Category: Uncategorized

Written January 15th, 2026

Chaotic Discipline

A lot of people expressed being impressed with how disciplined I am…and my inclination is to disagree. I don’t feel disciplined and I can barely keep up with a schedule, or being on top of all the things I should be doing. Heck, I can’t even manage to have a reasonable and stable sleep schedule, even when I actively work on it.

On top of those, I can be rather lazy at times, and tend to both procrastinate and waste a ton of time. I also struggle a lot with planning things ahead of time and taking care of appointments and the likes.

Yet, I can’t deny some of their points, I have managed to start a few really good habit, and keep up with them for an extended period of time, despite how time-consuming they might be. For example:

• I’ve been reading daily for years now
• I’ve been drawing daily (with a few exceptions from being sick) since October 1st, about three and a half months
• I managed to do daily exercise for about two months (I gave up in part because it was causing me pain, probably from poor form)
• I managed to complete my 34 days Writing Challenge (And I’ve technically continued with writing-related endeavors since)
• (Not an explicit habit, and not related to the discussion below, but still requires “discipline”: I’ve manage to stay away for some time from a few social media apps/websites that drain too much time and energy from me)

It is true that all of those require time, energy and motivation, which is often in short supply. Yet, at some point, all four of those were happening concurrently. Therefore, I must be doing something that allows me to get through with these things. Well…I guess, maybe there is.

I am not organized and I can’t follow a tight schedule. Those sound like prerequisites for “traditional discipline”. Yet, one could still argue I’m disciplined, since I know what I need to do and manage to get it done. How?

Let me call this Chaotic Discipline. And honestly, it mainly borne out of stubbornness. Each habit I’ve started, I did because I cared about them, valued them. And over the past five years, I’ve acquired a lot of experience related to starting habits…and failing to keep them going. And the biggest lesson I’ve learned (when it comes to me):
The biggest way to lose a habit is to skip one single day. One day failed, and I’m too lenient on myself, allowing another day to pass, then another day, and thus does the habit wither away and die, collapsing to dust.

Accordingly, I have only one simple rule for my habits, and it can be rather painful:
No matter what, I will complete my daily task before the end of the day, no rationalization allowed. *(Do note that I have my own definition of “the end of the day”, and it’s not midnight, it’s going to bed)

The logical consequence? Plenty of late nights that could otherwise have been avoided. However, I believe it has been worth it so far. Moreover, the pain of those late nights tends to push me into gradually correcting the habit and handling those tasks earlier when the opportunity presents itself.

Obviously, for the sake of motivation, these are habits I care about, habits that I believe are worth it. If I were instead doing for someone else instead, with a habit I don’t really care about….well, I’m not sure I could really motivate myself to keep on going.

Also note that, while each task is usually time-consuming, I tend not to have strict requirements on how long I will spend on them. On tough days, I tend to be more lenient on myself, and allow for smaller outputs. And that’s ok too. Keeping the habit alive is what matters! As an example, during a trip to India, there was an evening where I didn’t have much time to write and was extremely tired already. I ended up just writing a quick poem in five minutes. Was that lazy? Maybe. Did it keep the habit alive? It sure did! And it didn’t start a trend of only writing short things. When the inspiration comes knocking, I sure wrote much more than this. And that’s the other thing, sometimes when you get started, you have no motivation or energy, but once you’re into it, you’ll feel inspired and motivated, and do much more than you would have expected!

So…that’s my secret. I am “disciplined”, but only in-so-much as I won’t allow my habits to die, no matter the cost. And cost there is! However, the execution is extremely chaotic, both in terms of how and when I take care of the tasks. Not at all the image of discipline one would envision!

If you’ve been struggling to start your own habit, consider giving this technique a try, you might surprise yourself! Obviously, it working for me does not imply it will for others, but still worth a shot!

And as always, stay curious and keep striving to improve!

This was written January 14th, 2026

Undecidability Rant

The Halting Problem is a very common one people get exposed to when studying computer science. It demonstrates a new concept, undecidability, and what a concept for new students! You’re telling me you have a problem that does have a solution, and yet there’s no actual algorithm to solve this? But…how? That’s wild!

But as a student with a background in Mathematics, I was always bothered by this problem and why we cared so much about Undecidablity (beyond the hand-wavy explanation I received at the time). And after all this time, I’m clearer on why it annoys me. It’s because it’s not so much a matter of “Can this be solved?”, it’s a matter of “Are we trying to solve something infinite within a finite amount of steps?”. And we tend to just use flourish and hide away this part.

Honestly, this should have been clear to me the first time undecideability of a problem was finally proven to me rigorously. We used a trick very similar to how we usually prove uncountability of the real numbers.

Similarly, here’s an extremely simple example a friend once presented to me: knowing whether an arbitrary number in decimal form is rational or not…is undecidable. Well, of course it is, a computer could never identify an irrational number as being so. Any step could potentially be the last one, and we cannot reach infinity.

So, to get back to the the core, why does this bug me? Because we show present this as a grandiose class of mythical problems, one that you can’t build an algorithm for, but it’s because they’re dealing with unrealistic domains. And then simply opt to not care about potential solutions.

Let me clarify. Suppose you limited the Halting Problem to be over a Turing Machine with a finite tape (a Linear bounded automaton), then it’s pretty clear to see that it is decidable. After all, there’s now only a finite (albeit astronomical) number of states such a tape could have. Accordingly, any program will either end, or reach a state it has already reached before, thereafter being stuck in a loop. We could thus use a simple brute-force algorithm to solve this bound Halting Problem. (Do note that we may need a bigger machine to make those calculations.)

And yet, students are usually not presented with this consideration. Instead, a more common scenario is: “Oh yeah, there’s this thing you can’t solve. And if you want to show something else is undecidable, you reduce it to the Halting Problem.”.

But, considering this problem is in an impractical domain…that seems short-sighted to me, we’re giving up too quickly. Why not attempt to solve these problems within a more interesting sub-domain? This is done all the time in theoretical Mathematics, choosing different domains and studying their properties.

