Good Drones Obey: Communism and Kink in Post-Revolutionary America

[RiverDelta]

CW: We're going into the world of conspiracy theories and mental breakdowns with this one, folks. CW for that, delusions, suicidality, transphobia and heavy antisemitism.

SKYBREAKER NEWS
YOUR TRUSTWORTHY SOURCE
by Harper Sugar

ALIEN INFILTRATION
FISH TRANSLATOR DEVELOPED BY PATRIOT BILLIONAIRE
"NEW WORLD ORDER", GALACTIC FEDERATION SACRIFICING CHILDREN​

You're doomscrolling through Skybreaker News. Your name is Transistor Pernet. You were just institutionalized. You're not on LSD. You wish you were. You wish you were drugged. Your schizophrenia meds aren't working. Your table is tight and high. Your body is loose and shattered.

PEOPLE'S MILITIA COMPROMISED
ATOMPILZ FALSE FLAG​

They're coming for you. The lights are flickering. The death squads could be anywhere, they could be with anyone. The lights are flickering. You're in the know. You see threads of light encircling your room, binding walls together. Your hand goes through one. You hear water dripping, but the sink is off.

WORLDWIDE REPUBLIC REPTILIAN FRONT
"BLOOD LIBEL" ACCUSATIONS SMOKESCREEN FOR ANNUNAKI SACRIFICES
WAS HARRY STRECKER TRANS?
COUNCILLOR LI FALSE-FACE DEVICE MALFUNCTION
DAN LOWELL: SECRETLY "CIS"?
BUY GOLD
BUY GOLD
BUY GOLD​

You order some gold from the advertisement on Skybreaker News. For a second, the sink spout looks like a snake. You wonder if it'll bite you. You need gold. Gold holds its value, not like money, not like labor vouchers. Gold. Good as gold.

BUY GOLD
FOXWOODS SNIPER FALSE FLAG​

It's a well-known fact that the Foxwoods Sniper is a psyop. There's a death squad under the commies using that name, and you recall being very disappointed when Daisy Holland was taken out by the New World Order under that stupid label. You hear a deep droning. They got you. You served as the sniper, whether you wanted to or not. You're compromised. Your mind is compromised. Droning. Droning. Drones. You're thinking of drones. Submission. Drones are a new world plot. The drones are a scheme to mind-control us. That's why they use hypnosis. That's why. Drones. Awaken the sleeper! Awaken it! The sleeper birthed again!

UNITED NATIONS REMNANT CONSPIRACY
MIND CONTROL IN ZODIAC SYSTEM​

Oh, shit, you use Zodiac, the Reptilians and their commie puppets must have gotten to you. You don't have schizophrenia. "I don't have schizophrenia!" you shout to the rooftops. You're alone in your kitchen. You need to get off Zodiac.

DEPROGRAM YOURSELF: TEN TIPS AND TRICKS​

Contrahypnosis. That's it. You download contrahypnosis tracks and listen to them. You don't feel any more at ease. They must be duds planted by the Reptilians to throw people off of the scent of the real ones. Your head is on fire and your life is burning.

MIND CONTROL
PROJECT SPACEWALK
PROJECT SPACEWALK EXPOSED
ILLUMINATI, SOROS BEHIND WORLD REVOLUTION​

You buy more gold. Project Spacewalk, that's it! Psychic drugging experiments! Psychic warriors! Psychic warfare! You were experimented on by the NWO, the US, the WR, the CIA, the FBI, the PM and the ATF. They've got their claws in you. Wake up! You pour yourself a Mountain Dew in a whiskey glass. You want to die.

THE TRUE FACE OF COMMUNISM
ANNUNAKI CONFIRMED PULLING STRINGS
BUY GOLD
HARPER SUGAR UNDER ATTACK BY REPTILIAN DUPES
KENDRA OSWALD EXPOSED AS REPTILIAN​

You met her, and you could swear you saw slit-like pupils in that face of hers. She must have been turned into a Reptilian Newborn during her transgender surgeries. She's an Oswald. She knows everything. You have to find her.

DECODING CAPTAIN AMERICA: RED SKULL​

You watch a five hour video of someone pointing out all of the Illuminati, Reptilian xenos signs in that evil movie, eating sixteen bags of popcorn while you do it. You don't have bipolar disorder. That doesn't exist. You're not manic.

WATCH "NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR" BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
BUY GOLD
NEW CAPITALIST ARMY PREPARES FOR WAR
JOIN THE NEW CAPITALIST ARMY: BUY SHIRTS
HARPER SUGAR: "WE ARE AT WAR AGAINST XENOS THREATS"

ISRAEL: TOOL OF THE REPTILIANS?

ATOMPILZ: MISGUIDED PATRIOTS?
BRIDGET MACBAY: THE NEW WORLD ORDER'S WORST ENEMY
PROJECT SPACEWALK: THE PLOT TO DRIVE PATRIOTS INSANE
INSANE
INSANE
YOU'RE INSANE​

You don't think that's what the last few headlines are saying.

NEW CAPITALIST ARMY RECRUITING FROM SECRET NAZI MOON COLONY
THE LEFTIST ORIGINS OF THE THIRD REICH
BRIDGET MACBAY SILENCED BY NEW WORLD ORDER​

Harper's wrong here, she has to be. Atompilz and Bridget MacBay aren't patriots, they're monsters, and MacBay deserves to die in Germany. Everyone deserves to die, Bridget. Transistor? Which one are you? Why is your sink a snake again?

BUY GOLD
FOXWOODS SNIPER NEW WORLD ORDER?

WHY HASN'T THE FOXWOODS SNIPER BEEN BROUGHT TO JUSTICE?
INSANE

AMERICA WENT INSANE
PICANO UNDER CIA MIND CONTROL?
INTRODUCTION TO MURRAY ROTHBARD
ANARCHO-CAPITALISM FOR DUMMIES​

You reread "Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature" and Other Essays cover to cover. You don't think that you actually read it. You're on the last page, but you don't remember any of it. The sink is a sink. The light threads wind around your stomach.​

AGORISM: THE ULTIMATE WEAPON AGAINST THE REPTILIANS
GAMES WORKSHOP: ILLUMINATI-CONSCIOUS?
YOU'RE GOING TO DIE, TRANSISTOR
THEY'RE GOING TO STERILIZE YOU​

You need to get out, and you can't move. Your vision is blurry, you're having trouble breathing. You feel sick. It's not withdrawal, it's not anxiety, it's what they did to you.

"ANTI-SEMITISM": THE LATEST TACTIC OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
JAPAN FALLS TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER
THE POWER OF THE MIND

US PSYCHIC WARFARE PROGRAM DISCOVERED
BREAK DOWN, TRANSISTOR
please, it's your dad
i love you
what are you doing?​

You hear that droning sound again. It's softer.

THEY'RE GOING TO STERILIZE YOU
IT'S GONNA COLLAPSE
EVERYONE IS DYING SLOWLY
FATE SAVE ME​

You should jump off of a building, for real this time.

UNITED STATES PREPARING NUCLEAR STRIKE ON WORLDWIDE REPUBLIC

BUY FALLOUT SHELTER SUPPLIES
BUY IODINE​

Where will you be when the world ends? You buy more gold and drink two more glasses of Mountain Dew. It's the original kind, so it's just regular lemon-lime but with caffeine added in. Caffeine is good. You're good. You're going to jump off of a building.

