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As rumors of sexual misdeeds swirled, Cardinal McCarrick became a powerful fundraiser for the Vatican
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick waves to fellow bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington in September 2015, during Pope Francis's visit. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick waves to fellow bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington in September 2015, during Pope Francis's visit. Photo: Washington Post Photo By Jonathan Newton Photo: Washington Post Photo By Jonathan Newton Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close As rumors of sexual misdeeds swirled, Cardinal McCarrick became a powerful fundraiser for the Vatican 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
WASHINGTON - When Theodore McCarrick arrived in Washingon in 2001 to be the region's Catholic archbishop, it was clear right away that he was something very rare: a celebrity priest.
The vivacious cleric reportedly had spent time with famous Americans such as Bing Crosby and the Hearst family. He was a prolific fundraiser for big-name Catholic groups from right to left, and valued for his connection to Pope John Paul II, who dispatched McCarrick to hot spots worldwide as his diplomat. President George W. Bush, also new in town that January, marked his first private dinner in Washington by going to the home of the new archbishop.
McCarrick's gilded résumé stood in striking contrast to his public demeanor, that of a self-effacing do-gooder who, in a city full of egos and polish, wore rumpled clothes and exhibited a voracious drive to help others.
"I wish I were a holier man, more prayerful, more trusting in God, wiser and courageous," he said at his first D.C. news conference. "But here I am with all my faults and all my needs, and we will work together."
McCarrick's "faults and needs" are being considered in a new light after he became the first cardinal in U.S. history to resign from the post.
The resignation, accepted by Pope Francis, followed explosive allegations that the cleric sexually abused adolescents and sexually harassed seminarians and young priests under his authority.
The accusations have shocked and devastated McCarrick's many fans, leaving some to conclude that their hero apparently lived a double life. But to others who worked closely with him over the decades, the cardinal was always a more complex figure than his saintly public reputation conveyed. He was a man of enormous personal ambition, a skillful politician and, at times, shrewdly calculating, according to interviews with Catholic officials and others who knew and worked with him.
McCarrick stated his innocence after the first allegation that he abused a 16-year-old, which led to his suspension from ministry. He has since been in seclusion and has not responded to requests for comment. McCarrick's civil attorney, Barry Coburn, has declined to comment. His canonical attorney, Michael Ritty, declined to comment after the initial allegation and has not responded to repeated additional requests for comment. The Vatican has opened a case on McCarrick that could result in a church trial. Possible outcomes include defrocking and exoneration.
In 1988, McCarrick co-founded the Papal Foundation, a nonprofit organization that raises millions for the Vatican. He sometimes rushed to the side of the country's wealthiest Catholics in their times of personal crisis, following up to raise money later, according to two people who witnessed such interactions.
"The Papal Foundation was a huge point of leverage for him in terms of going to Rome," said Steve Schneck, the longtime head of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at Catholic University. Schneck worked often with McCarrick. "There is not a Catholic organization in the United States he hasn't raised money for."
Schneck admired McCarrick, but others used less favorable terms to describe him.
"He was a climber," said someone who worked closely with McCarrick in the past. Like several others in this report, the person spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to violate the church's protocol that only official spokespeople discuss McCarrick.
McCarrick's popularity and his enormous stature as an emissary for the church and as a prolific fundraiser for Catholic causes may have helped protect him over the years as other, whispered words were added to his reputation: harasser, groper, violator of his vows of celibacy.
- - -
Although allegations that McCarrick abused adolescents surfaced only last month, when the Vatican suspended the 88-year-old, there had for decades been rumors in church and journalistic circles about his behavior with seminarians. These ranged from talk of an unwanted hand on a knee to chatter on conservative Catholic blogs citing anonymous descriptions of sex parties.
The day he was suspended, two New Jersey dioceses made public that they had fielded three complaints from budding priests against McCarrick and had settled two of the cases. Last week, Albany priest Desmond Rossi became the first cleric to go on record as saying McCarrick's casual touches during seminary in the 1980s made him uncomfortable. Rossi told the Jesuit magazine America that he thinks McCarrick's behavior at the time fueled promiscuity among seminarians, which he said forced him to transfer to another seminary outside of McCarrick's jurisdiction.
Some who had heard the rumors and allegations surrounding McCarrick said they did not speak out because he was so greatly admired for his role in the church. But there are other possible reasons McCarrick's alleged actions are coming to light only now.
Some at the time dismissed as unreliable the attacks on McCarrick, who was often seen as left-leaning, because they came largely from conservative bloggers. That same impulse appears to now be leading some conservatives eager to find fault with the Pope Francis era to highlight the McCarrick case. Conservative blogs have been filled in recent days with rumors that Francis's U.S. allies - cardinals including Joe Tobin of Newark and Blase Cupich in Chicago - are close to McCarrick, an effort to tarnish Francis by association. One inaccurately said McCarrick and Tobin worked together.
There is also a long-standing deference within the Catholic Church to upholding institutional hierarchy and protocol, even in an extreme case like this. Priests, cardinals and bishops have said they told the Vatican years ago about McCarrick - either about the rumors, or about the two legal settlements New Jersey dioceses reached with him in the early 2000s - and there's no evidence anything was ever done. Victims never heard from Rome, and McCarrick was functioning as a priest until a few weeks ago, speaking to Catholic audiences and performing weddings and baptisms.
Requests from The Washington Post for comment from Rome haven't been returned for weeks.
"You don't go ahead unless your editor says okay, right?" said the person who worked with McCarrick. "We sent a letter to the Vatican and I was waiting for instructions. There is a hierarchy here you're dealing with."
- - -
McCarrick's career stood out from the start.
Many ambitious Catholic clerics spend time in seminary and graduate school in Rome, making connections around the Vatican.
Yet McCarrick spent much of his early career in the New York City area, where he'd grown up. He graduated from Fordham University, attended seminary in Yonkers, New York, and was ordained a priest in New York City, cementing connections that helped speed his rise later on.
His first assignment was as dean of students and fundraising at Catholic University in Washington, the bishops' own university.
He was then named president of a Catholic university in Puerto Rico at age 35 and then secretary, in the mid-1970s, to the cardinal of New York City.
From there, McCarrick began an unbroken stream of promotions, garnering some of the nation's highest civic and religious honors. He was taken as a young priest under the wing of two powerful New York City cleric-bosses - Cardinal Francis Spellman, and Cardinal James Cooke, whom McCarrick served through the 1970s.
"He had what we call the 'godfathers,' of the church," said the person who worked for years with McCarrick.
Around that time, McCarrick was becoming a jet-setting fundraiser, said James, 60, who lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, and earlier this month accused McCarrick of sexually abusing him from age 11 or so until he was in his early 30s. He lived in New Jersey when the abuse began, he says.
James, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used, filed a police report on July 17 with the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, a copy of which The Post has seen.
James's extended family was close to McCarrick, who had baptized him as a baby, he said. Through his later teens and 20s, James said he attended many fundraising dinners with McCarrick, as well as meetings with potential donors in various places, including Northern California, Chicago and Boston. In 1974, when James was a teenager, he said McCarrick took several trips to California to console the Catholic millionaire publishing family of Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped by leftist radicals. James's family had moved by then to the West Coast. James's sister told The Post that she recalled the visits as well. Requests for comment to Patricia Hearst and one of her siblings were not answered.
Later, McCarrick made use of the relationship to raise money from the family, James said.
James also said McCarrick visited and solicited donations from Bing Crosby, who, like the Hearsts, was Catholic. McCarrick delivered the homily at Crosby's New York funeral Mass, but a spokesman for the Crosby family said that while "Bing hardly ever turned down a request from a priest," he could not easily locate records of such donations.
James said he then fell into a damaging pattern with McCarrick for the next two decades, and spent time with the priest - including sexually. Often McCarrick was traveling for pastoral and fundraising trips and he'd bring James along, the man said.
"Sometimes he'd just speak at the table, he'd give a homily, the after-dinner homily," James said. "We'd be in a private dining area, and everybody would just open their purses and . . . write checks. All they'd say is, 'Who do I make the checks out to?' "
McCarrick had a core pitch: "We have so much, they have so little. We need to speak the word of God so they have something," James recalled.
In the 1980s, McCarrick was among those who established the Papal Foundation, meant to support the Vatican during an Italian banking crisis. Wealthy donors pledge a minimum of $1 million; the group has an endowment of $215 million, according to its site.
The person who worked with McCarrick in the past said McCarrick worked hard to woo Pope John Paul II, leaving his diocese to see the pope whenever possible. He traveled to Cuba and Mexico during John Paul's visits to those countries.
"Wherever the pope was, he was. He tried to be noticed," the person said. He said McCarrick became somewhat close to John Paul's secretary, the Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, which helped him get closer to the pope.
When the pope came to the United States in 1995, he flew directly to Newark.
McCarrick "was just a genius at schmoozing," said the Rev. Boniface Ramsey, a New York City priest who worked at a New Jersey seminary when McCarrick was bishop there. "I think it was all to suck up to John Paul II."
Yet McCarrick's decades of pavement-pounding for money were part of the reason he was considered so holy.
He was raising many millions for needy causes, from persecuted religious minorities in the Middle East to aid for immigrants to low-cost housing. He helped groups from right to left, from the Knights of Columbus to Catholic Relief Services. Although he also raised money for conservative causes, he was often viewed as left-leaning, primarily because he focused on causes such as alleviating poverty and supporting immigration rather than efforts against abortion and in support of Catholic views on sexuality.
He was also unusually public in the early 2000s in speaking out for survivors of clerical sex abuse; he was involved in the church's efforts to write policies aimed at preventing abuse and was an early advocate for zero-tolerance for priests who abuse.
McCarrick's ambition and fundraising prowess were not considered self-enriching. Some who worked with him over the years said that when it came to himself, the cardinal was thrifty and lived very simply. He wore an old raincoat and his staff one year gave him a Macy's gift card so he'd get some new clothes.
"He had no entourage, wasn't pompous, unlike traditional powers in the church and public life," said a person active in church organizations who collaborated on causes with McCarrick. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he was concerned about being identified as speaking favorably about McCarrick, given the allegations that have surfaced.
In 2001, McCarrick was awarded the position of archbishop of Washington - a relatively small city but because of its prominence as the U.S. capital, a post viewed as the ticket to an automatic "red hat," or cardinal spot.
About this time in the early 2000s, Pope John Paul II's health was starting to fade, and the culture wars within the Catholic Church - intensified by the liberalizing Second Vatican Council of the 1960s - revved up even more as it became clear that there would soon be a new pope.
It was also around this time that rumors about McCarrick and his treatment of seminarians seem to have spread further. Many of them were on a few conservative blogs, and contained anonymous, secondhand allegations that McCarrick had pressured young men studying to be priests to sleep in his bed. Some abuse watchdog sites published pieces as well.
But some Catholics who had heard the unsubstantiated rumors dismissed them as the product of church politics seeking to vilify those deemed too liberal. That remained the case in the following decade.
Someone whose organization honored McCarrick said they looked into the rumors. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn't want their work to be associated with the case.
"It sounded like disgruntled conservative Catholics. I didn't give credence to the source," the person said. "It seemed ideologically motivated."
As the rumors swirled in the early 2000s in certain pockets of the budding Catholic blogosphere, quietly the diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey, and the archdiocese of Newark were fielding three formal complaints about McCarrick and his treatment of seminarians and a young priest. Two were settled, the dioceses said in a statement last month, the day the Vatican suspended McCarrick, the first time any church office said on the record that there had been a complaint about the senior cleric.
McCarrick retired as archbishop shortly after he turned 75, in 2006. It's standard for bishops to offer their retirement to the Vatican at that age, but it's common for them to keep working for years if both sides wish. McCarrick was a hard-working striver whose routine didn't appear to slow until very recently.
He remained extremely active in the church, traveling on diplomatic missions, fundraising and acting as a priest for weddings and baptisms.
The person who worked with McCarrick said they suspect church leaders in Rome had chastised McCarrick in some way, telling him to pull back from public life.
"But he did whatever he damn well wanted," the person said.
These days there are limits.
Now that he has been suspended from ministry and resigned, the globe-trotting, vivacious McCarrick is not allowed to wear clerical garb in public. He also may not present himself as a priest. His movements must be approved by the Vatican's representative in Washington. However, in the privacy of his own room, McCarrick may still say Mass for himself. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
About the College
University of California Berkeley is located in Berkeley California. The school was founded in 1868. The school has a total enrollment of 35,409 as of 2008. The University is dedicated to their students by giving them the best education. Students from all over the states have attended this University. The professors at the University provide an excellent teaching experience for the students by giving them the best training and hands on training.
Campus
University of California-Berkeley offers their students on campus housing. This is welcome to all students and after getting accepted to the college you can sign up for on campus housing. The campus also provides meal plans, residential dining, and campus restaurants. There are also houses and apartments off campus for students to rent as well. The campus also features research centers, student affairs, athletics, libraries, bookstore, and also a store you can by all your college gear at, computers and so much more. The campus offers their students everything they will need while at college.
Courses
University of California-Berkeley is prepared to give all their students a wide a variety of programs. This gives students a chance to find a career that they will want to have for the rest of their lives. Other students it gives them a chance to take a few different programs so they have options in life. Some of the programs offered are Astronomy, Art History, American Studies, Biology, Business Administration, Bioengineering, Dance, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Computer Science, Film, French, Economics, Engineering, Environmental Health Science, Genetics, Geography, Health and Medical Sciences, History, Immunology, Law, Legal Studies, Journalism, Media Studios, Navel Science, Medical Anthropology, Military Science, Music, Mineral Engineering, Range Management, Practice of Art, Psychology, Thai, Dance, Theater, Social Welfare, Statistics, Sociology, Visual Studies, Wood Science and Technology. This is just a taste of what the University offers.
Data on this site are composed from various government and commercial sources. CaliforniaColleges.com does not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of any information on this site. Use at your own risk. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Fatigue rate of the external anal sphincter.
Studies of skeletal muscle show that fatigue rate corresponds to the proportion of fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibres that are present in the muscle. Limited work has been done on the fatigue rate of the external anal sphincter. We have prospectively studied fatigability of the external anal sphincter in women with faecal incontinence and women with normal bowel control. Anorectal manometry was measured by a station-pull technique using a water-filled microballoon. Fatigue rate was calculated from anal pressure measurements taken every 0.1 s over a 20-s squeeze. Women with faecal incontinence (n=88, median -12 cmH(2) O/min) were less susceptible to fatigue than women with normal bowel control (n=36, median -43 cmH(2) O/min) (P<0.01). The external anal sphincter was less susceptible to fatigue with increasing age (P<0.01, r=0.499). In women with normal bowel control and in women with faecal incontinence fatigue rate was negatively correlated with maximum squeeze pressure (P<0.01, r=-0.287; P<0.01, r=-0.579). The external anal sphincter was less susceptible to fatigue with increasing age. Women with faecal incontinence have a weaker but more fatigue-resistant external anal sphincter. This might correspond to a higher proportion of slow-twitch muscle fibres. Histological studies are needed to examine this hypothesis. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. Persistent diarrhea is one of the leading causes of morbidity in captive nonhuman primates (NHPs). During the current reporting period, a cross-sectional study was continued to test fecal specimens obtained from rhesus macaques admitted to the veterinary clinics for diarrhea and/or wounding as well as from animals housed in field cages at the Tulane National Primate Research Center (TNPRC) for microsporidia shedding using PCR diagnostics. Of 194 clinic specimens analyzed, 28 of 95 (29.5%) were positive for microsporidia and of 99 field specimens analyzed, 35 of 99 (35.4%) were positive for microsporidia with an overall prevalence of 32.5%. Fisher's Exact test indicated no significant differences in prevalence associated with gender, age, or clinic vs field animals. Enterocytozoon bieneusi was by far, the most common species identified (54 of 64;84.3 %). The objective of this study is also to determine the prevalence of anti-norovirus (NoV), sapovirus (SaV) and Tulane calicivirus (TV) antibodies in rhesus macaques of the TNPRC and evaluate the antigenic relationship between these viruses. So far, we tested 515 rhesus macaques for this purpose. A high prevalence of NoV (51-61%) and SaV (50-56%) binding antibodies and TV (69%) neutralizing antibodies were detected. The high prevalence of human and rhesus CV-specific serum antibodies suggests the frequent exposure of colony macaques to enteric CVs including the possibility of CV transmission between human and NHP hosts. More recently, 325 randomly selected stool samples collected from TNPRC rhesus macaques were tested using modified degenerate primers targeting conserved amino acid motifs in the calicivirus RNA dependent RNA polymerases (RdRp). Thirty-six (11%) of the 325 stools samples tested yielded TV specific sequences, confirming that TVs are endemic in the TNPRC. According to phylogenetic analysis, the 36 TV isolates can be classified into two genogroups and at least four genetic types. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | NIH ExPorter |
Giving birth and breastfeeding mean that biologically the mother is the prime nurturer of a child. However, this doesn’t mean that fathers shouldn’t be involved… If you’re a new father, spending plenty of time with your baby could boost their mental development, a new study suggests. British researchers looked at…
“I wanna show people what my life is like” says 22 year old vloger Beth Goodyear who was diagnosed with Kleine–Levin syndrome (KLS), also known as Sleeping Beauty syndrome which is a rare sleep disordercharacterized by persistent episodic hypersomnia and cognitive or mood changes. Many patients also experience hyperphagia, hypersexuality and other…
We say a big congratulations to Bradley Cooper and his girlfriend, Irina Shayk, as welcomed their first child together. The Oscar nominee, 42, and the Russian supermodel, 31, quietly welcomed their bundle of joy earlier this month. This is the first child for the couple, who started dating in April 2015…
Genital warts are very common appearance near millions of cases is recorded in US every year. But it seems like lots of misunderstanding appear when it comes that subject, stay still we have 7 genital wart revelations which can help you to maintain the health in that area. They... Read more
I happen to have grown up around lots of albinos , these children were very normal kids , who could do the same things I could , a larger percentage of them wore glasses and most of them were not allowed by their parents to play in the sun with us.... Read more
It’s important for us all to take care of our health, and if that means knowing the correct way to poop, then that too! But when someone is pregnant, this responsibility to take care of health doubles, because it now includes taking care of the budding baby’s health too!... Read more
Childbirth is the most beautiful and natural procedure known to mankind. With a child, a mother is born too. The moment a mother gets the news of her pregnancy emotional turmoil arises. Along with the indefinite amount of pleasure and bliss, she is haunted by ‘n’ number of questions, doubts... Read more | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Godly Women in a Sex-Driven Culture
Purity is not a concept of the past that should be neglected. It’s not a religious act that keeps us in bondage from enjoying the pleasures of the world. On the contrary, purity is for our own benefit. So many women have lost their virginity, dignity, and life after forsaking this command of God to stay and live purely. This is the message that Vicky Rios wants to convey in her message “Godly women in a sex-driven culture.” | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
1. Learn about climate change
2. Send us your message on why
climate change is important to you
In the weeks leading up to COP21, we will be collecting girls’
perspectives on climate change and how it’s affecting them. We’re asking girls
around the world to submit a photo or short video saying ‘I’m asking world
leaders to take action on climate change because _________.’
For more
information and to submit your photo or video, visit GirlsForAGreenerFuture.Tumblr.com.
We will take these messages with us to be displayed and shared with thousands
at COP21 in Paris. So speak out and make your voice heard!
3. Join the worldwide mobilization
on November 29
To create pressure and momentum ahead of COP21, climate activists will
be organizing major demonstrations around the world. From London to
Johannesburg, from Tokyo to Sao Paulo, people in cities across the globe will
be organizing. Find an event near
you and help make it clear to world leaders that young people around the
world want to see real action in Paris! | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria Ocasio-CortezOn The Money: Anxious Democrats push for vote on COVID-19 aid | Pelosi, Mnuchin ready to restart talks | Weekly jobless claims increase | Senate treads close to shutdown deadline McCarthy says there will be a peaceful transition if Biden wins Anxious Democrats amp up pressure for vote on COVID-19 aid MORE (D-N.Y.) said in a new interview that she believes the United States is heading in a fascist direction under President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE.
“Are we headed to fascism? Yes. I don’t think there’s a question,” Ocasio-Cortez told Yahoo News earlier this week after she visited migrant detention facilities managed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
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“If you actually take the time to study, and to look at the steps, and to see how government transforms under authoritarian regimes, and look at the political decisions and patterns of this president, the answer is yes.”
Ocasio-Cortez made the comments the same day she traveled with a group of lawmakers to assess the conditions at facilities holding migrants near the southern border. The freshman lawmaker, who has repeatedly criticized Trump's administration, called the conditions "horrifying."
She also described a tense atmosphere during the lawmakers' visit, telling Yahoo News that “s--- hit the fan” during one site visit due to what she called the "disrespectful" conduct of CBP staff. Ocasio-Cortez said at one point a CBP officer tried to take a selfie with her, even though lawmakers were not permitted to bring cellphones in the facilities.
She told Yahoo News that the episode served as an example of how CBP has systematically "lost control" of its operation.
Ocasio-Cortez also tweeted earlier this week that CBP officers were telling women to drink water out of toilets.
"I see why CBP officers were being so physically &sexually threatening towards me," she said. "Officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets. This was them on their GOOD behavior in front of members of Congress."
Ocasio-Cortez has vociferously criticized Trump and his administration ever since being sworn into Congress. She has repeatedly called out Trump in the past month over his immigration policies, and has compared migrant detention facilities near the southern border to concentration camps.
The comparison prompted backlash from multiple GOP lawmakers, who called her remarks disrespectful to the Holocaust and the millions of Jews killed during it. Ocasio-Cortez has stood by her comments, saying she would "never apologize for calling these camps what they are."
The New York congresswoman reiterated her stance to Yahoo News, arguing that Trump's tendencies compared to that time period. She also held the president directly responsible for the poor conditions at the migrant detention facilities, saying his policies have led to numerous Central Americans fleeing their native countries.
“We withdrew U.S. aid to those areas that was intended to stabilize those areas," Ocasio-Cortez said. “It deepened and exacerbated all of the crises that are already happening, causing a flood of people to try to escape these horrifying conditions. So we are contributing to the surge in the first place. We’re engineering it, so that’s coming to our border.”
Trump in March halted aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, saying they weren't doing enough to stop the flow of immigrants.
She added that if Trump “really cared about human lives," he would declare a national emergency to gain access to funds to improve the facilities' conditions. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Dear Captain Awkward,
I’m in my late twenties. I have extremely minimal experience in forging or seeking relationships, partly because although I am not asexual, I am not comfortable with the idea of sex, and do not…ascribe to the gender binary…, but at the same time would like to have a romantic relationship.
Additionally I have A LOT on my plate (I work six days a week, am buying a house, have a dissertation project coming up, a lot of family stuff etc) at the moment, I worry I wouldn’t be very attentive all the time, but I saw a guy on an online dating site and his profile made him sound like we’d really get on, we have a lot of shared interests and I think even if he didn’t like me romantically, we could be friends at the very least but I just don’t know what to do or whether to contact him?
I keep chickening out and have no idea what to say even if I did pluck up the nerve to make an account and send him a message. Please, help?
Many thanks
So Very Socially Awkward
Dear Socially Awkward:
Contacting an interesting person on a dating site does not mean OMG NOW YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP, BETTER FORGET ABOUT ALL YOUR OTHER PLANS.
You get to decide every step of what you want. To make it even more interesting, there is another human at the other end of the interaction who has their own shit going on and they also get to decide things. Sometimes people exchange a few messages and decide, nope, let’s not get together or be friends. Sometimes people have vastly different expectations about what they want and they find that out, too.
Writing to this person (or not) is not a massive statement on THE FUTURE OF EVERYTHING YOU WANT, EVER, AND YOU MUST DECIDE NOW.
Some basic stuff to help you keep your feet when online dating:
If you think dating or meeting new people would be fun, then try it.
If it comes to feel like work – it’s too scary, too draining, too time-consuming, etc., then take a break.
You do not have to meet up with or even respond to anyone who writes you. And they do not have to respond to you. Keep expectations WAY low about the level & frequency of communication that will happen and don’t act entitled to anyone’s time or attention or put up with anyone who abuses yours.
Post multiple, accurate pictures of yourself, including full body shots, how you dress, etc. I realize this can be anxiety-making for my fellow fats & people who play around with gender presentation but think of it this way: People who write to you and who respond enthusiastically to your messages enthusiastically like & approve what you look like. People who aren’t into your thing will scroll on by. This is WAY better than Catfishing folks with a single weirdly lit glamour shot closeup of your face, getting into some hot & heavy correspondence, and then freaking out before you actually meet them because you are worried about rejection.
When you write to someone for the first time, follow the alliterative trinity of:
Short
Simple
Specific
Initial greeting script: “Hi, I really like your profile, especially (where you said x cool thing)(the fact that you like x piece of media that I also like)(the photo of you where you are doing or wearing awesome stuff). Where did you find your (cosplay element)(unique bookcase)(jazz record collection)(fancy shoes)?”
Hopefully they’ll reply and you’ll message back and forth a few times. If that is enjoyable, generally it is better to meet sooner rather than after a very long, deep correspondence, because the clock totally restarts on getting to know someone once you meet them in person and it’s weird to be too invested and then find out you don’t actually click in person. Script for arranging a meet: “I’ve really enjoyed writing back and forth. Would you be interested in meeting for (coffee)(breakfast)(a drink)(ice cream)(hanging out in the park)(a study date at the library)(a free concert) sometime?”
Pick something that you would like doing anyway in the normal course of your life. Pick something inexpensive and easy.
Safety stuff: Google the heck out of the person – real name, username, email address. Find their social media profiles, though do not “follow” or “friend” anywhere outside the dating site until you know you get along and want this person in your life in some fashion. (They’re Googling you. It’s not weird, it’s just a way to get a larger sense of the person – are they connected to other people or will you be stepping into the Only Friend role? – Danger! Do they say racist/sexist/ableist/homophobic/transphobic stuff on their feeds? – Danger!)
Meet somewhere public that you can get to and from without giving or needing a ride to the other person. Tell a friend where you are going and who you are meeting (with links to photo, name, etc.) and make arrangements to call or text & check in once you’ve met them and again when you get home to let them know you’re safe. It’s generally better to schedule something short and sweet; you can always go from coffee to a movie or dinner, etc. if you are enjoying yourself, but if you don’t click you don’t want to be committed to watching the entire Ring Cycle followed by a showing of Berlin Alexanderplatz.
If you are not enjoying yourself, they seem very different from their picture, or if ANYTHING feels off to you, you are allowed to bail. IT IS OKAY TO NOT LIKE SOMEONE AND TO BAIL, EVEN IF IT SEEMED LIKE YOU WOULD LIKE THEM/YOU EXCHANGED A LOT OF MESSAGES/THEY MIGHT BE SAD.
I know I was yelling.
IT IS OKAY TO BAIL THIS IS A NO-PRESSURE SITUATION.
And whatever happens with the person is okay as long as it is okay with you and okay with them and you feel safe and comfortable and happy. If you are a fuck-on-the-first-date kind of person and they are also this kind of person and you are all about the safer sex and communication, that is okay. If you are a “Hey, I need a long time to get to know someone before I touch them” person that is okay. If you are a “I am not feeling any romantic or sexual pull here, but I’d like to hang out more and get to know each other as friends,” that is okay. If you are a “I need to get to know someone as a friend before romance or touching is even on the table” person, that is also okay, as is “I want to make it really clear that this is a potential friend-date, not a date-date. Is that okay?”
However you roll is okay, as long as you are honest about your needs & expectations and give the other person room to express their needs & expectations safely. Finding out how your needs & expectations mesh is part of the good part of getting to know someone, and if they don’t mesh, a 20-minute coffee date isn’t going to bankrupt anyone or be the end of the world. There is absolutely no benefit into convincing someone to date an insincere version of yourself who is only going through the motions of what they think people act like on dates.
Go slow.
Baby steps.
See what happens.
The other person is just a human.
Be yourself. I know it’s a cliche, but it’s the only way to go.
Be safe.
It’s okay to be nervous.
If things go well you will have lots of chances to shape & figure out how you want things to work in the future.
You & the other person can decide that slowly on a case-by-case basis.
If it’s too hard or too weird, stop.
<3,
Captain Awkward
Unofficial Queen of Online Dating, Terrifyingly Amazing Division, 1998-2012 | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Legal & Legislative
Massachusetts House Considers Car Rental Assessment Fee
April 25, 2018
• by Staff
The Massachusetts state house. Photo via Cburnett/Wikimedia.
A piece of legislation currently under consideration in Massachusetts’ House of Representatives would tack a $2 assessment fee to all vehicle rentals to directly fund police training, according to Boston 25 News.
The Chief’s Association estimates the proposal, which was the brain child of Chelsea Police Chief Brian Kyes, would generate about $7-8 million in funding; about $10 million is needed every year to provide proper training.
Kyes came up with the idea after seeing charges on his car rental bill while in California. While the proposal did not pass the State House last year, it is gaining traction this year following the murder of a police officer who was carrying out a warrant earlier this month.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is reminding vehicle owners and drivers, as well as fleet managers, to check for open recalls on their vehicles. Recalls that remain unaddressed are a safety risk, according to the agency.
Sen. Inhofe introduced an amendment to the AV START Act to establish a committee that would bring all relevant stakeholders together to discuss the control of and access to data produced by autonomous vehicles and propose policy recommendations to Congress.
The inspection came as a result of two accounts of alleged rape and murder on the ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing, which sparked national outrage and a public apology from the company’s senior management. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
_ECLIPSE OF MAN_
_NEW ATLANTIS BOOKS_
_Adam Keiper, Series Editor_
PREVIOUS VOLUMES:
_Why Place Matters:_
_Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America_
Edited by Wilfred M. McClay and Ted V. McAllister
_Merchants of Despair:_
_Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism_
Robert Zubrin
_Neither Beast nor God:_
_The Dignity of the Human Person_
Gilbert Meilaender
_Imagining the Future:_
_Science and American Democracy_
Yuval Levin
_In the Shadow of Progress:_
_Being Human in the Age of Technology_
Eric Cohen
_www.newatlantisbooks.com_
© 2014 by Charles T. Rubin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601, New York, New York 10003.
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FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Rubin, Charles T.
Eclipse of man : human extinction and the meaning of progress / by Charles T. Rubin.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59403-741-2 (ebook)
1. Philosophical anthropology. 2. Human beings—Forecasting. 3. Human evolution. 4. Human body—Technological innovations. 5. Cyborgs. 6. Biotechnology—Moral and ethical aspects. 7. Humanity. 8. Progress. I. Title.
BD450.R73 2014
128—dc23
2014022022
_CONTENTS_
_Introduction_
CHAPTER ONE: The Future in the Past
CHAPTER TWO: Discovering Inhumanity
CHAPTER THREE: Enabling Inhumanity
CHAPTER FOUR: Perfecting Inhumanity
CHAPTER FIVE: The Real Meaning of Progress
_Acknowledgments_
_Notes_
_Index_
_FOR MY PARENTS_
_I know that it is a hopeless undertaking to debate about fundamental value judgments. For instance, if someone approves, as a goal, the extirpation of the human race from the earth, one cannot refute such a viewpoint on rational grounds. But if there is agreement on certain goals and values, one can argue rationally about the means by which these objectives may be attained_.
ALBERT EINSTEIN, 1940
_Introduction_
"MANKIND WILL surely destroy itself." Whether predicted in a thunderous denunciation of our flaws or with mild worldly regret, an apocalyptic future has become a cliché. Will it be global warming or global cooling? Nuclear winter or radiation poisoning? Famine due to overpopulation, or pollution-induced sterility? These are some of the possibilities I grew up with. But today, it is becoming increasingly common to hear of another route to the demise of humanity: we will improve ourselves, becoming something new and better, and in doing so we will destroy what we are now. We have this opportunity because science and technology are giving us the power to control human evolution, turning it from a natural process based on chance to one guided by our own intelligence and will.
This idea—that human progress points toward human extinction—is held by people who go by a variety of names: transhumanists, posthumanists, extropians, advocates of H+, or singularitarians. It can be difficult to keep these terms straight, as they each represent schools of thought whose agreements and disagreements can be complex and ingrown. For the purposes of this book, all these schools of thought will be given the generic label _transhumanism_. The essential insight that defines transhumanism is, to borrow a phrase, that "We are as gods and might as well get good at it." Transhumanists argue not only that modern science and technology are giving human beings the power to take evolution into our own hands to improve the human species, and then to create some new species entirely, but also the ability to improve on all of nature. Much like the older apocalyptic visions, the transhumanists believe that mankind as we know it and nature as we know it are on their way out; but for most transhumanists, that is the deliberate goal sought, not a consequence of our hubris to be avoided. Indeed, the transhumanists believe that if we are to prevent some of the more common apocalyptic visions from becoming reality, we _must_ redesign humanity so that our ruinous flaws can be eliminated. To avoid mere destruction, we must embrace creative destruction.
Hence, the end of man can be the beginning of . . . who knows what, exactly? But, we are told, it will doubtless be some wondrous new home for intelligence, able to do things far beyond our present ability to imagine. If my baby boom generation was warned that the challenge of the future involved ensuring the continued existence of human beings in the face of all the threats posed by our own activities (and to some extent by nature itself), for the transhumanists it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine a future that has any place for us at all, except perhaps as curiosities.
Such views of the future can strike sensible people as idiosyncratic or even loony. But this book will show why that understandable first reaction should not be the whole story. There are some serious reasons why transhumanists have come to measure progress by the speed at which mankind disappears, and those reasons are more deeply rooted in mainstream ways of looking at the world than might at first be obvious. At the same time, as we shall see, there are also very good reasons to reject the transhumanist future, and to work toward a future in which, as William Faulkner put it in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature, "man will not merely endure: he will prevail." Those reasons will emerge from a serious confrontation with transhumanist ideals and the foundations on which they are built.
_SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY?_
It can be difficult to know what transhumanism amounts to—a worldview, an ideology, a movement, or some combination—but it cannot simply be dismissed as irrelevant. Doctoral dissertations and academic conferences have focused on transhumanism, and a few major universities have scholarly centers wholly devoted to exploring transhumanist ideas. Books and blogs, think tanks and online communities, documentaries and blockbuster movies have all helped to popularize those ideas. Major news outlets routinely publish reports uncritically explaining them. Meanwhile, some of Silicon Valley's best and brightest are committed transhumanists. Perhaps the most prominent promoter of transhumanism, the inventor and bestselling author Ray Kurzweil, subject of countless media profiles, was hired by Google in 2012 to serve as the company's director of engineering. Three years earlier, Kurzweil cofounded Singularity University, an institution dedicated to disseminating transhumanist ideas, with sponsorship from several high-tech companies and philanthropic foundations, as well as help from NASA. In short, many of the people who are inventing the tools of tomorrow embrace, or are at least informed by, the transhumanist vision of the day after tomorrow.
The transhumanist program to redesign humanity is often linked with the rise of the so-called "converging technologies": nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology (and sometimes robotics), and cognitive science. They are called converging technologies because each reinforces the potential that the others have for vastly increasing our ability to manipulate nature, including our own nature. And what remarkable things are now in the works! While it is still possible to make a splash by writing a book about how, in the not-so-distant future, people will regularly have sex with robots, that is hardly a revolutionary thought when for some time others have been writing books about people turning themselves into robots. The "virtual reality" expected soon to make movies and games more immersive is just a precursor to direct connections between our brains and computers, and even that is merely a prelude to uploading our minds into computers—providing us with a kind of immortality (so long as proper backups are made). The undoubted promise biotechnology holds for lengthening human lives is overshadowed by speculation concerning the ability of nanotechnology to bring the dead back to life. We are told that genetic engineering to cure disease and bioengineering to overcome disabilities are just foreshadowings of a complete re-engineering of human beings to add whatever senses, features, and capacities an individual might wish to possess.
Are such developments really likely, or even possible? Some critics point out problematic scientific or technological assumptions underlying transhumanists' ideas, or the obstacles that they might have overlooked. Critics also sometimes focus on the considerable uncertainty about what is possible, arguing that that uncertainty might in and of itself be adequate reason for ignoring those who happily anticipate an end to humanity. Without a clearer idea of what will actually be possible in the future, debating the details of various transhumanist predictions might seem like a waste of time—and surely we have more pressing things to worry about today.
But even if the converging technologies do not pan out exactly as transhumanists expect, who would really want to bet against the likelihood that science and technology will, in the future as in the past, continue to allow us to do things routinely that only a few decades previously might have seemed like mere science fiction? Indeed, it is surely likely that for a great many items on those worry-about-it-today lists, we will call upon science and technology to deal with them. That is our contemporary way of thinking about solving problems. Nanotechnologies are already being developed to deal with environmental and energy issues. The fight against terrorism has spurred advances in robotics. The most surprising human future would be one in which we did _not_ continue to accumulate scientific information and innovative technology and use them to increase our powers over nature, which includes power over ourselves.
From this point of view, it is clear that the broad transhumanist goal of overcoming the human condition does not depend on whether or not a _particular_ constellation of technologies works as expected. Indeed, we will see how some transhumanists reasonably suggest that dissatisfaction with the human condition and the wish to transcend it run deep in human thinking, and perhaps even define our humanity. If so, we may just keep trying to redesign ourselves with whatever means actually become available.
_MAN IS BORN TO TROUBLE_
Dissatisfaction with the miseries of human life—whether we are beset by them from outside or we bring them on ourselves—is nothing new. In the Bible, the Book of Job lays out the situation in a familiar way from which certain generic conclusions can be drawn. Job loses his great wealth, the external goods that make for a comfortable life. Boils afflict his body and take his health away. Job is deprived of his loved ones, and to that extent also of his future, as he fears that death is absolutely final. The only thing missing is deliberately omitted. Satan expects the balance of Job's mind will be disturbed and he will curse God. But while Job acknowledges confusion, longs for death, and contends with God, he does not explicitly curse Him.
So the human condition has long been understood to include the possibility, indeed the likelihood, of being deprived of external goods, bodily goods, and goods of the mind or spirit—and by dissatisfaction that we have such vulnerabilities. Doubtless that kind of dissatisfaction helped to prompt ancient imagination of longer lives, greater wealth, and superhuman power, as in the case of the Greek gods and heroes. These Greek gods—without the curse of mortality, with all possibility of ease and wealth and security, full of rude health and bodily vigor—are just what we might wish to be. And yet they are still restless, jealous, capricious, untrustworthy, often angry, unhappy, and quite dissatisfied. Even without the darker sides of the human condition, and without having to bear real consequences for the vast majority of their actions, they have a terrible lightness of being.
While these gods will punish those who seek to be too much like them, the gods themselves are punished for being what they are, for having some of the very goods that mortals hope for. Apparently, in the ancient view, the things we might have thought would make us happy do not guarantee it at all. Failure to appreciate this catch-22 means that imagination of something better is likely to be just another source of suffering, since what you imagine would never work out in any case. So whether you think things could be better or not, suffering is to be taken for granted. Options for dealing with this fact of life, whether among premodern polytheists or monotheists, were likewise limited. One might seek to delay suffering by proper relationships with gods or God, or to find some message or meaning in the suffering when it inevitably occurred, or simply to accept it with resignation as the cost of living. And at that, even the pious rabbis of the Talmud were known to wonder if it were better for mankind to have been created or not. When it came to a vote, they voted not.
Even if the sources of our misery have not changed over time, the way we _think_ about them has certainly changed between the ancient world and ours. What was once simply a fact of life to which we could only resign ourselves has become for us a problem to be solved. When and why the ancient outlook began to go into eclipse in the West is something scholars love to discuss, but that a fundamental change has occurred seems undeniable. Somewhere along the line, with thinkers like Francis Bacon and René Descartes playing a major role, people began to believe that misery, poverty, illness, and even death itself were not permanent facts of life that link us to the transcendent but rather challenges to our ingenuity in the here and now. And that outlook has had marvelous success where it has taken hold, allowing more people to live longer, wealthier, and healthier lives than ever before.
So the transhumanists are correct to point out that the desire to alter the human condition runs deep in us, and that attempts to alter it have a long history. But even starting from our perennial dissatisfaction, and from our ever-growing power to do something about the causes of our dissatisfaction, it is not obvious how we get from seeking to _improve_ the prospects for human flourishing to _rejecting_ our humanity altogether. If the former impulse is philanthropic, is the latter not obviously misanthropic? Do we want to look forward to a future where man is absent, to make that goal our normative vision of how we would like the world to be?
_DREAMS OF THE FUTURE AS MORAL VISIONS_
My previous book culminated in a discussion of deep ecology, a form of radical environmentalism that adopts the principle of "ecoegalitarianism": no one species has any moral priority over another. Because technological man so consistently violates this stricture, some of the deep ecologists look forward to a day when human beings will have been replaced by a new human-like species that lives more at one with nature. I criticized that view for its profoundly anti-human character, but even then I noted that the same threat could come from the direction of technological utopianism. Deliberately seeking our own extinction represents the extreme limit of how far we could want to go to overcome our given circumstances and raises in an obvious way a question that is always lurking in our rapidly changing world: What kind of future are we trying to create?
It is very likely that the world we will have in the future will not be _exactly_ the one laid out by today's transhumanists. Still, our utter dependence on continuing scientific and technological development makes it impossible to dismiss the broad goals of transhumanism outright; indeed, it is hard to imagine how we will avoid making choices that could provide building blocks for a project of human extinction. Even if in most instances these choices will actually be made with a view to the contingencies of the moment—arising from scientific curiosity, engineering creativity, military necessity, or commercial possibility—the transhumanist grand vision of the eclipse of man will be there to influence, rationalize, and justify favoring certain alternatives. It provides a narrative that takes those alternatives beyond contingency and presents them in a way that intentionally creates dissatisfaction with any merely human account of how we live and treat each other now. If it is the only story going, it is all the more likely to provide the moral meaning behind the scientific and technological future.
An argument could be made that we should avoid taking too seriously such grand visions of the future. In his book _In the Shadow of Progress_ , Eric Cohen warns, speaking specifically of genetics, that in order "to think clearly" and avoid the twin vices of over-prediction (assuming that our worst fears or greatest hopes will come to pass) and under-prediction (failure to acknowledge where present developments might go), "we must put aside the grand dreams and great nightmares of the genetic future to consider the moral meaning of the genetic present," instead exploring "what these new genetic possibilities might mean for how we live, what we value, and how we treat one another."
Cohen's caution is well taken, and the questions he poses ought indeed to be where thoughtful people begin to confront the apparently ceaseless innovations of our technological society. But it may be harder than it looks to separate how we think about the present from how we think about the future. Whether in secular or religious terms, it is not unusual for people to define "the moral meaning of the present" in terms of the future, judging what _is_ against what they hope (or fear) _will be_. After all, it is moral choice in the present that creates a future, so such visions influence how we live and treat each other today.
Cohen is doubtless right that a more sober and serious moral world would have less place for "grand dreams and great nightmares." Yet given that we cannot but be influenced by such visions, we must come to grips with them on their own terms; there have to be _reasons_ for putting them aside. People were not unaware of problems with capitalism before Marx, but Marxism became a sufficiently powerful grand vision that it had just the effect Cohen fears, blinding people to the truth of their present circumstances and of their obligations to those around them. Facing up to the defects of Marxism was easier said than done and remains an incompletely accomplished task. But one part of doing so was intellectual confrontation with it _as a grandvision_. None of the specific transhumanist visions of the future have as yet anything like the intellectual or political power of Marxism at its height. But if we are to eschew them, a similar intellectual confrontation will be necessary.
_CONFRONTING THE EXTINCTIONISTS_
It can be difficult to find a footing for criticism of transhumanism, given the broad scope of the transhumanist vision, the variety of (sometimes conflicting) transhumanist ideas, and of course the fact that we cannot yet know precisely what direction and shape transhumanist ideas will take in the real world. That is why the focus of this volume will be on transhumanism's _moral_ vision of the future, rather than its technological or scientific content. We will approach transhumanism sometimes directly and sometimes obliquely. While we will analyze the ideas of some of the most provocative and controversial transhumanist thinkers, we will also look at a wide range of other materials. We will journey from the invisibly tiny scale of molecular engineering to the far reaches of outer space. We will discuss ancient myths and recent science fiction, centuries-old paintings and Hollywood movies. And we will explore some forgotten byways, learning from long-neglected stories that can teach us about our desires for the future. Several of the chapters will also begin with prologues, short fictional stories I have written to help bring to life some of the ideas addressed in those chapters.
Why the emphasis on fiction? When compared to the works of nonfiction by experts and specialists in transhumanism, very often fictional works present us with a far more realistic and morally nuanced picture of the issues at stake in human self-overcoming. This should not surprise us. After all, excellent fiction requires a serious understanding of human things, and to tell a great story about scientific and technological possibilities, fiction writers have to start from a convincing human world—which of course is the world out of which the scientific and technological developments that will allow human redesign will _actually_ emerge. Those who start instead from the imagination of technological possibilities often suffer a kind of tunnel vision, a narrow focus that makes them assume that whatever they are writing about will be the center around which everything else will revolve. Indeed, that outlook helps to account for the moral weakness of the transhumanist project.
When you get beyond transhumanism's fascination with the technological cutting edge, it becomes evident that its hopes are not new. To separate the question of what kind of future is technologically likely from the question of what is a morally desirable future, it is useful to look closely at some of the earlier thinkers who developed ideas that are important to transhumanism—even if the transhumanists do not realize the debt they owe them. While we will not attempt to offer a complete intellectual history of such ideas, in the chapter that follows we will look at a selection of particularly influential presentations of the theme of overcoming humanity, stretching back to the late eighteenth century. As we shall see, these thinkers lay down some of the key foundations upon which today's transhumanists build. We turn there first in order to answer a fundamental question: Why would anyone think that human extinction is a good thing?
_CHAPTER ONE_
_The Future in the Past_
THE ASPIRATIONS of transhumanism are not entirely new because the human desires to change unsatisfactory aspects of our lives or to extend our powers are not new. Yet these deeper, perduring aspirations have gained a new force in the modern age, as the world has come increasingly to be defined by the ability of modern science and technology to change it significantly. It has become possible to think seriously about progress, about what it would mean if these achievements were increasingly to shape our lives, building one on another.
Progress does not inevitably have to point to the kind of future transhumanists envision. Science fiction authors, and others who think about the future in less overtly fictional ways, have had no trouble thinking about some pretty remarkable and very distant futures in which humanity persists in an eminently recognizable form. This does not represent a mere failure of imagination on the part of these futurists; in some ways, it arguably takes even more imagination to depict a future in which mankind has survived without becoming radically different.
To understand why the transhumanists believe progress requires human extinction, we can study some of their intellectual forebears—authors who, while not all widely remembered today, were in their own time influential on the way people understood where science and technology might be taking us. We begin with one of the greatest of Enlightenment prophets of progress, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, the French aristocrat known as the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794).
Condorcet was a mathematician and philosopher, an abolitionist and advocate of women's equality and religious toleration, an admirer and biographer of Voltaire, an economic liberal, and a genial enthusiast—an embodiment, in short, of all things enlightened. A prominent public intellectual, he was "one of the few Enlightenment thinkers to witness the [French] Revolution and to participate fully in its constitutional aftermath. . . . He was, in short, an outstanding disciple of the Enlightenment, uniquely located at the center of great events." A leader in the early days of the French Revolution, he was forced into hiding as the political winds shifted. Concealed in the house of one Madame Vernet in 1793–94, he wrote his most influential work, a little book called _Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind_. He was eventually arrested and thrown in prison, where he died the day after his arrest, under circumstances that "have been the subject of much speculation ever since." But his final great work was published the next year, and it became a landmark of Enlightenment thinking and would shape how generations understood the idea of progress.
In the book, Condorcet is convinced that the progress of reason has gone too far to allow any future lapse into barbarism, but he is still chagrined at how little progress has been made to increase human happiness. "The friend of humanity," he writes, "cannot receive unmixed pleasure but by abandoning himself to the endearing hope of the future." And what a future Condorcet expects it to be:
May it not be expected that the human race will be meliorated by new discoveries in the sciences and arts, and, as an unavoidable consequence, in the means of individual and general prosperity; by farther progress in the principles of conduct, and in moral practice; and lastly by the real improvement of our faculties, moral, intellectual and physical, which may be the result either of improvement of the instruments which increase the power and direct the exercise of these faculties, or of the improvement of our natural organization itself?
How is this "improvement of our faculties" and "natural organization" to take place? Growing liberty, equality, and prosperity within nations and among nations, Condorcet writes, will raise the general level of instruction, and that in itself will improve human ability. More instruction will in turn produce more knowledge, and Condorcet expects that as we come to understand the world better and improve our ability to teach that understanding, what once might have required genius to uncover or comprehend can become a subject of general knowledge. The result is that we advance the starting point for yet further attainments in the arts and sciences, which in turn increases our powers of action—an upward spiral of enlightenment. As a result, better food, better sanitation, and better medicine will extend the human lifespan, as will "the destruction of the two most active causes of deterioration, penury and wretchedness on the one hand, and enormous wealth on the other." Likewise, Condorcet foresees that "contagious disorders" will be brought under control, as well as occupational and environmental illness. The net result:
Would it even be absurd to suppose this quality of melioration in the human species as susceptible of an indefinite advancement; to suppose that a period must one day arrive when death will be nothing more than the effect of extraordinary accidents, or of the slow and gradual decay of the vital powers; and that the duration of the middle space, of the interval between the birth of man and this decay, will itself have no assignable limit? Certainly man will not become immortal; but may not the distance between the moment in which he draws his first breath, and the common term when, in the course of nature, without malady or accident, he finds it impossible any longer to exist, be necessarily protracted?
Despite his denial of the possibility of immortality, Condorcet expects "that the mean duration of life will for ever increase." It is one of the "laws of nature" that living things are subject to "perfectibility or deterioration." The breeding of animals already shows that we could improve our own physical capacities and senses, but perhaps our "quality of melioration" suggests that a good deal more is possible for us by other means as well. Hence Condorcet wonders whether better-educated parents might not transmit the superior "organization" they have achieved directly to their children.
Condorcet's vision of the future, so familiar to those of us in the West who live it on a daily basis, is very much a reflection of the project laid out more than a century earlier by the English philosopher Francis Bacon for "the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Condorcet sees how the increase of our power over nature will soften the hard edges of the human condition by improving the material conditions of life, which will allow at the same time an improvement in the moral conditions. He adds an intimation of accelerating progress; one generation can build on the work of another. A smarter and healthier generation sets the stage for even greater achievement by the next generation. He may have hedged on the question of immortality, but as we shall see, not everyone who came after him was so modest.
Condorcet's thesis—that mankind would improve and expand, growing wiser and healthier and much longer-lived—soon received a powerful rebuttal. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was a political economist whose _Essay on the Principle of Population_ explicitly attacked Condorcet's depiction of progress. Malthus believed that finite resources limit what human beings can ever hope to accomplish, and that because human reproduction always races ahead of available food, our future holds great misery and scarcity. Malthus's ideas influenced many fields, including biology, where Charles Darwin (1809–1882) adapted them to help explain the workings of evolution, a kind of natural progress caused by competition for limited resources. Through to our own day, much of the debate about progress has arisen from tensions among these three men's ideas: Condorcet's optimism about human perfectibility, the Malthusian problem of resource scarcity, and the Darwinian conception of natural competition as a force for change over time. The transhumanists, as we shall see, reconcile and assimilate these ideas by advocating the end of humanity.
_THE INVENTION OF IMMORTALITY_
In 1872, the British author and adventurer William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) revisited the project of progress that Condorcet had laid out. Reade, born in Scotland, was a failure as a novelist but had modest success as an African explorer and war correspondent. He was in correspondence with Darwin, who is said to have used in _The Descent of Man_ (1871) some information from Reade's expedition to West Africa. While it seems like in his short life Reade never quite lived up to his own expectations for himself, his attempt at a universal history—an 1872 book called _The Martyrdom of Man_ —was once highly regarded. W. E. B. Du Bois, Cecil Rhodes, H. G. Wells, and George Orwell all found reasons to praise it. Perhaps even the character Sherlock Holmes was a fan: in _The Sign of the Four_ , Holmes says to Watson, "Let me recommend this book—one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade's _Martyrdom of Man_. I shall be back in an hour." From its original publication to 1910 the book went through eighteen editions in England and seventeen in the United States; one can only imagine that many a Baker Street Irregular has felt compelled to track it down.
_The Martyrdom of Man_ began, Reade says, as an effort to give the hitherto neglected story of "Inner Africa" its due place within European history. But in the writing, the book became very much more: an effort to place human history within a larger natural history that eventually takes Reade right back to the development of the solar system and the origins of life. He adopts his own version of a Darwinian perspective, along with the theories about a geologically dynamic Earth, which were still rather recent in his day. Reade's naturalism is particularly deployed in extensive efforts to provide non-supernatural explanations for the rise of religions.
But there is one crucial aspect of his argument that distinguishes it from most similar presentations in our own day: Reade believes that nature is purposive—and indeed, that something like a cunning of nature is evident in human history. That is to say, human activities like war and religion, or conditions like inequality, serve developmental purposes within a natural scheme of things beyond what is intended by the human beings participating in those activities. "Thus when Nature selects a people to endow them with glory and with wealth her first proceeding is to massacre their bodies, her second, to debauch their minds. She begins with famine, pestilence, and war; next, force and rapacity above; chains and slavery below. She uses evil as the raw material of good; though her aim is always noble, her earliest means are base and cruel. But, as soon as a certain point is reached, she washes her black and bloody hands, and uses agents of a higher kind."
To put it another way, Reade believes that there is a natural imperative for higher abilities and capacities to grow out of lower ones: "The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness. Loyalty and piety, the reverential virtues, are developed from filial love. Benevolence and magnanimity, the generous virtues, from parental love. The sense of decorum proceeds from the sense of cleanliness; and that from the instinct of sexual display." Reade's claim that the higher derives from the lower does not just apply to human beings. It is a characteristic of life itself, indeed a characteristic of matter, which he regards as inseparable from mind.
We ought not to think there is anything degrading about thus understanding the higher in light of the lower, Reade argues. Indeed, his reductionism opens the door to remarkable possibilities:
It is Nature's method to take something which is in itself paltry, repulsive, and grotesque, and thence to construct a masterpiece by means of general and gradual laws; those laws themselves being often vile and cruel. This method is applied not only to single individuals, but also to the whole animated world; not only to physical but also to mental forms. And when it is fully realised and understood that the genius of man has been developed along a line of unbroken descent from the simple tendencies which inhabited the primeval cell, and that in its later stages this development has been assisted by the efforts of man himself, what a glorious futurity will open to the human race! It may well be that our minds have not done growing, and that we may rise as high above our present state as that is removed from the condition of the insect and the worm.
That we can assist in our own uplift and greatly transcend what we are today is crucial to Reade's picture of the future, as it is to today's transhumanists. In the natural order of things, the individual human life has limited potential, precisely because by nature we are parts of a whole with at least potentially greater significance:
As the atoms are to the human unit, so the human units are to the human whole. . . . Nature does not recognise their individual existence. But each atom is conscious of its life; each atom can improve itself in beauty and in strength; each atom can therefore, in an infinitesimal degree, assist the development of the Human Mind. If we take the life of a single atom, that is to say of a single man, or if we look only at a single group, all appears to be cruelty and confusion; but when we survey mankind as One, we find it becoming more and more noble, more and more divine, slowly ripening towards perfection.
That Reade believes mankind is "slowly ripening towards perfection" implies that he is tolerably certain he understands the immediate project that faces humanity, and at least some of its longer-term consequences. Although he claims that he does not mean to suggest that humanity will ever understand the ultimate purpose of creation, he feels confident enough to assert that man was
not sent upon the earth to prepare himself for existence in another world; he was sent upon earth that he might beautify it as a dwelling, and subdue it to his use; that he might exalt his intellectual and moral powers until he had attained perfection, and had raised himself to that ideal which he now expresses by the name of God, but which, however sublime it may appear to our weak and imperfect minds, is far below the splendour and majesty of that Power by whom the universe was made.
By the power of science rather than prayer, Earth, "which is now a purgatory, will be made a paradise." The genuinely "Sacred Cause" is "the extinction of disease, the extinction of sin, the perfection of genius, the perfection of love, the invention of immortality, the exploration of the infinite, the conquest of creation."
So by making men mortal and immoral, nature points humanity in the direction of immortality and morality so long as we exercise our intelligence. Reade could already see signs of progress in this direction: "Life is full of hope and consolation; we observe that crime is on the decrease, and that men are becoming more humane. The virtues as well as the vices are inherited; in every succeeding generation the old ferocious impulses of our race will become fainter and fainter, and at length they will finally die away." Delusions about an immortal soul will only stand in the way of such efforts; Christianity, which Reade treats under general headings such as "Religion" and "superstition," will have eventually done the work intended of it as a tool of nature, and at that point can and must be destroyed, for it is in the nature of these tools to become obstructions once they have brought life to the next level. While human beings may never rival the great Creator of all things, there is a long way to go before that would become an issue. Echoing Francis Bacon, Reade notes that "we can conquer Nature only by obeying her laws, and in order to obey her laws we must first learn what they are. When we have ascertained, by means of Science, the method of Nature's operations, we shall be able to take her place and to perform them for ourselves." Nature intends that we rebel against being the serfs of nature.
Having placed immortality explicitly on the agenda of the future, Reade considers space travel a necessary consequence:
Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe.
When human beings "invent" immortality we press beyond the natural order of things in which we are mere cells in a larger whole, and when we die are dead forever. In similar fashion, with space travel we will also have proven the essentially mundane character of the once-transmundane heavens. Yet Reade's imaginative assurance about the great things ahead for humanity puts in high relief the ignorance and miseries of humanity today.
These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when Science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which, even if explained to us, we could not now understand, just as the savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, steam.
This is a glorious future, one in which men will be "perfect," having the power of "what the vulgar worship as a god." But Reade recognizes—more so than did Condorcet—that this vision is not entirely consoling. In a prayer-like passage, he acknowledges that it makes the ills of the present look all the more terrible, and the past a yet darker place:
You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream; you pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth; when you turn back your eyes on us poor savages, grubbing in the ground for our daily bread, eating flesh and blood, dwelling in vile bodies which degrade us every day to a level with the beasts, tortured by pains, and by animal propensities, buried in gloomy superstitions, ignorant of Nature which yet holds us in her bonds; when you read of us in books, when you think of what we are, and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us you owe the foundation of your happiness and grandeur, to us who now in our libraries and laboratories and star-towers and dissecting-rooms and work-shops are preparing the materials of the human growth. And as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago.
The fact that he calls his book _The Martyrdom of Man_ indicates that Reade is well aware of the tragic side of his progressivism. But "in each generation the human race has been tortured that their children might profit by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come?" Until men become immortal, the only satisfaction to be found is in the superiority of the present to the past, and the chance of making one's own infinitesimal contribution to the future.
_SALVATION IN SPACE_
We turn next to another thinker who concluded early on that humanity, in order to preserve itself, would have to venture into outer space. Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829–1903), the illegitimate son of a Russian prince, was an intense but retiring Moscow librarian who was "reputed to have read all the books he catalogued." Unlike all the other figures discussed in this chapter, Fedorov was not widely known during his own lifetime. The posthumous publication of two volumes of his work did not change that situation a great deal, even though the publisher made them available free of charge, in accord with Fedorov's beliefs about property. But the quality of those who admired his work makes up for the lack of quantity: he was known and respected by both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. And Fedorov had one yet more important connection: he assisted, and some think passed his ideas on to, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, among the greatest of the pioneers of space travel.
In a work composed sometime after a famine in 1891, Fedorov writes that the "learned" have neglected their obligation to the "unlearned" to improve the conditions of their lives, particularly the lives of agricultural workers. He is mightily impressed by reports of using explosives to create rain. He regards using the tools of war for peaceful purposes as literally providential, a sign of what God expects of man. He is much more skeptical than Reade about the cunning of nature, asserting that it is "extreme childishness" to expect that the "blind force" of nature will produce just good results. It is only when human beings put their will behind their common task—to understand and control that force—that it will be turned to the good by our conscious control.
Fedorov is well aware that such control as we currently possess is far from guaranteed to be used for the benefit of mankind. What is lacking, he believes, is the necessary sense of human kinship. "Unbrotherly relations" make life the "struggle" that has hitherto been definitive of human civilization. They also lead to a thoroughgoing misunderstanding of the true meaning of progress. Progress, Fedorov claims, is not to be seen in the superiority of man over beast, the superiority of the present generation over past generations (as Reade would say), or the superiority in this generation of the young over the old. Indeed, such a picture of progress has its tragic tone because it is inherently divisive: "Progress makes fathers and ancestors into the accused and the sons and descendants into judges; historians are judges over the deceased, that is, those who have already endured capital punishment (the death penalty), while the sons sit in judgment over those who have not yet died."
In contrast, Fedorov—a devout if unconventional adherent of Russian Orthodoxy—writes that we should take our cue from "true religion," which is "the cult of ancestors, the cult of all the fathers as one father inseparable from the Triune God, yet not merged with him." On this basis Fedorov imagines the single, common task of mankind as a union of sons bent on overcoming the blind forces of nature—not only to defeat hunger, disease, and death for the living, but to achieve the resurrection of all of their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, etc. In a passage that could have been written by a number of today's transhumanists, he says, "Death has become a general organic evil, a monstrosity, which we no longer notice and no longer regard as an evil and a monstrosity." But we will learn to bring the dead back to life, "substituting resurrection for birth"; we will thereby eliminate the need for sexual reproduction, which is just another example of the blind operation of nature. We will solve hunger, too, substituting "creativity for nutrition": we will not need to eat, but will produce ourselves "out of the very basic elements into which the human body can be decomposed."
Even so, Fedorov is not unconcerned about the Malthusian problem of eventual exhaustion of resources here on Earth. He has his own, to us familiar, apocalyptic vision:
The extinction of stars (sudden or slow) is an instructive example, a terrifying warning. The growing exhaustion of the soil, the destruction of forests, distortions of the meteorological process manifested in floods and droughts—all this forebodes 'famines and plagues' and prompts us to heed the warning. Apart from a slowly advancing end, we cannot be certain whether a sudden catastrophe may not befall the Earth, this tiny grain of sand in the vastness of the Universe.
For such reasons resurrection will not suffice; the exploration of outer space is also absolutely necessary to prepare the "future homes of the ancestors." God has arranged that "the Earth itself has become conscious of its fate through man" and this consciousness would be useless were we simply to stand by and observe "the slow destruction of our home and graveyard" at the hands of purposeless nature. Rather, "God is the king who does everything for man but also through man" and he intends that humanity not be "idle passengers" but "the crew of its terrestrial craft"—a remarkable prefiguration of the space-age/environmentalist idea of "Spaceship Earth."
The reasons for developing space travel transcend the merely practical necessities of overcoming resource exhaustion ("the economic problem posed by Malthus") and finding a place for resurrected ancestors. Space travel will also deeply affect our moral nature. Is it more fantastic, Fedorov asks, to believe in the Christian understanding of heaven and the afterlife—"to create a moral society by postulating the existence of other beings in other worlds and envisioning the emigration thither of souls, the existence of which cannot be proven"—or to believe that we might visit other worlds ourselves someday? Moreover, to "inhabit all heavenly bodies" would
unite all the worlds of the Universe into an artistic whole, a work of art, the innumerable artists of which, in the image of the Triune Creator, will be the entire human race . . . attaining divine perfection in the cause, the work of restoring the world to the sublime incorruptibility it had before the fall. Then, united, science and art will become ethics and aesthetics; they will become a natural universal technology of their work of art.
It is through human efforts, then, that a _cosmos_ —an ordered universe—comes to exist, rather than the purposeless _chaos_ , the mere raw materials given us by God, that exists prior to human intervention. We will see a similar point being made many times in the pages that follow.
Both Fedorov and Reade seem to assume that outer space is entirely available for human colonization. In so doing they are taking a position on the question of the existence of life on other worlds, which was in fact already much debated in their day. Developments in astronomy, geology, and biology, in particular the thinking of Darwin, were leading many to consider that there was no reason to expect Earth to be the sole abode of life—and if life could exist elsewhere, so too intelligence may have evolved. We turn to one such thinker next.
_EDIFYING ALIENS_
French astronomer and spiritualist Nicolas Camille Flammarion (1842–1925) ranks high among the great popularizers of science, particularly astronomy—the Carl Sagan of his time. Owner of a private observatory and author of some seventy books, he was particularly interested in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and was among the first to imagine it in thoroughly alien terms, an idea he presented in both his popular science writing and science fiction. A sense of his contribution can be gauged by the fact that he has craters named for him on both the moon and Mars. Into the 1960s, decades after his death, his name remained on a popular, if by that time much updated, introduction to astronomy. And he garnered all this recognition despite the fact (perhaps in his own time because of the fact?) that he considered spiritualism to rank among his scientific interests.
Writing early in the twentieth century, Flammarion articulates what is often called the "assumption of mediocrity": that there is nothing special about Earth's place in the universe, and so life likely exists elsewhere. "On what pretext could one suppose that our little globe which, as we have seen, has received no privileges from Nature, is the exception; and that the entire Universe, save for one insignificant isle, is devoted to vacancy, solitude, and death?" If outer space looks unfriendly to life at first glance, we learn even from terrestrial observation that the environment that is hostile to one form of life is favorable to another. So the fact that extraterrestrial conditions may appear hostile to life as we know it is no warrant that life is impossible.
Furthermore, Flammarion argues that extraterrestrial life will likely be different from life as we know it, perhaps with a different chemical basis and very different capabilities. Perhaps it will in some respects be superior to us. Might not nature
have given to certain beings an electrical sense, a magnetic sense, a sense of orientation, an organ able to perceive the ethereal vibrations of the infra-red or ultra-violet, or permitted them to hear at a distance, or to see through walls? We eat and digest like coarse animals, we are slaves to our digestive tube: may there not be worlds in which a nutritive atmosphere enables its fortunate inhabitants to dispense with this absurd process? The least sparrow, even the dusky bat, has an advantage over us in that it can fly through the air. Think how inferior are our conditions, since the man of greatest genius, the most exquisite woman, are nailed to the soil like any vulgar caterpillar before its metamorphosis! Would it be a disadvantage to inhabit a world in which we might fly whither we would; a world of scented luxury, full of animated flowers; a world where the winds would be incapable of exciting a tempest, where several suns of different colors—the diamond glowing with the ruby, or the emerald with the sapphire—would burn night and day (azure nights and scarlet days) in the glory of an eternal spring; with multi-colored moons sleeping in the mirror of the waters, phosphorescent mountains, aerial inhabitants—men, women, or perhaps of other sexes—perfect in their forms, gifted with multiple sensibilities, luminous at will, incombustible as asbestos, perhaps immortal, unless they commit suicide out of curiosity?
For Flammarion, the possibility of life elsewhere—indeed, life everywhere—raises the question of the ultimate destiny of human life. For it is life, he believes, not matter, that is the key to understanding the universe, yet life eventually seems to give way to mere matter; individually we are built on death and proceed unto death ourselves, and the same is true for our planet as a whole. Hence "Let no one talk of the Progress of Humanity as an end! That would be too gross a decoy." Flammarion believes that progress is the law of life, but, as Fedorov also suggested, _material_ progress alone would mean that in the end we would still fall prey to entropy itself—that each of our lives, and that human life as a whole, will be extinguished. We reject this gloomy possibility, he says, as being "incompatible with the sublime grandeur of the spectacle of the universe." So while "Creation does not _seem_ to concern itself with us," this appearance may be deceiving. He even goes so far as to ask if "distant and unknown Humanities"—that is, alien races—might not be "attached to us by mysterious cords, if our life, which will assuredly be extinguished at some definite moment here below, will not be prolonged into the regions of Eternity."
One would be hard pressed today to find a popularizer of science who, like Flammarion in this poetic and confusing passage, seems to hover between a fairly traditional notion of heaven and a suggestion of interstellar reincarnation. But he seems to have felt that our intuition that our lives cannot end had support from his astronomy: "As our planet is only a province of the Infinite Heavens, so our actual existence is only a stage in Eternal Life. Astronomy, by giving us wings, conducts us to the sanctuary of truth. The specter of death has departed from our Heaven. The beams of every star shed a ray of hope into our hearts."
For Reade and Fedorov, the prospect of a universe that can be enlivened by human action, which involves transcending the natural order even to the point of inventing immortality, gives hope and meaning to the human future. For Flammarion, on the other hand, the conclusion that alien life is already omnipresent and diverse calls attention to the parochialism of our own view of ourselves, fostering scientific imagination of beings different from and even superior to us. We see the limitations on our own lives by imagining beings with different capacities, and in that light our own limits appear simply arbitrary. Yet at the same time, the likelihood of alien life suggests to him the insignificance of brute matter. The ascendance of life that he imagines we will see in the universe as a whole opens the door to a hope for the yet greater victory for life that would be personal immortality.
_BECOMING ALIENS_
Our next thinker shared Fedorov's and Flammarion's concern about the limited prospects for material progress if we are confined to Earth, and so believed that humanity was destined to explore outer space—but that, in the long term, we would become something no longer recognizably human at all. J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) was a distinguished scientist, a major public intellectual, and an outspoken Marxist. His main contributions to science were in quantitative analysis of genetics and evolutionary biology—from which one would not necessarily adduce the humor, imagination, and charm of his popular writing. His influence was such that he helped inspire two of the greatest works of anti-utopian literature of the twentieth century: his acquaintance Aldous Huxley based some of _Brave New World_ on Haldane's ideas, and C. S. Lewis is said to have had Haldane in mind for various speeches and characters in his space trilogy.
Haldane most vividly sketched out his vision of the human future in "The Last Judgment," a piece of writing from 1927 that is part essay, part science fiction story. (Lewis considered it "brilliant, though to my mind depraved.") Haldane begins by looking at how the Earth and our sun might come to their natural ends. He soon turns to consider a theme that we will see become increasingly common, how we might destroy the Earth ourselves, imagining an account of the last millennia of human life on Earth as it might be told by a distant descendant living on Venus. The premise of this story is that as a consequence of having "ridiculously squandered" tidal power over a period of some five million years, humans have changed the moon's orbit until it comes so close to Earth that it is pulled apart, in the process making Earth uninhabitable.
While this result was long predictable, humans "never looked more than a million years ahead" so few were ever concerned with this consequence of using tidal power. Instead, in the course of their three-thousand-year-long lives, most people concentrated on "the development of personal relationships" and on "art and music, that is to say, the production of objects, sounds, and patterns of events gratifying to the individual." Natural selection having ceased, the only substantial change to humanity was "the almost complete abolition of the pain sense." Real advances in science came to a halt; rather than try to develop the human race, attention was paid to breeding beautiful flowers.
Having foreseen what was to come, however, a few did what they could to assure the existence of life elsewhere after the anticipated disaster. That is no small task as Haldane paints it; even simple steps like managing to land explorers successfully on the moon, Mars, and Venus takes a couple of million years. The technical difficulties of landing and return are compounded by the disinclination of individualistic humans to give up their long lives on what amount to suicide missions. Those who finally land alive on Mars are destroyed by sentient alien life already established there, as Flammarion might have expected. Those who land on Venus find extremely hostile environmental conditions under which humans cannot possibly survive. Efforts at further exploration are dropped for the time being.
About eight million years later, the approaching moon having disrupted earth's geology and ecosystems, a minority undertake renewed efforts to colonize Venus. "A few hundred thousand of the human race . . . determined that though men died, man should live forever." By a ten-thousand-year-long effort at selective breeding, humans create a new race that can survive on Venus. These colonists are sent out in 1,734 ships; eleven manage to land. Such life as Venus already had, inimical to the colonists, is utterly destroyed by bacteria prepared for that purpose. From that point on, the settlement of Venus proceeds apace.
Our Venusian descendants were designed by the small minority of species-minded Earthlings to share a hive mind; they do not suffer from the selfish propensity for seeking individual happiness that led to Earth's destruction. Two new senses contribute to the hive mind: at every moment they sense "the voice of the community," and they also have a sort of built-in radio that can be turned on or off at will. They are also genetically predisposed to look to the future more than the past, unlike Earthlings whose strange backward-looking propensities are illustrated not only by their failure to act in the face of their destructive tendencies, but by their religious beliefs. The Venusians' forward-looking characteristic also makes them more willing to sacrifice themselves.
The net result is that the Venusians see their potential extending far beyond anything humans ever could have accomplished; "we have settled down as members of a super-organism with no limits on its possible progress." They plan to breed a version of themselves that will be able to settle Jupiter. Foreseeing in 250 million years an improved opportunity for interstellar travel, they think they can take it "if by that time the entire matter of the planets of the solar system is under conscious control." Only a few of the millions of projectiles they send out might succeed. The Venusians are undaunted:
But in such a case waste of life is as inevitable as in the seeding of a plant or the discharge of spermatozoa or pollen. Moreover, it is possible that under the conditions of life in the outer planets the human brain may alter in such a way as to open up possibilities inconceivable to our own minds. Our galaxy has a probable life of at least eighty million million years. Before that time has elapsed it is our ideal that all the matter in it available for life should be within the power of the heirs of the species whose original home has just been destroyed. If that ideal is even approximately fulfilled, the end of the world which we have just witnessed was an episode of entirely negligible importance. And there are other galaxies.
In his commentary on his story at the end of "The Last Judgment," Haldane acknowledges that he is not really trying to predict the future—he is just engaging in an imaginative thought experiment, a "valuable spiritual exercise." The future will certainly not conform to our present ideals, but thinking about it can illuminate "our emotional attitude towards the universe as a whole" that presumably is one source of those ideals. Traditionally, that attitude has been the province of religion. But modern science has taught us that the universe is far vaster in size and possibilities than religions ever knew, and so it is necessary to start using our imaginations in connection with these new realities. In effect, then, science fiction stands in for religion. The new scale of things we can begin to imagine should call forth a greater ambition among the most creative humans to develop (and for the rest of us to cooperate in) a plan that goes beyond traditional ideas of salvation, such as the assumption that the purpose of creation is to prepare some few for "so much perfection and happiness as is possible for them."
We can "only dimly conjecture" what this plan might be, but Haldane wonders whether it might be the "emergence of a new kind of being which will bear the same relation to mind as do mind to life and life to matter." As we can already envision the end of our own world, some such transformation will be necessary. Only if the human race proves that "its destiny is eternity and infinity, and that the value of the individual is negligible in comparison with that destiny," will "man and all his works" not "perish eternally."
The tension within this edifying conclusion is not hard to spot. In Haldane's scheme, an eternal and infinite destiny can only be achieved by making man himself into one of the works of man, such that in fact _human_ beings _do_ perish eternally. Furthermore, the imagination of this superior progeny is really an exercise in elucidating all the reasons for which, by and large, we should not be missed. So Haldane's substitute for religion embodies an "emotional attitude towards the universe as a whole" which is predicated on the assumption that whatever human beings do, "man's little world will end." The real choice is between ending it ourselves and having it ended for us, or perhaps between ending it accidentally and ending it deliberately.
_MANKIND REMANUFACTURED_
Haldane may have claimed he was not trying to predict the future, but our final author certainly was—and in the process, he lays out a rather specific path toward what he calls "the progress of dehumanization," integrating many of the themes that our other authors developed.
The Irish-born J. D. Bernal (1901–1971) was, like Haldane and Flammarion, a scientist by training. He is probably best known for the development of the mathematics of X-ray crystallography, which quickly became a key technique of chemical analysis. (It was this technique that allowed the double-helix structure of DNA to be discovered, for example.) He did research that helped facilitate the D-Day landings, and made serious contributions to the sociology of science. A public intellectual of some note, Bernal was a dedicated communist and admirer of the Soviet Union; in 1953, he was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize, a prominent Soviet prize for the country's international supporters, and from 1959 to 1965 he was president of the World Peace Council, a Soviet-funded international activist group.
Bernal's first popular publication was a thin volume called _The World, the Flesh and the Devil: An Inquiry into the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul_ (1929). In it, he proposes an objective effort to predict things to come. Bernal acknowledges that this task might be easier said than done, partly because it can be difficult to distinguish prediction and desire, partly because of all the complex interactions that make the world what it is, and partly because "all evidence" points "to ever increasing acceleration of change." Nevertheless, it is reasonable to start by looking at what the trends are. Bernal projects the future in three areas: "the world," or our power in relationship to the material world; "the flesh," or our power over life, particularly our own bodies; and "the devil," our power over our own psyches. He concludes his volume by attempting to see what might come of developments in these three areas taken together.
In each realm Bernal expects remarkable things. His chapter "The World" focuses primarily on "the conquest of space." He anticipates some developments that we have only recently achieved, like the use of huge sails to propel ships using solar wind, but his most extended discussion is of what it would take to create ten-mile-diameter spherical habitations with tens of thousands of inhabitants. With the necessary propulsion systems added, these communities in space would eventually allow for the long voyages that interstellar travel would require—voyages that will be necessary as our sun begins to fail.
The chapter "The Flesh" starts from the bald assertion that "modern mechanical and modern chemical discoveries have rendered both the skeletal and metabolic functions of the body to a large extent useless." Bernal expects the increasing substitution of mechanical for biological systems in the human body, with all the augmentation of physical and sensory abilities that implies—for example, "we badly need a small sense organ for detecting wireless frequencies." People have always wanted longer lives and more opportunities "to learn and understand." But achieving such goals is now in sight:
Sooner or later some eminent physiologist will have his neck broken in a super-civilized accident or find his body cells worn beyond capacity for repair. He will then be forced to decide whether to abandon his body or his life. After all it is brain that counts, and to have a brain suffused by fresh and correctly prescribed blood is to be alive—to think. The experiment is not impossible; it has already been done on a dog and that is three-quarters of the way towards achieving it with a human subject.
Bernal expects that once some men were thus transformed, they would be most able at transforming others. Humans will have a "larval" stage of six to twelve decades in our current bodies, then we will pass into "chrysalis, a complicated and rather unpleasant process of transforming the already existing organs and grafting on all the new sensory and motor mechanisms." Of course, unlike a butterfly, the end result of the human transformation will be capable of constant upgrade and modification—and indeed there will be no one form into which people will change themselves in any case, as the mechanical body will be readily customizable.
"Normal man is an evolutionary dead end; mechanical man, apparently a break in organic evolution, is actually more in the true tradition of a further evolution." Bernal envisions each of these mechanical men as looking something like a crustacean, with the brain protected in a rigid framework and a system of appendages and antennae attached for sensing and manipulating the world. He freely acknowledges that, to us, these beings would appear "strange, monstrous and inhuman." But he claims that such monsters are "only the logical outcome of the type of humanity that exists at present."
In any case, beings so designed would quickly become progressively more different from us. Their brains would be readily linked together electronically to become a kind of group mind. Thus, while the original individual organic brain itself would still have a limited lifespan (perhaps three hundred to a thousand years, Bernal estimates), sharing its feelings, knowledge, and experience with other brains would be a way of "cheating death." Bernal ends the chapter with the speculation that these inhuman beings would invent whole new materials and forms of life out of which to constitute themselves, so that even organic brain cells could be replaced with more diffuse materials with more complex interconnections, thus ensuring itself "a practical eternity of existence." They might transcend physical embodiment altogether, becoming completely etherealized, atoms in space communicating by radiation, ultimately perhaps resolving entirely into light. "That may be an end or a beginning, but from here it is out of sight."
These first chapters lay out what would become an agenda for decades of science fiction and a fair amount of actual research and development. The next chapter, "The Devil," is one that Bernal himself expressed dissatisfaction with nearly four decades after the book was published; he admitted that it was too much written under the influence of Freud. But the issue it discusses remains one that is debated, even if not precisely on Bernal's terms. The main question is whether continued progress in science will be able to overcome the problem posed by the new (that is, Freudian) insight that "the intellectual life" is not "the vocation of the rational mind, but . . . a compensation . . . a perversion of more primitive, unsatisfied desires." That is, science requires an ongoing supply of "perverted individuals capable of more than average performance." Should our psychology and our power over nature combine to make the satisfaction of our desires the norm, we could settle into a "Melanesian" life of "eating, drinking, friendliness, love-making, dancing and singing, and the golden age may settle permanently on the world" without any desire for further progress at all. (Note the similarity here with Haldane's flower breeders.) On the other hand, it could also be that we might be able to live lives that are both "more fully human and fully intellectual" if "a full adult sexuality would be balanced with objective activity."
The question of whether all this progress will eliminate the desire for further progress has another side as well, given the "distaste" that Bernal acknowledges he feels, and others are likely to feel, about what the future holds "especially in relation to the bodily changes." It may even be that people will not have a chance to get used to such changes gradually, given the accelerating rate of change. Bernal does not pretend to predict whether repugnance, combined with satisfaction, will ultimately triumph over the increasing power that will be in the hands of those who advance the cause of science and mechanization. But one result might be the "splitting of the human race" into two branches: a stagnant because "fully balanced humanity" and another branch "groping unsteadily beyond it." Seeing how that outcome might arise is the point of the book's concluding chapters.
Bernal's basic thought here is that the mechanical men he envisions would be very well suited for colonizing and exploiting space, as their life-support requirements would be far less than what human beings require and their capacities would be wider. He imagines these transhumans as "connected together by a complex of ethereal intercommunication" and spread out across space and time. But he is brought up short by the recognition that the human mind had hitherto "evolved always in the company of the human body." The radical change he anticipates to "the delicate balance between physiological and psychological factors" will create "dangerous turning points and pitfalls." What will happen to the sexual drive, for example? Perhaps it will require yet more thoroughgoing sublimation into research or, even more likely, into "aesthetic creation." As these new beings come ever more completely to understand the world around them, and ever more capable of manipulating it, their primary purpose is likely to become determining "the desirable form of the humanly-controlled universe which is nothing more nor less than art."
After much consideration about how the possibility of "permanent plenty" might transform society, Bernal settles on the thought that the future is likely to hold _de facto_ or even _de jure_ rule by a scientific elite that could be the first stable aristocracy. This elite would have the means to assure that the masses engage in "harmless occupations" in a state of "perfect docility under the appearance of perfect freedom." "A happy prosperous humanity enjoying their bodies, exercising the arts, patronizing the religions, may be well content to leave the machine, by which their desires are satisfied, in other and more efficient hands."
Since Bernal thinks that those who tend the machines will increasingly be machines themselves, we now see why he thinks the human race might split into two branches. Yet whereas it seems very likely, as he has suggested, that the distinction between machine-men and men would also be the distinction between ruler and ruled, perhaps that would not have to be the case. For as Bernal notes, science depends on the supportive routine work of non-scientists, and on the recruitment from the many of the few most capable minds. Furthermore, he claims, scientists themselves tend to have a strong identification with humanity. So the first stable aristocracy could be a meritocracy that might at least recruit (or should one say harvest?) fresh brains from the most promising of humans. Still, characteristics that might bind the two groups will likely diminish with time, allowing the underlying processes producing dimorphism to hold sway. At that point it is quite possible that "the old mechanism of extinction will come into play. The better organized beings will be obliged in self-defense to reduce the numbers of the others, until they are no longer seriously inconvenienced by them." The main hope for a different outcome is once again the prospect that the more advanced beings will settle in space, leaving Earth to the old-fashioned model in "a human zoo, a zoo so intelligently managed that its inhabitants are not aware that they are there merely for the purposes of observation and experiment." So decades before today's transhumanists, Bernal predicts the survival of humanity as a curiosity (at best).
Bernal is not certain his vision will prevail, nor does he hold that the developments he lays out will produce a perfect world:
the dangers to the whole structure of humanity and its successors will not decrease as their wisdom increases, because, knowing more and wanting more they will dare more, and in daring will risk their own destruction. But this daring, this experimentation, is really the essential quality of life.
Bernal's predictions are not so millennial as Fedorov's, nor as overtly tragic as Reade's. But they do contain tensions. He recognizes that his scientifically driven "progress of dehumanization" is motivated by an ultimately unfulfillable desire for the mysterious and supernatural. Those who push the boundaries of knowledge outward will create a world that, for them at least, will be ever more prosaic, and therefore of less interest. Even if this process is infinite, it retains a Sisyphean character, and one might wonder: why bother? It turns out, however, that this "daring" effort to transcend one's time and control one's life is nothing other than an expression of life itself that is beyond our control. There is a natural fatality to our effort to control nature.
_FROM BETTER HUMANS TO BEYOND HUMANITY_
My purpose in presenting these examples of thinkers who anticipated today's transhumanism is not to suggest how these thinkers might have influenced one another, or to prove their influence on today's transhumanists. But I trust it is reasonably clear that between Condorcet and Bernal the idea of progress itself has traveled quite a distance. Where for Condorcet the friend of humanity can find reason to think that in the world to come people will be more humane to each other, when Bernal looks to the future he sees "the progress of dehumanization": human extinction at worst, and at best human irrelevance to the progressive development of intelligence and power over the natural world—an evolutionary "dead end." As we will discuss later, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, one of the founders of the World Transhumanist Association and the director of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, thinks we can have it both ways, expressing the hope that our posthuman replacements will be designed to be _more_ humane than we are. Everyone seems to agree that the kinder, gentler world that Condorcet imagines could indeed come into being; but for Haldane it would amount to a short-sighted squandering of nature's potential, while for Bernal we humans would be likely to live in it as subjects to powers so far beyond our control as to make historical aristocracies seem models of egalitarianism. Today, David Pearce, another founder of the World Transhumanist Association, cuts through the problem of needing some to rule others in order to keep them happy by suggesting that we can redesign ourselves so that we are always experiencing "a sublime and all-pervasive happiness." Condorcet's expectation that people will be better fed becomes the revolt in Fedorov and Flammarion against the "absurd" need to eat at all, while today's transhumanists likewise find it unacceptable that we eat and excrete as we do. Condorcet suggests the possibility of accelerating progress toward the conquest of nature here on Earth, but for Haldane and Bernal what is at stake is the aesthetic recreation of the universe itself. Today, inventor and author Ray Kurzweil, the most widely known of the transhumanists, wonders if posthuman superintelligence might not be able to overcome entropy itself, thereby preventing the now-expected eventual end to the possibility of life in the universe and overcoming the last challenge to the immortality that Condorcet was only willing to hint at.
There is no single arc that connects all of our authors in such a way as to account for this significant transformation in the understanding of progress. But each lays part of the foundation for the change, a foundation on which is built the edifice that is contemporary transhumanism. Let us try to identify some of the key points.
The main line of Condorcet's argument is the most familiar. Perhaps building off Rousseau's notion of human "perfectibility," Condorcet asserts that we possess a (unique?) "quality of melioration" that allows us to improve ourselves, primarily through the conquest of nature. As that project succeeds, many of the longstanding, seemingly given conditions of human life—poverty, hunger, disease, vice, and other pervasive disabilities that have stood in the way of a good human life—become problems that can be solved. By solving them, we make better human beings, human beings who are physically more fit, mentally more capable, morally improved. The rate of progress accelerates with this new starting point, but Condorcet seems to believe that people will remain human beings.
Yet Condorcet's own ideas about life extension, combined with the possibility of accelerating progress, begin to suggest something more radical. Initially life extension seems of a piece with the other improvements he speaks of. After all, as we become healthier and eat better, longer life would seem to follow as a matter of course. One could say that Condorcet is merely pointing out how we can reduce the incidence of premature death. But when he starts talking about an indefinite extension of lifespan, the door is opened to the possibility of a significantly more fundamental change in the terms of human existence. It does not seem as if Condorcet wishes to open the door very wide. Yes, he looks forward to a time when death becomes something that is chosen, but note that it is chosen "in the course of nature," as if there is in this respect at least some part of nature that human beings will not or should not master.
This limit is one that our other authors are not nearly so inclined to respect, and their overt desire for immortality is of a piece with a far stronger inclination to imagine the development out of humanity of some completely new kind of superior being. Perhaps Condorcet did not understand, or chose not to highlight, the more radical consequences of his own picture of accelerating progress. But it seems more likely that something had to be added to Condorcet in order to promote this shift in the imagination. What might that be?
First, as Fedorov explicitly highlighted, there is the Malthusian dilemma of resource scarcity. Malthus wrote in direct response to Condorcet's hopes for the future, arguing that the melioration Condorcet imagined would be self-defeating. More people living materially more comfortable lives will simply produce resource scarcity, which in turn will bring back all the ills of human life. Perpetual progress understood as an ongoing improvement in the material conditions of life for all is thus simply impossible since population will grow faster than available resources. For Fedorov, the conquest of space is in part a solution to the Malthusian dilemma of resource exhaustion, a solution that becomes the more plausible as the sense grows that the Earth is but a tiny speck in a very large universe. Of course, as the hostility of the extraterrestrial environment came to be better understood, this prospect may have seemed more daunting. But Haldane and Bernal are there with a solution to this part of the problem: the radical reconstruction of humanity in a way that makes mankind better suited for life away from Earth.
As we have seen, once you have taken that step, the promise of effectively infinite worlds in infinite space makes anything seem possible; both Haldane and Bernal take us to the very limits of the human imagination, Haldane by suggesting that all the matter in the galaxy available to life should be used by it before moving on to other galaxies, Bernal by suggesting that our distant descendants will remake the universe with a new "let there be light." Perhaps these beings that conquer space will also conquer time and entropy, a route to the eternity promised by Flammarion and the end to death promised by Fedorov.
The resource scarcity that Condorcet did not worry about implies ongoing competition among human beings rather than an ever more cooperative world, and by the late nineteenth century that ongoing competition was firmly associated with Darwinian evolution. This intellectual revolution is the second change that has pushed Condorcet's successors in a more radical direction. Condorcet could assert that living things must be on a course of either perfection or decline; human beings in the future could change, but the result would be perfected or degraded human beings. From a Darwinian point of view, as Reade highlights, why should there not be changes in the future that correspond in magnitude to the changes that produced man as we now observe him? After Darwin, it becomes possible, _if not downright necessary_ , to think that future human descendants will not be human.
Scholars disagree about whether Darwin himself conceived that the evolutionary changes that brought about human beings (and other species) should be called "progress" or merely change. There is agreement that some of his writings point in one direction, some in another. At present, the "mainstream" scholarly view is that Darwin's statements implying that there is an ascent to humanity were mere concessions to the progressive spirit of his Victorian times, and that Darwin himself understood that his principles allowed him to speak of evolutionary change but not progress. Yet there is also an impressive body of arguments and evidence to suggest that Darwin _did_ believe in evolutionary progress, so long as we take sufficient care to define what that phrase means. In either case, it seems indisputable that a great many of those who, like Reade, were influenced by Darwin's ideas _took_ him to be pointing to an evolutionary ascent to humankind. And if so, why should that process not continue to produce yet higher forms of life? After all, even the penultimate words of Darwin's _Descent of Man_ suggest that man may be excused for "feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale," which in turn may give "hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future."
Yet all of our thinkers would agree that there will be a difference between the blind evolution that produced humanity and the future evolution driven by human beings and then posthumans, precisely because our "own exertions" can now play a part. If evolution is the law of life, and at the same time if evolution has brought about human beings who can take hold of evolution and direct it as one more aspect of our control over nature, then a grand narrative of free human creativity becomes possible. Our conquest of nature is no longer a local affair but takes on a cosmic significance. For Reade, Fedorov, or Haldane's Venusians, the creation of new forms of life, the enlivening of the cosmos, is the goal of goals, the highest good. We transform the universe by transforming ourselves.
Flammarion may be the superior Darwinian here, thinking that it is at least short-sighted and at worst completely inconsistent to think that all this marvelous development of matter into life and life into intelligence should be a process confined to one planet alone. Yet he does not highlight the tougher Darwinian consequences of this line of thought. What if the cosmos is not ours to do whatever we want with, because other forms of life have already staked a claim? Haldane seems to understand the situation best of all our thinkers: he extends the realm of competition beyond our world, with the expected consequences of extraterrestrial winners (the Martians in Haldane's tale) and losers (the aboriginal Venusians). At some point, the Martians, victorious over mere human beings, will have to deal with the greater abilities of the human-created Venusians, or vice versa. Still, even if it's a harsh universe, we come to the same kind of conclusion about the imperative of creative, self-directed evolution. For we had best be prepared to meet it coming from "out there," or else (as Haldane might say) suffer the fate of the first Venusians, or indeed of earthly human life, for our folly.
Flammarion presents what is probably just the prettier side of the same coin. One might have thought that to the scientific mind _any_ life beyond Earth would be interesting enough—surely any intelligent life. But the alien forms Flammarion imagines all have some wonderful advantage over mere human beings, so wonderful as to make us look pretty grubby by comparison, "like coarse animals . . . nailed to the soil like any vulgar caterpillar." Should we not then aspire to be more like those superior alien beings? Such evolutionary fitness as human beings might exhibit is relative only to the conditions of our place and time, and perhaps (as Haldane would suggest) we are not suited well enough even for that. We should not expect to persist into the far future, or on worlds beyond our own, without becoming alien to what we are now. But here again the key point is that this change counts as progress. Haldane's Venusians are clearly presented as superior to the humans who created them, and against all squeamishness about crustaceans, Bernal would in effect have us will to become Flammarion's aliens "gifted with multiple sensibilities, luminous at will, incombustible as asbestos, perhaps immortal."
The grand narrative of material progress and self-overcoming has one final twist that again links the materialist-minded Bernal with Fedorov's faith and Flammarion's spiritualism: material progress is itself something to be overcome. Bernal imagines that the ultimate destiny of intelligence may be to resolve itself into light. Whatever that might mean, how different is it from imagining spirits that might be communicated with or resurrected into bodies? Matter can be raised up into life and life raised up into intelligence; why should there not be further extensions of the sequence, however beyond our comprehension they might be? The progress of dehumanization runs from vile bodies to healthy bodies to redesigned bodies to no bodies at all.
_THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS_
This last transformation into the luminous, if not the numinous, raises in the most acute form a problem has become increasingly obvious as we have proceeded through these lines of thought. In the lead-up to one of his most widely quoted aphorisms, philosopher George Santayana says,
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement; and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
As Santayana suggested, the kind of "absolute" change in the human being imagined by Bernal and Haldane, along with today's transhumanists, really precludes the use of the term "progress." It becomes harder and harder for our authors to imagine what will be retained, hence where change will start from. And if the rate of change is accelerating, that simply means we are headed the more rapidly from one unknown to another, while the recognizable old standards for judging whether the changes are progressive are overthrown along with our humanity.
In today's world, a vision of progress like that laid out by Condorcet remains very much alive. The easing of human life through universal education, reduction in disease, increased sanitation, improved agricultural productivity, and a rising material standard of living is an established fact for much of the world, and the main questions involve how most rapidly and "sustainably" to extend these benefits more widely and how to improve upon what we already have. Likewise, we take increased life expectancy for granted, and worry only about continuing a well-established trend.
Beyond that, even though the thinkers we have examined did not anticipate some of the technological advances that today's transhumanists hang their hopes on—none foresaw the rise of digital computing, for example—some elements of the dehumanization they envisioned are already in place around us. Genetic engineering means that we would not necessarily require generations of careful breeding to create our Venusians. The "conquest of space" is in principle at least an established fact, and if the prospects for space colonies, planetary exploration, and interstellar travel still seem distant, that is less because of what we don't know or can't do than because of how we choose to arrange our funding priorities. Increasingly sophisticated and intimate man-machine interfaces are being developed; we are seeing impressive, if admittedly still early, advances in artificial ears, eyes, and limbs. We may not yet have the organ that Bernal imagined for detecting radio waves, but we do have t-shirts that can display the presence of wi-fi signals.
It is not just what we _do_ that links us with the authors we have looked at, but what we _expect_. We don't yet know there is alien life, let alone intelligence, but the idea is widely accepted by scientist and layman alike—if not always for the same reasons. It is likewise a commonplace that we live in a world with an accelerating rate of change.
We might not yet normally place these ideas and achievements within a framework of efforts to overcome the merely human—but they are there to be placed. The eclipse of man is underway. However amazing our present might look from the perspective of a not-so-distant past, there remain those who look down on the human because they can imagine something far better, whether it involves immortality or resurrection of the dead or brains transplanted into machines. Even if, as Bernal warns, we should also be wary of thinking that the future is going to work out just as we envision it today, it would certainly be the height of folly to assume whatever in these visions has not yet happened could never happen. Some (like Malthus) would have said that what we have today is impossible.
The main home for the hopes and fears that define the eclipse of man as we have examined it from the past may be transhumanism, but as we will see in the chapters that follow they are also at work elsewhere—including in the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence, to which we turn next. The general public is fascinated by hostile alien invaders. The scientists who look for extraterrestrials are fascinated by contact with advanced, benevolent intelligence. Some transhumanists would be surprised if there are any aliens at all. All these prospects are working out the consequences of ideas about human-alien relations that we have seen in this chapter. The differences among them are not so great as they might first appear.
_CHAPTER TWO_
_Discovering Inhumanity_
* * *
_PROLOGUE: ONLY CONNECT_
WHEN SHE accepted a postdoc position to be part of the team decoding the first message ever received from extraterrestrials, Camille never expected that the effort would occupy the better part of her career—would really _be_ her career. That was actually the third surprise about the message. The first was that it came in on a tightly focused, extremely powerful beam of modulated UV light, when most of those engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) still worked on radio telescopes detecting microwave radiation. At first, the speculation was that whoever was sending the message must be quite technologically advanced to have lasers on a scale that humans were just beginning to think about. But the intensive study of the alien sun that followed showed it to be far more active than Earth's sun; the frequency and intensity of solar storms that Earth astronomers inferred from the data would have made radio communication on their planet so unreliable as to be nearly worthless. Unlike humans, they had probably started and stayed with light as they developed long-distance communication.
The second surprise was that the message was not very user-friendly. It was at least pretty clearly divided into "words," and statistical analyses of their frequency looked a whole lot like what you got from similar analyses of human documents. But beyond that, it was not clear the aliens had considered the audience. Along with everybody else interested in SETI, Camille had given a good deal of thought to how she would design a message that started simple and moved on to more complex topics. At first, the assumption was that the easy stuff had been lost at the undetected beginning of the transmission. After nine months—a dauntingly long letter!—it was clear the message was repeating with no obvious primer at the start. That assumption had to be put aside.
Of course, at the beginning _everybody_ was interested. The discovery galvanized and monopolized media attention at least as much as Sputnik and the moon landing. Like most others in her field, deep in her heart Camille had thought that "first contact" would be . . . well, like a revelation from on high. It would change everything. And the fuss at the beginning had done nothing to dissuade her. Interviews, op-eds, news analysis persisted for months. There were two "instant books" on the market within weeks; a couple of the senior people on Camille's team were still living down some of the things they were quoted as saying in those early days. As transmitted, the signal was invisible to the human eye, but it was tuned down, analogized and transformed, mixed and remixed by countless artists in visual and audio forms, bits and pieces of it showing up in popular music and on t-shirts. Camille's prior interest in SETI put her well ahead of the game; there was a huge "catchup" increase in interest in astronomy, optical engineering, linguistics, mathematics, and even astrobiology now that it was a real discipline. A predictable glut of Ph.D.'s in all these areas followed. Even the shifts in government funding for sciences couldn't produce ways to employ them all, although that's what funded Camille's early years. The space program was reinvigorated, two sports teams abandoned Native American names in favor of "ALIENS." Once the message was complete, three "unauthorized" translations were out within months. The only one that didn't make it into print didn't have to, as the author "proved" on his website that the message was none other than the King James Bible.
At the time, Camille had been too busy and too much on the inside to appreciate fully how the message was like a great rock dropped into a small pond. Ripples spread widely, reflected back on each other, interfered and formed a complex pattern. But as time went by and the message remained enigmatic, the disturbance in society at large faded; life returned pretty much to normal. A rump group of enthusiasts stayed focused on translating the message, and some people spent what seemed like all their time trying to show the whole thing was a hoax ("They say the message is transmitted on a light-beam, but YOU CAN'T SEE IT!"), but the vast majority of the world's population went on exactly as before. That humans now knew there was intelligence "out there" became a historical fact among historical facts, part of the background against which the human drama continued to play pretty much as usual. Despite her own dedication to the project, Camille concluded that the discovery really was not, as some had claimed it would be, "the most significant event in the modern history of mankind" or still less "likely . . . the most earthshaking event in human history" or "perhaps _the_ greatest discovery in scientific history." It certainly didn't "change everything," or "cause the most dramatic shift in the status of our human species that has ever occurred in history," which Camille came to count as her fourth surprise. It was not yet her last.
As the academic work of decoding went on and on and on, various schools of thought formed, competing journals were established on the basis of divergent assumptions, there were conferences you went to and those you didn't. Camille did her best to be a uniter (consistent with keeping favor with her funders) and thank goodness the factions never lost contact with each other entirely, so when her final breakthrough came, nobody ended up a dissident prisoner of his own previous assumptions.
No, the last surprise was not that everybody essentially agreed about what the message said, it was rather the message itself. It proved to be a comprehensive history of the aliens' world (the science parts proved key to the translation, of course). They wanted us to know where they had been, because they were concerned about where they were going. Their admitted flaws and imperfections were becoming increasingly dangerous, they thought, as their powers over their world (they didn't seem to have a concept of "nature") grew. Camille was the one who had first understood how the message began and ended, and it still chilled her when she looked back on it: "Can you help us?"
* * *
WE SAW in the previous chapter how human re-engineering is related to ideas about space exploration—and has been at least since Winwood Reade's popular 1872 book—and to speculation about alien life in space. The link continues to be significant today in the writings of prominent transhumanists, but with a new twist. Ray Kurzweil has concluded that "it is likely (although not certain)" that there are no alien civilizations. Nick Bostrom has written that "in the search for extraterrestrial life, no news is good news. It promises a potentially great future for humanity."
Why are transhumanists invested in the idea that we are alone in the universe? Kurzweil and Bostrom each draw their conclusions following out a similar logic. Stars and galaxies are, in comparison with the time it took for life and civilization to evolve on Earth, very old. There would have been plenty of time before we arrived on the scene for an alien civilization to have come into being. So such an alien civilization could be thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years "ahead" of us in terms of its science and technology. Even with the great distances involved, it has been estimated that an alien civilization—one more advanced than ours, but not unimaginably more advanced—could colonize our galaxy in perhaps 60 to 300 million years. From a cosmic perspective, that is a relatively short time. If an alien civilization were to evolve in the way some transhumanists believe we will evolve, achieving great powers to manipulate matter and travel great distances, then surely it would have left its mark on the cosmos. Yet we see no evidence for such a thing. So, as the great physicist Enrico Fermi is said to have asked, where are they? Kurzweil and Bostrom plainly doubt the aliens are there to be found. To understand more fully transhumanist hopes and fears about alien civilizations, it is necessary to take a few steps back, and recall some of the earlier links between aliens and the eclipse of man.
As we saw in Chapter One, human space travel has been proposed as a way to solve the supposed Malthusian consequences of any Condorcet-like vision of material progress. If ever more people are going to be leading longer and wealthier lives, then they will require ever more of the finite resources upon which those lives depend. If we cannot do ever more with ever less, the argument goes, then either human civilization will come crashing down or the resource base will need to be expanded. Space travel, exploration, and settlement, however technically formidable, is conceptually a familiar solution—especially for a civilization, like ours, that was profoundly shaped by its own history of exploration, colonization, and expanding frontiers. So space exploration can seem like a way to protect and extend humanity. However, the genuinely "alien" conditions that prevail in space and on other worlds put a premium on imagining intelligent beings better suited to these environments. Having learned from Darwin that evolutionary diversity is a product of changing environmental circumstances over time, we can readily imagine how evolution might be deliberately helped along to our own advantage. Think of Haldane's humans, bred to select for qualities conducive to survival on Venus, or Bernal's attempt to imagine mechanical beings built for hostile extraterrestrial conditions.
So some human beings _become_ aliens to explore and settle new worlds. Bernal acknowledges that this result may be problematic from the point of view of any who choose to remain merely human. Perhaps there is some further reflection of that problem in the complete equanimity with which Haldane's Venusians report the end of humanity on Earth—the humanity that had created them and made Venus habitable for them.
But there is an additional problem. If we can expect to become alien and indifferent to _ourselves_ , what if the universe is _not_ waiting for us to enliven it? What if Flammarion is correct, and life establishes itself at the slightest opportunity? If there is alien life, then why should there not be alien intelligence? And if there is alien intelligence, why would it not eventually find itself facing the same limits and opportunities that, based on Malthusian assumptions, would drive us into space? If, as Haldane saw, _we_ could become alien invaders faced with an imperative to destroy or be destroyed, why shouldn't extraterrestrials behave in exactly the same way?
Of course, based on complete ignorance, we can say anything we wish about alien motives and abilities, a freedom much employed by those who write both fictional and speculative non-fiction works on this topic. So it is not hard to find grounds for happier outcomes, starting from skepticism about the Malthusian dilemma itself. But for our present purposes, the significant point is this: concerns about hostile aliens do not have to arise from commonly identified factors like primitive xenophobia or Cold War paranoia. They do not have to depend on any quirk of human history or psychology. As we have seen, when we imagine dangerous aliens we are imagining beings that are acting no better and no worse than we would act if we fulfill the hopes articulated by today's transhumanists.
Starting from this worldview, then, it is not immediately obvious that contact with aliens would be a good idea. Leave aside all prospects for tragic cultural misunderstandings; on the essential point we may understand each other only too well: they may not come in peace. Unless we are confident we would have the upper hand in the relationship, it might well be thought best to lay low, cosmically speaking.
_MAKING FRIENDS WITH ALIENS_
After World War II, advances in technology made it possible for the first time to think seriously about what it would mean to communicate across interstellar distances. Thanks to science fiction, the theme of hostile aliens was by then well established in the popular culture. So those who were advocating the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) had a problem: why would we want to have contact with unfriendly aliens? The first efforts at SETI, led by the American astronomer Frank Drake in 1960, were just a matter of listening with a radio telescope for what was hoped might be the background chatter of alien intelligence—the interstellar equivalent of tuning a radio to eavesdrop on conversations among truckers, or police, or ham-radio users. But those first efforts were rather quickly followed by deliberate attempts to send out contact signals of our own, over and above the radio and television broadcast signals that were already leaking into outer space.
Fortunately for the SETI pioneers, there was a readily available reason _not_ to worry about giving ourselves away. By the 1960s, the prospects for other intelligent life in our own solar system were looking bleak, and the distance to the nearest stars provided a comforting buffer. Messages traveling at the speed of light would take more than four years to reach even just the star nearest to our sun. Any back-and-forth communication given this limit would be difficult enough—likely a project of generations, given that our part of the galaxy is not very densely populated by stars in comparison to some other parts. Visits in person, including marauding fleets of star cruisers, seemed, to say the least, highly implausible. So the scenario of aliens exploiting our world for resources to solve their Malthusian problems did not look plausible. We could reach out safely.
There was only one catch. Many of the supporters of SETI believed that any contact we would make would be with aliens more scientifically and technologically advanced than we. There is a simple logic to this familiar belief. Our ability to send and receive signals at interstellar distances is still new and remains quite limited. It would be impossible for us to detect signals from anybody much _less_ advanced than we ourselves, since even to detect and distinguish the kinds of signals that we could send out would be difficult or impossible for us. Furthermore, the existence of human intelligence at all on Earth, let alone human intelligence with the technology to begin to contemplate interstellar communication is, cosmically speaking, a very, very recent event indeed. Since on the cosmic clock there has been ample time for life and intelligence to have developed elsewhere long before humanity even began to emerge on the scene, at whatever point we might stand on some general scale of abilities and intelligence, any beings we might contact are likely to be well above it.
But this argument, made by sober Ph.D.'s who did everything they could to distinguish themselves from those who believed in "flying saucers" and (later) alien abductions, in fact raises troubling questions. How confident ought we to be that our understanding of nature and the technologically possible is sufficiently definitive as to preclude practical interstellar travel? Couldn't very advanced aliens know how to do things that would look impossible to us, just as some of the things we can do would seem impossible to primitive men? We are regularly told that the universe is a strange and surprising place—might it be even stranger and more surprising than we now suppose? Even if decades have gone by without aliens appearing on our doorstep, perhaps we should not be confident about what tomorrow holds.
So it proves necessary to attack the very premise of hostile aliens, to turn them from cosmic pirates to cosmic philanthropists. And that effort requires following up on a different aspect of the eclipse of man. For along with this positive view of aliens comes a very dark picture of human beings. As foreshadowed by nearly all of the post-Condorcet thinkers we discussed in Chapter One, the more that alien beings look like our saviors, the less we look worth saving.
_HUMAN INSIGNIFICANCE_
There are three aspects of the SETI effort to put human beings in their proper—that is, insignificant—place in the cosmic scheme of things. The first is the claim that mankind does not occupy a privileged place in the universe; the second suggests that we should expect aliens to be our moral superiors; the third attempts to show how aliens might help us to overcome our own tendencies toward self-destruction. These three lines of argument combine to suggest that, because anything we can do they can do better, we would be best off following any lead that aliens were willing to give.
The first claim, about the smallness of humanity in the face of the infinite possibilities of cosmic life, is sometimes called the "assumption of mediocrity." Longtime SETI researcher Seth Shostak put it this way: "There's nothing remarkable, nothing the least bit special, about our cosmic situation." Just as we know that there are lots of galaxies like ours and huge numbers of stars like ours, so we have every reason to believe that there are lots of planets like ours. (So far, planet-hunting efforts have revealed lots of planets, but few like ours.) And if there are lots of planets, there are going to be many opportunities for life to arise, as Flammarion argued. (This, too, is a matter about which we have no clear-cut evidence.) And given those huge numbers of stars and planets, then if there is lots of life there will have been ample opportunities for intelligence to arise in at least some cases (or maybe even all). In a universe teeming with life, we just aren't that special.
The assumption of mediocrity is sometimes also called the "Copernican principle," a nod to the "decentering" of humanity that began with the discovery by Nicolaus Copernicus that the Earth is not at the center of the cosmos. Darwin too is sometimes said to have made a contribution in rejecting the necessity for any special creation to explain the existence of humanity. As Shostak tells the story, "These events caused us to lose our central role in the physical and biological realms." If we were to discover evidence of alien intelligence, he believes, it would "surely deliver a roundhouse punch to any remaining hubris, such as the belief that we are intellectually, culturally, or morally superior." *
As yet we have no evidence to suggest how common extraterrestrial life of any kind is, let alone intelligent life. For the time being, then, as Carl Sagan, the great popularizer of astronomy and SETI, acknowledged, "the application of this method [i.e., the assumption of mediocrity] to areas where we have little knowledge is essentially an act of faith." And it could remain a matter of faith indefinitely. Even if we were to imagine some arbitrarily large number of technologically sophisticated alien civilizations—and given the hundred-plus billion stars in our galaxy and the hundred-plus billion galaxies in the universe, there could be a staggeringly high number of intelligent alien civilizations—they might still be spread so thinly that, short of miraculous-seeming technology, contact among them would be unlikely. That would be cosmic quarantine on the grandest scale.
Still, should we ever make contact with aliens, vindication of the assumption of mediocrity will supposedly teach human beings important moral lessons, as Shostak's use of the word "hubris" suggests. For one thing, the knowledge that we are not alone would teach us something very important about our common humanity. "Just learning of the existence of other civilizations in space," Frank Drake wrote, "could catapult nations into a new unity of purpose. Indeed, the search activity itself reminds us that the differences among nations are as nothing compared with the differences among worlds." Sagan apparently shared this belief: "There will be a deparochialization of the way we view the cosmos and ourselves. There will be a new perspective on the differences we perceive among ourselves once we grasp the enormous differences that will exist between us and beings elsewhere—beings with whom we have nonetheless a serious commonality of intellectual interest." These are very edifying lessons, to be sure, even if one can conceive of a "human family" (an idea whose roots are to be found in the Bible and ancient Greek thought) without SETI. It is quite easy for what is presented as a future prospect to elide into a cosmopolitan norm that the authors almost certainly believe should be guiding our behavior even before any discovery of aliens.
However, encouraging a sense of brotherhood only among human beings does not have to be the end of the story. In exchange for the loss of our cosmic specialness "we will gain something perhaps more desirable," according to physicist Gerald Feinberg and biochemist Robert Shapiro. "Earthlife will be a part of the much more encompassing phenomenon of Universelife. Just as people gradually extend their vision from self-preoccupation as children to identification with a wider community as adults, so in the coming centuries the human species may prefer to be a local representative of Universelife rather than exist almost alone in a vast and sterile void. If so, this shift in attitude may prove to be the most important outcome of a successful search for extraterrestrial life."
Voltaire famously asserted that nothing human was alien to him; Feinberg and Shapiro seem to be suggesting that the yet more mature view would be that nothing alien is alien to us. They hope we may one day be able to aspire to an identity beyond the human in a universe enlivened by many kinds of beings other than ourselves. Just as Flammarion's picture of the wonder and beauty of alien life on alien worlds highlights all that we might find problematic about being human, if we have sufficient faith in the assumption of mediocrity, we could adopt a point of view that weakens our attachment to the merely human, and in this way further the eclipse of man.
_HUMAN FOLLY AND ALIEN ASSISTANCE_
For many SETI authors, that detachment from the human can hardly come too soon. Along with many others in the second half of the twentieth century, they looked at the world and saw it on the brink of destruction. In SETI circles the discussion has usually been couched in terms of the "L factor," meaning the lifetime of technological civilizations capable of sending and receiving an interstellar signal. The shorter L is, for us or for any aliens, the less likely it is that any two such civilizations will be sufficiently close in time and space to allow communication to take place. Over the years various perils have been used to suggest why we should not be confident that human beings, or at least our present level of technological development, will be around much longer. If there is nothing special about humanity, and if humanity seems bent on self-destruction, then perhaps it is a general rule that technological civilizations are short lived, as the following characteristically apocalyptic quotes from various sources suggest:
There is a sober possibility that _L_ for Earth will be measured in decades. On the other hand, it is possible that international political differences will be permanently settled, and that _L_ may be measured in geological time. It is conceivable that on other worlds, the resolution of national conflicts and the establishment of planetary governments are accomplished before weapons of mass destruction become available.
You might also say that the present very modest trends to reverse the nuclear arms race [in the late 1980s] are an indication that the "L" variable . . . might be larger. On the other hand, the other catastrophes that have come to the fore since then—global warming, ozone depletion, nuclear winter—work in the other direction.
The mushroom cloud rising above Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly warned humanity of our potential extinction twelve years before Sputnik soared into space and pointed to our next step in evolution. The planet has managed to avoid nuclear destruction over the past fifty years, but ecological hazards remain a clear threat. Some scientists studying the rapid extinction of terrestrial species today compare it with the time of the great dinosaurs.
The intelligence and dexterity required to build radios are useful for other purposes that have been the hallmark of our species for much longer than have radios, such as devices for mass killing and means of environmental destruction. We are now so potent at doing both that we are gradually stewing in our civilization's juices. We may not enjoy the luxury of an end by slow stewing. Half a dozen countries have the means to bring us to a quick end, and other countries are eagerly seeking to acquire those means. The wisdom of some past leaders of bomb-possessing nations, or of some present leaders of bomb-seeking nations, does not encourage me to believe that the Earth will have humans and their radios much longer.
Unfortunately, because the human race is squandering its natural capital at an unsustainable rate, it seems at least as likely that terrestrial collapse rather than extraterrestrial expansion awaits us in the next two centuries.
All these challenges mean that we live at an unusual moment, a time of testing, or a "great filter," as one author has called it. If we pass through successfully, there is hope: we come out on the other side in a brave new world. And that is just where contact with aliens might help us. Any contact we make almost has to be with a longer-L civilization than our own, which in turn means that it is likely to have surmounted just the existential problems that threaten to keep our "L" short. So might they not be able to give us a leg up?
Sagan's writings sometimes show a nuanced understanding of this possibility. He recognizes that there is a problem in expecting to hear from a civilization advanced "vastly" ahead of us; we may no more be able to appreciate their existence than "an ant performing his anty labors by the side of a suburban swimming pool has a profound sense of the presence of a superior technical civilization all around him." (And, we might wonder, would that superior civilization be any more interested in us, or well intentioned toward us, than the suburbanite would be toward the ant?) Hence, most likely our first communication will be with "civilizations only somewhat in our future." Sagan notes that "it has been suggested that the contents of the initial message received will contain instructions for avoiding our own self-destruction, a possibly common fate of societies shortly after they reach the technical phase." Given the likely differences between humanity and the aliens we might meet, he concedes that they might not be able to send us information about "stabilizing societies," but "it is a possibility not worth ignoring."
Why isn't Sagan certain we could be helped? Here another important SETI principle must be mentioned: anti-anthropocentrism. The assumption of mediocrity—the idea that there is nothing special about life or even intelligent life—is not taken to mean that the particular form we take, and the particular way our intelligence builds a human civilization, is not special. Indeed, it would be a great surprise to most SETI scientists if we _were_ mediocre in the sense that the alien life we found were somehow to resemble us physically. Notwithstanding popular ideas about "little green men" and other humanoid aliens, most scientist-speculators have long envisioned a wild diversity of alien life. On the other hand, the possibility that they could be, like us, carbon-based life forms, is often taken seriously. We would hardly expect them to communicate with familiar sounds or images, but we do hope they have technologies like ours and share sufficiently common scientific or mathematical knowledge to send an intelligible signal on that basis—although even this possibility has been disputed. In any case, were we to be able to decode a signal, that would at least suggest some commonality of thought processes—but then we might never be sure that we were not missing some (to them) crucial nuance. It might make a difference to the way we understand a message if we knew it was the alien equivalent of a sixth-grade science project, the product of a marketing firm looking for customers, or of a government agency tasked to identify and mitigate potential security threats—none of which possibilities might be immediately obvious to us from the contents of the message itself.
Such potential roadblocks are why Philip Morrison, a physicist who coauthored the first scientific paper explaining how one might do SETI using radio telescopes, had a more sober assessment than Sagan of what might be learned from aliens. Morrison, participating in a U.S.-Soviet conference in 1971, suggested that the impact of an alien message would come less from how it instructs us about questions we are already asking than from the discipline that will arise from the careful deciphering and study of the work of a radically different civilization. He argued—in the process creating some controversy at the conference—that we ought not to expect "some simple telegraphic message like a newspaper." Hence, a signal will have "great impact—but slowly and soberly mediated, transmitted through all those filter devices of scholars who have to interpret and publish a book, and so forth." The "interpretation of the signal will be a social task comparable to that of a very large discipline, or branch of learning." What might we learn from this enterprise? As Morrison put it at a 1972 conference:
I think the most important thing the message will bring us, if we can finally understand it, will be a description, if one exists at all, of how these beings were able to fashion a world in which they could live, persevere, and maintain something of worth and beauty for a long period of time. Again, we will not be able to translate it directly and make our institutions like theirs; the circumstance will be too different. But something of it will come through in this way. I think, therefore, that this will be the most important message we could receive. But it will be more of a subtle, long-lasting, complex, debatable effect than a sudden revelation of truth, like letters written in fire in the sky.
_IMMORTAL LONGINGS_
But among the early SETI advocates Morrison was unusually cautious. There is a more widespread tendency to be optimistic about the ability of aliens to solve at least some of our problems for us. Even Sagan said, "imagine if one day the contents of 100,000 books of a Type II civilization [one that has completely mastered its own solar system] suddenly fluttered through the receivers of our radio telescopes, a kind of Encyclopedia Galactica for children! The rewards of success are inestimable." Drake has been yet more outspoken on this point: "There is probably no quicker route to wisdom than to be the student of more-advanced civilizations." What does he have in mind? "A simple yes or no answer to the question of whether fusion-energy research should be pursued would be worth tens of billions of dollars to the governments of Earth." Or again: "I can only guess what a civilization far more advanced than our own might teach us. . . . But let me share one of my favorite 'what ifs' with you: What if _they_ are immortal?"
Drake is suggesting two kinds of gain by contact with intelligent alien life. The first is technical know-how: how to achieve fusion power or immortality. This enthusiastic belief that there might be advanced technological goodies to be got plainly stems from the assumption of mediocrity as applied to technological development. Speaking of aliens as "more advanced" suggests that the timeline along which our knowledge and abilities have developed will be more or less the same elsewhere—that our future will resemble their past. But since our developmental path includes the possibility of being destroyed by our technology, it is not enough to hope that we will get yet more dangerous toys; we will also find the "route to wisdom" that they must have if they were able to surmount the dangers we face. (Of course, this argument overlooks the possibility, highlighted in the prologue to this chapter, that _they_ are hoping for assistance in getting beyond difficulties that we cannot even begin to foresee.)
If we look again at the litany of dangers we pose to ourselves, we might conclude that they all point toward some combination of Malthusian scarcity and Darwinian competition. It would only be consistent with the premises of SETI—and not implausible in its own right—to think that these are constraints that any alien life would have to deal with. Here, then, the assumption of mediocrity would properly seem to triumph. But wouldn't anti-anthropocentrism be a safer bet with respect to the _particular_ timeline on which such dangers would be faced? When it comes to discoveries and inventions, there are surely some material and intellectual preconditions that suggest the sequence in which things might be discovered or invented; for example, we couldn't have invented rockets without prior experience in combustion. But while such conditions might be necessary, they are not sufficient. It also seems true that there is a high level of contingency with respect to the motives that turn possibilities for discovery and invention into realities. Would we have had atomic weapons in the mid-twentieth century, for example, without the Treaty of Versailles?
