many others do as well. We use our knowledge to help non-profits do their amazing work. This is a way to avoid that "exploitation" you mentioned and instead use what we know to help others. There's not much money in this kind of consulting, which is why few do it, but it's really important. Maybe some kind of granting agency could earmark money for non-profits to hire academic consultants to help them use what we know to help the world. That would be awesome
hey, I'm a recent advertisement graduate, it's good to see someone from such a familiar field here anyways, when I do groceries, I always follow the list to a T, and I take no time at all getting the items, basically, I go against every little trick supermarkets have to "seduce" the customer, so my question is: what makes someone a "good customer"? is it someone highly susceptible to the marketing tricks at the market or someone who spends both their money and time more efficiently?	Good can mean different things here. You sound like you're probably super loyal to products. That's pretty great for most companies. The fact that you don't succumb to unintended purchases definitely makes you less attractive in one capacity, but your predictability makes you very attractive in other ways. If I could run a company where every customer always bought the same thing every week, I would LOVE that. I would know how to schedule raw material purchases, delivery schedules, etc... I would have a steady and dependable income. If, however, I relied just on getting lucky and catching the eye of customers as they passed my products on store shelves, that would be a whole lot more difficult a business plan to execute.
Hi Jeff, I have always geared my life towards maxing out the benefits and deducting the losses for example leaving my family in order to search for better life oportunities, ditching jobs where I felt safe in favor of new and more promising ones. And by this logic I have reached quIte far in my life. But at the end achieving all this goals don't yields the expected satisfaction. However I'm pretty sure that don't doing this would be even worse. Why does it seems that no matter if the desitions taken are the best at my point of view it still seems like I need more than the goals I have achieved. Why is disatisfaction the expected result?	Wow, that's a lot to give up for goals! People are inherently likely to make what are known as upward comparisons. We don't look at the people who we have done better than, but instead focus on the few who done better than us. The classic example is Silver Olympic medalists. They should be elated, but instead they just covet the Gold medalist.
	Beyond that, in your specific case, it's hard to say for sure, but we know that close relationships are the number one driver of life satisfaction. If you've given those all up in pursuit of some other goal, that might explain things a bit. Take that with a grain of salt as all I know about you is summed up in 100 words or so!
Hello Jeff, glad to see this AMA here! I'm a statistics student in Brazil (one of my professors got his doctorate degree at Carnegie Mellon University, in fact!). Much of what we learn nowadays is related to careers pertaining the finance fields. Other stuff includes academic research mixed with other fields. I see myself as a data analyst for a big bank someday, but I always think: is there any career for a data scientist thats underrated by modern standards but still awesome and rewarding, in your opinion?	Go work for a non-profit! It's now where the money is, but many need help from data scientists. You can actually change the world that way!
Which US dollar bill is your favorite?	Cash? You still use cash?
the below is a reply to the above
For coke yeah	Oh, in that case.... Nope, not replying and losing my tenure :)
the below is a reply to the above
Prof, you have a bias. OP mean Coca Cola.	I don't drink soda either :)

There has not been a time more than now that I have felt like I am going to have an absolute mental breakdown. I am just angry. I just hate everything. I how a bunch of stupid pieces of fucking white trash are willing to put other people’s lives at risk and prolong this pandemic because of their absolute ignorance and politicizing of everything.
IT’S OCTOBER... I let that sink in recently. This shit is still not gone. And I believe it is because of absolute pieces of shit like the president who feel so entitled to do whatever the fuck they want regardless of Dr. Anthony Fauci tells us. I had a former coworker die from this shit and even though I didn’t know him well nor was I super close with him, his family is left without a father, husband, grandfather, and sibling. There are still similar stories to his IN OCTOBER because of this disgusting mind set that “my liberties are more important than your health, because I personally don’t think you’re going to get infected.”
Not just is there an increase in deaths, but the pandemic society has to continue along because a vast amount of people choose to make absolutely selfish decisions, at least in the U.S. I just feel like I’m going to lose my shit. I’m in my final semester in college, have no job prospects because of this, and had to pick up a minimum wage job in a supermarket where I have had the most ignorant piles of waste for customers tell me shit like “You must be so thankful to have a job.”, and have “dick-nose above the mask” wearing pieces of shit tell me their delusional conspiracy theory for why the masks are pointless and how for some reason it is a political ploy to screw over Trump. Fuck you for that you entitled braindead cunt. Fuck you. I just hate you. I just hate you so much. I don’t usually have physical tears but I’m just pouting for some reason.
Oh but I’m not done, I’m not even close to done haha. Ahahahahahahah. So, then I have my dumb bitch of an aunt, cousin, and multiple 55+ aged relatives send me political shit via text as well as post their shit on any platform they desire. Recently, my aunt sent me this video with how Trump had so many similarities with the bible. And this isn’t the first time that I received this from a relative! “Trump was like Jesus/Moses/Abraham/Joseph because he was born on a (whatever the hell it was) and that is why he is a godlike being and that he is backed by the lord himself.”