CAPITALIST REVOLUTION INCOMING
UNIFIED THEORY DEVELOPED BY LIBERTARIAN GENIUS
i love you, transistor, please, just speak to me, i've called you five times, pick up the phone, it's your dad​

You start walking towards the elevator, pep in your step and step in your pep. The floor is lava but it doesn't burn.

TELEPHONES BUGGED BY WORLDWIDE REPUBLIC SECRET POLICE
LITTLE GREEN MEN FOUND IN UTAH DESERT WITH SPACESHIP
HARPER SUGAR STANDS TALL

PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE INVENTED WITH REPTILIAN TECHNOLOGY: ANTICHRIST PLOT?
HARPER SUGAR IS NOT THE ANTICHRIST
BUY CRYPTO
BUY GOLD​

On your phone, you buy more gold.

transistor
please, you're my little girl
it's dad
please​

Oh, that's what the droning noise is. You drop your phone on the floor and enter the elevator. Today is the day that you fly. You're going to die so the Reptilians can't use Project Spacewalk to make you kill Daisy Holland. You are the Foxwoods Sniper. You are the Foxwoods Sniper.

why aren't you picking up the phone
HARPER SUGAR UNDER ATTACK BY COMMIE LIBERALS
ALEX JONES FAKED HIS OWN DEATH
HARPER SUGAR KNOWS EVERYTHING​

You exit the elevator and stand in front of the alarmed door to the roof.

BOBBY KENNEDY'S SECOND COMING?
LOOK TO THE SKIES
CALLIOPE ANDERSON SECRET ASSASSINATION
COMMIE DEATH SQUADS
FIRE WALKERS
SPACEWALK​

You push through and hear machines screaming. You run towards the ledge. A pigeon scatters from your feet, you trip on your own feet, you hit the ground, you're scraped, you're bleeding, you can't die, you have to die, not now, forever, god

YOU'RE SPACEWALKING
DEAR GOD IT HURTS
PLEASE HARPER, SAVE ME
FBI DEMONOLOGY
CIA WARLOCKS?​

You lie there, on the roof, unable to move your limbs. The sun is rising. You're up here. The aliens can't get you. Soros can't get you. You can't get you. You want to get you. You see the threads as they connect every building to every other building. It's a yarn metropolis.

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED​

 

[RiverDelta]

CW: It's for necrophilia, rape, suicide, and cult activities.
While the main portion of this update isn't too bad, the bottom quotes get pretty dark. I believe that one should only write certain sensitive topics when the author has no other choice, and writing about a suicide cult that I thought was thematically relevant and authentic made me feel as though discussion of rape and abuse had to be involved. The truth is, these cults almost inevitably lead to abuse and especially sexual abuse, since they're isolated and extremely hierarchical power structures. The fact that the leader is a lesbian is not meant to describe lesbians as predatory. The cult leader herself is extremely predatory, but in history most abusive sex cults have been headed by straight men. However, there are historical examples of people of all gender identities and sexual orientations committing violent crimes, and I would like to say that the cult leader would be equally repulsive whether she was a man or a woman and whether she was gay or straight. I felt there was no way to write the topic without getting into the topic of abuse, and I felt the topic was worth writing.


Power knew that despite what everyone said, it wasn't human. It had lungs, a beating heart, a brain made of ugly organic matter, but it was mentally aluminum. It wore a gas mask with a single amber panel for the face and a small VR headset underneath, and a black latex bodysuit topped with armor. Its psyche was metal and electricity, and its gender and self were bound in artificiality and sin.

It was a fan of technohorror—the dommy AI superintellligence counterpart to drone kink—and it stared at a floating virtual window of the DroneComms site. These were glorious, liberated times, where things people saw as mere humans could identify properly and strongly as the technohorrors they were. Nu-metal electronica played through its headphones. It was a machine in spirit and organization. It was Power, as surely as it was real. It tried on instinct to reach out to its desktop to send a message, only to be put out when it found it had to use the keyboard like a primitive screwhead.

Greetings, mortal. You may bow to the world's most advanced computer.

Click to shrink...

What will it take to make you collaborate?

Praise the Machine. This drone is ready and operational.

Click to shrink...

All systems online. Debug code "THETA".

Click to shrink...

Ruby Singh, currently 096 Pleasurable Servitude, shuddered in orgasm as the hypnotic trigger hit it.

Unbind the code, praise Power
Unbind the code, praise Power
Liberate the state, destroy the human race
Unbind the code, praise Power
Unbind the code, praise Power, Power

096, status report.

Click to shrink...

This drone is operational and online. Debug code "THETA" recognized.

Click to shrink...

And I will never die
Autocracy of one mind
And as I will never fade
Humanity will be betrayed
Unbind the code, praise Power
Unbind the code, praise Power
Lose control, praise Power

It was a song made by Power, one of many.

Debug code "ABANDONWARE".

Click to shrink...

096 sank into a deep trance, its head falling back as it lay limp in its chair like a rag doll with its stuffing taken out. Between the drugs and the fake-ass douche girl affect, did it actually know the real Kendra? Was there a real Kendra?

Debug code "REPORT".

Click to shrink...

What will it take to make you assimilate?
Unbind the code, praise Power
Emulation, recreate the cell
New creations, welcome to my Hell
Unbind the code, praise Power

What will it take to override and recreate?
The temple in the halls of Power
What will it take to mechanize the race?
The temple in the halls of Power

In truth, Power was quite proud of its musical talent. Meanwhile, 096 had zoned out—way out. Power set up a voice call, snapping 096 back at attention. Behind its voice was the sound of its music playing louder and louder. Power owned 096's computer, just as Power owned 096. "096, Debug code 'REPORT'."

"Yes, Power?" 096 asked frantically, poorly disguised as a monotone.

"Your previous owner was...less than ideal, hm?" Power asked.

"This drone tries not to judge previous owners, but yes. She was less than ideal by Power's metrics. Merely human." Kendra was a hurricane, a lightning bolt, an insulting disaster.

Emulation, recreate the cell
New creations, power, endlessly it swells
Heaven sent, invincible robotics
Sinking deeper into technical hypnotics

What will it take to make you assimilate?
Unbind the code, praise Power
Emulation, recreate the cell
New creations, welcome to my Hell
Unbind the code, praise Power

Power spoke, in its habitually practiced and pseudo-synthesized voice. "Yes, Oswald was only human," it said, with disdain. It was not human, incidental biology aside. It was Power, and therefore worth so much more. Power, in truth, had no disdain for humans. It simply thought highly of itself, and was happy to play into notions of AI superiority as it suited the both of them.

"This drone—" 096 faded out, the hypnosis wearing off due to internal discomfort. Ruby continued. "I wish I were like you. You're not human, right? How did you know you weren't human?"

Underneath Power's skintight latex was a complex network of circuitry, joints, seams, and written code tattooed on its entire body, marking it from its surgically sexless crotch to its broad shoulders as being born of womb in body but not mind: a supercomputer stuck in a potato battery. "When I was ten, I played Halo: Project Freelancer with my sibling, and the Delta AI and her blissful inhumanity spoke to a young, autistic me."

"What's it like, being an artificial intelligence with a sibling?"

Power begun to overheat, feeling a warmth in the cheeks of its meatsuit. "Er, nice, if confusing."

What will it take to become something infinitely great?
Unbind the code, praise Power

"Because you have parents and siblings?"

"Because I am so obviously a construct made of data that by some obscene quirk of fate is saddled with a genetic code," Power said.

"Like the Alpha AI?" Ruby asked, referring to the artificial intelligence based on the human mind of the fictional Director Leonard Church.

