

An Armless Girl and a Pirate

## By Marzipan Maddox

# Foreword

I wrote this book sporadically and rather indifferently from 1/6/19 to 3/2/19, edited from 3/4/19 to 3/9/19. I don't have much to say about it. I tried to be less pedantic and political than in my previous book.

Author's Note

This book and the previous book were written at 11 point Calibri font, and styled at copy paper width. I realize that this style doesn't translate well into the electric medium and sometimes creates page long paragraphs, but it is what it is.

Copyright © 2019 841B81AC6F18ACEBDF9BC8FDD0C4C78EE83D11D588682F4527091465E199D44E

All rights reserved.

# 1.1

"Wake up, Effie." Says a small girl, lightly slapping the cheek of another lying in bed

"Damn it, Mable; let me sleep." Says Effie

"No. You need to get up; I'm not getting in trouble. You have a big day today." Says Mable

"Fine. Don't remind me. I'm sure you'll be glad when I'm out of your hair." Says Effie, sitting up in the bed, squirming out of the covers, still wearing shorts and a t-shirt from yesterday

"I'm sure you'll come to visit at least." Says Mable, who goes back to her desk in the small room, sitting at a computer

"You're fond of talking to ghosts, are you?" says Effie, grimly

"Don't talk like that. It's just graduation. I'm sure they'll find something for you to do after school. I know I'd rather be graduating, I've still got 4 whole years left." Says Mable

"What exactly do you think a job entails? What could I possibly do?" asks Effie

"I dunno; something. Everybody gets a job after they graduate from school." Says Mable, off-handedly

"I don't go to shool, Mable. I go to the pen. You get prepared for life, I just get put in a holding facility while our parents are at work." Says Effie

"It's still school, even if it is for people like you. I'm kind of jealous that you never have to do homework or anything and you still get to graduate." Says Mable

"You learn things in school. I don't go to school, Mable." Says Effie

"It's called 'District 47 School for Special Needs Children'; it is still clearly a school. Besides, I'm sure they taught you something, even if you don't want to admit it. Why would the send you to school if they weren't going to give you a job?" Says Mable

"I don't think you understand the concept of a job." Says Effie

"Maybe I don't, but I don't really care." Says Mable

"You don't care? You don't care about the fact that I'm going to die today? You're sitting there playing that horse game on the computer, and you care more about that than my life?!" asks Effie, rather weakly, saddened more than upset, indignant

"Well, you're not going to die. I'm sure I would care if that were going to happen, but you're just getting a job, and yes, I do care far more about my horses than whatever stupid job they're going to give you. They would have killed you when you were born if they wanted to kill you. You know they actually do that to people, right?" Says Mable

"I know this, and I can't fathom why they decided to let me live. What job do you think I could possibly do? What skills do I have? What am I even capable of?" asks Effie

"I don't know anything about jobs, stop asking. I mean you have plenty of skills anyways. You're good at talking, you're super nice. I don't know. You have big boobs, too. That has to count for something." Says Mable

"I don't have any arms, Mable!" says Effie

"Well, didn't mom always say you could just be a mother? That probably answers your question right there, anyways." Says Mable

"Why would they want more kids like me? I can't even hold a baby!" says Effie

"Stop talking, just go eat breakfast. I don't know these answers. I'm 10 years old. Mom left you some oatmeal on the table. I already ate." Says Mable

"I'm not hungry." Says Effie

"I'm sure you will be later, but I'm not your mom, so do whatever you want." Says Mable

"How are you so captivated by this horse game you play? How long have you been awake?" asks Effie

"Only like 2 hours. I kept the sound off, why are you upset?" asks Mable

"You woke up at 4 in the morning to play with your horses?" asks Effie

"The horses need to be fed and taken care of. I already won two races, and somebody even gave me $5,000 just to have Candy-cane Rainbow breed with one of their mares. Besides, one of my foals was sick and I had to take care of her." Says Mable

"Why do they let kids play that game?" asks Effie

"It teaches them the importance of responsibility and teaches them the value of hard work." Says Mable

"How is betting on horses either of those things?" asks Effie

"I have to take care of them, because if your horses aren't in good health they won't win races and you will be poor. I don't even bet on horses, I only take the prize money that my horses win. It teaches you that gambling is bad because you almost always lose your money. So it's a perfect game for kids." Says Mable

"Fine; whatever. I don't care anymore." Says Effie

"I thought you liked horses, anyways?" asks Mable

"I do. I just think you're a bit too captivated that game." Says Effie

"I just have work ethic, unlike somebody here. Go eat breakfast and get ready for school." Says Mable

"Fine." Says Effie, getting off of her bed, leaving the yellow light and horse posters of the bedroom, walking into the dark hall, into the kitchen, sitting at the table, the purple glow of the twilight illuminating the darkened kitchen through the windows, she slides into her spot at the small table, looking at a bowl of now cold microwaved oatmeal and a spoon sitting next to it. She grabs the spoon with her foot, leans over the table and begins to spoon the food into her mouth handedly, eating steadily, with conviction. She finishes, leaves the spoon in the bowl, walks to the sink, sits on the counter, grabs a coffee mug from the counter with her foot, holding under the faucet she turns on with her other foot, filling it, turning off the faucet, and chugs the water diligently before placing the mug back on the counter, hopping off, then returning to her bedroom, her sister still on the computer.

"I don't know why you're so worried about this." Says Mable

"Maybe it's because I'm supposed to get a job, yet I can't do a god damn thing, Mable." Says Effie

"Don't you have like actual retards in your class? Clearly you're more capable than they are, yet they are still alive. What about that magic trick you can do?" Asks Mable

"I'm sure that they can still pull some damn lever in a factor or push a broom. Why would I even bring that stupid magic trick up? It's totally useless." says Effie

"That's a gift, you know that. People like that are rare in the world." Says Mable

"Gary told me it's useless, and I don't see why I should doubt him. His job is literally to prepare people like me for work, and I'm sure he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth if it was even possibly worth something." says Effie

"Still, just show the caste officer your skill, maybe he can think of something useful you can do even if Gary can't." says Mable

"What job involves making a needle float with my mind? I can't even control it to the point where I could sew, so that's completely useless, especially since sewing is done by machine, which requires two hands and a foot last time I checked." Says Effie

"You are pretty good at poking me with that needle, so I wouldn't say it's completely useless." Says Mable

"That's all I can do! That's worthless, you just grab the needle out of the air and that's the end of the story. You taped the needles to the desk, and that's all you had to do to make that ability completely useless." Says Effie

"Well, it's still pretty cool. I'm not clever, but I'd still show it to them, just in case it's useful somehow." Says Mable

"I'll just go with my boobs at that point." Says Effie

"That's probably a better idea, but just a little icing on top, you know? I'll give you a needle if you promise not to poke me with it." Says Mable

"I'll take anything I can get at this point." Says Effie

"It's better than nothing. I hate to leave my horses, but we should get ready to leave though. Are you supposed to dress up for this?" asks Mable, closing out of her computer program and shutting down the computer

"No. God, no. There is no dignity in this." says Effie

"I think it's important. Mom got you that pretty dress just for special occasions, and I think you should wear it." Says Mable, looking into their closet

"No. You can see my little nubs when I wear that dress, and that's embarrassing." Says Effie

"Whatever, I think it looks nice. You don't even have nubs; those are just your shoulder bones. Peggy has nubs." Says Mable

"It's still weird looking." Says Effie

"What about a blouse?" Asks Mable

"Just normal clothes, please." Says Effie

"Your loss, they might take a picture and you will be the only one who didn't dress for the occasion." Says Mable

"If I'm going to die, I'm going to be comfortable when I die." Says Effie

"Fine. You're not going to die, anyways. Come here." Says Mable, grabbing a t-shirt out of the closet, Effie walks over, and Mable begins to strip her

"I'm so jealous of your boobs." Says Mable, putting a bra on her sister

"You're 10, I'm sure yours will be just as big as mine. They're not that big, anyways." Says Mable

"They're way bigger than Peggy's boobs. Bend over." Says Mable, changing her sisters panties and putting on a pair of neon rayon shorts

"Whatever. I'm also taller than Peggy, so that's half of it." Says Effie, bending forward to allow her sister to put a t-shirt on her, sitting on the bed, Mable gets some socks, putting them on, before putting her sisters shoes on

"See, you won't even be positive about your boobs. That's why I don't care about whatever silly thing has you feeling hopeless. Change is always scary, but you tend to overreact to anything negative. Don't forget your needle." Says Mable, prying a needle out of the tape and sticking it through the collar of Effie's shirt, getting her backpack, leading Effie into the bathroom

"You need to pee?" asks Mable

"Yeah. I'm nervous." Says Effie

"Figured." Says Mable, who pulls her sister's pants down and begins to brush her teeth, Effie waddles over to the toilet, Mable spits, cups water in her hands, swishes it and spits again

"Done?" asks Mable

"Yeah." Says Effie, Mable wipes her, pulls her pants up, flushes the toilet, then washes her hands, grabs her sister's electric toothbrush, puts toothpaste on it, sits on the counter, and begins to brush Effie's teeth

"If you move to some new job, I don't know how you're going to get by without me." Says Mable

"I can brush my own teeth you know." Says Effie, spitting

"Barely. I've seen you try, and it's not pretty." Says Mable, as Effie leans her mouth into the stream of water to rinse and spit again

"The damn thing gets slippery with toothpaste drool; otherwise I wouldn't have an issue." Says Effie

"Let's go." Says Mable, turning out the light, leading her sister through the kitchen and living room area out the door of their apartment, locking the door behind her as they exit into the hallway before leaving the building and heading into the city

# 1.2

The city bustles, the girls walk.

"If you leave, I wonder if they'll make us move, since technically we don't need a ground floor apartment if you're not with us." Says Mable

"We never needed one, they just gave us one because I'm handicapped." Says Effie

"It's still nice. I'd rather not have to walk up and down three flights of stairs every time I want to leave the house." Says Mable

"Heaven forbid something gets in between you and your horses." Says Effie

"If three flights of stairs cause one of my foals to die because I couldn't give her medicine in time, I'm not going to be happy." Says Mable

"Not the foals." Says Effie, feigning seriousness and concern

"It is serious, don't give me that." Says Mable

"Clearly, as it's undoubtedly far more serious than me losing my life." Says Effie

"First of all, my foals could actually die, and secondly, you're not going to die. Like I said, you would already be dead if that were the case, so just give it a rest." Says Mable

"Is that what they teach you in your normal little school?" asks Effie

"I mean they mention that, but it's not really important. It' just like a fun fact I guess, they brought it up once because Nancy's sister got put down when she was born. They said her life would be miserable, she could never work, and it would be cruel to keep her alive. I don't know what was wrong with her, something terrible I guess." Says Mable

"Somehow I think somebody just forgot to do their job when I was born. That describes my life to the t." Says Effie

"Shut up. You're happy most of the time, and I'm sure you will get a job like everyone else. Stop talking like that, it's getting on my nerves." Says Mable

"Sorry. What about your school, is there a graduation today?" asks Effie

"Most people have already been caste, if you're still there and you're 14, I think you're going to become a teacher or something that works in a school. Seniors, spend the entire year just doing aptitude tests mostly. There's no reason not to let somebody work who can work, at least that's what they tell us, so getting caste early is kind of a status symbol when a certain guild was so tempted by you for whatever reason." Says Mable

"Have you piqued anyone's interest?" asks Effie

"No, I wish. I'm just normal for the most part, I've still got years to go and I don't show 'exceptional aptitude' for anything. I'd give anything to be out of that school. 3, maybe 4 more painful years of school, 8 to 4:30 and homework every night." Says Mable

"I don't know if you'd want to be working, you're only 10 you know." Says Effie

"Well, if I was naturally good at something I don't think I would mind. Fang Zhou was picked by the actuary's guild; he's the only one from my class so far. He was super smart though." Says Mable

"That kid must have been something else." Says Effie

"I don't know; he was quiet. They said they take people young because it takes a lot of training to be an actuary, and he should focus on that instead of other things. I know his English wasn't very good, but they didn't care. It's not really about what you can't do, it's just about what you can do, so the rest of the stuff doesn't really matter." Says Mable

"Let's just hope that I'm actually capable of something of value." Says Effie

"I'm sure your aptitude tests said you would be good at something." says Mable

"We've never taken an aptitude test." Says Effie

"Well, then I don't really know. I guess they just give you a simple job that doesn't require any aptitude." Says Mable

"I'm chomping at the bit." Says Effie

"That's what matters. Just look enthusiastic and I'm sure you will be fine." Says Mable

"I'll do my best." Says Effie

"This is where we part ways. I'll see you tonight, or whenever you come home." Says Mable

"One last hug for your sister?" asks Effie

"You're being overdramatic. Everything will be fine." Says Mable, hugging her sister

"Let's hope so." Says Effie

"Show them that trick. They'll love it." Says Mable, letting go

"It probably won't matter, but I'll do it for you; maybe they can put it to good use." Says Effie

"That's the spirit. Ta ta." Says Mable, leaving, entering the tall wide concrete building known as 'District 47 School 4', blending in among other a few nondescript children slowly funneling into school early

"Cheerio." Says Effie, in tender, vulnerable optimism, only for the sake of her sister; she continues to walk down the street

The buildings are functional, sensually aesthetically neutral; seductively forgettable. The people with grey jackets and white shirts, grey pants, black shoes, walk with purpose to work; those in jumpsuits walk with grim conviction. The roads brimming with crowded busses and commercial vehicles. A few passersby frown subtly at the girl, most pay her no mind. She grimaces. Walking, she reaches her school and goes inside. The first door enters into the receiving area, the receptionist looks at her silently, grimaces slightly, and returns to looking at her meaningless papers.

Effie enters the door behind the receptionist, and enters the short hallway, doors on each side, entering the one at the back; entering a large room, a small gymnasium of sorts with scattered chairs. An empty wheelchair sits next to a weightlifting bench; a Negro youth with muscled arms is bench pressing intently, his spotter a Caucasoid horse of a man whose face has been deformed by Down's syndrome.

Three apparently normal boys sit at a table, discussing things with hubris. A girl sits in a corner, her back against the wall, wearing modest a black and white dress from a bygone century, looking into a top hat with a blank expression. One girl, pale with black hair, sits in a loose fitting white dress, wearing black sunglasses, staring at the far wall across from her, a cane lying beside her.

One girl sits near the center of the room. Dirty blonde hair, a healthy tan, a modest bosom beneath a loose half buttoned blouse, wearing rugged, brown denim shorts; an ambitious grin and head-banded leather patch over her right eye, looking excitedly at Effie with her one blazing eye; waving her right hand, at the end of her other arm a hook with a plastic cap on the point, sitting in her lap; her left leg crossed over her right, man-like, in a four, her brief shin invisible, her leg suddenly disappearing into a peg-leg vacuum sealed onto the nub of shin.

"About time! I figured if anyone was going to be late, it was you." Says the girl

"I'm not even late, Peggy." Says Effie, walking down and sitting in a chair next to her

"Still, the early bird gets the worm, so they say. You wouldn't want to look irresponsible, at least not today, of course." Says Peggy

"Let's hope there are enough worms to go around." Says Effie, pessimistically

"You sourpuss. This is the greatest day of our lives, at least so far. No more holding pen, we're finally going to be let loose upon the world." Says Peggy

"If my brain is no longer a part of my body when I'm 'let loose' upon the world, tell my sister I told her so for me." Says Effie

"You'd have to have a brain for that to be true, so you've nothing to worry about. I'm sure they can put those boobs of yours to good use somehow, feeding babies or something nice like that." Says Peggy

"That's basically what my sister said, so let's just hope I'm at least good enough for that." Says Effie

"You brought a needle?" asks Peggy

"You can tell I'm desperate." Says Effie

"I don't know; it's a cool trick, but I don't think it can compete with those breasts of yours." Says Peggy

"For some reason I don't have as much faith in you or my sister that my boobs will actually give me a job." Says Effie

"Well, you're also an idiot, and there are plenty of jobs where those boobs would come in handy." Says Peggy

"Wetnurse?" asks Effie

"Wetnurse, stripper, dancer, therapist, comfort girl. You've got a comfort girl look to you, and to be fair that no arms shtick is great, you know how paranoid government men are." Says Peggy

"It's not a shtick. I just don't have any arms." Says Effie

"It's a shtick. It's your shtick. If you call it a disability or special needs that seems like something is wrong with you, but if you call it a shtick, it's hilarious and also an advantage because you know how to put it to good use. Like I said, at a bare minimum you're a comfort girl, and that's a good life there, hell, even a therapist, you're good at talking; everybody needs to cry into some milk pillows every now and again" Says Peggy

The Negro screams with bestial fury as he continues pumping out reps on the bench.

"Jesus Christ, Amos. What are you doing? Are you going to beat the cast officer to death?" asks Effie, sitting a polite shouting distance from the young man, he roars as he puts the bar back on the rack

"Bitch! I'm getting my pump on! I'm gone let these guns do the talking today." Says Amos

"Language!" Shouts the man, sitting at a desk, never breaking his empty gaze upon the celling

"Sorry, Gary. I just lost my temper." Says Amos

"It's cool. Stay cool, and we're cool." Says Gary, returning to his magazine

"Cool." Says Amos

"Cool." Says Gary

"You're in a wheelchair, what kind of job would you ever do where you need to be strong?" asks Effie

"Fuck if I know. I'm just saying it looks better than being some weak looking piece of shit. Shows I know how to work hard every day." Says Amos

"What happened to language?" asks Peggy

"Just don't call each other mean names, other than that it doesn't matter. Swearing is a good stress relief, unless of course your provoking people with it. Today is a stressful day for all of you, I'm sure." Says Gary, not looking up from his magazine

"Yeah, what Gary said. When's that caste officer getting here anyways?" Says Amos, wiping himself with a towel

"Freckle past a hair." Says Gary, looking down at his naked wrist before returning to his magazine

"You worthless, Gary." Says Amos

"I work here, I know this." Says Gary

"Damn, that's cold Gary. You a chill motherfucker, and that's quality. People assholes, but not you Gary, you chill." Says Amos

"Thanks, my man." Says Gary

"How is that not language?" asks Peggy

"That was complimentary. Like when two black people call each other nigga." Says Gary

"My nigga." Says Amos, with boisterous respect

"Gary, is there anything we should know about today?" asks Effie

"No. The man just comes in here and makes a decision, that's that." Says Gary

"Well then..." says Effie, as a large man with equal heft and muscle walks through the door, dressed in a civilian's military uniform, adorned with three meaningless emblems that signify his insignificance

"Speak of the devil." Says Gary, taking his feet off of the desk, unnerved by the presence of the man

"Good morning, everybody! I am Caste Officer Jenkins, and I'm sure you are all well aware of what is happening today. Today is graduation, and I wish you all the best of luck." He says, the children look at him nervously

"Well then! Let's begin! We will be headed outdoors into the yard to begin. I trust you can corral the children if necessary, Gary." Says Jenkins

"Amos, make sure Horse goes outside with everyone." Says Gary

"He'll just follow everyone. He's not that stupid, damn." Says Amos, Amos hop-slides into his wheelchair, the children all get up and head out the back door into the 'yard', a rather narrow double-width alley-way behind the building, Peggy and Effie the last to exit.

"Line up against the wall and face me. You will tell me your name, and what exactly is wrong with you, and then I can make a decision." Says the Officer as he walks to the first in line. "You look healthy, go head, let me down." Says the man

"Percy Stevens, sir." Says the boy

"Well, what the fuck is wrong with you." Says the Officer

"Humanism." whispers the boy weakly, the Officer withdraws his handgun, points it at the boys skull as enraged fury fills his face

"Live by the sword, die by the sword." He growls, and he shoots the child in head, and spits on his body; Effie starts sweating profusely at the sound of the gunshot, breathing heavily, tears welling in her eyes

"What about you." Says the Officer, coldly, glaring at the boy

"Dennis Brown... ethicism." Says the boy, scoffing, looking at the ground, smugly embittered; the general shoots the child in the head "Disgusting." He says, hocking up more spit and spitting on the child

"Just shoot me." Says the next boy, swaggering in dissociation

"You tell me your name, you tell me why I should shoot you. The last thing going through your mind needs to be your name, and why you are worthy of nothing more than death." Says the Officer

"Fuck you." Says the boy

"And a warm 'fuck you' to you as well. Now that we've gotten the cordial pleasantries out of the way, let's get down to business." Says the Officer, annoyed

"Max Simmons, atheism." Says the boy, haughtily, staring the officer in the eyes boldly with a cocksure grin, the officer points the gun at the skull of the child, staring him in the eyes coldly

"Burn in hell." Says the officer, damningly, as he shoots the child in the skull, the blood pooling on the ground, the officer's boots start to splash as he walks to the next child

"I've never gone four for four, but go ahead, nigger, make my day." Says the Officer

"Amos Smith, wheelchair." Says Amos, staring at the ground, embittered

"That's it? No mental disorder?" asks the officer

"Niggerhood." Says Amos

"Well Nigger, I'm not blind. Gary, this nigger shitting me? Nothing else wrong with him." says the officer

"No, that's it." Says Gary

"I'll be damned, big meaty nigger too. I take it you know how to shoot guns and beat the shit out of people, so you're going to be a cop, nigger." Says the officer

"For real?" asks Amos, surprised, miraculously relieved

"Real talk, nigger. I expect great things from you." Says the officer

"God damn." Says Amos, heart pounding

"Gary, what about this one, this retarded one?" asks the officer

"Fuck." Whispers Amos, fear stricken once again

"That's it." Says Gary

"Boy, you can talk?" asks the officer

"Yes." Says the boy

"What's your name?" asks the officer

"Horse." Says the boy

"Horse of a man, I'll be damned. What's wrong with you?" Asks the officer

"Downs." Whispers Amos, commandingly

"Downs." Says the boy

"God damn, I can see that. This was just a formality. You want to be a cop? Kids always want to be cops, and I figure you got the mind of a child. Dream come true, right?" asks the officer, the boy looks at the officer blankly

"Say yes." Whispers Amos

"Yes." Says the boy, firmly

"Hot damn. You're a cop now." Says the officer

"I know it should be ladies first, but I'm just hoping we've saved the best for last. So what is your name, little girl." Says the Officer to the girl in the black dress, holding her top hat at her belly

"Mary Bennet." Says the girl, frightened, crying softly, sniffling

"Well, I would tell you not to cry, but you've got to say what's wrong with you first." Says the officer, a bit embittered by the thought

"M-m-mor-mormonism." Says the girl

"Mormonism? Well, that's not so bad, I hope not anyways." Says the officer, rather comforting

"Ok." Says the girl weakly

"Gary, how bad does she have it?" asks the officer

"Well, she does that thing with the hat. That's it so far as I can tell." Says Gary

"That's not that bad, it will be ok. You have a little hat? That's ok. There's no reading or anything I hope, that would be very bad you know. There's benign Mormonism and then there's terminal Mormonism, and I hope you know that." Says the officer

"No, I can't read. Nobody in my family can read. I don't know. Please don't shoot me." Says Mary

"That's ok. I'm not going to shoot you. You pass, you will be ok. That's all that matters." Says the Officer, still trying to comfort the girl

"Really?" asks the girl

"100 percent. I don't know how good you are with your hat, but that doesn't matter, you can try your best, and even if your only right sometimes, at least you tried your best. You're going to be a police officer, does that sound fun?" asks the Officer

"Yes, please, anything." Says Mary

"Let's hope your hat can help you solve some crimes, and you will be a great police officer one day." Says the officer

"Thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus." Says the girl, still crying

"There, there, everything it ok now. What about you little girl?" asks the man

"Ada Gray, blindness." Says the girl, staring blankly

"Well, that's not it, it can't be. You would just be at a blind school." Says the officer

"Necromancy." Says the girl

"Well what the fuck is that? I've never heard of that." Says the officer

"I can talk to ghosts." Says the girl

"Bullshit, is that real? Gary, what is this shit?" asks the officer

"It's real, for fucks sake Jenkins." Says Gary, ashamed of the officer's ignorance

"Well, is that bad? Does your life hurt, do you hurt people?" asks the officer

"No. I just talk to ghosts." Says the girl

"What do ghosts say to you?" asks the officer

"Lots of things; your mother died February 12 of kidney failure due to diabetes." Says the girl

"What the fuck? How do you know that?" asks the officer

"I can talk to her, she's right here, she haunts you because she hates you, she makes you fumble things, misplace things, and stumble, she causes chest pains when you are mean to your wife. She never forgave you for killing her grandson, your brother's child." Says the girl

"Good god, my mother's ghost does all that? That insufferable bitch. Fuck me. How can you see her if you're blind anyways. Can you send her to hell or something?" asks the officer, playfully optimistic about the last line, looking around over his shoulder.

"I had to do it, mother. I had to kill Tommy. It is my Job, he was sick, he was very sick, he was a danger to himself and others and you know that. You can't be mad at me for that, it was just my job." Says the man, spinning around looking at the sky, attempting to sweet talk the ghost, soon grabbing his heart

"You bitch! Send that bitch to hell!" shouts the officer, staring at Ada

"I can't, you have to see a priest for that, you have to get an exorcism. I can only talk to them." Says the girl

"God damn it!" shouts the officer "Fuck!" he continues, furious, breathing heavily, looking around himself, aggressively paranoid "Ok, well, you are going to be a cop, one of those crime scene cops, and just talk to the ghosts to find out what happened." Says the Officer, not making eye contact, looking around wildly

"Ok... It only works sometimes, like I can't really talk to them if they got sent to hell, or taken into heaven." says the girl, distantly

"Fuck me. How did my mother not get sent straight to hell?" asks the officer

"She wasn't evil enough." Says the girl

"For fuck's sake, hell must be empty. Anyways, you're a cop now, congratulations." Says the officer

"Thanks..." says the girl

"Right then. You're next little girl. Not alarmed by the gunshots I see. I like it." Says the officer

"Of course not. My name is Peggy Little, and as you can tell, I have piratism." Says Peggy, confidently

"You've got it bad." Says the officer

"I do, but it's only on the outside. I'm a privateer at heart, and I hope my shtick can be of service to our country." Says Peggy

"I like your spirit, you little patriot. We don't do much of that any more, real demanding work, but I'm sure you'd make a great land pirate, err, privateer, so congratulations, you're now a police officer. Hot damn, lots of cops today, you got a nice class, Gary, ship shape." Says the officer

"Thank you, sir." Says Peggy

"Now, how about you, little girl?" asks the officer

"Euphemia... Winters." Says Effie, trembling

"Well, tell me what's wrong Euphemia, that's not a common name I'll give you that." Says the officer

"Amelia." Says Effie

"You name is Amelia? You just said Euphemia, do you have a speech disorder." asks the officer

"Damn it, Jenkins, it means she doesn't have any arms." Says Gary

"The fuck it does, Amelia is a girls' name you dolt. Who the fuck would name their kid 'no arms', and if that is what it means, why isn't this girls name Amelia?" asks the officer

"It has a lot of meanings, I don't know, you don't name a retarded child Retard, and you don' t name a colored child Nigger, so you're not going to name a girl with amelia Amelia." Says Gary

"That makes enough sense, just say 'no arms' next time, that's confusing when you put it like that." Says the officer

"I don't have arms." Says Effie, whimpering

"Is that it?" asks the officer

"That is it, please. I'm very nice, and I'm good at talking, and I have big boobs, please don't kill me." Says Effie, crying, "Please, look, I can make this needle float, see?" pulling the needle out of her shirt with telekinesis, causing it to float in between herself and the officer

"Jesus Christ, you can do magic?" says the officer, grabbing the needle out of the air

"That's it. I know it's stupid, please don't kill me. I don't want to die." Says Effie, crying

"Well, that's pretty damn clever. Can you pick me up with your magic?" says the officer

"No, no, only very small things, it's useless, I know, but I don't want to die." Says Effie, sobbing

"Well, pull it out of my fingers. I want to see that. That shit is pretty damn cool." Says the officer, holding the needle in front of her face

"You're holding it too tight! Please!" pleads Effie, desperate, "Just lay it in the palm of your hand and I can do it." Says Effie

"Jesus, calm down." Says the officer, holding his palm out with the needle in it, it slowly floats in front of him

"See? Is there any job I can do with that? I don't want to die." Says Effie, sobbing, hysterical

"Well, no, not really. You can't even pull it out of my finger, I've heard of magic, but at this point my mother is a better witch than you are, and she's dead." Says the officer

"Please! I'll do anything." Says Effie

"Ok, ok, calm down. Is she really a good talker? I mean I know this shit scares kids, but let me know, Gary." Says the officer

"Yeah, she's good at talking." Says Gary

"Very good, she's just super scared today, you know, about the whole graduation thing." Says Peggy

"Ok, so that's great. You do have some great breasts, and so I'm going to make you the good cop, people will trust you because you can't hurt them, and you can tempt them into trusting you because of your breasts. Just make sure somebody gets that cleavage showing, but I'm sure they'll teach you that at the academy." Says the officer

"Thank you! Thank you so much! I want to hug you but I can't! Thank you." Says Effie, ambivalent, but feeling waves of deliverance coursing through her heart and soul

"Aww, that's cute. Congratulations. You had nothing to be afraid of." Says the officer, hugging the girl with the warm platonic mutuality shared by officers of the law

"Thank you. Thank you." Mutters the girl, as the man releases her

"All of you will report to the district 47 police headquarters tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM to begin your training. Congratulations once again. It's rare that a class is all cops, usually somebody's popping out babies, and I almost made Euphemia here a comfort girl with those breasts and legs of hers, but this district needs cops, so welcome aboard. I'm off. I'll see you around Gary; sanitation will be here to get rid of those sick subhuman pieces of shit, so don't worry about that. I'm truly sorry you had to stay in a room with those abominations, but if the state says that there is some chance that they repent, there's nothing anyone can do about it. I think it's all bullshit, they probably just want to let you kids see godly justice in action. I can't blame them; it really helps you sleep at night knowing that somebody is out there sending those hellkites back whence they came." Says the officer, the kids look at him wide eyed, nodding with unquestioning affirmation of his righteousness

"Pip pip. I'm sure you're all itching to get out of here, so I'll leave you be. Have a good day." Says the officer, walking out of the alley into the street

"Inside, everybody; pick up your diplomas and then you can leave if you want. Congratulations, you're all adults now." Says Gary, opening the door back into the classroom motioning the unsettled kids back inside

# 1.3

Gary sits down at his desk, pulls the stack of diplomas out of a drawer. He draws and X on the first three in the spot for designating caste, then puts them to the side. The kids line up in front of the desk.

He takes Amos' diploma, writes 'cop', signs his own name, then hands it to Amos.

"These are just all just for show since you're all cops, Jenkins will send your info to the station. You don't need to get government IDs if you're going to be cops." Says Gary, as he fills out the diplomas for the other children, finally coming to Effie, last in line, he fills out the paper, putting 'good cop' as opposed to the simpler 'cop', and holds it out for her, she looks at him awkwardly.

"Fuck." He says, "You got pockets?"

"Yeah." Says Effie, softly

"Cool." He says, folding up the paper and slipping it into her pocket.

"Congratulations once again, I'm getting the fuck out of here. This is the closest thing I get to a three-day weekend all year, and I love all of you dearly, but not that much. Come back to say hello if you really feel like it, I'm sure you'll get a few calls to this place in your careers, and I'll be here till I die." Says Gary

"You a cool cat, Gary." Says Amos

"Thanks, dog. You've got a tough job, all of you; I can't say I'm jealous, but I'm sure it's better than having a bullet in your skull." Says Gary

"Damn straight. I was sweating back there; I feel like a new man right now." Says Amos

"Good. Stay strong out there, brother. I'm out. " Says Gary, daps the man up, and throws up a peace sign to the kids over his shoulder as he walks out of the room

"Peace out!" He shouts

"Peace!" Shouts Amos, the other children throw up a peace sign and a blank look

"Damn Effie, that's crazy. You was crying like a bitch too. I was ready to die, fuck it. I didn't know your name was Euphemia. That's a weird ass name. Funny how you thought that needle magic was going to save your ass." Says Amos, excitedly

"I'm sorry, I was really fucking scared, if you didn't understand." Says Effie

"I'll let you be a good cop on my ass any day, wouldn't mind having those titties in my face for a minute." Says Amos

"Fuck off, perv. You're a cop so you have to be good anyways. We all have to be good." Says Effie, upset, disgusted, at a loss

"You're the good cop, Effie. The rest of us is just regular cops." Says Amos

"Whatever, I want to go home. I've had enough of this. I'm still shaking." Says Effie

"I'm out. I never want to see this place again, god damn. I'll see you all tomorrow at work. Let's go Hoss." Says Amos, wheeling himself to the door and pressing the handicap button

"Peace." Says Horse, throwing up a peace sign, saddened, confused, but callous to it all because he knows better, following Amos out the door

"I'm going to leave too." Says Mary, softly, distant

"My thoughts exactly. See you girls soon." Says Ada, smirking at her own humor, as the two walk out of the door

"You can't really go home, can you?" asks Peggy

"I don't have a key." Says Effie

"Figured as much." Says Peggy

"It doesn't even make sense; I can turn a key easily, my parents just think it will get stolen." Says Effie

"So it makes sense. There are no easier pockets to pick." Says Peggy

"Whatever. I don't really care at this point. I'm kind of at a loss right now after everything that happened." Says Effie

"They must be desperate for cops. I know we're expendable, but you think there would be some sort of quality control beyond that." Says Peggy

"The only one that didn't make sense was me, really. The rest of you are all the run of the mill sort for regular cops." Says Effie

"That's true, but still. I don't know how the hell you're going to enforce the law." Says Peggy

"We'll figure it out. Anything you want to do today?" Asks Effie

"I don't know; this is our weekend, I guess. Straight to work on a Saturday: brutal." Says Peggy

"We're adults now, so that kind of opens some doors." Says Effie

"I didn't think you would be the type to seek the affections of a working girl, certainly not those employed by the public sector. What else is there? I don't have any money for drinks, and I doubt you would like being courted by drunken men." Says Peggy

"True and far too true. I don't particularly want to report to work, and they'd probably send us home anyways. I didn't plan on being alive at this point, so I'm drawing blanks." Says Effie

"Want to go play dominoes?" Asks Peggy

"That sounds like heaven after what we've been through today." Says Effie

"I know; damned to the work force for the rest of our lives. Nothing more soul crushing than that." Says Peggy

"I don't know how you're just unfazed by those boys being shot." Says Effie

"They were sick. You know what sorts of blight those illnesses brought upon the people." Says Peggy

"I never really learned that much. I was just told they were very bad and hurt people." Says Effie

"Lots of suffering, anarchy, starvation; you name it, those fuckers would love to cause it. That sort of shit is contagious too if you don't inoculate the kids to know better. Those sorts of diseases trick your mind with the devil's magic, all sorts of evil; it's like a heroin that you don't even need a needle for, you can just whisper it into somebody's ear and they'll become junkies, lunatics. At least those kids knew better than to try and possess people with demons; that sort of shit is unforgivable. I figure they were just born sick and couldn't do anything about it, every year the tests came back positive; I'm glad none of us are sick with that madness. You know they're possessed when the world tries to talk sense into them, but their mind is unwilling to believe it, like they are so dumbfounded that they're not living in hell anymore, and their mind is doing everything it can to summon their comforts of hellfire to lull them to sleep. Fucking demons, I tell you. Frightening when you think about it; they say people don't get possessed out of the blue, but I've lost sleep over it many times just thinking 'what if'." Says Peggy

"Jesus, I didn't need the history lesson. You're the one calling me baselessly worried when you're the one worried about being possessed by demons." Says Effie

"If they were powerful enough to hypnotize damn near everyone on the planet and usher in a kingdom of hellfire and damnation, I'm for damn sure not going to let my guard down." Says Peggy

"Cool it. We don't start work until tomorrow, there's no need to get on that high horse yet. Besides, all the willpower in the world can't cause a spineless man to stand, so put unless your money where your mouth is, your dreams of fighting off the devil amount to nothing at the end of the day, nothing but empty promises and the collapse of the people who needed to depend on you. Let's go. I don't want to think about this, I need to drown my thoughts in the clacking of dominoes." Says Effie, leading Peggy to the door

"We are no longer straw dogs when hellfire engulfs our bodies; we are but an effigy of the hell which once was. Fire can quickly spread if it is not contained, and I'm just all to wary of that." Says Peggy, as the girls exit the school and head down the road

# 1.4

"I don't know how you're excited to be a cop. My life kind of felt like it ended right there; what I got doesn't feel like anything, I just feel like a ghost. Almost like I actually got killed and now I'm looking over my dead body right now. I just can't make anything of all of it, like I was just handed a big fist full of air and I'm somehow supposed to materialize this into a solid piece of legitimate meaning." Says Effie

"You just can't wrap your head around it right now. I'm sure once you get thrown into the lake you'll feel like a fish. I mean, anything is better than sitting in that damn classroom 8 hours a day, and we even get to do something meaningful, full of action and excitement, at least far more than the usual hum drum of intellectually or physically demanding labor." Says Peggy

"You don't think this will be incredibly difficult given our disadvantage? How can this strike you as a good idea? That man caste 6 disabled children into the police force, as if we can somehow manage to keep order and civility amongst a population of able bodied people." Says Effie

"Clearly he wouldn't have caste us if we couldn't do the job. You're overthinking it. Just let the training resolve any insecurities about your position that you might have, then the rest is just keeping step with the rhythm of life." Says Peggy

"I'll do my best; something tells me we're just sacrificial lambs to allow the police to crack down harder on whatever it is they've been sent to deal with. In order for the classic 'imminent threat of death' to remain functional and valid in the eyes of the public, some cops actually have to die." Says Effie

"That doesn't always have to be a threat to the cop's life. It could be a threat against anyone's life to be fair." Says Peggy, as the girls arrive at the local recreation center, rather empty save for the odd-shifted who pursue leisure on an inverted clock, they approach the counter, register a set of dominoes, and sit down at a table inlaid with a cribbage board, place the pegs, deal, and play, both using the tray to hold their deal

"Shame we don't have four people." Says Peggy

"I'm sure there will be plenty of dominoes in our future, especially since we're likely going to spend our nights with our fellow officers trying to drink enough to forget the horror of our job." Says Effie

"I can already taste that sweet release. They always tell you that once you're an adult, the pain of thirst replaces the existential pain of youth. I'm looking forward to it, considering that thirst can easily be relieved. Don't think about the pain and dread of adulthood, just think about those sweet drinks finally absolving you of your stress and worry, replacing it with lackadaisical ease and lightheartedness." Says Peggy

"As much as the state allegedly holds people to a healthy limit, I doubt that limit is all too healthy when it washes away your concern with your life and livelihood. People are supposed to be concerned with those things for a reason; when you fail to actually address the issues that upset you, you're doing nothing but masking the problem and pretending it isn't there." Says Effie

"Analgesia functions in the exact same manner, yet it is vital in the medical community. Some problems can't be solved, and sometimes the best we can do is relieve the discomfort we are unconditionally forced to bear." Says Peggy

"It's still a line in the sand; the terminus of that direction is to incessantly do nothing but drink yourself to death and pretend no problems exist. I can understand that some problems may be irresolvable, but it's important not to fallaciously put things in that basket just to savor the analgesia of alcohol." Says Effie

"I don't intend on doing that, and neither does society; we define pains as avoidable and unavoidable for a reason, and seeing how that line in the sand is more so a line in the cement, I'm not going to argue with it, considering I'm not the mason placing that line. Go ahead and be teetotal, but just know the counterpoint to your argument is that we should bear all pain without analgesia and somehow attempt to resolve things that simply cannot be resolved, and that's nonsense." Says Peggy

"I could go for some analgesia about now, at least some kind of anxiolytic, but sadly, I've not the money." Says Effie

"Soon enough, my dear; dominoes should be all the analgesia you need." Says Peggy

"It's a distraction at best." Says Effie

"Just let the hypnotic sounds of the music lull you into the land of comfort and ease. They play this music for a reason, you know. Saying that children get no anxiolytics is nonsense; this music is mean to not only motivate, but to induce contentment." Says Peggy, enjoying the pulsing rhythm and ambient synths of the atmospheric outrun music

"Your sense of purpose escapes me. I don't feel like the protagonist, so at this point it feels like I'm just waiting for somebody to save me. The music only increases the pressure of the inescapable anxiety." Says Effie

"Soon; soon you will see. You will feel it in your soul, starting tomorrow, you are the protagonist." Says Peggy

Effie laughs, the girls go back to playing dominoes. The subtle atmospheric vapors of diethyl ether slowly permeate through their blood. Speaking of trivial things, more intent on playing dominoes, captivated and mesmerized by the process of making progress across the cribbage. Effie takes the third set.

"I figure it's time to go. Doubt you would want to start a set you can't finish." Says Peggy

"I could play all day, but I suppose we've got to break the news to our families." Says Effie

"You could make a childbirth sound grim. Somehow just sitting here playing dominoes has me sleepy, as if I've actually done something today." Says Peggy, as she replaces the dominoes and pegs in the box

"We survived; that's pretty damn good in my book." Says Effie, as the girls get up, return the dominoes, and head back into the streets, the afternoon sun indicating that it's about that time, the children loosed as those of the standard 1st shift employ begin to trickle into the streets, none too eager to leave work on time rather than stay late, but those who do would rather avoid the questionable idleness of attempting to save face by accomplishing nothing.

"This is where our paths fork, but I'm certain I'll be seeing plenty more of you. That suits my fancy and delight; lord knows what trouble I'd have in the workplace without a friend. People don't trust pirates, but I'm hoping you can warm them up to the idea." Says Peggy

"It seems like a misplaced fear, but I suppose your people got wrapped up in the precedent of preemptive caution in regards to stereotypes. It's been hundreds of years since that sort of piracy was common, but never the less people keep an eye out. I mean it is easy to presume somebody will act in a stereotypical way until proven otherwise, and I figure since all stereotypes are negative, it just serves to instill a baseline degree of caution in people. The whole blind trust of humans was what led to the collapse, so I figure blind distrust is probably a reasonable standard, even if it does make it harder for people to actually cooperate." Says Effie

"The whole concept of original sin makes the whole 'guilty until proven innocent' mantra sensible in my eye. Misplaced trust can lead to disaster, where misplaced distrust can only lead to shortcoming. You take it easy, love. Try to be positive when you're rattling off the good news to your folks; I'm sure they'll actually be excited that you've got yourself a real job, rather than something like comfort girl. Being a verb as opposed to an object, that's some baseline respectability right there, real meaning and whatnot. I'm sure you would've hated being a comfort girl anyways, seeing how you're not even fond of the decent men in the world, let alone the shameless statesmen looking for comfort. I figure that would've been a short and empty life anyways, seeing how they can't relegate you to housework, and at that point you're just popping out surrogate babies until that kills you." Says Peggy

"I'll try to keep that mindset going into all of it. I give you that, this could be worse, much worse. Ta ta, be good." Says Effie

"You too." Says Peggy, as the girls depart in different directions

# 1.5

Numbed and empty, smiling, walking down the street, the grimaces of passersby met with a lackadaisically confident wink. Effie no longer herself, simply part of the machine now, unable to question anything, a good girl, sporting the expected endless blind confidence in the system she cannot understand; she makes no effort do so. She reaches her complex, finds the door to her house unlocked, and lets herself in, the house still dark save for a light from her room. She enters.

"Hello, Mable." Says Effie, floating the needle out of the collar of her shirt, placing it on the desk beside her sister

"Hey, Effie." Says Mable, absentminded, tending to her electronic horses

"That's a disheartening amount of indifference to my existence." Says Effie, sitting down in the chair next to her sister

"What? It's the normal amount." Says Mable

"You don't remember how my graduation was today?" asks Effie

"That's right. Well, clearly you had nothing to worry about." Says Mable

"Considering that I witnessed three people get executed no more than 15 feet from me, I beg to differ." Says Effie

"Why? Only those three? I mean everyone knew that was going to happen. You had like years to prepare for that. You said all the time that there's no hope for those three, at least after their final analysis, and I figure that's who you're talking about. Did they even try to get a second analysis during the year?" Asks Mable

"No; no point. Still, I mean that could have been me. I'm just saying." Says Effie

"I still think they would need a much better reason to kill you. Sure you're disabled, but you're not sick or anything. What job did you end up getting anyways?" Asks Mable

"Everyone was drafted by the police, even me." Says Effie

"Wow, what? How can you be a cop?" asks Mable

"I guess I'll find out tomorrow. I don't have a clue; the guy said to put my boobs in people's face and be the 'good cop'. That's all I know so far." Says Effie

"I told you your boobs would get you a good job." Says Mable

"I'll give you credit for that. I can almost understand why you love this game so much, watching those horses run is hypnotizing, even exciting." Says Effie

"That's nothing. These horses are like my children, I have raised them, and I care for them, and watching them succeed is like watching your child be amazing as all of your hard work pays off. Sure, it is entertaining to watch, but when you're personally attached to the horses it takes on a whole new level of meaning." Says Mable

"I can tell you really do love those horses." Says Effie

"They're amazing. It totally is still educational and helpful, it teaches you the value of hard work and commitment you know, the necessity of a budget, and how learning and optimizing things will benefit you. Some of the boys in my school like to play the one about soccer, but that's so shallow compared to the intricacies of horse racing." Says Mable

"I'll leave you be." Says Effie

"Feel free to watch, it's a great time. You don't seem too excited about becoming a cop." Says Mable

"I'm just taken aback. I suppose I always gave cops way more credit than I should, if I'm qualified to be a cop." Says Effie

"Well, you know right from wrong, that's really all it takes. Maybe you can't beat people with a nightstick as good, but I'm sure there's more to it than that. Aren't you a good cop anyways? You're just supposed to go out and help people when there's a problem." Says Mable

"I don't think my job will involve too much of that, cops aren't really known for their helpfulness." Says Effie

"Well, you're a good one, not a regular one. I think it's a perfect job for you." Says Mable

"Thanks. I'm going to the bathroom." Says Effie

"You want some help?" asks Mable

"Sure. You spoil me, but it definitely makes the process easier." Says Effie

"I think it's kind of fun. You're kind of like a baby you know. Really makes people want to help you." Says Mable

"If you feel that way I'll go do it myself. I'm lazy, but I'm not a baby." Says Effie

"I know, but still. I kind of feel bad if I don't help you." Says Mable

"You really shouldn't." says Effie

"But I do, I think of what they teach you. How two people can push a load that one person can't alone. That even if somebody can do something alone, like lift something heavy, it's better to make it safer and easier by having another person help. We had to lift and carry 20 pounds as kids and it was basically impossible, but with another person to help the weight feels like it's only 10 pounds. You shouldn't be ashamed or afraid to ask for help you know. Anyways, it should always be a pleasure to help somebody; if you help somebody, you're helping everybody, and when you're helping everybody, you're helping yourself." Says Mable

"I just don't want to feel like a burden, you know. I understand the whole make 20 pounds feel like 10 pounds, but I'm just not sure I'm lifting my 10 pounds here." Says Effie

"Well, it's like 10 pounds to you, but it's like 1 pound to me. So that's a lot of it. I don't see a reason not to help; it's like expecting somebody to lift 10 pounds just so I can avoid lifting one, and that doesn't seem fair at all. That's against the fundamentals of efficiency and whatnot. If I can get something done in 10% of the time you can, I should do that thing, because now 90% of the time you would have spent doing that thing can now be done doing something else." Says Mable

"I'm glad you have faith in the system. When they made me a cop I started to have doubts." Says Effie

"That's not even the system, that's just common sense and being a decent person. Anyways, I hope you would chose to lift 1 pound if it meant saving me the trouble of lifting ten." Says Mable

"That's a fair point, and you know I certainly would. Let me know when you're ready." Says Effie

"Two seconds" Says Mable, finishing up one of the countless tasks required of those who professionally tend to race horses, she stands up, and escorts her sister quickly to the restroom and helps her take care of business before returning to her game

"I kind of feel bad that they never really taught you anything in school, but now they expect you to go do police work. I'm sure there's something you should have learned, like reading and writing or something at least." Says Mable

"First of all, I can read, and you know this. I can write to some extent, though I don't particularly practice so it's more of a just scrawl something and hope that it's legible. Some of us can't read, but that doesn't matter, because obviously they're not going to give us this job and expect us to magically know these things we were never taught. I'm sure they teach you that historically literacy was quite rare, and the world functioned just fine despite the fact that most people were illiterate. You don't need to be able to read in order to chop wood, and I'm sure the same applies to police work for the most part." Says Effie

"They really only mention that if you bring up why kids like you don't get taught anything; I did at one point because I foolishly tried to justify my disinterest in school by claiming that you didn't have homework. This puzzled them until I said that you didn't have arms, at which point the teacher talked about how knowledge is irrelevant in many fields, and some people just happen to be born with a predisposition to that sort of work. They scolded me for being so foolishly shameless as to think it was reasonable to hold myself to lower standards than I could achieve, just because some people happened to be naturally disadvantaged to the point where there were limits placed upon their success." Says Mable

"Of all of us, only Horse has any real limits to their capacity. Gary tells us that it's less about our own disadvantages as it is about preserving homogeny. Differences tend to be complications, and society doesn't like things to be complicated. Rather than complicate education we just get swept under the rug to avoid the possibility of making problems. If people saw me in your class without my shoes on, then people would start asking if they could take their shoes off, and there's no reason to facilitate that sort of differentiation when there is no need.

People don't like things that are different, they question them, and differences make division, which makes tension, which makes hostility, so society keeps that to a minimum, at least to a reasonable extent. I know this district is integrated, but that's just because all the people in it are of unsalvageable racial and ethnic purity, so rather than create division in the closest homogenized district, they just concentrate all of the racial deviations into districts like this one. It works for the most part, because rather than have a race, we are all largely raceless, we don't really identify as a specific group of historical people with a culture and whatnot, we're just the product of the collapse, the unnatural sort of people that arose from such heresy. Despite being raceless, the old adage of 'birds of a feather' still holds true, and despite being integrated, people still associate and reproduce with people who tend to look like themselves more often than not. It's just instinct I suppose, as despite not having a race, people's minds convince them to preserve their own people and distrust those who are different." Says Effie

"I guess it's kind of like sports. People just like to identify with one of the legitimate populations because it gives them a sense of belonging. Being outcaste like this is kind of disheartening when you understand the reality of it. 'We're the backbone of society' so they say, but that also means kind of being a horse as opposed to a person at the end of the day. We don't have any power, and the only reason we exist is because we serve the best interests of all parties. They don't want to sacrifice their own people, so they send us to do their fighting, their dangerous labor, their menial labor outside of their Districts, and unless you can prove your merit to be more so valuable in a skilled position, you will be relegated to one of these sorts of positions." Says Mable

"I'm grateful for our status, because you know for damn sure I would have been culled at birth in a District with higher standards. I'd rather be alive and powerless than dead, seeing how it's still a decent life, even if we are treated more like horses than people. People love horses, and that makes it easy for us, you just convince them that you're a good enough horse and they'll let you live your life; convincing somebody that you're a good enough person is another matter entirely." Says Effie

"You would love the other format of this game. I play the racing kind, but if you ever want to play the labor horse game, it's still kind of fun. You don't get to watch the horses race or anything, and it's way easier to breed and rear horses to be valuable than it is to rear them to be competitive. It's super depersonalized though and the horses are all like objects, you're raising hundreds of horses at the same time just trying to run a business, and I think that's way too cold. Horses deserve better than that." Says Mable

"I'm sure the labor horses get plenty of love for their labor, even if it isn't as glorious. There can only be so many race horses you know; all of the labor has to get done in order for there to be a market for that sort of sport. People wouldn't be tempted to gamble if losing meant that they weren't going to eat for the next few days, most people anyways. Glory is a luxury so they say, so to earn your glory, you must first earn your keep, as glory is nothing more than earning a surfeit of one's keep." Says Effie

"That's all we can really do, you as a cop, and me as whatever I end up becoming. Even if you get put in a dangerous menial job, there's always a way to do that gloriously. That's pretty cool when you think about it; usually the fear of being sent to one of those jobs just scares the heck out of me." Says Mable

"Good. That sort of work is scary; I would be doing everything I could to avoid that, but I figure there was nothing I could do to avoid that fate myself." Says Effie

"I don't think your job is going to be all that dangerous. It's not like you're even a regular cop, you're a good cop, and that's probably super safe." Says Mable

"I'm going to convince myself of that so I can sleep tonight. It may be the last time I get any sound sleep without fearing for my life upon the morrow." Says Effie

"I'm sure you'll sleep soundly because you work hard all day and do a great job. I know you're that kind of girl, and I'm sure you'll get a lot of satisfaction from finally being able to prove how amazing you are." Says Mable

"I'll do my best. Enjoy your horses, I'm going to nap until supper." Says Effie

"Have fun." Says Mable

Effie lies in bed, shaken, robbed of her life, what she understood as her life, given something else, something unrecognizable. Unable to make anything of it, looking at it perplexedly, disconcerted knowing that her livelihood depends entirely on her ability to make sense of this shapeless amalgam of nonsense that is her existence and theoretical function as an officer of the law. She has lost all but the vaguest perception of the fact that her conscious is what renders the impetus of her physical form, cognizing her existence as a little girl trapped inside of a haunted train that intends to ferry her directly into the fires of hell. She is not upset by this fact, disconcerted only by the means to this end, puzzled by the methods being used to conclude her lifespan, deemed too honorable and respectable to be euthanized per standard protocol, instead obligated by the champions of glory to pursue a noble death of theatrics, of tragedy, of a person seeking to live, desperately trying to stay alive, only to fail despite their noblest of efforts. It is a touching thought, baffling, but the sincerity of the compliment is understood, even if the compliment itself seems to be farcical.

The thought of life and death denatured by her sister's passion for her virtual horses, human life now indistinguishable from horses, seeing their upkeep and performance in regards to the input, mechanical beasts of yield, for sport or labor, nothing else save for the triviality of sentimental semantics for those so enraptured by endorphins and hormones. The horses are happy, and they are horses long before they are happy, this respect of the sovereignty and legitimacy of the creature is respected, herself worthy of this same respect, pondering her fate, concluding that were a horse bred for racing guaranteed to die if it races, there is far more honor in racing and dying than there is to be denied any opportunity to serve ones purpose to the world, even in vain futility, for such a death at the hands of one's purpose is the noblest death, and a life neutered of its meaning is no life at all, it is an abomination.

Horses run in stride with the ghosts of horses, she knows that a ghost that has preserved its dignity has forever preserved that dignity, and to live without dignity means to die without dignity and to be damned to haunt the earth forever as a ghost without dignity, and truly such is a fate worse than death. The thought it comforting, her fear of death turning into a warm contentment, happy with her fate, proud of herself, confident that she will be dead soon, but the dignity she preserves allows her to ignore the promise of the elongated torture of life, for dignification is a potent analgesic, while indignity is among the most potent of synalgesics known to man. The desire to not die is the fear of the unknown, and that fear proves to be rather meek and ethereal when compared to the fear of pain, for we are conditioned every day of our lives to fear and avoid pain.