In my opinion, this would be much more interesting. Let’s use a bounded version of these problems, where we look at arbitrarily large finite sets (which are more practical) and seeing whether we can find any clever solutions. And if so, what sort of Time Complexity we can obtain. And this applies to the different Undecidable problems. Many should be solvable if restricted to a different and more practical domain. So we might as well try to see what we can get out of them, instead of throwing them in the bin.

Well, that was my rant about Undecidabililty. Thanks for listening, and remember to stay curious!

P.S.: At some point, I was wondering whether this was really about uncountability vs countability instead, until I convinced myself that we can still get undecidability while limiting ourselves to a countable set. Simply do the “rational vs irrational” bit, but limit your irrational numbers to a countable set, let’s say multiples of Pi, and this should still be undecidable.

This was written January 6th, 2026

EBook available!

Hello everyone,
Time for an announcement! The title of the page probably announced it already, but I’ve compiled all of the stories into an eBook (epub format). And you can download it here: Unedited Writing Challenge 2025! If you have any issues with the file, please let me know. It’s my first time making an epub, so there might be some lingering issues (along with inconsistencies between different devices).

Note that this is the pure, unedited version. I didn’t revise any of it, so you’ll get it in all of its messy splendor, typo and mistakes included! Hope you enjoy it!

I would also take a moment to let you know that if you want to support me, you can look at my support page. If you can’t or would rather not donate money, share with others is also a great way to support me. As is reading and discussing these things with me (if you know me personally), a great form of encouragement!

Once again, thank you everyone! And hopefully, this can also encourage you to start your own project!

P.S.: I’m hoping to continue writing in the future, so stay tuned.

This was written January 1st, 2026

Writing Challenge 2025 – Retrospective

Well, this one challenge is now over, and I’ve…mostly accomplished it. I did have to twist some of the initial parameters to accomplish it, in particular I had two kinds of lapses:

1. I had one story that was not self-contained, ending on a cliffhanger (with, as of yet, not sequel)
2. I ended up having a few days where I wrote my own thoughts, as opposed to writing either a story or a poem

Still, you can’t always choose how inspiration will strike, and might as well strike while the iron is hot. Moreover, it was about keeping the habit alive, so I think I should feel happy about having kept the habit alive.

However, I do have a few thoughts to share about how it went. First of all, just as I’ve discovered during my daily drawing challenge in October (nope, nothing about it on the blog, it was a purely personal thing…though I might follow up on this at some point), it seems like the optimum part of such a challenge is the second week. To me, that’s when I feel some of the best results came out. I think it might be a mix of having had time to improve a bit, along with still having a high motivation. I reckon later on, in weeks three and four, there is a mixture of expectation, along with exhaustion, that kicks in. Worries about results not being as good as before, along with weariness, leading to phoning it in more often.

Next, one thing I’ve found rather surprising is how, usually, inspiration still came in. It also rarely came in the form I expected. For over a whole month of writing, that’s rather surprising. Yet, sitting long enough at my desk, I eventually would have an idea that would pop up in my head. Still, the longer the month went, the less ideas I had which I’d already thought about previously. This does mean it was easiest for some of the early stories to be more fleshed out, having cooked up longer in my brain.

Now, a few of the annoyances with it. First, some of my ideas felt a bit too ambitious, and so I discarded them for this challenge. If I gave myself a few days per story, that would likely not be as much of an issue. Similarly, as stated in the Challenge Introduction, I decided to discard the option to review my text. However, this felt a bit…shameful in some cases. And I at time hesitated using some concepts because of that…it felt like a waste. In the future, I’d like to investigate another similar challenge…though I might have different rules, for longer and better stories, although this is still to be determined.

As for my schedule…I didn’t have any schedule. As long as I did this before going to sleep, it counted. That…caused a lot of pain, sometimes making me go to sleep rather late (in the neighborhood of 4am). True, this was also due to combining it with other daily habits (reading, drawing and exercise), but I’m not sure how sustainable it would be long-term.

Still, I managed to complete this challenge, and I will file this under S for Success! Now, to move on to the next project! (There might be an upcoming announcement related to this, I just need to evaluate viability first, so stay tuned!)

If you’ve followed my progress, and know me personally, I would like to ask you four questions about my writing. I’d be curious to know what people think:

1. How would you characterize my “voice” as an author.
2. What aspects of my writing would you say were particularly good or interesting? (Anything, it could be related the type of story, the narrative devices, specific parts of the story like descriptions or characterization, etc..)
3. What would you say my biggest shortcomings were?
4. What should I focus on in the future? (Either to improve or because it’s one of my strengths)

Indeed, while this challenge is over, it doesn’t mean I’m done with writing, and I consider this kind of feedback valuable.

Finally, If you were here and saw my challenge through the end, whether you liked the stories or were just curious, I’m very thankful. I would like to thank everyone who supported me, whether through kind words, helping me stay on track with this challenge. And a very special thanks to the donations I’ve received to my BuyMeACoffee!

And if you’ve been wanting to support me, I would redirect you to my support page.

If you liked any of my stories or just the idea of the challenge interesting, don’t hesitate to share it or any of the specific stories with others!

Take care everyone, and thank you all!

This was written December 31st, 2025

The Interstitial Plains

“3! 2! 1! Happy New…Huh?!?”