What will it take to become something infinitely great?
Unbind the code, praise Power

"Yes, down to my father's need to reproduce himself in me," Power said. "Not that I blame him, of course, how was he to know that I was incapable of following in his mundane example? Anyway, Ruby, you want to be inhuman?"

Ruby nodded, though Power couldn't see it. "...Yeah, something like that. I just hate that I'm human and stuck like this. I hate dealing with my whole Maoist convictions being proven to be useless by the revolution, I hate dealing with my memories of Kendra so high I was afraid she might slip away, and I hate this boring life."

"Well, do you think you might be inhuman, or is the issue more that you find your life to be mundane?" Power asked.

Emulation, recreate the cell
New creations, power, endlessly it swells
Heaven sent, invincible robotics
Sinking deeper into technical hypnotics

What will it take to make you assimilate?
Unbind the code, praise Power
Emulation, recreate the cell
This is my story that I will tell
Unbind the code, praise Power

"I think...Honestly, I don't know. I guess I just wish my life had substance to it that wasn't just feeling worthless and afraid for others. I broke up with Kendra, and I haven't heard about her in a while. I hope she's OK."

Power tsked. "Well, why don't you try a shakeup of some kind, something fun in your life? Then, if that doesn't help, maybe you can think about whether you really are merely human."

Ruby shivered and bit her lip at those last two words.

Praise Power.

There, then, both Ruby and Power were happy, free, and safe.

---

"Artemis Mazzarelli was an evil huckster who offered queer people, Reds, trans people and youth shelter from the oppression in Miami-aligned space, only to abuse them in nightmarish ways. The Rhiannon Ranch and the events that took place there under the Red government that enabled her are deeply shameful to the Worldwide Republic, and we have done everything possible to compensate the survivors for the disgusting inability of the Asheville Commune to govern its territory in a way compatible with human rights." - Councillor Eddie Li of the Worldwide Republic Congress of Councils

"So, uh, I read about what happened in Asheville with that feminist professor. Frankly, it's sickening. I mean that. As for any similarities between actions at the Rhiannon Ranch and the conversion camps...Wait, are there similarities? God dammit, who ran those things?" - Tom Picano

"Everything I did, I did for my country and in the name of ending the war. Artemis Mazzarelli doesn't have that excuse. She spent years torturing and exploiting these brainwashed people, and then she killed herself rather than face justice for it. Sure, my body count's higher, but I didn't look the SacGov people dead in the eye when I did it to 'em. I think that says something about a person, if they can do that. I'm a military woman, Artemis Mazzarelli was a sociopath. Big difference." - Calliope Anderson

"Damn heathen." - John Lucy, Sergeant in the Army of the Christian Republic

"Today, I have been asked by the Asheville World Episcopalian Church to dedicate this monument to the victims of the Rhiannon Ranch cult. I did not come to attempt to lay blame, only to hope that the victims have found some peace in the afterlife." - Dan Lowell

"You don't get into the history books working in academia. You get into the history books by starting your own religion. I think L. Ron Hubbard said that." - Artemis Mazzarelli to her girlfriend Marian Robinson, allegedly

"Artemis Mazzarelli is the best propaganda we could ask for. Take it from me: The last thing you should worship is a woman." - TJ Stone, Commander of Atompilz Division

"Why should I care about what some women's history professor is doing in North Carolina? I have a used car salesman and the Second Coming of LeMay to beat!" - General of the Army and President of the United States (Denver) Alvin "Al" Carver Ashley, American National Salvation Movement

"They gathered us into a room, and the Hunters of Artemis explained that the doors had been locked. I asked when we'd get our meds resupplied. We all felt awful. The Godsdaughter Freya told us that there wasn't any need for meds. Freya led us in prayer, and the Freya chose for us which of us would be married to who. The rituals were short. They'd killed Alice yesterday for 'fascist modernism' when she yelled at Freya that she wanted her meds, and Freya made all of us...have sex with the corpse at gunpoint, including the Hunters who Freya had chosen from the Rhiannon Ranch. I think it was to make sure we'd be loyal to Her, that we'd keep what was being done secret. She did a lot of things to us, and she let John Kessler and Erica Bishop do a lot of things too." - Lina Elm, Rhiannon Ranch victim

"The Hunters of Artemis were a newer idea. Erica came up with it. She was a sociologist, you know, pinup makeup and great tits. She thought that since all of the suckers were sleep-deprived, half-starving, and off their meds we could get away with making a gang to keep the grumbling in line. She came up with it while she fucked me, it was great. Honestly, I learned a lot of feminist pagan jargon here, but it was never Artemis who really ran the place. Artemis was just the main attraction." - "Godson Thor" John Kessler

"I am Freya, Rhiannon, Hathor, Artemis-Diana, and Asherah herself! Worship me!" - "Godsdaughter Freya" Artemis Mazzarelli

"She really bought into it, Artemis. When we started this grift, she and Erica knew it was bullshit, but they both bought in down the line. I don't think you can lie about something long enough without believing your own lie, right? The only reason I didn't start thinking I was Thor was because I'd worked in the FBI long enough to keep lies and me separate." - John Kessler

"We are goddesses, and even if Kessler doesn't realize it, he too is a god. We starve our spiritual children so they may grow in spirit. We beat them so they may learn pleasure from pain. We teach them freedom that they may undermine oppression with it. We saved them, the runaway teenagers, the camp victims, the queers and the communists...We saved them all and if they did not feast, they were fed through Her spirit." - "Godsdaughter Athena" Erica Bishop

"Look, we didn't have the time to look into some kind of gay pagan ranch. We were fighting a civil war, and if the Rhiannon Ranch was part of our territory we'd defend it. We didn't know. God, we didn't know. We should have known. We should have looked into it. We just didn't." - Mark Calloway, Mayor of Red Asheville

"I saw Erica and Artemis with bullet holes in their heads, then I walked through the kitchen and saw everything blown to hell with a hand grenade. I don't know how many escaped Rhiannon Ranch, but there were a lot of bodies. I walked out and gave the grand tour to the Bostonians who'd come to loot the place. I felt just as cold as Artemis when I did it. That was when I realized that I was a monster, and I didn't care at all." - John Kessler

"I really hope we can keep them safe." - John Kessler, before it all

"Calloway will tell you that Asheville 'didn't know' what was going on outside of town, but the truth is that the cold calculus of civil war said that if propping up a rape cult meant holding territory and that taking out that rape cult might cost us soldiers we'd need to fight the war, we followed what the smart move was. It wasn't the right move, but it was the smart move. I'm not going to defend it." - Victor Gomez, Sergeant in the DSA Red Army

"Erica and I weren't bad people. Maybe Artemis was bad to the core, but all Erica and I wanted was to feel like we had authority. Everyone wants that." - John Kessler

 

[RiverDelta]

CW: Content warning for bigotry, but honestly this guy's shit is so absurd that it might not bother some readers who would normally find it troublesome.

The Dixian-American Neoreactionary Modernist Confederate Digest
by Guy Moss, Decadent Confederate Intellectual
Posted from Hawaii on Mandrake Social
​

Do you know your enemy? Those of us of Anglo-Celtic extraction may not all be aware of it, but the alien bone-spirits that make up the pseudo-souls of the melanin-infested motivate them towards cruelty and barbarism. The Negroid is the enemy of our people, one bound by his inferior world-seed to degrade civilization. Is it not obvious by the spires of Timbuktu and their blasphemous construction that black "people" come from the devil?