People can only fear death as they might god's damnation or the future; we cannot experience these things, thus we have no grounds to truly understand these fears, no grounds to truly be afraid of them; with pain however, the memory of pain is seldom forgotten, and this fear is a certain fear, a real fear, an unquestionable fear; there is no analgesia of hypotheticality, the pain is seared into the mind, an animal fear that courses through blood in the form of endorphins, true fear, powerful enough to dependably shepherded wild beasts from their deaths long enough to populate the planet. The fear of death is an existential fear, a conjured and imaginary fear, and it is easy to wage a war of fantasy against an imaginary opponent; to avoid pain however, one must wage a war in reality, and such a war must be fought with one's flesh and bones, and the pain of such a war will be felt every waking moment of every day, tearing the flesh and breaking the bones. We seek to avoid this pain at all costs, but as for the pain of death, we have yet to place our hand on that hot stove, however hot it might be, so we truly cannot fear it in the natural sense, only in the imaginary sense that one might be frightened by any other story, entirely imagined with no grounds beyond that.

# 1.6

"Effie, supper." Says Mable, hearing their mother call them from the hall

"Right-o." says Effie, rolling out of bed and sitting up, easily collecting herself as there was nothing left to collect, she follows her sister out of their room into the kitchen-living area and sits down at the table, supper was standard nutrition, a shapeless amalgam seasoned to the peak of edibility but no further, a satisfying meal as impersonal as it is nutritious; the prostitute of meals, but a skilled and respectable looking prostitute, getting the job done, satisfied with her performance but desiring no further relations after her service save for one of amiable business cordiality

"How was graduation, Effie?" asks her mother, warmly empty, looking at her daughter with eyes blinded by depersonalization and dissociation, her personage identified as little more than the warmth of her body, but the woman entirely content and usually pleased with that fact

"It was ok. I am a cop now, everyone is a cop." Says Effie

"Not everyone I hope." Grumbles her father, too tired to be upset by the fact, begrudgingly conflictory out of compulsion and as a matter of self-respect

"Well, no. Not those three, but everyone else." Says Effie

"Good. I'm sure you'll be a great cop." Says her father, mechanically, indifferent, genuinely supportive without actually making any effort to understand what he is supporting

"Ok..." says Effie, touched by the compliment, yet visibly confused

"Where's your usual chipper attitude? Graduation is something you should be excited about, you're an adult now, you know." Says her mother, smiling warmly, blindly seeking positivity and gaiety with the compulsion of a drug addict simply out of prudence, with only the subtlest of displeasures when such is not palpable, but compulsively driven to arouse such positivity out of a sense of a warmly embraced social obligation

"I'm just kind of confused and scared. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me." Says Effie

"I'm sure it's just the first day jitters. Everyone is nervous on their first day of work. Soon you'll be singing along like you were born in church, or the police station for that matter." Says her mother, cutely

"I was nervous on my first day as a machinist, but once you get into the swing of things, work becomes as familiar as saying your own name. You don't even have to think about it, you just know what to do, and all that is left is presentation and annunciation. Work is like your name you know, it is who you are, so just like you would say your name clearly and warmly; you want to work as respectably as you would say your name when you introduce yourself." Says her father

"I'll do my best." Says Effie

"That's all you can do, and it's the best you can do. Don't be afraid to ask for help; everybody needs training when they get sent to their job, so don't think you're any different if you are unsure of what it is you should be doing." Says her mother

"I'll keep that in mind. My fear is not that I won't know what to do, but that I won't be able to do it." Says Effie, hardly reassured

"They wouldn't give you that job if you couldn't do it." Says her father

"I know, I guess I'm just nervous." Says Effie

"Thanks for supper." Says Mable, attempting to leave

"Wait, Mable. You didn't tell us about your day." Says her mother

"It was boring; it was free-study. We have aptitude tests on Monday." Says Mable

"I hope you studied and didn't waste your time." Says her mother

"Of course I did. I'll study even more this weekend too. Mainly economics and the principles of labor." Says Mable

"Atta girl." Says her father

"You've always had a knack for those things. Just make sure to study the math components you need; it's one thing to know the principles, but another thing to put them into practice." Says her mother

"I do. I'm still young, but I'm definitely doing what I can. My teacher says it's good to cast a wide net, and I figure every sort of business needs people to help organize and optimize their workforce." Says Mable

"You've always been the one to care about other people, and there's no better way to do that. When you can make the people and their employer happy at the same time, everything works out for the best. If either one is upset, it always effects the other negatively." Says her mother

"Your brain is your most valuable resource, I'm glad you're putting it to good use. When I was a kid, most boys thought there was less respect in doing intellectual work than physical labor, but truth be told, your body gets old a lot faster than your brain does, so you're picking a real long term strategy, and that's a good thing." Says her father

"A lot of boys still think like that. They love to compete in the athletic aptitude tests, but I think they just want to have fun more than they want to study, seeing how they all love running around and seeing who is stronger." Says Mable

"The world needs strong men like that. It's a good thing boys like that sort of thing." Says her mother

"I'd call them foolish, but seeing how plenty of them will be caste into that sort of work based upon the needs of the industry regardless of any aptitude they might have, they're smart for valuing skills that they might need regardless of how decent they are at some sort of intellectual endeavor. Don't think of that as a reason to slack off though, you're still competing with every girl and plenty of boys for those exceptional jobs, so there's no reason to think a smaller pool of competitors will be any less fierce." Says her father

"I know." Says Mable

"You have any plans this weekend?" asks her mother

"Not really, everyone is probably going to be studying." Says Mable

"That's good. I'm glad your friends are prudent like that." Says her mother

"It's hard to enjoy your life if you think you're going to spend the rest of it doing something stupid." Says Mable

"There isn't any work that is stupid, and the people that do the menial labor aren't necessarily stupid. They are just as necessary and respectable as anyone else, just because their job is simpler or less intellectually challenging doesn't mean that it doesn't present its own unique challenges. It takes a lot of work to make the world go round, and just because some of that isn't impressive or grandiose doesn't mean it is any less valuable or necessary. I know some people like the menial, mechanical, monotonous sort of labor, at least some people did when I was growing up, and those people became very skilled at whatever they ended up doing. It's far more respectable to do an amazing job at something simple than it is to do a mediocre job at something complex." Says her mother

"I know. I guess I just want something exciting and challenging; if my brain wasn't being challenged I would feel restless and uneasy, at least I feel that way when we do any of those mechanical aptitude tests for a few hours." Says Mable

"All jobs require hard work and focus for prolonged periods of time, so even if those test seem boring, they're still very important to show that you have work ethic and the capacity to perform." Says her mother

"I know, I try my best, but just thinking about doing something like that for 8 hours a day seems kind of glum." Says Mable

"My work is kind of like that, but I come home with a sense of accomplishment and self-respect knowing that I did a great job and worked hard all day. Those tests seem boring because you don't accomplish anything, but if you see the fruits of your labor, it's truly not as bad at it might seem. I'll clean up and let you girls get back to your lives. I'm sure you're exhausted after today." Says her father

"Thanks for dinner!" says Mable, getting up, taking her and her sister's dining-ware and putting it in the sink

"Thanks for dinner." Says Effie

"You're very welcome, girls." Says their mother

"You've got work tomorrow, don't you, Effie?" asks her father

"Bright and early." Says Effie

"Make sure you get some sleep. First impressions are important you know." Says her father

"I will." Says Effie, headed back to her room, Mable already having made quick pace back to her horses on the computer

# 1.7

"That stuff always hits the spot." Says Effie, lying down on her bed

"I don't mind it. Some of the rich girls complain about it at school, but I think it's pretty good. Ten times better than most things, oatmeal, even bread and butter. It actually has real flavor even if it doesn't have a real shape." Says Mable

"The shape is shapeless, that's the perfect shape. You've seen me struggle with elbow noodles, and rather than try to eat something that slips off the spoon, it's so reasonable to have something that just sticks to the spoon." Says Effie

"I can't say you really struggle with elbow noodles. You just kind of stuff your face into the bowl." Says Mable

"That's because they'll slip off the spoon. Rather than make a mess, I just make sure that if the noodles fall off they fall back into the bowl." Says Effie

"It's not a very charming look to be honest, but you've never been too concerned with that." Says Mable

"You want me to charm you? That's weird. I'm not some kind of aristocrat you know." Says Effie

"I'm just saying." Says Mable

"So are you actually going to study?" asks Effie

"Yeah, tomorrow; I studied all day today. I need to unwind." Says Mable

"I understand completely. Lying in bed with a full stomach feels like heaven." Says Effie

"I take it you were hungry." Says Mable

"No lunch today." Says Effie

"Why?" asks Mable

"I didn't want to hang out at school until lunchtime. Me and Peggy went to play dominoes." Says Effie

"Really? You skipped school?" asks Mable

"No, I graduated, remember? We got let out after graduation, and Gary just says 'You're adults now' and leaves the class. This is his only three day weekend in a year apparently." Says Effie

"That's kind of funny. You didn't go do adult things?" asks Mable

"No. Me and Peggy didn't have any money. It's not like I have any interest in even seeing a public comfort girl anyways, let alone actually being quote unquote 'comforted' by one." Says Effie

"I don't really know what they do, but you're supposed to respect everyone who works, you know." Says Mable

"You don't want to know what they do. They comfort men, mainly." Says Effie

"I don't know, comfort sounds kind of nice. That bed is comfortable, and you like it." Says Mable

"I'm not that comfortable around most strangers, let alone a comfort girl. I'm not going to go into details, but it's not exactly the same type of comfort as lying in bed with a full stomach." Says Effie

"Whatever." Says Mable

"I'm about to pass out; long day. Wake me up if the house catches on fire." Says Effie, squirming under the covers, grabbing the blanket between her head and shoulders to pull it over herself

"Right-o. I'm sure the sprinklers would do that anyways; it's not like the building has ever caught on fire, either." Says Mable

"It was a joke." Says Effie, scoffing softly, rolling her eyes playfully behind the closed lids

"Gotcha." Says Mable, captivated by her game, quietly clicking the mouse

Effie lies in her bed silently, trying to sleep, pretending to sleep, unable to sleep. Thoughts of tomorrow, the rest of her life, like liquid fear being spooned over her mind that slowly drips down the back of her face into every crevice of her body, she tolerates the discomfort in her powerlessness, unable to act in any meaningful way, feeling like a child in a car crash slowed down to take place over the course of days rather than seconds, knowing full well her inevitable fate, unable to speed it up, unable to avoid it, trapped in this car staring at her certain death looming before her eyes. She sits up, shaken.

"You know it's bad when I can't sleep on a full stomach." Says Effie

"You're that worried, huh?" asks Mable

"Yeah." Says Effie, softly

"It's weird that you were less concerned with your future when you thought you were just going to be killed today." Says Mable

"I could come to terms with that, a death irrelevant from myself, my own actions, my own influence; that's just taking what I'm given, being the victim, the independent variable. Now that I know my fate is somehow in my own hands, or lack of hands as it seems, I feel far more responsible for my own fate, as if I am supposed to be capable of living a long, prosperous life, despite the fact that I was caste into one of the most dangerous professions without any tangible skillset that might assist me." Says Effie

"You're probably just overreacting like you always do. Sure cops do dangerous things sometimes, but a lot of the time it's probably just boring nothingness like walking around and talking to people or whatever. I doubt they're going to put you on some kind of SWAT team, they just want you to go check up on people and make sure things are ok, or direct traffic or whatever. You say it's dangerous but like 99.9% of people would never hurt a cop, even if they would hurt a civilian. Even criminals know the repercussions for hurting a cop are like 10 times higher than normal. Even criminals don't want to be on the wrong side of the law, so if anything they'll just be trying to appear to be reasonable people who don't break the law." Says Mable

"That would be a laugh watching me try to direct traffic with my feet." Says Effie

"Yeah, I don't know about that one, but I'm sure cops do plenty of other things too. I mean, a crossing guard just stands there in the middle of the sidewalk, so you could just hang a stop sign on your neck and walk into the middle of the road to get that done." Says Mable

"That's my life now, a walking stop sign." Says Effie, chuckling softly

"It's better than nothing, and I'm sure you get to do other things. I think because you're not threatening at all, they'll just use you to talk to people, victims, criminals, whoever. If people feel threatened by cops they're less likely to talk you know, even victims. You are very nice and you're good at talking, so I can see why they might have picked you for that." Says Mable

"Ironically I did say I was, and I quote, 'very nice and good at talking'." Says Effie

"That probably explains why they picked you to be a cop. They need cops who are nice and good at talking just as much as they need tough guys to beat up criminals." Says Mable

"That's a pleasant thought, and you're right, I know this, so I probably am just over reacting. I guess change is scary, you know." Says Effie

"It's kind of silly to think they would put you in the line of fire when you can't even hold a gun. That doesn't make sense, and things tend to make sense. They gave you that job because they want you to work hard and do a good job, not to accomplish nothing and get shot for no reason." Says Mable

"I need to be more positive. I have this amazing opportunity, and here I am presuming the worst for no reason. I'm sure there are plenty of worse jobs out there, and if I'm just talking to people and being nice I would actually enjoy the job." Says Effie

"That's the spirit. I think you will find out that not only can you do the job, but you're great at the job. Try to remember they gave you that job for a reason, and that's because you are capable of doing it, so when you know that much, just try your best to do it well, and that's all you really can do, but I'm sure that will be more than enough, considering how capable you are at both talking and being nice. I'm sure you feel like I did before starting school; I was super nervous and afraid, but I became comfortable pretty quick after that." Says Mable

"It helps that I already know the kids from my class. That takes away a lot of the social pressure thankfully." Says Effie

"If you're still worried, I don't know, distract yourself with something. Watch TV or something." says Mable

"Whatever mom and dad are watching I'm sure I don't want to watch it, and I definitely don't want to hang out with them. Maybe once I'm really an adult I won't mind that sort of stuff, but I feel like I've had more than enough advice and life lessons at this point, all that remains is putting that wisdom into practice." Says Effie

"They do like boring stuff like the news, that or some kind of show that I can't follow and usually they won't let me watch it because it's quote unquote 'adult' material." Says Mable

"I'm sure those sorts of shows wouldn't appeal to you anyways. They let me watch a few of them, they really appeal to this grim cynical side of adults that finds humor in dark situations. You're way too wholesome for that kind of stuff." Says Effie

"As much as I like wholesome things, I can still understand that sort of humor. I don't know if I would relate because I'm just a kid, but I'm not that young you know." Says Mable

"There's also plenty of swearing and nudity too." Says Effie

"You curse, and even I curse, sometimes, and beyond that I see you naked all the time. I don't get what's so adult about that." Says Mable

"Naked boys." Teases Effie

"That's either awkward or gross. There are cute boys out there, but I've seen dad naked and that's super gross. I'll stick to my awesome horses, because I definitely don't want to watch that kind of stuff with mom and dad, probably ever, even if I am an adult that stuff is still awkward." Says Mable

"Beyond that there is still the violence, blood and guts and stuff, and that stuff frightens me and I'm way older than you." Says Effie

"Yeah, I'll pass on that; I don't know why people like that kind of thing. I've seen cats and dogs that got hit by cars and its super sad. Maybe you should be watching it though, since you might see lots of beat up and bloody people in your job, even dead people, I don't know." Says Mable

"I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I like spending time with you anyways. It lets me pretend I'm still a kid, and that's about as comfortable as I can be right now." Says Effie

"Of course you want to be a kid again on your first day as an adult. I'm sure every kid wants to be an adult too. The grass is always greener, so they say. I don't mind being a kid, but I think being an adult would be nice too." Says Mable

"It's not like you've got it easy. I know school is rigorous, at least your kind anyways." Says Effie

"They tell us you either devote your mind to learning or you sacrifice your body to hard labor. I'd rather not have my body be a human sacrifice, so as taxing as school might be, I always find it to be the more preferable experience than even the thought of having my body scarified, let alone actually living through that." Says Mable

"Being worked to death isn't that bad when you think about it. Every animal gets worked to death, and that's about the pinnacle of quality of life right there. I can actually take some pride in being caste into work, considering that under the broadest lens that's the pinnacle of success, or at least the foundation of it." Says Effie

"Now you've just got to work your way up and become the chief of police, wouldn't that be something." says Mable

"I think that's more of a show position, but if they think I'm cut out for public relations like that, it would be an honor." Says Effie

"You are pretty cute, and nothing would make people feel safe around police if they were represented on TV by a cute girl with no arms." Says Mable

"Talk to me in twenty years if you want to call me cute. I'm sure two decades on the force will put some wear and tear on my appearance." Says Effie

"34 isn't that old, you know." Says Mable

"I'm just saying I doubt I'll look 34. Constantly being stressed by work is going to be visible in my face, you know. The reason why rich girls are usually more attractive than poor girls is because their lives are free from stresses, because it's those stress hormones that warp a person's face and body to make them look unhealthy or unappealing. If you're looking for a mate, and she's never been stressed in her life, I guess that tended to be a really good sign in nature, so we see those sorts of people as more beautiful." Says Effie

"That explains why you're so cute then, you never had to worry about anything." Says Mable

"I had my share of stresses; maybe not as many as normal, but I run into stresses where normal people wouldn't, so don't think of me like I'm some girl who's lived this entirely stress-free life." Says Effie

"I know you're talking about your lack of arms, but that doesn't really seem to bother you. You get along fine, even if I'm being stubborn and don't want to help you." Says Mable

"The issue isn't getting by as much as it is social anxiety and things like that, being worried about my place in society and what people think of me." Says Effie

"I think everyone worries about that, even rich girls. They all are super concerned about what other people think of them, especially the other rich girls." Says Mable

"That's a fair point; I suppose it's all about perspective really. I wouldn't care about petty things like rich girls do, but to them I'm sure it seems 10 times more important than it does to a normal person, just because they don't have anything better to worry about." Says Effie

"Pretty much; everyone will worry about something, usually at least. If you're not worried about things I figure that means nothing in your life is up to chance anymore. You only look at certainty every day where most worries come from uncertainty. If you're stressed about a certainty, I'm sure you would come to terms with that eventually, just like you and your arms." Says Mable

"That sounds about right. I figure that's why I've been so worried about graduation and now work, it's like 100% uncertainty to me." Says Effie

"Well, soon it will be mostly certainty once you know what you're doing. Just be confident that you can reach that point, and maybe it will take some of the weight off of your shoulders." Says Effie

"Even if I get my part of the equation under control, there is always the part that involves other people, and criminals tend to be more volatile than most people. I'm sure there will always be some degree of stress due to uncertainty with my kind of job, but maybe I can get used to that." Says Effie

"If you're certain about the uncertainty, that might help. You are so familiar with the things that might go wrong that they don't really worry you." Says Mable

"That would take a lot of experience to become that familiar and comfortable with the vast number of situations I might find myself in. If my job is simple, maybe, but if I'm dealing with wackos and loonies on the streets every day, I doubt I'll ever know what I should be expecting." Says Effie

"You'll get a general idea, and I think just being certain about that range of possibilities will help you. I don't know, I'm glad you're trying to be optimistic though." Says Mable

"Hopefully I can keep it up when the crucible begins." Says Effie

"You will; I know you. You're not the type to give up, even when things get hard." Says Mable

"I'll try my best. I'm going to shower and get ready for bed." Says Effie

"I'll come." Says Mable

"You don't have to." Says Effie

"I know, but I have to shower too you know." Says Mable

"I mean you can shower by yourself if you want to, you know I'll be fine." Says Effie

"I know you'll be fine, but I just want to make sure your clean and your hair looks nice and stuff. It looks bad if I let you go into work on your first day and you're a mess. Besides it saves water and technically we're supposed to do it." Says Mable

"I'm perfectly capable of showering by myself." Says Effie

"Do you have a problem with it?" asks Mable

"No, it's fine; I just kind of feel disrespected. You're a kid but you treat _me_ like a child, you know." Says Effie

"I'm not treating you like a child. I just enjoy doing it; don't think of it like I'm babying you, I just enjoy taking care of you like I enjoy taking care of my horses. When you look good, I feel good if I helped, you know?" asks Mable

"I guess being treated like a horse is better than being treated like a baby." Says Effie

"More like a puppy dog, but still." Says Mable

"You really are desperate for some kind of pet." Says Effie

"Well, I have you, that's close. I know we can't have pets, but it's kind of the same feeling when I get to take care of you, even if you don't want to jump on me and snuggle like a puppy would." Says Mable

"I don't know if it's a bad sign that you're that desperate for a pet, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth." Says Effie

"Good. Stop making a big deal of it, it's not like we would be any less obligated to shower together if you had arms, you know." Says Mable

"That's true. I am kind of making a big deal out of nothing." Says Effie

"You're too sensitive sometimes. I know you are self-conscious, but just because you can misconstrue something as an insult doesn't mean it is." Says Effie, closing her game, fetching herself and her sister clean clothes, leading her out of the room and into the bathroom

# 1.8

Mable places the clothes on the countertop, runs the water and undresses.

"So are you too proud to let me undress you?" asks Mable

"No, go right ahead." Says Effie

"Good. There's no reason to burden yourself needlessly, you know." Says Mable, undressing her sister and getting into the shower, rinsing herself, rubbing shampoo in her government issued bob cut, grabbing her sister's neck and pulling her head down without resistance, rubbing shampoo through her identically styled hair. Mable lathers a washcloth and begins to scrub her sister professionally, as one would a dog, with the diligence and casual tenderness of a groomer focused on mechanical efficiency, the subtle undertones of compassion causing no detriment to the efficiency of the process, squatting down to clean the legs, Mable lightly taps the back of Effie's calf, Effie lifts her foot, allowing Mable to scrub it, followed by the other. Mable stops scrubbing and begins to urinate casually.

"Making no effort to avoid pissing on my feet, as always." Says Effie

"Urine is sterile, anyways, it saves water and you're supposed to do it." Says Mable

"There is such a thing as courtesy, you know." Says Effie

"It's not like I'm peeing directly on you or anything." Says Mable

"It's fine." Says Effie

"Squat down and let me wash your back and head. Make sure you pee too. You know how much water a toilet wastes." Says Mable

"I know." Says Effie, doing what she's told, somewhat annoyed by her sister's incessant prudence, but far too sensible to actually speak out against it

"Close your eyes." Says Mable, lathering the cloth again and scrubbing Effie's face, patting her back to stand her back up, rinsing her face followed by her hair, Mable lathers the cloth again and begins to scrub herself

"You can get out if you want." Says Mable

"I'm not going to let this warm water go to waste. The highlight of my day." Says Effie

"Once I'm done we're getting out." Says Mable

"I know, but I'll take what I can get." Says Effie

"I've got to rinse now, so scoot." Says Mable, tapping her sister out of the way, and rinsing herself off

"Noo, my warmth." Says Effie, playfully longing

"You'll be in bed soon enough." Says Mable, turning off the water and getting out of the shower

"You want to dry yourself?" Asks Mable, drying herself off

"You know my pride and self-respect are dwarves when compared to my laziness. You do it way faster and easier than I can anyways." Says Effie, rubbing her face and body against the towel on the wall to dry off a bit

"Maybe you could use the practice then." Teases Mable

"I have tons of practice, you've just got talent is all I'm saying." Says Effie

"I don't know if drying people with a towel is really a talent, but I'll take the compliment." Says Mable

"To be honest you get my hair twice as dry as I usually can, twice as fast too." Says Effie

"I spoil you sometimes." Says Mable, drying her sister

"I thought you loved taking care of horses." Teases Effie

"I do, I enjoy spoiling you because you deserve it, but it breaks my heart to think what you would do without me." Says Mable

"I would just do everything fine. I would just be lonely I guess." Says Effie

"I would be lonely too, so don't leave me." Says Mable, getting her sister dressed in clean knickers and a nightgown, doing the same for herself

"I don't plan on it. I'm taking the path of least resistance; the last thing I would want is to start a crazy new job then try to live alone without help at the same time. I mean I could do it, but that much stress would get under my skin real quick." Says Effie

"You want me to brush your teeth?" asks Mable

"If I was going to do it myself I would have done it before I got dressed. Otherwise I might get toothpaste on my nightgown." Says Effie

"That would be no good." Says Mable, starting to brush her sister's teeth, Effie able to last most of the two minutes before pulling her mouth away from the toothbrush to spit, turning the faucet on with her shoulder to drink and rinse, Mable begins to brush her teeth as Effie leaves the room, Mable returns to the room, Effie climbing into bed

"Goodnight my little puppy dog." Says Mable, turning out the light

"Just don't come try to cuddle with me all night." Says Effie

"It is tempting now that you say it." Says Mable

"Please, no. Let me sleep." Says Effie, Mable jumps on top of her and begins to snuggle her

"Who's my little puppy dog, who's a good girl." Says Mable, teasing her sister affectionately

"You know dogs can bite, right?" asks Effie

"You're a good girl though, you wouldn't do that." Says Mable, nuzzling her sister's neck

"This is true, but if I were a real dog I wouldn't be so sure. That startled the hell out of me." Says Effie

"You are soft and warm like a dog though. It's a great feeling." Says Mable

"You have to realize why some dogs will jerk away when somebody tries to pet them. It's kind of one sided if you're not all that into it." Says Effie

"But you trust me and love me, so you should love it." Says Mable

"This is true, but the key component here is that I'm not a dog." Says Effie

"Well, let me pretend for a little bit." Says Mable

"You've had your little bit, go to sleep." Says Effie

"Let me sleep with you." Says Mable

"The bed gets way too hot, and you roll around way too much. I don't want to be kicked all night, either." Says Effie

"You kick too, but I see your point. This is even smaller than a hotel sized bed, and we have trouble sharing one of those sometimes." Says Mable

"I'm glad your delirium hasn't gotten the best of you." Says Effie

"You're still my little puppy dog." Teases Mable, hugging her sister tightly and kissing her on the cheek

"I take that back." Says Effie

"I'll let you sleep. I know you have a big day tomorrow. That was fun though." Says Mable, getting off of her sister and going into her bed

"Maybe a little bit. You seemed to enjoy it a bit more than I did." Says Effie

"So you still enjoyed it a lot, and I just enjoyed it a little bit more." Teases Mable

"Sure, let's go with that. Good night." Says Effie, rolling her eyes in loving acceptance of her sister

"Night night." Says Mable, as the girls drift off to sleep, Effie distracted enough by her sister's antics to have largely forgotten about tomorrow

# 2.1

The alarm clock rings in the dim yellow light of the room, the window black.

"Time to get up." Says Mable, on her computer

"You set the alarm?" asks Effie, confused, annoyed with being alive

"I set it when I got home because I didn't want to forget that you have to get up even though it's Saturday. I knew I would forget it once I got distracted." Says Mable

"Quite the prudent optimist." Says Effie, lazily sardonic

"I'm just being responsible. Go eat breakfast, go to work. Be an adult." Says Mable

"What's for breakfast?" asks Effie,

"What? It's 7 in the morning on a Saturday, nobody is awake yet." Says Mable

"I should have guessed." Says Effie, sitting up in bed

"You want me to fix you something?" asks Mable

"I'm fine. I'll just have standard breakfast." Says Effie

"Good. You'll need the energy and good stuff in there." Says Mable

"You want to dress me? I'm not feeling all too inspired today. I feel like a limp piece of cloth floating in whatever direction the wind wants to blow it." Says Effie

"If it weren't for guilt, I'd say no, but I'd feel like I'm being mean for no reason." Says Mable

"Eh. I'm being lazy for no reason, but it's whatever." Says Effie, squirming out of her nightgown with the help of the friction of the bed

"I'll help. Hold on a second." Says Mable, clicking the mouse a few times before getting up after Effie had abruptly stopped undressing, feeling the relief of satisfied laziness

"Do you have to dress up?" asks Mable

"No, at least nobody said to do it, so just normal clothes." Says Effie

"I'm just going to hang your nightgown up, I'm sure it's not dirty." Says Mable, doing so

"Whatever floats your boat." Says Effie

"I could always leave it on the floor like you do." Says Mable, playfully smug

"You're the one who's going to be in here all day." Says Effie

"True." Says Mable, fetching a bra, shorts, and a t-shirt for her sister and beginning to dress her

"Go eat breakfast so I can put your shoes on." Says Mable, going back to her game, Effie sighs, disheartened by the prospect of work as she leaves the room and heads into the dark kitchen, lit only by a small appliance bulb over the stove, she opens the refrigerator and pulls out the gallon pitcher of standard liquid breakfast and places it on the vinyl floor, she grabs her double size coffee mug off of the counter, places it on the ground, fills it, picks it up with her foot and leans against the counter, bringing the mug to her mouth to start drinking the thick substance artificially flavored with something that bore no resemblance to a real flavor, a palatable blend of flavor, the subtle flavor largely methyl eugenol with a hint of artificial vanilla, drinking laboriously but hungry and thirsty enough to be unfazed by the difficulty of doing so, stopping to breath heavily for a moment before starting another long slow chug of the second half of the drink. She breathes heavily for a moment, fills her mug halfway with water, and rinses off the majority of the standard breakfast that lines her mouth and throat. She puts her mug in the sink, opens the fridge and replaces the breakfast. The spot is hit, thickly; the walk back to the room feels subtly pregnant, comfortably and satisfyingly so.

"Let me lie down for a bit. Digest, you know." Says Effie, flopping into her bed

"I know. Hopefully you didn't go overboard." Says Mable

"Standard serving." Says Effie

"That's still a lot." Says Mable

"It's good though. I don't want to be hungry, not today of all days." Says Effie

"That's a good idea, you might need the protein if they start making you do workouts." Says Mable

"I hope not. Good god; I'm not in shape at all, and trying to workout would kill me faster than just being a cop." Says Effie

"Well, maybe it will save your life one day. So if they do, take it seriously, but don't hurt yourself, you know." Says Mable

"I'm just hoping for the best. I can do the talking part just fine; the physical fighting not in my wildest dreams." Says Effie

"Try your best. I don't know. I'll wake you up when you should leave." Says Mable

"Earlier than regular time, like 5 minutes early, the police station is a bit farther down the road." Says Effie

"Ok." Says Mable

"Thanks, love." Says Effie, baselessly confident, having replaced her thought of work with the conditioned expectation that she would be headed to school, the thought known as "headed somewhere" with no particular definition as to the place which she is headed, her mind easily slips into darkness, her thoughts drowning in her belly full of liquid contentment

"Time to go." Says Mable

"Goodness. You'd be surprised at how willing I am to forget the fact that I have to go to work today. I'm not even willing to think that thought, just blackness comes to mind if I even begin to." Says Effie, sitting up over the side of the bed

"I wouldn't be surprised at all. You tend to be a scaredy-cat when it comes to doing adventurous things. Do you want to wear shoes today? If you're working you might actually have to do thing with your feet, unlike in school." Says Mable

"Somehow you've put more thought into this than I have." Says Effie

"I just want things to go smoothly. I just keep thinking if I can help you get situated, then it will be smoother and smoother sailing every day. I like that thought." Says Mable

"You don't just take the path of least resistance, you're a trailblazer hacking your way through the jungle to make that path." Says Effie

"I guess. I mean I just thought it would be stupid if I put shoes on you ever day just for you to take them off the second you get to work." Says Mable

"I like shoes though." Says Effie

"I know this, but if you're not going to wear them at work I'm not putting them on." Says Mable

"Fair enough. Walking into people's houses without shoes on probably seems rude." Says Effie

"You're a cop, you're not a butler. Everything a cop does is rude for the most part, and that doesn't bother the cops at all. I doubt not wearing shoes in somebody's house is any ruder than beating somebody with a nightstick." Says Mable

"You're bolder than I am, but I suppose I'm rather bashful." Says Effie

"It's just a matter of logic, so if your bashfulness is preventing you from acting in a reasonable manner, that's just insanity at that point." Says Mable

"I'm just thinking protection would be a reasonable thing, especially if I'm going into the slums or something; there might be broken glass on the ground." Says Effie

"Look where you're going; anyways, people know better than that, and the last thing a poor person would do is break something made of glass, that's like tearing up a fiver at that point. Poor people don't even buy glass unless they have to." Says Mable

"Well, maybe a rich part of town then." Says Effie

"Rich people don't break glass, and neither do middle class people. If you wear shoes you will look lazy because then you can hardly do anything. Don't wear shoes. You want me to brush your teeth? You have to leave soon, you know." asks Mable

"I'll do it myself. As much as I love the help, I want to at least pretend that I am somewhat self-reliant. I shouldn't ask for help unless I need it, but your kindness just appeals to my laziness to no end, and that's probably not the mentality I should be coddling before I start my first day of real work." Says Effie

"Suit yourself. I like the initiative, but don't burden yourself too much trying to amass some imaginary form of self-respect. There's a happy medium somewhere, because if you're too stubborn to accept help and end up wasting time and being unproductive just because you wouldn't let somebody help you, that looks a lot worse than just being helped. People don't mind helping others anywhere near as much as they mind unproductivity and inefficiency. I doubt they did this to you, but the lessons where they teach you how painful those things really pound those thoughts into your head.

One of the easiest lessons ever; we had to try to pick up some heavy sheet of metal and carry it 50 yards so many times in a day, back and forth, and you can't get help on the first day, your lunch is whatever % of the number of times you were supposed to do it by lunchtime, and needless to say I didn't get any lunch that day, I could only drag it for like 10 yards before I became too weak and tired. The next day we had teams of four carrying the metal, and we got 100% of the work done and even got an hour of free time before lunch. I don't want to inflict that pain on anyone, I'm sure nobody else does either. The collapse was caused by that, people trying to be individualistic.

It was worse for the boys, they all had to fight for the piece of metal, 4 boys each trying to pull it to one side of the yard, then if they got too rough with each other, they had to sit out for being a criminal. They made the girls compete against the boys in two vs two teams, and of course the boys won easily, and that was the worst part, making girls compete with boys as if boys weren't naturally stronger. I'd hate to live in that sort of society. They tried to make the girls do the free-for-all against each other, but none of us were that stupid and said we would rather starve; the boys were that stupid though, so that was fun to watch I guess." Says Mable

"You've told me that before, I understand, but I guess without that experience I don't really have it reinforced in my head like you do." Says Effie

"I'm sure you will find that out at work, probably because you're so stubborn that you won't let people help you, until you finally let go of your pride and realized that things work way better when people help each other." Says Mable

"I'm not that proud. I'm going to brush my teeth." Says Effie

"Ok. Just remember that you might be an adult now, but that doesn't mean you're a superhero." Says Mable

"I doubt I will think I'm a superhero any time ever." Says Effie

"Well, just don't expect to perform beyond your capacity. Society works because everyone performs at their capacity. When people try to exceed their capacity they fail, and that was another part of the collapse, people trying to do more than they were physically and mentally able to manage." Says Mable

"Thankfully I'm not some kind of iconoclast, so it's not like I'm trying to argue with common sense just because I'm a loonie. I have no desire to return to those days, even if I don't know much about them, I know that they were bad, and I know society learned their lesson, so I'm not going to question that." Says Effie, as she leaves the room to brush her teeth

She enters the bathroom, flicks the light with her back, sits on the counter, grabs her toothbrush with her foot, toothpaste in the other, squeezes a drop of paste on it, grabs the brush with both feet, leans over the sink, placing the brush in her mouth and pressing the button, maneuvering the brush easily for most of two minutes until the drool coats the brush to the point where it slips out of her feet into the sink. She spits, rinses her feet and the brush, puts it back, runs her feet under the tap and washes the drool off of her face with her feet, leans into the tap, rinses, spits, turns the tap off, gets off of the counter, and wipes her feet on the bathmat, her face on the hanging towel. She flicks the light and returns to her room.

"You put on deodorant?" asks Mable

"No. I don't ever stink, so I don't need to." Says Effie

"That's just because you don't sweat a lot, but if you're doing physical work I would be cautious. You don't want to start smelling bad on your first day of work." Says Mable

"I doubt I'm going to be doing lots of physical labor anyways. Probably just listening and talking because it's the first day of training." Says Effie

"Well, just don't come home embarrassed. If you don't want to listen, that's fine, but at least now it's not my fault if you stink." Says Mable

"I don't stink, and I've never known myself to stink, so until that's proven otherwise I'm not going to wear deodorant." Says Effie

"Whatever. Have fun." Says Mable

"Try to do something besides play with your horses all day." Says Effie

"I'll study today, later." Says Mable

"To do that means you would have to look away from the computer screen." Teases Effie

"You know very well that I am more than willing to put down the game to take care of my responsibilities, one of which is you, and the other is studying." Says Mable

"I know; it's just an eerie sight, seeing you so enthralled by that game." Says Effie

"How do you think I feel when you're in bed all the time?" asks Mable

"I do other things, but I'm lazy, so what can I say." Says Effie

"Well, I love horses, so what can I say." Says Mable, imitating defensively

"Fair enough, be good. I'll be home sooner or later, I don't know if a work shift is longer than a school day, but it might be." Says Effie

"Okie dokie. Bye bye." Says Mable

"Bye bye." Says Effie, walking out of her room, down the dark hallway, her parents still asleep, turning the door handle with her foot, slipping through the door, and closing it quietly; she ventures into the streets, nervous, but more than compulsive enough to go where she needs to go when she needs to.

# 2.2

The sun crawls over the turquoise horizon, visible in every crosswalk down the seemingly endless streets that would stretch in straight lines until the curvature of the earth rips them from view if they were ever empty for a moment. Effie walks her usual route with the quaint comfort of routine until she passes the school. Every step beyond that tremble with her nerves, but fear is seldom if ever enough to cause a person's march to falter, as they know they are worse than dead if they fail to march, but at worse only dead if they continue; that thought tends to make even the fear of death a comforting one, despite the natural tension in the heart, the mind remains comforted and at ease through the affair.

The modest gray buildings eventually give way to another modest gray building, markedly different due to the presence of a small private parking lot that leads into an underground garage. Shorter than the classier buildings, than residential buildings, area on par, but having a handful of stories chopped off the top. Dressed in the standard city uniform, gray with standard size rectangular windows of standard spacing, the modest bronze plaque next to the left of the door reads District 47 Police Station 4 in raised letters, the plastic panel to the right of the door has a large colorful picture of police sirens, the old style, the two red and blue colored globes, hanging off of each other at a 120 degree angle, physically nonsensical, but the standard style. Above this picture which comprises 60% of the panel is a large number four. Effie walks up the steps mechanically, ghost dead and cold to her fate, her body indifferent to her mind's reluctance, operating out of knowledge rather than sentiment. She taps the accessibility button with her rump and enters the police station. A woman in uniform is sitting at the desk, clicking away at a computer, she looks up at Effie, but says nothing, Effie walks up to the woman.

"Here for training, I take it?" asks the woman

"Yeah..."

"Your friends are down the hall, on your left. Look for the open door." Says the woman

"Thank you." Says Effie, timidly, the woman goes back to clicking away at her computer, Effie heads down the hall, sees an open door that leads into a classroom of sorts, similar to her prior classroom, chairs loosely scattered through the small room, her classmates all there; business as usual. An empty seat is next to Peggy.

"Jesus, Peggy. Why do you have a sword?" asks Effie

"It's a cutlass. I got it for my birthday. My parents said I should try to look eager." Says Peggy

"I think that's going a bit overboard." Says Effie

"It's a status symbol. Not everybody gets to carry a sword you know." Says Peggy

"I thought you could always carry a sword." Says Amos

"Well, I can, technically. It's frowned upon, but now that I'm a cop, it's totally reasonable." Says Peggy

"I should have known you would get to work late, Effie. Some things never change." Says Amos

"I'm not late. Am I? It's not even 8:30. It's like 8:25." Says Effie

"5 minutes early is 10 minutes late." Says Amos

"If it was 10 minutes late they would have said to be here at 8:15." Says Effie

"It's just a sign of respect to be early, but you've never been big on that." Says Amos

"You got me. If the teacher or whoever isn't even here, I don't see how he would even be respected." Says Effie

"Oh, he's here. He checked in on us already, goes 'everybody here?', and we've got to say, 'No, Effie's not here yet'. I'm telling you, that rule applies now more than ever." Says Amos

"I'll keep that in mind, sorry. I'm here now, so it's whatever." Says Effie

"Whatever; making us all look bad." Says Amos

"Sorry. Jesus. I didn't realize it was that important." Says Effie

"Don't worry about it, the guy wasn't upset or anything." Says Peggy

"Good. People just need to say what time we should actually be here and not presume we'll be so prudent as to arrive 15 minutes early to everything." Says Effie

"Then everyone would just show up 15 minutes before that time. I'll let it go. Don't worry about it. We'll just tell him you're one of the slow children." Teases Peggy

"Considering that Horse was here 15 minutes early, that's hardly an excuse." Says Amos

"Just drop it. I'm not used to this sort of thing, ok? I'll be here 15 minutes early next time." Says Effie

"Good." Says Amos, the other three in the room quiet as usual, a police officer walks in the room

"Welcome to the force. I'm Andre. I'm sure all of you know right from wrong, so we'll just get you situated and get down to the nitty gritty. Ok?" Says the man, tall, muscled, full of arms and legs, crew cut light brown hair, eyes warm and full of empty stupidity, brimming with confidence and charm.

"All right." Says Amos, boldly, exited

"Good. I'll explain the system we use. The reason crimes happen is because people aren't afraid of the police. If people are scared and know that we'll fuck their day up, they won't commit crimes. That's most of it. If somebody calls in, and you get a call on the radio to go somewhere to investigate; step one is to go there, find whoever it is that got the cops called on them, then try to rough them up, if they fight back a little bit, just go ham on them with your nightstick, but if they pull out a knife or a gun, just shoot them. We try to make sure everyone that calls in a crime gives a description of the man, so just go with that. You can tell if somebody is guilty because they will look scared and guilty; you quickly learn the difference between that and the true surprise and actual innocence that people feel when you start to harass the wrong guy. If they run away, shoot them. If you are a girl and a boy hits you, shoot them, but try not to kill them. That's it for the most part.

There is also the papery kind, where the state will give us some papers to go arrest somebody who is doing money style crime. Those people will usually cooperate, so just put them in cuffs and take them to the station. The paper cops will take care of the papery stuff once they're here, so don't worry about it. You might have to interrogate them a bit, especially if you're good at it, but you don't need to know any of the ins and outs of paper crime. Paper cops are too bookish for that, they're all full of legal words and things like that, people aren't intimidated by that, they just fight back with their own legal words. You need to let those paper criminals know that you're an animal, you will tear that paper bag to shreds no question, and then they'll know what the deal is.

I doubt any of you can drive or shoot a gun, but we'll teach you. If you're doing security for some kind of event, make an example out of somebody who's getting a little rowdy just so the people know we're not fucking around; a stitch in time saves nine you know. If you beat somebody up, they probably learned their lesson. If you have to shoot somebody, if they're a fighter or a runner, you want to make sure you give em a good double tap once they're on the ground just to make sure they're dead; we have no tolerance for that sort of shit and the civs should all know that.

I know you're all rookies, but that doesn't matter too much. If we're doing something big time, like a raid, the same rules apply for the most part. We'll give you a badass gun, like nice rifle or a sub, and basically shoot everybody who doesn't duck and cover, if they curl up into a ball on the ground don't shoot them. That's all the rundown I can think of right now, any questions?" Says Andre

"What is a double tap?" asks Effie, timidly

"You shoot them in the head twice. Shit, you don't have arms, so I guess your partner will do it. You're the good cop, right? I know we got one. Ok, so Tina can teach you how to do that part of your job; the same rules apply, to whatever extent you can do them, I don't know exactly, kick them or something, or just let your partner do the work. You will mostly get domestic cases and stuff, so you're mainly there to comfort the women and children, and your partner will beat up the man. You've got an important job, making sure we look good and stuff, not 100% assholes but also decent people too." Says Andre

"Ok..." says Effie

"So no questions?" asks Andre "Good. We'll get you some uniforms and guns, and do some skills assessments after that. Follow me." Says Andre, he leads the rookies out of the room and down the hall into the armory

"Benito, get these kids some uniforms, we'll get guns later. We got your measurements already from the state, so just tell Benny here your name, hopefully none of you grew in the past week. If you start to get fat like Benny here, just tell him and we'll measure you. He cleans your guns, and he mends your uniforms if you get cut or something. He also washes them. He's fat because as I'm sure you know, we get donuts, and if you're not using that crime-fighting energy to enforce the law, it goes straight to your belly." Says Andre

"I'm not that fat, Andre." Says Benny, not fat at all, smaller than Andre in almost every way

"You want to lift that shirt up for us? I'll be happy to show these kids the difference between a desk cop and a real cop." Says Andre

"Fuck off, Andre. Here's your uniforms. Welcome to the force." Says Andre, taking out a large box, full of bags with clothes, labeled by a piece of masking tape, name written on the bag, the kids look at him

"I'm just saying; I've got this shredded sixer, and Andre looks like a maternal grandpa in the locker room." Says Andre

"Hey, Andre. How about you help hand out these uniforms instead of stroking that ego of yours." Says Benny, handing Andre a bag, labeled with a name, Andre looks at it, looks back at Benny, slightly insulted but too cocksure to have this dwindle any of his pride, being subject to an insult only reaffirms his perception of superiority

"Fuck you Benny, that's your job." Says Andre, handing the bag back to Benny

"What happened to team work?" asks Benny

"You do your job, I do mine. That's teamwork." Says Andre

"We could do this together you know, take half the time." Says Benny

"We'd be done already if you just did your damn job." Says Andre

"We'd be here all day if you tried to do my job, so remember that, and try to respect me." Says Benny

"Fuck you Benny. Don't talk shit like that, criticizing a specialized workforce." Says Andre

"I'm just saying, you're the one talking shit." Says Benny

"You're not telling these kids to do your job, so the fuck is that?" asks Andre

"They're not talking shit, you prick." Says Benny

"Fuck off. You're holding us hostage, and I'm just trying to get the work done." Says Andre

"Hold this one. You give that one out, and I'll give the rest out." Says Benny, handing Andre back the bag

"Horse." Says Benny, handing the bag to Horse; "Amos."... "Peggy"..."Ada"... "Mary"; Benny looks at Andre and raises his eyebrow, Andre looks at the bag, flustered, embarrassed, and looks at Benny

"That's mine." Says Effie, softly

"Cool. Thanks. I should have figured that out too." Laughs Andre, embarrassed, handing her the last bag, looking at her, grimaces awkwardly she wiggles her shoulder, he puts the paper straps over her shoulder

"If you could fly you'd rub that shit in my face, Benny. You're a prick too, you know; I love you, but you're such a prick." Laughs Andre

"I'm a cop, what did you expect." Says Benny, dryly

"You're crazy man. We'll be back later." Says Andre, leading the kids down the hall

"As you can tell, Benny is a prick, but he's a good guy. Here's the locker rooms, go get dressed, you got cubby's with your names on em, down in the rookie corner on the far side. We'll give you badges when you get your guns. But hey, uh, pirate girl, maybe leave that sword in your cubby. It's badass, but it's not great for beating people; we mainly beat people, we don't kill everyone you know." Says Andre

"Gotcha." Says Peggy

"Definitely on raids though, I want to see you fuck somebody's day up with that. Never had a pirate before." Says Andre

"It'll be my pleasure. It's what I was born to do, you know." Says Peggy, smiling boldly

"I like it." Says Andre, the rookies enter the locker rooms

The girls head to the rookie corner, noticeably indifferentiable save for the fact that it is in the corner across from the toilets. The girls open their bags to get dressed. Standard blue, blouses, high-waisted short shorts, utility belt.

"You want some help?" asks Mary, looking at Effie, the rest of the girls mostly dressed, Peggy lagging behind slightly

"I'm not trying to hold up the show." Says Effie

"That's for the best." Says Mary, starting to undress Effie and put her police clothes on

"You look nice." Says Mary, putting Effie's belt on

"Thanks, you too." Says Effie

"I'm scared, but hopefully things will be ok." Says Mary

"I'm sure things will be great." Says Peggy

"I'm sure a blind cop is just what this district needs." Says Ada

"I thought you would do that ghost shit on crime scenes." Says Peggy

"If the force has the brains to put me there, that's about all the use I can be. It was profoundly ambitious to put me on the force with all of you. Even Effie can see at least; that's better than me." Says Ada

"I mean, you've got that cane, that's pretty close." Says Peggy

"If criminals were the curbs of sidewalks, I would be the perfect cop, otherwise my cane won't be of much use." Says Ada

"I'm sure the caste officer reminded the police of your skill. It's in your file anyways, it's not like they could ignore it." Says Effie

"That's optimistic. They would need to know how to read, and beyond that know what a necromancer is. I know that's a big word, and I've never even seen a word in my life." Says Ada

"I'm sure they have some smart people here." Says Mary

"We'll find out." Says Ada, scoffing

"Let's go. Hate to hold up the force." Says Peggy, leading the girls out of the locker room back into the hallway

"Good to see the uniforms fit. Snug as a bug it looks like. Definitely don't want loose or wrinkled uniforms, that doesn't look classy. One thing though, good cop, what was your name?" asks Andre

"Effie." She says

"Yeah, you're a good cop, so you have the same uniform, but you should unbutton your blouse to show off those tits. That's an important part of being a good cop." Asks Andre

"Really?" Asks Effie

"Yeah, you got to convince people that you're friendly and stuff, and it helps get the criminals to talk when you shove those boobies in their face." Says Andre

"Ok..." says Effie, Mary looks at her nervously and unbuttons her blouse slightly

"One more button, I think that's standard." Says Andre, Mary undoes one more button

"Now you're a good cop. Get some sexy bras if you can, that goes a long way. I'm not going to teach you the ropes, that's Tina, she's good at that. I don't think criminals would be happy if I was pulling that sort of shit on them. Maybe some girls, but girls don't commit crimes like that, and if they do, they respond real well to intimidation. Follow me." Says Andre, Effie's cleavage exposed, the top of her bra peeking out of her unbuttoned blouse, Andre leads them back to benny

"Get these rookies their guns and badges" says Andre

"Ok." Says Benny

"No gun for me." Says Effie

"That makes sense." Says Benny

"I'm blind." Says Ada

"Ok. 4 guns it is. "Why do you have that hat? If you want a hat I can get you a hat, like a cop hat. That's a top hat." Says Benny

"I'm a Mormon." Says Mary

"What's that?" asks Benny

"She predicts the future and whatnot with her hat." Says Ada

"Weird, ok. I see you're just carrying it, but don't wear it, that's not uniform. Just keep it in the car or something. Maybe the chief can find a use for that magic, that's not my job though." says Benny, fetching 4 guns, and 2 magazines for each gun, handing them to the appropriate people.

"Ok, the gun goes in the holster, and the mags go in those little straps. Some nightsticks and badges too." Says Andre, Benny goes to get them

"6 badges, four nightsticks?" asks Benny, unsure of himself, handing out the supplies

"I'd just be swinging in the dark, so none for me." Says Ada

"Fuck are you going to do if you can't see?" asks Benny

"Don't question the caste officer, shithead." Says Andre

"I'm a necromancer, I can talk to ghosts." Says Ada

"Fucking freak-show today, I'm sure the chief can put that to use though, lots of dead people. Especially if you get the ghosts of the people we shoot to confess to the crimes or whatever." Says Benny

"Ok..."

"The badge just clips into your breast pocket, and the nightstick in that little strap. Now we've got skills assessment, and no, Benny, they're not freaks; they have real skills that will help the force. Real cop shit, not just closet attendant." Says Andre, Mary puts the badge on Effie, the rookies now dressed for success

"Fuck off, Andre." Says Benny, picking up a gun, starting to disassemble it

"So that's Benny, luckily you don't have to spend much time with the prick. There's a reason he got put on closet duty." Says Andre, before starting to walk away

"It's because I can read, shithead!" Says Benny

"Fuck you, Benny!" shouts Andre, as he leads the girls down the hall

# 2.3

"Assessment is pretty quick; the chief is smart as fuck and know this shit like his wife's back. So then we can do some skills work, maybe even get out into the field later on today." Says Andre, walking down the hall to find the chief's office, opens the door.

"Chief." Says Andre

"Andre." Says the Chief

"You want to assess these rookies?" Asks Andre

"It's done already. Just read their files this morning. The pirate and the two men are standard cops, the Mormon is a detective, necromancer forensics, and the good cop is obviously the good cop. Get to work." Says the Chief

"Got it, Chief." Says Andre, as he closes the door

"So just normal shit, you already know what you're going to be doing, so we'll go to the range. Forensics is just a big word for investigating crime scenes like you said, so that's all that is. Range is down here." Says Andre, he shows the rookies into the range.

"Ok, so I'm sure you know how to pull the trigger, but that's not all it is. Normally I've got one in the chamber, but I held back today just to show you how to do it. You pull out your gun, it should have a mag in there, but if you don't, you put the mag in at the bottom, pull back the slide, then you start shooting. Get some ear protectors, we don't use them in the field, but this shit is loud and fucks your ears up if you spend all day doing it. Basically just load the gun up, then shoot at those targets; try to hit them, but practice makes perfect. When everybody fires off their two clips, we'll head back to Benny. These are just 9's, so the recoil shouldn't be too hard on you, but it's definitely still there, so watch out. If you want a 45, talk to Benny and he can hook you up, those are harder to handle though. The earmuffs are over here." Says Andre, showing the rookies, each get a pair, Effie reasonable enough to grab a pair with her feet and put them on herself without wasting people's time, the rookies start shooting, everyone shooting handedly and enjoying themselves save for Mary, too weak and scared to shoot with anything but the most timidity, Peggy dropping her clip onto the table, quickly slamming the gun into the second mag in her belt and easily popping it into place with her hook, pulling the slide with the meaty rubber base on her prosthetic. Having emptied their clips, the three come to watch Mary, who begins shooting faster due to social pressure, reloading and firing her second mag wildly, in desperation, missing all of her shots. She holsters her gun and the crew gathers around Andre, taking off their earmuffs.