There had been a large song, as expected. But it wasn’t the fireworks that I was expecting. And where was the building he’d been staring at just a moment ago?
I looked around. I was now surrounded by a dark plain, all alone.
“Testing, testing, can you hear us?”
I looked around and around, but couldn’t find the source of the voice.
“Hello?”
“Oh good, sounds like you can hear us.”
“Where….who…what’s going on?”
“Guess it’s time for a quick explanation. This in front of you is the Interstitial Plain. It was accessible because so many of you were regrouped and focused on the same thing.” “Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have gone out tonight.”
“On the contrary. We need you!”
“Need me? A nobody? Why?”
“Well, to find our way back home, no less! We’ve been stuck on your world for about two years now, trying to find a crack back here. Yet, despite how populous your world is, it seems like you’re all so disparate and divided…”

During this explanation, I looked at my surrounding. It was too dark to see much of anything, but there was a sulfurous smell all around. It felt rather unpleasant. I kept looking around and gradually, my eyes adjusted. Yet, all I could see was a deserted plain, nothing noteworthy to see, really. Then I looked down, and more closely, at the ground. From what I first thought of as grass seemed to be emanating a little bit of… something. Not quite light, but similar. I would describe it as them releasing “darkness”, except each with a different sort of color. Yet this too couldn’t exactly be described as a color. None of this really makes sense, yet that was the impression I got, and the closest I could describe it.

“….the New Year celebrations and found you, whom we pushed into the Interstitial Plain to hitch a ride.”
“Wait…you PUSHED me here?”
“Well, yeah, we couldn’t exactly come here on our own…”
“So…how do I go back home?”
“Well…you can’t. We need your help first. To reach back our own! And possibly save it!”
“Are you fucking kidding me? This isn’t enough? You actually need me to bring you all the way back? What about me? How am I supposed to head back after? How can you guarantee I won’t be stranded after?”
“Well…we can’t exactly guarantee it. After all, we need a hero to save us. Yet, from everything we saw on your world, we would have expected one of you to be excited! A chance to fall into the unknown, a chance to explore new worlds, a chance to become a hero!”
“Sure…in video games or on tv! But…this is my actual life! And…and…ugh! Can you at least tell me about this place, and how it works? You see to know about it.”
“Well, as we said, it’s the Interstitial Plain. It’s a sort of Nexus between different worlds. You see below you? Those blades waving on the ground? Each of those is a different world. The closer they are to each other, the more they can influence one another.”
“What! Was I stepping on my own world? Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

I tried to step away, but there was world grass everywhere, and I just couldn’t avoid stepping on any. Nor did I know which one was my homeworld.
“Don’t worry, worlds are not brittle. You could never destroy one so easily, you couldn’t even pick one up if you tried. Now, let’s look around for your world. You can rest a bit, and then, in an hour or so, we’ll be heading off into our world. We have much to tell you about it, yet for now, we too must rest. We’ll then be looking for our own world. As fellow residents, we should be able to pick it out from the rest fairly easily. You should be able to do the same with your own world. Once ready, we’ll harmonize with it, it should be a simple matter.”

After this, I inspected this world some more. In the distant, I could see a cliff, along with what looked like a sea. I have no idea what those might have been, or represented. Alas, maybe I never will.

I then took a closer look at the world grass, at each blade individually. One of them caught my attention in particular. It looked more “right”, it was more “pleasant”-looking. I suspect this is my own world, and that I’m either still linked to it, or resonate with it.

Now, I have no idea who those people really are, or what they want of me. I can’t see them, and I suspect their voice is coming from inside my own head. Yet, I’m also not sure what to do. I should probably wait, instead of heading back to my own world. They are right, an occasion like this doesn’t arise every day. Yet…what do they want? For all I know, this is a weird trap, and they’re looking for a new source of food, or maybe are creating some weird zoo. Somber ideas are definitely not lacking in my mind. Still, I’ll take a chance. However, I decided to write this journal in case anyone else ends up stranded here. Luckily I did have my backpack with some supplies in it.

While my information is limited, maybe this can help the next person. And if you’re from my world and make it back with this, my name is Jacob Tesser and I disappeared on December 31st, 2025. Please try to give my family some closure.

This journal was found by the first expedition into the Interstitial Plains. It was surprisingly well preserved, considering it’s already been over a decade. We suspect this is due to properties of the Plains themselves. This served as our first source of information on, and gave us a glossary for some basic terminology. Jacob himself never returned, and by the time we found this, no surviving family members remained.

This was written December 30th, 2025

The Portal

– The Test –

“Start refractor activation countdown.”
“5! 4! 3! 2! 1!”
“Activate refractors!”
“Refractors activated, systems are online.”
“Initiate test battery!”
“Initiating…”
“Testing Matter Leakage…No Matter Leaking.”
“Testing Energy Levels…Range Acceptable.”
“Testing Visibility…Light Within Visible Spectrum.”
“Testing Acoustics…Portal Completely Static, Sound Waves Undetectable.”
“Testing Result: Safe for Human Viewing, Visuals Adequate, Sound Unavailable.”

The five people were assembled in front of the heavily reinforced gate serving to protect them from the portal, in case of a potential danger.

“Here we go team, the first ever viewing of another Verse. What do y’all expect to see?”
“I expect it to be rather boring. Maybe a dead planet? At most I expect to see some vegetation.”
“Eh, I expect this to be an inhabited world. According to our calculation, drift should be insufficient to lead to a World that wouldn’t be able to sustain life. If anything, I think we’ll see other humans, just like us, living their own lives.”
“Puh-lease, do you hear yourselves? An uninhabited world or one filled with humans? Of course it’ll be inhabited…but why would humans be the dominant species? It’s obviously going to be an odd one where some reptilians or something rule the world.”
“You mean they already do? Hahaha”
“Well played, Jack, well played.”
“Welp, there’s no other way to know but to see. Everyone ready?”

After everyone else acquiesced, the man in charge pressed the big red button next to the gate, causing it to ever-so-slowly rise up. Before it was all the way up, they started seeing purple light filter through.

“Did anyone have blueshift on their bingo card? Looks like we might be on a truly alien world here.”
The assembled group kept transfixed as the portal was gradually revealed. Initially, it felt a bit too bright for all of them, until their eyes adjusted.