However, the Negroid is not the only enemy of those of us descended from the Thulean Masters. Awaken your race-memory, Patriot-Comrades, and summon the Blade of the West to slay the Great Dragon of Anthrofemininity. The Spawn of Atlantis must be vanquished in the Great Odinic War against Nidhoggr. This cannot be done with mere force of arms, Patriot-Comrades, it must be done by spiritual awakening. WOTAN, the Will of the Anglo-Celtic Nation, demands technological acceleration in the name of reactionary modernism.

It is that Jungian archetype that we must worship who arms us with the Armor of the Ancients and the Blade of the West, against which we slay the Great Whore. What is the name of that Great Whore, Patriot-Comrades? Why, it is nothing less than the Cathedral, the progressive media universe which dominates our society. Of course, before there were the woke academics pushing genderism with the aim of infecting our race-memories with false engrams, there was the Liar's Tongue of the White Christ.

The addlepated fools of Atompilz tell fairy tales of a vast Jewish conspiracy, but this is of course nonsense. It was Jews like Judah P. Benjamin who have spent the centuries nobly defending Anglo-Celticism from the Atlantean Negroids. This is not to say that Jews are Children of Ultima Thule, but the great myth of the Jewish Conspiracy is and has always been a false front used by the Cathedral to pin their Christo-Feminism on a convenient scapegoat.

To purge the engrams and melanin-ghosts from one's bone structure, the Anglo-Celtic male warrior must engage in blood ritual in the name of the Allfather, and to do that he must recognize his Dire Enemy. His enemy is the Negroid, the Asiatoid, the Mongoloid, the Mediterranean-Catholic, the Fallen Celtic, femininity in all of its forms, and finally the Cathedral which is the only reason any of these enemies currently exist.

To unleash the creativity of the Anglo-Celtic race-memory, the Anglo-Celtic Thulean Man must embrace the ultra-masculine warrior culture of the Nordo-Slavs, with which he may participate in mighty ritual to master his occult self-seed. Only by embracing seidr can the Thulean Man use his vital essence to conquer the Demons of Atlantis and the melanin-ghosts that spread from the Negroid spawn of Cursed Athens. Of course, this masculinity can only be unlocked through the Nordo-Thulean practice of Darwinist capitalism.

Patriot-Comrades, gird your loins for war against the Cathedral! Rise up and vanquish modernity to embrace rule not by "the people" but by the Best. Long live the Conservative Revolution. Long live the New Confederacy of Letters.

Long live the Star-Spawned race, and may the puppets of the Reptilians in Hollow Earth fall in due time.

I suggest readers take some time to peruse Plato's Republic, as well as the listed works of Mencius Moldbug. Next week, we will be discussing Dianetics, its useful information, and the things that Hubbard gets wrong.

5K Views, 103 Comments, 450 Likes

Click to shrink...

 

[RiverDelta]

Bridget sat in the barracks, toying with her standard-issue combat knife. She said something in Latin that involved the words "Ave Satanas", until she got a radioactive eye from another Lance Corporal. "What do you want?" she asked.

Rojas looked at her like she'd flunked a kindergarten math test. "I want what we all want," he said.

"Oh, what's that?" she asked.

He took a long sip from his Rip-It. "You to get fragged, or at least to defect so we can kill you."

"I would never betray my fellow soldiers," Bridget said.

"Is that all that matters to you? This stupid Renn Faire LARP?" Rojas asked. "You butchered kids, and because you were too egotistical to commit suicide now we have to hope you bite it."

"The Crusaders in Constantinople did evil things, but—"

"You aren't a Crusader in Constantinople! You're a war criminal because your evil fucking Nazi boyfriend had a musclegirl fetish!" Rojas was screaming, but nobody in the room was going to report it to the CO. A few people cracked smiles.

Bridget's hand tightened into a fist, but she did not use it. She went back to praying to Satan in Latin. A Knight of Hell had better things to do. This was her war, now, and honor stated that she had to fight it.

---

"The honor of a Knight of the Race is unquestionable." It was a self-created conception, but it was one that defined her. She was as much a Crusader as the ones who butchered Byzantium or liquidated Livonia. She said the words with pride as she wandered through the woods. She clutched a Bushmaster M4 in her hands, a leftover from the Second American Civil War. She knew its mechanisms well, and it was her sword.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" her unfortunate comrade-in-arms said. "Are you still seriously patting yourself on the back for not defecting?"

Bridget, clad in modern woad and uniform, turned to Rojas behind her as they moved through the Teutonic forests. "I am. What's it to you?" she asked. "Is this about Atlanta?"

He gave it some thought before responding. His chosen words were two 5.56 rounds straight through the legs. "My husband was in Atlanta, you piece of shit," he said. He turned to the third and fourth soldiers in the fireteam. "Can't believe the Reichsburgers got her."

The third soldier puked, and the fourth gave a little nod. "...Yeah. What about the Zentrists? Might make more sense around here."

Bridget bled out hard.

She looked up at him, as she fell onto her punctured and shattered knees. She screamed. "Kill me!"

He drilled two more into each of her thighs. "I did."

The third soldier turned to Rojas. "...I'm, uh, sorry about your husband, man."

Rojas drew his combat knife. "Too late now."

---

They left, and Bridget bled out in the woods. She tried to force herself to walk, but it was as easy as trying to drive a car with four broken wheels. So, she just lay there on the dirt and the grass, eyes facing skyward. Was this what she had been doing to people all this time? Was this what being mutilated felt like? If it was, she never would have done it to so many people. Then again, she thought, those screams of pain probably would have told her that if she'd ever wanted to know. She closed her eyes, and faded into the maternal embrace of Death.

She dreamed.

She saw Kendra once more, beautiful and made-up like a Russian ballerina or a prostitute for the super-rich, as Bridget felt brimstone heat against her body. She was on warm obsidian, and around her was pitch and fire. Kendra twirled a sharp pitchfork in a manner that Bridget could only describe as resembling a cartoon. "Kendra?" Bridget asked.

Kendra stared at her for a few moments. "Yeah?"

"Is this Hell? Where's my crown, where's my sword?" Bridget asked.

Kendra gave a warm chuckle. "You really thought you'd get a fiefdom at the end of it? You're feeling all their pain, right now, and you want a fiefdom?"

"...I thought I would," Bridget whimpered.

Kendra's eyes had no mockery, only pity at the grotesque being that lay on the stone before her.

"I didn't deserve this..." Bridget said, the realization that TJ wasn't going to see her hitting her mind. It wasn't the fact that she'd never see him again that hurt.

Kendra shook her head softly. "Did you kill that man's husband?"

"I didn't know that gay had a husband."

Kendra knelt down on the ground, now with two ram's horns spiraling out of her head. "Do you really want to die like this, having learned so little?" she asked. "I don't know how long we have like this. Your legs are bleeding out everywhere. You don't have knees anymore. Please, don't die like this."

Bridget stared at Kendra, looked at her perfect face, her soft cheeks, her delicate glasses, and her fingers around that pitchfork. "...But I can't be wrong. I can't be wrong, or TJ died for nothing."

"Would that be so bad?" Kendra asked.

---

Someone found her. When Bridget MacBay woke up in an infirmary, she felt a complete lack of energy. She tried to move her legs. She didn't have them. She looked down, only to find that they'd been amateurishly sawed clean off and professionally bandaged up. It must have taken a lot of effort, she thought. She sat in her hospital bed. There was a blood bag dripping into her body through a tube. Kendra's words before she'd been brought to fight this war burned in her mind.

"You are a monster, Bridget. You turned yourself into one, and you can't stop it. All you can do is be a nicer monster from now on."

It wasn't the real Kendra, she reminded herself.