Also, to clairfy. No. I am not some ultra-liberal redditor looking for a handjob from the echo chamber. I am centre-left and just want some calmness in the political sphere. I hate it all. I hate how we still have civil unrest in our major cities, I hate how so many homeless have ruined California and the entire West Coast due to political mismanagement, I hate how so many cops have a god complex, I hate how there are extremists that react to these events and ruin the cities for everyone, I hate the nationalism here - posting a bald eagle on social media does not make you a better person.
I hate how I can’t travel because people have been doing stupid shit that has caused travel to still not be safe, I hate how my father manipulates me emotionally by being an amazing person sometimes and then an absolute arrogant headgames prick at other times (he’s bipolar but claims his “manic depression diagnosis in the 70s was nothing of concern”, I hate how my friends and random ppl still see me as the “haha fat friend” even though I dropped 40 lbs since June and went from a BMI of 29 to 24. I hate how the political subreddits are just “Trump bad” circlejerks without real discourse and pragmaticism with the fact that this election is still up for grabs - this should have been learned back in 2016.
I hate how my ex (who is actually really nice person) just associates with white trash and how she always tell me about how her bestfriend went to jail again or her mom goes to the casino all the time or the fact that her hillbilly brother knocked up a girl he wasn’t committed to at a fairly young age and now won’t be a father figure in his daughter’s life. I hate deadbeat dads, I wish the absolute worst upon deadbeat dads. Yes, my dad has mentally fucked me up at times (hid my aspergers diagnosis from me until I found out on my own) but at least he was there for me unlike some piece of shit that created a life to fuck up so he can get an orgasm. Back to the ex, she was a good person, but with the pandemic and us having to be long distance mixed with the white trash universe she had (think Shameless), I had to break up with her.
I had been pondering the thought of breaking up with her for a while prior to the actual Skype call where I did it. I felt like an absolute piece of shit. Everyone’s relationships should be ended in person. I only did it on Skype because it felt more personable than text or call. But it doesn’t matter, I fucked her up, because she thought I was the one she was going to marry. I visited her dad who was dying of cancer on a 2 hour flight away so I can comfort her (she was up there 4 days before I got up there). It was me going over there to visit that made her think I was the one. Fuck. The only reason I never thought about “playing house” shit like marriage or kids is because 1. I’m scared. I am only 22 yet I still feel like I’m in my youth. I’m just not ready to throw that away yet. 2. I hate young kids and the whole baby culture. I don’t mind having an older kid, but that would involve adoption and eh, idk, there’s so many ramifications. 3. Money. I would rather achieve financial independence prior to having a living being. I have learned a lot about financial literacy over the last 5 years and I now try to save and invest as much as possible to achieve a healthy retirement and eventually wealthy lifestyle. Notice how most young parents are poor as shit, because they don’t think. They think they’re so grown up and that they’re ready, like it’s a fucking fantasy.
I hate how my parents curse all the time in the house yet if I curse in front of my mother while my dad is around, my dad lectures me on cursing in front of my mother. Because she’s a woman?! This isn’t the 50s dad. I also have a younger brother and he hates me and I cannot necessarily blame him. Yes, I think his morals are a little fucked and that he is incredibly rude at times, but I haven’t always been supportive older brother of his endeavours nor have I been the brother that should have had his back. I was a deadbeat older brother who only made his situations worse because I somehow thought I was making them better.
You know. One of my favorite shows is Bojack Horseman. That show helped me understand my own mental health better. Before any one makes a comment about how it’s stupid when people try be like... Rick Sanchez, The Joker, Walter White etc. because they’re missing the point, I am not one of these people. However, most people that have seen the show have compared me to the main character, Bojack. He is a miserable piece of shit with mental health issues who ends up hurting others because he had such a messed up upbringing. The source of his misery comes from him. He has been given the opportunities to better himself and misses everytime he gets close - I don’t want to be like that. I really don’t.
I went to this school for one year before transferring to another state. I made three close friends there. My depression took a toll on me and had some existential crises and ended up drinking myself out of my mind. These three close friends were nice but all nerdy and I slowly ended up making them all resent me in a unique way. The first one to drop me was because I ended up becoming an absolute asshole to them. I’ve tried what I could over the years to get us on talking terms, they haven’t felt comfortable with that and I can’t blame them. The second one I sent an unsolicited snap of myself cutting (my arms) to them and that really bothered them; I haven’t cut since 2018 though at least. I ran into them a half year later where they voiced their disappointment with this and we ended up transitioning into a pleasant conversation where I kind of explained that I was in a bad place and should have NEVER done that. It went well, but then I got ghosted. I wrote a diplomatic sendoff text after a few ghostings from him but never got anything back. The third one and I sorta talk but it’s been on and off and I know they’ve thought I’m an absolute garbage person over these last 4 years. I burned a bridge with that place all because I am a dumbass.
Other things that piss me off and have attributed to me having an absolute breakdown:
-My first consentual sexual experience was with someone who had just been banging everyone.