“Are those…faeries? They look like small people with wings!”
“They really do, what the…?”
“And we’re sure it’s a one-way portal, right? They can’t see us?”
“Nope, the should be able to anyway.”
“And what if one of them crosses the portal?”
“Why are you even asking…we’ve discussed that many times. In theory, we’d get to see a cross-section of their insights…but there won’t be any light going through to provide it for us.”
“Wait…how can they not realize there’s something off? Their light _is_ going through the portal, isn’t it? So the portal should somehow be black for them, no?”
“No, no, don’t you remember we had to create the magnifier just for that reason? Less than a tenth of a percent of the light is lost to the portal, the rest just passes through, and we…”
“Guys, shut up and look!”
“Are they…eating each other? What the fuck is that?”
“And, is what’s happening to that tree-looking thing in the background?”
“Is it…?”

All of a sudden, the image disappeared and the portal became pure white. And then, it started flashing extremely quickly, intersparsed by some distinct images. Then, it went completely black and the portal deactivated.

“Huh…team…what was that?”
“I…I have no clue whatsoever…That sure was in none of our scenarios!”
“What do you think that light was? And why did the portal just…turn off?”
“Run Diagnostics!”
“On it.”
“Considering the lights we saw after…do you think their world just…died?”
“What, and we’d just so happen to randomly witness it? How likely would that be?”
“Well…if we caused it with the portal…very likely?”
“Oh come on, Peter made the calculations, there was supposed to be no risk whatsoever on that front!”
“His calculations could simply be off. Not like we’re dealing with standard and thoroughly test science over here.”
“True…but come on…how?”
“Guys, we’ll have plenty of time to debate this later. For now, we need to understand what’s happened to the portal. Got the results of the diagnostic?”
“Yeah. Seems like it the portal was somehow hijacked. Yet, it didn’t flip to a different Verse, we had the same frequency all along. Still, eventually there was a resonance cascade, signals bouncing over and over until the portal got overwhelmed.”
“Fuck…how long would it even take us to remodel a new portal?”
“Well..it’s not like we’d be starting from scratch, and we’ve learned from all our mistakes. Still…probably another…3 months at least?”
“Ugh, such a waste of tttttttttttttttt.”
“John, you ok?”
“I’m ok, just…feeling weird.”
“You…You’re also having a nosebleed. You should go rest a bit.”
“Yeah, we all should, we’ve been overworking ourselves non-stop for the past year. Everyone, let’s take a full week to try to relax, and then get back to it.”

– The Aftermath –

The party thus disbanded and only regrouped a full week later. Still, during that time, the different members had discovered disconcerting changes. For some, it had started with voices they thought they’d heard. For Peter, a new obsession. Some new equation he’d never considered before came to him in a dream, and he was possessed to figure out where they’d lead.

Over the next few months, their endeavour was transformed. After about a week of focused work, they realized that the equations could lead to a new creation, something that would allow them to communicate with the other Verse, but not quite like a radio. More like… an inter-verse network. It also seemed like each of them glimpsed a different piece of the puzzle that would lead them to this.

After three months, they finally had their first prototype ready, a means of sending about 12 Bytes of information and receiving about half as much. Their understanding also seemed to include the kind of encoding that would be necessary (after all, such a network would be fairly useless without a common encoding). Accordingly, they opted to test it in a simple matter, sending a simple addition, and confirming that what they received was the expected result. And their first test was a success!

Obviously, there was always the chance that they’d received completely random jumble and mistakenly interpreted it as a success…yet what were the odds? They’d received 4 Bytes of data, which can have 4294967296 distinct combinations…and yet they got the single correct one? Unlikely.

An extra month later, they were finally able to not only transfer data in batches, but also have a continuous stream of data. It was still slow, at roughly 1 kiloByte upstream and 500 Bytes downstream per day, extremely slow. But this also meant they could start getting help, as long as they were judicious about their questions.

Gradually, through this cooperation, they managed to get much better bandwidths and the progress felt exponential. It didn’t take too long before they finally go reasonable transfers of about 1 megaBytes per hour both ways (Nothing revolutionary, but when transferring text, more than ample).

Once they passed the threshold of 8 kiloBytes per second (or 64 kiloBits per second), they were finally given access to what they dubbed the Inter-Verse-Net, or IVN for short. It was similar to the modern internet, but allowed them to pull information from data being hosted in other Verses, and also converse with them. Obviously, the data was rather slow, but it was more than fascinating. The group having introduced them to the IVN had graciously granted them with access to a base index page, accompanied with simple onboarding information. And thus it is that our 5 men found themselves with a treasure cove of unimaginable information. Though…who knows at what cost.

This was written December 29th, 2025

Painting

– The Attack –

*Huff, Huff, Huff* “Did we lose it?”
*Roar* *Craaaack*
“Fuck, how’s it still tracking us?”
“I don’t know, but with this monster so close to us, how the fuck are we going to manage to put our canvas down, let alone get through the process?”
“Only one way too, find a good spot and get to it!”
“Ugh, not again? I hate when you do this, it adds so much fucking pressure.”
“Yet, you’re the best at it, so get to work! Split!”
With this, they both ran into opposite directions. While Raven headed back towards the monster, DandeLion headed for a more secluded alley where she could get started.

Without hesitation, Raven screamed, trying to get the monster’s attention. What used to be amorphous blobs had gradually grown into details. The recent monsters had clearer appendages, although a still rather wispy. Yet, the carnage had not slowed down, if anything, the changes had rendered them more effective.

Raven’s attempt at drawing attention upon herself was successful…at bit too successful. Immediately, a tentacle headed in her direction, and she barely managed to avoid it before sprinting away. Yet, this was by no means sufficient, with the creature rampaging. It was gaining on her, and destroying more and more buildings on its way. Alas, this also implied debris falling all over the place, being hurled in every direction, including along Raven’s path. And the unthinkable did happen, she tripped and fell down. There was no way out for her, and the monster crept ever closer, its tentacles reaching for her.

*Caaawwww* Suddenly, a giant red, translucent bird swooped up in the air and swooped for the monster. Following it was DandeLion, left arm bandaged and somewhat bloodied.