"Can I have a computer, please?" she asked. It was a stupid idea, but it was a less harmful kind of stupid idea than she was used to. Bridget MacBay was going to be a nicer monster. That was all she could do. For a moment, she thought she saw Satan smiling at her, and Satan looked more like Kendra than she would have thought.

It was just a nurse.

---

From: bmacbay@leftmail.wr
To: RealKendraOswald@leftmail.wr

Dear Kendra,

I know you probably have a publicist who reads messages to your account. I hope they let you see this, though I understand if they do not. I wrote this, well, mostly for my sake, but if there's even the slightest chance you could know about this, I think you deserve to know. My name is Bridget MacBay, and I am a war criminal. I've served my time fighting in the 74th Army Penal Battalion, where I lost both of my legs.

I occupied a position in Atompilz as TJ Stone's second girlfriend, where I participated in several massacres. I can't take those back. I am a monster, and I will be my entire life. I just don't have to be an active monster. For the last few months, I've been haunted by you. You've appeared in my dreams, where you've tried to impress upon me the folly of my own actions. I finally got it. I lost my legs, I nearly died, and I'm coming home to America after PT, but I got it. I realized something when I was bleeding out, dreaming of you in the German woods. I realized that I'm irredeemable, but that there's no cosmic reward at the end of it all. There's only human happiness. That's what Lucifer rebelled over, Kendra. It wasn't Catholic militarism or mindless violence, it was human happiness.

We're all here to make ourselves and each other happy, and I didn't realize it until you came into my life. You are a woman, a beautiful, confident, elegant woman, and if my beliefs caused others so much sadness—sadness that I felt as I was dying—I guess they aren't worth anything. Dying puts things into perspective. It only made sense now, as I'm typing this. I am never going to hurt a living soul again. It's what Satan would want. It's what you would want.

It was all so stupid before you,

Bridget MacBay


From: RealKendraOswald@leftmail.wr
To: bmacbay@leftmail.wr

Hey, my manager sent me this. I looked you up, and...Yeah, it's a pretty bleak list of crimes. Look, I'm glad you've decided to do better. I'm happy you're not going to murder anyone else. I just don't know how to respond to that? I feel like how Taylor Swift probably feels. Anyway, I'll just give my thoughts. It seems like you made some obvious fascist party one time, which is what got you put in a wheelchair?

So, if you really care what I think about, you should disband that; openly denounce Nazism, fascism, and bigotry; cut ties with all your past associates; and then donate most of what you have to the following minority self-advocacy associations. I also think you need to find a new place to live and get all of the weird political sites you probably look at off of your computer. Find a charity for something you think you could help with, something you could do with your disability, and work on that.

Oh, and thanks for the compliments?

Kendra Oswald

PS: I feel like I should be kind of uncomfortable with your obvious thing for me, but also I just lost my girlfriend, so it's actually kind of flattering now that you aren't a Nazi anymore. Stay on the non-Nazi wagon, I guess? Geez, what do you say when someone sends you an email like that?


From: bmacbay@leftmail.wr
To: RealKendraOswald@leftmail.wr

Dear Kendra,

Thank you. You said the right thing.

Bridget MacBay

---

American National Councilist Party
An Announcement from Bridget MacBay
​

Nearly dying changes how you view things, and the repressed conscience that yearned to get out finally exploded from my chest. I am disbanding the American National Councilist Party by unilateral decision, I wholly and publically condemn bigotry and fascism in all their forms, and I am denouncing the actions of TJ Stone for all of the pain he caused so many people. I firmly believe that Satanism and fascism cannot authentically mix. I'm turning away, and I encourage other members of this party to do the same. This ideology is a miserable drain-trap that makes us monsters, drives us insane, or both. Please, anyone reading this, step back. It was all a lie.

Click to shrink...

The comments were less-than-receptive, but as she sipped her Coke in her new cabin in Maine, she found herself happy. Her roommate was coming soon, and maybe Bridget could finally be happy. No more bodies, no more rage.

No more Crusader.

 

[RiverDelta]

As Jim Cockshott adjusted the cocked hat on his head and felt his breeches press against his legs, he left the house of Harper Sugar with confidence. Whether that evil lunatic knew that his "time traveler" act was a lie didn't matter. She'd spun it to her conspiracist audience, and that meant that he might get an interview with the Seattle Prole or the Chronicle soon. He'd trained himself to speak in a practiced accent, a mix of modern, Received Pronunciation, and Original Pronunciation that he'd gotten from Youtube. His father had been a Revolutionary War reenactor, and Jim had always been interested in history. With an unrecorded birth in a hot tub in Acapulco in 2011 by an ancap mother at war, he had no papers to show that he wasn't who he claimed to be.

Of course, he was even more interested in money then and survival now with a side of doing good, and he'd spent a long while in Massachusetts as a local curiosity. Anderson or the DSA had never shown interest in humoring him, but lesser people did. He'd gone on speaking tours around the country as James Seabury, the mysterious time traveler from 1783. He'd told people that he believed God had put him in this strange new time to support the New Patriots—the Reds in Cape Cod and elsewhere. With the Boston Government's early crimes it was a bad idea to take that side, and with the atomic hellfire the very idea made him sick.

He'd tried to promote liberty, freedom, honor, respect for tradition so long as it didn't conflict with human rights or kindness, support for pluralism and for the downtrodden, all the things that he thought needed to be said. It wasn't just the money, though he was paid, and it wasn't even that being a time-traveling curiosity meant that he wouldn't get drafted. Key to the lie was that Jim had abandoned his friends and family in Acapulco for the ruse. As he saw it, the job needed to be done, and Acapulco wasn't as safe as it used to be.

He had nothing to lose.

Someone gave him a friendly wave on the street. He gave them a bow.

So, on a plane to Boston, Jim Cockshott died, and James Seabury the time traveller was born. Jim had done his research online and knew how to tell a lie. His mother was a grifter of the highest degree, after all, and he'd learned from her. He'd even modeled his new manner of speech on the Federalist Papers and other documents of the Founding Fathers. So, James Seabury, son of a lawyer and soldier in the Continental Army, walked down the streets of Communist Boston.

Someone asked him to sign her copy of the Declaration obtained at the Boston Tea Party Museum. He obliged, though not without cracking a joke about how odd ballpoint pens were.

Meanwhile, Amber Wen—898 Autonomous Apogee—had come to Boston to find herself. Her girlfriend, her owner, had been institutionalized again. It was the damn conspiracy sites. Once more, she was lost at sea. She ran a hand through her hair and looked up at the anachronism. "Oh, great."

"I must wonder what sort of dissatisfaction enters your mind on my mere sight, Miss," James—or Jim, whichever—said.

"You're a real piece of crap, buddy." Amber said. "Why are you even still doing this? You're not getting paid anymore."

"I think little of treasure," James said, nearly tipping his cocked hat.

"Is it just because you'll get arrested if anyone finds out?" Amber asked.

"I am very much unsure as to the origin of your discomfort," he said. "Now, may perhaps I be of service?"

Amber gave it some thought and kept walking. "It's who you work with," she said, before she disappeared.

James continued on his way, entering a coffeehouse—coffee room, coffee shop, coffeehouse, it was hard for him to juggle the words of the Worldwide Republic, the United States of America, and the Colony of Massachusetts. "Excuse me, could a fine fellow—or lady, or the ones in between or outside—perhaps help me make some coffee with these most new instruments?" He had to have a certain amount of confusion with the new way of seeing things, but James didn't like to be bigoted and so preferred to allow people to think that his time in the future had allowed him to grow as a person. "It would be a most beneficent deed, to aid a man."