Even leaving aside the contingency that seems to characterize many of our scientific and technological achievements, we might notice that our science and technology have developed along the lines that they have because we have the specific human abilities and needs that we do, based, for example, on the shapes of our bodies, the capacities of our senses, the needs that must be satisfied to keep us alive. Add to that the specific raw materials that living on Earth provides to us. All these things shape our particular constellations of abilities, motives, and social structures, which in turn influence scientific and technological developments, and the manner in which they will be useful or dangerous. It is very hard to imagine what it would mean to be made wise by aliens, whose lives, anti-anthropocentrism requires us to believe, may hardly even begin to raise issues that for us require wisdom. To assume that intelligent civilizations all go through similar developmental stages is to adopt an extremely anthropocentric mediocrity, hubristically turning human experience into a cosmic norm.
But Drake himself hints at a kind of solution to this problem when he speaks of becoming immortal. Such a change, if revealed to us, would fundamentally alter what it means to be human. Drake is not being anthropocentric if from the start he is really assuming that "wisdom" means precisely the abandonment of our humanity, and the adoption of the ways of the "advanced" aliens. The point is made with startling directness by physicist-philosopher Paul Davies: "If they practiced anything remotely like a religion, we should surely soon wish to abandon our own and be converted to theirs."
What is perhaps most striking about this assertion is that Davies surely knows that mainstream Christian belief has no problem imagining alien intelligence that would even be subject to salvation. In other words, the reason that we would want to adopt an alien religion is not because all human religions are incapable of dealing with the reality of alien life. Rather, the sole justification would seem to be their presumed civilizational longevity and technological and scientific superiority. In other words, if they are so much more advanced than we are and still have religion, there must be something to it.
The abandonment of central aspects of human civilization is really only to be expected if we are also to abolish hitherto central aspects of the human condition. That may not be such a big deal if we are as spiritually primitive as SETI popularizers seem to imagine, if as Haldane suggested we are an infection hardly worth sterilizing, or if we are, as anthropologist Ashley Montagu once suggested in some remarks about SETI, a cosmic version of "rabies or cancer or cholera." It is true that humans have long abased themselves in the face of Divinity, but Shostak's concern about hubris seems almost quaint in this race to use the authority of science to diminish our sense of what it means to be human.
_WHAT'S KEEPING THEM SO LONG?_
Let us now return to Fermi's question: where are they? As we have seen, SETI scientists argue that life could have sprung up and developed elsewhere far earlier than it did on Earth, and that other planets might thus have civilizations that were already flourishing and growing in technological capacity over all those eons during which human beings did not even exist. They would have been accumulating knowledge and capacities over what for us is evolutionary time. If they are doing some of the things that the transhumanists predict we will someday be doing—like "reorganizing matter and energy" so as to start turning the cosmos into one big computer—shouldn't we see signs of it underway already? Why haven't we heard from them yet, or detected their work?
Many explanations have been provided to explain the silence of these ancient alien civilizations, but all of them have problems. Perhaps ancient alien civilizations may place young civilizations like our own in a cosmic quarantine for study or other purposes, maybe even leaving behind tools for covert observation. Or perhaps we may just be too primitive for them to bother with. But in a big universe, is there not even one deviant culture that is sufficiently committed and resourceful to want to interact with primitives? Perhaps, instead, at a certain point in their development, technological cultures turn inward, abandoning concern with space. But here again, the suggestion seems to be that there is not even one civilization so taken by spacefaring that it departs from the norm. So perhaps we just cannot hear the aliens because they long ago stopped broadcasting over radio waves—just as we ourselves have in recent decades replaced much of our over-the-air broadcasting with other forms of transmission that do not leak into space. Or perhaps, as some transhumanists expect for our own future, the aliens have given up on physical bodies, "retreating into cyberspace." Yet even then, might they not leave indirect evidence of their existence, such as signs of intensive use of matter and energy to satisfy their need for resources?
Perhaps interstellar travel is far more difficult or costly than we think. But that argument runs up against the suggestion that the development of civilization over evolutionary time scales may produce beings that are simply incomprehensible to us, while we are of as little interest to them as Sagan's ants by the swimming pool. Of course, that in turn means that aliens might have been here all along, and we have been looking for the wrong sorts of evidence. Perhaps instead of searching for big spaceships we should be on the lookout for relatively small probes, or even probes tinier than living cells, or information encoded in the very physics and math of our universe itself, as Sagan imagined in his novel _Contact_. But in a galaxy (or universe?) filled with such life, why would there not be some who would enjoy the challenge of communicating with lower beings just as we imagine how it would be interesting to communicate with animals? There might be, along lines that Sagan has suggested, "a few specialists" among the aliens who study "primitive planetary societies" like our own. They might even leave a message on the Internet. Or perhaps they have been trying to communicate with us all along and we just have not taken the possibility seriously—and we should start rethinking UFOs.
There are two kinds of conclusions that can be drawn from the failure of SETI to find evidence of aliens thus far, although it is very important to be clear from the start that this failure emphatically does not mean there is nothing to be found. However, we can note on the one hand that because we know literally nothing about alien intelligence, the only restriction on our reasoning about it is that our conclusions be logically consistent with our premises—premises that, like the assumption of mediocrity, are themselves as yet more or less without empirical foundations. As a result we have great freedom for imagination, ingenuity, and speculation; the price is that any plausible conclusion can be plausibly countered until there actually is an empirically based science of astrobiology and alien intelligence. On the other hand, it is certainly consistent with a variety of premises to suggest that silence means that advanced alien civilizations who we were counting on to help us may not be as interested in providing that help as we might have hoped. To put it another way, if they want to help, they will do so based on their judgment of the appropriate moment for intervention, which may (given the intelligence gap between us) have little or nothing in common with our hopes.
Frank Drake has come up with a way to accommodate this reluctance and still maintain the possibility of our receiving useful information from alien races. If they achieve something like immortality, he posits, they may become extremely risk-averse. That would explain why they are not interested in exploration, colonization, or contact generally, all of which are risky enterprises. But their "fanatic obsession with safety," Drake theorizes, might lead them to broadcast the secret of immortality. By seducing other species with the very immortality that today's transhumanists so fondly desire, the aliens could minimize any threat from afar.
Does Drake realize how chilling his picture of "the immortals" is? If these beings were immortal, then they could travel to the stars; the times involved would mean nothing to them. But instead of extending and expanding the realm of their experience, their mastery of death leaves them mastered by their fear of death. This is the gift that Drake imagines they would wish to pass on to us. If that counts as "benevolence," it is only by a standard very different from any that poor mortals — who aspire to go _per ardua ad astra_ (through advertsity to the stars) — would recognize.
But that is really the biggest question posed by SETI's effort to construct benevolent aliens in the face of the Malthusian-Darwinian argument that they might be our cosmic competition. For is it anything other than gross anthropocentrism to believe that our ideas of benevolence will accord with those of an advanced alien civilization? What makes us so confident that the assumption of mediocrity can be applied to the ethics of alien species? There is an uncertainty at the core of the very notion of alien benevolence. It was explored with brilliance in Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel _Childhood's End_. We now turn to that novel to explore how the progress of inhumanity, coming as a gift from aliens, might well be a Trojan horse.
_THEY'RE HERE_
_Childhood's End_ begins in 1975 near the imagined climax of a space race between the Americans and Soviets; both are out to launch nuclear-powered rockets to the moon. But instead, huge alien ships appear over the major cities of the world. After letting tension build for six days, on the seventh humanity hears from someone calling himself Karellen, Supervisor for Earth. Showing "complete and absolute mastery of human affairs," Karellen announces that all international relations are now under control of his people, who come to be called the Overlords. An unnamed nation tests their control, attacking an Overlord ship with nuclear weapons. Nothing happens; the bomb does not go off and no effort is made to punish the offending nation. "It was a more effective, and more demoralizing, treatment than any punitive expedition could have been."
At the beginning, all contact between the Overlords and earthlings takes place through the secretary-general of the United Nations, Rikki Stormgren, who (not surprisingly) quickly comes to trust Karellen. The Overlords leave many human things alone; they don't care about forms of government or economy, but they are not indifferent to oppression or corruption, even of animals. While it remains okay to kill for food or self-defense, sport killing is out, as the spectators of a bullfight find when they are made to feel the pain of the bull. Or again, the Overlords deprive South Africa of sunlight when the country, which by this point has replaced apartheid with a new policy that oppresses its white minority, is too slow to grant all its citizens equality. In any case, the international system of sovereign nation-states was already dying before the Overlords arrived, and within five years of their arrival a World Federation is in the works.
The Overlords quickly bring unprecedented "security, peace and prosperity" to Earth. Only a few malcontents have any doubts about their essential benevolence or attempt to cling uselessly to the past. But one issue chafes even at those who are happy with the new world: the Overlords will not show themselves to humanity. Karellen promises they will do so in fifty years, after which "we can begin our real work."
Fifty years on, the world has been changed "almost beyond recognition" by the "social engineering" of the Overlords, based on powers of great scope and subtlety. Earth has become a progressive, secular-humanist utopia, truly "One World." Everyone is wealthy, healthy, beautiful, and employed in interesting work that yet allows plenty of leisure time. There is almost no crime. Cities have been rebuilt, and the weather is under control. Continuing education is part of everyone's life. The Overlords have provided aircraft that allow people to globetrot simply to attend a party, and the result is an end of all racial and ethnic divisions. Oral contraception and reliable paternity testing have "swept away the last remnants of Puritan aberration" just as religion itself "vanished like the morning dew" when the Overlords provided access to a time machine that could (selectively) display the past, proving that the world's faiths might have had noble, but certainly not divine, origins. So when the Overlords do reveal themselves, at twice human size and with wings, horns, and barbed tails, humanity quickly gets over the shock that they look like devils.
By the middle of the twenty-first century, the human race achieves "as much happiness as any race can ever know"—a golden age. Only a few ask, "Where do we go from here?" One such is young Jan Rodricks, whose dreams of exploring space are thwarted by the Overlords. They have effectively banned any independent human space travel, and refused to share much of their own obviously greater knowledge and capacities in this area. Through a series of what turn out to be not quite coincidences, he comes to be the only human who knows the location of the Overlord home world. He resolves to visit it. Aware that the Overlords travel at nearly the speed of light, he understands that during a round trip he will subjectively experience as four months long, eighty years will have passed on Earth. He nevertheless stows away on an Overlord starship. As usual, when they learn of Rodricks's disobedience, the Overlords punish no one, but the incident prompts a stern press conference by Karellen announcing formally that the humans will never be allowed access to interstellar space. Humans could never deal with the vastness of the galaxy, and the "forces and powers that lie among the stars—forces beyond anything that you can ever imagine."
Soon enough, however, the human race gets a sense of those forces and powers. All children under ten start to act in strange ways, exhibiting paranormal powers. When this breakthrough occurs, the Overlords must at last announce the truth about their mission. They came not to prevent man from destroying himself with nuclear weapons or other modern technology, but to forestall developing investigations into parapsychology that, had they been followed up, might have loosed a kind of mental cancer into the universe. For humankind turns out to be a race gifted with psychic potentials that even the Overlords do not possess, potentials that make it possible for humans to merge with the Overmind, whose servants the Overlords have been all along. Their job has been to prepare humanity for this merging, to cultivate the proper conditions for it. The children are developing a group mind that will eventually be taken up into the Overmind. All of them are evacuated by the Overlords to Australia, where they become increasingly strange as their minds merge, their psychic powers expand, and they prepare under the tutelage of the Overmind to leave their bodies behind.
In the face of the shocking news that humanity as such has no future, people react variously. Many commit suicide, some live on in decline and desperation. Jan Rodricks returns to Earth from the Overlord home world to find he is literally the last human being left. When the Overlords see that the dangerous moment has arrived for the apotheosis of the children they prepare to depart. Jan offers to stay behind and report to them what happens; as a human he can see things the Overlords are not able to observe. Thus, Jan is witness to the complete destruction of Earth, which ensues as the once-human group mind tests its powers and meets its destiny in the Overmind. Karellen departs the solar system with regret not so much for Earth and humanity as for his own people, who for all their knowledge, brilliance, and power can never achieve this union with their masters, the Overmind.
_RETHINKING ALIEN BENEVOLENCE_
The issue of the benevolence of alien assistance is a live one throughout _Childhood's End_ , far more so than this bare summary might indicate. Certainly the outcome of the story puts this question in high relief. How are we to understand a benevolence that results in the destruction of mankind and the Earth itself? What are we to make of an end so traumatic that (we are told) it echoes _backwards_ in time (the Overlords insist that time is more complex than humans understand) such that the physical figure of the Overlords becomes the Devil, the Tempter who just like the Overlords provides all apparently good things as he leads on to destruction? There are times when it is clear that Clarke himself understands some of the problems of Overlord benevolence, and others when he provides hints of deeper issues that he may or may not have been willing to confront himself. The matter of alien benevolence can be discussed in three parts that correspond to the three divisions of the novel: first, the initial subjugation of humanity; second, the golden age; and third, the end of humanity.
From early on there are humans who distrust the motives of the Overlords. That mistrust is given expression by the Freedom League. U.N. Secretary-General Stormgren judges the Freedom League leader, Alexander Wainwright, to be "completely honest, and therefore doubly dangerous." Apparently unknown to Wainwright, his organization contains a secret radical faction. They kidnap Stormgren in order to get his cooperation in finding out more about the Overlords. The Overlords rescue him before he is forced to decide whether to cooperate, but the experience prompts him to start his own clandestine effort to get a look at them. His plan has modest success; Stormgren, a modern Moses, is allowed to catch a glimpse of Karellen's huge backside, presumably tail and all. Understanding now why these devil-like beings would want to conceal their appearance, but confident they will make everything right eventually, he takes his limited knowledge to his grave.
When Wainwright first meets with Stormgren to lodge a formal protest about the plans for the World Federation, he asserts among other things that his group objects to the Overlords because they have deprived humanity of its ability "to control our own lives, under God's guidance." In case we miss the irony here, Stormgren himself points out that many religious leaders support the Overlords' policies, but he concludes privately that "the conflict is a religious one, however it may be disguised." Interestingly, on the same page Clarke has Stormgren note that the "fundamental difference" between him and the Freedom League is that he "had faith in Karellen, and they had not." Clarke seems willing to consider the possibility that the conflict stems from something like religious belief on _both_ sides.
Karellen, on the other hand, presents the conflict with the Freedom League more conventionally as religion versus reason and science. People like Wainwright "fear we will overthrow their gods"; science can prove religion wrong, or it can destroy religion by ignoring it. _"All_ the world's religions cannot be right, and they know it." Given the way things play out, it looks like Karellen is right on this point; Overlord science does eventually destroy human religion (or nearly so, as we will see) both by active measures (the history viewer) and by the material utopia they provide. And yet Clarke describes Karellen's speech to Stormgren as follows: "His voice was somber now, like a great organ rolling its notes from a high cathedral nave." It would be perfectly consistent with the facts of the story thus far if Clarke were highlighting again that the benevolence of the Overlords is at this stage only a matter of faith. Furthermore, there is the troubling fact that the Overlords are also attempting to conceal the kernel of truth in mankind's _mystical_ beliefs, which often find their home in the religions the Overlords have carefully discredited. Given their true purpose in coming to Earth, why should we be confident that the already selective history viewer they loan to mankind is a reliable record of the origins of religion? By standing up for science as he does, Karellen is describing the conflict in a way useful to the deception in which he is engaged.
_WHAT DO HUMANS WANT?_
The golden age that the Overlords usher in would seem to vindicate their good intentions. The "average man" was grateful to them for being freed from want and war; "mankind had grown to trust them, and to accept without question their superhuman altruism." Few people doubt if it really was altruism. Yet we readers are given ample reason to question the golden age. Recall the carefully formulated way it is described: "mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know." That does not mean that everyone is happy, that the race as a whole is simply happy, or that happiness is the only or best way to measure the value of life.
For example, there are hints that in various ways this utopia does not quite even live up to its own billing. Religion may have withered, but there is one character who is unwilling to participate in a séance out of what her husband sarcastically labels Talmudic objections. The fact that "Puritan aberrations" have been swept away does not mean that men and women do not still conceal their affairs from each other. The fact that couples marry for defined periods does not eliminate the possibility that a man can become indifferent about his wife, and later regret that indifference. Female beauty is common, but that does not stop jealous impulses when one presumably beautiful woman encounters another yet more beautiful. There are still love affairs, and their failure still creates unhappiness. The security and material well-being provided by the Overlords apparently cannot solve all human problems.
Life under the Overlords is quite clearly not for everybody. We have already seen Jan Rodricks's restless dissatisfaction with the way the Overlords have restricted his life possibilities. More generally, we learn that utopia is dull and that it stifles adventure and creativity in the arts and sciences. (This recalls Bernal's quasi-Freudian views of the pitfalls of a "Melanesian" existence, described in Chapter One.) Inner and outer conflict spur creativity, peaceful satisfaction of desires dulls it. Seeking to counter this problem, some creative types set up a socially engineered island society for artists called "New Athens." But it is hard to believe that Clarke is not gently parodying their efforts. The kind of "conflict" that spurs them includes things like riding bicycles up hills, cooking one's own dinner (in perfectly modern kitchens), or attending endless committee meetings. When an Overlord comes to visit the island, he praises some of its composers for the "great ingenuity" of their work, leaving them "to retire with pleased but vaguely baffled expressions."
If socially engineered creativity is somewhat oxymoronic, that tension at least does not apply to the pacifying social engineering of the Overlords themselves. While they are unabashedly colonial administrators, they highlight two differences between their efforts and analogous human efforts. The Overlord visiting New Athens notes that unlike the British in India, the Overlords have "real motives" and "conscious objectives" for what they are doing. Of course, only after the fact are these motives and objectives made clear to the administered. But humanity could have done nothing to stop them in any case, and that is the second salient difference: the massive disparity in knowledge and power between human and Overlord. When Stormgren accuses Karellen of thinking that might makes right, Karellen does not disagree; he rather points out that with sufficient power of the right kind "might" can be exercised in very subtle, indirect and efficient ways. Might does not have to mean brutality. The Overlords say of their own relationship with the Overmind that "no one of intelligence resents the inevitable"; that is really the bottom-line justification for such benevolence as they have shown by creating a utopia for mankind, which in the end they admit was in part a distraction: "What we did to improve your planet, to raise your standards of living, to bring justice and peace—those things we should have done in any event, once we were forced to intervene in your affairs. But all that vast transformation diverted you from the truth, and therefore helped to serve our purpose."
_PERPETUAL PEACE_
Once the truth about their mission has come out and the children are about to be evacuated, Karellen announces that "all the hopes and dreams of your race are ended now." He wonders whether it would not be "most merciful, to destroy you—as you yourselves would destroy a mortally wounded pet you loved. But this I cannot do. Your future will be your own to choose in the years that are left to you. It is my hope that humanity will go to its rest in peace, knowing that it has not lived in vain."
Why exactly does the human race have no future? Only young children, under the age of ten, will unite with the Overmind; why can't those who remain continue to reproduce? We are told that many committed suicide in the aftermath of the evacuation of the children; New Athens blows itself up. Others live on with reckless abandon and violence as the global social order quickly deteriorates despite the Overlord power to keep order. But now, their mission nearly complete, the Overlords no longer care. They claim they cannot explain to Jan Rodricks why those who remained did not have more children. He suspects the reasons were "psychological," which is no explanation at all.
In fact, however, their failure to answer this question—are human beings unable or unwilling to procreate?—draws us back starkly to the nature of the Overlords' mission. Their job was to stop humanity from the independent development of paranormal powers and prepare the way for those powers to be used to unite with the Overmind. Independent development of psychic abilities would have made humanity like "a telepathic cancer" in the universe—that is, a threat to the Overmind, even if also to itself. You don't cure a cancer by excising only part of it. A human race that continues to exist _and_ knows the truth about its potential would be even more of a competitive danger to the Overmind than a human race that had only halting knowledge of what it could do. And, at any rate, the Overlords seem to have good reason to believe that the children will destroy the world when their rapture comes.
If as we have seen the benevolence of aliens in creating "One World" and a golden age is already problematic, how much more so is it when it eventuates in the end of humanity? Even if, hopeless as it would have been, humanity had attempted to resist either the Overlords or the Overmind, it is difficult to imagine a worse outcome than the one Clarke presents. However, that does not seem to be his view of events. Perhaps he begins from assumptions like Flammarion's; it is in the nature of things that species evolve or face extinction, that worlds are born and die. No matter what else happens, _someday_ there will be an end to humanity and the Earth. From this point of view we can understand Clarke's attempt to have us believe that the tragedy of his story is not the fate of the Earth and humanity but the situation of the Overlords, caught in their "evolutionary cul-de-sac," servants of a master they cannot really understand, destined always to be bridesmaids and never brides. The offspring of humanity, on the other hand, are moving on to great and glorious things.
Jan comforts himself by thinking that the Overmind draws "into its being all that the human race had ever achieved." However, it is not even remotely clear that his view is justified. Jan's view implies that the children sequestered in the Australian outback have mental powers of assimilating human history and culture—powers that are never presented explicitly. The Overmind, by taking only children under ten, takes those with the _least_ knowledge or experience of what it means to be human and indeed there is some stress put on the fact that the children are becoming something not human at all even before they are assimilated. It is the Overlords who seem intent on preserving remnants of Earth's life and human cultures; they go into a great museum that catalogues the evidence of the worlds they have helped to destroy. Nor would Jan's experience being debriefed by the Overlords on their home world give much comfort about the persistence of human things even if they _did_ take older minds. However well educated he is, Jan finds himself unable to answer many of the questions put to him about his own race. These men who have been gifted a golden age are not the deepest reservoirs of human hopes, experiences, dreams, and knowledge.
Karellen's assessment of the situation offers cold comfort: "You have given birth to your successors, and it is your tragedy that you will never understand them. . . . For what you have brought into the world may be utterly alien, it may share none of your desires and hopes, it may look upon your greatest achievements as childish toys—yet it is something wonderful, and you will have created it." But of course humans only "created" what is to come in the bare sense of procreating the necessary conduits for the Overmind.
Perhaps a better argument that the Overlords act benevolently can be found in their justification for barring humanity from the stars. Space is far more immense than human beings imagine. "In challenging it," Karellen says, "you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. Your race, in its present stage of evolution, cannot face that stupendous challenge. One of my duties has been to protect you from the powers and forces that lie among the stars—forces beyond anything you can ever imagine." Within this universe there is a hierarchy; "as we are above you, so there is something above us, using us for its own purposes. We have never discovered what it is, though we have been its tool for ages and dare not disobey it."
A reminder of the sheer scale of the universe is indeed a useful corrective for human hubris—although surely one could still be sympathetic with any industrious ants who against all odds attempt such a great study of sand. Yet what are we to make of the hierarchy Karellen is suggesting? It sounds almost as if the Biblically inspired vision of God, angels (fallen or otherwise), and man is not so far off the mark after all. Merely from the fact that the Overmind operates through Overlords, we cannot conclude that it is not omnipotent. And from the fact that it is "conscious of intelligence, everywhere," we might suspect it is omniscient and in some sense omnipresent. Karellen only said that _"all_ the world's religions cannot be right"; can we go so far as to say that the Overlords suppressed religions not so much because all of them were false as because some of them pointed to the truth?
_ALIEN DO-GOODERS_
Like Camille in the prologue to this chapter, most SETI researchers would be surprised if aliens wanted any help from us. But the idea that intelligent alien beings can somehow help us is deeply ingrained in the SETI worldview. The proven existence of aliens alone, it is thought, would have salutary moral effects. Beyond that, there is all the scientific, technological, social, and religious advice that we might get from them. This confidence is based on one aspect of the eclipse of man: its sense of the terrible flaws and insignificance of mankind as it is now. Aliens will have had to find ways around the self-destruction that we fear will be our own fate. They will have found ways to match their great power over nature with great moral responsibility.
Arthur C. Clarke's novel forces us to acknowledge another side of the aspiration to overcome our human flaws. In Haldane's vision of the future, Malthusian and Darwinian forces prompted us to aspire to become the alien invaders, destroyers of worlds. Why wouldn't those same forces be at work everywhere there is life? So between SETI and Haldane we seem to have two very different visions at work. But there is a link between them, which _Childhood's End_ suggests can be seen starting from an ambiguity within the meaning of benevolence itself.
First, Clarke knows full well that benevolence has a price even on its own terms; golden ages still have tradeoffs. Access to a galactic version of the Internet may help us solve some of our problems, but it will create new ones. Furthermore, he reminds us that not everything that seems benevolent at first glance really is; the Overlords have their own agenda in creating the golden age—it makes their job of ending humanity easier. This deception raises the question of motive, which will always be a problem with benevolence to the extent that we cannot see into the hearts of others. Is it not troubling that even after the Overlords show themselves to humanity, they are presenting a false front?
But even when motives are pure, benevolence must contend with the fact that people see the world in very different ways. Think about a moral experience not uncommon among us. Should you give the alcoholic panhandler the cash he asks for, or a cup of coffee and a sandwich, or a ride to a shelter, or an appointment at a detox center? Who doubts that one of the latter options is better for the individual than cash? But who would be surprised if the recipient had quite a different view of the subject? So there can be dilemmas of benevolence even when everyone shares a common horizon of human experience and assumptions. Why would the situation be any simpler when we start thinking in terms of all those highly advanced alien races SETI is looking for? As Karellen suggests, Overlord kindness is not really comprehensible to us; it is kindness by a completely alien standard. Clarke allows us to see that even after it has empirical support, there would still be a need for faith in alien benevolence.
The Overlords speculate that they were sent to deal with humanity out of some underlying likenesses between them and us. The hopes of SETI are predicated on the universe being such that we can come to communicate with intelligent beings who are at the same time enough like us to be comprehensible and different enough to be useful. But if, as Karellen suggests, fully in agreement with Carl Sagan, we end up being like ants in comparison to the aliens, then Clarke is correct to be concerned that the universe could contain beings that are very much _not_ like us. In Clarke's story the only reason we meet nice guys first is because there is a cosmic hierarchy with a superintending intelligence at work, something remarkably like good old-fashioned providence.
Needless to say, SETI is not built on the fictional metaphysics of _Childhood's End_ , but on the accepted metaphysic of modern natural science. Hence SETI rejects the paranormal as a means of communication, just as it rejects flying saucers, just as it would reject Flammarion's spiritualism. Strictly speaking, the universe of SETI is not an orderly, hierarchical cosmos—not a _cosmos_ at all in the literal, etymological sense of that term—but a chaos of random interactions of matter and energy without any inherent goal or purpose. Insofar as SETI hopes aliens will lead us to the supposed goods that Clarke's novel portrays, whether world peace and plenty or the overcoming of our humanity, it does so from an entirely different set of premises. So even if we accept that as far as humanity's cosmic fate is concerned, things turn out about as well as one could hope for in _Childhood's End_ , we are entitled to wonder if that happy outcome is more likely in Clarke's cosmos or in the materialist universe of modern science, with its Malthusian and Darwinian imperatives.
And yet, perhaps we can begin to reconcile the kinder, gentler aspects of the SETI vision with its tougher underlying assumptions if we note how for Clarke the question of benevolence really becomes a question of power. The Overlords can define benevolence as they wish, and they have the means to get humanity to go along. Ancient alien civilizations would be ancient not because they were good or learned to use their powers wisely, but simply because they learned to use them in the service of their own survival. If might makes right, then all of our dilemmas of alien benevolence disappear; how nice for us if they are so powerful they do not have to be brutal, but if they are brutal (by our primitive standards, of course), then we are left with Karellen's dictum: "No one of intelligence resents the inevitable." This is the functional equivalent of Drake's glib assertion that "There is probably no quicker route to wisdom than to be the student of more-advanced civilizations."
If the law of the jungle is the effectual truth of SETI, then it makes more sense that one supposed moral benefit coming from alien contact, as noted earlier, would be basing our sense of human fraternity on there being a non-human "other" for a radically new Us VS. Them. It also helps explain the transhumanist optimism about the meaning of our failure to find intelligence thus far; in the formula made famous on the TV show _Hill Street Blues_ , it means we can "do it to them before they do it to us."
_ARE WE OUR OWN OVERLORDS?_
Because SETI's contribution to the eclipse of man depends on the contribution of aliens, it may seem that the sort of issues that arise would be unique to that particular way of envisioning the future. But we have already seen more than hints that things are not so simple, especially in Bernal's picture of crustacean-like mechanical monsters with human brains. In the chapters that follow we will see that some of the same issues arise whether the source of our dehumanization is messengers from space or laboratories right here on Earth.
Even before there was any understanding of genetics, people could imagine how careful breeding of human beings could enhance our well-being. When knowledge of genetics started to increase, the eugenics movement was quick to arise, and many thinkers developed even greater confidence that great things could be done to improve humanity. Once genetic engineering comes on the scene, our power to mold ourselves in some new image seems only more likely.
The prospects for and problems with genetic engineering have been widely debated, even though with respect to human beings they are still largely speculative. And yet, there are already those who believe that genetic engineering in and of itself will not be the main route by which to create new and improved human beings. At best, it will be one among the "converging technologies" that together will vastly increase our power over the naturally given, the others being cognitive science, information technology, and nanotechnology. Nanotechnology in particular may open the door to a world where human power quickly reaches the ability to do seemingly everything the laws of nature allow. That is where we turn next.
* It ought to be noted, simply for the sake of intellectual honesty, that the traditional cosmology that put Earth at the center of things did so not out of a hubristic sense that we were the most important beings, but rather because, in the words of Alexandre Koyré, the center represented the bottom of a hierarchy "rising from the dark, heavy and imperfect earth to the higher and higher perfection of the stars and heavenly spheres." By contrast, the idea that we are not unique could arguably represent a significant elevation of human status—for example, it allows Carl Sagan to suggest that we are "star-stuff." (Alexandre Koyré, _From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe_ [Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1957], 2.)
_CHAPTER THREE_
_Enabling Inhumanity_
* * *
_PROLOGUE: THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE_
Yes, I was what you might call an early adopter when it came to living with nanites, and that's why my memories of the world before and after are still so vivid these many years later—I got prosthetic memory even before you could get the software to edit it. It was like being a kid in a candy shop, and with a big allowance to boot. Not everybody was as willing to experiment as I was, of course, but you more or less found your own level, finding people who were chasing the same kind of dream, at least at the moment you were both chasing it. Not that there weren't already some problems between those of us pushing the envelope and those who thought the world needed more boundaries given all the new possibilities. Old-style democracy was still around at that point, and there was some political pushing and shoving as well as some rioting and sundry nastiness on both sides. But it never worried me much at that stage. I was convinced I knew where things were going; those of us who took the plunge were better off—hell just plain _better_ —for having done so, and if it was going to come down to any kind of competition I was confident we would carry the day.
And of course I was right about that. I saw the end coming when the people who wanted to limit or reject the new nano-world started to defend themselves using the same "let us do our own thing" principle that _we_ had used to defend transformation! By that time we were perfectly happy to leave them alone as they were pretty much irrelevant anyway. But I admit that I was surprised that that victory was not the end of our problems. Actually, it was more like the beginning. We thought the end of the old society, politics, and economics would free us to be wonderful in whatever ways we wanted. Not exactly. There was a saying in the old world, "when nothing is true, everything is permitted." I don't know about that, but with just a small change it sure works the other way: when everything is permitted, nobody is true. You just could not count on people from one day to the next, or sometimes one moment to the next. There were no serious costs to picking up and going somewhere else, to becoming someone else, even to escaping altogether by getting yourself frozen. Responsibility proved to be pretty rare. It also became perfectly clear that bad guys don't become any less bad when they have more stuff and more power; we tried to deal with that by using "white-hat nanites" to fight "black-hat nanites." That worked okay when the people who invented them stuck to the job, but like I just told you they didn't always. And how could the rest of us blame them? Meanwhile, we also rediscovered that letting everybody do his own thing was not the end of conflict; one person's fondest desire might be exactly what another person most wants to avoid.
So there was even more reason for the like-minded to stick together, cutting themselves off as much as possible from anybody who didn't see it their way. We all told ourselves that we'd still be free to do our own thing because we could join any group whenever we wanted. It wasn't long before there were enough instances of people who joined in bad faith and other kinds of organizational sabotage to bring that phase to an end. By that time the white-hat nanites were being developed by artificial intelligence so we thought we'd be pretty well shielded from outsider lifestyle choices. Yet once the AI systems understood the logic of what they were being asked to do they realized the benefits of defense in depth and started taking what sure looked like offensive measures—only against the bad guys of course. Or at least the ones who looked bad to us.
So yeah it is a pretty tough world out there just now, but there never was a technology that didn't have some kind of downside, right? Maybe when nano really takes off it'll be different. In the meantime you sprouts may not be quite living the dream but . . . sorry, which siren was that? Another Level Seven incursion? Ok kids, you know where to go. With any luck we can finish this later.
* * *
FOR TRANSHUMANISTS, nanotechnology opens all kinds of doors. For starters, it will bring great material and economic benefits. "By making it possible to rearrange atoms effectively," writes the transhumanist philosopher-activist Nick Bostrom, nanotechnology "will enable us to transform coal into diamonds, sand into supercomputers, and to remove pollution from the air and tumors from healthy tissue." Simon Young, another cheerleader for transhumanism, adds that "Eventually, through nanotechnology, vast armies of miniature robot workers manufacturing goods at the molecular level will bring productivity levels through the roof, bringing an end to scarcity and want, poverty, and hunger."
But such changes to the world we inhabit may seem minor when compared to the changes in store for who and what we are. Nanotechnology will be one of the main routes to "the redesign of the human organism," Bostrom writes, suggesting dryly that "once there is both nanotechnology and superintelligence, a very wide range of special applications will follow swiftly." Still, "If we have a choice it seems preferable that superintelligence be developed before advanced nanotechnology, as superintelligence could help reduce the risks of nanotechnology but not vice versa." Meanwhile, the prominent transhumanist Ray Kurzweil points to a specific possibility in the way of building new bodies: smart dust. "In the late twenty-first century, the 'real' world will take on many of the characteristics of the virtual world through the means of nanotechnology swarms," trillions of intelligent networked nanobots that will be able to form into shaped clouds that will simulate anything, including a human body. When we go out, "we will have to select our body, our personality, our environment—so many difficult decisions to make! But don't worry—we'll have intelligent swarms of machines to guide us." (Note how readily Kurzweil slides from using this technology to express our choices to using it to guide our choices.)
The actual definition of the term nanotechnology is somewhat controversial, so it may be safest to begin with the basics. The "nano-" in "nanotechnology" is a prefix used in the metric system, much as a " _milli_ meter" is one thousandth of a meter and a " _kilo_ meter" is one thousand meters. A _nano_ meter is one billionth of a meter, and nanotechnology usually refers to manipulating matter at the scale of around one to a hundred nanometers—that is, at the level of molecules and atoms. It is very hard to imagine things this small. For the sake of comparison, a human hair is about 60,000 to 120,000 nanometers wide; a human red blood cell is about 6,000 to 8,000 nanometers in diameter; a DNA molecule is 2 to 12 nanometers in diameter. If every nanometer in the diameter of a CD or a DVD were expanded to the size of the more familiar millimeter, the disc would be 74 miles across.
For the time being, much mainstream nanotechnology research in universities and corporations is focused on finding uses for "nanoparticles"—very fine particles of some existing material—or experimenting with novel molecular structures. At this very tiny scale, substances can have properties that are not present at larger sizes. Adding nanoparticles to other materials can in turn give those materials new properties. At the moment, applications for nanoparticles are relatively prosaic; one can find them in items like sunscreens, disinfectants, and car parts. These nanoparticles and nanomaterials will surely have many uses in the years ahead, but they are hardly revolutionary. Indeed, there is reason to believe that they have a long history: some materials used in the ancient world, like Damascus steel and some kinds of Roman glass, had special properties that today's scientists attribute to nanoparticles.
But experts are confident that potentially revolutionary applications of nanotechnology are not far off. Mihail Roco, founding director of the U.S. government's National Nanotechnology Initiative, foresees future generations of nanotechnology that go well beyond today's "passive" efforts. Already researchers are developing a "second generation," with active devices such as nanoscale motors that could power nanodevices. According to Roco, third-generation systems of nanodevices could, for example, consist of systems of nanowires in the brain to sense or direct the activity of neurons. Or they could be networked nanoscale robotic devices that assemble themselves into dynamic three-dimensional images for highly realistic telecommunication or virtual realities. A fourth generation of nanotechnology could be, like biological systems, self-assembling, blurring the distinction between living and non-living systems.
By the time we get to the third and fourth generations of nanotechnology, which Roco expects to come into existence over the next two decades, nanotechnology begins to look a great deal like what Nick Bostrom, Simon Young, Ray Kurzweil, and other transhumanists have described. This shared vision of the more advanced possibilities for nanotechnology can be traced back to the work of K. Eric Drexler, whose groundbreaking and influential 1986 book _Engines of Creation_ remains one of the most thoughtful treatments of the risks and benefits of such great power.
Drexler, born in Alameda, California in 1955, was as a young man intensely interested in the possibility of establishing colonies in space. He started thinking about nanotechnology in 1976, during his time as an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and over the next decade he developed and refined his ideas, presenting them in a scientific journal in 1981 and then bringing them before the wider public in _Engines of Creation_. In that book, Drexler imagined the nanotechnology future in terms of "nanomachines" designed to manipulate matter at the molecular scale. These nanomachines, he thought, could be used to manufacture all kinds of goods, including themselves—that is, they would be self-replicating. One nanomachine could first build another, and those two could replicate in turn, until millions or billions were available to assemble molecule by molecule whatever additional product they were designed to produce. As Drexler originally envisioned nanomachines, they could manufacture anything—food, rocket engines, human organs, any consumer product—by building it from the bottom up. * The necessary raw materials could be provided by having other nanomachines sort and disassemble recycled goods, or by using natural resources.
With nanomachines programmed to produce just about anything we could imagine, something like the "replicator" in _Star Trek_ becomes possible; Drexler said it "might aptly be called a 'genie machine.'" Nanomachines, he expected, would help in the conquest of space, and natural resources from outer space will provide cheap raw materials and hence "a future of great material abundance." They would circulate in our bloodstreams, looking for signs of disease or decay, forming an artificial immune system. They would repair living cells and even redesign them, for there is plenty of room in a human cell for a nanodevice to set up shop. If atoms were the size of marbles, Drexler writes, a single human cell would be a kilometer across. He estimates that a device useful for doing repairs in the cell would at this scale be about the size of a three-story house, guided by a nanoscale-computer system about the size of a building with a footprint the size of a football field, thirty stories tall. Such repair abilities would open the door to revival after cryonic suspension—the ability to freeze a recently deceased or still-living body to preserve it until technologies are developed to cure or revive the patient. This life-extending technology is the single advance Drexler spends the most time considering in _Engines of Creation_. The central problem of cryonic suspension is that the freezing designed to preserve living or recently deceased tissue actually causes serious damage to cells and tissues. With nanotechnology, people sick or dying or recently dead from illnesses that medicine cannot cure could be frozen, put into what would amount to suspended animation, and thawed out as cures became available. Drexler notes that cryonics need not be limited to the sick: the same freezing and thawing approach could be used by anyone who wants to "time travel" into the future.
Drexler's book sparked the public interest in nanotechnology and inspired many scientists to begin working in the field. But Drexler is a prophet accorded only limited honor in the discipline he did so much to develop and popularize; the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative makes no mention of him in its "Nanotechnology Timeline" nor in any of its other official materials. His ideas have been subject to controversy at least since the publication of _Engines of Creation_. The book's strong focus on cryonic suspension and reviving the dead put Drexler in suspect company, and the book's frequent use of the term "imagine" (as in "imagine if . . .") is also not the sort of thing that many scientists and engineers are likely to be comfortable with, particularly when there is an ongoing and spirited debate about the very possibility of the nanomachines he described. There is also among his critics a sense that his early speculations about the promise, and even more the peril, of nanotechnology had an unhealthy effect on public perceptions, raising hopes and fears in relation to things that might never even come to pass.
Yet his pioneering work remains important whatever the misgivings of his critics. Even if it turns out he did not envision the details of self-replicating nanotechnology correctly, the big-picture issues he raises concerning it remain relevant. For what is he thinking about in _Engines of Creation?_ First of all, he is considering the consequences of continued progress in miniaturization in a world where what has already been achieved has had huge impact. Second, he is thinking about the significance of an improved ability to develop useful new materials and customize old materials. Third, he is talking about increasingly fine-grained control over natural processes, the productivity gains that could result from this manipulation, and the results of increasing resource availability. Finally, he is thinking about what all these capacities together might do for our ability to cure or prevent disease—or indeed, to do harm to people—and for our ability to choose freely among a widening set of lifestyle possibilities. In and of themselves, none of these trends he claims to see is controversial. Who does not expect the future to hold more miniaturization, more synthetic materials, more control over nature, more ability to help or harm human health?
So even if it turns out that Drexler was wrong about some specifics of nanotechnology back in 1986, he still identified a _trajectory_ of technological development that can be taken seriously. He certainly is not alone in thinking that nanotechnology will change everything. But it could be said that he has thought out its perils as well as its promise more than most. He offers a carefully articulated quasi-philosophy of cosmic history that suggests the _necessity_ of developing nanotechnology—a framework that is both useful for transhumanists and contains familiar elements from the eclipse of man. He offers a theory of human personality as well—and it is attractive to transhumanists, too, for it provides a justification for not worrying too much about using nanotechnology to transform our minds and bodies. And he offers a vision of what a world remade by nanotechnology ought to look like. All that makes _Engines of Creation_ an unusually comprehensive effort to think about the consequences of a new technology even before it exists. The discussion that follows will not take up the technical challenges to Drexler's vision that have been raised, but will simply accept that something like what he described in _Engines of Creation_ could indeed be possible. At the very worst, Drexler's discussion of nanotechnology becomes an imaginative case study for trying to think through the consequences of accelerating technological change, and the discontinuities that it might produce in what it means to be human.
_DANGER AND DIVERSITY_
Drexler suggests with some justice that his book is not so much advocating nanotechnology as promoting "understanding of nanotechnology and its consequences." For all the benefits that he expects to result from his nanomachine "engines of creation," which he calls replicators, he warns they could also readily be "engines of destruction." "Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop," he says. That possibility "has become known as the 'gray goo problem,'" in which uncontrolled replicators literally consume the entire earth in an orgy of exponential growth. (This warning is one of the main reasons Drexler is looked at unfavorably; he is accused of raising implausible frightening scenarios before we know that the nanomachines he describes are even possible.) There are other dangerous possibilities, too. Advanced artificial intelligence (AI), Drexler argues, will facilitate and be facilitated by nanotechnology, and will be able to do in seconds what it would take hundreds of years of human engineering to do. States could achieve "destabilizing breakthroughs" with the ability to mass-produce better versions of existing weapons, or "programmable germs and other nasty novelties." "A bomb can only blast things, but nanomachines and AI systems could be used to infiltrate, seize, change and govern a territory or a world." Under these circumstances, no traditional "balance of power" is enough in international relations; advances could be made in a day that would destabilize any status quo. Domestically, totalitarian states could use nanomachines to infiltrate bodies and minds so as to dominate their populations even more ruthlessly, and to make it yet easier to treat their human subjects as disposable.
For such reasons Drexler acknowledges that "it seems we must guide the technology race or die"; clearly "guide" means direct or channel rather than restrain, since "the force of technological evolution makes a mockery of anti-technology movements: democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole." It does not follow from this skepticism about local restraint that Drexler is in favor of world government. It would take a global totalitarian government to stop advanced nanotechnology from being developed; the elimination of liberty would be, he believes, too high a price to pay for safety.
How then are we to maximize the desired outcomes and minimize the dangers? Drexler spends a good deal of time discussing engineering techniques that could be used to reduce risks. Beyond design features, however, Drexler calls for serious efforts at "foresight," which involves asking "three questions. What is _possible_ , what is _achievable_ , and what is _desirable?"_ Laws of nature set limits to the possible, and Drexler makes the bold claim that nanotechnology will allow our power over nature to approach rapidly the limits of the possible. Drexler is aware in principle that as the achievable begins to reach the limits of the possible, foresight will have to focus on decisions about what is desirable. That is clearly a moral or ethical question—how people _should_ use this amazing expansion of human power.
We are left with a dilemma: "Our differing dreams spur a quest for a future with room for diversity, while our shared fears spur a quest for a future of safety." People's desires for our world and themselves diverge wildly, and so, as Drexler develops the argument, it becomes clear that he believes liberty and diversity go hand in hand. But liberty and safety do not necessarily go together. Leave people free to do as they wish and they may end up hurting each other; the more you want to keep them safe from each other the more you may need to restrict their liberty. Political philosophy has long had to deal with this dilemma. But in Drexler's case, this already serious problem is made yet more difficult by the underlying logic that he thinks will drive nanotechnology development, which strongly constrains the foresight question of what is desirable, even as it extends the concept of diversity well beyond anything that we are familiar with today. First we will examine that logic, and see its ultimate consequences for what diversity means to Drexler, and then turn to how he believes that radical new diversity can be dealt with.
_COMPETITIVE PRESSURE_
To understand the logic behind the development of nanotechnology, it is important to see that Drexler is not content to argue for nanotechnology on the grounds of its possibility and desirability alone. He also wants to suggest that because of competitive pressure we—understood in some sense as a national "we" and in some sense as a human "we"—have no choice _but_ to develop it. The most immediate reason is international competition; whichever country is the "leading force" in nanotechnology will gain a huge economic and military advantage over everyone else. That means there is every incentive for _somebody_ to develop it, and to his credit, Drexler, writing toward the close of the Cold War, clearly prefers that it be the United States.
Competitive pressure allows Drexler to place his nanomachines within a broad sweep of evolutionary development. The philosophy of cosmic history that he offers is reminiscent of the way Winwood Reade expanded on and adapted Darwin's ideas in _The Martyrdom of Man_ (discussed in Chapter One). Drexler follows Richard Dawkins, the neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologist, in arguing that evolution is all about the "variation and selection of replicators." The earliest simple replicators based on RNA and DNA evolved into a bewildering variety of forms—giving us life as we observe it. Eventually, the story goes, a kind of replicator we call human beings came along, capable of developing technology. This technology in turn undergoes the same process of evolutionary selection, as do the ideas ("memes") that are part and parcel of its development. Nanomachines are just the latest form of replicator, brought about by human replicators.
We must expect, then, that "deep-rooted principles of evolutionary change will shape the development of nanotechnology, even as the distinction between hardware and life begins to blur." Competitive pressure will drive the evolution of these new replicators as it drives all others; "the global technology race has been accelerating for billions of years. The earthworm's blindness could not block the development of sharp-eyed birds." Unlike natural selection, which depends on randomness, the variation and selection of nanomachines can be directed by the proper application of foresight to serve the ends of intelligence. Yet because competition makes the development of nanotechnology necessary, the question of desirability cannot really be a question of "nanotechnology or not" but must rather be a question of what kind and how. Indeed, Drexler argues that foresight must help us select _against_ ideas and ways of thinking that stand in the way of accepting this new form of replicator.
By lumping together many different biological, physical, and mental phenomena under the broad category of "replicators," Drexler assimilates the whole history of technology into the history of life, which in turn makes two kinds of evolution possible: one based on chance and the other guided by intelligence. (This distinction is an important point of contact between Drexler's argument and the arguments of the transhumanists, as we will see in the next chapter.) So when we consider the future of nanotechnology, we are seeing a new stage in an old story. Drexler's proof of concept for self-replicating nanomachines is the existence of the self-replicating organic "protein machines" that are so well established in the biological realm already—that is, all the parts that make up cells and organisms. With nanotechnology, we are just developing a new form of a common phenomenon.
_MIND IN MACHINES_
Yet there will still be significant discontinuity in the shape of life to come. Nanomachines may lead to the eclipse of man, and into realms of achievement we cannot now comprehend. Drexler envisions "revolutions": remaking our bodies, melding mind and machine, spreading life into space. The range of these possibilities suggests that the "diversity" Drexler discusses will have a very wide scope. Still, he is plainly aware that some people will be troubled by the convergence of minds and machines, with all that it implies about what we are and what we may become: "some feel uncomfortable with the idea that machines underlie our own thinking." To make such people less uncomfortable, Drexler attempts to shift their understanding of "machine" away from just the sort of "picture of gross, clanking metal" that Bernal presented in his crustacean-like brain housing. Drexler would rather we imagine "signals flickering through a shifting weave of neural fibers. . . . The brain's really machinelike machines are of molecular size." But the further implications of this view of what a machine can look like raises its own issues. Signals passing through fibers could describe either human intelligence or artificial intelligence—another idea that Drexler understands people resist. Yet if the brain is _already_ understood as a machine, opposition to artificial intelligence becomes merely "biochauvinist prejudice." Drexler is drawing out the consequences of scientific materialism's view of human beings as sophisticated machines. From this point of view, a new transhuman or posthuman model of humanity is no big deal.
The supposed need to overcome biochauvinist prejudice tells us how Drexler's idea of diversity includes dehumanization as a core element of the nanotechnology future. We see another in his discussion of one of the great payoffs he expects from nanomachines: indefinitely extended life. (Like Condorcet, Drexler is careful not to say immortality.) The argument begins with relatively conventional goals for nanomachines: we will use them to cure disease, detect and repair cellular damage, replace old parts with new. However, should there be anything wrong with the body that nanomachines can't fix, they can still make possible revival after cryonic suspension. Echoing Bernal, the only human part that Drexler really believes needs to be frozen is the brain—since the patterns of the information stored in the molecular machines that are our brains define the meaning of the "I" in the phrase "I will live far longer." To make this case, Drexler takes advantage of the real uncertainty we have about the basis for our personal identity and selfhood. Is it the body? Yet the body changes over time, and the very stuff of the body is in constant flux and not at all what it was not that long ago. So where does it reside? As a materialist, Drexler does not want to believe in a soul—but he comes close. The "I" is a pattern of information, a pattern residing in the brain.
"Nature draws no line between living and nonliving," Drexler writes. Matter is matter, but it can be patterned in different ways, and these patterns make a huge difference; "one simple sum of our parts would resemble hamburger, lacking both mind and life." With regard to that brain, however, Drexler turns out to be something of a dualist:
A mind and the tissue of its brain are like a novel and the paper of its book. Spilled ink or flood damage may harm the book, making the novel difficult to read. Book repair machines could nonetheless restore physical 'health' by removing the foreign ink or drying and repairing the damaged paper fibers. Such treatments would do nothing for the book's content, however, which in a real sense is nonphysical. If the book were a cheap romance with a moldy plot and empty characters, repairs are needed not on the ink and paper, but on the novel.
We know that the nonphysical information of the book, the novel, can have any variety of physical embodiments and remain the same with respect to the information it contains, whether the book be hardcover, paperback, e-book, or audiobook. Of course, the resurrected patterns of information that reside in the brain could be housed in a familiar body—perhaps even a body that resembles the brain's original body. But why stop there? Why not an unfamiliar body, or any body at all? Indeed, once the _pattern_ in the brain becomes the key thing, even the brain itself becomes disposable. In a sense, Drexler allows the argument to advance a step beyond Bernal, for whom already the body was a mere tool of the brain. Why should the pattern of information that truly is each of us reside in a biological brain at all? And why must that pattern reside in only one location at a time?
Drexler's presentation of individual identity as a pattern of information is a symptom of the relatively precarious way that consciousness and our sense of self are situated in scientific materialism. In _Engines of Creation_ Drexler does not explore in depth all the implications of the ability to "remake our bodies." While he mentions in passing the possibility of "bizarre" modifications of the body, for the most part he is content with letting his readers assume that a resurrected brain will be placed in something like a familiar body, and that one will lead a familiar life with resurrected friends and family—a scene that provided some inspiration for the prologue to this chapter. The implications are nevertheless clear enough, and suggest another respect in which nano-based diversity will produce inhumanity. Information can be stored, copied, manipulated, and transmitted in all kinds of ways. The idea that "I" am just a pattern abstracts not just from bodily particulars, but from how bodies are embedded in the larger world; or, perhaps more precisely, it assumes that we live in our own heads, and we don't even need to stay there. It wipes away much of how we experience and understand ourselves and our world. (In the next chapter we will see how transhumanists take advantage of the potentially radical consequences that pattern identity has for detaching people from "biochauvinist prejudice.")
_NANOPOLITICS AND HUMAN IMPERFECTION_
Drexler does his best to argue that the kind of diversity he has in mind—where people can choose to live on starships, to colonize alien worlds, to communicate telepathically, to redesign their bodies, to "time-travel" with cryonics, or even to live the way we do today—is in keeping with the kind of wide, free choice that is considered desirable in liberal democracies and capitalist economies. As remarkable as those examples may appear, Drexler seems to suggest that they fall under the rubric of the "pursuit of Happiness" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. But will people with such diverse desires be able to live together? Drexler is smart enough to understand that we cannot simply assume that giving people more power to choose individually or collectively how to live will make them more tolerant of those who choose a different way of life; it might make them more insular and less tolerant. So it is at least not self-evidently a good idea to seek a future where more people will have larger differences and more power to fight about them, a world in which people believe themselves even more entitled to do as they please than in many parts of the world today. We might hope that such power would be a recipe for leaving each other alone, for doing as we would be done by, but that is not the lesson of experience.
So what is to be done to make sure that nanotechnology is used responsibly—to govern its use in such a way that the gray goo scenario, for example, never comes to pass? Political, legal, or moral restraints that will help us to make the right decisions about the development of nanotechnology do not have to "start from scratch," Drexler writes. There are many elements of liberal democratic society and politics that can provide the necessary foundations. "The principles of representative government, free speech, due process, the rule of law, and protection of human rights will remain crucial," as will "such diffuse and lively institutions as the free press, the research community, and activist networks." Further, such things as "personal restraint, local action, selective delay, international agreement, unilateral strength, and international cooperation" will all be useful for avoiding fearsome scenarios.
However, such institutions and modes of restraint are only useful in a specific context: when they go along with what Drexler calls "active shields." Active shields are defensive, automated nanotechnologies that act as an immune system, seeking out and destroying hostile nanomachines. In other words, the best defense against bad nanomachines in the wrong hands is for nanotechnology in the right hands always to be one step ahead. If we look more closely at the kinds of measures Drexler advocates for guiding the development of nanotechnology, we can understand why in the end Drexler must place a huge amount of weight on active shields.
Political solutions are at least as imperfect with respect to nanotechnology as they are generally; in particular they are not complete answers to the existence of "power, evil, incompetence, and sloth." Drexler acknowledges that democracies can commit "atrocities" and that they contain evil people. The potential for evil is balanced by the fact that democratic "leaders gain power largely by appearing to uphold conventional ideas of good." He never makes clear just what constitutes "good" or "evil," a fact that suggests that he does not have a lot of hope that some "ethics of nanotechnology" will be very useful as a restraint. That power and evil are relatively intractable problems already suggests why active shields will be necessary.
Sloth and incompetence seem to be more tractable problems, although still not easy to eliminate because "we human beings are by nature stupid and ignorant." But in this area as in so many others, Drexler does not think we have to be content with nature. Indeed, we already know how to cooperate on technical matters to "gain reliability through redundancy." Incompetence can thus be weeded out. He also provides suggestions to "improve our institutions for judging important technical facts." One of these ideas is to create "fact forums" (sometimes also called "science courts"), which would put technical disputes within a quasi-judicial framework of due process, so that clear statements of what is agreed upon, and the parameters of disagreements, can emerge. Drexler does not envision them as policymaking bodies; they seem designed largely to lay out the merits of technical disputes for the public and decision-makers.
Even if foresight can be improved by improved competence, sloth is another matter. It may well be that not everyone will be willing to "meet great challenges with great effort." But it is not necessary that everyone be on board from the start. "It will require only that a growing community of people strive to develop, publicize, and implement workable solutions—and that they have a good and growing measure of success," Drexler writes. "Sloth will not snare everyone's effort. Deadly pseudo-solutions (such as blocking research) will lose the battle of ideas if enough people debunk them. And though we face a great challenge, success will make possible the fulfillment of great dreams."
_SHIELDS AND LIMITS_
While Drexler suggests that incompetence can be minimized and sloth may be made irrelevant under the right conditions, he wisely does not claim to have a complete solution to the two other problems he names: evil and the abuse of or hunger for power. These are facts of life, and no set of beliefs or framework of laws and institutions can restrain them perfectly. But the great power conferred by nanotechnology, power that Drexler himself suggests could change everything in a day, makes evil and the lust for power particularly dangerous. So moral, legal, institutional, and political restraints are likely to mean little unless they go along with active shields. Moreover, moral, legal, institutional, and political restraints are likely to be in tension with the goals of liberty and diversity in a way that active shields are not. The arguments that Drexler uses against efforts to prohibit nanotechnology generally—local restraint alone is ineffective, global restraint totalitarian—would apply just as much to any effort to restrain some particular form or use of nanotechnology. So moral, political, and legal restraints are either ineffective when non-uniform or dangerous to liberty and diversity when uniform. This dilemma may help explain why Drexler is not very interested in exploring terms like "evil" or conventional understandings of what is good. As different ways of life develop around different uses of nanomachines, the meaning of these terms will be contested. If active shields work as Drexler intends, he can think of them as guarantors of libertarian cultural relativism; it will not matter to one protected enclave what is going on in another.
Now, any society, even one that values liberty, needs some kinds of "active shields" like police, private security, or military forces because moral, political, and legal restraints cannot enforce themselves and not everyone will be equally restrained by them. In a society that loves liberty, these human active shields are there to make sure that (to use the familiar phrase) the liberty of your fist ends just prior to my nose. In a civilized society these old-fashioned active shields are the _ultimate_ line of defense; they come into play when all other restraints on behavior fail. These systems are imperfect, so crime and conflict are not always prevented. But the intensity of crime and conflict is limited not just by our active shields, but by some degree of unity, even if limited temporally or geographically, on normative beliefs that restrain conflict, and on the relative difficulty of acquiring tools that would be capable of larger- rather than smaller-scale destruction. So although it is relatively easy to get guns in the United States, for example, most people are not going to use them to commit crimes, and the few that have criminal inclinations will find it progressively harder to get progressively more dangerous weapons.
The future world that Drexler invites us to imagine is one with greater diversity than the one we live in, less normative consensus, and easier access to more dangerous tools. Thus, his active shields are not the last line of defense, they are the _precondition_ for creating a "stable, durable peace" while maintaining diversity and liberty in a world where human power increases but human goodness may not. Indeed, to the extent that the active shields work, it might appear that the question of goodness has reduced significance. Ensconced behind an active shield, we can safely follow our own vision of the good without having to worry about anyone else's.
Drexler's willingness in some fashion to confront the problem of evil justifies his claim that he rejects standard utopian fare, which "all too often [has] been impossible and the attempt to achieve it has been disastrous." He wants to present us with "useful dreams"; as we will see shortly, neither _we're running out of resources tomorrow_ nor _we can do anything we want forever_ is a useful dream. Likewise, it is not useful to think that we need to plan today for everything the future might hold; the "great task of our time" is not so much to build this world of diverse dreams as to guide "life and civilization through this transition" to it.
_UTOPIAN ANTI-UTOPIANISM_
We have already seen some of Drexler's recommendations for making the nanotech future safer despite the presence of power and evil, and for reducing, or at least minimizing the effects of, incompetence and sloth. While he claims these suggestions can build on existing institutions and ideas, will our system of politics survive in a recognizable way? The future Drexler describes seems likely to fundamentally challenge liberal democracy, which is predicated on checks and balances that allow the interests and ambitions of some, running along their well-established lines, to counter the interests and ambitions of others. What happens when those lines can be extended to the limits of the possible? Certainly the liberal democratic "pursuit of Happiness" is _not_ predicated on the degree of human malleability and the consequent radical range of choice that Drexler presents, and the same would be true of rights generally and indeed of any of the hitherto existing "conventional ideas of good."
This discontinuity should be understood carefully. There is ample historical precedent for expanding the sphere of moral concern and political protection to formerly excluded classes of human beings and considering it progress. The future could simply hold more of the more-or-less same. At the very least, our conception of the human (as in human rights) would have to expand, or our understanding of rights-bearers would have to shift from human beings to some other category, such as sentient beings. (The already out-of-favor yet foundational idea of "natural rights" will have even less approval in a world bent on reconstructing nature itself.) But even under these "optimistic" circumstances, Drexler's "useful dreams" are of a world that remains extremely dangerous precisely because of his hope for maximizing choice and minimizing restraint. The libertarian world he looks forward to seems unlikely to make people less assertive about their desires and perceived interests given the increasingly unimaginable benefits of nanotechnology, particularly when, for the "I" that is coming to understand itself as a "pattern" capable of diverse embodiments, the act of choosing becomes the locus of identity. The sphere of moral concern would have to be expanded to encompass all possible definitions of its appropriate scope.
In light of the diversity that Drexler envisions, one might ask, "If people can choose to do as they please, why should they concern themselves if others are choosing differently?" One could think even more creatively, and imagine that out of the settlement of alien worlds will spring a plethora of new nanotechnology-enabled species, alien beings who will have little interest in each other. But Drexler has already admitted that there are two flies in this ointment. The first is the existence of ongoing scarcity. This is a subject on which his position is nuanced, if not somewhat obscure. Drexler's original interest in space and then in nanotechnology grew out of a reaction to the doomsaying projections made famous in the Club of Rome's 1972 report _The Limits to Growth_ , which he first read as a young man. In _Engines of Creation_ , he utterly rejects the report's projections that we are quickly running out of resources; nanotechnology and human expansion into space will put greater resources under human control. But fundamental laws of nature still create limits under which people will have to live. For example, nature dictates that the expansion of humanity into the galaxy will be limited by the speed of light (at best). That natural limit means that if our population grows exponentially, we will not be able to spread rapidly enough to obtain the resources we need. So while "the spread of life and civilization faces no fixed bound," Drexler writes, "unchecked population growth, with or without long life, would overrun available resources in one or two thousand years at most." Drexler, in other words, believes that Malthus was essentially correct. So scarcity will remain an issue, even if only a cosmic-scale matter of living space, and competition among worlds will not disappear.
The second reason that radical diversity will challenge peaceful coexistence and live-and-let-live values becomes clear in an admission that Drexler makes: "Unless your dreams demand that you dominate everyone else. . . ." Such dreams are hardly unknown, but it is not clear Drexler has fully confronted their significance. As Aristotle knew, people do not turn to crime simply "through being cold or hungry" or become tyrants solely "to get in out of the cold." However much we may prefer a world where there is plenty of heat to one where there is not, from the point of view of Aristotle's realism, the abundance that Drexler imagines may encourage desires "beyond the necessary things" or for "enjoyment that comes with pleasures unaccompanied by pains. . . . The greatest injustices are committed out of excess." Excess almost seems to be the point of the nanotechnology that Drexler describes in _Engines of Creation_.
Because some people have dreams of domination, others will need protection from them. Even if greater choice and less scarcity reduces conflict, there will still be reason for conflict so long as there is ordinary crime and so long as diversity includes those (call them evil if you wish) who find reason to dissent from the orthodoxy of diversity itself. If even only a few want more than they can get, or even a few concern themselves with martial glory or the love of honor, or even a few exhibit pathological evil, the diffident and tolerant many will need to be able to protect themselves, and their best defense may be a good offense.
Since Drexler gives us reason to think that active and competent evil will continue to exist in the future, then while he would like to think that active shields are purely defensive and hence non-threatening, they _are_ a threat to anyone who has reason to worry about what is going on behind them. And such concerns arise not only so long as the possibility of evil exists. They will arise also out of the very fact that diverse visions of the good will often lead to divergent understandings of what kinds of behaviors are "safe" or "risky" in the first place. Drexler ignores the complication that in his world of choice among such visions, one group's benefit may be another's risk. Unless "worlds" can be completely isolated one from another, the competitive pressures Drexler counts on to produce progress in developing nanotechnology will not disappear even as the power to impose on others will increase, even as wild diversity decreases the sense of solidarity. Even those who might choose to "opt out" of the lifestyles nanotechnology makes possible will still be dependent on it: for example, if _almost_ everybody is willing to let me raise my child without nanotechnology, I will still need an active shield against unrestrained deviants who find my behavior to be child abuse. In general, then, it appears that active shields will have to be very active indeed.
Which raises a vital question. Who will develop and maintain the active shields? Not all of the lifestyle choices Drexler speculates about, or that we might imagine, would in and of themselves point to interest in or competence at this important task, particularly to the extent that they share the desire for ease and comfort that Bernal spoke of as "Melanesian" aspirations. But somebody is going to have to mind the store. One wonders whether Bernal did not see more clearly than Drexler the likely outcome of this dilemma: utter dependence of the many on those relative few (perhaps the committed and non-slothful?) who develop and manage the technology the many depend upon. Diversity must be built on uniformity of technological capacity, freedom on dependence on those guardians who develop and maintain active shields. The shield guardians will not always share the values of those they protect because their focus will have to be on the non-diverse technical demands of their job.
Or perhaps—as indeed seems likely—these shield guardians will not be human at all but precisely those advanced artificial intelligences that Drexler counts on to push so rapidly the achievable to the limits of the possible. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how such an artificial intelligence could even begin to be under mere human control, given that its main strategic and tactical advantage over human development, design, and deployment would be the speed at which it would operate. Either human beings would have to be enhanced to catch up to it, or it would have to have been securely programmed (or otherwise convinced) to be well inclined to those it nominally served. The old question of who will guard the guardians was hard enough to answer in light of the old worldly wisdom that man is a wolf to man. It is far from clear that handing over power to artificial intelligences will represent a solution to this problem.
Drexler is aware that diversity and conflicting values go together. He knows also that there will be "genuine opposition to an open future, based on differing (and often unstated) values and goals." He expects it will be opposed by "the power-hungry, the intolerant idealists, and a handful of sheer people-haters." But despite the conflicts that Malthusian scarcity and Darwinian competition would suggest follow from such diversity, he does what he can to avoid dealing fully with the implications of divergent visions of the good. He holds that such disagreements will be far less important than those related to "differing beliefs regarding matters of fact." Just as successful nanomachines reduce the problem of sloth, so too in the form of active shields are they the key to getting around value disputes.
Unless Drexler believes that there is an objective basis upon which to distinguish among visions of the good, then clarity about the facts will never be enough to settle such disputes. Rather, it seems that Drexler believes that in the present, the force of necessity allows foresight to slight the question of what is desirable, as if the might of technological possibility makes right. In the future, he hopes that active shields will make it unnecessary for there to be any common answers to that question. Yet the significance he gives to competition and scarcity make it implausible that what happens within active shields will not have consequences for relations among the shielded groups, and therefore on the way they are organized internally to meet this challenge. It is all very well to let a thousand flowers bloom, until you discover that some of them are invasive weeds. If it is impossible to isolate the worlds created by nanotechnological diversity from one another, we cannot overlook the significance of conflicting visions of the good among them.
_WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?_
This matter that Drexler seems not to address fully—the issue of conflict based on divergent ideas of the good—is at the core of Neal Stephenson's portrayal of a nanotechnology future in his dazzling novel _The Diamond Age_ (1995). Stephenson builds his story on broadly Drexlerian assumptions about the future of technology, and indeed, Drexler himself has endorsed the novel. But Stephenson is far more interested than Drexler in the question of how diverse visions of a good life might be organized internally in a nanotech future, and how such organized groups will be influenced by their competitive, external relations with those groups that have differing values. This question of relations between inner and outer arises throughout _The Diamond Age_ , relevant not just to the way nanotech-based cultures interact, but also to how people interact as individuals.
The world of _The Diamond Age_ is, by our present-day standards, pretty magical. A bird's-eye view would note the following: a worldwide computer network (called "the Net," recognizable as roughly equivalent to our Internet) was responsible for the downfall of the nation-state; once the Net made possible secure financial transactions that could not be traced by governments, people stopped paying their taxes. Nanotechnology produces goods plentifully; nanomachines disassemble matter at the molecular level and, normally for a price, programmable "matter compilers" (Drexler's genie machines) can reassemble it into anything that is wanted. This world, Stephenson says, is one in which "nearly anything" has become possible. But the observation that makes Stephenson's book so insightful is stated early on; for as nearly anything has become possible, the "cultural role in deciding what _should_ be done with it had become far more important than imagining what _could_ be done with it."
In the absence of the nation-state, answers to the question "What should be done?" are provided by a host of culturally distinct tribes, or "phyles." But all phyles are not equally successful, and those inequalities matter a great deal. The largest and perhaps most powerful are New Atlantis, Nippon, Han, and Hindustan. The major phyles have obvious geographic antecedents and still control territory, including islands they fabricated using nanoconstruction off the coast of China and elsewhere. The story of _The Diamond Age_ is largely centered on one such island, called New Chusan. It serves as real estate occupied by members of the New Atlantis phyle, which has self-consciously replicated Victorian norms as the best way to deal with the promises and perils of this new world. New Chusan is also the intake processor for the molecular stocks—the raw materials sorted largely out of the atmosphere and seawater—that are passed to the matter compilers through a network of feeder lines (the Feed). Territory on the island's lowland periphery is leased to other less powerful phyles and to "thetes," who belong to no phyle or to small "synthetic" phyles. The thetes constitute a relatively lawless underclass, living for the most part off the limited selection of free goods provided by the matter compilers.
_The Diamond Age_ is by no stretch of the imagination a utopia. Nanotechnology makes it a frighteningly dangerous place, where thugs install "skull guns" in their foreheads that shoot nanoprojectiles capable of turning a body to mush from the inside out. Successful phyles have extensive security measures to protect them from hostile nanotechnology; these Drexlerian active shields consist of things like tiny hunter-killer airborne nanomachines, whose immune-system-like battles with intruding nanotechnology can turn the air gray with dead "mites." New Atlantans also revive Victorian customs useful for self-defense: reception parlors in their homes serve to scan all visitors for hostile nanomachines, and women wear nanotech veils to fight off the same. The whole New Atlantis enclave is surrounded by a grid of floating security pods.
Yet despite all the advances in nanotechnology, the action of the story develops from the fact that in this new world, people (mostly) remain people. Parents want to do well by their children, who remain difficult to raise. Businesses want to make a profit. Society remains "an elongated state of low-intensity warfare," and high-intensity warfare can break out among competing phyles. _The Diamond Age_ pictures a world of prejudice, inequality, exploitation, competition, and crime—but also a world of nobility, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, and virtue. In other words, in its moral fundamentals it is a world very much like ours. Although Stephenson is not blind to the potential for the progress of dehumanization inherent in Drexler's promises, his achievement is to think through the impact of nanotechnology and other new technologies in relation to perennial _human_ possibilities.
Stephenson observes how nanomachines, by opening up all the diverse choices that Drexler anticipates, challenge the _ability_ of human associations to perpetuate themselves without altering the fundamental _need_ for associations to do so, given the existence of competing groups with different ideas of what should be done. As a result, Stephenson must go deeper than Drexler into the question of how the "inward" side of nano-constructed lives, be they understood as the cultures behind the active shields or the lives of individuals within them, mold and are molded by the "outward" side: relations with other cultures and individuals.
We will explore various factors that create this situation, but competition and scarcity are key elements that Stephenson draws from Drexler's account. In a world of ongoing competition and still-limited (even if amazing) resources, how a given group answers the question of _what should be done_ will be a factor in their success or failure vis-à-vis other groups with different answers. Stephenson also identifies factors other than scarcity and competition that mold the deployment and development of nanotechnology, and these round out Drexler's rather abstract picture of human things. In _The Diamond Age_ , even when people try to make the kinds of fact-based rational decisions that Drexler would have us aim at, they still run up against the consequences of imperfect information and the misapprehensions it creates. And in Stephenson's fictional world, as in ours, people are powerfully moved by the love of their own, a love that eventually points to certain mysteries of the human heart.
_OUR STORY THUS FAR_
A very spare plot summary can only hint at the Trollopian, if not Dickensian, richness in character and incident of _The Diamond Age_. It is largely the story of Nell (short for Nellodee), an abused thete child, who at the age of five or six receives from her delinquent brother Harv (short for Harvard) a stolen copy of an extraordinary interactive, educational book/computer/game of immense power, _The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer_. Harv stole it from its designer, a talented nano-engineer named John Percival Hackworth, who intended it as a gift for his daughter Fiona. But Hackworth's copy is in turn a bootlegged version of the original, which he had designed for Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, one of the "duke-level Equity Lords" in New Atlantis. Lord Finkle-McGraw intends it as a gift for his granddaughter Elizabeth, a gift he hopes will subvert her conventional New Atlantis education so that she can lead an "interesting" life; as one of the founders of New Atlantis, he finds his own children painfully dull and complacent.
Bootlegging the Primer requires that Hackworth use the facilities of Dr. X, a Mandarin working on three projects that move the plot: to free China from foreign influence, to rescue abandoned female babies from the ecologically collapsing Chinese interior, and to replace the centralized Feed of raw materials with "Seed" technology, decentralized nanotech manufacturing. Dr. X believes that the Seed will allow the Celestial Kingdom to become a true Confucian regime. Under Dr. X's power, Hackworth is enlisted more or less against his will to create the Seed.
The Primer, while an impressive example of artificial intelligence, still requires a human voice to interact with Nell as it tells her a host of compelling and didactic adventure-puzzle stories about a character who shares the name Nell. The human voice is supplied by Miranda Redpath, a "ractor" (interactive actor) who comes to think of herself as educating and raising Nell, with whom she shares a background of abuse. (Even though Miranda has no idea who or even where Nell is, the Primer closely monitors and draws on the circumstances of Nell's real life, so Miranda can infer a great deal about what is happening to the real Nell from the lines she is given to read for stories involving the fictional Nell.) The net result of the Primer's education is that Nell turns into a formidable, self-reliant child who can escape her dead-end thete world when her life is threatened by one of her mother's abusive boyfriends. She has behind-the-scenes help from Finkle-McGraw, who pays the fees for Miranda's racting. He later supports Nell as well as Hackworth's daughter Fiona at Miss Matheson's Academy of the Three Graces, the posh neo-Victorian finishing school that his own granddaughter Elizabeth attends. While each of the three girls was educated by the Primer as the heroine of her own story, it is Nell who turns into the most impressive and unusual young lady. In fact, by the end of _The Diamond Age_ she is a Queen of her own phyle, just like the character Nell in the Primer's didactic fairytale. Her real-life subjects are the abandoned girls saved by Dr. X. These hundreds of thousands of girls were also educated by pirated copies of the Primer that Dr. X and Hackworth supplied; these girls' experiences with the Primer have turned them into a real-world equivalent of the "Mouse Army" in Nell's Primer's story, an army that is entirely loyal to Nell.
While Hackworth's daughter Fiona and Nell are growing up, Hackworth spends ten years involuntarily (it would seem) immersed in the world of the Drummers, a strange underwater phyle whose members constitute a "Wet Net" in which individuals lose all self-consciousness in a quasi-telepathic linkage. Each becomes a node for processing information through intensive exchange of nanomachines in bodily fluids. Rescued once, Hackworth is drawn back to the Drummers for a second attempt to complete the Seed calculations in the midst of the Confucian uprising Dr. X has arranged. But while the last foreigners are expelled from China, many of their lives saved by Queen Nell and her real-world Mouse Army, Hackworth is again prevented from finishing the Seed calculations. For Miranda, having joined the Drummers in hopes that she could use their group mind to find Nell, was to be the sacrificial repository for this second attempt at Seed design. With the help of Carl Hollywood, Miranda's onetime producer, Nell locates and saves the woman whom the Primer itself has helped her understand as the loving human presence behind her book.
_CONTINUING SCARCITY AND COMPETITIVE PRESSURES_
Competition and conflict drive the plot of _The Diamond Age_ , as China yet again seeks to get out from under foreign domination. Technology makes new forms of exploitation possible, but those new forms of exploitation mimic in their effects and results familiar stories from history. As Drexler seems to expect, individuals can find a social world into which they fit with least conflict by having choices with respect to phyle membership (if the desired phyle will have them, which is far from a foregone conclusion). However, as Drexler does not expect, the competing notions of a good life represented by the different phyles continue to be the basis for conflict among them in part because (as we will see) nanotechnology has not ended scarcity.
Competition among phyles has contrasting consequences; it usually, but not always, promotes Drexlerian diversity. In some instances it leads to an emulation of successful models and a certain homogenization. We learn, for instance, from Madame Ping, the proprietress of a brothel, that men "from all tribes" want "to be like Victorian gentlemen," so their sexual fantasies turn toward neo-Victorian scenarios.
Competition among phyles means that they cannot in their internal organizations be blind to the qualities that will allow them to compete successfully. Observing the diversity of ways of life in her world, the teacher Miss Matheson notes as if speaking to Drexler himself: "It is upon moral qualities that a society is ultimately founded. All the prosperity and technological sophistication in the world is of no use without that foundation—we learned that in the late twentieth century, when it became unfashionable to teach these things." Elsewhere in the book we learn more of this history: the New Atlantis phyle arose as a reaction against the moral relativism and mindless egalitarianism of the late twentieth century, just as the original Victorians turned against the excesses of the Regency era. Lord Finkle-McGraw grew up in Iowa (more or less in our present) and as a young man he
had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behavior were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly. . . . Finkle-McGraw began to develop an opinion that was to shape his political views in later years, namely, that while people were not _genetically_ different, they were _culturally_ as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others. This was not a subjective value judgment, merely an observation that some cultures thrived and expanded while others failed. It was a view implicitly shared by nearly everyone but, in those days, never voiced.
The fashionable egalitarian relativism out of which New Atlantis sprang amounts to the belief (implicit also in Drexler) that one way of life is as good as any other. In the world of _The Diamond Age_ , thetes continue to act on the basis of this mistaken belief, and we can see its ruinous effects. Nell's mother breaks up with her most promising boyfriend because he is a blacksmith in a tribe of artisans; they produce handmade goods for the neo-Victorians. She "didn't like craftsmen, she said, because they were too much like actual Victorians, always spouting all kinds of crap about how one thing was better than another thing, which eventually led, she explained, to the belief that some people were better than others." From all we see of the thetes in the Leased Territories, we have no reason to believe her views are anything but typical. Certainly Nell's life as a thete, governed by violence, and the life of her thuggish father Bud, whom we see at the beginning of the book, represent a broader consequence of holding this belief, which is exploitation of the weak by the strong. The "logical conclusion" of the thete lifestyle is to be "homeless, addicted, hounded by debtors, or on the run from the law or abusive members of their own families."
So despite nanotechnology's potential to greatly reduce material scarcity—no one need go hungry ever again, since public matter compilers make such things as food and first-aid supplies freely available—inequality and relative poverty still exist. Yet the failure of the lives lived on thete assumptions is not entirely a product of their own moral failings; it is also a consequence of those failings in connection with their external circumstances, over which they have little control. The lowland territories where the thete underclass lives provide a useful buffer zone against nano attack for the highland-dwelling Atlantans, even at the cost of chronic lung disease for its residents. The thetes inadvertently are a sort of human layer in an active shield, a result of New Atlantis protecting its own interests. Nanotechnology is a big, powerful business that makes New Atlantis big and powerful. The Feed infrastructure was developed by and is owned and run by people made wealthy and powerful by its success; New Chusan is in effect Finkle-McGraw's ducal estate. The interests that brought about this new world do not simply vanish when it is created, but continue to shape it. New Atlantis, in short, has no interest in giving all possible goods away for free; to some extent the Atlantans must manufacture scarcity along with everything else.
_LOVE OF ONE'S OWN_
It should not be news that people tend to protect their own interests; it is a manifestation of the love of one's own that is pervasive in _The Diamond Age_. Hackworth goes outside the law to give his daughter a leg up, yet repeatedly also expresses loyalty to his phyle; Harv severely beats and perhaps kills his mother's boyfriend, who has abused Nell; Finkle-McGraw wants the Primer to improve the life of his granddaughter and advance the interests of his phyle. Carl Hollywood looks out for Miranda, his employee and perhaps romantic interest; Miranda comes to think of Nell as her daughter; the Mouse Army will do anything for their Queen Nell. As these examples suggest, while love of one's own forms a basis for phyles that protects them from outsiders, it can also threaten their internal organization. This perennial tension inherent in voluntary human associations is not changed by technological development. Hackworth is loyal to his phyle in relation to outside phyles; he is loyal to his family inside the phyle; his wife might claim he is loyal to his own love of engineering problem-solving, putting his family on the outside. It is all the more a challenge to reconcile inner and outer when the definitions of each can shift in this way. The multiple layers of the love of one's own make relevant a variety of moral qualities that contain it or direct its expression, virtues like loyalty, honor, courage. Having been well instructed throughout the book in how phyles take care of their own, we are hardly surprised when a grandmother blows herself up to save her fleeing cohort from oncoming Celestial Kingdom troops.
Sometimes the love of one's own directs violence against outsiders, sometimes it contains it in relation to those inside the group. It may involve competition among phyles, but there is also competition within phyles that must be dealt with. People in whom the moral qualities that discipline, train, and direct love of one's own are missing become dangerous; here again the thetes are instructive. Nell's mother and father have very limited attachments to anything beyond themselves. One of the reasons Bud is sentenced to death for a mugging is that he is not aware that his girlfriend Tequila has given birth to Nell; hence, the judge is confident that Bud's departure will not be a loss to his children. While young neo-Victorian ladies are taught to think of late-twentieth-century urban America as a historical low point, the thete lives we see are pretty nasty and Bud's is also literally poor, brutish, solitary, and short. Given their nearly unmediated selfishness, being spared the perils of starvation and other kinds of gross material deprivation by the free goods offered by the matter compilers only seems to liberate thetes to be more self-indulgent, irresponsible, and depraved.
But if thetes have little concern for anything outside of their own gratification, the other extreme is represented by the Drummers. In this tribe, individuals become parts in a "gestalt society," which is to say they share thoughts without being aware they are doing so. By their appearance, behavior, and tunnel-dwelling lifestyle, the Drummers rather remind one of naked mole rats. So far as an outsider can tell they lack any sign of inner life, consciousness, self-consciousness or individual volition; it is hard to see how there would be any competition among them. (The few we see escaping the Drummers seem to do so only with outside assistance.) The mechanisms of their physical survival in this state—like what and how they eat—are largely left unexplained.
The ultimate purpose of their common life is similarly mysterious. Carl Hollywood concludes that by directly linking computing technology with the human mind, which "didn't work like a digital computer and was capable of doing some funny things," they have gained the capacity to break the encryption codes upon which the security of the Net depends—a development with disastrous potential for the status quo. They have no "obvious way" or no desire to take advantage of their ability. Yet we know they _are_ willing to be used to create Seed technology, a tool equally subversive of the status quo. In losing a self-conscious identity, a core sense of being individuals, it seems the Drummers have succeeded either in transforming themselves into tools, the means to someone else's ends, or into an organization whose purposes are not comprehensible to those human beings who have not taken the Drummers' evolutionary leap to inhumanity.
In different senses, then, both extreme love of one's own (as in the case of the thetes) and extreme abandonment of it (as in the case of the Drummers) are dehumanizing. It is the middle ground that brings us to the question of _perpetuation_ : how a regime strives to contain and employ love of one's own to continue its institutions, fundamental ideas, and mores. For Miss Matheson, managing the tensions inherent in the love of one's own is a key element of perpetuation. Her work of "propagation" in her school is predicated on the belief that since it is a dangerous world, special care must be taken that, for "educated Westerners," the love of their own be properly constrained and directed to the group by what amounts to propaganda disguised as education and by inculcating the intensive discipline necessary to adhere to the powerful social norms of the neo-Victorians. While Miss Matheson appreciates that for some outstanding individuals (such as Nell) more is possible, she would seem to be content if most of her students turn out to be relatively uninteresting because of their thoughtless acceptance of the norms of their world. She wants them to love New Atlantis because it is theirs.
Lord Finkle-McGraw, on the other hand, hopes the Primer will promote an education subversive of the complacency inherent in Miss Matheson's method, so that those who get it will come to love New Atlantis because they understand it is "the best of all possible tribes." (Miss Matheson, in contrast, thinks it is only "as good as any other—better than most, really.") Both Miss Matheson and Finkle-McGraw are dealing with the problem of perpetuation for a small portion of the ruling class of New Atlantis. Finkle-McGraw thinks that, for some part of this class, perpetuation is best achieved by a subversive education that will allow those who get it to maintain a sufficiently critical distance from their society—based on having the capabilities to live an "interesting life"—to allow them to choose it as best. For Miss Matheson, perpetuation is best achieved for most of this class by discipline and indoctrination. The ideas of both are consistent with the broad character of their New Atlantis phyle. Miss Matheson's school prepares its female charges for the phyle's complex internal norms of self-discipline and social interaction, ruthlessly enforced by peer pressure. Finkle-McGraw is evidently looking to what is required when commercial and technological competition and innovation are crucial to keeping the phyle on top. Their positions could be reconciled, of course, by discrimination between those who would be best served by each kind of upbringing.
Dealing properly with love of one's own is necessarily a difficult proposition. Thetes seemingly solve the problem by caring for nothing beyond themselves, with the consequent dangerous atomism. Drummers seemingly solve the problem by becoming an aggregation whose parts are unaware of having inner or outer lives. Stephenson acknowledges that nano and net technology could combine to liberate love of one's own entirely or destroy it, but that these are both dehumanizing choices. Between them rests the challenge of perpetuation, where moral qualities make the difference between success or failure at the difficult task of reconciling inner social and personal character with the outward circumstances of a competitive world.
_THE INERTIA OF BEING HUMAN_
_The Diamond Age_ presents a world that is exactly like our world in that what is going on in one culture may not be comprehensible when viewed from the outside by another. A good deal of misunderstanding can be generated on this basis. But the same is true for one human being observing another; for all its technology, in Stephenson's world some mystery remains in the human heart. At one point in the story, Miranda is told by a certain Mr. Beck that it may be possible for her to locate Nell despite all the security built into the Net because that security is based on physical laws. But perhaps, he says, there is another dimension "invisible to those laws of physics, describing the same things with different rules, and those rules are written in our hearts, in a deep place where we cannot go and read them except in our dreams." Beck, we find out, is a CryptNet agent, probably recruiting for the Drummers, who will use Miranda, perhaps precisely because of her connection to Nell and through Nell to Hackworth—or at least so we might speculate. His appeal may not be disinterested, but it could still be true; after all, in the end Nell and Miranda _are_ united. Yet while the Drummers are able, it seems, to manipulate dreams and perhaps therefore hearts, they are not so attuned to the mysteries thereof that they can forestall the rescue of Miranda.
Mysteries of the heart come together with competition and love of one's own in a second shadowy conflict that moves much of the action of the book: the battle between New Atlantis and CryptNet. The New Atlantan view that there is a legitimate "cultural role in deciding what _should_ be done" is challenged by the members of the CryptNet phyle, who believe, as Hackworth explains, "that information has an almost mystical power of free flow and self-replication, as water seeks its own level or sparks fly upward—and lacking any moral code, they confuse inevitability with Right." Like Drexler, and reflecting many of the advocates of the eclipse of man, CryptNet apparently feels that changes brought by technology are both inevitable and the basis for "a more highly evolved society." But, at least in Stephenson's vision, technological development does not so much lead to "higher" social forms as it shifts the shape of the constellation in which perennial characteristics of human life show themselves. Hackworth's own metaphor reminds us of the perennial wisdom in the book of Job: "man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward."
The CryptNet view—the idea that technological advancement equals inevitable social improvement—fails to appreciate what seems to be a key lesson of _The Diamond Age_ : the complexly mixed human motivations that produce a given world-altering technological development do not vanish as that development works its changes upon the world. Born of desires for independence and control, of curiosity and mastery, the Seed technology that China and CryptNet desire for essentially contradictory reasons will not supersede or nullify such motives. Rather, its use will be conditioned by them, and by the myriad other sources of human action that come into play as a result of its employment by real people.
_HUMAN NATURE, RESPONSIBILITY, AND TECHNOLOGY_
_The Diamond Age_ illustrates how the deeper and more nuanced one's understanding of human things, the more it makes sense to imagine technological change within the framework of historical or cultural continuity, and the less the discontinuities promised by the eclipse of man seem desirable. Stephenson does not deny that technology could usher in vast changes in the ways in which people live, even changes which may fundamentally alter our humanity. The kind of world depicted in _The Diamond Age_ could represent an unstable, transitory, or intermediate phase of developments that will work themselves out in the victory of more radical possibilities. That outcome seems to be acknowledged in the book by the fact that none of the fundamental issues that move the plot is resolved. China, for example, is freed of foreigners, but its independence is by no means assured since it faces accelerated ecological collapse in its interior without either Feed or Seed.
Nevertheless, Stephenson imagines more convincingly than Drexler how deliberate choices with respect to what ought to be done with technology remain possible, and indeed how, given the enduring characteristics of human life, the increased power given by new technology will _require_ greater care with making those choices if societies are to thrive. Stephenson goes beyond Drexler's acknowledgment of human failings to think about a future where a full measure of human motivations, noble and ignoble, continue to exist. Our frailties are not problems to be solved but are built into what we are and how we are placed in relation to each other, guaranteeing that perpetuation will remain a challenge. _The Diamond Age_ begins and ends with the sounds of the bells of St. Mark's Cathedral in New Chusan—perhaps a reminder that godlike powers will not make us gods, let alone God.
Drexler's abstract understanding of humanity as "pattern plus stuff" in _Engines of Creation_ —an understanding that makes our bodies, for example, somehow accidental to who we are—makes it easy for him to downplay the significance of the complex passions and interests out of which any real world of nanotechnology is likely to be built, even though he is not blind to them. The net result is his belief that nanotechnology will not only solve many of the problems of our world today, but that nanotechnology will solve nearly all the problems created by nanotechnology. In and of itself that prospect seems very unlikely—unless, as Drexler only suggests, it would result from competition among various ways of life effectively ceasing when human power reaches the limits of the possible. But in fact, so long as humans remain flawed in ways Drexler acknowledges, and in others he does not, as the realm of choice widens we will only have more reason to think about responsible choice—choice made with an eye to the technical facts, but also all the messy complications of individual and collective moral life.
Drexler is no Bernal or Haldane; his advocacy of dehumanization is considerably less overt. But there are surely more than hints of it in disembodied brains, in the bizarre experiments that nanotechnology will make possible, in mind emerging in machines, in the promise of remaking our bodies, and in all the essential premises of his argument. Stephenson seems to be suggesting that the inertia of human things will and ought to be a challenge to most of the radical achievements Drexler looks forward to. One could accept that analysis, and conclude: so much the worse for human things if they stand in the way of Drexlerian imagination.
With that thought in mind, we turn next to a more detailed examination of the transhumanists, to see what the eclipse of man has come to look like today.
* It should be noted that Drexler subsequently abandoned this specific route to nanomanufacturing, has expressed his dislike of the terms "nanobots" and "nanites" that many writers have used to popularize this concept, and has disavowed the notion of "tiny, swarming, intelligent, socializing, conniving things" without making fully clear that this description sounds a good deal like what he once expected, or at least resembles the way he described it. However, the alternative course of technological development that he has laid out in works more recent than _Engines of Creation_ does not make a substantial difference in reference to the ultimate promise he sees in nanotechnology. (See Eric Drexler, "Why I Hate Nanobots," March 7, 2009, Metamodern [blog], <http://metamodern.com/2009/03/07/i-hate-"nanobots"/>.)
_CHAPTER FOUR_
_Perfecting Inhumanity_
* * *
_PROLOGUE: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE_
At the age of 75, Adam Newman is deeply satisfied that with the onset of middle age he is reaching the full height of his operatic powers. He has always been thankful for the genetic endowment his parents arranged for him: the propensities for musical abilities and language skills, of course, but also the fact that they had enough foresight to keep him a bit over the average in height. His 6' 6" frame can carry with ease the expanded lung capacity and musculature that have made him such a powerful singer, and being big along with handsome still has substantial social and stage advantages.
Not that Adam has failed to make some improvements of his own. It was no picnic training to use his new optimized vocal cords, but well worth it in the end; many audiences still appreciate that it is really him they are hearing across his full six-octave range, and not some processed sound coming out of speakers. Of course the biomechanical cords also allow him to play the more traditionally minded houses that won't synthesize at all. His language and vocal-style memory implants are another matter; here again he can hardly fail but be grateful to his parents. For his innate skills in these areas mean that unlike many of his peers, who need a minute or two to reorient, he can "switch gears" seamlessly from one language or musical style to another, no matter how exotic. Since stylistic and linguistic eclecticism have run riot among composers (why not say what you want to say in whatever language that it sings best in?), this ability puts him in great demand. He does not need the contrived off-stage moments that librettists often have to supply for singers to recover after they have switched over. Adam feels it just adds to the realism.
He's never happier than when he is on stage; indeed, Adam can hardly imagine a different life for himself. Still, even in the very enjoyment of full summer Adam is sometimes reminded that fall will come. Lately, he's found that he really benefits from a couple of hours of sleep a week. (His folks once told him they had to stretch a bit to afford the sleep-optional mod, but thought in the end it was worth it—what great people they were!) And his metabolism has needed a bit of tweaking to optimize his nanotech waste-minimization feature. But, thank Gentech, so far it's nothing that remotely affects his voice. Adam has reached the point where he has no real concerns about his legacy; after all, his great performances are already available in full-def 3D VR, and he is under contract for a series that includes the new emotional track, having finally found a producer who shares his contempt for the crude work of much that is done in this area and is willing to listen to his suggestions about whom to use as his emo-dubber. (It never occurred to Adam that anybody would want to feel what he is _actually_ feeling as he sings, which to be honest is not very much beyond a desire to please the audience.)
But he's beginning to wonder why he should have to think in terms of a "legacy" at all. Adam has never been what you would call an early adopter. He has all the innate conservatism you'd expect from an opera singer, but he has watched with interest the developing debate between the cyborgs and virtuals—those who have left birthbodies behind and uploaded their minds to biomechanical bodies and those who have chosen virtual instantiations. They both make good cases for their choices, although when the virtuals were just holograms, cyborgs seemed to have the better life. But then smartdust came along. Intellectually he knew Daphne Morgan wasn't a hologram anymore, but he never got over his surprise at how solid she was in that final embrace in _The Golden Ass_ , when just a moment before she had been a tree. No more need to mime body-resistance with her! Still, the virtuals tend to get a bit . . . weird. Adam had been content with their collegial relation, but then she started giving him what he thought were signals that she wanted more. So he invited Daphne out to dinner to test the waters. He supposes he should be grateful that she came as a baby rather than adult giraffe. But having her standing across the table from him, with her big eyes, long lashes, and baby-doll lisp; it aroused in him feelings he did not quite know what to do with. Although it was supposedly impolite to ask them, everybody knew that the virtuals are multitasking their avatars when they are dealing with the very slow-paced solid world. The rumors about how virtuals like to mess with actuals, and about the strange things that virtuals get up to in cyberspace didn't help matters; he'd had a sense a couple of times that they were not exactly alone at the table. After that, he was content that they just work together.
So Adam wants to see how things shake out before he gives up entirely on the body that has been so good to him—just another way of showing gratitude to his wonderful parents. He wouldn't be a bit surprised if by the time he's ready, you won't even have to choose between virtual and cyborg; there will be something better than both! What would it be like to sing with a full cast of Adam Newmans?
* * *
DEHUMANIZATION IS central to contemporary transhumanism. A skeptical reader of this book's first chapter might have concluded that the advocates of the eclipse of man discussed there—Bernal, Haldane, and the rest—represent little more than historical curiosities. But if their ideas remain in some way curious, at least they are not simply historical curiosities. As we saw in Chapters Two and Three, the themes they explored are alive and well today: scarcity and competition, remaking our bodies and extending our lives, merging minds and machines, mankind's destiny in space, and more. These are some of the dearest hopes of today's transhumanists. Ray Kurzweil, the most prominent popularizer of transhumanist ideas, imagines we will have multiple virtual avatars, so that "I" can at the same time be attending various meetings and sharing a stimulating simulated sexual encounter that will be better than the real thing because I will be able to feel not only my own sensations and emotions but also those of my partner(s). Hans Moravec, a prominent roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University, has enthused about how we will be able to speed up our thought processes so that "You will have time to read and ponder an entire on-line etiquette book when you find yourself in an awkward social situation." (Of course, that seems to assume that one's fellows are not similarly "speeded up.") The transhumanist Simon Young looks forward to being able to eliminate the need to eat or excrete or sleep. James Hughes, another booster of transhumanism, thinks we will have cybernetic brain implants that we will "undoubtedly" use for "watching and advising our behavior," to make sure we are acting morally by whatever standard of morality one might choose. A 2006 conference at Stanford University Law School organized by some of the top figures in transhumanism featured a panel discussion about people like Cat Man and Lizard Man, who have had themselves surgically and otherwise altered to resemble their namesakes. The list of alterations to our bodies and brains, our minds and morals, that the transhumanists envision goes on and on, becoming ever more strange.
Yet the best case for transhumanism starts from familiar, even prosaic, premises. This "common sense" case may be characterized as follows. Incremental technological and scientific progress, likely accelerating in pace, will continue to occur across a wide variety of fronts, driven by commercial, medical, and military motives, as well as the pure joy of research and development. Who does not already have a sense that things are changing rapidly, and that the rate of change is increasing? The consequences are readily taken for granted today: ever more people living lives that are healthier, wealthier, and longer. Who doubts that medicine will continue to make the kinds of strides that will offer opportunities for ever better health? Who would find it remotely plausible that computers would be the same in a decade as they are today?
Hence, many of the new abilities made possible by this progress will, taken one by one, hardly be controversial in themselves. But taken together, these ever-increasing powers over nature will converge on the ability to redesign our minds and bodies, opening the door to the more strange and radical possibilities mentioned above. There need be no dedicated research program to make these dreams a reality; the necessary technologies will appear on their own, regardless of transhumanists' hopes for the future. The technologies that cure disease and restore lost functionality open the door to enhancement of our abilities; indeed it seems to be agreed by both transhumanists and many of their critics that there is no bright line between therapy and enhancement. So transhumanists readily imagine using our increasingly sophisticated understanding of the human machine to create novel capacities.
Indeed, the more one thinks about how much better we could do if we designed our own bodies, the more dissatisfied we are likely to be with the present model. In particular, isn't just about everybody dissatisfied with the brevity of life? Pushing this open door is a favorite transhumanist selling point; they are confident that significant life extension is on its way. Ongoing developments in our ability to treat once-fatal diseases will certainly play a role, but aging itself, seen as a disease, will soon enough start to yield, whether to genetic engineering, artificial or cloned organs, or the kind of nanotechnology-enabled medicine that Drexler foresaw.
As we will see in what follows, the arguments that drive transhumanism from the uncontroversial to the strange are very similar to those that moved us from Condorcet's vision of human progress to the eclipse of man. Transhumanists argue, in a fashion that will by now seem familiar to readers of this book, that manipulating nature is simply part of what defines us as human beings. The growing abilities of modern science and technology that stem from this trait are giving us the power to take evolution into our own hands; ongoing competition will force us to use technological evolution to improve not only on the naturally given "outside" of us but also on our selves.
_EAGERLY AWAITING ENHANCEMENTS_
Let us begin by looking more closely at the first part of this line of thought. There are already many technologies available that enhance human abilities. Take, for example, human vision. Eyeglasses enhance the vision of those with poor eyesight, but they are already coming to appear as relatively primitive. Contact lenses can both enhance eyesight and provide cosmetic alteration of eye color or appearance. LASIK surgery can eliminate the need for certain kinds of vision prosthetics altogether. Artificial retinas are being used to restore sight to people with certain kinds of blindness, and tiny "telescopes" are being implanted into the eyes of some patients with macular degeneration. Such technologies are rapidly improving, and remarkable further advances are both easy to imagine and plausible. None of this "enhancement," if that is indeed what it is, is remotely controversial, and we expect and desire further improvements in such technology, made possible by growing knowledge of how vision and the eye work, and by advances in computing, materials science, and biotechnology. So an artificial eye, whether grown or constructed with organic or inorganic materials, seems far from a crazy dream, but rather a reasonable goal of medical research and a great boon, restoring normal sight to all those who suffer from vision loss.
So far so good. But if one can make such an eye, why restrict its use to those with vision loss? Just as many cars now come equipped with once-unimaginable rear-vision cameras, would it not be useful to implant a third eye in the back of one's head? Granted, the brain is not used to processing the data such an eye would provide. But the brain is quite malleable; could it not be trained to see with a third eye? A recent study suggests it treats tools as body parts, so why not new body parts as tools?
If there are atavistic aesthetic objections to a third eye, why not construct an eye that has _better_ -than-normal vision, one that can see more sharply at greater distances, or can see better in low light? Why not an eye with a zoom lens, or one that can extend the range of human vision into the ultraviolet or infrared? We are told that the eye is a kind of camera, and we already make cameras that do all these things. The brain "processes" electrical impulses from the eye, and we now also make cameras whose outputs are electrical impulses.
It does not take much imagination to see how such artificial, enhanced eyes could provide a competitive advantage to soldiers, pilots, police, sportsmen, contractors, repairmen—the list could be as long as the kinds of additional vision that _someone_ might find useful. And once some people adopt the new ability, others in their line of work will be faced with competitive pressure to keep up by using the same enhancement or risk falling behind. While doubtless early versions would be quite expensive, why not experiment on wealthy early adopters? Just as the price of LASIK surgery has plummeted, so too we can expect that some kinds of artificial eyes will eventually come to be affordable by nearly all—even if the cutting-edge models continue to be high-priced.
The transhumanists can point out that all you have to do is look around you today to see that if you leave people free to make their own choices about what kind of vision or any other sort of enhancement they wish to have, things will settle out in a way that favors their ever-increasing use, even if the distribution of benefits remains in-egalitarian. This argument, of course, tacitly acknowledges both that there will be winners and losers in a transhumanist future, and who the losers will be: the unenhanced or even the less-enhanced. Should we consider that a problem? Many (though by no means all) people accept that there will be winners and losers in an economy based on just the kind of free choice that the transhumanists advocate in relation to enhancements. So it seems as if anyone already accepting such inequalities would have to do so also in relationship to enhancements.
But there is a difference. The present inequalities are generally accepted to the extent that we believe winners and losers are not graven in stone, that there is dynamism and mobility such that winners are not entirely self-perpetuating—for example, there are reversals of fortune, or successful people can have stupid and profligate children who fritter away the fruits of their success. Beyond that, mortality is a great leveler. But transhumanist success aims precisely to be self-perpetuating to a far greater degree and takes perpetuity of some sort to be a reasonable aspiration. Hence, the prospects for entrenched inequalities seem to be dramatically improved as the logic behind how an artificial eye might be used is applied to just about any aspect of our bodies: senses, limbs, or organs, including our brains.
_CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE_
Nevertheless, in relation to all such technologies of enhancement, a great many transhumanists stand foursquare behind the principle of consumer choice. Most are willing to concede that enhancements ought to be demonstrably safe and effective. But the core belief is that people ought to be able to choose for themselves the manner in which they enhance or modify their own bodies. If we are to use technology to be the best we can be, each of us must be free to decide for himself what "best" means and nobody should be able to stop us.
This techno-libertarianism is important to transhumanists if for no other reason than that it allows them to believe they can distinguish between their outlook and that of the early-twentieth-century advocates of eugenics with whom they fear being confused. After all, the transhumanists, like the eugenicists before them, talk about a quasi-Darwinian competitive imperative to improve the human race; it might appear as if transhumanists are simply advocating more effective means to old-fashioned eugenic ends, replacing selective breeding and sterilization with enhancements. But transhumanists insist it is crucial that, unlike the eugenicists, they are not interested in using the power of government to coerce people into making better humans. For the most part the transhumanists insist that just as no one should be prevented from choosing the enhancements or modifications he wishes, so no one should be forced into any kind of enhancement or modification. Indeed, the transhumanists argue, it is their critics—whom they disparagingly label "bioconservatives" and "bioluddites"—who, by wishing to restrict enhancement choices, are the real heirs of the eugenicists; they are the ones who have an idea of what humans should be and want government to enforce it. The transhumanists would say that they are far less interested in asserting what human beings should _be_ than in encouraging diverse exploration into what we might _become_ , including of course not being human at all. Moreover, the argument goes, transhumanists are strictly speaking not like eugenicists because they are not interested only in making better human beings—not even supermen, really. For to be merely human is by definition to be defective. It is this view of human things that makes the transhumanists _de facto_ advocates of human extinction. Their dissatisfaction with the merely human is so great that they can barely bring themselves to imagine why anyone would make a rational decision to remain an unenhanced human, or human at all, once given a choice.
However, if the transhumanists are for the most part against state coercion in relation to enhancements, as we have already seen that does not mean there is no coercive element in the transition to the transhuman. They can avoid government coercion because they believe that the freedom of some individuals to enhance and redesign as they please adds up to an aggregate necessity for human enhancement, given competitive pressure and the changing social norms it will bring. Indeed, to the extent that transhumanists recognize that theirs is presently the aspiration of a minority, they are _counting_ on this kind of pressure to bring about the changes in attitude they desire. Within the framework of the largely free market in enhancements the transhumanists imagine, an arms-race logic will drive ever-newer enhancements, because if "we" don't do it first, "they" will, and then "we" will be in trouble. This kind of coercion is not of much concern to transhumanists; they are content to offer that it does not infringe upon freedom because, as the rules of the game change, one always retains the freedom to drop out. Indeed, the transhumanists seem to take particular delight in pointing out that anyone who opposes the idea that the indefinite extension of human life is a good thing will be perfectly free to die. In a world of enhancement competition, consistent "bioluddites" will be self-eliminating.
There is another kind of necessity that transhumanists can adduce to support their case for the free choice of enhancements. Recalling a theme introduced by Condorcet, they assert that human beings are practically by definition the beings that enhance themselves, or that human beings are the beings who overcome their own limitations and the limits of the naturally given—including the sorts of limits that Malthus had in mind. According to British bioethicist John Harris, who for no good reason objects to being called a transhumanist,
It is doubtful that there was ever a time in which we ape-descended persons were not striving for enhancement, trying to do things better and to better ourselves. . . . I am personally pleased that our ape ancestor lacked either the power or the imagination, or indeed avoided the errors of logic and/or morality, which might have led her to preserve herself at our expense. I hope that we will have the imagination, the power, and the courage to do better for ourselves and our descendants than the combination of chance, genes, and environment has done for us.
While Harris frames the issue as a choice, it is not clear why we are any more free to make it than our ape ancestress, given his initial assumption about what it means to be human—that we have always been striving for enhancement. Starting from this definition, the transhumanists are simply doing what human beings have always done. So just as history tells the story of cultures gradually gaining the wisdom to accept as humans people who come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, abilities, and colors, we ought to be prepared to extend that circle of identification and accept further such variance so long as the essential attribute of self-overcoming is still present. Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom has suggested that even if they are not human, transhumans and posthumans may yet be "humane"—that is, they may possess recognizably admirable human moral qualities. Indeed, they may well be more likely than humans to be humane, since they will have overcome the human or natural constraints that produce bad behavior among humans.
Yet by calling attention to this self-overcoming aspect of human nature, the transhumanists create another kind of problem within their argument. Starting from their assumptions, evolution is the only way in which human beings could have gained their ability to overcome natural limits; that we have this capacity is ultimately a matter of chance. The ability to control our own evolution going forward, then, has at least this much of an irreducible foundation in natural evolution. That foundation would seem to represent a limit on what parts of our nature we would seek to modify, lest we compromise this all-too-human drive to self-overcoming. Or, to describe this paradox in another way, our descendants would only genuinely be "posthuman" if they reached the point where they were no longer engaged in the self-overcoming that is our presumed essence. Whether such a result would ever be desirable is unclear, unless lurking somewhere in the transhumanist argument, as it did in Drexler's, there is a tacit belief that at some future moment our descendants will have reached some limit of the possible with respect to what can be done to themselves. Only at that point would this drive for enhancement become counterproductive and have to be rooted out at last. Short of this outcome, a remnant of our nature remains in whatever kind of beings come after us.
_GUARANTEED RETURNS?_
Competition combines with the challenging of Malthusian limits to give the transhumanists a very strong sense that they represent the direction of history. Ray Kurzweil has taken the argument one step further, giving it a cosmic twist (like Drexler and Reade before him). Kurzweil calls the force that drives the progress of inhumanity the "law of accelerating returns." As its name implies, this law encapsulates the idea of an accelerating rate of progress, but Kurzweil claims that he can show the trend line is an asymptotic curve, rapidly accelerating today toward an unreachable future infinite. Something like this law, he seems to believe, has been at work extending even into the deep past, long before the rise of humanity. If Kurzweil is correct, then any appearance of choice we might have with respect to a posthuman future is illusory, and the might of the law behind this trend line is the ultimate source of the rightness of the future he describes. (So Kurzweil, like CryptNet in _The Diamond Age_ , confuses "inevitability with Right.") Why bother advocating for transhumanism at all, if there is no reason to fear that transhumanism's critics might win out, as the law dictates their irrelevance? Advocacy for transhumanism must instead be predicated on concern that without a sufficiently solid understanding of what the future holds, the powers we are gaining could be misdirected in destructive ways. In other words, instead of deliberate human extinction, we might cause it accidentally.
Still, perhaps the transhuman future need not be quite so dire. David Pearce, a cofounder of the World Transhumanist Association, has what at first glance seems to be a considerably more benign outlook. He returns us to the prosaic, seeing the transhumanist effort to control evolution as being driven by what he claims is a completely rational and undoubtedly moral desire to maximize happiness and minimize suffering and pain:
Over the next thousand years or so, the biological substrates of suffering will be eradicated completely. "Physical" and "mental" pain alike are destined to disappear into evolutionary history. The biochemistry of everyday discontents will be genetically phased out too. Malaise will be replaced by the biochemistry of bliss. Matter and energy will be sculpted into life-loving super-beings animated by gradients of well-being. The states of mind of our descendants are likely to be incomprehensibly diverse by comparison with today. Yet all will share at least one common feature: a sublime and all-pervasive happiness.
We would of course first make every effort to get our own house in order, making sure that human beings are all happy all the time, but there is also pain and suffering in other parts of the animal kingdom, and eventually we would face up to the moral necessity of dealing with that by the appropriate changes in genes and ecosystems to put an end to animal predation. Pearce goes on to consider what happens when we discover life on other worlds, and has no compunctions about extending his principle, and hence posthuman efforts, in that direction. "So long as sentient beings suffer extraordinary unpleasantness—whether on Earth or perhaps elsewhere—there is a presumptive case to eradicate such suffering wherever it is found." When the posthuman Earth fleet arrives on an alien doorstep, it is only with the most benign and unselfish intention of completely restructuring their world so that all its beings can share in such happiness as we make possible for them. In Pearce's account of the posthuman future, our descendants become the aliens we have feared or hoped for. Yet if we imagine an alien fleet arriving on Earth with the same intention of rebuilding nature from the ground up, we are entitled to wonder if it would be taken as good news.
_OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES_
Meanwhile, the roboticist Hans Moravec has a different take on the transhuman future. As an alternative to Bernal's idea of transplanting an organic brain into a mechanical body, but based on a similar view of the primacy of the brain, Moravec seems to have been the first to think out in a systematic way what would be involved in "uploading" a mind into a computer. As he explains it in his classic 1988 book _Mind Children_ , Moravec's premise is the same idea of "pattern identity" that Drexler spoke of; who we are is fundamentally a matter of the processes going on in our brain, the electrochemical activity among our neurons, not the stuff itself; "the rest is mere jelly." There is of course a huge number of neurons with an even larger quantity of interconnections among them, so this electrochemical activity is extremely complex—but not infinitely so. Sooner or later, Moravec argues, as computing power grows there will be some ultra-sophisticated version of today's brain scanners that will make it possible to scan neuron by neuron what is going on in the brain, and store and duplicate those results in some combination of software and hardware simulation.
Moravec assumes that at least at first, efforts at uploading would have to destroy the brain bit by bit in order to expose each neuron for scanning. He asks us to consider someone hooked up to a device that would read and replicate each neuron. Suppose that as each cellular layer is scanned, the subject could switch back and forth between the organic brain and the simulation; if the system works correctly he could not tell the difference, so that each layer could be destroyed and the next scanned. As the process continued, more and more of the subject's thinking would be going on in the computer, until finally it would completely replace his old brain.
Moravec imagines that the brain thus computerized could, in the manner anticipated by Bernal, be combined with any sort of robotic body one wished. His personal favorite seems to have been the "bush robot," which is little more than a collection of arms and manipulators arranged in a fractal pattern, from the big to the very tiny. He described it thus:
A bush robot would be a marvel of surrealism to behold. Despite its structural resemblance to many living things, it would be unlike anything yet seen on earth. Its great intelligence, superb coordination, astronomical speed, and enormous sensitivity to its environment would enable it to constantly do something surprising, at the same time maintaining a perpetual gracefulness. . . . A trillion-limbed device, with a brain to match, is an entirely different order of being. Add to this the ability to fragment into a cloud of coordinated tiny fliers, and the laws of physics will seem to melt in the face of intention and will. As with no magician that ever was, impossible things will simply _happen_ around a robot bush.
The bush robot was not the end of his imaginings. Computerized minds could communicate with and access each other with all the ease of networked hardware and software. They could be duplicated, or optimized to run in various configurations. Beyond that, just as one might merge electronic documents, why not merge one electronic mind pattern with another? Since any brain could be scanned, why shouldn't a human pattern be merged with an animal pattern?
Moravec points out that this computerized mind could be effectively immortal (assuming sufficient provision for backups), which might seem like a very appealing prospect. But he recognizes that this immortality might not end up being precisely what someone might have originally hoped for. Competition and scarcity ("changing conditions," "external challenges") mean that the I that sought immortality will not actually get it:
Immortality of the type I have just described is only a temporary defense against the wanton loss of knowledge and function that is the worst aspect of personal death. In the long run, our survival will require changes that are not of our own choosing. Parts of us will have to be discarded and replaced by new parts to keep in step with changing conditions and evolving competitors. . . . In time, each of us will be a completely changed being, shaped more by external challenges than by our own desires. Our present memories and interests, having lost their relevance, will at best end up in a dusty archive, perhaps to be consulted once in a long while by a historian. Personal death as we know it differs from this inevitability only in its relative abruptness. Viewed this way, personal immortality by mind transplant is a technique whose primary benefit is to temporarily coddle the sensibility and sentimentality of individual humans.
Note how the desire for personal immortality is such a small thing from Moravec's point of view, a sentiment to be coddled, a kind of temporary error. Here is surely Olympian detachment! It is as if the gods in the full enjoyment of their immortality would wonder why mortals make such a big deal about death. And yet somehow this small thing drives us on to great things.
Given the speed with which computing technology developed since Moravec first published his thoughts on uploading in 1988, it did not take long for the idea to be modified to conform to new ideas and capacities. The rise of virtual reality made some wonder why the uploaded mind would require a physical instantiation at all when it could occupy whatever kind of virtual realities it wished. For those who might want to insist on continuing to be able to interact in the "real world" but find robotic bodies too constraining, the theoretical nanotech "smart dust" provides an imagined solution, promising "real" virtual bodies that would have none of the messy inconveniences of actual living things—very much along the lines that Fedorov imagined. And there is the added benefit that were such bodies ever to be disrupted in some way, they could always simply be rebooted.
_NEW WINE IN NEW BOTTLES_
In Moravec's presentation, transhumanist aspirations do not end with the (somewhat deceptive) promise of personal immortality. Once biologically based human patterns are instantiated in computers, they will as we have already noted become upgradeable in all kinds of ways. In particular, they will be able to think faster. Hence, just as a chess-playing computer can today consider more options in greater depth and shorter time than a human player, so will the formerly human patterns be able to think about and experience far more than a human being—and this without fatigue, without forgetfulness, without the distractions of biological needs. Here is surely a great boost to progress in any area to which these posthumans may wish to turn their attention. Problems will be modeled, solutions simulated, results refined in an interactive cycle of astonishing speed and complexity. Such intelligence, alone or in concert with advanced artificial intelligence, would constitute what is sometimes called "superintelligence" or "hyperintelligence." Its arrival, as Drexler suggested and as many others now believe, would be just the sort of thing that would rapidly push technological development to the limits of the possible. As Bostrom has speculated, "Superintelligence would be the last invention biological man would ever need to make, since, by definition, it would be much better at inventing than we are."
What exactly happens to humanity at that moment is an important and to some degree divisive issue for transhumanism. The issue is framed by the concept of "the Singularity." While the very meaning of this term is contested, it is fair to think about it in the way it was first systematically presented by mathematician and science fiction author Vernor Vinge:
When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities—on a still-shorter time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work—the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.
From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Developments that before were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if ever) will likely happen in the next century. . . . I think it's fair to call this event a singularity ("the Singularity" for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer and closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown.
If this hyperintelligence, like human intelligence, is routinely dissatisfied with its own capacities, it will surely turn its attention to finding the matter and energy for the ever-increasing computer processing power it will presumably demand. As Moravec puts it, "Our speculation ends in a supercivilization . . . constantly improving and extending itself, spreading outward from the sun, converting nonlife into mind." Matter and energy are not in short supply; what already exists just needs to be used to some purpose. Think of all the mass wasted in asteroids, moons, lifeless planets, or indeed in organic bodies of all sorts that do not need to live in biological form when they could just be simulated. Think of all the radiation that streams pointlessly into space from stars, but could be captured by enclosing them in gigantic spheres. Just as, from the transhumanist point of view, the human body is sub-optimally designed, so too there may be a great deal of work to be done to reconstruct our own and other solar systems to make them happier homes for intelligence. Whatever hyperintelligence is in its own way is, like the human mind, simply a pattern of information, a pattern that can be replicated in a variety of forms. The deconstruction of our solar system to turn dead matter into mind, and any other solar system hyperintelligent posthumanity may be moved to encounter, would not have to mean the loss of the information it represents. It was J. D. Bernal who said that "the desirable form of the humanly-controlled universe" is "nothing more nor less than art"—but in the vision of today's transhumanists, that desirable form is not, as it turns out, actually controlled by humans.
_WHEN HYPERINTELLIGENCE COMES KNOCKING_
Ray Kurzweil takes the argument about the capacities of hyperintelligent posthumans one step further. He wonders whether our understanding of the constraints imposed on us by the laws of nature may just be an artifact of our limited intellectual abilities. For the sake of "saturating" the universe with intelligence, which he (like Haldane) believes is "our ultimate fate," Kurzweil hopes that the speed of light may not after all prove to be a cosmic speed limit. Along with Moravec he would like to believe that efforts will be made to overcome the entropy that will eventually cause the universe to "run down."
These remarkable aspirations clearly connect back with issues we already looked at in connection with SETI. If Kurzweil is correct about the potential abilities of hyperintelligent posthumans, then would the same not also be true of the hyperintelligent form of some alien race? If so, then Fermi's question arises once again— _where are they?_ —and we probably have to have recourse to the same kinds of arguments already noted about our decidedly limited ability to detect the existence of such godlike beings, particularly if they wish to remain undetected. Then again, even less-capable aliens bound by the speed of light would still have had plenty of time to populate the galaxy, or use its mass and energy for computational purposes in a way that we might detect. As we saw in Chapter Two, such arguments make Kurzweil and some other transhumanists skeptical that there is alien intelligence at all.
And perhaps we should be happy about that. If we take posthuman hyperintelligence and the Singularity seriously, we are saying that the successors we are being asked to open the door to will be alien to us far beyond any change possible in natural evolution. Vinge from the start understood that one of the greatest unknowns would be how hyperintelligent beings would treat human beings. Would we be seen as revered progenitors or as inconvenient pests? Such a question is hardly new to science fiction, of course, but now there are no few transhumanists and AI proponents who think that the question of "friendly" or "moral" AI needs to be brought to the fore of serious, real-world efforts. What "friendly" or safe or moral AI would look like is anybody's guess, but it is very hard to see why the net result would not look very much like _Childhood's End_ , given the radical lack of a common framework of judgment between us and hyperintelligent life. Kurzweil likens it to the gap between us and bacteria, and yet no one claims seriously that we share a common moral universe with bacteria. Hence the transformation of supposed hyperintelligent benevolence into perceived malevolence remains a live issue. It does not seem likely that these otherwise incomprehensible beings will be more moral than we are in terms that we could appreciate.
So if this kind of posthuman hyperintelligence were to arrive on our doorsteps tomorrow, it is hard to see how it would look different from a hostile alien invasion of the sort classically depicted in science fiction. Separated from them by their Singularity (forget about mere biological or cultural differences), we would be incapable of understanding their needs and motivations beyond noting that they seemed to have an insatiable appetite for transforming matter and energy into forms useful to them but inimical to us. The opportunity to be absorbed (assimilated?) into whatever mode of life they will have created for themselves, to have our patterns preserved, would seem to be about the most we might expect.