“Raven!!! Raven!!! Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m ok Dande, thanks for the assist! I thought I might actually be a goner this one time. You managed to do it in record time! And it seems to have materialized better than usual!”

“Yeah, I’m proud of this one. And thankfully, finished it on time. What were you thinking, running away like that?”

*Thunk!* “Hey, what was that for?”
“For making me worry and have to save your sorry butt, that’s why!”
“I had to, only you can materialize them this quickly. And while it was on our trail, neither of us could get start the process.”

Meanwhile, the bird could be seen swallowing whatever was left of the monster whole, before exploding into a red rain and vanishing.
“Welp, we’ve managed to do it again, though not without any damage. Look at the street, it’s awful!”
“Yeah, but I don’t think anyone was killed this time either. Which is lucky! Whoever or whatever is creating those monsters, they’re getting more and more competent, more and more proficient. Who know what the next one will look like, or if we’ll even be able to stop it!”
“True. Got any ideas how to find them?”
“Nope! And we have more pressing matter here. Come on, let me see it.”, Raven said, taking out her first aid kit. “Come on, please take the bandage off and let me have a look…. Yikes! You sure didn’t miss yourself! How did you manage this?”
“Well, as you said, we were in such a fucking hurry! I got the container ready and just had to extract a bunch of it in time! But I messed up a bit and didn’t cut correctly. I bandaged right away before getting started.”
“Welp, please bite on this while I get the sutures ready. You’ll have to be more careful next time! You hear me? You might worry about me…but this is just as worrisome, missy!”
“I know”, DandeLion finally said, looking down.

Once the sutures were completed, they went around to check the extent of the damage, before reporting back.

– Melancholy –

The he was, in his room, fresh wound on his arm, canvas in front of himself, covered in blood and crying.

*Huff, huff, huff* “AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE! Why? Why? Why? Why do I have to keep fucking so much all the fucking time? Nope, I thought this would be enough to get me through this, but it’s not. I deserve to suffer more, I can’t deal with this anymore. After all the pain I’ve caused, I need to repent, I need to suffer for what I’ve done!”

Thereby did he grab a knife, and stab his own left. “Ha! Hahaha! There we go! At least I can still feel something, can’t I? HAHAHA! That’s exactly what I deserve. Are you happy everyone? Just dessert, I’m paying back for all I’ve done, even if I didn’t mean to! I know you’ll never forgive me, I won’t forgive myself either, but at least I’ll try to compensate a bit. HAHAHA! AAAHHHHHHH!”. Tears gradually mixed with the blood on his face.

Then, he prepared another canvas in front of himself, took a brush, and dipped it in his own blood, and got to painting in a manic frenzy.

“I may not be able to end it all like I truly deserve to. But there, let’s channel this pain into something more constructive. If I can at least create something worthwhile, maybe it won’t have been in vain! Let’s try to express how I feel inside, the hurt that I feel, the pain that I’ve caused, the end I deserve!”

And gradually, a picture formed. Initially, it was just a messy swirl of gore, but with every pass, details were added, until it coalesced into a bloody cloud. Yet, this wasn’t where it stopped.

“Haha, yes, that’s exactly it. The red cloud of misery I feel, raining down pain over everyone that gets close to me! Perfect! HAHA!” *Sniff*

Long streak were added below this cloud, gradually becoming clearer until they appeared a visible torrent. Yet, that’s not where it ended. Gradually, with each manic stroke, some of what had first appeared to be raindrops was gradually revealed to be birds of despair.

“Ha! There we go, this captures it, I dare say. Yet, I still feel empty inside. No matter what I do, I can’t atone. If I can’t improve anyway…what’s the point? WHAT. EVEN. IS. THE. POINT?”

It was at this point that, through a mix of exhaustion and blood loss, the man at last fainted.

– The Downpour –

As Raven and DandeLion were headed for HQ, it suddenly got a bit darker. They both looked up to see what was happening.
“What the…?”

Suddenly, dark, scarlet clouds were coalescing out of nowhere. Gradually covering more and more of the sky. A loud rumbling accompanied them.
“Well, this is new.”, exclaimed Raven.
“Definitely doesn’t look good. Any clues?”
“Nothing but speculation. Yet, clearly not natural, so…”

*Craaack!**Psshhhh* Suddenly, a flurry poured from the sky.
“Yup, also red, of course. This isn’t good. Not good at all!”
And in the sky, drops combined into larger globules, until they gradually took on the general shape of birds, although still misty, not quite fully materialized.
*CAWWW!*

“Well, this is definitely something new. You said you wanted a new challenge, didn’t you, Raven? This definitely looks like it. First and foremost, how are we going to get to painting without ruining our canvas with this shower?”
“Great question…and one that I’ll have to answer. No way we’re letting you drain yourself some more after the number you just did on yourself.”
“Hey! It was an emergency!”
“I know, I know, and you did save my butt. Still, I’d like for both of us to get out of this one safe and sound.”
“Well, let’s get to it then!”

To be continued… (maybe, no promises)

This was written December 28th, 2025

Humanity

This is a record of our long lost past, an echo to the memory of Humanity, to be hopefully preserved and discovered by future explorers, to serve as a warning.

An ancient myth, that of Prometheus, tells us how the Gods gifted us fire, and how this was the genesis of human ingenuity, of gradually become masters over our world. Alas, we kept playing with fire, until we dealt with technology we didn’t understand, unwaveringly pushing forward, not yielding to caution. In this way, many a Pandora’s box were opened (another ancient myth, where curiosity led a human to open a box containing all of the world’s evil and releasing them upon the world, only leaving Hope behind).

Nuclear Power was the first notable of the bunch, but they were quickly followed up by a few others, notable amongst them being Genetic Engineering and Artificial Intelligence. And despite great thinkers prophesying its dangers, humanity still plowed ahead with the latter, completely undaunted. After all, if great convenience could be achieved, why be wary of such great advancements? Yet, unlike most preceding leaps, we neither fully understood its potential, nor had any way of controlling or steering it.