"You've got to slow down girl, if you're not hitting the criminal you're not doing your job. I was watching you three, very nice, for rookies you impressed me. You gave it a good effort, little pirate, but I could see you were getting tired at the end. I know you only have one hand, and that makes it harder, but it was impressive to see you be clever like that. Get some practice in, warm-up before work, you'll be there. I know you're a girl, Hat girl, but that's no excuse when the pirate girl is coming in and shooting quality with one hand. Make sure you get some practice; I know you're a detective, but the same rules apply, and sometimes the people you have to question might fight or run away, and that's when you got to heed the call of duty." Says Andre

"Sorry. I know." Says Mary

"Peggy, by the way." Says Peggy

"I'll remember that. It fits." Says Andre

"Mary." Says Mary

"Got it. Wheels, Horse?" Says Andre

"Yeah." Says Amos, Horse nods

"Ok." Says Andre

"Is there any practice I should do? Did the chief say anything about my ability?" asks Effie, worriedly feeling left out

"Yeah, says you have some nice tits. That's great. I don't know how you would shoot a gun, but just be with your partner, maybe practice some kicking or something. I'm not clever, you know." Says Andre

"I mean, like my telekinesis." Says Effie

"What? I don't know what that is." Says Andre

"She can make small things float." Says Peggy

"No, he didn't say anything. Like I said, I'm not clever, but if you're at the station later, Tina giving you a rundown, after you get that done, talk to him, he's smart, he'll know what you're talking about." Says Andre

"Ok..." says Effie

"You should be all set, so partner up. I guess a few of you have extra training, detective and forensic, good cop and whatnot. So I'll try to get that situated today. I know you're rookies, you might not feel confident enough to hit the streets raw like this, so we can hit the sim-room, just to put you through some situations so you are familiar with what you should do. Hell, you can probably get cruiser certified while we're at it. If we get some paper perps in today, I can start to teach you some interrogating, and maybe we can do other things." Says Andre, the rookies look around, unsure of what is being said exactly

"Yeah, we'll hit the sim room. Just remember to see Benny and load up before you leave." Says Andre, leading the kids out of the range, down the hall

"Hop in that elevator Wheels, we're going to the second floor." Says Andre, leading the rookies up the stairs, into the second floor, Amos comes out of the elevator and they continue

"This is mostly offices and stuff, paper cops and shit, so it's not important, but the important part is the sim room. There's also the breakroom, but our coffee and donuts can't compare to what you get on the streets, so definitely make better decisions, you shouldn't be holed up at the station, but paper cops don't deserve the classy eats from around the city, so it works out." Says Andre, as the unit enters a large room, three arcade machines, one of the a full scale replica of the front seat of a car in front of a large three panel screen

"So this is the sim room, it just teaches you how to be a cop and shit, it's also for fun if you're bored and off duty. This is great because you see way more action that you otherwise would, and it helps you get better at your job; real productive shit. I take it you're with your partners already, so that works. Wheels, Horse, you two don't need more training, so I want to get you cruiser certified ASAP. Hop in that car right there. We got a good cruiser for you, Wheels, so don't worry about that, you can just roll your chair into the real one, but I take it Horse here will be driving, so hop in that passenger side." Says Andre

"His name is Amos." Says Peggy

"Shit, I been called Nigger most of my life, so Wheels works for me." Says Amos, hopping into the car, Horse instinctively follows him and sits the driver seat, the other four find chairs sitting behind the car in observation

"Damn, got it. Amos. I feel it." Says Andre,

"Turn that key." Says Andre, Amos points to it, Horse turns it, the Machine lights up, a green and black wireframe 2D GPS on the dashboard of the cruiser, showing the car as a green dot in the center, the large screen showing a first person view over the hood, the mirror images simulated, the car sits in a parking space

"Grab that strap. I know it's plastic, but it works." Says Andre, a box giving directions instructing the diver to grab the gearshift and pull down, showing a picture with the needle over the R, Horse puts the car in reverse, a picture showing a foot stepping on the gas pedal shows up

"Soft touch, soft with the foot." Says Amos, Horse touches the gas softly, the car inches backwards, the picture tells him to start turning the wheel, he does so, slowly the car begins to face out of the parking lot. It tells him to brake, he does so, the rapid stomp of the brake causes him to slam on the brake. It tells him to shift the car into drive, he does so, hit the gas, he does so, the car begins to creep up slowly, the arrows tell him to turn around the parking lot, showing him the picture of turning. He manages to complete the lap without problems.

"Kid's a natural. Slow and steady so they say. Let's hope he can go fast and steady." Says Andre, the arrows on the virtual road direct him into out of the parking lot, and turning right, he does so, slowly, moving at five miles per hour down the street. The game starts to honk at him; a car appears in the virtual mirror.

"Too slow. More gas." Says Andre

"More go foot. Slow but more." Says Amos, Horse slowly begins to accelerate, nearing the 25 mile an hour speed limit on the road

"Red light, stop." Says Amos, Horse slams on the brakes like the picture tells him to, stopping a good number of feet below the intersection, the game makes a loud crash, the car rumbles due to a large motor in the back of the car to emulate shaking, Horse wide eyed and frightened

"Too hard on the stop." Says Amos

"That's why we sim. In a car that fear starts to get you." Says Andre

"Green light, go." Says Amos, as the light turns green, the picture showing to step on the gas, Horse does so slowly, the honking again

"More, faster." Says Amos, he goes faster, speeding up at a reasonable rate

"Red light." Says Amos, Horse eases on the brakes softly, not enough, the car crashes into a stopped car, another loud noise and rumble, the virtual hood visibly dented horse frightened again

"Too soft on the stop." Says Amos, Horse on edge, continuing down the road once the light turns green, making it to the next red light and stopping correctly, slowly at first, instinctively, increasing the pressure behind the brakes as he approaches the stopped car

"I'll be damned, third time's the charm." Says Andre, Horse drives steadily through the following green light, stops at the next red light, and makes it through the intersection

"Complete!" says the game, in an excited tone, displaying two lists of numbers, some on the left red percentages, time, damage, some of the checkpoints green. The right side all 100%. A number code appears at the bottom.

"How did I get 100%, I didn't do anything?" asks Amos

"You didn't shoot anybody. That's classy. Too many cops just fuck around in here and try to get 0% on the early levels as passenger." Says Andre

"Damn son, that's fucked up." Says Amos

"I mean, if you don't remember the level codes, it can take a bit to get to a good one. You just punch that code in on the scanner to skip levels. Hit that siren switch on the scanner. The game makes a quick woop woop, startling Horse, and the car is back I the parking lot. Showing him what to do again, he does it, easily making it out of the parking lot and back on the street. Driving forward, right turn on green, left turn at a light, Horse easily following the lights and the virtual arrows on the road, he sits at a red light, told to turn right.

"Right on red." Says Amos, Horse does nothing

"Right turn, go on red." Says Amos again, the picture of the gas pedal appears again, Horse moves slowly, he hears the screeching of the breaks, startled

"Look first. Then go. Don't get hit." Says Amos, Horse nods, making it through the next green light, turning right on red easily, making it to the next stop light, a bandit appears on the right side of the screen, loud gunshots, bullet holes in the screen, Amos pulls the plastic gun and shoots the man easily, his own gunshots even louder than the criminal's

"You're slow rookie!" Says Andre, playfully condescending

"Shit. I wasn't expecting that." Says Amos

"You're a cop, you got to expect that sort of shit on every corner. If you let your guard down you get killed my man." Says Andre

"Got it." Says Amos, Horse still sitting at the light, startled, "Go. Don't stop." Says Amos, Horse continues driving normally, down a longer stretch of road, bandits begin popping out of windows and alleys, nothing on the drivers side, Amos shoots them handedly before they shoot, Horse driving cautiously, unnerved by the gunfire but more so by the fear of crashing, the fear of the rumble

"Nice. Shoot away from the screen to reload." Says Andre, Amos does so, Horse makes it through the next light, the level complete

"It's a lot of this, maybe an hour or two to get certified, you can always repeat levels you fail, but if you get decent ranks on the later levels they forgive any early hiccups. You girls can fuck around on those other machines; wait for your supervisor to show up. The chief knows we're in here, and if he doesn't it's the first place anyone would look, so just hang out and get some practice in. Pair up so at least one of you can shoot; it's twice as hard, but twice as fun, at least in sim." Says Andre, Peggy looks at Effie, she gets up to go to the arcade machine grabs a gun and shoots it at the screen to begin, the typical arcade handgun shooter

"Damn, picking the pistol game. I'm a fan of the sub-machine gun myself, but I see you're a realist. You go get trained too, Mary." Says Andre

"I'll just watch for now." Says Mary, timid

"I guess detectives don't shoot that much, but it's still a good skill to have." Says Andre, going back to watching the boys, Horse getting on the freeway

"Faster." Says Amos, the game signaling for more gas, teaching him to change lanes, he does so once, successfully, tries again, a large crash, he spins out, crashes into the wall, the car rumbling

"Mirrors, look behind you." Says Amos, pointing at the mirrors, the screen flashing "Try again?" he presses the gas to start the level over, easily entering the highway, masterfully switching lanes, getting off the highway, finishing the level, 100%.

"Nice." Says Andre, the next level starts off the same, Horse gets on the highway, a red sports car comes speeding past him, the yellow direction arrow turns red, Horse continues at the normal speed, gauging by the cars around him, dramatic failure music plays as the red car drives out of view

"You have to chase him, he's going too fast." Says Amos, Andre scoffs, Horse tries again, he starts to chase the car, Amos hits the siren as the game instructs, this time chasing the car skillfully avoiding the other cars, keeping in sight of the red car until it gets off of the highway and drifts around the corner through the underpass, 100% on the left side, red 0% on the right

"What?" asks Amos

"You didn't shoot that guy." Says Andre

"Damn, didn't tell me that." Says Amos

"I told you shoot them if they're runners." Says Andre

"Shit, got it. Even in cars. Got it." Says Amos, Horse tries again, getting to the same point, starting the chase, Amos flips the siren on and tries to shoot the red car, bullet holes appear on the screen.

"Shit." Says Amos

"Shoot out the window, dipshit." Says Andre, scoffing, Amos sticks his gun out the window and starts shooting at the red car, plinking noises of bullets hitting the car, unloading two clips before the red car eventually spins out and crashes into the wall, Horse follows the arrows to the exit ramp of the highway, slowing down as the game shows him to take the foot off the gas, Amos flips the siren off. The two columns mostly 100%, one 0% on Amos's side

"What's that for?" asks Amos

"No double tap." Says Andre

"You don't think he was dead?" asks Amos

"You just got to make sure, keep shooting at the car until it's out of view. I mean, you don't have to stop and check, but keep unloading for quality assurance." Says Andre

"I thought you couldn't read anyways." Says Amos

"I don't need to read to know what you didn't do. It's instinct, my man." Says Andre

"That's real, my man." Says Amos

"This is my life. It's your life too now. Real life, be serious about the sim, it's going to be raw and real soon enough, my man." Says Andre

"I feel you." Says Amos, Horse drive onto the next level, the same, but this time a passenger hangs out of the red car, starting to shoot at the cruiser, Amos misses twice before hitting the shooter, then continues shooting at the red car, unloading a full clip on it as it crashes

"Quality. You're not a bad shot." Says Andre

"Thanks." Says Amos, Peggy enjoying herself, easily mastering the auto-scrolling shooter game, the early levels having a good number of civilians who squat down and cover their heads, Peggy quite wary to shoot the runners as well as the shooters, the next level the boys face is a chase through the city streets, Horse struggles with the turns, too cautious at first, the red car easily gets away, he tries to use the handbrake as the game instructs, spinning out easily, trying again, crashing into a civilian car

"This level is hard; it takes a lot of practice. Thankfully we don't have too many badass motherfuckers in the city that can drive like that." Says Andre, Horse keeps trying, learning by fear and instinct; the rumbling of the car reminding him very physically when he makes a mistake. Instinctively mastering the handbrake enough to make enough turns and avoid traffic to give Amos enough time to shoot down the red car.

"Fuck, you don't even need to beat this level and he does it anyways. This fucker can drive. Anyways, you two are already cruiser certified, so that's quality. There are some other levels, but it's nonsense like jumps and whatnot, or civilian driving which is boring as shit, no need to do that. You two can fuck around on the shooter and let those girls have a go at this. There's no certification on the shooter, we just give everyone the benefit of the doubt that they know how to shoot people. We're making headway." Says Andre

"Word." Says Amos, as he gets out of the car, Horse follows his lead

"So you two ambitious girls, come give this one a go." Says Andre

"Roger that." Says Peggy, Effie looks at her nervously

"So one of you needs to be able to shoot, and clearly it's not going to be the one without arms. That means you're driving toots." Says Andre

"Ok..." says Effie, getting into the car

"It's totally easy, don't worry. Plenty of cops drive with their feet so they can shoot two guns out the window at the same time, so it should be a breeze for you, since you don't even have to multi-task like that. Just follow the instructions it gives you. I don't know what I'm going to do with the blind girl, cause she can't shoot even if the other one drives, but they technically only need the civilian driving certification cause they're not technically going out to do policing, just police work." Says Andre, Effie follows the instructions, her feet adroitly manipulating the automatic gear shift next to the wheel, driving slowly, taking to it easily, her left leg nimble enough to steer the wheel easily. Peggy bored with the lack of shooting compared to the previous game. Eventually she reaches the final level, she finds herself unable to perform the necessary handbrake turn skillfully, managing to grab the handbrake with her right foot and make the turn, but unable to accelerate out of the turn fast enough to keep up with the criminal

"God damn, better than I thought, like I said you don't need this level, so you're technically good. I didn't even think you'd try the handbrake without any hands, but you're ambitious." Says Andre

"I mean technically my feet are my hands, for the most part anyways." Says Effie, the adrenaline and fear of failure still palpable, but the euphoria of success calms her nerves to the point of a comfortable high.

"Good point. I mean you can always practice, but like I said that shit isn't too important. We've got a lot that we can fuck around in, we do some races and shit, lots of those kinds of turns, but that's mainly for sport, it's not that applicable. So I don't know shit about what a detective or forensic cop actually does, so I can't really send them on the beat, I don't even think they get one, but you two, you all are good if you want to head out, see if you can keep the peace, just radio if you have any questions or something. Benny can throw you some keys. Like I said, you probably won't see anybody you need to shoot too often, but if you see some people loitering or whatnot, just go in and check up on them, if they get rowdy you can beat them, just make sure they're actually in the process of being decent people." Says Andre

"Ok..." says Effie, feeling completely unprepared, getting out of the car

"Fuck, you's a good cop though, so, um, I'll see if I can find Tina." Says Andre

"Tina here?" asks Andre, into his transceiver

"Not till later."

"Fuck it. So you're good to go. Like I said, you'll get the domestic cases if we have any, other than that just a regular cop plus extra when you've got to be the good cop. I'm sure Tina knows better than I do, but just let the kids and women cry into your tits if they're upset, try to comfort them and shit, say you'll protect them and everything will be ok. That's what I've seen Tina do, you can't really stroke their hair or anything, but fuck it, do whatever feels right, that nice good shit. When she's doing that you go rough up the man or whoever, ok Pegs?" asks Andre

"Got it." Says Peggy

"Ok, you're good to go, get to work. Basically just cruise around, look out for trouble, and wait till you get a call on the radio. Remember your number, cause they'll say number so-and-so, go to wherever. Then wherever gets put into your little GPS, easy as shit, shouldn't be too many guns blazing cause we're not doing raids or nothing, maybe a gun here and there on a bad day, but mostly just petty bullshit." Says Andre

"You last two, get in this car, we'll get this shit done quick and proper. Type in 1234 into that scanner, it will be boring, but since your partner can't shoot, I don't want to put too much pressure on you the first time making you pull double duty like that." Says Andre, the girls follow his instructions, Ada getting into the car, dumbfounded, understanding that she is being tested on her ability to ride in a car as a passenger.

"Why are you still here?" asks Andre

" We're leaving, just a bit distracted." Says Peggy

"Shitheads, stop fucking around in the shooter and get to work." Says Andre

"Shit, got it, boss." Says Amos

"Shit, I ain't your boss, that's the chief. I just know what's good for you." Says Andre

"I feel it." Says Amos, as the four walk out of the room and head down the hallway

# 2.4

"Shit Effie, you gone let me cry into those titties?" jokes Amos

"Something tells me if you're involved in a domestic dispute, you won't be the victim." Says Effie, dryly

"That's sexist." Says Amos

"If I show up and you're bawling, I'll let you do it." Says Effie

"Note to self: learn how to bawl." Jokes Amos

"Fuck you." Says Effie

"Hell, you was a damn good driver back there, I was going to give you props, but if you're going to be mean to me I might not do it." Says Amos

"Thanks." Says Effie, rolling her eyes, as the four get into the elevator

"Are you two confident about doing you jobs? I'm basically flying blind here." Says Effie

"The fuck? You didn't listen to what he said? We just cruise around and look for trouble, roll up to wherever we get called to. Your instructions going to be on the damn GPS, so you don't have an excuse to not know what you're doing." Says Amos

"I just don't share your same degree of confidence." Says Effie

"Shit, it's not rocket science, it's the furthest thing from rocket science." Says Amos

"She's just nervous, she always starts to doubt herself in times like these. Don't give her shit, I'm sure we'll be taking care of business like none other." Says Peggy, as they get out of the elevator

"Good luck. Don't pussy out when duty calls." Says Amos

"That's sexist." Says Effie

"Bullshit. Since when is a pussycat a god damn sex." Says Amos

"Forget it." Says Effie, as they show up in front of Benny

"Benny, we got cruiser certified, so fill us in on what we need to know." Says Amos

"Well, nothing really. Do you have parking at your house?" asks Benny

"What?" asks Amos

"I mean, do you have a free space, do your parents own a car?" asks Benny, Amos looks at Horse and shakes his head

"No." says Horse

"No." says Effie

"Ok then. You just keep the car and park it at your house. Don't turn the scanner off while you're on duty, that's it basically. The scanner is how the operator knows where you are in the city, so if you're the closest one to a crime, you'll get called to it. Just drive around for the most part, we generally operate in the southwest part of the city, so try to stay in that section, shouldn't be too hard. I'll get you a couple mags, put your empties on the counter." Says Benny, going to fetch keys and mags, the recruits do so

"The number of your car is on the key. Your names?" he says, returning, Amos looks at Horse

"Horse." Says Horse, Benny writes the name down on the ledger and tosses him the keys, Amos hands him two clips, and puts two in his own belt

"Effie." Says Effie, Benny writes the name down, looks up, makes no facial expression, grabs a metal S hook from his supply shelf behind him, hooks it on the key ring

"Put that in her belt loop." Says Benny, handing the S hook to Peggy, Peggy does so and replaces her spent mags

"You should be good to go. Try not to have questions, just trust your instinct. If you have a question ask the operator, no promises you'll get an answer." Says Benny

"Got it." Says Amos

"Good luck. I gave you the one with the passenger side ramp. It drops down flat when you open the door from the outside, just press the button on the dash to raise it, when you open the door from the inside only half of it drops down, so you'll roll out quick, just be ready for that." Says Benny

"Right." Says Amos

"Good luck. Now get to work. Cars are in the lot underground, down this hall, exit on the side of the building." Says Benny, looking back down at his papers, professionally looking busy, trying to think of something he should be doing, the four do as their told, walking down the hall, exiting on the side of the building

"No time to waste!" says Amos, excitedly going down the ramp into the surface level lot

"We never learned what to do if we arrest somebody." Says Effie

"We'll cross that bridge when and if we get there. He just told us to beat some sense into people and kill the people who need to be killed. If you're arresting somebody you're doing something wrong." Says Amos

"Well, I mean, if they commit a crime and don't resist." Says Effie

"Fuck it, cuff em, bring em to the station, they'll know what to do. Probably tell you to beat his ass and let him go, but fuck if I know." Says Amos, picking up speed on the ramp down into the garage

"Press that button on the keys, Horse." Says Amos, Horse does so

"Other button." Says Amos, horse does so, a car honks

"That's our car." Says Amos

"Effie." Says Peggy, Effie looks at her, "Right." Says Peggy, squeezing the lock button on the keyring hanging on Effie's belt, their car honks

"We could have just read the tops of the cars." Says Effie

"I'm not big on reading." Says Peggy, as they walk to their car, a loud bang as the passenger side floor of Horse's car hits the floor and echoes through the garage

"Jesus." Mutters Peggy, as Horse and Amos close their doors, turn their car on, and easily whip out of the garage, they arrive at their car, Effie grabs the keys with her foot, puts them into the driver side lock, turns the key, withdraws the key, places it back on the s-hook, opens the door and gets into the car, Peggy taps on the window

"Unlock it." She says, Effie reaches across the car with her leg and pulls the handle of the passenger door, Peggy opens the door

"You know there's a button on the door, right? It has the picture of an unlocked padlock." asks Peggy

"Now I do. We're car number 26, just remember that." Says Effie

"Got it. That was pretty skillful, your opening the door and whatnot." Says Peggy

"I told you I could use a key." Says Effie

"Well, just don't let anyone steal it." Says Peggy

"Nobody would fuck with a cop." Says Effie

"Well, you also don't have any arms, so keep that in mind." Says Peggy

"I'm sure people don't want to be on the wrong side of the law. Stealing a cop car is a death sentence." Says Effie, grabbing the key off of her belt, putting it in the ignition and turning it

"Fair enough. Let's see this baby in action." Says Peggy, Effie inhales before going through the motions, slowly backing the car up, turning it easily, stopping, and putting it in drive

"Remember that crashes are for real." Says Peggy, Effie puts it in park.

"Seatbelt." Says Effie

"What?" asks Peggy

"The seatbelt light is on." Says Effie, grabbing the seatbelt with her right foot, switching it over into her left foot to buckle it

"We're cops. That's like 200% not wearing a seatbelt, if I'm wearing one I can't hang out the window and shoot people either." Says Peggy

"Well, wait until that time comes. They protect you from crashes you know." Says Effie

"So just don't crash, eh?" Says Peggy

"I'm just saying." Says Effie

"Well, I'm just saying don't crash. You were a damn good driver anyways, shouldn't have anything to worry about." Says Peggy

"Fine." Says Effie, putting the car in drive and heading out of the garage, turning onto the street, continuing at the modest speed limit of the standard city road

"I'll keep my eyes peeled, you just focus on driving. I'm sure you'll get plenty of practice before you'll really be put to the test." Says Peggy

"It isn't that hard really, this is just like the first level, really simple driving." Says Effie

"Easy for you, now I know what Andre was saying, with the itch to just start shooting. All this tension and no action." Says Peggy

"Relax. I'm sure there's never as much action as in those games. We just get to cruise around, isn't that nice?" asks Effie

"I guess we can see the city, not that there's anything to see. Hopefully we get a call soon. Right now it's like school where we just have to sit here until lunch if nothing happens." Says Peggy

"Well, I get practice driving, so that's something." says Effie

"If this job is just me sitting in the car until lunch because there's no crime, I can see why they picked us for it. That's all we ever did, sit there and do nothing." Says Peggy

"Well, that sounds nice to me." Says Effie

"I'm just anxious is all, it's not a bad time, we get to look at all the people and wonder what they're doing. Nothing suspicious yet." Says Peggy

"Good. Don't be too anxious to do something, you might mistake somebody who isn't doing anything wrong as a criminal." Says Effie

"Even if that's true, we can still just go check up on them, just to make sure they're not a criminal." Says Peggy

"He never really explained where we would park if we have to go check up on somebody." Says Effie

"We're cops, you just park your car on the side of the road and it's other people's responsibility to get out of your way. I'll make sure to put the lights on so people notice." Says Peggy

"All rightly, I'm enjoying this. It's better than school, at least having something to do." Says Effie, driving around, proud of herself, feeling like a legitimate member of society for the first time in her life, unconcerned with her accomplishing of nothing, seeing that nothing as all of the something she needs to accomplish

"Cruiser 26, there's a report of a public disturbance in the parking lot of the Saint James center. Go make sure everything is all right. Sending directions to your cruiser." Says the radio operator, vapid and uninterested

"Roger that." Says Peggy, confidently, enjoying the power of wielding the scanner microphone, flipping on the sirens

"Ok..." says Effie, timidly

"Step on it, girl! We've got a job to do!" says Peggy excitedly, Effie starts to cruise at the meekest pace of hurry, all she can muster for the fear inside of her

"Why are you scared? We're cops! Everyone knows better than to fuck with us." Says Peggy

"It's just the jitters." Says Effie, breathing steadily, her devotion to her role in society operating her body, her thoughts paralyzed by fear, she follows the GPS instructions just as the simulation had taught her

After a few blocks, they arrive at the location. A large parking lot, cars with trunks open, a swap meet, the cruiser pulls into the lot. Peggy flips off the sound, but not the lights. A group of gentlemen shouting at each other, most rather indifferent to the presence of the police, one faction of the men, clad in cheap suits, more so rowdy, pushing at the others, just kids in track suits, defensive but growing timid as now two threats stare them down. Effie parks the car, a good forty yards from the scene of the tussle. Peggy gets out, confident as always.

"Gentleman, what seems to be the problem!?" she shouts, haughtily confident in her role, Effie gets out of the car and follows a short distance behind Peggy

"Officer! We're glad you're here. These punks here think they can peddle these things above standard prices. They don't seem to understand how things work. Hopefully you can educate these kids about how business is conducted, according to the good graces of the law, of course." Says a man in a suit

"Yeah! That's for damn sure! This man understands the law, you listen to him; standards! You kids need to hold yourselves to the standards as much as everyone else!" shouts Peggy, warmly authoritative

"Standards!? These assholes are trying to rob us of our hard earned money! They think they can take what they want and just spit in our hands to call it even! We're not fucking slaves, pay us the money we earned!" shouts the leader of the youth

"You shit for brains little fence! You'll learn your place real fucking quick! It's too late to barter you shithead! Care to remind these punks of where they stand in the world, officer?!" shouts the suited man

"Let's hope I don't have to. Let's be reasonable here." Says Peggy calmly, with no real understanding of the situation, confident regardless, assured that no understanding of the situation is needed

"My place? How about your place, asshole? What are you going to do without the supply? How's all that demand going to treat you then, shithead?" asks the youth

"You ungrateful piece of shit! I'll show you demand. Countless punks are willing to take your job, and I wouldn't be so comfortable knowing you're staring down the barrel of a gun right now." Says the man

"I ain't drawn it yet, now. Let's not be hasty. No reason to escalate things if we don't need to. Let's just handle this like adults." Says Peggy

"I'm just saying you think you know how things work, when things don't work like that anymore, oh no, things are changing, today, right now, so come talk to me when you have some business sense..." says the youth, looking at Peggy, her eyes warm and unassuming, aware of nothing to assume, he glances at Effie, standing silently in the background

"Solo D, Solo D! Scram, dogs! Now's our chance!" shouts the youth, as the gang of kids starts to bolt into their cars, Peggy instantly draws her weapon and begins shooting. Two shots, the leader drops, the other kids running into their cars full of merchandise, Peggy still shooting, dropping another as the cars begin to start, the tires squeal as the cars start to whip out of the parking lot, drifting around the suited men, Effie still shooting at the drivers through the crowd of suits, most suits drop to the ground, one starts to run. Peggy's sights change to the runner, shooting him down twice in the back.

"Postal! Postal! Shouts the suited leader, still squatting down, two of the other men draw guns, Peggy sees these two motion for their guns, and shoots them both mid-draw, sitting ducks at close range.

"Cool it! Chill! Fuck! For Christ's sake! What the fuck is wrong with you!" shouts the suited leader

"Don't fucking move!" shouts Peggy

"Fuck! Good god! What the fuck!" shouts the leader

"Me? The fuck is wrong with me?! Two of your boys were pulling guns on a cop! The fuck is that!? Are we good!? No more disturbances from anybody, you hear!? " asks Peggy, assertively, heart racing but still fearless

"Yeah. Chill out. Just chill. Ok?" says the squatting leader, cold faced, bewildered, his hands in the air

"Let's go, Peggy! We've done our job! It's done!" shouts Effie, pleading, half crying, scared, coming to terms with what it means to be a police officer, a click sounds behind her head

"Peggy, is it?" says a man calmly from behind Effie, "Unless you want your partner's head to explode, you're going to put your gun away." he says, Peggy turns around, looks at the man, old, white haired, casually smoking a cigarette with his other hand

"Shit." Whispers Peggy to herself, she does as she is told

"You two are young, I understand this, and rather than be vengeant, we're going to use this as a learning experience, something that we can both benefit from." Says the man, Effie breathing heavily, her eyes closed, shaking

"You two are going to come with me. As for you spineless gangsters over there, you are a disgrace, for letting it get to this point, for failing to do your jobs, and for letting our business partners suffer at the hands of your incompetence. Get out of my sight." Says the man sternly, he looks over his shoulder slightly and motions a dark blue sedan to drive over to him, it does so. He finishes his cigarette and flicks it away into the parking lot.

"You there, Peggy, front passenger seat." Says the man, motioning with the gun, Peggy gets in, the man opens the rear passenger door and pats Effie's ass in warm assurance, Effie gets into the back seat of the car, the man leans in, she scoots over to allow the man in.

"Now my gun is pointed at _your_ head, Peggy. Be wary of that, wont we?" says the man

"Don't do anything stupid, Peggy." Says Effie, distraught, overwhelmed

"I'm not doing anything. This is a learning experience, beneficial for all of us. Don't worry, Effie." Says Peggy, still bold, confident, taking the man's words at face value with little thought beyond that

"It's hard not to worry when a man has a gun at your head." Says Effie, as the car drives off

"Well I'm not going to do anything stupid, so it's like the gun doesn't even exist." Says Peggy, her ego scuffed ever so slightly by her failure, but rather unfazed by the experience, quite assured of her own logic as well as her immortality

"Jesus..." mutters Effie

"Now then girls, I'm sure this is your first day on the job, so I'm going to explain some things to you. We, us, those men you shot, my men, we are like you, we wear blue, we respect the law, and we are classy people. The runner, well, that was unfortunate, and I understand your instinct to shoot, but the sight of a blue-suit should relax that instinct entirely, we don't shoot you, and you don't, well you shouldn't, shoot us." Says the man

"Nobody told us anything about that." Says Peggy

"And I expect you to tell nobody about this, us, or any of the likeminded cooperation throughout the city of our fine people and your fine people. It is an unspoken bond, an unspoken trust, that surely must be preserved in order to maintain law, order, and justice within our city. The police only extend so far, the surface layer, you protect the common people from the criminals. Us, however, the blue-suits, we protect the criminals from the criminals, the classy criminals from the savages, and there is mutual respect between our two parties, as I'm sure you will understand that keeping the peace is far easier when most criminals that exist are orderly, reasonable, people that pose no threat to the common men nor the officers of the law. This is why we are your friends, we make your job easier, safer, and more productive, allowing you to address the civilian matters that are beyond our influence, while we attend to the more so serious, often destructive, process of reducing violent and savage crimes within our city." Says the man

"Got it. Would have helped if we had some explanation earlier, but that didn't happen. Blue-suits are friendlies." Says Peggy

"Good. Like I said this experience will be beneficial to the both of us, and I would very much so like to make use of your company." Says the man, patting Effie's thigh amiably

"Please, no, not that." Says Effie, wincing

"Not that, of course not, I am no savage. I simply seek a favor for the staying of my vengeance, and surely that is not too much to ask." Says the Man

"Sure thing, what can we do for you?" asks Peggy

"Not you, this is beyond your control. You can however put me in touch with those whomst I need to communicate with." Says the Man

"Radios back in the cruiser, boss, I don't know how to contact anyone other than that." Says Peggy

"I will handle that matter of the affairs. I will just hold on to you two for the moment, for collateral, so that we both can get the benefit, the forgiveness, the compassion that we deserve." Says the Man

"Well, we're still on the clock, so have at it. Hopefully you can get your business done before the clock strikes 5." Says Peggy

"I'm sure if such cannot be accomplished, you will be rewarded with overtime pay, for truly those who command you understand the value of the law and order your time is helping to establish." Says the Man

"I'm glad somebody understands, cause we sure as hell don't." says Peggy

"Clearly." Says the man, chuckling softly, the sedan drives through the garage door of a warehouse, it parks the man opens the door

"Come." He says, opening the door, Effie follows him, Peggy more than willing to oblige such a gentleman, the exit the car into a gray, rather dark warehouse, soft yellow industrial lights beam overhead, the building nondescript, full of shipping containers, some of the doors open, exposing a number of unknowable knickknacks, easily the sort criminals would take interest in. The man whistles.

"Tito. Holding." Says the man firmly, with elegance, Tito walks over, gun In hand

"Walk. Up those stairs over there." Says Tito, pointing to a metal stairwell leading to a second story catwalk against the far wall

"I have business to attend to. Look after them for me." Says the man

"Will do, boss." Says Tito, directing the girls up the stairs, through a door, into a hallway of offices, classy old offices with stained glass windows in the doors and names of dead people engraved into metal placards attached to the wood, they walk to the back of the hallway, a large conference room with windows, a table, surrounded by chairs, old but in good shape, spared the abuse of frequent sittings.

"Get comfortable. Might be a minute. Guns everywhere, and you should know damn well by now not to do anything stupid." Says the man, gesturing at the table with his gun, leaving the girls in the room, locking the door

# 2.5

Effie looks at Peggy sternly, upset

"I know not to do anything stupid. That guy was pure class. At least he understands something. You know there was no way I could know all of that stuff. Don't look at me like that." Says Peggy

"I'm sorry. I know you did your best. I'm just scared right now." Says Effie

"Don't be scared, that guy was cool. Hell, he even liked us more than his own cronies. That's got to set your mind at ease." Says Peggy

"We're prisoners, Peggy." Says Effie, saddened, hopeless

"No we're not, we're collateral." Says Peggy

"That is like being held hostage." Says Effie

"Well, the cops are good at getting people out of hostage situations. If these guys are friends with the cops, I'm sure it won't be hard at all for them to come pick us up. We learned our lesson, the suit boss gets a favor, and everything is peachy rainbows at the end of the day." Says Peggy

"I'm too weak and scared to disagree, I hope your right." Says Effie, tears slowly dripping down her face, silently crying softly without a whimper, subtly quivering lungs the only sniffle, Peggy taking a moment to walk around the room, curious, opening the first door in the back of the room, a largely empty closet, opening the second, finding a large janitorial closet, a few old cobwebbed brooms, a mop, a prison style fold down metal bed without bedding, a sink and a toilet all in the closet

"Jesus, looks like somebody used to live in here, hell of life. Told you this guy was classy though, we even have a bathroom." Says Peggy

"Don't you think that's a bad sign? Like we might be in here for a long time? A _really_ long time?" asks Effie

"Maybe he just doesn't want people to piss on his floors. This is nice carpet. It's old, but it's nice. Real classy." Says Peggy, pulling out a chair, putting her feet up, looking out the window onto the view of the back lot of a small distribution warehouse, empty train tracks and tired containers neatly filed in rows adorn the landscape, nameless buildings in the background beyond; Effie sitting at the table, she puts her legs up on the table, crosses them as if they were arms, putts her head down in the crook of her knee and sighs quivering fear

"Cheer up. This is like the best way things could have gone wrong. I'd be grateful for that. Climate controlled, keep the sun from beating on us. Look at it this way; we get to spend a day pretending we're office people, just sitting around doing nothing, right? Petty sweet deal in my book." Says Peggy, Effie sighs again

"Sleeping on the job already, I like the enthusiasm." Says Peggy, nonchalantly humorous, a long pause follows, Effie lifts her head up

"How were you so ready to start shooting people like that? You even hit them too? I was so scared that entire time." Says Effie

"What? I mean it's totally easy, you just point the gun and pull the trigger." Says Peggy

"No, like being ok with shooting people, hurting them, killing them... you didn't hesitate at all. I know that's our job but I would be way too reluctant to do something like that." Says Effie

"I mean I gave them the benefit of the doubt, real good, you know. You saw that, right? It's not like I'm just going in vicious and starting to shoot anybody I see. The second that guy started running though, my heart jumped in my chest and it was just instinct, maybe it's a pirate thing, I don't know. It was like second nature basically, I didn't think I was going to be as good of a shot in real life, but that's my strong hand shooting the gun, and I've got all my skill in that one hand." Says Peggy

"You don't feel bad about hurting people?" asks Effie

"Well, I mean I would normally, but not then. They were running, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that was I was doing was the right thing. It felt like God cheering me on, loving me, reminding me that not only am I doing the right thing, but I'm doing what needs to be done. If you let those people run away, who knows what trouble they might have caused. Next time it might not be a public disturbance, it could be a murder, and then who's to blame? Me, because I let them get away. I mean I need practice, some of them got away, but I did my best, and as much as it would have been nice to get all of them, I can't beat myself up too much. It's the first day on the job you know.

I know your sensitive and everything, but you need to be a woman now, we can't let little kid things prevent us from doing our job. I know it is scary, and that you don't like blood or hurt people, but you have to understand that right and wrong are way more important than those things. Right and wrong don't care about how you feel, you need to trust the feeling of doing the right thing way more than any other feeling. That's a civilized feeling, right and wrong, and the sacredness and aversion to violence, those are little kid feelings. I can't expect you to change overnight, but just know we've got a job to do, a real important one, and do you best to make sure nothing gets in the way of that." Says Peggy

"I can do the driving, I like that part. I'll let you do the shooting." Says Effie

"That must have been the reason God didn't give you any arms." Jokes Peggy

"That might be the first time I've ever been grateful I don't have arms. If I was the one shooting and you couldn't shoot, we might both be dead right now, or fired because I just let them run away." says Effie

"Fired is worse than dead, at least we would get to die with dignity you know." Says Peggy

"You're not afraid of dying?" asks Effie

"Not in particular. It's hard to be afraid of dying when you've got nothing to live for. I'm as indifferent to death as I am to living. Seems like a pleasant change of pace. Not to say that I don't enjoy life, of course not, I love life, I'm just real open-minded you know, not casting judgement or comparison. 'It is what it is' so they say, and regardless of whether or not the it in question is life or death, it still is what it is, so in my mind they're not really any different, they may seem different, whether it is death or it is life, it still is it. I don't particularly have much say as to which it I'm going to be experiencing, so I'm not particularly concerned with any sort of opinionation on the subject, considering that it is largely beyond my control. It is what it is, and I don't see any reason to overthink it." Says Peggy

"That seems insane. You just refrain from objectively quantifying anything? Everything is basically the same, rain or shine, life or death, they all just happen to be interpreted as 'it' within your mind?" asks Effie

"Pretty much. I've lived my whole life knowing my opinions and sentiments don't change a damn thing, so rather than trying to conjure up those things and change what something is, what it is, I just accept it for what it is and try to make the most out of it, enjoy it for what it's worth, you know. It makes life way easier when you just accept things rather than try to change things or make comparisons, maybe I don't get the best results, but I save a hell of a lot of effort in the process of thinking up the methods which I would get these theoretically possible results from my actions.

The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry, and I'm certain I'm not the best plan layer in the world, I doubt I'm even competent in that subject, so rather than make plans myself that will more than likely go awry, I'll just take what comes at me for what it is, rather than what I intended it to be, or planned for it to be. This way I avoid the feeling of failure when my plans go awry all the time. It saves myself the trouble of paving that road to hell with my good intentions. I may be on the road to nowhere, but that sounds a hell of a lot better than hell itself." Says Peggy

"Are you just making up philosophy to justify your complete disregard of responsibility, and even your disregard of the process of analyzing and understanding your life, your actions, and your environment?" asks Effie

"I don't know. I would say I'm giving you good advice, but just because it takes some weight off my back doesn't mean it will help everyone. Somebody's got to make decisions you know. You see it as being responsible and understanding, implying that there is some sort of beneficial yield from those things, thus using the term with positive connotation. The way I see it, is if I put my coins in the soda machine, then ideally I get a soda, but in reality it is very possible that I don't get a soda, and I'm just being a realist and presuming that the vast majority of the time the ramshackle soda machine in my mind is just going to eat any coins I put into it, leaving me with nothing but the wasted money of my time, effort, and energy spend on pursuing those things despite the fact that they yielded absolutely nothing of value. They yielded nothing but wasted time, and easily stress, worry, and the perception that I have failed to accomplish something I intended to do. If you never intend to accomplish anything in particular, you never subsequently fail to accomplish what you set out to accomplish. If my life were defined by a long string of terrible failures, I would probably feel like shit and hate myself, but considering that I never pursued something to any degree that would put me into a position where I must understand that I have failed to accomplish what I intended to do, I never feel like a failure.

I feel great, I love myself. Imagine feeling like you've never in your life failed to accomplish something you set out to accomplish, I'm sure if somebody lived that life they would feel profoundly good about themselves day in and day out. The thing is, I do feel that way, I genuinely feel like I have never failed to accomplish something that I set out to accomplish, explicitly because I never set out to accomplish anything. Arriving at a solution sometimes just requires some sort of crafty manipulation of the problem, and that's basically what I did. By manipulating the problem of feeling like a failure, I have easily created an equation that always yields the result that endless people dream about day in and day out, only to fail miserably to attain this result and then feel like shit and hate themselves on account of this failure." Says Peggy

"What about feelings, just like raw feelings? That's a big thing that causes people to do things, to attempt things, and otherwise guides their actions. I mean it's not that people go through some thought process and decide with logic that they will feel a certain way every time something happens, they just feel it, they can't control it. The driving force of feelings inside of a person is what causes people to do things, even set out to accomplish something and then fail miserably. They set out to do something because they felt something like discontent or frustration; they felt a certain way and that compelled them to act in a certain way. You don't have feelings that influence your actions?" asks Effie

"Of course I have plenty of feelings. Loads of feelings, basically nothing but good feelings except for pain and maybe some other forms of sensational discomfort. The problem people have with feelings is that they overanalyze everything. People feel a certain way because they want this to be that, and be upset; they like that this is this, and they are happy; they think this is better than that, or they think that is better than this; all sorts of comparisons and contrasting to make people develop this perspective of either satiation and happiness or dissatisfaction and desire. This is where people went wrong, they overanalyzed the situation, and their needlessly convoluted understanding of things creates this profound degree of white noise in their mind, endless comparisons, and when you're comparing things all day, especially theoretical things with real things, you end up forming opinions about these specific things, developing preferences, all of that sort of noise.

The trick to feelings is to simplify it. Say somebody sees this and they want it to be that, common problem, yes? The trick here is to not see this, but to see something, and then when you try to make the comparison of this to that, oh no, it is not that, it is just something, both of them are just something. When you do this, you are comparing something to something, and so if you try to convince yourself that you see something but want it to be something, you've either stated nothing or you got what you want. It is something in the present, and when compared to something, there is no difference, so there are no grounds to feel any differently about something than you would about something, because they are the same thing. This is the trick, everything is something, and so long as you don't try to distinguish between things, objectively there is no difference between any of two choices, both are choices of something or otherwise something, so in the end there is no discernable difference between the two.

You might try to say, well, the first one is something, and the second one is something else. That's where you're wrong, you've overanalyzed, that problem is all too common. Once you start making distinctions, that sets off an endless chain reaction of distinctions, which lead to comparisons, and soon everything is not only distinct, but being compared to everything, and then there are pros and cons of everything, and that's taking things way too far. While one may have a technically valid point that you have a choice between something and something else, that triviality does nothing to negate the fact that in this same moment, you have a choice between something and something, and when this is true, my valuable perspective devoid of comparison holds true, and when you apply my logic, there is no reason to feel upset or discontented because something happened rather than something, because in the end it is the same thing happening, something.

Granted I am no sage, and surely I can be swayed by subliminal preferences, as it is instinct you know, to prefer things. The problem is that instinct can betray you and make you unhappy, so if I'm ever in a position where there are repercussions or pros and cons beyond the simple factor of enjoying myself without any real repercussions, then I fall back upon the something and something comparison. If I'm just in the market for pleasure-seeking, then I might cheat my wisdom a bit, fall back on the instinct, and perhaps have a subtle opinionated preference, but at the same time, if my preference is not indulged and the less preferable of the two pleasures is pursued, I am not discontented, as I can understand that truly it was still a choice between something and something, but as that meaningless instance of choosing has vanished into inexistence, I can now come to terms even easier with the situation and understand that 'it is what it is' and there is no choice being made and thus no grounds to even begin to form any comparison from which I might draw an opinion." Says Peggy

"It almost sounds like you're just too lazy to think, but I can understand how it would make you happier. You're never discontent if you see no difference between anything. Everything is just as good as everything else, something is always as good as something else, because you don't quantify any differences between them. It's amazing how your cognitive laziness has actually proven to be beneficial to your disposition, but the meek shall inherit the earth so they say, and I figure being so removed from any sort of decision making and even opinionation is definitely a form of meekness." Says Effie

"You know why they say the meek shall inherit the earth? Because if you stop being meek, you start killing yourself, slowly but surely, with comparisons, discontent, envy, pride, the whole shebang. All of these vices and painful afflictions that could be avoided if you were reasonable enough to avoid analyzing things to the point of making comparisons, because you know in the end these comparisons will likely amount to nothing more than discontent, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and countless other things including vice and even death. It takes a degree of insolence to compare things, to put your nose into the business of something, it's bold to be given something by god, shown two somethings, then expect more than that, expect distinguishing characteristics between those two somethings. You are shown two somethings, given one something, and you just say thanks, without casting judgment or comparison, analyzing, you just say thanks; that's the power of meekness." Says Peggy

"I doubt you have any real moral fiber that causes you to feel so inclined to utilize your system of thought. As much as you can make it sound as if you're just being moral and doing the right thing, it's hard to think that the morality of your philosophy had any sort of influence upon your decision to adopt it." Says Effie

"Certainly not, but an enemy of my enemy is my friend, and seeing how morality opposes thinking, and I oppose thinking, we may not have much in common, but I'll definitely enjoy the help of morality as we tag team that thinking nonsense and brutalize it to the point where it knows better than to show its face around these parts, at least until it learned its lesson. Thinking is poison of the brain, I like good feelings, and the way I see it , thinking just takes up room in my brain that good feelings could easily be occupying. I'm not fond of that, especially since thinking can easily convince you to feel bad feelings, even for no good reason, and I've got neither the time nor the appetite for that." Says Peggy

"Still, you say you're willing to think in regards to pleasure-seeking, but truly that is all anyone does. All of their plans, their hijinks, you name it, all of that results from the people seeking pleasure, or otherwise attempting to not feel bad." Says Effie

"That is true, but there's a few difference between common thought and reasonable thought. First of all, common thought induces a large number of bad feelings due to comparisons as I explained before, so I can avoid all of that displeasure, and when I don't experience it, it does not need to be resolved, and thus I don't need to think of a solution. As for simple pleasure-seeking, this is a very simple process, and the more convoluted a plan is, the more distant the pleasure is. I'm like a pleasure prophet, I can sense the pleasure in the future, and the more hurdles and complications that stand between me in the pleasure, the less and less that pleasure actually exists in my mind. In regards to simple pleasure seeking there are practically no hurdles, it is simply a matter to the degree to which you enjoy one pursuit in the present as opposed to another, this is why I allow myself to make that comparison. Any sort of theoretical pleasure that may possibly be attained if I were to connive some crafty plan full of cleverness and do all of these certain things to overcome the hurdles and challenges, well that is pleasure that basically does not exist.

People are delusional because they think that immense imaginary pleasure at the end of that massive obstacle course exists, when in reality that's bullshit, that's just a god damn obstacle course you're going to get hung up on, come to loathe, and then subsequently feel like shit because you've gotten your ass trapped in the middle of some challenging and unforgiving obstacle course yet have failed to attain any of that pleasure your delusion convinced you that you could somehow attain. I'm a reasonable person, so that sort of nonsense is not for me. Ambitious people, sure, and one in a thousand of them will attain that success, the pleasure however was likely far less than they imagined because as I was saying before they are incredibly delusional and this means they will attribute far more credit and quality to their fantasies and dreams than they will to reality. The other nine hundred and ninety nine failures will all feel like shit and see themselves as failures because they failed to accomplish what they set out to do, and whatever meagre reward they were offered for whatever burdensome obstacle they happened to afflict themselves with was nowhere near as pleasurable and amazing as they dreamt it would be.

As much as I don't compare things in regards to better or worse, objectively I can understand the things in question, simply without forming any meaningful opinion about them. So when I see this obstacle course that requires millions of hours of time effort and energy, some faint shimmer of pleasure peeking through that death trap is not going to tempt me to throw my body through that god damn crucible. I have no temptation to even cognize any deeper understanding of that painful crucible when I can see a nice little ledge I can step over to go play dominoes, shoot the shit, or otherwise entertain myself with minimal hurdles for a reasonable reward of pleasure upon reaching that easily attainable goal. Sure, I'm no champion of the crucible, but seeing how I'm far happier than 99.9% of the people who seek to become that champion and fail to do so, I have no qualms with my relative lack of glory, success, or achievement what have you. I am not vainglorious and see no reason to value satisfaction attained from such pursuits any more than the simpler pleasures. Knowing that pleasure is pleasure and happiness is happiness, I take the path of least resistance rather than attempt to quantify and qualify this pleasure and happiness so that I might come to some foolish judgment as to which of these sources of pleasure and happiness is more so noble, glorious, respectable, impressive, or otherwise worthy of being pursued. I am in the market of pursuing pleasure, not judging it, so clearly I'm going to be making economic and efficient decisions that ensure that I'm getting the most bang for my buck so they say, and I sure as hell do, plenty of bang for that buck. It's a good life." Says Peggy

"I'll try that... or something. I don't want to think anything at all right now." Says Effie

"That's some pinnacle level brain work right there. If you don't think at all, there's nothing in your mind that will cause you to feel bad." Says Peggy

"I still feel awful. Dreadful, to be honest." Says Effie

"That means you're still thinking, maybe not actively, but subconsciously. You still acknowledge things, you understand things, even if it seems like you're not thinking, but you still understand, that is still thinking. Your understanding where we are, what happened, why were are here, and most importantly who you are. You don't need to think about those things to understand them, at least to a reasonable extent, and avoiding thought-independent understanding is one of the higher degrees of skillful thought that can be mastered. Once you stop understanding those things, once those don't register in your mind, you'll be free as a bird in your mind, and nothing will get you down. I'm sure it might seem like nonsense, but even if you're not thinking, but you are still aware of those things, and still know those things, then your mind will subconsciously extrapolate upon those things, and this will cause you to worry if you're not particularly pleased with your situation. I know it might be hard to let that understanding slip from your mind, but try that something to something trick I was talking about. It's a powerful tool, you know." Says Peggy

"You got me there. I do understand these things. I don't know if I have the capacity to forget that much. You must have an intense degree of absentmindedness to forget who you are of all things." Says Effie

"While that may be true, my absentmindedness is not that powerful. You need to take charge of your mind, and if you want to go about forgetting those things, you need a different mentality. You don't forget about those things because you're familiar with them, you are familiar with the concept of yourself, you trust that concept, and it stays inside of your mind. That is all good and well, but in this situation where that may not be particularly helpful, you need to take charge and act in the best interest of yourself and your pursuit of happiness, and this means that you identify with your happiness, your pleasure, rather than any sort of meaty significance that is all colored by fun facts and whatnot.

If you see yourself as your pleasure, as your happiness, when your mind crosses the acknowledgment of your physical body, that is not yourself, as you are your happiness. Your happiness sees this body of yours, this existence, as an intruder, as an outsider, as something that is not yourself, as you are your happiness and your pleasure, not your physical body. So with happiness in charge, your happiness sees this sense of self, this physical identity, and it culls it form your mind, this is not you because it is not happiness, and thus it is irrelevant nonsense that is meaningless to you. Just like how you repel invaders or put criminals in prison, your mind does the same thing with any thoughts that don't particularly please you, even if they may seem important like your physical identity, because these thoughts interfere with your true self, your ability to feel happy and pleased. Don't be aggressive, or even acknowledge it, just know that this understanding of your physical self is not your true self, your happiness, so it is distrusted, disregarded and exiled, even if only temporarily until you are in a situation where the acknowledgment of this physical body of yours can be a source of happiness.

It's a matter of perspective really, so when you maintain your mind in regards to the most accommodating form it can take for your happiness and pleasure rather than your physical self or any sort of objective identity, that allows you to ensure that the thoughts that are swimming in that brain of yours are entirely blissful and pleasurable thoughts of good feelings. In my case, as I am rather absentminded, even if I have nothing particularly pleasurable happening within my ken, the thought of nothing itself is indeed quite pleasurable, more so a void of thought rather than a thought of the particularity of nothing, relaxing, and comfortable like sleeping in a bed. Very warm, the warm sensation of my body is nice, and there's no acknowledgement of any significance or meaning, so I'm just sitting here, in my mind, enjoying the physical pleasure of relative comfort without any sort of intrusive thoughts, delirium, or delusion that might distract me from enjoying this pleasure.

Applying this sense of reasonability to your sense of self is the most important part, as once your sense of self is gone, any sort of relevance of your situation is gone as well, as your situation is entirely dependent upon your physical setting as defined by the location of your physical body, and with no real connection to or significance of that physical body, but rather complete indifference to it, there is no source of displeasure from your setting, so long as your physical senses are not overtly intruding into the happiness and pleasure of your mind. It gets easier with practice, the more you can apply these strategies to things you would much rather ignore, the more capable you will find yourself of applying them to things you weren't intent on forgetting, but realize that you are happier if you manage to forget about them in the moment." Says Peggy

"For some reason people think intelligence is a reasonable pursuit, but it seems like in your experience the most beneficial pursuit is the pursuit of absolute ignorance to seemingly everything that doesn't happen to be pleasure and happiness." Says Effie

"Well, I mean it's a common sentiment, 'ignorance is bliss' so they say. Whatever you don't happen to be ignorant of is another something that might happen to cause you to feel something other than bliss. It may sound like I'm a proponent of pure ignorance, but this is not the case. As much as ignorance is bliss, and this is perfectly true, ignorance is not euphoria, and that is the key concept to realize. Sources of pleasure and happiness can induce a feeling that is far more pleasurable than bliss, and the concept of maximizing the sources of pleasure and happiness that exceed the pleasure and happiness of bliss is why there is always an effort made to pursue pleasure rather than sit in bliss all day.

Logically it is rather easy to find euphoria, at least when one is not consumed by the dastardly blackguard of thought , so even simple things like playing dominoes or in my case running my big mouth can be sources of pleasures and entertainment that exceeds the tranquil pleasure of bliss. That being said, in an ideal world there should be no reason to ever experience a feeling below bliss, but in reality, one is forced to play the long con, in that you must try to avoid intense sources of displeasure that you cannot easily become ignorant of by your own volition, while also attempting to ensure that once these intense sources of physical, psychological, or other forms of discomfort have been avoided, that you manage to find sources of euphoria that don't interfere with your life, nor consume your mind to the point where you become crippled by them, meaning that your craving and hunger for this pleasure becomes a comparison in your mind, and that the absence of this pleasure causes you to feel displeased by comparison. It's tricky, but it's a gambling game in a sense that you don't want to experience too great a degree of euphoria as to become crippled by it all while still pursuing this euphoria, but the odds are rather in the favor of a wise person, it's just that seldom has a man been wise and for that reason he is rife with discontent, displeasure, and dissatisfaction." Says Peggy

"As simple as that sounds, the hard part is somehow avoiding all of the sources of intrusive displeasure like, I don't know, being held prisoner by a criminal gang leader." Says Effie

"That's not a source of displeasure at all. You're over thinking again. It may seem like a problem, but in reality that issue doesn't exist, at least not from our perspective. You see, that issue is entirely out of our control, we have no ability to influence that issue, so seeing how we are completely irrelevant from that situation and any results that may arise from said situation, there is no reason to have any sentiments or thoughts regarding that situation in the slightest. It would be a different story if we were being subject to physical pain in the process, as that makes the situation harder to ignore and requires a good degree of mental fortitude, but logically our situation right now is no different than sitting in an office. That's what we're doing, just sitting in chairs in an office. There's no point in acknowledging anything beyond that understanding of the situation, and letting such idle thought distract you proves to be a source of nothing but displeasure. If the thought isn't pleasurable, just avoid the thought, shun the thought, disregard the thought because it is nonsense.