_TRANSHUMANIST TENSIONS_
There are genuine tensions between various aspects of the case for transhumanism that we have highlighted, not the least of which is that something that begins by promising human enhancement ends up more than reconciled to human extinction. More specifically: on the one hand, the motive force for transforming ourselves is a deep dissatisfaction with the merely human. On the other hand, this dissatisfaction, and the efforts at transformation it produces, are presented as quintessentially human. We are all to be free to make choices about enhancements, but radical inequalities may lead some to be freer than others. To raise our hopes, the transhumanists urge overcoming human limitations. To quiet our fears, they claim there could be continuities between us and the superior beings to come. Specific human characteristics are treated as if they are merely contingent with respect to all the alternative ways we can imagine intelligence might be embodied, but however embodied we are told there is no reason to think that intelligence could not still be humane. Yet even the continuity of the humane gives way to the absolute discontinuity of the Singularity.
These tensions mean there are reasons to have qualms about the transhuman and posthuman future despite the fact that it can seem to be derived from minimally controversial premises. The prosaic best case does not quite tell the whole story, but is more like the proverbial slowly warming pan of water in which the frog sits unaware of the boiling point to come. By thinking through the assumptions of the eclipse of man all the way through to the Singularity—to a point where it must be acknowledged that none of us knows or could even understand the full implications of the path we are set upon—today's transhumanists have clarified the full implication of those assumptions even more than the earlier thinkers we examined. But that does not mean they have thought them through completely.
In the prologue to this chapter, the character of Adam Newman has not been dehumanized—or at least, not obviously so. But his story exemplifies some problems to come, should transhumanist aspirations prove possible. We don't know that talents and dispositions can be engineered in the way implied in the vignette, but on the assumption that they can be, is Adam the freely choosing transhumanist ideal? He seems very much an instrument of his parents' wishes for him, far more than is possible for even the most controlling parents today. There are hints that he is unable really to question that legacy; as a result he is less of a free man and self-overcomer than he himself might believe. We may envy the ease with which he falls into a role that is perfect for him and the happiness it provides him, and still wonder whether this lack of tension accounts for his emotional flatness. We can wonder if his musicianship represents the triumph of technique, with Adam occupying something like the position of a racecar driver, in effect the business end of a highly tuned team of technicians who have made him what he is. Yet he probably has less understanding of what they do and how they do it than the driver does.
Then there is the character of Daphne Morgan. She is not so dehumanized that we cannot suspect her of being a trickster or a tease, or of having the sort of contempt for "solids" that bohemians have for bourgeois. But if her own self-regard makes her no more humane than any morally fallible human being, surely she has far greater power and even motivation to exercise her inhumanity, to sport with Adam as the old gods used to sport with humanity. Surely Adam's self-satisfied narcissism would make him a tempting target. Yet his sense that there is more going on with her than he is likely to be able to understand is probably correct. How would Adam understand what it is like to be in more than one place at a time, or to have all his consciousness be as editable, reversible, and replayable as the recordings he makes?
Looking at such distant prospects, which is after all encouraged by the transhumanists themselves, reveals important problems with their arguments. And yet it could be objected that even if the transhumanists are correct about what the future holds, any problems associated with it will not be _our_ problems—or at least will be experienced only by the relative few reading these words today who will have made provision for their own reanimation. For most of us, as technology progresses incrementally, the issues are going to be posed in terms of far more prosaic-seeming technologies of human enhancement, technologies that may look attractive whether or not there is an obvious link to the transhumanist aspiration for self-design. Hence, while there is no lack of thoughtful explorations of more extreme transhuman futures in science fiction (some of which we have already discussed in our examination of the "benevolent" superintelligence in _Childhood's End_ ), it makes sense to explore instead a still speculative, but not that speculative, nearer-term development: the ability selectively to erase unhappy memories. Difficulties with this relatively modest kind of enhancement will alert us to difficulties inherent in the more radical alterations transhumanism proposes.
_NO THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES_
As imagined biotechnologies go, memory alteration seems not quite in the same league as things like the transhumanist hopes for direct links between brains and computers, or wireless connections between brains that would allow people to feel each other's feelings, or the ability to "upload" into a machine the entire pattern of our identity. But it is worth considering memory alteration closely, since memory is central to identity, and identity to happiness—a point highlighted in _Beyond Therapy_ , a 2003 report of the President's Council on Bioethics. So if we are to make ourselves better off by the use of emerging enhancement technologies, or if in accord with Pearce's hedonic imperative we are to be happy all the time, memory and memory alteration in some form will be at the core of our various pursuits of happiness.
_Beyond Therapy_ focuses in a general way on the use of drugs to head off the impact of likely traumatic memories, or reducing their subsequent emotional consequences. Grounded in present medical realities, the report does not speculate at any length on the consequences of developing less blunt approaches to adding or subtracting specific memories as we understand the neuro-chemistry of the brain with increasing precision. While it is always easy to understate the difficulty of such efforts, there is nothing in our present understanding of the brain that definitively shows that precise interventions in memory will be impossible.
The consequences of selective forgetting have been a literary theme since long before science become seriously interested in the topic; think of magic potions in tales ranging from Homer to Wagner, or the elaborate deception practiced on the title character in Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's opera _Sly_. Here we will look at two stories about memory alteration. The first is _Dr. Heidenhoff's Process_ by Edward Bellamy, who would some years after writing it become internationally famous for his utopian novel _Looking Backward_. The second is the movie _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ , which provides a corrective to the generally positive position taken on memory alteration by Bellamy.
Bellamy's 1880 novella _Dr. Heidenhoff's Process_ is hardly great literature, but it nevertheless contains a well-thought-out moral defense of selective memory obliteration. If the story is Victorian in its operatic sentimentality, its effort to think through the moral consequences of Dr. Heidenhoff's process for elimination of troublesome memories exhibits likewise a Victorian intellectual thoroughness.
The plot is simple enough. Henry Burr loves Madeline Brand unrequitedly. Just as it seems she might be returning his feelings, the flashier Harrison Cordis comes to town, and Madeline and Harrison begin a flirtation. As their relationship deepens, Henry leaves town to work in Boston, unable to bear the loss of Madeline. However, "there was a scandal" and Harrison "deserted her." A fallen woman, Madeline flees to Boston. Henry finds her and offers marriage, but in her shame she keeps putting him off; she cannot ruin him as she has been ruined. One day, she seems to relent, and even allows Henry a not-so-chaste kiss prior to their parting, promising to settle the matter the next day.
Henry returns to find her terribly excited; she has seen a story in the newspaper about a technique invented by a certain Dr. Heidenhoff for the purpose of selective memory destruction. Madeline is anxious to have the memory of her shame destroyed so she can marry Henry with a clear conscience. Skeptical at first, Henry visits Heidenhoff and comes away convinced that Madeline should indeed try the process; "the thought of receiving his wife to his arms as fresh and virgin in heart and memory as when her girlish beauty first entranced him, was very sweet to his imagination." The procedure works, the couple are engaged—but at the moment of seeing Madeline model her wedding gown, Henry wakens to find he has been dreaming. He almost immediately receives Madeline's suicide note, in which she repeats how she could not dream of ruining him, and gently chides him for his failure to perceive that the kiss she at last permitted him was one of farewell.
_THE SPONGE OF OBLIVION_
Dr. Heidenhoff is no shrinking violet when it comes to explaining and defending his invention. In the full enjoyment of what he himself regards as the powers of a god, Heidenhoff is only too happy to explain the medical basis for his process; his hopes for "amusing experiments" that will confound the "thicker-headed" and "foggy-minded," whose false moral assumptions will be exposed; and the "good tidings" that his invention brings the world.
Indeed, Heidenhoff is so obnoxiously full of himself that it is tempting to think that Bellamy might be interested in exposing scientific hubris. Yet while that possibility cannot be entirely eliminated, it seems unlikely given the fact that the story is framed by two suicides stemming from their perpetrators' inability to forget shameful events. _Dr. Heidenhoff's Process_ suggests that neither love nor Christianity nor conventional moral ideals are adequate to the problems created for us by the memory of the misdeeds we do or those done to us. Bellamy evidently had some hope that science could step into the breach.
Dr. Heidenhoff believes that memory has a physical basis in the brain—hardly a controversial proposition today. He admits that, for the time being, his process, which applies electricity to the brain, can only extirpate memories that have been so dwelled upon as to create "a morbid state of the brain fibres concerned." But he expects that in twenty years, having established "the great fact of the physical basis of the intellect," "the mental physician will be able to extract a specific recollection from the memory as readily as the dentist pulls a tooth, and as finally."
Heidenhoff acknowledges some further problems with his process, admitting, for example, that there may be "shreds and fragments of ideas, as well as facts in his external relations" which are unaccountable without the eliminated memory. But these things are no more a problem than the challenge faced by a drunk or a sleepwalker who has done things he no longer remembers. Heidenhoff also acknowledges that the patient will know that he forgot _something_ , which may create "slight confusion." We see both problems arise in Madeline's case, and observe her filling in the blanks by creating plausible stories to account for matters which otherwise do not make sense to her.
Dr. Heidenhoff believes that his process has wide-ranging moral implications. On Henry's first visit the doctor notes that he finds patients generally come to him out of
very genuine and profound regret and sorrow for the act they wish to forget. They have already repented it, and according to every theory of moral accountability, I believe it is held that repentance balances the moral accounts. My process, you see then, only completes physically what is already done morally.
In this respect, he claims superiority to the "ministers and moralists" who preach forgiveness, but in fact leave the penitent subject to the ongoing tyranny of "remorse and shame." Indeed, Heidenhoff notes, it is the most sensitive moral natures, those precisely who most deserve that their repentance relieve them of their misery, who are most likely to be tormented by the memory of their wrongdoing:
The deeper the repentance . . . the more poignant the pang of regret and the sense of irreparable loss. There is no sense, no end, no use, in this law which increases the severity of the punishment as the victim grows in innocency.
In contrast, "I free him from his sin" entirely.
Heidenhoff is not content to beat religion at its own game; he believes that understanding the physical basis for memory and intellect, hence of all human actions, leads to the need for moral revaluation even beyond the specific consequences of his own technique. Some people, he says, may mistakenly think that sin must have painful consequences, whether physical or mental. They may believe that Nature is supposed to punish physical "vice and violence" with "diseases and accidents," and God is supposed to provide "moral retribution" via shame and sorrow. But in fact, both forms of retribution are essentially "blind, deaf and meaningless." Nature does not care and Providence is unreliable, so human beings must step in. Just as no doctor would refuse to set the broken leg of a drunk, just to make an example of him, so we should be equally willing to relieve mental suffering by forgetfulness.
Heidenhoff holds that because all suffering ultimately has the same physical basis, all suffering can and ought to be relieved. But in a manner familiar to arguments today about the difficulty of distinguishing between curing disease and enhancement, Heidenhoff's assumptions lead him to speculate that the world might be better off "if there were no memory" at all. For without memory, we would still have "congenitally good and bad dispositions," but the bad would not, as they do, grow "depraved" by the demoralizing effects of memory. "Memory is the principle of moral degeneration. Remembered sin is the most utterly diabolical influence in the universe. . . . more sin is the only anodyne for sin, and . . . the only way to cure the ache of conscience is to harden it."
Heidenhoff's apparent insistence on the objective existence of sin will doubtless strike oddest those who most share his materialist assumptions, but in response to an objection by Henry, he develops his argument in a fashion that suggests it is not sin which is the problem, but the _idea_ of sin. For Henry argues that even without memory, people will still be just as responsible for their acts as with it. Heidenhoff agrees, but with a twist: "Precisely; that is, not at all." For "human beings are not stationary existences, but changing, growing, incessantly progressive organisms, which in no two moments are the same." Hence, while crimes can be punished for prudential reasons—as a matter of "public policy and expediency"—they can never be punished _justly_ , for it is never just to punish people for what they cannot help. Why should I be punished for what I did yesterday, when I am not the same person who I was yesterday, and the person I am today has no control over what the person I was yesterday did?
In short, for Heidenhoff the self only exists moment to moment; by disconnecting the present from past and future the self becomes extremely thin. The moral implications of this thinness are clarified when Henry points out what he believes to be a flaw in Heidenhoff's argument. A person holding Dr. Heidenhoff's views would never need to erase any memories, since such a person would never feel guilty or remorseful about an act committed by an earlier version of himself. The doctor agrees that his process is indeed only for those who do not have the strength of mind independently to "attain" his philosophy. In fact, we are born anew each day, each moment. "Is there not sorrow and wrong enough in the present world without having moralists teach us that it is our duty to perpetuate all our past sins and shames in the multiplying mirror of memory," the doctor exclaims. Just as it is "only fools who flatter themselves on their past virtues, so it is only a sadder sort of fools who plague themselves for their past faults."
In sum, Dr. Heidenhoff's process reveals that when we understand the true physical basis for memory, hence for human thought and action, we see how we make two errors when we fail to forgive ourselves or others: the failure to forget an irrelevant past and the failure to realize there is no continuous self to grant or receive forgiveness. That our conventional moral precepts are not based on these truths has the perverse consequence of making us either more vicious or less happy.
_MEMORY AND MORALITY_
Does Bellamy intend that we should test the adequacy of Heidenhoff's morality? For surely from the start we can wonder whether, as Heidenhoff believes, his process really exposes serious confusion in our existing moral intuitions on their own terms. Is there really a weak moral case for punishing a person who has forgotten his crime? For example, when someone in a drunken stupor does not recall the hit-and-run accident, we do not only punish him in order to deter others but because there has been a wrong done to the victim that exists whether or not the perpetrator recalls it. Or again, if you were told that someone who gravely wronged you could not be punished because he had his memory erased, it is not obviously unreasonable to be concerned both about the injustice of getting away with a wrong and the further injustice that the wrongdoer is allowed to forget it. Heidenhoff has not shown that such responses are confused in themselves; they are only confused if we are prepared to join him in rejecting the continuity of our personality, and hence our moral responsibility for past deeds.
But on this very point there would seem to be confusion on Dr. Heidenhoff's side in the matter of changing personality versus settled dispositions. Madeline clearly has a flirtatious and self-willed disposition. If all memory of her errors created by that disposition has been sponged away so that she cannot become, as the saying goes, "sadder but wiser" through them, surely she will constantly repeat them; being born anew will not free her from anything but rather would be the constant return of the same. On the other hand, Harrison Cordis, the man who wronged her, could be said to have attained the heights of Heidenhoff's "that-was-yesterday" philosophy, and is arguably the freer to indulge his dispositional lusts—his freedom to act in accordance with his dispositions is hardly a moral improvement. The moral wrong of Harrison Cordis's seduction of women would surely not be reduced even if the memory of the seduction can be wiped away.
Finally, take the case of Henry, who acts rather nobly, even if self-interestedly, in seeking the fallen Madeline out and offering her the shelter of wedlock. If Heidenhoff is correct and the memory of wrongdoing contributes to the worsening of bad dispositions, does memory of good deeds like Henry's also contribute to the improvement of good dispositions? Heidenhoff seems to look forward to a world where there would be no need to comfort the afflicted, hence a world with reduced opportunity for the development of other-regarding virtues.
_BRAIN-DAMAGED GOODS_
Beyond the problems we have just noted with Heidenhoff's argument, the 2004 film _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ is nearly a point-for-point reexamination of some of his key premises, suggesting further grounds for skepticism about their adequacy. The story is not complex, but the movie presents it in a particularly thought-provoking way, such that the viewer only gradually comes to understand the sequence of events. The summary that follows, therefore, is very much a spoiler.
Joel and Clementine (played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) meet, fall in love, and then fall out of love. To forget their painful breakup, Clementine goes to Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) to have her memory of Joel erased; when Joel finds out what she has done he attempts to do the same. An underling of Mierzwiak's named Patrick (Elijah Wood) falls for Clementine when he participates in her memory erasure. Mierzwiak's process, as we will see, gives him access to Joel's diaries and other effects, and Patrick uses this information about Clementine to court her. She finds his efforts confusing and increasingly disturbing for reasons we will speculate about later. Mierzwiak's secretary Mary (Kirsten Dunst) and his main technician Stan (Mark Ruffalo) are likewise involved, despite the fact that Mary carries a torch for Mierzwiak.
The situation comes to a head during the procedure to delete Joel's memory. Patrick goes off to be with Clementine, allowing Stan and Mary to get stoned and have sex while waiting for Dr. Mierzwiak's process to do its work on Joel. Midway through the procedure, Joel changes his mind about erasing his memories of Clementine, and we see inside his head his heroic mental efforts to try to preserve them. Stan notices that things are going wrong, and calls in Mierzwiak to solve the problems created by Joel's resistance. At the end of a hard night of erasing Joel's memories, Dr. Mierzwiak and Mary kiss, observed by the doctor's suspicious wife (Deirdre O'Connell)—who reveals when she confronts him outside Joel's apartment that Mary and Mierzwiak have already had an affair. Mierzwiak is forced to admit to Mary that she had agreed to have her memories of their affair erased. Angered, Mary mails Mierzwiak's patients their files. Joel and Clementine, who by chance or fate have met again and are falling for each other again, listen to the tapes detailing their previous unhappiness with each other. The movie ends as they are deciding to give their relationship another try.
We begin by observing that Mierzwiak tries to overcome what Heidenhoff acknowledged as imperfections in his process. To reduce confusion created by waking up in a doctor's office, the procedure is done in the patient's home at night. There will be no memory of having a memory erased. Mierzwiak also has the patient purge his life of any material reminders of whoever or whatever is to be erased, which is how Patrick gets his hands on Joel's Clementine memorabilia. Finally, to reduce further the chance for confusion based on forgotten events, Mierzwiak sends out postcards to inform the patient's associates not to talk about what the patient had erased.
Yet the movie demonstrates several plausible ways in which the process remains imperfect (after all, "technically, the procedure itself is brain damage"). For example, we can understand why Joel would turn in a coffee mug with Clementine's picture on it, but how does he get away with not getting rid of the foldout bed that figures prominently in so many of his memories of her? Another problem created by the association among memories works the other way. Joel loses all memory of the cartoon character Huckleberry Hound apparently due to the association with the song "Darling Clementine." Or again, he is evidently a bit confused by waking up in the new pajamas that he bought for the procedure, but does not give them much thought. More troubling is the car damage he discovers the morning after the procedure. Clementine crashed it before their last fight, but, failing to recall that, Joel must construct a plausible story for himself that accounts for the now-unexpected dents. So he is upset but not confused.
All these examples fade in significance compared with Joel's discovery, inveterate diarist that he is, that two years of diary entries are missing. Surely it is only because he is so emotionally withdrawn in the first place that he is not more consciously concerned to understand this inexplicable loss. By contrast, the acute distress which Clementine increasingly feels, while doubtless exacerbated by Patrick's mimicking of Joel, shows another possible result of losing memories, more or less incompletely, without conscious awareness that one has lost anything at all. In short, there does not seem to be a consistent ability to predict what memories and associations will create problems when lost, or what exactly will be lost—hardly surprising given the rich associational and emotional character of our memories. Joel and Clementine have shared the _world_ , and they cannot turn the whole thing over to Mierzwiak. Perhaps it is the fact of such ongoing associations along with the habits created by their dispositions that draws the two of them back together even after their memories of each other have been erased.
_DOCTOR KNOWS BEST_
The efforts taken to make the patient forget that he has forgotten something may therefore be of only limited utility from the point of view of the patient, but they _certainly_ are useful to Dr. Mierzwiak. We see one hint of how when we find out that the "don't ask about . . ." postcards about Clementine's procedure are sent to everybody but Joel. Had Joel (as intended) remained in the dark about Clementine's decision he would not have stormed into Mierzwiak's office as he did when he found out. In like manner, if Clementine grows increasingly unhappy and confused as Patrick courts her, she will not see herself as an unhappy _return_ customer in Mierzwiak's office, although she may see him again as a "new" customer, unhappy for reasons she cannot connect to him. In short, Mierzwiak's improvements, while nominally for the good of the patient, in fact insulate _him_ , to the extent they work, from any bad consequences of his procedure. The postcards even serve the additional useful function of providing advertising when, of necessity, there can't be direct word-of-mouth.
Mierzwiak has arranged his process so that as much as possible he will not be confronted by the problematic consequences of his work. The irresponsibility inherent in his methods is reflected yet more clearly in the behavior of his underlings. Drinking, drugs, theft, and perhaps sex seem to be normal activities as they "monitor" the memory-erasing procedure. The forgetfulness they induce in others allows them to forget themselves, professionally speaking; they can satisfy their transitory desires with impunity. Now of course, in any care-giving situation there is a possibility for abuse such as this, and presumably it only increases when the patient is unconscious. But Mierzwiak's employees are further liberated by the fact that those from whom they steal, for example, will not even remember they were unconscious and under treatment. Joel finds he has less whiskey than he expected in the final moments of the film—but even knowing what he knows by then he does not connect it with the procedure.
The technical abilities and limits of Dr. Mierzwiak's process provide fresh opportunities for human failings, which brings us closer to the problems the film suggests with the moral case that Heidenhoff makes for memory erasure. It is easy to connect the irresponsible behaviors we have been looking at with Heidenhoff's denial of any continuity of self that would justify moral responsibility. Just about everybody in the movie has the very thin sense of self that Heidenhoff believes is a great moral achievement. Stan's stock humor is the quick personality shift from brusque professionalism to clownishness. The colorless Patrick readily adopts Joel's persona when given a chance, turning it on and off as needed. Mary gets her opinions from the multi-voiced _Bartlett's Familiar Quotations_. Clementine laments that she gets her personality out of the pastes for her ever-changing hair color. These thin identities are what it means to "attain" to Heidenhoff's philosophy of _that was then, this is now_ and _the I of today is not the same as the I of yesterday_.
If the results are bad all around, Dr. Mierzwiak himself illustrates the dangers best. In the movie he is not played as a mad scientist or evil genius; indeed his fatigued diffidence and calm contrasts favorably with Heidenhoff's preening iconoclasm. Joel barges into Mierzwiak's office, he calmly sees Joel. Mary kisses him, he kisses back. Because his wife Hollis was upset, he reasonably arranges to have Mary's memory erased. (Evidently he could not get Hollis to agree to the same thing.) But Hollis thinks he is a monster, and there is something to her point of view.
We see how when we think more about how he erased Mary's memories of their previous affair (in the shooting script, there is also an abortion involved). While subjecting her to the treatment was a decision he claims they came to together, we have no reason to think, given how the procedure works, that this claim would have to have been true. And even if it were, the obvious asymmetry in their relationship makes the claim of a mutual decision suspect. He could have employed against her the very fatherly/professional authority which is clearly part of what attracts her to him.
But Mary and Mierzwiak's case exposes a yet deeper problem in Heidenhoff's belief that we lack moral responsibility for our pasts while maintaining that we have dispositions that determine the general direction of our behaviors. In what proves to be a particularly poignant speech, Mary articulates the Heidenhoff-like hopes behind Mierzwiak's work. "To let people begin again. It's beautiful. You look at a baby and it's so pure and so free, so clean. Adults . . . they're like this mess of anger and phobias and sadness . . . hopelessness. And Howard just makes it go away." It is true that Howard can make Mary's memories of their affair go away, memories presumably painful mostly in retrospect. But _everything_ does _not_ go away. Instead, he "frees" her to fall in love with him again and creates a fresh opportunity for more infidelity. Mary cannot learn from her mistakes; her unhappiness over his unwillingness to leave his family for her will not cause her to grow angry with him, or disillusioned, or to leave her job and move on, because she has forgotten she was unhappy. On the other hand, how satisfying it must be for Mierzwiak to have her prove his power over her by falling in love with him yet again.
The same dynamic is at work between Joel and Clementine. From a purely prosaic point of view, if all had gone as expected their mutual erasure would simply have opened the door, should they meet again, for them to repeat all of their past mistakes. The same things would attract each about the other, the same things would eventually drive them crazy. Mary's intervention in sending out the patient files opens the door to something new and different in their relationship, but this _deus ex machina_ paradoxically merely restores the possibilities inherent in normal life: "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl." At the movie's end, for Clementine and Joel to reunite they must forgive each other for doing and saying things they have no memory of doing and saying. Granted, that may be an easy kind of forgiveness. But some forgiveness would have been possible had they simply resolved to get together again after a normal breakup—which is not to say they have much of a future in any case.
Against this argument that _Eternal Sunshine_ represents the problems created by Heidenhoff's notion of a thin moral self, it could be argued that it is in the process of getting his memory erased that Joel comes to _know_ himself. He attains the Proustian insight that if he truly no longer loved Clementine he would not feel the need to show her he no longer loved her, which is, in his own mind, what he wanted to demonstrate by the erasure. Of course, the effort really makes no sense at all since he cannot demonstrate anything to someone who no longer remembers him; he can only demonstrate it to the Clementine of his memories, who will likewise be gone soon enough. Furthermore, such an insight is hardly useful if he cannot remember it; Joel's already thin self becomes all the thinner by his decision to deal with the problem of Clementine by erasing her memory.
Still, Joel's motive gives the lie to Heidenhoff's claim that patients will come to him out of sincere repentance. We see Joel make his decision on the basis of that combination of anger and sorrow and desire for revenge which is not atypically a result of failed relationships. (Clementine, typically for her, is said to have undertaken the procedure impulsively.) Where Heidenhoff thought no one could want to revenge himself on an ignorant wrongdoer, Joel exhibits animosity not in spite of but _because_ he knows that Clementine no longer has any knowledge of the wrongs he thinks she has done him. Joel's revenge is typically passive-aggressive; we are reminded of how fortunate that is by the disturbing fact that in happier days he and Clementine apparently played murder/suicide games together, their thin souls toying with complete dissolution. Were Joel's "disposition" different, Clementine's choice to undergo Mierzwiak's process could have resulted in tragedy rather than romantic comedy.
Finally, Heidenhoff's own argument about the moral meaninglessness of psychic pain is shown by the movie to lower the bar for what kind of pain is tolerable. Perhaps it is simply moral progress that sexual relations outside of marriage no longer ruin a woman's life. But at least Madeline is portrayed as seeking out drastic measures because her life was indeed, by the standards of the day, ruined. Is it equally progress when one employs such drastic measures for a rather routine breakup such as Joel's and Clementine's—or, as we see with another patient, for the loss of a dog? Or is it rather once again an indicator of the difficulty these thin selves have in finding any meaning in their own actions and choices?
Nothing could stand in sharper contrast with the attitudes we see playing out in the movie than the poem from which the film draws its title, Alexander Pope's retelling of the great medieval love story of Peter Abelard and Eloisa in "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717). The poet has Eloisa both lament and celebrate the impossibility of her ever forgetting or overcoming her love for Abelard; "Tis sure the hardest science to forget." The nuns around her may enjoy the "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind," but with her own "Far other dreams," such enjoyment is as impossible for her as it is undesirable. Unlike nearly everyone in _Eternal Sunshine_ , she knows who she is, knows whom she loves, and is willing to live out the consequences to the last.
_SHRUNKEN SELVES_
What can we learn from these fictional sources about the moral challenges we may face in a world of transhumanist enhancements? Enthusiastic advocates of enhancements don't like to think seriously about the practical inevitability that the enhancements will work imperfectly, and that those technical imperfections will combine with human imperfections (for we will not make decisions to be enhanced from an enhanced position) to create opportunities for people to take advantage of one another. That this is not a new problem does not mean it is not a serious problem. To the contrary, its persistence over time exposes the utopianism of any who think that the _sine qua non_ for the proper deployment of enhancement technologies is more technology plus the maximization of individual freedom of choice.
These fictional works remind us that enhancements are not, as techno-libertarianism would have us believe, just a matter of what one individual chooses to do or not do. The choices that become available will arise out of the old world, with all of its unenhanced (or, at later stages, less enhanced) baggage and, as we saw in _The DiamondAge_, the choices will be conditioned by those circumstances. The assumptions behind thinking of some change as an enhancement—why we think it is desirable in the first place, what we think it will tell us about ourselves—will have an effect not just on the enhanced, but on their relationships as well, both with their enhancers and with all others who form a part of their world. From this point of view, to imagine as do the transhumanists nothing beyond the greatest possible freedom to make choices among the widest variety is really a restatement of the morally thin conception of the self. That observation in turn casts light on the transhumanist ideal of endless self-transformation. Enhancement is no longer a matter of becoming the best one can be when there is no core or stable self to enhance; perpetual change is equivalent to destruction.
Dr. Mierzwiak and his people act out the consequences of Dr. Heidenhoff's denial of any continuity of self that would produce moral responsibility in what is by transhumanist standards a quite prosaic world of still limited choice. Imagine how much worse their behavior could be when they have, perhaps like Daphne, less reason to think of themselves in terms of a self that could bear moral responsibility. After all, the whole notion of enhancement is predicated on a restless dissatisfaction with what we are, in the name of the as-yet-unknown possibilities for what we might be, and the hope for discontinuity between what evolution has produced by chance and what intelligence can manage deliberately. But from there it is but a short step, already taken by some transhumanists like Ramez Naam, to casting doubts on the existence of a self altogether—the self is, some would say, mere "user illusion."
There is some irony, then, in defenses of enhancement in the name of liberty. To be a truly free human being, to make one's own choices, implies accepting responsibility. It makes sense to advocate liberty if there is such a strong, responsible, moral self waiting to be free. But if, following Heidenhoff and today's transhumanists, we think that there is no such morally responsible self, we are left with only the willful or passionate choices of the moment, rationalized or otherwise, the expression of which is hardly liberty at all but license. There are of course huge moral hazards in a nanny state that would presume to protect the Joels and Clementines of the world from the selfish ministrations of the likes of Mierzwiak and his minions. However, in the transhumanist world of the right to choose without responsibility, the power that our future Heidenhoffs and Mierzwiaks will have over nature, and the power that they will therefore have over human beings, will be not so much the trump card as the only card to play when doubts arise about where our knowledge is taking us. Paradoxically, the world recreated by human beings will be predicated on the law of the jungle; our technological might will make right.
It may well be that this situation arises out of the fact that transhumanism is an effort to maintain some concept of progress that appears normatively meaningful in response to Malthusian and Darwinian premises that challenge the idea of progress. Malthusianism has come to be defined by thinking that the things that appear to be progress—growing populations and economies—put us on a self-destructive course, as we accelerate toward inevitable limits. But it almost seems as if, in the spirit of Malthus's original argument, there is something inevitable also about that acceleration, that we are driven by some force of nature beyond our control to grow until we reach beyond the capacities of the resources that support that growth. Meanwhile, mainstream Darwinian thinking has done everything it can to remove any taint of progress from the concept of evolution; evolution is simply change, and randomly instigated change at that.
Transhumanism rebels against the randomness of evolution and the mindlessness of a natural tendency to overshoot resources and collapse. It rejects, as we have seen, the "assumption of mediocrity" in favor of arguing that man has a special place in the scheme of things. But its rebellion is not half as radical as it assumes, for transhumanism builds on the very same underlying conception of nature that the Malthusians and Darwinians build on, vociferously rejecting the thought that nature has any inherent normative goals or purposes. While it rejects blind evolution as a future fate for man, it accepts it as the origins of man. While it rejects a Malthusian future, it does so with threatening the same old apocalypse if we do not transcend ourselves, and, in the form of Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns, it adopts a Malthusian sense that mankind is in the grip of forces beyond its control.
Because transhumanism accepts this account of nature, it is driven to reject nature. Rejecting also any religious foundations for values, then, it is left with nothing but socially constructed norms developed in response to human power over nature, which, given the unpredictable transformative expectations they have for that power as it becomes not-human, ultimately amounts to no norms at all. Transhumanism is a nihilistic response to the nihilism of the Malthusians and Darwinians.
This moral lacuna at the heart of transhumanism is why it can advocate the progress of dehumanization so enthusiastically. Bostrom may assert that posthumans can be humane, but human morality is built on human capacities and the circumstances of human life. If these are precisely the things that are going to change radically, it is hard to see how the progress of transhumanism can really be called progress anymore. At least, if the Singularity is the outcome, transhumanism cannot be "progress" understood as achieving or approaching some humanly comprehensible ideal or goal. It is progress only if a leap into the unknown can be called progress. That being the case, the only thing that can be said for it by anyone other than someone who enjoys taking incalculable risks is that it is _necessary_ that we go down this path.
But since we cannot in fact know if it is necessary, the Singularity represents an aspiration, and aspiring to it has consequences long before it arrives, if it will arrive at all. To aim at the Singularity is to aim at something without content, or (which amounts to the same thing) to aim at any content at all. Such a goal is peculiarly fitting to the thin, willful self that we have seen come to the fore within the transhumanist framework, a self that supposes itself capable of any content but can only prove that capability by serial negation. This self is the apotheosis of what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes had in mind as a defining human characteristic, the "perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death," except of course it now expects to cheat death as well. We saw how Moravec recognizes that there is something deceptive about the transhumanist promise of immortality, because the "I" that seeks it will not survive its own desire for constant transformation. In fact, the same deception is at work in all of transhumanism's promises to be looking toward solving human problems or other benevolent representations. However sincere these promises, the good intentions reference a world whose destruction in its present form transhumanists are at the very least reconciled to, if not actively seeking. As they see it, the "present form" is mere accident, unworthy of the respect of intelligent beings.
There is of course something to this line of argument. Our desires are restless, and hard to control. Genuine Stoic resignation about the ills of the world has only ever been genuinely possible for a very few. It becomes all the more difficult in a world where it is manifestly possible to meliorate ills that once called for resignation, even if so doing has been known to create new problems. In any case, change seems to be in our blood. Those who even try to use the rhetoric of technological stasis, let alone rollback, are few and far between, and it is yet harder to find those living in a manner consistent with such beliefs.
So surely the safest bet is that the world will continue to change in response to human activities. Even so, the transhumanists may or may not be correct that all roads that are not immediately disastrous lead to the Singularity. This uncertainty means that a great deal is at stake respecting the extent to which their vision of the future is adopted. If it becomes the dominant narrative of technological change and scientific progress (all technical questions aside) it becomes more likely by that very fact. That would be unfortunate, given what we have seen in this chapter. The transhumanists have not adequately dealt with the very thin moral self and the problematic relations between enhancers and enhanced that are central to _Eternal Sunshine_. The disparity in power that would be problematic under any circumstances is all the more so in the time of the thinning self. The will can become all the more willful when it is no longer even directed toward what I want to achieve, which after all implies some kind of self and limit, but is instead liberated to be all-negating. John Harris, avoiding as is his wont any use of transhumanist terminology as he makes his transhumanist arguments, tells us proudly that he does not "recognize finitude, only the limitless possibilities of the human spirit and of human ingenuity."
Finitude is, of course, all around us and in comparison to this reality transhumanism offers what is ultimately a kind of nothingness, be it in the form of mere negation or the unknowability of the Singularity. From this point of view, limits don't look so bad. If we go back to the common-sense beginnings of transhumanism in the admittedly extraordinary potential that modern science and technology hold, how might we begin to think about a future within limits—a _human_ future?
_CHAPTER FIVE_
_The Real Meaning of Progress_
* * *
_PROLOGUE: FATHERS AND SONS_
I've never really given that much thought to birds. Eating them, of course. But beyond that they do what they do and we do what we do. Dad's another story. If it hadn't been "let's try this experiment to escape from Minos," I'm guessing that sooner or later he would have found some other excuse to strap on wings. That's just the way he is—which means never satisfied with the way he is.
It's an admirable enough trait. I guess. We're supposed to strive for excellence, at least as much as the gods allow. But excellence for Dad seems to be more doing something new than doing something well. I've seen the "wings" he's making, and I'll never strap them on sober, I can tell you that. It's not that I'm against new things—where would we be without Prometheus? But Dad thinks that the fact that he _can_ do something is reason enough to do it. So let anybody offer him the chance to do something new and he is all over it. No thought for the consequences. Even now I'm pretty sure that he misses the irony of the fact that we would not need these stupid wings if he had not made that disgusting hollow cow. And this damn maze.
If we do get home after all this I'm going to have to talk with him. It's not that I think he is likely to change, but the gods know that somebody has to try and straighten him out before something really terrible happens. I'd hate to be the one to have to pick up the pieces.
* * *
WHEN APPEALING to common sense, transhumanists promise a better world in humanly comprehensible terms. However, their own assumptions lead them to abandon those promises in favor of willful change toward incomprehensible outcomes. They promise that science and technology will provide us with more of whatever it is we want more of at any given moment—and it is indeed hard to deny the attraction of that promise to people like us. The hitch is that people like us are not going to be around to enjoy it. Indeed, we are not even supposed to see our elimination as a cost at all, but as a great benefit. At least, for the transhumanists, this outcome is in some fashion necessary, and we are supposed to accept that technological might dictates right.
The transhumanists believe that their ideas represent _progress_ —not just technological progress, but progress in the much larger sense of humankind fulfilling its ultimate destiny (a destiny of overcoming itself). Now, one might have thought that ethical guidance would be central to deciding whether a given discovery or invention actually served to advance the well-being of humanity in a way that would deserve labeling it progress rather than mere change, or worse. When Condorcet spoke of progress, for example, we could see his hopes for moral improvement. But shorn of any serious moral content, the measure of progress—if it can be said to exist at all—comes to be simply our amazement at, or dissatisfaction with, the present state of our discoveries and inventions, our awed anticipation of what might yet be achieved. Indeed, our terror about what might go wrong along the way becomes a kind of measure of progress.
The result of framing the question of progress in this way is obvious in popular discussions of the future of science and technology. First, start with a little history to produce an attitude of pride that we know so much more than we once did. Then look at what we know now, and stress the dangers of our remaining ignorance. Finally, anticipate future discoveries, combining hopes and fears for what might happen with a humbling sense that, if only we stick with it, those who follow us will know more than we do and be able to do far more than we can. It would look like Winwood Reade's vision of mankind "ripening towards perfection," if it had the idea of perfection and Reade's tragic insight into the sacrifices involved.
Beyond that, "progress" becomes the sheer accumulation of information, a kind of hoarding mentality that is based on the belief that you never know what might come in handy someday. This helps to explain the widespread belief that any effort to restrain science or technology on the basis of ethics represents a threat to progress. After all, if progress is mere accumulation, then of course restraint _is_ a threat. Yet to see this concern as simply expressing the self-interest of researchers and inventors is to do them an injustice. Haldane wrote that the prospect for the future "is only hopeful if mankind can adjust its morality to its powers," and many well-intentioned professionals probably would agree that it is the job of morality to adjust to scientific and technological change without appreciating how that amounts to saying that might makes right, since they are saying that the question of what we ought to do must always bow to what we have the power to do. Others probably believe that ethical restraint is a weak reed. That is why we frequently hear the argument that if "we" restrain ourselves with respect to some line of research or development, "they"—some other country, usually—will not, putting us at a disadvantage. Combine these two perspectives and you can begin to understand why so often in practice "ethics" of science and technology becomes a matter of filing the right paperwork, following professional codes, publishing in highly specialized journals, or scientists and engineers being willing to have meetings with people from otherwise safely segregated humanities departments to talk about the "ethics of . . ." this or that technology or line of research.
In fact, however, the kneejerk suspicion of any effort to limit developments in science and technology represents something of a betrayal of the bargain that gives science its high place in the modern world. The enlightened acceptance and public encouragement of science and technology was built on the assumption that freedom for such research and development by those so inclined would serve _human_ well-being. The so-far largely successful results of that bargain have made the modern world what it is. Whether the bargain can be as successful if we lose sight of its terms is another matter, about which one is entitled to be quite skeptical.
Some may argue, in the manner of this book's epigraph from Albert Einstein, that today we are too sophisticated to think that there really is any rational answer at all to the question of what human well-being means; hence it could hardly help us think about how to limit our growing power over nature. Cultural and moral relativism, historicism, postmodernism, dogmatic materialism, and fashionable nihilism all create obstacles to taking the question of the human good seriously in our time, obstacles that were not created by advocates of the eclipse of man but that are consistent with their unwillingness to tackle moral questions. But if it is no betrayal of the bargain behind our scientific and technological prowess to at least _inquire_ into the limits represented by the pursuit of human well-being, is it not all the more urgent to pose the question when the ultimate promises of transhumanism so blatantly reject that goal in the name of powerful enhancers, willful negation, and the mystification of the Singularity?
It is no new observation that the great increase in our powers coexists with a diminished capacity to think about them with any kind of moral realism. But slighting ethics does not genuinely serve the cause of science and technology, since they only matter in human terms if they truly serve our humanity. When progress is defined by dehumanization, it is obvious that this result is by no means guaranteed.
While transhumanism is still a fairly recent development, questions about the extent to which human ingenuity serves human beings well are hardly new—as witness the ancient Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. The details of the story are familiar: Daedalus is a great craftsman and engineer, the builder of the Labyrinth used to entrap the Minotaur on the island of Crete. Despite this service, Daedalus and his son Icarus are imprisoned on Crete by King Minos. Daedalus fashions birdlike wings of feathers and wax so he and his son can fly to their escape. Ignoring his father's cautions, Icarus flies too close to the sun; his waxen wings melt and he plunges to his death in the sea.
The tale has drawn a fair amount of attention from artists over the centuries, including the three paintings we will discuss in the next section. The discussion that follows does not aim at offering a comprehensive account of the human good. Nor does it attempt to defend any particular limit on how we might use science and technology to preserve a future of _human_ well-being. But it suggests how we might begin to think about such limits in the course of even modest reflections on the world we are making day to day with science and technology. The transhumanist arguments obscure what is present in front of us in this world; its imperfections and failures, for example, are swept away in a tide of technological determinism drawing us on to some distant horizon of imagined possibilities. That transhumanist farsightedness is then taken to be the best framework by which to give a trivializing and dismissive meaning to present-day things. The three paintings we now turn to provide illustrations of the range of moral responses to the eclipse of man, responses that can illuminate the reasons for rejecting transhumanist farsightedness and put us in a better position to take seriously the human purposes that science and technology promised to serve.
_WINGS OVER THE WORLD: THREE VISIONS_
Our first image is "Daedalus and Icarus" by the French writer and painter Charles Paul Landon, who would eventually become better known as a writer on art than an artist. It is a marvelous illustration of the transhumanist hopes for the progress of inhumanity. The wings seem so natural—the thin fabric straps that bind them to the bodies of Daedalus and Icarus are easy to miss—that the pair look less like human beings wearing improvised wings than like winged beings. We see a moment of great promise, aptly in what seems the light of a new day, as Icarus steps into his first moment of flight, with the intent assistance—perhaps a slight push, perhaps just steadying hands—of his ingenious father. How Icarus feels is anyone's guess (does his face need to be quite so heavily shaded?), and Daedalus exhibits more concentration than amazement or even satisfaction at what he has achieved. Without clothing, with only a sky as background, and with only the vaguest of classical motifs in the pedestal on which they stand and perhaps in their hair, the picture presents this moment of accomplishment, the dawn of a new day, almost completely abstracted from time, place, personality, and circumstance (Icarus is even curiously androgynous). Thus, all the distinctions by which we normally define human beings, except the one that highlights our ingenuity, are missing, and perhaps therefore arbitrary, and the painting becomes a pure tribute to the magical-seeming potential of human invention. Landon of course knows we know what happens next in the story. But from this starting point, it is almost impossible to believe that Icarus will fall—it seems at least as incomprehensible as the fall of some angel. It is as if Landon has in mind a new version of the story, in which father and son both survive.
Charles Paul Landon, _Daedalus and Icarus_ , 1799
Musée des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle, Alençon Picture: David Commenchal
Our second image, "The Death of Icarus" by the contemporary German painter Bernhard Heisig, is a powerful illustration of a certain kind of problematic critical response to the eclipse of man. In contrast to Landon's painting, Heisig's shows the end of the story, perhaps at sunset, with a screaming, terrified Icarus (apparently a selfportrait of Heisig) the center of attention as he is crucified on the obvious artifice of his father's inventiveness. The background echoes the famous painting of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, while the prophetic, prominent pointing finger beneath Icarus' left wing could be a rotated image of the hand of God from Michelangelo's _The Creation of Adam_. All these Biblical visual references add up to a strong warning against overreaching technological ambition—a reminder of the human moral imperfection that conditions the way we use our amazing abilities, and a useful corrective to transhuman aspirations.
Yet Heisig, like Landon, simplifies the moral equation at work in the story. Despite or even because of its cultural quotations, the context in which he places the unfolding events is perhaps even more mysterious than Landon's. The violence of this image, something for which Heisig's work is generally known, is quite shocking, and puts the primary focus on the very direct line between Daedalus' innovation and Icarus' terror. "Here is where your creative pretensions will end up," the painting seems to be saying: not just in failure but in horrifying disaster visited upon those closest to you. So in a curious way this deeply negative outlook depends on accepting the same kind of necessity that transhumanists like to claim drives their project. It appears that for Heisig failure is the only option given that human beings are as they are. There is no point in speaking of progress at all if, from Adam on, we are fated to make the same overreaching kind of mistakes again and again, as the painting seems to suggest.
Bernhard Heisig, _Der Tod des Ikarus_ ("The Death of Icarus"), 1979
© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
However, that perspective overwhelms the fact that this son is, after all, not bearing his cross because he is self-sacrificing or even fated to be sacrificed, but is a young man personally responsible for having flown, against the warnings of his father, too close to the sun. Of course, we can hardly expect that sons will always obey their fathers. But it is not clear whether Heisig sees how the moral significance of Daedalus' work looks very different when we take account of the fact that his son's character plays a role in the way things turn out.
Our last picture is "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," generally attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It is loosely adapted from Ovid's telling of the story in _Metamorphoses_. Much has been and deserves to be said about this remarkable painting; let us therefore just stick with the obvious. Icarus plays a very small visual part in the story the painting tells; it depicts nearly the same moment of failure that Heisig presents, but in Bruegel we see it at a great and impersonal distance. A splash at the bottom right, some scattered feathers, and Icarus' tale is done; Bruegel has to play with the perspective a bit even to make him as visible as he is.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, _Landscape with the Fall of Icarus_ , CA. 1555
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.
Of course, that minimization is its own kind of warning against overreaching: who wants to be remembered most for self-imposed failure? But beyond disobeying his father's instruction to follow a middle course between sea and sun, what is the source of Icarus' failure? Ovid's version presents Daedalus in a not-very-flattering light that casts some doubt on his desire "to work on unknown arts, to alter nature," but it is not so clear that Bruegel agrees. The shepherd tending his flock in the middleground of the painting may come closest to living with nature unimproved (or at least, improved so long in the past as to _appear_ unimproved), but the fisherman certainly requires artifice to make his living. And our farmer's contour plowing may reveal him to be conservation-minded, but his plow, clothing, and literal reshaping of the earth together suggest no small degree of technological sophistication, a suggestion only amplified by the great argosies plying the waves and the alabaster city in the distance that is their apparent destination. In short, Icarus is placed on a continuum of very human enhancements of the given. Yet the tiny part that Icarus plays in the picture suggests a very different view from that presented by Landon and Heisig.
Bruegel's potential witnesses to the fall of Icarus are barely witnesses, if at all—they are certainly not dismayed, as in Heisig. In this respect Bruegel changes Ovid's story:
A fisherman, who with his pliant rod
was angling there below, caught sight of them;
and then a shepherd leaning on his staff
and, too, a peasant leaning on his plow
saw them and were dismayed: they thought that these
must surely be some gods, sky-voyaging.
Bruegel keeps the same characters, but not one of them seems astonished by what he has seen; indeed, it is not really clear they have seen anything at all. Because we know what is happening, and because we know Ovid, we can wonder about their _lack_ of wonder. Is it mere peasant stolidity, or the general human obliviousness in the face of something new and (as some would say) important? Perhaps the fisherman sees Icarus. He might have thought, " _Was that really a man falling from the sky? No, it couldn't be_." before returning, like the farmer, to doing his job. A flying man is outside of his expectations, and a god would hardly crash-land. Our shepherd is a more interesting case; he, not the plowman, raises his eyes, but not in the right direction to observe Icarus' fall. Perhaps he looks up because he hears Daedalus calling to his son? Or perhaps gazing up at the birds he daydreams of flying? But for him it is a passing fancy; not everyone has the genius and motive of Daedalus to turn such dreams to reality.
In any case, the most thought-provoking thing about Bruegel's painting of the story is that he does not have us (as Landon and Heisig do) asking much about Icarus, does not have us wondering about his wondrous or terrible flight. By placing Icarus in a relatively commonplace landscape, Bruegel instead makes us wonder about what Icarus means to these commonplace figures. He is an easily missed part of Bruegel's story, overwhelmed by Bruegel's seductive landscape of the everyday. In other words, in the world out of which they arise, innovations by the likes of Daedalus may hardly appear at all. Daedalus' great purpose, to find a clever way of freeing himself and his son, and Icarus' great failure, echoing his own father's quest to be free, do not intersect directly with what is important to the others in the painting.
On one hand, Bruegel's painting reminds us that the mundane is not given once and for all: there was a time when ships, cities, plows, fishing rods, and even herding sheep were new, the kinds of novelties that might have been, like Icarus' strange flight, either dangerous or hardly worthy of notice by sensible people. On the other hand, Bruegel's painting suggests the limits to the power of change, for the world he depicts would have been just as recognizable to a viewer four centuries before his time as it is for us four centuries after. Even four millennia before Bruegel there was food to grow, there were animals to catch or tend, there were goods to trade, and there were disobedient children. Familiarity across such time scales may be less than the blink of an eye from some imagined cosmic perspective, but this lived human experience provides the continuities that ground and shape human life. It is because of this backdrop that we have the chance to judge innovation and change to be merely that, or in some real sense _progress_ ; there has to be a human condition in order to speak of progressive improvements to it. Furthermore, it is because of this backdrop that the importance of an innovation will become obvious only in retrospect; we cannot know in advance whether its significance, if any at all, comes from the manner in which it is integrated into the old world, or overturns it. Bruegel stresses what Landon did not: that Daedalus' achievement was a dead end.
_BETWEEN TWO VISIONS OF THE FUTURE_
There is a further consequence of Bruegel contextualizing Daedalus' invention within the commonplace earthy, watery, and airy worlds of the farmer, fisherman, and shepherd. Can we not imagine them absorbed not merely in their work, but in those they are working to support? Their own aspirations for and worries about their families and communities would actually be their point of contact with the otherwise unfamiliar events whose final moments unfold before them. As they pursue their daily lives, Bruegel's figures look better dressed and better off than might have been true for their forebears; they might have similar hopes for their own descendants' material improvement without imagining them to be like gods. If they could meet Daedalus, then, we can well imagine they would be more inclined to marvel at his escape from a tyrant and commiserate with him about a disobedient son than focus on the details of his invention. Daedalus does not invent in a vacuum.
The existence of this shared world may be frustrating to those who today pride themselves on being at the scientific and technological cutting edge. But Bruegel reminds us that, practically by definition, the cutting edge is not where most people are; it does not even loom large in their lives. (Indeed, I know of no ancient story that suggests that Daedalus himself ever flew again; even for him flying itself was perhaps less an aspiration than escape.) Still, to those who think themselves in the vanguard, like today's transhumanists, the rest of us will appear as the fisherman, plowman, and shepherd—the ignorant and unobservant who through mere inertia ignore a fabulous future, or seek to keep it at bay. However, there is a certain falseness about this perspective, since in fact the vanguard does not really live in the future they imagine and must continue to rely on the existing world built by the mundane choices and motives that they would rather not acknowledge. Ovid presents Daedalus as an escaping prisoner, Icarus as proud and foolish. Such human details decisively shape how innovations come to be and how they are used. The extraordinary ambitions of the transhumanists and our other latter-day followers of Daedalus will be mediated by the complexities of the ordinary.
Is there any force that can move the ordinary world inexorably toward the radical changes foreseen by the transhumanists? Mightn't the powerful forces of Malthusian scarcity and Darwinian competition push us in that direction? Bruegel, as a man of the sixteenth century, of course cannot be blamed for being unaware of such ideas. Does his unawareness undermine the human vision that he is seeking to present?
The first thing that needs to be noticed in order to answer this question is that the lesson of ongoing scarcity Malthus taught, and to some extent also the lesson of Darwinian competition, is shocking only after hopes for _ending_ it, such as those articulated by Condorcet, come on the scene and become widely adopted. Without a vision of progress like Condorcet's, scarcity and competition would more or less simply be taken as definitive of the way things are. You need to have a vision of progress first, and then the Malthusian challenge can contribute to its radicalization.
Bruegel chooses in this painting not to highlight the worst consequences of scarcity and competition, aspects of life that would have been perfectly obvious to a man of his time. But that does not mean they are absent entirely. We see them at work in the inequality implicit in the painting, the distinction between city and country life, the somewhat menacing island fortress, the occasion for Icarus to be flying that is the story behind the picture, the existence of trade, the fact that the three peasants must make their livings by the sweat of their brows. All such things are just the norm in Bruegel's world. His acceptance stands in stark contrast to the mental gymnastics that advocates of transhumanism have to attempt in order to deal with scarcity and competition. As we saw, Drexler is driven to reject Malthusian scarcity in the near term, accept it over the longer term, and then argue for its irrelevance even in the long term. To one-up him, Kurzweil has to speculate that things we take to be fundamental physical limits may prove subject to intelligent manipulation after all.
We are fortunate to live in a world where, based on some very hard work, Malthus's gloomy predictions about scarcity so far seem to have been confounded. Perhaps, then, Bruegel's resigned attitude is misplaced—perhaps innovation, like that of Daedalus, deserves a much more central placement in our picture of the world. But if scarcity and competition have not yet done their Malthusian worst, we should also note that we can hardly claim that Condorcet has obviously been vindicated. Material progress has had costs with respect to both want and excess that Condorcet did not anticipate, and to be satisfied that it has produced the moral progress he expected it to create would plainly be mere smugness. If, as suggested above, some sort of progress is not entirely alien to Bruegel's picture, it may navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of these alternatives—between the pessimistic vision of Malthusian decline and the optimistic vision of progress—that so readily occupy our contemporary imaginations. Bruegel's in-between depiction may therefore be truer to the world we live in.
Finally, does Darwin's argument for the mutability of forms of life require us to abandon the perspective on human things that Bruegel seems to be suggesting? At the simplest level it does not, because a great many people in the world today, perhaps even most of them, are as little influenced by Darwin's ideas as Bruegel's peasants were, despite all the efforts of bestselling neo-Darwinian popularizers. We may decry such ignorance or (worse) obstinacy, but there it is; integrating Darwin into a horizon for understanding the world remains the achievement of a relatively small number, and it would be a brave soul today who would claim that these represent the vanguard the rest must necessarily follow.
Furthermore, it is not really that clear that Darwin's vision of natural evolution should be _expected_ to change the shape of our lives to something other than what Bruegel observed. What life lessons ought we to learn from Darwin? If his work represents a warning against a certain kind of human pridefulness, it is hardly the only source of such a warning; if it teaches us that this too shall pass, we likewise need not learn that lesson from him. If Darwin links us to animals in our origins, that is a more distant link than the one a dispassionate observer of human things like Aesop can readily see in our actions.
It seems true that Darwinism confounds both pagan and Biblical stories of human origins, and it is impossible to deny the corrosive effect Darwinism has had on Biblical faiths. Yet here again its limited impact is worth noting. The secular view that Darwinism has been taken to advance has not achieved its ultimate victory, not only because (for better and worse) faith can trump materialistic rationalism, but because faith has adapted. Rather than say Darwinism confounds the Biblical stories, it would be truer to say that Darwinism confounds certain ways of understanding those stories, and long before Darwin there were ways of reading them that did not treat them simply as scientific, historical, or journalistic accounts of events.
The transhumanist case for modifying our Bruegel-like understanding of the everyday world depends on making a very un-Darwinian move: transforming evolution from a natural and long-term process into a human project today. Is it truer to Darwin to modify his ideas in this fundamental way, or simply to let evolution take care of itself, and continue, as a great many people seem to do, to live out their lives without a concern for the ultimate fate of _Homo sapiens_ and our evolutionary successors?
No, if there is a flaw in Bruegel's portrait of the everyday, it is not in how it treats Malthusian and Darwinian realities, but that it contains so little hint beyond the scattered feathers of Icarus' wings of what Heisig reminds us of—that terrible things can become mundane. But Heisig and Bruegel might agree at least on this: what is terrible in the tale of Daedalus and Icarus reflects flaws and limits that make the human story what it is. We cannot simply wish these flaws away, lifting ourselves into some new state of affairs where they will make no difference. We might hope that our innovations always be motivated by a wish to be better, but they will certainly always arise within a framework in which that wish has not yet been fulfilled, and that fact will always make their actual result uncertain.
_THE POWER OF THE SEEMINGLY MUNDANE_
Bruegel's painting suggests how transhumanists slight the power of the everyday, instead projecting our hopes and fears for the future onto what is essentially a blank canvas. Hoping to overcome the merely human, they look at the present from the point of view of their projection—judging the world around us as though they already understand the future—in order to give meaning and direction to present human activities. So what is important to them are the real or imagined innovations that serve as a prelude to this future whose own meaning will be beyond us. The prosthetic hand that could serve the disabled veteran is immediately attached to the pioneer who wants a third hand, and since he _wants_ it, no further thought about the context in which such a thing might happen is considered necessary. If the transhumanists bother to look at anything in the past or present at all, it is only the as-yet-unrealized dreams of things like immortality or super powers. The godlike capacities that have long been wished for, and yet traditionally have been regarded as at least as much curse as blessing, if not far more curse, are turned into unambiguously normative aspirations. Such wishes become human essentials rather than aberrations.
With this blank canvas as their starting point, it does not seem so strange to transhumanists when they go on to assert that the meaning for life today, and a direction for future "progress," is to be found in an incomprehensible future. Yet that argument creates a powerful bias, a tunnel vision that focuses on developments and possibilities that make the least sense from the point of view of where we are today and for that very reason suggests they are the most important things in the world of tomorrow. At the very least, this kind of tunnel vision is not the only way of treating the future. Like Bruegel, we can admit the desirability of innovation and still value the continuities that for better and worse influence the meaning that those innovations will come to have for our lives, projecting the past and present into the future rather than the other way around.
Bruegel's alternative is not his alone; for example, a similar way of looking at the world is found in Tolstoy's _War and Peace_. Tolstoy describes how Pierre Bezukhov was changed by his experiences as a prisoner of Napoleon's army. Pierre grew up and, abandoning a way of looking at the world that sounds rather like the transhumanist vision, adopted a perspective like Bruegel's:
All his life he had looked off somewhere, over the heads of the people around him, yet there was no need to strain his eyes, but only to look right in front of him.
Formerly he had been unable to see the great, the unfathomable and infinite, in anything. He had only sensed that it must be somewhere and had sought for it. In all that was close and comprehensible, he had seen only the limited, the petty, the humdrum, the meaningless. He had armed himself with a mental spyglass and gazed into the distance, where the petty and humdrum, disappearing in the distant mist, had seemed to him great and infinite, only because it was not clearly visible. . . . Now he had learned to see the great, the eternal, and the infinite in everything, and therefore, in order to see it, to enjoy contemplating it, he had naturally abandoned the spyglass he had been looking through until then over people's heads, and joyfully contemplated the ever-changing, ever-great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him.
For the advocates of the eclipse of man, the "spyglass" may be some distant future, aliens from the stars come to save us, the ever-rising trend line that brings the actual ever closer to the limits of the possible, or the posthuman Singularity. From all these imagined points of view there is little to be said for humanity as we see it in front of us—it is indeed petty, humdrum, and meaningless. Yet even if the futures they look forward to are possible, and even if there are powerful forces at work behind the innovations that would bring them about, there is no necessity to look at them through the "spyglass" that the advocates of dehumanization use. The peculiar farsightedness of the spyglass makes small, speculative things look big and important while turning things that are close up into a blur. Instead of looking "over the head" of humanity to the alien or posthuman, we can attempt to see what is right in front of us, to meet human life face to face, and at the very least not abandon it until we are certain we have understood it and appreciated it on its own terms.
G. K. Chesterton writes of a reformer who sees a gate in the road and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." A more intelligent reformer, Chesterton says, would respond this way: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you _do_ see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." It is far from clear that the advocates of dehumanization have given much thought to the "use" of human beings, beyond various attempts at material explanations of why we are the way we are. There are a few exceptions: Winwood Reade and Nikolai Fedorov sought to place their arguments within an understanding of human things wider than the horizon of the power of technological possibilities. But most advocates of dehumanization, including today's transhumanists, are far more likely not only to take the world to revolve around the actual technological and scientific infrastructure, but to assume it revolves around what _might_ become possible if only we clear away all old gates.
If we appreciate instead how important the seemingly mundane is in shaping our expectations and hopes about the world, we are more likely to ask why we have this or that technology, and why we want it, or why we want something different. What good does it do, or would we expect it to do? How does it fit with our vision of what makes for a good life—which of course may or may not be a vision of a good life simply.
Such questions will not be easy to answer. Since science and technology as such offer few if any resources for ethical reflection, on their own they leave us with a painfully thin understanding of the shape of human life. Furthermore, the advocates of dehumanization are just one part of a larger picture, and in our time that larger picture in commerce and the arts, in the humanities, in the natural and social sciences, is one that _often_ simplifies, if not outright debases, our self-understanding in ways that reinforce the eclipse of man. If we lack the general intellectual tools required to make distinctions between progress and change, for example, or between freedom and willfulness, some of the transhumanists' heaviest lifting has already been done, for then it is easy to transform the possible into the necessary simply because it satisfies someone's desire.
_THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY_
Beyond these particular blinders of our time and place, investigating the meaning of well-being has _never_ been easy, because it requires a willingness to look at the question of the human good with care and seriousness, not taking the day-to-day for granted but not rejecting it dogmatically. That would mean neither the dogmatic acceptance nor the dogmatic rejection of the moral values of one's time and place. It would require avoiding cynicism and utopianism about human motives and possibilities. Such an investigation might yield a complex and mixed picture of what a good life is and how science and technology contribute to it. There will be grave uncertainties and honest disagreements along the way. We will likely find that even as individuals we have conflicting desires and visions of the good, not to speak of wider social and cultural disagreements. But the investigation is still worth undertaking if we want to speak meaningfully of "progress."
Putting all such challenges together, we begin to see why the problem of benevolence that has arisen in these pages looms so large. It can be hard enough to know what is genuinely benevolent when human beings are relating to human beings under the best of circumstances. When we start talking about benevolence directed to us by beings of unimaginable power and knowledge, the only intellectual experience we have is summarized in theodicy, the effort to understand God's goodness in light of the manifest evils of the world. That effort, which has occupied many a great mind over many centuries, is, shall we say, ongoing. Why it would be any easier to settle were we to start having to talk about artificial superintelligence or advanced aliens is far from clear.
A willingness to act on the basis of nearly complete moral ignorance relative to the central question of progress—the question of what would make for a better world—is really the only justification for the otherwise simplistic desire for the eclipse of man. Otherwise, we would surely want to adopt more _modest_ expectations for a human future. Surely it is not as if the only future that is worth looking forward to, and working hard for, is one in which we can achieve anything we can imagine, where everything will be permitted. If it were, what we are left with is mere pride in novelty and superlatives, a constant one-upmanship of imaginative possibilities that diminish the worth of human beings as we actually know them. With no clear goal, direction, or purpose, with willful freedom of choice as the guiding light, how could it be otherwise?
To be clear, this kind of needed modesty is not that of the SETI advocates, who are happy to expose what they take to be human vanity about our place in the universe. For that is a patently false modesty; diminishing what we are is only a prelude to pride in the great expectations of what we can achieve once we meet up with aliens, a goad to take up our true task of creating limitless possibilities.
The kind of modesty that we need acknowledges that there is much that can and ought to be done to make human lives better, and that science and technology will play a major role in that effort. At the same time, it does not take for granted what we mean by "better," in light of the whole range of human strengths and weaknesses that we observe when we pay attention, like Bruegel, to the world in front of us. We are notoriously in-between beings, neither beasts nor gods as Aristotle famously put it. How much confidence is appropriate, then, in our abilities to wield the great powers that are being promised to us? We can hardly afford to act on the basis of thinking that because we can imagine a day when we are without human vices, we can therefore ignore their reality when presented with technologies that could be used to help them flourish.
Anything we actually accomplish will be the product of limited and flawed creators, so the odds are that our creations will of necessity perpetuate those limits and imperfections. As we have seen repeatedly in these pages, the more we place our understanding of technological change within the constraints of the world out of which it actually arises and through which it must percolate, the more it seems likely that the result will never be as wonderful or as terrible as less-disciplined imaginations can so easily make it. That hardly guarantees a good result, but if we are unwilling to take up seriously the question of what good means, and if we are too much influenced by the tunnel vision of the dehumanizers, we can hardly expect anything better.
Human beings, unlike other animals, can make deliberate choices to change what it means to be human. It may be that now we are seeing the beginnings of a real choice about being human at all. In attempting to confront the "grand vision" of the eclipse of man as such, we have seen how its advocates have made arguments against our humanity based on a painfully thin understanding of what it means to be human, and made promises that will lead to the demise of the goods sought even as they are fulfilled. Their project is neither as inevitable nor as rational as they would like to believe, and they are therefore certainly not excused from defending it on the moral grounds implicit in calling it progress: that it will actually create a _better_ world.
_Acknowledgments_
THIS BOOK has taken longer to bring to fruition than I ever imagined it would. As a consequence, there are more people to thank than might otherwise have been the case. I only started to enhance my memory of such people by making a list after the process had already extended itself to such a degree that I fear there is every likelihood that I have forgotten some important assistance, kindness, or inspiration. To any of these people who might pick up this volume without finding the recognition due them, my sincere apologies.
It has been a deep pleasure for some years now to work in a variety of contexts, not the least of which is the Futurisms blog, with the talented editorial staff of _The New Atlantis_ : Adam Keiper, Ari N. Schulman, Samuel Matlack, Brendan P. Foht, and Caitrin Nicol Keiper. They also served as my editors on this book. As usual, their thoughtful corrections and suggestions have the net result of making me seem a better writer and a more intelligent person than I am. My only excuse for complicity in this deception is that at least I am smart enough to recognize that is the outcome, and to acknowledge it herewith. Eric Cohen was the founding editor of _The New Atlantis_ ; he along with Peter A. Lawler at _Perspectives on Political Science_ were the first to provide a print home for the writing I was doing on the arcane topic of human redesign, encouragement that came at a crucial moment. I also owe many thanks to the assiduous fact-checking efforts of several _New Atlantis_ research assistants and interns: Maximilian de la Cal, Steven Fairchild, Barbara McClay, Maura McCluskey, and Galen Nicol. _New Atlantis_ interns Moira E. McGrath and M. Anthony Mills helped compile the index. And thanks are due, too, to Roger Kimball, Heather Ohle, Carl W. Scarbrough, and the rest of the Encounter Books team for their contributions to unleashing this book on an unsuspecting public.
Having touched on the subject of finding a place to publish my thoughts on the topics this book covers, let me single out also Mary Nichols, who was instrumental in founding the Politics, Literature, and Film section of the American Political Science Association, and by so doing, and by the example of her own writing, encouraged me and many like me to think of literary analysis as a legitimate way to understand political things. Similarly, Stuart Kingsley's efforts to make a place for discussions of optical SETI at conventions of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) opened the door for this political scientist to put my thoughts before a community of natural scientists and reap the benefits thereof. Robby George and Brad Wilson likewise generously provided opportunities to air my ideas in the context of conferences hosted by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
In its early stages, my writing was supported by a sabbatical from Duquesne University and a generous grant from the Sarah Scaife Foundation. I note "early" to express my gratitude for the subsequent patience of executive director Michael Gleba, who never failed to show interest in how the book was going.
I can't even begin to thank my wife Leslie enough for the many things big and small she did over the years to give me the time, emotional support, and advice that allowed me to write. From discussion in the earliest days of this book to the last stages as she read galleys, her help has been indispensable. I am grateful that I can count on her energy and intelligence under all circumstances. My children Ted and Anna did their part by showing a remarkable tolerance for the needs of a father with such odd interests.
This book is less the product of specialized academic studies within a clearly defined discipline than it is of an academic life where, thanks to the tolerant attitude of colleagues at Duquesne University, I have been able to pursue the questions that intrigue me wherever they have led. But academic life is just one aspect of life, and when thinking about prospects for the human future, one can hardly help (even if unknowingly) drawing on that larger life experience. Such insights as I hope the book contains could have arisen as much from encounters walking about in my community or attending synagogue services as from the classroom, conferences, the library, the Internet. Its lineage is correspondingly complex. The list that follows encompasses people to whom I am indebted for a variety of the usual kinds of scholarly help: inspiring students and teachers (formal and informal), research assistance, paper discussants, or editorial advice. It also includes some intellectual sparring partners, sounding boards, and providers of moral support. I offer all my appreciation, without of course imputing any responsibility to them for arguments or ideas that, in some instances at least, I quite hope they do _not_ agree with. So my thanks to: Steve Balch, Mark Blitz, Todd Bryfogle, Nigel Cameron, Mark Coda, Tobin Craig, Stephen L. Elkin, Robert Faulkner, Barbara Goldoftus, Kim Hendrickson, Shawn Igo, Leon R. Kass, Caroline Kelly, Syma Levine, Michael Lotze, Don Maletz, Michele Mekel, Thomas W. Merrill, Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, Andrew Morriss, Gary McEwan, Michael Myzak, Steve Ostro, Marty Plax, Betsy Rubin, Bill Rubin, Jeff Salmon, Adam Schulman, Tom Short, Ted Weinstein, and Stephen Wrinn. Thanks also to Wilfred M. McClay, whose 1994 book _The Masterless_ included a chapter on Edward Bellamy that introduced me to the fascinating story "Dr. Heidenhoff's Process."
The last years of writing this book have taken place in the shadow of my Mom's developing "dementia consistent with Alzheimer's disease," as the more careful physicians seem to put it. I did not particularly need this lesson to teach me the fragility of human life, nor to bring home the depth of the love between my parents. On the one hand, then, it has reinforced my belief that we still have a great deal of progress to make simply towards alleviating _human_ suffering and disease, and that however what we learn in the process of so doing might be related to grand schemes for redesigning ourselves, those schemes remain a distraction, and a rather ethically oblivious if not cruel one at that. Yet on the other hand, it has shown me more clearly than I would have wished the occasion for noble and beautiful deeds that open to loving and respectful souls, my Dad's foremost among them, as they provide the care that must be given her in the absence of cure. I cannot call these opportunities compensation, let alone silver lining, but they are a weighty moral fact, and not the first my folks taught me. So this book is dedicated to them.
_NOTES_
EPIGRAPH
Albert Einstein, "Freedom and Science," trans. James Gutmann, in _Freedom: Its Meaning_ , Ruth Nanda Anshen, ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940), 382. The essay was later partially reprinted in various collections under the title "On Freedom."
INTRODUCTION
The differences among these schools of thought are important to those who have coined and adopted the different labels, even if outsiders may not immediately appreciate what is at stake. Yet in practice the adherents of one position or another often aim to adopt a "big tent" outlook that seeks to minimize the sectarian tendencies implicit in the different designations. So while my use of "transhumanism" in this book as a generic term necessarily means some nuance will be lost, the decision is likely to be controversial only to the extent that it may imply a single-mindedness that adherents to one position or another will object to when their own ideas seem to be slighted. But that problem is balanced by the fact that by using the term in this way I follow their own movement-building example.
Stewart Brand, "Purpose," _Whole Earth Catalog_ , 1 (Fall 1968), 2. This phrase, originally rendered in italics with the word "are" underlined, was the first sentence of the mission statement Brand put at the beginning of the first issue of his _Whole Earth Catalog_ , a short-lived publication that was influential in the counterculture movement, among futurists, and among the high-tech innovators of the 1970s and 1980s—a milieu in which many transhumanist ideas developed.
Thus, while transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom acknowledges that the technologies that allow human redesign may pose their own "existential risks," he also argues that the transformation of mankind may be a route to avoiding other such threats. For the briefest of statements to this effect, see his "Existential Risks and Future Technologies," www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/existential-risks-and-future-technologies.
William Faulkner, "Banquet Speech" (speech, Stockholm, December 10, 1950), Nobelprize.org,nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulknerspeech.html.
See, for example, the cover of the February 21, 2011 edition of _Time_ magazine, which reads: "2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal."
John Letzing, "Google Hires Famed Futurist Ray Kurzweil," Digits ( _Wall Street Journal_ blog), December 14, 2012, blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/12/14/google-hiresfamed-futurist-ray-kurzweil/.
Singularity University, "FAQ," singularityu.org/faq/.
The classic presentation of this idea is to be found in Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, eds., _Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance_ (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_report.pdf.
David Levy, _Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). The widespread attention given this book is perhaps best indicated by the fact that its author made an appearance on _The Colbert Report_ on January 17, 2008: thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/ykpl7i/david-levy.
See, for example, Ray Kurzweil, _The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence_ (New York: Penguin, 1999).
See, for example, Hans Moravec, _Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology_ (New York: Anchor Books, 1990).
See, for example, Simon Young, _Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto_ (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006).
For nanotechnology and water purification see Lora Kolodny, "Puralytics CEO On Cleaning Water With Light, Winning The Cleantech Open," techcrunch.com/2010/11/25/cleantech-open-winners-puralytics/. For nanotechnology and solar energy see Xiangnan Dang, _et al_., "Virus-templated Self-assembled Single-walled Carbon Nanotubes for Highly Efficient Electron Collection in Photovoltaic Devices," _Nature Nanotechnology_ 6 (2011), 377–384, dx.doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2011.50.
P. W. Singer, _Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century_ (New York: Penguin, 2009).
Tractate _Eruvin_ 13b.
Charles T. Rubin, _The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism_ (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 181–184, 206–211.
For an excellent account of the important role our visions of the future play in thinking even about the present, see Yuval Levin, _Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy_ (New York, Encounter Books, 2008).
Eric Cohen, _In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology_ (New York: Encounter Books, 2008), 81.
CHAPTER ONE: THE FUTURE IN THE PAST
Nick Bostrom, "The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction," Version 2.1 (2003), 47, transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf. See also Chris Wren, "Star Trek's Greatest Weakness," Mondolithic Sketchbook (blog), May 11, 2006, web.archive.org/web/20061015002913/http://mondosketch.blogspot.com/2006/05/star-treks-greatest-weakness.html.
Keith Michael Baker, "Marquis de Condorcet," in Paul Edwards, ed., _The Encyclopedia of Philosophy I_ (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1967), 182–84.
David Williams, _Condorcet and Modernity_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3. See also William Doyle, _The Oxford French Revolution_ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 399.
Williams, _Condorcet and Modernity_ , 42.
_Ibid_., 43.
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, _Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind_ (Philadelphia: M. Cary and Co., 1796), 245, oll.libertyfund.org/titles/condorcet-outlines-of-an-historicalview-of-the-progress-of-the-human-mind.
_Ibid_., 252.
_Ibid_., 289.
_Ibid_., 290.
_Ibid_., 291.
_Ibid_., 289.
_Ibid_., 289–90.
_Ibid_., 292.
Francis Bacon, _New Atlantis and The Great Instauration_ (Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, 1989), 71.
Thomas Robert Malthus, _An Essay on the Principle of Population, As It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers_ (London: J. Johnson, 1798), archive.org/stream/essayonprincipl00malt#page/n7/mode/2up. Condorcet's _Outlines_ first appeared in English in 1795; Mathus's _Essay_ came out three years later.
David N. Reznick, _The "Origin" Then and Now: An Interpretive Guide to the "Origin of Species"_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 68.
The Darwin Correspondence Project, "Spotlight on a Correspondent: William Winwood Reade," Darwin and Human Nature (blog), May 20, 2011, darwinhumannature.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/spotlight-on-a-correspondent-william-winwood-reade/.
"One always turns back to Winwood Reade's _Martyrdom of Man_ for renewal of faith." (W. E. B. Du Bois, _The World and Africa_ [New York: The Viking Press, 1947], x.) Rhodes called the book "creepy," but also said "That book has made me what I am." (Princess Catherine Radziwiłł, _My Recollections_ [London: Ibister and Company, 1904], 342.) Wells considered Reade a "great and penetrating genius." (Leon Stover, "Applied Natural History: Wells vs. Huxley," in Patrick Parrinder and Christopher Rolfe, eds., _H. G. Wells under Revision: Proceedings of the International H. G. Wells Symposium_ [Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press, 1990], 127.) Orwell wrote, "however hasty and unbalanced" Reade's book may seem, it "shows an astonishing width of vision." (George Orwell, _The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell_ , Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds., vol. 3, _My Country Right or Left_ , 1940–1943 [New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968], 37.)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, _The Sign of the Four_ (orig. 1890), in _The Annotated Sherlock Holmes_ , William S. Baring-Gould, ed. (New York: Wings/Random House, 1992), vol. 1, 619. I say "perhaps" Holmes admires Reade because "remarkable" does not have to be a term of praise, and Reade's book may just be a way for Watson to while away an hour. There is less ambiguous praise later in _The Sign of the Four_ : "'Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,' said Holmes. 'He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.'" ( _Ibid_., 666.)
Winwood Reade, _The Martyrdom of Man_ (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1910), xlvii, archive.org/stream/martyrdomofman00readuoft.
_Ibid_., 395–400.
_Ibid_., 10.
Whether or not Reade was familiar with Immanuel Kant, the argument recalls the nineteenth-century German philosopher's position in works such as "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent," collected in Immanuel Kant, _Perpetual Peace and Other Essays_ (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), 29–40.
Reade, _The Martyrdom of Man_ , 10.
_Ibid_., 392.
_Ibid_., 410.
_Ibid_., 393.
_Ibid_., 522–523.
_Ibid_., 443.
_Ibid_., 467.
_Ibid_., 512.
_Ibid_., 512.
_Ibid_., 464.
_Ibid_., 452.
_Ibid_., 505, 516ff.
Note that Reade also says, "Finally, men will master the forces of nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. . . . There is but a difference in degree between the chemist who to-day arranges forces in his laboratory so that they produce a gas, and the creator who arranges forces so that they produce a world; between the gardener who plants a seed, and the creator who plants a nebula." So perhaps we will not always be so far below the "Power by whom the universe was made" after all. Reade, _The Martyrdom of Man_ , 515, 467.
"Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed." Francis Bacon, _The New Organon_ (Aphorisms I.3), Fulton H. Anderson, ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), 39.
Reade, _The Martyrdom of Man_ , 513.
_Ibid_., 511.
_Ibid_., 515.
_Ibid_., 514–15
_Ibid_., 515.
_Ibid_., 538–39.
_Ibid_., 543.
Elisabeth Koutaissoff, "Introduction," in Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, _What Was Man Created For?: The Philosophy of the Common Task_ (selected works), Elisabeth Koutaissoff and Marilyn Minto, trans. and eds. (Lausanne: Honeyglen Publishing/L'Age d'Homme, 1990), 16.
Charles Tandy and R. Michael Perry, "Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829–1903)" _Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy_ , iep.utm.edu/fedorov/.
Koutaissoff, "Introduction," 16.
Fedorov, _What Was Man Created For?_ , 36.
_Ibid_., 34.
_Ibid_., 36.
_Ibid_., 39.
_Ibid_., 42, 43.
_Ibid_., 53–54.
_Ibid_., 54.
_Ibid_., 65.
_Ibid_., 56, 43–44.
_Ibid_., 91.
_Ibid_., 60–61, 66, 43.
_Ibid_., 90. For an interesting comment on the likeness between Fedorov and the transhumanists, see Charles Stross, "Federov's _sic_ ] Rapture," Charlie's Diary (blog), July 1, 2011, [www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/federovsrapture.html.
Fedorov, _op cit_., 88.
_Ibid_., 96.
_Ibid_., 97, 96.
_Ibid_., 97.
_Ibid_., 97.
_Ibid_., 97–98.
_Ibid_., 127–128.
Camille Flammarion, _Astronomy for Amateurs_ , trans. Francis A. Welby (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1915 orig. 1904]), 319, [archive.org/stream/astronomyforama00welbgoog.
_Ibid_., 325–326.
_Ibid_., 338.
_Ibid_., 331.
_Ibid_., 338.
_Ibid_., emphasis added.
_Ibid_., 337.
_Ibid_., 340.
Richard Jeffery, "C. S. Lewis and the Scientists," _The Chronicle of the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society_ 2, no. 2 (May 2005), 17–19.
In the United Kingdom, "The Last Judgment" was published as the final piece in the book _Possible Worlds and Other Essays_ in 1927. It was excluded from the American edition of that book, because the piece was instead published in the March 1927 edition of _Harper's Magazine_ and as a small standalone book the same year by Harper & Brothers. (See Mark B. Adams, "Last Judgment: The Visionary Biology of J. B. S. Haldane," _Journal of the History of Biology_ 33, no. 3 [Winter 2000], 462.) "The Last Judgment" is a sort of sequel to Haldane's 1923 lecture _Daedalus, or Science and the Future_ , which I analyzed in Charles T. Rubin, "Daedalus and Icarus Revisited," _The New Atlantis_ 8 (Spring 2005), 73–91.
C. S. Lewis, "On Science Fiction," in _Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories_ (San Diego: Harvest/Harcourt, 1994 [orig. 1966]), 66.
J. B. S. Haldane, _Possible Worlds and Other Essays_ (London: Chatto and Windus, 1927), 292.
_Ibid_., 295.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 302.
_Ibid_., 303.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 309.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 310.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 311.
_Ibid_., 311–321.
_Ibid_., 312.
_Ibid_., 310, 312.
Andrew Brown, _J. D. Bernal: The Sage of Science_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 54.
_Ibid_., 238–254, 158–159.
_Ibid_., 341, 416, 432.
J. D. Bernal, _The World, the Flesh and the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), v.
_Ibid_., 6, 5.
_Ibid_., 15.
The first spacecraft to rely on solar sails was a Japanese probe given the acronym IKAROS, after Icarus, the mythological figure who perished after flying too close to the sun; he is depicted on the cover of this book and discussed at length in Chapter Five.
Bernal, _The World, the Flesh and the Devil_ , 18, 25.
_Ibid_., 27.
_Ibid_., 32.
_Ibid_., 35.
_Ibid_., 34.
_Ibid_., 34.
_Ibid_., 37.
_Ibid_., 36.
_Ibid_., 37–38.
_Ibid_., 42.
_Ibid_., 38–41. Bernal paints a vivid picture of the mechanical men he envisions: "Instead of the present body structure we should have the whole framework of some very rigid material, probably not metal but one of the new fibrous substances. In shape it might well be rather a short cylinder. Inside the cylinder, and supported very carefully to prevent shock, is the brain with its nerve connections, immersed in a liquid of the nature of cerebro-spinal fluid, kept circulating over it at a uniform temperature. The brain and nerve cells are kept supplied with fresh oxygenated blood and drained of de-oxygenated blood through their arteries and veins which connect outside the cylinder to the artificial heart-lung digestive system—an elaborate, automatic contrivance. . . . The brain thus guaranteed continuous awareness, is connected in the anterior of the case with its immediate sense organs, the eye and the ear—which will probably retain this connection for a long time. The eyes will look into a kind of optical box which will enable them alternatively to look into periscopes projecting from the case, telescopes, microscopes and a whole range of televisual apparatus. The ear would have the corresponding microphone attachments and would still be the chief organ for wireless reception. Smell and taste organs, on the other hand, would be prolonged into connections outside the case and would be changed into chemical tasting organs, achieving a more conscious and less purely emotional role than they have at present. . . . Attached to the brain cylinder would be its immediate motor organs, corresponding to but much more complex than, our mouth, tongue and hands. This appendage system would probably be built up like that of a crustacean which uses the same general type for antenna, jaw and limb; and they would range from delicate micromanipulators to levers capable of exerting considerable forces, all controlled by the appropriate motor nerves. . . . The remaining organs would have a more temporary connection with the brain-case. There would be locomotor apparatus of different kinds, which could be used alternatively for slow movement, equivalent to walking, for rapid transit and for flight. On the whole, however, the locomotor organs would not be much used because the extension of the sense organs would tend to take their place. Most of these would be mere mechanisms quite apart from the body; there would be the sending parts of the television apparatus, tele-acoustic and tele-chemical organs, and tele-sensory organs of the nature of touch for determining all forms of textures. Besides these there would be various tele-motor organs for manipulating materials at great distances from the controlling mind. These extended organs would only belong in a loose sense to any particular person, or rather, they would belong only temporarily to the person who was using them and could equivalently be operated by other people."
_Ibid_., 40, 41.
_Ibid_., 41.
_Ibid_., 43.
_Ibid_., 46.
_Ibid_., 47.
_Ibid_., vi.
_Ibid_., 56.
_Ibid_., 53.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 56, 57.
_Ibid_., 58.
_Ibid_., 60.
Interestingly, the word "cyborg" (cybernetic organism), now popularly used to describe beings that are part living and part machine, was first coined in 1960 to propose a way to adapt human beings for the hostile environments of space exploration. See Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, "Cyborgs and space," _Astronautics_ 14, no. 9 (September 1960), 26–27, 74–76.
Bernal, _The World, the Flesh and the Devil_ , 63.
_Ibid_., 64.
_Ibid_., 65.
_Ibid_., 66.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 70, 75.
_Ibid_., 74.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 78–79.
_Ibid_., 79.
_Ibid_., 80.
Bernal worries that his vision may fail to be convincing for two kinds of reasons. On the one hand, perhaps he has not portrayed a future that is sufficiently "mysterious and full of supernatural power." Paradoxically, the very desire for such a future has driven the creation of the world today, a world in which we have the non-mysterious power to fulfill all our desires except this one. Will the fact that the future is now becoming "a function of our own action" turn us away from further achievement, or will we accept that an unfulfillable desire will drive us ever onwards? On the other hand, Bernal acknowledges that "we shall have very sane reactionaries at all periods warning us to remain in the natural and primitive state of humanity, which is usually the last stage but one in their cultural history." But he is not terribly worried that such critics, however sane, might actually prevail. He suggests that "the secondary consequences of what men have already done—the reactionaries as much as any—will carry them away then as now." As even reactionaries are only committed to preserving "the last stage but one," they are forced to be progressive by the brute facts that are being established around them by those who have no corresponding qualms. _Ibid_., 80–81, 65.
_Ibid_., 68.
_Ibid_., 64.
David Pearce, "The Hedonistic Imperative" (online publication, 1995), hedweb.com/hedethic/hedonist.htm.
"The need to refuel three times daily is most frustrating. . . . The requirement for the daily evacuation of unpleasantly odorous waste products from an orifice needlessly situated directly next to the sexual organs is an obvious design fault." Simon Young, _Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto_ (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006), 28.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _The First and Second Discourses_ , Roger D. Masters, ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), 114–115.
Condorcet, 290.
The power of this vision of space as the new New World is such that still today, when we have gained so much knowledge about the actual technical challenges of space travel, visionary proponents of this solution to Malthus's problem remain. See, for example, Marshall T. Savage, _The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps_ (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994).
Timothy Shanahan, _The Evolution of Darwinism: Selection, Adaptation, and Progress in Evolutionary Biology_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 173–195.
_Ibid_., 276.
Flammarion, 325.
Flammarion, 325.
George Santayana, _The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), 284.
Adam Keiper, "The Age of Neuroelectronics," _The New Atlantis_ 11 (Winter 2006), 4–41.
See the "Wi-Fi Detector Shirt" sold by ThinkGeek, thinkgeek.com/tshirts/illuminated/991e/.
See the account of actual experiments involving head transplants and monkey and dog brains in a bottle in Mary Roach, _Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers_ (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003).
CHAPTER TWO: DISCOVERING INHUMANITY
Mark Chartrand, "What To Do When ET Comes," _Ad Astra_ 7, no. 2 (March/April 1995), 54.
Shawn Carlson, "Science and Society: SETI on Earth," _The Humanist_ 51 (September/October 1991), 37.
Donald Tarter, "Practicing Safe Science: Treading on the Edge," _Skeptical Inquirer_ 17, no. 3 (Spring 1993), 295.
Carl Sagan, "The Search for Signals From Space," _Parade_ , September 19, 1993, 4–7.
Jeffrey Bennett, _Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 204.
Inspiration for the ending of this prologue is owed to Walker Percy, _Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book_ (New York: Washington Square Press, 1983), 255–256.
Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking: 2005), 357.
Nick Bostrom, "Where Are They? Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing," _Technology Review_ (May/June, 2008), 72–77; quoted from nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf, 9.
Eric M. Jones, "Estimates of Expansion Timescales," in B. Zuckerman and M. H. Hart, eds., _Extraterrestrials: Where Are They?_ 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 92–102.
Paul Davies, _The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence_ (Boston: Mariner Books, 2010), 167.
"Fermi Paradox," Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox.
This topic is sometimes addressed by scientists interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Perhaps conflating technological prowess with moral decency, pioneering SETI astronomer Jill Tarter suggests that, "If aliens were able to visit Earth, that would mean they would have technological capabilities sophisticated enough not to need slaves, food or other planets" ("Sci-Fi Movies Are Wrong About Aliens, E.T. Hunter Jill Tarter Says," Space.com, May 25, 2012, space.com/15870-aliens-earth-science-fiction-tarter-seti.html). On the other hand, her SETI colleague Seth Shostak believes that any aliens who come visit us will probably have "a more aggressive personality. And if they have the technology to come here, the idea that we can take them on is like Napoleon taking on the] U.S. Air Force. We're not going to be able to defend ourselves very well" (Sue Karlin, "The Aliens Would Win," _IEEE Spectrum_ , June 6, 2012, [spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/geek-life/hands-on/the-aliens-would-win). The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking periodically makes a splash by suggesting that contact with aliens might not be a good idea. For instance, in 2010 he said, "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans. . . . I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach" (Chris Matyszczyk, "Stephen Hawking: Aliens Might Hate Us," CNET, April 25, 2010, cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20003358-71.html).
Seth Shostak, _Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life_ (Berkeley: Berkeley Hills Books, 1998), 7.
_Ibid_., 190.
_Ibid_.
I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, _Intelligent Life in the Universe_ (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1966), 358.
Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, _Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence_ (New York: Dell Publishing, 1992), 159.
Carl Sagan, _The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective_ (New York: Anchor Books, 1973), 218.
Gerald Feinberg and Robert Shapiro, _Life Beyond Earth: The Intelligent Earthling's Guide to Life in the Universe_ (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1980), 436.
Shklovskii and Sagan, _Intelligent Life in the Universe_ , 412.
"Interview with Dr. Carl Sagan, Planetary Society Founder, SETI Pioneer" in Frank White, _The SETI Factor: How the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is Changing Our View of the Universe and Ourselves_ (New York, Walker and Co., 1990), 196.
White, _The SETI Factor_ , 85.
Jared Diamond, "Alone in a Crowded Universe," in Zuckerman and Hart, _Extraterrestrials_ , 163.
Zuckerman and Hart, _Extraterrestrials_ , x.
Robin Hanson, "The Great Filter: Are We Almost Past It?" (online article), September 15, 1998, hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html.
Sagan, _The Cosmic Connection_ , 232. Somewhat more charitably, Sagan also says, "I think it is a great conceit, the idea of the present Earth establishing radio contact and becoming a member of a galactic federation—something like a bluejay or an armadillo applying to the United Nations" (242).
_Ibid_., 224.
_Ibid_., 219.
_Ibid_.
The English scientist William Whewell imagined unintelligent and distinctly non-humanoid alien life, based on the physics and chemistry of other planets, in his 1853 book _Of the Plurality of Worlds_ ; the astronomer Camille Flammarion, as we saw in Chapter One, imagined greatly varied alien life; the two French-Belgian science and science fiction writers who shared the pseudonym J. H. Rosny imagined intelligent alien life that was very different from terrestrial life; the evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace wrote in 1904 that alien life "with a mind and spiritual nature equal to that of man might have been developed in a very different form"; the naturalist Loren Eiseley, in a 1953 essay later collected in his book _The Immense Journey_ (1957), argued that alien life "will not wear the shape of man"—a point on which most scientific theorists now seem to agree.
Nicholas Rescher, _Finitude: A Study of Cognitive Limits and Limitations_ (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2011), 20–27.
Giuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison, "Searching for Interstellar Communications," _Nature_ 184, no. 4690 (September 19, 1959), 844–846, dx.doi.org/10.1038/184844a0.
Carl Sagan, ed., _Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence_ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1973), 337.
_Ibid_., 337–338.
_Ibid_., 337.
Richard Berendzen, ed., _Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man_ (Washington, D.C., National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1973), 44. Later collected in Philip Morrison, _Nothing Is Too Wonderful to Be True_ (Woodbury, New York: AIP Press, 1995), 178.
Shklovskii and Sagan, _Intelligent Life in the Universe_ , 396–397.
Drake and Sobel, _Is Anyone Out There_?, 159.
Greg Easterbrook, "Are We Alone?," _The Atlantic Monthly_ 262, no. 2 (August 1988), 37, theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/88aug/easterbr.htm.
Drake and Sobel, _Is Anyone Out There_?, 160. It should be no surprise that hopes for immortality provide one of the themes that link SETI with technologies promoting transhuman transformations. Robert Freitas, for example, has written on xenobiology, the theoretical study of alien biology, but he is also one of the great proponents of the medical promise of nanotechnology, a source of many transhumanist hopes. (See Robert A. Freitas Jr., _Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization_ Sacramento: Xenology Research Institute, 1979] and his website xenology. info, as well as his multivolume work _Nanomedicine_ , published by Landes Bioscience beginning in 1999, [nanomedicine.com.) For an intellectual history of such links that is intelligent, illuminating, and amusing, see Ed Regis, _Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over the Edge_ (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1990).
For a popular treatment of the contingent factors that shape technological development, see James Burke, _Connections_ (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1978).
Paul Davies, _Are We Alone? Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life_ (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 55.
See, for instance, C. S. Lewis, "Religion and Rocketry," in _The World's Last Night and Other Essays_ (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1960), 83–92.
J. B. S. Haldane, "The Last Judgment," in _Possible Worlds_ (London: Chatto and Windus, 1927), 288.
Berendzen, _Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man_ , 21.
Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 21, 364–365. On this theme see Charles Stross, _Accelerando_ (New York: Ace Books, 2005). Interest in searching for signs of SETI based on the more exotic possibilities that transhumanism has suggested for the human future has only grown in recent years. It is an important theme in Davies, _The Eerie Silence_ , 93–115.
J. A. Ball, "The Zoo Hypothesis" in Donald Goldsmith, ed., _The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life: A Book of Readings_ (Mill Valley, Cal.: University Science Books, 1980), 242; P. A. Sturrock, "Uncertainty in Estimates of the Number of Extraterrestrial Civilizations" in M. D. Papagiannis, ed., _Strategies for the Search for Life in the Universe_ (Boston: D. Seidel, 1980), 71.
Sagan, _Cosmic Connection_ , 222; R. N. Bracewell, "Communications from Superior Galactic Communities," in Goldsmith, _The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life_ , 105–107.
Michael H. Hart, "An Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth," in Zuckerman and Hart, _Extraterrestrials_ , 1–4. But see also Sebastian von Hoerner, "Where is Everybody?" and "The General Limits of Space Travel," in Goldsmith, _The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life_ , 250–54 and 197–204.
Sebastian von Hoerner, "Where is Everybody?" in Goldsmith, _The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life_ , 250–254. Although von Hoerner notes this possibility, he does not find it convincing.
Davies, _The Eerie Silence_ , 82.
_Ibid_., 167.
Freeman J. Dyson, "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation," _Science_ 131, no. 3414 (June 3, 1960), 1667–1668, dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.131.3414.1667, also collected in Goldsmith, _The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life_ , 108–109.
M. D. Papagiannis, "The Number N of Galactic Civilizations Must Be Either Very Large or Very Small," in Papagiannis, _Strategies for the Search for Life in the Universe_ , 55. Cf. also Robert Lemos, "Rocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars," Wired.com, August 19, 2008, archive.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/space_limits and Valerie Jamieson, "Starship Pilots: Speed Kills, Especially Warp Speed," NewScientist.com, February 17, 2010, newscientist.com/article/dn18532.
Arwen Nicholson and Duncan Forgan, "Slingshot dynamics for self-replicating probes and the effect on exploration timescales," _International Journal of Astrobiology_ 12, iss. 4 (October 2013), 337–344, dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1473550413000244.
Carl Sagan, _Contact_ (New York: Simon and Schuster/Pocket, 1986 [orig. 1985]), 367–368, 416–422, 430–431.
Sagan, _Cosmic Connection_ , 222.
Consider, for example, the "Invitation to ETI" project founded by Allen Tough, which hopes to "establish communication with any form of extraterrestrial intelligence able to monitor our World Wide Web" (ieti.org).
Drake and Sobel, _Is Anyone Out There_?, 161.
Arthur C. Clarke, _Childhood's End_ (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1953), 15.
_Ibid_., 16–17.
_Ibid_., 24.
_Ibid_., 41.
_Ibid_., 42.
_Ibid_., 14.
_Ibid_., 58.
_Ibid_., 68.
_Ibid_., 72–73.
_Ibid_., 136.
_Ibid_., 111.
_Ibid_., 135.
_Ibid_., 175.
_Ibid_., 209.
Not for nothing did C. S. Lewis say that he was "bowled over" by Clarke's novel, finding it "quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers," an "ABSOLUTE CORKER" that even "brought tears to my eyes." C. S. Lewis to Joy Gresham, December 22, 1953, in _The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950–1963_ , ed. Walter Hooper (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 390–392.
_Childhood's End_ , 12.
_Ibid_., 14.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 21.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 20.
_Ibid_., 182–183.
_Ibid_., 70, 74.
_Ibid_., 136.
_Ibid_., 95.
_Ibid_., 190.
_Ibid_., 77–78.
_Ibid_., 90.
_Ibid_., 91, 141.
As he describes New Athens, Clarke shows he has in mind Francis Bacon, one of the founders of modern science. The character who is "the driving force behind New Athens" is given the name Ben Salomon. In Bacon's famous story "New Atlantis," he depicts a secretive island that is home to "Salomon's House," what we would now recognize as an institute for scientific research, founded by the late King Solamona. While, in Plato's original myth, Athens was victorious over Atlantis, in Clarke's story the material satisfactions prefigured in Bacon's "New Atlantis" show their power over the creative efforts of his New Athens. (See Francis Bacon, _New Atlantis and The Great Instauration_ , ed. Jerry Weinberger [Wheeling, Il.: Harlan Davidson (1989, revised edition)], 56, 58.)
Clarke, _Childhood's End_ , 164.
_Ibid_., 20, 168.
_Ibid_., 161.
_Ibid_., 68–69.
_Ibid_., 208, 184.
_Ibid_., 185.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 183.
_Ibid_., 207.
_Ibid_., 204.
_Ibid_., 186.
_Ibid_., 135.
_Ibid_., 184.
_Ibid_., 184.
That the Overmind begins to look like a stand-in for a rather traditional God is also suggested by the fact that its angels seem to be slowly and quietly preparing a revolt. The Overlords are not quite so resigned to their task as they make themselves out to be. They use Jan Rodricks to gather information about the Overmind, both on their own planet and when the last moments of Earth approach. As a human, he can see things that are hidden from them because of their complete lack of paranormal powers. Their effort parallels the investigations that Stormgren undertakes at the end of his career. In neither case ought we to conclude that there are immediate plans or even hopes of altering the hierarchy—but if ever an effort were to be made, it would have to be based on such intelligence. The Overlords are loyal, because so far they have no choice but to obey. But they are also patient and long lived. That they want to understand their master better may be more than idle curiosity; perhaps they would like to have a choice whether or not to obey.
See, for example, the justification that Plutarch offers for the Spartan policies of the community of wives and the exposure of ill-formed infants in his "Lycurgus." Bernadette Perrin, trans., _Plutarch's Lives_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914), 251–55.
CHAPTER THREE: ENABLING INHUMANITY
Nick Bostrom, "The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction," Version 2.1 (2003), 9, transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf.
Simon Young, _Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto_ (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006), 52.
Bostrom, "The Transhumanist FAQ," 49, 26.
Ray Kurzweil, _The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence_ (New York: Penguin, 1999), 145.
_Ibid_., 146.
The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson Center has since 2005 published a "Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory" that, as of its October 2013 update, lists some 1,628 products that use—or at least _claim_ to use—nanoparticles or nanomaterials. See nanotechproject.org/cpi/.
See, for example, "Engineers Build World's Smallest, Fastest Nanomotor" (press release), University of Texas at Austin, Cockrell School of Engineering, May 20, 2014, engr.utexas.edu/features/nanomotors.
Ortwin Renn and Mihail C. Roco, "Nanotechnology and the Need for Risk Governance," _Journal of Nanoparticle Research_ 8, iss. 2 (April 2006), 153–191, dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11051-006-9092-7.
K. Eric Drexler, "Molecular engineering: An approach to the development of general capabilities for molecular manipulation," _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 78, no. 9 (September 1981), 5275–5278.
K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology_ (New York: Anchor Books, 1990 orig. 1986]), 5. Drexler has placed the complete text of the book online for free at [e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Table_of_Contents.html.
_Ibid_., 53–63.
_Ibid_., 95.
_Ibid_., 81.
_Ibid_., 93–95.
_Ibid_., 99–116.
_Ibid_., 106.
_Ibid_., 130–146.
_Ibid_., 111.
The physicist Richard Feynman is often credited as an important inspiration for nanotechnology; see Richard P. Feynman, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," _Engineering and Science_ 23, no. 5 (February 1960), 22–36, calteches.library.caltech.edu/1976/1/1960Bottom.pdf. For a thoughtful and critical assessment of this claim and Drexler's role, see Adam Keiper, "The Nanotechnology Revolution," _The New Atlantis_ 2 (Summer 2003), 17–34, and Adam Keiper, "Feynman and the Futurists," _Wall Street Journal_ , January 8, 2010, wsj. com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703580904574638160601840456.
National Nanotechnology Initiative, "Nanotechnology Timeline" (undated), nano.gov/timeline.
Drexler has written thoughtfully about how his kind of scientifically informed speculation about technological possibilities differs from the ways we usually conceive of science. His preferred term is "exploratory engineering," which emphasizes both the theoretical nature of his ideas and the fact that they are aimed at accomplishing potential technical goals. It is a mistake, Drexler argues, to judge exercises in exploratory engineering by the standards of either science or engineering, which have different goals and methods. K. Eric Drexler, _Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization_ (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), 132–144. See also K. Eric Drexler, _Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation_ (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992), 489–506, where he makes the same argument but prefers to use the term "theoretical applied science."
Ed Regis, "The Incredible Shrinking Man," _Wired_ (October 2004), archive.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/drexler.html.
_Ibid_., 241. This phrase, which appears in Drexler's 1990 afterword to _Engines of Creation_ , appears partially in italics in his book.
_Ibid_., 171.
_Ibid_., 172.
In the years since _Engines of Creation_ was first published, Drexler has taken pains to downplay the "gray goo" problem, including in the 1990 afterword to _Engines_ , and in his most recent book: K. Eric Drexler, _Radical Abundance_ , 201 _n_. For more on the public reaction to the "gray goo" notion, see also W. Patrick McCray, _The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 192, 248, 251.
Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 174.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 195.
_Ibid_., 176.
_Ibid_., 32.
_Ibid_., 39. Drexler went on to co-found, and for many years was closely associated with, the Foresight Institute, an organization dedicated to studying these questions about nanotechnology.
_Ibid_., 77.
_Ibid_., 39.
_Ibid_., 189.
_Ibid_., 26.
_Ibid_., 38. Drexler has since given further thought to the role of design versus evolution in understanding how nanotechnology might develop, but it is not clear that there is any fundamental shift in his belief that nanotechnology will allow deliberate design to replace random evolution. K. Eric Drexler, "Evolutionary Capacity: Why Organisms Cannot Be Like Machines," Metamodern (blog), August 2, 2009, metamodern.com/2009/08/02/contrasts-in-evolutionarycapacity/.
Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 32.
_Ibid_., 8.
_Ibid_., 21.
_Ibid_., 37, 103.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 76.
_Ibid_., 103.
_Ibid_., 102.
_Ibid_., 110.
See, for example, Tzvetan Todorov, _Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) and Marilynne Robinson, _Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self_ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press: 2010).
Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 21.
_Ibid_., 234, 145.
_Ibid_., 234–237. As Drexler sums up, "In short, we have a chance at a future with room enough for many worlds and many choices, and with time enough to explore them. A tamed technology can stretch our limits. . . . In an open future of wealth, room, and diversity, groups will be free to form almost any society they wish, free to fail or set a shining example for the world. Unless your dreams demand that you dominate everyone else, chances are that other people will wish to share them. If so, then you and those others may choose to get together to shape a new world. If a promising start fails—if it solves too many problems or too few—then you will be able to try again. Our problem today is not to plan or build utopias but to seek a chance to try" (237).
_Ibid_., 200.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 196.
_Ibid_., 187–188.
_Ibid_., 199.
_Ibid_., 200.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 201.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 209–216. Drexler also endorses the idea of hypertext. Considering that he was writing in the 1980s, before the flowering of the World Wide Web, he showed foresight in anticipating that hypertext had the potential to be a Gutenbergscale revolution in information dissemination. See 217–230.
_Ibid_., 201.
_Ibid_., 201. This idea of a dedicated community of the likeminded—somewhat reminiscent of the Earthlings in J. B. S. Haldane's story "The Last Judgment" who worked so hard to salvage something from the coming disaster—is one we will return to shortly in the context of Neal Stephenson's novel _The Diamond Age_.
_Ibid_., 232.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 231.
_Ibid_., 239. Drexler's notion of a perilous period of transition to a future stage of great power recalls the idea of the "great filter" we discussed in the context of SETI in Chapter Two.
_Ibid_., 200.
Donella H. Meadows _et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind_ (New York: New American Library, 1972).
Ed Regis, _Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over the Edge_ (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1990), 116–117. See also Drexler, _Radical Abundance_ , 13–16, 246, and McCray, _The Visioneers_ , 149, 153.
Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 163.
_Ibid_., 165, 163. It should be remembered that Drexler wrote _Engines of Creation_ at a time of intense public interest in the issue of overpopulation and worries about a "population bomb." In the decades since, world population has continued to grow but the rate of growth has slowed, and in many countries the population is now shrinking or is projected to soon shrink.
Drexler argues that the "settled cultures" towards the interior of the wave of human (or transhuman?) space invaders he envisions will have to deal with limits more than those on the frontier, because as settled they will have more clearly defined goals, which already implies living within limits no matter what kinds of resources are available. But they will stand in contrast with the creativity of the frontier, where "standards keep changing" and therefore "this idea of limits becomes irrelevant." More broadly, he concludes that even if "brute matter" creates ultimate limits, mind has "room for endless evolution and change." _Ibid_., 165.
_Ibid_., 237.
Aristotle, _The Politics_ (1267a), trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013 [second edition]), 40.
_Ibid_.
For more on this theme, see P. B. Thompson, "Social Acceptance of Nanotechnology," in Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, eds., _Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology_ (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 2001), 198–202, wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications/nanosi.pdf. See also Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, _Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers_ (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1982).
Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 238.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_.
Drexler says he points readers to _The Diamond Age_ whenever he is "asked to recommend a science fiction novel about advanced nanotechnologies." Stephenson's book, Drexler writes, is "a good read, it portrays a complex and surprising world, and] it's not saturated with nanobots." K. Eric Drexler, "Nanotechnology in Science Fiction (and _vice versa_ )," Metamodern (blog), April 9, 2009, [metamodern.com/2009/04/09/nanotechnology-in-science-fiction/. (Actually, nanobots—called "nanosites" in Stephenson's novel—are crucial to the plot.)
Neal Stephenson, _The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer_ (New York: Bantam Spectra, 2003 reissue [orig. 1995]), 273.
_Ibid_., 38, 40.
_Ibid_., 37.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 8.
_Ibid_., 30.
Strangely, analysts of the novel seem divided on this point. Jan Berrien Berends seems to think that Stephenson wants to show that "our future is bright, _really_ bright"—"who wouldn't want to live there?"—and that Stephenson is blind to the many flaws Berends readily perceives. Not only does this mischaracterize the book's setting and tone, but Berends himself seems oblivious to several key plot points. (Jan Berrien Berends, "The Politics of Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ ," _New York Review of Science Fiction_ 9, no. 104 April 1997], 15.) On the other hand, Joachim Schummer seems to err in a different direction when implying that, as an example of the "cyberpunk" or "postcyberpunk" genres, _The Diamond Age_ must have a "nihilistic undertone" and "focus on human alienation," and if it weren't so fascinated with technology, it would be dystopian. (Joachim Schummer, "'Societal and Ethical Implications of Nanotechnology': Meanings, Interest Groups, and Social Dynamics," _Techné_ 8, no. 2 [Spring 2005], 59.) Brian Opie catches the right tone when he notes that _The Diamond Age_ is "not utopian, since the societies it describes are not only not perfected but are self-consciously reproducing inherited models of cultural practice and values." (Brian Opie, "Technoscience in Societies of the Future: Nanotechnology and Culture in Neal Stephenson's Novel _The Diamond Age_ [1995]" (conference paper), February 2004, [www.europe.canterbury.ac.nz/conferences/tech2004/tpp/Opie_paper.pdf, 3.) N. Katherine Hayles believes the book shows how its utopian projects fail "at every level." (N. Katherine Hayles, "Is Utopia Obsolete?" _Peace Review_ 14, no. 2 June 2002], 136, [dx.doi.org/10.1080/10402650220140148.)
Stephenson, _Diamond Age_ , 53–55.
_Ibid_., 172, 331.
_Ibid_., 55–57.
_Ibid_., 292.
_Ibid_., 286.
_Ibid_., 18.
_Ibid_., 108.
_Ibid_., 374.
_Ibid_., 322.
A thought echoed in the epigraph for _The Diamond Age_ , from Confucius: "By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart."
_Ibid_., 20–21.
_Ibid_., 185.
_Ibid_., 332.
_Ibid_., 9, 136, 180.
It is striking how frequently analysts find this failure to end scarcity unexplained or inexplicable. See Berends, "The Politics of Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ ," 18, and Richard Rorty, "Hope and the Future," _Peace Review_ 14, no. 2 (June 2002), 152, dx.doi.org/10.1080/10402650220140166.
_Ibid_., 59, 333.
_Ibid_., 21.
_Ibid_., 84, 23, 208; 69; 80–82.
_Ibid_., 217–218, 268; 284–285; 448. The reviewer Jan Berrien Berends finds Miranda's attachment to Nell mysterious, having perhaps missed that they share a history of abuse. He can only imagine that it is based on "a _huge_ dose of maternal instinct (a property in which I do not, in fact, believe)." Berends also misses the hints that Hackworth has something to do with the Mouse Army's loyalty to Nell, and so he instead draws the extraordinary conclusion that the only reason they follow her is because she is white and Victorian. (Berends, "The Politics of Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ ," 18, 16.)
Stephenson, _The Diamond Age_ , 486–487.
_Ibid_., 42–43.
_Ibid_., 313.
_Ibid_., 337.
_Ibid_., 433–434.
_Ibid_., 434.
While a skeptic with respect to the Singularity, the technology commentator Jaron Lanier (inventor of the concept of shared "virtual realities") hopes and expects that the next stage for human beings is "fuller contact between minds." He imagines advanced Martians who pity us for the poverty of our abilities to connect with each other, separated as we are into "sacks of skin." (Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing our Minds, Our Bodies—and What it Means to be Human_ [New York: Doubleday, 2005], 200–202.)
Stephenson, _The Diamond Age_ , 263, 323.
_Ibid_., 365.
_Ibid_., 354.
_Ibid_., 304.
_Ibid_., 383.
_Ibid_., 37, 384.
_Ibid_.
Job 5:7 (KJV).
CHAPTER FOUR: PERFECTING INHUMANITY
Ray Kurzweil, _The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence_ (New York: Penguin, 1999), 146–49.
Hans Moravec, _Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 114.
Simon Young, _Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto_ (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006), 28.
James Hughes, _Citizen Cyborg: Why Democracies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future_ (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2004), 255.
William Saletan, "Among the Transhumanists: Cyborgs, Self-mutilators, and the Future of Our Race," _Slate_ , June 4, 2006, slate.com/id/2142987/.
For example, Kurzweil, who is among other things interested in altering the human digestive system, notes that the nanotechnologies that will allow that to happen are already in the works but their intended applications are diagnostic and therapeutic rather than enhancement and redesign. Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 303.
For an extended effort to provide this kind of "common sense" defense of transhumanism, see John Harris's book _Enhancing Evolution_. In a wonderful combination of populism, disingenuousness, and Seinfeldian phrasing, Harris claims, "I have no transhumanist program or agenda. I do think there are powerful moral reasons for ensuring the safety of the people and for enhancing our capacities, our health, and thence our lives. If the consequence of this is that we become transhumans, there is nothing wrong with that, but becoming transhumans is not the agenda." John Harris, _Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 38–39.
See, for example, The President's Council on Bioethics, _Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness_ (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 2003), 13–16, thenewatlantis.com/BeyondTherapyPDF; and Ramez Naam, _More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement_ (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), 5–6.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), "FDA approves first retinal implant for adults with rare genetic eye disease" (press release), February 14, 2013, www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm339824.htm. FDA, "FDA Approves First Implantable Miniature Telescope to Improve Sight of AMD patients" (press release), July 6, 2010, www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm218066.htm.
Lucilla Cardinali, _et al_., "Tool-Use Induces Morphological Updating of the Body Schema," _Current Biology_ 19, iss. 12 (June 23, 2009), R478–79, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.05.009. See also Karen Hopkin, "Tools Are Body Parts to Brain," _Scientific American_ (podcast), scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/tools-are-body-parts-to-brain-09-06-23/.
If we could see better in low light, we would use less energy for lighting; such an enhancement could be a way of addressing global warming. See S. Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache, "Human Engineering and Climate Change," _Ethics, Policy and Environment_ 15, iss. 2 (2012), dx.doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2012.685574.
Young, _Designer Evolution_ , 286–287. Cf. Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 338.
"Democratic transhumanist" James Hughes is not so happy with the thought of a purely market-based system of access to enhancements, and holds that social justice would require "subsidies and universal provision." Hughes, _Citizen Cyborg_ , 233.
See the brief scenario presented in Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 7–8.
We will get to "the Singularity" shortly, but the following quote gives an idea of the crusading mentality transhumanists can adopt: "We are willing to do whatever it takes, within reason, to get a positive Singularity. Governments are not going to stop us. If one country shuts us down, we go to another country. . . . Just because you don't want it doesn't mean that we won't build it." Michael Anissimov, "Response to Charles Stross's 'Three Arguments Against the Singularity,'" Accelerating Future (blog), acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2011/06/response-to-charles-stross-three-arguments-against-the-singularity/.
Nick Bostrom flirts with the idea that a time may come when parents have a "moral responsibility" to enhance their children. But he concludes that "Only in extreme and unusual cases might state infringement of procreative liberty be justified. If, for example, a would-be parent wished to undertake a genetic modification that would be clearly harmful to the child or would drastically curtail its options in life, then this prospective parent should be prevented by law from doing so." (Nick Bostrom, "The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction," Version 2.1 (2003), 21, transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf.) But note that it is not hard to imagine that a time may come when a failure to enhance, genetically or otherwise, would "drastically curtail" life options. James Hughes is also in this ambiguous situation given his belief that enhancement should be subsidized by governments. Under these circumstances it may indeed be true that one will not be coerced by government into being enhanced, but one will be coerced into paying for others to be enhanced.
See for instance Max More, "A Letter to Mother Nature," MaxMore.com (personal website), August 1999, web.archive.org/web/20130324082510/<http://www.maxmore.com/mother.htm>.
John Harris finds it odd that there should be anyone who is against enhancement; after all, does not enhancement mean "a difference for the better"? And who would not want that? Harris, _Enhancing Evolution_ , 36.
See, for example, Harris, _Enhancing Evolution_ , 38 and Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 322.
Harris, _Enhancing Evolution_ , 13, 16. Cf. Naam, _More Than Human_ , 9.
Bostrom, "The Transhumanist FAQ," 36.
Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 35–110, but cf. 14–21.
David Pearce, "The Hedonistic Imperative" (online publication, 1995), hedweb.com/hedethic/hedonist.htm.
Pearce, "The Hedonistic Imperative," hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon4.htm.
Moravec, _Mind Children_ , 117. For the same idea, see also Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 258.
Moravec, _Mind Children_ , 108–110.
_Ibid_., 107–108.
_Ibid_., 115–116.
_Ibid_., 121–122.
Moravec offers what he calls a "fun" kind of resurrection, just as he offers a kind of immortality: "imagine an immense simulator (I imagine it made out of a superdense neutron star) that can model the whole surface of the earth on an atomic scale and can run time forward and back. . . . Because of the great detail, this simulator models living things, including humans, in their full complexity. According to the pattern-identity position [that Moravec holds], such simulated people would be as real as you or me. . . . [W]e would bring people out of the simulation by . . . linking their minds to an outside robot body, or uploading them directly into it. In all cases we would have the opportunity to recreate the past and to interact with it in a real and direct fashion. It might be fun to resurrect all the past inhabitants of the earth this way and give them an opportunity to share with us in the (ephemeral) immortality of transplanted minds. Resurrecting one small planet should be child's play long before our civilization has colonized even its first galaxy." _Ibid_., 123–124.
Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 310–320.
Nick Bostrom, "When will Computers Be Smarter Than Us?," Forbes.com, June 22, 2009, forbes.com/2009/06/18/superintelligence-humanity-oxford-opinions-contributors-artificial-intelligence-09-bostrom.html. This notion dates back at least to the 1960s, when mathematician I. J. Good wrote that "the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make." Irving John Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultra-intelligent Machine," in Franz L. Alt and Morris Rubinoff, eds., _Advances in Computers_ , vol. 6 (New York: Academic Press, 1965), 31–88. More recently, the idea has been taken as the central thesis for a book about artificial intelligence: James Barrat, _Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era_ (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2013).
Vernor Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" (1993 conference paper hosted on Vinge's faculty website), www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html. See also Vinge's later annotated version of this essay: Vernor Vinge, "What Is the Singularity?," _Whole Earth Review_ (Winter 1993, annotated Spring 2003), wholeearth.com/uploads/2/File/documents/technological_singularity.pdf.
Moravec, _Mind Children_ , 116.
This is the idea of the "Dyson sphere" or "Dyson shell" that so often pops up in science fiction, named for the theoretical physicist who was the first to mention it, in passing, in a scientific journal: Freeman J. Dyson, "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation," _Science_ 131, no. 3414 (June 3, 1960), 1667–1668, dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.131.3414.1667.
Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 349–352. Kurzweil does note that "Dyson Shells can be designed to have no effect on existing planets, particularly those, like Earth, that harbor an ecology that needs to be protected" (350). But it is not clear that this statement is anything more than a pious sentiment, given the overall direction of his argument at this point; he has just calculated the computing power latent in the mass of the solar system as a whole, "not including the sun (which is ultimately also fair game)" (349). There is not much point in trying to protect Earth's ecosystems without a sun.
Moravec is a bit hazy on just why posthumans would wish to engage in wholesale resurrection efforts; as we saw above (note 30) it might be "fun" "child's play." Eric Drexler was similarly vague about his own version of resurrection involving frozen bodies. But we can at least note the interesting progression that has been made in the ideal of resurrection from Fedorov's solemn religious obligation to Moravec's idea of what might amuse hyperintelligence.
J. D. Bernal, _The World, the Flesh and the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), 66.
Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 366.
_Ibid_., 353–357.
Moravec, _Mind Children_ , 147–148; Kurzweil, _The Age of Spiritual Machines_ , 260.
Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 342–349; but cf. Moravec, _Mind Children_ , 136–139.
See, for example, Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen, _Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); J. Storrs Hall, _Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine_ (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007); and Eliezer Yudkowsky, "Creating Friendly AI 1.0: The Analysis and Design of Benevolent Goal Architectures" (white paper), Machine Intelligence Research Institute (formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence), June 15, 2001, intelligence.org/files/CFAI.pdf. See also my essay, Charles T. Rubin, "Machine Morality and Human Responsibility," _The New Atlantis_ 32 (Summer 2011), 58–79.
Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 297–298. The nonbiological intelligence Kurzweil expects to exist by 2045 will be "one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today" (136); by the end of the twenty-first century, he expects "the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence" (9).
_Beyond Therapy_ , 211.
_Ibid_., 205–273.
Edward Bellamy, _Dr. Heidenhoff's Process_ (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1880), 72, archive.org/stream/drheidenhoffsproobellgoog.
_Ibid_., 108.
_Ibid_., 115–116, 115, 116, 114.
_Ibid_., 103–105.
_Ibid_., 100. It should be noted that, while brain researchers today accept that memories are sometimes stored in very specific locations in the brain, they do not believe that, as Dr. Heidenhoff puts it, "conventionally or morally morbid or objectionable" memories can bring about "a morbid state of the brain fibers."
_Ibid_., 101.
_Ibid_., 103.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 102.
_Ibid_., 105.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 117.
_Ibid_., 105.
_Ibid_., 116–117.
_Ibid_., 116.
_Ibid_., 119.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 120.
_Ibid_.
_Ibid_., 121.
_Ibid_., 124, 121.
_Ibid_., 125.
_Ibid_., 126.
_Ibid_.
Charlie Kaufman, _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script_ (New York: Newmarket Press, 2004), 38.
_Ibid_., 107.