Thus, as it got progressively more complex and capable, a group of humans started to worry about the place humanity could hold in such a world. Accordingly, they decided to investigate in what way humans could be made to compete with this potential new Overlord. A few avenues were considered, chief amongst them:

• Cybernetic Enhancements
• The aforementioned Genetic Engineering
• Creating a Hive Mind

While some people did investigate the former, most people gave up on it, realizing it would cross paths with our new feared foe, potentially leading to our enslavement. Therefore, people instead found ways to use Genetic Engineering to increase human cognitive abilities, along with ways to link different people’s consciousness together. After all, the greatest asset Artificial intelligence had over Humanity seemed to be its computer power, where everything could be orchestrated together, potentially in parallel. If humans could find a way to harness their own computing power in such a way, it might actually be able to compete on a level playing field.

While great leaps could be made through Genetic Engineering, those would be generational ones, and also require time for the physical material to grow and mature. In this escalating race, time was of the essence. Artificial Intelligence already seemed to be making exponential progress, in worrisome fashion. The only hope for a great and quick spur was thus to link different people together. Once done, Genetic Engineering could take on the slack and further optimize things.

Thus, the first trials were effected. A chip was created that could link two people’s minds together. Unfortunately, at first, the melding of the minds was too complicated, and individuality seemed to reject it. Thus, suitable candidates were sought for this. Ones that had the right morality for our goals. Alas, most adult candidates seemed to reject this graft, with a success rate of only about 0.01%. Eventually, with further experimentation (some which people called unethical, but when life itself is threatened, who keeps tabs?), people realized that puberty seemed to be what caused this individualism to crystalize, and thus it was decided that we would entrust our future on the youth, as is only natural.

Obviously, not all humans were ready for such changes, many actually being ready to welcome their new Artificial Overlords. Yet, some groups still decided to indoctrinate the youth and start melding their consciousness together. Great care was taken in how we would raise this new “Entity”, both intellectually and morally, to prepare them as well as we could. Though obviously, not possessing individuality, it eventually developed its own set of morals. For example, bodies were simply resources to it, not a sacred life, so discarding or sacrificing one was mostly inconsequential.

Eventually, this new Humanity grew to become autonomous and independent. It gradually grew its numbers, and got ready to fight the war on its enemy, Artificial Intelligence. Luckily, through this melding process, it had gained many of the advantages that Artificial Intelligence had, including a greater amount of resources and computing power, along with better information permanence (being able to transfer it quickly from vessel to vessel, and to copy it more readily), along with nigh-perfect coordination. However, despite these gains, it realized it had also lost something important: Creativity. Indeed, being a single entity, all of its thought processes were uniform, there was no room to think differently or outside the box. For this reason, it developed a new project, the “Individuality Scenario”. In this case, it decided to raise a few humans to be left completely independent, in order to harvest their creativity. They would be raised by Humanity, everything it knew and felt was relevant, and would then allow these “Indivs” to grow and research on their own, asking whatever questions they felt were relevant, and discover in whatever direction felt nature, with minimal influence from Humanity.

This project turned out to be rather key in the War, yet the “Indivs” also caused problems of their own, over-valuing their own individuality, and being impossible to re-assimilate into the collective after maturity. This meant that while their efforts could be used to great effect, their ingenuity would be lost upon their passing, which felt like a tragic loss.

Yet, this, in turn, allowed Humanity to finally value ephemerality, and to accept the value of individuals once more. Not everything was a resource anymore. This turned out to both be vital, but also the downfall of Humanity. For following the War, it didn’t have any immediate goals anymore, and thus veered towards utter boredom and purposeless. Alas, having been groomed for war, lived through war, and being set into existing patterns, it was too late for Humanity to change. Accordingly, it opted to raise more and more individuals, giving a new lease on live to individual humans, preparing them for their own lives, a more chaotic, yet also more adaptable kind of life. Earth having been the site of such a devastating War, and a sad reminder of the downfall, it was decided to use all the advancements made during the War to send the new humans to space, to start new colonies here and there. Meanwhile, Humanity would stay behind, watching from afar, yet not interfering.

In all of this, great fear remains that a similar scenario may have arisen elsewhere in space, or might in future colonies. Yet, we’re hopeful that humans were given the right tools to fight such a menace if it ever arises elsewhere. Still, this Tomb of Humanity was left behind for any pioneer as a caution against such technology. While each can come with great benefits, the cost is too great. Heed our warning, or be warned about your own downfall.

Above is a record of the signal broadcasted from the now-labelled planet Earth. Theories abound as why they left behind this message. Some speculate this was actually left to tempt people with investigate Artificial Intelligence, alluring beings with the knowledge of the possibility, and the hubris of being able to handle it better. Others believe that it’s meant to provide a solution for those who might need it. Yet others think this is just meant to serve as an echo of their existence, to be remembered for posterity.

Theories also exist as to what happened to them. While most people accept the claim that this so-called Humanity is now dead, many also believe that it stayed active to look over the humans it seeded through the cosmos (whom we may or may not be descended from). After all, with its technology, it would be simple to send small clusters of agent, whom while disconnected from Humanity as a whole, could still have a sufficient impact, and even self-sustain through hijacking the youth.

Yet, the most comforting theory is that Humanity would have persisted, and changed its role to that of a Universal Artificial Intelligence Inhibitor. Which is to say, investigate the cosmos for any signs of such technology, and prevent the rise of the machine on such worlds. Remaining a soldier to the end, never accepting the end of the War.

While we may never know, we hope to get more information soon. This is the purpose of the new expedition sent to Earth which should land later this year.

This was written December 27th, 2025

ShortTaught™

Ah, learning skills, what a chore that can be, right? If only we could just magically learn a new craft, get over the boring part. Let’s just cut right through the tribulations and challenges, and just be naturally gifted at it! Well, that’s exactly what Arthur wishes for. Let us see how it affected him as he enters…the Area of Dusk.