-I’m bisexual and I hate saying this even though I’m open because a lot of straight people start treating me like I’m gay while a lot of gay people make me feel illegitimate about my sexuality.
-Even though my dad always said he would never be bothered with a gay son and told me he supported me when I came out as bi, he still says shit about how it’s gross one when a guy puts his genitals in another guy’s ass and how the balls smack against his rear. He then drops the narrative and talks with me like women are the only people in my dating pool.
-Kinda cliche, but I really hate Tik Tok just because it’s so prevalent today and has so much shit that comes with it.
-My aunt who always takes candid photos of us at family events where I look like absolute shit and posts them social media. Also, stop having your iPhone be your 8 year-old son’s virtual babysitter. He’s discovered some pretty fucked up shit and lacks any discipline or manners.
-I hate entitled parents/dog owners that think that their kid/dog can do no wrong.
-The fact that I’ve been so insufferable at times and that there are still people who talk to me but secretly resent me for this.
-The fact that I’ve been told “I have a good heart” or that I’m an “old soul”. My “good heart” is the reason I’ve gotten so fucked over in the past and it’s not good. My “old soul” is not “old”. I hate most older people because of their stubborness and bitter attitudes toward anything my generation does. Fuck you. You all were rebels decades ago.
-My beard grows so fast so I have to clean shave almost everyday, and no, I’ve grown it out in the past. It looks like shit. People have told me some very hurtful yet truthful things about it when I’ve had it. I just always seem to look gross even though I shower twice a day and wear pretty clothes these days. I just wanna look cute, ya know? But I never do. But I’m not phishing for compliments on my looks. I hate pandering pieces of shit. I accept that I just can’t look cute and hate it. Also, the “fat friend” thing again even though I have a normal bmi these days. Some people just can’t shake the image. Including me.
-The expression “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” I’ve gotten jumped/harrassed by sketchy people on the street because that saying made me think nothing was going to happen to me if I kept walking on the same side of the sidewalk as they were even though they looked scary as shit. And I always keep to myself. I never open my mouth unless it’s to eat or say annoying shit to my friends. Fuck that expression by the way. Fuck whoever made that expression.
-Getting treated like a number by every college/university to which I have been.
-Aggressive Homeless People
I don’t know how much more I can write. I want to pass out back can’t fall asleep. I have a feeling I could eventually be successful, but I still won’t be genuinely satisfied unless I’m travelling all the time. For some reason, travel has always been something. But fuck that. Can’t do it safely for a while and it’s not like it’s a free acrivity you can do year-round anyway.
Also, regrding my post’s title, I really hate the wholistic stuff. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for here but it will be nice to hear from you all. I’m sorry if this post really demonstrates that I’m a miserable piece of shit. If you come to that conclusion, you’re probably justified in thinking that. Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings. I think the only reason I’ve calmed down at all towards the end of writing this is due to exhaustion. Have a great rest of your day/night.

My wife and I are both retired, low-budget seniors. We have been in Europe several times before, but this trip we decided to extend to two months, much longer than previous trips. Since we are somewhat budget travelers, we wanted to keep costs as low as possible, however, we are too old to want to travel as backpackers.
We decided on a road trip since the cost of renting a car is dirt cheap, way cheaper than trains and it gave us the opportunity to stop when we want, explore the smaller centres and just generally be more flexible. We are not huge fans of big cities and have seen a lot of the major attractions before, so we wanted to travel at a slower pace and experience more of the backroads.
Our Itinerary:
Flew Vancouver to Gatwick via WestJet return, then Easyjet to Edinburgh.
We rented a car in Edinburgh and after a couple of days touring Edinburgh, road tripped the Highlands for a week then returned to Edinburgh.
We flew Edinburgh to Basel, Switzerland by EasyJet, took the train to Freiburg and rented our long-term car there.
We drove through the Alsace area of France 4 days, then drove into Switzerland 3 days, back into Germany about 10 days touring Rhine Valley, east into Bavaria, then 5 days Czech Republic and Prague, then 3 days in Slovakia, 5 days in Hungary and Budapest, 4 days in Austria, 3 in Slovenia, 7 days in Italy, back into Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and returned the car in Freiburg. We flew out Basel to Gatwick and home.
Total trip cost was $220Can/day for 55 days.
Ways we economized:

• We saved on all luggage fees by having only cabin baggage. We packed very light. Once we had the long term car, we provisioned up with a cooler bag, utensils, some cooking supplies at a dollar store in France, bought used clothes at a couple of thrift stores.
  
• We bought a cheap Sim card in Freiburg at an internet cafe when we arrived. We used a Lebara Sim card which gave us 30 days / 5 gigs, 3G coverage for 20 euro. We renewed the 30 days once. Our primary usage was Google Maps and the Airbnb app.