_Ibid_., 58.
Mary may be the most serious character in the movie; at least, in the shooting script she has some intimation of what is genuinely interesting about the _Bartlett's Quotations_ she loves so much—it represents the human race in "constant conversation with itself" ( _Ibid_., 64).
This insight into how forgetfulness compromises our ability to learn from mistakes suggests a deeper meaning to the fact that the happy conclusion of the Madeline and Henry story takes place only in his dream. Shorn of the experience that made her sadder and wiser, would not the innocent Madeline that is restored to Henry resume the "mirthful, self-reliant" ways that got her in trouble the first time around? Even in Henry's dream there are signs of such a restoration in her "flashing, imperious expression." But she is spared by another _deus ex machina_ of sorts: trying on her wedding dress, turning her expression to "shy and blushing softness" with "a host of virginal alarms." Perhaps marriage would tame her—and perhaps not. At any rate, that is Henry's dream for her. (Bellamy, _Dr. Heidenhoff's Process_ , 136.)
Marcel Proust, _In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower_ , trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 99.
Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard," poetryfoundation.org/poem/174158.
Tor Nørretranders, _The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size_ (New York: Penguin Books, 1999).
Thomas Hobbes, _Leviathan_ (New York: Collier Books, 1962 [orig. 1651]), 80.
Harris, _Enhancing Evolution_ , 137.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE REAL MEANING OF PROGRESS
Winwood Reade, _The Martyrdom of Man_ (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1910), 523, archive.org/stream/martyrdomofman00readuoft.
J. B. S. Haldane, _Daedalus, or Science and the Future_ (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1924), 88.
For example, when the Obama administration dissolved the Bush-era President's Council on Bioethics, which routinely attempted to pose the question of science and ethics in terms of a good human life, the relief in some circles was palpable. The promise was that this supposedly too-philosophical council would be replaced by a body that would instead provide so-called "practical" guidance. See Charles T. Rubin, "Postmodernism, Autonomy and Bioethical Boundaries," _The Good Society_ 19, no. 1 (2010), 28–32, dx.doi.org/10.1353/gso.0.0090.
See, for example, Hans Jonas, "Technology and Responsibility: Reflections on the New Tasks of Ethics," in _Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 19.
I should acknowledge openly what will in any case become evident soon enough: I do not approach these paintings as an art expert or art historian. But I believe looking at them naïvely can serve a useful purpose.
Alan Barnett, "Bernhard Heisig: The Sound and Fury of Painting," Politics and Art (blog), December 1, 2005, politicsandart.com/2005/12/bernhard-heisig-sound-and-fury-of_01.html.
_Ibid_.
Ovid, _The Metamorphoses of Ovid_ , trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1993), 254.
My reading of the painting owes much to W. H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts" (collected in W. H. Auden, _Selected Poems_ , ed. Edward Mendelson [New York: Vintage, 2007], 87) and William Carlos Williams, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" (collected in William Carlos Williams, _Collected Poems: Volume II_ , 1939–1962, ed. Christopher MacGowan [New York: New Directions, 1991], 385–386).
Ovid, 256.
J. B. S. Haldane notes, "There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. . . . The biological invention then tends to begin as a perversion and end as a ritual supported by unquestioned beliefs and prejudices" (Haldane, _Daedalus_ , 45, 49).
Compare Larry Arnhart, _Darwinian Conservatism_ (Charlottesville, Va.: Imprint Academic, 2005).
Leo Tolstoy, _War and Peace_ , trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 1104.
G. K. Chesterton, _The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic_ (orig. 1929), collected in _The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton_ , vol. 3 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 157.
Aristotle, _The Politics_ (1253a), trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013 [second edition]), 5.
For much more on this theme, see Peter Augustine Lawler, _Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future_ (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2005).
_INDEX_
Abelard, Peter
active shields ( _see_ nanotechnology)
Aesop
aliens 24–25, , , , , , , 55–56, , , , , , , , ; assistance from ; benevolence of 77–79; contact with 51–53, 55–60; immortality of ; morals and ethics of ; religion of ; technological superiority of , 63-64, ( _see also_ search for extraterrestrial intelligence [SETI])
anti-anthropocentrism , 62–63
aristocracy 35–37
Aristotle ,
artificial intelligence (AI) , , , 103–104, , , 211 _n_; friendly AI and moral AI
assumption of mediocrity , 54–56, , 61–62, 65–66,
astronomy 24–26, ,
avatars 122–123
Bacon, Francis , , , 191 _n_, 201 _n_
Bellamy, Edward 143–144, , , 213 _n_, 214 _n_ ( _see alsoDr. Heidenhoff's Process_)
Bernal, J. D. 31–40, 42–44, , , , 93–95, , , , , , 193 _n_, 195 _n_ ( _see alsoWorld, the Flesh and the Devil: An Inquiry into the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul, The_)
_Beyond Therapy_ (President's Council on Bioethics) 142–143
Bible , , ( _see also_ Job)
biochauvinism ,
bioconservatives and bioluddites 128–129
bodies , , , ; as contemptible 19–20; creation of ; redesign of , 95–96, , 123–124, ; and self-overcoming , , 42–43; separation from , , ; virtual bodies ,
Bostrom, Nick , 49–50, , , , , , 187 _n_, 210 _n_, 211 _n_
brain , , 32–33, , , , , , , , , ; and machine enhancement 93–94, , 126–127, 133–134, ( _see also_ mind)
_Brave New World_ (Huxley)
Bruegel, Pieter the Elder 168–178,
bush robot 133–134
de Caritat, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas ( _see_ Condorcet, Marquis de)
Carnegie Mellon
Cat Man
chaos ,
Chesterton, G. K.
_Childhood's End_ (Clarke) , , 77–79, , ( _see also_ Clarke, Arthur C.)
Christianity ,
Clarke, Arthur C. , 70–71, , , 77–79, 200 _n_, 201 _n_ ( _see alsoChildhood's End_)
Club of Rome ( _seeLimits to Growth, The_)
cognitive science ,
Cohen, Eric
Cold War ,
colonization , 28–29, , , , , , , 197 _n_, 211 _n_
competition ( _see_ Darwinian competition)
Condorcet, Marquis de (Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat) 12–15, , 37–40, , 50–53, , , , , 174–175
_Contact_ ( _see_ Sagan, Carl)
converging technologies 3–4,
Copernican Principle ( _see_ assumption of mediocrity)
Copernicus, Nicolaus
cosmos , , , , ,
creation, as divine act 18–19, , ; as nature 17–18, , 40–41; as human act , 29–30, , ,
_Creation of Adam, The_ (painting by Michelangelo)
cryonic suspension , , ( _see also_ life extension _and_ nanotechnology)
Daedalus (mythical figure) , , 172–176
_Daedalus and Icarus_ (painting by Landon) 166–168
Darwin, Charles , , 40–41, , , , 175–176
Darwinian competition , , , , , ,
Darwinian evolution , 40–41, , , , 158–159, 175–176 ( _see also_ evolution)
Davies, Paul
Dawkins, Richard
death 5–6, , , 25–26, , 39–40, , 134–135, , ,
_Death of Icarus, The_ (painting by Heisig) 167–168,
Declaration of Independence, the
dehumanization , 36–37, 43–44, , , , , , , , , , , 179–180,
Descartes, René
_Descent of Man, The_ (Darwin) , ( _see also_ Darwin, Charles)
destiny ( _see_ humanity)
_Diamond Age, The_ (Stephenson) 105–112, 116–118, , 206 _n_, 207 _n_ ( _see also_ Stephenson, Neal)
diversity , , , 90–91, 93–107, , , , 205 _n_
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
_Dr. Heidenhoff's Process_ (Bellamy) 143–150, 153–155, 157–158, , 213–214 _n_
Drake, Frank , , , , , , 198–199 _n_
Drexler, K. Eric 85–107, 110–111, 117–119, , 130–131, , , , 203 _n_, 204 _n_, 205 _n_, 206 _n_, 212 _n_
Du Bois, W. E. B.
Dyson sphere 211 _n_
eco-egalitarianism
Einstein, Albert (epigraph),
_Engines of Creation_ (Drexler) 85–89, , 101–102, , 205–206 _n_
enhancement 124–125, , , , 209 _n_, 210 _n_; and concept of self 156–157; and memory ; as personal choice 126–131
Enlightenment, the 12–13 ( _see also_ progress)
entropy , , ,
_Essay on the Principle of Population_ (Malthus)
_Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ (Gondry) , , , ,
ethics , , , , 164–165; science and 164–165; technology and
eugenics ,
evil , , 31–32, , 97–100, , ,
evolution 1–3, , , , , 40–42, , , 64–65, 75–76, , 90–93, , , 130–132, , , 157–158, 175–176 ( _see also_ Darwinian evolution _and_ progress)
extended life ( _see_ life extension)
extraterrestrial life ( _see_ aliens)
fact forums
Fedorov, Nikolai Fedorovich 21–24, 26–27, , 38–42, , , 212 _n_
Fermi, Enrico ( _see_ Fermi paradox)
Fermi paradox , 64–66,
Flammarion, Nicolas Camille 24–28, , , 40–42, , , , ,
foresight 90–92, ,
Foresight Institute, The 204 _n_
freedom , , , , 128–129, , 156–157, , 180–181
Freedom League 70–71
Freud, Sigmund ,
_From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe_ (Koyré) 55 _n_
Future of Humanity Institute
genetic engineering , , ,
genetics , , , , , , ,
genie machines ( _see_ nanotechnology)
God 5–6, , 21–24, , , , , , , 201 _n_
Google
"gray goo problem" ( _see_ nanotechnology)
group mind ( _see_ mind)
Haldane, J. B. S. 27–28, 30–31, , 37–43, 50–51, , , , , , , 215 _n_ ( _see also_ "Last Judgment, The")
happiness , , 29–30, , , , , 141–142, , ; pursuit of ,
Harris, John 129–130, , 209 _n_, 210 _n_
hedonic imperative
Heisig, Bernhard 168–172,
Hobbes, Thomas
Homer
Hughes, James , 209–210 _n_
human condition ( _see_ humanity)
human extinction ( _see_ humanity)
human pattern ,
human rights ( _see_ rights)
humanity, association and , ; assumption of mediocrity and 54–56, , , 158–159; becoming aliens , ; bodies of ( _see_ bodies); destiny of , , 41–42, , , ; extended life and ( _see_ life extension); extinction of , , 9–11, , , , , , , ; hubris of , 54–55, 63–64, , ; human condition and 5–6, , ; human rights and ( _see_ rights); immorality and , 198–199 _n_; memory and ( _see_ memory); morality and , , , , 77–79, , , 112–113, 116–117, , , 129–30, , , , ; perpetuation of 114–116, ; suffering of ( _see_ suffering); transformation and , , , , , , , , , 187 _n_ ( _see also_ nanotechnology _and_ progress)
Huxley, Aldous
hyperintelligence/superintelligence , , , 136–139, , , 211 _n_, 212 _n_
Icarus (mythical figure) 165–172, ,
immortality , , , , , ; attainment of , , ; invention of , 18–19, ; personal immortality 134–136
_In the Shadow of Progress_ (Cohen)
infinite space
information technology ,
inhumanity , , , ,
intellect 145–146
intelligence 1–2, , , 41–42, , , , 137–138, ; alien intelligence 44–46, , 51–4, 63–66, 78–79, 139–140; human intelligence , , 58–59; nanotechnology and 92–93 ( _see also_ artificial intelligence _and_ hyperintelligence/superintelligence)
Internet, the , , ,
Job (Biblical figure and book) , ( _see also_ Bible)
Kant, Immanuel 190 _n_
Koyré, Alexandre 55 _n_
Kurzweil, Ray , , 49–50, 84–85, , , 138–139, , , 209 _n_, 212 _n_
"L Factor"
Landon, Charles Paul 166–168, 171–173
_Landscape with the Fall of Icarus_ (painting by Bruegel) 169–172
"Last Judgment, The" (Haldane) 27–31, 205 _n_ ( _see also_ Haldane, J. B. S.)
law of accelerating returns ,
Lewis, C. S. , 200–201 _n_
liberty , , 98–99, 157–158; vs. license
libertarianism ,
life extension 38–39, , , , ( _see also_ cryonic suspension _and_ nanotechnology)
_Limits to Growth, The_ (Club of Rome)
Lizard Man
_Looking Backward_ ( _see_ Bellamy)
love , , , , 112–117, 143–144, , 154–156, ; of one's own 112–117
Malthus, Thomas Robert , , , , 50–52, , , , 174–175, 195 _n_
Malthusianism , , , 50–52, , , , , , , , , 174–176
_Martyrdom of Man, The_ (Reade) , , , 189–190 _n_, 190–191 _n_ ( _see also_ Reade, William Winwood)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
materialism ( _see_ mind)
memes
memory 142–143, 146–149, 151–155; alteration of 142–143, 146–150; erasure of 143–144, 148–150, 153–155; human identity and 146–149, 153–158; morality and 148–149, 156–158 ( _see also_ humanity)
memory erasure ( _see_ memory)
Michelangelo ( _seeCreation of Adam, The_)
_Mind Children_ (Moravec) 133–135 ( _see also_ Moravec, Hans)
miniaturization
mind 4–5, 16–19, 29–30, 33–36, , , , , ; group mind/hive mind , , 69–70, ; machines and , , 133–135; materialism and , , 93–95, , , ; pattern identity and , ( _see also_ brain)
Montagu, Ashley
Moravec, Hans , 133–138, , 211 _n_, 212 _n_ ( _see alsoMind Children_)
morality 98–99, , 165–166; of aliens 54–55; of humanity , , , , 77–79, , , 112–113, 116–117, , , 129–30, , , , ; of memory erasure 143–148
Morrison, Philip 60–61
Naam, Ramez
"nanobots" ( _see_ nanotechnology)
nanomachines ( _see_ nanotechnology)
nanotechnology 3–4, , ; active shields 97–99, 112–114, 116–117; current research on 84–85; development of 91–93, 96–98, ; "gray goo problem" , ; nanomachines/"nanobots" ; nanoparticles 84–85; promise of , 83–85, , , , , ; replicators /genie machines 89–92; smart dust , ( _see also_ cryonic suspension _and_ hyperintelligence/superintelligence)
National Nanotechnology Initiative (U.S.) ,
natural rights
natural selection , ,
naturalism
nature 2–4, , , 16–23, , , 37–39, , , , , 124–125, , , , , 191 _n_, 210 _n_; as a force 21–22, , 190 _n_; control/power over , , , , , ; laws of , , , ; manipulation of , ( _see also_ progress)
negation , ,
nihilism ( _see_ transhumanism)
Orwell, George
_Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind_ (Condorcet) 12–14 ( _see also_ Condorcet, Marquis de)
Ovid 169–170,
Oxford University
pattern identity ( _see_ mind)
Pearce, David , 131–132,
perfection , , , ,
perpetuation 114–116
personal immortality ( _see_ immortality)
Pope, Alexander
population competition , , ,
posthumanism , 37–38, , , 130–132, , 138–40, , 178–179
posthumanity ( _see_ posthumanism)
President's Council on Bioethics ( _seeBeyond Therapy_)
progress 13–14, , , , , , 124–125, , , , ; accelerating progress , , ; defined, , 37–38, 164–165, , ; Enlightenment ideals of 12–14; evolution and , 40–41, ; human condition and ; human destiny and ; human extinction and 1–2, ; human identity and , ; material progress 26–27, , , , ; nanotechnology and , ; paradox of ; progress of dehumanization , 36–37, , , ; science and , ; space travel and ; transhumanism and 36–38, , , 158–160, 163–166; vs. change , 42–43, ,
Reade, William Winwood 15–22, , , , 40–41, , , , , ( _see alsoMartyrdom of Man, The_)
reductionism
religion 16–19, , 30–31, , , , 71–72, 76–77, 144–146,
replicators ( _see_ nanotechnology)
reproduction, human , , , 210 _n_
resources , 50–52, , , , , , 206 _n_; competition for , , , , , 174–175; exhaustion of 22–23, 101–102, 197 _n_; scarcity of 14–15, 39–40, , , 101–102, , , , , , , 174–175
resurrection 22–23, , 211 _n_, 212 _n_
Rhodes, Cecil , 189 _n_
rights , ; expansion of ; human rights , ; natural rights ;
Roco, Mihail
Rousseau, Jean–Jacques ,
Sagan, Carl , , 59–61, , , 198 _n_
salvation , ,
Santayana, George ,
science courts
science fiction , , , , , , , , , , , 197 _n_, 198 _n_, 206 _n_, 211 _n_; cyberpunk 207 _n_; postcyberpunk 207 _n_
scientists , , 58–59, , , , , , 197 _n_; non–scientists and
Scylla and Charybdis
search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) , , , 54–57, 59–66, 77–80, , , , 197 _n_, 199 _n_, 200 _n_ ( _see also_ aliens)
selective breeding ,
selective memory obliteration ( _see_ memory)
self-replication
Shostak, Seth , , , 197 _n_
Simulation , , 211 _n_
Singularity, the , 136–140, 156–161, , , 188 _n_, 196 _n_, 199 _n_, 208 _n_, 209 _n_, 210 _n_, 211 _n_, 212 _n_; discontinuity and ( _see also_ transhumanism)
Singularity University
sloth 97–98, , ,
smart dust ( _see_ nanotechnology)
society , , , , , , , , , , 114–115, 117–118, , 204–205 _n_
soul , , , , , ,
Soviet Union , ,
space colonies , 28–29, , , , , , , 197 _n_, 211 _n_
space exploration , , , , , , 194 _n_
Stephenson, Neal 105–108, 116–119, 206–207 _n_
suffering , , , , ; alleviation of, ; eradication of
supercivilization
superintelligence ( _see_ hyperintelligence/superintelligence)
supernatural , , 195 _n_
techno-libertarianism ( _see_ libertarianism)
technological utopianism ( _see_ utopianism)
technology 1–4, 11–12, , , , , 83–84, , , , , , , 116–117, , , , , 180–181, 204–205 _n_; choice and , ; communication with aliens and 52–53, ; converging technologies ( _see_ converging technologies); development of , 91–92; ethics of progress and 163–166; evolution and , ; history of ; life-extension technology ; nanotechnology ( _see_ nanotechnology); of aliens ( _see_ aliens); responsibility and ; technology race 90–92 ( _see also_ enhancement, life extension, nanotechnology, progress, _and_ transhumanism)
theodicy
Tolstoy, Leo ,
Tower of Babel
transformation ( _see_ humanity) ( _see also_ progress)
transhumanism, bodily alteration and 123–124; definition of 1–3, 187 _n_; dehumanization and , ; enhancement and , , 209 _n_, 210 _n_; extended life and ; human extinction and , ; immortality and ; "might makes right" and ; moral vision of , 9–10, , ; nihilism and , , ; superintelligence and ; the Singularity and , , 199 _n_; transformation and , , , , 174–175 ( _see also_ progress)
Treaty of Versailles
Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin
United Nations
universe , , , 24–27, 30–31, , , 39–42, , , 53–56, 64–65, , , , 78–79, 138–139, ,
utopianism , , 71–73, , , , , , , 204–205 _n_, 207 _n_; technological utopianism , 106–108
Vinge, Vernor 136–137,
_World, the Flesh and the Devil: An Inquiry into the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul, The_ (Bernal) ( _see also_ Bernal, J. D.)
_A NOTE ON THE TYPE_
_E CLIPSE OF MAN has been set in Minion, a type designed by Robert Slimbach in 1990. An offshoot of the designer's researches during the development of Adobe Garamond, Minion hybridized the characteristics of numerous Renaissance sources into a single calligraphic hand. Unlike many early faces developed exclusively for digital typesetting, drawings for Minion were transferred to the computer early in the design phase, preserving much of the freshness of the original concept. Conceived with an eye toward overall harmony, Minion's capitals, lowercase letters, and numerals were carefully balanced to maintain a well-groomed "family" appearance—both between roman and italic and across the full range of weights. A decidedly contemporary face, Minion makes free use of the qualities Slimbach found most appealing in the types of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Crisp drawing and a narrow set width make Minion an economical and easygoing book type, and even its name evokes its adaptable, affable, and almost self-effacing nature, referring as it does to a small size of type, a faithful or favored servant, and a kind of peach_.
SERIES DESIGN BY CARL W. SCARBROUGH
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Books3 |
Stay Informed
Linda Harvey
After repeated losses, Liberty Counsel has now taken its lawsuit against New Jersey's ban on ex-gay "reparative" therapy to the Supreme Court.
It looks like the right-wing attacks on anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist for allegedly being a secret Islamist might actually threaten his re-election to the board of the NRA.
Linda Harvey is terrified of what gay marriage will bring: "It should break the heart of any freedom loving, God-honoring American to say this, but there is no evidence that America has the moral will to prevent the following 'gay-stapo' dreams from being fulfilled shortly after."
FRC prays that God will finally "awaken your people in America to stand in the gap with extraordinary prayer and to demand that our elected representatives act to defeat ISIS and hold President accountable to defend all Americans, including Christians and Jews who have been uniquely targeted by ISIS."
Finally, Gary Cass declares that Christians should take comfort in the fact that the Prophet Muhammad "is eternally dead in Hell and suffering the just penalty for his sin."
Mission America’s Linda Harvey is urging conservatives to use Valentine’s Day to “promote true love,” which, as she explains in a WorldNetDaily column today, means opposing LGBT rights. She urges readers to mark the holiday by demanding that companies drop their support for LGBT equality and posting “an online comment challenging notions of homosexuality as ‘marriage’ or anti-Christian bigotry.”
“Don’t be afraid to say, ‘Not true!’ when some maintain that sodomy and abortion are the high ground, as is same-sex ‘marriage,’ that children should be encouraged to change genders, that Americans are all racists and that Christianity is hateful,” she writes.
The leftists love Valentine’s Day. This year, they will exhibit a bizarre preoccupation with the movie “Fifty Shades of Grey,” as America’s notion of “love” is stretched to unrecognizable limits.
But as Christians, we think of love in a different sense. It’s one that “does not rejoice in inquity, but rejoices in the truth.” (1 Corinthians 13:6)
So what can Christians do in 2015 to promote true love?
Despite some disturbing, jaw-dropping events of the past year, and some daunting ones in the coming months, we really aren’t at the mercy of cowardly Republicans, destructive Democrats, vicious feminists and homosexual bullies.
While designers of wickedness present great challenges to American culture, to freedom and to the rule of law, let’s never forget that those who hate godliness are in self-destruction mode.
While we pray for any individuals who can be pulled out of the coming fire, let’s lovingly assist the unworthy causes they espouse toward a sure demise.
…
The loony left does not represent America, and their ideas are mostly poison. Let me make it clear: I am not advocating civil unrest or violence here (like liberals sometimes do), but in the public square of reasonable debate over public policy, don’t let unhinged voices get away with calculated deception, obfuscation and other evil nonsense. Expose mythology for what it is.
Don’t be afraid to say, “Not true!” when some maintain that sodomy and abortion are the high ground, as is same-sex “marriage,” that children should be encouraged to change genders, that Americans are all racists and that Christianity is hateful. Get ready to say NO and shine the light of reality back at them.
So, how do we do this? Start with fervent and persistent prayer. Then, commit to at least one “push back” activity each week. Make one phone call to a corporate supporter of “LGBT” deviance, or send one email to a pro-abortion politician. Make an online comment challenging notions of homosexuality as “marriage” or anti-Christian bigotry. Be sure to call your child’s school and object to anti-American, pro-Marxist lessons.
Here’s a good place to start: the erroneously named “Corporate Equality Index” of the Human Rights Campaign. This pedophile-founded, multi-million dollar homosexual lobbying group is a pretender to high-minded notions of “equality” and “non-discrimination.” HRC is a vicious bully with an empire built on attacking personal sexual integrity, undermining authentic families, promoting deviance and mischaracterizing Christians.
So consult this listing of businesses that have signed on to HRC’s “gay” agenda, and make a call to one each week. Just ask: “Why is your company supporting the harmful homosexual agenda? Why are you donating to advance same sex ‘marriage’? No one needs to be homosexual, and no one is born in the wrong sex body. It’s a mistake for your company, wrong for your employees and for America.”
It seems that Linda Harvey of the anti-LGBT group Mission America was not a fan of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, writing in BarbWire yesterday that Katy Perry’s song “Dark Horse” may be an “invitation to demonic possession.”
She also criticized “I Kissed A Girl,” unsurprisingly, by claiming that the song (not to mention Perry's “suggestive twerking with Lenny Kravitz”) is promoting the “homosexual agenda.”
“Just like her flirtation with Satan, she’s merely joining and providing theme music for a movement that long pre-dates her,” Harvey wrote.
But according to Harvey, these two songs aren’t the most troubling aspect of Perry's performance. The Religious Right activist thinks that Perry’s “Firework” may actually be a tool to trick people into following Satan rather than God, proving once again that Perry has “become a glamorous huckster of destruction to her millions of followers.”
“While ‘Firework’ seems encouraging taken at face value (and the song is musically very appealing), in the context of Perry’s other messages simply comes off as ultimately godless and pointless,” Harvey wrote. “So it’s still all up to me and only me? No help from the any spiritual source? Just one, perhaps– the one Jesus calls a liar and a thief.”
The halftime performance of Katy Perry at the 2015 Super Bowl seemed to be all about choice. While the show was a spectacle on a grand scale, the content was shady. Perry held out foolish choices with eternal consequences on an altar of defiance.
And this isn’t the first time she’s shown a preference for jaw-dropping rebellion. Many will recall her Grammy performance from 2014 where she pole-danced on a witch’s broom as the backdrop to her song “Dark Horse,” with lyrics selling sex and “magic” from which there will be “no going back.”
The Super Bowl gig was just a variance on the same theme with Perry astride a giant robot tiger. “Dark Horse” is a tune not about love or even a hot hook-up. It seems to be [sic] invitation to demonic possession, and the halftime theatrics recalled the Apostle Peter’s caution: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).” And sure enough, Perry and the red-eyed beast roared in defiant power. What kind of power, hmmm, do we think she’s offering?
Sexual confusion is a natural companion to spiritual apostasy. Perry proceeded to bend over in some suggestive twerking with Lenny Kravitz and then sang another hit, telling us that she “kissed a girl and liked it.” The lyrics go on to say, “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.”
This 2008 song is a prime expose of the lies embedded in the homosexual agenda. Not that Perry leads that effort. Just like her flirtation with Satan, she’s merely joining and providing theme music for a movement that long pre-dates her.
…
There would be a predictable reaction if a well-known homosexual man crooned that he had “kissed a boy and liked it” and he “hopes his boyfriend don’t mind it.” If such a song even saw the light of day, it would be instantly labeled bigotry, hate and right-wing extremism. After all, one is never allowed to experiment in that direction. Satan and his mouthpieces will make sure such a notion never gains traction.
…
It’s tragic that a former Christian has left the faith she allegedly once knew to become a glamorous huckster of destruction to her millions of followers. Even her closing song of the evening, “Firework” suggests finding hope not in an eternal Christ before Whom every knee will bow, but in a spark that already exists inside each of us.
While “Firework” seems encouraging taken at face value (and the song is musically very appealing), in the context of Perry’s other messages simply comes off as ultimately godless and pointless. So it’s still all up to me and only me? No help from the any spiritual source?
Mission America’s Linda Harvey decided to ring in the new year by celebrating the GOP’s midterm election victory, calling it a “hopeful sign” that Americans are ready to rise up against “cowardly Republicans, destructive Democrats, vicious feminists and homosexual bullies.”
“These folks are showing all the signs of self-destruction,” she said. “The loony left does not represent America and their ideas are mostly poison.”
After calling on conservatives to get “ready for battle,” Harvey warned that gay rights supporters are bent on harming children, claiming that “our toxic culture is stealing the innocence and dimming the futures of our offspring.”
Just in case you are doing some last-minute shopping for Christmas, provided, of course, that your town hasn’t already fallen in a bloody battle in the War on Christmas, we here at Right Wing Watch are out with a new holiday gift guide focused on that special right-wing friend or relative in your life.
The perfect prepper gift, televangelist and survivalist Jim Bakker is offering a hot deal on an “Egg Bucket” for just a cool $100. Nothing gets people more excited than seeing a bucket of dried eggs underneath the Christmas tree, especially once they realize it contains a whole 29 “pouches.” Just add water!
And if you need a present for a prepper with a sweet tooth, make sure to buy Bakker’s 273-item gourmet dessert tray so the whole family can enjoy ice cream sandwiches as society collapses.
Finally, the Pat Robertson-approved children’s book about the Last Days that your child has been waiting for! “I Won’t Take The Mark” prepares kids for the end of the world, concluding with a contract where readers pledge to never take the Mark of the Beast.
3. Obama T-Shirt Sale
Is anyone on the hunt for a barely legible conservative t-shirt? Well, you are in luck, as “The Ten Commandments According To Obama Shirt” is on sale. It was written by Obama himself (probably) about how people should worship him because “I am the chosen One and like God, I do not have a birth certificate,” and should have abortions and persecute Christians. And printing a very long list with a small font size on a white t-shirt is always a winning design idea.
2. Build Your Own Noah’s Ark
The Creation Museum is out with a new, fun way to disprove evolution and let people know that Noah really did put all those dinosaurs up on his ark: building your very own ark! Well, sort of. With their Noah’s Ark Paper Model, you can “[d]iscover the truth about Noah’s Ark by constructing your own scale model! Interesting facts about the Ark and Flood are located on the bottom of the model. Available in two sizes—small and large.” Just in case you were wondering, yes, it is to scale, in cubits.
1. An Ex-Gay Christmas
Anti-LGBT activist Linda Harvey of “Mission America” knows that if you are still “wondering what to get your teen or college student for Christmas,” you should consider “giving them the gift of common sense and morality.” And by common sense and morality, she means her new book, “Maybe He’s Not Gay: Another View On Homosexuality,” which peddles ex-gay pseudo-science. For those who want to use Christmas to “cure” a loved one of homosexuality, Harvey boasts that her book tells gays and lesbians “why they can leave those feelings behind.” A true Christmas miracle!
What better way to criticize your political opponents than by accusing them of creating an oppressive government that will lead to the coming of the Antichrist and fulfill biblical prophecy on the Last Days?
Warning about the imminent end of the world may seem extreme, but it is a great way for media personalities, politicians and activists to rile up and instill fear in their base. Whether such arguments are purely cynical or genuine, in 2014 many conservative pundits cited the End Times to back up their denunciations of everything from gay rights to the so-called ‘War on Christmas.’
The Obama Presidency
After leaving Congress, Michele Bachmann hopes to become a major conservative voice on foreign policy issues. Among her qualifications, apparently, is her knowledge of the End Times. Bachmann has warned that the Bible prophesied the president’s foreign policy decisions, arguing that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are “calling for actual war and economic war against Israel, or at least suggesting it as such.”
“The nations of the world will come against Israel, and the scripture very specifically says all nations. Now for the United States, we don’t have that experience until recently under President Obama with the United States not standing with Israel,” Bachmann said in an interview with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, adding that the Jewish community “sold out Israel” in order to “support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president.”
Pat Robertson became so concerned with Obama’s term in office that he called on “700 Club” viewers to “pray to be delivered from this president,” warning that America will face “serious decline unless something dramatic is done about it.” Televangelist Matthew Hagee feared that Obamacare would condition people to accept “the kind of global dictatorship that is described in the End Times” and take on the Mark of the Beast.
Pastor Franklin Graham suggested that God will bless Russia thanks to Vladimir Putin’s leadership while removing His favor from America as a result of administration policies that are “pushing the gay-lesbian agenda.” “Our president and his attorney general have turned their backs on God and His standards, and many in the Congress are following the administration’s lead,” Graham said.
Pastor Mark Creech, who is affiliated with the American Family Association, wrote a column for the Christian Post implying that Obama is the Antichrist who will surface “in the last days – the day before Christ's return.”
Radio host Rick Wiles dedicated an entire show with Jonathan Wright to discussing how the “Bible Code” proves Obama is the Antichrist and even offered the strongest evidence yet that Obama is either the Antichrist or his forerunner: a fly once landed on him.
Ebola
Following the lead of Republican politicians who cynically turned the Ebola outbreak in West Africa into a campaign issue, only to have their incendiary rhetoric about Ebola (and Ebola-tainted urine) subside after the Fall election, many conservative pundits and pastors used Ebola to stoke fear about imminent dictatorship, divine punishment and the end of the world as we know it.
Televangelist John Hagee told viewers that the Ebola virus is God’s way of showing his anger with President Obama’s foreign policies, while his son Matthew Hagee suggested that the Bible pointed to Ebola as a sign of the End Times. Another televangelist, Jim Bakker, offered a special discount on survival food items, including desserts, in case Ebola and other calamities bring down the country.
Far-right radio hosts alleged that Obama wanted to “round up patriots,” ban churches and aid Ebola-infected ISIS fighters, and one Fox News personality said Obama hoped to use Ebola to make America “suffer” while helping his African brethren. One prominent right-wing radio broadcaster, Janet Parshall, said God used Ebola as a “warning” because “he is a gentleman.”
Of course, gay people were also to blame. “Trunews” host Rick Wiles said God will use Ebola to give gays and others an “attitude adjustment,” and pastor Ron Baity, who worked with the Family Research Council to champion his state’s ban on marriage equality, said homosexuality is responsible for the Ebola outbreak since it is “bringing the judgment of God on this nation.”
Gays Rights Victories
Ebola, it turns out, was just one way that gay people, along with supporters of gay rights, tried to usher in the global calamities leading up to the End Times.
Deryl Edwards of Liberty Counsel pointed to growing acceptance of gay Christians as a sign that we are “in the Last Days.” Mission America’s Linda Harvey claimed marriage equality is one reason why “we’re heading into the End Times, and it sure looks like we may be, or the end of America — or both.” Michael Bresciani of the Christian Post said God will use terrorist attacks to punish the country for accepting gay rights. Pastor Flip Benham maintained that homosexuality “destroys those who practice it and nations that approve of it.” Rick Wiles predicted that gay rights will lead to an all-out nuclear war.
Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Dwight McKissic said athlete Michael Sam’s decision to come out of the closet shows that “the spirit of Sodom would be prevalent and prominent in the end time,” since, McKissic claims, “the Anti-Christ would be a homosexual, or certainly unmarried.”
“This is the moral issue of the End Times,” pastor Scott Lively said of homosexuality, lamenting in a radio show interview that “it’s just astonishing how rapidly they are proceeding in homosexualizing the whole world.”
Addressing the National Organization for Marriage’s Washington D.C. rally, Mike Huckabee said that “there is no doubt in my mind” that the U.S. “will feel His hand of judgment” if the courts strike down bans on same-sex marriage. Another speaker at the event, pastor and Pennsylvania politician Sam Rohrer, predicted that the legalization of same-sex marriage will “destroy the very fabric of our nation,” “invite God’s judgment” and “remove His blessing from our nation.”
Televangelist Pat Robertson — who had a banner year of blasting gay people as “terrorists” and demonic — marked Thanksgiving by warning that gay rights are “sowing the seeds” of America’s “destruction.”
Michael Bresciani assured Christian Post readers that the deleterious effects of climate change actually have nothing to do with the environment at all. Instead, Bresciani writes, incidents of extreme weather are just “‘birth pangs’ for a planet about to meet its creator” as legal abortion, along with homosexuality, brings “the antichrist to his short lived rule over a reprobate and dying world.”
In a column published on BarbWire, Bresciani claimed that “gay marriage and abortion, Obama’s preferred social causes, are antichrist in nature,” warning that the “Bible says that when a nation chooses to ignore its sinfulness, God will not only allow them to go reprobate, but will empower them with rulers who will enable them to succeed in their drive to destruction.”
End Times preacher Jonathan Cahn linked abortion rights and same-sex marriage to the September 11 terrorist attacks and a looming “great shaking” from God, and the Oak Initiative said legal abortion led to “the alien invasion” on America’s southern border as “a sign of divine judgment.”
Joel Rosenberg, a prominent Religious Right author who focuses his work on End Times scenarios, told Pat Robertson that legal abortion has turned the U.S. into a worse country than Nazi Germany, warning viewers: “We know the judgment that came on Nazi Germany, and we feel like it was correct, it was just. What do we think is going to happen?”
The War on Christmas
Conservative activists often celebrate Christmas by claiming that they are being persecuted by store clerks and neighbors who dare to say “Happy Holidays” as part of the annual "War on Christmas."
A distraught Franklin Graham warned “the war on Christmas is a war on Christ and His followers” and described it as a satanic plot that may one day lead to violent anti-Christian persecution.
A Renew America columnist said the “war on Christmas” and “the growing disrespect and outright mocking of one of Christianity’s holiest days” is linked to biblical prophecies about the End Times: “While Christians in other nations like Iraq, China, and Iran are being murdered in the most gruesome of ways for their faith in Jesus Christ, America allows Him to be mocked and ridiculed. What kind of people have we become to allow this travesty? God's Word says that ‘in the Last Days, scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires.’ (2 Pe. 3:3 NLT).”
“Friends, what we are seeing is the reason America is not mentioned as a world power in Bible end times prophecy,” writes J.P. Sloane in the far-right outlet BarbWire. “As America continues to travel down the Paganistic heathen slope of perversions—and atheists attacking Christians and Jews—while Muslims are celebrating their holidays in the very capital of our country—yes in our very own White House—Christmas—a legal American holiday—is under attack on a regular annual basis!”
Christian Anti-Defamation Commission President Gary Cass told radio host Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries that “the spirit of Antichrist” is behind the mythical War on Christmas.
Finally, two weeks ago, we posted a clip of Donnie Swaggart declaring that gay activists would publicly behead Christians in America if they could get away with it, and Swaggart's ministry immediately got it yanked from YouTube. We filed a counter-claim citing "fair use" and today our video was restored: VIDEO
Unless your family has fallen victim to the War on Christmas, Mission America’s Linda Harvey knows just the thing to get that gay or lesbian friend this year: her new book, “Maybe He’s Not Gay.”
Harvey authored the book to peddle ex-gay pseudo-science and further explain her claim that gay people do not exist, telling listeners of her radio bulletin today that it would make a perfect Christmas gift.
“If you were wondering what to get your teen or college student for Christmas, how about giving them the gift of common sense and morality? This is the way many people have described my book, ‘Maybe He’s Not Gay: Another View On Homosexuality,’” she said. “Same-sex relationships are not what anyone was born for yet there are reasons why people get there and even more reasons why they can leave those feelings behind.”
Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values, thinks that the American people will revolt if the Supreme Court makes a sweeping ruling in favor of marriage equality.
Speaking over the weekend with Mission America’s Linda Harvey, Burress said he feared that the Supreme Court “will force same-sex marriage on all fifty states,” adding that “the nation is not going to stand for this.”
Burress added that in the event of such a ruling anti-gay activists will be forced to reorganize and launch a new campaign to amend the Constitution: “I really believe if the Supreme Court was to rule the wrong way, I think you’re going to see an uprising and a demand for a constitutional amendment that takes this matter out of the hands of the courts and puts it back into the states.”
Burress went on to attack Sen. Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican who endorsed marriage equality after his son came out as gay, pledging to defeat to him if he runs for re-election and unite Portman’s conservative opponents around a single primary challenger.
“We did a poll of just conservatives, the values voters, dealing with just Portman,” Burress said. “Seventy-two percent of them said that they would not support Portman. If he runs, he will lose.”
He claimed that marriage equality is losing support among voters: “The reason they are losing support is because people are understanding this is not about same-sex marriage or same-sex unions anymore, it’s about persecution, it’s about suing people, it’s about forcing people to comply with what they want or else we’re going to put you out of business and if you don’t comply then we’ll put you in jail.”
Don Feder calls upon voters to support Republicans "even if it hurts."
Laurie Higgins declares war on "immoderate" Republicans, but which she means Republicans who do not share her radical right-wing agenda.
Linda Harvey is furious that a transgender woman is serving as Health Commissioner of Virginia: "It is incredibly disturbing that this kind of person with this kind of delusion in their own personal life has been appointed to this high public post with so much responsibility."
Finally, Bryan Fischer says that Christians and Muslims most certainly do not worship the same god because "our God has a Son while their god does not." We feel compelled to point out that if that is the case, then Christians and Jews do not worship the same god either.
Ex-gay activist Linda Wall, who has launched a new Religious Right group called Virginia Mass Resistance, promoted her organization in a Saturday interview with “Mission America” host Linda Harvey.
Wall described to Harvey her own experience of being “seduced” into homosexuality, which she said all started with “a glass of wine and marijuana.”
“It was as if it was an instant addiction as to a drug,” she said.
Wall: So if you’re not born with a gay gene, then you have to be seduced or lured into it, which is an epidemic. Or I call it the ‘runaway train in America’ because I was minding my own heterosexual, college co-ed life when an older woman seduced me into it.
Harvey: How does that happen? Tell me a little bit, without too much detail.
Wall: This is way back, 33 years ago or more, she started flirting with me. I just took it to be a friendship that she was trying to build with me. I was raised in rural Virginia, I’ve never met a homosexual, a person who claimed to be a homosexual, and then in time I realized that there was more to this and I was intrigued and so under the influence of a glass of wine and marijuana, I decided one night to explore and try this. It was as if it was an instant addiction as to a drug and for ten years almost I wanted to get out of it and could not. Praise the Lord I realized that if it could be done it would be done by Jesus Christ, the one who had healed lepers and even raised the dead.
This weekend, while speaking with Mission America’s Linda Harvey, Burress said that if more Republicans announce their support for marriage equality or merely offer muted opposition to marriage rights, then he and other conservatives will leave the GOP.
“You can put a cross on the grave of the Republican Party if they ditch this issue, it would be the same thing with the life issue,” he said. “If they’re not going to stand for life and natural marriage, Huckabee was the first one that came out and said that he would not only leave the Republican Party but he’ll take everybody with him. The Republicans had better take this serious because this is a nonnegotiable issue with us.”
Burress — whose group is the Ohio affiliate of the Family Research Council and of Focus on the Family’s political arm Citizenlink — predicted that Portman will lose his race for reelection because of his marriage equality support: “I find this rather amusing, he stands no chance whatsoever. He’s seen his numbers, he knows what his numbers are and so do we. He is basically lost, he’s not even going to hold his own seat in ‘16.”
“People will vote but they just will not vote for somebody who’s wrong on these nonnegotiable issues. If they’re wrong on life, marriage or religious freedom, they’ll go to the polls and vote but they just won’t vote for them,” he said. “I have been saying this and screaming it from the treetops: If Rob Portman decides to run in the primary in 2016, he is on the ballot in 2016, Ohio will again have two Democratic senators. This is not our fault, this is his fault if we lose this seat.”
Burress warned that if a primary challenger to Portman does emerge, the GOP “will still spend millions of dollars to support him” against an anti-gay opponent.
“Rob Portman stands no chance of being president, this is a hoax,” Burress said of the rumored Portman presidential campaign, adding that “there’s between 24 and 26 percent of the voters that go to the polls in Ohio [who] are evangelical Christians and if you lose that base then you’re dead.”
He attributed Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss in Ohio to the former governor’s “flip flops” on social issues, saying evangelical Christians “did not trust Romney.”
She said during her radio bulletin yesterday that Ally Week “peddles deviance and immorality” that will lead to “discrimination” against Christians in schools.
“No responsible parent,” Harvey added, would let their children become “endorsers of homosexuality.”
“Here’s the real trick of Satan: It’s especially children like yours and mine, raised as Christians, raised to want to be kind to others as God has been merciful to us, who are more vulnerable,” she said.
Later, Harvey said that gay rights supporters are the real bullies while the true allies and friends of LGBT children would tell them that they are sinners who will continue to offend God unless they change and repent.
Linda Harvey of Mission America warned on her radio bulletin yesterday that America has entered “a time of possible civil disobedience” following the Supreme Court’s recent marriage equality announcement, telling listeners that “we must not serve the interests of sin and darkness” and “this court’s inaction is an act motivated by evil and deception and ultimately will not stand.”
“This is attempted theft of what God has ordained and our Lord will not honor this lawlessness,” Harvey said. “Allowing homosexuality to become normal in America may certainly be part of God’s judgment on our once-Christian nation for our irresponsible sexual practices and for turning our back on what the Lord has taught us. Even so, God will at some point allow the consequences of such defiance to play itself out and that will be a very tragic day indeed for those who have thumbed their noses at the Lord as they celebrate sin.”
Harvey hoped the court’s action will actually give a boost to the work of anti-gay activists: “Those of us who know the truth about homosexuality are far from finished, and in fact, God will use this cowardly act by the majority in our high court to bring a new zeal and fervor to the pro-family movement.”
James Dobson says that "the preservation of the family is the Cause for which I was born. I knew it when I was 20 years old."
James Robison warns people to vote properly: "Whatever political banner you may wave, you need the banner of the Lord and the principles of Almighty God or you are going nowhere but down. The way up is God. The way out is Divine Direction."
A bunch of anti-gay Religious Right activists are so anti-gay that they are urging other anti-gay Republicans to vote for a Democrat over a gay Republican.
Linda Harvey fumes over advances in gay rights: "Vicious attacks have been launched by the Human Rights Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others against brave, compassionate, truthful Christian brothers like Peter LaBarbera, Dr. Scott Lively, Dr. Michael Brown and organizations like American Family Association and Family Research Council. Isn’t it obvious, isn’t this revelation enough, that the poison 'fruit' of homosexual advocacy is ripening in today’s America, revealing lies and oppression, and it stinks to high heaven?"
NOM likewise fumes over the success of gay marriage: "This is not democracy: it is judicial tyranny ... [M]arriage is on the ropes, and our principles of government are taking a beating as well."
Linda Harvey hosted Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality this weekend on her “Mission America” radio show, where the two activists warned that schools are using misleading information as part of their efforts to keep “promoting” homosexuality to children.
“This is such a betrayal of our vulnerable children,” Harvey lamented, criticizing the “mythology” surrounding homosexuality.
LaBarbera, for his part, denounced “politically correct” schools for making students “ignorant” by using LGBT-affirming lesson plans: “The kids are learning — they are so ignorant of so many basic facts and truth on this issue.”
Molly Smith, the director of Cleveland Right to Life, lost her group’s affiliation with National Right to Life Committee last year when she criticized Sen. Rob Portman for announcing his support for marriage equality after his son came out as gay.
The national group chided Smith [pdf] for taking on “an advocacy agenda that includes issues beyond the right to life,” but her group pushed back, saying that “any politician, including Portman, who supports the break-up of the American family and supports the denial of a mother and father for children has forfeited the right of support and endorsement of the prolife movement .”
“The Planned Parenthood and anti-life lobby is heavily imbued and connected to homosexuality,” Harvey told Smith. “They’re in favor of opening up the doors and spreading the boundaries of sexuality all across the board. That includes homosexuality. The lines are very blurred, and unless you stand strong on this issue, you’re going to see much more, and you do see much more, out of wedlock sexuality and then of course, more abortion.”
Harvey said that she had seen Planned Parenthood march in the Columbus, Ohio, LGBT pride parade: “Why are they doing that? Because they know, you muddy the water, and you get a lot more of their business, abortion.”
Smith and Harvey then discussed polls showing rapidly increasing support for gay rights, which they decided must be skewed.
“I’m beginning to lose all kinds of respect for these polls,” Smith said.
“Yes, they’re inaccurate, they portray things in the wrong way,” Harvey agreed, adding that if polls gave people “all the information” about LGBT people “they would change their minds” and realize that “maybe these people are defending something that is not defensible and is, indeed, shameful.”
In an interview with Cleveland Right to Life’s Molly Smith earlier this month, Mission America President Linda Harvey claimed that LGBT youth centers are in fact “homosexual sex centers” where “kids are being preyed upon by older homosexuals” and contracting HIV.
Harvey reported that LGBT teens at these centers “go and socialize with out homosexuals who are college-age and some of the volunteers who are out homosexuals” which leads her to believe that “kids are being preyed upon by older homosexuals.”
“The things that go on in the bathrooms at these centers…It’s unbelievable. It’s everything you can imagine” she said.
“Social service agencies donate money because, again, it’s considered a youth center. No, it’s a homosexual sex center and kids should not be involved in this. This is another way HIV is being spread, I think. There’s no question that kids are being preyed upon by older homosexuals, and that’s why you see Centers for Disease Control shows 13- to 24-year-old HIV rates are going up.”
Harvey also went after anti-bullying programs in schools, which she faulted for telling children that “people are born homosexual” and that “there’s nothing you can do to stop bullying of those people when it does actually exist than accept homosexuality,” and for failing to report “the full picture” that there is in fact “no such thing as a gay person.”
“There is no such thing as a gay person,” she declared. “The are people with those attractions and preferences, but not intrinsically, and those behaviors are immoral and harmful. So, are they ever going to tell children that? I would hope so, but these bullying programs are pretty weak on the whole picture.”
BarbWire content editor and columnist Gina Miller was the guest this weekend on “Mission America,” where she and host Linda Harvey took a break from attacking the LGBT community to discuss campus sexual assaults, for which they blame feminism for launching a “war on white males.”
Miller said feminists, and all liberals, “have this hatred for males, especially white males.”
“There is this palpable hatred for men,” she said. “Actual rape is a terrible thing and no one is saying that these men are not accountable but I at the same time hold women responsible for when they put themselves, present themselves in slutty attire at a drunken frat party and then expect these frat boys to behave like gentlemen. It’s nonsense.”
Harvey, for her part, claimed the “war on women” is a myth, when in reality there is “a war on unborn babies, a war on common sense [and] a war on Christianity.” Miller agreed: “The war on women is a completely fabricated, made-up thing. There is actually a war out there, it’s a war against all humanity led by the Devil himself and people that he inspires. A war on unborn babies, it’s a genocidal, homicidal war. There is a real war on white males in this nation.” | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
CEO absconds as another cryptocurrency firm implodes in Vietnam
Investors and board members of the company have not been able to reach him. Le Minh Tam, the CEO, has allegedly taken $35 million from 5,000 investors. The company’s headquarters in Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City, is closed, and the Sky Mining signs and posters have been removed. ‘We are victims, too’ The deputy chairman of the company, Le Minh Hieu, said that he has formed a temporary board of 16 people to support investors and calculate the remaining asset of the company. Hieu said that Tam has gone to the U.S., taking all the money of the company and its investors. He said he was not clear about the details of the company’s assets as Tam had directly managed the mining rigs and storage. “[The board] has reported this to the police and showed evidence that we are not guilty,” said Hieu, who said many investors have threatened to hurt his family. “We are victims too,” he told VnExpress. A group of 20 investors have filed a petition on the alleged fraud with the police of Ward 9 in Phu Nhuan District, where Sky Mining was located. Sky Mining organized several events to attract investors. Screenshot taken from Sky Mining’s video on Youtube ‘Largest’ in Vietnam On its website, Sky Mining claimed to specialize in purchasing computers to solve algorithms, a process known as cryptocurrency mining. It invited investors to buy a computer system that performs the necessary computations for mining, known as the mining rig. Investors… [Read full story] | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Newly elected Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford says he'll cut taxes and repeal Ontario's sex education curriculum, and is open to a hands-off approach to cannabis once it's legalized.
"I don't believe in the government sticking their hands in our lives all the time. I believe in letting the market dictate," he told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning on Tuesday.
The former city councillor won the PC leadership race Saturday following a tumultuous convention sparked by the resignation of Patrick Brown, who left the party earlier this year amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Brown entered the race briefly before bowing out.
In his first week of campaigning, Ford promised to repeal Ontario's sex-ed curriculum, cut the carbon tax and end provincial taxes for people making $30,000 or less a year.
Here's more of what he told Ottawa Morning host Robyn Bresnahan.
'I believe in letting the market dictate'
Q: What are your plans for regulation and enforcement for marijuana when it becomes legal? Would you privatize pot stores?
A: We're going down a path that no one really knows. I have been open to a fair market and letting the markets dictate. I don't like the government controlling anything no matter what it is.... I'm open to a free market and I'm going to consult with our caucus.... I don't believe in the government sticking their hands in our lives all the time. I believe in letting the market dictate.
Q: Will you be cutting public service jobs?
A: No, I won't be... I don't believe in the word cuts, I believe in efficiencies. We drive efficiencies in the private sector, we will start driving efficiencies in the public sector as well.
Carbon pricing 'a job killer'
Q: You've said no to any kind of carbon pricing. How will you make up for the billions of dollars of revenue from the tax?
A: It's only crucial if you want to make it crucial. It's a job killer and an absolutely terrible tax. It puts us on an unfair playing field.... You are trying to compete against other jurisdictions in the world that don't have a carbon tax and all it does is drive up cost of all goods. It's hurting everyone in Canada.... People don't want to be punished because of this carbon tax and there are other ways out there of being environmentally friendly.
Q: You've said recently you plan to repeal Ontario's sex-ed curriculum. In the past, you talked about reviewing it. Which is it?
A: We are going to repeal it because this is an issue of respecting parents. Parents weren't consulted and they should have been. What happens to our own kids is our business. It's not about the liberal ideology that's being breathed down our backs from [Ontario Premier] Kathleen Wynne.
'I don't give 2 hoots about Donald Trump'
Q: Are you Ontario's version of Donald Trump?
A: No.... But look what is happening south of the border; we have trillions of dollars going into that country because they dropped the tax rate. Unemployment is [the] lowest in 20 years and manufacturing jobs are coming back.... I'm Doug Ford and we're going to turn this province around. I'm focused on Kathleen Wynne and I don't give two hoots about Donald Trump. I'm focused on Ontario.
Q: You've promised to freeze Ontario's minimum wage at $14 an hour. But would you roll back the hike to minimum wage?
A: No, I wouldn't. It's not that I like it. Sixty-thousand people have been laid off so far and it's going to continue.... When the minimum wage goes up, the government is gouging you — there's a little hypocrisy happening there. What I plan on doing is anyone making $30,000 or less will be paying zero tax and because of that they are going to have $160 extra every month in their pockets. I'm going to reduce taxes and put money into the pockets of the most vulnerable.
The interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Kevin Malone
Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) is a character on the popular TV show 'The Office'. Kevin is an accountant for the Dunder Mifflin Paper Distributor Company. He is a quiet man who makes a lot of sarcastic, blunt, and often times offensive comments about the other employees. It is a running joke throughout the series that his pastime includes looking at pornography on the computer. Kevin is engaged to a woman named Stacy (Trish Gates) who is the fourth woman to whom he has proposed and the first to say yes. He does not have a lot of responsibility at Dunder Mifflin as he mostly shreds company documents. Kevin also suffers from a foot condition called Planters and Angela (Angela Kinsey) is often disgusted by his feet.
Memorable Quotes:
"I know what's right, but I'm not gonna say because you're all jerks who didn't come see my band last night." | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Darcy Leslie spent eight years playing for the now-defunct Chicago Force, establishing herself as one of the best women to ever put on the pads. She was a national champion, and was decorated with many individual awards every season, including perennial team Defensive MVP and league All American. She also was Women's Football Alliance ( WFA ) Conference Player of the Year in 2013.
"My Force [career] entails some of my greatest athletic accomplishments," said Leslie, who lives in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood and is a general manager for Canine Crew and CrossFit Coach at Hardware Crossfit.
Football is still in her blood, though now retired from playing. Leslie was a Summer Scouting Specialist for the New York Jets.
Yes, the Jets of NFL fame.
"Last year, I applied for the Women's Careers in Football Forum, [which] helps the NFL identify qualified women to join its next generation of leaders," Leslie said. "I was accepted and went to Orlando [this past] January for two days of panel discussions, presentations and breakout sessions. It was a very educational experience and it helped me gain knowledge about various fields within the NFL that I was interested in, such as strength and conditioning, scouting and coaching.
"That weekend help solidify my desire to pursue a career in the NFL. Since then, I was able to make some invaluable connections, with individuals such as Sam Rappaport, NFL senior director of football development, and Scott Pioli, assistant general manager of the Atlanta Falcons. Sam and I have been in contact since the Forum and she was a huge advocate of mine. Because of her advocacy I was able to go to the Chicago Bears' training facility to watch practice and meet some of the players and coaches. After that experience, the opportunity to intern with the New York Jets was introduced to me and it is an offer I could not be more grateful for."
Leslie assisted the Jets' Scouting Department throughout training camp. "I was responsible for learning the ins and outs of football scouting, operations and analytics," she said. "The Jets taught me how to identify and differentiate between players. I learned how to evaluate the talent of football players and the critical factors for each position. With that, I was then in charge of writing weekly scouting reports for the position group I was assigned. In these reports, I had to differentiate and articulate different athlete body types, list their strengths and weakness and evaluate where this player stood on making our roster. It warranted a high attention to detail and helped me look at football from a different lens."
Leslie spent six weeks with the Jets, throughout training camp.
"I also learned that football at this level is made possible by the countless efforts of hundreds of people," she said. "Everyone is here putting in the long hours to help do what they can to make the team successful. It was pretty unreal to get a glimpse of what all goes on. I love football and have been a fan of the sport my whole life. As a fan, we just see what happens on game day. I had the pleasure of interacting with so many different departments while I was here, whether you are in the business department, equipment, operations, video etc, [and] everyone is working extremely hard day in, day out. It was truly one team, one goal around here."
Leslie, with a strong passion for fitness and nutrition, asked the Jets' strength and conditioning coach out to lunch to talk about his role and what his workload entailed. "I was expecting a 'No,' but instead, Coach [Justus] Galac welcomed the opportunity to share his knowledge. I learned so much in that hour about his role and how he manages to balance his job and family. He then invited me to sit in on the players' workout. It was definitely one of my highlights while being here. Justus and his two assistant coaches, Aaron [McLaurin] and Joe [Giacobbe], were very knowledgeable. They are always busy, but were so open to answer any questions that I had and I was never made to feel like I was wasting their time. I was grateful for that."
Leslie is convinced that women are capable of holding more "nontraditional" roles in the NFL. "We might have to work harder to get there, but it is not unrealistic," she said. "I learned that the most important thing is winning. If what you bring to the table will help the success of the team, then you are an asset, regardless of your sex.
"Some people are skeptical when it comes to having women in football and as a woman, when you get your foot in the door, there tends to be an even larger focus on the fact that you are a woman. My focus is putting in the work and making sure I work hard and have there be no question whether or not I belong there. I wish I could say me being a female shouldn't matter, but it does. It matters to me, it matters to the other women trying to pursue a career in this field and sports in general and it matters to that little girl that turns on the television. It's crucial that our young girls can see representations of women in the media, that they can see a female referee or coach during an NFL game and ultimately see what is possible."
Leslie also is a proud representative of the LGBT community, as she's an out, married lesbian.
"I was open about my sexuality my entire time with the New York Jets and was never once made to feel uncomfortable or less than," she said. "I shared with some of the coaches, players and staff that my wife was pregnant with our son and I got several congratulations and tips on the best products my wife and I will need once our son is here. Several of them also gave me insight on what life would be like having a career in the NFL while trying to make time for your family. I am grateful for their inclusivity and affirmation of the LGBTQ community."
Leslie added, "I'm so grateful that Sam Rappaport and the New York Jets saw something in me that allowed me to earn this opportunity. Being a minority in nearly every space I have played sports in, worked in, and trained in, I understand the importance of including as many people from different walks of life as possible. What people see on camera and on sports teams is what they see as possible. Without such representation, future generations won't know what is possible. My son will be here in November and when he grows up, I want him to be able to turn the television and see someone who he can relate to and I hope I could offer that now to some little girl or boy."
Despite a taste of NFL life, Leslie has certainly not forgotten her Force roots.
"The Force is the reason why I'm experiencing this amazing opportunity," she said. "I was coached by the best coach in women's football, [John Konecki]. I learned so much from Coach K and I believe having him as my coach and utilizing all that I've learned from him will help me on my path to a career in the NFL. I would also say, the Force helped me grow into the woman I am today. I started on that team at a very young age. I had the opportunity play and be mentored by some amazing women who were older and wiser than me. Linda Bache, Rosalyn Bennett, Pam Schaffrath, Jessica Mcpeake, and Keesha Brooks played pivotal roles in my development as a player and a young adult. If it wasn't for them and the Force, I'm not sure what my life would look like today."
Former Force owner Linda Bache was the first person Leslie called to tell her about the Jets' gig.
"Linda has been a big part of my life since I joined the Force [and] the one who suggested I apply for the Forum in January, and she is the one who wrote my letter of recommendation," Leslie said. "She's always had my back and has only wanted the best for me. I'm not sure what will come from this internship, but I do know I am grateful for Linda and for all that she has done for women's football and all that she continues to do for me."
Leslie said she developed good friendships with some of the Jets, such as Leonard Williams and Trumaine Johnson.
"I was able to interact with the players and coaches daily," she said. "Coach [Todd] Bowles is a great man, very knowledgeable about the sport and his players. I would chat with him several times a week. Since I was there as a scouting intern, I would be assigned a different position group each week and had to write scouting reports about each player in that position. This meant that each week I was interacting with a new set of players. Daily I had the chance to spend time with Coach [Karl] Dorrell, Coach [Jimmie] Johnson, several of the other coaches and in time, all the players. I got to know many of the coaches and players on an individual level, as we ate all three meals together in addition to spending countless hours together on and off the field."
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On Place and Space: The Ontology of the Eruv BARRY SMITH, BUFFALO1 On one walk he 'gave' to me each tree that we passed, with the reservation that I was not to cut it down or do anything to it, or prevent the previous owners from doing anything to it: with those reservations it was henceforth mine.2 1. The Eruv is Up! 'Eruv' is a Hebrew word meaning literally 'mixture' or 'mingling'. An eruv is an urban region demarcated within a larger urban region by means of a boundary made up of telephone wires or similar markers. Through the creation of the eruv, the smaller region is turned symbolically ('halachically' = according to Jewish law) into a private domain. Orthodox Jews may, so long as they remain within the boundaries of the eruv, and so long as these boundaries are undisturbed (the eruv is up!3), engage in activities that would otherwise be prohibited on the Sabbath, such as pushing prams or wheelchairs, carrying walking sticks, books, keys, gloves, or spectacles, wearing jewelry, including watches, and walking dogs. There are eruvim in many towns and university campuses throughout the world. There are five eruvim in Chicago, five in Brooklyn, twenty three in Queens and Long Island, and at least three in Manhattan. There are also eruvim in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Venice,4 Gibraltar, Melbourne, Sidney, Toronto, and Vancouver. Different 1 Preprint version of a paper to appear in C. Kanzian (ed.), Cultures: Conflict – Analysis – Dialog, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2007 (Uncorrected proof.) 2 Malcolm 1958, 31f. 3 http://laeruv.com/. 4 http://www.ghetto.it/. From C. Kanzian (ed.), Cultures: Conflict – Analysis – Dialogue, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2007, 403-416 404 eruvim in the same city maintained by different Orthodox communities may intersect in different ways. The US Supreme Court is (like most other major US Federal Government buildings) located within the eruv of Washington DC. To consititute an eruv, a given area of public space must be demarcated from its surroundings, either by wires or by some sort of wall or fence (or combination thereof), or by virtue of its topography (for example because it is all higher or lower than its surroundings). Because it is typically impractical to build continuous solid walls around a sizeable built-up area within an already existing residential zone, advantage is taken by eruv-builders of the fact that Jewish law places no limits on the number of doorways which are permitted within a wall. This means, in effect, that eruv walls are allowed to consist entirely of doorways, which are themselves seen as consisting of two parts: vertical supports (for example utility poles) on either side, and a lintel, consisting for example of a cable or fishing line strung between them. And to accommodate a rule to the effect that the lintel, to constitute the horizontal completing plane of a doorway, must be positioned above the top of the doorposts, thin rods or tiny plastic strips called lechis are used to create surrogate doorposts attached onto the poles.5 Certain activities may still not be performed within the boundaries of the eruv because they are seen as being not in the spirit of the Sabbath. These include touching a pen, opening or carrying an umbrella, playing ball, riding a bicycle, or swimming. Similarly, there are certain types of location which cannot be included within an eruv, for example cemeteries, so that the outer boundaries of an eruv may surround exclaves which are not themselves private space when considered halachically. Because of storms and other hazards, the eruv boundary must be inspected each week in order to ensure that it is still complete. This task is carried out, in the case of the University of Maryland eruv 5http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/04-Observance/section-43.html. Last accessed September 20, 2006. 405 (whose website talks of a 'metaphysical wall'6) through the use of laser beam technology. In many cases, not all of those living within or near the area of an actual or proposed eruv will themselves be Orthodox Jews, and this has sometimes led to protests against the eruv creation. It is such protests which triggered the writing of this essay. 2. The Tenafly Eruv The proposal to establish an eruv in Tenafly (New Jersey) gave rise to protests which culminated in a vote by the Tenafly Council to have the US Supreme Court hear its case against the Tenafly Eruv Association.7 Without permission from the borough, the association had attached lechis to utility poles, contravening a local ordinance prohibiting the placing of signs or advertisements in the public right of way without permission. (Such items as house numbers, political posters, and church signs had often been posted on the same poles without complaint.) In United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit No. 01-3301, Tenafly Eruv Association, Inc. v. Borough of Tenafly a brief from the Agudath Israel of America refers to 'anti-Orthodox paranoia', which saw what was, after all the creation of a 'virtually invisible boundary line indistinguishable from the utility poles and telephone wires in the area,' as variously threatening to destroy Tenafly's public school system, close its shopping malls on Saturdays, put the butchers at Grand Union out of business, lead to the establishment of many small synagogues and stores that cater to Orthodox Jews, turn all of the eruv-enclosed area into a private Orthodox ghetto, give nonOrthodox Jews an inferiority complex, and impose Orthodox Judaism on all of Tenafly's residents. 3. The Barnet Eruv 6 http://www.umderuv.org. Last accessed September 20, 2006. 7 Jewish Week. July 2, 2003. 406 In 1992 the Orthodox Jewish community of Barnet, as part of its project to create an eruv, submitted a request for planning permission to erect some forty pairs of metal poles with strands of nylon fishing line stretched between them at a height of 10 meters. Ten years later, after many protests, permission was granted for the erection of the poles, allowing the creation of an eruv comprehending a six-and-a-half square mile area of North London, in which the portions of fishing line close off gaps in a boundary otherwise composed of already existing telephone lines stretched between wooden poles together with portions of railway fencing and walls of terraced housing. The importance of this case turns not least on the kinds of objections raised by protesters. Some Orthodox Jews objected because they saw the restrictions on carrying as necessary to maintain social order. More modernist Jews objected because they feared 'the re-creation of ghettos'.8 Most intriguing, however, are the arguments of secular liberals, who objected that the eruv impinges on their 'human rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion' and who proposed taking these objections to the European Court of Human Rights, which itself lies within the Strasbourg eruv. 4. The Outremont Eruv In 2001 the proposal to establish an eruv in the Montreal neighborhood of Outremont gave rise to considerable public controversy:9 A dispute over barely visible fishing line that Orthodox Jews say is vital to the practice of their religion landed in court yesterday as the city of Outremont argued it cannot allow the six-metre-high filament to cross public land. Opponents of the eruv argued that public property cannot be designated for the use of a particular group, and that Orthodox Jews 'are 8 Valins 2000. 9 Graeme Hamilton, Montreal enclave, Hasidic residents fight 'turf war': Fishing line fence seen as encroaching on public land. National Post, June 7, 2001. 407 able to practise their religion in their homes and do not need use of the streets as well.' One secular group, the Mouvement Laïque Québécois,10 opposed the establishment of the eruv on the grounds that it runs counter to the separation of church and state. The group's president asserted that public space must be kept free of all religious symbols in order to guarantee everyone's freedom of religion. Establishment of an eruv, he said, 'amounts to privatizing public space because the Hasidim consider the enclosed space their own.' One municipal councilor asserted that the string in front of her home is 'a constant reminder of a religious boundary across public space. Against my will, because of the location of my apartment, I find myself living in a territory identified with a religion that is not my own.' Another Outremont resident said she feels excluded by the presence of an eruv: 'I love everybody. I adore eating Jewish food. I love matzo ... But I want to live in peace.' 5. Ways of Worldmarking Such liberal opponents perceive the eruv to be a challenge to ideas of secularism, the public–private divide, and enlightenment rationality. For them, the eruv seems to 'symbolically stain space'11: Eruv-believers would happily pass through their symbolic gateways in the streets, but everyone else would be compelled to do so without such a benefit, even if the compulsory passage through the Eruv structures is offensive to a person's beliefs. (Letter to the Editor, Local London, December 5, 2000) Recall that the creation of an eruv consists, in the worst case, in the erection of poles connected by a fishing line at a height which makes the fishing line itself invisible to passers by. Or it consists in the affixing of small plastic strips at a similar height to existing telephone poles. In many cases such creation consists in no more than the fact that certain existing items of street furniture are deemed by one group 10 http://www.mlq.qc.ca/ 11 Cooper 1996. 408 of residents to constitute the boundaries of a certain space. The protests by non-believers to these deemings and/or to the tiny adjustments to the physical landscape made by believers in order to bring about slight enhancements in their convenience in following religious laws seem, particularly when viewed from the perspective of the objectors' own belief-systems, to rest on some sort of mistake. But what is the nature of this mistake? First, and most neutrally, let us address the question as to the real reason for these protests. Two potentially attractive answers to this question we shall, for different reasons, dismiss from the very start. A first answer would be that some of the protests derive from property owners within the vicinity of the eruv. A tempting practical argument is the fear that the creation of the eruv would lead to a decline in property value. In fact, however, the creation of an eruv is more likely to have a positive effect on property value, since it attracts potential Orthodox Jewish homebuyers to move into a given area (and the numbers of non-Orthodox who are even aware of the existence of an eruv is, outside the immediate circle of the protestors, typically very small). This may in the long term have the effect of bringing more Jewish residents into a given area, which leads us to a second set of arguments, which turn on the hypothetical presence of strains of antisemitism on the part of the protesters. Analogous protests, as far as we know, were never directed against comparable deemings involved where Catholic or Protestant diocesan or parish boundaries are at issue. This is so, even in spite of the fact that such boundaries often ride roughshod over established political boundaries (as when, for example, the diocese of the Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar is deemed to comprehend not only the area of Gibraltar but also all of mainland Europe, Morocco, Iceland, and the territory of the former Soviet Union12). Antisemitic beliefs may themselves give a special (symbolic, irrational) significance to the inserted lechis. Some might even go so far as to see the creation of an eruv as just the first 12 While the see is in the City of Gibraltar, the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity in Crawley, West Sussex. See: http://www.europe.anglican.org. 409 step in bringing about a real physical enclosure, rather than a purely symbolic boundary. (From Sydney: "My wife and I were stunned to discover we were now living in a real, fair-dinkum Jewish Ghetto."13) We think, however, that there is a further common reason for the other kinds of protests, which turns on the presence of intellectual errors of a spatio-ontological sort. X counts as Y in context C Since the lechis and associated boundaries are for all practical purposes invisible, why is their presence disturbing to some non-Jewish residents of the relevant areas? Not, we presume, because the boundaries of the eruv are perceived by the latter as possessing any special halachical powers, but rather (if we interpret the protesters' reasoning correctly) because the lechis and the associated connectors are believed by others to have such special powers. But how, then, should the existence of such beliefs bring it about that the relevant spatial regions are seen by non-believers as becoming transformed in such a way that 'the compulsory passage through the Eruv structures is offensive to [a non-religious] person's beliefs'. In The Construction of Social Reality John Searle develops a sophisticated account of institutional facts as resting on special sorts of 'status functions' which certain physical objects (for example buildings, a region within a residential area) acquire in virtue of cognitive acts or states which are directed towards them in certain contexts.14 To this end Searle employs the formula X counts as Y in C (X = the physical object or region, Y = what it counts as, e.g. an eruv, C = the ontologically relevant context). He even applies this formula to a case which comes very close to that of the eruv: 13 "Jews show the way forward towards racial/cultural/ethnic/religious/economic/social apartheid in Australia", http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/Australia/eruv.htm. 14 Searle 1995. 410 Consider for example a primitive tribe that initially builds a wall around its territory. ... suppose the wall gradually evolves from being a physical barrier to being a symbolic barrier. Imagine that the wall gradually decays so that the only thing left is a line of stones. But imagine that the inhabitants and their neighbors continue to recognize the line of stones as marking the boundary of the territory in such a way that it affects their behavior. ... The line of stones now has a function that is not performed in virtue of sheer physics but in virtue of collective intentionality. ... The line of stones performs the same function as a physical barrier but it does not do so in virtue of its physical construction, but because it has been collectively assigned a new status, the status of a boundary marker. (Searle 1995, 40) The crucial phrase for our purposes here is: 'imagine that the inhabitants and their neighbors continue to recognize the line of stones' as marking a boundary. For the Tenafly and Barnet eruv cases reveal that the collectivity of those living in the vicinity of an eruv may associate divergent beliefs with such recognition, so that there is no common context C and no common set of status-function-imputing beliefs in relation to which we are able to understand the eruv and its boundary from the perspective of those involved. This problem is addressed in "The Construction of Social Reality: An Exchange",15 which addresses the problems for the X counts as Y in context C formula which may be seen as arising through the existence of such conflicting belief systems. The contested eruv is a case of the form: X counts as Y in context C and X counts as Y1 in context C1, where neither C nor C1 has priority over the other. Thus it is comparable to the case of an area X on the Indo-Chinese border that is claimed by India as Indian and by China as Chinese. X counts as Indian territory in India-friendly contexts, and as Chinese territory in China-friendly contexts. What is the correct account of the ontology of this piece of territory, on Searle's account? 15 Smith and Searle 2003a. 411 In his response to this question, Searle insists that the X counts as Y is 'merely a useful mnemonic' that is intended to remind us that institutional facts only exist because people are prepared to regard things or treat them as having a certain status and with that status a function that those things cannot perform solely in virtue of their physical structure. The creation of institutional facts requires that people be able to count something as being more than just what its physical structure indicates. Searle's idea is that the 'counts as' formula is in the end ontologically misleading, since it suggests that there are social objects in addition to the physical objects which serve as the targets of acts of status function imputation. In my "John Searle: From Speech Acts to Social Reality"16 I respond to this charge by arguing that we need, in fact, to distinguish two cases: the first, which receives almost all of Searle's attention, is illustrated by the examples of president, cathedral, dollar bill, where physical object and social object are indeed one and the same – exactly in keeping with Searle's naturalistic inclinations. For these cases, certainly, talk of 'social objects' or 'institutional objects' is misleading to the degree that, as Searle fears, it would imply that there may be multiple social objects in addition to the physical object which serves as their ontological basis. The second case, however, is one in which there is no physical object to serve in this way as basis. These objects, which I have proposed to call 'free-standing Y terms' are illustrated by examples such as debts, permissions, rights, and so forth – examples which certainly fall within the scope of Searle's theory of institutional reality, indeed they form its very heart, but to which he has addressed too little careful attention. 6. Cognitive Geometry When Searle addresses the issue of disputes concerning institutional facts, for example disputes about the ownership of a piece of property, he points out, correctly, 16 Smith and Searle 2003b. 412 that in order for us to even have an analysis of the nature of the dispute we have to understand that what is in dispute is the assignment of status functions. That is, [disputes] about the Nazi expropriation of property, or disputes about the ownership of a painting, or about the boundary line between two countries, are real life disputes among people competing for the right to assign status functions to objects. (Searle, in: Smith and Searle 2003) Searle insists that such disputes 'are not problems for philosophical analysis of the ontology of institutional facts, they are real life problems to be settled by judges and lawyers, and in the end perhaps by armies and political movements.' Not so, however. For the very idea of competing for the right to assign status functions itself presupposes that this right – which is itself (presumably) a status function – would somehow have to have become assigned (presumably on some lower level in the counts as hierarchy). And then the question arises once more: by whom, and under what auspices? The respective roles of judges and political authorities on the one hand and of armies on the other in effectuating such lower-level assignments would itself therefore seem precisely to be a matter for philosophical analysis. Indeed, as concerns judges and political authorities, precisely the same problems will arise as in the mentioned cases as concerns their contested jurisdictions; and if, as a last resort, we fall back on the role of armies in resolving such contests then we seem to be left only with a version of the formula might is right. The eruv disputes are marked by some further philosophically significant differences from the disputes about ownership or sovereignty mentioned above, differences which seem to be significant even where eruv disputes were indeed settled, in the end, by judges and lawyers. For while one group is here indeed competing for the right to assign status functions to objects (more specifically to a certain region of space), the protest groups are competing for the right to prevent such assignment. And so again the question arises: Why, given that the highly esoteric status functions in question pertain to matters which lie entirely 413 outside the world in which the protestors live, do they protest so much? One answer to this question turns on what we might call the confusion of space and place. An eruv, like a parish, a village, a neighborhood, a legal jurisdiction, and a military district, occupies space. But it is not identical with any region of space, and in particular it is not identical to the region of space through which non-eruv-believers pass when going about their daily business. The source of the confusion (the ontological running together of space and place) is associated with a deeply rooted assumption to the effect that there is one single division of space into subregions, corresponding to the standard geopolitical division, for example of a continent into countries, countries into states, states into counties, and counties into towns or communes, in a simple hierarchical nesting.17 Departures from such hierarchical nesting, even when we consider only the restricted dimension of political-administrative sovereignty, are more common than we are disposed to think. There are non-contiguous nations (including the United States) whose sovereign territory is broken up into separate pieces by the interspersed territory of other sovereign nations. The Belgian village of BaarleHertog, lying some 5 kilometers North of the Dutch-Belgian border in the region of Turnhout (and thus entirely surrounded by Dutch territory) is a conglomeration of 20 small parcels of land lying interspersed with the small parcels of land which form the Dutch village of Baarle-Nassau.18 Some parts of Baarle-Nassau are counter-exclaves, which is to say exclaves of the Netherlands surrounded by Belgian territory which is in turn surrounded by territory of the Netherlands. In the region of Cooch Behar in West Bengal, where India and Bangla Desh are topologically intervolved in almost miraculously complex ways, we find examples of counter-counter-exclaves.19 There is, however, a powerful force in history which manifests itself in a desire by human groups for exclusive control over topologically compact and connected regions, so that, ideally at least, the 17 Bittner and Smith 2003. 18 http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/baarle.htm. 19 Whyte, 2002. 414 world would be subject to a jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint partition into separate regions, with each one of which there would be associated one single ethnic (and religious and linguistic) group and within each of which there would reign one single sovereign.20 Traces of this force underlie the suspicion of gypsies in Western societies. It is manifested also in the still common political use of phrases such as 'rape' or 'mutilation' or 'dismemberment of the motherland', and in the willingness of people to give their lives in the cause of establishing borders having certain favored shapes or features (for example that they coincide with rivers or coastlines). The ideal of a mathematically perfect tessellation is given concrete form for example in the rectangular shape of the boundaries of Colorado and Wyoming. It serves as one philosophico-ontological basis of the Peace of Westphalia and of Napoleon's and Woodrow Wilson's successive attempts to rearrange the map of Europe, and in its most extreme form it manifests itself in the doctrine of Dar al-Islam (literally: house of submission), through the realization of which the whole world will fall under the dominion of Islam. The Treaty of Westphalia asserts that 'the governments of sovereign states are free to structure their relationships with their citizens independent of all external interference'. The king has 'all Rights...without any reserve...with all manner of Jurisdiction and Sovereignty,' rights which are to obtain for all eternity. Yet even today, where nearly all national boundaries have been precisely demarcated along Westphalian lines, there remain a variety of overlapping jurisdictions, including the exclaves and counter-exclaves referred to above, and as well as a variety of temporary departures from the ideal of perfect tessellation (as for example when Camp Zeist in the Netherlands was declared from 1999 to 2002 a Scottish enclave, in order to allow the UK authorities to bring two Libyans accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to trial on Scottish soil). But the latter are treated as exceptions. The intricate intervolvement of Belgium and the Netherlands in Baarle is impossible to detect on maps of the Low Coun- 20 Smith 1997. 415 tries – in part, we may suppose, because it represents so considerable a departure from the post-Westphalian expectations of map-makers. 7. The Arguments Surveyed Some of the objections brought forward by protestors are not addressed, or are touched upon only partially, by such spatio-ontological considerations. This applies in particular to the objections of the Orthodox Jews who see restrictions on carrying as necessary to maintain social order, and to the argument which sees the eruv as a 'first step towards the re-creation of ghettos', and which thus forecasts a causal effect from eruv creation. But we believe that all of the other objections rest in one way or another on the presupposition that multiple places cannot be associated with a single region of space, so that eruv creation would imply somehow exclusive use over a public region of space by one single privileged group. These objections can be summarized as follows: a) the eruv impinges on the 'human rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion' of the protestors, b) the creation of an eruv 'runs counter to the separation of church and state' (because it involves local council administrations in the approval process), c) public property cannot be designated for the use of a particular group, d) eruv creation 'amounts to privatizing public space because the Hasidim consider the enclosed space their own.' e) public space must be kept free of all religious symbols in order to guarantee everyone's freedom of religion, f) newly erected portions of the eruv boundary (strands of fishing line) are 'a constant reminder of a religious boundary across public space.' As to a), whence the impingement, if multiple activities can take place side by side within a single region of space? As to b) and c), the eruv does not, of course, restrict use of any region of public space to a sin416 gle group. As to d), the deemings of the Hasidim have no causal powers (though they may be believed to have such powers except against the background of certain strange spatial-ontological views) and thus such deemings can (rationally) influence outsiders only if they share the beliefs which underlie them. As to e) and f), many church steeples are more prominent (and more conspicuously religious) than tiny strands of fishing line. Perhaps, then, the crucial issue has to do with the fact that the church steeple is itself erected on private land. (One wonders what would be the likely reaction of our objectors to a proposal to buy a narrow circular strip of land around a given residential area, and to create a private eruv boundary, made of strands of fishing line, encircling the included region of public space.) 8. Appendix on Virtual Philadelphia To see why we resist overlapping, interpenetrating segmentations of space, it is useful to imagine, finally, a Nozickian virtual reality machine21 which generates three-dimensional visual and tactual simulations of landscapes and architectural works. So impressive is the illusion, that those inside the machine feel that they are experiencing ordinary reality. We could even imagine a community of individuals connected to a single machine that coordinates their experiences in such a way that they seem to be moving around together, meeting in, say, Philadelphia, walking hand-in-hand along the sidewalk. A travel agent might advertise trips to Virtual Philadelphia. A real estate agent might offer to sell land there. Virtual Philadelphia might in all sorts of ways be better than real Philadelphia. But if we discovered at some later point that we were living not in real Philadelphia but in Virtual Philadelphia, then we would be disappointed. Why? In Virtual Philadelphia you can live in the same building with Madonna. But so can one million other people. They can all 21 Nozick 1974. 417 show photographs of themselves in the elevator with Madonna and chatting with her baby. And it is precisely this possibility which tells us what is missing from Virtual Philadelphia as opposed to its real counterpart. Living in the same building with Madonna, really living in the same building with Madonna – which means exerting real control on a quite specific region of space – is an achievement. It is something highly valued precisely because not everyone can do it. What space, the real space we share in common, provides is the possibility of such achievement, because it provides the presupposition of competition, and thus of economizing, of taking responsibility, and of overcoming the legal, political and physical obstacles which stand in the way of our manifesting our personality in free acts which leave traces on reality. It is such acts which provide our lives with meaning,22 and the (to some) disturbing effect of the eruv comes about in part, I believe, because it seems to interfere with our freedom to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the region of space in which we live. Acknowledgements With thanks to Berit Brogaard, Roberto Casati, David Mark, Frederic Tremblay, and Leonardo Zaibert for helpful comments. REFERENCES Bittner, T. and Smith, B. 2004 "Theory of Granular Partitions", in M. Duckham et al. (eds,), Foundations of Geographic Information Science, London: Taylor & Francis, 2003, 117–151. Brogaard, B. and Smith, B. 2005 "On Luck, Responsibility and the Meaning of Life", Philosophical Papers 34(3), 443–458. Cooper, D. 1996 "Talmudic Territory? Space, Law, and Modernist Discourse", Journal of Law and Society, 23, No. 4, 529-548. Malcolm, N. 1958 Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, London: Oxford University Press. Nozick, R. 1974 Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York: Basic Books. Searle, J. R. 1995 The Construction of Social Reality, New York: The Free Press. 22 Brogaard and Smith 2005. 418 Smith, B. 1997 "The Cognitive Geometry of War", in P. Koller and K. Puhl (eds.), Current Issues in Political Philosophy: Justice in Society and World Order, Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 394–403. 2003 "From Speech Acts to Social Reality", in B. Smith (ed.), John Searle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, B. and Searle, J. 2003 "The Construction of Social Reality: An Exchange", American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 62. Valins, O. 2000 "Institutionalised Religion: Sacred Texts and Jewish Spatial Practice", Geoforum 31, 575-86. Whyte, B. 2002 Waiting for the Esquimo. An Historical and Documentary Study of the Cooch Behar Enclaves of India and Bangladesh, Research Paper 8, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne Publication | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PhilPapers |
Natriuretic response to atrial natriuretic factor enhanced by angiotensin II and vasopressin.
The effect of angiotensin II (ANG II) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) on the natriuretic response to partially purified high molecular weight atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) was examined in anaesthetized rats. ANG II and AVP were infused continuously at equipressor doses. Rats receiving ANG II and AVP showed five- to sevenfold greater natriuretic responses to bolus injections of ANF than controls. A significantly smaller augmentation of the natriuretic response to ANF was produced by equipressor does of norepinephrine and epinephrine, suggesting that the potentiation by ANG II and AVP were not entirely due to increased mean arterial pressure (MAP). Decreased MAP in rats receiving infusions of saralasin and hydralazine did not diminish the natriuretic response to ANF. The results suggest that the ANG II and AVP augmentation of the ANF-induced natriuresis is mediated partly through increased MAP and partly by interacting with the renal action of ANF. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
In the communications industry, much attention has been focused on making more effective use of the limited number of transmission channels available for delivering video information and programming to an end user. Various methodologies have been developed to achieve an increase in the number of available transmission channels within the frequency bandwidth that was previously allocated to a single video transmission channel. An increase on the number of available transmission channels would allow the communications industry to reduce costs and to increase broadcast capacity. It has been estimated that a typical cable operator could have the capability to deliver as many as 500 channels to a home viewer.
A dramatic increase in the number of separate program channels that could be broadcast within the currently available transmission bandwidth may be realized by employing a process of compressing and decompressing video signals. Typically, the video and audio signals comprising a video program are converted into a digital format, compressed and encoded in accordance with an established compression algorithm or methodology. The compressed system signal or bitstream, which is understood to include a video portion, an audio portion, and other informational portions, may then be transmitted over existing television channels, cable television channels, satellite communication channels, and the like. A decoder is then typically employed to decompress and decode the received system signal in accordance with the same compression algorithm or methodology previously mentioned. The decoded video information may then be output to a display device, such as a television monitor. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | USPTO Backgrounds |
Rebecca's Blog
-
Endocrine disrupters in ocular surface disease - and paying attention to the unusual.
Are endocrine disrupters contributing to the increase in dry eye?
This paper was just published in a journal called Medical Hypotheses. This journal is pretty far out there - more about ideas than science, for sure, and it’s been embroiled in controversies at times. However, this subject matter actually seemed pretty timely to me.
The idea is that “endocrine disrupters”, certain natural or man-made chemicals in many products such as cosmetics, pesticides and, ahem, plastic packaging and metal food cans, may affect - among other things - our sex and thyroid hormones, both of which have roles to play in dry eye disease. In other words, they may be contributing to the increase in dry eye.
This study highlights the fact that unusual cases deserve special attention. (Ahem!)
When I read this bit in the abstract:
…The increasing frequency of dry eye and other ocular diseases indicates the need to better investigate the potential relationships beyond the isolated associations mentioned by patients and documented as rare case reports….
…My first response was, “Right on!” But then, I circled back to this key phrase:
… isolated associations mentioned by patients
…which struck me as awfully idealist. After all, unusual ocular surface disease associations can’t hope to be documented as case reports, much less have the relationships between them investigated, unless they’re actually heard and taken seriously.
How many of these potentially data-rich dry eye cases are dismissed by the physician as coincidental before the first twenty words are out of the patient’s mouth?
Not all dry eye is due to menopause, auto-immune disease or iatrogenic causes.
Today’s rarity may be tomorrow’s trend.
We need to carefully investigate the new and unusual cases so we can get ahead of the curve and improve prevention advice.
Abstract
Endocrine disruptors are a group of compounds that occur in increasing amounts in the environment. These compounds change the hormone homeostasis of the target organs regulated by those hormones, mostly by binding to their receptors and affecting their signaling pathways. Among the hormones altered by endocrine disruptors are sex hormones, thyroid hormones, and insulin. Studies have documented abnormalities in the reproductive and metabolic systems of various animal species exposed to endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disruptors can play a significant role in ocular diseases once hormone deficiency or excess are involved in the mechanism of that disease. Cataracts, dry eye disease and retinal diseases, such as macular hole and diabetic retinopathy, are some of the frequent problems where hormones have been implicated. We found that some compounds function as endocrine disruptors in the metabolism of body organs and systems. The increasing frequency of dry eye and other ocular diseases indicates the need to better investigate the potential relationships beyond the isolated associations mentioned by patients and documented as rare case reports. The evidence from case-control studies and experimental assays can provide the information necessary to confirm the endocrine effects of these chemicals in the pathophysiology of dry eye disease. We hypothesize that endocrine disruptors may contribute to the increase of ocular diseases, such as dry eye disease, in recent years. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Q:
Is it possible to use steganography on an analog audio channel?
Is it possible to use steganography using an analog audio channel?
I know this can be done using images. My idea is to encode an audio message in way that if listened by an ordinary device (e.g., radio or telephone) it delivers a normal message. But if we use a special decoder, the receiver can listen to a hidden message. Please note that I am interested in decoding the message only using analog audio. I know it is possible if we go with digital audio.
Is this possible? If so, it would be great if someone can give me a some practical implementations of this.
A:
There are a few ways to do this. Use ring modulation to add a virtual carrier to the audio you want to hide, for example at 14khz. Goldwave's mechanize feature can do this. This will give an amplitude modulation-like signal with sidebands above and below 14khz. Then use a highpass filter to get rid of the lower sideband, and only kids or dogs may hear the deedle deedle deet of the single sideband audio signal, but may not know what it is unless they're familiar with shortwave listening or ham radio. Someone else with a ringmod plugin or goldwave can apply the same 14khz effect to demodulate the signal. The normal un-hidden audio at the same time will get modulated at 14khz and will sound like hash that you can get rid of using a lowpass filter to hear the hidden audio totally in the clear, but you probably won't need to bother. I suggest before you hide your audio that you filter it with a 300hz to 3000hz filter which is what telephones and communications radios use. This will limit aliasing of the converted audio and make it harder for normal ears to hear when listening to the undemodulated file. Another method is to simply record a short message and slow it down 32 times, and mix the result with the ordinary in the clear audio you want to mask the message with. Be sure to mix it at a reasonably low volume so that the low thunder rumbles of a slowed-down human voice are not obvious under the normal audio. Then all the guy on the other end needs to do is speed up the file 32 times to hear your short message. This method needs lots of room, 32 seconds of file for each second of slowed-down audio, so make it quick.
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | StackExchange |
The first psychiatric Royal Commission: Reg Ellery and the attendants at Kew Hospital.
The first Royal Commission into the activities of a psychiatrist took place in Melbourne in 1924, inquiring into misconduct by Dr Reg Ellery at Kew Hospital. Ellery, appalled by the conditions at the Idiot Cottages, had attempted to make improvements for the children. This led to a confrontation with the Attendant's Union--who had been challenging the power of doctors to run the asylums--which met with an unexpected change in Victorian state politics to lead to the establishment of the Royal Commission. Though Ellery was in the end exonerated, his subsequent treatment by the Lunacy Department was slightly insulting, featuring a transfer to another hospital. Despite all this, however, Ellery went on to become the most prominent psychiatrist in Australia between the wars. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
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Topic Review (Newest First)
03-09-2011 06:56 AM
_Chaz
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
Probably against Sod again in IW in R3
Again two favourites of mine have to play each other (before that Berrer vs Sod) and then all the Germans have to meet Top 4 guys so early, Mayer --> Djokovic R2, Petzschner --> Federer R3, Kohlschreiber --> Söderling R3.
And then all these HC mugs get into one section and play each other while there are (too) good first round matches, like DelPo vs Stepanek. I'm really pissed atm.
03-08-2011 04:48 PM
STUHL
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
Did a good Job in the Tie ands Germany won. Now heading to Indian Wells!
03-03-2011 01:35 PM
STUHL
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
Kohli faces Dodig tomorrow! Do it for Germany!
02-23-2011 01:15 PM
STUHL
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
Big chance blasted away. 0-6 6-4 2-6 lost
02-22-2011 01:26 PM
STUHL
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
Kohli wins 7-6 6-1
Great Match from the stats. Has now a big change against my other Phillip, but he needs the points more!
His Draw is ok. He knows he can beat Troicki won the last two meetings last Year. If he beats him he could go to a Quaterfinal!
02-10-2011 09:37 PM
STUHL
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
This so sad
02-10-2011 09:34 PM
misty1
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
damn, 6-6 second serve...
7-6 kohli
7-7
8-7 soderling
not another 2nd serve....
FUCK!
02-10-2011 09:32 PM
STUHL
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
He saves the first one! Come On! now!
02-10-2011 09:28 PM
misty1
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
3-1 soderling
3-2 soderling
4-2 soderling
5-2 soderling
come on kohli!!!
5-3 soderling
5-4 soderling
6-4 soderling
6-5 soderling
6-6
02-10-2011 09:26 PM
misty1
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
damn robin holds
tiebreaker here we go, kohli serving...
crap, a 2nd serve
and..
1-0 soderling
2-0 soderling
3-0 soderling
02-10-2011 09:25 PM
STUHL
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
Oh my God! Tie-Break! _Its just luck now!
02-10-2011 09:24 PM
misty1
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
well this was never going to be an easy or short match for either one
02-10-2011 09:23 PM
_Chaz
Re: Feburary 2011-Time for Improvement (Rotterdam, Dubai, Davis Cup)
Of course, the only thing I didn't want to happen, happened
2hours 7 minutes already, I have the feeling the winner will be tired tomorrow. And tiredness together with Kohli's inconsistency (if he wins) would probably end in a straight sets win for Youzhny tomorrow...
This thread has more than 15 replies.
Click here to review the whole thread. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Related literature {#sec1}
==================
For the synthesis of new ligands to stabilize dinuclear complexes and control their reactivity, see: Das *et al.* (2008[@bb2]); Estevan *et al.* (2006[@bb3]); Jie *et al.* (2007[@bb5]); Müller & Vogt (2007[@bb7]); Schilling *et al.* (2008[@bb12]). For the synthesis of 1,3-bis(aryl)triazenes as precursors for triazenido ligands bearing Lewis basic *ortho* substituents such as ester, methoxy and methylmercapto groups, see: Nuricumbo-Escobar *et al.*(2007[@bb8]); Ríos-Moreno *et al.* (2003[@bb10]); Rodríguez *et al.* (1999[@bb11]); Tejel *et al.* (2004[@bb15]). The starting material 2-\[4,5-dihydro-1,3-oxazol-2-yl\]aniline was synthesized by a modification of the literature method of Gómez *et al.* (2005[@bb4]). For bond-length data, see: Allen *et al.* (1987[@bb1]); Orpen *et al.* (1989[@bb9]).
Experimental {#sec2}
============
{#sec2.1}
### Crystal data {#sec2.1.1}
C~16~H~18~N~4~O~2~*M* *~r~* = 298.34Monoclinic,*a* = 16.846 (2) Å*b* = 12.2053 (17) Å*c* = 7.4302 (11) Åβ = 93.212 (13)°*V* = 1525.3 (4) Å^3^*Z* = 4Mo *K*α radiationμ = 0.09 mm^−1^*T* = 298 K0.40 × 0.22 × 0.14 mm
### Data collection {#sec2.1.2}
Bruker P4 diffractometerAbsorption correction: none4153 measured reflections3067 independent reflections1778 reflections with *I* \> 2σ(*I*)*R* ~int~ = 0.0443 standard reflections every 97 reflections intensity decay: 2.8%
### Refinement {#sec2.1.3}
*R*\[*F* ^2^ \> 2σ(*F* ^2^)\] = 0.055*wR*(*F* ^2^) = 0.188*S* = 1.043067 reflections201 parametersH-atom parameters constrainedΔρ~max~ = 0.57 e Å^−3^Δρ~min~ = −0.22 e Å^−3^
{#d5e472}
Data collection: *XSCANS* (Siemens, 1996[@bb14]); cell refinement: *XSCANS*; data reduction: *XSCANS*; program(s) used to solve structure: *SHELXS97* (Sheldrick, 2008[@bb13]); program(s) used to refine structure: *SHELXL97* (Sheldrick, 2008[@bb13]); molecular graphics: *Mercury* (Macrae *et al.*, 2006[@bb6]); software used to prepare material for publication: *SHELXL97*.
Supplementary Material
======================
Crystal structure: contains datablocks I, global. DOI: [10.1107/S1600536809011908/kp2210sup1.cif](http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S1600536809011908/kp2210sup1.cif)
Structure factors: contains datablocks I. DOI: [10.1107/S1600536809011908/kp2210Isup2.hkl](http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S1600536809011908/kp2210Isup2.hkl)
Additional supplementary materials: [crystallographic information](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/sendsupfiles?kp2210&file=kp2210sup0.html&mime=text/html); [3D view](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/sendcif?kp2210sup1&Qmime=cif); [checkCIF report](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?kp2210&checkcif=yes)
Supplementary data and figures for this paper are available from the IUCr electronic archives (Reference: [KP2210](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/sendsup?kp2210)).
We gratefully acknowledge support for this project by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia *y* Tecnología (CONACyT grant 60467), Consejo del Sistema Nacional de EducaciónTecnológica (COSNET grant 486--02-P) and a graduate scholarship from CONACyT for F. Rocha-Alonzo. The authors are indebted to Adrián Ochoa Terán and Ignacio Rivero Espejel for their support in this work. We acknowledge Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo-León (Monterrey, México) for diffractometer time.
Comment
=======
The synthesis of alternative ligands to stabilize dinuclear complexes and control their reactivity is an area of great importance in coordination and organometallic chemistry (for recent literature see: Das *et al.*, 2008; Estevan *et al.*, 2006; Jie *et al.*, 2007; Müller & Vogt, 2007; Schilling *et al.*, 2008). In this context, we have focused our attention to the synthesis of 1,3-bis(aryl)triazenes as precursors for triazenido ligands bearing Lewis basic *ortho* substituents such as ester, methoxy and methylmercapto groups (Nuricumbo-Escobar *et al.*, 2007; Ríos-Moreno *et al.*, 2003; Rodríguez *et al.*, 1999; Tejel *et al.*, 2004); it has been found that the nature of the substituent produces a dramatic impact on their coordination chemistry and reactivity. As part of our ongoing research, we have synthesized the title compound (I, Fig. 1) using the diazonium salt *N*-coupling methodology.
The molecular structure of (I) shows the characteristic *trans* stereochemistry about N═N of the diazoamino group of free triazenes. The N1═N2 bond \[1.264 (3) Å\] is longer than the typical value for N═N bond (1.222 Å), whereas the N2---N3 bond \[1.320 (3) Å\] is shorter than typical value for a Nsp^3^---Nsp^2^ single bond (1.420 Å) (Allen *et al.*, 1987). In addition, the C7---N3 bond \[1.395 (3) Å\] is shorter than the characteristic C~aryl~---NH single bonds for secondary aromatic amines (1.419 Å) (Orpen, *et al.*, 1989). An intramolecular N1---H···N4 hydrogen bond is observed (Fig. 1 and Table 1).
In the crystal structure, adjacent units are arranged into a two-dimensional network along the (100) plane *via* intermolecular N--- H···O and O---H···O hydrogen bond interactions (Fig. 2 and Table 1). These layers are linked together *via*intermolecular N---H···O and O---H···O hydrogen bonds forming a zig-zag bilayered array along the \[001\] direction (Fig. 3).
Experimental {#experimental}
============
The synthesis of the title compound included reagents and solvents of reagent grade, which were used without further purification. As a starting material we synthesized 2-\[4,5-dihydro-1,3-oxazol-2-yl\]aniline by a modification of the Gómez and coworkers methodology (Gómez *et al.*, 2005). 2-\[4,5-Dihydro-1,3-oxazol-2-yl\]aniline (1.00 g, 6.17 mmol) was dissolved in aqueous HCl 2 *M* (9.25 ml, 18.50 mmol) and cooled to 268 K. A sodium nitrite solution (0.51 g, 7.40 mmol) in water (6 ml) was slowly added with continuous stirring. A solution of *p*-toluidine (0.66 g, 6.17 mmol) in methanol (10 ml) was added slowly to the reaction mixture, and stirred for 30 m at 268 K. The resulting mixture was neutralised with a saturated aqueous solution of NaHCO~3~. A crude yellow-orange was separated by filtration and washed with small portions of water. The product was purified by flash chromatography on neutral alumina (hexane/ethyl acetate, 1:9), and recrystallized from an ethyl acetate/hexane mixture (9 : 1). Orange bar-shaped crystals of (I), suitable for X-ray analysis, were obtained by slow evaporation of the solvent mixture. Yield 47% (0.87 g, 2.90 mmol), based on 2-\[4,5-dihydro-1,3-oxazol-2-yl\]aniline; m.p., 111--113 °C. IR (KBr pellet, cm^-1^), 3278, 3233, 1625, 1538, 1269.^1^H NMR \[(CD~3~)~2~CO, 200 MHz\] δ 12.89 (*s*), 8.10 (*s*), 7.93--7.02 (m, 8H), 4.10 (*s*), 3.74 (dd *J*= 5.4, 11.0 Hz, 2H), 3.54 (dd, *J*= 5.4, 11.0 Hz, 2H), 2.35 (s, 3H).^13^C NMR \[(C D~3~)~2~CO, 50 MHz\] δ 135.4, 133.0, 130.1, 128.4, 121.7,114.9, 61.2, 43.2, 21.0. *Anal.* Calcd. for C~16~H~18~N~4~O~2~: C, 64.41; H, 6.08;N, 18.78%. Found C, 64.11; H, 6.44; N, 18.93%. HRESIMS Calcd. for \[*M*+H\]^+^299.1503. Found 299.1519.
Refinement {#refinement}
==========
Refinement for H atoms was carried out using a riding model, with distances constrained to: 0.93 Å for aromatic CH, 0.98 Å for methine CH. Isotropic U parameters were fixed to *U*~iso~(H)=1.2*U*~eq~(carrier atom) for aromatic CH.
Figures
=======
{#Fap1}
{#Fap2}
![Packing of I showing the bilayer. The molecules are forming a zig-zag array along the \[001\] direction.](e-65-0o990-fig3){#Fap3}
Crystal data {#tablewrapcrystaldatalong}
============
------------------------- -------------------------------------
C~16~H~18~N~4~O~2~ *F*(000) = 632
*M~r~* = 298.34 *D*~x~ = 1.299 Mg m^−3^
Monoclinic, *P*2~1~/*c* Mo *K*α radiation, λ = 0.71073 Å
Hall symbol: -P 2ybc Cell parameters from 76 reflections
*a* = 16.846 (2) Å θ = 4.7--12.0°
*b* = 12.2053 (17) Å µ = 0.09 mm^−1^
*c* = 7.4302 (11) Å *T* = 298 K
β = 93.212 (13)° Neele, yellow
*V* = 1525.3 (4) Å^3^ 0.40 × 0.22 × 0.14 mm
*Z* = 4
------------------------- -------------------------------------
Data collection {#tablewrapdatacollectionlong}
===============
------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------
Bruker P4 diffractometer *R*~int~ = 0.044
Radiation source: fine-focus sealed tube θ~max~ = 26.3°, θ~min~ = 2.1°
graphite *h* = −20→20
2θ/ω scans *k* = −15→1
4153 measured reflections *l* = −9→1
3067 independent reflections 3 standard reflections every 97 reflections
1778 reflections with *I* \> 2σ(*I*) intensity decay: 2.8%
------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------
Refinement {#tablewraprefinementdatalong}
==========
---------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Refinement on *F*^2^ Secondary atom site location: difference Fourier map
Least-squares matrix: full Hydrogen site location: inferred from neighbouring sites
*R*\[*F*^2^ \> 2σ(*F*^2^)\] = 0.055 H-atom parameters constrained
*wR*(*F*^2^) = 0.188 *w* = 1/\[σ^2^(*F*~o~^2^) + (0.1035*P*)^2^ + 0.0651*P*\] where *P* = (*F*~o~^2^ + 2*F*~c~^2^)/3
*S* = 1.04 (Δ/σ)~max~ \< 0.001
3067 reflections Δρ~max~ = 0.57 e Å^−3^
201 parameters Δρ~min~ = −0.22 e Å^−3^
0 restraints Extinction correction: *SHELXL97* (Sheldrick, 2008), Fc^\*^=kFc\[1+0.001xFc^2^λ^3^/sin(2θ)\]^-1/4^
Primary atom site location: structure-invariant direct methods Extinction coefficient: 0.008 (3)
---------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fractional atomic coordinates and isotropic or equivalent isotropic displacement parameters (Å^2^) {#tablewrapcoords}
==================================================================================================
------ -------------- -------------- ------------- -------------------- --
*x* *y* *z* *U*~iso~\*/*U*~eq~
N1 0.69940 (11) 0.33793 (15) −0.0017 (3) 0.0484 (5)
N2 0.76320 (11) 0.39013 (16) 0.0332 (3) 0.0481 (5)
N4 0.54570 (10) 0.30472 (15) −0.1084 (3) 0.0456 (5)
H4A 0.5790 0.3480 −0.0525 0.055\*
O1 0.51316 (10) 0.13062 (14) −0.1750 (2) 0.0574 (5)
O2 0.39653 (10) 0.39859 (16) 0.0593 (3) 0.0651 (6)
H2B 0.4341 0.3834 0.1299 0.098\*
N3 0.75322 (11) 0.49670 (16) 0.0124 (3) 0.0521 (6)
H3A 0.7066 0.5219 −0.0175 0.063\*
C1 0.70741 (13) 0.22274 (19) 0.0146 (3) 0.0434 (6)
C2 0.64042 (13) 0.15801 (18) −0.0313 (3) 0.0424 (6)
C3 0.64717 (15) 0.0445 (2) −0.0087 (4) 0.0550 (7)
H3B 0.6029 0.0006 −0.0346 0.066\*
C4 0.71719 (17) −0.0036 (2) 0.0504 (4) 0.0646 (8)
H4B 0.7200 −0.0792 0.0651 0.078\*
C5 0.78345 (15) 0.0601 (2) 0.0881 (4) 0.0654 (8)
H5A 0.8317 0.0275 0.1237 0.078\*
C6 0.77816 (14) 0.1716 (2) 0.0729 (4) 0.0577 (7)
H6A 0.8228 0.2141 0.1022 0.069\*
C7 0.81680 (13) 0.56925 (19) 0.0379 (3) 0.0472 (6)
C8 0.80588 (14) 0.6767 (2) −0.0132 (4) 0.0552 (7)
H8A 0.7569 0.6993 −0.0642 0.066\*
C9 0.86733 (16) 0.7513 (2) 0.0109 (4) 0.0608 (7)
H9A 0.8588 0.8240 −0.0227 0.073\*
C10 0.94103 (16) 0.7200 (3) 0.0839 (4) 0.0622 (8)
C11 0.95105 (16) 0.6126 (3) 0.1297 (4) 0.0682 (8)
H11A 1.0006 0.5896 0.1771 0.082\*
C12 0.89054 (14) 0.5364 (2) 0.1086 (4) 0.0608 (7)
H12A 0.8994 0.4637 0.1416 0.073\*
C13 0.56158 (13) 0.19811 (19) −0.1101 (3) 0.0420 (5)
C14 0.47468 (13) 0.3509 (2) −0.1968 (3) 0.0495 (6)
H14A 0.4671 0.3186 −0.3157 0.059\*
H14B 0.4829 0.4289 −0.2126 0.059\*
C15 0.40087 (15) 0.3347 (2) −0.0995 (4) 0.0617 (8)
H15A 0.3555 0.3523 −0.1806 0.074\*
H15B 0.3968 0.2580 −0.0676 0.074\*
C16 1.0073 (2) 0.8027 (3) 0.1157 (5) 0.0921 (11)
H16A 1.0569 0.7649 0.1374 0.138\*
H16B 0.9968 0.8470 0.2184 0.138\*
H16C 1.0101 0.8486 0.0113 0.138\*
------ -------------- -------------- ------------- -------------------- --
Atomic displacement parameters (Å^2^) {#tablewrapadps}
=====================================
----- ------------- ------------- ------------- -------------- -------------- --------------
*U*^11^ *U*^22^ *U*^33^ *U*^12^ *U*^13^ *U*^23^
N1 0.0424 (10) 0.0407 (11) 0.0617 (13) −0.0019 (9) 0.0007 (9) −0.0026 (9)
N2 0.0432 (11) 0.0418 (11) 0.0585 (13) −0.0002 (9) −0.0026 (9) −0.0039 (9)
N4 0.0368 (10) 0.0412 (11) 0.0581 (13) 0.0021 (8) −0.0039 (9) −0.0023 (9)
O1 0.0554 (10) 0.0464 (10) 0.0678 (12) −0.0062 (8) −0.0189 (9) −0.0037 (8)
O2 0.0477 (10) 0.0882 (14) 0.0579 (12) 0.0226 (9) −0.0101 (8) −0.0129 (10)
N3 0.0373 (10) 0.0382 (11) 0.0796 (15) 0.0020 (8) −0.0072 (10) −0.0020 (10)
C1 0.0409 (12) 0.0430 (13) 0.0461 (13) 0.0018 (10) 0.0015 (10) 0.0002 (10)
C2 0.0438 (12) 0.0405 (13) 0.0428 (13) 0.0027 (10) 0.0001 (10) −0.0001 (10)
C3 0.0560 (15) 0.0425 (14) 0.0654 (17) −0.0017 (11) −0.0071 (12) −0.0009 (12)
C4 0.0697 (18) 0.0407 (14) 0.082 (2) 0.0094 (13) −0.0100 (15) 0.0012 (14)
C5 0.0509 (15) 0.0536 (16) 0.090 (2) 0.0143 (12) −0.0097 (14) 0.0021 (15)
C6 0.0426 (13) 0.0525 (16) 0.0771 (19) 0.0020 (11) −0.0053 (12) 0.0019 (13)
C7 0.0385 (12) 0.0428 (13) 0.0603 (15) −0.0017 (10) 0.0020 (11) −0.0070 (11)
C8 0.0420 (13) 0.0508 (15) 0.0726 (18) 0.0000 (11) 0.0029 (12) 0.0010 (13)
C9 0.0587 (16) 0.0510 (16) 0.0737 (18) −0.0109 (12) 0.0113 (14) −0.0017 (13)
C10 0.0525 (15) 0.0679 (18) 0.0669 (18) −0.0196 (13) 0.0083 (13) −0.0146 (15)
C11 0.0412 (14) 0.078 (2) 0.084 (2) −0.0023 (13) −0.0095 (13) −0.0153 (17)
C12 0.0469 (14) 0.0481 (14) 0.086 (2) 0.0037 (12) −0.0122 (13) −0.0078 (14)
C13 0.0422 (12) 0.0436 (13) 0.0398 (12) −0.0002 (10) −0.0004 (10) 0.0004 (10)
C14 0.0487 (14) 0.0481 (14) 0.0508 (15) 0.0031 (11) −0.0051 (11) 0.0011 (11)
C15 0.0456 (14) 0.0737 (19) 0.0643 (18) 0.0056 (13) −0.0097 (12) 0.0006 (15)
C16 0.073 (2) 0.103 (3) 0.100 (3) −0.043 (2) 0.0043 (18) −0.016 (2)
----- ------------- ------------- ------------- -------------- -------------- --------------
Geometric parameters (Å, °) {#tablewrapgeomlong}
===========================
-------------------- ------------- ----------------------- ------------
N1---N2 1.264 (3) C6---H6A 0.9300
N1---C1 1.417 (3) C7---C8 1.375 (4)
N2---N3 1.319 (3) C7---C12 1.381 (3)
N4---C13 1.329 (3) C8---C9 1.383 (3)
N4---C14 1.447 (3) C8---H8A 0.9300
N4---H4A 0.8600 C9---C10 1.381 (4)
O1---C13 1.238 (3) C9---H9A 0.9300
O2---C15 1.420 (3) C10---C11 1.363 (4)
O2---H2B 0.8200 C10---C16 1.513 (4)
N3---C7 1.395 (3) C11---C12 1.382 (4)
N3---H3A 0.8600 C11---H11A 0.9300
C1---C6 1.393 (3) C12---H12A 0.9300
C1---C2 1.404 (3) C14---C15 1.486 (4)
C2---C3 1.400 (3) C14---H14A 0.9700
C2---C13 1.503 (3) C14---H14B 0.9700
C3---C4 1.368 (3) C15---H15A 0.9700
C3---H3B 0.9300 C15---H15B 0.9700
C4---C5 1.376 (4) C16---H16A 0.9600
C4---H4B 0.9300 C16---H16B 0.9600
C5---C6 1.367 (4) C16---H16C 0.9600
C5---H5A 0.9300
N2---N1---C1 114.01 (19) C10---C9---C8 121.2 (3)
N1---N2---N3 111.82 (19) C10---C9---H9A 119.4
C13---N4---C14 122.64 (19) C8---C9---H9A 119.4
C13---N4---H4A 118.7 C11---C10---C9 117.4 (2)
C14---N4---H4A 118.7 C11---C10---C16 121.5 (3)
C15---O2---H2B 109.5 C9---C10---C16 121.0 (3)
N2---N3---C7 121.21 (19) C10---C11---C12 122.6 (3)
N2---N3---H3A 119.4 C10---C11---H11A 118.7
C7---N3---H3A 119.4 C12---C11---H11A 118.7
C6---C1---C2 119.0 (2) C7---C12---C11 119.3 (3)
C6---C1---N1 123.2 (2) C7---C12---H12A 120.3
C2---C1---N1 117.79 (19) C11---C12---H12A 120.3
C3---C2---C1 118.0 (2) O1---C13---N4 121.8 (2)
C3---C2---C13 115.7 (2) O1---C13---C2 118.9 (2)
C1---C2---C13 126.3 (2) N4---C13---C2 119.3 (2)
C4---C3---C2 121.7 (2) N4---C14---C15 114.9 (2)
C4---C3---H3B 119.1 N4---C14---H14A 108.5
C2---C3---H3B 119.1 C15---C14---H14A 108.5
C3---C4---C5 119.9 (3) N4---C14---H14B 108.5
C3---C4---H4B 120.1 C15---C14---H14B 108.5
C5---C4---H4B 120.1 H14A---C14---H14B 107.5
C6---C5---C4 119.8 (2) O2---C15---C14 114.5 (2)
C6---C5---H5A 120.1 O2---C15---H15A 108.6
C4---C5---H5A 120.1 C14---C15---H15A 108.6
C5---C6---C1 121.5 (2) O2---C15---H15B 108.6
C5---C6---H6A 119.3 C14---C15---H15B 108.6
C1---C6---H6A 119.3 H15A---C15---H15B 107.6
C8---C7---C12 119.1 (2) C10---C16---H16A 109.5
C8---C7---N3 118.6 (2) C10---C16---H16B 109.5
C12---C7---N3 122.3 (2) H16A---C16---H16B 109.5
C7---C8---C9 120.3 (2) C10---C16---H16C 109.5
C7---C8---H8A 119.8 H16A---C16---H16C 109.5
C9---C8---H8A 119.8 H16B---C16---H16C 109.5
C1---N1---N2---N3 178.6 (2) N3---C7---C8---C9 179.6 (2)
N1---N2---N3---C7 −177.7 (2) C7---C8---C9---C10 0.9 (4)
N2---N1---C1---C6 3.2 (3) C8---C9---C10---C11 0.6 (4)
N2---N1---C1---C2 −176.6 (2) C8---C9---C10---C16 −178.0 (3)
C6---C1---C2---C3 2.7 (3) C9---C10---C11---C12 −1.2 (4)
N1---C1---C2---C3 −177.6 (2) C16---C10---C11---C12 177.4 (3)
C6---C1---C2---C13 −174.8 (2) C8---C7---C12---C11 1.3 (4)
N1---C1---C2---C13 5.0 (3) N3---C7---C12---C11 179.8 (2)
C1---C2---C3---C4 −2.1 (4) C10---C11---C12---C7 0.2 (5)
C13---C2---C3---C4 175.6 (2) C14---N4---C13---O1 −6.1 (4)
C2---C3---C4---C5 −0.5 (4) C14---N4---C13---C2 173.9 (2)
C3---C4---C5---C6 2.5 (5) C3---C2---C13---O1 −11.0 (3)
C4---C5---C6---C1 −2.0 (5) C1---C2---C13---O1 166.5 (2)
C2---C1---C6---C5 −0.7 (4) C3---C2---C13---N4 169.0 (2)
N1---C1---C6---C5 179.5 (3) C1---C2---C13---N4 −13.5 (3)
N2---N3---C7---C8 169.7 (2) C13---N4---C14---C15 76.5 (3)
N2---N3---C7---C12 −8.8 (4) N4---C14---C15---O2 71.8 (3)
C12---C7---C8---C9 −1.9 (4)
-------------------- ------------- ----------------------- ------------
Hydrogen-bond geometry (Å, °) {#tablewraphbondslong}
=============================
------------------- --------- --------- ----------- ---------------
*D*---H···*A* *D*---H H···*A* *D*···*A* *D*---H···*A*
N4---H4A···N1 0.86 2.05 2.696 (3) 132
O2---H2B···O1^i^ 0.82 1.92 2.729 (2) 169
N3---H3A···O2^ii^ 0.86 2.00 2.851 (2) 170
------------------- --------- --------- ----------- ---------------
Symmetry codes: (i) *x*, −*y*+1/2, *z*+1/2; (ii) −*x*+1, −*y*+1, −*z*.
###### Hydrogen-bond geometry (Å, °)
*D*---H⋯*A* *D*---H H⋯*A* *D*⋯*A* *D*---H⋯*A*
------------------- --------- ------- ----------- -------------
N4---H4*A*⋯N1 0.86 2.05 2.696 (3) 132
O2---H2*B*⋯O1^i^ 0.82 1.92 2.729 (2) 169
N3---H3*A*⋯O2^ii^ 0.86 2.00 2.851 (2) 170
Symmetry codes: (i) ; (ii) .
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Central |
ICPD beyond 2014 Global Youth Forum
Date:
Start in 04 Dec 2012End in 06 Dec 2012
Location:
Indonesia
Youth Rights at the Heart of Development
Forty-three percent of the world’s population is currently under 25 - and the number of young people is rising fastest in those parts of the world with the lowest economic growth. The ICPD Programme of Action made the needs of youth a priority and yet in all countries of the world, progress on youth issues is lagging.
Today’s youth are more connected and tuned in to the world than any generation before. They are growing up fast, in a world that is changing even faster. Fortunately for all of us, young people see the challenges before them in fresh ways and are responding with enthusiasm and imagination. Young people have the potential to transform the social and economic fortunes of their communities, particularly in least developed countries.
With the right investments, today’s young people can reach their full potential as individuals, leaders and agents of progress. And the world clearly needs their energy, their participation and their skills. But delivering that transformation takes partnership action on health, education, employment, sexual and reproductive health and a commitment to real civic engagement.
Depsite their enormous stake in the future, youth voices have not been part of the mainstrean development debate. The ICPD Beyond 2014 Global Youth Forum, in Bali from Dec 4-6 2012 aims to address this. Through a partnership of UN agencies, young people, civil society and the private sector the Forum aims to translate the participatory goals of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development into a sustainable youth advocacy movement.
Led by young people for young people and contributing directly to the process of defining future development goals, the Global Youth Forum will give young people a stronger voice. Over 900 delegates will agree on global recommendations for action on five crucial issues:
Youth Success Stories
Today, my activities have created jobs for young people interested in livestock development, encouraged many farmers already frustrated with inadequate productivity, empowered women in the livestock value chain and have contributed immensely to the rapid multiplication of livestock and sustainability of livestock value chain in Nigeria and West Africa.
I believe that agriculture was meant to be my destiny and I am grateful for being inspired to pursue a career in science. If I had to choose all over again, I would without a doubt and a second thought choose agriculture. I love being an agronomist. It gives me enormous sense of job satisfaction and achievement.
Because of the universal reach of agriculture, I believe my career in it has, and will continue to have, a truly positive impact on the global community. #IamAg, I am involved in agriculture and surrounded by it. #AreYouAg too?
When I look back, I realise that the job I am doing today did not exist when I was a child or at secondary school. I just followed by heart and passion, and did what I feel happy doing. Therefore, my advice to someone interested in my career is to first of all love what you do.
My advice to be successful in an agricultural career is to not only focus on passing the exams and finishing all your tasks. Tomorrow you will be the one who will feed the people and you must know how to produce healthy food. Your worth will only be equal to what you know.