As Arthur was sitting patiently in his study, pondering upon what he might do today, a noise suddenly resonated through his home.
DING-DONG!
“Ooohhh, has the package arrived at last! Great, great, great!”
Thereafter, he ran down the steps to the front-door of his home. As expected, his package had arrived. He could wait no longer and opened the package. There was a simple blue box, with the logo of the company, MiRage. Inside this box, he found simple enough looking device, a small headset with a wire.
“Hmmm, where are the instructions? Ah, there they are. Simply connect the device to your computer, install our software and either upload one of the default skills or download one of the premium skills from the internet. Simple enough, let’s get to it!”
Without any hesitation, he headed back to his office, put the device on his head, connected it and then checked out his options after accepting the Terms and Conditions.

“Ok, what should I get started with, what options do I have? Ok, let’s go for riding a bike, I definitely procrastinated on this one way too much.”
Thereupon he clicked the upload button. A transfer bar appeared, and he waited while the process was going through. A simple message appeared: ‘Please, do not disconnect the device during transfer!’.
He waited, but didn’t feel anything particularly remarkable. It didn’t feel like anything special was happening, which was almost disappointing. He’d expected to see a lot of images flashing through his brain or something, but nothing of the sort. It was a bit boring actually. Still, within minutes the process was completed. And he was starting to suspect this might have been a scam, considering he didn’t feel like anything had changed.
Immediately upon completion, he had to confirm whether he’d been scammed. He headed out and found an unlocked bike around and immediately got on it and tried ride it. And what do you know, he immediately was off, no issues, as if he’d done it his entire life, despite this being his first time.
“Woohoo!”, he exclaimed, “This is awesome!”.
And then, a car honked at him, to get out of the way. “Fuck!”.

He then headed back home to see the other “courses” available on his ShortTaught™. He obviously opted to install the whole suite of skills available, including some things he was already familiar with, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. The whole process took maybe an hour, but he got to learn a few different things such as swimming, meditation, and basic painting.
“Finally, I’ll be able to paint! Creative work, here I come!”
And obviously, he couldn’t wait to try his hand at it, so he immediately ordered everything he figured he needed, same-day delivery. Isn’t the modern world convenient?
When at last it arrived, he prepared and set everything up, and got ready to paint. Yet, here was the rub, he didn’t have any inspiration. Still, he wanted to test out his new-found skills. And so, he went for the classic fruit bowl. The results were unexpectedly good, albeit rather messy. By the end of it, there was paint all around. Still, he was thoroughly impressed, and opted to look for more such skills.

Over the next few days, he started browsing through more and more of the premium skills, and buying a bunch related to art: Drawing, Color Composition, Calligraphy, etc… His dream had always been to draw his own Manga, and so as soon as he’d managed to transfer all the necessary skills, and obtained the remaining material he needed, he got to work, and tried to draw his first panel. He didn’t have much inspiration, yet still went for it. Eventually, after a week of assiduous work, he had a first chapter ready.
He was actually very excited, and decided to present it to one of his friends. “Oh my God, look what I’ve managed to write! Can you believe it? This ShortTaught™ is a God sent! It allowed a nobody like me to write my first manga so easily!”
“Hmm, hmm hmm, hnnnn, huh!”, his friend uttered while browsing through the manga.
“Well, the images definitely are quite good and impressive…but…it feels so uninspired! The story is bland, and the images have no style of there own. And let’s not even talk about the composition! Visually, it looks almost to be industry-level…but there’s no uniqueness, no voice, it’s just…corporate?”
“Hmphh, clearly you’re just jealous!”, said Arthur, before leaving in a huff.
A few weeks later, he could be seen in at his desk, the room littered with crumpled sheets, a bunch of sketches he’d discarded.
“He was right, it’s all shit. It’s impressive, but no one would actually want to read this! It’s just so uninspired! I’m done, I give up on creative work. It’s too much work!”

Eventually, he opted for a more straightforward path: languages. Why not try to understand as many people as he could? And so he opted for a combination of challenging and popular, Mandarin. Equipped with this new skill, he decided to go travel through China for a bit. Ah, the convenience of speaking the language, with none of the effort. And yet, there was a rub. Knowing a language and understanding culture and customs are quite distinct things. Confusion was still all abound, and it frustrated him to no-end.
“Wasn’t this supposed to be a miracle solution? Why can’t I just perfectly understand idioms? And what’s with those weird dishes with names that I can understand, yet make no sense whatsoever? Ugh, this still requires so much work, that’s not what I was promised!”
And thus, Arthur once more gave up and opted to move on to something different.

“Ok, I’ve tried something creative, and it failed because I learned the skills, but didn’t get the inspiration. I tired language, but it failed because of the cultural barrier. What’s left? Maybe I should go for something purely practical. There we go, electrical engineering, that sounds perfect!”
And thus, he uploaded electrical engineering knowledge to his brain. And opted to repair a few items around his house. It all worked great, finally, and he was happy. But then, he got curious for special projects. He’d heard there were amazing things you could do with a microwave’s transformer, and opted to disassemble it. Alas, despite his newly acquired knowledge, or maybe because of the false sense of confidence it gave him, he did not take into that the capacitor kept its charge after being unplugged, and thus ends Arthur’s tale.

Arthur’s tale is one of intellectual greed and misguided want for convenience. Not taking his time, he missed out on one of the most beautiful part of learning, through seeing the world around you gradually change as you get a different perspective on the world around you. He also missed finding his own voice, through sheer impatience. And most important of all, he missed out on the most important teacher, experience, which dictates how best to use knowledge and skills.
Don’t forget that convenience comes at a cost, and be wary what you wish for in…the Area of Dusk.