  
• For driving, we set GMaps to avoid all toll roads and it did an excellent job doing that. I can't tell you how great that option is. Avoiding toll roads slowed our pace substantially, it gave us the opportunity to see the small towns and villages, and we paid zero toll charges - except the time the dumbass driver decided not to listen to GMaps and drove into a toll zone. The car was a very economical Skoda and gas costs were not a significant part of our overall costs. In mainland EU, we rented through Europcar and the rate was 8 euros/day throughout the trip. I insured the car through our Visa Platinum.
  
• Airbnb was excellent. We set the filter as low as possible to get bookings in areas we were traveling through. Rates are much lower in fall and we had no problems booking the same day, but we tried to book at least a day or two ahead once we decided on the general route.
  
• If traveling to large cities, we tried to book on the fringes, then rode transit into town, that way we kept our accommodation cost lower, we were more likely to find places to ourselves with a private bath, we didn't have to drive in the large cities and less noise.
  
• Most places we stayed had at least a microwave oven and fridge so about 80% of the time we ate meals from supermarkets like Lidl, Tesco (our favourite) and Coop. We bought wine in the supermarkets in 3L boxes (we would also splurge on the good stuff), bought beer there as well - super cheap. Some accommodations had a full kitchen so we would buy ingredients to actually cook a nice meal.
  

Total cost was $220Can/day for 55 days.
Areas we traveled that were a pleasant surprise:

• Alsace region. Beautiful architecture, rolling hills, the FOOOOD.
• Switzerland was actually very reasonable cost-wise as a road trip. The Airbnb was in the country, we traveled through the area around Bern and brought our own food, we had to pay a $40euro highway pass, but that was about our only significant cost.
• Rhine valley, Germany
• Spa region of western Czechia. Wow! Cheb, Karlovy Vary, Pilsen. This region was my favourite.
• Rural Slovakia, particularly the area around Martin
• The drive from Linz, Austria into Slovenia.
• Lake Bled region has been mentioned here many times, but is really worth visiting. We splurged here and got a 100 Euro room at a new casino in Kranjska Gora. Beautiful spa there.
• Mountainous region of Tuscany.
• Naples and the Amalfi Coast region.
• For major cities, I'd say Budapest was number one, although Prague, Edinburgh, Vienna, Rome, Naples were all phenomenal. Bern and Luzern were also very beautiful. As I said though, major cities were not really a big part of the overall trip.

I could go on, but really, there were very few disappointments, perhaps the farming regions of Germany and northeast Italy and maybe the beach zones along the coasts of Italy.

Naima
She was going to buy diapers. They were having a sale at Kroger and she was woefully unprepared for how expensive they were, how expensive everything to do with babies was. Mary had her first, and as of now, only child just six months ago. It might as well have been six years at this point. The rumors were true, any hope of sleep was abandoned long ago. Maurice did what he could to help out, he loved feeding their little girl and didn’t mind when she spontaneously vomited on his shirt, or if he did he never showed it.
They named the girl Naima, after Maurice’s grandmaw who passed away the day her namesake came into the world. Naima made it to her grandmaw’s funeral where she screamed and cried every second of the service. Mary however was absent. Everyone understood. Her labor wasn’t easy, a grueling sixteen hours of push and breathe, sweat running down her arms and legs in rivulets. They all agreed that a funeral was no place for a woman to be after giving birth just four days ago. But at Easter, Mary was certain they all looked at her a bit different now, like she had failed an important exam and her commitment to the family was thrown into question.
The parking lot was nearly deserted, it being almost 10 o'clock at night. She had meant to go earlier in the day, had even set an alarm on her phone to remind herself, but Naima was sick. Mary thought she was sick. She was mostly sure she was sick. She hadn’t eaten anything that day except for a few brown lumps of applesauce that later came out the other end virtually the same. Mary wasn’t scared yet but the anxiety, the vision of rushing to her family doctor only to be told once again that “this is normal Mrs. Hader, happens all the time, she just needs a bit of rest,” was ever present on her mind. She hated that place, hated the smell of it. When she herself was a little girl the atmospheres of hospitals, clinics, dentist offices, all revolted her. The snarky look of the woman behind the counter, watching another new mother panic over a little diarrhea, it was all a bit too much to bear. She tossed an Ativan quickly into her mouth and locked the car door.
She checked her phone. No texts from Maurice. He would be working late tonight, they’d been giving him the night shift at the hospital for months now. Even when he got off early he would head to the gun range to “get his aim ready for the apocalypse.” The baby was taking a strain on him. He held up well, remarkably well, better than she had. Naima was the love of her life, as well as the bottomless well where she tossed in every waking hour of her day. Sure she could maybe leave her alone here and there, she was six months after all, but she knew that within ten minutes the screaming and crying would start and there’d she be, holding the squirming mass to her breast.
She squinted at the glaring white lights of the store and swung her grocery bag from side to side, not thinking about where she was going as she walked towards the Personal Care aisle. She passed colorful packages of tissues, toothpaste, and tampons, and studied the boxes of diapers, selecting what she gathered was the medium tier.
Down the aisle there was a young man looking at conditioner. He was rubbing his mouth and kept looking back and forth from his phone to the bottles.