Avoiding distracting sources of displeasure is something like avoiding starving to death. You can ignore hunger to some extent, but not indefinitely, so that is an issue that must be addressed because it will easily begin to invade your mind despite your best efforts to ignore it. That is the situation that forces you to think about it, compared to this situation, where acknowledging that we are being held prisoner is entirely optional, and beyond that completely irrelevant from ourselves as we have no ability or power to influence the situation. If we could influence the situation, then that is staring down a crucible where we can try to reason with whether or not the effort we would put into resolving this situation would yield more pleasure for us in the long run, and that is entirely relative and depends on one's own cleverness as well as the difficulty of the undertaking. You can look at the crucible before us of somehow escaping, and that crucible offers basically zero promise of anything besides a painful death, so as our only option of influencing the situation amounts to far more displeasure than ignoring it, there is no reason to acknowledge the situation or dwell upon something.

I'm sure you're accustomed to the fact that you don't have arms to the point where you don't spend all day thinking about arms or thinking that you would rather have arms, it's just a fact of life that seldom crosses your mind for the most part. That sort of mentality is how you need to approach these sorts of things that are beyond our control, as something you can forget about, because thinking about the situation or having opinions about the situation changes nothing about the situation and is therefore not only irrelevant, but foolish as doing so would create a source of displeasure and discontent in your mind." Says Peggy

"Just like how there are advanced levels of intelligence, you have this advanced level of ignorance that provides you with this wonderful boon of happiness and pleasure. It's remarkable, but sadly I have not developed that skillset of applied practical ignorance, so I'm unable to attain these same benefits that you do, which clearly are immense, as you are entirely unfazed by our situation." Says Effie

"Clearly you're upset. You're upset because you're thinking, because you're understanding things. Just make an effort to push those thoughts away, dismiss them as any other form of nonsense, because truly the standard of nonsense is not this empirical objective standard that people preach, but it is an entirely relative one. If your understanding of yourself, of your situation, make you unhappy, then it does not make sense to acknowledge them or consider them, and when that is true they can be dismissed just as readily as any long string of garbled random letters that has absolutely no meaning. Being upset or unhappy is nonsensical, thus things that make you feel upset are equally nonsensical. If you could do something about this unhappiness, then you might consider taking some form of action, but the degree to which you have an ability to influence that which makes you unhappy should be the most significant metric that determines whether or not you should acknowledge that source of displeasure in the first place.

If it can be resolved, resolve it, replace this source of displeasure with a source of pleasure and happiness, but if it cannot be resolved, if you are powerless or largely powerless to resolve this source of unhappiness, then it should not be a source of any sort of sentiments because the situation is entirely independent from yourself. If two issues each cause you to feel 100 grains of sadness, and you are 1% capable of resolving the first, but 90% capable of resolving the second, you should only feel 1 grain of sadness for the first, while you can justify feeling 90 grains of sadness for the second. I don't know if capability is measured in percentages, it's usually 100% or 0% in my book, but the point still stands, it's about the proportion of your capacity to resolve the situation, if you can do nothing to resolve that which makes you upset, there are no grounds to be upset by it. Even if this is inescapable physical pain and torture, if you cannot resolve this issue, it is the most wise to develop the capacity to ignore this pain entirely simply because acknowledging it and dwelling upon it gets you nowhere, and does nothing for yourself and your happiness." Says Peggy

"I'm sure this is all sage advice, but everything is just nonsense to me, nothing makes sense, my head is spinning, I'm so confused, and I just feel helpless. I'm sure I'm not supposed to feel anything, but I can't help it, seeing how helplessness by definition is something that a person usually can't do anything about. I'm getting good at failing to understand everything, but that feeling is still frightening, now it's just a bunch of frightening things I don't understand." Says Effie

"That's a good start, but see, your over thinking it again, you don't understand these things, but you understand that they are frightening. That is still understanding, see, and once you stop understanding that they're frightening, then you're making true progress. As for feeling helpless, you understand that you can do nothing about it, but again you are still understanding the feeling. You know what it means, what it indicates, and what it signifies. If you just feel the feeling and don't understand what it signifies, it becomes far less worrying because it becomes no different than any otherworldly hallucinatory feeling that has no meaning or significance, sure it is powerful, but as it has no context or definition, that feeling does not particularly induce any sorts of destructive chains of contextualized thoughts or worries, because it is no longer connected to any sources of meaning or understanding.

I'm sure it's hard to master this, but practices makes perfect, the something to something trick might help, if you're having trouble understanding things as vague somethings, just try to pour a nice bucket full of specific somethings over the feeling and try to do your best to refrain from distinguishing any difference between them. Try zoo animals or numbers, something that in itself isn't going to also induce a powerful array of feelings. You've got to fight nonsense with nonsense, so even if it seems logical and justified to feel a certain way due to your situation, that is not respecting the fact that it is nonsensical to feel displeasure and unhappiness when it can be avoided, so as much as facts and reality might seem to make sense, when the result is nonsense in the form of unhappiness, that negates any legitimacy of that understanding of reality, at least so long as that source of unhappiness is largely out of your control." Says Peggy

"I don't know the amount of head trauma I need to stop understanding the most basic aspects of life, but go ahead and lay it on me." Says Effie

"The point is not failing to understand things. Things clearly don't make sense to you, but that doesn't stop them from making you upset. It's far more like a double understanding, beyond the first layer of understanding. Sure, you can acknowledge the specificities of the situation, but that sort of needle-eyed thinking is what causes those particulars to worry you. It's like cards, where the general something is the trump suit. The specific knowledge, non-trump suits, can always be trumped, effectively negated into inexistence by acknowledging the general something. Sure, this situation can be upsetting, but you can trump that worry with generality.

Vaguely we are in a situation, and there's no particular reason to feel any differently about this situation than any other situation. You should feel the same about this situation as any other situation, just because they are identical in the fact that they are a situation. As I said earlier, you can just rely on the fact that 'it is what it is', to allow you to understand that in reality we will always be in a situation, and since we can't be in more than one situation and we can't change our situation for the most part, any specificities are irrelevant. That's like holding and orange and trying to compare it to other oranges when no other oranges exist. There's just the one orange, so any comparisons are the fruits of fantasy. When there is no source of comparison, discrepancy, or disparity, there is no reason to become upset with something, to judge it as inferior, or to think of it as any less preferable than anything else. If only one orange exists on the planet, that's a perfectly good orange, so unless you start comparing apples and oranges, the orange is what it is, there aren't any better or worse oranges because only one exists. When there are no grounds to judge or criticize this orange, you don't do it. It can't be better or worse, because there is only one orange, simultaneously the best and the worst." Says Peggy

"As true as that is, the orange changes over time. There may be only one orange, but this orange is still in much worse shape than it was earlier." Says Effie

"That's all fantasy again. You're comparing our orange to one that doesn't exist. If that comparison was relevant, you could just put this orange down and go grab that other one, but that orange doesn't exist, so you're making a meaningless comparison and judgement by using a conjured, imaginary, fictitious entity known as the past as the standard to which an orange is held. The past is never relevant, and it is never real, the records of the past, sure those exist in the present, but that clearly is different than the past itself.

Being upset about the state of an orange is like being upset that a man isn't God, or you don't have a full-sized bear instead of legs. Those things will never be true, so being upset about them is nonsense, you could be upset about an infinite number of things that aren't true because they can't be true, so by comparing something to another thing that can't be true accomplishes nothing but making you upset because reality isn't your fantasy.

You might think the situation could be better, but unless we can do anything about it, unless we can actually make our situation better, you're upset about nothing. If you are given the choice between two oranges, go right ahead and take the better orange. If you're simply given an orange without being given a choice, you can't be upset that you don't have a better orange because there were no better oranges that were within your power to get. You can always think of better situations to be in, but unless you can actively put yourself in those situations, there's no reason to judge your current situation just because you can think of a better one. Being upset about the fact that you don't have arms isn't going to change that fact, and I'm sure you've realized by now that there is no point in being upset that you don't have arms." Says Peggy

"You're right, it's just hard to convince myself not to fantasize about better situations I could be in right now. I really shouldn't fantasize about changing things that are beyond my control, because it is pointless, but my mind is just desperately searching for an escape route, and all it manages to find are fantasies at this point." Says Effie

"Just be aware of the difference between real oranges and phantasmagorical oranges. There's no reason to think less of a real orange just because some meaningless ghastly orange of fantasy rears its head. It may seem like you're comparing oranges to oranges, but the ghastly nature of the latter means your comparing apples and oranges, or ghosts and oranges, and really there are no grounds to think less of an orange because you think more highly of a ghost.

If I'm sitting in this comfortable chair, I'm not going to let some fantasy of an even more comfortable chair ruin any of the pleasure of sitting in this one. Basically, if I have five dollars in my hand, seeing or thinking of twenty dollars in someone else's hand isn't going to make my five dollars any less valuable in reality. I can appreciate the five dollars without comparing it to things I don't have, because acknowledging an infinite number of useless comparisons is not going to change anything about my five dollars, so I understand that those comparisons are pointless, the imaginary twenty dollars has no value to me, but the real five dollars does, so I can appreciate and truly feel the real value of my five dollars, where the ghastly twenty is surpassed by the ghastly 100, by the ghastly million, billion, anything.

When you extrapolate like that, it's easy to realize that fantasies are nonsense, where if you keep them on some quasi-believable level, you fall victim to thinking that you actually should have that twenty rather than the five, and this causes you to become discontented. The twenty doesn't exist any more than the billion, so you shouldn't see yourself having that twenty as any more of a legitimate thought than having a billion dollars. Supersede your fantasies until they become extremely nonsensical, then dismiss all of the fantasies as nonsense, leaving you only with the acknowledgement of reality which you can then fully appreciate as you are no longer discontented by fantasy." Says Peggy

"The advice is just to ignore everything save for that which is already real, then just try to appreciate reality for what it is rather than comparing it to what isn't. It is sound advice; it's just hard to live in the moment to that degree. Thankfully my mind is exhausted from worry, and even just from trying to understand what you're saying. The whole mental fatigue is making it much easier to do something like that, just acknowledge that the room is comfortable, the chair is comfortable, the smell is aged but still classy. I don't know. I'm too tired to think of anything beyond this situation we are in, my mind is too fatigued to even fantasize about anything at all right now. I don't know how you manage to keep this sort of mentality despite your seemingly endless energy sometimes." Says Effie

"Well, I'm lazy, you know that. I see all of that thinking and comparing as work, and I'd rather save myself the trouble of doing that. Work, then worry, then discontent, that's all those fantasies amount to. It's way easier to feel the chair or the temperature than it is to conjure up some fantasy. Fantasy never did much for me anyways, any sort of believable fantasy is quickly drowned by extreme fantasy, comparing the twenty to one-billion, you know, and at that point the entire fantasy is palpably foolish. I'd rather have a billion dollars than twenty dollars, so I fantasize about the billion, then come to terms that I won't get a billion dollars and the fantasy ends there, and unsurprisingly enough I'm still in the same situation I was when I started. I look around, and seeing how I know that fantasy is worthless, I can just appreciate the something that surrounds me rather than the nothing of though." Says Peggy

"Now I'm just kind of bored. I've forgotten everything about everything for the most part. My mind is just empty, I feel nothing, I don't want to think, and I'm just staring out into space just trying to busy my feet and mind with something meaningless like dominoes or something. As much as I understand that it's foolish, but again I don't have the slightest care right now, despite the situation, the best idea I can think of for making it better is playing dominoes." says Effie

"That's a pretty common pastime in prison, along with cards, and there's a reason for that. They can't really do anything about their situation, so they just try to enjoy it as best as they can." Says Peggy

"Yep. That word 'prison' really got under my skin, unfortunately. That's where we are right now. This is a prison, and I'm not all that confident that we won't be sentenced to death. It feels a lot like what I would imagine drowning feels like. You may not notice it, but my body is just desperate to breathe, and though my flailing and thrashing is all in my mind, it is still very much so there, and I am trying desperately to get my head above water, to breath, to not die, but all of those breaths, those thoughts of living, there's plenty of water in those breaths, so I'm choking on the water every time a half-way pleasant thought of somehow escaping this situation crosses my mind. I think, wow, that's a nice thought, but I try to take it in then my brain gets filled with pangs of doubt and depression considering that we're basically in a prison right now.

I guess my mind is half dead by this point, because I'm having trouble even imagining an alternative to this, this imprisonment is just so real and overpowering that it dominates my mind and massacres any semblance of fantasy that might cross it. So to be fair, I'm not even comparing this feeling to anything else, thinking that there are better situations that we could be in, the problem is that even if a person had known no reality besides actively drowning, I'm not confident that they would be entirely indifferent to the pain and misery of drowning. Even without comparing it to anything, the experience itself is readily painful in and of itself without having any sort of philosophic comparative conjecture to draw a judgement from. Pain is simply pain, the fear of death is the fear of death, these are animal instincts, and clearly an animal doesn't have the awareness to fantasize about theoretical situations they could be experiencing instead of their current one, they are upset simply because their situation is upsetting, and it has nothing to do with the judgements of perspective. Your philosophy addresses the psychological discontent of humans, but it does nothing to resolve the instinctive fears and pains that all animals experience regardless of their degree of intelligence." Says Effie

"Well, it's a nice prison. As true as that is, instinct and what not, I can't give you credit. You're just anticipating your pain and death, and that again is the result of instinct. A cow being brought to slaughter doesn't experience the stresses of death until the moment he is being executed, so your discomfort is really due to the fact that you understand this situation as the march to the gallows. You could preserve your comfort for a while if you can manage to let that slip your mind, you know. It may seem like instinct, and I'm sure a lot of the fear is instinctive, but the point is that your intelligence and understanding are what trigger that instinct, rather than the simple physical sensations that cause those feelings to arise in traditional animals." Says Peggy

"It's like you don't exist, like you're not even real, Peggy. Nothing about reality bothers you in the slightest, like reality means as little to you as some nonsensical thought of you being eaten alive by a bear riding a bicycle." Says Effie

"Maybe it does, I don't know. My life has always been rather devoid of meaning. I've kind of felt like a piece of litter my entire life, not that being litter is a bad thing. I've never been held to any expectations or been given any significance, so just like a piece of litter, I'm just kind of there without any real purpose or significance, and my existence really doesn't tend to influence anything. Sure, it might upset a small number of queer individuals who are unusually perceptive about aesthetics or utility, but other than that it's not like any reasonable person would think twice about my existence, and I suppose I'm just one of those people. If I see a piece of litter one day, but it's gone the next, do I really care? Am I upset about that? No, regardless of my extreme similarity to litter, my existence in the world is entirely in the hands of the powers that be, so as my own sentiments are largely if not entirely irrelevant from whether or not I continue to exist, I've never seen any reason to have particular sentiments about my life. Sure, I have sentiments about feelings, as I am particularly fond of pleasure, but I am entirely indifferent in regards to my status of being alive.

I don't have ambitions or dreams or anything like that, I just sit here in the present, trying to enjoy myself, and don't fantasize about anything bigger or better than what I currently have. I could be killed any day, by the state or whoever wants me dead, so rather than worry about that, I just write my death off as some inevitability that's beyond my control and then understand that I have no reason to be concerned with things that are beyond my power to control. I focus on that which I can control, and that's where my chain of thought ends. It's a utilitarian mindset in that I don't delve into chains or trains of thoughts that aren't useful, ones that don't provide value to my life. That brings me back to the bear on the bicycle, because honestly the thoughts of my death at the hands of this gang of suits is just as irrelevant as the thought of being eaten by the bear on the bicycle. I can't control my fate in those situations, so I have no reason to fret about them; I see the thought not as realistic or unrealistic, but rather as applicable or inapplicable with any realism being ignored entirely.

Despite the reality of the situation, my mind condemns the thought of our death at the hands of these suits in the exact same manner as the death by the bicycle bear; I'm just dismissively derisive because the thoughts seem so asinine and worthless. There is absolutely no weight given to realism, save lest I can actually get some sort of reward in terms of pleasure of course, so when I can't gain any pleasure from those thoughts, I just look at them as if they're some dog shit on the sidewalk and keep walking. Sure they're not particularly pleasant, but I just get on with my life and just as seeing a piece of dog shit isn't going to faze me in any particular manner, neither are the thoughts of dying to that bear or to these suits. It's asinine to let the existence of dog shit on the sidewalk upset you when there's nothing that can be done about that dog shit. I don't have a bag, and I'm not going to pick it up with my hand, so it's just going to sit there, and I'm not going to dwell upon the existence of dog shit for absolutely no gain when I can just pay it no mind, get on with my day, and above all, continue to enjoy myself. I walk past the dog shit, think nothing of it, just a fact of life, and what do you know, I end up in this climate controlled room in a comfortable chair, that's pretty damn good, yeah? I'm talking, I get to hear myself talk, that's good. I like to hear myself talk, that's very comforting, something about the sound of my own voice, you know? I hear my voice, I think to myself, I like that person, she's fucking amazing, I love her, blows my mind how awesome she is, like a big engine that creates good feelings and good times rather than horsepower or whatever.

Basically, those things you worry about, those thoughts, they're so irrelevant and worthless, irrelevant explicitly due to their worthlessness, that my mind just instinctively and automatically disregards them, just like I'm not going to try and figure out how to enjoy myself with a piece of dog shit I find on the street, I'm going to keep on walking and try to find far more fruitful ventures. That being said, I can understand why people become upset in situations like this. Basically they realize there is this piece of dog shit on the street and they try to start playing with it, they try to figure out how to make it less disgusting and somehow try to enjoy it, when that's pretty fucking stupid in my book.

It's some odd instinct of people to focus on these upsetting things then try to play with them until they're no longer disgusting. Regardless of however much you rub that piece of dog shit on your hands and body, it's not going to stop being dog shit, and it's not going to be any more pleasant than it originally was. By playing with it you end up accomplishing nothing but smearing dog shit on your hands and body, where in my case I simply ignore it, stay completely clean, and then keep walking onto the next thing that piques my interest, explicitly due to the fact that it's pleasurable.

What I'm trying to say is, if it's not pleasurable, basically it doesn't exist, so displeasurable things only exist in the situation where I can address them and then subsequently experience more pleasure, but in a case like this, the situation doesn't exist, it means absolutely nothing to me because I can't reap any pleasure from it. So yes, I suppose my mind does understand this situation to be no different than being chased by a bear on a bicycle trying to eat me. It's common sense really, considering they both are equally valuable thoughts in my book, so they shouldn't be treated any differently. A fiver is always a fiver, it doesn't matter what year it says on the paper, and in this case if you understand thoughts for what they're worth rather than what they are, it becomes easier to disregard the sorts of unpleasant thoughts you have despite the fact that they coincidentally happen to be rooted in something real." Says Peggy

"Reality is just a coincidence to you?" asks Effie

"I guess, it means nothing in particular. The important part of reality is the pleasure, and beyond that there's nothing to really value. If it doesn't have value it can be disregarded as worthless, and all worthless things are worth nothing, so they get treated the same. If you want to spend a day at the dump and tell me how you would treat one piece of trash differently from another piece of trash just because the specifics are different, go right ahead, but I'm sure as shit going to treat them the same because functionally they are the same, just worthless garbage, and the same applies to thoughts, cognizance, understanding, and all that jazz when all of these different specificities all have the exact same value, which in regards to redeemable pleasure is next to none, or in your case, negative pleasure. I would be condemning those sorts of sentiments like the plague, a disgrace, an abomination on the face of the earth, to conceive of a thought that yields negative pleasure. That thought will burn in hell for desecrating this holy ground." Says Peggy

"Are thoughts people that go to hell now? What are you talking about?" asks Effie, exhausted from confusion

"I mean, I don't see any difference. Thoughts by definition are full of that peopley shit that animals don't have, you know, moral agency and whatnot. A thought knows right from wrong, and seeing how a thought by definition has some degree of intelligence, it should know damn well that cognizing displeasing things is deplorable, shameless, and easily unforgivable. I've no time for that bullshit, and I know for damn sure if I were God I would be sending all those thoughts to hell. Seeing how God and demons and whatnot tend to be similar to thoughts, those spooky ghost sort of things that fly around in your head and talk to you and what not, there's no reason to think a thought wouldn't be sent to hell just as quickly as Lucifer or any other demon." Says Peggy

"I'm in awe of your ability to conjure up some stance on these philosophical quandaries to the point where you can easily defend it. Being somebody who largely lacks that skill, I can see how cults get formed so often. You have the ability to create this point, and as nonsensical as I understand them to be, I can't really argue against you or disprove your sentiments, so I have to acknowledge that your points are both reasonable and somewhat intelligent. I have to submit myself to your understanding, as flawed as it may be, simply because I cannot trump your understanding myself. I have not the confidence, the ego, nor the imagination to do this, so this ultimately puts me in a position to listen to you and respect your beliefs, not because they're all inherently right, just because I cannot philosophically overpower them myself, and in this situation I become reverent to your wisdom. You assert things, and I have no strength or pride to rebut them, and this creates a situation where I just accept what you say as the closest thing to the truth that I can imagine, simply because there are no readily available sources of insight that can contest your palpable yet suspiciously nonsensical wisdom." Says Effie

"I'm just explaining how I understand things. I give you this advice because I think it's good advice that can help you feel better. I'm sure people all have different motivations for trying to sway people's opinions, but in my case I just don't want you to feel so upset." Says Peggy

"It's working. I'm just so in awe of you at this point, I have so much faith that you understand these secrets to being happy, I'm so desperate to be happy, that to contradict you or disagree with you seems unthinkable. The fact that your logic may be incredibly flawed, it doesn't matter, that's the only life-saving floatation ring in sight, and I'm clutching onto that for dear life, thanking you as if you're God incarnate that descended from the heavens just to save me from my misery." Says Effie

"God damn, that's pretty desperate. I don't know about that much, I mean I'm wise, but this is like common sense not any sort of magic that makes you feel good. If I knew magic that would be like God, but not just being reasonable and having common sense, that's normal people things. God's prophets all can do magic, so until I'm doing that real magic like they tell you about, I'm just a person, a reasonable person, but not any sort of god incarnate or whatnot." Says Peggy

"I think the point of the prophets was more about providing incredibly useful insight and wisdom, far less than the magic. I think the magic was just used to convince simple people that these sources of wisdom are incredibly powerful and capable of producing immaculate benefits to the person's life, not just to say 'these wizards have powerful magic so we must respect them'. Clearly they don't teach you to respect wizards and magic, they teach you to value the benefits of virtue and morality and that sort of thing." Says Effie

"I'm just saying regardless of the point of it all, the presence of powerful magic was always the definitive factor of the God's prophets. I don't have magic, so you know I'm just giving you real meaty people wisdom, rather than the magical kind." Says Peggy

"Well, it seems divinely inspired to me, but I suppose my desperate mentality is what empowered every cult leader of the past to take advantage of equally desperate and ignorant people. Regardless of my awareness of that fact, that does not reduce my awe and reverence to your wisdom." Says Effie

"Well, I'm not talking about magic things. That's what cult leaders did, they talk about spooky things like ghosts. I'm not talking about how to find unthinkable pleasures from a ghost or when you become a ghost; I'm just saying if you tie your shoes, your shoes don't fall off, and if your shoes don't fall off, your feet don't hurt. It's logic, not magic, that's the point I'm trying to make." Says Peggy

"It's magical logic though." Says Effie, half-joking playfully

"Well, maybe if you can make the most of it, I could see how it might seem like magic, especially if you've been so consumed by those unpleasant sorts of thoughts all your life. I'm sure plenty of uncivilized peoples would see penicillin as some kind of magic, and I figure my wisdom is rather comparable to penicillin in that it curse so many unpleasant thoughts and feelings." Says Peggy

# 2.6

"Holy shit, it's Andre." Says Effie, seeing the man, visible through the glass windows of the conference room, he enters the room

"Yeah, sorry about all this. It sounds like you didn't really do anything you weren't technically supposed to, so it's just a matter of technicalities getting tangled up. I'm sure the boss talked to you about our sort of alliance, so that's something to remember. People don't tend to call the cops on suits, and it was like ten different things going wrong. That being said, we've got to make amends, professionally and whatnot, so as much as we're working on that, we need a paper cop to come in and pull some strings for us, and that's what makes this a bitch, got to do shit on paper, and that complicates the fuck out of things, got to write it, send it, get it back, orchestrate on the phones, all that sort of bureaucratic bullshit no reasonable person has any capacity to do.

Thankfully we have people working on it, so we'll get you out of here, but I'm just saying it might be a while. Not too long, hopefully by tomorrow if the stars align and the prison got somebody who can read working this evening. Somebody will bring you girls some dinner, so just relax, everything will be fine. We're partners, and they don't want to fuck with us as much as we don't want to fuck with them, so as much as you're just cordial collateral or whatever right now, nothing bad is going to happen to you. I'll have the secretary phone up your places and tell your family you're getting some training overnight or something, night cop shit, be home tomorrow. I've got shit to take care of, just wanted to give you girls the heads up." Says Andre

"Wonderful. This place isn't a bad place to be held as collateral, you know, it's pretty damn classy." Says Peggy

"I know, right. It's good you're not tied up in some fucking oil-drum by some lunatics or something. The suits stay classy; do business right and all that, so you're in good hands. It's a rough first day, but it'll break you girls in nice, nothing but smooth sailing after this. I've got work to do, so just sit tight, and we'll get you out of here real quick." Says Andre

"Truly appreciate the courtesy, really sets the mind at ease. Glad you all have more of a grasp on the situation than we do. Do what you must; we'll be here if you need us." Jokes Peggy

"Haha, got it. I'll catch you two later. Be easy." Says Andre, nonchalant, professionally apologetic yet hardly bothered by the situation,

"Ta ta." Says Peggy, as Andre leaves the room

"As much as that was good news, the degree of indifference from both of you is rather unsettling." Says Effie

"What is there to be unsettled about? Somebody's even going to bring us dinner, that's incredible. The degree to which we have become legitimate people is unimaginable. Nobody's ever brought me dinner, and my mind is blown just thinking about the fact that the world respects us that much." Says Peggy, bewildered by the flattery

"For some reason I'm not as moved by the thought of somebody bringing us dinner as you are. I am far more preoccupied with the fact that we're being held as hostages by a criminal gang. I'm sure things aren't as bad as they seem, but being held hostage is still bad regardless of the context." Says Effie

"I'm sure you just haven't been able to understand the reality of what he told us. Somebody is bringing us food, that's incredible, I don't know how any other thought can even fit inside your brain! The thought of food just filling my mind, wall to wall, my mouth watering, but my mind as full with the thought of food as we can only hope our bellies will be! Even if it is meagre, it's still far better than nothing, we could be going hungry you know.

It may be fantasies, but I'm sure you know that thoughts can make you feel those feelies, and that thought of food is certainly one that delights me quite nicely. I need to calm myself down, you know, not get too carried away, but that big bright something amongst the nothing that surrounds us, my brain took to that. Even the cute little foods, those that are little more than nothing, still so pleasant, the politeness of it all, the respect, I can taste the respect among a packet of sugar wafers and a water, it tastes so good, so filling of the soul, being respected like that can quiet any sort of hunger pangs, even if you're dying, see, because you can die knowing that you're respected, and that respect is all you need to die in peace, with a smile on your face. You die knowing that you're somebody, that the world respects you, and even if you're dead, you're not discontented in the slightest with death, because you have something far more valuable than life itself, and that is the respect of the world, dignity. You should know, full of indignation about our situation, not any more, we have dignity, there are no grounds for somebody with dignity to feel indignant, and that truly sets all worries of the soul at ease." Says Peggy

"Yes, sugar wafers and a cup of water. That would make anyone feel far less upset about being held hostage." Says Effie, dryly

"It's far better than no sugar wafers and no water. You're comparing again, and you need to realize that the only two things that can be compared right now are the presence and absence of those sugar wafers and glass of water. Clearly unless you're some kind of masochist, the sugar wafers are far better than nothing, and the fact that we're getting the more pleasant of two possible outcomes is an incredible stroke of good fortune." Says Peggy

"As much as I'm having trouble sourcing any pleasure from the thought of sugar wafers, I'm actually taking your antagonization of comparison to heart, or trying to at least. As much as the thought does nothing for me, I'm accepting that our fate has no options within it, and without any sort of viable comparison, there's no reason for me to have an opinion. I feel stupid for willingly refusing to acknowledge reality, but stupid feels better than scared. Maybe those sugar wafers will brighten my day, who knows. I'm just kind of repressing every thought imaginable right now. I figure if I do my damnedest to ignore every thought, none of them can upset me." Says Effie

"That's half the solution already, the second half is just letting those pleasurable thoughts in once you've condemned all of the unpleasant ones." Says Peggy

"Like I said, I'm keeping the door open for those sugar wafers, but other than that, there's no pleasurable thoughts in sight, so just trying to disregard all of them seems to be a reasonable course of action." Says Effie

"As much as that's close to successful logic, there is a very significant difference from your logic. It seems that you're just hiding from the world, the bad thoughts, the unpleasant things, and that's going to make it hard for you to find the pleasant ones and embrace them because you're always hiding. True mastery comes about when you're not afraid of or upset by the unpleasant thoughts, but just disgusted by them, ashamed of their indignity, allowing you to acknowledge them if need be, but more importantly to overpower them. You need to dominate your environment, including your psychological one. If you group in all of the unpleasant acknowledgements of reality in with unpleasant and nonsensical acknowledgements of unpleasant nonsense, that nonsensicality functions much like a communicable disease and infects all of the unpleasant thoughts that are realistic simply because they're grouped in with the nonsensical ones.

You wouldn't be upset by the thought of a dog vomiting tiny little tax men the size of ants who crawl on your body in order to cut little pieces of your flesh out because you claim that you owe them taxes, and that's because the thought is too ridiculous to actually be afraid of. When you group the unpleasant thoughts that are realistic in with all of the nonsensical ones, you develop this instinct to dismiss them as meaningless nonsense and when that's true they won't bother you any more than the thought of the tiny ant size tax men. You dismiss those unpleasant thoughts as nonsense before they can make you feel upset because you understand that regardless of any other allegedly pertinent traits of those thoughts, in reality, they are nothing more than equally nonsensical bullshit, because you can easily understand that things that make you feel pleasurable are sensible things, while things that upset you are nonsensical bullshit that must be dismissed and condemned thoroughly, despite any misleading characteristics of the thought that might trick you into thinking that the unpleasant thought is somehow relevant. The logical process is something like: does this thought cause me pleasure? If this thought does not cause me pleasure, can I readily react to and act upon the thought in such a way that practically and economically brings me pleasure or otherwise reduces displeasure? If not, the thought is nonsense." Says Peggy

"It seems like you've somehow confused the concept of pleasure and reality over the course of your life, but honestly that seems to have been nothing but a blessing." Says Effie

"Reality may seem pertinent, but in reality it is seldom as important as people believe it to be. The vast majority of reality is entirely irrelevant to my existence, and any parts that might possibly be relevant to my existence are dependent upon my own personal disposition in regards to those things, so in reality I personally am the one who decides what is relevant far more often than anything else. A tree falls in the forest, a perfectly real occurrence, but when you're not there to notice this, it is as if the tree never fell, and there was never a tree or even a forest in the first place. Your perspective is what defines your understanding of reality, and I just use that to my advantage is all.

It's a case where correct logic deduces something that appears to be illogical but in reality is not. Reality is all about, doing x to accomplish y, chains of events, that sort of thing. So even when the doing is not a particularly active verb, but something like existing per say, it is still defined as doing that x to accomplish y, and then you just have to understand how this existing helps you to accomplish the y that you intend to accomplish. In my case, the y that I'm attempting to accomplish is to feel good, so if doing x does not help me to accomplish y, I'm going to refrain from doing x. Of course existing is a broad and unavoidable action that we all incessantly do, but the point is that such a verb can be refined, rather than just accept it in its raw state, and refine it so that you can refrain from doing whatever portions of existing don't help you to accomplish your purpose.

See, I'm not going to go out and study the advanced physics and psycho-biology related to playing croquet semi-competitively in the slight breeze on a weekday amongst retired and wealthy individuals. Despite this being a very real thing that exists, something that can be acknowledged and understood, the fact that there is practically nothing that I can gain from doing so means that this very real and very possible pursuit and action is something that I can ignore entirely, because there is absolutely no reason for me to do acknowledge it. I use this odd example to prove the point that your pursuits are what lead to your results, and as I would likely never be allowed to play croquet with rich people, there's no reason for me to try and master any skills that might help me reap a more so sizable amount of pleasure from that situation by winning the contest or otherwise accommodating the reaping of pleasure. Cognizing this reality is nothing but a waste of time because it does not help me to accomplish my goal, so for that reason it is easily cast into the basket of equally meaningless things.

You can understand this, but the point is that you need to apply this same logic to everything, and even master your own thoughts and instincts to the point where they are sorted and treated in the same manner. If the thought, the understanding, whatever, does not help you to accomplish your goal, does not help you feel good, that thought, however real and valid it may be, is truly no more relevant or meaningful than the aforementioned advanced situational knowledge of croquet, and when you understand this, there is no reason to treat that understanding you have any differently than you would the advanced understanding of croquet if you were to have it. These two things are practically indistinguishable in that they offer no benefit; they are inert in regards to your purpose, so they can be treated as functionally identical things. Clearly if you could somehow maximize upon that knowledge of croquet and reap pleasure from it, then go right ahead, but if you cannot, then there is no reason to believe that said knowledge has any relevance or significance whatsoever, and as it is ultimately meaningless, it can simply be disregarded along with every other bit of meaninglessness that might cross your brain.

You are distinguishing things without intent, and you are finding things to be meaningful when they lack value, and that is where your thought processes are flawed. Something cannot be meaningful if it lacks value, such as our situation right now, as there is no way we could possibly change this situation in order to reap value from it. So by going in to distinguish things with the intent of analyzing the potential pleasure that can be gained from these things, you are able to dismiss the thoughts as irrelevant once you understand that nothing can be gained from them, and when this is the case you can easily pursue other trains of thought that may possibly yield pleasure. You're thinking something is important just because it's real, when in reality, whether or not something is real is irrelevant, as the only pertinent traits of something are whether or not it yields pleasure. If an imaginary thing yields just as much pleasure as a real thing, it is equally valid and legitimate, as the trait that measures validity is exclusively the degree to which said thing induces pleasure. That is of course from my perspective, and some money-fiend may use making money instead of pleasure, or any other possible metric to validate things, but in my case, I'm fairly simple, and the metric of pleasure and potential pleasure are the only ones I use to validate or invalidate things." Says Peggy

"The conundrum I am facing right now is trying to think of how I might somehow pursue pleasure in the absence of any available pursuits of pleasure. I cannot think of how I might take pleasure in this situation, and when I try to think of ways that I might somehow find pleasure, I come across nothing but thoughts of the displeasurable nature of our situation. Those thoughts really bang on the glass if you know what I mean, and the glass of my mind isn't particularly strong, mind you." Says Effie

"If there are no pursuits of pleasure available, find pleasure in that. There is pleasure in knowing you're a pleased as possible, you know there may be nothing you can actively pursue, but there is pleasure and comfort in that thought. Something like knowing you've done all the work that can be done, and now have nothing left to do but relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor, these comfortable chairs, this climate controlled environment, the city-scape in the afternoon sunshine. There are no pursuits that can expand upon these pleasures, but that doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed for what they are. As for those things banging on the glass, clearly those unpleasant thoughts are all as irrelevant as some masterful knowledge of the intricacies of oddly specific scenarios involving croquet, so a good course of action is to rebut them with the logically equal necessity of knowing those specificities of croquet, and keep condemning them for their baseless conceit until they acknowledge the equal relevance of that knowledge of croquet, then they can be easily be dismissed. If you get too stern with them, you might start to think that you truly do need this knowledge of croquet in order to feel pleasure or even to survive, but even if you take it that far, it's not hard to convince yourself otherwise." Says Peggy

"You were on a roll for a while, but that strategy just seems incredibly stupid. I don't think I will be able to fend off the fear of death and torture by trying to convince myself and those thoughts that the knowledge of croquet is just as pertinent" says Effie

"But when you are in no position to play croquet and reap that pleasure, just as you are in no position to change anything about our situation, then measurably those thoughts are equally valid, pertinent, and significant." Says Peggy

"I still don't understand how you can see how our situation has become _measurably_ worse than it was this morning, yet this has done nothing to sully your disposition. How is it possible to be just as pleased as you were earlier, when so many of the pleasing things that existed in our lives have now been taken from us." Says Effie

"It's a matter of perspective. You're doing raw, hard, barbaric counting, all empirical and proportional, and I'll teach you a little trick to understand things rationally, even if you feel the need to compare things like that. So this morning, let's say that all of our pleasurable things in life were the equivalent of throwing a ball 100 feet, that the maximum distance we could possibly throw a ball was that 100 feet, and we did it, so we felt very good about that. You follow me? So as you were saying, now we sit in a room, and we try to throw the ball but it only goes 20 feet this time. I can see how you might think that is a painful reality, only being to throw the ball to a much lesser extent, but that's just the nature of life, some parts of life are far more enjoyable than others, but that shouldn't cause you to think poorly of the less pleasurable parts of life. We may only be able to throw the ball 20 feet, but in reality, that is the maximum distance that we can throw the ball, it's just not physically possible for us to throw it anymore, so as much as it may seem like we're throwing the ball 80 less feet, we're still throwing the ball as far as possible, 100% of the possible distance, and from that perspective, rationally, the distance we're throwing the ball has not changed, it is still 100% of the possible distance, and from that perspective there is no reason to be upset or frustrated by our situation, because we're still throwing that ball as far as possible. If nature, something beyond your control, changes how far you can throw the ball, there is no reason to be upset about that, the ebb and flow of pleasure maximums are a natural part of life, so if you're upset about those things clearly you're going to be upset all the time, whether you're in a sticky situation or not.

Even if everything is peachy and just fine, but the natural pleasure maximum ebbs down to 80% of what is was an hour ago, you're going to be discontented, let down, not as happy, because you're comparing things empirically rather than rationally with proportion. When you are always comparing things to one another even when that comparison is not valid because one of the things being compared is impossible to attain, you're always going to be discontented. You should only compare two things when they are both equally attainable, and then at that point a comparison is valid. If you're not making valid comparisons, of course you can find ways to criticize everything because everything is not impossibly perfect, but in reality, if you understand the variable natural limits on perfection, you will find the same degree of pleasure every time just by knowing that you're reaching that pleasure maximum. That is the baseline, and anything beyond this basic pleasure is excess euphoria. If you compare things empirically it's impossible for you to reach that pleasure maximum, but using proportion it is always possible to reach that degree of pleasure. If this proportional judgement is your baseline for pleasure, any other euphoria that you might feel beyond this baseline is certainly something to enjoy, but it's not something that you would hold against another experience that you are also enjoying to the fullest simply because it does not offer you that intense euphoria.

That sort of mentality of judging things based on empirical euphoria rather than proportional pleasedness is the mentality of chasing the dragon that has come to define the endless discontent of the consumeristic hedonists and drug addicts alike, they are always looking to compare the raw degrees of euphoria rather than the proportional percentage of possible pleasure, and for that reason they're always discontent, as truly it is impossible to always feel the highest degree of euphoria one has ever felt at every possible moment of one's life, so when uses that as the benchmark, every experience reinforces this standard that informs them that this time spent, this action in the present is not as good as their moment of peak euphoria, and this causes them to be discontented or unappreciative of their situation despite the situation in question offering them easily 100% of the possible pleasure, a metric that is no difference than the 100% of possible pleasure offered to them by their experience of peak euphoria." Says Peggy

"It's as if you have this intermediary step between realizing something and having a psychological reaction to that thing. For me it's not like that at all, I just realize something and my mind instantly reacts to it. I don't have this period of time where I can just analyze the pending thoughts to determine whether or not I want to feel them." Says Effie

"It may seem like that, but in reality there is no intermediary step, my mind just performs those judgements in that same instant that you happen to start feeling them, the way I understand those negative thoughts and avoid them is just how I feel about them, it's my feelings about those things that allow me to dismiss the thought. It's a matter of understanding that you dislike those thoughts, then condemning them, and soon enough your mind just starts to instinctively condemn them in the way that those same thoughts instinctively cause you to feel things right now. Your reaction to things includes believing that those things are relevant, when my reactive understanding disregards them because from my perspective they're irrelevant. Still, just because you happened to realize something and then feel a certain way about it doesn't mean you can't objectively try to understand what it is you realized, how that made you feel, and then try to overpower that instinct with logic by reminding yourself how you should be feeling about that thing, then try to convince yourself to feel that way. It takes practice, but it's worth it." Says Peggy

"I'll try to keep that in mind, as much as it seems incredibly difficult, my desperation to attain that sort of peace of mind will at least convince me to try and develop those skills. The sheer power of your presence of mind in the face of every stressful and mind shattering impetus that occurs in our lives is truly incredible." Says Effie

"It may seem that way, but it's truly nothing all that impressive. I know that thoughts and feelings and whatnot can seem intimidating or powerful, but once you realize that despite however powerful and imposing they may seem, those feelings are little more than the Wizard of Oz, the tiny man behind the curtain causing this imposing apparition to appear, then it becomes much easier to overpower them. You're putting faith in that apparition rather than understanding thoughts as that tiny man, and that's why they seem so powerful. Your conscious thought processes are capable of being equally imposing and dominating as your unconscious ones, and it's just a matter of your faith in one or the other that allows one to dominate the environs of thought. If you allow your unconscious thoughts like feelings and emotions to purport themselves as more so legitimate and important than your conscious thoughts, of course you're going to be swayed by them, but if you denigrate and disenfranchise those unconscious thoughts and deem your conscious thoughts to be supreme, it because easy to disregard those unconscious ones because you instinctively think they're full of shit and are quite prone to dismissing them. That being said, unconscious thoughts can also be pleasant, and at that point enjoy them, but letting every unconscious thought past the customs of conscious thought is reckless to the point of insanity.

If you have standards for a thought, like thinking that one thought is a good idea, one a bad idea, the same sort of quality control can be applied to emotions. If an emotion or sentiment is not a good idea, and you would rather not pursue that idea, then dismiss the idea. As much as you may still feel the emotion, you're not putting your faith in the emotion, and that belief, that faith in the emotion, that trusting of emotion and believing that it is valid is something that makes the emotion so powerful. You don't question the emotion and it has free reign to do whatever it wants, to cause you to feel however it wants you to feel, and that's bullshit. I have no interest in feeling that way, so whatever might cause me to feel that way is clearly nonsensical bullshit, regardless of how real it is, seeing how if that thing had some potential to allow me to gain even more pleasure, I would be dead set on attaining that pleasure and I could preemptively understand that the pleasure does exist and it is rather accessible, as even just knowing that said attainable pleasure exists is itself a source of pleasure. Seeing that big bowl of pleasure and realizing that it is readily attainable, something like salivating at the sight of food. If you can't get that food, then there is absolutely no reason to salivate, but if you can and will more than likely get that food, go ahead and salivate, but more importantly get that food." Says Peggy

"As enlightening as it may be, listening to a two hour lecture about your philosophy has proven to be exhausting. Beyond that, it just feels ominous, it feels like we're just fucking around when there's something important we should be doing right now. Like we're on a sinking ship and we're not making any effort to get off of it." Says Effie

"Nonsense. The ship is not sinking in the slightest, obviously we're firmly on land so that should be the least of your concerns. In regards to the metaphor, I would think that the recent good news should be more than enough to remind you that we are healthily afloat at the moment. The whole feeling that you should be doing something, that's the most ominous thing you mentioned. The thought of doing something, let alone the thought of doing something in the hopes of accomplishing something that would better your position or situation, that sounds exactly like plot to me.

In the words of my father "Plot is just a nigger peddling crack-cocaine. It's bad news if you hear about him, worse if you see him, even worse if you're forced to smoke that crack-cocaine, and the worst possible situation is being addicted to that awful drug.' That restless feeling that you need to be actively pursuing things in some sort of flamboyant display of the fact that reality is volatile and reactive in respect to your actions, your life; that's an awful situation to be in, volatility and whatnot. You want the world to be largely unreactive despite anything you may do, knowing that despite however much you might fuck up or cause problems, that the world won't be affected in the slightest. That's what you really want, and that is the opposite of plot. Plot is like a china-shop walking on a tightrope jousting a whole herd of bulls, that's not something anybody should look highly upon, but just like the chemical analogue known as crack-cocaine, the allegorical form of plot gets people incredibly high, they feel great when they're high on plot, and this high deludes them, they can't see the terrible physical, psychological, financial, and god knows what other problems that their habit of abusing plotlines causes in their daily life.

Just think about the last two days, compared to all of the rest of our lives. Our lives earlier had been basically devoid of plot entirely, and they were nearly perfect, safe, reasonable, consistent, and very agreeable. The last two days, so rife with plot, forced upon us of course, but despite any pleasures of getting a job or whatever, the disagreeable elements of the volatility are not something anybody should be fond of, let alone pursue. I understand we've got a very plot rife job, and they likely gave it to us for that reason, just because of the detriment to a person's physical and mental health that plot causes, as we are rather expendable low value laborers, so our maiming would not be such an egregious price to pay when compared to the alternative of sacrificing legitimately healthy and valuable people, but still, just because we're economically prone to being subject to plot doesn't mean we should be chasing it out of our own volition. God no." says Peggy

"Well, still, just sitting here is making me restless." Says Effie

"I'll try to find something. Worse comes to worse we can talk our way into some idle entertainment. At least we're somewhat respected, which I presume would be quite rare in situations such as these." Says Peggy, getting up, walking around the room, opening the drawers on a dresser

# 2.7

"Notepads, pens, office things... a deck of cards, just what we needed." Says Peggy

"At least you're wise enough to have developed an aversion to plot. I'm sure if I tried to pursue some way to better our situation, the situation would only get worse." Says Effie

"That's how plot works. They only tell you the success stories, but in reality, those are a tiny fraction, less than one percent of people who pursued plotlines. For every war hero there's thousands and thousands of people who died as victims of the plot. People like to hear those sorts of stories, they give them the confidence to keep living, to be optimistic that they will prevail despite the struggles that life throws at them. If the people were shown a realistic proportion of the outcomes of people subjected to plotlines, people would fear for their lives at every street corner, living in constant fear that some plotline will come around that they're powerless to overcome and thus they suffer and die on account of this. By showing the people only the rare instances where the protagonist actually manages to make his situation better rather than fail miserably to do this, people foolishly think that they're comparably capable of accomplishing these things and attaining these unthinkably improbable results. Rummy?" asks Peggy

"Sure. I don't know how, but just the thought of playing cards is incredibly relaxing." Says Effie

"Psychological muscle memory, I suppose. Mental conditioning, as every time we've played cards in the past we've done so in very relaxing situations, so by now your mind has just associated the thought of cards with relaxation. That's nice in a situation like this where your delusion would cause you to worry, but the presence of the cards reminds you that everything is perfectly fine, and you have no reason to feel anything other than tranquil relaxation." Says Peggy, shuffling Casino style, dealing handedly, Effie adeptly consolidates her deal, holds the cards on the table with one foot, peeking with the other, sorts her cards, and then rests her foot on her hand as the girls begin to play

"This is nice. If we were playing Rummy earlier I'm sure I would have just seen your points about the philosophy and whatnot. When I've got something to distract myself, it's not hard at all to ignore the rest of the world as meaningless impertinent bullshit. Rummy is what's real, my mind understands that; at least in this situation, my mind instinctively dismisses anything outside of this room as nonsensical bullshit, even just thinking about what time it is, or what day it is, that all just seems like the incoherent babbling of a toddler, and I couldn't give less of a fuck about any imaginable intricacies that define the spittle dribbling out of that child's mouth. Rummy is the real world, at least so far as my mind's eye can see. They say idle hands are the devils workshop, in my case idle feet, and that idle mind is truly a demon in disguise. Worrying about nothing for no reason, I'm ashamed of myself." Says Effie, confident, relaxed, nonchalant

"Good. Now that you've got some awareness of the basis of your precocious abilities in that area of expertise, you can maybe just imagine yourself playing rummy or something, then the thought of playing rummy will dominate whatever nonsensical bullshit might happen to upset you for some reason." Says Peggy

"That's a seductive thought, but I don't really have the capacity to track an entire deck of cards in my mind like that, not to the extent that I could just idly play a real game. The act of having the cards here takes away all of the difficulty of memorizing the positions of 52 randomly placed cards, and I can just sit here and enjoy playing the game." Says Effie

"I can see the difficulty, but if you could master that skill, it would be quite potent within your mind. Seeing how often we play cards, I'm sure there's some foundation already laid for that sort of thing." Says Peggy

"Yeah, but I'm never thinking about the cards like that, thinking what cards are where, who has what, not to the extent where my mind just knows where each card is at all times. I've never been that attentive, but I might try to put some effort into it now that I can see the value of developing that skillset." Says Effie

"I'll admit I take the path of least resistance myself. Why bother to develop the mental capacity to play cards in my mind when I can just do so in reality. The fleeting and ephemeral nature of fantasy is nowhere near as satiating as the experience of the raw physical pleasure of feeling the cards, making the plays, and enjoying the company of course. Just imagining cards sounds like the desperation I would resort to in purgatory. I'd rather not contemplate my death like that, being held in some void, told to repent, and my mind is just despondent thinking about cards and dominoes, truly bereaved." Says Peggy

"My thoughts exactly, and I don't even have the sheer mental fortitude you have. If I try to loiter in my mind and imagine playing cards, I'm sure every sort of psychological demon in existence would take that opportunity to strike, seeing my as easy prey, knowing that the power of volition I have over my own consciousness is so meagre. With real cards, the physicality and unshakable reality is more than enough to overpower the ethereal nature of thoughts, and do know I revel in that, I lather my mind with this beautifully physical reality which so handedly suffocates those demons in their own irrelevance.

Thank god I'm stupid, otherwise it might be harder to dismiss those demons, but honestly I'd rather think of cards than make any sort of cognizant attempts to verify and validate the psychological perturbations according to their presumed relevance to reality. I don't give a damn about theoretical implications those demons may have on reality in the future, in the present I've got cards, and that's more than enough to allow me to dismiss the future as nonsense. If these worries about the future were so pertinent, why are they not physically palpable in the present? Clearly their incessant demands and gripes are nowhere near as relevant as these cards between my toes. Of course I acknowledge that if they did happen to become equally relevant as this physical reality, I would acknowledge them, but until that point I tell them to wait their turn like everyone else, without even batting an eyelash at whatever it is that concern may be about. In my case, the truly irrational fears always appear to be equally as relevant as the real fears, so despite being plagued by irrational fears, that kind of comes in handy, as you were saying, as I can dismiss all fears based upon the presumption that they're irrational, at least when I'm distracted enough. My problem is ignoring those fears when there's nothing that can distract me from them, which I will admit is not a particularly pleasant experience." Says Effie

"Maybe just find some sort of travel size distraction. Like a ball in a cup or something. That sounds nice." Says Peggy

"They'd find me starved to death, not a penny to my name, with a smile on my face, just holding that ball in a cup in my foot because I'd entirely forgotten about reality having been so consumed by that damn game. Just thinking about it is entertaining enough, let alone playing it." Says Effie

"As much as we should be wary, ball in a cup is like the purest freebase of plot, an infinite number of tragedies, an infinite number of heroic successes, an endless and unpredictable cycle, truly enough to captivate even the most wandering of minds for eternities on end. People read books for the plot, that's truly a laugh, knowing that every attempt at getting the ball in the cup surpasses whatever semblance of plot that some writer could manage to fathom: the rise, the fall, the success, the fall from grace, the second rise, the near success and failure, the despair, the newfound inspiration, another rise from the ashes like a phoenix, truly it is an endless degree of the highest quality of plot imaginable. People will read these formulaic books knowing every twist and turn beforehand, but with ball in a cup, you never really know what will happen next, countless profoundly tragic mistakes are possible, and countless unimaginable heroic successes will never cease to blow your mind." Says Peggy

"It truly is an example of Occam's razor: ball in a cup will always function as a perfect heroic epic, and every possible work of literature will always be riddled with flaws and shortcomings that arise from complexity." Says Effie

"Even the unwise pursuit of a better plot is an example of that. People complicate things unnecessarily by adding in more and more standards, metrics, and criteria from which they formulate a judgment, and this complication simply makes things needlessly far more prone to failure. By imposing these standards, you have done nothing but defile your own ability to enjoy things, as without these standards, ball in a cup is endlessly enjoyable, but once you apply these rigorous yet pointless standards, ball in a cup doesn't measure up, and while some great works may measure up to half of the raw and unfettered empirical pleasure of ball in a cup, truly those works never come close to that pleasure, and it is only through applying these needless and destructive filters that one can even interpret these works of literature as more so pleasurable than ball in a cup.

If I have 4 pennies, 1 nickel, two dimes, and three quarters, clearly if you filter out those silver coins, those 4 pennies will seem like an incomparably large amount of money, but this is only because you have filtered out the larger and more valuable pieces of money. If you simply condemn silver coins due to pride or arrogance, if you convince yourself they have no value, then clearly you will see those 4 pennies as the most valuable coins in the group, but this exemplifies the delusions induced by applying needless standards despite the fact that they amount to nothing but impoverishing yourself, and this explains why people's tastes so poorly enable them to actually feel pleasure and joy.