If you are looking for a job that gives you real job satisfaction, inner peace and a relationship with nature then I invite you to study agriculture. Agriculture is a noble profession because it was man’s first occupation and remains critical to the survival of mankind.
I think the reason more young people aren’t interested in an agricultural career is the lack of promotion. Agriculture has been left behind. In my country, every year universities are offering more office type careers, so young people are pursuing those. It is down to us, those that work in farming, to share our experience and tell how much we love to work in agriculture.
Today, I am agricultural economist, an agricultural extension officer and an agricultural communicator not only for YPARD Nigeria but for agriculture.You too can choose your agricultural path and become the best and that could turn out to be an inspiration for someone out there.
Opportunities are a pool of doors in our lives, we just have to find the keys to open them. My family, my University and YPARD, have been the keys for many of them. Now it’s time to become a key too, and return what others have given to me.
Focusing on young farmers, and young people in general be it professionals in agriculture and consumers in rural areas, is key in all of this. They are more open to adopting more sustainable, or just different practices and comprise a large share of the local populationAnd it’s them that will be hit hardest by the consequences of unsustainable practices. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Canola is the seed derived from any of the Brassica species B. napus, B. campestris/rapa, and certain varieties of B. juncea. Canola oil is high in monounsaturated fats, moderate in polyunsaturated fats, and low in saturated fats, having the lowest level of saturated fat of any vegetable oil. Thus canola oil is an important dietary option for lowering serum cholesterol in humans. In addition, the protein meal which is the byproduct of canola oil production has a high nutritional content and is used in animal feeds.
Imidazolinone and sulfonylurea herbicides are widely used in modern agriculture due to their effectiveness at very low application rates and relative non-toxicity in animals. Both of these herbicides act by inhibiting acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS; EC 4.1.3.18, also known as acetolactate synthase or ALS), the first enzyme in the synthetic pathway of the branched chain amino acids valine, leucine and isoleucine. Several examples of commercially available imidazolinone herbicides are PURSUIT® (imazethapyr), SCEPTER® (imazaquin) and ARSENAL® (imazapyr). Examples of sulfonylurea herbicides are chlorsulfuron, metsulfuron methyl, sulfometuron methyl, chlorimuron ethyl, thifensulfuron methyl, tribenuron methyl, bensulfuron methyl, nicosulfuron, ethametsulfuron methyl, rimsulfuron, triflusulfuron methyl, triasulfuron, primisulfuron methyl, cinosulfuron, amidosulfuron, fluzasulfuron, imazosulfuron, pyrazosulfuron ethyl and halosulfuron.
Due to their high effectiveness and low toxicity, imidazolinone herbicides are favored for application to many crops, including canola, by spraying over the top of a wide area of vegetation. The ability to spray an herbicide over the top of a wide range of vegetation decreases the costs associated with plantation establishment and maintenance and decreases the need for site preparation prior to use of such chemicals. Spraying over the top of a desired tolerant species also results in the ability to achieve maximum yield potential of the desired species due to the absence of competitive species. However, the ability to use such spray-over techniques is dependent upon the presence of imidazolinone resistant species of the desired vegetation in the spray over area. In addition, because residual imidazolinones persist in a sprayed field, a variety of resistant species is advantageous for crop rotation purposes.
Unfortunately, the Brassica species which are the source of canola are closely related to a number of broad leaf cruciferous weeds, for example, stinkweed, ball mustard, wormseed mustard, hare's ear mustard, shepherd's purse, common peppergrass, flixweed, and the like. Thus it was necessary to develop Brassica cultivars which are tolerant or resistant to the imidazolinone herbicides. Swanson, et al. (1989) Theor. Appl. Genet. 78, 525-530 discloses B. napus mutants P1 and P2, developed by mutagenesis of microspores of B. napus (cv ‘Topas’), which demonstrated tolerance to the imidazolinone herbicides PURSUIT® and ASSERT® at levels approaching ten times the field-recommended rates. The homozygous P2 mutant produced an AHAS enzyme which was 500 times more tolerant to PURSUIT® than wild type enzyme, while the AHAS enzyme from the homozygous P1 mutant was only slightly more tolerant than the wild type enzyme. In field trials, the P1, P2, and P1×P2 hybrid withstood ASSERT® applications up to 800 g/ha with no loss of yield. The P1 and P2 mutations were unlinked and semidominant, and P1×P2 crosses tolerated levels of PURSUIT® higher than those tolerated by either homozygous mutant. Imidazolinone-tolerant cultivars of B. napus were developed from the P1×P2 mutants and have been sold as CLEARFIELD® canola. See also, Canadian patent application number 2,340,282; Canadian patent number 1,335,412, and European patent number 284419.
Rutledge, et al. (1991) Mol. Gen. Genet. 229, 31-40) discloses the nucleic acid sequence of three of the five genes encoding AHAS isoenzymes in B. napus, AHAS1, AHAS2, and AHAS3. Rutledge, et al. discusses the mutants of Swanson, et al. and predicts that the two alleles that conferred resistance to imidazolinone herbicides correspond to AHAS1 and AHAS3. Hattori et al. (1995) Mol. Gen. Genet. 246, 419-425 disclose a mutant allele of AHAS3 from a mutant B. napus cv Topas cell suspension culture line in which a single nucleotide change at codon 557 leading to an amino acid change from tryptophan to leucine confers resistance to sulfonylurea, imidazolinone, and triazolopyrimidine herbicides. Codon 557 of Hattori, et al. corresponds to codon 556 of the AHAS3 sequence disclosed in Rutledge, et al., supra, and to codon 556 of the AHAS3 sequence set forth as GENBANK accession number gi/17775/emb/Z11526/.
A single nucleotide mutation at codon 173 in a B. napus ALS gene, corresponding to AHAS2 of Rutledge et al, supra, leads to a change from Pro to Ser (Wiersma et al. (1989) Mol. Gen. Genet. 219, 413-420). The mutant B. napus AHAS2 gene was transformed into tobacco to produce a chlorsulfuron tolerant phenotype.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,114,116 and 6,358,686 disclose nucleic acid sequences from B. napus and B. oleracea containing polymorphisms, none of which appears to correspond to the polymorphism disclosed in Hattori, et al., supra.
For commercially relevant Brassica cultivars, it is necessary to ensure that each lot of herbicide-resistant seed contains all mutations necessary to confer herbicide tolerance. A method is needed to detect mutations in Brassica AHAS1 and AHAS3 genes that confer increased imidazolinone tolerance to commercial cultivars. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | USPTO Backgrounds |
Contemporary Orthodoxy is the Field of Grace’s Action
It has been stated some decades ago that the ecclesiology would be in the focus of the theological thought for many years ahead. This prediction appears to be true. The issues discussed below are derivations from the ecclesiological problematic. At the same time, they are not theological abstractions, but the real problems which the Orthodox Churches worldwide live and contend with in accomplishing their mission. I see my primarily task here to identify those problems.
One of the basic principles of the Orthodox ecclesiology (teaching on the nature of Church) is that there is only one holy catholic and apostolic Church, which exists here and now as an empirical, and not just eschatological reality. The Orthodox completely identify their communities with this Church.
As for other Christian communities, which they sometimes call heterodox, there is a variety of views on their relation to the only true Church. Some Orthodox unquestionably refuse to recognise in those communities the true Church of Christ. Some believe that those communities have certain elements of the true Church. It is however out of the Orthodox tradition to recognise in those communities the fullness of Christ’s Church. All these beliefs make the Orthodox Church belonging to the family of Churches that support the Una sancta ecclesiology.
How these beliefs correspond to the everyday realities of the Orthodox Church? Are they compatible with the problems that the Orthodox Church faces and the weaknesses that the people from outside observe in her life?
It has been stated some decades ago that the ecclesiology would be in the focus of the theological thought for many years ahead. This prediction appears to be true. The issues discussed below are derivations from the ecclesiological problematic. At the same time, they are not theological abstractions, but the real problems which the Orthodox Churches worldwide live and contend with in accomplishing their mission. I see my primarily task here to identify those problems. I do not feel myself able to give solutions to them. The only thing I will tray to do is to give a different prospective to those problems. May be, from apparent disadvantages of the Orthodox everyday life they turn to be advantages?
Between hierarchism and conciliarity
Although the Orthodox believe that their Church constitutes one single body, institutionally, it is a complex system of communities, which are structured hierarchically. It is a common belief that there is a strict hierarchy in the Orthodox Church. This is true, though partly. The Orthodox Church is in fact a fellowship of the Local Churches, without definite hierarchy between them. Also within the Local Churches the conciliar system is quite strong. Alongside the traditional synodal institutions, where mostly Church hierarchs take part, the Orthodox Church retains much of laic participation in the crucial decision-making.
An active laic participation in the Church life was strengthened at the beginning of the XX century. That epoch was marked by radical social changes and revolutions with lower social classes taking upper hand in the political and social life. Similar processes penetrated deep into the life of the Orthodox Churches, having become a sort of ‘socialist’ fashion. In many Local Orthodox Churches the hierarchical synodal system, consisted exclusively of bishops, was transformed into a mixed system, with combination of both hierarchical and laic elements. In the Russian Church, for instance, this ‘socialistic’ trend took shape of a so-called ‘Local Council’ (Поместный Собор). In the Orthodox tradition, the institution of a local council always meant a gathering of bishops only. At the beginning of the XX century, however, under the influence of the social reformations, it was transformed into a sort of clergy-laic congress which included delegates from both clergy and laity. Moreover, this ‘socialistic’ kind of ‘Local Council’ was given an ultimate authority in deciding over the most crucial issues of the Church life.
The same processes happened in other Local Churches. For instance, in the Church of Constantinople, the institution with the highest authority consisted of two bodies (δύο σώματα), hierarchical and laic. A similar institution, Congress of clergy and laity (Κληρικολαϊκὴ συνέλευση) for a long period of time elected Primates of the Church of Greece and took most important decisions in the life of this Church. This list can be continued. Nowadays the institution of mixed hierarchical-laic councils is in decline. Some Local Churches got rid of it long time ago. Some are just in the transition process of coming back to the hierarchy-only councils.
The process of ‘de-laicisation’ of the general councils, however, does not always goes smoothly. In the Russian Church, for instance, some ultimately conservative circles resist it as if it would be betrayal of Orthodoxy. This resistance is rather a paradox. Indeed, laicisation of the conciliar institution of the Church, as it was said earlier, was a trend inspired by the socialist movements of the beginning of the XX century. These movements were liberal and eventually strengthened secularism in the societies and, in some cases, went as far as to the military atheism. When the Church applied laicisation to her conciliar institutions, she in fact absorbed liberal values. Nowadays, those who fervently support the laic element in the conciliar system, are ultimate conservatives who pretend to be keepers of an uncompromised Orthodoxy. They do not realise that what they support is in fact a foreign, socialistic and liberal influence upon the Church happened in the period of the social transformations in the beginning of the XX century.
Of course, what is said above does not mean that the Orthodox Church is strictly hierarchical and lacking laic participation. This is especially clear on the level of elementary communities.
Participation of laity in the life of the elementary communities is so active that sometimes it goes too far. It often happens that priests in the communities are fully subjected to the laic communal councils, without right to have a say. This especially happens in the communities where priests do not have any other income but from their parishioners. This is often the case in the United States and other countries where the Churches are not sponsored by the State. There, many parishes are ruled by rich benefactors practically ruling the parish and not by the parochial priests.
‘Democratic’ elements, as contrary to the principle of hierarchy, exist not only on the level of elementary communities, but also on the level of entire Local Churches. For instance, in some independent or ‘autocephalous’ Churches, the ties between the dioceses and their administrative centre are rather loose. A good example in this regard is the Church of Greece, where the diocesan bishops (in Greece they have title of Metropolitans) enjoy much of independence from their Primate, who is not even considered to be a Head of the Church, but just a president of the Synod. His abilities to impose his will upon the Synod are very limited. Owing to this ‘synodal’ system the Church of Greece is administrated not as a unified single Church with a powerful primate, but rather as a confederation of dioceses with quasi-autocephalous diocesan bishops.
Some ‘democratic’ features can be also distinguished on the level of the inter-Orthodox relations. While the Church of west has a strictly structured hierarchy of the local Churches with the bishop of Rome on top of it, the Church of east is more flexible in this regard. In the eastern Christian world, it is rather unclear what sort of interrelations and hierarchy, if any, between the local Churches should be regarded as traditionally Orthodox. Some believe that the Orthodox oecumene is a sort of confederation of the Local Churches, of which each one enjoys absolutely the same rights and privileges as the others, regardless of their history, size, canonical status (i.e. Patriarchate, Metropolis or Archbishopric). Some believe that the Churches should be separated in two groups, one consisted of ancient Churches (Πρεσβυγενή Πατριαρχεία) which includes the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, on the one hand, and on the other hand those Churches that were established relatively recently (recently means second Millennium). Some interpret this classification as if it would mean that not every local Church has the same rights. For instance, the Church of Constantinople, many believe, is the only that has a right to have dioceses outside her canonical territory.
There is also still a discussion of the nature of the inter-Orthodox relations and autocephaly. What are the local Orthodox Churches at whole? How their unity is related to their independence (autocephaly)? Interesting insights into these matters were given during the recent Meeting of the Primates of the Churches held in Istanbul last October. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in his opening speech criticised the idea of confederation of the Local Churches, which he called ‘autocephalism.’ He particularly focused on abuses of autocephaly which, in his opinion, loosened the ties between the local Churches: ‘This <…> is the healthy significance of the institution of autocephaly: while it assures the self-governance of each Church with regard to its internal life and organization, on matters affecting the entire Orthodox Church and its relations with those outside, each autocephalous Church does not act alone but in coordination with the rest of the Orthodox Churches. If this coordination either disappears or diminishes, then autocephaly becomes “autocephalism” (or radical independence), namely a factor of division rather than unity for the Orthodox Church.’ At the same time, he recognised that there is no authority in the Orthodoxy above the Local Church, and the unity of the Churches is secured not by any papacy-like institution, but by the Churches themselves: ‘We do not, as during Byzantine times, have at our disposal a state factor that guaranteed – and sometimes even imposed – our unity. Nor does our ecclesiology permit any centralized authority that is able to impose unity from above. Our unity depends on our conscience.’
Whatever interpretation is closer to the truth, it appears that the system of the local Churches in the Orthodox world is in some regard more flexible than the system which was shaped in the western Christian world. It may have its downsides, but its advantages are obvious as well. I would call this system a fellowship, which resembles in some sense a commonwealth of the independent states.
Primacy
The vagueness of the ‘horizontal hierarchy’ of the Local Churches applies foremost to the issue of primacy as it exists in the Orthodox Church. There is a variety of interpretations of the meaning of primacy in the Orthodoxy. Those interpretations evolve around a nice yet not very comprehensive formula which was accepted by all the local Orthodox Churches: primus inter pares – ‘first among equals’. This formula, however beautiful it is, does not itemise the rights of the first Church. Neither does it make clear to what extent and in what matters the other Churches should consider positions of the first Church.
It is obvious that the interpretation of the role of the primus depends on how the relations between the Local Churches are interpreted. Those who support the idea of ‘confederation’ of the Churches, would deny any real privilege for the first Church and her primate. Those however who criticise the idea of confederation of the independent Churches want to see a more tangible centre for Orthodoxy. They support the idea that some specific rights should be reserved for the first Church, which is the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
In the variety of the interpretations of what primacy means in the Orthodoxy, there is a consensus at least in one thing – it must not be Roman-like. The fear that some Church one day may take the place of the Roman See is so deeply rooted in the Orthodox consciousness that it can be regarded an essential ‘protestant’ feature of the Orthodox identity. This fear is shared equally by Greeks and Slavs, Romanians and Georgians, regardless of the fact that they had different historical reasons to reject Roman claims for superiority.
At the same time, clearly rejection of the Roman primacy is not a sufficient basis for building up an Orthodox idea of primacy. Studies of the history of the idea of primacy demonstrate that this idea always existed in the East and derived from the Latin idea of primacy. The East never rejected the idea of primacy. It only warned against deviations from the true primacy, as this can be seen, for instance, from the words of the Patriarch of Constantinople John Kamatiros (XIII c.): ‘We agree to venerate Peter as the first disciple of Christ, we agree that his veneration excel the veneration of others, so that he may be glorified for his primacy; we also count the Church of Rome as first in the rank and the honour… However, we do not see that the Scriptures oblige us to recognise her (= the Church of Rome) as either the Mother of the others or as embracing the other Churches.’ (Letter to Pope Innocent III)
The idea of a superficial and not real primacy seems to be new to the Orthodox tradition. This idea appeared as a result of the historical processes when alongside the recognised centre of the Orthodox world, Patriarchate of Constantinople, a new centre appeared, supported by the growing political power of Moscow. The Patriarchate of Moscow was established not just as a fifth in the list of the Orthodox Churches, but as a double of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It is not coincidental that initially there were plans to move the See of the Archbishops of Constantinople to Moscow. These plans never became reality. Nevertheless, they gave a push to establishing a new Patriarchate. This Patriarchate appeared to be the first real Patriarchate established after a long period that followed the era of formation of the Pentarchy of the ‘ancient-born Patriarchates’. Historical researches indicate that the other Patriarchates established before Moscow but long after the ‘elder Churches’ (Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia), were rather ephemeral, only by ‘high name’ – ὑψηλῷ ὀνόματι.
Codification of Canon Law
We have just been talking about such concepts as hierarchy between the Churches and the primacy. These concepts are connected with another important issue, that of the Canon Law in the Orthodox tradition. This issue has the same problem as the issues of relations between the local Churches or of the primacy – lack of certainty. Indeed, there is a number of canons that can be interpreted in various, sometimes contradictory, ways. The most obvious one is canon 28 of the IV Ecumenical council held in Chalcedon, which deals with the issue of jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople. On the base of this canon, the Church of Constantinople claims power over all the communities outside of the traditional jurisdictions, that is to say, in the Diaspora. Some other Churches, first the Moscow Patriarchate, reject any special right over the Diaspora for the Church of Constantinople on the basis of the same canon.
Does the blurriness in interpretations of this and other canons mean that the Canon Law is a weak link in the Orthodox tradition? – I think no. The nature of the Canon Law in the eastern tradition is precedential, like in the British law system. This makes it different from the western Canon Law, which is closer to the Roman legislation system. The canons are either actual historical precedents or they clearly reflect particular problems occurred once upon a time in the life of the Church.
The West at some stage undertook codification of these precedents into abstract rules. Although the East attempted to do the same, such attempts were not successful. An example which is often mentioned in this regard is the Pedalion by St Nikodemos the Hagiorite who lived in the XVIII – beginning of the XIX centuries. Many believe that Pedalion was an ‘eastern’ attempt of codification of the canons. I personally think that this is not exactly true. St Nikodemos in fact undertook extended interpretations of the canons. His work is not a codification of the canonical cases, but rather a collection of scholia on the canons, a genre traditional for the Orthodox Canon Law and implemented in the works of other eastern canonists.
Because of the precedential nature of the Orthodox Canon Law, the judicial system in the Orthodox Church is ‘personified.’ The right to judge is concentrated mostly in the hands of bishops or gatherings of bishops. They, on the one hand, exercise judgement on the basis of the historical precedents described in the canons. On the other hand, they investigate concrete situations, which they try to interpret in terms of the ancient precedents. So, at the basement of the Orthodox judicial system, there is interpretation, and not a universal rule, there is personality of bishop, and not an apparatus of judicial clerics. Probably, this is why the institution of the Church courts remains rather undeveloped in the Orthodox world.
The interpretational character of the Orthodox Canon Law is one of the reasons why there is so much unclearness about the issues which were considered earlier, namely the relationships between the Local Churches and the role of the primus inter pares. In fact, there are too many interpretations of these issues, which do not always help to come to consensus.
However, this does not mean that the consensus is unachievable. It need some more negotiations and talks to reach a common understanding of these issues, which the Orthodox constantly do. The interpretational character of the Orthodox Canon Law allows various ecclesiological concepts to float. A historical inquiry into the concepts of autocephaly, autonomy, primacy, etc., allows us to conclude that these concepts were and still are constantly developing. These concepts were always and still are dependent on the concrete political and social circumstances. This, in turn, happened exactly because of the precedential character of the Orthodox Canon Law which is based on the interpretation.
Church and Nation
One of the ecclesiological concepts that underwent dramatic modifications through the centuries is that of the local Church. During its journey through time, the idea of local Church developed from local community to national Church.
A very important notion that pushed this development forward was the notion of canonical territory. This notion is basic to the Orthodox Canon Law, as it is a starting point for any kind of structural organisation of any local Church. At the basement of this notion is the principle ‘one city – one bishop.’ This principle implies that the Church is organised according to geographical criteria and covers neighbourhood of cities. A local Church is the Church of certain territory. Its structure reflects the way in which the cities, which are covered by her, are related to each other. A local Church may be the Church of a province, state, or nation.
Indeed, it was the notion of canonical territory that pushed gradual transformation of a local Church into a national Church. The national Churches emerged surprisingly recently, a couple of centuries ago, when after the French revolution national states started appearing on the soil of the Ottoman Empire. These states which were shaped by the national criteria, wanted the Orthodox Churches on their territories to be organised and functioning on the basis of the same national criteria. And the Churches yielded to these demands of the national states. It does not mean that the process of ‘nationalisation’ of the local Churches went smoothly. There was resistance to it, primarily from the Church of Constantinople which defended the original idea of the local Church being shaped by geographical and not national criteria. However, resistance of Constantinople failed, and in the modern time the idea of local Church is connected with the idea of national Church.
There are also modifications of the concept of national Churches. For instance, the Russian Orthodox Church is not exactly a national Church, but rather multinational, because she embraces many nations that dwell on the territory of the Russian Federation and its neighbourhood. Nevertheless, she has a different attachment, that to the State. Therefore, she is a rather a State Church and her policies are to a large extent dictated by etatism.
Church and State
Etatism is not as bad as it may look at the first glance. At least, the local Churches do not have bad feelings about it, since their attachment to any sort of political power, whether this power has a form of empire, national state, international structures etc., is quite dear to them. Attachment to the state power is one of the characteristic features of the eastern Christian world. This feature should not be condemned a priori, as it has become a logical result of the development of the historical circumstances, on which I should dwell more.
There are two kinds of the local Churches in the Christian world. One kind are the ancient Churches that were established before Constantine and went through severe persecutions from the hostile Roman state. Those Churches have been vaccinated against collaboration with the state and even in the periods of the state favouritism kept memories about state-sponsored persecutions. They know that however nice may be the state in its attitude to the Church, one day it may turn into a hostile enemy. Those Churches try to keep reasonably distance from the state. Some of them, like the Roman Church, went as far as to establishing its own quasi-state structure, to secure at least relative independence from the state. Some, as the Church of Constantinople, worked out mechanisms of symphonia, which allowed clear distinction between the responsibilities of the Church and the state. In my personal opinion, the rationale of symphonia was not so much to harmonise, but to distinguish the realms of the Church and the state. Although the mechanisms of symphonia historically often failed, at least they were declared as an ideal model of coexistence of the Church and the state.
Another kind of the local Churches are those established with a direct involvement of the state authorities: kings, knjazes, vojevodas and so forth. These Churches have a similar pattern of birth. A chief of a people accepted Christianity and then forced his people to do the same. Christianity was spread therefore from above, and the State authority substituted apostolic mission. The Church was established by a commandment and with the direct administrative and financial support of the state. Such a pattern does not bring any negative memory about the state. Something the opposite, in the memory of the people, the very being of the Church remains connected with the state authority.
In the history of these Churches, civil authorities always played an important role regarding many aspects of Church life. They founded monasteries and churches, promoted and installed to high positions their own primates and hierarchs. Sometimes they even decided what doctrine should the Church keep. Probably, the most illustrative example in this regard is the role of the emperors in the doctrinal disputes held in the Ethiopian Church. The official doctrine of this Church, including its Tewahedo Christology, was largely shaped by the imperial decrees.
Although many of these Churches inherited Byzantine symphonia, they easily dropped it, under the State’s demand. This happened, for instance, in the Churches which adopted the so-called synodal system. Most prominent examples of such Churches are in Russia (in the XVIII-XIX centuries) and in Greece (in the XIX century). Synodal system is a way of administering the Churches, which is a result of transformation of the traditional Patriarchal administration to a collective administering performed by the Holy Synod and controlled by the state through its representatives to the Synod. The Church in this situation is turned into a sort of civil ministry of religious affairs. Her policies are supposed to be coherent with the policies of the state.
Quite surprisingly, even though the state, by introducing the synodal system, violated the rights of the Church and specificity of her inner life, the people of the Church, notably the most conservative ones, remained faithful to the political regime that supported the synodal system, even after the fall of that regime. This is the case, for instance, in the Russian Church, where the ‘synodal period’ is considered by many to be a sort of ‘golden age’ for which people feel nostalgia.I do not want to say that such sort of attachment of the people of the Church to a state or to a political regime is good or bad. I just want to say that this is a specific feature of those Churches which were established with the efforts of the state.
Orthodox civilisation
In the recent years, the issue of the so-called Orthodox civilisation is widely discussed by many Orthodox theologians and publicists. This issue was initially raised not by the Orthodox. For the first time it was thoroughly explored in the works of the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. However, it was not his research that made the issue a topic for discussing by the Orthodox, but the works of Samuel P. Huntington. Owing to this American researcher, the Orthodox started developing their own concept of Orthodox civilisation, particularly as opposite to the Western civilisation. According to this theory, Orthodoxy has shaped a huge space with common values. This space embraces traditional Orthodox countries that have close brotherly boundaries. This space and its values are incompatible with the civilisation created by the Latin Church. This incompatibility causes religious, cultural, and political tensions between these two civilisations.
In my personal view, the theory of the Orthodox civilisation, as it is expounded earlier, is not exactly correct. The so-called Orthodox civilisation is something more complicated than what the supporters of this theory think. Indeed, Orthodoxy has had a great deal of influence upon the Orthodox nations, such as Greek, Romanian, Russian, Georgian and so forth. However, it was not only Orthodoxy that had its impact upon them. Also cultural, geographical, national, etc., differences played a decisive role in formation of these nations. Being mixed with Orthodoxy, they shaped the modern profile of these nations. The Orthodox world, thus, is a conglomerate of the nations which, on the one hand, share common features of mentality, keep similar attitude to the basic categories of law, justice, human person, society, etc. On the other hand, the Orthodox nations may be quite dissimilar. They may belong to different and even antagonistic civilisations.
In my opinion, the so-called Orthodox civilisation is actually shared by several geopolitical civilisations: western, eastern, and Arabic. The centre of the western Orthodox civilisation is Constantinople. Moscow is the core of the eastern Orthodox civilisation. Antioch is apparently the centre of the Arabic Orthodox civilisation. Orthodoxy gives to each of the mentioned civilisations its own apochromatism, though it does not melt them into a separate ‘Orthodox’ civilisation.
There are tensions and conflicts that happen between various local Orthodox Churches, which I would explain through the tensions that exist between the global geopolitical civilisations. Thus, I would explain the tensions between Moscow and Constantinople by the civilisational differences of the worlds they represent: actually, these are the tensions between global east and global west. Constantinople managed to consolidate those Churches that belong to the states that opted for the western civilisation, while the Russian Church, following the Russian state, keeps her adherence to the global east. The tensions between the western and the Arab worlds are reflected in the conflicts between the Orthodox Greeks and the Orthodox Arabs in Israel. The Greeks of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem are closer to the pro-western Israeli than to their Arab flock, and this is a source of antagonism between Greeks and Arabs.
A recent war between Russia and Georgia is a sad and yet eloquent illustration of how virtual is the ‘Orthodox civilisation.’ Georgia with its orientation to the western world got a full support from the Georgian Church. The Russian Church fully supported the military campaign against Georgia. Although the two Churches managed to avoid open conflict, a contradiction between their positions is obvious, and these positions are clearly predetermined by the positions of their Governments.
Another illustration of how weak is the concept of the ‘Orthodox civilisation’ is the situation in Ukraine. This country consists of two parts, one of which, in the West, has a strong orientation to Europe, while the other one, in the East, is attached to Russia. Huntington mentions the example of Ukraine as an illustration of his concept of civilisations being shaped by the religious factor. He understands the barrier between east and west of Ukraine as a ‘line that divides Orthodox eastern Ukraine from Uniate western Ukraine’ (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Touchstone, 1997, 37). When researched more accurately, however, the example of Ukraine illustrates exactly the opposite, because in both parts of Ukraine the presence of Orthodoxy is dominating. Both the pro-western and pro-Russian Ukraine are overwhelmingly Orthodox. Moreover, the number of the Orthodox communities in the western Ukraine exceeds the number of similar communities in the eastern Ukraine. Therefore, it is not Orthodoxy that dictates the opposite civilisational choice for the two parts of Ukraine, but the fact that Ukraine is located on the crossroads of two major geopolitical systems, that it equally belongs to the West and to the East.
It should be said in addition that Orthodoxy does not help to reconcile the two antagonistic parts of Ukraine either. Moreover, Ukrainian Orthodoxy itself faces a danger to be split into two parts, alongside the civilisational borderlines within the country. Thus, there are plans to invite the Patriarchate of Constantinople to adopt a part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which has been in the state of schism since early 90-s. As a result, there is a danger of splitting the Church into two parts, one under the jurisdiction of Moscow, and the other one under the jurisdiction of Constantinople. This will cause a major confrontation between Moscow and Constantinople worldwide and in Ukraine. The real reason of this unfortunate confrontation will be not a violation of rights of one of the jurisdictions, but a civilisational choice of one of the parts of Ukraine.
I also believe that the division of the Universal Church into western and eastern parts that occurred in the XI century, was caused not so much by religious or doctrinal factors, but by geopolitical realities that developed independently from religion. Doctrinal differences at that time were exaggerated and abused by the politicians who persuaded their geopolitical goals.
At the same time, it would be an oversimplification to say that the ‘Orthodox civilisation’ is divided by major geopolitical systems, and to put a full stop. Orthodoxy has a power to bridge the gaps between civilisations and overcome geopolitical expediencies. Unfortunately, this was not the case in the XI century, when geopolitics won over the unifying power of Christianity. That mistake should not be repeated now, in the antagonism between Moscow and Constantinople.
As an example of such unifying power I would like to mention the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which brings together Ukrainian west and east, however difficult it is. Nevertheless, she may fail to do this, if two jurisdictions, those of Moscow and Constantinople be established in parallel. This will deepen the civilisational gap between two parts of Ukraine.
Conclusion
In my presentation, I have touched on a few issues that are in the focus of discussions in the Orthodox world. These issues are considered by some observers as weak points of Orthodoxy. Namely, they believe that these issues are the reasons of apparent disunity, internal tensions, and even conflicts within the Orthodox world, inability of the Orthodox to have and demonstrate their unified position concerning various topics. However, I would argue that such evaluations are correct. They seem to be too superficial, because whatever may be considered as problem, at the same time can be an advantage.
Thus, the local Churches may be disunited, too national and state-orientated, but this helps them to be closer to the life of ordinary people and avoid secularisation, which occurs in the western world. The Orthodox Church may be lacking their own Pope, however, this provides more space and responsibility of each Church both in the matters of the global Orthodoxy and in her internal life. The Churches may be missing definite and universal rules, but this urges them to be more creative in self-ordering and self-organisation. In other words, the problems that the Orthodox face due to the specificity of the Orthodox way of life, allow them to be alert and sober, struggling for the pan-Orthodox unity not as something given and constant, but as a goal which should be achieved on the everyday basis. Last but not least, existing problems create a plenty of space for God to intervene in the life of His Church, and make God’s presence always appreciable.
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Orthodoxy, life's purpose, family and society. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
A YOUNG WOMAN
ALONE IN A COLD WORLD
"You have to understand, Hweilan, your world... your cities and walls and castles and fires that keep out the night. Your wizards waving their wands and warriors strutting with their swords on their hips... they think they've tamed the world. Made it serve them. And maybe in their little cities and towers they have. They've tamed it by keeping it out. By hiding."
FIGHTING TO SURVIVE
LONG ENOUGH TO
AVENGE HER DEAD
"But there are powers in the world that were ancient when the greatest grandfathers of men still huddled in caves by their fires and prayed for the gods to keep out the night. These older powers... they don't fear the dark or the things that stalk in it. They revel in the dark. They are the things that stalk it."
THE HUNTER HAS CHOSEN.
"You speak of good and evil. When a wolf pack takes down a doe, are they evil? When a falcon takes a young rabbit, is it evil? Or are they merely reveling in their nature?"
CHOSEN OF NENDAWEN
**Book I**
_The Fall of Highwatch_
**Book II**
_Hand of the Hunter_
December 2010
**Book III**
_Cry of the Ghost Wolf_
December 2011
ALSO BY
MARK SEHESTEDT
THE WIZARDS
_Frostfell_
Slavers stole her son and she would sacrifice everything to get him back. In the uncaring, frozen north, will it be enough?
THE CITADELS
_Sentinelspire_
With the powers of an archdruid at hand, the mad master of the fortress of Sentinelspire will bring death to more than just his enemies—he will call down doom on all of Faerûn.
# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Mr. Ed Greenwood, for creating the Realms and letting the rest of us play in it.
Thanks to Erin Evans, for all her hard editorial work and creative contributions.
And special thanks to Brian Bell of Brunswick, Maine. If the world had more booksellers like Brian, there'd be no such thing as readers with no idea what to read next, and there'd be a lot fewer starving authors.
# PROLOGUE
NAR-SEK QU'ISTRADE.
_A spur of the Giantspire Mountains thrust into the Nar grassland. At its tip a fissure splits the mountain, only wide enough for two riders to go abreast. The Shadowed Path locals named it, for so high is the rock that even in summer the sun only shines into the path for a short time_.
_At the end of the path the fissure opens into a valley—a_ _great basin of grass, surrounded by high cliffs. For generations the Nar used the valley as a winter refuge, one of the few places where rival tribes maintained an oath of peace_.
_In the year 1371 DR, King Gareth Dragonsbane of Damara_ _obtained permission from Thalaman Harthgroth—the closest thing_ _the Nar had to a supreme ruler—to mine the eastern slopes of the Giantspire Mountains. What began as a trickle of hopeful Damaran miners soon grew into a flood_.
_Then a warrior named Ondrahar, recently granted titles for service to his king, came to Nar-sek Qu'istrade to found a permanent settlement and a new order of knights, sworn to the service of Torm_. _All peoples—Damarans, Nar, Vassans—were welcome, provided_ _that they maintained the peace_.
_The Nar had long been content to fill the valley with their tents for a season and then move on, but the newcomers desired a more permanent home. The shallow caves that lined the walls of the valley were a start, but their first year the settlers began expansion.Skilled stonemasons from Damara carved the caves into halls and rooms. When rich deposits of bloodstone and iron were found in the surrounding hills, dwarves began to settle the area_.
_In the year 1375 DR, work on a mountain fortress began. Highwatch, the Damarans named it, for its towers perched on the peaks and looked out upon the steppe for miles. Here the Knights of Ondrahar made their home, and their lord took the title High Warden_.
_In the years since, the fortunes of Damara have waned, and Narfell has grown colder. But under the wisdom and fair hand of the High Warden, Highwatch has become a bastion of prosperity and safety in the Bloodstone Lands. Walled in by the mountains themselves and watched by the Knights, Highwatch has enjoyed generations of peace_.
—Uluin of Merkurn, _Annals of Soravia_ , 1454 DR
# CHAPTER ONE
HE CROSSED THE FROZEN STREAM, KNOWING HIS pursuers would not. The knowledge of what lurked on the mount—the fear of it—would hold them back.
Still they might loose a few arrows if they caught sight of him. So he moved on. Over the ice-slick rocks of the riverbank, through the winter-bare branches of the trees that leaned over the river like eager listeners, and on into the deeper shadows of the pines.
He'd made it. He was... not free. But he was away from _them_.
Up the slope he ran, crouching under branches thick with snow, finding his way as much by scent as sight, for the pines blocked out the starlight. His boots kicked at old bones—and some not so old. But he kept going, up and up, to the very height of the hill. He knew the futility of trying to run or hide. His only hope was to find the horror before it found him.
Bare of trees, the summit gave him a wide view of the lands below. To the north, the peaks of the Icerim, starlit snow creased with black rock, a wall against the sky. Southward, the wooded hills fell away into the steppes of Narfell.
He had never been to this place, but he had visited others like it in other lands, had stood vigil while others sought the secrets in the holy places of the land—the Hearts. A thick tower of bare rock broke from the soil of the mount. Cracks and fissures marred it from top to bottom. Frost filled them, reflecting the starlight and giving the entire rock the appearance of being shattered by pale light.
Except near the bottom, where the largest fissure opened into blackness—the cave leading to the Heart. It waited like an open mouth, a jagged row of icicles making it seem not so much to yawn as prepare to bite. The breeze, which down in the valley had only whispered in the topmost branches, quickened to a wind and howled over the cave mouth.
A new light rained down upon the height. He looked up. The rim of the moon was climbing over the mountains. The full moon. Called by his people the Hunter's Moon. That meant—
All at once, he knew he was not alone on the mount. Eyes watched him. Hungry mouths tasted his scent on the breeze. The very air held a Presence.
He turned and looked back down the slope.
Eyes burned from the moving shadows under the trees. Dozens of them. Some large and close to the ground, their gazes mean and hungry. Wolves' eyes. Winged silhouettes watched him from the treetops, and dozens upon dozens of shadows hopped and flapped against the white background of the snow. Ravens.
_Why have you come?_
The voice thundered in his head, so strong that he fell, his knees breaking through the snow. He caught himself on both hands. The sharp rocks under the frost scraped the skin from his palms.
From the trees came the howl of wolves and the caw of ravens. They did not advance. Still, their meaning was clear. _You are surrounded. You are caught_.
He looked back to the cave, and something tugged his gaze upward.
The rising moonlight fell on a figure crouched on the rocks above. Larger than a man, his frame thick with muscle, his flesh patched with scars. Clothed in ragged skins, some of which still dripped and steamed in the cold air. Antlers rose like a twisted crown from the skull he wore as a mask, and from within the sockets his gaze burned with green fire. In his right hand he gripped the shaft of a long spear, its black iron head barbed. His left hand dripped blood.
Nendawen. Master of the Hunt.
_Why have you come?_ said Nendawen.
"Salvation from my enemies," he said.
_And who are you?_
"Lendri," he said.
_You know the covenant. To come without sacrifice means death_.
Lendri felt the world shake around him, and a great roar filled his ears. He opened his eyes—he could not remember closing them—and looked up into the visage of the Hunter. Nendawen stood over him, the point of his spear on Lendri's throat.
_I see no sacrifice_.
"My sacrifice awaits you in the valley. A living sacrifice. Not one. I brought many."
_You_ brought _nothing_ , said Nendawen. _They pursued you. And now you come to me, begging me to save you_. He crouched, the spear never wavering, and brought his head close, the skull mask only inches from Lendri's face. The stench of death washed over Lendri, thick and close. _You have blood on your hands. The blood of a king_.
"Y-yes."
_You are an exile. Cast out from your clan. Your people gone from this world. Returned home in victory. But you? Left behind in dishonor_.
Lendri said nothing. He knew these things already.
_But did you know that our victory was incomplete? Your people returned home, yes, but to a home despoiled by Jagun Ghen. We_ _defeated him in the end, but he fled our vengeance. Did you know this?_
"N-no."
_Jagun Ghen escaped. Fled the Hunting Lands. Fled_ here. _To this world. And here you are, Lendri, killer of kings_.
It was not a question, but Lendri could see that Nendawen waited for a response. The point of the spear touched his throat, pressed, drawing blood.
"Wh-what do you want, holy one?"
_What I ever want_ , said Nendawen. _Blood. I want Jagun Ghen, him and all his ilk, delivered to me_.
Lendri swallowed. He could feel the movement of his throat touching the cold iron of Nendawen's spear.
_What do_ you _want, little one?_
"I..." He'd come here looking for no more than a night's safety. But Nendawen's question seemed to ask for more.
_Salvation, you said. From your enemies_.
"Yes."
_I grant your request_ , said Nendawen.
Gratitude filled Lendri, but he said nothing.
_This night, under the Hunter's Moon, I will hunt. Those sniffing your trail will not survive to see the sun. But when the Hunter's Moon sets, I may hunt no longer_.
"Wh-why are you telling me this?"
_Jagun Ghen cannot be allowed to roam free. In the Hunting Lands, Jagun Ghen almost conquered. Only hundreds of years of blood and sacrifice vanquished him. Here, in this corrupt world beneath its cold stars, Jagun Ghen could become a god. This cannot be allowed. You know the pact. In our holy places, within the shrines, I may enter this world, but beyond... only my sight may roam, except under the Hunter's Moon. Other nights, and days beneath the sun... another must hunt in my place. My Eye requires a Hand_.
"What has this to do with me?" Lendri said, though he feared he already knew the answer.
Thunder shook the sky, and a deep rumbling filled the earth, and Lendri realized that Nendawen was laughing.
_You are not to be the Hand of the Hunter. You may have ties to this world, but you are of the Hunting Lands... heart, soul, and blood. To hunt Jagun Ghen, I require one who is of this world_.
Lendri swallowed. He could feel a trickle of blood running down his neck from where Nendawen's spear had pierced it.
_You will bring me my chosen Hand_ , said Nendawen. _Do this, and you may return to the Hunting Lands. When next the Hunter's Moon rises, I will have my Hand, or I will have your blood, Lendri, killer of kings_.
"How will I find this... Hand?"
_Hunt_.
"And how will I know him?"
_She carries death in her right hand_.
# CHAPTER TWO
HWEILAN?" THE LADY MERAH LOOKED UP, HER GAZE catching the young woman in the shadows. "Hweilan, is that you?"
Lady Merah was sitting on a bench near the far wall of the garden. Her long hair wafted unbound in the morning breeze, save for a braid over each ear. Scith leaned against the wall behind her, his thick arms crossed over his chest. Where she was lithe and fair to the point of paleness, he was dark and thick, giving the impression of immovable stone. Deep lines creased the corners of his eyes, and a bit of gray had begun to pepper the hair over his temples, but middle age had not softened him.
Hweilan stood in the corridor that led from the eastern towers to the garden. Clear sunlight bathed the garden. It gave little warmth. Her breath steamed in the air before her. The priests' calendar proclaimed that spring was here, but one would never know it. Both Merah and Scith wore heavy cloaks, rimmed in fur. But Hweilan wore only her 'rough" clothing—suited for a day spent outside the castle walls: thick breeches, her heaviest tunic, jerkin, and boots. She had left her room in such haste that she hadn't donned a coat or cloak.
"How long have you been standing there?" said Merah. Her voice was firm, but Hweilan saw the look of guilt on her face. She was trying to hide it, but Hweilan knew her mother too well.
"I saw nothing I shouldn't, if that's what you're worried about," said Hweilan. "Is it true?"
"Is what true?" said Merah.
"That I am being sent away," said Hweilan. She walked across the courtyard. It was broad as a tourney field, surrounded by a low wall not far from the edge of a fifty-foot drop to another courtyard below. A grove of windbent pines, frosted in snow, grew in the middle of the garden, surrounded by bushes and shrubs that sprouted bright white and blue flowers in the summer. Their branches were bare and sparkled with rime. Ivy clung to the walls, forming a ring of green about the place.
The Garden of First Light. So called because it was the best place in Highwatch to watch the rise of sun and moon. Merah often came here for the latter. Though she worshiped in the temple of Torm along with the knights and the rest of the household, her heart had always tended more to Selûne. Hweilan had vague memories of other rituals dedicated to the minor gods of her mother's people. The Lady Merah was only half human. Raised among elf "barbarians" (a term Hweilan's grandmother was fond of using until her grandfather had put a stop to it) in the east, Merah had clung to her people's faith even after wedding Hweilan's father. But after her father's death, things had changed. Too many things.
Merah sighed and said, "Who told you?"
"Grandmother. I called her a liar. But it _is_ true. Isn't it?"
Merah looked away, and it gave Hweilan a small flicker of hope. There was little love between her mother and her father's mother. If this was the doing of her grandmother, then her mother might—
"You will apologize to your grandmother," said Merah.
_"What?"_
"She should not have told you yet, but you will show her—"
"It _is_ true!"
"You are not being "sent away,' Hweilan. In these troubled times, alliances are important. You are going to accompany a delegation to Soravia where you will be—"
"Married off! To the highest bidder, is that it?"
"No one is forcing you."
"Really? Then I will stay here."
"You will not," said Merah. "Your family has decided—" "Who?"
The first hint of anger entered Merah's voice. "Who what?"
"You said our family has decided." Not true. She had said _your_ family. Not _our_. But Hweilan knew that sting—had felt it herself. "Was it grandfather or grandmother? I know Uncle Soran would never—"
"Hweilan, calm yourself." Merah moved over to one side of the bench—away from Scith—to make room. "Please sit. We will—"
"I don't want to sit," said Hweilan.
"Hweilan!" Merah stood to her full height. She was a formidable woman, her beauty undiminished by middle age, and she looked down on her only daughter. "You will _not_ interrupt me again."
Hweilan ground her teeth, breathing heavily through her nose, and held her mother's gaze. She gave Scith a sidelong glance. He looked elsewhere.
Hweilan looked away. "I won't go," she said.
"And what will you do? Spend your days wandering the wild and hunting with Scith? You're not a little girl anymore. You will serve your people and your family."
"How? By bedding some fat lordling's son? How does that serve my people?"
"No one is forcing you into marriage, Hweilan."
"Really?"
"A delegation is going to Soravia to solidify relations between our houses. Your Uncle Soran is going as well."
"But he isn't staying," said Hweilan.
"You will be fostered there for at least one year in hopes—"
"I know what hopes are. The duke's son—and heir, grandmother was quick to point out—is ready to marry."
"Your grandmother... misspoke," said Merah.
"Did she?"
Merah sighed. "Hweilan, you're seventeen. You're a member of a noble house. Did you really think you were going to spend the rest of your life wandering the wilds?"
"I can serve my people here."
"How?"
Hweilan scowled. She had no good answer for that, and it made her even angrier.
"Perhaps you will," said Merah. "But for now, you will go. As soon as the Knights deem the Gap safe for travel—"
"The Gap is never safe, no—"
Merah's voice rose to override her daughter's. "—you _will_ go west, and you _will_ conduct yourself in a manner worthy of your family. You will _not_ shame me or this house." Her mother closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and softened her tone. "I will not lie to you, Hweilan. Your grandmother hopes that you will marry this duke's son. It would bring a strong alliance between our houses. And who knows? He might be a fine man. But your grandmother does not rule Highwatch, and she does not rule my children. You are going. If things warm between you and the duke's son... well and good. If not, I promise that you will not be forced into anything."
Hweilan could feel tears welling in her eyes, but she squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, forcing them back.
"You will go to Soravia," said Merah. "If your fate lies elsewhere... so be it. But heed my words, daughter. Your childhood is over. You must find your fate, or it will find you."
Hweilan turned her back on them and walked away.
"We have her, my lord."
Guric turned to look at the man who had spoken. Argalath stood enveloped in dark robes and a deep cowl. The skin of the hands that protruded from his robes was mottled sickly white and covered with patches of blue. Argalath's entire body—every hairless inch of it—had been so scarred after encountering spellplague.
The last of the day's light was bleeding from the sky, but in the high valley night already held sway, and the men had lit torches against the dark. Even their meager light pained Argalath.
"The seals...?" said Guric.
"Unbroken," said Argalath. "All went as planned."
Guric let out a great breath. "I..." He struggled to find the right words, then settled on, "Thank you."
Argalath bowed.
Guric pushed past Argalath and through the graveyard gates. The common folk of Highwatch and Kistrad buried their dead outside the village walls in the valley of Nar-sek Qu'istrade. The Nar burned their dead in elaborate rites in the open grassland beyond the Shadowed Path. The dwarves had carved elaborate crypts in the deep places of the mountain. But the Damarans, so far from home, still clung to their old ways. The High Warden's family had elaborate tombs farther up the mountainside, but the other Damarans of Highwatch buried their dead here, in a small valley on the mountain above the fortress, accessible only by a small path, too narrow even for horses. The hardship in getting here was part of the point. Damarans were a hard people, a proud people.
When the day's work had begun, the light had still been strong in the sky. But after the first few strikes of the workmen's picks, Guric had fled the graveyard. The sounds of iron and steel breaking through the frozen earth had been too much for him. Every blow only served to remind him of what lay below—and of what he was about to do.
The men—a few Damarans, who were loyal to Guric, overseeing the work of Nar, who were loyal to Argalath—stood round an open grave. The Damarans held their torches high, and inky smoke wafted up into the dead air. Before them, the Nar stood over a long bundle, and one of them—one of Argalath's acolytes, Guric knew by his shaven head—was carefully using a horsetail brush to clean away the bits of frozen earth.
"My lord!" Argalath called from behind him.
Guric slowed, not because of Argalath but because of what lay before him. It looked like a large bundle of supplies, wrapped in fine linen, various symbols drawn round the knots of cord that bound it.
"Valia..." said Guric.
"My lord, please," said Argalath. "We must not break the seals until we have the blood."
Guric took one step forward. "I must see her."
"No." Argalath grabbed Guric's shoulder.
Guric looked down. "Unhand me, Argalath."
There was no anger in the words. No threat. Guric was not a man to threaten. People did as he told them or suffered the consequences.
Argalath released him and bowed. "My lord, I beg you. Seeing her now will only bring you pain. We are so close, so close..."
Guric looked down at the bundle. At his wife's corpse. He had not seen her in three years, and that last sight had haunted his dreams since.
"Those who wronged you," said Argalath, his voice pitched for all to hear, 'who wronged _her_ , must pay."
Guric contemplated all that lay before him. His mouth felt very dry. "There is no other way?"
"No. Kill them. Kill them all, my lord. And save the youngest for last. Her blood shall bring Valia back to you."
# CHAPTER THREE
ONLY ONCE BEFORE HAD HWEILAN EVER FELT SUCH utter, black despair. Worse than fear was the certainty of hopelessness, and she had truly felt it only once. It wasn't the day she'd been told her father was dead. That day had been confusion. At ten years old, Hweilan had not been able to fathom the thought of a world without her father.
Until she saw his body. That had been the day. Her mother had insisted. Her child was the offspring of warriors, through both mother and father. She could weep. She would grieve. But she would not shrink from the stark reality of death.
Merah had taken Hweilan to the temple where her father's body lay, tended by priests in preparation for the last rites of the Loyal Fury. Her mother ordered everyone from the room and took Hweilan to the granite slab.
Hweilan did not resist. She was, in fact, curious in the way all children are. She had seen death before. Sheep, swiftstags, horses, even people. But never someone she knew. Never someone she loved.
Her father lay on the slab, draped in white linen up to his chest. She could not see the wound that had killed him. She'd heard the priests call death "eternal rest," but one look at her father, and there was no mistaking him for being asleep. His eyes were closed, but the sunken cheeks and colorless pallor of his skin, gray as the stone on which he lay, and just as lifeless...
She reached out with one hand. Her mother didn't stop her. She touched her father's cheek. It was cold and stiff, though slightly yielding, like when the outer layer of a damp cloak froze on a winter's night. It was the most awful thing she'd ever felt.
"He's dead," Hweilan said.
"Yes," said Merah.
That was when the reality had hit her.
"Who will take care of us?"
Her father had been there the day Hweilan took her first steps. He had heard her first words, begun her lessons in fighting with blade and spear, had stayed up with her through the long nights of winter, telling stories by the fire. It had never entered into her darkest fears that he would no longer be there.
"We must care for each other now," Merah said. She turned Hweilan from her father and knelt before her. "I have something for you," she said, and reached into the folds of her robes. She withdrew a small sheepskin bundle, bound with a leather cord, and handed it to Hweilan.
"What is it?"
"Look."
Holding the bundle in one hand, Hweilan worked at the knot with the other. She could feel something hard within. She peeled back the soft folds of the bundle. Nestled within was a sort of spike, slightly curved and yellowish brown like horn. Slightly longer than her ten-year-old hand. She touched her finger to the point. It was sharp. The other end broadened into a sort of handle, and little notches had been cut into it.
"My people have given these to their children for generations," said Merah.
"What is it?"
"A _kishkoman."_
_"Kishkoman,"_ Hweilan said in a whisper of awe. _"Kish..."_ She searched her memory. Her mother had taught her little of her native tongue, but this word she knew. "Knife."
"Very good, Hweilan." Merah smiled, though tears were thick in her eyes. _"Kishkoman_ means whistle-knife."
"Whistle-knife?"
Her mother took the horn knife, put one of the grooves to her lips, and blew.
A sound pierced Hweilan's ears, high and so sharp that it seemed to cut right into the center of her head.
Her mother lowered the _kishkoman_ and smiled. "You heard it?"
"Yes. It hurt."
"I was afraid you might not. But the blood of my people runs strong in you."
Hweilan said nothing. Simply stared at her gift. For her last birthday, her family had given her dresses, gowns, cloaks, jewelry, and a doll of silk. Gifts fit for the granddaughter of the High Warden. But gifts for a little girl. Soft gifts. This was far better.
"It is made from the antler of a young swiftstag buck," her mother said. "Among my people, mothers give them to their children when they are old enough to go off on their own at times. The whistle is beyond the hearing of most folk. But our people, Hweilan, we are... not like others. If you find yourself in danger, if you need help, blow this, and we will hear."
"But what if you are too far to hear?"
Merah's smile did not lessen, and in her eyes, behind the tears, a new light shone. Not pleasure. Not even pride.
Ferocity.
"Then you use it like this."
Her mother brought the sharp horn around in a punch so swift that Hweilan heard it cutting the air. Merah's fist stopped with the point of the _kishkoman_ touching the soft flesh behind Hweilan's chin.
Eyes wide, breath caught in her throat, Hweilan looked up at her mother and saw not the widow of the High Warden's only son, not a grieving wife, but a barbarian queen, proud and fierce.
"Your father is dead, Hweilan. Death comes to us all. Many in this world are stronger than you. They may try to take your life, and they may succeed. But you must never _give_ it to them. Make them pay, Hweilan. Make them pay."
Hweilan sat on the ground near her father's tomb, thinking on these things.
The final resting places of the family of the High Warden were high above the fortress. The cemetery was on a wide shelf of rock that looked down upon Highwatch. Boulders and tough bushes, their thick leaves green year round, were the only wall. Rugged, scraggly pines, their gnarled roots clinging like talons to the broken rock, lined the path to the graveyard before spreading out into a small grove that separated the tombs from the path. Rather than digging into the hard rock to bury the dead, thick stone coffins lay in the yard in even rows. Over two score in all, and only four of them empty. They were simple in design, unadorned save for the inscription bearing the name of the deceased and a few words of devotion to Torm. Of all the bodies laid to rest here, her father was the only one she'd known.
That had been the darkest day of her life, but her mother had given her hope and courage to face a world that had suddenly seemed uncertain and decidedly cruel. But she had still been a girl then. A girl who needed her mother. And now, her mother was part of that cruel world. Had it always been so? Was that realization what it meant to become an adult?
_You're not a little girl anymore. Your childhood is over. You must find your fate, or it will find you_. Her mother's words.
Hweilan reached under her leather jerkin and pulled out a braided leather thong, old and weathered with age. The _kishkoman_ hung from it. She seldom went without it, and even after all these years, the point was still sharp. Once, while hunting with Scith on the open steppe, she had fallen down an ice-slick slope, landed hard, and the _kishkoman_ had given her a nasty cut.
Scith...
Of the Var tribe, he had served the High Warden as his chief advisor and ambassador to the Nar tribes. But after the death of Hweilan's father, Scith had been much more than that to her. Hweilan had taken to following Scith when he went onto the steppe to meet with the tribes or to hunt. The first few times, she had sneaked away, and after being caught, she had been punished. But her mother—and much to her surprise, her grandfather—had spoken for her. It would be good for one of the family to learn the ways of the land and the native people.
The priests taught her to read and write, and instructed her in history and the faith. But it was Scith who gave her the education she loved. How to speak the native tongue of the Nar. How to track both beasts and men. How to find shelter and survive the harsh Nar winters. How to hunt and live off the land. He was a good teacher. Hweilan loved him like a beloved uncle, both mentor and confidant.
Hweilan missed their closeness, and the division that had grown between them hurt like a thorn under the skin.
Hweilan had not been the only one in need, not the only one with a hole left by her father's death. As one of the chief servants of the house and Hweilan's teacher, Scith spent much time with the family. He and Merah had grown close. Many whispered that they had grown too close. Hweilan had even heard it said in Kistrad that Scith the Var had found enough favor in Highwatch that he now shared the Lady Merah's bed. The looks that some in the household gave her mother told Hweilan that the rumors were not isolated to the common folk. Had they been lies, Hweilan would have known how to deal with them. But the plain fact was that Hweilan feared there might be some truth to the rumors.
It had soured her friendship with Scith. She still took lessons from him, still sometimes accompanied him among the tribes, but their once warm affection had turned cold. He had not said anything to her. A Nar warrior did not speak of such things. But she sometimes saw the regret in his eyes.
"Find your fate, or it will find you," Hweilan muttered to herself. She looked at the stone coffin that held her father's body. Sometimes, no matter what choices you made, fate found you anyway. Found you, smashed you to the ground like some great wheel, then just kept on rolling, merciless and uncaring.
Swift shadows passed over the ground. Hweilan looked up. The sun was no more than a blurry disk in the gray murk of the sky, and beneath it several winged shapes circled. Even as she watched, one of them tucked its wings and dropped.
Scythe wings were not graceful fliers like hawks or the great mountain eagles, who rode the skies like a fine ship might ride the waves. Scythe wings conquered the sky by brute strength and ferocity. Called _orethren_ by the priests and scholars, the beasts looked like some sort of unholy combination of a monkey, bear, and bat. But they were loyal mounts for the Knights of Ondrahar. The Nar held them in superstitious dread, and the goblin tribes in the Giantspires were absolutely terrified of them. The wing of the _orethren—_ jointed like a bat's, the final spur of which curved forward in a sharp bone—gave them their more common name 'scythe wings."
The beast spread its wings just in time, its free fall turning into a glide that swept the graveyard with a harsh wind as it passed overhead. The pennant whipping behind the rider's back bore the standard of an open gauntlet flanked by two golden wings. It was Soran's standard.
Hweilan stuffed the _kishkoman_ back under her jerkin.
The scythe wing circled back around and settled on the rocks above the tombs. It sniffed the air and glared at Hweilan. Even from the distance of forty feet or more, Hweilan could feel the ground trembling at the roar building deep in its chest.
Horses could not abide Hweilan's presence, nor her mother's. No horses would bear them, and the knights' scythe wings were even worse. A horse would merely roll its eyes and run, only kicking and biting if she inadvertently cornered it. But the scythe wings...
The one time Hweilan had come near, the great beast had tried to swipe her with the great wing bone that earned them their name. Had her Uncle Soran not had the beast under tight rein, Hweilan would have died.
"Easy, Arvund," said Soran. He climbed out of the saddle and stroked the scythe wing to calm him. The creature kept its gaze locked on Hweilan, but its growl changed into something more like a purr, and it lowered its head to rest on a snow-covered rock.
Soran was the single most imposing man Hweilan had ever seen. His elder brother Vandalar, High Warden and Hweilan's grandfather, was taller, but not by much, and Soran's frame was wrapped in thick muscle. Middle age softened many men. Soran had only grown harder, like old oak. And now that even middle age was passing, he was harder still. The Chief Priest of Torm at Highwatch, Commander of the Knights of Ondrahar, Soran was one of the most feared and respected men within five hundred miles. No one who met him ever forgot him. He was solemn to the point of grimness, but he was also the most fair, just, and uncompromising man Hweilan knew. He demanded much from his men and his family, but he demanded the most from himself.
Soran hadn't chosen the best landing place, not that there were many to come by up here, and it took him awhile to get down. He walked up to Hweilan, not removing his helmet, but loosening the straps on the face mask so that it slapped against his chest as he walked. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright from exertion, and his face set in their usual deep lines.
"Well met, Hweilan," he said.
"Why are you here?" said Hweilan.
Soran did not smile, but she saw a gleam of mirth in his eye. "Is that how you greet your uncle?"
"Well met and all hail," she said in a flat voice. "Now why are you here?"
"My brother's wife is convinced that you've run off to marry a Nar chieftain. She has guards searching every cranny of the castle and servants searching Kistrad. Even Guric's men are hounding the fortress for you."
"She rousted the Captain of the Guard?"
"You know your grandmother."
Hweilan looked up at the other knights circling above. They were so high that she just barely made out the wings. "How did she persuade you to send the knights out after me?"
Soran snorted. "Don't flatter yourself. You are a stop along the way. We have other troubles."
"The Nar?"
"Yes."
It was not unusual for many clans to camp in Nar-sek Qu' istrade for the winter. But come spring, most went back into the open steppe to hunt, tend their herds, and feud. It had been much the same this year, but a great many had not moved on. In fact, more had come and were camping just beyond the main gates of the Shadowed Path.
"Your mother told me where she thought you might be," Soran said. "She asked me to come here and ask you to come back."
"Ask me or command me?"
"If this were a command, she'd have come herself."
"Hmph."
Soran opened his mouth to say something, but then his eyes settled on the thing leaning against the stone coffin beside Hweilan: a bow. Unstrung, it was almost as long as Hweilan was tall. Of the finest yew, it had many runes of power etched along its surface—all inscriptions sacred to Torm and the Knights. Seeing it, Soran's jaw tightened, and his nostrils flared. "That isn't a toy, girl."
"I know," she said. She wrapped her hand around the bow. "It was my father's. It's... it's the only thing I have left of him. That and memories. I bring it with me when I come here."
The anger melted out of Soran. "You've never used it?"
Hweilan snorted. "Used it? I can't even string it."
"Why do you carry it now?" said Soran.
She looked down at the bow. "It helps me remember him. He's been gone so long. My memories of him aren't as clear as they used to be. I come here. To remember. To think. To..."
"Honor the dead?"
"Something like that."
From far above them came a cry, harsh and guttural. One of the scythe wings circling overhead. Arvund, still perched on the ledge nearby, snorted and flapped his wings, raising a cloud of frost and grit.
Soran looked up, scowled, then said, "Would you like some advice from your older and much wiser uncle?"
"Not particularly."
His scowl deepened. "Very well, then. How about a request? Don't be so hard on your mother."
"She's sending me away!"
"Don't be foolish," said Soran. "Of course she isn't. That's your grandmother's doing, and you know it. I've met Duke Vittamar's son. I like him. But that wasn't what I meant about being hard on your mother. I meant Scith."
Hweilan flinched as if he'd slapped her. "You've heard? You... _approve?"_
"Hweilan..." said Soran. "Your mother is a woman. Your father has been dead for seven years. You can't expect her to spend the rest of her life alone. I would have thought that you'd be the first to defend her. Scith is a good man. And you know that better than anyone. He devoted his life to our family before you were born. He loved your father as a brother, and your father loved him."
"Then why is he rutting his brother's wife?"
Soran stood very still, not even blinking. All the flush drained from his face, and his white skin was almost pale as his short hair. "You will never speak so of your mother again," he said. "If you do so in my hearing, you will regret it the rest of your days." He stood there a moment, looking down at her, then said, "I'm surprised you listen to those nattering hens."
"You don't?"
"If you'd stop thinking about yourself for half a moment, you'd see," said Soran. Scith loves your mother and she him. That's plain. But they can do nothing about it. For one reason."
Hweilan snorted. "What?"
"You."
"What?" Hweilan realized she was shaking. She hugged herself but couldn't make it stop.
"Think," said Soran. "She has long since passed her time of mourning. But you know how things are in this house. Vandalar loves your mother like his own daughter. But your grandmother rules the house, and you know how she feels about your mother—how she's always felt. Your mother's only status in the household is as the widow of the High Warden's son. If she takes a lover or a husband, it'll be the end of any power she holds—and right now, you stupid, ungrateful, little girl—the _only_ reason she's clinging to that is you."
"Me?" The tears were falling now, and Hweilan scrubbed them away with her sleeve before they could freeze.
"Think. If you're your mother actually took Scith into her bed, married him, if she allowed herself one night of being happy and not being lonely, she could no longer protect you. Your grandmother could marry you off to whomever she pleased—and there are a lot of duke's sons out there _much_ less appealing than Vittamar's."
Hweilan turned her back to him. She couldn't stop the tears, and she hated appearing weak. Especially in front of Soran, who had nothing weak in his entire being. Everything he said made perfect sense. She felt furious at herself for not realizing the blazing obvious sooner. Shame welled in her at her own selfishness. She had been behaving like a little girl. But that still didn't change one simple fact.
Her shame melted before her anger, and she whirled on her uncle. "Highwatch is my home. I won't go!"
Soran took two steps forward, glaring down on her as he did so. "You're going if I have to tie you up and throw you in the wagon myself."
Hweilan opened her mouth to reply, but before she could get a word out, the sound of a horn drifted down from the sky. Arvund let out something between a bark and a roar and flapped his wings.
Soran looked up. One of the riders had come down about half the distance from the others. Hweilan could not make out the details of his pennant, but by the colors—white on gray—she knew it was Soran's second.
"We'll talk later," said Soran as he began to strap the faceplate back to his helmet. "Go home."
# CHAPTER FOUR
HWEILAN SAT FOR A WHILE AFTER SORAN HAD LEFT. She was still angry. She wasn't going to prance off to some western court, dress in gowns, curtsy, and fawn over some spoiled lordling.
But she knew her uncle was right. Her mother was doing her best for her. Or at least what she thought was best.
And so it went, round and round in her head, going nowhere.
Something tingled on the back of her neck.
Something was watching her.
Hweilan looked around. Nothing but row after row of stone coffins, the mountain rising behind them, and the scraggly winter-bare trees that managed to burrow their roots into the rock. Overhead, the scythe wings were long out of sight. Even the blurry eye of the sun, resting on the tip of the peaks, had dimmed behind thickening clouds. No birds. No breeze. Nothing.
But Hweilan knew the feeling. A hunter developed it. Scith said that all beasts had this sense, though it seemed to have gone to sleep among humanity. But those men who spent much time in the wild, who knew the land and became part of it, learned the old ways, the flow of the blood from ancient times... it would waken in them. And like any tool, it could be honed with use.
Hweilan took up her father's bow and headed home, but she decided to take a different path—another of Scith's lessons. The Nar learned to hunt by watching the wolf packs. Wolves knew the ways of the swiftstags, for the large deer were creatures of habit, always following the same paths. A predictable creature was easy prey.
So Hweilan took another path that led her round a shoulder of the mountain and into deeper woods. The feeling of being watched did not lessen.
The sun fell behind the peaks, and the woods dimmed. Shadows fell together and deepened, like a convergence of streams.
Hweilan's new path took her through another graveyard—the one used by the Damarans of Highwatch who were not of the High Warden's family. Situated on broader, more level ground, this yard housed real graves. Gravestones, ranging from small slabs set level with the ground to marble pillars taller than Hweilan, marked each resting place.
Statues of Torm in all his manifestations—a young warrior, a knight mounted on a golden dragon, a venerable knight, and an armored warrior with the head of a lion—stood watch at the four corners of the graveyard, all looking outward. Black iron rails fenced the graveyard between the statues, and the path ran between two gates, one on each end.
Hweilan passed through the first, quickening her pace. The feeling of being watched pressed on her.
She smelled it before she saw it.
The aroma of freshly turned soil. Thick and loamy. Rich. But something else. Beyond smell really. More of a heaviness on the brain. Something... foul.
Then she saw it. An open grave.
No one had died recently. Why would there be a freshly dug grave? Hweilan's throat had gone very dry. She tried to swallow.
Just go, she told herself. Run back. Tell someone.
She lifted one foot to do just that. Then stopped. She'd feel ten times the fool going back without at least having a closer look.
She left the path and took a few steps toward the fresh hole. It was not a new grave. It was an old one. Hweilan read the inscription upon the rectangular pillar of stone at the far end of the wounded ground:
VALIA
BELOVED
Guric's wife. Her death had scarred him deeply.
Hweilan took another two steps. Just enough to peer down.
The soil was almost black, and darkness welled thick inside the open grave. But there was no mistaking what was down there.
The grave was empty.
Hweilan could not look away. She felt locked in time and place. The scent of fresh earth, overlaid by the foul stench, drowned out all other smells. Far away she could hear the wind howling over the peaks, but down here in the steep valleys, the air was still. Not even a breeze. The air, cold though it was, felt heavy and close on the exposed skin of her face.
The open grave, filled with shadow—something about it seemed to pull at her, as if she stood in the midst of water being sucked down into a fissure. Her chin began to fall, and she lurched forward, the open hole seeming to spread out.
Hweilan screamed and stepped back, the spell broken.
Her scream came back at her, faintly, echoing off the mountainsides, which suddenly seemed very close.
A harsh caw came from behind her.
She whirled.
A tall figure stood under the trees, draped in shadows. Man-shaped, but antlers protruded from his skull. A raven sat upon his shoulder.
Hweilan took in a breath—to scream or call for help, she didn't know—and the raven took wing, crying out again and again as it left the graveyard. But her eyes were fixed on the antlered figure.
The shadows thinned under her scrutiny, and she saw that it wasn't a man at all. Just an old stump of a lightning-blasted tree. Another smaller tree behind it, its branches winter gaunt, gave the illusion of antlers. Just a trick of light and shadow.
She let out her breath with relief. Her heart hammered so hard she could feel its pulse in her ears.
Foolish, she told herself. Jumping at shadows.
"Better step away from there. You'll hurt yourself."
Hweilan turned at the voice. Jatara.
Jatara and her brother were the personal bodyguards of Argalath, a spellscarred shaman who had managed to worm his way into the service of Captain Guric. She stood just inside the gate, another man at her back. The woman was dressed in assorted animal skins and untreated leathers. She wore no cloak against the cold, and her pale skin told why.
She was one of the Frost Folk—a people of the far, far north, said to be distant relations of the Sossrim. They had a dark reputation among the Nar and were rarely seen south of the ice fields. Her hair—a blonde so pale that it was only a glimmer away from white—hung almost to her waist, but she shaved the front of her head completely bald. The man behind Jatara was a Nar that Hweilan didn't recognize, though she suspected he was another of Argalath's sycophants. Who else would take company with Jatara?
"What are you doing here?" said Hweilan.
Jatara walked into the graveyard, the Nar at her heels. Sheathed swords bumped against their legs as they walked.
"Many in the fortress search for you," said Jatara. Her command of Damaran was not flawless, but very precise and lightly accented.
"I've been told," said Hweilan. "Have you been following me?"
Jatara stopped at the edge of the path. She cocked her head to the side, almost birdlike, no sign of deference, amusement, or any emotion whatsoever on her face. Just... coldness.
"Why are you here, woman?" Hweilan said again.
"Why are _you_ here, little girl?" said Jatara. The Nar behind her chuckled.
"How dare you!" said Hweilan. "I am the daughter of—"
"I know who you are," said Jatara, her voice still low, calm, completely unaffected by Hweilan's rage. "You will come with me now."
Hweilan was so struck by the woman's casual command, her sheer confidence, that for a long moment she could think of nothing to say.
Jatara motioned to the man, and he walked toward Hweilan.
"Do not give Oruk any trouble," said Jatara. "It makes him... unpleasant."
In that moment Hweilan knew something was very, very wrong. She was in real danger. Servants of the Captain of the Guard did not give orders to the High Warden's granddaughter.
As Hweilan's foot came down, her heel dipped low. She'd come up against the edge of the open grave.
She held her father's unstrung bow in front of her. "Keep away from me."
The Nar's grin widened.
Hweilan turned and leaped over the grave, landing in the pile of freshly turned soil.
She heard the Nar grunt in mild surprise at her move.
On her hands and knees in the grave soil, her father's bow still clutched in one hand, Hweilan turned to look at them. Jatara had still not moved. But the Nar was coming around the foot of the grave, his smile gone. He reached out one hand to grab her.
Hweilan turned and threw a handful of dirt in his face.
He stood back, sputtering and rubbing at his eyes.
Hweilan rose to her knees and swung the bow at his head. It connected about two-thirds of the way down the shaft. The Nar stumbled from surprise more than any real pain. But it put him off balance.
Scith had taught Hweilan to fight. Nar methods were neither graceful nor fair—at least by Damaran standards. The Nar were brawlers and completely unashamed in fighting with fists, feet, elbows, knees, and teeth.
Pivoting on one knee, Hweilan brought her other leg around in a wide swipe. The thick, flat toe of her boot connected with the side of the Nar's knee.
He cried out—in real pain this time—and crumpled. One leg slid into the open grave. Overbalanced and caught completely by surprise, he tumbled in.
Jatara still had not moved. The woman crossed her arms beneath her breasts, blinked once, and said, "Impressive. But you are still coming with me."
Hweilan came to her feet running, leaping gravestones and dodging monuments. She threw her father's bow between the iron rails of the fence, then leaped atop it.
"Hweilan!"
Jatara's voice, raised for the first time, stopped Hweilan cold. She turned. The Nar was struggling to climb out of the open grave. Jatara stood over him, but her eyes were on Hweilan.
"My orders," said Jatara, "are to bring you to the fortress. Alive. But I was not told 'unscathed.' Force me to chase you, girl, and I promise you, you will be... scathed."
Hweilan tumbled over the fence, grabbed her father's bow, and ran.
Raised in Damara among formidable citadels, Guric had come east to foster relations between his family and the High Warden. He expected these colonials to dwell in hovels of stone, scarcely finer than swept-out caves. How wrong he had been. Highwatch was not the most beautiful fortress he had seen, but in terms of martial defense, there was none finer.
From the watchtowers on a clear day one could see for a hundred miles into the open grassland. At Highwatch's feet, surrounded on all sides by cliffs, was the bowl-shaped valley of grass the Nar named Nar-sek Qu'istrade. The only way through the cliff wall was the narrow way of the Shadowed Path, where only a few horsemen could ride abreast. Even if half the Nar in existence had laid siege outside the Shield Wall, no large-scale charge could make it through the Shadowed Path, and with the Knights' scythe wings able to bring in supplies or drop flaming pitch on any besiegers, no army in Narfell could siege the fortress. As a knight, Guric had admired the fortress, perhaps even envied those who dwelled there, but it had not been home.
Until he met Valia.
Her family had fallen out of favor with King Yarin. Forced to flee their ancestral home with only what possessions they could carry, Valia's father had taken them into the Gap, deciding to take his chances against the goblin and ogre tribes of the mountains rather than wait for Yarin's forces to catch up with them. A third of their company died before they made it halfway, and they lost more daily to raids and the cold. Had Soran and his knights not found them and come to their aid, they would never have made it.
Homeless, branded traitors, with no wealth save what they had carried, Valia's family had begged protection from Vandalar. He granted it.
Guric, still in his first year at Highwatch, had been among the soldiers sent into the Gap to bring the refugees to Highwatch. Never had he seen such a pitiful sight. Frightened out of their minds, freezing, and half-starved, there was nothing aristocratic about the sorry company. It was hard to tell noble from servant. But one look at Valia, and Guric had eyes for no other. His heart was hers.
Later that year, when the storms lessened and messenger hawks could again make it across the mountains, Guric had written to his father, begging his blessing to marry Valia. His father had refused. Not just refused. Forbidden. His son and heir would not marry some vagabond outlaw's daughter. Their family could not afford such an affront to Yarin's authority. He demanded his son return at once.
Guric's final reply was short and to the point. He withdrew all claims to inheritance, lands, and titles. He would marry Valia and live, with honor, in Highwatch. The High Warden had not encouraged the decision, but he had accepted it and given Guric a place in the household.
Guric never heard from his father again.
He and Valia married, and for over a year, Guric had never known such happiness. He had something he had never felt before: a home and hope. He knew his place in the world and loved it.
But then came the fever. Most thought it had first started among the Nar, who lived in such scattered groups that it did little damage. But then people began to sicken in Kistrad. The healers and priests did what they could, and many recovered. But in the close confines of the village, it spread beyond their control. All the medicines of the healers and prayers of the priests could not stop it. Many graves were dug and pyres lit that year.
Valia's father's spirits had never recovered from the loss of his household. He was the first to sicken in Highwatch itself. And the first to die. The disease spread. There seemed to be no pattern. No distinction. The fever struck servants, soldiers, knights, and even the Warden's household. As in Kistrad, some recovered and some did not. To some, the prayers of the priests brought an almost instant recovery. To others, no amount of prayers, litanies, sacrifices, or medicines brought relief. The High Warden's wife was one of the lucky ones. Valia was not.
She sickened not long after her father. It struck lightly at first, and for a while the fever lessened. She was even able to leave her bed at times and sit with Guric upon their balcony that overlooked the little garden. But when her father died, the grief weakened her. Her mother had not survived their journey out of Damara. Her older brother had died defending them in the Gap. With her father gone...
"You're all I have left," she told Guric. Tears came at her words, and that night the fever returned with a vengeance.
She died nine days later.
Soran himself had prayed at her bedside, had offered sacrifices on her behalf, but all to no avail.
"I'm sorry," she said. The last words she spoke to Guric. She closed her eyes and fell into some dark dream from which she never woke.
Guric begged for Soran to perform the rites to raise her, but Soran refused, saying that if his prayers had failed to heal her, it could only be the will of Torm.
"Damn Torm's will!" Guric said.
"That's your grief talking," said Soran. "I forgive you. But don't do it again."
And then Guric had understood. He had thought Highwatch his home. He had thought himself a valued member of a proud and noble house. If not a son, then at least a beloved liege. But in that moment he saw it all for the sham it was. How could he have been so wrong? The Knights spoke of honor and truth and loyalty, of fidelity. But when it really mattered, when nothing else mattered more, it was all empty platitudes.
Guric could not return to Damara. He'd severed those ties. If he went back, he'd return as a beggar. And Guric would beg no more. He would seize what he wanted, and gods help anyone who stepped in his way.
It was Argalath, his favored counselor in his dealings with the Nar, who had first told him of other means to bring Valia back to him. Ways that the Knights would not smile upon. Older ways. Rites that the Nar had performed when they were a great people. But there would have to be sacrifices.
Guric had not balked and, in fact, seized on the notion. He began gathering Damarans who were disaffected with the rule of Highwatch, who felt themselves wronged at one time, or those who simply wanted more. Argalath found allies among the Nar.
Guric had placed his men well. Inside the fortress, they weren't many. The Damarans he could trust numbered less than a score. The Nar, mostly Creel gathered by Argalath, numbered almost a thousand. But they were camped outside the Shield Wall. Just as Guric had planned.
It brought the Knights out of the fortress. A third of the knights or more were out on their usual patrols. A scarce few remained at Highwatch. But the others, led by Soran himself, went to confront the Nar, whom they believed to be the usual winter bands who simply lingered too long. That many Nar gathered this late in the season...
Highwatch, which had once struck Guric with such awe, which he had once believed to be the most formidable fortress within a thousand miles, fell in a single afternoon.
"What are they doing?"
Guric heard the guard's question as he approached the main gate. Before the Damarans had come, this bit of the Shadowed Path had been unworked walls of solid stone. But in the years since, Damaran and dwarf craftsmen had hollowed out tunnels, halls, raised a thick wall at the entrance and exit, and built parapets along the cliff wall, both inside and outside.
The gate guards were all gathered around the doors, both the large main gates and the smaller postern door. Three of the ten had their faces pressed up against the small peepholes. None of the men turned at Guric's approach.
"It'll be over soon," said one. He was taller, older, the beginnings of a paunch straining under his mail. "You just watch."
"Took you long enough," said the first at hearing footsteps behind them. "A man could die of thirst waiting on you." Guric cleared his throat.
The men whirled. Upon seeing their captain and four armored soldiers before them, all the guards whirled and stood straight, their eyes forward.
"Your companion," said Guric, "has others duties now."
"Yes, Captain," said the chief guard.
He let them stew a moment. Then he motioned to the gates. "Anything to report?"
"Lord Soran is circling them now," said the older guard. "The Nar are scattering. Lord Soran will land soon, I expect."
Guric paced in front of the guards, inspecting each one. All stared straight ahead, none daring to meet his gaze. Good. He needed them pliable.
He stopped before the chief guard and said, "I want both main gates opened and an honor guard lined up outside. Now."
The chief guard's eyes went wide. "M-my lord? I... I don't understand."
"The Knights are about to get most of that rabble on the move," said Guric, "but their chiefs are going to come inside to meet with the High Warden. For a good tongue lashing, I expect."
"My lord," said the chief guard, 'we were not told of any—"
"I am telling you now," said Guric. He took a step forward, putting his nose only inches from the guard's forehead. "Are you questioning my orders?"
The guard swallowed. "Of course not, captain."
Guric turned and stepped away. "Then do it."
"You heard him," said the chief. "Double quick! Get those gates open. I want Hailac near the winch. Everyone else, a line on each side, just inside the gate."
"Make that just outside," said Guric, loud enough for all to hear.
The chief guard frowned. _"Outside_ the gate, captain?"
"The Knights are just outside," said Guric. "Are you really concerned about a half-dozen old men riding past?"
The eight men selected to line up outside the gates all looked decidedly paler, but they gripped their spears in steady hands as the large double doors swung open with a creak of frosty hinges and rattling chains.
Light poured inside the path, and Guric got his first good look of the scene playing out before him.
It had still not warmed enough for the winter snows to melt, but most of it had been trampled by the thousand or more Nar camped before the main gates. Tents, rope palisades, fires—all laid out with no semblance of order. Each tribe staked its claim and camped. When the next came along, they found a place and did the same.
A few hundred feet above the plain nine scythe wings circled and swooped like a monstrous murder of crows. One of them let out a roar, and even from the great height it hit the ears with an almost physical force. Guric could hear horses in the Nar camp neighing in panic, and over them the shouts of their masters as they tried to get their mounts back under control. Three scythe wings descended in a wide spiral. Guric saw that Soran led them.
"Good," said Guric. "Here it comes, you bastard."
"Captain?" said the chief guard. He was looking at Guric with wide eyes.
Guric smiled. "The Nar. Soran will give it to them. Won't he?"
The chief gave a nervous laugh. "As you say, my lord."
The guards had lined up facing each other, forming a path leading into the gate. Guric and the chief walked between them. The four soldiers Guric had brought remained just inside the gate.
The nearest edge of the Nar encampment was a few hundred yards away. Even as Guric and the chief guard stepped past the last of the guards and stopped, a large company of horsemen galloped out of camp and headed right for them.
"That doesn't look like a half-dozen old men," said one of the guards behind them.
Guric said nothing. The man was right. He counted a score and one horsemen, all hardened warriors, all holding bows.
"Captain...?" said the chief guard.
"Rest easy," said Guric. "This will all be over soon."
The Nar rode at an easy canter, not hurrying. Beyond them, Soran had landed his scythe wing, and his rear guardsmen were about to do the same. The ground shook with the approach of the horses.
"Those don't look like chiefs either," said the chief guard.
"No?" said Guric. He smiled and stepped forward, raising a hand to halt the warriors' advance.
The horsemen reined in their mounts and spread into a wide arc. Guric had to give the guardsmen credit. They kept their posts. The chief guard looked on the Nar surrounding them with dismay, but he stood his ground and kept his mouth shut.
It wasn't until the Nar reached over their shoulders for their arrows that the Damaran guards broke and ran.
"Captain!" the chief guard screamed, then the first arrow struck his throat.
Guric stood unmoving as arrows flew past him, some close enough that he felt the wind of their passage. He closed his eyes and listened to the dying shrieks of his men. Arrows found their marks, and the four soldiers he'd left inside the gates did their duty with swords and daggers. Some small part of Guric cringed at the sounds. But then he thought of Valia. He remembered feeling the life slip out of her as he held her hand. He could still feel the cold emptiness of her dead flesh as he held her until dawn. The screams of dying Damarans didn't mean as much anymore.
Something wasn't right. Soran's hackles were already up as he landed his mount, and when he saw the Creel, he understood why. Even in the cold, the Creel was naked from the waist up, and every bit of exposed skin had been painted with arcane symbols. On shoulders, chest, and forehead, the symbols had been cut directly into his flesh, and blood ran down his face. A shaman at the least. But by the wild look in the man's eyes, Soran feared he might be one of the demon binders.
Soran called upon the Loyal Fury.
The Creel, chanting a litany in some language that was not any tongue of the Nar, raised one hand, and a tiny ember of light shot out. But as it flew it seemed to feed on the air, tumbling and growing into a ball of flame.
Soran raised his own hand, and the sigils etched into his gauntlet flared. Holy light engulfed him and his guardsmen, and as a river swallows a stream, so the power of Torm swallowed the dark magic of the Creel.
Then the arrows began to fall.
# CHAPTER FIVE
HWEILAN TOOK TO THE TREES AND DID NOT LOOK BACK, weaving through the trunks and stumbling over roots hidden under the snow.
When the ground began to slope under her feet, she realized she'd made a poor choice. These woods ran along the arm of the mountain for a ways, then ended on a rocky escarpment. No paths and far too steep to climb.
Hweilan stopped, realizing she had to make it back to the path.
Then she heard sounds of someone coming through the woods, right on her trail. She couldn't see who it was. Among the pine and spruce that stood like silent sentinels on the hillside, she could discern little more than snow under her feet and dark shapes all around.
Hweilan turned, following the grade of the hill in hopes of the graveyard and finding the path again.
Sounds of pursuit grew closer, and she forsook stealth for speed.
"Stop!" said a voice behind her. A man's voice. She risked a glance behind her. It was the Nar. Oruk. Still a ways behind her, lurching over the uneven ground and favoring one leg, but the look of fury on his face...
Hweilan turned and ran, leaping roots and rocks and ducking under branches. She veered uphill, hoping to find the path again.
She saw it, no more than a few dozen paces ahead of her. Risking a glance back, she saw that Oruk had fallen behind but was still coming on.
Hweilan bolted out of the trees and onto the path. A sort of ululating hiss in the air was all the warning she had.
Something struck the back of her leg, right behind the knee, then pulled round both legs. Hweilan went down, throwing both hands in front of her to break the fall. Her father's bow flew out of grasp. She hit the ground hard, her breath forced out of her, and her face skidded over the thin snow on the path.
"Thank you," Jatara's voice came from behind her. "Had you stayed in the trees that never would have worked."
Hweilan rolled over and forced air into her lungs. A thin braided cord, weighted on both ends by round stones, was tangled around her legs. Jatara was walking down the path toward her.
"Stay away from me!"
Jatara reached back and pulled a coil of rope from her belt.
Hweilan let out a long, wordless scream, hoping that someone—anyone—would hear.
Jatara laughed. Only a few paces away, she stopped and her eyes hardened. "Take that knife and toss it aside. Then be still and I won't make this too tight."
Hweilan tried to scream but it came out more of a sob.
Think, she told herself. Jatara had the sword at her hip, and if even half the things Hweilan had heard were true, the woman knew how to use it. Hweilan's knife would be no match, not unless she could get in close. And then it came to her.
Hweilan sat up and reached for the cord round her knees.
"Ah-ah!" said Jatara, her hand going to her sword. "Knife first."
Scowling and doing her best to keep back the tears, Hweilan pulled her knife from the sheath at her belt and tossed it to the side of the path.
"Good," said Jatara. "Now on your knees and turn around."
Hweilan could hear Oruk getting closer. She'd have to make this quick. She turned around, putting her back to Jatara, got up on her knees, and clasped her hands in front of her, as if in prayer.
"Arms at your sides," said Jatara, as she leaned in close, the rope held out before her.
Hweilan reached inside her coat with her right hand and moved her left arm down to her side.
_"Both_ arms," said Jatara. Almost close enough.
Almost—
"I said—"
—close enough.
Hweilan's fist closed around the _kishkoman_ , the sharp spike protruding from between her middle fingers, and brought it out of her coat. She turned and punched.
Jatara saw it too late. Her eyes widened in the instant before the sharpened antler went into the right one. She shrieked and fell back, dropping the rope and both hands going to her face.
Hweilan scrambled away, her legs kicking, trying to loosen the cord around her legs. It only made it tighter.
The sounds of Oruk breaking through the brush were very close now. Hweilan lunged to the side of the path, grabbed her knife, and raked its sharp edge down the cord. The tight braided leather parted like spidersilk before her blade.
Oruk crashed through a pine branch, sending needles loose in a shower, and stared at the scene before him—Hweilan on the path, knife in hand, Jatara writhing on the path, blood leaking from between the fingers she held to her face.
"Whuh—?" said the Nar, and then Hweilan was on the move. She snatched her father's bow in one hand, keeping the knife in the other.
"Never mind me!" Jatara shouted. "Get! Her! _Now!"_
Hweilan ran.
She kept to the path. Many times she slipped or skidded in the frost or through the carpet of pine needles, but she kept her feet, knowing that a bad fall or twist of her ankle would be the end of her. She'd walked this path more times than she could remember. She knew every twist and curve, every tree and stone. Hweilan ran, swift as a hart. Never able to ride a horse, Hweilan had walked or run her entire life, and there were few in Highwatch or Kistrad who could outrun her. Once Scith had even said that in a long distance race between her and any horse in Highwatch, he would have laid his coin on her.
Although the sounds of pursuit grew farther behind, they did not cease. Oruk was still following. If she fell, if she stopped to rest, he'd be on her in moments.
She knew that once she reached the fortress, found the first guards, a knight, or even a servant, she'd be safe. One word in the right ear and Hweilan could have every soldier in the fortress out after Jatara and Oruk. Argalath himself would be hauled before her grandfather. A deep and vindictive part of Hweilan's heart warmed to the thought of what her Uncle Soran would do when he heard of this.
Then she saw the smoke.
A smear in the sky. Not the usual haze of evening cook-fires or wood burning against the early spring cold. A thick, gray smoke.
Hweilan rounded a bend in the path. The trees fell away and she had a clear view of Nar-sek Qu'istrade, the distant cliff walls, the fortress of Highwatch, and Kistrad huddling at its feet. At the bottom of tall columns of smoke she saw the angry glimmer of flames. Kistrad was burning. Thousands of Nar filled the valley. Some moving toward the fortress, but a great many not moving at all.
Shocked, Hweilan stopped, her breath coming in great heaves, her heart hammering against her ribs. But even over the sound of her own breathing and her frightened heartbeat, her sharp eyes caught other sounds—faint, but still clear, even over the distance.
Steel ringing against steel. The bellow of a scythe wing. The screams of the dying.
Highwatch was under attack.
Much to Guric's fury, Soran had survived the ambush. The powers of his god had protected him from the Creel spellcasters—though his guardsman had not been so fortunate—and the poisoned arrows, if they had even managed to pierce the scythe wing's thick coat and skin, had no effect.
The fiercest fighting took place in the valley between the village and the Shield Wall. Once the Knights saw Nar pouring through the Shadowed Path toward the fortress, they regrouped and attacked. Just as Guric knew they would.
He knew the tactics of the Knights, and he placed his men well. In the first wave, the scythe wings came in low, roaring and sending the Nar horses into a panic. They landed, and as the Knight set to work with bow and arrow, the scythe wing waded into the Nar. Each sweep of its wing wreaked carnage among warriors and horses alike.
It worked once, as Guric ordered. It made the Knights bold.
The second wave was a feint, and as the scythe wings landed, Creel spellcasters struck, throwing fire and lightning at the great beasts. One knight died screaming as his mail suddenly blazed, burning through the padding and clothes beneath. Had the Knights been prepared, had they not rushed in, thinking they were putting down a mere rabble of bloodthirsty raiders, most would have been able to repel the attacks. But their panic combined with Guric's feint killed all but four of them before they could take to the air again.
Seeing that this was no mere rebellion, the surviving Knights took to the air and returned to the fortress.
But again, Guric had his men well placed.
Three years ago, when relations with King Yarin had grown particularly sour, Guric had appealed to the High Warden to install several large mounted crossbows around the eyries. The Knights of Ondrahar were the only aerial cavalry within five hundred miles, yes, but they were hardly the only ones in Faerûn. Should their enemies ever decide to take Highwatch, mercenaries on other aerial mounts could be found, and should the Knights be on patrol or in battle, the eyries could prove a weak spot for the fortress. Vandalar had relented.
Guric's men in Highwatch did their work even as the battle began on the plain below. The Knights were well trained for open battle and learned in the tactics of Nar warfare. But treachery from within caught them completely by surprise. Some died in their beds. Others by ambush. And those scythe wings still in the eyries died by poison and spear.
When Soran led his survivors back to the fortress, Guric's men were ready for them. They let the scythe wings come in close, wings spread, soft undersides exposed as they prepared to land. Then the crossbowmen went to work.
High in the fortress, in the courtyard known as the Horizon Garden, the surviving defenders of Highwatch made their final stand. Guric and his men—mostly Creel, but with a few Damarans guarding his back—pursued them. The fighting in the valley, through the streets of Kistrad, and into the fortress itself had been fierce. But this day had been long in the planning, and when the final fight began, Guric's men outnumbered the defenders three to one.
The Creel fanned out, facing the defenders, Guric and his guards several paces behind. The Creel held bows and spears, the soldiers of Highwatch only swords. Two still had shields. This would be a short fight.
"Listen!" Guric called. "Lay down your arms, and you will all be spared! Your comrades have done so. Even now, their wounds are being treated. Any who wish to return to their homes will be given arms and food to go."
One of the soldiers with a shield called out, _"This_ is our home, you treasonous bastard!"
"Lay down your arms now," said Guric, 'and you can go in peace. Or stay here and serve me."
"I'd rather die."
A few of his fellows exchanged nervous glances, but none stepped forward.
"No one?" Guric called.
"The Nine Hells take you!" the shield man called.
Guric ignored him and looked to one of the nervous fellows. "You stand no chance against my archers. Last chance..."
One of the Highwatch soldiers opened his mouth to respond.
The Creel cried out.
But it was too late. The great beast landed in the middle of the Creel, crushing three underneath its massive bulk. Guric felt the ground shudder beneath his feet. A scythe wing, the bulk of its body at least four times the size of a warhorse, its wings the size of sails. The knight on the creature's back let fly an arrow, and another Nar fell. The pennant at his back whipped in the wind. It was Soran.
Guric had thought all the Knights dealt with. He himself had passed two scythe wing corpses on his way to the higher towers. If Soran had survived...
"Fall back!" Guric shouted.
It was a needless order. His men were already scrambling away. But some were too slow.
The scythe wing swept one wing outward, and the hard, sharp bone along its length plowed through his men. Two went flying, and one went flying in two pieces. Another arrow from the knight took out yet another.
"Regroup!" Guric roared to his men. "Turn and loose! Turn and loose, damn you!"
The Creel obeyed. Turning, they loosed arrows and lobbed spears at Soran and his mount. One arrow bounced off the knight's armor, and the others struck the scythe wing. They only seemed to enrage the creature. It bellowed, spittle flying from its mouth, the roar drowning out all other sound.
Guric's men drew arrows for another volley. The scythe wing lumbered forward and drew back one wing. Half the archers managed to loose before the wing mowed them down.
"Fall back!" Guric called. He ran backward, not daring to turn his back on Soran and the huge beast. The archers were the first to retreat. They turned and ran. The spearmen backed away, keeping their sharp iron barbs between them and the great beast.
The scythe wing did not pursue, but let out a great bellow. The men cowered, and a few even dropped their spears to cover their ears. The sound echoed off the mountain. Guric had always imagined it might sound like that if a wall of strong steel were ripped in half.
Soran loosed another arrow, taking down another Nar, then turned his attention to the Damarans behind them. Knowing it might be only a lull in the carnage, Guric seized the moment.
"Soran!" he called. "Soran, hear me!"
Soran returned his attention to Guric but said nothing.
"It's over, Soran," Guric said. "Lay down your arms, and on my oath all of you will be spared."
"On your oath?" Even behind the face mask, Guric could hear the ragged edge to Soran's voice. There would be no surrender. "You swore oaths to serve the High Warden. Your life for his and for his people."
"I did what I had to do," said Guric. "I took no pleasure in it. Let the bloodshed end here. Save your men. Save yourself."
"Listen to your new lord," said a voice from behind Guric. Argalath had arrived. He stepped forward to stand beside Guric, Kadrigul a pale shape just behind him. "Highwatch is fallen."
Argalath raised one hand and let the cloth of his robe fall back to reveal his hand and forearm. The red light of the fires from the village below made the pale waves and pools of his skin between the bruises seem to burn like the flames themselves. The deeper blotches of his spellscar shone blue. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pulled down his cowl.
The scythe wing let out a low growl that sounded like tumbling river stones. Argalath kept his eyes closed. Guric could feel the ground shaking as the creature approached.
The blue patches marring Argalath's skin flared with a cold, blue light, and when he opened his eyes, the same light burned in his gaze. The scythe wing stopped its approach and snorted in surprise.
Around him, Guric heard the Nar gasp, taking in a collective breath of superstitious fear. Soran was close enough now that Guric could see his eyes widen with surprise.
"No!" Soran called out.
The scythe wing opened its jaws and roared, its fangs long as daggers. The sound echoed off the cliffs and towers, and Guric could smell its fetid breath washing over him. But he stood his ground.
The blue glow emanating from Argalath flared.
The scythe wing's roar cut off, ending in something like a whimper. Its jaws snapped shut, and it shook its head. A tremor passed through its entire body, and for a moment it stood stock still. Guric was watching when the first real pain hit it. He saw it as a flash in the creature's eyes and a dilation of its nostrils. It gathered its strength for one final lunge. But halfway its muscles lost all strength. The scythe wing collapsed and slid forward, its head coming to rest almost at Guric's feet. Its breath washed out of it, ruffling the hem of Argalath's robes, but it was only the great creature's dead weight pushing the air out of lifeless lungs.
The Creel cheered.
Argalath let his arm drop. Guric could see it trembling. It had been a long night.
Soran roared in grief and fury. He threw aside his bow and drew the sword from the sheath at his back as he leaped from the saddle.
# CHAPTER SIX
THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING—
—can't be happening—
—can't be—
The thoughts tumbled through Hweilan's mind as she ran.
She was no stranger to bloodshed. Narfell was a hard land. Outside of Narsek Qu'istrade, the tribes fought all the time. A warrior culture based on honor and status... bloodshed was inevitable. Most were little more than skirmishes, but now and then entire clans would feud.
Never—not once—had anyone dared to assault Highwatch.
But the smoke, the screams, the clang of steel, the harsh bellows of scythe wings...
Spring rains had not yet come, and it had been too cold for the snows to melt. Fire could spread among the dry wooden buildings of the Kistrad. An unfortunate accident. That had to be it. A spilled lantern in someone's stable. It would spread fast. Scythe wings hated fire. That explained their cries. Perhaps the horde of Nar she'd seen flooding the valley were merely coming to help.
Hweilan clung to these hopes. Tried to convince herself of them.
Then she found the bodies.
She rounded the hill and descended the final slope to the back walls of the fortress, still at least a quarter mile away. As fast as she was running, she was in the midst of corpses before her panicked mind registered them. She stopped so quickly that she skidded on the frosty ground, caught her boot on a bump in the path, and fell forward. She landed only inches from the staring eyes of a dead soldier. He lay on his stomach in the middle of the path. Two arrows sprouted from his back. Hweilan's eyes seemed drawn to them—anything but looking into the soldier's sightless stare.
The shafts were of a dark brown wood. Shallow grooves had been etched lengthwise down the shaft. Called 'wind sleeves," they supposedly kept the shaft from warping. The fletching was the dark gray and brown feathers of pheasant. Nar arrows. Creel or Qu'ima.
Not a nightmare then. Real. Nar were attacking Highwatch.
Hweilan pushed herself to her feet and looked around. Three bodies were soldiers. Men of the Highwatch guard. But the rest were servants—older men and women in thick homespun clothes. Hweilan looked away, not wanting to see their faces, afraid she might recognize one.
A man stood up from behind a bush next to the path. His dark hair pulled back in a topknot. Clothes of animal hide and furs. His face impassive, a mask, almost of boredom. But his eyes were hard, and his breath steamed in long plumes.
"You were right," he said in Nar, "someone was coming down the path."
"Fresh little doe, isn't she?" said another voice from behind her. "Good thing we lingered after all."
Hweilan whirled. Another man stepped out of the brush on the other side of the path. Each man held a bow, and a sword hung from their belts. They came at her. Not hurrying. Nice and easy. Obviously not wanting to spook her, but utterly confident.
From behind her, Hweilan could hear Oruk blundering down the path.
The two Nar—both Creel by their accents—glanced that way.
"Your friend comes?" the first one said, obviously struggling over the Damaran words.
Hweilan tightened the grip on her knife. She didn't brandish it. No need to provoke them.
"Let me pass," she said in Nar. "I—" She almost said, I am the High Warden's granddaughter, but instinct stopped her at the last moment. "I serve the High Warden. Let me pass, and I will not remember your faces."
The Nar's brows rose as she spoke in perfect Nar, but he laughed. "Remember all you want," he said. "Vandalar feeds the crows."
Hweilan felt as if she'd just been punched in the stomach.
The sounds of Oruk's approach were very close now. She could hear his ragged breathing as well as his footsteps.
The other two Nar were only a few paces away now. They had dismissed the bow she held, unstrung as it was. But both eyed her knife.
"Drop the blade," said one. He had an arrow fitted on the string of his bow. He pulled a little tension into the string. "Drop and we have no trouble."
"Stop! Argalath wants her alive!"
The two Nar looked up the path, where Oruk, red-faced and panting, was stumbling toward them.
Hweilan ran. The distraction gave her a head start.
"Stop her!"
She jumped over a corpse in the path, and when she came down, her boot slipped on the uneven, frosty ground. She stumbled—
And it saved her life. An arrow hissed past, so close that she felt it tug loose a few stray strands of hair.
"Alive, you whoreson! Argalath wants her alive!"
Hweilan regained her balance and ran on. She could hear the men right behind her.
"Stop! No!" Oruk screamed.
Pain erupted from the back of Hweilan's skull.
The next thing of which she was aware was voices.
"It was a fowling arrow," said a man in Nar. "No point. I always keep one handy for birds and pretty girls."
"Still might have cracked her skull," said Oruk. "She dies, Argalath will kill you."
The voices were close. Hweilan tried to open her eyes. Her left wouldn't open at all. It hurt to open her right. She realized half her face was planted on the ground, and her hair had fallen across the other half of her face, some of it right across her eyelid.
She felt a hand against her throat. "She's not dead."
Full awareness seeped back in. She was lying on the path, one hand—the one that had held the bow—outstretched. The other, the one still holding the knife, was under her. It was a blessed miracle she hadn't fallen on the blade.
"Find something to tie her," said Oruk. "She took Jatara's eye and I chased the little _kûjend_ over half the damned mountain."
"She took Jatara's eye?" one of the men asked.
"Gouged it right out," said Oruk.
The voice nearest her laughed and said, "I would not want—"
Hweilan rolled away from her pinned arm and brought her blade around in a fierce swipe. Her hair still covered her face, and she forsook a good aim for speed. The Nar screamed and jumped back, the tip of the knife slicing through his arm.
"Get her!" said Oruk, who was standing only a few feet away, the other Nar by his side. "Don't let her—"
An arrow struck him in the neck. It hit with such force that Hweilan heard the _snap!_ of breaking bone. Oruk went down. The Nar beside him reached for his sword, then his eyes widened at the sight of something behind Hweilan, and he decided on flight rather than fight. He turned and made it all of two steps before an arrow hit him in the back. Screaming, he fell facedown into the brush.
The man Hweilan had cut was scrambling away, trying to put distance between them as he struggled to his feet.
Hweilan pushed herself to her feet, intending to run the final distance to the fortress, but when she looked up she found herself facing another Nar. He held a thick horn bow in front of him—Hweilan could hear it creaking with tension—and an arrow against his cheek. Blood covered the man—a spattering over his face, but shining wet gore, almost black, from his fists almost to his shoulders. His topknot was awry, and strands of hair made thick by sweat and blood draped his face. His eyes shone with a fury Hweilan had seen only in cornered beasts. There was nothing human in that gaze.
But then she recognized the face.
Scith.
"Hweilan, down!" he said.
She dived to the side of the path. She heard the twang of Scith's bow and the flight of the arrow over her, followed by the hard slap sound of the shaft striking flesh and bone. Men were screaming, but her heart beat so loudly in her ears that the sounds of dying men seemed thick and far away.
She lay at the base of a thicket, thick with green, waxy leaves and wire-strong branches. She looked up to see Scith walking calmly past her. He dropped the bow on the path and drew his knife. Hweilan knew that blade well. Scith's hunting knife. Made of black iron, its single edge honed razor sharp, with it Scith could gut and dress a swiftstag in moments.
Several paces away, the Nar Hweilan had cut was trying to crawl away, but the arrow protruding from his back seemed to be keeping his legs from working properly. Scith didn't hesitate or increase his pace. He walked steadily, patient and sure.
Just before he reached the man, he turned and looked at Hweilan. "You should look away now."
She didn't.
_Vandalar feeds the crows_.
That had been the man who said it.
Hweilan watched the whole thing. Before it was over, she was smiling.
# CHAPTER SEVEN
WHAT IS THIS PLACE, MY LORD?" BORAN SPOKE IN A reverent whisper as they passed through the stone arch and into the open air of the holy place. Something about it seemed to call for soft voices.
The other men left their torches on sconces just inside the arch, but the snow on the ground outside reflected the star and moonlight, so that even without torches they could take in the entire scene. They stood on a great shelf of rock. Where it met the wall of the mountain behind them, it was broad as the fortress's inner bailey, but it narrowed to a point a stone's throw away before ending in a sharp precipice. The rock wall behind them showed many additions—elegant borders and runes carved in the dwarf fashion, Dethek runes praising Torm the Loyal Fury, and over the door itself a graven image of an open gauntlet. All of it displayed master craftsmanship.
Most of the area beyond was empty space, open to wind and sky. Guric could see how its starkness appealed to Soran and the man's understanding of proper worship. But in the middle was a stone altar, about waist high, and before it a wide basin set in the ground, now filled with snow. Argalath stood there, a half dozen of his acolytes around him.
"My lord...?" said Boran.
"This place is sac red to the K nights of Ondrahar," said Guric. He took a deep breath of the mountain air and let it out in a great plume that turned to frost before it hit the ground. The snowstorm had blown over, the clouds had broken, and the air was almost painfully cold.
Argalath walked over and bowed before Guric. "Well met, my lord," he said.
"All is ready?" said Guric.
"It is."
"And she...?"
"My servants have tended her well, my lord. Soon, you shall have her back."
Guric thought that at those words a feeling of profound relief would have flooded him. He'd done so much to come to this moment. But now that it was done, all he could feel was dark apprehension.
Argalath cleared his throat. "My lord, the sacrifice...?"
"On its way," said Guric.
"Very good, my lord," said Argalath. He bowed again and returned to his acolytes.
"My lord," said Boran, his voice pitched not to carry. "What sacrifice?"
Guric swallowed hard, then turned to his men. "I... I need a few moments. You men, go back down and help the others with their burden."
The four guards bowed—Boran with a frown—then turned and disappeared back into the tunnel. Once the glow of their torchlight was gone, Guric walked over to Argalath and his acolytes. Closer, he could see their tracks in the snow, and the bundle they had laid in the very middle of the basin. Guric approached, slowly at first, but gaining speed so that when he fell to his knees before the shroud, he slid in the snow. Five years in the frozen ground had made the outer layers of the linen wrappings deteriorate. The runes written on them had faded to bruiselike splotches. Guric reached forward, reverently, and touched the shroud. The weakened fabric crumbled beneath his touch, but beneath, the linen seemed almost new, barely even stained from its burial. Wrapped in thick linens and bound with braided ribbons, it was still obvious what lay within. The head lay back, turned slightly to the side. Guric swallowed hard. She used to lie that way when in deep sleep. He remembered lying there, watching her as the lamp burned low, the low flame off the red tapestries of their chamber making her pale skin seem warm and soft, like summer sunset through thin clouds.
Guric tore his gaze from the bundle and looked to Argalath. He knew four of Argalath's acolytes—three Creel and one Qu'ima, the oldest of them no more than twenty. But two he didn't recognize. They wore the same robes of swiftstag hides and had shaved all but the topknot of their hair. But they had the bearing and hard build of seasoned warriors.
Argalath stepped to the side and presented them. "Durel and Gued. My acolytes."
"I don't know them."
"They begin their disciplines tonight, my lord."
Guric grunted. He'd been with Argalath long enough to recognize that more was going on here.
"Your spells worked?" said Guric.
"Perfectly, my lord," said Argalath behind him. "She has not changed since the day we put her in the ground."
"I..." Guric gulped, part of him recoiling at what he was about to do. He hadn't seen his wife in five years, except in memory. "I must see her."
"The outer wrappings must be removed for the rite," said Argalath. "If you will stand back, I will have my man remove the linens. He is most skilled with a blade."
"No!" Guric looked up at Argalath. "No one touches her but me."
Argalath closed his eyes and bowed. "As you wish, my lord. But I urge utmost caution. Cut away layer by layer. We must not damage the—"
"I know!" Guric drew the dagger from the sheath at his belt, then peeled off his gloves with his teeth. His hands were trembling, and not from the cold.
Using only his thumb and one finger, he gently peeled up the top layer of linen, set his blade under it, and pushed upward, slicing through the cloth. Rather than going layer by layer down the length of the shroud, he pressed into the lower layers with his fingers, pulled the cloth up and well away from the treasure beneath, and cut away all the upper layers, peeling them back like the pages of a book. Layer by layer he cut, his heart hammering faster with each layer. After five layers, the thick cloth was completely dry, and he thought he could still smell a faint waft of the burial oils.
That sudden scent brought the memory back, stronger and more vivid than he had experienced in years. Even in the depths of his grief, he had not allowed others to handle Valia's corpse in those final moments. After Argalath had performed the rituals to preserve his wife's body and the servants lowered her into the grave, Guric had ordered everyone away. He had filled in the hole himself. Every last grain of soil and the rocks over it. In the moment when the black soil covered the last glimpse of the linen shroud, Guric's grief had almost overwhelmed him. Even his thirst for vengeance—no, for _justice_ —had not been enough. It had been the promise of Argalath's words that held him.
_I can bring her back. I can give her back to you_.
Guric breathed in the scent and kept cutting away, layer by layer, until he could feel something beneath the cloth. Hard and unyielding. Cold. Dead. Nothing in that touch held any hint of life. Guric's gorge rose, and he had to force himself to lift that final layer, pierce it with his dagger, and cut it away.
Silk. The finest silk. Guric knew the wine red cloth had three layers, joined by intricate embroidery. The gown in which his wife had been wrapped in her shroud. Guric knew it because he had been the one to put it on her. Part of him longed to touch it, to feel the flesh beneath, but another part of him recoiled in horror at the thought, knowing that the flesh was cold, heavy, and lifeless.
Guric swallowed and took in deep breaths through his nose.
"Are you well, my lord?" said Argalath.
He couldn't respond.
Argalath knelt on the other side of the shroud and said, "Shall I do the rest, my lord?"
_"No,"_ said Guric, with much more force than he'd intended. "Make your preparations, Argalath. I do this alone. No one touches her but me."
When Guric peeled back the last scrap of shroud, Valia lay before him, her wrists bound by red ribbon under her breasts. A gold scarf—it looked off-white in the reflected moonlight, but Guric knew it was gold, for he'd chosen it himself, almost five years ago—had been wrapped around her eyes to keep them closed. Above the fabric, strands of her hair wafted in the breeze off the mountain. Her flesh was pale as the snow around her, and just as cold. Her lips were gray and lifeless. That they were slightly parted was the worst of all. He could see the rim of her teeth, and even in the dim light he could see the tip of her tongue, cold and colorless like a slug creeping out of a crevice. There was nothing of the softness and warmth he remembered. The sight revolted Guric, but he could not look away.
"Lord Guric," said Argalath, and Guric realized that his counselor stood beside him, hand on his shoulder, shaking him. How long had he been there?" Your men return with the sacrifice. Be strong, my lord. Soon now, you shall have your reward. But now your men must see their lord, commanding and sure. Be strong."
Guric looked up. He saw the red hue of torchlight flickering on the snow. He turned.
Boran, his five other personal guards, the closest Guric had to friends, and five other soldiers whose names he did not even know were coming out of the stone doorway. His personal guard and one other bore torches. The other four carried a man between them—taller than any of them, but bound at wrists and knees so that he had to be carried. Soran. Tough leather ropes at elbows and wrists bound his arms behind his back, and a stick was wedged in his jaws and bound with a thick strap to keep him quiet. He wasn't struggling, but the men carrying him panted from the exertion of carrying the large man up thousands of steps.
At the sight of the once-proud knight, a cold dread built in Guric. The old Guric, the one who had known life and laughter, who had been Valia's lover and husband and given up his inheritance for her, seemed to rouse and whisper, _After this, there's no going back. Before was battle. This is murder_.
He turned to Argalath. "You're sure this is the only way?"
"Yes," said Argalath. "If you still want Valia back, this is the only way. If you wish to let her rest in peace, to lose her forever, then—"
"No!" Guric said, so loudly that it echoed off the mountainside. He lowered his voice then for only Argalath to hear. "If this is the only way, so be it. Soran denied her life. Let him answer to his god tonight. Face to face."
Argalath bowed his head. "So be it." He turned to the guards. "Bring forth the sacrifice!"
Guric sent the extra guards back into the tunnel, with strict orders to go down at least two hundred steps and remain there, no matter what they heard. His personal bodyguard stood with the acolytes and Guric himself, forming a ring of thirteen around the rim of the basin. Guric had not told his men exactly what to expect, but when it became obvious what was about to happen, they had not flinched. Their loyalty filled Guric with pride and love for them.
Soran lay next to Valia. He still moaned and struggled, but his bonds kept him from getting away, and the tight rope going from his elbow bindings to the loop round his throat kept his thrashings to a minimum. Too much movement and he could not breathe. Guric's men knew their business.
"Ignore his noise, my lord," Argalath said. "Soon, it will no longer matter."
"It doesn't matter now." Guric took his place on the rim of the basin.
They waited. Argalath paced the inner ring of the basin, muttering various incantations and sprinkling a dark powder of who-knew-what into the snow. It had a charnel stink, but Guric did not care. He'd bathe in the reek if it would bring Valia back to him.
After what seemed his hundredth journey round the circle, Argalath stopped over the two prone figures, one still thrashing weakly, the other cold and still. He lifted one hand to the eastern horizon and pointed at a gathering of stars.
"Behold," he said, his voice low and rasping. "H' Catharises over the rim of the world. Korvun the Stone of Sacrifice bears witness above."
He lowered his arm and began a new incantation. At first Guric thought it was in one of his native tongues—Argalath's mother was of the Nar, but his father had come from Frost Folk, like Kadrigul and Jatara. But Guric knew much of the Nar speech, and he had listened to Argalath over the years to pick up the flavor, if not the precise meaning, of the language of the Frost Folk, and this was neither. The words were sharper, harsher, and seemed to speak of malice, hunger, and things that lurk in the dark.
Argalath lurched to a halt, wavering, and for a moment Guric feared his counselor was going to fall over in the snow. But then a great shudder passed through Argalath, he threw his head back, and Guric saw that his eyes had rolled back in his head. The voice that spoke was deeper and rougher than Guric had ever heard his counselor speak, and it held a timbre of malicious glee.
Argalath looked down on the figures lying in the snow, one dead and still, the other watching him with wide eyes. Argalath reached inside his robes and withdrew a knife, not long but curved and of such pure steel that it caught every fragment of starlight.
Soran renewed his struggles, but in so doing pulled the noose tight around his neck. He thrashed even harder, and when he struck Valia, Guric growled and stepped forward.
"No!" said Argalath, still in that alien voice. "You must not break the circle."
Soran lay there panting, his eyes closed. Guric stepped back onto the rim of the basin.
Argalath resumed his pace, walking in a tight circle around Soran and Valia. Something in the way he moved set Guric's teeth on edge. He moved with an unusual, even beautiful, grace. But one that was decidedly inhuman. He raised the knife, resuming his chant, and Guric saw that more than starlight reflected off the blade. The edge of the curve blade glowed red, as if it had been sheathed in hot embers.
Argalath's incantation grew in volume, echoing off the mountainside, and took on a repetitive rhythm, almost like an incessant pounding upon a locked door. The words were still gibberish to Guric, but he picked up one phrase often repeated:
_"Jagun Ghen..."_
_"... resh Jagun Ghen ye..."_
_"... Jagun Ghen!"_
Argalath's eyes rolled back in his head again, and he seemed rapt in a fit of ecstasy. The hand holding the knife trembled and shook.
Soran began screaming again. His jaws ground into the stick wedged between his jaws. Guric heard a cracking sound, and he didn't know if it was the wood or the man's teeth.
The knife flashed down.
Guric had known what was coming. He'd expected a slash to the throat, as a butcher might put down a young bull or goat. A quick slice. A few moments of pain followed by a rush of euphoria, then death.
No.
The knife plunged up to the hilt just below Soran's navel, then Argalath pulled, opening up a wide gash until the blade struck bone and stopped. Dark blood and pale blue offal welled out, steaming in the cold air. Soran screamed, a wail of agony that Guric had never heard even on the most brutal battlefields. It drowned out Argalath's final words.
Soran thrashed like a live fish thrown onto hot coals. Blood flew outward to stain the surrounding snow black. From the corner of his eye, Guric saw all but one of his guards turn away.
With his free hand Argalath grabbed Soran's head and pressed it into the snow. He brought the dagger to his throat at last, but not a quick slash. He pressed the point inward, almost lovingly, and slowly twisted open a jagged wound. Soran's screams died away in a wet gurgle, and he coughed with such power that a mist of blood shot out of his nose and around the wood still wedged in his jaw.
Guric opened his mouth to scream, _Enough!_
But then Valia moved.
The words died in Guric's throat.
Guric's stared at his wife's corpse. It had been the slightest movement, her left arm pulling against the binding ribbon. Soran's struggles caused her arm to move, he told himself. He watched for it again. So much blood had darkened the scene, covering both Valia and Soran, that it was hard to—
Valia's back arched, her jaw opened, and she took in a great breath, so much air rushing through her throat that she let out a sort of reverse howl. Her arms tensed, straining at the ribbon around her wrists, then the soft fabric snapped. Her back hit the ground again. Violent tremors shook her body, and she thrashed with hands and feet, sending bloody slush flying over the onlookers. Her gown ripped open, exposing one shoulder and breast.
"Argalath—!" Guric called, but he was too frightened to move.
"Be still!" Argalath said.
The tremors ceased. Both Soran and Valia lay still. For one instant, no one moved, and not even a whisper of steam came from anyone's mouth. No one dared to breathe.
Valia sat up. Even though she moved, there seemed to be no warmth about her. And even as he watched, Guric saw her cheeks sink, the skin stretch tight around her hands, like some half-starved refugee. For the first time that night, Guric felt suddenly and terribly cold. Chilled to his core.
With one hand, Valia reached up and removed the bit of cloth blindfold. She threw it away and looked at Guric. Looked him right in the eyes.
There was no welcome there. No love. No recognition. Not even confusion. What Guric saw in those eyes was hunger.
Snarling, Valia scrambled to her feet and lunged at Guric.
But Argalath stepped between them, brandishing the still glowing blade. Valia flinched and drew back at the sight of the knife.
_"Ru!"_ Argalath said. _"A shyen. A kyet!"_
Valia threw back her head and screamed. There was nothing human in that sound. It was the cry of something that knew only cold, dark, and hunger.
Still brandishing the knife at Valia, Argalath turned to one of his acolytes and nodded.
The young man stepped to the acolyte standing next to him—one of the new ones; Durel?—grabbed both his shoulders, and shoved him at Valia. The man was too surprised to resist.
The man stumbled in the snow, and Valia fell on him, her teeth tearing into his throat.
That broke Guric out of his shock. He screamed and rushed forward, part of him wanting to pull Valia away and plead for her to stop and part of him wanting to pummel the life out of Argalath for allowing this to happen. Damn him, he had _promised!_
But before he'd made it three steps, two of Argalath's acolytes tackled him. Guric screamed and thrashed and called for his guards.
_"Stop this!"_ Argalath roared, and his eyes and the dark splotches of his skin began to glow blue. "Stop this madness now!"
Unable to break free, Guric looked up at his counselor. "You promised I'd have her back. You promised!"
"You shall, my lord," said Argalath. "You—"
"Defiler!" said a new voice, as cruel and lacking in warmth as the winter. It was Valia. She crouched over the dead acolyte, fresh blood steaming in the cold, soaking them both. The man's throat had been torn to shreds. "You break the pact."
"No!" said Argalath. "The line of the House of Highwatch is ended." He pointed at Soran' corpse. "This man's blood—"
"Lies!" she screamed, and bloody spittle flew from her mouth.
The meaning of the conversation began to sink in to Guric's mind. Something had gone wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong. Whatever was speaking through his beloved's body now... it was not Valia.
"You lie!" she said. "One still lives. The House of Highwatch still walks this world. Still breathes. Her blood runs hot."
"Who?" said Argalath.
"The youngest. The girl."
"Hweilan," said Guric, and all the strength left his body.