“Having trouble?” she said
“I guess so. I’m supposed to get something with coconut oil, but there’s like five of them with that.”
“Do what I do.”
“What’s that?” She picked up a nondescript bottle and put it in his hands.
“Get the cheapest,” she said.
He laughed a little at this, “I like the way you think. Who are those for?” he said, pointing to the box in her hand.
“Naima- or uh, my daughter.”
“Bit late to be running out for that.” She didn’t quite like that, but he gave her a quick sympathetic smile that she returned.
“Yeah I was going to earlier but you know how it is,” she started walking back down the aisle.
“I can help you,” the man said, his voice even.
She stopped and turned back to him. He was still looking at her nicely enough, his eyes almost seemed to be scanning her.
“Excuse me, I have to go.”
She turned and started walking back again. Suddenly much more aware of how empty the store was at this time. She didn’t hear him follow, just the sound of her own flip flops hitting the floor a bit faster than normal. She cast a glance over at the two employees by the service kiosk who were chatting away, hardly even noticing her. She wanted to be through self check out and back in her car as quickly as possible. Would she tell Maurice about it? No, probably not. He’d get worried, and he already had so much to deal with.
The self checkout machine blared out to her in its automated voice, asking if she had a membership card. She cursed it silently and quickly scanned the box of diapers, leaving well before the receipt was curling out of the slot. In the black reflection of the plate glass windows of the store she saw the man calmly scanning the bottle of conditioner. Her heart beat a little louder in her ears, she hadn’t even heard him walking up. She kept her eyes fixed on his reflection as she walked out the sliding doors.
The night air was humid and hung still. Across the parking lot a car sat by a stop sign, its red brake lights casting a faint glow on her face. Her little Hyundai was parked thirty yards away. She put her phone up to her ear and pretended to be talking to someone, a trick she had learned in college. This soothed her anxiety a bit, not as much as the Atavil would when she got back into her car, but enough for now. She crossed the lane in front of the store and her footsteps echoed across the empty lot. Twenty yards away. Behind her she heard the sliding door open again, and she began to walk a little faster. Fifteen yards now. She thought she heard someone behind her but she couldn’t be sure, she was too afraid to look. At ten yards her heart was racing in her chest, it was hard to hear anything else. She took out her keys, gripping them tightly in her hands, trying to calm herself down. Her legs felt rubbery and weak, her eyes were hot. She made herself turn.
He was standing ten feet away, silhouetted by the dim yellow street light just above and behind him. He looked bigger, much bigger than he did in the store, and he wasn’t moving. Her mind tried to project a face, an identity onto the dark human cut-out before her. She could feel his eyes staring back at her, all over her. He moved towards her. She was yanking at the handle of the driver side door. She didn’t remember moving to get there. The handle pulled but with no click of the opening latch, she forgot to unlock the car. A quiet moan escaped her as she looked up into the reflection of the window and saw that dark figure raise its hand to the back of her head and with sudden force, thrust her head against the side of the door frame.
The first thing she noticed was that she was on her back. There was something covering her eyes, it felt soft but was wrapped tight around her head which made the aching pain in her forehead protest even louder. Worse than the pain was the smell. Wherever she was the air smelled cold and closed in, damp, stale. It smelled like overripe cucumbers. She could feel something crawling up her calf and tried to shake it off but her legs were bound tight to what felt like a cold metal table. She went to move her hand to brush it off but her arms were trapped just as her legs, with straps like the ones they used to restrain mentally ill patients.
Naima. The word flashed in her head like a big red neon sign outside a Las Vegas casino. The baby, my baby, she’s all alone. God I only left her for ten minutes. Hot tears wet the cloth over her eyes and ran down the side of her face. She thought about screaming but she was too upset, too scared, too confused to do so. Instead she started hyperventilating. She could hear herself gasping, the pressure building up inside here like a crescendo of panic and fear. Her mind flashed to the prescription bottle of Ativan in her car. God, where was her car? Where was she? What was crawling up her leg?
“You need to relax,” a voice said, and this time she did scream.
“Where’s my baby?!”
“Wherever you left- it?”
“Oh Jesus, what are you doing? Let me go, please let me go let me go let me go let me-”
“It was easy to get you here,” said the voice that she could hear slowly orbiting around her. “Dark parking lot in the middle of the night. You should know better. You weren’t even carrying pepper spray, I know, I checked your bag.”
Mary strained against the straps, against the pain in her head, and against the creeping thing that was now marching slowly up her thigh. She began to sob.
“Your head must be killing you,” said the voice in a quiet, comforting way. “I’m sorry I had to do… what I did. I was scared you would get away.”
“Why are you doing this,” Mary said in between sobs, almost screaming. “What the fuck do you want!?”
“You. I want you.” The voice was quiet for a time. The crawling thing was onto her canvas shorts now but she didn’t notice. “I think you’re beautiful, so beautiful, almost perfect. I want to help you become... immaculate. You’re so close. I don’t want you to worry about your head, you’ll never see a scar, I’m good at what I do. You’ll never see.”