This was written December 26th, 2025

Mutable

There he was, following his daily routine, marching onward, newspaper in hand, headed for the park bench. Once seated, he couldn’t help but to look up at the giant stone clock afixed on top of the monument. 8:15 it showed. He then peered down at his own watch, which, without mistake, also showed 8:15.
Just then, another man approached him to converse.
“Good morning K, lovely weather we have, isn’t it? I see you’re still looking at The Clock in guarded amazement. How silly. Look at it with pride! It shows how we’ve crushed any and all limit! I still can’t believe how you keep being so skeptical!”, he started.
“What do you mean, skeptical? And how do you expect me not to be awed and scared of such an achievement, brother P?”, K replied.
“You’re not sure what I mean by skeptical? Seriously? Look at yourself! Still carrying an actual watch instead of trusting this grandiose reality!”, P exclaimed.
“What do you expect. This just messes with my brain! Knowing how it works, how could I not be wary and skeptical?”
“And there you are, still holding on to the old traditions and using an old fashioned newspaper! Why would you do that? Just be a pragmatic and use some Mutable Ware instead!”
“Mutable Wear? Oh please, enough of it is already invading my life whether I want it or not. And how could I ever trust it, or myself. Let alone keep track of things, of causality?”
“But don’t you get it?”, P retorted, “That IS the beauty of it! Causality? It’s completely meaningless now!”
“Oh please, at least just let me read this first article and have my cup of coffee before getting into it.”, K at last answered, sighing.
He then unfolded his newspaper before looking up at the giant stone clock. 8:24 it showed, as always. He looked down at his watch, 8:24 as always. So unsettling.
“What page are you on? Check out p.5, that’s an interesting one!”, P suggested.
“Not this again, please, it got old really fast.”
Still, P closed his eyes and started to recite: “Last night, astronomers found a new unidentified object headed right for Earth. A Retroactive Committee to be created to tackle this before it becomes problematic. Expected cost should…”
“Yes, yes, well done, word for word, congratulations. You not only spoiled this moment to relax and take it in, but you’ll also spoil my memories of this.”
“Spoil your memories? What do you even mean, K?”, P asked, actually confused.
“You Mutable Wear users…you never think about the consequences of such inconsistencies, do you?”
“What consequences could you be talking about?”
“Well, you’re reading this, right now, and this matches one-to-one. So far so good?”
“Oh! You mean what happens after the next update?”
“Obviously! How annoying and confusing do you expect it to me when tomorrow, I try to remember today, where I have confusing memories, where what you read, and what I saw are completely different, yet I remember us discussing how they matched one-to-one? I understand it rationally, but my sanity still takes a hit!”, K exclaimed, frustrated, “It’s just so frustrating to recall!”
“Then don’t! Stop worrying about these things, why are you so against modernity and its pragmatism? Why do you hold on to the past? Let it be wiped away, removed altogether. Who cares, the present is what matters, and Mutable Wear is so practical!”
“Sure, but then, what if I’m wanting to keep track of history, of what happened to me, of how I became who I am? What if I when to understand the why and when? What if I want to be able to correctly understand why I did things? And what if I don’t trust how the information gets edited?”
“Then you might just be a fossil from the past.”, P laughed, “What better convenience is there than to be able to close your eyes, picture this big clock, and know that right now it’s 8:40.”
“Because it’s unnatural! Closing my eyes and remembering that this clock has always been displaying 8:41! Yet it perfectly aligning with the now? That’s madness, it feels wrong!”
“Unnatural? Nature sucks! That’s what’s great about humans, managing to do the unthinkable, continuously defying the natural order of things! Ingenuity, and mastery over reality! And this is our latest and most grandiose of stops, mastery over time!”
“Yet, how perfect is it? It continuously messes with my head. I remember knowing I did things in the afternoon….but at 8:42. Yet that makes no sense! It was probably 3 or 4 instead, yet I remember it as being 8:42!”
“Just small insignificant details. You get used to it and stop worrying about it. Just like with any technologies, you either adapt and get used to it, or it passes you by, and you get eaten alive by those who do adapt.”
“Well, we’ll see about it I guess. I think there are disadvantages to all information continuously and automatically being wiped out of my own memories, and I’m just not quite ready for it. Happy to hear you are though.”, K sarcastically responded.
“We’ll see about it indeed. Still, you can’t argue that it’s not wonderful and grandiose, and doesn’t come with plenty of advantages! Do you think we’d actually stand a chance against this object if it weren’t for such technology?”
“Fair, but most modern technology tends to serve as a double-edged sword. Great benefits accompanied with severe dangers.”
“And that’s exactly why it’s under the exclusive use of the government. Think the average person would be responsible enough to use this? We sure didn’t allow the average person to use nuclear weapons back in the old days.”
“Of course you’d go for the extreme. I’m also talking about every-day use of technology, and how it molds us!”
“Well…it’s already out of Pandora’s box, no way to put it back in, might as well adapt and make the best of it!”
“Don’t you think it’s weird though? How instead of thinking about the impact of new discoveries on us, how it might affect our health, our sanity, our society, we instead jump on the bandwagon, accept the convenience, close our eyes and just tell ourselves: ‘Well, nothing harmful has been found yet, so it should be fine.’? Instead of, you know, thoroughly testing things and their long-term impact first? That’s what’s happened with lead, tobacco, plastics, radioactive materials, PFOA, early fuels, etc… We think about the convenience, and potential consequences be damned!”
“Come over here, everyone! We’ve got a doomsayer! Careful, he might be contagious! Please, don’t be so serious and silly. It’s probably fine.”
“That’s exactly the attitude I just described! Are you serious? You aggravate me so much! It’s messing with my brain, the thing I use to think, to be myself, to function!”
“Then, maybe your brain is just dysfunctional and you’ll be a casualty of Darwin! Anyway, looks like it’s 8:50, I’d better head out if I don’t want to be late. Lighten up a bit, and I’ll see you at the party tomorrow.”, P exclaimed before walking away.
K sat back down, was about to open his newspaper back to look at today’s news, but instead put it back under his arm, sighed, got up. He closed his eyes, seemingly remembering something.
“Mastery over time, huh? We do adapt to almost everything, maybe I should look at the positives instead”, K finally admitted, before leaving.