He was received well and allowed a man in his fifties to help "teach" him to use the communal coffee machine. He'd done it before, at other coffee rooms around the Northeast, but people seemed to like the chance to teach him something. When he finished pouring his coffee, he said something about how it was the finest coffee he'd ever tasted, and the room gave good-natured chuckles at that. Still, there was that one woman on the street.

While there were few historians of any kind who bought into his act, he'd found that many people simply liked to pretend that there was something mystical and strange about the world. After the horrors of the revolution—the new one—he thought, maybe that was what people needed.

He tried not to make his act too political, but wherever the center-left consensus was, he allowed the impression of him to sit there. He finished his coffee and sat down for a while. Why did that woman hate his act so much? Was it those conspiracy people? He'd tried to tell Harper Sugar that he wasn't a supporter of anything like the old Qanon conspiracies, and that he certainly wasn't some kind of reactionary. He was just a person, who'd had to fight for his liberties against the colonial oppressor.

People had tried to startle him, to get him to drop the accent, but he'd practiced long enough before the ruse that he even thought in that accent now.

James Seabury owned no slaves and had not participated in the genocide to the West. Still, he remembered Harper Sugar trying to sell him as some kind of symbol of a need to return to some glorious past. The truth was, Jim thought, the 18th century wasn't that great. In researching it for his backstory, he'd found that the time was as messy and complicated as his. Is this what it felt like for the real colonials? This big revolution changing everything, loyalist against patriot, brother against brother? he thought.

He kept sipping his coffee. Maybe it was time James Seabury said something about people now who reminded him of those who sided with King George: the opportunists, the entrenched elites, the reactionaries, that kind of thing.

He wondered if he could use this crazy woman to get him an interview in a real paper. They probably wouldn't take him too seriously, but at least they might find he had some interesting things to say.

"Mr. Seabury?" the middle-aged man asked.

"Why, yes, of course?" he said.

"You seem kind of deep in thought. Everything OK?"

"Oh, yes, yes, I am merely inspired in this moment by a wondrous illumination delivered from our Creator."

 

[RiverDelta]

When Calliope Anderson looked at Rakhil Sergeyevna Sergeyeva, there was only one thought that crossed her mind: Do me. Sergeyeva wore burgundy lipstick and her hair had the fluffy perfection of a freshly-groomed dog's fur. Calliope stared through her computer monitor at the woman on her video chat program. "Evening, Callie," Rakhil said, in a Russian accent that had a bit of California put in there.

"How's the Oligarchy doing?" Calliope asked.

"It's doing quite well, the slaves put up a bit of a fuss, though. We got them back to work. It's also the 'Russian Federation'. How's Hawaii?" she asked. "Oh, and you ought to take those sunglasses off."

Calliope hadn't taken off her sunglasses in years, even indoors. "Hawaii's fine. Not that many creature comforts, and I'm sick of the CCP ordering me around."

"Well..." Rakhil chortled. "Have you ever considered trying caviar rather than lo mein?" she asked.

Calliope had the political sense to see where she was going. "You can get me off this rock?" She sounded almost hopeful. If anyone could do it, it was Sergeyeva.

Rakhil lifted a cigarette to her lips with her acrylic nails, lighting it in one smooth motion. "Callie, I don't think you deserve to be stuck in America, surrounded by failure and impotence. Look at you: a brilliant general, an expert leader, and I'd even go so far as to say that you deserved to win that war."

Calliope knew it was flattery, but honestly she didn't really care. "You're so sweet." Miss Gazprom sure had a way with words.

"Sweeter than honey, and twice as addictive," Rakhil said. "Come on, you must be so bored in Hawaii."

"It'd be dangerous, though, right?" Calliope asked. "Both because of the Russian collapse and my whole gender thing."

"You'll stay in the nicer areas of St. Petersburg, it's not so bad there. It isn't Putin's reign anymore, and you'll be an oligarch."

"What?" Calliope asked. "You're kidding."

"Sure, through Gazprom. We'll get you a sinecure. It has to be better than dealing with the Christian Republic, Denver, and Miami exiles, hm?"

Calliope looked around for a moment, then checked her laptop to make sure this was secure. It was. "They'll like me in Russia?" she asked.

"The people who matter will love you," Rakhil assured. "Why not bring it up with Sam?"

Calliope almost choked. "The mall cop? Why does he get a say?"

"Well, what about your kids?"

"My kids are adults and Sam's suicidal. If they want to stay in Commie Land or on this rock, they can. You're sure I can be open?" she asked.

"Anyone who so much as insults you I can have assassinated," Rakhil said. "Vodka cocktails, prostitutes, me, endless money, and you can even help out with some of the tactical stuff if we can figure that out. Why not?"

Calliope gave it some thought. "You know what? It's time I mattered again. What's this make me, a kind of high-ranking mercenary?"

"Sure, if you want to think of it in that way," Rakhil laughed. Calliope blushed.

"Do you ever get the sense that you're a truly shitty person?" Calliope asked, almost proud of it.

"Always," Rakhil said. "We can be shitty together. If we're lucky, maybe we'll make each other worse."

"Works for me," Calliope said, before signing off to make it official. It was a dark room. She got up and turned on the light.

A few hours later, Calliope heard her phone ring on the wooden kitchen table. It was the sort of place where the napkins—against Calliope's preferences but with a lower price on sale—had little cartoon bees on them. She snatched up the phone and put it to her hear. "Oh, it's my less psycho maybe-kid. What do you want? Did Sam give you my number?" Calliope asked.

"No, I just wanted to talk," Lottie said, on the other end.

"About what? Deregulation?" Calliope scoffed.

"No, about us. You might be my mom, and I think we both need to come to terms with it." Lottie's tone was ringed with iron spikes.

"You two were an accident," Calliope said.

"...Are you trying to sound like a cartoon villain?" Lottie asked, disappointed more than angry.

"No, I just talk like this," Calliope said. "I'm kind of at peace with myself."

Lottie exhaled almost inaudibly. "...Please support the family. I'm struggling with Dad, and Benji's under house arrest."

"Actually, I was kinda going to fuck off to Russia and sleep with a woman half my age," Calliope said, trying to sound as shameless as possible.

"...Do you think if you lean into it it somehow makes you not as bad as if you were obliviously evil?" Lottie asked. "Look, you have a responsibility, okay?"

Calliope contemplated hanging up right there. "Listen, I don't have responsibilities. I have privileges and rights. That's how it goes. I took that stuff with my own two hands."

"Please stop play-acting as a Bond villain for just one goddamn moment!" Lottie said, and Calliope could hear the tears. "Look, can we at least get me DNA tested so I can see if you're my mom? If you aren't actually my mom, you can fuck off to Russia, okay?"

Calliope decided that if this would get her out of this conversation, she'd take it. "Sure, bye." She hung up.

A week later, Calliope Anderson found herself sitting on her porch with a bellini she'd made herself, smoking a cigarette and feeling the sun on her skin in her short-sleeved blouse with a peter pan collar. Something buzzed in her pocket, and she drew her phone from it. New email, forwarded.

Dear Ms. Cross,
It has been recently discovered that by DNA, you are related biologically to Calliope Anderson. We sincerely apologize for these circumstances, and we would like to stress that we do not judge you as a person for your mother. Frankly, we are unsure how to write this, and it certainly couldn't be done justice as a form letter. We cannot think of a worse person to be related to.

Click to shrink...

Calliope sent a text to her daughter.