Before she could respond her phone erupted somewhere distant in the room. It must have been sitting on a table because she could hear a loud buzzing sound. The voice growled in rage and rushed away, a moment later she heard a loud crack that must have been her phone flung shattering against the floor. Her mind tried to gauge how long she had been down here. She could feel the dried blood pulling on the skin of her forehead, maybe a couple hours at the most. Maurice would be home soon, he could take care of the baby, Naima must be screaming loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear. Somewhere in the back of her head she thought she could hear her infant child wailing in the distance. Almost as if he read her mind, the man said:
“Please don’t try to scream. No one can hear you down here, it’s just you and I now. But you won’t be down here long. I won’t leave you down here with all these nasty little things.”
She heard a quiet crushing sound, like stepping on a pine cone, and the cucumber smell increased. She was much more aware of the creeping crawling sensation that by now was exploring her exposed midriff. Suddenly his hands were on her, one of them resting gently on her thigh, the other plucking up what was just over her navel. In the darkness under her blindfold she could feel the air being displaced as his hand moved it towards her mouth.
“Kiss?”
And she could feel its antennae frantically probing her lips, its spindly legs scratching them, it released it’s pheromones and the stench made her gag, making a gurgling sound that contrasted sickeningly with the tittering laughter of the man still holding the bug to her face. She would scream but she was afraid if she opened her mouth he would drop it in. The smell was everywhere, in her mouth, in her nose, in her brain. She didn’t sense his hand pull away. She had concentrated every ounce of her being into not throwing up and only distantly heard the sound of the man crushing the insect between his fingers. Then he was back, squeezing her jaw with more force than she thought he possessed and said quietly:
“I will help you.”
He took off the blindfold.
The light that shown in her eyes was blinding but in time she was able to focus on the large mechanical arm, like the ones dentists used, that beamed light down into her face. She gagged again when she saw three stink bugs crawling lazily across its surface, had they been crawling all along her when she was unconscious? She peered around the room. Everything else was bathed in darkness, the vague outline of a shelf, a washing machine, and what looked like a set of ancient narrow stairs leading up out of the basement. To her right she heard the clinking silverware sound and she could see the man hunched over a long metal table.
“I’m sorry for the delay, I just want to make sure everything is done correctly. Co-rrect-ly. You’ll be happy to know I use anaesthetic now. It’s much quieter, easier for both of us.”
“Wh-what?”
“I am going to fix you. Make you what you’re meant to be. I want you to understand I do this all out of love, out of love for your beauty, for what you will become.”
He turned around and her eyes grew wide and white with terror at the syringe in his hand. At this she finally screamed, screamed as loud as she could, louder than Naima screamed when she woke her up at 5 AM that morning, standing in her crib and howling. Mary’s arms and legs writhed against the straps and for a split second she thought she felt a give until he slapped her hard across the face. In stunned silence the tears fell freely down her cheeks, she was whimpering. The syringe needle entered just under her left cheekbone.
“Local aesthetic, I’d put you under if I thought I could bring you back out.”
She strained at the leather strap across her forehead, the back of her head now aching against the cold metal table top. Soon though she could feel her face going numb, a bitter taste in her mouth seemed to flow from there and then down throughout her body, into her arms and legs which laid like lead against her sides. She couldn’t tell if she even had a body anymore, she could feel nothing, not even her own breathing.
The man placed the syringe back on the table and in its place appeared a small scalpel. In her mind she was leaping off the table and up those rickety stairs, out of the black nothingness, but still she lay motionless. Near the spot where he injected the paralyzing liquid, the man made what must have been a small circular cut. She could feel a vague pressure on her cheek. She remembered being nineteen, the summer before her sophomore year at WSU, getting her wisdom teeth taken out, the sound of metal scraping against bone, ripping flesh.
She could see his fingers maneuvering little metal instruments like chopsticks, covered in crimson blood. He wasn’t wearing gloves. After what could have been an hour or five minutes, the pressure moved from her left cheek to the right, then the center of her face. Soon she wasn’t able to breathe out of her nose, she could feel something oozing into the back of her throat and tried to cough but couldn’t. In some far away corner of her mind she prayed that her gag reflex wouldn’t kick in, fearing she would choke and die on this table. The man yanked hard on her nose, the pressure mounting until with a pop he fell back, holding a white sliver of bone in his hand. More blood oozed down her throat. With equal force he pressed something down hard on her face, whatever was left of it at least, so hard that she could see stars forming in her vision. When he released she could not breathe through her nose at all, stopped up tighter than the worst cold of her life.
Apparently satisfied with his work he gave a small chuckle and plugged something into a wall socket behind her head, then she heard the buzzing whine of an electric razor. She heard him unstrap the leather bindings across her forehead and cradled her head in his hand and began to shave her hair off. Stray strands fell into her eyes and she tried to blink them away. The numbing effect was less potent near the back of her head and she could feel the razor travelling across her scalp. A rustling sound and she felt him placing something on her shaved head, a wig. It fit tight, pulling the skin above her eyebrows taut and making it nearly impossible to close her eyes.