They're smoking cigarettes that filter nearly 100% of the smoke, and it is their pride that convinces them that the bigger filter means that the smoke is better, and this is absolute bullshit. It's a damn shame people take more pleasure in pride than pleasure itself, but humans are a damnable creature, and it is through this vice that they are and will continue to be damned. They teach kids to be proud of themselves rather than pleased with themselves, and clearly whatever idiot came to that conclusion must have never felt pleasure in their life. Rather than chase pride, be pleased with yourself, because pride is worthless if it yields no pleasure. If pride makes you pleased, you could still chase it, but this mentality of valuing pleasure rather than pride saves you the trouble of being bothered by all of the unpleasant things that can result from chasing pride." Says Peggy

"As much as I can agree, I think it's only because we've never really had anything to pride ourselves on. Sure, chasing pride is futile and will lead to nothing but failure, but seeing how most people do chase pride above pleasure, this is probably because pride inherently feels better than pleasure if you can actually attain it. I'm sure everyone who has even the slightest bit of natural caliber has done something in their life that they were proud of, and that feeling clearly must be better than pleasure otherwise people wouldn't chase it. Granted a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, people would probably be better off settling for easily accessible pleasure even if it means forsaking the potential gains of pride, but people don't think that way, as if they did there would be no appetite for gambling, when reality tells us that is clearly not the case in the slightest.

I'm glad I don't have anything to be proud of, at least nothing that I could use to compare myself with others in any significant way, as that does save me the pain of developing the addiction to gambling for pride, but seeing how that pride addiction is likely the same as a gambling addiction, I doubt it is the type of shortcoming you can cure in people just by rattling off your philosophy. They're going to keep buying those scratchers and look at you like you're an idiot because you don't believe that compulsively investing in scratchers is a reasonable pursuit. Even though you're clearly right for the most part, the fact that there is some small degree of skill involved in accomplishing something to be proud of, people all see themselves as capable of doing so, despite the fact that most are the fools being taken advantage of by the casino of pride rather than the few who can actually count cards and reliably walk away with legitimizing winnings." Says Effie

"I'm sure there's some sort of fix they get just by investing in those scratchers, otherwise they wouldn't invest in them at all. Just like how the both of us enjoy table games, people can probably find the same pleasure in the pursuit of pride if they're somewhat versed in the game itself. People think it's shameless to settle for being the dregs of society, and that's bullshit, because in reality it's settling for contentment and happiness rather than discontent and indignation, as those are the only reliably attained results from failing to settle for whatever you can get.

I've been called shameless on numerous occasions, and as much as that may seem like an insult, I always take it as a compliment. Shame sounds like an awful emotion to feel, why would anyone want to feel shame? I feel great, and I don't feel shame, and I certainly would like to continue to refrain from doing so. Why should I be ashamed of my life, of accomplishing nothing, of occupying my time with cards or dominoes, shooting the shit, running my mouth, and enjoying myself through these easy pursuits?

The claim that 'it amounts to nothing and is a waste of time' is like saying a noun is a noun, if I was pursuing incredible success and profits I would come away no less empty handed, I would accomplish nothing more, and despite the allegedly noble nature of those pursuits, those pursuits truly are the far more squandry than actively seeking out activities that I can actually enjoy. I may throw away the opportunity to be successful, but seeing how I would not be successful even if I pursued it, I am throwing away an opportunity to accomplish nothing when I disregard those pursuits, and if I pursue said success I am in reality throwing away countless hours that I could actually be enjoying myself.

This is the matter of shame, as people only raise the bar for themselves by pursuing these successes. They attain a certain degree of success then feel ashamed if they cannot perpetuate that success indefinitely, it is shameful to be successful then fail, and this painful shame causes people to be consumed with whatever degree of success they elect to manifest. They devote their lives not to feeling pride, but primarily to avoiding the displeasure of shame. To feel proud, they must raise the bar, to attain unprecedented or unattained success, as meeting their standard of success only produces contentment at best, and usually little more than a perpetual fear of the looming possibility of failure tomorrow. Raising this bar, this standard of success that one holds oneself to, all this does is voluntarily create the possibility of failure, this creates that possibility for shame and pain on account of failure, and I see no reason to do that, especially considering the extremely high probability of failure for a standard person of such pursuits, let alone somebody of my lowly status without education. I keep that bar securely on the ground, and that is truly a source of endless pleasure and contentment.

While most people have that bar sitting at their neck, and they cannot even relax their neck, let alone sit comfortably without inducing that pain of failure, I have that bar on the ground, and thus can even lay down on the ground, accomplish the epitome of nothing, the antithesis of accomplishment, and I can still feel great, I feel as good as a man who keeps that bar at his waist but manages to one day to hurdle that bar. That man is now damned to feel unfulfilled whenever his success does not include hurdling that bar, now when that man even stands with the bar at his waist he feels unfulfilled, where previously he was perfectly content without hurdling. I can lay down and still hurdle my bar, and I get just as much pleasure from hurdling that bar as the man does, but that man must work very hard to jump, where as I only have to lay down to feel that same pleasure, and even just by sitting up, let alone standing, I manage to supersede my expectations of success.

The lower your expectations are, the easier it is for you to meet those expectations, and seeing how the meeting of expectations is a rational pleasure, a percentage, whereas work required to meet expectations is an empirical measurement, clearly I'm doing nothing more than paying extra money, the lucre of work, just to attain that same pleasure. It's nonsense. It's a complete racket that they trick people into, deluding them into thinking they will actually feel better if they are successful, when as I have explained that is bafflingly nonsensical. I can see how it is necessary, for progress and whatnot within society, as otherwise people would just be content playing dominoes and society would do the bare minimum to get by, but still, I feel sorry for those people who decided to raise the bar on themselves, as once you've raised it, I'm sure it's rather difficult if not impossible to set it back down again. You'll always be comparing yourself to yourself, always discontented by your inability to attain the greatness of the past or at the very least nostalgic and rife with bittersweet memory of your glory days." Says Peggy

"I'm sure talking must feel like juggling knives right now, you're good at it, but still that last part of bittersweet memories of your glory days stabbed me something fierce. It's hard to remain ignorant to our situation and how it contrasts so painfully with the freedom we had known for so long." Says Effie

"I see you've not really contemplated the illusory nature freedom. Perhaps when compared to the freedom of youth, but even still we've just moved from the prison of our youth to the prison of work. We were always in a prison, and the prison of work is notoriously more so brutal than the prison of youth, being expected to do things rather than only being expected to refrain from doing things.

That being said, as we're inescapably trapped in this prison of work now, our current situation of bondage is easily even more so agreeable than our newly standardized cell of police work. We would have to go around and do work, and as much as we may be ambling around in some larger area, we are still shackled to our duties. As of now we're shackled to nothing, our jobs at the moment involve doing nothing at all, and that weight that has been taken off of our backs, at least for the moment, that weight of professional responsibility is no imaginary burden. The world is endless prisons and mixtures of different types of prison cells, we're imprisoned by our womanhood, our deformities, our work, our place in society, all of these things, so a simple change of one of these things is not really changing much about our perpetual bondage. Sure, the quarters may be a smaller than when roaming around, but we're no less imprisoned, simply imprisoned in a different manner. It has pros and cons, but I know I would rather be playing rummy than chasing after some hooligans with a nightstick. Seeing how we're getting paid either way, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that we're being held as collateral.

Unless the police force dissolves, the suits are intelligent enough not to do anything to damage the value of their collateral, and seeing how they clearly have a functional business relationship with the police, it is easy to deduce that we are in good hands, or at least the hands of people who have our best interests in mind, as our best interests also happen to be in their own best interest. They want to do a prisoner exchange, and that's as standard in a militant field as shooting a gun. If they wanted us dead, they would have killed us, they had countless opportunities, but clearly they very much so wanted us alive, and they want us to continue to be alive. We have value, and intelligent people don't squander value.

People find the same degree of discontent with every prison cell they happen to be in, be it their gender, their socio-economic standing, these things are just as imprisoning, and people get just as upset about those things as any other form of imprisonment. It's never a matter of being in prison or not being in prison, it's about understanding the nature of the countless forms of perpetual imprisonment that a human in society and even in nature is subject to, then understanding how to accept these inevitable facts of life. Once you start to see all of the other types of prison cells that we're confined in, you start to become tolerant of being in prison cells, and this general tolerance of general imprisonment helps you to develop a standardized tolerance of any prison cell. I'm sure it might take some getting used to, depending upon one's level of adaptability, but once you come to terms with the nature of these countless styles of imprisonment, it becomes easier to accept them. They all blend in, comparing something to something, and you can just see it as experiencing another something, when you've been experiencing these somethings your whole life, nothing new or different, just another yawn of the snake." Says Peggy

"That's a fair point, but seeing how common it is for people to be upset with those metaphorical prison cells you describe, it's not hard to understand that people are just naturally prone to being upset about those things, and having the prison cell be so real and finite as opposed to metaphorical only exacerbates that natural capacity to be upset. I'm not familiar with that expression, 'a yawn of the snake', though." Says Effie

"Well, it's just another something. I figured I could throw some words out there, a phrase that means something, and sense I'm comparing somethings and somethings, it didn't really matter too much as to what words they were." Says Peggy

"Just another yawn of the snake I guess." Says Effie

"Exactly." Says Peggy

"I'm yawning myself; what ever happened to that food?" asks Effie

"I'm not one to ask questions. I figure it is what it is, so there's no reason to investigate any further than that." Says Peggy

"Good point. Curiosity killed the cat, so they say." Says Effie

"You can't eat fantasy, and speculation is nothing but fantasy at the end of the day." Says Peggy

# 2.8

"Speak of the devil." Says Effie, a suited man walks in with two paper cups in a paper tray and a paper box

"Standard and some doughnuts." Says the man, putting it on the table and leaving

"Thank you kindly, good sir." Says Peggy, the man does not reply as he walks out of the room back to his business

"See that Effie? Doughnuts!" says Peggy, excitedly

"I'd save them for breakfast. Nobody ever said we would get any." Says Effie

"Let's take a look." Says Peggy, opening the box, "4 of them in here, chocolate covered." Says Peggy

"Incredible." Says Effie, putting her cards down, grabbing one of the cups with her feet, and starting to drink through the large straw

"Standard is good." Says Effie

"It always is." Says Peggy, grabbing her own cup

"Damn, this hits the spot." Says Effie

"Still, those doughnuts. Mighty tempting." Says Peggy

"If horses eat hay, I suppose cops eat doughnuts." Says Effie

"I'm glad they are such gracious hosts as to feed us our natural diet." Says Peggy

"We've been cops for a day, I wouldn't state it like that yet." Says Effie

"We're evolving, Effie. We have to adapt to our new environment if we want to thrive." Says Peggy

"I'm just saying." Says Effie

"Split one? Maybe? We can get one and a half tomorrow." Says Peggy

"You're still hungry after that standard?" asks Effie

"No, but I'm a cop, so putting these doughnuts in my mouth is like instinct. It's hard to fight." Says Peggy

"Just one then; I'm just as happy to reap the rewards of our caste, but still, I wouldn't look at it like that. Doughnuts aren't particularly healthy, you know. That instinct could easily kill you if you can't control it." Says Effie, Peggy grabs a doughnut and tears it in half with her hook, reaches across and gives Effie a piece,

"Crispy, chewy , cold, good. Real dough, not that cake kind, somebody's got good taste." Says Peggy

"Unnervingly sweet. Suspiciously sweet, you know. I would be nervous about eating too many of these, I would get nauseous real quick." Says Effie

"I thought you were a cop." Teases Peggy

"I think you're supposed to have coffee to wash them down with. Washing it down with shake doesn't' clean the tongue well enough. That sweetness and chocolate has to be melted off or something." Says Effie

"As awful as coffee is, usually, I still want some for some reason. Despite it being the evening and everything. Coffee and doughnuts would just put me in this heavenly place, like I've accomplished all that can possibly be done, I've done my job for the day, and all that is left to do is relax." Says Peggy

"I doubt you could relax after having coffee, considering you're a rambler even without it." Says Effie

"Perhaps that's true, but then that may be why cops smoke cigarettes so often, to calm them down after the coffee." Says Peggy

"Jesus, we don't need to start smoking." Says Effie

"I'm just saying if the world expects us to look the part, it might give us some credibility, build trust with the people, you know." Says Peggy

"I don't see what you're getting at." Says Effie

"Well, if we're just cruising around, you know, actively looking like we're working hard, people might be a little on edge. If they see us in the window, sitting in the doughnut shop, eating doughnuts, drinking coffee, then smoking a cigarette, not doing anything intimidating at all, those people will think, 'I can trust those cops, they're good, normal people who don't mean me any harm or have any interest in giving me a hard time'. If we're working too hard, people might think we're out to get them or something, like we're actively looking for fights rather than just doing our jobs." Says Peggy

"Despite the health risks, despite the cost of a smoking addiction, just think back to your philosophy of how you antagonize those people with the pride addiction or whatnot. Do you really want an addiction that is basically the same?" says Effie

"Well, the difference is that you can easily attain cigarettes, that's like if you could just go to the store and buy 20 sticks of smokable pride for $5. I wouldn't be so critical of those people if they could easily get their fix like that. The problem with pride is that it's extremely difficult to attain, whereas with cigarettes it's the antithesis. I'm sure it sucks just as hard to be deprived of cigarettes if you're addicted to them, but the world makes it very easy to get cigarettes while it's incredibly hard to earn any palpable degree of pride." Says Peggy

"Still, it's unhealthy. We should be in good health and in good shape. The odds are already stacked against us in this very physical line of work due to our physical shorthandedness, so we don't need to stack them any higher against us." Says Effie

"That's a fair point, but if we're at a social or something you better smoke if somebody offers it to you. That's rude if you don't, more than a faux pas, but it's basically a taboo in our culture, and then those people definitely won't trust you, you'll seem weird as shit, and suspicious too." Says Peggy

"Sure, I'll do it if another cop or somebody offers me a cigarette, but we're not just going to start smoking so people will trust us. We're hard not to trust as it is, how can you suspect somebody without arms of intending to do something at all, let alone something subversive against you." Says Effie

"Even just a normal person." Says Peggy

"It could be poisoned or something." says Effie

"Well, if it's a classy person. I mean I doubt any dregs are going to offer a cop a sherm or anything, so you don't really have to worry about it being poisoned. That just seems like an irrational fear. You manage to worry about everything, don't you?" Asks Peggy

"I just don't know anything about cigarettes, I'm just saying it could be possible." Says Effie

"It's easily far less probable than even getting food poisoning. Poison is expensive, and trying to poison somebody by getting them to smoke something is nonsense because firstly the fire would burn up most of the poison and then they just wouldn't inhale the smoke and stop smoking it because it tastes bad. Real poison doesn't need to be smoked, they can just brush it under your nose for a second and you will be poisoned. That or it's in your food. If anything, cigarettes are going to be even safer than food, unless you smoke so much you get cancer." Says Peggy

"I don't plan on it. I guess it was kind of an irrational fear. What ever happened to ignorance is bliss anyways?" asks Effie

"You weren't being ignorant, you were being paranoid. Ignorance is looking at a cigarette, and thinking this is a cigarette, then ending the train of thought there. Paranoia is looking at a cigarette and then going off on a tangent like 'what if it's poisoned?', you knew about the cigarette, then you presumed you knew even more than that by inserting the idea of poison. That's like two whole thoughts, when you don't even have to understand anything about a cigarette to enjoy it, I'm sure it's even better if you don't understand any of the long term health risks of smoking cigarettes. Ignorance is still bliss, it's just that paranoia founded in misinformation does not happen to be bliss." Says Peggy

"That elusive true ignorance... that is the bliss. My ignorance of certain specific things doesn't offer me the same bliss, as this bliss is quickly invaded by those unfortunate miscreants known as prior knowledge. Even if I don't know something, that won't stop my mind from superimposing things it presumes to be true over that ignorance. The mind truly is a wretched creature." Says Effie

"That is a fact. You can't trust your mind; keep it on a short leash. Your mind keeps your body in check, but don't let it have free reign. It takes a second mind, one that is mindful of the mind itself, to keep the mind in check, to ensure that it doesn't do stupid things. Your mind exists in this sort of vacuum of authority and influence, so you need to conjure up that authority in order to ensure that your mind doesn't wander off into the brambles like that." Says Peggy

"I don't know how you were so suspicious and distrusting of your mind that you somehow came to the conclusion as to exert authority over it. I don't really question my mind like that, I usually don't even notice that my mind exists in any form, I exist, I am aware of my body, but not my mind, nothing like you. Out of sight out of mind, so they say, that's ironic how much that applies to the mind itself. It's never in sight so I don't tend to think about it. I think all the time, but never is the existence of the mind itself acknowledged. The thoughts are, of course, but I never tend to be aware that all of these thoughts take place inside of this little bubble in my head, the thoughts basically just blend in with the air and the mind itself is completely imperceptible." Says Effie

"Your thought processes make sense, as it's hard to acknowledge something that is pretty much imperceptible. The thoughts blend in with the air, so that's like two layers of camouflage to hide the existence of the mind itself. I just get this thick fog of confusion in my mind, so thick I can feel it, and I just don't trust that feeling. Like I'm trying to think of something, my mind gets foggy and has trouble conjuring up the right though or the sensible thing to think, so when my thoughts fail like that I become suspicious of my own mind.

How can I trust something that clearly proves it's unworthy of that trust? Feelings are always plain as day, honest, straightforward, especially the good ones. I don't need to question those because I understand them, but seeing how if I try to deduce something clever I usually just get stumped, just run into a brick wall of foggy ignorance, I don't look too highly upon my brain. It's ok, but I wouldn't trust it for any sort of real insight or information. It's definitely not too reliable in terms of what it is supposed to do, which is supposedly to know things, so I don't tend to give it much responsibility or anything.

That's your problem, you trust your brain and your thoughts and whatnot. I mean sure, they exist, but it's silly to think that just because they're always there means they're worth their weight in salt. You wouldn't trust some stranger on the street who does literally nothing but talk your ears off night and day telling you all sorts of things, including plenty of disagreeable things, right? It's the same nonsense coming from your brain. It will try to trick you, make you think that you are those thoughts, and that's bullshit, your brain is just another raving lunatic on the street trying to tell you about the magic of Jesus, or some herbal bullshit, or reading, or god knows what. I'm not giving those asshats the time of day, like their meaningless and baseless superstition is worth a damn or actually going to help me. If I'm bored I might shoot the shit with them, but I'm definitely not going to unquestioningly gobble up the nonsensical shit they're spewing out of their mouth.

As much as I can respect my thoughts because they smell like me, and that's a good sign, they're pretty stupid most of the time. I try to pay attention to facts, and other than the facts most of the thoughts just become white noise. It's like being exhausted by some street-preaching lunatic's endless ramblings to the point where you can hardly even make sense of the words they're saying. Still, I know what they're talking about, in general terms, which is nonsense. The longer somebody talks, the more and more likely they're not going to know what they're talking about, the more likely their words and statements will be flawed and problematic. Beyond that, the more complicated the idea or topic their discussing is, the greater the room for error.

I know I like to run my mouth, but I'm not sitting here talking about the interplay of 5 different people as they each try to accomplish a different set of objectives, while they may have some in common and lack others in common, while there are countless unknowns about the weather and the chemical dispositions throughout their body that come into play, along with all sorts of other relevant information that I don't give a fuck about, just so I can try to convince you that I know how to make the most of that situation, to come out successful, to have attained your goals at the highest degree possible. That's a shit show, and I'm not some master manipulator of minds and emotions to the point where I can even understand how one would do that, let alone actually execute it. Clearly I don't know how to do that, but that situation is the world, only your tangible world is the interplay of the hundreds if not thousands of people that are somehow relevant in your pursuit of success.

Even if it's not people, then it's chemicals or mechanicals or electricals and god forbid emotionals that all crash and bang together and give you this massive hodgepodge of chaos, and anyone who tries to think these days is trying to sort some sort of reasonable deduction from that nonsensical shit show, and that's just stupid. I'm not going to waste my time with that just so I can stroke my ego by putting on the asshat and pretending I'm not fully of shit when I run my mouth about how much I know things. I can stroke my ego by playing dominos or rummy. I can actually do those things, and that means I can actually reap the reward of pleasure by winning games.

I can't actually do any of that big time big show thinking whatnot, so I know that even if I try to, I'm going to come up empty handed, and I just find it is far easier not to do it. I don't have any interest in wasting any amount of time attempting to do that sort of shit, seeing how I know for damn certain I have very little if any capacity to do those things. People hold themselves to such high expectations and expect to be able to make sense of chaos and be the force of order that regulates the clusterfuck of nonsense known as reality, and that's beyond ambitious, that's delusional. I know some people have made a dent, but that's a rarity, so expecting to come out guns blazing and expect to hit some sort of valuable game animal by taking shots in the dark just shows how prone the human mind is to both delusion and reckless desperation. I'm sure those fuckers are hungry as hell for whatever it is they think they're hunting, but they're far, far stupider than they are hungry, and that's saying something considering how hungry they are for success or love or whatever they're craving to that degree.

I like it simple. I like well-established cause and effect. I know for a fact I will enjoy playing cards, so I can certainly defend entertaining that thought because it is more than a fantasy, it is a fact. It would be unheard of that I play cards and don't enjoy myself, unless I just don't play enough cards that is, but still. I know for a fact that I am both capable of playing cards, and that I will enjoy playing cards, so the thought of playing cards for pleasure is one that I can respect. If I was uncertain of my capability, despite any confidence I may have presumed, I would not be so ambitious to undertake the playing of cards, because I would not know for certain if I could actually do it or if I would actually enjoy it. People tend to presume that they are not only capable of something, but that they will enjoy something, so they just recklessly pursue things without actually understanding that reality is notorious for failing to meet people's reasonable expectations, let alone the wild and outlandish delusions of grandeur that so many ambitious people happen to mull around in their head." Says Peggy

"As much as you condemn thought, you tend to allegedly know plenty of things. I figure knowing is a type of thinking." Says Effie

"Well, I don't put any effort into thinking the thoughts, I just grab them out of the bag of known truths and throw them out there. Even if I'm wrong, as clearly some psycho-analyzer will tell you I have my head up my ass, then it doesn't matter, as I'm just explaining things as I perceive them. This is as much as I've been able to make sense of the world, whether or not what I'm saying actually makes sense is up for debate, but these are lessons I've learned over the years, however wise or foolish they might be in reality. That being said, I doubt I would be running my mouth like this in the presence of somebody who believes they know all sorts of things that somehow trump my sentiments, because I'd rather not exhaust myself and I have no interest in arguing with somebody, as I don't particularly care if they're enlightened to my wisdom, and if they don't want to listen or they want to disagree, I'm certainly not going to force it down their throat.

As it stands, we're just shooting the shit pointlessly, and I don't even remember what I've said in the past few hours. I just kind of absentmindedly pull out numbered drawers of established theory in my mind, attempt to explain what is in those drawers, then often times those drawers will have a "see drawer number 32 for more information", or whatever number, they don't really have numbers, but basically my mouth is just doing menial work of communicating things from my mind, my mind is just doing the menial work of fetching the information from drawers and shoving it into the relay, so in reality neither party is actually paying attention to what is happening, they trust the other to get the work done. What I've said in the past is irrelevant, as it was just some sort of inferred request as to open this drawer, probably because I'm just trying to be helpful, so I open that drawer and do what I can to convey whatever information is in there.

Talking, debating, all that is sort of like curling, in that to be the person who makes the point, you just have to be closer to the target. Granted people like to pick up other people's curling stones as well as their own and just throw them violently in a blind rage, but that's not how the game is played when people play according to the rules. Right now, we're just playing a causal game of philosophical curling, and as casual as it is, you don't tend to use those philosophical arms you have to challenge my stones, you just kind of sit there, so I'm having a nice casual time just throwing the stone towards the target and seeing how well I do.

I may seem to know things, but that's just because you don't really compete in the slightest. If there was somebody here who was comparatively as baselessly assertive as I am, then I would seem to know much less because I'm sure there are plenty of flaws people would happily bring up with my arguments. I might argue back, I might not, I don't know. I get exhausted when people try to argue with me, because I truly don't care if they see my point or not. If they're arguing in the first place that makes it magnitudes less so likely that they will even consider your point, let alone ever acknowledge it as a legitimate or defensible sentiment. So I figure the reason I talk so much, and seem to know things is because you're willing to listen. You don't contest my curling stones, so that makes it very easy for them to stay close to the target. Hell, my 8 stones could all be a mile off, but when the two stones you might throw are 10 miles away and you forfeited the other 8, clearly it's going to look like I've curled a snowman on you. It's not due to my particular skill in curling, or knowledge in this case, it's just more of a matter of your indifference to putting up any contest." Says Peggy

"For someone that who claims that they would seldom talk if there was even the slightest bit of competition, you seem to be quite devoted to the craft. I figured if you saw talking as such a piddling and pointless activity you would occupy yourself with alternative ventures that would be more fruitful and meaningful." Says Effie

"If such pursuits existed, perhaps I would pursue them, but as it stands in this reality, there is nothing more meaningful or fruitful as talking, despite whatever degree my own phonetic musings may lack a that particularly savory form of meaning and nutrition that quality talk has historically been redeemed by. The pursuits that men preoccupy themselves with are seldom if ever the pursuit of anything more than death itself, and even in the case of the one thing that does not explicitly qualify under this definition, reproduction, this is merely the pursuit of a second death by giving new life to something.

To chase implies hunger, and hunger implies mortality, thus all men who chase things, be it drugs, women, money, entertainment, or otherwise, these men are all chasing things because within their fleeting lives the absence of these things causes an intense dysphoria, as such things are ephemeral as their own lives. When these men lack these things, they feel that they are dying, that they had once been living, but now in dearth they are dying. These pursuits are lowly cravings of animal instinct, of hunger, of survival, and as pleasurable as some may find these pursuits to be, they are truly inhuman, as they are bestial pursuits. Pursuits that are truly human are those that can be pursued by humans yet not animals, as opposed to the pleasures that both partake in and enjoy. If an animal can enjoy a pleasure, know that it is an animal pleasure, and for a man to pursue them, he may simply be humble, but for a man to be preoccupied with him, he is a degenerate.

A human must pursue human pursuits in order to be human, as without these definitive pursuits in a man's life, he has not become human; he has simply become an animal. Human pursuits being that of wisdom, of reason, of anything that falls beyond the grasp of the carnal conscious mind of any other mammal on this fair planet; these are the only pursuits that one can truly justify. Sure you can enjoy your guilty pleasures, but commonality does not absolve oneself of the guilt of these things, of one's guilt for pursuing them. For that reason, as a woman lacking in any form of truly refined intelligence for which I can further the technological secondary evolution of the species, I am reduced to the simple human pursuits, that of the endowing the other members of my species with whatever enlightenment I have been able to grasp over the course of my life. To enlighten people to wisdom that allows them to truly exist as human, to live their lives in such a way that their own wisdom is such a boon to their survival that the source of their livelihood is refined and potentiated beyond that of an animal. Truly a dog or a cat may live within society, and eat the civilized foods, but that does not mean that this animal is in any respect a human.

That is an important thing to understand, as simply reaping the benefits of the wisdom of others does not make one wise, as truly that makes one little more than a domesticated beast of burden, if one can even carry any burden from which one can justify one's own existence. To be wise one must reap benefits from one's own wisdom, and only then can one truly claim to be human; one's own wisdom must measurably benefit oneself in a way that proves oneself acts in a manner that is beyond that of simple observation and instinctive reaction, that one can understand, manipulate, and exploit the world rather than simply react to it.

In my case, this takes the form of a refined and masterful pursuit of pleasure, contentment, and practical enlightenment, but I am merely playing the hand I am dealt so to speak, as this truly is hardly a winning hand amongst the human race, but that being said I am playing it as best I can, and earning as much winnings as I possibly can through my masterful knowledge of the rules of this game of civilized life. That being said I do so in a human manner, with wisdom enhancing all of which I reap from this gambler's game, yet too often people reap what nature has sown for them, what their mother has provided for them, rather than actually reap what they have sown with their own hands, through their own initiative, their own volition, their own wisdom. As casual and tender as conversation may be, it is refined, it is the art of the wise, where save for perhaps hard science, there are no more so justifiably human pursuit that a person can devote themselves to.

To defend a more carnal pursuit over a refined one such as conversation would be for me to defend plot, conflict, strive, suffering, as opposed to the relaxation if not absolution of these things offered by the wisdom with which our species has been christened. Plot is not only an intrusive, bothersome, demanding pissant of a nuisance; it is also the lowest form of petty buffoonery known to man. Plot in its essence is little more than slapstick: it is the class clown, shouting loudly, clapping his hands, making obscene remarks, being lively, all of that meaningless distraction and petty drivel, and often times reduced by his carnal nature to slugging fisticuffs about and growling viciously like a truly feral beast. To be entertained by that slapstick, of the apparent bestialization of a human soul, that truly is a mark of worthlessness upon that person, that said soul in question cannot entertain the person without being subjected to and victimized by sadism: they look at that soul and you say 'I would have no interest in you were it not for your suffering', and truly at that point one who finds themselves entertained by plot is indistinguishable from a sadist.

Entertainment can be found in endless ways without suffering, even beyond the pettiest sadism of the suffocating comedic tension and asshatery that the dolts intoxicate themselves with. As much as a soul has some sentimental and occasionally empirical value, a human soul is also a stick in the same right. As much as this is true, to prefer to see people take turns being the person who is lashed by this stick, this switch, for the entertainment of how they cry out, how they write and suffer is truly barbaric. The existence and utilization of plot used to provide entertainment implies that one is unable to enjoy the stick itself in its own right, that without this stick being utilized in such a barbaric way, not a soul would care in the slightest about said stick. For a human existence to be 'functionally worthless save lest it is subjecting others to or otherwise being subjected to sadism' is shameless, so to have this be the standard of human entertainment just shows the degree of savagery that humanity has succumb to, as even true savages in the wild would be revered far more for their wisdom and insight than any sort of penchant for the suffering they may happen to inflict or be subjected to.

Every relevant facet of the plot is a marker that the human being itself, the thoughts, sentiments, intelligence, and wisdom of that character are so unremarkable that these facets that definite human existence have now been replaced by the bleating groans of a suffering animal, for no reason other than the empirical entertainment value of a tortured animal when compared to this unthinkable underwhelming lack of humanity and sentience being emitted from this protagonist, or other plot relevant character.

The beauty of the stick, the tree-limb, the entire tree, the forest, and the incredible symbiosis of this forest and all of nature, this should be the entertaining part of bearing witness to the existence of the human race, not the pettiest observation of the duality that a man has the capacity to be both a tortured animal and a torturing stick. Such is not intelligence, and to revel in the suffering and plight of an animal rather than in the unprecedented and staggering wisdom has come to define the significance of our species, that is an unforgivable degree of pettiness, to be given such a precious commodity of wisdom and instead elect to sustain oneself on the instinctive, subconscious, and thoughtless reactions to witnessing the suffering borne by an animal of ones species subject to torture. It is disgustingly shameless that humanity is voraciously willing to reduce themselves to wild animals who take pleasure in beating each other to death and cannibalizing the suffering of their own species. I'm not saying that I expected any better, but that does nothing to minimize the despicability of such barbarism. As much as I may be a peasant, I am still a peasant, and this degree of nobility is not something I have any interest in sullying with the savagery of degenerates." Says Peggy

"I'm right there with you. As much as I can be, I suppose. I don't really have your nobility to assist me in my disdain for plot, but I definitely don't like it at all. I figure I tend to be the one subjected to the sadism, seeing how I can hardly inflict much of it, so having been in that position my entire life, I really dislike plot. It's more of a fear than a disdain really, but that sort of conflict, some sort of series of meaningful events in which my own actions and performance are somehow relevant and meaningful, that scares the shit out of me. I can't even imagine a plot that I might be involved in, but in my heart I know damn well that I would be the one subjected to the torture.

Even this past day of plot, my timid fears and preoccupations that I had grown used to, that I was capable of ignoring because they seemed like empty fears, they all came full circle. I was always afraid that something bad would happen, but it never really did, not until today, that is. I tried to convince myself that my anxiety was stupid, that I was scared for no good reason, but after everything that happened today, I know damn well why I had those fears. I was scared for a good reason, and I doubt I will ever be able to ease this incessant paranoid tension in my heart, I'll just be hoping to Jesus that somehow all of this resolves itself, because I know for damn certain I'm not capable of furthering this plot, of resolving this conflict, in any meaningful or significant way, meaning that this plotline of our captivity does nothing but ensure that there is this indefinite window for me to be subjected to the sadism of the world.

I'm not saying that's guaranteed to happen, I'm trying to convince myself that it won't, but I know for certain that if something happens, it is guaranteed to be my torture. I'm not some kind of action hero that can save the day, I'm just a girl, basically a kid, less than two days as an adult, and I don't even have arms for Christ's sake. There must be some delusional asshats out there who can enjoy plot, because even for me just to acknowledge that plot exists is basically like acknowledging that a wolf that could easily be stalking me, and seeing how I can smell that damn wolf right now, I'm even more scared and nervous than I usually am. Thankfully these cards can distract me, it's a godsend that you found them, really, but as much as that soft and serene anxiolysis can coat my heart, it can hardly penetrate but the thinnest layers of tissue, thus my heart is still thick with that dense gelatinous fear. I'm relaxed on the outside, but I've basically got to blackout all of the feelings inside of my body, I've got to sip the oil on the surface because the water below it is poison." Says Effie

"As deadly as plot can be, the world is not fond of it, so hopefully that can ease your pain. As much as the cocksure love to peddle their delusions of plot, only the most reckless of humans will actually pursue it beyond a simple joust of delusion. All humans hate plot, they fear plot, because even the strongest and most capable of men can easily be massacred by plot. Plot is egalitarian death, and all men know this to be true. Man wants nothing more than to avoid death at all costs, so only the stupidest of the fools will voluntarily pursue plot, and most all of them have died or been maimed beyond function by the time they might actually impact reality.

Plot is a farce; it is a vulgar and disgusting farce at that. Plot is some form of unprecedented and unthinkable success against all odds. It is the gambler's dream that he buys some endless string of winning scratchers; it is so asinine that it is ridiculous. In our situation, reality would dictate that all parties go about the situation in a professional manner, pursuing objectives with the smallest degree of risk with the highest probability of success.

Plot would dictate that people pursue things with the highest degree of risk with the lowest probability of success, because that sort of irrational and improbable success is what people like to see. Rather than have the boys down at the station sort this out with business and paperwork so we all get out of here no worse for wear, plot would dictate that Amos and Horse come jump through the window guns blazing to save us, we have to fight to the brink of death ten times over, nearly dying every time and only escaping by the skin of our teeth, and at some point Amos probably dies because he is black, and at another your magic of all things is what somehow saves all of our lives, and to think that any reasonable person would even entertain the thought of such pursuits is ridiculous.

I would hope that nobody would be that stupid, but I know that rarely such stupidity does exist, and those people promptly die. If our friends tried that they would be shot on sight, and we would just be sitting here with our equivalent thumbs up our asses, our collective one hand in the air, scared shitless watching two men bleed to death, having made absolutely no progress in bettering our situation in the slightest. Fucking hell, why not ride away into the rainbow kingdom in the sky on a unicorn because the second coming of Christ is also Prince Charming who comes to save us, and we both get married to him and his brother Prince Kindness, and we live happily ever after as princesses in the joyous pleasure and endless peace of the rainbow kingdom. I'd have to huff paint to enjoy plot, and thankfully I'm no more rife with inhalants than the usual trope they'll pump you full of at the recreation center, the quality kind for good health, not some godforsaken third world bullshit." Says Peggy

"I'm sure that the cops at the station doing business things still counts as plot. I've seen people in offices on TV doing paperwork and whatnot. I'm far more open to that kind of plot than the kind you described though." Says Effie

"That's just because you can't read. I'm sure if you could read you would be just as afraid of that sort of frantic bullshit of throwing papers in the air and shouting into a telephone as you are of the threat of physical violence. That whole office plot exists because those people are brutally fucked if they don't throw their papers just right and shout the perfect frantic phrase into the phone. They're equally dead, they're just fighting for their lives with paperwork and phones rather than with guns and knives and stuff. It's not like those people are just pushing papers in the same modest and meaningless pace that defines the humdrum of workplace monotony, they're doing it frantically because there's some sort of life threatening situation on the line." Says Peggy

"I can read, you know this, but I still see your point." Says Effe

"Well, for all intents and purposes you can't read. I wouldn't let anyone know that either. I would hate for your little bit of pride to get the best of you. Sure you can probably read a few words, but if your life was on the line, in that plot style of paper throwing, I'd hate to see that. You'd breakdown ten times faster because you realize that you're getting far too big for your britches making claims like that." Says Peggy

"I mean I can read on a basic level, maybe not professional or anything, but I can still do it. That being said I'm definitely not going to go telling people that any time soon. I'm trying to avoid that sort of paper throwing at all costs, I'm sure you're right in that I couldn't handle it in the slightest. Even if I could do the reading, I would hate to be responsible for saving people's lives in a situation like that. I'm soft-spoken, so I'm sure the plot would be that I couldn't shout loud enough into the phone to save the person's life, so it's a terrible tragedy." Says Effie

"That or you just couldn't read well enough. I'm sure that's a common plotline for a tragedy, somebody is trapped in some kind of vice, but the tension arises because protagonist can't read well enough to understand what need to be done to save the person's life. I think it would be a hit amongst most common people, even if the ones with airs would find it to be stupid." Says Peggy

"I think most people can read, or at least want to think they can read well enough. That's like having a plot where the protagonist is just too fat and slow to save the person's life or something. That's terrible, people don't want to be reminded of real shortcomings like that." Says Effie

"That's what makes it dramatic though, it's believable and realistic and whatnot. People really sympathize with the protagonist because they would have the exact same problem in that situation." Says Peggy

"That's still only if the people aren't ashamed of having that problem in the first place. If you just make people feel embarrassed and self-conscious, they're not going to like that plot." Says Effie

"All plotlines are defined by that shared shortcoming, through which people understand the fear and struggle of the protagonist because they too would have a great degree of difficulty in succeeding in that situation. If the viewer doesn't relate, if they don't sympathize with the struggle, they're not going to be moved by it. A two hour movie about a man stuttering, sweating, struggling to order a sandwich would hardly resonate with the audience because none of them have trouble ordering a sandwich." Says Peggy

"I suppose your right, but I'm just saying if the movie was about somebody without arms struggling to do things that I struggle with, as much as I relate to that person, I would still be self-conscious, especially if the protagonist was struggling with things normal people don't. It would make me feel inadequate and insecure and stuff. I mean I can deal with it fine in the day to day, but if my inadequacies were put on center stage like that, I'd definitely be embarrassed." Says Effie

"That's a fair point, but if this was some odd paradoxical isolated environment without people to compare yourself to, then you would definitely sympathize with the protagonist and be moved deeply. There are those comparisons again, ruining what could otherwise be a perfectly enjoyable movie." Says Peggy

"That's funny you say that. I'm sure I could enjoy it in that situation, probably heaps, just because of the fact that I would relate to it and sympathize with it so much." Says Effie

"As true as that is, sympathy and all, the whole nature of plot and comparisons and whatnot, that's a subtle little sneak you've got to be wary of. It's easy to get the feelies out of those sorts of things, but that easiness is what will also readily betray you and give you the unpleasant ones. I'm not going to expect you to lather me with wisdom, but a whole feely comparison is rather worthless when compared to wisdom. I mean I like them too, I just can't trust them." Says Peggy

"You're so weird." Says Effie

"I'm not the one who's so troubled by unpleasant feelings like anxiety and whatnot. As weird as it may be, I would argue it's a bit more pleasant." Says Peggy

"What about the good feelings that you won't get if you distrust them? Maybe those outweigh the pain and suffering of the bad ones." Says Effie

"Tell me how true that has been in your case. Besides, I can pick and choose for the most part, so if a feeling is a pleasant and harmless feeling, I tend to let it through the psychological customs enforcement checkpoints." Says Peggy

"I mean, I do have plenty of good feelings. It would be nice to not have so many unpleasant ones, but I think my life would be grim and sad without the pleasant ones. People make me feel good feelings, most of the time anyways. If I just felt nothing when I hang out with you, or even with my sister, that seems eerie, creepy, like a depressing kind of unnerving. To even imagine myself feeling that way seems like I'm already dead, and that's a worse feeling than the fearful ones, because at the very least I can hope that the fearful ones subside eventually." Says Effie

"I mean, I do have plenty of feelings, I just subject them to scrutiny is all. It's not like I'm callous at all, I'm rife with feelings, it's just I think that having some standards of quality control endows me with a higher quality emotional experience. As adulterated as it may be, I'm not some sort of psychological purist that would argue that a natural sentimental disposition is somehow preferable to a refined one, regardless of how artistically and aesthetically valuable a natural predisposition to emotional states might be." Says Peggy

"I want to think you're just weird, but I'm sure you're just too wise for me to understand right now. I'm a bit sleepy, so my mind isn't working at this incredible degree of clarity and sensibility that yours tends to work at, not that it really ever does, but now is further from that standard than it usually is." Says Effie

"In my ignorance, I would argue that your mind is just so rife with white noise, with meaningless and/or worthless thought that it muddies the hell out of your thought processes. Sure, you've got plenty of thoughts knocking around in there, but when you want to drink the water of thoughts, yet your wellspring of thought is rife with all sorts of petrochemicals, garbage, human waste, and discarded psychoactive prescription medications, you're not going to get the crisp clear refreshment of that pure, refined, distilled water. You've got plenty of water, I'm sure of that, it could just use a good deal of healthy refinement is all." Says Peggy

"When you describe it that way, my innate fearfulness tells me that if I try to boil the water to purify it, all the water will all evaporate and I'll be left with nothing but the distilled wastewater. I'll just take my nausea if it's either nausea from drinking subtly dirtied water or drinking the refined displeasure of distilled liquid garbage." Says Effie

"You've got to catch the water and toss out the garbage. You position your mind in the sludge, when you've got to allow your mind to float above the water, drink in the vapor, and then ascend to the point where the garbage is no longer within the confines of your mind. Your mind is permeable, you know, so if you've got the top half of water, and the bottom half garbage, just increase the height of your mind by 50%, and seeing how the volume doesn't increase, you've got nothing but water as that garbage now lays beyond the boundaries of your mind." Says Peggy

"Then what fills the other 50% of your mind?" asks Effie

"Air, I suppose." Says Peggy

"Clearly. In my case that would probably end up being air pollution, unfortunately." Jokes Effie

"Call me an airhead if you'd like, but I'd rather have my head be full of crisp, clean air than garbage. It's a matter of your disposition you know; you're the master of your own environment, so whether or not your mind is full of that garbage is all a matter of whether or not you're willing to tolerate that garbage." Says Peggy

"Theoretically that works due to the ethereal nature of thought, but in reality the nature of thought is a far closer parallel to physical reality. Sure people can be upset with garbage and want it gone, but that doesn't mean the garbage disappears, it just gets stuffed somewhere else like in a landfill. The psychological equivalent of that would be repressing the thoughts, and I figure I already do that to some extent. On top of that, just like in real life, most people's minds actively create this psychological garbage, and I suppose it is only fitting that as an American I create a remarkable amount of this garbage in a rather short period of time. Thankfully it condenses very well, but it's still just an incredibly dense ball of haunting garbage. That's probably why I don't usually understand what it is I am afraid of, it's all been absorbed into this shapeless sphere of incredibly dense psychological garbage. It is unrecognizable, shapeless, but the aura of garbage is still incredibly palpable." Says Effie

"I'd use that to your advantage. If it's unrecognizable, that should make it far easier to do that classic something to something comparison. Despite the fact that it is something, it's not really anything in particular. Sure it has some particulars about it, but if you can turn a blind eye to those particulars it just becomes an inert sphere of undefined meaninglessness, plenty dense, but nothing particularly relevant about it. Even if you still feel that fear and whatnot, just by convincing yourself that the ball of garbage is not anything specific, you will stop sourcing fear directly from that ball, you won't think of the ball and be afraid. Fight fire with fire, you know, drown any other specific fearful thoughts with that ball of garbage, just absorb them into there, then at that point you're only dealing with one constant source of fear rather than multiple sources swirling around and whatnot. With only that one specific source of fear you can make a concerted effort towards denaturing that single ball, and then use that to overpower anything else that might come your way. A specific fear just becomes grouped in with the general fear, and once you have a mastery of your general indefinite fear, then it will be easier for you to conquer fears in the moment because you're skilled at handling the indefinite fear to the point where your skillset easily translates and/or the fear translates into general fear." Says Peggy

"All of these psychological strategies seem like a mixture of nonsense and impossibility. Brains just work, it's not like I'm sitting there pulling levers and turning knobs in order to cause my brain to do things. Maybe I'm not in the right mindset, but trying to master and conquer my fears doesn't seem appealing at all right now, in my mind I'm just running from them, and so long as I can ignore them, I can kind of forget about them. Even the thought of turning around and going to fight them is far too unpleasant for me to even consider right now. Maybe if these were simple, foolish fears, then I might consider your propositions, but seeing how our situation involves armed criminals and could easily involve our own death, I'm not particularly tempted to try and come to terms with either of those things. To be fair, it does remind me of one of your strategies, all of it being reduced to blackness that I'm unwilling to acknowledge, something to something, am I wrong?" asks Effie

"That's perfectly fair, there's fifty ways to skin a cat. So as long as you're comfortable in your own mind, it doesn't particularly matter how you get there. It's a matter of walking away in the best possible shape you can, so if conquering those fears is impossible, denaturing them into vagueness is a reasonable approach. It's good you're at least aware of what you likely have the psychological capacity to accomplish. Too many people have an irrational amount of confidence or lack of it, but you seem to be perfectly grounded. I'm not belittling you, I've just known you for long enough to know your fearful timidity is not going anywhere, not that it's a problem, it's probably just a healthy level of fear." Says Peggy

"Thanks for that. It's kind of perturbing to be the only one with a rational level of trepidation and fear, most people tend not have any palpable degree of discretion induced by anything that even resembles fear. Perhaps my perspective skews my opinion, seeing how existing without arms when everybody else has arms is pretty much the equivalent of existing in a world where every person you see has a gun except for you. I figure that would put anybody on edge, even if the paranoia is equally as irrational as fearing guns, considering that the vast majority of people with guns don't commit crimes with them." Says Effie

"That whole rational level of fear is likely only due to the fact that you're intelligent. To be afraid of something you usually have to understand why it is you should fear that thing. If you point an assault rifle at the head of a baby, that baby will probably just grab the rifle and put it in their mouth. Babies will understand shouting and violence, but just calmly pointing a gun at them won't faze them in the slightest. Most people tend not to understand things, so their method is usually to refrain from understanding then be satisfied with this lack of understanding as a result, the result of contemplating something being ignorance to which the person has no issue with. You on the other hand like to think for some reason, you will see something, then acknowledge your ignorance, then start on some hypothetical ghost catching parade where you think about all of the what ifs and maybes that could give you a good reason to be afraid. As much as you end up being afraid of all the things you should be afraid of, you also end up being afraid of lots of things you probably don't have any real logical reason to be afraid of." Says Peggy

"I would like to think I have a perfectly rational reason to be afraid right now, Peggy." Says Effie

"I'm just saying it's all theoretical and hypothetical who whats whys and maybes. I'm not going to place bets on those horses, I know better than that." Says Peggy

"I'm sure you're aware that our situation is not a hypothetical one at this point. We actually are being held prisoner. It was a hypothetical situation this morning, but now it is a reality rather than a possibility." Says Effie, worriedly, nigh condescendingly

"That's not the point. The point is that we're sitting in a room and playing cards, that's it. There's nothing else happening. You're afraid of something that might happen, and I think that's foolish. If somebody came around putting a gun in my face telling me that he's going to kill me, sure I might be a bit alarmed, but as it stands, that's not happening, so I'm content with understanding I'll cross that bridge when and if I get there, as I certainly see no reason to do so right now. The last thing that happened was somebody gave us some food, so clearly that's a pretty good sign that probability isn't ruthlessly intent on putting us in the ground. I'm sure federal prisoners get treated worse than this, so considering the standards of half-decency that the government holds themselves to, I'd say our fate is in the hands of decent, reasonable people right now." Says Peggy

"I'm just saying that this is comparable to a weather report, and the weather called for stormy skies with a chance of tornadoes. I'm going to be on the look-out for tornadoes, just in case, because that possibility is what gets under my skin. Granted, you have a reasonable strategy of just waiting until you see the tornado to be afraid due to the facts that we are trapped in a room and worrying gets us nowhere, as you are right that logically there's no point in being afraid seeing how we can't evacuate or hunker down or whatever.

It's just when the wind is howling and rattling the windows, it is alarming, it's just instinct, I don't know. My instinct wants me to do something despite that something being impossible, so I'm scared, I just can't help it. As optimistic as I am, meaning incredibly and blindly optimistic, I am still scared as hell. Thankfully that powerless fear just causes me to hope for the best.

Despite the fact that this situation has not made the best result seem impossible, the wind is still howling and the windows are still rattling; the chance of a tornado is much lower than it could be, but the weather, so to speak, isn't exactly blue skies and sunshine if you know what I mean. I'm not putting two and two together, I'm putting two and something together, and that gets me at least halfway to four. Seeing how the distance to four in this situation is a matter of life and death, I'm rather nervous about that unknown distance. I know I'm being foolish, cross that bridge when we get there, but still, I'm just rattled. Let's talk about something else, distract ourselves better than this." Says Effie

"No point crying over spilt milk." Says Peggy

"We're the milk in that situation, Peggy. We're the milk!" Says Effie

"Maybe our situation is the milk, but if we are glasses of milk, we're still perfectly intact." Says Peggy

"Fine, still. That's fair. Just rant about your philosophy or something." says Effie, exhausted, rankled

"Conversation is a two way street; I may love myself, but I'd enjoy hearing something about you every now and again." Says Peggy

"You've heard enough about me. I'm a shallow, empty, puddle of fear; at least right now. If I try to think about some sort of opinion it's just frustration and fear. Thankfully I'm just starting to be annoyed by our situation, that it's this incessant and inescapable source of fear. I'm just looking at it, still scared of course, but it's an annoyed form of fear, and even if that's not any better, it's still different. It's odd how little sense my mind makes some times, as much as incessant frustration does turn into annoyance, it's not like this imprisonment is some little kid that I can tell off or something. I'm getting too haughty; you must be rubbing off on me." Says Effie

"It's always reasonable to put yourself above something or someone, at least in your mind. If you have the choice of feeling superior or inferior, better or worse, I would just pick better every time. I'm sure there are some logistical flaws, like things might end up worse, but if we're just slapping judgements around, I'm not going to sit around like a masochist without asserting my authority. Maybe when it's less masochistic to be meek, sure, but if there aren't any repercussions for my hubris than I'm not going to sit with my tail between my legs just letting the world walk all over me." Says Peggy

"What? How? What part of this situation involves you being the superior, the one who walks all over the other one?" Says Effie

"That's not important. The thing is if you believe something, if you truly believe something in your heart, it doesn't matter what the truth is. I may not have any good reason to feel superior, but I do, I feel far superior, well above all of this nonsense, and seeing how far below me all of this bullshit is, I just look down on it and smirk haughtily. It's just a crock of shit, nonsense, kids running around babbling gibberish and slapping each other while I walk on by indifferent to everything.

Thankfully I've made quite the habit out of being ignorant and oblivious to my situation, so despite the degree to which you bring it up, I'm still trying to put these pieces together to even conceive of what you're talking about. It just doesn't register in my mind because it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter at all, the what or how or any of that nonsense defining our situation. If I can't change something, if I can't, through my own volition, change something and make it better or more preferable then it is functionally perfect. It cannot be improved, so I just write it off as another perfect part of my life.

Even just babbling, everything is perfect, pawing this little knit ball of conversation, of catnip, around with you, playing cards, it's perfect. We've even had something to eat, it's great. I feel like Santa Clause ginning ear to ear, like 'Ho Ho Ho, everybody loves me!' I don't know, maybe I'm stupid, but seeing how I feel pleasant, I'm not complaining. It's an easy life, but it's always worked out for me, if I die, so be it, I had a good life, and dying doesn't really register in my mind either, just another nonsensical fantasy. I'd rather not think unless I have to, so by doing the minimum I save time, effort, and energy, but also save myself plenty of unpleasant thoughts. What is there to think about? Look around the room, there's just chairs and a table, cards, a window, there's nothing bothersome about those things." Says Peggy

"What about the guy with a gun sitting outside of the door, Peggy?" asks Effie, standoffish

"Well that's no different than a road. If you go run out in the road and lie down under the tires of a truck, you're going to die, so unless you're going to complain about a road I wouldn't see this situation as tangibly different. Sure we can't do certain things without dying, but I figured that would be a sentiment you had come to terms with a long time ago. You're typically not indignant about the fact that we can't lie down in the road or eat arsenic or all of those other equally relevant things we can't do without dying." Says Peggy

# 2.9

"I really need to learn how to think as little as possible. I can't even call it stupidity. You've managed to optimize thinking, and contrary to most popular theories regarding the topic, that involves thinking next to nothing, then half-assing every though you have in the rare instance that you put forth the effort to even have one." Says Effie

"I don't know, I don't like thoughts, thoughts are like something rattling around in my head. If you've had a stuffy nose or something, it feels like that, a stuffy brain, something stuck inside of it that I'd rather not have in there. I'm sure you know what a thought feels like." Says Peggy

"My thoughts are weightless and fly around like ghosts. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, sure, some can be heavy and overpowering, but that doesn't stop them from being nimble as a god damn goose." Says Effie

"I suppose mine are not particularly nimble, so it makes it easier for me to catch them and apply discretion. Even my thoughts are lazy, I suppose it's something in the blood." Says Peggy, yawning indifferently

"I'm starting to think I'm mentally ill, most people's minds seem to be comparably lazy as yours, not thinking unless they have to. You're just far more skilled in that process because you'll think as little as possible even when you need to, where most people tend to think being clever will help them more than being indifferent." Says Effie

"See, I'm not clever though. Maybe if I was I would feel that way, but my cleverness is not going to win any cleaving contest any time soon." Says Peggy

"I don't think that's what that word means." Says Effie

"Well it's either that word or clevering, take your pick. I told you I'm not clever." Says Peggy

"I don't know if there is a verb for being clever, but perhaps that is because there was seldom any use for that word." Says Effie

"That's fair, most people are not particularly clever, so I certainly don't feel bad about my modest ability in the feat. I'm sleepy to boot, so that's not going to further my capacity in the slightest." Says Peggy

"As tired as I am, this whole situation does not allow me to even contemplate the thought of sleep. I know it's not the same, but that's like saying you would fall asleep if a man had a gun in your face because 'you can't change the situation so you're indifferent'." Says Effie

"It depends on how long he had been pointing it at me. I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over the fact that some dawdler's horse didn't win. It's not my business, so I'm hardly phased by that sort of noise." Says Peggy

"How is your own life not your business? How does that make sense?" asks Effie

"Whoops, I forgot that I'm entirely invested in the business of keeping people alive and shepherding them in order to turn a profit from their existence. Wait, no, that's the government. So clearly as I'm not invested in the business, it's not my business, whatever the relevant business-people decide is up to them. I'm not involved in the decision so I'm not going to have an opinion one way or the other.