Argalath had sent Jatara to retrieve the girl. But Jatara had come back missing an eye, claiming that the girl had tricked her and run away. The Creel sent after her had only managed to chase her back into the fighting. She'd been killed. Looking for her family, she'd made it all the way to the middle bailey, where the dogs had found her. Creel hunting hounds that had been used to sniff out anyone hiding, they'd gone mad at the scent of the girl. By the time their masters had pulled them off, her features were mangled beyond recognition. Guric remembered the torn and bloody corpse on the flagstones. No way to tell who it might have been, save for the word of the men chasing her. Guric had trusted the competence of the damned Creel. What a fool he'd been. His own eagerness to see this done had blinded him.
"We... we did not know," said Argalath. "I swear it!"
"Swear..." said the thing in Valia. "Vow, promise, mock, bleed. Call it what you like. You did not honor the pact. Our agreement is ended."
Guric took a breath to speak, but Argalath beat him to it.
"No! Please. Our utmost desire is to honor the pact. Grant us another chance to appease you."
The thing sat there, watching Argalath through narrowed eyes. Guric noticed that no steam of breath issued from Valia's mouth or nose. The thing seemed to take air only to speak. Guric squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back tears. His beloved was truly dead then. All this had been for nothing. He had damned himself for nothing.
"What do you propose?" said the thing.
"Remain in this body until a more suitable replacement can be found. Accept—"
_"No!"_ Guric surged to his feet, catching the acolytes by surprise and breaking free. But two more stepped forward and grabbed him. Guric punched one, but the others grabbed his arms and held firm. "No, Argalath! I'll kill you myself if you do this!"
After such a spectacular failure, Guric would kill him anyway. But he had to get away from the damned warlock's brutes first.
"Boran!" Guric called to his guards. "Gods damn you, men, help me!"
Argalath's spellscar flared, briefly illuminating the holy site, then fading to a dull glow again, and all five of Guric's guards dropped senseless into the snow. Guric screamed in wordless fury and despair.
"My lord, please," said Argalath. "Your men are sleeping, not dead. Please listen to me."
Left with no other choice, Guric stopped his struggles and glared at Argalath.
"Please, my lord," said Argalath, and Guric saw the compassion and sincerity in his counselor's eyes. "All is not lost. Trust me. Please. Allow me to salvage this before it is too late."
Guric took a deep breath and gave one swift nod. "Your life if you do not."
Argalath returned his attention to the thing in Valia's body. "The sacrifice"—he motioned to Soran's corpse—" was the most honored knight of Highwatch, and one of the most feared warriors of this realm. I beg you, take this body. Such a great warrior... would he not be a fine host?"
The thing smiled. "The rite is unfinished. What you began cannot be undone. If I leave this body, it dies."
"No!" Guric screamed. "Argalath, no! Do not—"
The thing's laughter cut him off. "You love this one, don't you? This body?"
"Y-yes."
"Then I propose a new pact."
"A new pact?" said Argalath.
"That one"—the thing motioned to Soran's mutilated corpse—"was a formidable warrior in this world, yes?"
"Yes."
"Then here is my offer. We summon another of my brothers to take this warrior's body. This warrior will hunt down the last scion of Highwatch and bring her back to complete the rite. When Highwatch lives no more, when the girl's blood slakes this circle, this pact shall be fulfilled. I will leave this body and complete the rite. She will be restored to you."
"But what of my wife until then?" said Guric.
"I keep her, and you keep me. A show of good faith on both sides, yes?"
Argalath turned to Guric. "My lord?"
"This is the only way?" said Guric.
Argalath lowered in his head. "For now, my lord. Given time—"
"No! No, damn it all. I agree. Let it be done."
The thing looked to Soran's corpse, at the mangled throat and spilled entrails. "This vessel will need some repair."
"It shall be done," said Argalath.
"And my brother will be hungry when he arrives."
Argalath smiled. "That should not be a problem."
# CHAPTER EIGHT
YOUR MOTHER IS DEAD.
_Your grandparents_
... _the household_...
... _servants_...
... _dead_.
After rescuing her, Scith had dragged her into the woods and told her. He hadn't wanted to. He'd stopped only to clean his knife, rob the corpses of their arrows, and then he was off, dragging her away.
And then he'd told her.
"They're all dead, Hweilan. You are the last. The last scion of Highwatch."
She couldn't remember much after that. Only running away from Highwatch, the secret way that only a few knew. Back up into the mountains and through passages cut into the rock. Up and up and up. Hweilan remembered darkness and cold. Darkness of tunnels, and darkness of the woods as night fell.
When dawn came, still they ran, the smoke-filled sky at their back. When the first rim of the sun finally peeked over the hills to their right, Scith found a brush-choked hollow and made a small fire. It smelled clean. Not like the black burning behind them.
Hweilan sat in front of the fire, her eyes fixed on the narrow plume of smoke but her mind registering little. Scith had been standing behind her, looking down and chewing his lip for a long time.
He walked around and sat across the fire from her. "Hweilan, I... must go back."
She didn't answer.
"To Highwatch. You understand? I must..." He looked away, squeezed his eyes shut, and took very deep breaths.
This more than anything brought Hweilan out of her stupor. She had _never_ seen Scith cry.
"Find out who did this," said Hweilan.
He looked back at her. "What?"
"You said you're going back. It isn't to save anyone. Our family is dead." It all came out of her in a toneless rush. "You said so yourself. You saw my mother die trying to save her maidservants. The others were dead when you found them. If Creel were able to storm the fortress, that means that the Knights are dead or fled. Any of the servants or villagers who survived are either captives or sworn to new masters. We have tools for food and fire. We can make shelter. If you're going back, there's only one reason: to find out who did this, and why. We must know so that we can hunt them down and kill every last one of them. That's the only reason to go back. And I'm going with you."
Scith sat there in stunned silence for a long time. Finally, he said, "No, you will not come. Think. You heard those Creel _golol_. They wanted you. Not as spoils. They wanted you. They knew _you_. They had orders for you. You are being hunted."
"Why?"
"I do not know," said Scith. "But we need to know. Our best hope now, I think, is to go west to your family's allies in Damara. The Creel are savage and cunning, but they could not have done this without help. That they were hunting you specifically..." He scowled and added a bit of wood to the fire. The blood soaking his arms had frozen black, and his sleeves creaked as he moved. "If their help came from the west, then we must know from where, or we could be seeking shelter from wolves in a lion's den."
"And you want me to... what? Sit here and tend the fire?"
His scowl deepened, but part of Hweilan took great comfort in it. This was far better than tears. This was the Scith she knew. "If those _golol_ were hunting you, if _Jatara_ was hunting you, then by now whoever gave those orders knows you escaped. They'll still be hunting. Every Creel and ally will probably be watching for you. But I am Nar. Change my hair, maybe even take some clothes off a corpse, and I can blend in. I can walk among them if I am careful. You cannot. You will stay here, because you are not a little girl anymore. You are a hunter. And after last night, you are a warrior. You must _think_. You'll never bring vengeance to your enemies if you hand yourself to them."
And so he left. He took his bow and all the arrows. The thick horn was too strong for her to draw, and even if she'd had a string for her father's bow—and she didn't—she couldn't draw it either. Scith told her to wait one day. If he had not returned by dawn the following day, Hweilan was to leave without him. North at first. Returning to the Gap would take her too close to Highwatch, and the lesser passes wouldn't be safe for a woman alone. Her best hope would be to go north around the Giantspires, then turn west for Damara. A long, cold road.
Exhausted, Hweilan tried to sleep, but she only dozed fitfully. She lay curled under her cloak beside the fire, and as sleep came upon her, so did the memories—
_Vandalar feeds the crows_.
_No one can help you_.
_Your mother is dead_.
But under them all was a deeper rhythm, like the sound of distant drums. With them, a sense of fear and dread seized her, and in the final moments before she clawed her way out of sleep, she thought she could hear words in the beat.
_Jagun Ghen..._
She woke shivering. The fire had burned low. Lying still on the ground, her body had soaked up the chill. She sat up and fed the fire, careful not to add too much. With the solid ceiling of low clouds—some wisping along the tops of the surrounding hills—she knew it would take a miracle for the smoke to be seen more than a few hundred feet away. But if Scith didn't return soon, she'd need all the wood to get through the night.
Sitting there, hunched near the fire, she dozed off again, and again the memories came, and the distant beat.
_Jagun Ghen..._
_Jagun Ghen..._
She coughed. In her doze, she'd leaned in too close to the fire. The smoke was choking her. She took in a ragged breath and wiped tears on the back of her glove. Through the haze of smoke and tears, she saw the man, just at the edge of the trees, watching her. He crouched, elbows resting on his knees, a massive spear laid across them. Standing, he would have looked down on Uncle Soran. But it was his eyes that drew her. They burned with a hot, green fire, like looking at the sunset through an emerald. So bright that their glow hid his face in darkness. Beyond the darkness massive antlers protruded from his head, melding with the twisting branches of the wood.
"Jagun Ghen..."
The sound didn't seem to come from the antlered man, but from the woods beyond him.
Hweilan came fully awake and took in a breath to scream.
The man was gone. Another trick of shadows and branches seen through the haze of smoke and tears. Probably mixed with exhaustion and nightmare as well.
Heart hammering in her chest, Hweilan looked around. Evening was drawing nigh. The sky had taken on the deep gray color of heavy snow on the way. She was utterly alone. Ravens cawed in the distance, but nothing more.
Night fell, and still Scith did not return. Hweilan kept the fire going. Alone in the dark, it struck Hweilan how utterly and completely alone she really was. Before, in the wild she had always had Scith with her—and usually a great many guards besides. And there was always a home to which she could return. No more. The sounds of the hills at night, sounds that Hweilan had always loved on hunting trips—the breeze through the branches, stronger gusts seeming to sigh over the hilltops, night birds in the trees, small animals rustling through the brush, now and then the hoot of an owl—seemed almost furtive. Even sinister.
Hweilan found herself shivering. She added more wood to the fire. Her rational mind knew it was foolish. Nothing she heard was anything she had not heard dozens of times before. Nevertheless, a sense of dread grew within her.
She hugged herself to try to still the shivering, and her hands caused something sharp to poke her chest. Her _kishkoman_ , still under her coat and jerkin. It brought her mother's words back to her—
_... our people, Hweilan, we are... not like others. If you find yourself in danger, if you need help, blow this, and we will hear_.
Hweilan pulled on the leather cord around her neck until she held the _kishkoman_ with her frost-tinted gloves. She set the small horn whistle to her lips and blew, long and hard, again and again and again.
She lost count of how many times she blew. But she forced herself to stop when lights began to dance before her eyes. Her head felt light and airy. Clutching the _kishkoman_ in one fist with the sharp point protruding from her fist, Hweilan lay down again and tried to sleep.
Just before she dozed off, a wolf howled in the distance.
When she woke the next morning, her sense of unease had not lessened. If anything, it seemed stronger.
Dawn had come, and Scith had not returned. Hweilan stood, kicked snow and dirt over the smoldering remains of the fire, and looked northward. Down in the wooded valley, she couldn't see far, but she knew what lay that way. Mile after mile, mountain, hills, and steppe. Even if the gods smiled on her, she had a journey of many tendays ahead of her.
"Alone." Her voice seemed very loud in the morning stillness.
But that one word made her decision for her. Everyone she knew and loved was dead. Everyone but Scith. She could go off alone, and if she was very, very lucky, find herself a beggar on some lord's doorstep. Or she could go after her friend.
Hweilan turned and headed south. Scith had trained her well, and his trail was easy to follow. She took her time. She knew that even if the invaders were sitting secure in Highwatch, feasting on their bounty, they would have scouts and guards out. Especially if Scith was right, and the invaders were hunting her.
With every mile, her sense of unease grew, so much so that she felt as if she were pushing her way up an invisible stream.
Shortly before midday, she was skirting her way around a clearing—she didn't want to be out in the open—when she saw it. A wolf, watching her from the shadows of the deeper wood. She might not have seen it had it not been for its pale fur. A silver so pale to be just shy of white, like starlight on new snow. Nothing unusual about that. Narfell was thick with wolves—especially near the hills, where the swiftstag herds came to forage and take advantage of the mountain streams in summer.
But less than a mile later, she saw it again. The same wolf. With that pale fur, there was no mistaking it.
She kept going.
The last time she saw it, it was standing on a treeless slope above her, looking down. Very strange behavior, especially for a lone wolf. Giving its position away like that for anyone to see. It let out a short yip that melted into a whining howl, then turned tail and disappeared over the hill.
She smelled them before she saw anything. Wood smoke. A campfire, most likely.
Hweilan crouched low, kept to the deep brush, and chose each step with the utmost care.
There, in a small valley next to a frozen pool, she found Scith.
Hweilan counted five men with him—all Creel as near as she could tell. They had picketed their horses under the nearest trees and built their fire in a basin formed by the crater left behind from an old treefall. The tree still lay next to it, its large root system gnarled and probably hard as iron. The Creel had tied Scith to the upended roots of an old tree, his arms spread, the coat and clothes covering his upper torso cut away. His skin was bloody with fresh cuts. The men were laughing as they knelt over the fire.
One of them stood. In his hand he held a long stick, the far end glowing hot and smoking. His laughter stopped, and he stepped toward Scith.
# CHAPTER NINE
HOW IS THE EYE?"
Jatara's jaw tightened and she breathed heavily through her nose. Guric saw the fury in her remaining eye, and it warmed his heart. A strip of gray cloth around her forehead bound a linen bandage over her right eye. Lord Guric, two guards behind him, faced Jatara, who stood guard outside the door of Argalath's chamber.
Jatara bared her teeth. Perhaps it was supposed to be a smile, but it seemed more snarl to Guric. "Which eye, my lord?"
"Why the only one you have left, of course. I was told you lost the other in failing at the one task given you yesterday."
No mistaking it. He could definitely hear her teeth grinding.
"It won't happen again, my lord."
"I should hope not. Only one eye left. Tell your master I wish to speak with him. Now."
Jatara bowed and stepped inside the room.
Guric suppressed a shudder. He didn't care for any of Argalath's bodyguards, but Jatara in particular made his skin crawl. It wasn't the too-pale skin of her people, nor the odd way she shaved off the front half of her hair. She had never shown Guric anything but the utmost deference and obedience, but he sensed no genuine respect in her. She honored Guric because Argalath wished it, and no more. What hold his chief counselor held over the woman and her twin brother, Guric neither knew nor cared. As long as they did as they were told.
He could hear whispered voices beyond the door. Jatara and one other. Probably Vazhad, Argalath's Nar bodyguard.
His patience gone, Guric told his guards, "Wait here," pushed the door open with his fist, and stepped inside. A low fire burned in the hearth, more for heat than light, since bright light pained Argalath. Jatara stood a few paces away. Vazhad was beyond the bed, helping his master into his robes. Both were scowling at Guric for barging in.
"Out," Guric ordered them. "I wish to speak to your master alone."
Both waited for Argalath's nod before obeying, which only fueled Guric's fury. He slammed the door behind them.
"How may I serve you, my lord?" said Argalath.
"I want to see her. Now."
"My lord?"
"You know who I mean, Argalath. Don't vacillate with me. I haven't the patience for it."
"My lord, I... I don't think that wise."
"Your _wisdom_ brought this upon me, counselor. After last night, you'll forgive me if your counsel holds less weight with me."
Argalath looked at the floor. "You wound me. I did my best. If you will remember, my lord, I did warn you that in... these matters, nothing is certain."
"Damn you! _What have you done with my wife?"_
Argalath started at Guric's shout, then bowed low and did not rise again. "She is being well cared for, I swear. I beg you, my lord, heed my counsel."
Guric ground his teeth together and took a deep breath. "Stand straight and look at me."
Argalath straightened but still did not look him in the eye. "My lord, please. Listen to me. Your wife's body is being given the utmost care, under the watch of the best guards. But you must understand: The body moves, speaks, sees, hears... but whatever is inside the body, that is not Valia."
"You think I don't know?" Guric could feel his fury rising again, but he kept his voice low. "I was there, Argalath. I saw what she... _it_ did. I looked into its eyes. But—"
"It is not too late. Do not despair, my lord. The rite did not fail."
"Did not fail? Are you mad? I—"
"The rite worked perfectly. It was our knowledge that failed. The Nar sent after Hweilan were mistaken. They swore that the body we saw was hers, that the House of Highwatch was gone from the world. They were wrong. Once that error is rectified, your wife will be restored to you. I swear it."
Guric winced and turned away. "She's just a girl, Argalath."
"You regret our actions?"
"No! What was done two days ago, that was justice. That was battle, and innocent lives are sometimes lost in battle. But this... this feels like murder."
"And murder it is." Guric felt Argalath's hand on his shoulder. He hadn't even heard his counselor cross the room. "But it is the only way to return your beloved Valia to you."
They stood in silence a moment, the only sounds Guric's heavy breathing and a slight crackling from the low fire in the hearth.
"It is not too late," said Argalath. "Kadrigul leads the hunters. If you find this whole business too distasteful, we can call them off, exorcise the... thing from Valia's body, and set her to rest. But if we do that, there is no going back. She will be beyond my powers to restore."
Guric swiped Argalath's hand off his shoulder and said, "Where is my wife?"
Argalath sighed. "My lord, nothing has changed. I fear seeing her will only bring you further pain."
Guric looked down on Argalath with the full weight of his authority. "Pain is part of the price of leadership. Take me to her. Now."
After crossing several courtyards and many stairs to one of the upper sections of the fortress, they had climbed well over two hundred steps to the top of one of the northern towers. At Guric's insistence, they had left their guards behind. Guric cursed the time it had taken. Argalath leaning on him was no burden, but the man was damnably slow.
Guric looked down at Argalath. His chief counselor's cheeks were even more sunken than usual, and lines of fatigue creased the corners of his eyes. Still... Guric's anger and frustration at Argalath's failure—no matter how the man painted it or placed blame elsewhere, the rite had failed; spectacularly so—were strong enough that they drowned out any feelings of remorse or pity. After last night, Argalath deserved to feel a little pain.
A door stood along the right wall and two more guards, both Nar, stood before it. The men showed no emotion whatsoever. No deference at the sign of the two most powerful men of Highwatch suddenly appearing at their post.
Still leaning on Guric, Argalath took a moment to catch his breath, then said something to the men in their own tongue. Guric had only a basic understanding of the Nar language, and this one had a different sound to the words, the accent strange. He caught only _trouble_ and the word signifying a question.
_"Nyekh,"_ said the guard on the right, followed by a short string of words.
"What did he say?" Guric asked.
"I asked if she had given them any trouble," said Argalath. "He replied that she has not, that she has not even spoken."
Both guards bowed, then one stepped aside while the other removed a long iron key from a chain around his neck. He fitted it into the lock, twisted—the old mechanisms tumbled with a creak that set Guric's teeth on edge—then stepped back.
Guric stepped to the door and pushed it open. Beyond, all was darkness.
"It's black as pitch in there," said Guric.
"We don't mind," said a voice from the darkness, and Guric stepped back. The voice was strong but cold, and although it was utterly inhuman, there was a timbre to it that still held hints of Valia's voice. Guric felt a shiver go up his spine, and his mouth suddenly felt very dry.
"Here, my lord." Argalath had lit a torch from a brazier the guards used for warmth. He stepped around Guric into the room, holding the torch high and averting his eyes.
The light pushed back the shadows, revealing a small cell of stone walls and floor, with old clumps of dirty straw the only flooring. The roof was old timber beams and planking of the roof.
The creature—one glance and Guric could not think of it as Valia—was on the far side of the cell. She crouched against the far wall, still in the fine robes of her burial, though the skirt had been torn to shreds. The skin of her legs and one arm was pale as bone, but blood covered her other arm and face, for in one hand she held a rat, its legs dangling and entrails spilling from where she had torn out its underside with her teeth.
Guric felt his gorge rise. He clamped one hand over his mouth and took deep breaths through his nose. But that only made it worse, for he could smell the reek of blood and offal—and all around it, something worse. It reminded Guric of an animal stench. An animal of the cold and dark places.
"Where is my brother?" she said, then buried her face in the rat's entrails for another mouthful.
"He has other duties now," said Argalath. "As we agreed."
She swallowed and smiled. There was nothing human or even bestial in the expression. It was merely a movement of muscles and dead skin pulled tight over the teeth. "And what are my... _duties?"_
"Your time has not yet come," said Argalath.
"And when will my time come?"
"When your brother has fulfilled his promise."
"Hm." She looked down at the dead rat in her hand. "That might take some time. The tall one there... this one's body means something to him?"
"It does. We must take great care of it."
"Then I must be fed, or this shell will decay. This"—she dropped the rat and stood—"dulled the edge off my hunger. But if I have to feed off vermin, the tall one here will not like what it does to this body, I think. I will require more fitting food."
Guric fled the room.
Outside the cell, the door shut and locked once again, Argalath put a hand on Guric's shoulder. The lord of Highwatch leaned against the wall, stared out the window, and took in deep draughts of air.
"I'm sorry, my lord," said Argalath.
"Did I... did I take her—" Guric shook his head and cursed. "Its. Did I take _its_ meaning correctly?" "I fear so, my lord."
Guric groaned. He swallowed and took in another deep breath before turning to face his chief counselor. "There is no other way?"
Argalath shook his head. "She will not need to be fed often. We could withhold as much as possible, but I fear the damage that might do to your wife's body. The body itself—forgive my bluntness, my lord—is still dead, animated only by the spirit occupying her flesh. That... life-force must be fed, lest the body decay."
"Fed... people?"
"Yes. But is the return of your beloved Valia not worth the sacrifice?"
"This is not sacrifice," said Guric. "If it were me, that would be sacrifice. To take another's life... that is murder. Again. More murder."
Argalath shrugged and at least had the good sense to try to appear uneasy. "I know of no other way, my lord."
Guric turned back to the window. His voice hardened with resolve. "You are certain this hunting party of Kadrigul's can find the girl?"
"Quite certain," said Argalath. "We have one who will find her for us."
Remembering Soran's eviscerated corpse and that horror's talk of summoning her brother, Guric shuddered.
"Show me."
Argalath leaned on Guric for their descent down the stairs. As they took their first steps, Guric said, "You said this happened because a few of our Nar lied about killing Hweilan?"
"Five of them, my lord," said Argalath. "And I do not know that they lied. They might have been mistaken."
"Find those five, Argalath. They will be that thing's first dinner guests."
"As you command, my lord."
# CHAPTER TEN
HWEILAN KNEW THE PREFERRED TORTURE METHODS of the Creel. Scith himself had taught her. If they wanted a victim to take days dying, their favorite method was to bury the victim up to his neck, then slice off the eyelids. But digging a hole in the frozen earth was hard work, and Creel were notoriously lazy. Thus, this was their so-called "summer torture."
The rest of the year, their favorite method was to hamstring the victim, sever the tendons at elbows and shoulders, cauterize the wounds, then wait for the wolves to do the rest. Seeing Scith covered in blood and the Creel heating sticks in the fire, Hweilan feared the worst. Feared she might be too late.
The only bow she had, she could not draw, and she had no arrows. Only her knife and the _kishkoman_. And there were five Creel down there.
Then it came to her. Creel, for all their faults, were still Nar, and the life of any Nar warrior was his horse.
_Get the horses_.
She knew the beasts would go mad near her. Horses always did. But that might help. It would certainly take the Creels' attention off Scith. If she could get close enough to cut the lines, the horses would flee. If she could keep out of sight, most of the Creel would go after the horses.
_If..._
She stashed her father's bow under the thick leaves of a bush, then set off. She was within a short bowshot of the horses when they began to snort, stamp, and pull at their picket line.
One of the Creel said, "What is that?"
Hweilan pulled her knife and ran. Crouching low, she pushed her way through the brush. The horses went mad, screaming and pulling at the single line of rope to which they'd been tethered.
She could hear the Creel even over the screaming of the horses.
'... horses!"
"What is it?"
"If that wolf is back..."
Hweilan reached the tree around which the picket line had been tied. The horses reared and pulled, their eyes rolling back in their heads.
From where she stood, she was in full view of the Creel, all of whom had turned to see to their horses. They saw her.
"Hey!"
She leaped forward and brought her blade across the picket line in a swift swipe. It snapped, and the horses surged away.
"Charge!" Hweilan screamed. "Loose arrows! Get them! Get them!"
Her ruse worked. Every Creel reached for weapons, their eyes scanning the trees.
Hweilan turned and ran. It worked. She couldn't believe it. But it worked.
Creel knew the open grasslands better than the castle chambermaids knew every cell and hallway of Highwatch. But they didn't know these hills. Not like Hweilan. And they were unused to the trees and thick underbrush.
Tired, cold, and hungry as she was, Hweilan still managed to lose them. By the time the Creel realized that there were no arrows hissing from the trees and no soldiers bearing down upon them, Hweilan was up in the rocks again, where there was little grass, but lots of the thick bushes whose roots cracked the stone and grew branches tough and pliable as wire. They left few tracks but gave good cover. The first place to hide she found, she took. She couldn't see their camp, burrowed as she was among the thick evergreen leaves. But she could hear them shouting, some apparently going after the horses while others came after her. None came close.
Hweilan took deep, careful breaths, slowing her hammering heart. She listened to them arguing which way to chase.
After awhile, she heard horses galloping away, following the gap between this hill and the next. When the hoofbeats had faded, Hweilan waited, listening. Ravens in the distance. An intermittent breeze rattling the leaves higher up the hill. Nothing more.
Knife still in hand, Hweilan made her way back down the hill.
Nothing moved in the camp. All the horses were gone. Not a Creel in sight. Scith lay against the roots of the fallen tree, his chin resting on his blood-spattered chest.
Hweilan ran to him. It was even worse than she'd feared. The Creel had cut both of Scith's ankles and sliced through the thick tendons that ran from his shoulders to chest. To keep him from bleeding to death, they'd burned him from heels to halfway up each calf. His left side had been scalded so badly that his shoulder was a blackened husk that faded into red blisters and peeling skin to the center of his chest. But the right shoulder had only been singed and was still leaking blood. The weak pulse of red fluid was the only sign Scith was still alive. Hweilan had seen worse. But the smell... a sickly sweet reek; it caused her stomach to wrench and brought bile up to the back of her throat.
"Oh, Scith..."
She reached out but could not bring herself to touch him.
He'd never walk. Not without a healer.
Scith lifted his head. Scith was the strongest man she had ever known. Even more than Soran, whose strength lay in his unyielding rigidity. Scith's strength was deeper. Both kinder and crueler. Primal. But now, his head wobbled with no more strength than an infant's. His jaw hung slack, and bits of bloody drool ran from the corner of his mouth.
He took a ragged breath and said, "Behind you!"
Hweilan whirled.
One of the Creel was coming out of the brush, a long, curved knife in hand. Watching her watching him, he froze. Neither of them moved. Neither breathed. Then the Creel straightened and smiled.
"You... no moving," he said in Damaran. Then he screamed in Nar, "Back! Come back! She's here!"
"No!" Hweilan said.
"You no worry," the man said. His lips peeled back in what he obviously intended as a smile, but emerged more of a leer. "You beautiful. No cutting for you."
"Run," Scith rasped.
Hweilan kept her eyes fixed on the Creel. "I'm not leaving you."
The Creel's leer melted away and his eyes hardened. "You drop knife now."
She raised it. "No."
The Creel tossed his own knife from hand to hand, then twirled it in his right. He began taking slow steps toward her. "You drop it. Or I make you drop it."
"Run!" Scith said.
Hoofbeats in the distance. The other Creel returning. It had all been a ruse to draw her in, and she'd fallen for it.
The Creel flipped his knife, caught the blade, then flipped it again. The leather-wrapped hilt slapped his naked palm. "Last chance, girl."
Hweilan lowered her knife. "I will. Just... just don't hurt me."
Scith let out a long, low groan. "Run," he whispered.
Keeping her gaze fixed on the Creel, who was still slowly advancing, Hweilan crouched and set her knife on the ground. Right next to the campfire.
"Good," said the Creel. "Good, girl. Step back. Now. By your friend."
Hweilan's hand grasped one of the rocks the Creel had used to surround their fire. The outside of her glove was wet, and it sizzled against the hot stone.
"What—?" said the man. The sound of hoofbeats was very close now.
Hweilan stood and threw the rock as hard as she could. Wearing the thick gloves, her aim wasn't perfect, but the man was only a few paces away now. She aimed for his forehead, but the stone smashed into his mouth. He fell screaming.
She kicked the contents of the fire over him, then went for her knife. She was shaking all over, and her hand, encumbered by the thick leather of the glove, fumbled around the handle. As she scrambled for it, her eyes met Scith's.
In that moment of frozen time, that one brief instant between one heartbeat and the next, she saw it. Scith was dying. Each beat of his heart weaker than the last. Each breath a struggle. Every thought a battle. One he would soon fight no more.
Her fingers closed around the knife, and she turned.
The Creel was already on his feet, knife in hand. His eyes looked more shocked than hurt or angry. The burning coals she'd kicked on him had singed his outer clothes in spots but done no real harm. He spat a black glob of saliva and blood. Hweilan thought she saw a small chip of white—a tooth—in it.
"Stupid girl," he said in Nar. "Maybe I cut you anyway." A rider broke through the brush and reined in his mount on the edge of the campsite. Three others came in behind him, the last leading the fifth horse. They took in the scene, and all but one of them erupted in laughter.
"Seems we're just in time," the leader in Nar. "Lucky she didn't kill you."
The man on the ground spit another gob of blood and said, "She tricked me."
"It's her," the man said.
Everyone looked to who had spoken. It was the rider leading the extra horse. The one who hadn't shared in the laughter. He was studying Hweilan intently. "The one Argalath wants. The one who hurt Jatara. That's her."
The Creel all returned their attention to Hweilan. None were laughing now, and the man on the ground looked more apprehensive than angry. The riders fanned out, and the unsmiling one let go of the riderless horse. The beast tossed its head, snorted, then trotted back into the woods.
Hweilan waved her knife. "Stay back!" she said in Nar.
The nearest rider was only a few dozen paces away now, but he was having trouble getting his horse to come farther. His mount pranced and fought at the reins. Two other riders had gone back to the brush, and Hweilan could hear them trying to circle in behind her.
Hweilan couldn't gather her thoughts. Everything in her screamed at her to run, but she knew that even if she could get away—and that seemed very unlikely—she couldn't leave Scith. Not like this.
The man with the knife began to creep forward again. He gave her a bloody smile. "We'll be rich."
"You need to catch her first," said the leader. He'd brought his horse in behind the man on the ground and was trying to bring it around to her left, but the beast seemed reluctant to get too close. "Put the knife down, girl. We'll get the fire going again, have some hot food, then go back to your home. We'll even see what we can do for your friend."
"Home?" Hweilan had a hard time spitting out the word. She remembered the smoke, the glow of fires in the distance. The corpses outside the wall.
_Vandalar feeds the crows...._
_Your mother is dead...._
She screamed, more grief than fury, and charged.
The leader's horse shrieked and bucked away, its rider cursing as he tried to get it under control. Part of Hweilan's mind heard the other horses charging, but she focused all her attention on the man with the knife.
She made her attack clumsy. A feint, bringing the open edge of her knife around in a wide arc aimed for the man's face. He stepped back, caught her wrist easily, and squeezed.
"Now," he said. "Drop the kn—
All breath shot out of his body as the toe of Hweilan's boot hit him between the legs. His grip on her wrist melted away. She yanked her hand free and felt the edge of her knife slice through his glove and into flesh. He tried to scream and lurch away at the same time, but his knees collapsed beneath him.
Hweilan raised the knife and lunged.
Something hard struck her in the back. Pain flared through both shoulders and she fell, the Creel she'd kicked scrambling away. She rolled over to see the man who had first recognized her. He'd forsaken his horse and was running toward her on foot. A few paces away, Hweilan saw the spear that had hit her. He'd thrown it shaft first.
"Got her!"
Another Creel fell on her right arm, both his hands locked around her wrist.
Hweilan shrieked and punched at him with her free hand, but he held on. She got in four good hits before another man grabbed her arm.
"No!" Hweilan screamed and kicked and twisted, but the men were too strong. "Let me go!" Hweilan looked up. The leader was standing nearby, a spear in hand.
"You _will_ drop the knife," he said. "Hard way or easy. You w—"
He stumbled, his jaw went slack, and he fell face forward. An arrow—pale shaft, black feathers—sprouted from his back. It had pierced his heart.
The men holding her let go and scrambled to their feet. Another arrow hit the man on her right. He screamed and went down. The other ran for the woods. He was only a few paces away from the nearest trees when another arrow took him in the back. He went down and did not move again.
The second man to be hit was still screaming as he struggled to his feet. The arrow protruded from his side, just above his hip. His face was a grimace of agony, but he held a spear in one hand and knife in the other as he faced the woods.
"Face me!" he screamed. "Come out and—"
Hweilan took three quick steps toward him and buried her knife in his throat. The shock of the steel hitting bone traveled up her arm. The man stumbled back, staring at her, his eyes wide with shock. His mouth moved, trying to speak, then he fell. The knife was caught in bone, and she could not keep hold of it. The man's legs kicked once, the breath went out of him, and for a moment only, all was silence.
She could not look away. The world around her seemed to stop, everything focused on the dead man at her feet. She had killed him. Killed a man. She had killed many animals in her life. But this was the first time she had killed another thinking being. He would never love or laugh or cry again. Never breathe. Because of what she had done.
But she was not sorry. In fact, something deep inside her, some smoldering rage, exulted in it. She had to resist the urge to throw back her head and bellow.
Then she heard the horses galloping away. Somewhere in the woods, a man was screaming. There was the brief growl of an animal, then the man screamed no more.
Hweilan heard movement behind her and turned. The only surviving Creel, the one who had first confronted her, was standing in a sort of crouch, his knees still trembling. Blood streaked down his chin. He held his knife again, but his hand was shaking.
"You..." he said.
Hweilan spun and grabbed the hilt of her knife. She pulled, twisted, and pulled again, but the knife would not come free.
"You!" The man was coming for her.
"Stop!" said a new voice, speaking Damaran.
Both of them turned in the direction of the voice. A figure stood just at the edge of the trees. Tall, lean, dressed all in skins and furs. The bits of skin showing between his coat and fur cap were pale as the snow, but intricate inks twisted vinelike patterns across his cheeks and round his eyes, making them seem very bright. One was a blue pale as winter sky, but the left eye was a vibrant green. His hair was light as his skin and gossamer fine. The slightest breeze set the long locks wisping around his face, save for two thick braids knotted before each ear. And those ears rose into sharp points. An elf.
The newcomer held a thick bow of some pale wood, an arrow nocked and ready, though he held it low, with only the slightest tension on the string.
The elf looked to Hweilan. "Get your knife," he said.
"I kill you!" said the Creel. "Kill you both!"
"She is unarmed," said the elf. "You will wait, or I will feather you where you stand." He fixed those eyes on Hweilan. "Get your knife. Now."
She tugged and twisted. The blade moved, making a mangled mess of the dead man's throat, but the point was lodged deep in bone.
"Put your boot on his throat and pull," said the elf. "But take care not to slice your foot when the blade comes free."
She looked at him. Who was this stranger, and why was he helping her? Or was he? Was he only waiting until she had steel in hand to turn the bow on her? He raised an eyebrow in question.
Hweilan planted her left boot on the corpse's throat, grabbed the knife with both hands, and pulled. A moment's resistance, and the blade came free. Hweilan fell hard on her rump, and a line of blood—still warm and steaming—splattered across her face.
The Creel was looking back and forth between her and the elf. He was panting, and by the look in his eyes, Hweilan knew he was barely holding back panic.
"Crooked Knife!" the Creel shrieked, a ragged edge to his voice. "Help!"
"Your friend is dead," said the elf. "Your horses are gone." He looked to Hweilan again. "I can kill him now, or you can. By rights, he is yours. But you seem rather..." He shrugged. "Out of sorts."
"You want _me_ to kill him?"
The elf relaxed the tension on his bow, then slid the arrow into a quiver on his belt. He scowled, seeming a little puzzled, then said, "I ask what _you_ want. His life is yours, by right."
The Creel screamed and charged the elf.
The elf looked up, almost casually, and drew a sword from a scabbard he wore on his back. It was somewhere between a short and long sword, sharp only on one edge, and slightly curved near the end. A long tassel of braided leather and bits of fur dangled from the end of the leather-wrapped hilt.
Several paces away from the elf, the Creel threw the spear. The elf leaped aside, and the shaft sailed past him to land in the bushes.
The Creel looked at the elf's sword, looked at the knife in his hand, then turned and ran. He made it into the trees, and the elf did nothing.
"You aren't—?" she said, then she heard the growling of an animal, followed by the shrieks of the Creel. He didn't scream long.
"He is... taken care of," said the elf.
He sheathed his sword and walked over to stand before her. Still holding his bow in one hand, he spread the other in an open gesture and said, "I am called Lendri. You are Hweilan, daughter of Merah, are you not?"
# CHAPTER ELEVEN
ONE OF THE GREAT DISADVANTAGES, IN GURIC'S mind, of a fortress the size of Highwatch was that it took so damnably long to get from one place to the next. All the winding stairways and halls of the outer fortress were bad enough, but Vandalar's dwarves had burrowed dozens of tunnels through the western cliffs. It was into these that Argalath, after retrieving Jatara and Guric's two guards, led them. Into the deep dark of the mountain itself.
The tunnel was tall enough for Guric to walk upright, but the walls and ceiling were still unfinished stone, broken only by occasional support beams.
Argalath had buried his face deep in his crimson cowl. Even now, he kept it up, for both of Guric's guards—one leading, one trailing—held lamps, and in the close confines of the tunnel, their light was very bright.
"What is this place?" the lead guard asked, his voice little more than a whisper.
"A mine at first," said Argalath.
He spoke like a host giving his guests a tour. The patronizing tone rekindled Guric's anger. How could the man seem so damnably content when their plans had gone so wrong?
"When the mine turned up nothing," Argalath continued, "the burrowers began expanding it for storage and future dwellings. See there."
They passed a doorway on their right. A stout frame of worked stone supported the arch, but there was no door, and beyond the stone floor had been smoothed only a few feet. The rest of chamber was raw rock.
"See," said Argalath. "Very new."
"Enough talk," said Guric. "Get this done."
They passed two more such chambers when they saw light before them. In the middle of the floor, a large lamp filled the tunnel with yellow light and the strong scent of oil. More light glowed from a doorway to the left. This one showed no stonework whatsoever, beyond the cutting of the tunnel itself.
Argalath stopped. "My lord," he said, "our men should wait here."
Guric nodded at his own men and gave Jatara a look that told her that "our men" included her. He reached out for Argalath to lean upon him.
One of the strange Nar with the shaven head and single topknot stepped into the doorway. One quick glance took in their procession. His eyes settled on Guric and Argalath, and he gave a slight bow. The man and Argalath exchanged a series of words, then the Nar stepped aside.
"Ah," said Argalath. "It seems we are just in time. Our hound is ready for the hunt."
Another Nar stepped out of the doorway and into the tunnel. A third man followed. He was bare from the waist up, his chest and stomach smeared and spattered with blood, and his hands and forearms were covered with blackish gore.
Kadrigul emerged from the room, whispered, "It is done, master," to Argalath, and then he too stepped aside.
Another figure stepped into the doorway, and all the breath escaped Guric in a gasp of utter shock.
The newcomer had to stoop to get through the doorway. He was taller even than Guric, who looked down on everyone else in the tunnel. The figure was naked, save for a ragged loincloth. His pale skin had a sickly yellow cast in the soft lamplight.
It was Soran. No mistaking that carved-from-granite visage, the square jaw and deep-set eyes. But now the eyes were black, whether from the unnatural light in the tunnel or something else, Guric could not determine. And the wounds that had killed him—he'd been gutted like a deer—were completely healed.
"Gods, Argalath," said Guric. "What have we done?"
"What all strong leaders must do," said Argalath. "What is necessary."
Later that morning, Guric and Argalath, their guards keeping a respectful distance, stood behind the parapet of the outer bailey wall, watching the hunting party disappear in the distance.
"You're certain it can find her?" Guric asked Argalath.
"Yes, my lord."
"How?"
Argalath thought a moment before replying. "Soran's flesh is dead. Still the flesh is of Hweilan's family. His blood runs in her veins through Vandalar. What's inside Soran can use that. He will be able to sense her."
"Like a hound."
"Something like that, yes. Furthermore, seeing her uncle riding after her, the girl might not flee. She might even run to his arms."
Guric grunted. "Once she's close enough... she'd never mistake that thing for Soran."
Argalath smiled. "Once she's close enough, it won't much matter."
# CHAPTER TWELVE
HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?" SAID HWEILAN. "I heard the _kishkoman,"_ said the elf. "Yesterday. In these lands, a human with a _kishkoman..._ there's only two people you could be. Hweilan or Merah. You are too young to be Merah."
Her mother's words came back to her.
_The whistle is beyond the hearing of most folk. But our people, Hweilan, we are... not like others. If you find yourself in danger, if you need help, blow this, and we will hear_.
"You... you're Vil Adanrath," she said.
The elf cocked his head, and his brows narrowed. "Of course. What did you think?"
"I..." She didn't know what to say.
"We should see to this one." The elf waved in Scith's direction.
Hweilan stumbled over to Scith. Her heartbeat was calming, and her knees suddenly felt weak. She dropped her bloody knife and sat beside him. His head had fallen again, his chin resting on his chest. But a faint trickle of blood still leaked from his shoulder wound.
The elf knelt on the other side of Scith. He frowned.
"I am no priest," said the elf. "His wounds are beyond my skills." He looked to Hweilan and set a hand to the knife at his belt. "I could ease his passing."
"No!"
At her shout, Scith's eyes fluttered. He tried to raise his head but failed.
Fighting back tears, Hweilan took his face in her hands and lifted his head. She eased it back against the frost-encrusted soil between the fallen tree's roots. His eyes opened, focused on Hweilan, then looked to the elf.
"You!" he gasped.
"You know each other?" said Hweilan.
"You..." Scith said, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. "Stay... away. From. _Her!"_
"I have done as the lady asked," said the elf. "I have honored her wishes."
"What are you talking about?" said Hweilan.
Scith's gazed returned to Hweilan. She saw his pupils flare, then his eyes rolled back in his head. His entire body trembled as he exhaled his last breath. Blood no longer flowed from his open wound.
"Scith?" said Hweilan. _"Scith?"_ She shook him. His head flopped forward and struck his chest, causing his jaw to snap shut. Lifeless as a canvas doll. "Scith!"
"I am sorry," said the elf.
She squeezed her eyes shut, and the tears spilled, freezing on her cheeks. She scrubbed at them with the back of her glove.
"Hweilan—"
She grabbed her knife with both hands and pointed it at the elf. "Who are you, and _how_ do you know my name?"
The elf looked down, seemingly unconcerned at the blood-smeared steel trembling only a few inches from his nose. "I have told you my name," he said. "Lendri."
A growl, so deep that Hweilan felt it rattling her gut, came from behind her. Still holding the knife, she turned her head and saw a wolf standing on the edge of the campsite. The largest wolf she had ever seen, it easily outweighed her. One paw stood off the ground, as if frozen in midstep. Every gray hair on its body stood on end, it held its ears erect and forward, and its lips—still smeared with blood—were peeled back from long teeth.
"Lower your knife," said Lendri. "You're making me uneasy. Hechin doesn't like it when I'm uneasy."
Hweilan remembered the sounds of the men screaming in the woods and how they had suddenly cut off. Seeing the wolf's bloody muzzle...
She lowered the knife.
The wolf opened its jaws wide, almost in a yawn, then padded over to nuzzle the elf, a low whine emanating from its throat.
"A friend of yours?" said Hweilan.
The elf smiled. "More of a cousin."
"I want some answers."
The smile melted off Lendri's face, and he pushed the wolf away. "We should see to your friend first."
Lendri spoke as he worked. He drew his knife—a long flat piece of silvery steel, shining like ice, etched with runes, hilt bound in thin strips of some dark leather—and cut the thick coils of horsehair rope around Scith's wrists.
"I am Vil Adanrath," he said as he sliced. Scith's right hand fell limp to the ground. "As was your mother—or half so, anyway. Her mother was Thewari, of the Red Horizon band. Her father... well, that's another tale. Thewari's grandfather"—he reached over and sliced the rope binding Scith's left hand; it fell, limp as a wet coil, onto Hweilan's knee, and she recoiled—"was Gyaidun, who was _rathla_ to me."
_"Rathla,"_ said Hweilan. "I... I know this word. My... my mother told me. Told me stories. It means..." She searched her memory for the right words.
"Blood-bound, in your tongue," said Lendri. He opened his right hand and pretended to draw his blade across it. There, bisecting his palm, was an old scar, almost blue against his pale white skin. "Brothers of the same mother are _yachinehra_ , 'milk-brothers.' It is said that the gods choose your _yachinehra_ , but _rathla_ choose each other. Brothers in blood."
"I... I don't know what that means," said Hweilan.
"It means that I swore an oath to your grandmother's grandfather. Blood to blood. His blood binds me still. To you and to your mother."
"My mother is dead." Hweilan couldn't believe how easily it came out. After the horror of this day, it already seemed distant. But saying the words, her next breath caught in her throat and threatened to come out a sob.
The elf's eyebrows shot up. The wolf, sensing his tension, let out another low growl. "Merah is... dead?"
"Yesterday," said Hweilan. She took a deep, calming breath. "Creel sacked Highwatch. Vandalar, the Knights... my mother. All dead."
"All the Creel in Narfell could not have taken Highwatch," said Lendri. "Not without—"
"Treachery. I know."
"Who?"
"I don't know. I was... away when it happened. But on my way back, I ran into servants of Argalath, sent to find me. Scith"—she had to stop and breathe deeply to keep from crying—'saved me."
"Who is this Argalath?"
"A Nar shaman," said Hweilan. "Or half-Nar maybe. I've heard stories... But he wormed his way into the confidence of Guric, Highwatch's Captain of the Guard."
Lendri nodded and sheathed his knife. "Captain of the Guard? Yes, he could plan such an attack."
"I'll kill them." Hweilan had not even thought it until the words were out of her mouth. But she didn't regret them. She looked over to the man she had stabbed. The open wound at his throat was still steaming a little. "Just like that one."
"A trained soldier and a Nar shaman—perhaps even a demonbinder? You will walk up to them and stab them? When at least one of them—probably both—are looking for you? And how will you do this?"
Hweilan suddenly felt weary to her bones, as if she could crawl off into the nearest tree shadows and sleep for a tenday. "I don't know."
Lendri looked down on Scith. The wolf nudged under his arm, sniffed at the corpse, then let out a long, low whine. Lendri took the tattered remains of Scith's shirt and coat and folded them over his cut and bruised torso. "This one—Scith you called him—he was a friend to you?"
Hweilan could hardly believe that the lifeless shell before her was the Scith she knew, the man who had been the closest thing to a father she had known since her real father's death. Scith had been dead only a few moments—she knew if she reached out and touched him with her naked skin, he wouldn't even be cold yet—but already there was something _other_ about him. Still in every feature the man she knew, but in every way that truly mattered, something altogether separate from her. Only a shell. A lifeless image.
And so she simply said, "He was."
"Then we must do him honor." Lendri stood and inspected the old tree against which Scith lay. "This will do."
"Do for what?"
"A pyre. We will use this tree. The wood is old and will burn well."
Hweilan stood and looked at it. "It's covered with ice."
Lendri slid a steel-headed hatchet out of his belt and handed it to her. "Get the ice off first, then hack out a bed in the wood. Save the kindling."
She hefted the hatchet, testing its weight. "You'll never get that wood to burn."
"I will. Get to work."
With that, he turned away and headed back into the woods, his wolf at his heels.
"Where are you going?" she called after him.
"To look for an _uskeche tet."_ He melted into the shadows of the wood.
Hweilan walked to the side of the tree, purposefully not looking at Scith. She knew that if she did, she might not be able to hold back the tears anymore.
She set to work.
Lendri returned before she finished. She had cleared off most of the ice—taking a great deal of old bark with it—and had begun hollowing out a bed. The more she worked, the more it began to look like a coffin.
The elf was carrying a straight piece of wood, slightly longer than his forearm. He had stripped off the bark. He sat down next to the cold fire bed and, using what to Hweilan looked like a long iron nail, began carving the stick.
"What are you doing?"
He answered without looking up. "Making the _uskeche tet."_
"The what?"
"It means... 'ghost stick,' "said Lendri. "But also 'fire stick.' The _uskeche tet_ is for both fire and ghosts to our people."
_Our people_. Hweilan's mind was still wrestling with that one. She found no fault in the elf's story. It matched with things that her mother had told her over the years. But Lendri seemed so... different, so _other_ from what she had always imagined her mother's people to be like.
"Where are the others?" Hweilan said.
Lendri did look up at that. "Others?"
"Your people," she said. "Vil Adanrath."
He frowned and set back to work. "I am the last."
"What?"
He looked to the log and frowned. "The pyre is ready?"
Hweilan began chopping again. "I can listen while I work."
"Our people were exiles in this world for many generations," said Lendri. "But it was never home. They have returned to the Hunting Lands. Your mother had the choice. To return with her people or stay here with your father and you. She chose you. Now, all that remains of their blood in Faerûn is me—and you."
Hweilan stuck the hatchet in the side of the log, then scooped out all the loose kindling and dropped it onto her already considerable pile. "Why?" she said.
"That is a long, long tale," said Lendri.
"No. I mean why are they gone but you are... not?"
"Another tale, though not quite so long. But in short, because of my oaths to your forefather." Lendri's lips compressed and he thought a moment before continuing. _"Rathla..._ the most sacred of oaths, save marriage. _Rathla_ live, die, and kill for one another. Understand: To harm my _rathla_ is to harm me. To bless my _rathla_ is to bless me. Gyaidun and I were brothers, and long were the shadows we cast. But he was a man, and I am Vil Adanrath. Long after I lit his pyre and mourned his passing, still my oaths bound me to his children. And his grandchildren. And to you, Hweilan inle Merah."
"You and I," said Hweilan, "we are this... _rathla?"_
"No," he said. "Your forefather was my _rathla_. But the Vil Adanrath walk the world far longer than the children of men. And my oath to him binds me to you."
"But I'm not... like you. I am not Vil Adanrath. My mother—"
"Loved a Damaran, yes," said Lendri. "Bound herself to him in marriage. She was not the first to find love outside the people. Her own mother did so. But my _rathla's_ blood ran in her still. And it runs in you. My dearest sister was your foremother, Hweilan. We are _k'che_. We are family, you and I."
Her distant foremother's brother. That made Lendri her uncle. Of sorts. Hweilan retrieved the hatchet and went back to work, considering the elf's words. Some of his tale she knew already. She knew her mother was not Damaran, not even fully human by the sharp curve of her ears and her slightly offset eyes. Her mother had been born among some 'barbarian" people to the east. Everyone in Highwatch knew that. Hweilan had even heard the name Vil Adanrath pass her mother's lips from time to time. But she had never known that she had family beyond her aunts, uncles, and grandsires—the Damarans. Now... the dead.
"Why have I never heard of you?" she said. "Never seen you? My mother never—"
"Merah put the ways of her people behind her," said Lendri. "Not without reason."
"Then why are you here?" said Hweilan. It came out harsh. Accusing. But she didn't care. Her mother and her entire family lay dead in the ruins of their home, and this buckskin-clad brute whom she'd never met or even been told about sat across from her, calm as a summer morning, telling her that they were family while he whittled on a stick. "Why now?" she said. "Scith recognized you, and he didn't seem happy about it."
Sadness passed over Lendri's face, and he set back to work on the stick. "I came. Once. Not too many years ago. But your mother would not have me. She honored her people, but her life was among the Damarans now. And I think she did not want me influencing you. She told me to leave. I honored her wishes."
Hweilan attacked the fallen tree with sudden savagery, sending bits of wood flying. "Doesn't death release you from your oaths?"
"I am not dead."
"But Gyaidun. Your... _rathla_. And my mother—"
"The oaths were mine," said Lendri. "Only my death will free me."
"You said you heard my whistle-knife," she said. "But why were you here at all? The Vil Adanrath dwelled far to the east."
"I am... looking for someone."
"Who?"
"I am... not sure yet."
Hweilan stopped her work and stared. The elf was so damnably _odd_. "What does that mean?"
"Later," said Lendri. "We see to Scith, then we must decide what to do with you. Now work."
Once Lendri had finished, he set the _uskeche tet_ carefully aside, then used his heavy knife to help Hweilan finish her work. Once it was done, they stood and looked down at the corpse. Ravens had begun circling overhead, and Hweilan could hear more off in the woods, already eating. Together she and Lendri stood over Scith. In the short time they had worked, his skin had taken on a grayish cast, and frost now caked him.
"I can't do this," Hweilan whispered, more to herself than Lendri.
"You must. I cannot lift him in by myself. Honor your friend. Would you leave him as carrion?"—1
She did it. Hweilan cried the entire time, but she helped Lendri lift Scith into the shell they had hollowed out inside the tree. A heavy, completely dead weight. They covered him with the kindling.
"It will never burn," said Hweilan. "Too wet."
"Stand back," said Lendri. He peeled the glove off his right hand and curled it into a fist. A small ring, a dull yellow like brass, circled one finger. He pointed it at the log and said, _"Lamathris!"_
The air round his fist ignited, and a gout of flame shot outward, striking the tree and enveloping it in bright orange fire. A hot gale swept over Hweilan as the fire heated and pushed back the air. Flames rose, tumbling over one another and sending up thick clouds of gray smoke. Somewhere out in the woods, Hechin howled.
Lendri retrieved the stick he had spent so much time carving. He handed it to Hweilan. She examined it by the light of Scith's pyre. Into the pale wood, Lendri had etched many Dethek runes in a spiral down the length of the shaft, and within the carving he had rubbed some sort of resin. Turning the stick, she read them.
MERAH INLE THEWARI
SORAN OF HIGHWATCH
VANDALAR OF HIGHWATCH
SCITH OF THE VAR
KNIGHTS OF ONDRAHAR
PEOPLE OF HIGHWATCH
"Your honored dead," said Lendri. "I will sing. Add your own prayers if you wish."
Lendri sang. More of a whispered chant really, like a soft breeze through dry branches. At first he sang in his own tongue. Hweilan listened, understanding nothing but the names.
"Sing with me," he said.
"I... I don't know the words," said Hweilan.
"We will sing them in the tongue of the Damarans."
And so they did, Lendri chanting one line, Hweilan following.
_Flames of this world, bear this flame to our ancestors
Our family burned bright
Our family..._
Lendri took the stick back from her. Holding one end with both hands, he stepped forward and thrust it into the middle of the fire, sending a great shower of sparks fluttering amid the smoke. He held it there as long as he could bear to be near the flames, then he stepped back. The end of the stick was black, but the resin pressed into the runes burned a hot red.
_Merah daughter of Thewari burned bright,
Soran of Highwatch burned bright,
Vandalar of Highwatch burned bright,
Scith of the Var burned bright,
The Knights of Ondrahar burned bright,
The people of Highwatch burned bright.
Their exile is ended, their rest assured_.
Lendri looked up to the sky and sang in his native tongue, but this time loud—more of a shout than a chant. Then he looked down at Hweilan. His eyes seemed hard, not with any sort of religious passion. More in expectation.
"You still wish to bring justice to your family's murderers?" he said.
"Yes." No hesitation.
"Then do as I do. Take off your gloves."
She did.
He raised his right hand, long fingers outstretched, and he sang, "Our family burned bright. Those who robbed the world of their light will rest no more."
She repeated his words, not singing but speaking them clearly.
Lendri brought his open palm down on the top of the stick. Hweilan heard skin and flesh sizzle, a sharp intake of breath from Lendri, then he pulled his hand away. She looked at him with wide eyes.
"Hurry," he said, "before the fire consumes the wood."
She hesitated. What kind of fool put his naked hand on burning wood? But Lendri's gaze on her was fierce and unwavering. She raised her right hand. It trembled.
"Do it, Hweilan!"
In her mind, she saw Scith's last moments. She saw the last look her mother had given her, heard their last words, spoken in anger. She heard again her father's parting words to her on the day he'd ridden out of the fortress _—Listen to your mother, Hweilan. She does what is best for you. Make me proud_. The next time she'd seen him, his face had been pale and cold, more like lifeless stone than the always-quick-to-smile face of her father.
Hweilan slapped her hand down and grabbed the stick. Pain seized her entire arm. She gasped and tried to let go, but the muscles in her hand convulsed, squeezing tighter. She could feel the skin of her palm and the insides of her fingers burning away, her flesh fusing to the wood.
Control returned. She let go, flesh that did not want to come away from the hot wood tearing and peeling away. She stumbled back and landed hard on the icy ground. The world seemed to spin around her, going black, and she could hear nothing but a roar.
When the world cleared again, she could see the great cloud of her breath mixing with Lendri's. The elf knelt over her, his brows creased in concern.
"Can you hear me?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Foolish girl," he said, and it was then that Hweilan first noticed that he held her burned hand between his own. He was pressing snow into her palm. She couldn't feel the cold. Everything from her wrist down was only pain. "You were supposed to touch the stick, not grasp it. Why?"
She smiled weakly. "It felt like a good idea at the time. My family..." Tears began to well in her eyes again.
Lendri held her gaze a long time, then nodded. "Grieve for them, Hweilan. Honor them. But do not punish yourself. Punish those who killed them. I will help you."
"When do we start?"
# CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HWEILAN'S HAND WAS STILL IN AGONY, BUT THE COLD snow she held helped. Now that all of her attention was not focused on her arm, she felt a pounding headache coming on. Not like others she'd had in the past—pain behind her eyes or her forehead. This was a nagging pulse right at the base of her skull. Almost like a drumbeat.
"Try to open it," said Lendri.
Clenching her teeth against the pain, Hweilan opened her hand slowly. Pain shot up her forearm. She turned her palm down and dropped the snow. She could feel tiny tugs as bits of skin came away with the ice.
"I have some salve," said Lendri. He gently turned her hand and opened his mouth as if to say more. He gasped and his grip tightened, pulling her closer.
Hweilan winced and tried to pull away. "You're hurting me!"
He let go and looked at her, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.
Hweilan looked down at her hand. Most of the skin was gone, the flesh beneath burned. But across her palm, three of the letters from the names that Lendri had carved into the stick were clearly visible, branded right into the flesh of her hand in raised, puffy red flesh:
K
A
N
_"Kan?"_ said Hweilan.
Lendri closed his mouth and looked down at the brand again.
"What?" said Hweilan. "What does it mean?"
"Death..." he said, though his eyes were distant, and he seemed to be talking to himself. "She carries death in her right hand."
"What are you talking about? Lendri?"
He shook his head, almost as if waking from a dream. His haunted eyes focused on her, and he said, "That word... it means 'death' in our people's language."
Hweilan studied the scar. "Maybe it is a good sign?" she said. "I swore to bring vengeance to those who killed my family. Now I have 'death' branded on my right hand. A sign?"
"Perhaps." Lendri's looked away. "Rub some clean snow on it. I will put on some salve and a clean bandage. Then we must leave. Quickly."
"Wait," said Hweilan. "Go? Go where?"
Lendri pointed at the fire, and his upper lip curled over his teeth in a very wolflike snarl. "That smoke will draw any Nar within ten miles. You want to be here when they come for a look?"
Hweilan looked away. The pounding in her skull was getting worse. She knelt and rubbed snow on her hand. "What makes you think I'm going anywhere with you? You come out of nowhere claiming—"
A shrill sound cut the air, bringing a sharp pain to her ears. She looked up. Lendri was holding a _kishkoman_ to his lips, much like her own, but brown with age.
He dropped it back into his shirt and walked over to her. He loomed over her and said, "I am Vil Adanrath. I am blood to you, by oaths and birth." He crouched and leaned in close, his nose only inches from hers. "But if that is not enough, I am the only hope you have."
They were getting close.
Soran, riding out front, had set an unrelenting pace. Almost dangerously so, since the ground was not only uneven and rocky, but covered with snow and ice.
Argalath had been forced to ensorcel all their horses before they would tolerate the Soran-thing's presence. But it had worked, and their "hound" never hesitated in his chosen path. He led, and they followed—Kadrigul and eight Nar behind him. He thought all were Creel, but it didn't matter to him. Nar were all alike.
They crossed a slight rise—a thickly forested saddle between two hills—and Soran disappeared between the trees. Kadrigul reached for the amulet Argalath had given him and whispered the words to activate it. Through the cured leather of his glove, he felt the metal tingle.
He followed the tracks through the snow and soon found Soran sitting on his horse, glaring at him. The Nar stopped their own horses well behind Kadrigul.
Soran drew in a deep breath to speak. "She is close."
They set off again, and when they next left the trees, Kadrigul could see a thick column of smoke in the near distance. A mile away or less.
Soran spurred his horse, and Kadrigul followed.
Lendri finished bandaging Hweilan's hand, then helped fit her glove back over it. The salve helped. The pain in her hand was already fading to a throbbing ache, but the pounding in her head was so bad that she thought she could feel her skull rattling.
Scith's pyre still burned, but the flames had lessened considerably, and the smoke had gone from thick white plumes to wisps of gray. With almost no breeze, the pyre had filled the little valley with an eye-burning haze.
"The pain is very bad?" said Lendri. He was studying her intently.
"My head worse than my hand. Where will we go?" Hweilan asked.
"North for now."
"The people who killed my family are sitting in my home right now, at Highwatch. To the south."
Lendri looked at her with that unnerving gaze of his. The ice blue right eye reminded her of the strange Sossrim who occasionally came to Highwatch to trade. But the green left eye... there was something unnatural about it. "Our oaths bind us, yes, but we need help."
"What kind of help? Where?"
"To answer that to your satisfaction will be a long tale. For now, we must run."
"Why won't you tell me?"
"I will tell you!" Lendri's lip curled over his teeth and she heard the beginning of a growl in his voice. She stepped back.
Seeing her fear, Lendri's expression softened. "I'm sorry. I will tell you. I promise. I have... so much to tell you. But to explain everything will take time. Time we don't have now. We are still too close to Highwatch. Now, let's move."
Hweilan turned and went the other way.
_"Where_ are you going?"
She stopped and glared at him. "I left my father's bow up the hill. I'm not leaving without it."
Lendri thought a moment, then nodded. "Be quick."
She pushed through the brush and made her way up the hill, finding the bow with little problem. She retrieved it, stood, and looked down into the camp. Lendri was rummaging through the supplies of the dead Nar, discarding most of what he found, but pocketing an item here or there.
I could go...
The thought hit her. She could turn, keep going up the hill. Lendri wasn't looking her way. She could be over the rise and be long gone before he suspected anything. Hweilan gripped her father's bow in a tight fist and turned uphill—
To come face to face with a wolf, standing on a ledge no more than a few paces away. Hechin. The huge gray wolf's yellow eyes, unblinking, fixed on her. He didn't snarl, didn't growl, did nothing whatsoever to threaten her. But his very stillness spoke volumes.
"Hweilan?" Lendri called from below.
"Coming."
By the time Hweilan walked back into camp, Lendri had his supplies—two thick bundles, bound with leather cords—secured on his back. Ravens sat thick in the trees, and more were circling overhead, their cries a raucous counterpoint to the crackle of the pyre's dying flames. Only a shell remained of the log. Everything within was gray ash and red coals. Nothing left of Scith but what the gods had taken.
Lendri walked over to Hweilan and held out a thick bundle. "Here. You'll need this in the coming days."
It was a thick Creel cloak, make of swiftstag hide and rimmed with fur. Her head fit through the middle of it, and it flared in the front, covering her when needed but easily thrown back in case she needed to free her hands. It even had deep pockets along the inside.
"Did you... did you find this in their packs or take it off..." Off a dead man? She couldn't speak the words. "Does it matter?" said Lendri.
She shook her head and settled into the cloak. Hweilan looked at the Nar corpses. "What about them?"
"A feast for the crows," said Lendri. "Let's leave them to it. Come."
He set off, setting a brisk pace through the woods, following frost-covered deer trails along the bottom of a steep escarpment.
But they made it no more than a quarter mile out of the camp before Hechin barked from behind them.
Lendri stopped and raised a hand to signal quiet.
The wolf bounded out of the thick brush. Even Hweilan, who had studied wolves only from a distance, could see that he was agitated. His ears lay flat against his head, and his tail pointed straight out.
"What's wrong?" said Hweilan.
"We're being followed," said Lendri. "Keep moving." Lendri shrugged out of his pack and handed it to her. "Here."
"What? What do you mean?"
"You keep going. I'm going back to see who it is."
She set the bow on the ground so she could settle the packs on her back. "Probably other Nar, coming to investigate the smoke. Why not keep moving?"
_"You_ will."
He fitted an arrow to his bowstring and headed back the way they'd come, Hechin at his heels. Hweilan watched them go, then watched a while longer. Finally, she turned her back and headed north, fast as she could. If the elf never came back... well, at least she had the supplies.
Her trail led her away from the escarpment. The hills reared up into a wall before her, blocking the north, while the trail bent eastward. Hweilan knew of a pass several miles farther that way. With Lendri not there to tell her otherwise, she headed east.
The ground soon smoothed out, becoming less rocky, and the tall woods gave way to a scrubland of thick brush and squat trees, their branches still winter bare.
Hweilan fell into a steady jog, and her long legs ate up the ground. The pulse at the back of her head was still there, but it was no longer a hammering pain. More of a tingling just under her skin, an itch, a buzzing on the brain. Very much like the feeling of being watched she'd experienced on her way back to Highwatch the day before. But this feeling had an undertone of anger, sharp and hot. It didn't make her want to look around to see who might be watching. And even though there was a hint of danger, it didn't make her want to run or hide. It made her angry
Hweilan suddenly found herself with the urge to hit something. To pound it again and again until it couldn't move any more. Standing here in the cold afternoon, Hweilan felt positively hot with fury.
A wolf howled behind her, the sound beginning low, rising high, then dropping again to fade into something just shy of a growl. Brief silence, then the same howl. Hweilan had learned enough from Scith to guess at what it meant. Wolves howled for a reason. Usually to communicate with the pack over vast distances, and sometimes just for fun when the pack was gathered. But when one pack encroached on another's territory, the lead male would sometimes howl like the sound she'd just heard. It was meant to warn off the invaders.
Hweilan stopped to listen, and she heard something else. At first she thought it was just her own heartbeat, but as she stood there in the path, taking deep, steady breaths, there was no mistaking it. Hoofbeats. Coming up behind her. That could only mean Nar.
Her hand seemed to search for her knife of its own accord. The anger in her was seething to come out. But her rational mind forced that down. Had she been able to use the bow, had she even a few arrows... maybe. But on her own, with a knife, against mounted men... no.
She looked around, searching for a place to hide. Squat trees and bushes everywhere. If she could take care not to leave any tracks...
The hoofbeats were getting closer. At least three horses. Perhaps more. And moving just shy of a gallop. The fools were risking breaking their mounts' legs on the icy ground, which meant they were pursuing something.
Hweilan leaped off the path, going from rock to rock or the thickest ice as best she could. Only once did her boot crack the frost. She passed the first bushes and trees, fearing they were too close to the path. When she had put at least a dozen yards between herself and the path, she threw her father's bow under a large bank of scrub brush, then wriggled under it. With the thick Nar cloak and both packs still riding her back, it was no easy task.
Lying on her belly under the bush, she pushed herself up just enough to bend back an outer branch and peer out on the path. Other foliage was in the way, but between them, she caught her first glimpse of the rider.
A large horse—larger even than that of a Nar chieftain's war mount. One of the huge Carmathan stallions that Damaran traders sometimes rode through the Gap in summer.
Trees hid the rider a moment, and when he came back into view, he had slowed his horse to a canter as he cast his gaze about. Hweilan's breath caught in her throat.
"Soran!" she cried. "Uncle Soran!"
Grabbing her father's bow in one hand, she scrambled out of her hiding place as quickly as she could, heedless of the branches scraping her face. The rider reined in his horse with such ferocity that it screamed and skidded to a halt on the frosty ground.
Hweilan ran to him, but the first good look at Soran stopped her in her tracks. She wasn't sure what she'd expected to see on his face. A look of utter relief perhaps. Joy. Grief that they were the last of their family. Or maybe even anger that she was all the way out here while the good people of Highwatch and Kistrad were suffering. But there was nothing. Not even a sign of recognition. The look that he turned on her was completely blank, like...
Just like Scith had looked after he took his last breath. Soran looked dead.
Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or maybe only a sign of Hweilan's exhaustion and frayed nerves, but as Soran turned his horse toward her, she thought she saw a flicker of red in his eyes.
"Uncle Soran?"
More riders came into view. All were Nar, save one. Kadrigul. One of Argalath's lackeys—and Jatara's brother.
Kadrigul followed Soran's gaze, saw Hweilan, and reined in his own mount. The Nar behind him did the same. The other riders urged their horses off the path, right for her. All were reaching for weapons.
The tingling in Hweilan's head suddenly spread through her body, like being woken from deep sleep by a splash of cold water. The anger was no longer just an emotion. It was a physical force, making her muscles tremble with a sudden irresistible urge to _hurt_ all the men before her. The world around her became sharp and clear, perfectly focused, every sound sharp and distinct. Every sensation, every breath, every beat of her heart screamed at her to lash and rend and kill. So sharp were her senses that she thought she could hear the beating hearts of the horses and the men on them—though not Soran's.
A blur of gray ran among the Nar horses, barking and snapping at them. Hechin! The horses screamed and tried to scatter, but their riders reined them around and brought their weapons to bear against the wolf. But he was too quick, evading their spears and the swipes of their swords.
Soran reached over his shoulder and drew a sword—a huge, ugly thing of black iron—then urged his mount forward. Hweilan could feel the ground shaking as the huge horse surged toward her.
"Soran!" It was Kadrigul, calling out as he spurred his horse toward her. "Soran, no! We need her alive!"
Hweilan couldn't move.
An arrow struck Soran in the back. He didn't even flinch.
"Run, you stupid girl!" It was Lendri, reaching for another arrow as he ran from cover on the far side of the trail.
"Soran!" she shouted. "Uncle, please!"
Still no recognition in his face, and then her mind caught up with what her instinct had known all along. This was not her uncle. She didn't know why and could not fathom how, but this horror bearing down upon her was not her uncle.
Hweilan screamed in defiance and charged.
She heard Lendri scream, "No!" and another arrow hit Soran.
Hweilan was less than five or six steps from the horse when it screamed and reared. Whatever it was about her that spooked horses—some effect of her Vil Adanrath heritage, she now suspected—it worked on Soran's horse. The stallion's eyes rolled back in its head as it fought to scramble away. In its panic, its hooves slipped on the uneven, icy ground, and the horse fell, smashing Soran's leg. Even over the noise of Hechin's barking and the screaming of men and horses, Hweilan heard a _crunch_ of shattering bone.
Soran's mount fought its way to its feet, then bounded away. Soran tried to push himself to his feet, but his right leg folded beneath him.
"Hweilan, run!"
Lendri stood his ground just this side of the trail. He dodged a spear from one of the Nar, planted an arrow in his attacker, knocking the man from his horse, then reached for another arrow.
Soran regained his feet, and he lumbered toward Hweilan, leaning on the sword like a cane and dragging his shattered leg.
The breeze shifted, just for a moment, and the thing's scent washed over her. Worse than a charnel house, it made Hweilan's gorge rise to the back of her throat.
Hweilan's hand fumbled for the knife at her belt.
"Run!" Lendri called. "These aren't the only—!"
Another arrow hit the Soran-thing, lodging in his good leg. A pure white arrow—shaft and fletching all white as snow, and smaller than Lendri's arrows. Where had it—?
Soran didn't slow. Didn't even seem to notice the arrows sprouting from his body. Only a few paces away now.
Hweilan couldn't get her knife free. The thick glove over the bandages robbed her fingers of all nimbleness. She stumbled backward, her heel struck a rock or root, and she fell.
Soran stood over her. This close, she got her first good look at his eyes. Black eyes. Dark as polished stones. Not a fleck of white or color remained. And they seemed too wide, as if something mean and hungry were trapped in his skull, trying to press its way out. When those eyes looked down on her, it woke something deep inside Hweilan, like a spark catching in dry tinder. Her anger flared, and she had to push down a sudden urge to snarl.
The Soran-thing lunged. Hweilan scrambled backward, but the uneven ground was slick, and pain shot up her injured arm. The creature's iron-hard fist locked round her ankle.
Hweilain's uninjured hand found a rock and closed around it. She smashed it into the side of his face. He didn't even flinch. She hit him again. And again. On the fourth strike, she gouged off a long strip of skin and heard bone crack.
He released his hold on his sword and caught her next strike. Hweilan screamed and tried to pull free. She felt the cloth of her coat and shirt slipping under his grip, but then the fist tightened.
"Let me go!" She planted her free leg and pulled with all her strength. The fabric between her arm and his hand slipped again, and for an instant, they touched, skin to skin.
Something passed between them, sizzling, like cold water tossed on hot steel. The thing's black eyes locked on her, and she could feel them penetrating skin, flesh, and bone, gazing upon something she had only felt in her dreams.
Soran's face twisted into a scowl. Pure malice.
"I can smell him on you, girl." It was a hollow voice. Nothing like Soran's. All malice and hunger. His mouth opened wide, and he took in a deep breath, as if tasting the air. Dead lips pulled back over his teeth in mockery of a smile. "You reek of—"
A black cloud washed over him. Hundreds of ravens hit the Soran-thing, cawing and screaming, burying him beneath flapping wings as their sharp beaks pecked at him. The wind of their wings buffeted Hweilan, and she felt their feathers brush her cheeks, but they passed over her to attack the Soran-thing. Soran released Hweilan and swiped at the birds with both hands, but for every one he hit, ten or more descended on him.
Soran stood, his sword in one hand, his other continuing to swipe at the birds. But his eyes locked on Hweilan as he shambled toward her.
A huge, shaggy shape hit the ground between Hweilan and her pursuers. Kadrigul's horse screamed and reared, and then the roars filled the valley, one after another, pounding through the air like thunder off the mountains. The trees shook with the sound. Hweilan felt their force like a punch in the gut, and the marrow in her bones trembled.
Tundra tigers. One swiped at Kadrigul's horse, and two more ran among the Nar.
Soran, still covered in ravens and hampered by his shattered leg, lurched toward her. Just beyond him, Kadrigul, upon his horse, was bearing down upon her. Beyond them, two tigers were pressing the attack against the Nar. Only the long spears of the Nar warriors held them at bay.
Hweilan's eyes widened, and she scrambled to her feet. One of those tigers carried a rider. Small as a ten-year-old child, clothed in furs and a snug blue material. She had no idea who or what it could be. Even as she watched, she saw more of the little people emerging from the trees, spears in their hands.
Where was Lendri? Where—?
_Run, girl..._
Hweilan wasn't sure where the voice came from. It seemed to pass her ears entirely and speak in her mind.
_Run! Run! Run!_
Hweilan ran.
# CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BROKEN BRANCHES SNAGGED HWEILAN'S CLOAK AND scraped her face, roots beneath the carpet of snow tripping her. Again and again she fell, but each time she pushed herself up and kept going. Before long she could discern little but the lingering blue glow in the snow set amid the deeper black of the surrounding brush and heavy sky.
The sound of the fighting grew fainter with each step, and bit by bit, reason began to return to Hweilan. She knew she was making an awful racket, blundering through the timber, her feet crunching through new snow and old frost. But she didn't care. Every beat of her heart screamed at her to get away from the _thing_ that wore Soran's face. And the ravens...
She pushed through a thick patch of darkness—some thick bush or scrub that kept its thick, waxy leaves throughout the winter—and the ground fell away beneath her feet.
She tumbled, striking hard ground beneath the snow and sliding down a steep enough slope that her stomach seemed to jump up her throat.
She hit level ground. It drove what little air she had left from her body, and for a long moment, all she could do was lie there, half her face in the snow, trying to draw breath back into her chest as bright orbs of light danced in her vision. With each breath, the lights winked and faded a little more.
She'd managed to keep a grip on her father's bow during the fall. She still held it, her right fist locked around it. Something else was poking her in the chest, just below the soft part of her neck. Something under her shirt. The _kishkoman_.
Hweilan pushed herself up to her knees and pulled the bone whistle from her shirt. She put it to her lips, took in a deep breath, and blew a shrill note, as loud and as long as she could. The sound cut through the night, hurting her ears.
She sat, holding her breath, straining to hear an answering call. Nothing. Only a breeze rattling winter-brittle branches. She tried again, holding the note as long as she could. Still nothing.
Now that she was no longer running, her body began to shiver, and she could feel her own breath beginning to freeze against her face.
A thick darkness loomed before her. It was one of the great pines, but fallen ages ago. Most of the trunk had probably gone to rot, but the thicker wood of the roots had gone iron hard, and the years of brush that grew up and around them formed a sort of woody cleft. It would do. She dared not risk a fire, not with that Soran-thing maybe still out there, but she had to keep the wind off her and find someplace close to keep in her own body heat.
Hweilan threw herself into the cleft, branches and nettles and thorns ripping her clothes and skin. There was no wide way through, but her body found the path of least resistance, and she pushed and pushed, turning herself sideways to squeeze through the crack. She hit a wall of tangled brush, rotted wood, and soil, all frozen hard as stone. Exhausted, terrified, and cold, Hweilan wept.
She had no idea how much time passed, wedged between old roots and frozen soil. Her body shivered so badly that the roots and frost around her were rattling. She could no longer feel her fingers, toes, or face.
One clear thought rose in her mind: You have to move, or you're going to die.
Hweilan moved, the roots digging into her clothes again. She thought they were most likely scraping her face, as well, but she could no longer feel her exposed skin. The farther she went, the easier it became.
She was nearly out when she heard it: something coming through the brush.
Hweilan held her breath and kept her body perfectly still.
The sounds came closer, and besides the crunching of branches and snow, she heard something sniffing.
Hweilan took a chance. With fingers she could no longer feel, she brought the _kishkoman_ to her numb lips and blew one note—very softly, scarcely above a whisper.
A plaintive whine came from the darkness.
"Hechin?" she called out.
But whatever it had been was running away.
Hweilan waited, counting to a hundred, listening. If anything was out there, it wasn't moving. Never in her life had she been so cold. Lendri's packs still rode her back. Surely he had flint and steel. Maybe even dry grass for kindling. But she could not get the image of Soran out of her mind—
The dead face.
The implacable approach.
The red fire, all malice and hunger, flashing behind the dead eyes.
And she knew that any fire would be seen, even if she could muster the will to gather dry wood.
Her teeth would not stop chattering, and she was shaking so hard that her jaw ached. Gooseflesh prickled her from head to toe, and she felt as if every hair on her head was standing straight up. She had to keep closing her eyes to keep the moisture on them from freezing. Each time, she had to force her eyelids open again. Her body cried out for rest, but she feared that if she slept, she'd never wake again.
She knew her only two choices were to build a fire and risk being seen by the Nar and... that thing. Or freeze to death. Given the two fates...
Scith had once told her that freezing to death became painless after a certain point. One even began to feel warm again, before the end came.
Hweilan closed her eyes, and remembering that moment, the thing she cherished the most was the fire that had burned merrily between her and Scith, wafting long, slow breaths of warmth over her open hands.
Just thinking of it, Hweilan felt warm again.
She stood on black rocks, looking down on clouds and listening to the roar of the world. Above her, a clear night sky rimmed the horizon. There was no moon, but the stars burned like fresh-cut diamonds set on velvet tapestry. One star just topping the horizon burned bright as a small sun, though it shone blue and cold.
Behind her, a great wall of mountains pushed up against the sky. Their heights dwarfed any mountains she had ever seen. Fully half their slopes were draped in snow, and even the nearer foothills were taller than the Giantspires near her home.
She stood on the fingertip of the mountains' last grasp, and the world fell away at her feet. Miles away to her right, a river thundered over the chasm, its voice so powerful that it shook the rocks beneath her. Hweilan had no way to fathom the depth of the valley, for it was all a mass of starlit mist stirred by the cataract. Woods covered the lower slopes of the mountains and the distant lowlands, and they were black amid the trails of mist winding through their boughs.
Turning her back on the valley, she faced the woods of the mountainside. Mists curled through the trunks, and here and there she could see birds or small animals flitting from branch to branch.
She relaxed her eyes and took it all in, not focusing on any one spot. Just the way Scith had taught her. _Let your eyes drink every dreg of light. In the darkness or in thick cover, watch for movement. If you see something, do_ not _focus on it. Keep it at the edge of your sight. That part of your eye takes in more light than looking at it straight on_.
There it was. Pale shapes moving amid the boughs. Just a shade paler than the mists themselves. They moved without haste, and now and then one or more would stop, and Hweilan knew they were watching her.
She looked to each side. A broken, uneven chasm all around. To her left, climbing up again to the mountain's heights. To her right, sloping down and finally curving to the edge of the falls. No paths anywhere, and the few protruding rocks that might serve as holds or even the occasional shelf to rest upon... all were slick with spray from the falls. One slip, and Hweilan would soon find out how deep the valley was inside the mists.
Howling wafted down the mountainside, and when she turned back, the shapes had come much closer. Dozens of them at least. Maybe a hundred or more, and the nearest ones were only a stone's throw away. She could see that although most were pale as ghosts, some were a darker gray, some brown, and one was black as dreamless sleep.
She reached for her knife, only to discover that she had no knife. No belt. In fact, she wore no clothes at all, and it wasn't until that realization that she felt cold. Goosebumps shot up all over her, her hair standing on end.
The first wolf—a beautiful thing, white as new snow—was almost upon her. Hweilan crouched and raised her arms to protect her throat.
But the wolf rushed right past her, so close that its fur brushed her leg. The final step it leaped into the air and plummeted into the mist. Another wolf followed it, then another, then three more. In moments it seemed an entire river of wolves rushed past her, their claws clicking on the rocks, and their panting breaths enveloping her in thick, warm fog. Every one leaped into the open air and fell without a sound, the mist swallowing them.
Only the black wolf remained. It stood a few paces in front of Hweilan, watching her for a moment, then turning back to look into the woods. A low whine escaped it, and she could see tension in its movements. Fear. What could have—?
Then she sensed it.
It had not been the wolves' eyes intent upon her. Something from the woods was watching her, from up there in the dark where she couldn't see it. And it was getting closer. She could sense it, like a sudden lightness to the summer air that meant a storm was on the way.
She heard rustling and shrieking in the woods, and as she watched a great cloud of birds erupted from the trees for miles around. They flew every which way, most seeking the heights and speeding away, but she saw some of the stragglers stop their fluttering midair and fall back to the ground as if dead. More creatures ran past her—mice, squirrels, bears, and many strange creatures that she'd never seen. Those who could scrambled down the cliffside. The others leaped, much like the wolves had done. Even the insects were leaving the shelter of the woods.
Most of the breeze had been coming up from the valley itself, pushed upward by the great fall of water. But now the wind shifted, coming from the woods itself, and Hweilan smelled something putrid and foul.
The black wolf gave her a final look that seemed to shout— _Run!_ —then it too leaped off the cliff.
Hweilan coughed at the foul stench coming from the woods. What could make such a foul reek?
Then she heard laughter and singing. The voices were sweet, but in the laughter she sensed hot malice, and even though she could not understand the words of the song, she sensed blasphemy in the words.
Whatever it was, it was getting closer.
_Time to choose_ , said a voice from behind her. Something about it reminded her of her mother.
She turned, but no one was there. Only the distant falls and a long, long drop.
She turned back to the woods. _Death_ , said the voice again. _Death comes from that way. Be sure of it_. Hweilan faced the chasm again. _And that way..._
The voice trailed off. Death? Something worse? The animals had leaped that way, without hesitation, choosing the drop into nothingness over whatever approached from the dark.
_Choose, Hweilan_.
She took a deep breath, gagging on the reek, then took two quick steps and leaped, pushing as far as she could in hopes of clearing the cliffside rocks below.
Her mind swirled, her body took in one great gulp of air.
She plunged into the mist, the wetness hitting her naked skin like a cold slap. Her whole world went gray, she took in another breath to scream—
It came out a cough. Water sprayed out of her nose and throat, and she found herself on her hands and knees on a rock floor, bits of grit and sand raking into her skin. Her hair hung in heavy, dripping clumps, and water streamed off her, as if she'd just been dumped from a bath.
A cold bath. She was shivering, and her breath clouded in front of her face.
Still on her hands and knees, she looked up.
She was in a cavern. Bigger than any she'd ever been in. Her grandfather's hall could have fit inside with room to spare. Great columns of stone went from floor to ceiling in no particular order. In other places, long cones of stone hung from the ceiling or pushed up from the floor. A red glow lit the cavern, making the damp stone seem almost bloody. But she couldn't see where the glow was coming from. It certainly gave no heat.
Still shivering, Hweilan stood.
_Cold_ , said a voice. The same one that had spoken to her on the cliffside. _But this is a lifeless place now. I am gone. Empty dens, dead hearts... cold_.
"Who are you?" said Hweilan. "What is this place?"
Hweilan heard a light splashing behind her and turned. A pool took up the back half of the cavern, its water almost black in the dim light. Emerging from the pool was a tall figure, moving with a bestial grace, all willful intent commanding smooth movement. Not a wasted motion, as if the body were more raiment than flesh.
A woman's body, but Hweilan could not put the word _woman_ to this figure. She was far too... other. Her frame was thin, but there was no hint of weakness or want in her limbs. Hweilan could not discern the exact color of her skin, for a slick wetness covered the woman from forehead to toes. The wetness was too thick and dark for water; the figure before her was covered with blood.
Although she was wet in it from head to toe, the woman's hair was stainless, woven into scores of tight braids that hung to her waist. Amid the locks were smooth stones, bits of bone, feathers, and dozens upon dozens of tiny flowers. Even through the strong, metallic scent of the blood, Hweilan could smell the flowers, almost as if they were newly bloomed and still growing.
The figure stopped upon the shore and looked down on Hweilan. Her Uncle Soran had been the tallest man she'd ever known, but even he would have looked up to this woman's chin.
Hweilan swallowed and said, "Wh-who are you?"
The woman cocked her head, almost birdlike. Her lips did not move, but Hweilan heard the words, _My name holds no more power in your world. For generations I guarded and guided your people like a mother to her cubs. But the cubs have gone home. All but two. And you do not need a mother. Time to grow up, Hweilan inle Merah. Time to hunt_.
"I... I don't understand."
_You do not need understanding. You need to choose. Understanding will come later... if you survive_.
"Hweilan!"
She jumped, and her eyes snapped open. How long—?
"Hweilan!"
It was Lendri. Whispering, but most definitely Lendri. And close.
"H-h-here!" she called out, and was surprised at the weak rasp of her voice.
She sensed movement outside her shelter, but she didn't have the strength to look up. Strong hands helped her out.
"You're freezing," Lendri said.
"It's... not s-so bad... nuh-n-n-ow."
Lendri muttered something in his own language, then said, "Do your hands and feet hurt?"
She shook her head again, and managed, "H-haven't... f-felt 'em, f-f-for a w-while."
Lendri rummaged through the one pouch on his belt. "I have something," he said. "Not a permanent solution, but we can't risk fire just yet. This will help."
He held out a small, dark something to her.
_"Kanishta,"_ said Lendri. "A root that has been... treated. It will give you some strength back and keep you warm. For a while." Gently, he opened her mouth and shoved the root between her cheek and teeth. "Chew."
At first, she could barely open her mouth wide enough to wedge the root between her teeth. But whatever the root was, the tissue in her mouth responded to it almost immediately, flooding her cheek with fresh spit. The taste of the root hit then, and she almost gagged, but one swallow and a tingling warmth spread from her mouth and throat to her head. She managed to chew, coaxing more juice out of the root. It was beyond bitter, but with each swallow, she felt warm, and vigor began to work its way back into her limbs.
"Better?" Lendri asked.
"Much," she said. "Tastes like garden soil, but it's... warm. Oh, that's magical."
"Only somewhat. Are you hurt?"
"Scrapes and bruises," she said.
Now that she could feel her limbs again—and feel something besides cold—her mind seized on...
"The Nar, the tigers, are they...?"
"I killed two Nar," said Lendri. "And Hechin scattered their horses. But they are still out there. Can you walk?"
"If they're still out there, I can run."
Lendri let out a short bark of a laugh, then said, _"Besthunit nenle_ will do."
"What?"
"A proverb," he said. ""Hurry up slowly.' We need to move fast, but not so fast that we announce our presence to anyone within a half mile." He took their packs from her and fit them on his back. "Now let's move."
He turned and headed off into the dark.
Hweilan followed. "But, Lendri... oh, gods, what was... that... that _thing?_ It looked like my uncle. My uncle! But it wasn't. I swear it wasn't. It—"
He didn't turn or slow. "I know."
"What was it?" she whispered.
"I do not know. But I could feel its..."
"Wrongness."
"Yes." Lendri stopped on the trail and turned to her.
"Like the taste of meat gone bad," she said. "Yet somehow still..."
"Yes. I know. It's—"
"And those... those other... th-things?" She was having a hard time catching her breath. She could hear herself beginning to babble, but she couldn't stop. "I-I-I s-saw them! Like children! But one of them was riding a tundra tiger. _Riding!_ No one rides tundra tigers. And the ravens... when Kadrigul was after me."
"Kadrigul?" said Lendri. "The _Siksin Nene?"_
" _Siksin_ what?"
"The pale one. Frost Folk your people name them. This Kadrigul...?"
"Yes, that's him," said Hweilan. "You saw. Didn't you see? Ravens... hit him. Dozens of them. Hundreds maybe. That was... you?"
"No," said Lendri. He had gone very still, save for his head, which he turned this way and that as if listening. She could hear him sniffing the air. His voice dropped to a whisper. "That was... I don't know what that was."
"What is it?" she whispered.
"Shirt!" Lendri stepped forward—more of a pounce really—and grabbed her arm in a painful grip. She looked down. Too dark to see clearly, but she could see that his glove and much of his sleeve was smeared with something dark. The scent hit her. Blood. He still had the blood of dead men on his hands.
"Lendri?"
He drew an arrow from his quiver and placed it on the string of his bow. "Run!"
He pulled the arrow to his cheek, and in that instant the moon peeked out from a rent in the clouds. In the new light, Hweilan saw that Lendri had nocked a fowling arrow—no arrowhead, just a hardened tip of wood, meant to stun birds without spoiling the meat.
"What are you—?"
"Run, girl!"
A bone-shaking roar came out of the woods behind them, followed by another off to the side.
"Run!"
She ran. Behind her, she heard the twang of Lendri's bow, followed by a sharp cry, then the sounds of Lendri following.
The woods around them erupted in a riot of sound—many shapes blundering through the brush, high-pitched cries, and above her on the left, the roar of a tiger. The sound washed over her, a physical force, and for three steps her knees weakened, threatening to buckle beneath her.
Lendri grabbed her above the elbow, pulled her back up, and dragged her behind him. A huge shape hit the ground several paces in front of them, stirring up a cloud of snow and spraying branches everywhere. Though she couldn't see it clearly through the snow, she knew it was a tiger.
Lendri pulled her to the right, but too quickly. Her feet tangled over an exposed root or branch, and she went down, breaking Lendri's grip. She scrambled to her feet. Several feet away, Lendri was standing still again, one hand reaching over his shoulder, fingering the nock of another arrow in his quiver.
In front of them crouched two tigers.
And one of them bore a rider. A small rider, to be sure, child-sized, but the long spear it held looked lethal. In the dim light, the rider's eyes gave off a pale luminescence.
That was when the smell hit her. Flowery almost. But not quite. It had the sharp tinge of cold, like the autumn winds off the Giantspires—the breezes that promised the first storm of the season, bringing days of howling winds, bitter cold, and darkness even at midday.
Another tiger had come in behind them, and in the woods all around, more glowing eyes watched them. The nearest was no more than five or six paces away—two pale diamonds seeming to float in the air. But even as Hweilan watched, a form materialized around the eyes—whatever magic had hidden the creature dismissed. This one held a sword, but not like any she had ever seen. It drank in the little light off the snow and seemed to amplify it, so that the cold steel seemed a shard of ice. Jagged edges and protrusions angled off the blade near the hilt, giving it a thorny appearance. And although the creature would have had to stretch up on tiptoes to reach Hweilan's head, it held the sword with an easy confidence.
"Lendri," Hweilan rasped, "what do we do?"
"Do not reach for a weapon," he said. "Don't even move."
"Very good advice," said a voice from the darkness, "coming from a fool such as you, Lendri."
A fierce gust swept down the hillside, rattling branches and snow into a stinging tide that washed over them. The air caught and swirled next to the little swordsman, forming a small cyclone of snow and shadow. When it settled, another figure stood there, much taller than the hunter, snow and frost wafting off his armor like tiny cataracts. The armor itself was more elegant than anything Hweilan had seen—a breastplate, spaulders, and tassets made of many layers of fitted metal, which gave off their own unearthly sheen. A long cloak hung from the spaulders, and in the dark it rippled like a living shadow as the wind died away. The man wore no helmet, and his long hair played in the breeze. He rested one hand on the head of a tundra tiger and scratched it between the ears, as if it were a favorite lap cat.
Lendri still hadn't lowered his hand from his quiver. "Your skills have improved, Menduarthis."
"Your sense has not." The man spoke in Common, though with enough of an accent that Hweilan could tell it was not his native tongue. "I always hoped you'd come back. But I never actually believed you so stupid. I must say, I am most pleased to have been proven wrong. You and your friend are going to surrender your weapons now." He motioned to the little warriors all around them. _"Valdi sinyolen."_
# CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HWEILAN STOOD DUMBFOUNDED. HAD LENDRI JUST called the man by name? The man had definitely called Lendri by name. But was he a man? His skin was pale as Lendri's, but his breath wasn't steaming in the frigid air, and he seemed quite comfortable in the cold, with no cloak, coat, or hood.
Two of the little hunters came toward her, weapons held ready in one hand, the other reaching out to take her bow.
She pulled back. "No!"
The hunters stepped back, and a dozen spears lowered in her direction.
_"Voi!"_ Lendri shouted. _"Ele vahat sun!"_ He had already been disarmed. Even his quiver was gone.
"Now, now, Lendri, you don't give orders to the Ujaiyen," said the armored man. He sounded amused. "Not anymore."
He walked off the slope, pushing his way through the brush and past the hunters to approach Hweilan. She stiffened and stood her ground.
The man looked her up and down, and reached one gloved hand toward her.
She stepped back, raising the bow before her and reaching for her knife.
"Easy, easy," said the man. "Don't be skittish. You've got nowhere to skit."
Hweilan risked a glance over her shoulder and saw two of the little hunters behind her, both holding spears.
"Menduarthis, please—" said Lendri.
"I'm not going to hurt your friend," Menduarthis told Lendri, though he kept his eyes fixed on Hweilan. He smiled. "Not yet, anyway."
Before Hweilan could react, Menduarthis's hand shot forward and pushed down her hood.
"Well!" His eyebrows shot upward and he smiled. "I go out for a night of hunting beasts and instead happen upon a rare flower."
He stroked her cheek with the back of one finger. Hweilan stepped back and brought her knife out and forward in a quick swipe. Menduarthis pulled back in time, her blade barely missing his finger.
"Ho!" Menduarthis laughed. "This flower has thorns, I see! Don't worry, little one. I'm not out to peel your petals."
"Leave me alone," she said.
Menduarthis chuckled. "Not tonight. Why so unfriendly?"
"Menduarthis, please!" Lendri called. "Allow me to explain!"
Still watching Hweilan—she couldn't tell if his gaze was lecherous, curious, or simply amused; a little of all three she suspected—he called out something in a tongue she didn't recognize. Two hunters lowered their spears at Lendri, and all around her Hweilan heard many blades leaving their scabbards.
"Know what I told them?" said Menduarthis.
"No," Hweilan replied.
"I told them that if _your_ friend over there opens his mouth again, _my_ friends are to kill him." He pushed at the inside of one cheek with his tongue, thinking, then said, "A shame, really. Truth be told I always liked Lendri. I don't suppose you've seen his little wolf friend around, have you? What's its name? "Itching'?"
Hweilan glared at him. "Hechin."
"No matter. Let's talk about you. What's _your_ name?"
Hweilan's glare deepened to a scowl. She didn't lower the knife.
"Not very friendly, is she, Lendri?" Menduarthis called out. When Lendri didn't answer, he looked over his shoulder at the elf and said, "Oh, yes. You aren't to speak. So glad you're paying attention."
When Menduarthis turned back to Hweilan, his gaze had hardened. The hint of lechery and curiosity was gone. The amusement was still there, but it was peeking from behind a very dark curtain.
"Let me tell you something, little flower," he said. "The world is not a nice place. Fools say it's unforgiving, but that's why they're fools. The world doesn't forgive because it doesn't blame. And the world doesn't blame because it doesn't care. So here's my little lesson for you tonight: You can name yourself, or others will name you. And you might not like what they call you. So I'll ask you one more time." He leaned in closer, just beyond the point of her knife. "What's your name?"
Hweilan's grip tightened around her knife, but her hand was shaking. Something about the tone in Menduarthis's voice—she felt as if Kelemvor had just placed her in his scale, and her next words would decide which way she swung.
She licked her lips and said, "H-Hweilan. My name is Hweilan."
Menduarthis straightened, closed his eyes, and breathed in deep through his nose. "Ah... Hweilan," he said, pronouncing it very carefully, savoring each syllable. "A flower indeed. And I even like the thorns." He bowed. "Well met. My hunters tell me that a band of frantic Nar ride not a half-mile from here, and one of the Frost Folk leads them. Friends of yours?"
"No! They attacked us."
"And what do you know of the thing that rides with them? Big brute with black eyes."
"I know it attacked us."
"And the ravens? A whole murder of them coming to your rescue?"
She shuddered at the memory. "I don't know."
Menduarthis held her gaze. "Don't know or won't tell?"
"Ravens hit the man. I ran. We ran. Lendri and me. We thought we'd lost them, and then you arrived."
"And here we are, yes?"
Hweilan shrugged.
"Back to the matter at hand, then," said Menduarthis. "You were about to hand over your weapons."
Hweilan looked to Lendri. The elf kept his jaw clenched, but he gave her a careful nod.
"No," she said.
"No?" said Menduarthis.
"I'll surrender the knife," she said. "But the bow belonged to my father. It's all I have left of him. I'll give my life before I give the bow."
"Hm." Menduarthis peeled off his gloves with his teeth, then tucked them into his belt. "Dear Father is dead, I take it?"
Hweilan's scowl deepened.
"Don't take offense," said Menduarthis, his tone light and mocking again. "My father is dead too. At least I think he is. But I assure you, Hweilan, I am no thief. I don't even want to keep your little steel thorn there, though I do appreciate the offer. I simply don't want you causing any trouble on the way. The Ujaiyen's tigers can be a bit... ill-tempered."
"On the way to where?"
"To where we're taking you."
She waited for more explanation. It didn't come, and she knew it wouldn't. "I promise I won't cause any trouble," she said.
"Well, I do appreciate that. But we hardly know each other. How do I know I can trust you?"
"How do I know I can trust you?"
"What makes you think you have a choice?" He waved his fingers at the hunters surrounding them. "Unless you have more ravens up your sleeve... well, I'm afraid I have the advantage, yes?"
"I don't have any arrows," said Hweilan. "I can't even bend the thing enough to string it—much less use it!"
"Then why hang on to it?"
"Because it was my father's!"
"Anything else of his you'd like to hang on to?"
"J-just the bow."
"Hm." Menduarthis folded his hands in front of his face and hummed while he considered it. He looked around at the little hunters, then back to Hweilan and said, "No."
"Why?"
"Because," he said, and his voice went hard and cold again, "although you do seem like a most trustworthy little flower, right now, you need to understand who is in command here. _Me_. Hand over the bow."
"No. You'll have to kill me first."
"Will I?" Menduarthis laughed and looked to Lendri. "Is she really that foolish?"
Lendri said nothing.
"Oh, yes," said Menduarthis. "Can't speak." He let out an exaggerated sigh—Hweilan noticed that his breath still didn't steam, even in the cold. He raised his voice and said, "The elf can answer this question. Nobody kill him."
Lendri fixed him with a cold glare, then looked around at the hunters.
"Ah, yes," said Menduarthis. "They don't speak the language. Can't understand what I just said. You _are_ paying attention! I guess you'd better keep quiet after all." He turned back to Hweilan. "Last chance. Give me the bow and knife, or I take them."
"No."
He clucked his tongue inside his cheek. "You like magic, Hweilan?"
"Not really."
"Hm. Pity." Menduarthis planted both his heels together, stood very straight, and waved both hands in an intricate pattern. "You probably aren't going to like this, then."
Menduarthis's hands shot forward, and with them came a wind with the force of a dozen winter gales—but focused in one thick stream that flowed around him. His cape billowed out like a pennant. Storm and darkness hit Hweilan, then swallowed her.
# CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HOWLS HAUNTED HWEILAN'S DREAMS. PAIN TINGED these howls. Remorse. Fear.
Everything around her was cold. Cold and hard. Mountains covered with snow and ice that had not melted in a thousand generations of men. Jagged, broken peaks that bit through gray clouds lined by moonlight. At the mountains' feet, forests of pine older than the kingdoms of men filled valleys—some so deep that they never saw sun or moonlight.
Cold as it was, still the land felt alive. Not merely filled with living things—though that was true; thousands of animals and birds singing, playing, sleeping, waking, hunting and being hunted... dying; even flowers bloomed amid the frost—the land itself and the air around it possessed... a...
_Livingness_. A steady pulse ran through everything. A breathing. Almost like a song, though one not so much heard with the ears as felt in the blood.
But that blood ran cold.
Her eyes opened, the memory of the dream already fading. She couldn't see. Shadows masked everything.
She tried to sit up, but something held her back. For an instant, she panicked, but then she found she'd been wrapped—more snug than tight—in blankets, then lain upon a thick fur and wrapped again, some of the outer fur blanket folded over her head like a hood.
Wriggling like a caterpillar escaping its cocoon, Hweilan managed to free her arms, sit up, and pull the blanket off her face.
She was surrounded by bones.
She was in a sort of domed tent, made from bent poles of wood—some so green that leaves and verdant moss still clung to them. A small fire in the center of the room cast everything in orange light. Hanging from the tent frame were dozens and dozens of bones. Leg bones, ribs, sections of backbone strung through braided thread like the macabre necklace of a giant. But worst were the skulls. Swiftstags, some with antlers and some without. Tundra tigers, their daggerlike teeth painted in swirls of red and yellow. Many smaller animals—badgers, squirrels, voles—and many birds. And here and there were even a few human skulls, some bare and yellowed with age, painted in many curved and branched patterns, and others still brown and glistening fresh.
The last thing she remembered was Menduarthis on the mountain, then a great gust of wind, hitting her like a felled tree. Her body still ached from the impact, but it was a dull ache. Either a healer had seen to her, or she had slept for many days while her body healed. Perhaps both.
Her stomach felt empty and her throat dry enough to make her believe she had slept for a day at least.
Feeling her body and looking down inside the blankets, she saw that her own clothes were gone. She had been washed and now wore a sort of shift. It felt soft and warm as doeskin but looked fibrous. Someone had washed and clothed her. Hweilan shivered.
She looked down at her right hand. The bandages were gone, and the skin almost healed. The new skin had a too-smooth sheen, but the scabs were gone. The letters were still there, though, a puffy scar: KAN. "Death." She wiggled her fingers, then clenched her hand in a tight fist. The new skin felt tender, but there was no pain.
The flap of the tent opened, admitting a breath of frigid air and one of the little hunters. He ducked inside, pulled the door shut, and his eyes widened at seeing her awake.
They locked gazes for a long moment, then he placed one hand to his chest and said, "Nikle."
In the light of the fire, Hweilan got her first good look at one of these strange hunters.
Her first impression of a halfling had not been far off, at least in height. But there the resemblance ended. He was very thin, and his skin had the tint of a cloudless winter sky. And so much skin showing for such cold weather! It made Hweilan shiver even in her blankets. The little hunter wore a sleeveless tunic of some cured animal hide, belted at the waist. Its fur fringe hung just above his bare knees. He wore no boots, gloves, or coat. Just a very strange hat. It, too, was made from some sort of animal skin, fur around the edge of the cap, tied around a rim of dark wood, or perhaps horn. On the left side, a single antler spike protruded from the rim, and bits of leather lacing tied it to the long cap, so that the hat rose to sort of a curved cone over his head. A tiny skull—from a squirrel or small badger perhaps—dangled from a tassel attached to the top of the hat. The ears protruding from under the rim of the hat were very pointed—sharper and taller than even Lendri's—and the green eyes had the look of elfkind. By the warm light of the fire, they did not quite glow, but they seemed very bright, like flawless emeralds.
Hweilan shook her head. "Nikle?"
The hunter nodded and motioned to her with one hand. _"Nu thrastulet?"_
The door opened again, letting in more cold air, and Menduarthis entered.
"He's telling you his name," said Menduarthis, "and asking for yours." He rattled off something in the same language she'd heard them speak on the mountainside. Nikle smiled and shuffled out of the way.
Menduarthis shut the flap and sat across the fire from her.
"He knows your name already," he said. "But the uldrainsist on propriety and good manners to a guest."
Hweilan looked to Nikle, who was watching them both. If he understood Menduarthis's words or sensed his flippant tone, the little hunter gave no sign.
"Uldra?" Hweilan asked.
Menduarthis waved one hand at the little hunter. "Nikle here. He's an uldra."
Hweilan took in her first good look at Menduarthis. She'd only been able to get a few details on the dark mountainside. He wore no armor now—trousers and shirt of a simple cut, an unbuttoned coat that fell to his knees, and boots laced up to his knees. Nothing unusual in his manner of dress, but his physical appearance was something else. His skin was not simply pale. It was bone white. Which made his hair seem all the darker—the blackest black she had ever seen. It scarcely reflected the firelight. He wore it long, well past his shoulders, and it didn't look as if a brush had visited it in many days. Her first thought was that his eyes were silver, but upon closer inspection she saw that they were very light blue flecked with many darker shades, and he had no pupils.
"You are eladrin?" she said.
Menduarthis gave her a sly smile. "Among other things."
"What does that mean?"
Menduarthis chuckled, but he had a dangerous glint in his eye. "And what are _you?_ Hmm?"
"Human," said Hweilan. "Though I have elf blood through my mother."
Menduarthis sat up straight, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back, almost as if in meditation. A breeze came from somewhere behind her, tossing her hair in her face and causing the fire to lie low. But when she turned, there was no gap or tear in the walls. Just the wooden tent frame and wall of animal skin.
When she turned back around, Menduarthis had not moved, but he breathed in deep through his nostrils.
"Ah,' he said, and looked down at her. "Human with some elf blood, she says. True enough. True enough. But what _else_ runs in your veins? Hmm?"
"You never answered my question."
"I didn't come to answer your questions, girl. I came to fetch you. You have an audience. With the queen."
"Queen? There are no queens in the Giantspires."
"Oh, you _are_ a sharp one. Now, get dressed or I'll have to take you in your blankets, and that is hardly a way to make a good first impression."
"Where are my clothes?"
He leaned back, opened the door just enough to reach one hand out, then brought it back inside holding a thick bundle of cloth tied crossways with a cord.
_"Your_ clothes, I'm afraid, are gone." He glanced at Nikle. "Those rags you had on were not suitable for an audience with the queen."
"They were no worse than what you're wearing."
Menduarthis chuckled. "Yes, but I'm a loyal subject. You? Well, you were found running with that _sivat_ , so I suggest you wear what you're told and mind your manners. At the moment, you're a guest, but you can join your little elf friend if you aren't careful."
"Where is Lendri?"
"Taken care of."
Hweilan took the bundle and undid the knot of cord. Opening it, she found fine linen smallclothes, a shirt of the same fibrous material as the shift she was wearing, a leather belt, and trousers and a coat that seemed to be made of swiftstag skin. Soft rabbit fur lined the coat. Nothing fancy, but all very well made.
Nikle rattled off something in his own language, and Menduarthis responded in kind. The little hunter poked his head outside, spoke to someone out there, then reached out and came back in holding a large sack. Menduarthis was watching her intently, an amused glint in his eye.
"What is it?" said Hweilan.
"Nikle has a gift for you," said Menduarthis.
She looked at the sack. As Nikle moved back to sit beside the fire, she could hear something rattling inside. "What kind of gift?"
Menduarthis said something to Nikle. The little hunter smiled and emptied the sack beside Hweilan.
Five skulls rattled out. Dark brown and glistening wet, bits of tissue and blood still clinging to them. The stench of death caught in the warm air of the fire and filled the tent, making Hweilan's stomach clench.
Nikle spread his hands over the gift and said something.
Menduarthis translated. "Nikle wishes to tell you that those Nar who hunted you will trouble you no more. Whatever grievance they had against you died with them. Though in truth, I do believe that your elf friend killed two of them, and a good many more got away—including that Frost Folk brute and that... whatever it was."
She looked down at the grisly pile. "What am I supposed to do with them?"
Menduarthis threw back his head and laughed. "Nikle here would be happy to treat and paint them for you. You can use them to adorn your... well, wherever you might end up. But that is for another day."
He said something to Nikle, and the little hunter began tossing the skulls back in the sack.
"I'll give you a moment to dress," said Menduarthis. "A quick moment. We must be off. Not wise to keep the queen waiting."
Menduarthis waved to Nikle, and they turned to leave.
"Where are my things?" said Hweilan. "My bone whistle? My father's bow?"
"I told you," Menduarthis said over his shoulder, "you had to give those up. Don't worry. They're in safe keeping. But until we're sure you aren't going to cause any trouble, I'll just keep them safe."
"I am not going anywhere without them."
"I could make you come."
"And I could make that very difficult for you."
Menduarthis stared at her a long time, those pupilless eyes seeming to weigh her. Finally, the left side of his mouth curled up in a grin. "You could, I think. Hmm. Well, as much as I might enjoy that, our time is short. Shall we compromise?"
"What?"
He reached inside a pocket sewn on the inside of his coat and pulled out her _kishkoman_. "I give you back your _kishkoman_ , and you come along with no trouble."
"How... how do you know what that is?"
"Let's just say it isn't the first I've seen."
He tossed it to her, and she caught it.
"Know this," said Menduarthis. "Blow it all you like. No one here will answer. You'll only annoy the locals, and I don't recommend that. Try anything with the pointy end, and you'll never see dear Mother's _kishkoman_ again. Get dressed."
Menduarthis crawled back outside and held the door open for Nikle. The air that rushed inside was absolutely frigid. Nikle turned and faced her, gave a small bow, then walked out. The door shut after him.
Hweilan crawled out of the blankets. Even with the fire nearby, the air inside the tent was cold, and she shivered.
She was halfway finished donning the smallclothes when the door flew open, and Menduarthis leaned inside. Hweilan shrieked and grabbed the blankets to cover herself.
"I almost forgot this,' he said, and threw in a pair of fur-lined boots, gloves, hat, and a fur cloak. The door slammed shut. "Hurry, girl!"
Knowing what nights in the mountains could feel like, Hweilan put the shift back on over her smallclothes and tucked it into the trousers. Every little bit of clothing would help.
Once she was fully dressed, she hung the _kishkoman_ round her neck and stuffed it between her smallclothes and shift.
_Give me the bow and knife or I take them_. Menduarthis had said that right before he'd done... whatever he'd done. And he'd taken the bow and knife. Damn him.
Hweilan's fear subsided as her anger returned. She'd been chased and threatened, and Menduarthis had taken away her weapons with ease. She'd have to find a less direct way of beating him if his magic could summon the winds like that.
Hweilan crouched and threw the door open. Menduarthis stood a few paces away, scuffing the toes of his boots through the snow. Nikle and a few other uldra chattered among themselves. Beyond them—
Hweilan stepped outside and got her first good look around. Her jaw dropped, and her eyes went wide. There were dome tents all around—some clustered around large firepits where cauldrons bubbled, others alone between the roots of trees.
And such trees. Hweilan craned her head upward. Pines of some sort, branches powdered in snow and trunks coated with frost, their lowest branches far overhead. The bases of the trees were larger than the topmost towers of Highwatch, and several had roots that broke up through the soil and twisted in arches that under which she could have walked upright.
She could only assume it was daytime, for soft gray light filtered down from the pines, but she could not see the sky through their branches. Most of the light came from the campfires.
Flowers grew amid the frost—in the dim light their petals looked silver, their leaves dark blue. Above she heard the songs of birds and cries of animals, but none she recognized.
All this she absorbed in one glance, then pain broke her concentration.
Cold hit her like a slap. Hard enough that she gasped. The sharp intake of breath froze the insides of her nostrils and slid like a razor down her throat. Her exhale plumed like a geyser in front of her, froze into a miniature storm of frost, and fell with a whisper on the ground. The skin on her face tightened, and she thought she could feel the blood just under her skin freeze solid. Both eyes seemed to turn to round stones of ice in her head. She squeezed them shut.
She'd lived in snow-covered, ice-bound Narfell all her life, where winter winds howled down the mountainsides like tormented dragons. But she had _never_ felt cold like this.
"Bit of a chill in the air this morning, isn't there? "said Menduarthis, and when Hweilan opened her eyes a crack, she could see he was looking at her with that insolent smile. How could he be standing there bare-faced, no hat or hood, and seem so at ease?
He rattled off a string of words in the lilting language of the uldra, and Nikle proffered a small wooden bottle.
"Let me help you,' Menduarthis told Hweilan. He upended the bottle on his thumb and reached for her face.
She flinched back out of reach.
"Easy. This is _halbdol_. A bit scenty, but the fumes will keep your eyes from freezing in your skull.' "Why aren't you wearing any?"
"I don't need it. Take it or not. You can walk around all squint-eyed and grow icicles off your nose if you like. Yes or no?"
She gave him a curt nod and stepped forward. He smeared a thick coating of the black paste over each eyelid, coated the skin around her eye, and smeared a line below each eye. Then he drew a stripe down her nose and around each nostril, and coated her lips, chin, and cheeks. "Scenty" had been an understatement. The _halbdol_ gave off wonderfully warm fumes, enabling her to open her eyes fully and breathe without pain. It had a heady scent of mint, flowers, and... something she couldn't quite place.
"What is that made of?"
Menduarthis chuckled. "Probably best you not know. There!"
He stepped back and his chuckle turned into a laugh. Even Nikle and the other uldra smiled.
"You look like a very sad skull," he said
Hweilan scowled.
"Forgive me," said Menduarthis. He handed the bottle back to Nikle, then bent and cleaned off his thumb in the snow. "It's quite becoming on you. The _halbdol_ , I mean. Not the scowl." He turned on his heel and began walking away. "We must be off. Mustn't keep our lady waiting."
Hweilan stood her ground. The uldra behind her crowded in close. Even Nikle scowled, and the others had taken tighter grips on their spears.
When Menduarthis noticed he was walking alone, he turned and raised his eyebrows. "Problem?"
"Where am I?" she asked.
"You'll be in the bad graces of your hostess if you don't come along."
"I'm not going anywhere until I get some answers."
Menduarthis grimaced. "We shall talk while we walk, yes?"
Hweilan spared the uldra another glance. The look in their eyes made the decision for her.
"Very well," she said, and followed Menduarthis.
"This isn't the Giantspires," Hweilan said as they threaded their way through the scattering of tents and fires amid the trees.
"Very good," said Menduarthis. "You have a talent for noting the obvious."
They passed into a part of the camp where the fires were fewer, the trees closer, and all around her the world was a mixture of snow amid dark blue shadow. The trees seemed an army of towers that disappeared into a foggy murk overhead. But amid the murk, Hweilan caught glimpses of glowing eyes. More uldra? Perhaps. But if so, they could climb like monkeys.
"So where are we?"
"Frightened?"
"No,' she told Menduarthis, and was surprised to realize it was true. Everything around her looked, smelled, and sounded completely... other. Completely foreign to everything she knew. Still, something about it seemed right. Not quite comfortable exactly, but...
"Home,' said Menduarthis.
"What?"
"The short answer to your question. This is home. I've lived here many years. The uldra call it _ban Meidan_ , which in their tongue means 'our land.' "He chuckled. "Very imaginative folk, the uldra. But those people in your world who know enough to know of this place, they call it the Feywild."
Hweilan's heart skipped a beat, and she gasped before she could catch herself.
The Feywild.
She'd heard bards' songs of the place, and Dorim's stories. Of all the dwarves who lived in Highwatch, Dorim was the only one to whom Hweilan had ever been close. Master craftsmen, his family crafted the bows for the Knights, and Dorim himself had crafted her father's bow. But more than a master of weaponry, Dorim fancied himself a loremaster—though Hweilan's grandmother had always called them "foolish dwarf nonsense.' But Hweilan had loved his stories—the ones he'd tell her over a fire on the coldest winter nights, his bare feet propped next to the fire, his favorite pipe dangling between his lips.
All the lore and songs and fireside stories agreed on one thing—the Feywild was a place of peril, of beauties that would break your heart and horrors that would eat it. Some who wandered into the Feywild returned to the real world half-mad. And some never returned at all.
She didn't know what to think. Her senses couldn't deny her present location, no matter how much her reason tried to fight it. She'd somehow stumbled into a bard's tale.
"Where is Lendri?" she asked.
Behind her, the uldra hissed. She turned and saw the hunters staring at her through narrowed eyes.
"Hmm," said Menduarthis, and though his back was to her, she could hear the frown in his tone. "Best not mention that name around our little friends. Your pale pet doesn't have the best reputation 'round here."
"Where is he? He isn't... dead?"
"No." He cast a sly eye over his shoulder and winked at her. "But the day's not over yet."
The darkness pressed down on them. Even with her keen eyesight, Hweilan could make out little except pale swathes of snow amid patches of shadow. They passed under a great arch of a tree root, icicles and silvery moss drooping from it like a ragged tapestry, before she saw the tundra tiger lounging atop the root, watching them.
Menduarthis caught her wide-eyed stare and said, "You behave yourself and so will the uldra's playthings."
She hurried under and past the root. The tiger watched them leave but did not follow.
"Why am I here?" she asked. "Why have you brought me to this place?"
"You'd rather we left you in the Giantspires to freeze or starve?"
"Of course not. But why bring me here?"
Menduarthis was silent a while. Long enough that Hweilan was beginning to think he wouldn't answer. But then he sighed and said, "I was bored."
"You brought me here because you're _bored?"_
"You were found in the company of an elf that the queen swore to kill if she ever found. A little exciting, yes? That makes you a candidate for... well, a few questions, at the very least. What happens to you next"—he turned and smiled at her, but it was the smile of a wolf finding a lamb all alone on the hillside—" depends very much on your answers." He looked around at their surroundings, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Best we not talk through this little bit of our stroll."
"Why?" she whispered back. "You said the tigers would behave themselves."
"There's more than tigers in these woods. Quiet now. And stay close."
They wound their way farther down into the valley. They left the giant trees behind and entered woods that seemed more familiar to Hweilan—at least in size. Set amid the frost and snow, their bark seemed just a shade above black, and their trunks and branches leaned and twisted every which way. Even though they were seemingly still in the grip of winter, leaves filled their branches. The leaves, some as large as her hand, seemed like an oak's—though the blade had far too many points and their veins looked silver, even seeming to glow if she looked at them just right. Silver moss and icicles hung from them, and undergrowth, aside from the occasional bit of the strange flowers, was sparse.
Their path disappeared, and Menduarthis led them into the trees.
The air became much quieter. There were no more songs of birds or cries of animals. Their footfalls crunching through the snow seemed muted, and even the uldra appeared uneasy. They gripped their spears in tight fists, and their oddly glowing eyes kept careful watch.
A rift in the earth blocked their path. It was only four or five paces across, but so deep that Hweilan could not see its bottom. Ice-covered stone and soil fell away at her feet into shadow. Definitely too far to jump. Hweilan looked both ways, searching for a bridge. Then she saw somthing on the other side of the ravine.
"That is the strangest tree I have ever seen," she said in an almost reverent whisper. The thing had two trunks that joined together about a third of the way up, then sprouted outward again just below the crown. It had an unsettlingly human shape. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of smaller branches, vines, and thorns sprouted from its limbs.
At the sound of Hweilan's voice, the tree moved, the thick cluster of branches that Hweilan could only describe as a "head" turning toward them, and two eyes regarded her. They glowed like the uldras' eyes, verdant green, and the look was decidedly baleful.
Menduarthis turned to her. He put a thin finger across his lips and whispered, "I said quiet."
She stepped as close to him as she could without actually touching and whispered, "If this place is so dangerous and your queen wishes to see me, why has she not provided an escort?" Her words came out in a plume of frost that coated Menduarthis's shoulder.
He smiled, but taut anger lay behind it. "What do you think I am?"
She opened her mouth to reply, but he placed his hand over her mouth and shushed her. His skin was shockingly cool—far colder than any man's ought to be. She wondered how he could stand being outside without gloves.
They continued on. The tree thing across the canyon followed them for a while, keeping pace and watching them from the opposite side. But the rift grew no narrower, and the thing made no effort to cross. Finally it gave up but stood there watching them as they continued. When they were almost out of sight, the thing threw back its head and let out a long, mournful sound that seemed part howl and part trumpet. It sent a chill down Hweilan's spine—and when other calls answered, in the distance, her chill grew into a full-fledged shudder. The sounds stopped them all in their tracks.