Letting her head fall back down loudly on the metal table, he restrapped the leather bindings and pried her mouth open, fitting in a metal wire brace to hold it in place. Somewhere in the numb unconscious of her mind her gag reflex finally won her over.
With a sickening gurgle she vomited, but it became stuck in her throat and quickly the air was completely cut off. Alarms screamed inside her head but she still could not move, her eyes darted around their sockets. The man, whose face she still couldn’t make out due to the bright light directly above his head, only stared back at her silently. He yanked the wire brace out of her mouth, taking a few teeth with it, and then he kicked the table over on its side. The dark room lurched before her eyes as she slammed into the concrete floor, the heavy metal table bearing down on her from above. She vomited again but could now feel air roaring back into her burning lungs. Rasps escaped her and just as violently as she was flung down the man heaved the table back up into place and secured the straps. The feeling was beginning to return into her legs, she felt a wetness around her crotch.
“You’ll learn to keep it down now won’t you? God you stink, not much left to do.”
He opened her mouth, put the brace back in, and soon she felt immense pressure on her top gums, a yank, and a sound like a wine cork being pulled. He held up one of her incisors, gripped by his pliers, in front of her eyes. Tossing it aside, he fit the pliers around her other incisor, the pressure came, and then suddenly a hideous cracking, like a branch being snapped. Her tooth had shattered.
“Don’t worry I have new ones for you. Not too big, bright and shiny.”
Her fingertips were coming to life then, she could feel the cold air of the basement again and with horror she began to imagine the pain that would engulf her entire mind when the aesthetic wore off. The pain would blot out the world, would blot out the terror, would even blot out Naima. She wished for death.
“Darren, son you need to go to bed it’s late.”
The black figure snapped into attention like a deer in the headlights at the sound of feeble voice calling from far away, somewhere above their heads.
“I’ll be up soon momma, you just go on to bed now.”
His voice when he had spoken to her sounded frantic, monotone, inhuman. Now when he replied to that voice from above he affected a submissive whine. Sensation was reentering her body faster and faster by now. She could feel the raw skin of her wrists where she had pulled against the straps, and then her arms. She had to escape before the pain hit and blinded every sensibility. The black figure named Darren was back at his instrument table muttering soft curses to his mother who by now must have shuffled back into whatever stale bedroom she came from. Without really planning it, the thought entered her head. She began rocking back and forth on the table. The leather straps creaked a bit and the loose bolts holding the legs to the table squeaked but not enough for Darren to notice. She rocked harder and harder, urging against the leg straps that were looser than they should have been, he had neglected to secure them after knocking her over before. The table groaned as two of its legs were now leaving the ground at a time. Darren whipped around, the light finally catching his face. He was handsome, young, but that disarming grin he gave her in the supermarket was replaced by the bared teeth and all-white eyes of a man enraged. He lept up to catch her but the table fell again.
The strap holding her head down snapped and her forehead hit the concrete with a hollow sounding thud. The room went black before her eyes. Vaguely she felt her body dry heaving. The numbness was gone but the pain was distant, she was detached now from her body. Hovering in the air of the basement she saw her torso half laying out of the leather restraints of the table, her body violently spasming. Darren was pacing frantically beside her bleeding head, the area just above her left eye a red mass of flesh and blood already pasting strands of the bad blonde wig to her forehead. His nerve broke.
“Oh fuckfuckfuck I’m sorry. I wanted to help you, I did, I promise I wanted to make you better, I-. I’m going to let you go, but you can’t tell anyone, you can’t. You don’t know me.”
Inarticulate groans came out of her mouth, her tongue lazily exploring the gap where her two front teeth had been. He knelt down beside her and began undoing the straps, her eyes focused on a stink bug crawling slowly through the puddle of blood that her head had left. Red on green. The bug became two, then four, and then her vision fractalled out of existence. When it returned she woke up on the cold dewey grass of a front lawn.
She could hear automatic sprinklers chirping off somewhere distant. Her head was a mountain of pain, every pulse of her heart beat like a drum that throbbed and pushed even more agony than she thought could exist into consciousness. She pulled herself into a ball, groaning with each tiny muscle movement. She could not move her face, it felt like a mask. Her eyes burned and her vision was foggy, she peered out through blades of finely cut grass to a small one story house. Her house.
Naima.
In an instant pain was replaced by a bottomless fear for her baby. She was on her feet. A distant place in her brain informed her that her left leg had been broken somewhere below her knee, and there was a crunching grinding sound as she walked. The motion sensing lights went on and cast a crooked shadow behind her. Her sticky hands felt behind her and by some miracle produced her house keys. She fumbled with the lock, it was hard as her vision kept blurring in and out of focus. Her head, God her head was killing her. She slid through the door and headed down past the kitchen to Naima’s room.