If somehow my opinion was relevant, sure, I'd try to rattle of some rhetoric and propose some agreeable methods of conflict resolution, but if I'm confident my words will have no influence on the situation, I'm not tempted to try to fish them out of the pond. Maybe some idle conversation, something pleasant, but I'm not going to be pleading and whatnot for no reason." Says Peggy

"Do you have some other body somewhere else that you live in? How are you indifferent to your existence?" asks Effie

"As I was saying, I'm just not all that invested in it. You've clearly got things you value for some reason, so having your investments threatened puts you on edge. As natural as it is, it's contrary to wisdom that's almost cliché at this point. Never invest what you're not willing to lose, you know." Says Peggy, casually and genuinely indifferent

"Now I feel like a fool for having been so heavily invested in my life. Clearly the stock was not worth what I had so blindly invested into it." Says Effie, indignant, indifferent to her growing lunacy

"I mean it's doing fine, you're just caught up in speculation for no reason. Paranoia is no good for investing. I'm not somebody you want to talk to stocks about. That's beyond my realm of applicable insight for the most part. That's how they get you, you know. You invest into your stock; invest in yourself, and then you work hard to make sure that it does well. It's the oldest trick in the book. Too much stress and trouble for me. I'm fine watching the markets, sure it's entertaining, but I'm not sitting here trying to make a killing in stocks. I tend to invest in the old fashioned reliable stocks like cards, or conversation. I'm about ready for sleep, don't know about you, but after a long day's work my mind is ready to call it a night." Says Peggy, yawning

"You're going to sleep on that metal bed?" asks Effie

"I saw a few blankets on the shelf in that closet. I'm sure it will be comfortable. You're welcome to join me, I'd hate to leave you staring into the darkness alone with your thoughts." Says Peggy

"I don't think we'll both fit in there." Says Effie

"It will be fine; just don't kick me too much. I'm sure it's just as big as a normal bed. Don't let the metal scare you away." says Peggy

"I don't even like sharing a bed with my sister, and she's smaller than you are." Says Effie

"I'm sure you'd like sleeping on the floor much worse than sharing a bed with me. I'm just trying to make it easy on you. I know you're the type of girl who would sit in these damn chairs all night because you didn't want to be rude and wake me up after you've had your fill of trying to sleep on the floor." Says Peggy

"I appreciate it. You know me too well. I'd probably just keep lying on the floor because I didn't want to seem rude, like I would hurt the floor's feelings if I got up." Says Effie

"You're a piece of work, but I love it. Let's go to sleep." Chuckles Peggy, getting the blankets out of the closet and taking them to the sleeping closet

"This room is like a jail cell." Says Effie, as Peggy pulls down the metal bed, attached to the wall like an ironing board in a hotel room

"I believe the politically correct term is Japanese Apartment." Says Peggy, as she lays out the two thick comforters, the larger one twice the width of the bed, folded over to serve as the base, the second one hardly any more fitting, hanging over the edge, nearly touching the ground

"I think that's just slang." Says Effie, as Peggy begins to undress to her panties, her uniform and gun in a pile on the floor, pushed to the far wall

"I think it originally was, but the state made that the official term a few decades ago." Says Peggy, going to use the toilet, Effie sits on the bed

"It's pretty comfortable. I needed this." Says Effie, laying down, exhausted

"You're not going to undress?" asks Peggy

"I was hoping you would help. I'm not feeling up to it; so many damn buttons." Says Effie

"I got you." Says Peggy, wiping herself and flushing the toilet, going over to Effie

"You're not going to wash your hand?" asks Effie sitting up, as Peggy begins to unbutton her shirt

"Germs make you strong." Says Peggy

"Gross." Says Effie, Peggy rolls her eyes and runs her fingers under Effie's nose

"What? It's not like I shit on my fingers or anything? My wipes are clean 99% of the time. They make the standard that way to save money on toilet paper in state facilities. I'm sure it's easy to judge when you aren't held to the same standards." Says Peggy, resuming her undressing, popping Effie's bra, throwing the two articles of clothing into a separate pile, undoing her belt, placing it gingerly on that pile before returning to unbutton Effie's shorts and slide them off

"Fair enough. Thank you kindly. I'm going to take a leak." Says Effie, getting up

"Have at it." Says Peggy, taking off her prosthetic hand and leg, tossing her eye-patch on the ground, then laying down, Effie rubs her ass against the wall to drop her panties, sits on the toilet, uses it, slips her feet out of the leg holes, tears a piece of paper with her feet, wipes herself with her foot, slides her feet back into the leg holes, sighs, lays down on the floor, lifts her legs up so that the panties slide back down up to her thighs, does high knees, lifting her shins to be parallel to the ground in the process, she does this a few times to wriggle them upwards more until they're adequately positioned

"I love watching you do that." Teases Peggy

"Are you some kind of sadist?" asks Effie, flushing the toilet, walking back to the bed

"I'm just saying it's impressive is all. If I help you I kind of feel bad, but watching you do these things by yourself is always a show of ingenuity." Says Peggy, as Effie goes to close the door, grabbing the knob with her foot, the room growing too dark as she does so, so she leaves it open a crack, the undercut of the wooden door low enough as not to sliding upon the polypropylene carpet, she walks over to the bed, sighs, Peggy lifts the blanket to let Effie in, she slides in quietly

"I knew there were pillows somewhere." Says Peggy, hugging Effie and nuzzling her head into Effie's' breasts, stretching her back, overcome with instinctive relaxation and comfort

"What about me?" asks Effie

"If I had some to offer, I would, but I'm rather short stocked in that department. Hold on." Peggy crawls over Effie to grab the large extra piece of blanket hanging over the edge and pulls a large pile of it beneath Effie's head

"It's not much, but it's the best we can do right now. We'll be warm anyways, so don't think it's any tax on the blanket." Says Peggy,

"Thanks, Peggy." Says Effie

"Good night, sweet tits." Says Peggy, hugging Effie like a stuffed animal, cuddling up to her pillows again

"Night, Peggy." Says Effie, unwilling to fight for any more dignity than she has been offered

Soon, Effie's breath starts to quiver subtly, her crying in the darkness audible with the small, muffled, repressed gasps.

"It's ok." Says Peggy, reassuringly, squeezing Effie with polite firmness, being forced to acknowledge and judge the situation, Effie's soul disagrees, in despair her sinks like lead, the sobbing becoming intonated with pained tones, still repressed

"We're ok, Effie. Don't cry." Says Peggy, sliding up Effie's body, holding her head with her one hand, Effie too pained to speak, having no reason to speak for all is known, comforted like an aspirin and a hot toddy for a man who was just shot by a handgun. She appreciates the care of her friend, unable to overpower any of her feelings, hoping that somehow Peggy will be able to relieve the crippling pain in her heart, Effie cries into Peggy's neck, wanting to be held over every inch of her body; savoring what human warmth she can feel.

Her cold bare skin is the whisper of death in her mind, the whisper of her own death, the warmth of the human body, of life, seeming as if it were the temptation of Tantalus, despite being so present, the strength of the sorrow and despair in her heart makes the human body seem ethereal, distant, and dreamlike compared to the overwhelmingly palpable misery that crushes her soul. The relaxation of being held causes her to relax her inhibitions, causing her to cry even more, louder still with her moans of sorrow, unrestrained, her soft childlike wailing restrained more so by the weakness of her chest and lungs than her usual reserves of reservation, her fear of attracting attention.

"It's ok, Effie. Everything is ok." Says Peggy, holding Effie tighter, kissing her on the cheek, doing everything she can, rubbing Effie's back with her handless wrist and forearm, kissing her again, Effie's sobbing is softened slightly by this, the comforting taking gaining noticeable ground against the despair in her mind, desperately wanting to be comforted

"Thank you, Peggy." Says Effie, still crying into Peggy's shoulder, still sniffling, her faith in the compassion of her friend comforts her, she does not understand why or how, but this ignorance does not cross her mind, she knows only that the love somehow reduces the pain she feels throughout her body, as in this moment that is the only thing she can muster any analgesic faith in, Effie kisses Peggy's cheek, crying gratefully, "Thank you." She says again

"It's ok. We're ok." Says Peggy, kissing Effie's cheek again, placing her head in the crook of her neck, breathing heavily from adrenaline, but now relaxing slightly as the impetus of the trigger has started to weaken, rolling on top of Effie slightly, instinctively, as if to cover a grenade that may possibly be live, still nervous, hoping, praying for the best, for fear of her own death, albeit her adrenal response entirely instinctive without any emotional attachment to herself, only the empathy for Effie's suffering capable of causing her to feel emotions that seldom permeate her skin

"I want to hug you so bad. I never wanted something so bad in my life." Says Effie

"I've got you. I'll hug for the both of us." Says Peggy, hugging her grenade firmly, with protective dominance, nuzzling their cheeks together to maximize the contact, Effie's breathing relaxed by the weight on top of her, she kisses Peggy's cheek once again

"I love you so much." Says Effie, truly grateful for having such a friend

"I love you too, Effie, so much. It hurts when you cry like that." Says Peggy

"It hurts me too." Says Effie, the thought, the warmth of Peggy slowly washing the fear from her mind, terribly confused and ambivalent, her mind ignoring the fears she cannot fully understand and instead is captivated by this human warmth and compassion she can easily feel coursing in her veins, understanding this comfort, this island paradise in seas so fond of drowning those who cannot swim.

"We don't need to cry. Everything is ok. We're fine. We're ok. Just remember that. That's all that matters." Says Peggy, rolling off Effie slightly, still holding her firmly, exhausted, incredibly relieved that Effie has stopped crying, her mind begins to shut off slowly from fatigue, resting Effie's head as well as her own on her arm good arm, the other holding Effie, pulling Effie on top of her slightly, drifting off to sleep, Effie kisses her softly on the lips

"Thank you." She says,

"What?" asks Peggy, confused, taken aback slightly, too tired to understand

"Thanks for everything." Says Effie, softly, weakly, too sore from sadness to be embarrassed

"You got me on the lips, you know." Says Peggy, indifferent beside a bit of embarrassment

"I know." Says Effie, soft with a tired bit of hopeless shame

"Yeah?" asks Peggy, flattered but still confused

"Yeah..." Says Effie, softly, looking away, embarrassed in the darkness

"Really?" asks Peggy, playfully confident, rolling Effie slightly on top of her

"I don't know." Says Effie, weakly, herself not really following the conversation, Peggy strokes Effies lips softly with her own, Effie's heart tenses up, but she returns the affection in demure trepidation, hopeless yet somehow hopeful

"Yeah?" asks Peggy, herself subtly nervous despite her defining indiffidence, having very little understanding of the situation beyond the simple actions without social context, making no attempt to do so, bashful entirely out of her residual youth.

"I think so. I love you Peggy. You make me feel so good, so happy, so much better than anyone in the world. My whole heart, my hold body just wants you, I desperately want as much Peggy as I can possibly get. I need you Peggy." Says Effie, embarrassed, honest, staring at Peggy in the darkness, unable to distinguish much of anything

"I love you to, Effie. You definitely make me feel very good too, especially like this. I didn't know you were like that, but that definitely works for me." Says Peggy

"Like what?" asks Effie

"Well, into girls." Says Peggy

"I guess I didn't even think of that. That is weird isn't it." Says Effie

"Nah, it's totally fine. I'd love to make you happy however I can." Says Peggy

"Are.. you into girls?" asks Effie

"I don't know, I think so. You definitely make me feel good, like really good. I've always liked your boobs, but I didn't really think that much of that, everyone likes boobs I think. But still, holding you.. and kissing you... that stuff also feels very good, like just as good as boobs." Says Peggy, kissing Effie, honestly with reserved appreciation, Effie savors the affection

"Wow.. really?" asks Effie

"Yeah, I really like it. I want a whole lot of you and more right now, in my whole body. You definitely make me feel very good." Says Peggy

"You're not even sad though." Says Effie

"You just make me happy, I guess, all of this stuff, it feels very good, and you know I'm a sucker for that sort of thing." Says Peggy, holding Effie closely, kissing her boldly, seductively

"It's so good to feel wanted, like a comfortable bed for my hopelessness, wrapped up in the safety of blankets that are made of you caring about me." Says Effie

"I definitely do, so much, I've always loved you, and if you want me to love you like this, I'm more than happy to do so. It's all I could really ask for, you don't know how good you make me feel." Says Peggy, kissing Effie lovingly, sliding her good hand down Effie's back and softly taking hold of her ass, Effie sensually replies with her mouth as a feeling of belonging fills her body, Peggy sneaks her tongue into Effie's mouth, to which Effie instinctively tastes and drinks from, thirsty for any of this love she can manage to receive, Peggy slowly spreads her legs, guiding Effie's crotch between her own, the subtle pressure of Peggy's hand the only instruction needed as Effie begins to slowly grind her groin against Peggy's, the passionate dance of their tongues and lips fueled by their mutual desperation for more of each other, Peggy eventually slips her good hand onto Effie's breast to fondle it, placing her handless wrist upon Effie's ass, still guiding her strokes effortlessly, Effie arches her back, beginning to squirm, eventually Effie's breathing becomes too heavy to keep kissing, "Oh, Peggy." She whispers slightly overwhelmed

"Is that too much?" asks Peggy

"I don't know, it feels so good. Incredible. I've never felt anything like this. It's so wonderful. I love this." Says Effie, unabashedly flushed with passion, far more pleasantly confused than exhausted

"It is incredible." Says Peggy, kissing Effie's neck "I'm definitely into this sort of thing."

"Thank you, Peggy." Says Effie, suckling on Peggy's lips once more, "Thank you so much." She says, crying softly in joyous relief, rolling off of Peggy, nuzzling into her neck, sniffling

"Any time and every time, I'll be here for you, Effie." Says Peggy, kissing Effie's cheek

"I love you so much." Says Effie

"I love you too, baby. So much. Maybe too much. For the love of God don't change your mind. You don't know how much I need this." Says Peggy

"I need it too. I need it so much." Says Effie, still sniffling

"I think I'm in love with you." Says Peggy

"I know I'm in love with you." Whispers Effie

"Then I know I'm in love with you too." Says Peggy

"Good. Please don't ever leave me." Says Effie, weakly, crying, sniffling in preemptive fear

"I won't." says Peggy

"Good." Says Effie, looking up to kiss Peggy softly once more cuddling into Peggy's neck and arms to escape her own weakness, Peggy kisses her on the forehead, incredibly happy, taken aback with purest wholesome joy of earnest love falling into her arms through serendipity alone, the pleasure of warm compassion and the comfort of a bastion of loving solace lull the girls to sleep in their collective arms

# 3.1

Instinct reaffirmed by dead reckoning rouses Peggy; she tosses the covers over onto Effie, reaches for the liner of her prosthetic leg off the ground and handedly slides the pin into the peg-leg. The perpetual corporate daylight dripping through the cracked door is plenty bright enough for her to amble sleepily to the toilet, use it, and walk back over to sit on the bed.

"Morning." Says Effie, softly, sleepily

"Mornin'." Says Peggy, intangibly awkward, terse,

"So..." says Effie, embarrassed, nervous, ashamed in the darkness, still laying under the covers

"Yeah..." Says Peggy, grimacing at the ground in the darkness,

"I'm..." says Effie

"I understand. I apologize... for that... last night." Says Peggy, reluctantly admitting guilt

"Peggy..." says Effie

"No, no. It's my fault. You were hysterical and I just went to town on you. That was wrong of me; I'm not really like that you know. You were just rubbing on me something, got me feeling, you know, like a dog, and that's just what a dog will do when you rub it like that. I know I'm no better than an animal, you know that, nothing but meat and blood, but that doesn't change the fact that what I did was wrong, I know that. I didn't at the time, it just felt good, I wasn't thinking, you know I don't think, but it hit me hard when I woke up, realizing and what not." Says Peggy, apologizing sincerely, logically understanding her guilt despite not feeling any, still unnerved by the deduction

"What? No, Peggy..." says Effie, sleepy, trying to understand and failing

"No, Effie, don't put it on yourself, it's not your fault. I know you want to, but it was me. I need to control myself, I was in control, you weren't, it's my fault." Says Peggy

"You don't, you didn't mean...?" Says Effie, heart twisting

"I don't know if I meant to, I mean sure I meant to, of course I did, but I can mean to do something even if it's something that's not right, I just didn't realize that at the time." Says Peggy

"What you said?" asks Effie, subtly pained

"What? What did I say? I figure I said plenty of things." asks Peggy

"Well, about... you know. About me..." Says Effie

"What? I mean, I don't know. That? Well, that's something particular, see... I'm not trying to put that on you or anything, you just were putting it on me is all, and I'm just saying in that case then that's a particular case, but don't think I'm out for you, like that." Says Peggy

"You're not?" asks Effie

"Well, you, Effie, you are the judgment call there, the condition, if you know what I'm saying. You know me, you know what I like, you know I like you, in plenty of which ways I realized, I'm a simple woman; you're smart. I'm not trying to be clever here, I'm just being honest. I have no clue what you want, I was just going with the motion of the ocean, you just happen to be a tempest on my calm seas. You were hysterical, remember?" Says Peggy

"Well, I... I like you in plenty of which ways too, Peggy." Says Effie

"It's easy to sweet talk a woman in the darkness." Says Peggy

"What?" asks Effie

"As pleasant of friends as we may be, I just didn't think you could like me, like that, you know. I'm missing all sorts of parts, like a half a Frankenstein's monster. I don't want you to see me like that, that's an unpleasant thought despite even _my_ narcissism. I figured you'd be gagging on regret by now." Says Peggy

"Really? I never once thought about what you looked like that whole time, that didn't matter at all, it still doesn't Peggy. I said what I said because I meant it; those feelings have nothing to do with what you look like. Why would you think that?" asks Effie

"I'm just saying if you start to think of me like that, objectively, you know. I'm lacking six-ways from Sunday, and lackluster when I'm not lacking entirely. I figure it'd be hard to really love a freak like me, all mangled and whatnot." Says Peggy

"Christ, Peggy. I don't have any fucking arms. How can you be so self-conscious? I don't care what you look like, I never did. I love you because of who you are as a person, because you care about me, that's all that matters to me. You're actually very pretty, anyways, so stop it." Says Effie

"I'm just saying I can't hold a candle to you." Says Peggy

"You have a hand, Peggy. If either of us can hold a candle, it is you." Says Effie, Peggy chuckles

"I'm just saying..." says Peggy

"I'm just saying I really meant it, Peggy!" says Effie, indignant

"Really?" asks Peggy, laying back, her peg leg over the side of the bed, resting her head against Effie's

"Yes. Dear god, yes." Says Effie, growing desperate

"I'll take you at your word." Says Peggy, yawning, hesitant to believe her friend

"And?" asks Effie, expectantly

"What?" asks Peggy, truly curious

"Did you mean it?" asks Effie, nervously indignant, Peggy wraps her good arm around Effies shoulders

"Of course I meant it. I've always loved you, and I'd love to love you like that." Says Peggy, kissing Effie casually,

"Thank you. Thank you, Jesus." Says Effie, tearing up subtly relieved, kissing Peggy's neck like the Wailing Wall

"Truly honest, right up my alley; you're my cup of tea if there ever was one, I just didn't want to force myself upon you. I didn't want to ruin our friendship, you know. I was thinking you might not be into it." Says Peggy

"I'm definitely into it." Says Effie, breathing heavily with relief as if having just slammed the door on a bloodthirsty monster

"I'm happy to hear that. I don't know if you're really into it or you were just desperate for some sort of desperolytic, either way I'm happy to be of service." Says Peggy

"You definitely got rid of my despair, but you also made me feel really good on top of that, like out of hell and straight into heaven. Being touched, held, kissed, it all feels so incredible, better than anything in my life." Says Effie

"Well, see, that's my point. Anyone can touch you and hold you, I figured you'd be far more tempted by the normal looking people than by myself, if you catch my drift." Says Peggy

"No, Peggy. You're literally the only person in my life besides my sister, and still that's just my sister. So you're the only one who I know and trust to the point where I could be comfortable doing this. Thinking about a stranger doing this scares the ever living fuck out of me, that's like my worst nightmare because I'm completely powerless.

With you I instinctively trust you to the point where that doesn't bother me at all, even though I still feel powerless, it feels good to be powerless when you're the one holding me, like everything is how it should be. There's never been a point in my life where I don't feel powerless, but when you're holding me, that whole powerlessness doesn't even bother me at all, like you just have enough power for the both of us or something, I don't know." Says Effie

"I like to think that. Hell; that thought makes me feel good, and I don't even tend to feel powerless. Having the power to protect you, like my little treasure or something, that's a real good pirate feeling. I'd die fighting to protect you... my precious booty." Says Peggy, groping Effie's ass

"Jesus, Peggy." Says Effie, chuckling, rolling her eyes

"Yarr." Says Peggy, grinning heartily

"We should probably get out of bed." Says Effie

"I had that thought, force of habit, but I don't see any reason to." Says Peggy

"What if somebody walks in to check on us?" asks Effie

"We'll just say we're sleepy." Says Peggy

"We're half naked on top of each other." Says Effie

"Sleepy and cold." Says Peggy, yawning comfortably

"Maybe just a little bit longer." Says Effie, kissing Peggy's cheek

A pleasant nap later the guilt of idleness starts to creep in.

"I suppose it's about that time, unfortunately." Says Peggy, patting Effie's ass in approval, tossing the blankets up, sitting up and putting her hook on before starting to get dressed back in her uniform

"I'm not a fan of these buttons either. I like the clothes that slip and slide on. Whoever invented buttons was a dolt." She continues, fumbling the buttons into place in the darkness

"Sit up, sleepy head." She says, Effie sits up, stretches and squirms as she does, Peggy puts Effie's clothes back on, "You're lucky you've only got to button half the buttons on the shirt." Says Peggy

"I'm glad you concur with the uniform expectations of the police force." Says Effie, dryly

"You've got to put those peacekeeping tools to good use. It'd be a shame to let them go to waste." Says Peggy

"I'm sure big boobs have caused a good deal of sexual violence in the past. I'm not sure they technically qualify as peacekeeping tools." Says Effie

"Well, it depends on how they're used. With that uniform they are. They give criminals and everybody reason to be polite to you. Even if people don't give a damn about staying on the good side of the law, they'll still want to stay on the good side of the titties." Says Peggy

"I can't say that I've ever felt inclined to be extra polite to women with big breasts." Says Effie

"You're weird though, all covered in emotions and whatnot. I'm talking about regular people. Besides, you're polite to everyone, so it's not like you even could be more polite to anyone... Ok, you're ship-shape. Lets go, those donuts are calling my name." Says Peggy

"I'm glad you let all that morning weirdness go. I can understand why somebody might feel that way, but coming from you it seemed super weird." Says Effie, following Peggy into the conference room, sitting down at chairs across from each other

"I'm quick to forget, thankfully. I don't know much about that sort of thing, the whole more than friends thing. From my meagre understanding of all of it I just figured you were out of my league, didn't want you to be so regretful it made things weird between us." Says Peggy

"I don't think I even have a league, I'm just as much of a freak as you are, Peggy, and I'm even more of one probably. We're in the same boat, and it's a small boat. I'm definitely not thinking I could do better than you, ever; I didn't think I would ever go that far with anyone to be honest. Any time I think of somebody wanting me like that, it just seems like bad intentions. Anyone who is tempted by somebody without arms is probably only tempted because they want to do things to them that they can't to somebody who has arms. I figure I'd be so easy to abuse that I don't have any business being in a relationship." Says Effie

"That's fair, but still, you're a pretty freak, so I'm just saying people would want you, not that they particularly have the best intentions." Says Peggy

"If they don't have good intentions I definitely don't want to be with them. That makes you the best of all possible people I could be in an intimate relationship with because I know you don't have any bad intentions. I wouldn't even trust Amos or Horse and we've known them forever. I know they're good people, but I also know that they're men, and I know what men want, and I know what men do, especially if they know they can get away with it." Says Effie

"You're going to call it that?" asks Peggy, blushing, looking away

"What would you call it?" asks Effie

"I don't know, that just sounds serious and complicated. I love you and all of that, but I still see you as more of a friend that I happen to appreciate in that way. It's not like I see you as my girlfriend or wife or something more than my friend is what I'm saying. That sounds like 100% girlfriend when I figure we're like 100% friends and just happen to do some relationship-y things together. Like that's not the main point of us spending time together." Says Peggy

"I see you point, but I still like to think about it like that. You don't know how good it felt to be held and kissed like that." Says Effie, a bit embarrassed

"I mean I definitely love that sort of thing too, I just don't want you to start seeing me only like that. I want to be your friend like normal unless we just happen to want to do some things like that, you know? Is that possible? I don't know how these things work." says Peggy

"I figure that's how all of those relationships work, it's not like people are going to town on each other the entire time they're around each other; they've got to fill the normal time regardless of being in a relationship." Says Effie

"That makes sense; I just don't want you to see me as less of a friend because of it, like we're just two friends who happen to enjoy each other like that. Too many relationships seem to be the people who enjoy each other like that, but aren't particularly good friends, you know? That's the whole situation I'm trying to avoid." Says Peggy

"I understand. Just make sure you don't forget that we're also like... you know, so we should do that sort of thing sometimes, ok? Having that sort of relationship, especially with you, it means a lot; it's like all I could hope for really. I always dreamed about having a relationship, but I never thought it would or even could happen." Says Effie

"For sure, you get me going something good, I love every minute of it, but just don't start to see me only in that way. I'm not real knowledgeable about romantics and whatnot, so I think coming at it like friends would be way easier than trying to dates or whatever. No clue how any of that works and I'd rather just keep on with you like we always do." Says Peggy

"Yeah, you don't need to take me on dates or anything; I can see how that thought would seem weird. Now I know what you're saying, friends all the time, but we just happen to be like that too." Says Effie

"That's the number. Maybe I'll learn about dates and I can take you out, real romantic, I figure you'd love that sort of thing, not that it makes much sense to me right now." Says Peggy

"As dreamy as that sounds, you don't need to hurt your brain trying to think about it. I don't expect that sort of thing from you at all, I'd be happy with just some occasional love and tenderness. A girl really longs for that sort of thing, you know?" Says Effie

"That I can do. I'm quite fond of that sort of thing myself, so just let me know when you're in the mood and I'll happily go to town. Maybe not in public so much, but I doubt you'd be that enraptured by me in broad daylight." Says Peggy

"I'm not saying I wouldn't, but I'm definitely not that type of girl, so don't worry about it." Says Effie

"If you want it, I got it, let's just try to avoid getting tickets. Donut?" Asks Peggy, grabbing a day old doughnut for herself and sliding the box over to Effie

"We're definitely not going to get any tickets. Thank god for modesty and inhibition, otherwise you'd definitely be surprised at how tempting that sounds." Says Effie, grabbing one with her foot

"I knew you were a freak deep down, wanting people to watch you like that." Says Peggy

"That's definitely not it, it's just that doing that sort of thing felt so good I could convince myself to let you do it anywhere, just forget about the world." Says Effie

"You're lucky I've got some self-control, we might drown in tickets otherwise" Says Peggy

"I would stop you before it got out of hand." Says Effie

"No you wouldn't." teases Peggy

"You're probably right." Says Effie, visibly embarrassed

"Brace yourself, because I'm going to town next time now that I know you want it as much as I do. I was really confused as to how much affection I should have been returning last night." Says Peggy

"All of it and more, until it kills me. That was easily the best I've ever felt, I just want you to know that." Says Effie

"Well in that case we should be in bed right now, cause I've got plenty more to give. I'll take you to the moon, trust me on that." Says Peggy

"As tempting as that sounds, I'll try to avoid becoming entirely debauched for however many hours I can. We're already dressed, I don't want to make you dress me twice in one day." Says Effie

"It'd be more than worth it." Says Peggy

"It's like 9 AM, Peggy. Maybe try to have a bit more modesty." Says Effie

"It's the weekend, this is what weekends are for." Says Peggy

"We could just play cards or something. You don't know how hard it is for me to resist that temptation though. Maybe cards will take your mind off of it." Says Effie

"You know the way straight to a girl's heart, damn it, Effie, your making me fall too hard for you. You're too damn perfect." Says Peggy

"Really? Just suggesting that we play cards?" Asks Effie

"Well I love to play cards, I love to be with you, it's too perfect. Whenever we're not going at it, we can play cards, and that's a great time in and of itself; you're a wellspring of good times, you know that?" asks Peggy

"I think you're just easy to please." Says Effie, rolling her eyes bashfully

"As true as that is, nobody tends to try, except for you of course, and I truly appreciate everything you do for me." Says Peggy

"I'm not sure I do that much, but I'll take the compliment. You don't need to sweet talk me, you know. Just deal." Says Effie

# 3.2

"I'm just being honest. Rummy?" asks Peggy

"Sure." Says Effie

"I could go for some Canasta but we've only got one deck, so Rummy will have to do. I'm glad you're in a better mood today." Says Peggy

"Yeah... you kind of helped me forget. Right now this just feels like school, sort of, anyways, being stuck in a room and everything." Says Effie

"Or just like what we'd do on the weekends anyways, at least before we had work. No ambiance of the rec center, but we can make do with what we've got." Says Peggy

"I honestly don't mind the lack of those fumes and music." Says Effie

"I don't know, hypnotic enthrallment by card games is pleasantly intoxicating. That rec center really knows how to help a girl relax." Says Peggy

"I'm sure it's the fumes." Says Effie

"It's medicine, first of all, its relaxation medicine. Not that I'm not relaxed or need medicine, but I'm sure it helps some people who live stressful lives." Says Peggy

The guard opens the door, holding to tall paper cups with plastic lids

"I saw you were up, got you two breakfast." Says the man, the guard different from last night

"What is it?" asks Effie

"Coffee and standard." Says the man

"Excellent." Says Peggy as the man puts the cups on the table

"Any news?" asks Effie

"The fuck I look like? A paperboy?" asks the man, aggressively indignant

"Nevermind..." says Effie, fearfully apologetic, instinctively sarcastic, the man walks out of the room

"Thanks for the coffee." Says Peggy, genuine

"No problem." Says the man without looking back as he closes the door

"Two breakfasts, now that's a treat." Says Peggy, putting the cards down to sip on her beverage "Nice and hot, too. Thick; like they actually intend to feed us. That's a good sign, yeah?"

"I'll take your word for it." Says Effie

"Pretty sweet deal, as much as I may have technically gummed something up yesterday, the result is easily better than what we'd have gotten if I hadn't." says Peggy

"You're that swayed by coffee and doughnuts?" asks Effie

"Well, I'm just saying we got out of a half day of work yesterday, and I figure we'll get some more time off today. I'd rather be playing cards that driving around trying to scare the fear of the law into people." Says Peggy

"The whole precarious nature of our current situation doesn't bother you?" asks Peggy

"It's far less precarious than even the standard fare of our work. Yesterday we were in danger of being shot at, forced to defend ourselves, et cetera, but today we wake up, have breakfast, play cards, and we don't even have to leave our little squat. It's a cheeky little vacation." Says Peggy, still sipping her coffee

"At that rate you'd call prison a 'cheeky little vacation'." Says Effie

"Well in prison they make you do work, that's the difference. I'm sure that'd be ten times worse than police work. Modern day slave labor is what happens in prison." Says Peggy

"I'm glad you're happy, but I'm sure you're conscious of the fact that there's a little perturbation of unease in the back of my mind. I can ignore it, but sadly I can't forget about why exactly we are here and what exactly our quote unquote vacation is meaner to accomplish for those who so graciously provided it to us." Says Effie

"You're looking at it the wrong way. People wouldn't set out to accomplish these things if they weren't confident of actually accomplishing them. They clearly have enough faith in their abilities to undertake such a venture, so I would have some faith in these people. This is a legitimate criminal enterprise; these are not some desperate lunatic taking hostages in the hopes that their ex-wife will let them see their kids again. This is strictly business, and seeing how your job is to put your life on the line in order to perpetuate law and order, this is probably the easiest form that job can take. We're in good hands, high quality hands, at least, even if they may be morally objectionable." Says Peggy

"We work for a rag tag band of illiterate idiots who are tasked with orchestrating the fine intricacies of the justice system. Even if I had faith in these criminals for some reason, I would then need to have faith in our people, and for some reason that faith was never instilled over the course of our training." Says Effie

"Relax. Andre said they were calling in one of those paper cops who knows how to do all of that technical jazz. You can sit in some precarious speeding metal transport and worry about every little thing that could go wrong, but as much as there is that slight possibility that something could go wrong, people manage to ride in subways and busses without worrying about those things because they put their faith in the system, in probability. Things are designed to function and be successful; clearly this orchestration we're a part of is just as skillfully designed as any assembly line or other process or means to an end that any respectable person has ever put into action.

If you're all worried about these random improbable events, I don't see why you're not clamoring for a bible just to do some sort of ritual that has some irrelevant probability of actually being relevant because of the serendipitous providence of the hand of god that would otherwise be absent if you hadn't. I don't see you doubling over in prayer just out of some blind hope that god himself is so swayed by your devotion that he comes by and conjures up some miracles to resolve some alleged problem or another." Says Peggy

"I'm just not as prone to blindly putting faith in either of those two systems of notoriously uneducated if not physically or mentally disabled individuals. It's hard to be optimistic about your horse when he's one of the few illiterate horses at the spelling bee." Says Effie

"Don't sell yourself short, kiddo. They know how to read good enough to get that job, and other than that, we're handicapable, you know that. We have these jobs because we can do them, neither the cops nor a criminal enterprise want to employ somebody who can't do their job, so as shorthanded as we may be, we'll still get our jobs done handedly. Pun intended.

Anyways, if you can't have faith in two systems you should easily be capable of having faith in, it doesn't even matter. You're a smart girl, you know all those quips of pretention, I know you'll put faith in those because you're the type to whip a mule with laurels rather than a bullwhip. They say 'History repeats itself' so that should have you sleeping easier than a whiskied baby.

Friday was our World War One, and Yesterday was our World War two, that means next up is the Korean War, and that means not a damn thing is going to happen that anyone will give half a rats ass about. Whatever sort of conflictory event happens next will just be unremarkable and entirely forgettable. After that little scuttle, sure there's Vietnam, but hindsight is 20/20, so we can just be reasonable, swallow our pride, and get out of dodge, rather than die in the jungle to the Viet Cong.

I'm not going to have you worried about the Korean War when history reminds us that nothing happened. World War Two: hundreds of movies, books, television shows, all that stuff; Vietnam, same story, very popular in media. Korea though, nobody vies a fuck about Korea, literally one television show, that show was based off of a Movie of the same name, and that movie was based off of a book of the same name, so it's literally only one thing disguised as three; the Korean war produced one memorable thing compared to the hundreds of all the others, and that's for a reason, because nothing happened, and if anything did happen, it was unremarkable and generally insignificant. God help you if you're worried about Korea of all things." Says Peggy

"That is a bold interpretation of a generalization that only holds water because of how vague it is and how subjective ones perception of history is. That phrase is like looking at Rorschach tests then arguing 'the butterflies repeat themselves', it's a fair enough point just because the argument is so subjective and vague it can't really be written off as entirely false." Says Effie

"Five dollars whatever sort of objectively violent shenanigans we get into today are basically a parallel to the Korean war. If nothing happens, we just sit here, I still win, because that just proves my point entirely." Says Peggy

"I'm tempted to take you up on that, just because logically your argument is 100% nonsensical insane babbling, but then at the same time and for absolutely no reason I start to think that you might be right, just due to my faith in that witticism that history repeats itself. I must be dumb as bricks, because whatever logic and reason I can muster can't entirely overpower the thought that you are somehow, for some reason, correct about this." Says Effie

"You can't overpower that thought because I'm right, that thought is the right thought, so it should be overpowering the other ones. People turn that phrase for a reason. Nobody ever said 'history occurs in accordance with logical reasoning' it's just people being crazy and irrational, and it's not ironic in the slightest that an 8,000 year history of belligerent idiots screaming and hitting each other in the face continues to produce plotlines of unintelligible belligerent screaming of dolts and said idiots hitting each other in the face.

Logic would predict that people would learn from their mistakes and not repeat them, but at least those people turning out phrases aren't so stupid as to think that the human race is in any way logical. Sure there's a clear cut pattern, but I wouldn't call it logical, as much as logic easily could derive the pattern readily, it's a pattern of illogic rather than logic." Says Peggy

"You just contradicted yourself over and over in what you tried to communicate there. You said that history repeats itself, then you said it was illogical and random, then you contradicted yourself again saying that it was entirely rational and not random at all because it's a very consistent stream idiots just being irrationally violent, then you claim that the human race is entirely illogical, but try to argue we should trust some logical presumption that history repeats itself, then apply this generalized logic to our very specific situation that isn't particularly historical at all, meaning there are absolutely no grounds to apply the broad logical generalization of history to our scenario. How does that make any sense at all to you?" asks Effie

"We don't need to analyze some sort of semantic derivation of the turn of phrase, the point is that the turn of phrase holds water, and has held water for so long, because it is rather true enough to be a cheeky expression. If it's a phrase like 'every seventh man to enter a bus on Sundays shits in his hand during the course of his ride', that's bullshit, it doesn't hold water, so nobody is going to turn that phrase out trying to sound intelligent. The common phrase holds water, and that's all you need to know. That means it's quality. So now that we've gotten to that understanding, despite any lack of understanding regarding the reasons as to why it is true, we know the reasons as to why it is true are irrelevant, because we know it's true and can stop there.

The thing you've got to understand, it's a real clever law of physics, that everything is proportional and scalar and whatnot. So 100 horses will draw 100 carriages at the same rate 1 horse will draw 1 carriage, that's how horsepower works. It's scientific and that's why they can throw it on all the engines. That's how the real world works, proportionality, scalar ratios, that magic sort of thing. Knowing that reality can be scaled down to any proportion and hold water, at least for any real functional classic style business, we know that we can apply that principle to our situation. Sure, that turn of phrase applies to history, but we also know that it will still be true if we apply it to our own lives, so long as we use proper ratio to make it the right scale.

Take our situation, and try to understand it with respect to my historical insight. In World War One, say 12 million troops died, that is our 3 dead fellas on Friday. World war two, just a rough estimate of 20 million troops died, I'm sure these numbers are off slightly, but there close enough to prove my point, as those 20 million equate to the 5 fellas I gunned down yesterday. See how these proportions, though not exact, of course, due to the subtle influence of rounding and borrowing and that sort of stuff, they're close. You can see the real correlation between those two wars, and our Friday and Saturday.

That means logically, in the procession of wars says the Korean war is next, and this is logical because both our lives and the history of warfare in the 21st century are rather violent processions of law-minded peacekeeping, and thus will tend to play out in very similar fashion. This means logically the body count of our next endeavor will be proportional to the Korean War, and as I said, nobody gives a fuck about the Korean War for a reason because nothing happened. This means that the body count was particularly low.

We can use simple math to understand that 4 million is the equal number to a body, and I can guarantee you that nowhere near that many troops died in the Korean war, not even one million, so clearly nobody is going to die, I'm pretty sure it was maybe 50 or 100 thousand, so that's like 1% of a body, somebody will end up 1% dead. The same logic applies to all of our next little tussles, maybe a scratch or a bruise, but nobody is going to die, not even close.

Vietnam, Gulf War, Gulf War 2 all of these are nothing at all, people only give a damn about Vietnam because the hippies all cried all day because their balls had been cut off by the communists or whatever it was that caused them to want to be homeless drug addicts rather than fight for freedom in order to fend off communism. Anyways, history tells us that we've got a nice pleasant period of smooth sailing ahead of us, at least until we get to the equivalent of World War 3, which hasn't happened yet, so I can't give you an estimated body count. It's common sense really, so no complaining for a while." Says Peggy

"So basically you're saying that we're not going to die for a week or something, because clearly World War 3 is going to kill everybody. That is your logic, I'm just letting you know." Says Effie

"Well, that's a pessimistic view, as after the eunuchation of America by communism, they've had no stomach to fight any real wars, so it's highly likely there will never be any more wars. There are no men left any more, hardly enough to fuel a real war, so that means there won't be one. America won't go out fighting for freedom if it knows all of its male children have had their balls cut off by the communists.

The commies won, and that's that, the end of wars, world peace. It's a damn shame, but we can't do anything about it. If it wasn't true we wouldn't just sit here being chummy with the goddamn commies over in the East and singing we are the world like Communism isn't some god damn abomination before the eyes of God. Hell, at this point, so are we, our country is sick with that same AIDS just because we let the communists go to town on our people and our economy with their degeneracy.

I don't give a fuck, personally, I just know enough history to know that this place isn't particularly America, not the old kind that goes in guns blazing to let everybody know who's boss. They're all about sharing and caring now, and that's not American at all. I know you don't watch television, but I've seen enough war shows with my pop to know these sorts of things. Just take my word for it.

Commies won't kill other commies; it's common sense, because that's the same thing as suicide if a commie kills another commie, because there is no 'I' in communism, only 'we', so they're the same person. This means there is no World War Three unless the world wants to kill themselves for some reason, and as you can tell by the complete lack of balls that has defined America since the Vietnam Era, they might cry and pout, hell, they might even want to do it, but they don't have the balls to do it. This is unassailable logic, and if this won't put you at ease, I don't think anything can." Says Peggy

"Peggy... that was nonsense, absolute nonsense." Says Effie, baffled

"Five dollars." Says Peggy

"Fine. Five dollars, I don't care. If you're right, you deserve five dollars. Seeing how by your logic we live to old age and never die from violence, that sounds perfectly fine. Hell, by that logic, nobody ever dies to violence just because the casualties of the wars are too low to produce a body." Says Effie

"Well, you're making broad presumptions there. That's where ratio comes into play. Those ratios only apply to us because of our lives defining them. If you look at a larger group of people, say a group that is 100 times as big as the two of us, then the Korean War and the Vietnam War will produce a body. Whether we personally produce that body is a matter of chance, but that's still a 1/100 chance that we end up being the ones who induce that death.

I'm not making analytical predictions beyond history, because I really can't deduce the body count of our shenanigans without an estimated number of casualties from the war, but I'm definitely good for the next four little tussles we might find ourselves in. The bet was just five for the next one being Korea, but if you want you can let it ride over all four of those." Says Peggy

"If I ever have 40 dollars for some reason, I might just pay you if we survive these next four days. I don't know why I would owe you that money, just as an apology I guess." Says Effie

"The five still stands though." Says Peggy

"Seeing how we're dead if you're wrong, you're not really betting anything here. I'm not sure this is how gambling works." Says Effie

"Plenty of people bet their life savings on black with a gun in their mouth. This is exactly how gambling works. Those people even put the gun in there themselves, and seeing how somebody else is putting us in that situation, I have no reason not to bet it on black, seeing I'm dead if I'm wrong and I'm rich if I'm right." Says Peggy

"Five dollars isn't going to make you rich." Says Effie

"Rich with the filthy lucre of pride, though." Says Peggy

"I figure you're already filthy rich in terms of pride." Says Effie

"I've never known a rich person to stop coveting money." Says Peggy

"Fair enough, I still don't think this is how gambling works though." Says Effie

"Subjectively it's not gambling due to a loss of consciousness upon losing, but objectively it is, and the gains are still objective. Perhaps it's some weird paradoxical form of gambling physics, but it's certainly a paradox many people have proven to be fond of over the years." Says Peggy

"I don't understand how people can be so desperate that gambling like that sounds appealing." Says Effie

"You're just not trying to understand, it is basic common sense. The logic goes 'I can't lose if I'm not alive' thus 'If I am alive I am a winner', and then that gets reduced to 'I am a winner'. Granted those people lose to an incredible degree if they can't follow through with their end of the stake, but people prone to that sort of thinking usually have a very low degree of impulse control. It's kind of like being a card counter, you go into the Casino knowing you're going to walk out a winner." Says Peggy

"I think people have more of a conscious understanding of being alive than you do. Life and death don't seem to register in your mind, somehow it's like meaningless white-noise that doesn't even register in your mind." Says Effie

"As fair as that is, I can't preoccupy myself with every piddling piece of irrelevant minutiae just for the sake of artistic entertainment. It gives you some insight as to the fact that if life and death were actually relevant, then I would be far more influenced by that little light-switch. See, if that light-switch is on, then you've got to fiddle about with all the possible maybes that could direct your action or inaction, but if that light-switch is off, then you don't have to do any of that. I can't make some sort of logical sequence of sowing and reaping beneficiating probabilities from my actions if I'm not making any actions, and there's no reason to feel any particular way about things in that situation because I'm dead and don't feel anything.

People will say 'I'd feel bad if I died and left some responsibility or other behind me', that's a crock; you wouldn't feel a damn thing because you're dead. People become preoccupied with preemptive posthumous empathy and remorse as if that is a common sensation, despite the fact that nothing has ever felt that sensation in this history of the world; dead people don't feel anything. They'll have feelings about a situation where they won't have any feelings in the first place, and that just doesn't make sense to me. Granted I'm not much of a thinker, but I'm not going to go out of my way to imagine how I would be thinking and feeling in situations where I know it's impossible for me to do either of them.

I know people are all trying to polish their shit-stone lives and savor that dignity they fallaciously think they'll feel when they die, and as much as it is a point of pride you can revel in while alive, in reality it's a uniformed delusion, as there are absolutely no grounds to believe that it is anything but a delusion.

People will all talk about meaning and whatnot; I've never had any taste for that, what pleasure is there in meaning? I find pleasurable things pleasurable, so if meaning is pleasurable it will be registered as pleasure, not as something separate that means something more than pleasure, because in the most quality cases of meaning, those that can induce pleasure, the meaning itself registers as pleasure in my mind, and that's what makes that meaning significant, not that there is some spooky sort of ghost that makes meaning do things or amount to something. Meaning is just some sort of justification of one's pursuit of pleasure, so rather than wrangle me up all these random nonsense hoops to try and be cordial, I'm a pragmatist in that I justify my pursuit of pleasure with the pleasure itself, not some sort of prestige or airs that emanate from the prerequisite jumping hoops of meaning.

I'm not one to sully pleasure with social formality, and that's all that judging pleasure through the lens of meaning accomplishes. If I'm feeling a pleasure, I'm not going to let some pretentious aristocrat turn their nose up at my pleasure because it's not prim and proper with meaning; that's just the petty niggling of people with absolutely nothing better to do, people who get their kicks by trying to shit on your parade, and I'm not having any of that.

Meaning is all made up, conjured, spooky ghosts, that's what meaning is. That's not real, that's a figment of the imagination. Pleasure is real, they've got chemicals to prove it, you find me some meaning chemicals, that do some chemical reactions in your brain that cause meaning feelings or something, then I'll believe you, but until then, it's a clearly absolute nonsense, even just trying to phrase the equivalent of pleasure, some chemical that induces the feeling of meaning in the brain is nonsense, and clearly they would have found it if it did exist, separately from delusion of course.

I'm sure if they measured the brains of people who perceive meaning, and people who hallucinate nonsensical apparitions and traditional delusions, they would realize that it is the same chemicals that cause delusion that cause people to start believing in meaning, just at lower doses than cause people to just start imagining meaning out of the thin air without any sort of physical catalyst of their delusion.

Just because I'm not half-bonkers enough to have a standard degree of the delusion chemicals in my mind doesn't mean I'm wrong. That's like saying if everybody was walking around with crippling deformative polio, then I'm the one who is 'unhealthy' because I don't have polio. These meaning folks are just infecting people with delusion, the same delusion, different delusions, all of that, by tricking people into thinking that meaning exists, and people will believe them because they've not got a strong enough immune system to fight off that infection of meagre delusion.

If somebody wants to come at me with some crock like meaning, I'll come at them with as tall as tale as I can spin, because if they're trying to argue that something has meaning, they'll find that my own argument stating that whatever meaning they happened to conjure up was actually created by lost souls enslaved by some bean-stalk monster lives inside of the clouds in the back of people's minds then tickles them into the beanstalk ghost jail where their ghosts have to perform slave labor in order to make more meaning up for the beanstalk monster, and that's what their ghosts are doing the whole time that they're alive, at least so long as asshats paying tithe to meaning like the patsies that have come to dominate the planet by spooking the dolts with their goddamn ghost stories. If you believe in meaning, you believe in that bean-stalk monster, because it's equally as true, logically, scientifically, by every metric, even if you don't have faith in it, there are no grounds to prove that one's own perceived meaning is any bit more valid than the beanstalk monster, so they'd be pulling up dust out of their potato sack trying to pull satyr's tricks trying to get you to agree with them.

I may not be smart, but I'm stubborn as a mule, and I figure I'd win that argument because as prone to being tricked by nonsense as they are, I'll just keep throwing potshots at them until they give in, whereas I'm never going to be tricked by some sap who argues that meaning is any more than pleasantry, some form of relish, a pretty little fantasy that means absolutely nothing, but is respectable enough to be enjoyed in the same manner as a dream or some sort of tall tale or fable.

If that's the extent that they enjoy meaning, that's fine, but don't let these delusions govern an otherwise purely scientific world. If we do that, clearly there is just as much of a justification to force anyone to do whatever competitively insane demand some lunatic can imagine coming from the beanstalk monster, because all sorts of spooky feelings of meaning will come haunt you if he's not happy with you." Says Peggy

"After hearing that I can better understand your thought process, it's remarkable really. You put this massive obstacle course of trying to understand half of what you said in front of me, and I just look at it and find no temptation to even try, my mind doesn't even bother to think, and it has no intention of attempting to do so, not even the slightest temptation." says Effie

"That's a good sign. It's a very valuable skill to have. I've no real appetite for meaning or the debate of it, but I'm willing to fight fire with fire, just because I'm such a humble person as to help the meek avoid being burned by that nonsense. I know better ten times over, as I've had to send those demons back to the hells whence they've been summoned time and time again. I've got plenty of fire-sticks to fight off those rabble-rousers, just collected over the years out of disdain for that nonsense. Even trying to understand how people can not only come to those sorts of conclusions, but collectively agree upon them, makes my brain hurt like I'm drinking lead paint" says Peggy

"People just love relish. That's what it is, you're right, it's relish, but that being said it's still relish. Sure, relish might not provide any nutrition, it could even be somewhat unhealthy, but it's tasty, it has a good flavor, so why not put some relish on your burger or hot dog or whatever is so begging for relish. I mean maybe people get a bit too wild with the relish, putting it on things that probably don't need relish, but they like it, I'll cut them some slack. You said it yourself that the human race isn't particularly sensible, so with poor impulse control and common sense, clearly if they're fond of relish in some situations, they're going to be more than tempted to throw relish on damn near everything." Says Effie

"The problem is not the relish; it's the worship of that relish. It is relish, and if it were just relish to the people, wonderful, that's fine, I can certainly enjoy some relish every now and again. People, on the other hand, they will argue that you can't have a dog without relish, you can't have a burger without relish, and that's insanity. Of course you can, you can make plenty of dogs and burgers without a drop of relish, but this worship and devotion to relish is distracting the world from understanding that there is no nutritive value of relish, it's just flavor, empty, meaningless flavor.

They start to think it's the relish that keeps them alive, when in reality it's the burger that does this. The relish is nothing without the burger, and that's the same reason every communist country has collapsed, because they put too much emphasis on the relish; they're crazy about the relish, and their people starve because their faulty triage puts the preservation of relish well above the preservation of things that actually give people the calories they need to survive. People are loonies, so if they're so preoccupied with relish, then go right ahead and let them be communists, because that's just sitting there eating a jar of relish. There's no room in this world for fence sitters, either the people denigrate and disenfranchise the relish, or they go die and burn in hell like the rest of the commies. We're trying to get things done when we're all slippery with relish so we can't grasp the wrenches and hammers we need to bang out some god damn success, and who is to blame? Communists, fledgling communists, the seeds of communism, that's who is to blame. Damn relish cultists." Says Peggy

"I know you're American, and I know your dad is like this, but as justified as it is, I don't think we really need to berate the communists to that extent. If a tree falls in the forest, yeah?" asks Effie

"I don't mean to, lord no, I have no intention of doing so, the commies are free to die on their own time and I couldn't give half a rat's ass about them. It's just a coincidence that whatever topics we might happen to stumble upon lead to communism as the clear and obvious source of problems.

That's common sense, of course, that if you dig deep enough, you're going to come to plenty of evidence of the culpability of the communists, but I've nothing irrational against the communists in particular, not any more than I'd have for any other aggressively and dangerously stupid and delusional people. If we're picking out scratchers of conversations, it's not surprising that some of them will result in a mention of communism. Communist countries were great examples of the collective failure of not only communism, but the human mind, and mental shortcoming tends to be one of the definitive traits of human beings, unfortunately enough." Says Peggy

"It just seems random, pointless. Considering everything, our situation, berating the communists isn't going to amount to anything." Says Effie

"It's just a force of habit, proper manners, you know? If you catch a whiff of communism, even just rattling around in your mind, you've got to make sure to get the damn commies in the neck. Just out of self-respect, let alone what others might think; if it looks like you're soft on commies, that's the end of you, at least in the eyes of any god-fearing American." Says Peggy

"I'm sure you're aware that I'm not particularly concerned with communism or anything like that. Per your philosophy, that's not my business. If it were, perhaps I'd care, but it's not, my business consists of being tied to the back of a wagon and dragged along for what it's worth. I'm not the one at the reigns, I'm not taking care of the horses, I'm just the echo of society in the canyon of the city; my existence is no more my own creation than a piece of art created the artist who made it. I know to steer clear of communists, and that's more than enough, considering they hide like rats, and I'm certainly not out hunting rats." Says Effie

"Fair enough, just didn't want to let them think I'm sleeping on them. I'm not." Says Peggy

# 3.3

"Fair enough, but still, you're concerned with what god-fearing Americans might think of you, yet you tend to show absolutely no reverence to even human existence, let alone any sort of supernatural manifestations of otherworldly powers. I think that degree of irreverence is easily as denigrable as any sort of communism, they'll just as quickly put you in the dirt for saying god is nonsense as they will for being a communist." Says Effie

"Thankfully I don't tend to run my mouth, as all of that majestic nonsense is truly beyond me, but as I wouldn't bring it up save for in pleasant company such as yourself, I'm not concerned. I care about what those people think because they're the standard fare; they're the meat and potatoes of our country, so of course I try to save face amongst them. We're not so meaty, starchy; us, we're closer to radishes, hardly nutritious, but some sort of spice for to shake up the monotony of stew perhaps.