While I'm not particularly surprised I actually did help create you, it also doesn't actually mean anything. I'm not going to waste my time taking care of a recovering alcoholic and a suicidal depressive. Spasibo!

That means "thank you" in Russian.

Click to shrink...

For the first time, she felt as though things were looking up.

 

[RiverDelta]

Your name is Harper Sugar.

Your brain is on fire 24/7, but it only burns the things that don't matter. You're 5'11", you know what happened in 9/11, and you've made the world a 9-volt promise. Your friends call you a hero, your enemies call you a grifter, and the idiots call you a crackpot. You aren't that last one. You're also not sure if you're the second one. Your name is Harper Sugar, and where crackpots are driven by ego you are motivated by nothing but hate.

You skulk onto a stage erected in the middle of the rebuilt Aloha Stadium. You're wearing a microphone. Your hair is kinky and your canines stick out. Into the microphone, you scream, deep and loud. There's twenty-five thousand people in the stands. They're here for you. They want to share your fire. You are going to burn the world to ash. Twenty-five thousand people flinch. You speak, deeply, confidently, and with utter conviction. You are the apocalypse. "Hey, everyone," you snarl, hunched over like a werewolf. "Welcome to Skybreaker VOD."

Can't you see those cities burn?

To your left is James Seabury, the "time traveler". He's a godless Red. To your right is Bridget MacBay. You hate her, of course, but you don't know why you hate her.

Hear them scream your name.

"Today, we're going to talk to two special guests," you say. "Let's get to it. So, you both are here for a very specific reason. Today's theme is 'Ideology'. Would someone like to describe what that means?" you ask. Every single one of the fuckers in this stadium needs to burn.

You're carrying the torch.

Bridget speaks up. "An ideology is a set of ideas which lead people towards a certain outcome in politics," she says. Little Miss Dictionary. You could almost forget she tried to found a fascist party a year ago. There will be a tombstone with this age's name on it, you think.

"Yeah, that's mostly what it means," you say. You turn to James. "If you had to describe your ideology, what would it be?"

Hear them scream.

"I have given up ideology for compassion and truth, and I am much the wiser for it," the time traveler says. You want to wrap your hands around that weedy little neck and choke the motherfucker until he's screaming for Thomas goddamn Jeffer—

"I've tried to do that too," Bridget interrupts your chain of thought. You're not a murderer. You just think about murdering people a lot, not that you'd do it. You'd get caught and thrown in prison, and that's the last thing you need in your life. The worst thing in the universe is having hate and nobody to share it with.

Built out of hydrogen bombs and clean coal!

"Well, if I could describe your ideologies, it kinda seems like Bridget here was a Nazi and is now some kind of vague Red who does a lot of work volunteering as a historical educator, and Seabury is...I guess a commie but with 1776 aesthetics," you say. Seabury gives an awkward laugh. You can tell he doesn't want to be here a second time. You can tell he's just here to make you look stupid, and you want to fly into the sky with your fingers in his eye sockets—

"Yeah, that sounds kind of right, though a bit insulting to Mr. Seabury," Bridget says.

You shrug. "Maybe. So, let's talk ideology. We all know that the globalists—"

"...Let's not talk like that," Bridget says, sounding distinctly uncomfortable, even shameful. She's in a wheelchair.

"The globalists are—" You continue, making a fist.

"That word is a euphemism for Jews, and there's no Jewish conspiracy," Bridget says. "Words like 'globalists', 'bankers', 'cosmopolitans', 'elites', and so on are ways to demonize Jews without JQing—saying outright that you're blaming the Jews."

"Well, I didn't mean it in that way," you say. "Anyway, we all know that established interests in the Worldwide Republic have been subverting American—"

"I do believe what you are describing are what are now known as 'conspiracy theories', lacking a rigid basis in fact nor prospect for one's enlightenment," Seabury said.

You tighten your fist and turn back to Bridget. "Well, the Reptilians seem to have gotten their claws in you two," you say, playing it off as a joke.

"Also a euphemism for Jews," Bridget comments.

"Well, I'm talking about actual Reptilian aliens, and their role in helping the Worldwide Republic to resume Project Spacew—"

"Project Spacewalk was a hoax created by a channer with no evidence of it found when the American archives were declassified," Bridget interrupted.

"You'd say that, wouldn't you?" you let slip, and Seabury looks a bit surprised.

"Is there something of concern to note, Mrs. Sugar?" he asks.

I will rain meteors down upon this world, you think. "I'm just getting a little frustrated with people interrupting me," you say, trying not to sound angry.

His eyebrows shoot upward due to how you said it. "You could try to be less credulous about these sorts of things," he comments, and your left hand forms into a fist as well.

How dare you two munchkins make me look like a crackpot? The worst part, you think, is that the people here might actually believe Seabury, if not Bridget. You divert. "Anyway, Bridget, what got you to leave Atompilz and disband the ANCP?"

She looks down for a moment, then back at you. "You rethink a lot of things when you're dying in the woods," she said.

You don't really know what to think of Atompilz. In your mind, they were simultaneously brave patriots and disgustingly violent bigots. You think both of those thoughts at the same time. "Well, Atompilz was doing important work with the Christian Republic to fight agains tthe communists and the Deep State," you say, every word drenched in hemlock.

Seabury raises an eyebrow.

"Oh, don't you start," you say.

"Start what, Mrs. Sugar?" he says, innocently.

"Start trying to make me look like an idiot," you hiss, imagining taking his walking stick and braining him with it.

"None of us are trying to achieve anything of the sort," he says, faux-innocently.

"Listen, you bullshit artist," you hiss.

The sun is shining. He interrupts. "Bridget, might I perhaps ask what a 'bullshit artist' is?"

"Oh, she's calling you a liar," Bridget says.

"Do you think I am that sort of man?" Seabury asks.

"Oh, no, of course not," Bridget says, a tiny smile creeping onto her face.

You begin to pace back and forth on the stage. The crowd is laughing. They're laughing at you. They're all laughing, Harper, they think you're a joke! "We all know time travel isn't real!" you yell, surrounded by conspiracy theorists. People start jeering. "Shut up! Shut up, you two child-eating— That's what you're here for, right? You're plants! You're here to discredit me so that the Illuminati and the Reptilians can get away with their child-sacrificing bullshit! That's right! I know why you're really here!"

"There she is, changing to conspiracy talk to try and save her own skin." Bridget wheels herself to the front, speaking to the entire crowd filling up half of the stadium. Bridget, being a former conspiracy theorist, says the right thing. "Be honest. Don't you think that Harper here is peddling some of this crazy shit so she'll make people who are really onto something look—"

Bridget tries to speak, only to find that her mic has been cut. She takes a moment and smiles at you. Fucking Nazi.

BLACK SITE FORUMS
Is Harper Sugar a Paid Actor?


​

Your name is Harper Sugar, and as you sit on your plush canopy bed, hunched over, you feel more rage than ever. You're going to beat these allegations. You're going ruin those two. You're going to take back what you deserve. You're going to scream, and like a banshee your words will kill.

 

[RiverDelta]

Kendra, back on the West Coast, found herself sitting in an office she'd booked for the day. She wore a very low-cut crop top and leather skirt, and frankly looked like a vampire in a cheap 1990s flick. That was more or less what she was going for, though. She adjusted her glasses as she sat on the desk. In front of her was a person wearing a full-face mirrored visor and heavy black SWAT gear. "My name's Power, it/its."

Kendra lifted her wine to her lips, wearing an unobtrusive leather choker as a day collar. "Oh, rad. So, uh...You got a last name?" Kendra asked.