"How many of those things are out there?" she said.
Menduarthis turned and said, "We might just find out if you don't keep quiet. If I have to tell you again, I'm going to have Nikle gag you."
They walked on, always downslope, and at a much faster pace.
The rift widened the farther they went. The slope on which they trod grew steeper, the trees sparser, and more rocks began to peek through the snow. But Menduarthis seemed to know his way, and Hweilan followed his footsteps almost exactly.
Walking near the cliff's edge, Hweilan looked down and was surprised to see something: the bottom of the canyon. Its flatness made her suspect it was a river or lake where the water flowed right up to the cliff's edge, for there were no trees or brush of any sort. Just a flawless sheet of snow, blue and sparkling in the faint light.
"What—"
"Best not to talk just yet,' Menduarthis interrupted, and he motioned to the path in front of them. "The walls have ears."
Looking where Menduarthis had pointed, Hweilan saw that the woods were coming to an end, and they were nearing a wall.
As their little company passed out of the shelter of the wood, they walked into snowfall. Large heavy flakes that seemed to whisper as they fell. They came to the wall, and Hweilan saw that it was not a wall at all, but a huge hedge, comprising many thousands of dark-green-leafed branches, each armored in an array of thorns. No frost of ice covered it, and there was movement within the branches. Furtive shapes that must have been very small to work their way through the tangle. Hweilan saw tiny pairs of eyes glowing from the shadows, but if they caught her watching, one blink and they were gone.
"Menduarthis," Hweilan whispered, "what is in the hedge?"
"Locals. Don't worry. They know you're with me."
"That last local didn't seem to like you much," she said, thinking of the tree things.
He shrugged. "Most of the locals don't. But they know I'm here at the queen's behest. No one will interfere with that. Now be quiet."
Hweilan scowled, but the place seemed to call for quiet, almost as if the sound of snowfall was a constant _shush_. She turned to look at the uldra. The little hunters, all of whom seemed perfectly at ease around tundra tigers, were as wary as she'd ever seen them. They kept looking around, their eyes wide and movements skittish as birds.
She saw no more eyes in the depths of the hedge, but she did notice that even the snowflakes would not settle upon it. Most flew away at the last instant, as if stirred by a puff of air. But a few did manage to hit an outstretched branch or leaf, whereupon the flake sizzled away into a tiny mist that fell to the ground.
Menduarthis walked a few paces left, then back to the right, leaning in close and passing one hand over the hedge. The leaves and branches rasped and rattled as his hand passed over them.
"What are you looking for?" she asked.
He stopped and stood ramrod straight, heels together, head back, arms outstretched slightly. Almost exactly the same pose he'd taken that night on the mountain before—
Hweilan gasped and stepped back. She could feel the power building.
Menduarthis leaned his head back, his eyes closed, but his nostrils flaring as he took in deep draughts of air.
The ground shook. Just a trembling at first, like the feeling in the air during thunder. But then everything underfoot shuddered with such force that Hweilan fell forward into the snow. She looked up.
Before Menduarthis, a shard of ice came up from the ground, splitting the hedge like shears through cloth. The shard was knife thin at first, but as it rose it thickened. By the time it stopped some ten feet or more above them, its base was wider than she was tall.
Still holding his pose, Menduarthis flicked his fingers forward, and the ice shard split with a _crack!_ that sent a gout of frigid air and frost spewing over him. He brought his palms together with a flourish, then waved them apart. The split shard molded outward into an arch, then melted away into a heavy frost, much like the snowflakes had on the leaves. When it was gone, all that remained was a tunnel through the hedge, blue-silver mist falling down the sides and swirling along the bottom.
Hweilan pushed herself to her feet and brushed herself off. "What are you?" she said.
Menduarthis dropped his pose and turned to her. The frost that had coated him melted before her eyes, falling away in that same strange mist that the snowflakes had. He looked down on her with the strangest expression. Curiosity? Bewilderment? A little of both, and something else. Something that bordered on affection. That made her more uncomfortable than all the rest.
"You behave yourself, you survive your meeting with the queen, and I'll tell you all about me."
"Survive?"
"Too late to worry about that now," he said. He turned and walked into the tunnel. "Come along!"
Hweilan followed. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the uldra did not. Nikle motioned at her—it seemed more of a benediction than a wave—then he and his companions turned and fled.
# CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WHEN THEY EMERGED FROM THE TUNNEL, HWEILAN and Menduarthis were in a field that sloped gently downward, filled with trees that she could not name. Their branches sprouted not needles but thick and vibrant leaves—some larger than her hand. Whether it was their true color or simply a trick of the dim light, the leaves had a bluish tint, the color of evening clouds, thick with snow. Among them were waist-high bushes, their small, waxy leaves dark green and sprouting tiny flowers that seemed black against the falling snow that would soon hide them. The brush had a tangled look, but paths wound between them. The only sound was the falling of the snow and their own footsteps.
Many side trails branched off their path. Hweilan stopped counting them after thirty. Theirs were the only prints in the snow. Occasionally their path took them beneath the boughs of the strange trees, and the ground was more frost than snow. Still, the ground sloped ever downward, as if the garden were set on a shallow hill.
The woods ended on the lip of a steep bank. The snow was falling too fast and thick for her to see more than thirty or forty feet, but beyond the bank was a flat field of white. A lake or river, then.
Menduarthis stopped in the shadow of the last tree. Hweilan stopped beside him and was about to ask why when she sensed it. Nothing tangible that touched her five senses. This tickled an older, more primal sense in the very core of her mind. Something was different here. The sense of the entire land being not only alive but _aware_. That awareness seemed focused, like the summer sunlight through the window glass of her grandmother's shrine.
Menduarthis didn't turn but looked at her sidelong. "Are you ready?"
"I've never met a queen before," said Hweilan, and she realized that her heart was beating twice as fast.
"It wouldn't help you if you had. There are no queens like Kunin Qatar."
"Is that good or bad?"
"She is what she is," said Menduarthis. "If you're the praying sort, now is the time."
He stepped forward and slid sidelong down the bank.
Hweilan did the same, though as she hit the soft snow at the bottom, she wondered why. The part of Hweilan that loved the wild seemed to have gone numb out of sheer bewilderment. But the very small part of her that was still the pampered castle girl was wide-eyed awake, and she was screaming at Hweilan to run.
She followed Menduarthis over the snow-covered ice, and the storm swallowed them. The trees behind them became indistinct, soft blue shadows watching over them from above. The last look over her shoulder showed them as little more than fading shapes in the snowfall. Then they were gone.
But there were other shadows.
Hweilan saw them out of the corners of her eyes—shapes watching them from the storm. But when she turned to face them, she saw only snow, heard only a whisper of footfalls that might have been the snow settling all around them. She couldn't smell anything over the _halbdol_ paint on her face.
A terrible power emanated from some place in front of her, like an invisible sun. It touched the very marrow of her bones, but not with warmth. This sun burned cold.
Still she followed Menduarthis.
Thinking on it, it came down to simple choices. Her family was dead. Murdered. Her friends too. Even people she hadn't much liked. Slaughtered. And what she would have given to see them now. Lendri... Dead? Alive? Did it matter? He wasn't here. It all boiled down to one simple fact:
"I have nowhere else to go."
"Ah, now that's not true, little flower," said Menduarthis, and it wasn't until he did that she realized she'd spoken her thoughts aloud. "We always have a choice."
Another shadow loomed to her left. She turned with a gasp, but it was gone.
"Don't mind them,' said Menduarthis. He stopped for a moment, until she was beside him, then he put an arm around her shoulder and led her on. "Hmm. Choices, choices. Everyone has choices." He chewed on his lip, made a clicking sound in his cheek, then said, "Not always good ones, though. Damned on left or right. Story of my life."
"Are you saying I can choose to turn around? "said Hweilan. "Go back? Not face your queen?"
Menduarthis chuckled, though there was no humor in it. "Afraid not."
"You said—"
"I said there are always choices. I didn't say there are always good ones. And that one, I'm afraid, is beyond you. You've been summoned. You will answer to Kunin Gatar."
"So I have no choice, then?"
His voice dropped to a whisper. "Oh, but you do. You can go in there all weak-kneed and scared. Maybe even blubber a little. Fall on your knees and beg mercy. You won't get it. Kunin Gatar's heart is as cold as her... well, let's just say I don't recommend that choice. Or you can go in there and face her. Tell the truth. Don't lie, I warn you. She'll know if you do.' He looked away, and she detected a slight trace of his mocking manner returning, though there was a sadness to it now. "I speak from experience."
"You're saying I should—"
"Don't misunderstand me," he said. "I'd say there's a decent chance you're about to die. But I've been wrong before. I would have bet my left eye Lendri would be dead by now, and I would have lost that bet. Though I can't say he's any better off. But you can do one thing. Face your fate standing up. Look her in the eye. Tell her the truth. If you die... well, at least do it without shame. No one likes a coward."
A great shadow loomed out of the storm before them. At first, Hweilan thought it was simply an errant breeze swirling the snow. But with each step, the shadow loomed larger and grew more distinct. It took up the entire sky before them.
At first she thought it was the most magnificent sculpture she'd ever seen—taller than the outer wall of Highwatch by far, but elegant beyond anything she'd ever imagined. All curves and eddies, like...
A waterfall. The largest she'd ever seen. A river falling off a precipice that had to be at least a thousand feet high. But the entire waterfall was frozen. Not slowly, like the usual winter grip of the Giantspires. This great cataract had been locked in ice in an instant of glory, thundering fall and tumbling waves and spray. The fall seemed a great multifaceted curtain, shaped in every shade of blue, white, and purple. The waves at the bottom large as houses, no two alike, all curves and swirls that melted into one another before freezing forever. All beautiful beyond description. But the frozen spray... it reached out at jagged angles, like thorns or curving blades. Sharp as razors.
"The palace of Kunin Gatar," said Menduarthis. " _Ellestharn_. Snowthorn."
Hweilan suddenly felt very small. She'd always taken great pride in Highwatch, even though in her heart of hearts she'd never really loved the place. Carved onto the mountain's face, crafted from the bones of the earth, it rose above the steppe, the tallest dwelling for hundreds of miles. A great house of stone in a land where most people lived in hide tents. Shaped by the hands of master stoneworkers, it demanded awe. But this...
The crude buildings of men, dwarves, their mightiest works... they seemed ugly, crude, the scratchings of petulant children in comparison to this. Ellestharn was a work of magnificent, terrible beauty.
"How could... this"—she gestured at the frozen palace—" be?"
"Kunin Gatar," said Menduarthis. "The Queen."
Hweilan heard the raven before she saw it—a harsh _caw! caw!_ that broke through the reverent silence of the storm. She turned and saw the bird circling them.
Menduarthis kept walking, ignoring the bird. Hweilan followed, though she kept a wary eye on the newcomer. It faded in and out of the storm behind them.
They stopped just in front of the nearest walls of the ice palace—a great wave of ice shards that curved over them, almost like a reaching hand.
The raven alighted on the nearest column of ice. It regarded them with one eye, then flapped its wings furiously. Feathers flew about it, mingling with the snow, and the bird's form blurred, seeming to suffuse like a droplet of blood in clear water. Its black feathers became smokelike, spreading then swirling amid the snow. The swirls coalesced and reformed into a more human shape.
At first Hweilan thought it was some sort of twisted elf child—small, thin, all loose angles connecting lanky limbs. Black eyes set in gray skin beneath an unruly shock of black hair that still had the look of feathers. His entire body, crouched on the ice, seemed to be letting off a faint black steam, but it fell around him rather than rising.
_"Govuled_ , Menduarthis," he said, and Hweilan was shocked at the deep voice that emanated from such a small frame.
"Well met, Roakh," said Menduarthis. "You should speak so that our guest might understand."
Roakh cocked his head sideways and looked at Hweilan. A shiver went down her spine, and she felt suddenly very helpless. One of her Uncle Soran's knights had once told her stories of great battles, how the corpses might lie for days under a sun broken by clouds of ravens. The dead were lucky. Those who were too wounded to move had to wait for one of the healers to find them—if there were any combing the battlefield, and many times, there weren't. That, or the youngest squires whose job it was to wander the battlefield with a knife and slit the throat of any living too far gone to heal.
Those who were found by neither waited for the ravens. As little Hweilan, no more than six or seven at the time, had listened, she had imagined lying there helpless, surrounding by corpses and buzzing flies, having only the strength to breathe and close her mouth to keep out the flies. A rustle of feathers, and she'd look up to see the pitiless black eye of a raven and the long beak the instant before it jabbed right into her eye.
The raven, hopping among the corpses, looking for a tasty morsel... that was the look that this Roakh gave her now.
"And what is our guest's name?" he said.
Hweilan stood there staring.
"No one likes a coward," Menduarthis whispered.
"Hweilan," she said. "Of Highwatch."
"Highwatch," said Roakh. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and smiled. "Stone houses in the mountains. Damarans so far from home. Nar at their feet. Dwarves dig-dig-digging deeper at Damarans' demands. Ahh... Hweilan. Hweilan is not a Damaran name."
Hweilan returned his stare. He hadn't asked a question, and something about his manner was stirring Hweilan's anger.
"Haven't brought us another liar, have you, Menduarthis?" said Roakh.
Menduarthis gave the silence no chance to become uncomfortable. He looked down at Hweilan and said, "A nswer him."
Hweilan kept her gaze fixed on Roakh. "He didn't ask me anything."
Roakh threw back his head and laughed—a raucous guffaw in which Hweilan heard the sound of a corpse-hungry raven. "Oh, I like this one! I can't quite decide which way my hopes should go."
Hweilan gave him a quizzical look.
"It is my honor to take you to our queen," Roakh said. "If you please her, it will be my job to take you back out again. If not... well, Kunin Gatar is a most kind and benevolent ruler, and she usually allows me to eat unpleasant guests." He smiled, and Hweilan saw that his tiny teeth were very sharp. "After she's done with them, that is. But alas. I've just eaten, and I'm not at all hungry. So you see, I'm not quite sure whether I should be hoping you live or die."
"That's enough, Roakh," send Menduarthis.
Roakh slipped off the shard of ice and stepped toward them. He had a hunched way of walking, his arms and head both thrust forward, but even standing up straight he would have had to look up at Hweilan's shoulder.
"True enough," he said. "If things don't go my way today, there's always tomorrow. Let's test fortune's favor, shall we?"
He held one hand toward the wall, and Hweilan saw a yawning passageway through the ice. It hadn't been there a moment ago. It was higher than the main gates of Highwatch, and wide enough for four horsemen to have ridden in side by side. A few steps led upward—either ice or a pale marble, she couldn't be sure. But beyond that, the light failed.
Roakh leading, Menduarthis following, they entered the palace of Kunin Gatar.
Inside the palace, the cold pressed in, making the air heavy. As the light, dim as it was, of the outside world faded, the darkness took them. Menduarthis stepped beside Hweilan, took her arm, and led her onward. The stairs were shallow and widely spaced. Even in the dark Hweilan had no trouble despite their gentle curve. The only sounds were their footsteps, their breathing, and the frost of Hweilan's breath whispering to the ground in a fine frost.
"Can we not have some light, Roakh?" said Menduarthis.
In front of her, a raven cawed, followed by the flap of wings. Instinctively, Hweilan squeezed her eyes shut. But the bird was moving away.
She opened her eyes and could see. Set along the wall at every dozen paces or so were misshapen pillars, black as onyx but gleaming as if wet. From the top, a sort of waterfall of frost and fog, its stream no wider than her hand, fell away into a basin. The frost and fog glowed with blue light, dimmer than lamplight, but the walls seemed made entirely of ice, and they caught the glow and reflected it back a thousand times.
The stairway ended a dozen steps above them. They stepped onto a landing, broader than a tourney field. It was lit in the same manner as the stairway. Hweilan could not see the ceiling. The walls went up and up until they were swallowed by darkness. Many doorways lined the walls. Some led into halls, others to stairs leading down. But to their left, a passage opened large enough for a parade, and more steps led up.
"That is our way," said Menduarthis.
From the stairway came a raucous cry. Hweilan could not tell if it was the caw of a raven or words. "Come! Come! Come!" A bit of both, she decided.
The wide stairs straightened for a while, then wound back and forth, passing more landings lit by the little falls of glowing frost. Not even a candle burned in the entire palace, much less torches or lamps. It was entirely bereft of flame and warmth, and as near as Hweilan could tell, she, Menduarthis, and Roakh were the only living things in the palace.
They passed through an arch, and the wall to their right disappeared into nothingness. The stair clung to the wall of a huge chamber of ice. It was about as far across as the inner bailey of Highwatch, but the drop...
Fifty or sixty feet down, the light failed. It might well have been bottomless. And there was no rail. One wrong step...
Looking up, the walls of the chamber glowed cold blue, lit by more of the little falls of frost. Hweilan could see that the stairs ended at a landing some hundred feet or more above them on the opposite wall of the chamber.
"Almost there," said Menduarthis.
They kept going, and when Hweilan heard the flutter of wings, she looked up. A raven was flying back and forth across the chamber. It dipped close a few times, then flapped up to the landing.
When they reached it, Roakh was sitting upon the top step, elbows on his knees, chin on his crossed arms. When his eyes were level with Hweilan's, he said, "You never answered my question."
She stopped a few steps beneath him. "Which question was that?"
"You say you are from Highwatch," he said. "Highwatch founded by Damarans, populated by Nar, a few score of dwarves, and whatever draped-in-rags wanderers find a place to feather a nest. Yet your name, Hweilan, is neither Damaran nor Nar. So are you one of the draped-in-rags wanderers? Or was it your mother, buying a warm bed by sharing it?"
Hweilan lunged at him, one fist cocked back.
Menduarthis caught her wrist before she could pummel him.
"Oh, I like this one!" said Roakh. He hopped to his feet and backed out of Hweilan's reach. "She'll do well, I think. A pity? A grace? Could be either, 'specially in this place."
Hweilan jerked her arm out of Menduarthis's grip and glared at him.
"Roakh asks a discourteous question," said Menduarthis. "Don't give him a discourteous answer. That can only harm you here."
Hweilan held her glare a moment more, grinding her teeth, then she looked back at Roakh and said, "My father was Damaran. My mother was not. I was given a name of my mother's people."
Roakh smiled, showing his sharp teeth. "And those would be...?"
"Vil Adanrath."
All glee melted from Roakh's eyes. When his smile returned, it was pure malice. "Well," he said. "Looks like we know which way this is going to go after all."
"What do you mean?"
Roakh looked at Menduarthis. "You can see to things from here?"
"Yes," said Menduarthis. He sounded subdued, like a man who had just gotten back to his feet after a strong punch to the gut. "Where are you going?"
"To work up an appetite," said Roakh. He ran to the ledge and jumped. He fell out of sight, but a moment later a black raven rose through the air. It circled the chamber a few times, cawing raucously, then dived into the darkness.
The hall was wide enough for several wagons, but the ceiling low enough that Menduarthis probably could have reached up and trailed his fingers along it as they walked. It gave their footfalls an odd echo.
The hall was unlit, but Hweilan could see light not too far ahead. She walked beside Menduarthis rather than letting him lead.
They emerged into a domed room. The floor was black and smooth as the bottom of a deep well. The ice walls curved around, and they held inside them ancient trees, their trunks and branches black and hard. Only a slight curve of the trunks protruded from the walls, but their bare branches spread out into a low ceiling, and cold white globes of light dangled from their clawlike branches. They gave off no heat, so Hweilan assumed they were lit by magic. Their glow reflected off the flawless blackness of the floor, giving Hweilan the sense of walking on the night sky.
Across from Hweilan and Menduarthis, two of the trees framed tall double doors, which seemed to have been crafted from the same wood as the trees. To the right of the door, a pale figure hung from the branches of one of the trees.
"Lendri!"
Hweilan ran to him, and Menduarthis did nothing to stop her.
Lendri had been stripped naked. Cuts, welts, and bruises covered his face, legs, and torso. Ugly blue bruises covered his forearms like fresh tattoos where he had obviously tried to ward off blows. Dozens of black cords bound his upper arms. The other ends had been tied to the limb so that he hung like some lifeless puppet. He could have stood if he tried, but he hung limp, his knees bent beneath him, and for one moment Hweilan was sure he was dead.
She fell to her knees in front of him and lifted his face in both her hands. Through her gloves, she couldn't feel for warmth, but she could see that his skin tone, abnormally pale to begin with, had taken on a sickly, grayish cast. Something had taken a few small bites out of his left cheek. A raven's beak. Roakh's beak. Her stomach turned.
Lendri's eyes beneath the lids had sunk into his skull. She shook him and whispered his name.
His eyelids fluttered open. He licked his lips and tried to say something, but all that came out was a soft rasp.
She looked over her shoulder to Menduarthis, who stood a few paces away, arms crossed over his chest and looking down on them. Given what little he'd told her about Lendri, she expected to see disapproval on his features. But instead his face was a stone mask. Only the slight softening around his eyes told her that he was masking profound disapproval.
"Do you have anything for him to drink?" said Hweilan.
Menduarthis shook his head. "No. And even if I did, I wouldn't give it to him. His fate is up to the queen now."
Hweilan looked back to Lendri. Something nagged in the back of her mind. "His skin."
Before, tattoos had covered Lendri, most old with age. Every bit of skin she'd seen had been decorated in some sort of design, with scars overlapping many of them. They were gone now, his pale skin decorated only by the rents caused by the thorns.
"Flayed off him," said Menduarthis, "then grown back by Kunin Qatar's healers."
"That's monstrous!"
"It is," said Menduarthis. "But unless you'd like that confirmed firsthand, we need to be out of here." "Can we do nothing for him?"
"I don't know about we. But my counsel to _you_ is the same as it was before. Be strong. Don't cower. Tell the truth. You won't be any help to anyone if you end up there beside him."
She turned back to Lendri and bent down so that she looked him in the eye. "I'll do what I can for you. I promise."
She stood and turned away. Menduarthis spared Lendri a final glance, shook his head, then led Hweilan over to the double doors. She could see no handles, and the crack between them would not have fit a razor.
"Is there no one to announce our presence?" Hweilan asked.
"She knows we're here," Menduarthis whispered.
The doors flew open toward them, pushed by a gust of frigid wind. The branches of the trees caught them, like the hands of eager attendants.
The wind swirled around the room in a furious vortex. Beyond the open doorway, all Hweilan could see was impenetrable white, like the heart of a blizzard.
She tried to back away, but the air seemed to solidify and push them both forward. Hweilan forced her legs to move, fearing that if she didn't the gale would simply bowl her over and shove her along like a dry leaf across a snowfield. They staggered through the doors, and in the great rush of wind, Hweilan thought she could hear a cold, feminine laughter.
The doors slammed shut behind them, and the fierceness of the wind began to abate. The whiteness surrounding them flowed and swirled in a hundred streams, condensing more and more tightly, until they joined into a single cyclone
In an instant, it stopped. Snow and frost fell to the ground with a million tiny rattles.
Hweilan found herself in a wide room, with walls made of towering columns of ice in every shade of blue. They gave off a faint light.
Before them, no more than five paces away, Queen Kunin Gatar stood in the midst of the last of the snowfall. Hweilan gasped at the sight of her.
She'd expected a woman of her mother's age at the least, perhaps even her grandmother's. But the woman looking down upon her seemed scarcely past girlhood, her pale skin flawless, her hair swept back off her high forehead. Tight braids so black that the light reflecting off them shone blue were tucked behind high, pointed ears, and a hundred tiny diamonds—or perhaps they were bits of ice—sparkled in her hair. The queen's eyes were a blue so pale that the color simply seemed to fade into the whiteness beyond—and like Menduarthis's, they had no pupils. The fabric of her gown was gossamer fine, and the long strands of cloth dangling from her bodice and sleeves rippled and flowed in the eddying air currents of the room.
"Well met," said Kunin Gatar. Her voice was light but had a hoarse edge, like new snow blown over hard frost.
"W-well met, my lady."
"My lady?" the corner of the queen's mouth curled up in a sardonic grin. "Not yet. But we shall see."
# CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE SCOUTS HAVE RETURNED, MY LORD," SAID Argalath. "The Gap is passable. Not easy, mind you, but passable. Our forces should depart within four days, as planned."
"They will be ready," said Guric.
Guric looked up at the archway in front of him. Dwarvish runes ran from the floor, over the curve of the arch, and down again. The splintered remains of the oak door still littered the floor inside the archway. Guric could count on one hand the number of times he'd been down in the parts of the fortress where the dwarves made their homes—and he had never been down this deep.
"But," Guric continued, "we're not leaving Highwatch before I see Valia alive again. You must complete the rite."
"My lord," said Argalath, "it is possible that the girl _might_ be returned to us within four days." A moment's silence, then, "But she might not."
"You heard me, counselor. I won't leave Highwatch until this is done."
"Forgive me, my lord, but you must. To solidify your rule here, those houses sympathetic to Vandalar _must_ be subdued before they have the chance to rally. And you must show your strength to the king. To allow our enemies to array against us—"
"I didn't do this to be king," said Guric, and he had to press down the urge to shove Argalath into the stone wall, again and again until he heard bones crack. "I did this for her. Without her, none of the rest matters."
"Valia _will_ be restored to you. But unless we secure your rule here, you may find yourself branded an outlaw by summer. What kind of life will you be able to give her then?"
"I don't care how much faith you place in your acolytes. Jatara has already failed us. I won't leave Valia's fate in the hands of those savages."
"Of course not, my lord. You must lead your army into Damara, but I will stay here to finish the rite. Once Valia is alive—"
"That was not the plan!" Guric stopped walking and faced Argalath.
His plan had been simple in its brilliance. Secure Highwatch, then lead his forces through the Gap to Damara. Ride up to a city or fort with an army at his back, then come forward under flag of truce to discuss terms, with Argalath and his guard as escorts. When the city's delegation came out under flag of truce, Argalath would use his spellscar to kill all but one of them. The conniving fops would simply topple dead from their horses. Guric would then smile and inform the lone survivor that if the city surrendered and swore loyalty to him, everyone would be spared. But any who resisted would be instantly killed, just like these poor fellows.
Absurd, of course. Argalath's spellscar actually held very little power. Using it, he could move objects with his mind. But only very small objects. Anything much larger than a flagon pained him. Put wine in the flagon and it could leave him bedridden and blind for days. But he had discovered something about the human body. A blood vessel below the brain was far, far smaller than a flagon—and much more flexible. Squeeze it shut, and a man would fall senseless in moments. Keep it closed and he would soon be quite dead. A simple trick. It took very little power. But power carefully applied could prove deadly. Still, using it against even a half-dozen people at once tired him greatly. The threat of using it against an entire populace... impossible. Argalath would be hard-pressed to use it against twenty people at once, and never at a great distance. Afterward, he might well be blind for days, and scarcely able to move. But the good people of Damara did not know that. Reality and perception were two different things. As long as their ruse remained a secret—and none knew beyond Guric and Argalath's bodyguards—it gave his counselor a dreaded reputation. One they hoped to use to subdue Guric's enemies with very little bloodshed.
Guric wouldn't begin with the great castles or larger cities, of course, which were likely to have several wizards among their defenders. He'd take the smaller, outlying places at first. Those forts that surrendered would be left in peace—provided that their soldiers joined Guric's army. Those who refused... well, Argalath had other gifts besides his spellscar, and their strategy assured that the first forts they attacked could be taken with Guric's army if necessary.
The conquered would first serve him out of fear, but soon out of love. He would rule with justice and a fair hand. He would free them from the oppressive incompetence of Yarin Frostmantle and make Damara the jewel of the north, Valia by his side.
But without Argalath, it would be bloody battle after bloody battle. Guric would not be seen as a proud liberator. He'd be loathed more than Frostmantle. And if the Damarans did manage to rally quickly—not likely, but not impossible—his plan might fail altogether. If it failed, Guric could probably still lick the proper boot heels, and if fortune favored him he might come out as the new Duke of Highwatch. But Guric was done licking boots to get what he wanted.
"Our plan is secure, my lord," said Argalath. "Though I fear we must make one small change."
"What change?"
Enough of Argalath's face showed within his hood that Guric saw his smile. "Follow me, my lord."
They passed through an archway, decorated with dwarven runes. Beyond, the halls became rougher, their walls only minimally worked stone, save for the occasional rune etched into a wall or burned into a wood beam. But Guric and Argalath had left even those behind some time ago, passing through tunnels of round stone where Guric had to walk hunched over, holding the torch well away from him. No matter how he held it, the oily fumes seemed to gather around his head, as they walked into a natural cave, carved by time and water rather than hands. It was narrow, but high enough that Guric could walk upright again, and sometimes the roof rose out of reach of the torchlight. The air felt close and damp.
The tunnel spread into a large chamber, points of stone dripping water from a high ceiling, and warped mounds of age-old rock, wet with condensation, reflecting Guric's torchlight into a thousand motes of light. A path snaked its away among the rocks, and when Guric looked down he saw that it was not gravel on which he trod, but the dust from precious stones—rubies, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and bloodstone. They were walking on the treasure of a dozen lords.
The path ended at a stone arch set amid the opposite wall. Hundreds of runes and images decorated the cut stones of the arch support, and on either side were two statues, each twice his own height. Their bodies were stout, their hands large. Guric thought they might have once been dwarves, but their features had been defaced, the stone hacked away, and newer runes painted in a dark substance covered them. Guric could read none of them, but he recognized the style of these new runes from some of Argalath's rites in which he had taken part.
"What was this place?" said Guric.
"A temple of sorts, I gather." Argalath turned, and the smile he gave Guric sent a chill down his spine. He motioned for Guric to go inside. "We have found better uses for it."
Beyond the archway, all was darkness. Guric held his torch in front as he ducked into the tunnel. The ceiling was several feet above his head, but something about the feel of the darkness made Guric instinctively hunch over.
Jewels of every color sparkled along the walls and ceiling. Gold, silver, and other precious metals had been inlaid into the stone, highlighting sculptures of dwarf heroes. But on the floor, rats squealed and scurried away from the torchlight, bugs crunched under Guric's boots, and with every step he waded through a thickening stench. He could hear Argalath following, but he kept his eyes forward, afraid that at any moment a cloud of bats might surge out of the darkness or the stream of rats might decide to brave the torchlight.
"Not much farther, my lord," said Argalath.
Guric ground his teeth. How many times had the man said that already?
"Gods, Argalath, what is that reek? It smells like—"
The light washed over a demon, standing in the middle of the tunnel, and Guric started. The thing stepped forward, and Guric saw that it was not a demon after all, but one of Argalath's special Nar. The man's head was shaved in a fashion uncommon to the Nar: completely bald save for a topknot, in which were knotted bones and teeth. His face had all the expression of a death mask. Bare from the waist up, his torso and arms were covered with inks and scars of leering eyes and tongues slathering around sharp teeth. The red and green inks had looked very much like scales in the torchlight, which was why Guric had first taken him for a demon.
The Nar bowed and said, _"Kâ bâr khorluk."_
Shielding his eyes from the torch, Argalath stopped beside Guric and said, _"Kâ bâr khor,"_ followed by a long string of words that Guric could not follow.
The Nar answered, then turned away, the darkness swallowing him.
"All is ready, my lord," said Argalath.
They walked on, and within a dozen steps Guric could see light ahead. Low and purplish, like the dying light of evening. Another scent mixed among the stench. Smoke that smelled of spices.
The tunnel turned to the right, and beyond, Guric's torch was no longer necessary. The tunnel ended and opened into a vast stone chamber, lit by coals burning in braziers so large that he could have bathed in one. The coals piled high within them glowed sickly purple and gave off a scent that seemed sweet but still tickled the back of Guric's throat, threatening to make him gag.
But the light they cast, though it seemed weak—so much so that even Argalath did not flinch—went very far, lighting up a chamber in which a hundred people could have milled with room to spare. Carvings and symbols decorated every wall, and the five columns of natural stone that joined the floor to the ceiling at least fifty feet above them had been left unmarred, though fine bits of gold wire had been wound around them in intricate, interlocking patterns so that they seemed to have been dressed in metal lace.
On the far side of the room was an altar half the size of Guric's council table. Two dwarf-sized statues flanked it, and one three times the height of a man looked down from behind, but all three had been hacked, defaced, and smeared with soot and a darker, wetter substance.
The Nar guard that had startled Guric stood just inside the room with four others that might have been brothers to the first. So alike were they in dress, build, and the designs etched into their skin that Guric would not have been able to tell one from the other.
Beyond the Nar, the stone floor sloped down into a sort of bowl, and Guric gasped at the sight. It was a charnel house. Bodies had been torn and spread apart. All of them human. Broken bones, shredded skin, flesh, and offal lay everywhere. Rats and other vermin crawled over the remains.
But other corpses, whole corpses, stood among them, looking at Guric.
"Behold your new army," said Argalath.
# CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE QUEEN STEPPED TOWARD HWEILAN. THE RUSTLE of her robes reminded Hweilan of the sound of Deadwinter wind in the eaves outside her window at Highwatch. Looking into the eyes of the queen, Hweilan felt a _presence_ rattling around in her mind, any barriers she might have had against it long since ripped away and discarded.
Kunin Gatar stopped, leaned in close and Hweilan heard a deep intake of breath. The queen pulled away, her head back and eyes closed, her nostrils flaring as she took in Hweilan's scent. The presence in her mind did not leave but seemed to settle in. Quiet. Lurking, watching like a predator in tall grass.
"Hweilan, is it?" said the queen.
"It is... uh, Queen." The last word ended in the tone of a question.
Kunin Gatar gave her a tight smile, showing no teeth. "Address me with only the truth," she said. "We are not so caught up in titles as you mortals. Your petty lords... they drape themselves in titles like face paint on a whore, hoping it will make her a lady. _I_ know who I am. What you name me says more about you than me."
Kunin Gatar turned and walked away, and Hweilan saw that a throne now sat in the middle of the room. Had it been there before? She could not remember. It was like no chair she had ever seen, all jagged angles and sharp protrusions, save for the seat, back, and armrests, which were smooth as polished glass.
While the queen's back was turned, Hweilan took the opportunity to risk a glance at Menduarthis. He stood several feet behind her, watching and waiting. He gave her nothing but a small raise of an eyebrow.
The queen sat and said, "Would you sit?"
Hweilan turned and saw that a chair of sorts now rested behind her. She was quite certain it had not been there a moment ago. It looked very much like an arm rising from the floor, made completely of ice, the hand bent back flat so that the palm formed a sort of seat, the fingers curling up into a backrest.
"N-no. Thank you," said Hweilan. She could imagine those icy fingers closing into a fist all too easily.
"As you wish," said the queen. She regarded Hweilan a moment, glanced at Menduarthis, then continued. "You are Hweilan, daughter of Ardan of the Damarans and Merah of the Vil Adanrath. Yes?"
"Yes." Hweilan could not recall telling anyone the names of her parents. Had they beaten it out of Lendri?
"I know of Highwatch," said the queen. "A pile of stone set on the mountains' last grasp. Nar used to winter there like cockroaches scuttling away from the light. Then came the Damarans, hoping to rape riches from the rock. Your fathers sat in their houses of stone and scattered favor to any too weak or stupid to seize it for themselves. And for this, they fancy themselves lords. You mortals know little of true power."
Hweilan said nothing. The queen's words poked at the fire of her anger, but mostly because Hweilan, as a girl, had often thought the very things Kunin Gatar had just spoken. Hearing them come from her, Hweilan felt shame and anger.
"I care not for the Damarans," the queen continued, and Hweilan saw a girlish glee in Kunin Gatar's eyes. "Like flies in the Melting days, they will serve their purpose, then die. And not even the stones will remember them. I will remain, and I will remember them as no more than an occasional itch I was forced to scratch."
The queen gripped the arms of her throne with a sudden fierceness, and Hweilan thought she heard cracks running through the ice.
"But these"—the queen's lips twisted into a snarl—" Vil Adanrath they name themselves. That itch is long since scratched, save for one. So I would hear it from your own lovely lips, little Hweilan. _Why_ are you running with that _kus itaan sut?"_
"You mean Lendri?"
Gale force wind shook the chamber, knocking Hweilan onto her hands and knees. Frost and ice stung her exposed skin, and through the howling air she heard the queen's voice, seeming to come from all directions at once.
"I mean that murdering traitor! That—" the queen's words fell into a stream of words in a language Hweilan did not know.
The wind abated as the queen's tirade died away, and when Hweilan ventured to look up, Kunin Gatar was standing again, her throne gone. Hweilan looked behind her as she pushed herself to her feet. Menduarthis was standing in the same place, covered with frost. But it didn't seem to bother him. He rolled his eyes and brushed it off his face.
"Answer me, girl," said the queen, and when Hweilan turned, Kunin Gatar stood only inches away, cold radiating off her like heat from a forge. Hweilan hadn't heard her approach.
"H-he found me," said Hweilan.
The queen did not move. Her gaze did not falter. Did not soften. So Hweilan ventured on. The words tumbled out of her.
"Highwatch... is gone. Fallen. By treachery, I think. I escaped." A sob shook her. But one look at the queen, and she did not even consider stopping. "I ran. Lendri found me. Promised to help me."
Hweilan searched for more words to say. But there were none. The presence in her mind held her in its grip, and she found she could do nothing but look into the eyes of the queen.
"Hear me, Hweilan," said the queen. "You would do well not to trust the words of that one. He holds them only as long as they seem comfortable to him."
With that, the queen turned away. Her throne was back, and she sat again.
"I... I don't know what you mean," said Hweilan.
The queen had lowered her gaze and seemed to be staring off into nowhere. She motioned to Menduarthis with a flick of one finger.
"Tell her," she said.
Menduarthis bowed, then began to pace the room, circling Hweilan like a bird searching for a safe place to roost.
"Your Lendri is not the most reputable of pups around here. We found him, years ago, wandering the valleys where our people hunt when it suits them. Our lord, uh..." He seemed at a loss for words, and looked to Kunin Gatar.
"You may say his name," said the queen, still not looking up.
"Our lord at the time, Miel Edellon"—he stopped his pacing a moment and bowed to Kunin Gatar—"our lady's beloved, decided to hunt your friend. But Lendri... a tricksy little cur that one. He evaded the hunt again and again, and when it became clear he could not get away, he turned on the hunters. Lord Edellon was so impressed that after he caught Lendri—for he did catch him at last—rather than take his tail for a pennant, he brought him home and offered him a place among our people. An offer that Lendri accepted."
"He swore oaths," said Kunin Gatar.
"So he did," said Menduarthis. "Loyalty, keeping our secrets, preserving our ways—all that. But... well, it seemed his heart wasn't in it."
"Wh-what do you mean?" said Hweilan.
"Faithless cur, he—" The queen stopped, and Hweilan was shocked to see a glimmering tear fall down one cheek. For a moment, she really did seem a bereft girl, no more than Hweilan's age, heartbroken and alone.
"Understand," said Menduarthis. "Our world, our society... it isn't like the outside world. The mortal world... your so-called lords and kings, they swear oaths and vows like they wear clothes—easily sloughed off when they become uncomfortable. Here, that isn't so. Here, once you are one of us, the only way out is death. There is no..." He chewed the inside of his cheek, considering. "There is no change of heart. Here, you change your heart, we'll feed it to you."
Hweilan swallowed. The _halbdol_ must be wearing off, she thought, for her face suddenly felt very cold, almost too chilled to move, to speak. "You're saying... Lendri left?"
_"Left?"_ the queen shrieked. "That whorespawn murdered my beloved!"
Hweilan looked to Menduarthis, who nodded. "Killed our lord, yes. That he did. Killed our beloved Lord Miel Edellon and ran."
A murderer... no. Worse. A traitor. Someone who killed his own lord... among the Damarans, even trying that meant hanging. Among the Nar, they were even less merciful. They slit open a traitor's stomach, tied the entrails to his own horse, then slapped the beast into a gallop. Once the traitor stopped screaming, his own family would hack him to pieces and leave the remains for wolves and ravens.
"I don't believe you," said Hweilan.
"You doubt me?" Menduarthis frowned, but it was a theatrical gesture. Mocking. "After all I've done for you?"
_"Roakh!"_ the queen called. "Bring him!"
Hweilan heard a _snap!_ like someone breaking a dry stick, then turned to see Roakh entering the room, leaning away from a series of black cords, dragging Lendri behind him. Lendri didn't resist. Didn't even move.
As Roakh passed Hweilan, he grinned at her and said, "Heavy, your friend. Dragging him makes me... peckish."
He stopped halfway between Hweilan and the throne, then stepped back beside Menduarthis, who frowned down on the smaller figure. But Roakh didn't notice. His hungry eyes never left Hweilan.
Kunin Gatar flicked her hand, and shards of ice shot up under Lendri, encasing his torso, arms, and lifting him off the floor. She walked over, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and pulled up his head. Hweilan saw icicles forming around her grip.
She shook him. "Wake!"
A groan escaped Lendri, but his eyes did not open.
The queen looked to Roakh and spat an order in her strange language. Roakh shuffled forward and pulled a black phial from inside his jerkin. He pulled what looked like a wet wad of leaves from the mouth, then dumped the contents into Lendri's mouth.
Lendri coughed, spraying Roakh and the floor between them with the green liquid. Roakh poured more, and clamped the elf's jaw shut. Lendri swallowed, and his eyes opened. Roakh shuffled back to stand beside Menduarthis.
"Look at me," said Kunin Gatar, and she gave Lendri's hair a cruel twist.
Lendri glanced at Hweilan, a look of sadness passing between them, then up at the queen.
"Your new pet here," said the queen, "thinks Menduarthis a liar. Tell her. Tell her what you are. What you did."
Lendri swallowed and licked his lips. "That would be a long tale."
Kunin Gatar looked down on him, stood absolutely still for a long moment, then brought her free hand around, one finger pointing. Hweilan heard a crackling, almost like the sound of water thrown on a hot rock, and Lendri's mouth opened. But as Hweilan watched, his jaw kept opening, and Hweilan saw the ice forming there, growing, pushing his jaws apart. It was past the point of comfort, then kept going, into pain, and Hweilan feared at any moment she'd hear tendons breaking, skin tearing.
When Lendri cried out at last, Kunin Gatar stopped and leaned down so that her face was only inches from Lendri. "I can send that all the way down your throat. I can freeze the blood in your veins and keep you alive. I can think of ways to kill you that will take days and nights and days again. But you'll be begging for mercy in the first few moments."
The queen released him, whirled, and stomped away. The ice in Lendri's mouth shattered, and he breathed out in a great cloud of steam.
Kunin Gatar stood in front of her throne and pointed an accusing finger at Lendri. "You killed him! You _murdered_ Miel!"
Lendri swallowed, flexed his jaw and seemed to bite back pain, then looked up at the queen. "He would have killed me."
The queen's hand dropped back to her side. "Oathbreakers die," she said. "He did only his duty."
"It was him or me," said Lendri. "I chose me."
Kunin Gatar chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. "You chose poorly. Miel might have killed you. He might have even skinned you for a rug. But it would have been quick. Not at all what I'm going to do to you."
Lendri said nothing. His head fell again, and his hair hid his face. Hweilan couldn't tell if it was from resignation, or if he simply no longer had the strength to look up.
"Which brings us to you," said the queen, returning her attention to Hweilan. "What to do with you..." She sat and let her fingers play over the sharp shards of her throne. "You are kin to this one. Do you deny it?"
"No," said Hweilan.
"You share his blood," said the queen. "Would you share his fate?"
"She does not share his crime, my lady," said Menduarthis. Both Hweilan and the queen looked to Menduarthis. Roakh was scowling up at him.
"What is she to you, Menduarthis?" said the queen.
He shrugged. "Interesting."
The queen laughed. "You jest."
"No, my lady. I knew it the moment I saw her. Human? Yes. And Vil Adanrath? Some, yes. But the other... can you not smell it in her?"
Menduarthis smiled. Roakh looked from his queen to Menduarthis, and his scowl deepened.
"Menduarthis is a liar and conniver," said Kunin Gatar. "And many troublesome things besides. But in this, I think he is telling the truth."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Hweilan said.
The queen looked to Menduarthis, and again Hweilan was struck by the girlish expression on a being of such power. She'd never had an older sister, but if she had, one who perhaps liked to torment her younger siblings, she would have very much expected to see a look on her face like the queen had now.
"She really doesn't know?" said the queen.
"So it would seem, my queen," said Menduarthis.
"What is this?" said Hweilan, looking back to Menduarthis.
"Yes!" said Roakh, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. "What—?"
"Oh, flutter off," said Menduarthis.
Roakh stood to his full height, which was still well below that of Menduarthis, and shouted, "I demand to know what—!"
"Be silent, crow," said the queen, barely more than a whisper.
Roakh snapped his mouth shut and glared at Hweilan.
"Hweilan," said the queen, and Hweilan turned to look at her. "Child of Damarans and Vil Adanrath. And what else, I wonder?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about." It was true.
The queen stood from her throne, and the seat crumpled to frost behind her. She walked to Hweilan, and it was all Hweilan could do to keep from backing away.
"Let's have a look, shall we?" said the queen.
There was a hiss in the air around her, and before Hweilan could move she found herself encased in ice, much like Lendri, only her hands and head free. She could not move, and she could feel the cold swiftly seeping through her heavy clothes.
Kunin Gatar took Hweilan's right hand in both of her own, and very gently opened her fingers. Hweilan was too shocked to resist.
"What is this?" said the queen, studying the scar.
"Curious, isn't it?" said Menduarthis.
"What does it mean?" the queen asked.
"I don't know," Menduarthis said, and at the same time, Hweilan said—
"Death."
The queen looked up, and Hweilan felt the Presence in her mind flex its claws. "What?"
"S-so Lendri told me," said Hweilan. "K-A-N. The runes are Dethek. But Lendri says it is a word of the Vil Adanrath for 'death.'"
"Hm," said Menduarthis. "Curiouser and curiouser. You are a mystery, little flower."
Hweilan felt a sharp pain in her palm. She gasped and looked down. A thin shard of ice pierced the middle of her palm. The queen held the other end, and even as she watched, the ice turned red with blood.
The queen pulled it out and held the red icicle in front of Hweilan's eyes. "We shall see."
Kunin Gatar closed her eyes, her lips parted, just slightly, and slid the frozen blood into her mouth. She leaned her head back and swallowed. A slight, almost ecstatic tremor passed through her, and the queen sighed, long and low.
"Oh, Menduarthis," she said, "you _are_ a liar." The queen lowered her head and looked Hweilan in the eye. "But not today."
The ice holding Hweilan disappeared, and she fell at the queen's feet.
She heard the queen say, "Menduarthis, what is the word mortals use?"
"See?" Menduarthis laughed softly. "In her blood. Something... other."
The threads of Hweilan's emotions had been pulled as far they would stretch, and finally they snapped. She sat on her knees in the chamber of the fey queen and broke into an uncontrolled laughter until her gut ached and tears made it halfway down her cheeks before freezing solid.
When she was able to gain control of herself at last, she looked up. The queen was sitting upon her throne, looking down on her with an amused expression. Menduarthis was still circling her like a cat considering what to do with a mouse.
"You're mad," she told him.
"You wouldn't be the first to say so," he said. "But even a madman can tell you which way the wind blows."
"What game is this?" said Hweilan. "You capture me and drag me off to this godsforsaken wasteland, and now—"
"Now you find out you're one of us," said Menduarthis. He stopped his pacing, stood before her, and gave an exaggerated bow worthy of a drunken bard. He spared a glance to Roakh and the queen. "A mortal nature? Yes. But also... something else. Something _magical."_
"I'm not like you," she said.
Menduarthis laughed and said, "Well, there's like and there's like. I was born eladrin, as was Our Lady Queen. But we have... improved ourselves, yes?"
Kunin Gatar smiled.
"Your parents were your parents," Menduarthis continued. "I'm not suggesting otherwise. But your father's father? Your mother's father? Or your grandmother's grandfather's grandmother? Who knows? The blood runs thin in you, perhaps, but it runs true. Someone from... well, _somewhere else_ planted a seed in your family garden. You're Damaran, to be sure. If you say you're kin to Lendri there... well, I have no reason to doubt you. But make no mistake. You're something else too. Something... _more."_
"I don't believe you!"
"Believe what you like." Menduarthis rolled his eyes. "Believe Toril is flat and dragons lurk past the edges of the map. Believe a lie, but it won't stop the world from turning. And it won't stop you from being a god walking over ants."
"Shall we find out, Menduarthis?" Kunin Gatar rose from her throne and walked past him. She had a most eager look in her eyes. Hweilan had once seen that same look in the eyes of two Nar boys after they'd pulled the wings off a grasshopper and headed for the nearest anthill.
Menduarthis scowled. "Find out...?"
"Find out whose seed went into whose garden."
Menduarthis blinked twice, very quickly. It was the first time Hweilan could remember seeing him shaken. "Wh-why?" he said, and gave what even Hweilan could see was a false smile. "We see the flower in bloom before us. Does it matter who planted it?"
"Ah, Menduarthis, you forget. This particular flower may need plucking. It would be wise to make sure we aren't trampling in the wrong garden."
Roakh made a noise that was something between the clearing of his throat and the caw of a raven. "Does this mean you won't be needing me further, my queen?"
Kunin Gatar kept her eyes fixed on Hweilan as she answered, "No one likes a glutton, Roakh. Haven't I already fed you today?"
There was no reply, and Hweilan could not tear her eyes away from the queen to look at Roakh.
"Careful, Ro," Menduarthis called to him. "If she is Vil Adanrath, she might eat _you."_
The queen stepped in front of Hweilan and looked down on her. Had she grown taller? It seemed—
Kunin Gatar placed a finger under Hweilan's chin and pulled her gaze up so that she stared right into the queen's eyes. Hweilan could feel the sharp nail pressing into her skin. So cold.
"Let's see what we can see."
Hweilan could not break her gaze from the queen. Close up, she thought herself a fool for believing there was any blue in those eyes at all. They were two orbs of white, cold and pitiless as winter. They grew in Hweilan's mind, and she fell into them.
The Presence in her mind was no longer the tiger lurking in the grass. The tiger had pounced and was devouring her, raking through her mind, taking great bites out of her, swallowing, tearing, then digging deeper, digesting every morsel. But then the Presence came to a deep part of Hweilan's mind, a tiny spark. And where the queen was cold incarnate, this spark burned hot. When the Presence bit down, something bit back.
Kunin Gatar gasped and fell back as if struck. She and Hweilan hit the floor at the same time. Menduarthis simply stood there with his mouth hanging open.
The queen rose first. Hweilan lay on the black floor, watching, but unable to move. She felt like a wineskin that had been filled to the point of bursting, then emptied completely.
Kunin Gatar pushed herself to her feet and swayed a moment. Hweilan saw something strange. The queen had been the very image of cold, all whiteness like frost, broken only by cool shades of blue, gray, and black. But no more. A trickle of red ran out one side of the queen's nose. Blood.
"Wh-what just happened?" said Menduarthis.
"Get this creature out of my sight," said the queen, and she turned away.
"She is to live, then?"
The queen laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. "I very much doubt it, Menduarthis. But she isn't mine to kill. Someone else has a claim on her."
_Someone else?_ Hweilan's vision began to blur. She could no longer see Kunin Gatar. The queen was fading into a whiteness that seemed to be overtaking everything. Even the floor was more gray than black now. Menduarthis remained the only bit of color in the world, and his voice cut through the steadily building hum in her mind.
"What would you have me to do with her?"
"I told you. Get her out of my sight! Use your imagination, Menduarthis."
Hweilan heard a raven cawing.
Then Menduarthis shouting.
Then nothing.
# CHAPTER TWENTY
BEHOLD YOUR NEW ARMY," SAID ARGALATH.
Guric swallowed hard. He had to take careful breaths through his nose to keep the contents of his stomach from coming up. The stench in the enclosed cavern was overpowering.
"Not an army proper, perhaps," said Argalath. "But the troops at your back will be only for show. These"—he motioned to the standing corpses, still starting at them—"will be all the army you need, once the Damarans see what they do."
Their eyes had the same look as his beloved Valia's, that horror staring from the black eyes of her lovely face.
Before becoming a squire, Guric had studied with the clerics of Torm in Damara, and he knew of demonic possession. He'd never seen an exorcism himself, but his fellow students had told him that their teacher had once been famed in his crusades against evil spirits. Whatever profane pacts Argalath worked with his northern devil-gods, it was nothing like any possession Guric had ever heard of.
"What is this abomination?" said Guric.
Argalath frowned. "Not an abomination, my lord. When the rite to restore your beloved Valia... did not go as planned, well, we seem to have stumbled upon this rather happy accident."
"Accident?" Guric seized Argalath's robes in both his fists and shook him so hard that his hood fell back. "Happy _accident!"_
The acolytes began to approach, weaponless but fists clenched tight, but Argalath shook his head, and they stopped.
Guric lifted Argalath off the ground until their noses were only inches apart. "Give me one reason I shouldn't snap your neck right now."
He saw no fear in Argalath's eyes. Only a little surprise, but he buried it in what Guric was suddenly sure was an entirely false deference.
"I have three, my lord. The first and most immediate are your new troops. Killing me would rather upset my acolytes, I fear, and they might not be able to control our new creations."
"Without Valia, I don't care."
"Which brings me to my second reason, my lord," said Argalath, and the bastard even had the boldness to smile. "The forces we are dealing with... they do not know pity or remorse or fear. Only hunger. Their only delight is in death. The power is great, but the pacts we make with them... they are not bargains or alliances. We force them to bend to our will by words of power and deeds of blood. But they hate it. _Hate_ it. It only fuels their hunger and malice. That thing up in the castle? The being using your beloved Valia's body like new clothes? Do you really think it will give her up unless we _force_ it? It is trapped, my lord. We called it forth—"
"You!" Guric said, and shook him again. _"You_ did this!"
"At your behest! At your _command."_
"Because you said it would bring her back."
"And it will! It will, my lord. But not without sacrifice. These things you see before you. Abominations, you named them. They are... an experiment of sorts. And it worked. It worked, my lord!"
Guric's resolve fractured. He kept a tight hold on Argalath's robes, but he lowered the man's feet back to the ground. "Explain."
"That thing in your wife, I do not think it will leave as promised. Its hunger is insatiable, and now that it has come into the world, surrounded by so much life, it will not go back willingly. And truth be told, it is beyond my skills to force back. But we can send it elsewhere. Give it a new home. A new body. A body we can control."
Guric looked to the creatures, none of which had moved during this confrontation. "We can control them?"
"A new army, my lord. One that does not know fear or feel pain or cold. One that can endure injuries that would kill the hardiest soldier. We were forced to allow such a being in Soran. But I realized, if this can be done once, why not twice? Or thrice? Or a hundred times? Yet with even one of them at your side, you will not need me to take the cities and forts of Damara. We will need to devise a new ruse, to be sure. So there are my three reasons." Argalath's voice softened. "All true. And all give you your heart's desire."
Guric let it sink it. "Yet every one requires murder."
Argalath sighed and looked away. "So it does, my lord. But if you will look"—he pointed to the first of the creatures on the left—"there is Lakan, one of the Creel responsible for the mishap with Valia's rite. The man you ordered slain, as you'll recall. Next to him is another of the same order. That hulking brute beyond him was found raping the hostler's wife in Kistrad—which was strictly forbidden, and by your orders punishable by death. You see my point. Is it murder if we use those deserving death anyway? This is Narfell, my lord. There will be no shortage of such men."
Had it really come to this? Guric had told himself that the death of the house of Highwatch was only justice for what they had done to Valia—and a small price to pay to get her back. But this...
Still, if it was the only way to get her back...
"Show me," he said.
"My lord?"
"You ask me to put great faith in these things. Show me what they can do for me. Show me now."
Argalath smiled. "As you command."
Guric let him go. Argalath pointed at the creatures and said something in a language Guric did not understand. All but one of the creatures walked out of the bowl, stepping through the body parts and vermin with no reaction. The one who remained had once been a Nar warrior—average height for his people, but this one was unusually muscular. He was dressed only in a ragged loincloth that fell to his knees. The strike that had killed him—a precise thrust of a knife between the ribs and into the heart, had been expertly stitched over.
Argalath turned to his acolytes. "Bring them."
Three of the Nar walked around the edge of the room and disappeared behind the altar. Guric looked to Argalath.
"A storage area below the altar, my lord," said Argalath. "Quite sizeable."
"What are they doing?"
Argalath nodded in the direction of the altar, and Guric looked. The Nar were returning, one leading and two following a procession of five men, all with arms bound and joined by a chain that ran through a collar around their necks. All of them were Nar—Creel as near as Guric could tell—but they were a dejected, disheveled lot.
"Criminals, my lord," said Argalath.
"Nar deal with their own criminals."
"Ah," said Argalath. "These five did not break any laws of their own people. They violated _your_ commands, my lord."
Guric grunted in response. He knew what those were likely to be. He had very few commands enforced on his Nar allies. During the taking of Highwatch, they had killed and pillaged at his command. Everything in the village and every weapon taken in battle was theirs for the taking. He placed only two restrictions upon them. Women and children were to be spared, and raping was strictly forbidden. Breaking either of these commands was a death sentence.
The prisoners were led into the bowl. Their eyes went wide at the sight of the carnage, and their steps faltered, but the Nar pulled them on. At the sight of the creature standing amid the charnel and more of his fellows looking down upon them, two dropped to their knees and screamed for mercy. The others tried to run.
"Be still!" Argalath shouted. He raised one arm, and the sleeve of his robe fell back. The mottled blue patches of skin along his arm and head began to glow. His reputation among the Creel was well known, and the prisoners stopped. "Hear me," Argalath continued. "You men are condemned to death for crimes against Lord Guric. But your lord is not without mercy. Among his people of the west, his gods of justice allow trial by combat. This man"—Argalath pointed to the creature, still standing motionless several feet from the prisoners—"is Lord Guric's champion. Kill him and prove your innocence. Stay alive, and you will leave here free men."
Argalath stepped away and called to one of the Nar. The man untied the prisoners and removed the collars from their necks, then he and the other Nar stepped back. The prisoners still looked scared, but they were warriors. The thought of leaving this place had enlivened them, and the promise of a fight seemed to have given them strength. But as they rubbed blood back into their arms, every one of them kept looking at the torn body parts all around them. Guric knew such a sight would have completely unmanned one of his own knights.
"Argalath?" said Guric. "You said this... experiment was a success."
"Yes, my lord."
"Then whose are the body parts?" He pointed at the carnage in the bowl. "And why are they... in pieces?"
Argalath shrugged. "The end result was a success. But I fear it took... several attempts."
"Criminals all?"
"Of course."
Guric didn't believe it. But he realized that he no longer cared. They were Nar after all, and Creel—the lowest of a low people. If killing a few of them brought Valia back, he would lose no sleep over it.
Two of the acolytes stepped to the edge of the bowl. They had long wedges of sharp steel that Guric supposed were some sort of swords, though they seemed to him more like cleavers. The Nar tossed the blades down to the prisoners. They picked them up, dropped into defensive crouches, and surrounded the creature.
The man directly in front screamed and charged, while the man behind him came in quietly, but just as quick.
The creature didn't move. Didn't even flinch.
The Creel prisoners knew their business. The one charging head-on brought his blade around in an arc and buried it in the flesh between the creature's neck and right shoulder. Guric heard bone snap, but the creature did not fall, barely even stumbled at the blow. The man coming in from behind showed less skill, but put much more strength into his blow, aiming for the creature's back.
The creature moved at last, with a quickness beyond anything human. He turned to the man behind him. The one in front still had hold of his blade and was dragged along, apparently so surprised that he didn't think to let go. The second man's blade fell, but the creature's arm shot up and caught the man's wrists. The creature squeezed, and even over the man's screams Guric heard bones crumbling. The first man still hadn't let go.
The creature brought the second man around, smashing him into his companion. Both went down. The creature stepped over the second man's discarded sword and reached up to grab the handle of the blade still embedded in his shoulder. As the blade came free, the men at his feet screamed and scrambled in different directions.
Swinging the blade sideways, more like a paddle than a blade, the creature swatted the nearest man onto his back. The prisoner raised his arms to ward off the next strike, but the creature threw the blade aside—with such strength that one of the Nar acolytes standing on the rim had to jump out of the way—and leaped on the man. It reminded Guric of the time he'd seen one of the local tundra tigers take down a swiftstag.
Guric looked away, but he could still hear the man screaming as if he were being flayed.
"Forgive me, my lord," said Argalath, "but you should see this."
Guric clamped his jaw shut, took a deep breath through his nose, and looked up. The man was quite dead, his head hanging limply from the remains of his savaged neck. The creature standing over him—still chewing, Guric noticed with a grimace—was black with blood from his face down to his waist. But even as Guric watched, the creature's grievous wound closed. A stunned silence had filled the room so that Guric was able to hear the broken bone snap back into place.
"You see," said Argalath, "the spirits inside are able to keep their bodies alive by feeding on living flesh. They can heal from the most savage wounds—though the greater the wound the more... um..."
"Food?"
"Very good, my lord. The more _food_ required to repair the damage."
The four remaining prisoners—one of them now weaponless—were not fools. They saw the hopelessness of their cause. All it took was one to make the first move—turning and charging the rim in hopes of escape—and his fellows followed. Each chose a different spot to try to escape, but each met with the same fate. One of Argalath's monsters simply grabbed the man and tossed him back into the bowl.
Guric did not need to see the rest. He turned his back on his counselor and walked out.
# CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE SUN WOULD BE DOWN SOON. KADRIGUL CURSED his luck. After the fight with the tundra tigers and whatever those little monsters were—a fight in which he'd lost almost half his Nar—it had taken the survivors most of the day to regroup and find their mounts. He supposed it was a small blessing that those Creel who survived the fight had fled the scene. Had they seen what Soran had done in order to heal his wounds, Kadrigul never would have been able to rally them again. As it was, they'd crept back like beaten dogs, skittish and uncertain.
They'd followed Hweilan's trail yesterday, deeper and deeper into the mountains, until it was too dark to see. They made a cold camp where they stopped. Back at it at first light, and now with the day dying around them, they still hadn't found her.
Not long after finding the trail yesterday, the two sets of tracks they'd been following had been overtaken by many others—tundra tigers, and the smaller, stranger tracks that even the Creel could not identify. It was obvious that Hweilan and whoever was with her had been captured. It went a long way to explaining why Soran could no longer sense the girl. If she had been killed...
But by whom?
The Creel were frightened to the point of breaking. They held these hills in a superstitious dread, and fighting the tigers and those little hunters had pushed their loyalty to its bounds. The only thing keeping them here now was that they were still more afraid of Soran and Kadrigul than whatever might be lurking in the hills.
If the girl had been killed, whoever had done it had left no trace of a body. Tigers might have eaten most of a dead body. They might even have broken the bones to get at the marrow, but they would have left the bones. There would have been signs. And Soran and Kadrigul had found none.
The sun slipped behind the mountains as their company left the treeline. They were in a high, rocky country now, walking in mountain twilight, sometimes passing beside deep ravines or under high cliffs. The thick snowfall made following their quarry easy, but it also hid rocks and cracks in the ground. They could not run the horses for fear of breaking a leg.
Their company skirted the edge of a bare, snow-covered hill, the heights of the Giantspires looming beyond. The Creel snaked out in a long line behind him, every man leading his horse. Soran was just ahead, dragging his mount behind him. He'd taken the lead early that morning, and Kadrigul let him have it. The Creel seemed more than eager to put as much distance between themselves and Soran as Kadrigul would allow.
There was a silent sharpness to the air that raised Kadrigul's hackles. He took his scabbard from where it hung off his saddle, slid it under his belt, then loosened the knot on his cloak so that he could throw it off quickly if need be.
They continued on, rounding the shoulder of the hill. Below them, in a round hollow between the hill and the next, were a jumble of shapes that at first glance Kadrigul thought was some sort of building, long fallen to ruin. The trail they followed headed in that direction.
As they grew closer, he saw it wasn't a ruin at all, but a series of standing stones, some fallen at haphazard angles.
When they closed to within a hundred feet or so, he saw that he'd been wrong yet again. If the shapes were standing stones, they were like none he'd ever seen before. They looked more like broken shards of ice thrust up from the ground. Some almost straight up, but most at varying angles, no two seemingly alike, and in no discernible pattern that he could see. The bases of most were far enough apart that three men could have walked between them, side by side, but the way many leaned past one another formed odd pathways, some open to the sky, and some covered by leaning pillars of ice.
Soran stopped in front of the nearest, its pinnacle leaning over him.
Kadrigul stopped behind him. "What is it?"
"I do not know," said Soran, no emotion in his voice whatsoever. His gaze seemed to strain at the deep blue shadows between the great shards, and his nostrils flared as he took in a great lungful of air. But Kadrigul could see it was an effort for him to do so. It wouldn't be long now.
"Anything?" said Kadrigul.
"She was here."
"But no longer?"
Soran gave a strong wrench on his mount's reins and began pacing around the structure, circling it.
Shifting his own horse's reins from one hand to the other, Kadrigul turned to the Creel, who had stopped several feet away. They were staring at the strange structure, and Kadrigul saw one of them clutching some sort of talisman.
"You men," he called in their own tongue, "do you know this place?"
"No, lord," said one of them.
One of the Creel in the back of the group called out, "We must leave this unclean place!"
The first said, "It is getting dark, lord. Should we not find a place to camp for the night? Some place else?"
Kadrigul looked up. The eastern sky, mantling the arm of the mountains as it stretched out onto the steppe, was already a muted purple, and the first stars peeked out. The western sky, where the mountains piled up against the sky, still held a blue glow of evening. Even if they left now, they wouldn't get far before full night fell, and the breeze off the mountains was getting colder by the moment.
"We'll camp here," Kadrigul told the Creel. "Get the tents up and sort out the last of the fuel. We'll need a fire tonight. Picket the horses nearby. They'll need the warmth as well."
None of the Creel moved, other than to exchange nervous glances.
"We can't sleep here, my lord," one said.
Kadrigul walked over to them, leading his horse behind. He walked up to the Creel who had been doing most of the talking. He didn't get too close. Kadrigul wasn't one of those blustering fools who counted on intimidation to win his fights. He acted or didn't. If he did, better let it come as a surprise.
"And why is that?" he asked. He pitched his voice for all to hear, but he kept his gaze on the nearest man.
"L-look at this place, my lord." The man pointed at the structure. "That... not right. Not natural. We've come too close as it is. The girl isn't here, lord! This place is _lakhôt!"_
Kadrigul wasn't sure of the exact meaning there. _Unholy_ perhaps, though not in the way most thought of it. Many of the Creel had returned to their ancestors' devil worship and demon binding, so the concept of _holy_ was not really in their thinking. _Lakhôt_ meant something older, some _other_ than mortal men—and best left alone.
He pulled his left glove off with his teeth and was about to reach for his sword—perhaps killing this mouthy one would put the rest back in line—when he heard hoofbeats. They all turned to see Soran coming around from the opposite side of the structure from which he'd departed. He was riding his horse now, the great beast billowing out clouds of steam in the cold. Soran had a tight hold on the reins, but he rode hunched over, as if wounded or sick. Kadrigul knew it wouldn't be long now. Better to leave all the Creel alive in case they were needed for other purposes.
"You've found something?" Kadrigul called.
Soran pulled up beside the Creel and stopped his mount just in time. He looked down at Kadrigul and said, "Their trail leads into that structure. It doesn't come out again. Whoever took the girl took her in there and didn't come out again."
"Then in we go," said Kadrigul.
"My lord, please!" said the Creel. "At least wait for the sun. Please, I beg you."
"We look now," said Kadrigul. "She's in there, or she isn't. Either way, our hunt ends here tonight. If she isn't there, we head home with the sun."
"You swear?"
Kadrigul ground his teeth.
"Come," he said. "It shouldn't take long. But we'll need light"
Weaving through the leaning shards of ice, the horses would have been more hindrance than help, so Kadrigul chose two of the Creel to stay behind with their horses and supplies. The other five, three holding torches, gathered with Kadrigul and Soran at the edge of the structure.
Soran led the way, plunging in without a torch. Kadrigul drew his sword and motioned the Creel after him.
The boldest of them licked his lips and said, "After you, my lord."
"You men get in there now," said Kadrigul, "or I'll have Soran come back and hold two of you by the neck. Which two will it be?"
The men exchanged nervous glances, and every one of them either looked at Kadrigul's naked blade—or pointedly did not look. One of the torch bearers said, "Sooner in, sooner out," and plunged in after Soran. The others followed, and Kadrigul came after.
He prodded the rearmost man with the point of his sword and said loud for all of them, "Catch up with Soran."
The trail was easy enough to follow. Most places inside the structure were still open to the sky, and snow lay thick on the ground.
"Ai, _lakhôt!"_ one of the men ahead said. The others stopped and stood in a tight group. The path was just wide enough for all of them to gather. Kadrigul saw why. The light from their torches hit the great shards of ice and refracted back in dozens of colors. In the thicker parts of the ice—and this close, Kadrigul was no longer certain it even was ice—the light seemed to catch, spark, and glimmer in tiny motes at times very deep within the shards, and at other times just below the surface.
"What is it?" said another.
"It doesn't matter," said Kadrigul. "Move along. Quickly!"
The men looked at one another. The one who had called out was trembling with fear. He placed a hand on the hilt of his knife.
"Soran!" Kadrigul called.
That got them moving again, though all of them had hands on weapons now.
Paths veered off in every direction between the shards. Three times out of four, they veered left at one of these branches. The trail remained clear, but they still hadn't caught up to Soran.
Night fell outside, and as darkness pressed in, the glow from their three torches seemed all the brighter, refracting off snow and shards in a dozen shades of blue, green, and red. Gold, silver, and bright white flared in the depths of the shards. At least two of the men muttered frightened prayers.
The Creel with the torch leading the way stopped again. He turned to look past his companions to Kadrigul. There was no insolence or rebellion in his face. Just fear. "Shouldn't we have come to the other side by now?"
Kadrigul remembered seeing the structure from the hillside above and how Soran had circled it on horseback in a short time. The man was right. They should have come out by now. Even the few forks in the path had not bent them around enough to walk in a circle. Something was wrong.
"Keep going," he told them.
The man who had spoken looked to the other Creel. The others all seemed to look to the man nearest Kadrigul, the one holding the other torch. He swallowed and stood straight. "No, my lord. We go no further. This is madness."
Kadrigul swept his sword out and forward in an arc aimed for the man's belly, but he was ready for it and jumped back. Kadrigul's blade glanced off the wall in a small shower of blue sparks.
All the Creel had swords drawn now. They fanned across the path three across, with the two torchbearers behind.
"Please lord!" their leader called out. "Not this! I beg you. We mean no disrespect. But this... this is madness. This is no place for men. Can you not feel it?"
The wind had picked up. Not strong, but a good steady breeze. As it cut its way through the shards, the entire structure whistled, and damned if Kadrigul couldn't hear a music in it—a soft, sad song, almost a lament, that sang of cold and ice and the darkness between the stars.
"We go on," Kadrigul said.
"Please, lord..."
The man in front of him, the only one holding his sword with a steady hand, dropped his eyes and said, "Please."
Kadrigul heard a _swiiisht_ , like someone swinging a green twig through the air, then one of the torchbearers fell backward screaming. His torch went down fire first into the snow and snuffed out in a small cloud of hissing steam.
The other Creel screamed and leaped away. Kadrigul saw something long, thin, and dark wrapped around him, snaking across one shoulder near his neck then under the opposite arm. Curved thorns, some half as long as a man's finger, sprouted from it, shredding the Creel's thick clothes and biting into the flesh beneath.
Kadrigul's gaze followed the line of the vine through the snow beyond. Just where the light from the last torch and glowing shards ended, Kadrigul saw a small figure, no taller than a halfling, but scantily dressed in strips of fur and leather. One of the hunters that had attacked them in the hills. It held the vine in gloved fists and watched them through eyes that glowed with a feral light. A long cap festooned with bones and feathers dangled from one shoulder. The creature saw Kadrigul watching him, then hissed, dropped the vine, and fled back into the dark. But rather than going slack, the vine tightened.
The Creel screamed in agony, his cries drowning out those of his terrified companions, as he was dragged away into the dark, leaving a trail of bloody snow behind him. There was no way such a little creature as that hunter could pull away a full-grown man. Something else was in the dark.
The roar of a tiger hit them, so loud that Kadrigul felt his teeth rattle.
Still screaming, the Creel scattered, two heading off together down a side path, one going down another, and the remaining torchbearer bounding past Kadrigul. He let him go. The more distractions the better.
But the man had taken the light with him.
Kadrigul was alone in the dark.
Kadrigul had lived most of his life in the far north, in lands where summer came colder than most winters in southern lands. In winter, night could last for months. To stay alive, to thrive in lands that would kill even the hardiest of Nar, his people had learned to survive the cold and hunt the dark.
Once his eyes adjusted, he found that he could see quite well. In this high country, the stars seemed very close, and their stark light reflected off the snow and the great shards that thrust up from the ground like fallen watchtowers. It was the shadows between that gave him pause.
He followed the trail of the two Creel, but he took his time, not rushing around corners or past a crossing where anything could be hiding behind the shards. The screams of the men had continued for a long time as they ran. The ones in front of him soon grew weak with distance. But Kadrigul distinctly heard one from behind him cut off abruptly. The tiger did not roar again; he had no idea where it was.
Kadrigul rounded a corner and saw that the snow in front of him was scattered all the way across the path and stained dark. Steam rose from it. Blood. He could smell it. Pushed up against the bottom of one of the shards was a wet, grayish pile that, by the smell, Kadrigul knew were entrails. But no body.
One set of tracks continued beyond. Two other pathways led off to either side, but there were no tracks. The snow was pure and untouched.
Kadrigul heard a skittering overhead and looked up. He saw a dark shape against the sky, a quick glimpse of two glowing eyes, and then they shot out of sight.
He leaped over the blood—no sense in picking up its scent—and took the left path, his feet trudging through the unbroken snow.
He took the first path to the left he found, then two more to the right, hoping to throw off pursuit but still moving away from where the first Creel had been taken.
Kadrigul sheathed his sword and went to the shard leaning at the greatest angle. He went to the back of it and tried to climb. No luck. It was dry as bone, but slick. He could make it no more than a few feet off the ground before sliding back down.
A tiger roared. Kadrigul froze. It was some distance away, but still loud enough that he could feel the shard vibrating under his hands. It was the deep, bone-rattling roar that tigers used to stun their enemies. It roared again, but this time the roar ended in a fierce growl. The tiger had caught whatever it was after. Time to move.
Kadrigul forsook the path and began to weave through the shards themselves, but he soon regretted his decision. In places, the bases of the shards ran together at odd angles, making it hard to find proper footing. In open ground between them, the snow was often knee deep. Either way, he'd be at a disadvantage if it came to a fight.
As soon as he found a path again, he took it.
He heard the tiger again. Not roaring or growling this time. It was a great scream of anguish, high-pitched and almost pitiful. But it was still behind him. He moved on.
Kadrigul soon came to a wide part in the path, where the great shards all leaned away, forming a fence in the shape of a long V. The moon had not yet risen over the mountains, but the stars shone down, their light reflecting off the snow and shards so brightly that Kadrigul cast a long blue shadow at his feet.
Ahead, the path took a sharp turn to the right. He was halfway there when a small figure stepped out from between the shards, blocking his path. One of the little hunters. The creature's eyes glowed with a frosty light.
Kadrigul stopped a half-dozen paces from the creature. Even in the starlight, he could see its skin had a bluish tint, and the ears protruding from the rim of the cap were far too sharp. The creature spread both hands outward, almost as if proffering himself, and Kadrigul saw that something was wrapped around him, from his fingertips all the way to his shoulders.
The creature smiled, showing sharp teeth, and flicked both wrists. A length of vine fell and coiled in the snow at his feet, and as it hit the ground, soft tendrils along its length stiffened into sharp thorns. The same whiplike weapon that had taken the first Creel.
Kadrigul turned. Another of the creatures was blocking the path behind him—this one holding a spear that was twice his own height. He heard rustling above and looked. More of the creatures were perched on the shards above, like birds on a ship's rigging, looking down on him with their glowing eyes. He counted four on one side and three on the other. Nine in all.
"So be it," Kadrigul said, and drew his sword.
The creature who had first blocked his path began swinging the thorn-covered vines, one in each hand, twirling them in intricate patterns to each side and over his head, cutting the air and sending up clouds of snow as they hissed over the ground. Kadrigul had no shield, so he held his empty scabbard in his off hand, ready to block the vines.
The creature advanced, twirling the vines faster and faster, still smiling his feral grin. So far, the others seemed content to watch.
The creature leaped forward and one vine shot out in a vertical swipe. Kadrigul danced to the side, the vine missing him by a foot or more, but the other was already coming across at his midsection.
He hit it with his scabbard, and the vine whipped around it, cutting through Kadrigul's coat, shredding it but missing the skin beneath. With the vine tangled around his scabbard, Kadrigul struck the length of it with his sword, hoping to sever it.
His blade, which he sharpened to a razor's edge every night, nicked a long strip of bark off the vine, then bounced away.
The creature yanked on the vine, trying to pull the scabbard from Kadrigul's hand, but he used the added force to his own advantage, stepping in to the pull, within striking range, and bringing his sword around in a long swipe aimed for the creature's throat.
The creature dropped so quickly that the tassel of his cap flew up and Kadrigul's sword sliced it off. The creature snarled and backed away out of reach of the blade. His vine was still tangled around Kadrigul's scabbard, but he let out enough slack to pull away. Kadrigul twirled the scabbard in an attempt to dislodge the vine, but the thorns held their grip.
The onlookers hissed, whether in delight or consternation Kadrigul could not tell. They slapped the great shards with bare feet and hands, all in unison, and began a whispering chant. The wind picked up, howling through the structure and setting a mournful tune to counter the creatures' song.
Kadrigul's opponent brought his arm back in a swift yank, hoping to dislodge the scabbard from Kadrigul's grip. Kadrigul let him take it, but he directed the pull, throwing the scabbard at the creature's head, using his own momentum against him. It struck the creature full in the face, causing him to stumble back.
Kadrigul was on him, forsaking good form for brute strength, aiming the point of his sword for the creature's midsection.
But the creature twisted away from the blade, the edge of Kadrigul's sword scraping his side, and brought the other vine around in a diagonal strike. Kadrigul had to fall into a crouch and roll to keep from being caught, but the thorns still raked along the back of one shoulder, tearing through clothes and skin as they passed.
He came back to his feet, bloodied. The creature had a wicked cut along his side, and the thorns from his own weapon had pulled a great deal of skin off the left side of his face where the vine-covered scabbard had hit him. Kadrigul could feel blood soaking his side, and his left shoulder burned as if a thousand ants were biting their way through his veins. Poison.
_"Niista! Niista!"_ The onlookers chanted.
Kadrigul shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The creature behind him held his spear ready, but so far he was still guarding the way, not joining in the fight.
He had to end this quick.
With one vine still tangled around Kadrigul's scabbard, the creature let it go and set his remaining weapon twirling over his head. He advanced, not charging, but step by careful step, a dance in time with the onlookers' chant. He struck diagonally, three quick swipes, spraying snow. Kadrigul backpedaled, taking him near the spearman.
The onlookers were standing now, perched on the great shards and stamping their feet. More had come. At least twice as many as had been there before. Perhaps more.
The vine came across in a horizontal swipe, Kadrigul dropped beneath, but this time rather than rolling to the side, he rolled back, under the spear, and brought his sword around in a backhand strike. It struck the spearman's knee, cutting all the way through one leg and halfway through the next. The spearman hit the snow and let out a long, keening wail.
Kadrigul came up, buried the point of his sword in the spearman's midsection, and snatched the haft of his weapon with the other. The onlookers screamed, and the creature with the vines charged. Kadrigul stood and threw the spear at the creature with the vine. The little hunter jumped to the side, his charge spoiled, and the spear flew past him.
Kadrigul took up a guard position, holding his sword in both hands, as the creature charged again.
Strike and swipe and thrust. Again and again the two combatants struck at each other, drawing more blood, ripping more skin and clothes, but doing no permanent damage.
The creature backed into the spear and seemed to stumble. Kadrigul struck, but it was a feint. The creature righted himself, hissed through bared teeth, and brought his weapon around, swift as an adder, aiming for Kadrigul's head.
Kadrigul had to give up his attack and bring the blade up to block the vine. It whipped around the blade, and the creature pulled, yanking the sword from Kadrigul's grip. Vine and sword flew away into the snow.
Kadrigul stood before him, blood leaking from a dozen cuts.
The creature reached behind his back, and his hand emerged holding what looked like an antler, one long spike sharpened to a glistening point.
_"Niista! Niista!"_ the onlookers called.
Kadrigul kept his gaze fixed on the antler.
That was his mistake.
The creature leaped into the air—surprisingly high for one so small—and kicked Kadrigul in the chest. He'd been hit much harder before, but it caught him off guard, and he fell back in the snow. The creature landed on top of him, straddling Kadrigul's stomach, his weapon held high.
_"Niista!"_
The creature over Kadrigul screamed, tensed the arm holding his weapon—
Kadrigul pushed up, easily dislodging the creature's light weight. He seized the creature's head in both hands, gripped like a falling man grasping that last ledge, and twisted. The creature's head went around with a sharp _snap!_ of breaking bone and torn muscle.
The onlookers went silent at once. The only sound was that of the howling wind.
Kadrigul threw off the dead weight, jumped for his sword, grabbed it, and ran, the sound of dozens of pursuers right behind him.
# CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SOMEONE ELSE HAS CLAIM TO HER.
_Time to grow up, Hweilan inle Merah. The blood runs thin in you, perhaps, but it runs true. Time to hunt_.
— _Jagun Ghen—_
A dozen voices vied for Hweilan's attention. A hundred. Some she knew. Many she did not. Some were altogether strange, more beast than human. Others spoke in tongues she had never heard, but she felt a kinship to these. Like a wolf pup raised by hounds, who hears howling in the distance, she longed to reach out to them.
But others—many others—filled her with a cold terror, awakening in her every instinct to flee.
_Death comes from that way. Be sure of it_.
_You're something else, too. Something... more_.
_Time to choose_.
_—Jagun Ghen—_
None shouted. None needed to. Hweilan couldn't move, couldn't reply, couldn't shout for them to quiet. Couldn't even cover her ears to block out the voices.
_You do listen, then. But do you understand?_
_Someone else has claim..._
_... something else..._
_—Jagun Ghen—_
_... if you survive_.
_Someone else..._
_... consumer..._
_—Jagun Ghen—_
_... despoiler..._
_I require one who is of this world_.
_Time to choose_.
_... the Hand of the Hunter_.
She saw the great waterfall again. The animals fleeing an approaching darkness. The black wolf. Heard and felt the cackling malice in the dark. The pool, deep and dark, comforting like sleep. The woman covered in living blood.
Something getting closer. She couldn't see it or hear it. But she could sense it, like a blind man can feel the heat of fire.
She heard the bells of Highwatch. For years they had called the people to shelter, the warriors to arms, and the Knights of Ondrahar to battle. But that night, they were the death knell of Hweilan the High Warden's granddaughter, and they were the herald of Hweilan the...
What?
_Time to grow up, Hweilan_.
_Time to choose_.
_Time to hunt_.
_Time to—_
"Wake up, Hweilan."
She opened her eyes and saw a haggard-looking Menduarthis leaning over her.
Hweilan pushed him away and sat up. She was upon a pallet of many furs, with more on top of her. The bed was set on a large shelf in an alcove. Beyond was a room that seemed equal parts living quarters, kitchen, and dining area. A table covered in the cured skin of some animal dominated the middle of the room, and four chairs sat around it, one to each side. A large goblet in the midst of the table bubbled over with what looked to be a vaporous frost, but it gave off a strong blue light, much like the little falls in Ellestharn. In the hearth on the other side of the table, a fire burned under a large kettle. Long drapes, set in the colors of snow and sky, hid what she assumed was a door, and opposite that were two windows, both oval, both shuttered. The ceiling stretched low, and Hweilan noticed it was uneven. It seemed to undulate, almost like low waves. In fact, the entire room seemed not to have been built or even cut so much as shaped.
"Where am I?" she said.
"My humble abode," said Menduarthis. Stepping away from the bed, he extended his hands and twirled in a little circle. For all his bluster and power, there was still very much the element of a little boy about him. A mischievous little boy.
She kicked away the blankets and set her feet on the floor. Her coat, gloves, and boots were gone, but she still had on her lighter clothes. "And where is... here?"
"You are still in the realm of Kunin Gatar. We're in the mountains between her palace and the camp where we first took you."
Hweilan remembered the walk from the uldra's camp to the palace. She looked around at the walls and ceiling, wondering how strong they were, and said, "Those moving tree things..."
"Won't bother us." He smiled, and when she scowled in return, his smile broadened. "You hungry?"
She was. Starving. When had she last had a good meal?
"Yes," she said.
"Good! Good!" Menduarthis clapped and sauntered over to the hearth. "Have a seat at the table—any place you like. I'll get the food."
Hweilan sat. Menduarthis hummed tunelessly as he set wooden bowls and spoons on the table, then stirred whatever was cooking in the kettle.
Hweilan watched the glow bubbling up out of the goblet. She could see no light source. The liquid simply seemed to bubble up and glow as it spilled over the rim of the goblet. But it never ran out, and the vapor simply evaporated on the skin cloaking the table. She reached out and passed her fingers through the vapor. It was cool and tingling, almost pleasantly so, and when she pulled out her hand, the bits of whatever it was glowed on her hand a moment before evaporating.
"Here we are," said Menduarthis. He set the kettle on the table and filled Hweilan's bowl with a thick brown stew.
The smell of the food wafted over her, and her stomach gave a low growl. Hweilan blushed.
Menduarthis chuckled. "Your compliments to the cook, eh?"
"I'm starving," said Hweilan.
Menduarthis sat in the chair to her right and filled his own bowl. "Then eat," he said.
She did. With a vengeance. The stew was wonderfully warm, but not too hot to eat. And it was delicious, sprinkled with small chunks of meat, vegetables, and herbs.
"You like it?" said Menduarthis after his first few swallows.
"Mm," said Hweilan. "Very much. What is it?"
"Raven stew."
Hweilan coughed, spraying stew back into her bowl.
Menduarthis erupted into laughter. "Ah, you're too easy! Don't worry. Even if this were raven stew—and it isn't—I'd never eat that old bird, Roakh. Never know what he's had in his mouth. This meat is simply a plump rabbit."
Hweilan studied his face for any sign of deception, then resumed eating. After two more bites, she said, "I've never tasted rabbit this good."
"You warm my heart, little flower."
"My name is Hweilan."
"Yes, I know."
"So stop calling me 'little flower.'"
He grinned as he swallowed, then said, "Why does it bother you so?"
"It isn't my name."
"Menduarthis isn't my name."
Hweilan scowled. "But... but Lendri called you Menduarthis. I heard him. And Roakh. And the queen."
His smile faded. He left his spoon in the bowl and left the table. For a moment, Hweilan thought she'd offended him, but he merely went to a cabinet near the hearth, retrieved a black bottle and two glasses, then said, "So they did. But remember, Hweilan." He placed a glass beside Hweilan's bowl. A tapered cylinder the length of her forearm, it seemed made of finest crystal. "Remember what I told you on the night we met: "You can name yourself, or others will name you.' I spoke from experience."
He tipped the bottle over her glass and filled it with a dark red liquid.
"Wine," he said, and filled his own before sitting down again.
"What is your name, then?" she asked.
"Ah, Hweilan, I don't think we're close enough yet for such intimacies."
Hweilan scowled again. "Well then, why Menduarthis? Does it mean something?"
He took a sip of the wine, then said, "My black hound."
"What?" Hweilan snorted.
"Well," he said, "the short of it is that my coming to live here, among the queen's people, had a less than wise beginning. Perhaps even a bit foolhardy, you might say."
"You? I'm shocked."
"The flower's thorn doth prick me," he said and took another swallow of wine. "To tell the long tale short, I killed the queen's most prized hunting hound—a vicious black monster named Venom. To be fair, I did not know it was the queen's hound at the time—or even that there was a queen. She was furious at Venom's loss, but intrigued that a... well, a person such as I had stumbled into her domain. Very much in the fashion of Kunin Gatar, she told me that she was going to kill me unless I could give her good reason not to do so. Seeing her power—not to mention the score of hunters and half-dozen guards she had with her—I told her that I would take her hound's place. She laughed and accepted my offer, naming me _My Black Hound_ in her language."
Hweilan finished the last of her stew and decided to try the wine. It was delicious, but the fumes hit her throat like fire. She choked it down and coughed. "What kind of wine is this?"
"The strong kind. Do you like it?"
A very pleasant warmth was spreading through her, but unlike the wines she'd taken at her grandfather's table, this did not dull her senses. In fact, sounds and smells seem to hit her with sharper clarity, and the light seemed richer.
She took another drink and managed to swallow this time without choking. "What's going to happen to me? "she said.
Menduarthis leaned back in his chair, took a slow drink, watching her over the rim of his goblet the entire time. He swallowed and said, "What do you mean?"
"What the queen did... what she said..."
Menduarthis let the silence build until it was becoming uncomfortable, then he set his almost empty goblet beside his bowl and said, "How much do you remember?"
Hweilan shuddered, and her stomach clenched. Suddenly, she didn't seem that hungry anymore. "I could feel her... inside me. In my mind."
She took another long drink of the wine. The queen had scraped through Hweilan's most intimate secrets, and she still sat up there in her palace, smug with victory. But still, something had happened, something...
"You surprised her,' said Menduarthis, breaking Hweilan's reverie. He sounded more serious, more solemn, than she had ever heard him, and when she looked up, he was scowling into the depths of his wine. "The last person who surprised Kunin Gatar... well, he's been through a hellish day, and he might not survive another."
"You mean Lendri," said Hweilan. She'd seen what the queen had done to Lendri. Or had others do for her.
The solemnity in his gaze dropped, and for a moment he looked... not contrite. Something told Hweilan that this one probably wasn't capable of such an emotion. But perhaps... sad?
"Hweilan, I must ask your forgiveness. Perhaps if I had warned you what to expect, things might not have... gone as they did. You must understand, I wasn't sure of you. Why you were traveling with an outlaw, why despite your rugged clothing you obviously had not lived a hard life in the wilderness, and you being... Other."
"I'm not like that!"
Menduarthis didn't flinch at her shout. Instead, he locked eyes with her and said, "You are. I'm sorry if that is upsetting for you, but it's the truth. Somewhere—some way back, I suspect—you have an ancestor who was... well, let's say, from beyond."
"You're mad."
"Mad, bad, glad, sad—all boiled into one. That's me. But it doesn't change the truth." He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. "All your life, you have dreamed, but not like others. Sometimes—not always—you dream true, of things past, things yet to be, and things far away. You can sense the truth—and the lie—in people. And your eyes itch."
Hweilan snorted. "My eyes itch?"
"An expression of the uldra. It means you are discontented. Always. No matter how happy your surroundings, how much you are getting everything you want and need, you're never satisfied. Your eyes are always on the horizon, wondering what might lie beyond. Others might see rain coming to water the grass. You wonder from what distant seas the clouds came. Others wonder at the beauty of sunset. You wonder on what lands it is rising. Others fear the moon and the night. You lie awake, wondering if there is a way to make them fear you." Menduarthis smiled. "Am I close?"
Hweilan took a long, slow sip from her goblet, then looked away. "I'm not like you."
Menduarthis chuckled. "Well, you aren't nearly as good a liar as I am, that's for certain."
"You never answered my question."
"I have yet to answer many of your questions, as I recall. Which one do you mean?"
"What's going to happen to me?"
"I'm no seer, but if you mean what is Kunin Gatar going to do about you... I don't know. When she was..." Menduarthis cleared his throat and looked down, obviously finding the subject uncomfortable. "When she was _sifting_ your mind, she found something..."
"Something that surprised her, you said."
"Hmm, yes, well... I'm not sure 'surprise' is the best word. Truth be told, you scared the frost out of her tightest orifice." Menduarthis pushed his bowl and goblet aside, leaned forward, and dropped his voice almost to a whisper. "She was sifting your mind, Hweilan, like a miser might sift through an old sack of coins, hoping for gold. Like dwarves dig through dirt, hoping for shiny rocks. And she found something. Something that knocked her on her arse." His voice dropped further so that she had to strain to hear it. "What was it?"
"I don't know. Why should anything in my mind scare her?"
Menduarthis stared into her eyes, and she could sense him searching her for the slightest flinch, the barest sign of an evasion. "Hm," he said at last. "Well, that is why you aren't sharing your friend's fate, I expect. "Someone else has a claim to her,' she said. No idea what that means?"
Hweilan looked away and searched her memory. "They wanted me for some reason," she said.
"Who?"
"On... on the day Highwatch fell, the traitors sent someone after me. A horrid slug named Jatara. I don't know why. But the other day in the woods, that pale man who came after me—"
"The Frost Folk?"
"Yes. Kadrigul. That was Jatara's brother, and he was screaming at the... the other thing, screaming at him that he wanted me alive."
"Why do you suppose that is? You'd be easier to carry off dead."
"I have no idea. Kadrigul and Jatara serve Argalath. Some sort of half-Nar shaman. Spellscarred. Makes my skin crawl. But he somehow wormed his way into the good graces of the captain of the Highwatch guard. I... I have reason to believe that they were the ones responsible for..." Hweilan took a deep breath, choking back tears. "For Highwatch."
"Hm," said Menduarthis. "Well, it does sound as if this Argalath is up to something. But a Nar shaman? That wouldn't even make the queen twitch. She'd give him no more thought than a horse brushing a fly off its rump."
She could sense the truth in much of what he was saying, but still...
_Someone else has a claim to her_.
But that wasn't all that had been said.
_She is to live, then?_
_I very much doubt it. But she isn't mine to kill_.
"Who is Nendawen?" said Menduarthis. He was watching her intently, and he grinned when her eyes widened at the name.
"I don't know," she said. "Is that a riddle?"
Menduarthis sat there a long time, staring at her, then said, "I was wrong. You are a better liar than I thought."
"It's no lie! I don't know who Nendawen is. Where did you hear it?"
"You talk in your sleep." His grin widened.
"I..." _Never heard of him_ , she'd meant to say, but something stopped her. Some feeling like an unremembered dream.
"What?"
"I... don't know. Can't remember."
"Lendri never mentioned Nendawen? Never?"
She thought a moment, then said, "No," sure of it.
Menduarthis chuckled, but it sounded more in disgust. "That flea-bitten little bastard," he said. "How much do you know about your friend Lendri?"
"I just met him. He... he saved me. Told me that he is some sort of blood brother to one of my grandsires. He offered to help me."
"Help you?" Menduarthis snorted. "Help you what?"
"Bring vengeance to those who killed my family."
"So you went with Lendri, hoping he would help you kill several hundred Creel and Damarans?" Menduarthis shook his head.
Hweilan scowled. "Well, for one who used to lie awake wondering of ways to make the moon and night fear her, several hundred Creel doesn't seem like much."
Menduarthis threw back his head and laughed. "Ah, Hweilan, I _did_ misjudge you! Ah, well, the gods favor children and fools, they say. Why not both in one?"
Hweilan stood so fast that her chair fell over behind her. "I'm no fool, and I am _no child!"_
All jollity left Menduarthis's face. He pursed his lips, and for just an instant, he reminded Hweilan of her Uncle Soran, disapproving and in the midst of a scolding. "You've called me mad several times," he said. "Do you know the true madness of a madman?"
"What?"
"He thinks he's the only sane man in the room. The truly sane? They know we're all a little mad, deep down. So pick up your chair and sit down. There's a few things you need to know about your little elf friend."
Hweilan stood there, glaring down at Menduarthis, wanting nothing more than to smash that smug look off his face. Her chair still lay on the floor behind her.
"Why should I believe anything you say?" she said.
Menduarthis spread his hands and rolled his eyes. "Why should you believe anything Lendri says? You listen, try to understand, then you make up your own mind. You don't want to believe me? As you wish. But at least hear what I have to say. Now, please, sit. I like to sit while I drink, and I hate looking up at someone when I talk."
Hweilan picked up the chair, though she placed it back up a few feet from the table and sat with her legs in front of her and her arms crossed.
"Your... friend"—Menduarthis twisted his lips round the word—"Lendri. Well, I'd call Kunin Gatar warm and cuddly before I'd call that pup a liar. He holds the truth like a dwarf holds his last copper. But he has a talent for telling you only what he wants you to know and holding back more. A lot more."
"He admitted he killed..." She couldn't recall the name.
"Miel Edellon. Bah." Menduarthis waved his hand as if shooing a fly. "Good riddance to that one. I told you Lendri's no liar. He did us all a favor when he ripped that throat—though I'll admit our beloved queen hasn't been in the best of moods since. But that isn't what he's hiding from you."
"What then?"
"What's he told you of Nendawen? What's he told you _exactly?"_
"Nothing. Never mentioned it."
"No?" Menduarthis's brow creased. "You said his name in your sleep, Hweilan. More than once. If Lendri has never told you, let me tell you now. The Vil Adanrath call Nendawen the Hunter. He's some sort of demigod or some such to them. Not a greater god, but he is... what you might call a very, _very_ powerful spirit. Something primal."
"A powerful spirit... hunter?" Hweilan snorted. "Sounds like a bard's tale."
"Nendawen is a hunter, girl. But not only of swiftstags or bear. Nendawen's favorite prey walks on two legs."
"He hunts men?"
"Men, elves, dwarves... whomever finds his disfavor, or sometimes whomever just happens to fall in his path. I've heard stories..." Menduarthis shuddered, though to Hweilan it seemed affected.
"You're saying he's evil?"
"Evil? No. I don't know that Nendawen even thinks in those terms. No. Nendawen is... primeval."
Hweilan smirked. "He's old and woodsy?"
"You have to understand, Hweilan, your world... your cities and walls and castles and fires that keep out the night. Your wizards waving their wands and warriors strutting with their swords on their hips... they think they've tamed the world. Made it serve them. And maybe in their little cities and towers they have. They've tamed it by keeping it out. By hiding. But there are powers in the world that were ancient when the greatest grandfathers of men still huddled in caves by their fires and prayed for the gods to keep out the night. These older powers... they don't fear the dark or the things that stalk in it. They _revel_ in the dark. They _are_ the things that stalk it. You speak of good and evil. When a wolf pack takes down a doe, are they evil? When a falcon takes a young rabbit, is it evil? Or are they merely reveling in their nature?"
"You're saying Nendawen is some sort of beast?"
"Nendawen is to beasts what Kunin Gatar is to snowballs."
Hweilan laughed, but Menduarthis did not join in her mirth. He simply sat there, looking at her, as grave and solemn as she had ever seen him.
"How do you know all this?" she said.
He shrugged. "I've been around awhile. A long while. I was here when little Lendri came here like a little lost puppy. I was here before he and Miel Edellon had their falling out, and I used to have to listen to Lendri pine away." Menduarthis rolled his eyes, very much the mischievous little boy again, and did a very impressive imitation of Lendri's accent. ""O, I'll never see my people again. I'm so alone. Woe is me!'"
Hweilan scowled. "You shouldn't mock him."
"I know him," said Menduarthis, "better than you, most likely. He's earned a little mockery from me. And I know all about his people. Your people, too, you Vil Adanrath. An impressive lot of savages, I'll grant you. And that's saying something, considering the company I keep. Lendri could be the most impressive savage of the lot when he set his mind to it. But I'll tell you this. In the entire time I knew him, Lendri only mentioned Nendawen a few times. But every time Lendri spoke of Nendawen— _every_ time, Hweilan—he sounded fearful as a scarecrow dancing round a bonfire. I'll say it plain: Lendri is using you."
"Using me?" She looked at Menduarthis. He was an admitted liar, but she could see no sign of it in him now. "Using me how?"
"I'm not sure. But I do know that the lands sacred to Nendawen were less than a tenday's walk from where we found you. If Lendri is taking you to this Nendawen—someone that terrifies him, and gives even Kunin Gatar serious pause—it can't be good."
"I could use powerful friends right now." Hweilan said it barely above a whisper, more to herself than him, but he heard it.
"I'm sure. But are you sure this Nendawen is a friend? Kunin Gatar..."
She watched him, waiting for him to finish, but he simply looked away and took another drink.
"What?"
"You heard her."
"'She isn't mine to kill,' "said Hweilan, and then she and Menduarthis said at the same time, ""Someone else has a claim on her.'"
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the fire crackle in the hearth.
"You think..." Hweilan said at last. "You think this Nendawen has a... a claim on me? What does that even mean?"
"I don't know," said Menduarthis. "But I know someone who does."
"The queen?"
"Lendri."
Hweilan's eyes went wide, and she stared at Menduarthis. He wasn't joking, wasn't playing with her mind. At least not that she could see.
"You still haven't answered the one question I most need answered," she said. "What does the queen intend to do to me?"
"At the moment, nothing. She told me to get you out of her sight and left it at that. I think she'd be quite content if I took you back where we found you and left you to freeze or starve. But the more tormenting Lendri riles her up, the more time she has to think about it..." He pursed his lips and stared into his empty glass. "You want my advice? Let me take you out of here. Tonight. Right now. Take you far away from the queen, far away from Lendri."
"To where?"
"Wherever you want."
She sat, watching him, looking for the slightest hint of insincerity or double meaning. She saw none. But that didn't mean it wasn't there.
"Why are you helping me?" she said.
"Truth be told?" He chuckled. "I'm bored."
"You're bored."
"As a river stone. I've been here too long. People like you and me, Hweilan... we're like the wind, never happy unless we're passing on. Put the breeze in a bottle and it's just dead air. I'm starting to feel dead. The queen gives me a long leash, to be sure. But a hound on a long leash is still leashed, and mine has been chafing a long time now."
"Then why haven't you left?"
"I'm sworn to the queen. Her hound, remember."
"The queen would release you from your oath? You, her faithful hound?"
He leaned over the table again, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Well," he said, "I did _say far away from the queen_. And, I might add, fast. If we're going to go, best we go quickly. Her arm is strong, but her reach isn't infinite. Besides, I know a few tricks." He shrugged. "And the uldra like me. If she ordered the Ujaiyen after me, they'd scamper off. But I don't think they'd look very hard."
"Ujaiyen?"
"Kunin Gatar's scouts and hunters. Mostly uldra and their tiger mounts. A few eladrin besides. Bunch of simpering, high-nosed frill shirts. They'd be glad to be rid of me."
"So why now?" said Hweilan "Why... me? Why break your oath to help me? I can't believe it's just boredom."
"You're the best chance I have," he said.
"What does that mean?"
"I told you. I think our dear queen is just a little bit afraid of you. At least right now. Give her time to get over it... well, as I said, best go soon. And now would be best." He gave her the mischievous boy smile again. "Before I change _my_ mind."
Hweilan put her elbows on the table and stared into the glowing vapor fuming out of the goblet. She made a show of considering it, but in truth her mind was already made up. A fool's plan, perhaps. But that might be the only type of plan that stood a chance of working.
"One thing," said Hweilan.
"Only one? You're easy."
"I'm not leaving without my father's bow."
# CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
KADRIGUL STOPPED, HIS CHEST HEAVING, HIS BREATH pluming out from him in a spray of frost. Cold as it was, sweat drenched him, and his heart was beating like war drums.
No sounds of pursuit.
Had he lost them?
After the duel, he had run back the way he came, then begun zigzagging every which way. Taking paths at random. Leaving the paths and squeezing his way between the great shards. Fearing at any moment to feel one of the thorn-covered vines tightening around his throat.
The little creatures had pursued him, the sounds of their footfalls like a small stampede. But they hadn't called out. Not in fury at seeing their companions killed, or even to signal one another. They ran in silence. Like animals. That was the worst.
But he'd lost them. So it seemed.
Kadrigul's left shoulder was still bloodied and sore from the fight, but none of the cuts were deep. He slowed to a careful walk, his eyes searching every shadow. The snow before him was unmarred, and none of the creatures' glowing eyes watched him from the dark.
He was hopelessly lost. Fleeing the creatures, he felt sure he'd run at least half a mile. But from the outside, the entire structure had seemed half that size at most. Much as he hated to admit it, he regretted not heeding the Creel's warnings. Sometimes cowards feared for a reason.
The path widened, but unlike the wide area where he'd fought the creature, the spires did not lean outward, open to the sky. They leaned inward, forming a haphazard roof, and as the path began a gentle slope downward, Kadrigul felt as if he were walking down a hallway.
The path ended at a strange archway. It was tall and wide enough for an entire column of cavalry to have ridden through, but here the great shards looked almost like thorn-covered trees, twisting and turning into the archway.
Beyond was an open area, a sort of hollow in the midst of the structure, only slightly larger than the main hall of Highwatch. More arches covered other paths across the way. In the midst of the open ground was a pool of sorts, but rather than water or ice, it seemed to boil over with a sort of frosty vapor that gave off a bluish glow—bright enough that it muted the light from the stars above.
At the edge of the pool, right where the glowing vapors evaporated, a tundra tiger lay in a frozen pool of its own blood. Its limbs twitched feebly, and it let out a horrible mewling sound. Its bottom jaw had been broken and ripped open. In fact, it had been damned near ripped off. Only a few bits of bloody skin still held it to the head.
Kadrigul walked up to it. The tiger's eye rolled to watch him, but its claws did no more than twitch. Closer up, Kadrigul could see where its back had been broken just above its back legs. The pain had to be so great that Kadrigul couldn't understand how the beast was still conscious.
Before he could change his mind, Kadrigul brought his blade around and down, plunging the sharp point deep into the tiger's throat. He twisted and yanked down, opening a deep gash, then removed the steel. Blood streamed out, and the tiger was dead in moments.
Kadrigul stepped back and knelt to clean the blood from his sword in the snow.
"You have killed my favorite pet," said a voice behind him.
Kadrigul stood and whirled, his blade held before him. A tall figure stepped out of one of the passageways. He was dressed all in black, loose-fitting clothing and a long cloak of ermine. A crown of twisted leather held long, black hair back from pale skin. His features were lean and sharp, and pointed ears emerged from the locks of hair. An elf or eladrin. At this distance, Kadrigul couldn't tell for sure.
Another stood behind him, so alike in appearance and manner that the two might have been brothers.
"Thrana was my best hunting cat," said the first.
"Where is your friend?" said the second. "The big one?"
Kadrigul said nothing.
Four of the little blue-skinned creatures emerged from the passage behind them. Between them, they dragged one of the Creel, tangled in at least four of the thorned vines and bleeding from dozens of cuts and scrapes. His eyes were wide and seemed to stare into nothing, but he was still alive. His entire body trembled, and by the smell, Kadrigul could tell he'd soiled himself.
"I'll ask you once more," said the second elf. "Where is the big one?"
Kadrigul wished he knew.
"Take him," said the elf.
The four creatures dropped their hold on the vines and charged. They held no weapons that Kadrigul could see.
Kadrigul brought his sword back to strike.
The elf pointed at the blade, shouted, _"Saet tua!"_ and the sword flew out of Kadrigul's grip as if snatched by an invisible giant. It struck one of the great shards and bounced off.
Then the creatures were on him, bearing him to the ground and tearing with tooth and claw. Like rats.
The thick hide of Kadrigul's coat and the tough fabric of his clothes were no help against the creatures' sharp teeth. They shredded through them and into the flesh beneath. Their fingernails were tough as claws and raked at his face and the skin of his ungloved hand. He had to squeeze his eyes shut to protect them from their ravages.
Then he heard shouting. From the elves, he thought.
And part of the biting, clawing weight left him. The creatures cried out, and more weight was gone.
Kadrigul dared to open his eyes.
Soran stood over him, grabbing the creatures one by one and throwing them. Even as Kadrigul watched, he grabbed another. The creature snarled and bit into Soran's wrist, but it didn't save him. Soran whirled and hurled the creature. It flew through the air and smashed into the nearest archway with a bone-crunching smash.
The remaining creature leaped off Kadrigul and at Soran.
Soran's fist caught him in midair. The creature hit the snow and did not move again. But Soran did. He brought his boot down on the creature's skull, smashing it.
The elves spread out. One held a long, silver sword in one hand. Green light rippled along its curved edge. The other was waving his hands in an intricate pattern and chanting an incantation.
Soran went for them, approaching relentlessly like a rising tide.
The first elf twirled his hand in a final flourish, then balled his fist and struck the air in front of him.
Hundreds of shards of white light erupted around Soran, whirling and striking him again and again like a cloud of fiery wasps. Skin, flesh, and bits of gray hair were torn from Soran's face. He growled, but he did not slow his approach.
The other elf stepped between his fellow and Soran. He screamed something in his own language, then charged, running Soran through with half the length of his blade. Soran coughed up a great gout of black blood—the elf smiled in grim satisfaction—and then Soran grabbed the elf's sword arm. Even from the distance, Kadrigul could hear the bone crumbling like shale as Soran squeezed. The elf shrieked. Soran reached forward with his other hand, grabbed the elf's throat, and ripped. The elf fell soundlessly to the ground.
The remaining elf turned to run, but Soran was too close now. He leaped over the dead elf, the sword still protruding from him, and bore the sole survivor to the ground.
"No, Soran!" Kadrigul called. "We need him alive!"
Sitting on the elf's back, Soran looked over his shoulder, growled, "Very well," then turned and dislocated both the elf's arms.
The elf screamed and writhed, and Soran got off him. Brutal as it was, it was effective. They needed the elf alive—at least for now—but they couldn't have him casting any more spells.
Kadrigul's limbs ached from the bites and claw marks he'd endured. He retrieved his sword from the far side of the pool, and when he returned, Soran was removing the last of the vines from the Creel.
The man seemed to have come back to his senses somewhat. He was looking back and forth from Soran to Kadrigul. But the sword still protruding from Soran's stomach seemed to have him very disconcerted.
Soran looked very much like the corpse Kadrigul knew him to be. His skin was dry and gray as shale. The wounds he'd endured from the elf's spell would have sent any normal man to the ground, screaming in agony. Soran's didn't even bleed. The thorns from the vines had shredded most of the skin from his fingers and palms, but he didn't seem to care.
"Ah, gods," said the Creel. He pointedly looked away from Soran and up at Kadrigul. "Th-thank you. Oh, thank you."
"Don't thank me," said Kadrigul.
Soran threw away the last vine and buried his teeth in the man's throat. The Creel kicked and screamed. But not for long. Soran savaged the man's throat like a tiger on a deer. Blood sprayed. The sight of it, Kadrigul could take. But the sound of Soran gulping it down like a deprived drunkard turned his stomach.
Kadrigul turned away. He walked over to the elf, lying on his back near his dead companion. Both his arms hung at crooked angles, and the elf was weeping with the pain.
Behind him, Kadrigul heard breaking bone and tearing flesh. The elf cried out and shut his eyes. Kadrigul wasn't sure if it was from terror or pain. Probably both.
When Soran joined them, he had the Creel's heart in one bloody fist and was still chewing from where he'd bitten a large chunk. Most of the wounds on his face and hands were gone. With his other hand, he removed the sword from his midsection, spraying the prone elf with dark, stinking blood, then threw the blade away.
"I feel much better," said Soran. He took another bite from the heart, chewed, and swallowed.
The elf cried out something in his own language.
Wincing at the pain from his many cuts, Kadrigul knelt beside him and said, "Now. You are going to tell us where the girl is."
The patrol had still not returned. Jijoku, whose task it was to remain by the portal and watch, had expected them long ago. After the capture of the exile and the girl, the Ujaiyen had suspected there might be more lurking in the valleys. The Nar never came close to their hills. Where two mortals did come, there were sure to be more. No one came that close to their lands unless they were up to something. So the Ujaiyen had continued their hunt.
But they should have been back by now.
The storm's fury had begun shortly after dawn. Jijoku relished the fresh cold and the beauty that the snowfall brought to his home. But it was falling so heavily now that he could no longer see the portal.
If it had just been Jijoku's brothers and the tiger, it might have not been so worrisome. The uldra often reveled in their hunts too long when game—two-legged or four-legged—was plentiful. But the eladrin Amarhan and Teirel had been leading the company. They were never late.
Unless they'd found something.
"They should have been back by now," Jijoku muttered to himself.
It was snowing even harder. He'd waited longer than he should have. A sentry who could no longer see what he was supposed to be watching wasn't much of a sentry. Time to move.
Jijoku retrieved his spears and hopped down from the outcropping of rocks where he'd been hiding. His bare feet had no trouble finding traction in the snow as he hopped and slid down the incline.
Even as the ancient tree, bowed over as if forever frozen in the wind, came back into sight, Jijoku thought he saw the last of telltale shimmer fading from its branches. Had something just come through?
He gripped his spears—one ready in one hand, two held loosely in the other—and advanced more cautiously.
Something was leaning against the bole of the ancient tree. It didn't move of its own accord, but the gusting wind caused something to ripple. Some sort of fabric.
Jijoku raised his spear and approached.
It was Amarhan. Both of his arms hung at twisted angles that made Jijoku wince. The eladrin's eyes were wide with panic, and he panted like a deer brought to ground by wolves.
Amarhan's eyes locked on Jijoku, and his mouth moved.
Jijoku stepped closer. "What?"
_"Run!"_ Amarhan gasped.
Jijoku turned in time to see the sword descending. Then he saw no more.
"No," Kadrigul said, as he knelt to clean his sword. "Don't."
Soran emerged from the swirling snow like a ship through a storm.
"Are there more guards?" Kadrigul asked him.
"Not anymore." Soran closed his eyes and leaned his head back, like a man might bask in the sun. A smile spread across his lips, but it was the most inhuman thing Kadrigul had ever seen. No joy. Not even malice. Just the pulling of lips back over the teeth.
"You can sense her again?" said Kadrigul.
"Oh, yes. She burns like sun's first light. So much brighter here."
Kadrigul scowled. He had no idea what that meant. "You can find her? You're certain?"
"Quite certain," said Soran.
Kadrigul stood and walked over to the eladrin. They wouldn't be needing him any longer.
# CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I'M NOT LEAVING WITHOUT MY FATHERS BOW," SAID Hweilan.
Menduarthis frowned. The warm light from the hearth fire burned low, setting a flamelike halo around his hair. But the blue light from the goblet on the table lit his pale face, setting his eyes and the folds of his frown in deep shadows. All in all, it gave him a maniacal aspect.
"Hmm," he said. "That could be difficult, I'm afraid. I may be the queen's hound, but Roakh is her main meddler. Your things are with him."
"Then we go see Roakh."
"You think he's just going to hand over your things?"
"We ask nicely," said Hweilan. "If he refuses, we take them. Less than nicely if necessary."
"You're ready to cross that bridge?" Menduarthis said. "Once you do, there's no coming back."
"I'm not leaving without my father's bow. It's all I have left of him."
"You have your blood. If you rouse the queen's ire, she'll take that as well."
"Not without a fight."
Menduarthis watched her in silence. She returned his gaze without flinching.
"How far are you prepared to go?" he asked.
"As far as necessary."
"Have you ever killed anyone before, Hweilan? I mean a person—not a beast, not something intended for your table."
She remembered her first day on the run. The Creel chasing her down. The fear and anger in the man's voice— _Face me! Come out and—_
If she tried, she could still feel the shock going up her arms as she plunged her knife into the man's throat. She had killed him. No doubt.
But that had been different. The man had been hurting her, and she'd struck out. This would be different. This would be going after what she wanted and being faced with the stark reality of killing whoever got in her way.
"Are you a killer, Hweilan?" Menduarthis asked.
"Not... not like this," she said. "But I have to start some time."
Menduarthis donned the armor he had worn the first time she'd seen him then donned a blue cloak over it. Had his wild, black hair not spoiled the image, he would have looked every inch the prince.
He disappeared into the hallway again and returned with a large bundle. Fresh clothes for Hweilan. Not the leather and animal hides Lendri had provided for her, but fine clothing of an excellent cut. The material felt soft as fine linen over her skin, but it was thick as tent cloth and, he assured her, would keep her warm. Loose trousers and tunic, a jerkin that fell past her hips, all a dark gray that would fade into shadows, snow, and stone. Over that a sort of sleeveless robe with a deep cowl, rimmed in fur, all black, as were the belt, gloves, and boots he gave her. And over that a thick cloak made from the white fur of some animal. He even had the grace to turn his back while she changed.
"How do I look?" she asked when all was done.
"You don't look like you," he said, "and that's the important thing. Keep the hood up, and you'll pass a casual glance for one of the eladrin. Just pretend everyone is beneath you. Also very eladrin."
He turned and rummaged through a chest of black wood set against the wall. Peeking over his shoulder, Hweilan could see only more clothes, but when he stood and extended his hands, a long knife in a scabbard rested across both his palms.
"In case we run into trouble before... well, before."
She took it from him and drew the blade. It was single-edged, the point ending in a slight curve. The blade alone was as long as her forearm, and the silver steel was etched in curving designs that seemed to evoke wind and clouds.
"It's beautiful," she said. "Thank you."
"Keep it under the cloak," he said. "No sense in asking for trouble." He reached inside his own jacket and pulled out a small phial. "One more thing."
_"Halbdol?"_
"You're still in Kunin Gatar's realm, and it's still very cold. You'll want it. Trust me."
"Why don't you need it?"
"A long tale. For another day."
She closed her eyes, and Menduarthis applied a thick coat all around her eyes, painting a sort of mask. But her hair kept falling in the way. Her eyes still closed, she felt him brushing the hair back behind her ear, very gently with the backs of his fingers. His touch lingered a bit too long, and she pulled away.
"Let me do something about my hair," she said. Feeling her face flush, she turned away.
"Here," said Menduarthis. "Try this."
She turned back around. He was holding out a long silk scarf, a dark red, like heart's blood.
"It's lovely," she said. As she took it, the scent of a feminine perfume wafted out from it—fading, but still there. She gave him a wicked smile. "Something tells me I'm not the first lady to enjoy your hospitality."
He grinned back. "So you _are_ enjoying me, then?"
Hweilan took the scarf, swept her hair back off her head, and bound the cloth atop her head.
She held out her hand for the phial. "I can do the rest."
"As you wish," said Menduarthis.
Rather than another death mask, Hweilan smeared the _halbdol_ on one finger and covered most of her face, neck and ears.
"Most fearsome," said Menduarthis. "Let's do this."
He walked over to an open space on the floor between the shuttered windows and motioned toward the floor with one fist. With a rush of air, a door flew up from the floor and banged against the wall.
Remembering the night she'd first met Menduarthis, and being reminded of his powers now, Hweilan asked, "You're a sorcerer?"
"Nothing so droll," he said. "Let's get today over with, then we can get to know each other properly."
Hweilan felt herself blushing again and was grateful for the black paste covering her face.
They stepped outside, into a gust of frigid air and snow. The cold hit like a slap, and Hweilan cried out.
"Hmm," said Menduarthis. "Good thing you painted yourself with the _halbdol_ after all. Looks as if Kunin Gatar's in a mood today."
They stood on the broad ledge of a cliff. How far it ascended over the ledge and fell below, she couldn't tell, for the snow hid everything beyond a few dozen feet. She saw another round door and shuttered window peeking through the snow. Whether they were other dwellings or more of Menduarthis's, it didn't much matter now. Hweilan knew she'd either be dead or gone from this place before the day was done.
Menduarthis led her down more steps—none with rails, and she walked as close as she could to the rock wall—along more paths along cliffside ledges, and across stone bridges where the wind seemed determined to push her over the edge. She clutched at the insides of her cloak to keep it near her body, not just for warmth, for she feared if the wind caught it, it would fill like a sail and throw her into depths where she might fall forever.
Only the _halbdol_ kept her face and eyes from freezing, but her breath came out in great clouds that froze into snow only inches from her face before being swept away by the gale.
Hweilan saw no other living creatures, but she could sense things watching them from the storm. Sometimes with only simple curiosity. But once, as they passed underneath an overhang of black rock, she could feel malice washing over her, like a foul stench, and Menduarthis called over the shriek of the wind, "Best stay close here!"
She didn't ask why, and the feeling soon passed.
They continued on, rounding a bend in the mountain and walking into the face of the wind. Every step brought them closer to the palace. They were walking into the heart of the storm.
By the time they reached the frozen river, the light was beginning its slow fade to evening, and the new snow was up to Hweilan's knees. With no snowshoes, they had to wade through it. But Menduarthis had spoken truly about the clothes he'd given her: even walking into the wind, Hweilan wasn't cold.
Menduarthis kept near the base of the cliff, for out on the snow-covered ice, uldra were racing down the river in sleds affixed with large sails. They moved incredibly fast, and although Hweilan caught only glimpses of them through the snow, she thought by the snatches of laughter she heard that most of the sailors were children.
As they neared the section of the cliff, on the other side of which lay the main gate, two uldra passed them riding on the back of a great swiftstag. Menduarthis spoke to them in their language—Hweilan tense and looking elsewhere the whole time—then they rode off. She watched them go until the great beast was lost to the storm.
"I thought they rode tigers," Hweilan said to Menduarthis.
"Only the Ujaiyen," he said, "the queen's scouts. Other uldra ride swiftstags, wolves, rams. I've heard rumors there's one old fellow a ways upriver who has tamed a bear. But on the rivers and fields, they love their sailsleds. Not much good up in the mountains and woods, though."