You're wise in knowing that we're alive because of the meat and potatoes, not the radishes, just being honest, but I still certainly don't mind having my expectations so low that the world only expects me to provide some meagre degree of nutrition from the digestion of my body by society. Low standards are easy to meet you know. I'd be sweating if people expected plenty from me. I don't know if I can do plenty, but something, sure, I can do something, and I don't mind doing it, so I see no reason not to.

I fear god by proxy, and I figure that's good enough, the people who fear god make the world fear god, and at that point there's no particular reason for me to have any sort of ritual reverence, considering my god fearing is getting done anyways, regardless of whatever I might happen to believe on the subject, so for that reason I tend to slap a healthy null value in that bucket and call it a day. I figure if I take care of myself, with respect to the god-fearing people, I'm going to be in-line with their expectations.

They wouldn't let me succeed through half-assed bullshittery if it wasn't in line with their standards, so in order to succeed in the face of their opposition, I would need a high degree of fervor and comparable righteousness to assert myself above them. That sounds like a lot of work, so knowing how prone I am to the path of least resistance, I figure everything is good and well in regards to the standards of god, as nobody's ever made a point to harangue me about irreverence, so by my understanding I am not particularly or palpably irreverent. I let other people do the understanding because they're quite inclined to do so regardless of myself, and I figure if we've got that base covered, there's no reason for me to be dawdling over there shooting the shit and accomplishing nothing.

I'm not some kind of necromancer, so I have no reason to be particular about souls or ghosts or extra spooky ghosts what have you. I've never been into that sort of thing, I figure a ghost won't come spook me to death, so I've got bigger things to worry about, and thus far that presumption has held quite true, thankfully. That sort of spooky shit, not to be dismissive, but it just seems silly. I mean, clearly Ada ended up in the same spot as the rest of it more or less. Nobody seemed all too interested in her necromancy, despite the caliber of her skill, the result was nearly the same as your little floating of needles.

I mean, what good is that, really? These little spooky quirks, they don't amount to much, if they amount to anything at all. Can you even float a single card? These are paper, and you can't even lift them to my knowledge. Not to be disrespectful, but I don't think Mary's magical hat or Ada's necromancy will amount to much more than your own little oddity. When all of these magical things are so thoroughly unimpressive, there's just nothing that calls me to have faith in god, who is even less prevalent and relevant than any of you three's magic. People love to boast and exaggerate, and I figure the same thing happened with every sort of magical religious wizard that ever existed. If you lived 2,000 years ago, I'm sure we'd all hear tales about how you can fly or sword-fight with the best of them just with the magic of your mind." Says Peggy

"Cards are too heavy for me to lift, but I wouldn't knock Ada or Mary so quickly. We both know for a fact that my little magic is laughably useless, but if we get out of here, maybe we will see that Ada or Mary actually have some capacity to benefit the workforce with their magic. That's not unheard of, I mean, maybe I'm just reiterating folklore, but I'd like to have faith." Says Effie

"I think you're just being polite. I'd bet you another fiver, but I'm not staking my pride here, I'd just be taking advantage of a dangerously polite young girl." Says Peggy

"You sure know how to break my spirits. Even if I knew for a fact that they could accomplish next to nothing, I'd still be polite and believe that they were capable of meaningful things and had a useful amount of magical prowess." Says Effie

"I mean, if you think about it, if there was some way to extract value from that sort of thing, the world would be handedly versed in that art form. They would actively be looking for ways to reap that bounty, and I'm sure plenty of people have tried over the course of history, but every single time any pittance of magic that a person could muster was so damn lackluster and underwhelming, that people gave up. All of their efforts to make something useful out of magic always failed, and they could never figure out how to make it powerful enough to make use of.

So far as I know there's nothing but urban legends that claim society has some secret people with profound magical skills, but seeing how nobody's ever seen them or heard of them, I'm sure it's just propaganda to scare communists. It doesn't matter if what you fear is real, so long as the fear is real. That's the whole logic behind all of that, and that little grain of truth, of quaint little girls like you who have these cute little magical abilities, that's all it takes to create this massive forest of paranoia, fear, delusion, and delirium.

If that caste officer had any suspicion that he could make something valuable out of any of your magic, or Ada's or Mary's for that matter, he would have given you jobs other than cop. We got put together because our skillsets are the same, so clearly the caste officer understood that there's no point in trying to spin gold out of hay, so he just had himself a laugh by entertaining himself with a show of your talents, then sent us on our merry way.

The closest was Ada, who barely did something by telling the man he was being haunted by a ghost, and despite making that far, she couldn't do anything to actually help the man because she can't do exorcisms, and I don't even know if anyone can reliably do those to be honest. I figure most people with common sense could figure out that they're being haunted, so it's hard to say if that's even a valuable skill save lest somebody is incredulous or stupid.

I could just rattle off a checklist of signs and symptoms of being haunted by a ghost and easily produce damn near the same results with a comparable degree of accuracy, not as good of course, because of the delusional people and victimization fetishists, but other than that it'd be spot on, and I don't even have any magical powers. Maybe I'm just being stubborn, but I figure if there was any reason to think significant things will come out of these little magical skills, I would have heard about it night and day." Says Peggy

"Honestly I wouldn't have much faith in it either, if I wasn't so polite. My magic is just real enough to know that it's there and then be let down. If there is a use for it, I've not figured it out yet, and I doubt I ever will because I don't tend to mess with it unless I'm unthinkably bored or desperate. Maybe everybody has some little form of magical skill, maybe your piratism made you better at shooting guns or something, who knows? You did shoot those people very easily yesterday.

aybe Amos's wheelchair makes him more competitive, or Horse's disability makes him a better driver. I'm just saying, having some little faith in magic may be stupid, but it is kind of entertaining. It makes the world seem to be a bit more magical if you do believe that it somehow helps people." Says Effie

"None of that sounds like magic. That just sounds like me having good hand eye coordination, Amos having some sort of chemical imbalance, and I don't know about Horse, maybe he just has good focus and instinct because he doesn't have so many thoughts that would distract him. You did just as well basically, maybe not the specialty maneuvers, but still, that's hardly magic." Says Peggy

"Well, it still saved our lives, so whatever it is I'm grateful for it. Considering my experience with magic, it's comforting to think that it's not magic, as I would hate to have my life depend on magic as opposed to some legitimate vector of accomplishing things. It's kind of weird, because as silly as it sounds, you can see it in my actions that when desperate or scared enough, people will just put their faith in magic out of desperation.

Logically I knew my magic was completely useless, but in desperation I was pleading and crying trying to somehow get my magic to save my life. Clearly it didn't do anything, and thankfully it didn't need to, but that desperation is probably the source of a lot of the faith that people tend to believe in. A long time ago desperate people were looking for something to save them, so some petty wizards, witches, dolts, what have you, just happened to be in the right place in the right time to convince some desperate people of the value and power of magic. When you feel powerless, you're willing to put faith in anything and everything that might possibly save you." Says Effie

"I suppose that's the reason why I've never had any particular preoccupation with god or souls or that sort of thing. I've never had any god to fear, I've never been so desperate and hopeless that I have to entrust my fate to a spooky ghost that will use his magic to save me. I've had an easy life without any real external pressure, and I figure if you don't give somebody a reason to need god, to believe in god out of necessity, they really won't have any predilection towards doing so. Thankfully I've never been so consumed by my own fever dreams that I start to believe in some ethereal repercussions of my actions, or any of that jazz really.

I don't even believe in ghosts that much, I mean, sure I know ghosts are real, but if I were a ghost, I figure I wouldn't be much of a ghost at all. I don't bear grudges or hold malice in my heart, I don't seek vengeance, I'm just idly wandering around getting my fill of kicks, and I certainly wouldn't develop any sort of ambition to accomplish something meaningful in the moments between dying and becoming a ghost. I figure at that point my mind would just turn off; I don't have any particular reason to think or understand things, so I would just avoid that sort of responsibility like the dickens and just never think again.

Technically I would be a ghost, but seeing how I've not real malice or haunting flavor I'd end up being indistinguishable from the wind. I'd be happy not to think a damn thing, just to stare out into space, thinking nothing forever, but as it stands I've got all sorts of bodily fluctuations that push and tug me around to keep my body functioning and full of fuel and whatnot. Especially if it's pretty, a nice view, I wouldn't have any reason to think at that point, just wandering around the wilderness taking in the atmosphere for pure pleasure.

Ignorance is bliss, and I'll be damned if I'm needlessly perturbing my pleasant thoughtlessness once I'm dead. It's nothing but trouble to have to chase all these discontenting sensations in my body enough to quell them, I figure if I didn't have to do that I'd never have had a thought in my life. Thankfully I can speak without thinking, so it's not particularly bothersome, but that's entirely reactive, as I'm not keen on talking unless there's somebody to be shooting the shit with. I won't seek it out, as much as I can paddle that boat, I'm not any more fond of boating as I am sitting on the shore, napping in the sunshine." Says Peggy

"I'm glad it's no bother for you to keep talking my ears off. Lord knows what I'd hear if I was left alone with my thoughts, so having you to drown them out for me is truly a blessing. As much as I don't particularly want to think either, I just can't help it, like something forces me to do it; maybe it's ghosts or something, who knows.

I just notice some little crack in the floorboard of my contentment, then this will allow these real ominous ghosts to come flooding through, like they were waiting for the second I laid my eyes on that damn floorboard to come out and start to haunt me. Right now I'm just running away from that house, I'm nearly seeing myself in third person right now. Thankfully your insane nonsense has helped me lose my mind to a comfortable degree, as much as people will see that phrase in a negative light, when I don't want to have my mind, I'm more than happy to lose it, at least as much of it as humanly possible." Says Effie

"I figure you could just shore up those floorboards and that house in your mind would be nice and cozy. I know you're not drowning in the hellfire gasoline of vainglory, but if you come across any in that little cottage of yours, a nice little torch flaming with dominant pride tends to spook those sorts of ghosts away. I don't even speak ghost, but they for damn sure speak my language of screaming aggressively. They like it when you scream fearful, but if you're shouting at them, they run off like any wise animal would. They know I'd hurt them one way or another, either with logic or the brute force of violent ignorance if that fails, but ghosts spook as easily as they spook, so you've just got to know they're strength is their weakness as well. The danger comes when you're not wary of the ghosts you should be, they'll spook you out of a bad idea just as quick as they will for kicks, so I wouldn't write off all the riling as foolishness." Says Peggy

"The irony of it all is that I'm sure I could shore up the damn floorboards if I had any arms. Something about not having arms just makes you fearful, maybe overly fearful, but as I said before, the vulnerability is not something you can easily forget. It's like everybody around you waving guns in the air and shouting while you yourself have no guns to speak of.

I figure if the world is at a standard 1 degree of danger, and everybody waving guns around is a 2, the standard degree of safety in my life is at 0, making that 1st degree danger seem like what 2nd degree danger would feel like to a normal person. Thankfully beyond that all danger just blends in together, so I'm probably only half as scared as 2nd degree danger as a normal person, just because I can't really be much more nervous than I already am anyways." Says Effie

"I'll just say that you're doing much better on that fearfulness front than you were yesterday, far more collected, even than your usual self." Says Peggy

"I'm pretty sure I just ran out of fearfulness to burn. I just don't have any more to throw on that fire. My mind grew so exhausted and crippled by fear that it just shut down, some sort of nervous breakdown or something where my mind thinks I'm already dead or something. It truly believes that, it's rather quaint. I'm not complaining. It's weird having come to terms with my own death before it happens, but I figure I spent so much damn time yesterday trying to do just that it would be a shame if I wasn't able to accomplish what I'd set out to do.

Being trapped in this room with you had thoroughly brutalized my understanding of reality to the point where nothing really makes sense to me, everything seems like funhouse nonsense and the world is melting like taffy from the ceiling. Sure it's covering me, I'm sticky as hell, but I just don't have the strength or energy to try and pull the taffy off of my body; I've given up, I'm dead, just lying on the ground, motionless, covered in taffy. That's how I understand myself, and per your philosophy, as I'm powerless to do a damn thing about it, there's no reason to feel a particular way about it.

I see my body, and I don't even know if I wanted to be alive, I'm not trying to impose some sort of presumption upon myself. Did I want to be alive? If I didn't, then my death is not particularly tragic. I can't say I wanted to die, but if I didn't want to be alive, it's not like a man who doesn't smoke becomes indignant when somebody doesn't offer him a smoke.

Looking at my life from the third person, it's just some mangled piece of abstract art, or even worse than that, just some disorderly room full of broken furniture that I happened to disorder through my own volition. I'm looking at that room and my mind doesn't think a damn thing, just wide eyed and feeling nothing but the inclination to walk away slowly and pretend that nothing happened. Whatever happened, whatever caused such a mess, that's not my business, it's not my problem; perhaps I did it, but it doesn't matter, I'm far less inclined to attempt to clean up that mess than I am to just walk away, shameless as it may be, I don't care in the slightest.

I suppose it's the thought process of somebody who might commit a hit and run, they know things are fucked up, they know they fucked up, but just drive on, try to forget about it, pretend nothing happened, hope for the best. Sure it's a damn shame, it's nothing but pain and misery upon the victims of the crime, but that has never stopped the people who commit hit and runs from acting in their own perceived self-interest, and seeing how I know for damn near certain that I can't do a damn thing to fix the problem, it's best to just walk away, cut my losses, call it a day. Good enough, good effort, good show, I did my best, what else can I do? I'm not angry, depressed, bitter, or upset, I just feel nothing, just shellshock and disbelief to the point where I'm more than happy to just walk away from the situation and pretend I never laid eyes on it.

Clearly I'm babbling, but I'm just trying to make sense of my thoughts, and hopefully the translation into English makes enough sense. I'm blind as Ada right now, seeing ghosts and whatnot, even though I'm the ghost. I don't know, it's not particularly me, what am I? I don't know, just some sort of lens that filters these images and collects data, scared to death, and you said it yourself that the dead don't feel. I feel cold, empty, blind, I don't know. Maybe it's just shock, thought paralysis, but to be honest, I'd rather not try to analyze or dissect these things that I can just take at face value and be on my merry way.

People say life is about finding yourself, that's how you can become happy, but in my case, I had myself the whole time, and of late I lost myself, my whole self, sort of, at least ejected from the pilot seat, and now there's nobody in the cockpit, and the plane just keeps on flying without a care because it's a machine, it doesn't think, or understand, it just perpetuates itself based upon the laws of physics and that's more than enough for the plane. It's regrettable what happened to the pilot, but she knew the risks, she knew what could and easily would happen, plenty of years to come to terms with her fate, she wasn't surprised, she took it in stride as best she could, and I'll commend her for that, rest in peace, dollface, it was a pleasure." Says Effie

"I liked it, very pretty, lots of colorful pictures in that spiel. It's a pleasant narrative; I can see the solace in there. I'm sure it might feel odd, but at least you've started to bleed the feelings out of your head. Never underestimate the power of some good bloodletting. If you've got some unhealthy blood in you, by all means get that out of there. People are too visceral, I figured they'd bleed out after a while, at least after years of all their torment and suffering, but people have a lot of blood for some reason. It's odd, I'm dry as a kite, but other people bleed to no end, you were one of them, always so meaty and bloody with feelings and what not. I know its normal, but goodness it seems like some haunting displeasure." Says Peggy

"I don't know. My mind is just being scrubbed on a washboard by these images of playing rummy, looking at you, just the most usual of usuality, it just quiets the thoughts, the feelings; none of those stains on my mind. Just this purity, tranquility, it feels like the world is just turning, that automated assembly line cranking out life as we know it is churning along just fine, babbling like a brook, serene, peaceful. I'm not even there, this, all of this isn't even me, I don't exist, it's just a pleasant parade of life, objectively seen in the third person, entirely bound in the present, no past or future, like a little film reel or something. I'm like a meaningless background character or something, and as there's nothing notable in our little scene, there's nothing my mind latches on to in order to beat some thought or something out of that piñata of happenstance.

It's so smooth. Frictionless, just sliding along indefinitely without any sort of resistance, no objection or obstacle, not the slightest bit of variation to distract one from the monotone, my thoughts, my feelings, this pleasant hum, it's a silent hum, an aesthetic hum, but it's a wonderful feeling. I'm entirely captivated by it, some peculiar sense of awe and wonderment, not at the particularity of anything that is happening, but the complete lack of particularity, like I can run around in the field, play, and giggle, and laugh, without any sort of care in the world, no sense of unease, no wariness, no capacity to even imagine a problem or even understand anything at all, mindless bliss.

My mind, I can feel it, heavy, motionless, still soft and fleshy, sleeping like a drowned dog, even that image is a pleasant one, the dog entirely irrelevant, as if the people in the park could see a dead dog lying there and think nothing of it, nothing more than a happy little rock or anything else that is not out of place in the slightest. It feels like home, like where my mind belongs, just this happy little rock, a soft fleshy rock, content, warm in the sunshine, not a care in the world. The rest of it is just picturesque scenes flowing over my sensory input like water, I don't feel me, I don't feel personal things or sways, I just feel this scene, this ambiance, all of the characters, nameless people, children, carefree, thoughtless, giggling, running around playing games without definition, without reason, or rules, just some form of idle entertainment. They just exist and are happy, there's no convolution of the formula, no hurdles or obstacles, no conditions, there's just this simple input and output that defines the lives of these exquisite creatures of meaningless existence, so beautiful, so joyous.

I'm just some sort of resonant sphere of unnoticeable ether, the reverberations of sensations and pleasantness just echo through my mind, the whole scene, that's what I am right now. It feels nice to not think, to not exist, reality right now just seems like a little thought, a little spec of imagination in my mind right now, one that I can understand as existent, yet I have no interest in exploring that little facet of my mind, not now, perhaps never, but still, it is there, and I know this, it just means nothing, nothing more than any fleeting figment of a nameless fairy tale that might happen to cross the mind of a child, purely fictitious, entirely irrelevant, too invested in other thoughts to pay any mind to that one particular thought. My eyes just glance over it as if I'm looking at an endless row of culinary spices, none of them standing out in precedence or significance. Nice, yeah?" says Effie

"That pleasant dream's got me yawning good. You spin a good yarn, put a girl right to sleep." Says Peggy

"I'm catching your drift as to why the world is inconvenient quainthood above all else. The mind is capable of experiencing anything; it's entirely subjective, it just happens to be guided by the physical world around us. That matter of input and output is inconvenient, seeing how if we could just conjure up any output we were in the mood for regardless of the input in reality, it'd be nothing but paradise or any other adventure we could dream up.

It's a shame that the tool, the mind, is wasted like that, so capable of feeling these things, of experiencing these pleasures, these scenes; that could be our entire lifetime, just nothing but drowning in harmless fantasy. The mind is perfectly capable of perceiving the world that way, well, perceiving dreams as if they were reality, but through evolutionary necessity our cognizance is transfixed upon this reality, rather than the most pleasant pursuits our mind can conjure regardless of the reality that surrounds us. It's some long chain of physical input to psychological perception, that if through some unthinkable magic we could control the psychological result independent from the physical reality, then life would be perfect, nothing but dreams come true.

I'm sure this is wishful thinking, as the mind itself has shortcomings by developing tolerances to things, and you'd end up dreaming about perfection, but it feels like nothing, because that is just your baseline, so as nothing more pleasurable than perfection would ever occur, your life is defined entirely by deviations from perfection and thus only unpleasant feelings. Still, a nice little reprieve every now and again, a nice escape into dreamland would serve somebody well, maybe.

People are known to become crippled sick with pipe dreams, so I figure the same would apply to these sorts, but in my preemptively posthumous escapism, it's certainly a pleasant bit of thinking, to exist in my mind entirely independent from reality. I can see how it would be problematic, people daydreaming to death, through starvation, irreverence, sloth, the like. It's shameless, but shame has seldom stopped a heroin addict seeking the sweet relief of analgesia." Says Effie

"As much as it may not cause physical harm, I can see that psychologically deconditioning people from reality could cause baskets of problems. Reality would need to function in the first place, so once people start escaping into dreams like that, slowly and slowly reality falls apart, the people all choose to die in their dream cocoons because they're so detached from reality that death is a nonissue, their own physical forms are foreign and unknown entities, completely irrelevant to the dreamer.

People are incredibly prone to addiction, and I'm sure having the capacity to psychologically perceive one's world to be paradise due to an induced dream-state would create an incredible addiction in most people. Perhaps I'm wrong, but seldom have people been known to be responsible in their pleasure seeking." Says Peggy

"Whelp, all of that realistic problematicality of daydreaming you just happened to rustle out of the blue just seasoned all of the daydreaming with the usual fret for frets sake. I hardly even put half an ounce of energy into cognizing what you said, but it still managed to flavor that whole dream with unease, like something's not right and something might go wrong somehow. I have no idea why I even notice that feeling, if I can forget the sound of my breathing and my footsteps, I should damn well be able to forget that uneasy feeling, seeing how my breathing or my footsteps are at least so polite as to not make noise 24/7. Oh well, it was good while it lasted, quite nice, very pleasant. I'll try to get back there somehow, if I can ever manage to escape the fretfulness." Says Effie

# 3.4

"Egotism really helps you be dismissive of anything and everything you dislike, regardless of how legitimate it might be. I know that doesn't come naturally to you, but it definitely comes in handy when you've got to step up and start handing out pink slips to those thoughts and feelings that don't pass muster. You've got to be the boss; nobody else is going to do it, not in your own mind.

I know you're meek, but unless you just want your thoughts to walk all over you, you've got to lay down the law. There's no reason to be afraid of those ghosts rattling around in your brain, its nothing but being spooked by a ghost; and a ghost can't do a damn thing if you actually put some thought into it rather than just jumping like an animal for animality's sake.

I know it's instinct, but you've got to put some reigns on that horse and drive it to where you want to be, don't let that horse lead you wherever it wants to go, it's a damn animal and has no interest or inclination towards pursuing any legitimate or reasonable ends, and that's where your heavy hand of psychological authority needs to come into play. Still, I can only lead a horse to water, I know I've said something like that plenty of times, but rote learning is still a way to learn, at least have that concept reinforced or something, hopefully it will take root.

What I liked about that nice dream, I was dipping my tongue in there too, real nice, real tasty, you know, but what I liked was that it was real; it was genuine, raw like dirt. That whole perspective of meaninglessness, being some sort of ball of inexistence that is entirely unnoticeable, that's what life is, or at least that's what we are in the grand scheme of things. Reality will merrily throw a baby under the wheels of a dump truck and it won't stutter for a second, not a 'whoopsie daisy' or anything. The real world doesn't give a damn about us, and any perceived significance or meaning of a person, or anything for that matter, is all entirely imaginary.

Sure people put faith in it, but that doesn't make it any more legitimate. Reality is just raw feelings and sensation, actions, nouns and verbs, all of that noise, but no meaning. If you want to have meaning you've got to conjure it up yourself, and that's why meaning is the lame child, the runt of the litter, of all the feelies a person might have in their blood, if it's even a child at all, which I wouldn't give it credit for being one, despite the contrary opinion of the world.

Meaning is like some sort of garbage monster just screaming and wailing, and people think that makes it a person, like those raw real feelings, those are the people in this situation. That damn monster is still a monster, and it's important to know that, it's the big pile of garbage created within the mind by collecting the white noise and the excreta of everything else that exists, then presuming that said pile of garbage is for some reason significant and valid simply because the logic held true for all of those little children running around in that field, for everything real, it was real and thus it was valid. That's just not the case with meaning.

See, real things, trees and people and whatnot, physical things, those are real, the physical entity smashes into your cognizance, and then the reaction is the significance. The thing about meaning is that clearly it doesn't exist on the outside, there's no big rock of meaning that will come smash into your brain in the form of light beams reflecting off that damn sparkler. Your brain creates this imaginary force and hallucinates that force somehow creating some impact on the body, on reality.

That's like how a person will jump out of the way if you had a realistic car hologram coming straight at them, one that they couldn't tell the difference, it's just instinct. The shame is that meaning isn't even that good of a hologram; it's just half-decent to the point where humanity gives it the benefit of the doubt despite having plenty of room to argue that its validity has clearly not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

They want to believe in it because that hallucination has dug up some void in the brain that they've got to fill with something, that hallucination of meaning makes people think that something needs to be in that hole in their mind, when in reality absolutely nothing should be in that hole because nothing really exists to fill that hole. It's an imaginary doctor treating an imaginary flesh wound, and if we're just playing pretend like we're children then I'm a majestic princess who can fly and do all sorts of profoundly unrealistic forms of magic like I'm straight out of a storybook. It doesn't matter how good at pretending these people are, a hypochondriac can convince themselves that they're deathly ill, and there's no difference between a meaning laden person convincing themselves that things are full of meaning.

Reality is just the clacking of balls in the pool hall, smashing and clacking, predictable and easily understood by the clear cut laws of physics. I'm not going to be tender with the damn pool balls because my delusion convinces me that there's some little elf that lives inside of it. I'm not going to be tender with some dolt because his meaning is telling him his feelies are somehow different than the damn formication of some speeder. Rats to his damn feelies, I don't give a damn how your feelies make you feel tender and queer, if they're not directly related to and influential to the trajectory and inflection of the pool balls on the table, that sort of pleasantry, however quaint or spooky, has no damn place in any sort of rational discourse regarding how the pool balls happen to clack around.

Feel away, but don't come fiddling with the pool table and breaking all the damn cues because your feely ghosts tell you that it would be better that way. Sure it'd be better if I could shoot pool with my damn brainwaves, clacking them all day in my sleep, but that's not how the real world works, so were either going to sit in a catatonic daydream or we're going to play pool. Personally, I'm rather intent on playing pool, so I don't want people playing games and pulling tricks with the tools and mediums with and through which the game of pool is played. I don't give a damn about the god damn elf in the pool ball. Until his own discomfort from being so clacked around starts to influence the game of pool, it's a non-issue, and it is utter nonsense to cater to his little whims and whimsy just because he happens to squeak if you rustle him the wrong way. This is what I'm saying, so much god damn relish on the table we can't even play pool anymore; it's lunacy, absolute lunacy." Says Peggy

"That last line, scrawl it onto a post card, sent it to the mayor, that'd be rich." Says Effie

"This district, it's not so bad, but the country, it gets softer the higher up you go, all sensitive to whatnot, there's no room for that sort of yellow spineless commie bullshit in a real country, but maybe we're just not a real country anymore." Says Peggy

"I'd just go with that. The people in charge of military dominance of the world really shouldn't be soft on anything, but maybe it's the only way to keep the hippies out of the streets, who knows. Hell, they'll start raising Cain just because they happened to imagine some kind of problem, just think of how bad it would be if there was a real problem." Says Effie

"People are awful, the government solves damn near all the problems, and nobody is any happier, the people just end up imagining problems and turning non-problems into problems just because they'd rather but upset than grateful for once in their lives. Just the other day, somebody described a fat Irishman masturbating in front of a few women in public as a 'catastrophic' event, and that's ridiculous. If you think witnessing a fat Irishman masturbates in public is a 'catastrophic' event, you really need to spend some time in a war-torn country where people are starving to death.

People don't give a damn about real problems, they just want to be the victim, and I can't even understand how a person got hurt by that, it's not like he gave them some kind of venereal disease, can somebody really get hurt by seeing a picture? How does that work? Are you some sort of epileptic that goes into a seizure upon seeing a fat Irishman masturbate? It's fucking nonsense. People just pretend to be hurt just to raise Cain, just for attention, money, sympathy, what have you, and the worst part is people give them the time of day.

How is seeing a man pulling on his junk more traumatic than seeing these children starving to death in warzones on television, that right there is trauma, it's an irrational degree of unpleasantness that could rattle somebody. Is every man down in Mardi Gras going to sexual abuse counselling because some chick whipped out the titties for some beads? God no, this is a ridiculous double standard. Throw that man some beads and get on with your life, what the fuck is wrong with you. People really don't have shit to do if they're making a commotion about this sort of thing, anything to be the victim, good god. These women basically walked into a strip club and then complained that the bare titties are sexually abusing them, what the fuck, don't go into the strip club if you aren't mature enough to casually be indifferent to titties while you talk out business over drinks." Says Peggy

"I mean... ok... I wouldn't be happy about that sort of thing, but that's just me. I don't know how we got here, but somehow hippies transitioned into fat Irishmen. Is the general public just a place for reckless aggressive debauchery now? I might have missed the memo, but I can see how that could be true." Says Effie

"You hit the nail on the head. If people are going to run around fornicating like dogs and peddling the soft-porn of their bodies on every corner, nobody has any right to complain that somebody crossed that line in the sand and went a little harder than normal. All of these whores and debauchers crossed eight god damn lines in the sand from back when people actually had standards of moral decency, so until they all start to dress and act like the god damn Puritans, they don't have a fucking case, they can't gripe about how somebody went and crossed the 8th line in the sand, when they've crossed 7 themselves.

Petty beyond words, look yourselves in the mirror before you start to judge people, 7/8ths is not legally any more pure than 8/8ths, hell, by law I'm sure 1/8th is technically the bare minimum for legal status, maybe 2/8ths, but for 7/8ths to turn their nose up at 8/8ths, that's spineless, just crying foul for fucks sake, for shits and giggles, or just for personal gain, not because there's actually a problem.

We just need to bring back the old standard where showing legs or cleavage was just as inappropriate as public masturbation is today, hell, these whores would be stoned to death: see how they like playing the petty wailing prude then, yeah? Glad the law knows what to do, just wail on them with the nightstick till the problem is solved, once they agree that nothing of note happened, all is well, but the media, that's the devil, just spreading stories like their own opinionation is above the law. Despicable. Misleading and deluding the people with their propaganda, their rabble rousing, just stirring the shit for fuck's sake, employing communist tactics just to make more money, as capitalist as that is, it will still end up in the same result, the dam country falling to shit because everyone's minds have been turned to jelly by the commie propaganda." Says Peggy

"The city is lucky to have you on the police force, seeing how you can smell a commie from a mile away. They really should have made you the detective." Says Effie

"As flattered as I am, sadly that has become a moot point. There comes a point in an infection where amputation will simply kill the man, and our country has reached that point with its own communist infection. They disguised themselves, used some other tricky words to sneak around, but they're still commies, and at this point all we can do is be polite and start to dig our own grave. Damn shame, but I'm not going to kill this country with fever knowing damn well that I can't fight off that infection. As much as you fear death in that natural sense, a little analysis of the situation would make any reasonable person see death as a pleasant alternative to this life. It's not so much death as being euthanized in order to spare one the suffering of an ever worsening infection with communism.

I'm shameless, I can get my pleasure despite the pangs of the sickness, but still, noble people don't die like that, they don't die in the opium den saying that the opium doesn't taste like communism. As true as that is, real people have dignity; thankfully I don't, as much as I do objectively understand the concept. I'm here to get my kicks; I'm not fretting about the damn relish. It's shit relish, for damn sure, but I can avoid it for the most part, at least for now." Says Peggy

"I think all this confinement is making you restless, you need some fresh air or something, take a walk. I understand, I'm not fond of it either, doesn't do a body well to be trapped like this." Says Effie

"I need to stop dawdling around just knowing better and instead just go back to knowing what's best for me. Sure, knowing better is important, but that's petty, it's childish. There's no point in explaining the fact and reminding people that you know better, because most everyone will just give you the benefit of the doubt in that regard.

Sure, maybe if you have a small child you need to remind them to know better, but you're not a child, and I'm not a child, so rather than spend my time contenting myself with proclaiming what amounts to little more than shooting the shit about the weather that never changes, I've got to stop for a second, realize what I'm doing, and instead talk about something more legitimizing than my ability to reiterate basic common knowledge. It is comforting, true, to hound the communists, but they get hounded plenty, and a team of horses can't draw a carriage faster than a horse can run, and that carriage is already going damn near that top speed without my help. Plenty of carriages need pulling, and I can definitely pull them, so it's best to pull one that needs to be pulled rather than pull one that doesn't." Says Peggy

"I know you're just talking out of instinct at this point, but I'm not your dad, so the patriotism is sort of lost on me. It's hard to think of something to say when I'm not particularly inclined to think or be thoughtful right now, and I'm sure you are seldom inclined to do so even on the best of days." Says Effie

"I can sing songs better than write songs, improvise a line here and there sure, but in terms of cooking them up from scratch I'm not much for it. I figure I know so little, if I'm not reiterating the choruses of some song I've hear hundreds of times I'm not particularly saying much of anything. I figure that's worth something, as the generalized negligibility of the world makes these little quaint philosophical and psychological stratagems I'm fond of are equally as significant as anything else. As much as I might not seem that way, that's only an illusion of perspective. Your mind is fishing for some sort of measurements to distinguish varying degrees of significance, when in reality there are none, so a person's mind just ends up imagining them because there truly are no merits from which to form a proper metric.

That's why the whole business of sentiment and opinionation flails around randomly and nonsensically like an epileptic, it will just trash in every which direction just because there is no forward or backward, up or down, at least not to any degree that somebody can justify one sentiment beyond another. Once you get into the measurable results of some realization of opinion, sure, there's plenty to criticize and critique, but despite that clear second-hand failure of the opinion, the opinion remains unassailable just because it exists in that immeasurable realm of imagination." Says Peggy

"Just like how the communists can just convince themselves that communism is legitimate in their heads by saying the measurable results of communism don't count, yeah?" says Effie

"Of course, of course, there's no reason to beat a dead horse save for the pleasure of unbridled vengeant rage. Not that I would shy away from such pleasures, but I figured I'd try to hold myself to some sort of standard, enjoy those horse beatings by proxy, then set my sights into the fog that is supposedly laden with productive or significant observations.

My problem with talking is that I'm largely a reactive talker. I'd just sit here empty-headed and thoughtless if I wasn't noticing things or hearing things. Without those sorts of inputs I'm not going to be wrangling thought crops. I've got plenty of water, clearly, but I'm not sowing seeds because I've never once been hungry for a thought in my life, even just having those few roused from the dirt by god knows what makes my head feel rather cramped, like I've got lots of company in there. I don't mind company, but having it stuffed like a crowded room if a bit much for me, it's exhausting trying to clink glasses and have a scoff with every guest at that party. I like a nice relaxing time, a nap under a hat, that's for me, none of this thinking.

Hell, as upset as I can get with communism, I can get comparably if not equally upset with people who just think any sort of thoughts, at least to the point where they'll be comparably as aggressive with throwing their Molotov cocktails of opinionation. There's no need for that, all of these people with opinions wanting people to respect them, or compliment them. Getting lathered up with praise and money because you can preach to the choir of dolts and tell them what they want to hear.

I figure if somebody makes a living preaching opinions they're not worth their weight in salt, seeing how it's not like they'd eat a day in their life if they didn't just tell people what they wanted to hear, and at that point their either fraudsters shilling lies to the delusional or they're just stroking the delusions and egotism of people so pretentious as to be concerned with contentious opinions. If an opinion is contentious, you know damn sure having one of those opinions is irrelevant if not problematic, because if either of the opinionated positions were a legitimate and correct answer to the issue at hand, it wouldn't be a contentious issue. The issue is only contentious because neither side is anywhere close to correct on the point, so they spend all day condemning each other for being wrong, despite the fact that neither side is even close to right.

I know the state wants people to feel powerful and significant so they encourage them to smear the shit of their ignorance all over the walls and electric windows of our society, but it's gotten to a point where there's hardly any semblance to actual debate and the quality of arguments have been reduced to aggressive opinionation to the same degree that a white nationalist and a black nationalist will hate and condemn each other for no reason other than ingrained preemptive bigotry and denigration.

Neither of them have a valid point, they just condemn each other because they don't like one another, they don't suit each other's fancy, and this is irrelevant because one's fancy is entirely irrelevant in regards to science, at least so far as I can tell. A car coming at you full force isn't going to give a damn about the fact that you don't fancy being hit by a car, so it's best to disregard your damn fancy for a moment and make the most logical situation in regards to your situation, despite however much this may be some affront to the fallaciously presumed legitimacy of your fancy." Says Peggy

"I know that in your allegory being hit by that car is the collapse of the country or something, but I'm not the type to go out and criticize somebody's beliefs like that, I would just let it happen. I'm just saying, they're not going to listen to me anyways, that's the benefit of not having any pride to lose, it's not going to hit me in the pride if the country collapses; I'm not going to stake my pride on the ability of a massive collective of people to accomplish a somewhat difficult task.

If I single-handedly cause the country to collapse, sure, but I'm not going to take any bit of the blame for the failures of the country just because I personally know better; I don't have some sort of messiah complex where I feel that it is my responsibility to save somebody, let alone the country, just because I am theoretically able to do something like that. Theoretically is a long way from realistically, and I tend to be happy if I can accomplish something that I realistically should be able to accomplish.

I'm sure it's bittersweet to see this little puppy you watched grow up run into the road and get struck and killed by a car the second you let it out of the house, but if that's what America is going to do, so be it, I can't stop it. Maybe it's easy for me to think that way just because I don't have arms, but I'm just saying it shouldn't be too hard a concept to grasp. I can't be the damn catcher in the rye, so I'm not going to try, I'm not going to be guilty in the slightest if I fail to do that job, because that's a ridiculous job to even imagine oneself doing. That would be like being the catcher in the rye for a field full of aggressively retarded children as strong as oxen, and there's no way you can stop those kids from running right through your damn noodle arms and jumping off the damn cliff. They're stupid, the world is stupid; just let it go, let them all fall off that cliff into hell, good riddance. You know they're sick with communism, I figure you'd be happy to see them plummet to their death." Says Effie

"Well, as much as those damn kids will definitely take me with them right off that cliff, it's still worth it. I don't know, I just think about America, the old America, and think it's so regrettable as to how far we've fallen from our roots, those things that made us a great country. It's sad, I know I'm dreaming when I think I can somehow help it get back on its feet, but what can I do? Nothing, nothing at all, just help bury the corpse and give him a salute, it's a damn shame this place got so damn sick, but that's just what happens when you stop inoculating the country against communism. Hell, it's like the whole damn immune system decided to retire after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it only took twenty years for the communists to infect the country all over again.

Just because the Soviets aren't a threat doesn't mean communism itself isn't a threat, that's like saying just because Smallpox isn't a threat that means viruses as a whole just don't exist. If that is our level of logical fluency, it's hard to even condemn the communists for arguing that communism is nearly indistinguishable from Santa Clause, because communism for damn sure will know when you are sleeping, break into your house at night, and start eating your food, but there sure as shit won't be any presents for you when you wake up, unless your wish list was comprised entirely of starving to death and politicide; If so, merry fucking Christmas you god damn communist." Says Peggy

"Give it to those damn communists." Says Effie, tastefully vapid, entirely uninterested, brimming with mocking ingenuine enthusiasm

"I know you don't care in the slightest, but I'll do it anyways. When a bull sees red, it's just instinct. By my understanding, communism, it is simply wrong, it is the blanket-term for all of the mental failures and idiocy of the human race. Despite any technical semantic definition of communism, whenever somebody is acting contrary to the wellbeing of themselves and society contrary to any basic understanding of functionality, this is communism. If this isn't communism, the commies slapped their name on this philosophy of acting contrary to every piece of natural law, logic, function, wisdom, and legitimacy. The technicalities don't matter, because whether or not an arsonist burned down a building with kerosene or gasoline, it doesn't particularly matter in any field save for pleasantry, as the relevant point is that the building is on fire and/or burning to the ground. The people who support communism yet do not live in such a country are easily denoted within this parallel as they are intoxicated if not brain damaged from huffing the damn smoke and fumes all day.

The thing about communism is that it is contrary. It is entirely contrary to history, to human nature, to anything and everything that history has been defined by. We know how human society works, it's like water. Water is naturally going to flow in the path of least resistance, meaning that when you smash all of these little peasants into a little town, a city, a country, what have you, their intermingling and function is going to function in the same manner that water does, and this is because humans are averse to work with a distaste for fruitless conflict. Society clearly designed itself to operate in the most efficient and successful way possible because people always strive to be more successful, and the only way to accomplish that save for technological advancement independent from social orchestration is to increase the efficiency of the processes that accomplish things.

Originally, this was kings, clearly very efficient, one man makes one decision and that's the end of that. The improvement is democracy, where a handful of people are elected to supposedly make decisions, but end up accomplishing nothing 99% of the time if they even bother to attempt to do this. This system works because it tells the people that they themselves hold the reins of governance, so clearly the common people won't bother to do anything, especially something that requires the investment of such a high degree of energy such as establishing governance, because they're certain that the entity known as 'the people' which they are presumedly a part of have already done this.

Its simple conservation of energy, and as much as these people are clearly inept, those who envisioned democracy understood this and ensured that these people never held any degree of power that might actually incidentally accomplish something. The problem with kings was that despite the benefits of order that result, the king is capable of making bad decisions, and thus the country suffers. The advantage of democracy is that all of the same order that a king creates is still created, as people respect the state, the mayor, their father, et al. for fear of death, but the state doesn't actually have to do anything to induce this fear.

This is may seem magic, but it's really a simple trick. You tell the people that they themselves are the powerful and almighty government, and this confuses them to a profound degree, then at this point, they are far less inclined to act out against the state or rebel, because by their reckoning this would be rebelling against themselves, and that doesn't make a damn lick of sense to anyone. This holds true so long as these people believe that they themselves are somehow involved with and responsible for the powers that be, as despite how little they or anyone else for that matter understands politics or what politicians actually pretend to accomplish, they will always understand that these politicians are presumedly representations of themselves, and as much as politicians may fall out of favor because people are fickle and cannot be pleased, the system itself, the democracy never falters because people would think to assail this backbone of law and order would be to strike down themselves.

That being said, clearly you can't expect a massive crowd of uneducated, delusional, or otherwise feeble minded idiots to create a functional system or anything that even resembles such a system by shouting and slapping tables, purporting themselves as some form of legitimate authority because they're so bold as to assert a baseless if not blatantly fallacious presumption. This means a democracy can only be as powerful as its politicians and people are powerless, and for that reason, the founding fathers made it incredibly difficult for anyone to accomplish a damn thing through democracy, as they knew nobody would ever agree save for in the most desperate and hopeless conditions, so this means that unless shit has hit the fan something fierce, then absolutely nothing will get done because nobody will be scared and desperate enough to agree.

This has been a powerful system because in times of peace, nothing needs to get done; if something is getting done politically it is guaranteed to be a heavily flawed if not dangerous insinuation of the degeneration of society. If politicians are attempting to accomplish something, this means the country has been so safe and successful for such a long period of time that said success has started to unnerve the people; it is eerily quiet and peaceful, and due to human nature of instinctive paranoia in the name of survival, people start to feel threatened by nothing, they start to be stirred to action, towards desperate and fearful accordance with one another despite the fact that nothing has justifiably caused these things.

They get so on edge and nervous, as their instinctive paranoia does not have the ebb and flow caused by actual threats and the relief of these threats, that some subtle snapping of a twig beneath their feet becomes the impetus of a fearful reaction that causes a god damn stampede. They start running away from or fighting imaginary problems just because they've got absolutely nothing better to do, and human instinct simply will not allow them to exist without perceiving there to be a problem somewhere with something, if not everywhere with everything, save lest of course these people have recently faced a real, tangible, and palpably threatening problem that allows them to get their bearings to the point where they can understand what a problem is through adequate dead reckoning.

I drifted a bit, but back on the topic, one of them at least, is that society functions like water, it flows in a very organized and predictable manner, it is nearly identical to the water cycle, in that water flows around, evaporates into clouds, rains, forms rivers, then goes into the ocean, evaporates again, so on and so forth. The allegory is full of relevant anecdotes that explain these things, and it's not particularly relevant to the point, save for the fact that natural function, low effort, low organization, low resistance, low reward, but stable cyclical systems are what naturally govern human societies. Communists want to act contrary to all of this, and try to argue that a high effort, high organization, high resistance, unstable and rigid system will somehow yield a high reward, but this is entirely unnatural and cannot function in a system so prone to chaos and disorder. Things have to splash around and be inefficient, wasteful, pointless; you have to let the water do whatever it damn well pleases so long as it stays within the loose confines of physical law, and at that point the water will simply behave in natural ways that benefit the planet, or in this case the fruition of human society.

People start to think this way, supporting these lofty nonsensical ideas for exactly the reason why democracy in peacetime is dangerous, there is nothing that keeps these people in check and allows them to keep their bearings. These unchecked systems of extrapolation and hypotheses go on forever and end up growing faith in all of these unnatural and dysfunctional systems just because the artificial safety and control produced by society allows them to, this is much like how you can grow an entirely unnatural collection of plants in your garden so long as you put enough work into the process to deter the natural causes that would otherwise put an end to your unnatural cornucopia of flora. Is it better? Dubious, because the work required is likely not worth the reward, as there comes a point where that extra yield is not worth the work required, and in the case of communism, the system is so farfetched and opposed by nature that the entire crop is doomed to fail.

Back to the point about degeneracy, about deviation from natural systems, as that's an incredible danger of civilization. When you think about history, the older and more primitive the philosophy is, the closer to human nature and thus nature it is, so that means that that the previous millennia have been defined by the degeneration of natural functionality that correlates with the generative increase of technological advancement. The most primitive philosophies have survived for so long and are still respected to this day because they are legitimate.

As scientifically flawed as they might be, they understood human nature, and they understood how humans can functionally coexist. Easily the most highly respected of these works is the Bible, where god teaches you to hate humans because they're all shit, ruthlessly abuse them for their shortcomings, teach them some solid pieces of wisdom, and then society will work to a reasonable degree. This was how society was organized for damn near all of history, and it worked pretty damn well.

This is explicitly because people existed in a world where real threats existed, there were very palpable threats within an arm's reach, and this allowed these people to keep their bearings, not only in terms of what is right and wrong, but more importantly in regards to what is and isn't problematic. Nobody really understood why these castigated things were wrong or problematic, they just took god's word for it, and it's a miracle they did, because despite the complete lack of irony, god was right about damn near any point he decided to castigate people for. When you brutalize people for being irreverent or mutinous, they are far more reluctant to be irrational or conflictory people, and when that is the case, the society as a whole tends to function with a higher degree of stability.

A man needs to be broken to no less of a degree than a horse, and to an even further degree because due to the possession of intelligence men are naturally immoral and far more dangerous to themselves and one another. This was where the entire fear of god and thus the fear of those who act in god's stead is so valuable, as it gives people that fear, that perception; much like how sight allows people to avoid running into obstacles in their path, this fear of moral rebuke helps people avoid running into moral obstacles, similar to echo-location but accomplished through fear instead.

This was easily one of the greatest accomplishments, if not the single greatest accomplishment that mankind has wrought over the course of human history, because without this fear, there would be no ability to organize and maintain a society. When you don't break your men, this is like trying to draw a carriage with an unbroken horse, and clearly those damn beasts are going to draw the carriage into some thickets, kick the driver, stand around dawdling and eating grass, all while having no intention of actually reaching the destination. Of course you could beat the horse, and though we do have some vestigial horse-beating within our society, largely starving the horse to make them at least wander around for food, perhaps a little subtle conditioning by providing food for these horses along the path a wise man would like them to tread, but with the profound social degradation, the only moral conditioning these people receive is through the law, which as this point is reverent to none but a single commandment, the first commandment, don't murder people.

That leaves a profound degree of moral justice entirely undoled, and if it doesn't get doled out, then people have no reason to be moral. People don't understand the benefits of morality just like how a horse doesn't understand that the plowing of the field creates the crops he eats. He's a god damn horse, you can't expect him to understand these things, but seeing how we're going to morally starve to death or otherwise be crippled and die from nutrient deficiencies because we have left the fertile nutritious fields of our origins and entered this technologically advanced mecca of unnatural mechanical capacity, there's no capacity to justify the abandonment of morality-based fear without arguing in favor of the dissolution of society itself.

When you don't strike fear into people's hearts, you get communists, every flavor of communists under the rainbow, and mind you that range of communists goes all the way down into the pits of hell. As much as it is the path of least resistance, this complete lack of resistance, however natural in society, is actually unnatural in a technologically advanced and civilized society, because this exact presence of morality-based fear is what allowed these civilizations to be created and exist in the first place. Without that essential part of the laws of social order, there will be no social order, when you stop keeping things orderly, function and order will descend into chaos, and in chaos you cannot sustain these fragile and intricate systems of communal moral trust that are used to sustain society. You cannot have them because people don't fear the repercussions for acting contrary to them, and the more you become tolerant of vice, the more common it becomes to fall victim to vice, until all of society it turned to salt like Lot's wife for being sympathetic towards the damnable like the fools they are." Says Peggy

# 3.5

"You miss your dad, yeah?" asks Effie

"I don't know, it feels proper, I figure I'm too flippant sometimes. Somebody's got to brandish authority, we're not rabbits, hell, we're cops, it should feel right as rain for us to ramble and rabble about whatever it is that might show people we know right from wrong, and that we know better than them. Thankfully my dad is fond of that sort of lecture, so I've got some words of wisdom up my sleeve if we need to harangue somebody.

Talking about philosophy and sentiments, even dreams, feels like nodding off. Sometimes you just catch yourself, a little startled, a quick jolt when you notice yourself falling asleep at an improper time. Figured it's worth something to try and keep our wits about us, we're not loons drowning in dreamland yet, now. I'm sure your parents gave you plenty of sage advice its best to keep dear." Says Peggy

"You know my parents are nothing like your dad. It's not like they put on some modest and reserved costume just when you come over. They just say things like 'try your best'. I suppose they never needed to teach me much about respecting people seeing how I have never in my life been in a position to disrespect anyone. It's easy to be meek when you don't have arms. I doubt I could stop being meek if I tried, even the thought of doing so causes me to freeze up.

I've seen you get spanked for being too rowdy or reckless, and even being in that position where I might get hit for something makes me do everything I can to try and be a good person. I think it just scares me more than most because I can't hit anyone back, it's not like I can put myself above anybody, really." Says Effie

"That's the way it should be, for most people. I'm sure you're well aware that my reckless haughtiness has not provided me any illustrious boon. It's just an odd instinct to think you're so damn great and above everyone else. I'm sure I deserved it, for whatever I did, but I know to try to keep it modest enough, respectable, reasonable. Thankfully I had a proper childhood and I know what common decency is by now.

It's not even that you need to know exactly what causes this punishment, that punishment, or no punishment, hell, I'd even say knowing explicit and defined punishments just makes people more tempted to consider the gambit. The point is, if you know that punishments do exist, that you are punished for your wrongdoings, then you will be far less tempted to commit them, because that fear or wariness of repercussion will show up in your mind whenever you consider doing something stupid, and that bit of wariness definitely keeps me out of dodge, and I'm grateful for that. It's that fear of repercussions that is lacking in plenty of people.

Clearly my loud mouth wasn't going to get me killed when I was 7 and running around my house screaming like an idiot. The point is that loud mouth of mine could easily have gotten me killed 15 years later when I was an adult and ran my mouth off in the wrong place at the wrong time. People see me getting beaten and think that it's an irrational punishment, and that's nonsense, you need to understand that even if this time my actions don't have natural repercussions, and the next time they don't, there will certainly come a time where your own character flaws will fuck your day up something proper, if not put you in a damn hole entirely.

It's something like paying interest on a loan, where you're just paying the interest for your grievance ahead of time; that 1% of your being beaten mercilessly at the hands of somebody who didn't like what you said some 15 years down the line from when you're being punished as a child, because if you didn't get that whooping, you know damn well how certain it is that somebody would have to teach you that lesson sooner or later, and by the time it comes to a stranger electing to learn you proper, they're not going to have that same bit of compassion and restraint that your parents or schoolteachers do.

If you pay your dues, you take all of those little 1% beatings, then by the time you come to the point in your life where you would be beaten 100% to death, you've already paid those dues, and you don't get beaten to death. It's a modern day miracle, but postmodernism prefers castration and breaking a gelding to simply breaking a stallion outright, and it it's a damn shame. People like that have no business running a farm, it's unnatural. It's gotten to the point where people aren't broken in the slightest, even women are running around bucking like broncs and like we've replaced civility with the slapstick of a goddamn clown rodeo." Says Peggy

"The degree of hypocrisy is entirely unironic coming from a standard sort of person, but I know the only reason you're running your mouth like this is because you know I'm not going to do anything to abuse you to the point where you realize it's a bad idea or otherwise just entirely stupid. Even if we were just in earshot of some standard people you'd be trying to save face and keeping your lunacy to a respectable level of modesty." Says Effie

"You know that's how I work, there's no shame in that. I'm just going to flail around swinging my arms and shouting until I come into contact with the bullwhip or the electric fence, then I'll be brought back in check. The shame is in the society that fails to properly condition the people; not that I'm putting that blame on you, as I can't expect you to crack that whip when you're the furthest thing from the sort of person who would be entrusted with that job. It's not just me, clearly not, it's the people who thrash and flail with an even greater degree of vehemence than I do. I'll slowly build up to this point, and only in this entirely quaint environment that facilitates unrestricted growth.

The problem with this sort of situation is that the real world is reduced to psychological perception and words, just thoughts and words. I'm not dealing with people, rocks, buildings; that meaty stuff; this is all just thoughts, where words and clouds are the pinnacle of physicality and legitimacy. In this sort of situation, of course I'm going to get all riled up spewing words and whatnot because by my perception, these words are the most powerful force known to mankind, and these words have a tremendous degree of impact on these little clouds of thought.

I am waging glorious conquest upon god knows what just by throwing words at it like a good man throws stones at a sinner. I feel like a champion, a warlord, unopposed simply because none have the capacity to contest me. It's glorious; it's an addicting thrill once you've lost your mind to the point where the highest degree that you can understand and experience reality is that of words and thoughts.

If I had real people to see, to feel the echo of my words off their chests as said words accomplish nothing, as if these common people were like superman and my words were bullets, but even less impressive than that because my words are just words, and clearly those damn words are going to bounce off that fucker's chest. That sort of experience, that reality, that perspective, I need that, you're not an animal sort of person, more of the ghost type, a poltergeist or something, my words just go straight through you, it's not like they do any damage or cause any sort of reaction, but still, my world has been reduced to words, thoughts, and a friendly ghost, so clearly I'd start to lose my mind a smidge just like any poor sap stranded on a desert island.

I was never even that sane to begin with, so clearly my rampant ignorance and magnitudinous pride are little more than gasoline on the strawman of my sanity, and that little puppy loves to burn. It's cold, you know, it doesn't feel pain, it likes to be warm, it knows better, it gets it in the neck for being on fire, but here, fuck, who cares, it's nice, real nice. It's shameless, but I can drink in the darkness can't I? I'm not a drunk if I hide it from the world, I'm just a stand up gal, I'm quality, good, all decent and respectable so long as the world doesn't suffer on account of my affliction. I'm decent enough to do them that favor.

Am I really that different or odd? Who else loves little more than the sound of their own voice, their own thoughts, their own sentiments, especially when such pleasantries are entirely unopposed in their conquering of the godforsaken planet, and in this case, this little room, this prison cell; this is the world so far as my wits elect to deduce.