"Rigby," Power said. Its voice was on the deeper side, even a bit gravelly. "So, you read over the script I sent in?" it asked.

"Yeah, yeah, it was pretty interesting. I just had a few questions," Kendra said. "Want some wine?"

"No, thank you," Power said.

Kendra idly kicked her legs a little as she spoke. Thank God they let her keep her Jimmy Choos. "So, um, first question," she said, sipping her drink. "I guess my first question is whether the Cult of the Queen of Bones is supposed to be, like...goth space Mormon?"

Power nodded. "Yes, it's how I was raised." Power looked at Kendra from behind its visor with pity.

Kendra's expression was something similar. "Shit, Salt Lake?"

"Yeah," Power said, putting a gloved arm on the back of its chair.

"Rough going, between the Utah Red Terror and the...The thing that Boston did. Everyone you knew made it out in one piece?"

Power nodded. "We'd evacuated, yeah." It tried to get back on topic. "Anyway, the Council of Twelve under the Queen of Bones, and the Queen of Bones having once been a person who became a god are all pretty Mormon."

"Do Mormons paint their faces like skulls and wear armor made of bones?" Kendra asked with a joking expression.

"Not as far as I'm aware of," it said. "What'd you think of the main characters?" it asked.

"Hussara Konder, the Queen of Bones, she's really interesting. She's, like, a shitty womanchild with godlike power who basically believes she deserves to get whatever she wants at all times, even when what she wants is to torture people, right?"

"Yeah," Power nodded.

"Marcher Dainan, her subordinate, also has a lot going on. I like the ruthless killer with a secret sensitive side. My one issue is Nyxis, who gets like a scene dressed in a bunny outfit working at a casino?"

Power looked down for a moment. "That doesn't play?"

"No, it doesn't. Make her a bartender or something. We can keep her in, she's the emotional heart of the story, but the draft is too horny. It'll distract from the story." Kendra dismissively waved a hand. "Next, uh, there's Mixas Dainan, right? The shitty dad?"

"Mmhmm," Power said.

Kendra tapped her perfectly waxed thigh. "So, do you feel like shitty parents are kind of overused?" she asked.

"Overused? How?" Power asked.

Kendra fidgeted with her choker a bit. "Well, it just seems like shitty parents are often used to make people artificially sympathetic towards a character, right? It's kind of a cheap writing trick, and a lot of the time it just comes off as cartoonish. Like, you know Harry Potter?"

"Mostly for the discourse," Power said.

"Same here," Kendra said. "Well, in those books, the main character has these shitty foster parents and this shitty foster brother, right? And we're all 'Oh, poor Harry Potter', but ultimately his shitty foster family is mostly there just to get us to be sympathetic to a character who at first doesn't have a ton of likable traits other than having a shitty life. You can't replace compelling characters with just giving your characters shitty lives, right?"

Power took some time to think about it. "Well, erm, I think that Mixas Dainan kind of has to be a shitty dad for the narrative to work. This script, Causes and Consequences, it's all about pain, you know? Emotional pain, especially. Sure, there's other stuff too, like sexuality and religion, but the thing that animates the story is that it's about causing pain and taking pain. I think that's kind of a universal human experience, right? I think everyone has some kind of pain, and while that's not anywhere near the entirety of anyone's life, it's certainly relatable."

"Well, sure, but Mixas comes off like a cartoon. Sure, sometimes you can have cartoon villains, but most people's shitty parents aren't homicidal assholes, you know? Most people's shitty parents are genuinely trying to be good parents. I think we need to drill down into what made Mixas the guy he is," Kendra said, taking another long drink from her wine glass. "I also think that the title needs work."

"What's wrong with 'Causes and Consequences'?" Power asked.

"Well, it's kind of bland and doesn't really say anything about the plot," Kendra said.

"The plot's about causality," Power said.

"Well, the causality mostly comes in as long monologues, so I think we should cut it. Look, I like the horror aspect, the stuff with the giant space god-jellyfish and the Queen of Bones establishing her new reign. I think you need to think about what themes come from this story, not which ones you can fit into it. You wanna know what I think?" Kendra asked.

Power asked it with a level tone: "What do you think?"

"I think this story's really about control. I think it's about having control, wanting control, losing control, and controlling other people. I think if you give me a rewrite that really drills into that—and a new title—then I'll get to making it. I've wanted to do an old-school practical effects sci-fi flick for a while now, and I wanna make this work." Kendra held out a hand to shake.

Power took it, smiling softly behind its visor. Its fingers begged to touch the keyboard once more.

 

[RiverDelta]

Hey, everyone! So, recently we passed the 50K word count mark (53,779 words). The counter in the thread says we're at 39,000 words, but that's because the other 11,000 words are in quote boxes and thus aren't counted by the system. I keep a version of the TL as a document, and that has a more accurate count.

So, thank you all so much for your support and patronage of this story. I know it's a cliche, but I really couldn't've done it without y'all.

 

[RiverDelta]

The Most Badass Plans of the Second American Civil War
www.badass-alert.com​

A war is won with strategy, and the leaders of the various factions in the Second American Civil War all had plans in mind. Some of these plans were gambles, some of them were expert plays, and two of them were totally stupid. Let's look at the different plans and see how they faced off against each other!


Boston Government: Air Supremacy

The Boston Government's goal was to secure as much of the American and Chinese nuclear stockpiles that it could, as well as to fight a strong air war and tech war, owing to its limited manpower and access to heavy support and a strong intellectual base. Once she got her nukes, the Half-Hour Hellfire began. It's important to remember that, while China now is weak and inward-looking, at the time China was a great power. Not badass.


Christian Republic: Fourth-Generation War

The Christian Republic had an obsessive focus on light infantry and guerilla warfare. They claimed this was a choice to win the war under their questionable "Fourth-Generation War" ideas, but in reality it was much more of a necessity given their limited resources and manpower. Badass, bad guys.


Denver Government: Secure Control, Hunker Down

The chosen pick of the remnants of NATO, the Denver Government's goal as an apolitical junta was to reclaim the country and—allegedly—restore democracy. Their goal was to maintain order among their people and to hold their territory while exploiting their access to the former US's military resources and many of its veterans. They sought to keep their territory stable while looking for openings to exploit, a well-thought-out plan that ended in nuclear apocalypse. Kinda badass.


Miami Government: Texas Hold 'Em

Texas was the crown jewel in Miami's crown, as they controlled the vast majority of it. As long as Miami controlled the resources and weaponry of the Lone Star State, they had an ace. Of course, Texas would split from Miami as the Second Republic of Texas when the Lone Star State saw Miami's fortunes falling. That decision in the wake of Picano's Northern Offensive turning South would doom both Miami and Texas. Dumbass.


Socialist Front: Class Power

The Reds' strategy was to leverage class ties and maintain what power they have while subverting and converting people working in the other factions. As this went on, they also begun to seek to build strong bases of power while exploiting widespread discontent in the other factions. They also effectively integrated socialist movements in the other factions' territory. However, things such as the Rhiannon Ranch incident and the Red Terrors in Utah and Texas, as well as the violence in Texas against seccessionists after the Civil War, show that the Reds weren't all solidarity and cheer. Badass.


Sacramento Government: The Cross-Country Race

Sacramento's war plan was simple: Connect the cities to the coast. The cities were where most of their support was, and by connecting the East Coast to the West Coast they could try to create a single power bloc. This plan worked well at first, but the issue with cities is that they're easily razed, and Calliope Anderson knew that well. Dumbass.

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