Maurice got off early that night and he was driving home. His floor had been quiet, just watchinng the clock spin. He wanted to go to the range but he hadn’t really seen Mary in three days. She worked hard for that child, every day of maternity leave from the school was spent in dedication to their little Naima. So he decided to surprise her, turn the engine off and coast into the driveway in neutral like he had done when they were in highschool while sneaking out. About a block away he flicked away a half smoked cigarette out the window. He promised her and himself that he’d quit soon. Lung cancer got his grandmother. He’d do it for Naima. But with these back to back shifts at the hospital, a man needed something to take the edge off, and when he couldn’t go to the shooting range a camel or two would do the trick.
The car rolled silently into the driveway. He got out and walked to the door, not noticing the droplets of blood on the grass or the red bricks of their walkway. He’d get into bed with her, pull her close to him, and if the baby was quiet, they’d sleep the whole night through for the first time in months. Then he caught sight of the bloody smudges around the lock and his heart stopped, it froze then and there in time. He saw his eyes in the reflection of the glass door, they were recessed now, drawn back into his face and alert. He moved to his car, never looking away from the house. Opening the passenger door as quietly as he could he felt under the seat for his .38, the one his dad got him for Christmas that year. He was back at the front door.
He held the gun tightly in his right hand and pushed on the doorknob, feeling it give, it was unlocked. His breath came slow, he could feel streams of sweat pouring cold down from his armpits. He stared into the darkness of the living room. Framed family pictures, not even as old as Naima, stared at him in amazement, at the man in scrubs carrying a gun. It was still and quiet save for his hissing breath, until he heard the baby begin to scream. His legs lost their strength and his whole body, an impressive 190 pounds of bulk and muscle began to shake. As quietly and as quickly as he could he moved down the carpeted hall to Naima’s room. The light was on, he could see a tall shadow swaying across the bedroom wall, the smiling faces of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet juxtaposed against his own, covered in beads of sweat.
He entered the doorway, the gun held firmly with both hands, hammer cocked back and finger on the trigger. His eyes were wide open. Over by Naima’s crib there was a woman. She was bent over, peering down at his infant daughter who was screaming louder than he had ever heard. Blonde hair hung limp from her head, and he could see blood seeping out of her scalp and falling into the crib. The woman’s body was shaking in waves, as if she were crying, or laughing. He heard his voice yell to get away and she lifted her head up to see him. Her eyes were wide open in a look of shock, they were bloodshot and he thought he could see a grey film of dust over them. Her eyebrows arched grotesquely high and far to the sides of her face, a face that was red and puffy. Her nose was impossibly thin and crooked on her face. Both her lips were pulled back in a hideous oval around the few teeth she had, they were bloodstained, a large gap right front and center. He was sure of nothing in that moment other than that he was staring straight at a monster. He aimed, held his breath, and pulled the trigger.
Dead center, her forehead exploded in red. Her body jumped a little and then slid over onto the crib, for a moment he was worried it would collapse under the weight but she slumped off of it and onto the carpeted floor, her filmy eyes staring up at the ceiling that he and Mary had pasted glow in the dark stars to the summer before.
He ran over to the crib and picked up Naima whose little blue singlet was speckled in blood and viscera. She was no longer crying, but Maurice was. He cradled his daughter, trying to keep her face away from that dead woman on the floor. He called out for Mary and collapsed to the floor of the hallway, holding Naima in his arms, until the police came.
They got him out of the house fast and took him in for questioning, he couldn’t understand why. They weren’t telling him anything, they wouldn’t let Mary see him. They even brought in a public attorney who just looked at him in sad confusion. He was sitting on a metal chair in an interrogation room, just like the ones he saw all the time on TV. He looked at the wall-length mirror and wondered who was behind it. A deputy came in and sat down across from him, he looked uncomfortable, wouldn’t make eye contact. He held up a manilla folder and slid it across the table to Maurice. Looking down at his hands the deputy spoke.
“Uh, sir, we’re having trouble identifying the victim, and we-”
“What do you mean victim? Victim my ass, that.. thing, that thing was in my house. I was protecting my daughter.”
“Yes sir, we understand it’s just, can you look at these photos please.”
“I want to know where my daughter is being kept first, I want to know where Mary is.”
The deputy rubbed his eyes. It was late, probably close to 4:30 in the morning.
“Your daughter, Mr. Hader, is with social services right now. We’ve contacted your wife’s mother who should be there to pick her up soon.”
“And Mary?”
“We’re looking for your wife now.”
Maurice let out a long moan that filled the interrogation room. He still had blood on his scrubs and his shoes. The deputy pushed the file towards him and sat back in his chair, eyes locked on his hands. Maurice opened the first page which held photographs taken in his little girl’s room. He had to look away and shut his eyes tight so he wouldn’t scream. Most of the woman’s head was gone above the nose. Blood and brains were covering the flower print carpet in Naima’s room. He quickly flipped the photo over. The next shot was of the woman’s torso, one arm crossed over a shirt so caked in blood you couldn’t read what was on the design. He almost flipped that photo over too, until he recognized the ring on his wife’s finger.