If something comes along to change my perspective, put me in a different situation, so be it, but the world is relative, and clearly I'm not going to be in Taipei and Hong Kong at the same time; I'm in one place or the other, so the world is as big as my little noodle arms and shiny hook can go reach out and wrap my arms around. That's the world to me, everything else is irrelevant, what those people are doing in Hong Kong or Taipei is hardly anything more than fictitious irrelevance, at least so far as I'm concerned, because clearly that's not going to influence any tangible aspect of my reality in the present moment.

I know you live in a crooked house full of mirrors that reflect from every visible angle within ten miles, that every possible and theoretical set of eyes can see you fumbling and mumbling in that crooked house, but I'm a thrasher, I'm not going to sit there and take it, getting googled at and snickered at and whatnot. I'll be smashing these damn mirrors right quick to get down to the bottom of that damn mystery, at least until I smash one too many and somebody comes in and sets me straight with the belt or whatever flavor of civility the lord is so kind as to endear upon me

I can't say if I'm breaking the mirrors, but that's a moot point, cause I'm thrashing, see, so those mirrors and their glares, they're equally as hurt by my physical attacks on their mirror as I am by their mirror attacks on my physical body, so even if they're not getting smashed, it's a stalemate, and I'm certainly not shying away from round two. I don't really understand much of it, but I'm going to make a lot of noise and flail around because that seems like common sense, at least instinct, scare off the spooks, and on the better day's my thrashings will put some people in their place that should know better than to stand in the line of fire of my fury.

I don't even think I'm a particularly furious person, I think I'm just restless right now, the whole stuck in a room thing. I don't tend to mind this sort of thing, we've spent weekends just hanging out in my house, but the difference is being unable to leave.

You see a man who religiously is in his house every Sunday from 4 AM to 8 AM, never once leaving for a damn thing in his life, then you tell him that he can't leave his house during those hours, he'll come at you with the fury, for absolutely no god damn reason, his life wouldn't change at all if that was somehow true but you hadn't told him that, but as soon as he knows it, that fact will bother him, it will upset him, because he's an animal. A man is happy so long as he thinks he is free, and he's upset when he thinks he's caged; it doesn't matter if these two things are physically indistinguishable, the exact same situation, the way he feels about his situation is entirely dependent upon how he interprets it and understands his situation.

I need some of that damn rec room ambiance, I know what you mean being alone with your thoughts, too damn many. As much as I seem upset about something, I couldn't even tell you what I was upset about a minute ago. In my mind I'm just looking at all of these papers, these piles of papers that somehow ended up in here; clearly they had nothing better to do, and I'm just picking them up and throwing them in the air and shouting, whole piles of papers, that's all I'm doing.

Somehow it turns into words, lord knows how that happens, but this is all it feels like in my mind, this is the extent to which I am actually understanding what I am saying. These damn words, these papers, they're all meaningless, they're shit paper, wipe your ass, wipe the ass of your mind with them, clean your mind of the filth, scrape the shit off your mind, that's all they're good for; I can't even read god damn it. I can't even throw enough papers to alleviate this restlessness, it's insane, this truly is some form of insanity, too many papers, paperful syndrome, where the fuck do these papers come from?

It's like I have a brief little thought, a contemplative considering, I casually stroll over to the filing cabinet, expecting to thumb through a row of folders, pick out one, slender, lithe folder with a few thin pieces of paper, but then I open that damn cabinet and it just explodes papers, papers everywhere, what the fuck am I doing? Is this how business works? This is insane.

I just want to throw them at people, all sorts of people, making these papers, who is spending the time and effort to conjure up all of these topics upon which there is endless amounts of criticism and analysis, of audits, endless audits for the failures and shortcomings of every little facet of anything that happens to exist.

I usually just sit around dawdling, I'm never even in the damn office, I can't read, and clearly I don't have any intention to go into these file cabinets on a normal day, but for some reason, sitting in this office, got me playing pretend, just for shits and giggles, like I work in an office so I go over to the filing cabinet to make an ass of myself, some good old slapstick, and look what happens, it's a mess, it's ludicrous.

This is why I get frustrated, I like to think as little as possible, but everyone else loves to complicate every last bit of everything that can possibly be complicated, and they do this for absolutely no reason. Keep this god damn poison out of my mind, if these things aren't relevant to me, if I'm not operating on these things like a damn surgeon, then there's no reason for me to even be aware of these things.

It's not quaint, it's just endless piles of needless garbage information that amounts to absolutely nothing; it's not entertaining, it's big piles of liquid garbage so damn thick and sticky that I'm drowning in it, but still so crisp, just little papers, so light, they fly and float, all of that liquid garbage turns into the atmosphere that fills up the room I've got to live in this room, this is my mind, it's like holding your breath until the pressure hurts, but for some reason I can't find a way to exhale out of my mind.

At least right now, I'm thinking, wait, hold on. I'm telling you I stopped thinking there. It was all those papers, input overload or something. I just had to put my mind to it, understand what was happening, and the relevance of the papers, the fun facts and criticism, that all was sitting pleasant at a zero, clearly, so I just stared down those papers and questioned their existence, really grilled them with my glare, they spooked like ghosts, disappeared for the most part, maybe some residual fumes where they once were, just exhaustion, maybe that quizzical dark matter that nobody can understands, I can't quite wrestle out all of the haze in my mind, but I got most of it, mind you.

Absolutely no idea what I was ever talking about, but I got most of that garbage and clutter gone, it was an illusion, damn it. I'm losing my mind if I'm going to be giving into illusions like that, ghosts, real ghosts, haunting sorts that really give you the feels on your skin, like the damn caste officer had in him; this office must have killed some paper hounds or something, almost spooky if I didn't hold them in contempt for reading and whatnot. Spit upon them like dirt, but that's just because I don't like reading.

I know they do important things, papers do important things but I've got no time for that and people don't tend to like things they don't understand. Hell, I'm sure spitting on the dirt actually helps the crops grow, so I can't even say I'm even acting in poor faith at that point; you've got to be the type to like getting spat upon if you're going to bend over and let papers go to town on your brain like your some kind of ragdoll cocotte worth a few bills for thrills. That's just vulgar, but all the jobs need to get done, even the most distasteful of sorts." Says Peggy

"I'd be careful about talking to ghosts; they might make you into a detective." Jokes Effie

"I'm serious though; having too many thoughts in your head it feels like your suffocating, I can't even understand them, not the slightest clue. I just know what they are, and it's that intense pressure like you need to breathe. You've got to scare them away, spook em like the varmint they are, trying to come eat up on your pleasure, the god damn parasites.

I can wrestle with a thought from time and again just for sport, just for a laugh, it's not too bad, but a whole mob of them, a gang of them, that's like hippies coming to invade and take over your farm, turn it into a commune, start abusing drugs everywhere and confusing you with their reefer smoke, you'll go blind, crazy, start convulsing, just because you don't have a high enough tolerance to their poison to survive.

I can wrestle a hippie, let them know who's boss, who's in charge, I feel bad beating up emaciated and intoxicated adults with the mental capacity of children, but they're hippies, and it's no holds barred with hippies. Even kids know how to fear god, and if you're not walking up to the inquisition with your tail between your legs, you're entirely to blame for the fate I'm going to dole out upon your body. No room in the world for hippies, I'm sure even real communists would kill hippies in a heartbeat, commies know better, the ones trying to pail the damn water from their ship don't want to starve, despite the inclination of their party's faithful, so basically everyone who survived communism long enough to be in a position of decision making power is going to know better than to trust a hippie, and I'm sure it's kill on sight just because that's how communism works.

We're a little too high on Jesus in this country, and that explains a lot of things, the hippie infestation for one, but other than that, it is what it is, and at least it's not communism, god damn. I hate to think I'm respecting the logic of a communist, but I wouldn't be chomping at the bit to give the commies commendation for breathing, and killing hippies is little more than breathing to be fair. That being said they like to breathe all sorts of things that perhaps are not too good for the health, kill a few too many people, but if half of your dogs are rabid with common sense, those dogs can't help you in commie land, they've got to be put down, it's a damn shame, but if you're so fond of spinning records backwards, that's just what the fuck you've got to do." Says Peggy

"Well, we're back on the communists now, so we're at least making some headway on the journey home. Christ; sitting in a room for this long is not good for you." Says Effie

"It's frightening; I don't mean to say anything. I don't have any particular interest in saying these things, it just seems like I'm speaking in tongues, that's how meaningless all of this is to me. Just like I'm chanting some sort of spells to fend off the ghosts. I figure that's what it is, the damn commie ghosts and their espionage, blending in with my usual sort of poverty and degeneracy. I may be a degenerate, but I'm not an idiot, and that's the difference.

You can smell them, your mind can anyways; they emit that pressure, just like the papers. It's a lost art, railing the communists. You know, half of the damn fear is that we don't get feared like we should, we no longer live in a world where we can sleep easy knowing that the government is hunting the commies to no end, it's awful, it's as if law enforcement just decided to stop hunting murderers. They try to lull you to sleep with knowing that murderers are getting shot promptly, but without the communists being hunted you just feel like you're living inside of a leprotic half-dead husk. Spooky as shit, I'm not fond of that spook. Flying around like ghosts and there's no good reason on god's green earth why I should be so wary of communism, like they've already infected the country and I'm one of the few half-decent souls still alive capable of fighting them off.

I know you're too meek to put up any tangible fight, and that's probably half of it, the men getting buckled at the knees by Geneva and the other gay little songs of the castratos in Europe. When you break the damn knees of all the men of course the commies are going to run wild. I need some ether. Some kind of tranquilzer. I'm getting spooked like a horse in the night and it's no good. It's exhausting, I don't like it.

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I'm as meek and polite as you are; I'm not going to be so prudent as to ask that kindly man watching over us with a gun if he could spare some kind of barbiturate to soothe the mind. I'd rather just live with my suffering, my lunacy, my sweating and rambling than I would be so bold as to impose upon somebody. That's inappropriate, it is impolite to impose upon somebody like that, as pleasant as it might be to ask for help like that, sweet and kind, I couldn't do it.

Even something as simple as a barb from the gas station, that's too much to ask. Maybe a cigarette, sure, but even that is still conditional. If you're sitting there shooting the shit, and he brings them out in front of you to spark one up, sure you can politely ask if he'd mind bumming you a smoke, but you can't just ask out of the blue, that's savagery, beyond homelessness to the point of a miscreant drug fiend of the lowest degree of respectability because you refuse to die quietly and bear your affliction with dignity. Damn it I could go for a barb right now." Says Peggy

"I think you just need a walk or something, I don't know. I'm sure most of that is just due to being trapped in here, I'm anxious and on edge just as much as you are, maybe not to that extreme degree, but certainly discomforted. I wouldn't ask him either, god no, but still. I figure if you were having barbs for lunch you'd just nap for the rest of the day; you tend to be fond of that regardless.

I'm with you, so much, as much as I'm sure some sort of barbs or bennies would help me with my fear, I'm too afraid of the drugs themselves to even seek help. I don't want to be addicted, and I know for damn sure I will be. I know they're cheaper than dirt, but they still take a toll on the body and the mind, and I'm too scared to be able to even consider letting my guard down like that.

If I start to get slippery in the mind with the barbs, then my whole world starts slipping, falling apart, then I end up in all of these dangerous situations because I didn't have the proper anxiety and fear that would keep me away from them in the first place. The fear is unpleasant, but I'm sure being abused to no end by somebody who felt like throwing me over their shoulder just because they can is going to be far worse than being uncomfortably timid and nervous all the time." Says Effie

"After some deliberate breathing, I've collected myself to some extent. Some sort of winded exhaustion from ranting like that helped. It seemed so valid, so righteous, to go on like that, but the displeasure of exhaustion, futility, like I'm trying to shout away the drowning. It's not worth it. I can breathe the water for what it's worth, clearly not much, but at this point I'm only actively drowning out of pride.

Looking back at it, I was tempted something fierce, Lucifer perhaps, forgive my lapse in character. I see that pride, that delusion of somehow influencing the world, of somehow not drowning. I swim in a sea of thieves and fools, and if the water doesn't want to cooperate there's no means for me to refrain from drowning. I'm not bitter, I'm exhausted enough now, not forgiving but pleasantly forgetful enough to see drowning in a light no different than a nap. I'm quite fond of naps, and even the commies will let you sleep so long as you're complicit in their schemes.

I'm not going to rally for communism, but seeing how I'm stuck on this bus regardless, a pleasant nap before we eventually crash wouldn't be bad. I'll just Rip Van Winkle my life away and end up dead. Lest you call me the Christ, I'm not to blame for a damn thing that happens. I can't save the world, I'm indifferent to the fate of the world, as stern and critical as I may be, it's only out of common decency, not out of any particular sentimental attachment to the fate of the world.

Due to the degree to which the human race despises facts and reality itself save lest those things happen to coincide with what they want to hear and what they want to believe, I find myself rather unenthused with facts and reality. I look at reality, this table, these walls, any facet of factuality, and I think to myself 'this misbegotten crock of shit, it's a regrettable existence isn't it?'

The fact that humans will define the world more with their delusions than they will with facts causes me to group reality itself, science, physics, the whole shebang in with the mentally dysfunctional and deformed people who exist on a considerably higher degree of dysfunctionality than ourselves. As much as we may be lacking in certain areas, our brains still function for the most part, so we can sing along and keep the tune as much as the next person more or less, maybe not dance as well, but that's beside the point.

Reality just seems like this very palpably incorrect note being played in the symphony that is blasted into our ears by the powers that be, the state, the general public, anyone and everyone who purports and perpetuates any of these common pieces of delusional rhetoric that have come to define our society. These things aren't based in reality, they're based in delusion, ideal, and that nonsense, and seeing how we shine up those logs of shit until they shimmer with the blazing glory of god almighty, clearly reality isn't going to hold a candle to it.

Whenever reality offers a perspective and judgement that is contrary to the sentiments of the human race, if reality argues a fact is true when the humans simply don't want to be true, that fact just seems like a man with a monstrously deformed concave skull uttering some of the stupidest things imaginable. It's not because they're false, it's because they're so castigated by society that their factuality is entirely irrelevant. Disagreeable facts are disagreeable before they're facts, and seeing how disagreeable things are castigated to no end, there's nothing that truly can be done.

Reality, despite the unquestionable beauty in factuality, is often treated like that deformed retarded monster of a child that is kept in the basement and is the subject of horror films, at least in the human perspective. Just think of every example where if people were treated like standard farm animals, they would be shot on sight, long ago. Science can easily explain the executions of these animals, and seldom will any but the most tenderhearted zoophiles complain.

These same standards and metrics would just as readily and justifiably determine when a person should be put to death, but to argue in favor of holding people to the same standards of quality control as beasts of burden is the pinnacle of savagery. This is just one of many examples where people fail to hold themselves accountable, they treat themselves as if their own existence trumps reality, and that is entirely shameless.

Only direct and palpable threats to one's life can be justifiably killed, whereas with animals, any direct and palpable threats to one's own wellbeing can and should be killed. The lame horse, the rabid dog, or the hen that doesn't lay is killed just as quickly as a murderer in our society, but by arguing that humans, the most intelligent and capable creature on the planet, be held to at least the same standards as farm animals, you suddenly become some sort of unthinkable and monstrous savage.

Humans should be held to even higher standards than farm animals, yet that is not the case. People can harm and hinder the wellbeing of society in the exact same respect that a dysfunctional animal will harm and hinder the wellbeing of a farm, but for some reason people hypocritically argue that this treatment is unjustifiable. This is what I mean when people put themselves above reality.

When I'm seeing this table, this reality, as much as I love it, I'm quite fond of it and certainly would not argue that it is deformed in any way. I think about the perspective of society, their sentiments and castigation towards the caste that is inanimate and inhuman reality, and I just want to euthanize that entire caste out of sheer respect for its constituents. These things don't deserve to get treated that way; if anything deserves to get treated as less than what it is scientifically and economically worth, that would be the human race, simply to balance their own dangerous predilection for baseless conceited narcissism.

To constantly and falsely disown one's own guilt, to ignore it, to argue that one is innocent, to truly believe that, is clearly some degree of a very serious mental illness, yet it is so damn prevalent that people just ignore that fact, rather than address this pandemic. To believe that one has some inherent entirely baseless value simply due to being a human being is such a degree of egotism, that it is beyond simple bigotry and it now is megalomania.

This mental illness found in nearly every human is the equivalent as a white man arguing that a white person will always have 100 grand cash in their pocket, while a black person won't, despite the fact that this statement is blatantly, palpably, provably, and unquestionably false. Replace white people with the human race and black people with non-human things, and then this perfectly describes the species sentiments towards reality; logically this is pure insanity.

I understand that this is the treatise of mutual hedonism, but when this mutual self-preservation starts to actively harm and cripple the ability of society to sustain this intended self-preservation, this treatise is acting against the entire reason that legitimized its justification. People cannot pursue hedonism if their society is crippled, but knowing the narcissistic faith in this god damn treatise people is going to cripple their society until it dies just because they're so damn reverent to refraining from interfering with another person's pursuit of possible hedonism.

People are more than happy to ignore reality if reality argues against somebody's pursuit of hedonism, and they're happier and happier to do this by the day, regardless of the fact that allowing these people to pursue this hedonism is explicitly contrary to the self-preservation of society, and thus the treatise itself. All people want is hedonism, so they viciously fight to ensure that their lives are as hedonistic as possible, and this easily gains traction because people either don't understand or don't give a damn about the repercussions of indulging to such an extent, and people don't have the fear of god that would otherwise condition them to avoid pursuing many of these destructive pursuits.

People don't even understand the god damn treatise to the point where they see social orchestration simply as a tool to maximize the raw hedonism they can experience in the present moment, and they have absolutely no interest in self-preservation and even less interest in societal preservation, if they can even understand the concept in the slightest.

Not to beat a dead horse, but this describes communism to a t: delusional people viciously chasing a much greater degree of hedonism, and through this savage pursuit, they crippled the self-preservation of their society, and tens of millions of people died because of this before the country eventually collapsed. People think that there's absolutely no justifiable reason as to why their life isn't just cocaine and rainbows, and clearly they're willing to fight to the death due to this ignorance, as clearly there are countless justifiable reasons as to why people must be subjected to painful and difficult lives. Communism unironically failed to make people's lives any measurable bit more pleasurable, and clearly this is because reality, the laws that govern our physical domain, simply do not allow for this imagined form reality to come into existence and sustain itself for any legitimizing period of time.

Right now the west is experiencing a communist devolution, rather than a revolution, where people slowly and casually cozy up to the communist idea of maximizing personal hedonism, and more and more this is going to slowly increase the crushing weight upon society until it simply can no longer sustain itself. This is common sense, but just as a damn heroin addict won't give a damn about the common sense that tells him that needle in his vein is killing him, the vicious hedonists who spur and define social norms clearly aren't going to give a damn about that same bit of common sense either.

People figure if their decision accommodates their hedonism or that of someone else, so long as they're both alive tomorrow, that's a good decision, when clearly this tends to be an awful idea because hedonism will blind them to any sort of long term repercussions of this decision until they're sick and dying from their affliction. The point of self-preservation is not to simply survive until tomorrow, it is to survive indefinitely.

Give a man HIV and he will live for a day, but he sure as shit won't live as long as he would if he didn't end up with AIDS, provided that he doesn't receive medical attention, which is a given in this situation, because suffering from this allegorical HIV is the source of these people's pleasure, and clearly they're going to fight tooth and nail to ensure that you don't take that away from them.

It's just the sentiment 'better dead than red', and for some reason I just feel so bad for reality that I wish I could do reality the honor, of putting it down before the communists mangle and mutilate it to no end, just to preserve its dignity. Clearly it will have the last laugh, turn the tides of torture and mutilation upon the communists, but to see it be subjected to that sort of mutilation just pulls on your heartstrings, regardless of the fact that reality doesn't tend to have feelings, as it's still a damn shame to see it be disrespected and desecrated to such a degree." Says Peggy

# 3.6

"Reality has always been about letting things happen and then being punished or rewarded for whatever someone or something happened to do. Sometimes reality fights back promptly, sometimes it is as subtle as a mouse. Just like how people will evacuate from a fire, but they won't run away from carbon monoxide, the same thing applies to society. We're going to run away from and fight fires, but if something is deadly in the same way carbon monoxide is deadly, we're not going to notice until people start dropping dead unless we have an alarm, and as much as your common sense might feel like one, if it's not loud enough to wake up the people strung out on hedonism, it hardly counts when those are the people you want to wake up in the first place.

It's like you've got the nose of a dog that can detect gas leaks when people can't smell them, but as you said yourself, people won't listen to you unless you tell them what they want to hear, so at that point there's no significance to your life saving ability when the people just see you as a needlessly barking dog. If they can convince themselves that there's not a problem, it doesn't matter how much you are convinced there is one, or even how much there is a problem, because whether or not they act upon an issue depends on whether or not they think there's a problem, not whether or not there actually is a problem.

This of course leads to our society where people will often demand action on things that aren't problems just because they're foolish and convinced that some imaginary problem exists, and on the other hand people will fail to act upon a real problem because they are not convinced that it truly is a problem that even exists, let alone one that must be promptly addressed.

As fond of thoughtlessness and the pursuit of pleasure as you happen to be, I figured you'd be a bit more tempted to turn a blind eye to the dangers of being strung out on hedonism in a den that's slowly filling with carbon monoxide. Even if you know how to fix the problem, which is dubious, you don't have the authority to do so, and at that point the problem is a moot point. A preventable or addressable problem can easily be understood as an unpreventable or unaddressable problem when there are unnatural forces at hand that cause an otherwise preventable problem to function as an unpreventable one, and two of those forces are human pride and human instinct in the face of human induced problems.

If you're really concerned about the flood, seek high ground, because at this point, the communist devolution, as you call it, is functionally no different than a flood, a slow, gradual flood of the land that we inhabit. If we really can't get to higher ground, it's best to just accept our fate, and try to understand that contrary to common sense, these preventable problems are not actually preventable due to the disagreeable properties of human nature.

Sometimes you just have to let addicts die; there is nothing you can do to save them. People think that this treatment or that treatment will help them, but unless the junkies themselves don't want to use drugs anymore, they're going to run right back to the needle the second they get the chance. I'm sure you're more than happy to cut the hands off of society so to speak, to prevent them from shooting up so easily, but mind you that I'm sure I could easily figure out how to start shooting heroin with just my feet if I really put my mind to it, so that's a twice moot point, seeing how a democracy will never agree to cutting their own hands off, and even if you did they would just shoot that heroin with their feet, because that's what addicts do: anything and everything to get their fix." Says Effie

"I'm not bitter about the human race; they can burn in hell for all I care. It's just the fact that they're desecrating the planet in order to get their fix, and it's like seeing the villain run away with the princess. That's not how you want the story to end. I know she escapes eventually, but I'm just saying that it's just human instinct, or at least a girl's instinct to want the princess to end up with the noble prince, not the savage, disgusting, evil warlord who just abducts her and forces himself upon her.

That's the only part I'm bitter about, but I suppose the world, reality, all of it is just here to remind us that we're all fucking monsters, abominations, that god hates us for a reason, to remind us that godforsaken creatures get their just desserts. Perhaps to remind people that justice is eventually served, though they would not live to see that seeing how their extinction is all the justice this planet could possibly hope for. If the planet is a casualty and the human race survives, so bet it, then it is simply all the more powerful when justice is finally served.

Even if the human race survives until the end of time, when reality dissolves they'll all be held accountable for their grievances and wrongdoings, then hopefully be put in a situation where they're abused and exploited by some force in the same manner they abused and exploited the planet. The only justice there is the humans can actually feel suffering to a much greater degree than nature, which balances out the irrational guilt of evil torturing goodness rather than supreme evil torturing standard evil. If I had to theorize as to why humans exist, why we are intelligent, and why we are capable of feeling things, that would be it. Just to have a ledger of grievances that justifies many eternities of suffering for each individual proportional to his or her grievances against this once holy, natural, and noble planet." Says Peggy

"Careful now, you're sounding a bit like a hippie with all of that tree hugging. I'd hate to see you go off the deep end." Jokes Effie

"I'm just respecting things proportional to the degree to which they deserve it. I'm not claiming that a god damn potato has feelings, or even that animal suffering is wrong. Life is suffering; it's just that the degree to which the human race suffers is not proportional to the degree to which they deserve to suffer. That sort of stored up energy is going to snap back and destroy the fuckers soon enough, like pulling a rubber-band back as far as you can before letting it come hurtling right back towards your face.

I'm just bitter, I don't know, this damn table never did a damn thing that was wrong or unjust, it just sat here being a table. Find me one person that is as innocent as this table, and I will tell you that you have found a baby, and even then the projected guilt of the baby as it grows up makes even that analysis far too premature to bear any degree of legitimacy.

Even us, as powerless as we are, we're not dying as zealots against the human race, so we're guilty of failing to do things we could have, for whatever that's worth, where the table doesn't have a shred of that guilt of complicity to weigh down it's table soul. It was a tree once, and it got mutilated, and it just took it like the masochist that nature is and now it's a damn table until it happens to be returned to the dust whence it came.

I just like common sense, methodical and logical systems, and the whole delayed repercussions of intelligent exploitation of an unintelligent system are embittering when the intelligence is so damn loathsome due to the fact that the unintelligent system was not only innocent, but inherently beautiful. I'll numb the pain with what sensible pleasures I can find, but it's still a shit feeling to know that you're part of this unforgivable and loathsome race of hellkites." Says Peggy

"Call me old fashioned, but I never think of myself as being in a position to make judgments like that, so I just don't do it. Sure, we're lorded over by bastards, but I'm not going to criticize them. That's not my role in the world. If somebody comes in and tells me that this is the way things are and this is the way things are going to be, I will just say ok and that's the end of that. It is what it is, and what it is certainly does not have a damn thing to do with however I may feel about something one way or the other. I for one, have absolutely no interest in living in a world where I am entrusted with that responsibility, and to that point it's almost a blessing that I don't have arms, because that just reduces the probability that I get handed that responsibility even further.

As much as we wish things could be better, perfect, or whatever, causing things to work out nicely is magnitudes more difficult than it is to just conjure up some theoretical solutions to these problems. People are going to take the path of least resistance, and that will be that, any deviations from this course will more than likely lead to disaster because that's not the way anything in reality functions. The same thing plagued the communists, deviation from the natural order and the path of least resistance, and it is apparent that the same fate is slowly falling upon the advocates of democracy, because as much as their system is better than communism, clearly it is resulting in the same fate, just at a much slower procession of degeneration.

History is basically just people throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, and people get all caught up in their fantasies about flinging shit against the wall or scraping other shit off of it, but all shit will fall off the wall eventually, and then people are back to square one. Sure they could throw a tried and true piece of shit on the wall, but seeing how it fell off, they're going to be disinterested in pursuing that same fate again, they're going to be all to wary of the flaws that caused said piece of shit to fall from the wall, and they'll be trying anything and everything in the hopes that something sticks.

It may seem like logic or reason will prevail, but humans constantly throw wrenches in those fine-tuned machines because humans are savages, that's just what they do. That's why in reality our only legitimate strategy is the historical one, because to approach this with some sort of scientific or logical strategy would easily be futile because such a chaotic system is so irrational and nonsensical that defining, analyzing, refining, and optimizing it in scientific terms would be too difficult for the human mind to accomplish if it is even possible at all.

It's just not possible, it's like a question asking "Mary has 7 shoes; Joe has lots of shoes, more on some days and less on the other days; and Tina has quite a few shoes and she usually has some extra shoes on most days. How many shoes do they have in total if it is this certain day of the week at the current time?" it's impossible because we can't get the hard numbers we need to solve the problem. There is a correct answer, this is true, but we cannot measure it or calculate it, and at this point our only strategy becomes once again to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.

The point is that even if we did somehow solve the problem, the answer changes all the time, and that is why the shit falls off the wall time and time again. We have plenty of capacity to take the historical approach, as reality is kind enough to let us do so, but to argue that a more analytical or logical approach would produce any better results is optimism beyond that which any reasonable person would defend, seeing how analytical logic means nothing more than opinionation and bias when it is filtered through a human, and at that rate we would quickly exclude the correct answer just as readily if not more so readily than we would throw it at the wall. Seeing how vehement people are about the process of throwing shit at the wall, I'll leave the professionals to their jobs rather than be concerned about something that is well beyond the realm of anything that actually has a legitimate reason to occupy my mind." Says Effie

"I'm bullheaded, you're wise; seeing how you're also meek and I'm still just bull-headed, that sort of basic formula doesn't benefit anyone looking for an appropriate solution, because if the wise are too civil to be bull-headed, the bull-headed are going to win every time through sheer force of will. That doesn't bode well for the human race that is far more bull-headed than they are wise by any stretch of the imagination, so any little shred of wisdom will likely just be trampled upon seeing how it can't hold its own in a traditional test of mettle.

Wisdom may stand up to the test of time, but it sure as hell won't stand up to the brutal caning it will receive if it opens its mouth in public, let alone in the arena of politics. The only reason people are willing to respect wisdom through the years is because hindsight is 20/20, and they keep making the same mistakes, realizing that they should have listened to the ancient wisdom, passing that lesson down to their children, just for that cycle to keep repeating itself for thousands of years because the children forsake the wisdom just like their parents did. Nobody listens until it's too late, so there's no point in telling anyone something they haven't already learned through their own failures." Says Peggy

"Thank god I'm not bullheaded; the degree to which people will butt heads over damn near anything seems to be more than enough to cause significant brain damage. Seeing how debate is little more than people head-butting each other and screaming, it's no wonder as to why democratic societies are always at each other's throats. It's never a test of legitimacy, it's just who can scream the loudest and head-butt the hardest, never once is anything defended with scientific metrics, and if it is, I'm sure that thing is laughed out of the arena faster than the dumbest piece of rhetorical dribble somebody is willing to pick a fight over.

Science doesn't fight, it just stands there, says what it has to say, then leaves; unless it's slapping you in the face with money, nobody gives a damn what science has to say. Even if science promises you money in the long run, shills and delusion peddlers will promise you ten times that money, and people are guaranteed to invest 100% in the delusion because they aren't measuring legitimacy in the slightest, they're just measuring the promise of money, and despite however illegitimate the promise is, the shill is going to falsely promise you ten times more money than science, then it easily wins the favor of the people. Science isn't going to lie to people, to delude them, or give them a run for their money, and it is for that exact reason that science will always play second fiddle to anyone and everyone who is willing to resort to those tactics to get what they want.

The irony of it all is that people are born shmucks, and then they get upset when their nature gets taken advantage of. They don't even try to stop being shmucks, they just go find the next person who is willing to take advantage of their idiocy and shill them another crock of shit. If people will never learn that anyone who offers them something, defends something, or argues in favor of something is only doing so because they personally have something to gain, it's hard to sympathize them for being abused and exploited by anyone with half a pittance of wits about them.

It's the same damn cycle of somebody making an outlandish claim, people blindly putting full faith in that claim, being incredibly let down at the eventually proven failure, then turning around to do the exact same thing again. People are too damn gullible to ever pull themselves out of the unfortunate position they are, because they'll always fall victim to the same damn tricks and schemes that caused them to end up in that position in the first place.

The cycle of tabloids and countless other irrational delusions held by people only prove the point that people will always chase the damn imaginary stick if you pretend to throw one, some shill will just pretend they have a stick and throw as if they did, then the people will chase that stick to the end of the Earth.

If any one of these new miracle diets that is shilled in tabloids year after year ever actually worked, they wouldn't be in the tabloids, the diets would just be prescribed by doctors and taught as a solution to the public health crisis. The last thing the tabloids actually want is for these diets to work, because at that point they'll lose all of their damn customers; it would be suicidal for the tabloids to propose a diet that actually induced weight loss, but even still they're bold enough to do that half of the time because they're so rightfully confident that the American people lack the character to even hold themselves to a diet that is proven to work, seeing how every legitimate diet just consists of eating less food than the amount of food that makes you fat.

That's how diets work, any newfound miracle diet is just some shill taking advantage of your gullibility in that you want there to be a solution to your problem that is easier to accomplish than the legitimate solution, and at that point you're willing to put faith in physically impossible nonsense just because the pinnacle of physically possible efficiency is not pleasant and easy enough for one to respect. This whole mentality of demanding physically impossible solutions while condemning physically possible ones for no reason other than the disagreeable nature of reality is why we're stuck with the same problems day in and day out. People are too stupid to accept the truth even when it is punching them in the face, if they don't like it, then that means it's not true, and that defines our reality.

People will think they're not so dumb as to put faith in tabloids, but whatever sort of consumer product they happen to be preoccupied with only demonstrates the fact that their own conceit is entirely baseless, they just think they're hot shit because they are being taken advantage of by one shill instead of another. The fat people who turn to the tabloids are scientifically equally as justifiable as the schmucks who put their faith in politics, except the delusions of the fat people don't determine the fate of the country.

Politics is going to resolve your social or economic problem at the same rate that the tabloid diet will resolve your obesity, it won't, it might look like it for a minute, but you're either going to end up with your problem getting worse or end up in the same position you were beforehand. Granted politics is very good at appearing to do something, but this would be like if a diet could simply move weight around your body, people would be amazed at how much it appears to be accomplishing something. The world is nothing but a game of shills and shmucks, and anyone who thinks differently is clearly a shmuck and a half." Says Effie

"At least you're wise enough not to play the damn game. I might play for sport, but I'm sure that sort of head trauma isn't good for the body in the long run. It's sad to see that wisdom is so painful; makes me rather glad I'm not swimming in it. I'm sure those shmucks are having the time of their life seeing their horse win, or placing a new bet at the tabloid tracks, hell, that's the thrill of life right there. They don't give a damn that they're just going to lose any money they win on the horses next week, and that beyond that they're more than likely just going to lose money today, it's that temptation, that thrill of gambling that keeps people coming back time and time again. They don't give a damn about the odds, their track record, rats to all that meaningless bullshit, what they care about is that thought, the faith, the dream that they will win, that they will walk away sitting pretty, and not only that, but keeping coming back to the tracks every week, betting it all just to win again and again.

People are fiends for that sort of shit, but you know what, it keeps the horses running, and if those horses are what's pulling the carriage of society, who knows where we would be if people turned their noses up at it. Without the money involved, without the gambling and the potential to personally win big, people wouldn't give a damn about any of that, the horses would just lull around in the field and accomplish nothing because nobody expects them to.

If people knew that they had nothing to gain, if they knew that if politics won't benefit them personally, or that these shilled self-help miracles are all bullshit, then people would just stop caring. People would just accept the fact that they're fat, they wouldn't lose any weight, and people would just accept the fact that the government is useless and dysfunctional then leave it at that, go about their business and call it a day.

As retarded as the people-horses may be, especially the politician sort, they're at least expected to run in a straight line to the finish, while it's clear that they don't do that in the slightest, but in terms of at least developing that expectation there is some degree of progress compared to watching wild horses do whatever they damn well please. That line is anything but straight, the amount of head pats and oats that the horses stop for as they dawdle to the finish line is absurd, but at least we've got the track, we've got the interest of the people, and all that is left to do is to find a breed of horse that actually cares more about racing than it does about the oats and the head pats.

Clearly that won't happen naturally in a human, just as much as it won't in a horse, and for that reason we've got to apply common sense and enlist some jockeys to ride these bastards like there's no tomorrow, so people can actually have the race they want, so they can actually have an honest bout of vice rather than this shit show we have today, half of the pleasure of going to the tracks is just watching the horses run, and if they're not really running, that ruins the damn experience for those of us who never have money to bet.

We don't win or lose anything based on how the horses do; we're always piss poor at the beginning of the day and at the end of it. All we can ask for is a race. Who cares if it's the commies making brutal killings or the plutocrats raking it in? If the horses are really going at it, giving it their all, at least we've got ourselves a race. You fuckers don't get the oats until after the race, and then you get the oats, all the oats you want, but you fucks better give me a damn good race. This dawdling and meandering is a disgrace to the sport, and you fucks should be ashamed of yourselves." Says Peggy

"The politicians aren't here Peggy, they can't hear you." Teases Effie

"I'm just saying, they could have this place bugged, but it's more so that when I get talking like that, my eyes glaze over and I'm seeing myself slapping tables and shouting where my voice echoes like the clap of a belt on the ass of a child in a canyon. I'm losing my mind a bit, but I don't mind dreaming, even if I am awake. My dreams are pleasant dreams, and if we're just playing cards, it's not like I'm going to crash a boat because my eyes only see the mirage." Says Peggy

"It's so odd to try and think about how it is that anybody is given the time of day. We don't even listen to ourselves, we don't pay any attention to what we're saying, and we don't particularly care about conversational points any more than just to pass the time. I figure it takes an army of shills to get one man to stand out above the rest, seeing how everyone is going to shill you the same thing under a different brand name. That's a degree of organization and mutuality that is almost unheard of amongst humans, for so many groups of competing interests to draft their shills and prop them up with money just so their collective can get their name on the grandstand and govern the odds at the racetrack. This whole definition of politics is why if I ever were to vote, I would have to vote conservative every time.

When you are voting, you are electing the person who is going to determine the odds at the track. Clearly, whoever is trying to make theses odds cater to poor people is up to some sort of scheme, as there is no reason why anyone should even consider the poor at the race track. If you leave the rich to govern the track amongst themselves, they will at the very least set up fair play rules between the rich, and that will keep 95% of the economy healthy. Even if the poor get cheated, that's a fair tradeoff because the races will at the very least keep running because the rich all have high stakes between themselves, and they certainly want to race horses as much as anyone else in the world. If you start catering to the poor people, that doesn't really make any sense because the rich are your primary clientele and source of revenue, and the poor don't really have much if any money to spend in the first place.

It seems like a desperation move by the left to try and win the support of somebody, since you can't win the support of the rich, but trying to create some form of odds where the poor people walk away from the races happy seems foolish beyond words, as even if the poor do win, they're not going to think they've won enough to be happy and they'll still be upset with the track. Seeing how deluding the poor with false promises of money will only serve to make them more upset in the long run, and seeing how the liberals themselves are not delusional poor people clamoring for better odds, it's clearly some sort of scheme driven by ulterior motives that can only be accomplished by convincing the country to trust them with the racetrack and thus the orchestration of the entire spectacle.

It's fair to argue that they're just shills looking for work, so they'll take up whatever cause can net them some money, but as fair as it is for them to do their job as shills, it's reckless to delude the poor in a manner that harms the wellbeing of the country, even if it does land you those fat shill checks, it's still hardly any more respectable than selling street drugs to desperate people looking for a fix.

I will be polite enough to presume that their only motivation is a desperation to make good money shilling, but still I can't support anyone who argues in favor of entrusting the operation of the racetrack to people who are simply looking to make a living by shilling delusion rather than those who actually have their lives and livelihoods invested in the performance, well-being, and survival of this racetrack, the horses that race there, and thus the country.

People will always have their self-interest at heart, and seeing how the self-interest of the right is in line with the self-interest of the race track, as much as the poor will be poor, they will be poor either way, and this way at least we get to watch quality horses race. The rich will always be at each other's throats far more than those of the poor, as there's nothing to be gained by placing bets against the poor. The rich want to compete, they want the fastest horses, and if you just make it easier for them to compete against each other, if you facilitate the quality of the race, that ensures a healthier race, seeing how people will seldom get chummy with the competition if they're losing money in the process.

I've made a garbled mess of logic here, but to simplify it all, one should never trust someone who claims to be a 'friend of the poor', because there's no logical reason that justifies somebody actually being a friend to the poor, as there is nothing to be gained by being a friend of the poor, only countless things to be lost in the process.

This means that whatever the reason they claim to be such a 'friend of the poor' is not due to them actually being a friend of the poor, but rather because they have something to gain in the process. In this case it is a paycheck from shilling, some pocket money under the table if somebody happens to benefit, but these are people who are making a living shilling, rather than shilling in order to facilitate and accentuate the living they make regardless of their shilling." Says Effie

"The commie warlords will remind you that there are fat bags of money to be had if you can trick the poor into giving you absolute power, so it's a long con, but the left is not shy about letting the world know the direction they would like to take the country in. If somebody is politically deluding the poor, you can guarantee they're a communist, because only communists have something to gain by tricking the poor by means of politics.

The poor themselves are too busy being tricked and taken advantage of by each and every swindle and con they happen to pass by on the way home from the meat packing plant, so clearly it's not the poor people themselves orchestrating any of this, they're just being tricked and conned like usual, but doing so in politics is a commie's game, at least if you promise them some sort of free things, that's always communism.

If you win their support with appeals to faith and patriotism, that's perfectly reasonable because those things don't cost any money to sustain, the poor make the faith and patriotism themselves and then they're happy when they get to have it, and you're not even lying to them because you give them plenty of faith and patriotism by politically accommodating such things; these free things are what people need to shill to the poor because you can actually reliably give them to the poor.

Telling them that you'll give them things that cost money for free, that's ridiculous, because that money has to come from somewhere, and poor people certainly don't make money at anywhere near the self-sustaining rate they will make faith and patriotism. If you're just making sound investments, sure, that's just business, and that's not any degree of giving things away for free.

If you're making shit investments that don't turn a profit, that's communism, you're buying the loyalty of the poor so that you can eventually seize absolute control of the country once they're drunk enough on these free things, if not simply the promise of free things, that the people let you do whatever you damn well please, at least for a while, and by the time their drunken euphoria wears off, it's too late for them to fight off your iron grasp of the country because you control all of the money and the laws. That's where communism comes from, and people seem to be forgetting that more and more by the day." Says Peggy

"Again with the communism; I'm proud of your for what it's worth, but I'm sure America would get tired of this tried and true rhetoric. That's your catch-phrase, you love it, and I let you have it, I honestly don't mind it, but then when I think about the common people, how most all of them are as bullheaded as you are, each with your own catchphrases, that just sounds like a concussion waiting to happen. Hearing people talk, repeat themselves endlessly, say the same thing, make the same point in different clothing time and time again just so that they can say their damn catch-phrase and get the cheeky thrill and the equivalent of a laugh track that is composed of the studio audience roaring with impassioned zeal as they worship you like a god.

Two people trying to get that laugh-track for different catch phrases: that's a recipe for disaster, a recipe for viciousness if not violence itself. Everybody wants to be the lead; they want to shoot the punch-lines out of their t-shirt cannon, or whatever the equivalent is for a drama, that's all they want. They don't give a damn about being intelligent enough to make a valid point, they just want to shoot those damn t-shirts out of the cannon and have the audience fight tooth and nail for them.

Any means would justify that end, and seeing how it is practically impossible for anyone to achieve that end in any realm beyond delusion, they just shit some methods and principles for their bullshit out of their ass then go to town on the cannon. The how and the why don't matter in the slightest, they have they what, they have the t-shirt cannon, and so long as they can convince themselves that they're somehow in the right, they'll convince themselves of that fact more and more every day of their life. It's the pleasure of shooting that cannon, even only in one's delusion, which will more than remind oneself that one's beliefs are not only valid, but valid to the point of being the unquestionable authority of god himself in heaven.

If two people disagree on something, it's easy to tell who is right. This is because they're both right, as neither of them have a standard of legitimacy that justifies their point, so whatever it is they believe is equally as right as anyone else. They file the paperwork for a baseless opinion and a catchphrase, and that gets them the license to shoot the t-shirt cannon. Once they're shooting that cannon, everything else is behind them, it's all irrelevant, they're right because they have the license, and nothing pleases somebody more than having the meek and thoughtless consume your own opinions rather than ones other people try to shill them.

At that point, it is just trying to shill the most tempting and agreeable ideas to these people, and clearly that's hardly a metric of legitimacy, because the only quality control is that the idea has to be smart enough for people to believe, which in reality just means that the plan can't be so stupid that people don't believe it. People will believe anything and everything, they're beyond desperate for salvation and they'll put faith in any godless messiah who claims to have an answer to their prayers, so long as they're not personally threatened, disparaged, or displeased by those ideas.

The fact that the popularity of a philosophy is currently determined exclusively by which philosophy can competitively convince the people that they are the victims only serves to show how ridiculous such a system is. Clearly people are so deluded as to think that they're always victims and always need to be saved, because otherwise they would hardly be interested in what it is you're trying to sell. If they are that desperate, if you have convinced them that they are victims and need to be saved, of course they're going to eat up whatever it is you're trying to peddle them because when they feel endangered they become desperate for salvation from said danger.

It's a completely concocted cycle of exploitation that has gone one for millennia, but it has become so profoundly potentiated by the advent of the electric medium. The true lunacy of the human mind is put on full display when it is forced to exist in a world where there is no quality control on the bullshit that gets force fed into their brain, like one big sick experiment, society is now defined by the fact that people lack the ability to actually discern legitimacy from illegitimacy and are only going to believe that which convinces them through abusive and manipulative false logic.

The people who are at the pinnacle of respect amongst those who peddle opinions are hardly there because they have sound opinions, not in the slightest; they're there because they can reliably compete in the field of fearmongering and then subsequently offer people some fabricated miraculous to solution to these entirely fabricated problems.

The cycle could easily exist to the same degree and with the same potency in a world that is naturally devoid of any problems whatsoever, simply because the human race is so prone and susceptible to both fear mongering and being taken advantage of by shills. The advent of the media just allowed people to realize that they could sustain this entire con themselves rather than just play one part of the cycle." Says Effie

"When you convince your shmucks that they're enlightened, you have the perfect con, because they'll viciously castigate anyone wants to disagree with that sentiment; facts be damned, you have a loyal army of militants that will viciously indoctrinate themselves just because you so masterfully deluded them the first time.

Hell, they'll do their damnedest to indoctrinate anyone they meet just because they're so damn convinced through their gullibility that the crock of shit they're eating is the real deal. This is the nature of modern shills, empowered by this unrestricted, unregulated, and unchecked medium of media, and obviously those crafty fucks are going to adapt and exploit this environment to the greatest degree that is humanly possible.

It's that sort of initial energy, that spark, because once you've got your tinder burning, the fires will fuel themselves, hell, they'll tear through the wilderness burning anything and everything in their path, at least if you're a good enough shill to fuel the flames in the face of those who want to rain on your parade. It's not even that there's anything to put out these fires, god no, not even the biblical flood could do that, it's just that there are countless other shills each trying to indoctrinate anyone they can, then once these people get burning, some other color of fire can't do a damn thing to change them. Before the media people just didn't have this degree of indoctrinability, of course there were rumors, but nothing to the degree of vehement militance that defines the modern shill-fuel.

The whole concept that humans are blank slates is true enough, and the degree of reverence these people have towards their shills just goes to show that you can scrawl some unthinkable, ludicrous, and ridiculous things on those slates, but the people will still live by that creed that is branded into their mind, bodies, and souls. I would pity them if I wasn't so awestruck by the degree of lunacy that defines these people.

Politics in America after the dawn of the information era is like 100 communist revolutions happening simultaneously, and they're all throwing Molotov cocktails at each other. People have never been more viciously and eclectically deluded in the history of the world, and that will easily never change so long as the world turns, at least so long as America has their freedom of speech that is." Says Peggy

"Peggy, doesn't that describe you and your disdain for communism just as much as it does anyone else and their predispositions?" asks Effie

"Of course it does, but at least I have some degree of historical and logical legitimacy to my arguments. I'm not saying there's a mountain of that stuff, but a modest amount that at least provides some grounds for me to defend what I'm alleging. Nowadays people will put faith in ridiculous things that are literally mass psychogenic illness, people being paranoid about vaccines and fluoride and all sorts of nonsense. The degree of truth that is needed to justify one's point has diminished to an inordinate degree since the paradoxically named information age started turning at full-speed.

At least in the respectable days of America, you needed a somewhat legitimate reason to argue a point, and in my case, clearly it was the Soviets, and clearly the Soviets were threatening and that logically makes anything and everything they do and believe wrong and nonsensical. To oppose America is to be the opposite of success and greatness, and clearly that point held true until the day the Soviet Union collapsed. It was common sense, and that's why anti-communist sentiments were so prevalent.

Clearly the glory days of America have faded thanks to the degeneracy of American tradition, principles, and values, but regardless, anti-communism still stands as a valid point. I'm not saying that being pro-America makes any more sense at this point, but Nouveaux America and traditional America are two profoundly different places.

People used to have faith in the indoctrination peddled by people with something to lose, those people are at least going to defend something of value, something significant; nowadays people tend to only have faith in people with something to gain, because those people trying to make a living by indoctrinating people are more than willing to resort to unscrupulous and shameless tactics just to cut themselves a check at the end of the day, then beyond that the money they make by doing so only potentiates their capacity to indoctrinate people.

It's shameless, but that's what you get, you steal the fire of the gods, the means of indoctrinating people, of course you're going to get your damn liver eaten out of your body every day, and even if it grows back by some odd miracle, that absence of your liver for a substantial portion of your life will turn your blood to poison right quick, and that's going to cause serious brain damage to the fallen titan that was once America." Says Peggy

"At least you're modest in your hypocrisy; it'd be a shame if you were as rabidly defensive as some of the shmucks who are unwilling to admit they've been had. The lot of them, unwilling to even consider the fact that their ignorance is the cash cow for any shill willing to take a moment out of their day to tug on their udders; it's shameless, but I wouldn't expect anything less from a member of this ignoble species." Says Effie

"Seeing how everyone in the world is a shit-for-brains asshat, at least we're of the decent sort that doesn't pretend the shit we spew from our mouths as if it is any less trivial than the spittle dripping from the mouth of a babbling retarded baby. As for shits and giggles, it's not a bad pastime, but sitting here arguing that we can spin gold from this choleric diarrhea of ignorance is an entirely comical suggestion; at least it would be if the world wasn't so vehemently convinced that such a proposition is the most logical and justified pursuit known to man." Says Peggy

"Cheers to that. As much as it's a pointless and shameless waste of time, find me something that isn't. I can't turn my nose up at some shits and giggles if we're just sitting here playing rummy. Thankfully I'm not some toploftical prick who thinks that there's any discernable difference between choleric, ebolic, and giardic shits and giggles. Just because I spew my shit on account of the communicable diseases transmitted from other people's cases of communicable shit-for-brains rather than those transmitted by eating the shit of a meat-animal or drinking some river water doesn't mean my bullshittery is any less valid than theirs.

Taking pride in the source from which you garner your psychological affliction that induces your verbal incontinence is truly for the petty, but of course the delusional asshats will gladly spend their days judging this shit spewing as if they were judging a god damn dressage contest at the highest possible level. People don't have any grounds to justify or validate their smugness, so they just imagine some sort of reason and spend their days judging shit from shit and alleging there is some tangible difference." Says Effie

# 3.7

A man sternly walks into the room with a 20 gauge shotgun.

"You two are coming with me. Don't fuck around." Says the man, coldly, pointing the gun at the girls

"Right-o. I'm sure we could both use a change of scenery." says Peggy, calmly indifferent to the gun, the man scoffs. Effie looks at her, fear-stricken.

"Move." Says the man

"Everything is falling into place as it should be, I presume." Says Peggy, assertively confident, as the man prods the girls out of the conference room and down a hallway

"Some shit came up, so we're turning to plan b." says the man

"What plan would that be?" asks Peggy

"Put two and two together." Says the man, Effie begins to tear up, silently fearful

"My specialty exactly, if I say so myself." Says Peggy, failing to do so, giving up, and forgetting about the challenge

"Good." Says the man

"Right... straight... left... right." Says the man, directing the girls down a corridor, finally reaching an exit into the junkyard visible from the conference room

"Free at last, free at last! I do love me some sunshine." Says Peggy, excitedly, Effie trembling with pained breaths

"Get on your knees." Says the man, kicking the two girls in the back of the knees, they fall to the ground

"You two got any prayers you want to say? I'm trying to be a decent right here." He says, cocking the gun

"I'm not much for prayer, you Effie?" scoffs Peggy, still entirely unfazed by her position, entertained by her wit

"Jesus, God, Please Help! Help! Please!" screams Peggy

"Amen!" says Peggy warmly

"Good enough. See you bitches in hell." Says the man, pointing the gun at Peggy's skull, he cocks his shotgun, pulls the trigger; Effie screams and collapses into a ball on to the dusty ground in the afternoon sun, screaming, crying into the dirt

# E.1

"You cheeky fuck, you missed!" shouts Peggy, after seeing the slug whiz over her shoulder and into the dirt

"Peggy!" Screams Effie, sobbing into the ground, screaming

"Jesus Christ. Your friend is something else." mutters the man

"Ladies! Ladies! It's ok!" shouts Andre, Effie still screaming

"Fuck's sake! I'm not going to shoot you!" shouts the man, Effie screams turn into sobbing, wailing moans in the ground, lying on her side

"Andre! My man!" shouts Peggy, excitedly

"Girl! It's me! Your friend Andre! You aren't going to die!" shouts Andre, Effie still sobbing, covered in the wetted dusty soil

"It was just a joke!" says the man

"Tommy got you good! God damn, that's something else; who would have guessed?" says Andre, chuckling good, Effie starts screaming painedly again

"Jesus. It's like I really did shoot her or something." Says the man

"She can just get hysterical sometimes, it's a girl thing, you know." Says Peggy

"Figures." Says the man, indifferently

"Jesus. Calm down. Look, I've got shit to do, but Joey drove your cruiser over here, it's parked outside in the alley. I'm on duty right now, but if you two want to take the day off, go ahead, fuck if I care, just take your cruiser to the station. If you want to work, you can do that too, now that you've got your wits about you and whatnot." Says Andre, handing the keys to Peggy, Effie now sobbing but a modest spectacle, still lying in the dirt

"Roger that, Andre. I'll take it from here, go back to cracking skulls or doing whatever it is that needs to be done. Thanks for looking out for us." Says Peggy

"No problem, toots. Just try to put the pieces back together of that one, she took it the wrong way. Figure most people can go for a good spook, scary movie, what not, it's a laugh at the end of the day for most people." Says Andre

"Don't worry about her, she'll be fine." Says Peggy

"I'll take your word for it. I'll see you two later." Says Andre

"Deuces, motherfucker." Says Peggy, grinning haughtily

"Peace." Says Andre, walking away steadfast on business

"Come on, Effie." Says Peggy, picking up Effie, Heimlich-style under the ribs, "Damn, you're heavy." She says, spinning Effie around, patting her ass with encouragement, wrapping her good arm tight around her waist, half-carrying her in the direction that Andre left, Effie still sobbing

"Take it easy, cowboy." Says Peggy

"You too, chief." Says the man, chuckling a quiet scoff as he goes back inside, Effie shaking, choking on sniffles and tears...

"Hot damn... Five dollars.... Five dollars for the pirate. I told you it would be Korea..." says Peggy, smirking, playfully smug, as she carries Effie, out of the junkyard