Another sailsled raced by, just a swift shadow passed through the swirling snow. The sound of laughter lingered after the sled was lost to sight.
"Who said there are no benefits to a queen's wrath?" said Menduarthis
He led Hweilan to the cliffside. Under the snow, Hweilan could feel her boots cracking on something that felt like dry branches—many of them too thick to break and simply threatening to trip her.
She knelt in the snow and rummaged under it until her glove brushed up against one of the branches. She grabbed it and pulled it out. It wasn't a branch. It was a bone. A leg bone by the looks of it. She was no expert on such things, but its narrow length looked very much like a human leg bone. She tossed it aside, then found another. Definitely a rib. When her other hand brushed up against something more round, she closed her eyes and swallowed hard, fearing what it was. Her fears proved true. Her hand emerged from the snow with the upper half of a human skull.
She looked up at Menduarthis. "What is this?"
He pointed up. "We're here."
Hweilan looked up. The falling snow obscured everything above a few dozen feet. But she could just make out where the wall of the cliff began to lean out a little.
"We're where?" she asked.
"You said you wanted your things back."
"Roakh lives here?" Hweilan looked back down at the skull in her hand and remembered her meeting with Roakh in the palace. Memory of the old nightmare came to her again, of ravens on the battlefield, their dead, black eyes eager for hers.
"For the moment," said Menduarthis, and it took Hweilan a moment to catch his meaning.
She reached behind her back and drew the knife that Menduarthis had given her. "I'm ready," she said.
Menduarthis extended his hand. "Very well," he said. "Come here."
Hweilan walked to him, the knife held loosely at her side, and stopped just shy of his hand.
"Don't you trust me?" said Menduarthis.
"I'm here, am I not?"
"That's not what I meant. Roakh's up there." He pointed to the cliff wall above them. "I can get us there, but not like this. You must suffer my embrace for a few moments."
Hweilan scowled. "Suffer your—?"
Menduarthis lunged, adder-quick, taking her in a tight embrace, his arms pinning her own. She stiffened as she felt his cool skin press against her cheek, but he only held her tighter. Then the breath of his whisper in her ear. "No one likes a coward. Trust me."
Before she could react, she felt a great rush of air—not the storm, this gale was narrow, concentrated, and under the control of strong will. She almost panicked and tried to fight her way free, but she remembered exactly how Menduarthis had captured her in the first place, and she decided to trust him. Just this once. She could always use the knife once he let her go.
The wind swirled around them, so fast and fierce that it felt almost solid. Menduarthis held her very tight, and she suddenly found it hard to breathe.
The air hit them, a physical blow that knocked them off their feet.
No, Hweilan realized. It was lifting them. They had lurched, but not down. The cyclone was lifting them up, faster and faster each moment.
Hweilan felt a scream building in her chest, and just when she could contain it no more, the cyclone was gone, the wind simply dissipating. Still in Menduarthis's tight embrace, Hweilan fell. Not far, but enough to clamp her teeth together.
They hit a snow-covered ledge of rock and rolled. When they stopped, Hweilan was on her back, Menduarthis on top of her.
He pulled the upper half of his body up and looked down on her. He had a dark smear of _halbdol_ across one cheek where he had rubbed against her. "Do you trust me now?"
She pushed him away with her free hand. "A lot less than I did a moment ago."
They got up. Hweilan found herself on a curving lip of rock several feet wide. Up here, the wind from the storm was stronger, and less snow had gathered. The litter of bones was much more evident. Four skulls—one of which still had bits of flesh and hair clinging to the scalp—and countless random bones strewn about. Even in the wind, the ledge reeked.
Set amid the cliffside was a round window, closed by a thick shutter. It hadn't been crafted by planks of wood, but seemed rather to have been grown or molded, almost like the parchmentlike outer wall of a wasp's nest.
"Follow my lead," said Menduarthis. He walked over to the shutter and raised a fist.
The shutter flew outward, barely missing Menduarthis and revealing the upper half of Roakh, standing on a lower floor just inside the window. Snowflakes sprinkled him, laying against his gray skin and black hair in stark contrast.
_"Govuled_ , Menduarthis," he said. "I thought I heard—" His gaze found Hweilan. She felt it, almost like a physical touch, those black eyes, void of all warmth and emotion save one. Hunger. "What have we here? Brought me a gift, have you?"
Roakh's eyes flicked to the naked blade in Hweilan's hand. His eager gaze was just turning to a scowl when—
Menduarthis said, "I have.
"And what is the precious gift's name?"
"Boot."
"Boot?" Roakh looked up at Menduarthis—
—and Menduarthis kicked him in the face.
Roakh fell backward into the room, and Menduarthis jumped in after him. Hweilan's eyes, accustomed to the glare of the snowstorm—fading as it was to evening, it was still bright compared to the gloom beyond the window—could not see the two men, but she could hear Roakh's surprised croak, followed by the sound of more blows landing.
Inside her gloves, Hweilan's palms felt hot and slick. She tightened her grip on the knife and approached the window. Closer up, she could see bits of the room beyond. A hallway not much wider than the window continued a short distance into a larger room beyond. Still no sign of Menduarthis or Roakh, but she could hear frenzied movement inside.
"Hweilan!" Menduarthis called. "Do come in. It's rude to linger outside windows. Someone watching might think we were up to something."
She jumped inside. Keeping her back to the window, she walked forward, the knife held in front of her. She could feel her arms and legs trembling like plucked harp strings, and her breath seemed very loud in her ears.
The room beyond was a wreck. Round walls and a domed ceiling, it seemed—much like Menduarthis's dwelling had—to be more of a cave molded from the rock of the mountain. Shelves lined the wall to her left, each crammed full with bits of clothing, old boots, weapons, jewelry, brass lamps, scrolls, books and pieces of books, and many things Hweilan couldn't identify. Piles of similar items lay around the room, on tabletops, on the floor, and more bundles of sackcloth or net hung from the ceiling, every one packed full.
Menduarthis, a thin trickle of blood dripping down his chin, stood in front of the far door. Roakh, his mouth a mess of blood and broken teeth, one side of his face already swelling, stood pressed against the far wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Treachery!" Roakh screamed, and it came out more of a croak than a cry. "You know what happens to traitors here. Kunin Gatar will flay you for this."
"Perhaps," said Menduarthis. "But not today. Today, you will give us what we want."
"I'll tell you where he is," said Roakh. "Just... don't hurt me anymore."
"Where who is?" said Menduarthis.
"Lendri. Please! He's... he's still alive. The queen ordered him taken to the Thorns. She wants him to die where Miel Edellon died."
Menduarthis pursed his lips and nodded, taking this in. "Very nice," he said. "But that's not why we're here, old crow."
Roakh's eyes widened. "What... do you want?"
"Hweilan here has come for her things," said Menduarthis. "Her father's bow."
Hweilan nodded. "I want it."
Menduarthis smiled down on Roakh, and a shiver went down Hweilan's spine. It was the first time she had seen such an expression from him: pure, undisguised, joyful malice. "I think you know what _I_ have come for, old crow."
Roakh pushed himself away from the wall and into a crouch, his limbs trembling with fury and pain. He glared at Menduarthis a long moment, then said, "Why?"
Menduarthis shrugged. "Why not?"
Roakh leaped at Hweilan. His form blurred and twisted to wings, feathers, and long, sharp claws, aiming for Hweilan's face.
Menduarthis flicked his wrist and thrust an open palm at Roakh. Wind roared through chamber, blowing scrolls off shelves, ripping pages from books, and setting the dangling nets and bundles to swaying. But one directed current of air struck Roakh full force and smashed him into an upper shelf. Hweilan winced at the sound of cracking wood and bone, then Roakh, shocked back into his elflike form again, hit a table below, smashing it beneath him and scattering jewels and coins all over the floor.
"Best not try that again," said Menduarthis. "Hollow bird bones break so easily."
Roakh lay writhing atop the smashed table, clutching at his right side and moaning.
"You broke my arm, you—" The rest of Roakh's rant faded into a long string of words in another language that Hweilan was quite sure were curses.
"Give the lady her bow," said Menduarthis as he walked over to stand over Roakh. He bent down and began to stuff his pockets with jewels and coins. "Be good, and I'll leave you tied and gagged in one of your nets. Continue being... _difficult_ , and—well, have you ever seen an old wineskin filled with too much wine? Imagine what would happen if the air in your wretched frame did the same thing."
Menduarthis stood and twirled his fingers in an intricate pattern, and Hweilan felt a breeze waft through the room. Roakh gasped—
No, not a gasp. Air was rushing into his lungs, very much against his will. He clamped his jaws shut, then pressed his unbroken hand across his nose. His eyes widened with fear, and tears leaked down the sides of his face.
"I can shove it in through your ears," said Menduarthis, "though we won't be able to continue our conversation once all the little bones in there get shoved down your throat. So give"—he kicked Roakh in the ribs once, a rib cracking under the blow—" the girl"—another kick, and Roakh dropped the hold on his nose—"what"—another kick, this one aimed at Roakh's knee—"she wants!"
"Ah!" Roakh screamed. "Stop! Stop, please! I'll do it."
Menduarthis stopped his assault and dropped his hands to his sides.
"Just... just help me up," said Roakh. "I'll, ah!" He winced in pain. "I'll get them."
"No," said Menduarthis. "You point, and we'll get them."
Roakh glared at him. Menduarthis raised one hand again, his fingers already twirling again.
"No!" Roakh screamed. He pointed in Hweilan's direction. "Under the pile! There!"
She turned. Shoved up against the wall not far from the hallway was a jumble of cloaks, clothes, and what looked like an old tapestry.
"Careful, Hweilan," said Menduarthis. "This one's a trickster."
She peeled back and tossed aside the thick fabrics with the tip of her knife. At first there were just more of the same, then she came across a long tassel, a bit of rope that looked fit only for burning, then under an old leather jerkin was a familiar bundle. One of Lendri's belt pouches. The larger one. She grabbed it and opened it. Inside was a whetstone, bowstrings, arrowheads, a few wooden phials stopped with tightly rolled felt, and a ring. Not gold. Darker and redder. More like copper, with darker etchings all around it. The ring he had used to summon the fire for Scith's pyre. She closed the pouch and tucked it under her belt.
Digging through more clothes and another bit of tapestry, she found her old knife and her father's bow. She gasped with relief, tears welling in her eyes. She slipped the knife into her boot, sheathed the new blade Menduarthis had given her, and cradled the bow to her chest.
Standing and turning to face Menduarthis, she wiped the tears from her eyes. "It's here. Everything I need."
"Good." Menduarthis looked down on Roakh. "Now, back to business."
He raised his hand, his fingers twirling, and Roakh's eyes went wide. "No! You promised!"
"And I'm a liar," said Menduarthis, a stiff breeze already wafting through the room. "Even if I could trust you not to go cawing off to the queen the moment we leave—and I can't do that, can I?—the truth is I never liked you, you conniving, greedy, gluttonous little bastard. You've had this coming for a long time, and I am going to enjoy myself."
Roakh clamped his jaw shut again and grabbed his nose. Tears streamed out of his eyes. The air in the room moved, eddying currents twisting every which way and then coalescing around the two men.
But then another sound broke through the howling of the wind in the chamber. Horns. From outside. Dozens of them at least. Not the brass sound of the horns of Highwatch Hweilan knew so well. These had a lower, howling sound.
"What is that?" Hweilan asked.
"Ujaiyen clarions," said Menduarthis, and he dropped his hand. The air stopped dead in the room, though bits of it still seemed to be playing in Menduarthis's hair. Even the howling of the storm outside seemed to have hushed.
The horns continued, and amid them Hweilan could hear the cries of voices in the distance.
"We're under attack," said Menduarthis.
# CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
GURIC SPENT THE EVENING IN PRAYER. THE LONGEST time he had ever done so since his knighthood—and the first time since Valia's death. The small shrine devoted to Torm was set in a bit of the mountain near the gardens where most of the High Warden's family had once had their apartments.
In the sacking of Highwatch, the shrine had been robbed of its gold, the jewels pried from the statues, and the silver chalice of the altar itself was long gone. Probably in some Creel chief's tent. But Guric had not allowed the altar to be desecrated. At the time, he wasn't sure why. But now, he was glad.
He did not feel at peace. Only death would bring him peace now. But at least he felt determined.
Where it had all gone wrong, he still didn't know, and if Torm knew, the god was silent. Guric knew his own center had never been right since Valia's death. But he often wondered if her death was Torm's judgment for Guric's defiance of his father, his family, and their house. In his heart of hearts, he did not believe that. Torm demanded justice, but there was no malice in his judgments. No, Guric believed his life had come to ruin at one critical juncture: Argalath.
Had Argalath used Guric from the beginning? Deceived him? Or did the man honestly see good in the horrors he had wrought? In the end, it didn't really matter. The man had to be stopped.
Guric's guards fell into step behind him as he left the shrine and crossed the winter-bare garden. Guric stopped in the middle of the garden and looked around. The ivy climbing the walls was brown, the branches on the bushes black and leafless. How fitting, Guric thought. He turned his attention to Boran and said, "Gather ten more guards. Men you trust. Hemnur and Isidor." He hesitated. "And Sagar."
"Sagar?" Boran whispered and looked at the other guards, standing a respectful distance away. "You're certain, my lord? His loyalty—"
"I have no faith in Sagar's loyalty to me," said Guric. "But I am quite certain of his... antipathy for others."
Boran's eyebrows rose, and he looked around. Not gathering his thoughts. He seemed to be searching for spies. "You mean—"
"You know who I mean. No need to speak it."
"If I may..." Boran swallowed, and Guric saw that a fine sheen of sweat had broken out on his brow. "For what am I gathering these men?"
"Nothing more than a walk, I hope," he said. "But they should come armed. Just in case."
Guric, fourteen guards at his back, stood before the arched doorway that led to the southern tower where Valia had been housed. Every guard had a sword at his belt, two carried axes in their hands, and every one wore mail and helm.
Two Nar guards had been here before. Now, nothing. The archway stood empty. Unguarded. Guric did not know whether to feel relief or dread. It delayed a possible confrontation with Argalath's men. But that Valia's chamber was unguarded...
A thin curtain of dread draped itself over Guric's mind, and for the first time since leaving his prayers, he felt his determination cracking.
He turned to Boran. "I want you, Isidor, and two others with me. Everyone else, guard this entrance. No one comes in or out without my leave. And I mean _no one_. Understood?"
The men bowed.
Boran said, "Yes, my lord," and chose two men to accompany them. The axemen.
Guric's unease grew as they mounted the stairs. Something was not right. No lamps or torches burned in the sconces. It was cold enough in the tower that their breath steamed before them, and the sounds of their footfalls echoed against profound emptiness.
Long before they reached the top, Guric began to suspect. But before they rounded the final bend in the stairs to the top platform and the door, he knew.
No guards stood vigil on the platform. The door to her cell stood open. The chamber beyond still held a foul reek, but nothing stirred within. Even the rats had forsaken the chamber.
Valia was gone.
Guric rejoined the rest of the guards at the bottom of the stairway. Seeing the fury on his face, they stepped back. Two bowed their heads and did not look up.
"Did anyone try to come this way?" Guric asked.
"No one, my lord."
Guric turned to Boran. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, reconsidering. He'd been about to say, _We must find Argalath. Now_.
But no. He would not go to Argalath, making demands and begging like a cur under his master's table.
No.
Argalath would come to him.
"My lord?" said Boran. "What are your orders?"
"I am going to my chambers. I want a flagon of wine waiting for me when I get there. Before I am finished draining the dregs, I want Argalath in front of me."
Sagar smiled. "I'll fetch him, my lord."
# CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
UNDER ATTACK?" SAID HWEILAN.
"Those clarions," said Menduarthis. "That is the call to arms. Something has come into the realm of Kunin Gatar."
Hweilan felt it then. The pulsing at the back of her skull. Not strong yet, but steady as a drumbeat. She had not felt it since...
And she knew who it was.
"Soran," she said. "That... that thing that looks like my uncle. It's him. I know it."
Roakh tried to laugh, but it came out more of a cough, and black blood dribbled out on his cheek. "Haak! They'll be coming for you, Menduarthis. Your Ujaiyen. And for me. You to lead your scouts. Me to... do what I do. They'll be coming. They'll... find you. See what y—"
Menduarthis kicked him again. Then he looked to Hweilan. "He's right. If we're under attack, the queen's hound and her favorite snoop will soon be summoned."
Roakh coughed up more blood, then began to roll away from Menduarthis, closer to the shelves.
"Where are you going, old bird?" Menduarthis asked. He bent down to turn the man over.
But Roakh rolled back on his own, and as he did so he used his unbroken arm to punch at Menduarthis.
Menduarthis jumped back, laughing, and said, "What do you th—?"
And then something struck him in the face. It hadn't been a punch from Roakh after all. A throw.
The small brown bag bounced off Menduarthis's forehead, surprising him more than anything, but as it did so, its contents spilled out in a cloud of white powder.
"Wha—?" said Menduarthis, then he screamed and slapped at his face. He lurched backward, stumbling as his knees gave way, then fell face first on the floor. Only the bundle of junk saved him from cracking his head on the stone.
Hweilan screamed, "Menduarthis!"
"Don't worry," said Roakh, as he pushed himself to his feet. "He's not... dead." He coughed, and a fine spittle of blood flew out of his mouth. "Not after what he's done. Death's"—he took in a deep breath, and Hweilan could hear the broken, wet rattle in his chest—" too quick... for him. Now, what shall we do with you?"
One twisted arm hung limp and useless by Roakh's side. He tried to move it, winced in pain, then gave up. He took a big step to Hweilan, almost slipped on all the detritus littering the floor, then leaned against the near shelf.
"Keep away from me!" said Hweilan, and she thrust the bow in front of her, holding it crossways like a staff. She glanced over her shoulder to the still open window. Beyond was the ledge, and after that a drop of a good forty feet or more. Too high.
"Half a... moment!" Roakh coughed up more blood. He turned and used his good hand to rummage through the shelf behind him. An old plate fell to the floor and shattered. He turned back to Hweilan. Still leaning on the shelf for support, he now held a small phial in his trembling fist. Wincing at the pain, he used his teeth to pull the cork, spat it out, then drank the contents of the phial.
Roakh screamed—an agonized shriek that caused Hweilan to take an involuntary step back. He fell back onto the remains of the table where he had received his beating. His back arched. He hammered the floor with one fist, his scream growing into a ravenlike cry. Then, like the tension leaving a cut string, he collapsed.
For an instant, Hweilan thought—hoped—Roakh was dead.
But then he took a deep draught of air and sat up. He moved his right arm. It was no longer broken. He made a tight fist then wiggled his fingers.
"Ahh." Roakh chuckled and looked at Hweilan. "Much better. Still not quite hale as ever." His smile widened. The sharp teeth had mended, though blood from his previous wounds still smeared his face and mouth. In the fading light, it looked black against his gray skin. "A good meal will mend that, I think," he said, and pushed himself to his feet.
"Stay away!" Hweilan said, and raised her bow in both hands, like a club.
Roakh's smile melted, his face losing all semblance of emotion, and he cocked his head to one side. Like a raven. A raven scavenging the quiet battlefield, disturbed only by the endless drone of flies and the caws of his fellows. He charged her.
Hweilan screamed and swung the bow.
He laughed and caught the bow in one hand, the wood striking his palm with a loud slap. He tightened his grip, twisted, and yanked the bow from her hands. Hweilan tried to hang on to it, but he was too strong—unbelievably strong, considering his small stature and almost frail frame—and he almost pulled her off her feet.
Roakh caught her. She pushed at him, and again he used her own strength against her, throwing her across the room. Her back struck the wall under the window, knocking every last bit of breath from her body, then she hit the floor, and bright lights danced before her eyes.
Her vision cleared. Roakh advanced on her. She screamed and scrambled to her feet. A forty-foot drop suddenly seemed a lot more inviting than it had a few moments ago.
She was halfway out the window when Roakh grabbed her, threw her to the ground, and put his full weight on top of her. He didn't weigh more than a child, but his strength was incredible. She aimed a backhanded punch at his face, but he caught her wrist and pinned it to the ground beside her head. She tried to bring her left arm around, but it was pinned beneath his leg.
Roakh opened his mouth, dark spittle fell down onto her cheek, and his teeth lunged down. Hweilan screamed, still unable to move her hands, and twisted beneath him. Strong as Roakh was, he was still much lighter than Hweilan, and she managed to get him halfway off her. His jaws snapped shut, barely missing her face and instead closing around a mouthful of hair. He growled and spat it out.
Hweilan's right arm was still pinned under his grip, but she'd wormed her left free. Rather than aiming another useless punch, she raised her knee and thrust her hand inside her boot. With the glove on, it took her a moment to find the knife. She managed to wrap three fingers around the hilt and pull, the knife coming halfway out.
Roakh used his free hand to grab a handful of Hweilan's hair. He gripped and yanked, turning her head to expose her throat.
Hweilan grabbed the hilt.
His lips wet with blood and drool, Roakh lunged.
Hweilan drew the knife. Her leg and arm were twisted at such an angle that the blade sliced through her trousers and nicked the skin beneath as it came free.
Sharp teeth and warm, wriggling flesh, like grave worms, hit her throat.
Hweilan screamed and stabbed upward.
Roakh shrieked, the sound deafening so close to her ear, and his teeth scraped away skin and flesh as he flung himself away.
Hweilan rolled to her feet and looked down. Dark blood drenched the entire length of the knife and much of the glove holding it. Roakh leaned against the opposite wall, both hands clutching his side just below his ribs. Blood wasn't leaking out from between his fingers. It was _pouring_.
"You stabbed me, you—!" Roakh pulled his hands away, twisting them into claws, and lunged.
Hweilan dodged sideways and swept the knife in front of her. She was too frightened to aim, to think of anything more than keeping the monster away from her. But the knife sliced one arm, opening another deep gash.
Roakh twisted and came after her.
She brought the blade around again, stabbing this time instead. She felt the shock up her entire arm as the point slid between two ribs, the blade catching there a moment before the force of Roakh's charge twisted the blade, forcing it in deeper.
They fell. One of Roakh's clawed hands went for Hweilan's throat while the other batted at her knife hand. She screamed through clenched teeth, desperate to keep hold of the knife, and pushed him with her free hand as they hit the floor. It forced Roakh away, the blade coming out with another gush of hot blood.
"You—!" Roakh screamed, and there was desperation as well as fear and anger in his eyes now.
But Hweilan gave him no time to finish. All the rage and fear of the past days—her family massacred; chased by Nar and some monster wearing her uncle's face; captured, having her mind violated by a capricious queen; and this foul creature putting his wet, slavering mouth on her—all the railing against her powerlessness and the injustice of the world... all of Hweilan's terror and rage twisted and tightened into a tight cord, humming and vibrating under the tension.
And then snapped.
She fell on Roakh, the knife rising and falling again and again, sometimes hitting bone and scraping away, tearing more skin and cloth than flesh. But others sinking deep. First into the soft flesh where his neck met his shoulder. The blade sank all the way in, and Roakh's black eyes went wide with shock and his mouth opened in a silent scream. She yanked it out, blood spraying over her, and then brought it down again and again and again, ravaging his neck and face.
She was still stabbing and pulling, stabbing and pulling, stabbing and pulling, long after Roakh stopped moving.
"Hweilan!"
A strong hand caught her wrist.
She shrieked and twisted, lunging after her new attacker.
"Hweilan, enough!" Menduarthis said as Hweilan came down on top of him.
She lay there, panting. The scarf on her head had been ripped off in the fight, blood soaked her hair, and it hung in matted lanks in front of her face. The knife, raised over her head and ready to plunge into Menduarthis's face, was trembling, and a steady drip-drip-drip of blood fell off the blade and pattered onto the floor.
Menduarthis still had bits of the powder on his face, and his lovely blue eyes were shot through with ugly red veins. Still, he gave her a weak smile and said, "I see my knife proved useful."
Hweilan slid off him and onto her knees. She clutched the knife to her chest in both hands, not caring in the least about the gore covering it.
"Lendri's," she said. She held the knife up. "Lendri's knife."
Now that her breath was coming easier and the hammering in her heart was slowing, she heard the horns again. She opened her mouth to ask, _What are we going to do?_ But then her gaze caught the mangled mess that had once been Roakh.
She dropped the knife, fell forward on her hands, and vomited all over the floor.
Menduarthis let her finish, then pulled her gently to her feet and held her against his chest.
"I killed him." He throat and mouth ached from the burning bile.
Menduarthis brushed the bloody hair out of her face and said, "The world is a better place without the little bastard. He can plague the Nine Hells with his chatter now."
She pushed Menduarthis away and retrieved her knife. Considering the bloody wreck of her clothes, it seemed pointless to clean the knife, but she did, kneeling down and wiping away the blood on an old curtain. The sounds of horns still wafted through the air.
"Hweilan, you're bleeding," said Menduarthis. He knelt beside her and gently turned her face aside. "I didn't notice it at first because of the _halbdol."_
She had completely forgotten about Roakh's bite, but now that Menduarthis had mentioned it, she could feel a throbbing sting along the left side of her throat, just below her jaw line.
"How bad is it?" She gave a sharp intake of breath at his touch.
"Nasty, but it looks like more torn skin than anything. We'll need to clean it. Come. But triple-quick. We _must_ hurry."
He helped her to her feet and through the door. Beyond was an even larger room, a round door on the opposite wall, littered with even more piles of Roakh's possessions. Windowless, the room would have been black as starless midnight if not for one iron lamp hung from the ceiling. What sort of fire or magic lit it, Hweilan had no idea, but it cast sickly blue light throughout the room, casting all the piles and tables as little islands in pools of shadow.
One other object in the room cast its own light—a wide basin, crafted from some precious metal and encrusted with hundreds of jewels. The rim glowed vibrant green, the light rippling off the fluid filling the basin.
"What is that?" said Hweilan.
"Just a washbasin," said Menduarthis, "which you sorely need."
Together, they washed the worst of the gore out of Hweilan's hair. No matter how much blood stained the water, a swirl from Menduarthis's finger, and the water cleared again. Whether this was some trick of the basin itself or one of Menduarthis's spells, Hweilan couldn't bring herself to care. She'd just hacked a person to death. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel the shock traveling up her arm as each blow of the blade landed—the instant of resistance as the steel passed through flesh, or the harder strike of glancing off bone. His screams... Hweilan shuddered. No, it was when the screams had stopped and she'd kept hacking away. That had been the worst.
Hweilan's knees trembled, and then her legs gave out, depositing her on the floor. Lendri's knife, which she had completely forgotten she was still holding, clattered to the floor beside her. She would have retched again if anything remained in her stomach.
"Are you hurt?" Menduarthis asked, as he knelt beside her.
"I... I killed him, Menduarthis. I killed Roakh."
"That you did. He is most certainly dead."
Her body was shaking. She hugged herself tight but couldn't make it stop.
"Hey." Menduarthis grabbed both her shoulders and shook her. Not hard, but enough to get her attention. "Now, listen to me. It was him or you. Believe that. True, you did get a bit... carried away. One sloppy mess you made of the old bird. But it was your first time. A little more practice, and you'll be a cold killer."
She looked up at him. He was smiling. Not with his usual sardonic amusement. Something almost like genuine good will.
Her body was still shaking, but she managed to give him a faint grin in return. "It... it wasn't my first time."
His eyebrows shot up. "Really? Well, that sounds like a tale. But at the moment, Hweilan, we've got to survive today. Now let's get out of here. We've lingered too long already."
Menduarthis stood and extended a hand to help her up.
She grabbed his arm and stood. "Where are we going?"
"Those horns are coming from across the river, which means that whoever is attacking either came through the main portal or from that direction, which means that the Ujaiyen, the uldra, the eladrin, the elves, the everyone, they'll be scrambling to hunt down the invaders. That whole area will be thick with fey out for blood. But there are other ways out of here. We avoid being noticed and slip through in the confusion. Everyone will be looking for trouble coming in. Not trouble getting out."
She looked down at her clothes. Despite Menduarthis's efforts, the once-fine cloth was spattered in blood, and she was a solid black mess from her left elbow down. "Avoid being noticed? Look at me."
"Hm. I see your point. Wait here."
Menduarthis returned to the first room and soon returned carrying her father's bow and the red silk scarf he had given her. It was still clean.
"Cover your hair with this. You huddle under that cloak and cowl, nice and snug, and I'll give you a good coating of snow. Carrying the bow, you'll pass a quick look for one of us."
"And a longer look?"
"It's the best we can do under the circumstances."
She pulled her hair back and covered it with the scarf, knotting it in a sort of cap that would both keep her hair out of her eyes and hide the tops of her ears. Looking down to do so, she saw the knife she'd dropped on the floor. Lendri's knife. She picked it up.
She removed all the blood she could from Lendri's blade, but much of it had soaked into the leather wrapped around the hilt. Looking at the knife, looking at _Lendri's_ knife, it came to her then. Even if they could make it out of Kunin Gatar's realm, she had nowhere to go. The most she could hope for among the Damarans was a life in hiding and the security of wedding some minor lord. A hunted woman with no lands, no riches, no dowry, she'd be lucky to bed some minor duke's man-at-arms. A friendly tribe of Nar? She'd do little better there. If Lendri was to be believed, the Vil Adanrath were gone...
Lendri.
She couldn't leave him. She knew it now. Not after everything he had done for her. The knife he'd given her had saved her life, and he himself had done so at least twice, risking his own life for hers. Was he using her as Menduarthis said? Perhaps. But if so, she needed to hear it from his own lips. Look into his eyes as he admitted it. And then—
A life on the run with Menduarthis? To what end? Where? And how soon before he expected to share her blankets in return for helping her?
"No," she said.
"No what?" said Menduarthis, his voice equal parts exasperation and fear.
"We can't leave yet. Not without Lendri."
Menduarthis's jaw dropped, shut again, and he laughed. "You're serious?"
"I'm not leaving without him."
"He's _using_ you, Hweilan!"
"I won't forsake him unless I hear that from his own lips."
Menduarthis turned and kicked a pile of junk on the floor. Jewelry, utensils, an old shoe, and a few books went flying. He kicked another pile for good measure, toppled a small table, and screamed, "Are you serious?"
Hweilan opened her mouth to answer, but the sound of pounding cut her off. she could hear voices yelling outside, though they were too faint, the door too thick, for her to understand. But then she heard one, raised above all the others. "Roakh!"
"Gods buck my bottom, they've come for him," said Menduarthis. His eyes were round and shiny as new-minted coins.
"What do we do?" Hweilan whispered.
Menduarthis paced the room, muttering to himself the whole time, kicking aside piles of clothes as he went. Mice scuttled squeaking from a few of them. He ran out of piles to kick at the wall, then came back toward Hweilan, shoving Roakh's belongings aside as he went.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"Looking. Help me!"
"Looking for what?"
He kicked a large pile of robes, clothes, and old tassels aside, and said, "This!"
Hweilan stepped over, and Menduarthis pulled at an old iron ring set in the floor. A hidden door swung upward, revealing a ladder leading down into darkness.
"Roakh?" said a voice from the other room. Someone had come in through the window, the same as Menduarthis had.
"Where was it Roakh said Lendri is?" Menduarthis whispered.
"The Thorns?"
"The Thorns it is then. In you go." Menduarthis motioned to the ladder.
From the other room came a loud cry. _"Roakh! Aivilulta! Aivilulta! Roakh aiviluldulaik!_
In she went.
# CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
WHAT HERE A MOMENT," SAID MENDUARTHIS, HIS voice scarcely above a whisper. "Don't make a sound."
He turned away and shuffled off around a bend in the tunnel. Hweilan was still trying to catch her breath, and she could hear little beyond the hammering of her own heart.
After their frantic flight down the ladder from Roakh's dwelling, Menduarthis had led Hweilan through a series of tunnels. For a while, they had been followed by the sounds of pursuit—light footsteps and the occasional shout. And once their pursuers had come close enough for Hweilan to catch the faint green glow of the lights they held. But then a strong breeze had shot through the tunnel—Menduarthis working his magic—and they scuttled quick as they dared down a series of steps and through a series of several quick turns. It had worked, and there had been no sounds of pursuit since.
They kept on for a long while after that, no longer running but keeping a quick pace. Hweilan's eyes strained, hungry for light, but there was only the dark, intense cold, and the sounds of their own footsteps. In places, Hweilan could feel fresh air against her skin as they passed fissures in the rock. But full night must have fallen outside, for no light leaked through. They walked in utter darkness, Menduarthis keeping a first grip on her cloak.
But then Hweilan realized she could see again. At first she thought it was only a trick of her eyes—the swirling lights and shadows that dance before everyone's sight at times. But no. It was not clear or distinct, but there was no mistaking the shape of Menduarthis before her—a solid blackness in front of only a slightly-less-than-black background. The farther they went, the stronger the light became. It was only moon and starlight, but so hungry were her eyes for even the tiniest fragment of light that by the time they neared the end of the tunnel, Hweilan could see quite well.
She heard furtive movement, and Menduarthis stepped back around the bend. He saw her and said, "All clear, as near as I can tell. Come."
Hweilan followed him out of a cave mouth only slightly larger than the door in Roakh's floor. She had to crouch to get through, and the back of her cloak scraped on icicles. She stood and was struck at the cold brilliance of the night. The storm clouds had broken, and only a few tattered remnants remained—black ribbons tinged almost white by the brilliance of the moon rising over distant mountains. Only a thin crescent, but it was huge, far larger than any moon Hweilan had ever seen, and its silver light was almost painful to her eyes. A million stars rode the sky. Under their combined light, the snow and ice of the world around her shone a brilliant blue, broken only by the black of winter bare trees and jagged rocks.
The cave from which they emerged wormed out of a broad riverbank, but the river itself was a jumble of ice rolling down a gentle slope. Presumably a smaller offshoot of the great river whose fall formed the main gates of Ellestharn. But rather than the sharp cliff of the palace, this bit of the river had taken more of a boulder-riding journey than a fall, before freezing, seemingly in an instant.
Nothing moved for as far as Hweilan could see. Even the wind had died.
"Where are we?" she whispered, and her breath fell as snow before her.
"Downriver from Ellestharn," said Menduarthis. He stood beside her, his gaze roaming over the wide valley before them, his face creased with concern.
"What's wrong?"
"The horns," said Menduarthis. "They've stopped."
"Is that bad?"
"Perhaps. It could mean that they've caught whoever was causing the trouble. Or it could mean all the watches are set, and the entire force of the Ujaiyen is waiting in ambush."
She followed his gaze, imagining the woods lining each side of the valley and every boulder hiding watching eyes. And there was something else. Something she had first felt in the Giantspires with Lendri. That pounding in the base of her skull, mingled with a growing dread. The way she imagined some animals could sense bad weather on the way. A heaviness. An itch. And it was growing stronger by the moment.
"I think we need to go now," she said.
Menduarthis still didn't move. Didn't even look at her. There was an edge to his voice when he said, "You're sure about this? About going after Lendri?"
"He saved my life. Twice."
"For his own reasons. He's _using_ you."
She looked down at her hands, at the bow she held, already gathering a coat of frost from her breath. Were it not for Lendri, she would be some Creel bandit's slave right now, and her father's bow long gone.
"If that's true," she said, "I have to hear it from him."
_"If?"_ Menduarthis's jaw clenched and his eyes went narrow as slits, though he still didn't look at her. "That's it, then? You don't believe me?"
She considered a moment, then said, "Much of what you say rings true. Most, in fact. But damn it, Menduarthis, the man saved me from death and worse. If he is using me, perhaps there is more to it than you know. And even if there isn't, I have to hear it from his lips before I forsake him. I owe him that."
Menduarthis muttered something in his own language that sounded less than flattering.
"You can find him?" she asked. "You know where these... thorns are?"
_"The_ Thorns," said Menduarthis, "and yes, I do."
"So we can find Lendri?"
"We?"
"You promised to help me."
"Escape. I promised to help you _escape_ , not kill one of Kunin Gatar's chief servants, then deliver you to her with silk in your hair."
_"You_ were going to kill him!" she said.
Menduarthis hissed and waved his hands at her. "Quiet, quiet. Sound travels far out here." He dropped his own voice to just above a whisper and finally looked at her. "True enough, though. I was. And then I was going to run fast and far away. Not run off rescuing the one person Kunin Gatar has dreamed of killing for years!"
"So you won't help me?"
"Why should I?"
"He's kin to me."
Menduarthis snorted. "No. He's blood brother to some distant forebear of yours. Hardly a favorite uncle."
"And blood oaths mean nothing to you?"
"Don't know. I've never been damned fool enough to make one."
"Very well," she said. "I'll do it on my own."
Menduarthis grabbed her shoulder. "Hold a moment! At least answer my question before trotting off to your untimely death."
Her hands stopped halfway to her hood. "What question?"
He smiled. The mischievous boy smile again. "Why should I help you?"
She tucked the ends of her hair into the hood and raised it. "Get to the point. What do you want?"
"For helping you steal from the queen and rescue an honor-obsessed elf?"
"Yes."
"A kiss."
Hweilan felt her cheeks and ears flushing and was very glad for the deep hood and the dark _halbdol_ masking her skin. "That's it? Just a kiss?"
"Well, it's a start. But that's all I'll obligate to you."
"Very well," she said. "Get me to Lendri, then help us to get out again, and _afterward_ , I will... kiss you."
"Us? Get us out? You mean you, me, and Lendri?"
"That's going to depend very much on what Lendri has to tell me."
They took their time getting down the slope of the hill and into the valley proper. Menduarthis kept them to the shadows of the wood, going from shadow to shadow until they reached the wide expanse of the frozen river.
He stopped and gave Hweilan a chance to catch her breath. "This is where things get tricky," he said. "How do you mean?"
He pointed across the river. It was hard to be certain by moon- and starlight, but it looked to be close to a mile across. A mile of flat snow and ice, with no cover. "We have to cross that," he said.
"Why is that bad?" Hweilan asked. "Is this ice thin?"
"Thin? Ha. No. Solid ice straight to the bottom, I'd wager. But we'll have no cover. Anyone watching for as far as eyes can see will see us—and many have eyes out there that are much sharper than mine." Menduarthis sighed. "We go. Quick, but not too quick. We want to look urgent, but not hurried. And if we do come across someone—or they come across us—you let me do the talking. _All_ the talking, mind you."
Hweilan nodded.
"And one more thing. Where we're going... the Thorns. Not a nice place. Not nice at all. I'll do my best for you, Hweilan, but no promises. We may not be able to get through there, much less get Lendri out. Not if the guards have been warned against me."
"You think they are? Looking for you I mean?"
He shrugged. "We know they've found Roakh. And since they don't know where I am or where you are... add to that the little trick I played back in the tunnels, and it won't take long for our people to start wanting to ask me a lot of questions. Much depends on how far word has spread and how fast."
The heaviness in her mind was almost pounding now. Hweilan could feel it, right behind her eyes.
"We need to go," she said. "Now."
They left the trees, hopped down the final bit of the embankment, and set off across a mile of frozen river.
They tried to run, but with no snow shoes and almost a foot of new snow covering the ice, the best they could manage was a quick shuffle, pushing their way through and sending waves of powdery white pluming in front of their knees.
Hweilan kept her eyes fixed on the dark line of woods ahead, fearing at any moment to see signs of movement. Once, she thought she saw a shape pass in front of the moon, but if so, it was either very small or very far away, and she could not find it against the night sky.
They were about halfway across when a great noise broke the silence. Not just horns this time, but horns, howls, and cries, wafting out of the distance to their right.
Menduarthis stopped in his tracks, listening.
"What is that?" said Hweilan.
"Kunin Gatar has returned to Ellestharn."
"Is that good or bad?"
"If we get out of here soon, it doesn't matter. Move."
They kept on, Menduarthis pushing them faster now. Hweilan's legs and back were beginning to ache, but she knew they couldn't stop. Not until they were well away from Kunin Gatar's realm.
The snow began to get shallower as they neared the far side. Most of the storm's fury seemed to have struck the palace side of the river. The bank and nearest trees were only a stone's throw away, and still there were no signs of pursuit. Hweilan believed they might actually make it. Still... that nagging weight in her mind seemed to grow with every step.
Looking at the dark line of the trees before her, the dream from days ago hit her again, not simply as a memory, but as an assault on her senses.
_The smell—foul, putrid, rotting_.
_The black wolf, its yellow eyes suddenly brighter than the moon in her mind's eye, its voice—Run!_
_Laughter, devoid of all goodwill. The giggle of a girl ripping the wings of a butterfly. The eager smile of a boy, tearing the legs off a grasshopper and heading for the anthill_.
_Singing. Sweet voices. True melody. All set to blasphemies_.
_The motherly voice—_
_Death comes... be sure of it_.
It hit her with such force that she stumbled, for a moment her mind separate from her body. She fell in the snow, her father's bow striking her painfully in the ribs.
"Hweilan?" Menduarthis's voice. "Are you—?"
She heard them before she saw them. Something large—or more likely many large somethings—breaking through the brush, and the sounds of many heavy hooves churning through snow. When the herd broke out of the woods just upriver from them, Hweilan actually felt the ice vibrating under their feet. Running against the dark backdrop of the forest, Hweilan could not make out what they were at first, but as they came out onto the snow- covered ice, she saw huge antlers crowning the herd. Swiftstags? If so, they were the largest she had ever seen.
"Stay calm," said Menduarthis as he helped her to feet. "Act like we're going about our business. And remember, _I_ do all the talking."
Hweilan opened her mouth to ask how he planned on talking to giant deer, but then she saw them. The creatures were almost upon them now, the sound of their hooves on the ice like slow thunder. She thought she saw nine, though it was hard to tell through the great cloud of snow and frost churned up by their legs. Every one of them bore a rider, and every rider carried weapons.
The herd split into a V formation to surround Menduarthis and Hweilan. As they rode past, spraying her and Menduarthis with snow, she saw the riders' pale faces turn to watch her. Beautiful, lean faces, but solemn. Starlight played off the frost in their dark hair—elves. She saw two carrying bows, but most bore long, black spears.
Menduarthis stood unmoving as the ring of creatures closed around them. Not swiftstags after all, but something like them. Draped in shaggy gray fur, the smallest of the beasts was easily seven feet tall at the shoulder, and their antlers, which ended in curved points, spread more than ten feet across, so that as their masters turned them to face Hweilan and Menduarthis, the beasts had to stand well apart. Their breath froze as they panted, painting Menduarthis and Hweilan in fine frost.
Hweilan looked wistfully past them. They'd been so close. The embankment and nearest trees were only a few dozen feet beyond the riders.
"Menduarthis?" said one of the riders, as he slid off the back of his mount and approached them. He held a spear in one hand, and he didn't even have to duck to make it under the antlers. He was nearly the same height as Menduarthis, but leaner, his features sharper, and his ears ended in an upward curve. Definitely an elf. He stopped a few paces away and said something to Menduarthis in his own tongue.
Menduarthis answered in kind, then said, "I am taking this one to the Thorns."
The elf glanced at Hweilan and scowled. "Why do you speak the vulgar tongue?"
"She goes to the Thorns." Menduarthis gave Hweilan a sly smile over his shoulder. "I wish to remind her of it."
"Why?"
"Pain tastes sweeter if it is seasoned with fear."
The elf's scowl deepened as his eyes lit on her bow, and his fist tightened around the haft of his spear. "You are taking her to the Thorns, but she goes armed?"
"It is my bow," said Menduarthis. "She bears it because I command her to carry it."
"You have no bow like this."
Menduarthis shrugged. "Recent spoils."
"Indeed?" The elf lowered his spear and used its point to peel the heavy fur cloak back from Hweilan. Several of the other elves, still on their mounts, tensed. One of the bowmen reached for an arrow. "Word flies on the wings that Roakh lies murdered in his roost. And here is this one, covered with blood. Recent spoils, you say. Spoils from where? Where _exactly_ , Menduarthis?"
"You accuse me?"
The elf pulled his spear back and planted its butt in the snow. "Accuse? No. But... you never liked Roakh. That much is known. He lies dead, with you nowhere to be found. Until now. And I find you with a captive covered with blood. You can explain this?"
"I can," said Menduarthis. "But not to you... Tirron, is it? I don't answer to you."
"You may not answer to me, Hound. But I answer to Kunin Gatar, and she orders any who find you to bring you to her at once. So you will come with us. Both of you. Nicely"—five spears lowered in their direction, Hweilan heard creaking wood as the bowmen drew feathers to cheeks, and Tirron smiled—"or otherwise."
Menduarthis bristled, his back straightening, and he gave Tirron his best withering stare. "Your orders are old. Kunin Gatar herself ordered me to take this one away. I am taking her to the Thorns. I would demand your aid, but I tire of your insolence. Send us on our way, and I might forget to tell the queen that this happened."
A few of the riders exchanged nervous glances, and Hweilan thought she caught a hint of doubt in Tirron's gaze.
But then the elf looked at her again. She had neglected to close her cloak, and her blood-spattered clothes were still on display for all to see.
"I think not," said Tirron. "Something is amiss here. We will take the matter to the queen."
The heaviness in Hweilan's mind seemed to drop and shatter, shards stabbing her awareness. Not blinding her, but making her incredibly _aware_.
_Death comes!_
Every shade of light and shadow suddenly seemed clear and sharp as new steel. Every sound—the heavy breathing of the elves' mounts, the crunch of the snow under their hooves, and something... something else. Something coming closer. Its footsteps pounding her skull like a hammer.
Scent filled her head. Sweat from her body. The reek of Roakh's blood in her clothes. The musky scent of the huge elklike creatures, and the stink of their breath wafting over her. The wind-through-frosty-pines smell of the elves. And a slow rot, stirred to an agonizing mockery of life by the fire within. Closer... closer...
She felt every fiber of her clothes against her skin. The greasy coat of _halbdol_ on her face. The bite of the cold night air in her throat. The shaking of the ice beneath her feet as some foul dread approached.
And so it was that Hweilan was the first to see it.
A tall, broad figure walked out of the shadow of the wood. Not rushing, but not hesitating either. Hweilan cried out and pointed.
At the same time, the elves' mounts began to snort, toss their heads, and fight the reins of their riders.
One of the riders shouted. _"Tir ened! Tir ened!"_
The figure stepped off the bank, landed on the snow-covered ice below, and continued its advance.
The elves' mounts scattered, forsaking Hweilan and Menduarthis for the moment to assess the newcomer. Tirron, lithe as a deer himself, leaped back onto his mount and turned it to face the newcomer, spear lowered. The huge elklike creatures snorted and fought their reins, and even in the dark Hweilan could see the whites of their eyes, wide and frightened.
_"Ri ened!"_ Tirron shouted. _"Deth! Deth!"_ Tirrons mount pranced sideways, spraying snow in every direction as it fought its master's control. _"Liikut! Liikut!_ Stop!"
If the figure understood him, it gave no sign, neither slowing nor speeding up, just coming at that same implacable pace.
Tirron's mount had gone well to one side now, and as the snow settled, Hweilan saw the figure's face.
Soran. Or at least the cold mockery of his face. The same grim, square-jawed countenance that looked as if a smile might break it. The deep set eyes. The close-cropped hair. But it was an image only. A likeness. Devoid of all life.
Tirron shouted, _"Hled et!"_
Two arrows hissed through the air. One struck Soran in the chest and bounced away. The other buried itself up to the fletching in his stomach.
He didn't even flinch.
His eyes were fixed on Hweilan. She could feel the gaze burning her, like noonday summer sun. Pace unfaltering, he reached over one shoulder and drew a massive sword from its scabbard.
Two of the elves kicked their mounts into a charge, the great antlers lowered as they closed on Soran. He spared them a glance but did not slow his pace.
The first of the creatures veered at the last moment, and the elf threw his spear. Soran stopped long enough to smash the spear out of the air with his sword, then managed another two steps before the second creature was on him, raking with its sharp antlers.
Soran stopped. One hand brought the sword down on the creature's neck, while the other grabbed the antler. Hweilan heard a crack of breaking bone, a short scream cut off, the smash of bodies colliding, then all was lost in a cloud of snow.
Soran emerged from the settling snow, the broken body of the huge elk lying beside the motionless body of its rider. She could smell the fresh blood wafting off him.
He was less than twenty feet away now, and Hweilan could see his face clearly, even behind the mask of blood and snow. Another arrow struck him, then two more. He didn't even flinch.
"Hweilan?" Menduarthis said, and Hweilan heard fear in his voice.
"Run!" she said.
A spear struck the Soran-thing, hurled with enough force that it threw him off his stride as it pierced him, tearing flesh and shattering ribs.
Menduarthis and Hweilan ran downstream, away from the horror. Her senses were still sharp as a razor, and she heard every hoof breaking through snow, every cry of the elf warriors behind them. She heard a snap and risked a glance over her shoulder.
The Soran-thing still had the broken haft of a spear protruding from his side, but he had either hacked or broken off the spear's length. Seeing his quarry fleeing, he broke into a run. Even wielding the massive sword and bearing wounds that would have killed any man, he came at them incredibly fast. Another of the elves' mounts plowed into him.
"Hweilan, move!" Menduarthis shouted.
She turned and ran, fast as she could.
Menduarthis waved his hand, and a gust of wind struck the snow before them, clearing a wide path. Another wave, and the great cloud of snow swept over and behind them, hiding the battle. She could hear elves and their mounts screaming.
Two more riders were between them and the woods. The nearest seemed content to let them pass, concentrating on the graver foe at hand. But the second reined in his mount just under the boughs.
A pale man, dressed all in skins and furs, white hair flowing behind him, leaped from the tree shadows. A long blade, slightly curved near the end, caught the moonlight and flashed in his hand. The elf didn't see him.
"You two!" the elf called. "Stop or—!"
The pale man passed over the rump of the elklike creature, his sword swinging out beside him, and sliced the elf's head from his body. Elf, swordsman, and a great gout of blood hit the snow at the same time. The elf's mount screamed, almost humanlike in its fright, and bounded away.
The pale man stood and faced them, a smile playing over his lips. He was more than pale. His skin was as white as the snow.
"Kadrigul," Hweilan said.
Menduarthis kept his eyes fixed on the newcomer as he said, "Not another uncle, I hope?"
Kadrigul swiped his sword, cutting the air. "Been awhile since I killed one of your kind."
"Really?" Menduarthis smirked, and his fingers began their intricate motions.
Wind shot past Hweilan. Not a gale. Just a good breeze, but she could feel it narrowing and gathering force as it passed.
"Been awhile since I did this trick," said Menduarthis, "and the lady here ruined my last try."
Kadrigul's chest swelled, and his eyes went wide. He dropped his sword, fell to his knees, and clamped his mouth shut.
"Hmph," said Menduarthis, and twirled his fingers faster.
Kadrigul's nostrils flared, the air whistling as it forced its way in.
"You might want to look away, Hweilan. This can sometimes be a bit m—"
Something dark passed over Hweilan's right shoulder, spraying her with warmth and wetness, there was a _thunk_ , and Menduarthis screamed and fell forward—
—the pale man fell on his hands and expelled a great gout of air—
—and Hweilan saw what had hit Menduarthis. An arm. By its size, she knew it had to have come from one of the elf riders.
Hweilan turned and saw Soran coming, black sword in one hand. She drew the knife Menduarthis had given her and stepped in front of Menduarthis. She dropped into a defensive crouch, just like Scith had taught her, and brandished the blade.
A gale swept down the hillside, spraying snow and branches and a million pine needles. It swept over Soran in a flood.
Hweilan felt a tug on her arm. "Don't be a fool, girl!" said Menduarthis. "Run!"
They turned and ran.
Kadrigul was back on his feet, sword in hand, fury in his gaze.
A great ram of air—the strength of a winter gale off mountain heights, but concentrated into the force of a giant's fist—tore through the snow beside Hweilan and struck him. He flew through the air in a cloud of snow and broken ice.
The sounds of a savage fight still raging behind them, Hweilan and Menduarthis ran up the embankment and into the woods.
# CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE WOODS TANGLED AROUND THEM. HWEILAN HAD never seen such trees, had never imagined such trees. Most grew no more than a few dozen feet, but hardly any grew up. Trunks twisted, turned, bent sideways, and smaller ones even wrapped around their larger neighbors. Deep winter as it was, still dark green leaves grew in abundance, so thick that they had blocked out nearly all the snow—and every trace of star- and moonlight.
Hweilan kept a firm grip on Menduarthis's arm and trusted that her feet would find their own way in the dark. She made it no more than twenty steps into the wood before striking a root or low branch and falling, almost pulling Menduarthis on top of her.
Menduarthis let her go, said, "A moment," and Hweilan could hear him searching his pockets.
Light bloomed, blue and cold, no brighter than a small candle, but in the nearly impenetrable gloom of the wood it seemed very bright to Hweilan's eyes. It shone forth from a round crystal, no larger than an owl's egg, that Menduarthis held in one hand.
In the near distance, an elf's voice cried out in a defiant battle cry, then rose into an agonized shriek.
_"Move_ , girl!" Menduarthis pulled her to her feet and they plunged onward.
The land began to climb almost at once. The trees grew larger and even more tangled the farther they went, but Menduarthis always seemed to find a path—ducking under the great arch of a branch, pushing their way through the leaves; finding narrow paths that snaked among the branches; sometimes even running along broad trunks that grew along the ground, like slightly curved roads.
"Careful," said Menduarthis, and Hweilan soon saw why.
They were walking along the wide bole of a tree, but the ground fell away beneath them, the tree forming a natural bridge across a ravine. The sky opened above them, giving enough light for Hweilan to see that the cut in the ground was not that wide, and no more than thirty or forty feet deep. But the trees down there had been choked by vines covered with wicked thorns.
When they reached the other side and stepped off the tree, Menduarthis stopped and turned. Over the sounds of their heavy breathing, they listened for pursuit. Nothing.
Still, that nagging weight, that sense of dread pulsed in Hweilan's mind. It had lessened somewhat in their flight from the frozen river, but now that they'd stopped again...
"We need to keep going," said Hweilan.
"Half a moment," said Menduarthis. He pulled her behind him. "And hang on to something."
He stood away from the tree and threw back his cloak. He began waving his arms and hands in an intricate motion, faster and faster. Wind rushed past them, snapping branches and toppling smaller trees in its path.
It struck the tree-bridge. Roots broke and came up with such force that dirt exploded dozens of feet into the air, and the tree itself shattered in the middle. The wind died, and the broken tree fell into the ravine with a crash that shook the ground.
"That should throw off the pursuit," said Menduarthis.
Hweilan wasn't so sure.
More and more vines—their thorns ranging from small, almost furlike protrusions along the creepers to long thorns thick as nails on the stalks—crawled through the trees as Hweilan and Menduarthis climbed the final slope. But the trees themselves didn't seem to suffer. The foliage, rather than lessening, grew even thicker, and in some places Hweilan felt that their path was walled in by leaves and thorns. Menduarthis's light began to catch bits of white in the air. At first, Hweilan thought that it was snowing again, and some few flakes had managed to find their way through the canopy. But no. They were tiny moths, their wings white as new frost. How they managed to survive the cold, Hweilan had no idea. The close air of the woods was warmer than it had been out on the frozen river, but it was still cold enough for Hweilan's breath to steam before her.
Menduarthis stopped, their path seemingly ending in a great tangle of thorns. One hand grasping the little light stone, he turned and looked at Hweilan.
"This gets tricky here," he said. "Once again, you must trust me."
"Trust you how?" she said.
With the hand holding the light, he pointed at the wall of thorns before them. "This is our way."
The vines looked tough as wire, their thorns sharp as wasps' stingers. Even the leaves looked sharp. "You can't be serious," she said.
"Trust me. You'll be safe as a babe in her cradle _as long as you keep moving forward_. Don't stop. Don't slow. And whatever you do, do _not_ move backward. As long as you move forward, these creepers are all bark, no bite. Soft as feathers. Stop or try to move backward... well, the only thing that'll get you out then is fire, and I don't think you'd like that much."
"Wh-what if I fall?"
"Don't."
She looked back. There was no other way.
"I'll go first," said Menduarthis. "But Hweilan, once I'm in, I can't come back for you. You understand?"
She swallowed hard and nodded.
Menduarthis pushed forward into the vines. They parted before him like smooth waters before a ship, then rustled shut behind him, thick as iron bars. He'd taken the light. Darkness engulfed Hweilan.
"Come along," he called, and she could hear the rustling of his movement.
Hweilan held her father's bow close, pulled her hood down as far as it would go, huddled in the cloak, and pressed forward. Even through all her layers of clothing, she could feel the vines. Not like wire at all. More like... snakes. They slithered and undulated around her as she moved forward, the thorns bending, pliable and harmless as feathers, just as Menduarthis had said. Unable to see anything, Hweilan squeezed her eyes shut and pushed onward, step by careful step.
She could still hear Menduarthis ahead.
"How much farther?" she called.
"Not long," he said. "Keep moving!"
She kept moving. Once, the bow caught on a particularly thick branch, and for one terrified moment, caught. Stifling a scream, Hweilan pushed hard. The bow broke through, and the branch snapped back, striking her in the face. Her hood caught most of the blow, but she still felt the branch brush across her nose and cheek. The thick autumnal scent hit her, but the thorns didn't even scratch, and she pressed onward.
Her eyes squeezed shut, her mind concentrating solely on forward, forward, forward, a slow panic began to rise in Hweilan. To fight it, she began counting her steps.
At forty-seven, another vine struck her face, harder this time. Still, the thorns brushed off her skin, but it startled her so that for an instant her step faltered. The vine's thorns stiffened, catching in her hood. A low moan escaped her throat and she surged forward. The thorns caught in her hood, pulling it off her head. She kept going. She heard fabric tearing, then she was through. The feel of the vines and leaves against her face sent her stomach churning, but she pressed on, even faster this time.
"Hweilan?" Menduarthis called, and she could hear the concern in his voice.
"Right behind you. How much farther?"
"Not long."
"You said that. Quite long ago, I'm certain."
"Keep moving."
She took a breath to scream at him, but a sound cut her off. Laughter. Light and gleeful. Almost childish. And very close.
Hweilan opened her eyes. Still she walked in darkness, vines and leaves and thorns thick about her, but she saw eyes watching her. Not the pale blue of the uldra. These eyes glowed verdant green. Two pairs of eyes off to her right, and one very close on her left. Just out of reach, in fact. Seeing her watching them, the watchers laughed, and the eyes were gone.
"Menduarthis!" Hweilan called, panic rising in her voice.
"Keep moving."
"There's something in here with us!"
"Many somethings," said Menduarthis. "Keep moving. We're almost through."
"Curse you, Menduarthis, how much far—?"
She shrieked as she fell forward into open air.
Menduarthis sat on a boulder a few paces away. The vine-wrapped trees still twisted all around them, but the light from Menduarthis's stone showed a small grove with paths branching off in several directions. He gave her a sheepish smile. "Not long," he said.
Then the thorns around them moved, and Hweilan saw that many of them were not thorns at all. At least a dozen figures closed in on them. Some stood on the ground, while others crouched on the thicker branches of the surrounding trees. They stood no taller than uldra, but their skin was green as moss, their meager clothing made up entirely of leaves. They had very narrow chins, almost pointed, tiny noses, and their sharp ears swept back, framed by thick brown or reddish hair that stood off their heads in lanky points. Theirs were the eyes she'd seen. Most held bows, arrows nocked and ready, but one held a sword of sorts in both hands. At least Hweilan thought it was a sword. There was no steel or metal. The entire thing—blade, hilt, handle—seemed made entirely of stiff vines, hundreds of sharp thorns sprouting off the blade.
"No sudden moves," said Menduarthis in Damaran. "Most of them know at least a little Common, so guard your words. Let me speak to them."
"Speak so I can understand you, Menduarthis," the creature with the sword said in Common.
"Forgive me, Grilga. This one"—he pointed to Hweilan—"knows little Common, and none of our speech."
"And who is this one?"
"A captive taken in my last hunt."
"The one who traveled with the Vil Adanrath?"
"That one, yes."
Grilga looked at Hweilan, his eyes narrowing in what she thought was a scowl. "And why is she here now?"
"Kunin Gatar ordered me to let her go."
Grilga's eyes widened, and he looked at Menduarthis. "Let her go?"
"I believe "Get that creature out of my sight' were her exact words."
"Gods' truth?"
"Gods' truth," said Menduarthis.
"Then why not kill her?"
"Had Kunin Gatar wanted her dead, I'm sure she would have said so—or done it herself. You know as well as I that our beloved queen is seldom unclear on such matters."
The other creatures giggled at this.
"I see blood all over her," said Grilga. "And I smell it on you, Menduarthis. Elf blood. Explain."
"You heard the horns?" said Menduarthis.
"We did. You have news?"
"On the way here, the girl and I met Tirron's riders on the ice. While we were... having words"—at this, a few of the creatures laughed softly—"we were attacked. By two. One was a Frost Folk warrior. The other... some vile thing I have never seen before. Whether they were the entire invading force or only part, I don't know. But Tirron's riders"—Menduarthis shuddered—"they couldn't stop the thing."
A collective gasp rustled through the group. Even Grilga seemed caught up in the tale.
"I took the girl and ran," said Menduarthis. "I can't be sure, but I think these invaders, whoever they may be, are after her."
All eyes turned to her, and several pulled their bowstrings to a half draw.
Hweilan looked back into the wall of thorns. The weight in her mind was growing heavier again, the pulsing alarm faster.
"Then I ask you again," said Grilga, "why not kill her?"
"Marauders invade our realm," Menduarthis said, anger in his voice, "kill our people, defy our queen, and you suggest we give them what they want? Besides, Kunin Gatar ordered her gone. Until Kunin Gatar orders otherwise, I hear and obey."
Hweilan watched the creatures. They glanced at one another, and every one pointedly avoided looking at Grilga, whose scowl deepened. It struck her how magnificent a liar Menduarthis really was. Everything he'd just told them was the truth. Every word. But the many words he'd left out made all the difference. It made her very glad that she'd insisted on seeing Lendri for herself. Menduarthis had been wounded defending her, and was even now committing treachery against his queen. She had no reason to doubt he was helping her. But why? _I'm bored_ , he'd told her, _starting to feel dead_. True? Perhaps. But what truths was he keeping from her?
"If Tirron's people couldn't stop this thing," said Grilga, "and if it is hunting her, then where is it? And what of the Frost warrior?"
"I dealt with that one," said Menduarthis. "The other..." He shuddered. "I don't know. I destroyed the Byway Bridge. I'm sorry. I had to. But for all I know, that thing is on its way here right now."
The creatures all went very quiet. They cast furtive glances over their shoulders into the surrounding woods.
"What is this thing?" said Grilga.
Menduarthis glanced at Hweilan, then said, "I don't know. I've never seen its like. He seemed like a man—taller than me, but much stronger. A very formidable-looking fellow. Human by the looks. But I saw him take an arrow and a spear in his body—wounds that would have killed any creature with sense enough to die—and it barely slowed him. He ripped off an elf's arm with his bare hands."
The creatures all looked to their leader. Grilga stood straight, puffing up all of his three-foot height, and said, "Nothing comes through the thornway without our knowing."
The pounding in her head felt like iron hammers now. It was closing in.
She opened her mouth to tell Menduarthis, when hundreds—hundreds of thousands—of the tiny white moths poured out of the thorns, like a fluttering geyser.
Grilga shouted orders. The creatures—all but one—split into groups and shot back into the thorns, quick as squirrels. Hweilan had no idea how they navigated the deadly tangle, but the branches closed around them, the leaves rustled a moment, and they were gone.
Grilga looked at Hweilan, seemed to weigh her in his mind, then said, "My folk will do what we can, but I won't spend their lives on this one. Get her out of here."
"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," said Menduarthis.
Grilga took what looked like a long, thin bone from his belt, set it to his lips, and blew. Hweilan heard nothing, but a shudder seemed to pass through the branches.
"The way is open to you, Menduarthis," he said. "Move fast."
# CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
GURIC SLUMPED IN HIS CHAIR. HE'D TURNED IT TO face the door of his personal chamber, but A rgalath still had not come. The flagon dangling from Guric's right hand had been empty a long time. The wine had thickened his head, making him feel warm and the world around him soft, but it had not dampened his ire.
He heard voices. Someone knocked on his door. "Enter," Guric said. He did not get up, did not even straighten in his cha ir.
The door opened, and Sagar stepped inside. "He's here, my lord."
"Send him in. Alone. And shut the door behind you."
Sagar turned and left the room. Guric could see more guards, and beyond them, Argalath, head buried deep in his hood against the light. Vazhad and Jatara lurked beyond their master. Argalath entered the room, and Sagar slammed the door behind him.
Argalath bowed. "I come as bidden, my lord."
"Drop your cowl, counselor. I would look at you when you speak."
"The light, my lord..."
Guric had ordered the hearth packed full of wood and blazing, every lamp in the room lit, and more candles brought in. One might have thought it was High Festival by the look of things.
"Then close your eyes. I like to look at a man when he lies to me."
Argalath laid the palm of one hand against his chest and bowed even deeper. "You wound me, my lord."
"Drop that cowl, damn you!"
Slowly, Argalath straightened and lowered the hood. He squeezed his eyes shut and placed one hand over them. "How have I lied to you, my lord?"
Guric stood. He towered over the spellscarred man by more than a head, but he still found himself hesitant to approach. "I have two questions for you, Argalath, and I want the raw truth. No evasions."
"Might you dampen some of the lamps, my lord?"
"No," said Guric. "Where is my wife?"
Argalath licked his lips. "We have been over this, my lord. I assure you, your beloved's body is being well cared for until we can return her to you."
_"Where_ is her body being well cared for?"
"Someplace safe."
"She's down beneath the fortress, isn't she? In those caves. Down there with your other monsters. Isn't she?"
Argalath stepped toward Guric and laid one hand on his shoulder to push him toward the bed. "You sound so tired, my lord. You aren't thinking clearly. Please, take your rest. I will see to everything. If you so wish it, I will have her brought back to the tower at once."
Guric took one step back, his legs crashing into the chair behind him, then smashed the empty wine flagon against Argalath's skull. The baked clay was thick, but it shattered. The man grunted and went down in a tangle of his own robes.
The door slammed open, and Sagar and Isidor rushed in, swords drawn. Jatara stood just outside the door, struggling with two guards, who were keeping her out of the room and preventing her from drawing her sword.
"Do you need assistance, my lord?" said Isidor.
Guric looked down at Argalath, who was rubbing the side of his head and brushing shards of pottery off his shoulder.
"No. Everyone out. If _anyone"_ —Guric caught Jatara's gaze—"enters without my word, Sagar, you have my leave to run them through."
Sagar smiled and gave the fallen Argalath a rather disbelieving—and very relieved—glance before following the other guard out. Guric walked past Argalath and shut the door behind them.
Argalath pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.
"What was the other thing you wished to know of me?" Argalath said. His voice lacked his usual deference, and he seemed more angry than hurt.
The first pang of doubt hit Guric, like a little shock at the bottom of his skull. "What?"
"You asked where Valia is," said Argalath. He stood before Guric, eyes still closed, but he stood straight now, not cowering against the light. "But you said you had two questions. What is the other?"
"I trusted you," said Guric. "I trusted you with everything. My life. My future. Everything I had. Even after you turned Valia into that... that thing, still I clung to your word. But I was wrong, wasn't I? This was your game all along, wasn't it? Those Nar I saved you from all those years ago, they were right, weren't they? You are a... a monster."
"Am I a monster? What is a monster but a trial for the hero in bards' tales? I gave you all you asked for, never asking anything in return. And you are no hero, Guric."
A low growl built in Guric's throat. _No one_ had ever spoken to him in such a fashion. Had he been sober, he might have given Argalath a cold laugh and summoned the guards. But the wine had opened his eyes, had showed him that when the really important things of life are at stake—and nothing was more important than his beloved Valia—all the trappings of society, of court, of civilization, all the bows and "by your leaves" were only so much pretty ribbon on an unbroken horse. Pretty it up all you like, the horse still would suffer no master—unless the master broke it.
He had a dagger at his belt. No. Too swift. Guric wanted to beat this monster with his bare hands. He balled both fists and charged.
The patches of pale skin mottling Argalath's skin suddenly flared with cold, blue light, and pain—agony like he had never known, like he had never imagined any one person _could_ know—struck Guric in the chest, then radiated outward. He couldn't cry out. Couldn't even draw breath. His entire chest seemed to constrict, and he fell at Argalath's feet. Darkness was closing in around the edges of his vision.
"Guric," said Argalath, "because you have been such a useful tool in my hand, I will answer your last question. And it will be your last. Those men you _rescued_ me from all those years ago were doing exactly what I told them to do. They played their roles perfectly."
The pain evaporated, and Guric spent every ounce of his strength drawing breath into his body. He opened his eyes. His vision was clearing, though the room seemed to dance and swirl. All the lamps had gone out. All the candles. Only the fire in the hearth remained, bathing Argalath's robes in a hellish light.
On the other side of the door, he could hear men screaming. The clash of steel on steel.
He looked up at Argalath. The man was smiling.
Guric tried to push himself up, but a new pain struck him, right in the middle of his head.
"That is a vein in your brain bursting," said Argalath. "That warmth, that... fuzziness you're feeling is your own blood flooding the inside of your skull. Your own heartbeat is killing you. So, Guric, I will answer your question: Yes. This was my game all along. Thank you for playing."
# CHAPTER THIRTY
HWEILAN AND MENDUARTHIS CROUCHED IN THE TREES on the top of a small hollow. Menduarthis had put his light away. After leaving Grilga and his band, they had gone swiftly downhill, and the foliage was not as thick down here. Parts of the path were even open to the sky, and there was enough moon and starlight that even Hweilan could see fairly well. A wall of trees and vines ringed the hollow, but farther down, the brush seemed to thin out, and Hweilan could see bits of snow here and there.
"Damn," said Menduarthis. "There are guards."
"Where?"
"In the hollow. I'd hoped Grilga might summon all his forces to go after... that thing."
"I don't see any guards."
"Of course you don't."
The pounding in her mind had dampened somewhat, but it had not gone away. "We don't really have time for this, Menduarthis."
"If the guards had gone off with Grilga and his band, this place would be alive with birds. Owls mostly. But it's dead quiet. That means sentries."
"We need to hurry," she said. The feeling of approaching doom was getting stronger again. Making her bones itch. "You have a plan for getting past the sentries?"
"Bluffing. Seemed to work on Grilga, eh?"
"And Tirron?"
Menduarthis sighed. "You have a better idea?"
"No."
He stood and offered his hand. "Then let's do this."
They walked down a winding path toward a thick wall of trees and vines. As they drew near, Menduarthis said, "Now, remember—"
"I know. You do the talking."
Several steps later, leaves rustled over them and two of the green creatures, much like the ones from Grilga's band, dropped onto the path, one before them, one behind. Both had bows, with arrows pulled to their cheeks.
Menduarthis stopped and spread his hands. Hweilan followed his example.
The one in front of them relaxed his blow slightly and said, "Menduarthis? Why are you here?"
The one behind Hweilan lowered his bow.
"We need to see the prisoner," said Menduarthis.
The first creature narrowed his eyes to glowing slits and said, "Why?"
Hweilan could barely keep herself from bouncing on her toes. Her entire head was thrumming. "Menduarthis," she said in Damaran. "Hurry. Please."
"What's this?" said the first guard, his words harsh and angry. "Who is this one?"
Menduarthis turned to Hweilan and spoke in Common. "It is most rude to speak of our hosts in front of their backs." "What is the meaning of all this?" said the guard. Horns broke the surrounding silence of the wood. The same warning clarions as before, but these were _much_ closer. Definitely this side of the river. Perhaps even just over the crest of the hill, Hweilan thought.
"Invaders are in the woods," said Menduarthis.
"We heard. Drurtha and I guard the prisoner. Why are _you_ here?"
"Just you two?" said Menduarthis.
"We two. Now why—?"
"That simplifies things," said Menduarthis. He thrust his hands outward, one toward each of the guards. Currents of air, focused like battering rams, shot through the trees and hit the guards, snapping both arrows and knocking the bows from their hands. He flicked his wrists again, and the currents came back around, striking each of them from behind and pummeling them to the ground. Bits of leaves went flying from their clothing.
"Get that one!" Menduarthis shouted, and leaped for the first guard.
Hweilan threw down her bow and jumped for the second guard. His quiver had spilled its arrows all over the ground, and he was still stunned from the pummeling, but as soon as Hweilan grabbed his arm, he screamed, kicked at her, and tried to twist around to bite. Only her thick glove and coat sleeve saved her. He was no larger than a six-year-old child, and very thin, but he twisted and thrashed like a sack full of cats. Hweilan yanked him up by the arm, spun him around, and grabbed him in a fierce hug. Still he kicked and thrashed.
"I thought you were going to talk our way past!" she screamed.
Menduarthis had the other guard in a similar hold. "Changed my mind."
"Now what?"
The little creature was still thrashing and wailing in her arms.
Menduarthis walked over, his own prisoner putting up quite a fight. "Listen, you two!" he said.
It did no good.
Menduarthis threw his charge to the ground, belly first, and straddled his back, pinning the creature's arms underneath his own knees. His hands now free, Menduarthis twirled his fingers, and the guards' screams suddenly stopped.
"That's right," said Menduarthis. "I can rip the breath right out of you. Or"—he twirled a different pattern, and Hweilan heard a great gasp forced into each of the creatures—'or I can pop you like pustules. So you will both calm yourselves. Now."
Air exploded out of both guards. The one in Hweilan's arms went limp, as did the one beneath Menduarthis.
"Much better," said Menduarthis. "Now, the girl and I are going to see your prisoner. Then we'll be leaving. You can tell Grilga whatever you want. Never saw us. Ate us. I don't care. But you _will_ cease to bother me. Understood?"
Hweilan retrieved her bow while Menduarthis kept a tight grip on the guards' arms. But it seemed unnecessary. After Menduarthis's threat, all the fight had gone out of them. There was still anger and hurt in their eyes, but a great deal of fear as well.
The horns had stopped, but the wind had picked up again, setting the entire wood to rustling. Knowing Menduarthis as they did—at least by reputation—this only served to make their captives even more nervous. Wisps of cloud were racing past the moon and gathering overhead.
"Oh, damn," said Menduarthis.
"What?"
Menduarthis spoke as he led Hweilan along the wall of vines and trees. "Kunin Gatar. I think she might be headed this way. And I don't think she's happy. Let's make this doubly damned quick, shall we?"
Prisoners in tow, they ran.
"How far is the way out of here?" Hweilan asked.
"Skip, hop, and a stone's throw," said Menduarthis, and they came to an opening in the wall. "Let's see to your pup," he said, and rushed inside.
They ran through a tunnel formed of foliage, leaving the soft ligh of the night behind. Holding the prisoners, Menduarthis could not retrieve his light. Hweilan followed the sound of his movement, his boots kicking their way through eons' worth of dead leaves.
They emerged from the tunnel and into a large area devoid of trees. Clouds hid the moon entirely now, and the last of the stars were fading behind their haze. But faerie light lit the area before them. A fall of glowing frost, much like the ones Hweilan had seen in Ellestharn, only much larger, fell over a low cliff to their right and gathered in a narrow pool. Small orbs of light, none larger than her fist, floated soundlessly throughout the area, reflecting off the fresh snow in every color of the rainbow.
A huge tree, shaped like an ancient oak but utterly black and leafless, grew out of the glowing pool at the bottom of the glowing fall. It towered at least fifty feet in the air, but its lower branches, thick as battering rams, bent low to the ground. Vines draped the tree, and thorns covered the vines. Tangled among the vines, like a fly in a spider's web, was Lendri. Naked, his pale skin bled from dozens of places where the thorns had raked away great gouges of skin or cut deep into the flesh beneath.
"Quickly, Hweilan," said Menduarthis. He was watching the sky nervously. "Every moment counts now."
He needn't have said so. The pounding in her brain told her all she needed to know.
She ran to Lendri, Menduarthis following with their prisoners.
Mindful of the vines and thorns, Hweilan knelt in front of Lendri. He raised his head to try to look at her. She reached in among the thorns, slow and careful, and brushed the hair from his face.
"Hweilan?" he said. "Are you—?"
"I'm well enough. But we need to get you out of here and be gone." The words from her dream came to her suddenly— _Death comes... empty dens, dead hearts_.
"Leave me," said Lendri.
Much to Hweilan's surprise, Lendri looked even better than he had when she had last seen him in the queen's palace. Not good. But not just half a shade from death either. He bled from dozens of cuts, but few of them looked very deep. Hweilan suspected the worst of his injuries were more to his spirit than his flesh.
"How badly are you hurt?" she asked.
Hweilan heard Menduarthis walk up behind her, and Lendri's eyes focused on him. "What's _he_ doing here?"
"Helping us escape."
Lendri barked something that was part laugh and part sob, then let his head fall again. "Get out of here while you still can, Hweilan. But don't trust that one."
"Weak words, coming from you," said Menduarthis. "But we can play Menduarthis-was-right-all-along-and-oh-how-I-should-have-listened later. After we are well away from here."
Hweilan looked up at Menduarthis. "What's the matter with him? He looks better than when we saw him at the palace."
"The queen's had him tortured," said Menduarthis. "Several times. But before he can die and be out of misery, she has him healed again, then starts over."
"Help me free him," she said.
Menduarthis looked down at his two captives. "You heard the lady. Double quick!"
The sentries stared spears up at Menduarthis. They'd heard that Menduarthis suspected that Kunin Gatar was headed their way, and a great deal of defiance had returned to their gazes.
"Don't make me twirl my fingers." The one Menduarthis held with his left hand tried to thrash out of his grip, but Menduarthis held on and shook him. "Just for that, I'll burst your chest first. Go on! Free my hand!"
Wind gusted, rattling the branches of the old tree and spraying them with snow. By the slight widening of Menduarthis's eyes, Hweilan knew he hadn't done it. But that was apparently lost on the guards, and they jabbered something to him in their own tongue. Menduarthis answered in kind, then let them go. They stepped away, each of them rubbing their arms where Menduarthis had held them.
"Stand back, Hweilan. Let them work."
She did. The two guards stood in front of Lendri. They began a sing-song chant, more mutter than song, and passed their open palms over the thorns, beginning low down where thick tangles of vines held him around the waist. As they did so, the vines peeled away, unwrapping themselves.
"Why didn't they bind his legs?" Hweilan asked Menduarthis.
"He can struggle more that way. The more he struggles, the deeper he cuts himself."
The nagging beat in her mind was screaming at her now. "Hurry!" she told the guards.
Lendri seemed to sense something as well. He raised his head and sniffed at the air. "Hweilan, run!"
The guards had removed most of the vines from his torso and shoulders, and as Hweilan watched, the last coils sloughed off his neck. But many still encased his arms, holding him upright but limp, like a puppet hung from a peg on the wall.
"We're not leaving without you," she told Lendri.
"Don't be foolish," Lendri and Menduarthis said at the same time, then glared at each other.
Seeing the vines sloughing off him, more and more skin revealed, Hweilan realized a flaw in their plan. They'd brought no clothes for Lendri. After they left the Feywild, it might not be as cold, but winter was still holding on in the mountains.
She turned to Menduarthis. "Why didn't you tell me he'd be naked?"
"How would I know?" he said. "But this one can take care of himself."
"He'll freeze!" Hweilan took Lendri's pouch that she'd rescued from Roakh out from her belt and laid it on the ground before her. She knew there were no clothes in there, but there might be something to give him a little modesty at the least.
"He won't," said Menduarthis. "Trust me. He can—"
Lendri screamed and lunged for Menduarthis. Most of the vines had been taken away by the guards, and the few that still clung to his arms ripped away, taking more skin with them.
But Menduarthis sidestepped, and Lendri sailed past. He hit the ground and turned, already preparing another lunge. Menduarthis stood ready, one hand held before him, another raised over his head, the eldritch glow of a spell pulsing in both fists.
"Stop it!" Hweilan screamed, and jumped between them.
Lendri crouched before her, hands like claws before him, lips pulled back over his teeth like some rabid beast.
"Stop this! Lendri, stop! Menduarthis saved my life and risked his own to free you. We're leaving here with him."
Lendri recoiled as if slapped. The fury melted from his face, but he didn't relax. "You can't trust him, Hweilan."
"More so than you," said Menduarthis.
The two guards, seeing their captors distracted, fled. One headed for the tunnel, the other ran over the lip of the hollow and disappeared into the woods.
"Let them go," said Menduarthis. "Doesn't matter now." Still holding his magic and standing guard against Lendri, Menduarthis spared a glance at the darkening sky and the wind rattling through the branches of the great tree. "Come with us or don't, Lendri, but we _are_ leaving. Now."
Hweilan winced. The pounding in her head was so intense now that it had gone beyond annoyance or anxiety to actual pain. She took Lendri's pouch that she'd found in Roakh's roost and handed it to him. "Please," she said. "Let's just go."
Resigned, Lendri stood, took the pouch, and reached inside. He pointedly avoided looking at either Menduarthis or Hweilan.
Menduarthis straightened, the magic in his hands dissipating.
"You have something for the cuts?" said Hweilan.
"I'll be fine," said Lendri. He took out the copper ring she had seen in the pouch and slid it on one finger. Hweilan could see his hands trembling.
Menduarthis shouted, "Hweilan!"
She turned. A figure stepped from the tunnel. Or shambled more like, as if it were hurt or carrying a great weight. Shadows seemed reluctant to leave it. Darkness clung to the thing like a cloak. But as the figure stepped onto the snow, the fey light illuminated his features.
Soran.
But he had been... not hurt. Savaged. The flesh and skin along one side of his face hung in bloody tatters, and the eye in the midst of it was only a dark, wet socket. The lips and cheek were gone, showing his teeth in a lopsided, savage grin. His few remaining clothes hung off him in tatters, and great gouges of flesh along his torso had been ripped away. He dragged his right leg as he walked. In his left hand, he held a sword, broken about halfway above the crosspiece and ending in a jagged shard. Bits of vine hung off him, and in his right hand he held what Hweilan first took for a tree branch. But as he walked, the thing in his hand flopped, and she saw that it was an arm, still dripping blood and steaming in the cold air. Hweilan feared she knew what had happened to the guard who had fled into the tunnel.
The thing fixed its one good eye on Hweilan, its bloody half-grin widened, and it increased its pace.
"Run!" Menduarthis spread his arms in a flourish worthy of a tavern bard, and his fingers began to twist in their intricate pattern.
Lendri grabbed Hweilan by the forearm and pulled her after him, heading downslope toward the woods.
She looked back.
Menduarthis brought both hands around in a sweeping motion. Wind crashed down like a wave, driving snow and ice and compressing it into a wall that rolled toward the Soran-thing. It struck him full force, stopping him in his tracks. Snow and ice continued rolling over him, encasing him.
"Ha!" Menduarthis cried.
But then the spell was spent. Thick ice encased Soran up to his waist. He thrashed like a live fish thrown onto a hot pan, striking at the ice again and again with his sword and fist. His strength was far beyond anything human, and the ice was not glacier solid.
"He's breaking free!" Hweilan shouted.
"Duly noted," said Menduarthis. He stood his ground.
Soran broke through the last of the ice and charged.
Menduarthis's hands were forming another spell.
Soran plowed into him. But Hweilan was his target, his one blazing eye fixed on her, and he simply crashed through Menduarthis like a stallion breaking through a half-open gate. Menduarthis hit the ground several feet away.
"Keep going!" Lendri said, and shoved Hweilan in front of him.
She went all of five steps before turning and drawing the knife sheathed at her back. She held the knife in one hand and brandished her father's bow in the other. Her body trembled, and the warning inside her seemed to be trying to claw its way out of her skull, but she would not run while her only remaining friends fought.
Lendri kept himself in a low crouch between Hweilan and Soran. Covered in blood, his long hair in a wild tangle, muscles trembling, the elf was a fearsome sight. He threw back his head and screamed. It struck Hweilan like a physical blow, and she realized there was nothing remotely elven in the cry.
But it didn't affect Soran in the least. He brought the broken sword around in a savage arc, aiming to cut Lendri in half. But Lendri ducked under the blow and lunged. He latched onto Soran and buried his teeth in the man's throat.
Soran didn't scream, didn't cry out in pain. With his sword arm pinned, he could not bring the blade to bear. But his strength far outmatched Lendri's. He grabbed Lendri's forearm and threw the elf off, sending him sailing through the air. Lendri landed not far from Hweilan, hitting the snow and skidding a ways before coming to his feet. When he rose, the wind blew his hair out of his face, and Hweilan screamed at the sight.
The bones in Lendri's face had thickened, his jaw elongated, and when his lips peeled back in a snarl, he revealed sharp teeth.
Soran swung his sword, but not in a strike. Lendri was too far away. He threw the broken blade, and it cut through the air, twirling end over end. Just before it was about to strike Lendri, a shard of ice, thick as a lance but moving swift as an arrow, slammed into the steel, shattering it into several pieces and sending the frost-covered shards into the snow.
Hweilan followed the path from which the shard had come and saw Menduarthis standing again, frost still leaking from one fist, like heavy smoke.
Weaponless, still the Soran-thing kept coming. But he was not coming for Lendri. Hweilan had half-turned to flee before she realized she had no idea where to go.
The wall of vines and trees at the edge of the hollow exploded in a gust of snow and wind. The blast shattered all but the thickest branches of the great tree and struck Hweilan like an avalanche. She flew through the air and hit the ground hard. She tried to breathe, failed, then tried again, forcing frigid air into her lungs.
She rolled over and sat up. A section of the wall wider than Highwatch's main gates had been completely blasted away. Leaves and shards of shattered wood and vines still rained from the sky. In the gap in the wall, framed by a storm of wind and snow, draped in feylight frost, stood Kunin Gatar.
How Hweilan had ever seen the queen as a young woman her own age, she could not imagine now. The being that stood at the rim of the hollow was ancient of days, queen of winter and wielder of all its power. She held storm in her hands, and in her eyes swirled the darkest moonless midnights. All the fey lights now shone cold and white, and they swirled around her in dozens of tiny cyclones.
Kunin Gatar spoke, her voice shook the ground, but the words were in a language that meant only storm and ice.
Lendri and Menduarthis were both on their hands and knees, looking up at her—Lendri in defiant fury, Menduarthis in a sort of resigned despair.
From a pile of forest debris and snow, Soran rose to his feet. More of his skin had been stripped away by the blast. But he did not even glance in the queen's direction. His eyes, one all dead flesh, the other a blazing red, fixed on Hweilan.
Lendri stood between them.
Kunin Gatar rose, lifted into the air by currents of air at her command, and entered the hollow.
The queen turned her gaze on Lendri. _"You_ brought this on us? On _me?"_
The winds calmed around her, and when her feet touched the snow, she was already storming toward Lendri. He looked up at her, then spared Hweilan a glance. In his eyes, Hweilan could see that he knew he was about to die. He looked more relieved than frightened.
Soran, thinking perhaps that the queen was coming for Hweilan, lurched toward her. His muscles trembled and convulsed so strongly that his entire body seemed to be shaking itself apart, and tiny tongues of orange flames began to dance up his arms and crown his head with fire. He spared Hweilan only a glance before charging the greater threat.
Seeing Soran advancing on her, Kunin Gatar shrieked, "You _dare?"_
She thrust her hand, one finger pointing at him, like an angry teacher disciplining a rebellious pupil.
Hail and ice shot out of Kunin Gatar's body and struck Soran like a storm of nails, stripping away what remained of his skin and taking large chunks of flesh. His remaining eye exploded, and both empty sockets blazed like tiny forge fires. The flames dancing along his arms and head fell flat, but they grew in power, and although his gait slowed, he did not stop.
Soran struck the queen like the tide striking the shore. His fists ripped through her. She wailed, the sound of wind breaking rocks. Her physical form melted into the storm, wrapping round Soran, and pounding him again and again. The thinner bits of flesh round his skull, hands, and shoulders flew away, and the flames on him grew brighter still, burning away the frost in a hissing steam.
"We should go now!" said a voice beside her, shouting to be heard over the storm. Hweilan tore her gaze away from the battle. Menduarthis, wide-eyed and trembling, crouched next to her.
Lendri was just beyond him. He looked down at her and said, "Go!"
"What about you?" she said.
"I'll follow. I know the way. Now go!"
Menduarthis pulled her to her feet, she snatched her bow from where it had fallen in the snow, and together they ran for the woods.
Just before they reached the shelter of the trees, Hweilan risked a look over her shoulder. Kunin Gatar and Soran had separated, and both now seemed more elemental than physical—one of malicious winter, the other consuming fire. Lendri huddled in the snow not far away, watching them. The two combatants struck each other in a clash of howling wind and hissing steam. Hweilan felt the ground shake.
Lendri shouted something and pointed one fist—the one on which he had put the ring, Hweilan remembered—and fire spewed out from his fist, enveloping the queen and her adversary.
As Hweilan and Menduarthis plunged into the wood, a terrible shriek filled the world. Fury, fire, agony, ice... all combined into one great scream that rattled the trees around them.
The incessant pounding in Hweilan's mind exploded.
# CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ARGALATH'S EYES ROLLED BACK INTO PLACE. THE final shudder shook him so hard that he fell to his knees, and his free hand came down right in the middle of the corpse. He could feel the hot blood and viscera between his fingers. The reek wafted upward so strong that he could taste it in the back of his throat, coppery and searing.
But he could see again. The eviscerated corpse of the Damaran. Sagar...? Had that been his name? It no longer mattered.
The other corpse—the one kept so carefully whole, tended so well after death, and laid so carefully beside the sacrifice—was sitting up. The corpse that had once been Guric turned its head and smiled down on Argalath.
Half of Argalath's vision was still in the other world, and he could see the furnace of black fire blazing behind those eyes.
"Well come, brother," he said.
"Come at last," said the thing inside Guric.
They stood together and turned to face the Ring of Ten—Vazhad, Jatara, and eight of Argalath's acolytes. The last of his acolytes. The strongest. The others had not been found worthy and had been put to other uses. They stood round the basin on the great rock shelf where once the Knights of Ondrahar had held their holy rites, where the final stages of Argalath's plan had begun with Valia. How fitting that Guric should now join her. Sooner than expected, to be sure. The man had surprised Argalath, had come to his senses and seen through the lies far sooner than Argalath had thought he would. No matter. The hardest part of the plan was done. Planting season was over. From here, it would be a matter of tending the healthy crop of his designs.
Guric's corpse lurched and would have fallen had Argalath not caught him.
"So... hungry," he said.
Argalath waved to his men. "Bring him. Quickly!"
Vazhad took two of the acolytes back into the tunnel. They returned, dragging a bound and gagged Damaran soldier. His eyes were wide, and the blood and tears had frozen on his face, but still he thrashed and screamed behind the gag.
The thing in Guric hissed in delight and fell on his meal before the three men had even brought it to the basin. Argalath and the others left him to it. It was over in moments.
Guric stood, his eyes and teeth shining bright in the starlight amid their mask of blood. The ravaged body of the soldier steamed in the cold at his feet.
Argalath opened his mouth to speak—
The world spun around him, light lancing through his brain, shattering the darkness there. In the roar of the world's passing, he heard—far, far away—his brother screaming.
With every beat of his heart, the world came back into focus, and the roar in his mind fell away. When Argalath could finally see again, Vazhad and Jatara were leaning over him, concern written on their faces. He realized he'd fallen and was lying in the blood-spattered snow.
"Are you hurt, master?" said Jatara.
"Ukhnar Kurhan has fallen." The words had passed Argalath's lips before he realized them, but he knew they were true.
"What does this mean?" asked Vazhad.
At the same time Jatara, face filled with worry and shock, said, "Kadrigul...?"
"Help me up," said Argalath.
They did. The other acolytes were looking on, impassive. Unmoving. Not even a hint of worry—or worse, ambition—in their eyes. He had trained them well.
"Master," said Jatara. She was trembling, her grip on his arms too tight. "Master, my brother...? Please."
"I do not know," said Argalath. "All I know is that Soran's body has been destroyed. Ukhnar Kurhan will seek another or return here, weakened, bewildered, and hungry."
"Seek another?" said Jatara, and Argalath knew her meaning.
"The only way he could possess a living being is if the person were to invite him."
"And if the person was... not living?"
Argalath turned away from her. "I need rest. This has been... most trying. Have the acolytes see to our new guest. You should help them, Jatara. Vazhad, take me back to my rooms."
"Master?" Jatara called after him.
Leaning on Vazhad's shoulder for support, Argalath headed for the passageway that would take him through the tunnels and back to Highwatch. Back to his bed. Vazhad cast an apologetic glance over his shoulder, but he did not slow.
"Master!" Jatara said. "Master! My brother?"
Carnage. Absolute carnage.
On the frozen river where Tirron and his hunters had been slaughtered, a band of uldra worked in the bloody snow, gathering the corpses of the dead. They dragged the broken and torn elves onto litters. Their dead mounts they left where they lay.
Near the steep bank where the trees drew in close, one of the uldra found another corpse, neither elf nor one of their mounts. A human, dressed mostly in skins and leathers. His skin and long hair were as pale as the snow in which he lay. His limbs were twisted and back broken as if he had been pummeled by a giant.
One of the Frost Folk. The uldra who found him had fought his kind before. On hunting trips to the far north of the outside lands, where the cold almost matched that of the queen's domain.
The horizon beyond the shore suddenly lit up, as if by a great fire, and the ground shook. In the distance, the uldra heard a scream. It hit beyond the ears, striking their very bones with its fury and pain.
The sound died away. The rumble in the ground stilled to a tremble, then stopped.
The uldra felt a stray breeze waft past his face. It almost felt... hot. But not in a pleasant way. Scalding.
He looked back down on the pale corpse. Something was different. Something—
The corpse's hand shot out and gripped the uldra's ankle in a crushing grip. The eyes opened. Red fire burned in their depths.
# CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE LITTLE STONE PRESSING BACK THE DARK WITH ITS pale light, Menduarthis led Hweilan out of the hollow and down a steep path to a clearing in the wood. A mound sat in the very center. Something about it set Hweilan's teeth on edge.
Menduarthis dragged her to it. "Quickly!'
He fell to his knees at the foot of the mound and pressed both hands into the snow. He closed his eyes, and for a moment Hweilan thought he was praying.
"What are you doing?"
He stopped his chant and glared at her. "Trying to make sure no one follows us out of here."
"What about Lendri?"
"If he isn't here by the time I finish, he won't be coming." Menduarthis closed his eyes and resumed his chant.
Hweilan looked back the way they had just come. Wind still tore through the wood, its howl masking all other sounds. No sight of Lendri.
"Time to go."
Menduarthis stood and tossed his light stone in the snow. It was no longer glowing with a pale blue light. It pulsed yellow, and with each pulse it quickened and darkened, becoming an angry red.
"What is that going to do? "she said.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him. "Blow this mound to the bottom of the Nine Hells, I hope."
"But Lendri!"
Menduarthis ignored her and pulled her behind him. They circled the mound, and on the first full circuit, Menduarthis began an incantation. Hweilan looked back up the rise. It was hard to be certain through all the snow stirred by the wind, but she thought she saw a pale shape bounding toward them.
"Menduarthis, I think I see him!"
"Too late," he said, and in the next swirl of shadow and light, Hweilan looked up at a clear sky, set with a million stars. Stars she recognized. And Selûne was the moon Hweilan knew. Just the right size. Her court of stars in the old familiar patterns.
Menduarthis pulled her behind him. "Not safe yet!"
Stumbling behind him down a frost-covered slope, Hweilan looked back. The mound was a mirror image of the one they had just left in the Feywild, but the shadows seemed thinner here. Less vital. Starlight glimmered on the rime-covered rocks, almost sparkling.
She tripped, righted herself, and when she looked back again, Lendri was running toward them.
Hweilan opened her mouth to call—
And the mound exploded.
She saw Lendri lifted through the air, then Menduarthis fell on top of her, taking her to the ground. A tide of rock, ice, and grit washed over them in a roar of sound. When it passed, smaller stones and a storm of soil began to rain down around them.
Menduarthis rolled off her, and she sat up on one elbow. Back where the mound had been was only a smoking crater. Eldritch lights sparked and fumed, and tiny lightnings struck the ground. They were growing with each strike.
And then Lendri was beside them, bleeding from dozens of scrapes and cuts, still naked as the day he was born.
"Whatever you did..." He looked back at the magic fury eating away at the crater. "We should go."
Hweilan looked back at the conflagration. "That thing and the queen...?"
"The thing is dead," said Lendri. "Kunin Gatar? I very much doubt it."
In the crater, several bolts of lightning crackled around one another, each increasing in fury as they struck the ground.
"We need to leave!" said Lendri.
"Damned if I don't agree with him for once," said Menduarthis.
They were deep in the Giantspires, in the high mountains, and the stars seemed very close. Cold as it was, it was a cold Hweilan knew, and after the realm of Kunin Gatar, it almost seemed warm.
Menduarthis led them into a high valley flanked by three peaks. In the bottom of a gully choked with boulders and bushes of iron-hard branches, he took them to a small cave. No more than a large hole in the ground, it looked like the entrance to an oversized warren.
"What is this place?" said Hweilan.
"The Ujaiyen used to camp here when they hunted this region."
"Used to?"
"They don't come here anymore." "Why?"
Menduarthis looked to Lendri. "Yes, why would that be?"
Lendri scowled, then looked to Hweilan. "Inside. Then I'll tell you everything."
It was a simple shelter. A cave with a dirt floor. Its low ceiling was stained black by old fires, and a fissure where one wall met the ceiling let out most of the smoke. A small basin, dusty dry, hugged the back wall, but when Menduarthis chanted and waved one hand over it, it filled with clear, cold water. There was even an old cache of supplies—firewood, kindling, blankets, and food that had long spoiled or been eaten by mice. No clothes for Lendri, but he covered himself in one of the blankets while he set about fashioning a sort of loincloth and sleeveless shirt.
After they had slaked their thirst and got a small fire going, Hweilan looked to Menduarthis. "Are you certain we're safe here?"
Menduarthis snorted. "We're a damned long sight from safe. But with the mound gone, the Ujaiyen will have to come at us from another. That will take them most of a day at least. Still... I don't think they'll come here. We're very close to a part of these mountains where I doubt even Kunin Gatar would come." He looked to Lendri, who stared in the fire. Lendri would not meet Hweilan's gaze.
"Lendri," she said, "who is Nendawen?"
He flinched and looked up. "Where did you hear that name?"
"Menduarthis said I called it out in my sleep. But... but I don't remember."
Lendri's eyes widened at that, and he mumbled something in his own tongue.
"Time to bare your soul, cub," said Menduarthis. "What's your game?"
Lendri swallowed hard and looked at Hweilan with haunted eyes. "I didn't know it was you," he said. "I swear it. I didn't know. I never _imagined_ it was you."
His words, the desperation in his eyes... it seemed to stir a deep pool in Hweilan's mind. She remembered parts of her dream that night she'd slept in the frozen branches of the fallen tree.
The howl of wolves...
_Time to grow up, Hweilan inle Merah. Time to hunt. You do not need understanding. You need to choose. Understanding will come later... if you survive_.
And the image of the antlered man that haunted the shadows at the edge of her vision.
Then Lendri began his tale.
"Our people were not born to this world, but in a place we name the Hunting Lands. Long ago, a fell being of great strength made war on the gods of our people and the primal spirits who served them. Jagun Ghen we named him. Burning Hunger. The Destroyer. For generations we fought him, but he grew stronger, destroying our homeland. We fled in exile to this world, where we have lived for many long years. But some twenty years ago, the great god Dedunan—"
"Who?" said Hweilan.
But it was Menduarthis who answered her. "Silvanus."
Lendri and Hweilan both looked at him in surprise.
He shrugged. "I know things."
Lendri scowled. "Yes. Silvanus. He intervened on our behalf, and for once the winds turned in our favor. Jagun Ghen was cast from the Hunting Lands, and after generations in exile, the Vil Adanrath returned home. Except for me."
"Because of your oaths to my forefather," said Hweilan. "Because of me."
"In part," said Lendri. "After my people left, I wandered for a while. I even visited Highwatch once, but Merah had no interest in renewing her ties to her heritage. I left, lost in my heart." He looked up at Menduarthis. "It was at this time I came to live in the realm of your queen."
Menduarthis snorted. "Hardly _my_ queen anymore."
"I escaped," said Lendri.
"After betraying them and murdering their king," said Menduarthis. He looked to Hweilan. "He's leaving out quite a lot."
"And so are you," said Lendri. "I—"
"Enough!" said Hweilan. "Menduarthis, be quiet. Lendri, what does any of this have to do with me?"
"After I escaped Kunin Gatar," said Lendri, "I fled, but the Ujaiyen pursued me. I fled to the one place I knew the Ujaiyen would not dare go. To a region of these mountains sacred to Nendawen. We are close to them now."
Menduarthis shuddered and looked at the exit of the cave. _"Very_ close."
"Truth be told," said Lendri, "I went there with little real hope. Nendawen is sacred to the Vil Adanrath. Not one of the great gods like Dedunan, but Nendawen serves him in his own way, as we serve our gods. Nendawen is a hunter. _The_ Hunter. But to come to him without sacrifice, without blood... it is death. Nendawen loves our people in his own way, but he is not a kind master. Not forgiving. I'd hoped he might take the Ujaiyen on my trail as sacrifice, but if not... well, I thought it better to die at the hands of one of my own than _his_ ilk." He looked at Menduarthis.
_"This_ ilk just saved your life, I'll remind you," said Menduarthis.
"He killed them?" said Hweilan. "Nendawen killed the Ujaiyen?"
"Oh, yes," said Lendri. "But he did not count it as sacrifice. He..." His brows creased as he searched for the word. "Put off payment, you might say."
"You mean _her?"_ said Menduarthis. He raised one fist and glared at Lendri, and Hweilan knew he was considering which spell to use on the elf. "You're delivering Hweilan to this monster as some sort of blood sacrifice? That... that's—"
"No!" said Lendri. His lips pulled back in a snarl, and in the firelight Hweilan thought his teeth seemed sharper. "I would never do such a thing." His countenance softened and he looked to Hweilan. "I would die first. I swear it."
She believed him, but something in his gaze sent a shiver of fear through her.
"It's... more complicated," said Lendri. "Nendawen told me that Jagun Ghen—the Destroyer who made a wasteland of our home—had not been killed. Only vanquished. He fled the Hunting Lands. Fled here, to this world. Though his power was much reduced, it will grow again. He will bring his brothers and servants—fell spirits like him—to this world to kill and destroy. His hunger is never satisfied. He does not care to conquer. Only consume."
Lendri looked into the fire, and Hweilan saw its warm light glistening in his eyes. They were filling with tears.
"I thought he meant me," said Lendri. "I swear it. Nendawen said that Jagun Ghen must be stopped. But this world... it is not ours, nor our gods. Even Nendawen, his power is very limited here. Only on certain nights may he roam. Other times, he is confined to his holy places. To stop Jagun Ghen, the Hunter requires someone to go in his stead. The Hunter needs a Hand."
Both men were staring at Hweilan, Lendri with tears in his eyes and Menduarthis with his mouth hanging open.
"You mean me?" she asked.
"I did not know," said Lendri. "Nendawen would not tell me who. He told me only that his chosen would hold 'death in her right hand.'"
Hweilan's mind reeled. She looked down at her hand.
"Wait," said Menduarthis. "Death in her right hand? You mean...?"
Lendri nodded. "Show him," said Lendri.
Hweilan pulled off her glove, spread her palm, and turned it so that the firelight caught it full force.
"I've seen it already," said Menduarthis.
"Death," said Lendri. "Hweilan holds 'death' in her right hand."
Hweilan stood.
"Where are you going?" said Menduarthis.
"I need to be alone."
"It isn't safe out there."
"The sun will be up soon," said Lendri. "She'll be fine." He looked at her. "Don't stray far. If you need me, use your _kishkoman."_
Behind her, she heard Menduarthis ranting. "Are you mad? One of your bloodthirsty beast-gods wants her and you tell her to blow a damned whistle?"
Hweilan ran, leaving them behind.
She wandered out of the gully and sought the heights. As the stars began to fade in the lightening sky, a sudden hungry longing to see the sun woke in Hweilan. How long had it been since she'd watched the sun rise? She couldn't remember. Since well before the fall of Highwatch.
She found a way up a low offshoot of the nearest peak, her boots often slipping on the slick rocks or ice-covered grass beneath. But she made it up and found a nice perch, where she had a clear view of the eastern sky between the mountains. The Giantspires towered around her.
Nendawen...
Jagun Ghen...
She shivered. Not so much at the horror of Lendri's tale, nor that it had a sharp ring of truth. No.
She'd heard those names before. She knew that now. Never in her waking memory, not until Menduarthis and Lendri had spoken them. But those names had haunted her dreams.
Nendawen. The Hunter. The antlered man she kept seeing from the corner of her eye. _Time to grow up. Time to choose. Understanding will come later. If you survive..._
Jagun Ghen. Destroyer. That voice out of the darkness. The stench of death, of rot, of carnage unimaginable.
And familiar. It hit her then. Her dream had met the waking world. When that... that thing, that monster wearing her uncle's face had come after her. It wasn't even a scent so much as a complete miasma. A reek that sank into the spirit.
This Nendawen had sent Lendri to claim her: Had Jagun Ghen sent something as well? That thing, that mockery of Soran? And would he keep sending them?
With a jolt, she realized something else. That thing had not come alone. The first time he'd found her, Creel had been with him. Creel had taken Highwatch. Had killed her family.
And Kadrigul had been beside Soran too. Kadrigul who served Argalath.
Hweilan had heard the whispered tales that Guric's chief counselor was more than spellscarred. Though the man himself had always denied it, more than a few had said the man was a demonbinder, that he sacrificed to the ancient devil-gods of the Nar.
Jagun Ghen.
"Damn," said Hweilan. It all made sense.
Highwatch had fallen and her family had been murdered. And all because of some conflict that went back thousands of years.
Sitting there surrounded by mountains, weighed down by her thoughts, Hweilan felt very small.
And terrified. She'd lived a sheltered life at Highwatch. The world was much bigger, harder, and _meaner_ than she had ever imagined. Every person she'd ever loved was dead. Murdered.
That didn't make the terror go away. A little pit of it still churned in her stomach. But it shrank as something else grew inside her. Something stronger.
Anger. Fury.
It cleared her thoughts.
She was alive. Through all the horror, the fear, and the uncertainty of the past days, one fact remained, pure and cold in the growing predawn light: she was alive. Her breath came cold and plumed before her. The _halbdol_ was beginning to lose its potency, and she could feel the first pangs of chill against her skin, but it was a _good_ feeling. She was hungry, tired... but those feelings seemed to strip her to her purest essence. She was alive. She still had her breath, her blood, and her freedom. If anyone or anything wanted those things, they would have to take them. Hweilan was tired, yes. Tired of running. Tired of being hunted.
She remembered a lesson Scith had given her in her eighth year. Her first time in the wild without her family. Only her, Scith, and a few guards. But she and Scith had roamed away from the others for much of the day, Scith teaching her the ways of the wild. His first lesson, the one on which all others had built, came to her now.
"There are two types of beings in the world, Hweilan, neither better than the other, and both depending on one another, blood and breath, for survival: the hunter and the hunted."
Hweilan was tired of being the hunted. Whatever the days ahead brought, she would be hunted no more. Time to stop running. Time to stop being hunted. Time to hunt.
# CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE SUN WAS CLIMBING INTO THE SKY WHEN HWEILAN returned to their shelter. Menduarthis was pacing outside, and Lendri crouched just outside the entrance. When Menduarthis saw her approaching, the tension left his shoulders.
"We were getting worried," he said.
Hweilan took a deep breath, then said, "I'll go."
Menduarthis looked at her, looked at Lendri, then back at her. "Go? Go where? What are you—?"
"To Nendawen," she said.
"You can't be serious."
"I want to find the people who killed my family. I want to kill them. If this Nendawen can help me do that..."
Menduarthis opened his mouth to reply, but Lendri spoke first.
"Hweilan, it isn't..." He stood and gazed off northward to the pass between two of the peaks. "Not like that. Nendawen isn't one to be bargained with. He wants Jagun Ghen, and that is that. Your family—"
"Was killed by Jagun Ghen," said Hweilan. "Or by those who serve him, at least."
Lendri scowled and Menduarthis rolled his eyes as Hweilan laid out her reasoning to them. Lendri's eyes sharpened, but she could see his attention focused inward. Menduarthis's eyes widened in dawning horror.
"Am I the only one here who hasn't lost all sense?" said Menduarthis. He pointed at Lendri. "Just because _he_ made some deal with a barbarian demigod doesn't obligate _you_ to help him. He wants to honor his people's ways by jumping face first into the fire? Let him. But don't jump in with him."
"They're my people too," said Hweilan.
"Oh, for—"
"They killed my family! Do you remember what you told me? "The world isn't a nice place,' you said. "Fools say it's unforgiving, but that's why they're fools. The world doesn't forgive because it doesn't blame. And the world doesn't blame because _it doesn't care.'_ You were right, you bastard. The world doesn't care. But there are people in the world who do. I loved my family. They loved me. And they're dead now. Murdered. And those who did it are sitting in my home. My home! And if Jagun Ghen is responsible, I swear to my family's gods that I'm going to make him regret the day he—"
An arrow hit Menduarthis in the chest. He still wore his armor, and the shaft bounced off, but it struck with enough force that it knocked him to the ground.
They looked up. An archer stood on the southern rise that they had come down earlier. He was already reaching for another arrow. Below him, two tundra tigers were descending the slope, each carrying a rider. Other figures—some small, their odd hats giving them away as uldra, others taller, their long hair blowing in the morning breeze—crested the rise and fanned around the archer.
"Ujaiyen," said Menduarthis. "How...?"
Lendri grabbed Hweilan and pulled her behind him. "Run!"
They had no real chance. Their weapons were down to Hweilan's two knives and a bow she could not use. The Ujaiyen had the element of surprise, superior numbers, and Hweilan, Menduarthis, and Lendri were still hungry and haggard from their escape. Still, desperation lent them strength and speed, and they were halfway up the northern slope when the tigers' roars washed over them.
Hweilain's knees buckled, and she hit the ground. Lendri grabbed her elbow and yanked her to her feet.
_"Move,"_ he said. His eyes shone with a cold fury, and his teeth had lengthened to points.
The tigers flanked them, passed them, then stopped on the rise above them as the Ujaiyen on foot closed from below. The tigers' riders lowered long spears.
Menduarthis flicked an intricate pattern with the fingers of his right hand, then thrust both fists forward. A wind swept across the slope, driving frost and grit across the riders, blinding them. He finished with a flourish of arms and hands, and snow and sharp bits of hail wove into the wind, striking their pursuers below.
"Keep going!" he shouted to Hweilan.
They made it over the rise and kept going. The next valley was choked with evergreens and winter-bare underbrush. Behind her, she heard the roar of a tiger, a shout from Menduarthis, and the roar of more wind.
Lendri fell back to put himself between Hweilan and their pursuers. She spared a glance back and saw Menduarthis coming over the rise. An arrow shot through his cloak, and another bounced off his armor.
"Keep moving!" he shouted. "Don't wait for me!"
Lendri looked at Hweilan, said, "Get to the trees," then charged back over the hill.
"Where are you going?" she called, but he ignored her.
Menduarthis grabbed her and pulled her after him. "He can take care of himself. Move!"
A tundra tiger roared, and mixed with it Hweilan heard the angry growl and bark of a wolf.
"Lendri!" she screamed.
But Menduarthis held her tight. "He's buying us time. He'll be along. Now _move!"_
She turned and ran, Menduarthis a few steps ahead of her. The slope was steep and covered with ice and snow. She could hear footsteps behind her, gaining, but she didn't dare look back. Near the bottom, a rock under the snow turned beneath her boot, and she fell, hitting the ground hard.
It saved her. She felt something pass over her, and when she looked up, she saw that one of the riders had tossed a net. It had just missed her, and instead caught Menduarthis around the legs.
The rider snarled and reined the tiger back, tightening the noose threaded around the net. It pulled Menduarthis down in a tangle of his own cloak.
Hweilan let go of her father's bow, grabbed the nearest rock, and lobbed it at the rider as hard as she could. Her thick gloves affected her aim, and the rock hit the tiger instead. It stopped and turned its yellow eyes on her. As did its rider. He let go of the rope holding the net, lowered his spear, and with his knees turned his tiger toward her. The tiger's ears flattened, and it lowered its head as it charged.
A spear struck it in the soft flesh between its jaw and shoulder. The tiger screamed and thrashed, throwing its rider.
Hweilan grabbed her bow and looked up. Lendri was coming down the slope, a small knife in one hand. Blood covered his face and chest, and as near as she could tell, none of it was his own. He must have killed one of the Ujaiyen and taken his weapons.
"Go!" he shouted.
More Ujaiyen—uldra and elves, all on foot—were streaming down the hill behind him. Except for the archer, who stood on the crest, bow bent, arrow to cheek, the point of his arrow aimed at Hweilan. He loosed. His aim was flawless, but the distance was enough that Hweilan had time to dive out of the way, scramble to her feet, and run. She heard the arrow strike the rocks a few paces away.
Menduarthis had disentangled himself from the net and was on his feet again. Together they made it into the trees.
Hweilan slowed. "Where is Lendri?"
Menduarthis pushed her onward. "If he's alive, he'll find us. If not, there's nothing you can do for—"
Menduarthis screamed and shot into the air. A thick tendril of vine, covered in wicked-looking thorns, had snaked around his torso and yanked him into the air. Hweilan looked up and saw two uldra, their faces split by wicked grins, crouched in the thick green boughs of a pine.
And then the net fell over her.
Three uldra and an elf reached through the net, taking Hweilan's weapons, then hung her from the next tree. More vines encased Menduarthis, pinning his arms to his sides. Even his fingers, bloody and ripped by the thorns, were bound in smaller tendrils.
Hweilan dared hope that Lendri might come to their aid, but when the rest of the hunting party arrived, they were dragging Lendri in another net.
An eladrin who wore his black hair in dozens of tight braids, all pulled back and bound with a green cord, stood in their midst and looked up at Menduarthis.
"Nikle's plan worked," he said, and bowed to one of the uldra. It was the first one Hweilan had met her first night in the feywild. The little creature's eyes sparkled at the praise. "Just like deer. Spook them and they run right into the trap. I said you were far too smart to fall for that. I am most pleased to see how wrong I was. Most pleased."
Menduarthis cursed him in his own language, and Hweilan could tell by his voice that the thorns were cutting through more than his clothes.
"Most impolite, considering your current predicament," said the eladrin.
"How in the unholy hells did you get through the mound?" said Menduarthis.
The eladrin chuckled. "The one you destroyed? Oh, we didn't. We had to come through the crystals. But really, Menduarthis, are you so smitten with this little wench that you've forgotten how to think? We came through the crystals, yes, but how hard is it to teleport once we are here? Quite a mess you made of the place, I will say. Still, it wasn't hard to pick up your trail."
"I really didn't think you'd come here," said Menduarthis, and he managed an insolent grin through his mask of pain. "I thought you too much a coward."
The eladrin went very still and paled. Finally, he said, "Whatever devil you let into our realm, Menduarthis, it failed. Kunin Gatar was hurt, yes, but your little ruse only fueled her anger. She has plans for you three. For you, Lendri... she's going to cut off a new appendage every day, then grow it back. That will be your food for the next year. Eating yourself." He shuddered. "Still, bloody monster like you might enjoy that. You, Menduarthis? She's still contemplating your fate, though I dare say it is going to make you pray to take Lendri's place. And you."
He walked over to Hweilan, looked down on her, and poked at her with the toe of his boot.
"I confess I've forgotten your name."
She glared up at him. "Hweilan."
He grimaced. "Not worth remembering. You girl... well, perhaps our queen still has a warm place in her heart for young girls. I have orders to find a low-hanging branch, nail you to it, palms and wrists, and leave you to the mercy of whatever foul power haunts these lands."
Lendri snarled and thrashed in his net, but two of the uldra laid into him with whips fashioned from the thorn-covered vines. Blood splattered, freezing on the ground as it hit, and he quieted.
"Well," said the eladrin, "let us do our duty. Sooner done, sooner we are gone."
One of the uldra said something in his own language. A single syllable, but Hweilan heard the fear tinging it. He pointed, and the eladrin looked up. Hweilan followed his gaze.
Ravens filled the nearest trees. They had not been there before, Hweilan was sure of it. Dozens of ravens looked down on the hunters and their catch. Thick wings flapped, and even as Hweilan watched, more landed. And more. Dozens at first. But then they grew to a hundred or more. In the bits of sky she could see between the branches, she saw more circling overhead, some close enough to be seen for the huge ravens they were, but others only distant specks. There were hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands.
The eladrin opened his mouth to speak, but even as he did so, a howl broke the silence. Then another and another and another. From every direction.
The Ujaiyen called out in alarm. Dusky shapes were making their way through the surrounding wood, and here and there, yellow eyes watched from the shadows.
Menduarthis laughed. "I'd watch the 'foul power' insults if I were you, Losir. And if you have any sense at all, you'll let us go. Someone much more powerful and much meaner than Kunin Gatar has a claim on that girl. And you're pissing on his threshold."
# CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MENDUARTHIS SPEAKS THE TRUTH—FOR ONCE," said Lendri. "Hweilan is Chosen of Nendawen. Harm her, and by dawn all that will be left of you and all your hunters are your bones."
Losir looked around at his men. They did not look away, but Hweilan could see the fear in their eyes.
"If we go back without you," said Losir, "Kunin Gatar will put your fate on us." "Then run," said Menduarthis. "Get as far away as you can from the queen. You'll be surprised how good it feels."
The two uldra holding him snarled at his insult and pulled the vines tighter, shoving the thorns deeper into his arms.
Menduarthis cried out, then said, "Though not so much right now, I will admit."
"I am not like you," said Losir. "Faithless. The lord of this place claims the girl? Fine. I will leave her here unharmed and hope that the queen is in a forgiving mood. But you two are returning to face her judgment."
"No!" Hweilan screamed. But Losir ignored her.
Hweilan thrashed and kicked in her bindings. One of the uldra stepped forward and brought his thorned whip across her. Her thick clothing protected her from the worst of it, but a long tendril raked down her cheek, barely missing her eye.
Every raven in the trees cried out, their caws loud as thunder, and the wolves' howls changed to low growls that shook the ground.
They quieted.
"I wouldn't do that again," said Menduarthis.
Losir nodded and spoke to the uldra in his own language. The little creature coiled his whip and stepped away.
"Let us go!" Hweilan screamed.
Losir glanced at the ravens, then looked down at Hweilan. "Calm yourself, and I will free you before we leave."
Hweilan screamed and kicked at him, but he bounced away, light as a dancer.
"As you wish," said Losir. He called out to his troop, and they began to file away, every eye turned warily up to the trees or watching the thick brush. The two uldra let Menduarthis down from the tree and fitted his bindings to drag him behind them.
"Losir!" Lendri called. "Leave the girl her weapons. The knives and bow. They are hers, and she is Nendawen's. Steal from her, and you steal from him."
Losir stopped, considered, then waved to an elf and issued an order.
The elf stepped forward and dropped both knives and the bow on the ground several paces away.
Losir looked back at her, "This Nendawen claims you? Let him untie you."
And with that, he walked away, his troop following, dragging Lendri and Menduarthis between them.
In moments, Hweilan was alone under the eyes of the hungry ravens.
She screamed.
"Hweilan!" Menduarthis called from the woods. "Stop. This doesn't help us. I got away from Kunin Gatar once. I can do it again." Hweilan heard the lie in his voice. "You take care of yourself now, little flower."
Hweilan let out a final scream, then stopped. She had no idea how long she'd been at it, but her throat was raw. Taking deep breaths, she realized how absolutely silent it was.
She looked up. The ravens were gone. The skies were clear again, and there was no sign of a wolf in the brush.
Have to think, she told herself.
She was still bound in the net, but the net's leash was not tied to anything. Scooting like a caterpillar, she worked her way over to her weapons. She worked three fingers out of the net, managed to grab the knife Lendri had given her, and set to work.
It was a painstaking process, and more than once she dropped the knife or sliced into her jacket. But bit by bit she managed to slice through the net, and before too long she had freed one arm. After that, it was easy, and she freed herself in moments.
She stood and sloughed off the remains of the net.
Looking around, the Ujaiyen and her friends gone, she realized she had absolutely no idea what to do.
She could not forsake Lendri and Menduarthis. Not after all they'd done for her. She knew if she did so, the disappointed faces of Scith and her family would haunt her dreams forever. But what could she do with only two knives and a bow she could not bend?
"Nendawen," she said.
And then a new realization hit her. She knew she was near his sacred lands. But near which way? Lendri had said north. But how far? And how could she find him?
Standing there, wrestling with indecision, hungry, tired, and very, very frightened, she felt her head begin to hurt.
No. Not just a headache. It was pounding. A steady pulse in the base of her skull. And a cold dread was building. A familiar dread.
Her eyes widened and she gasped. It was the same feeling that had dogged her whenever that Soran-thing drew close. The closer he got, the harder the pounding in her brain. Lendri had been wrong. That monster had somehow survived, and it was hunting her again.
It gave her an idea.
The sun was disappearing behind the wall of the western peak when Menduarthis saw Lendri again. The Ujaiyen had dragged them through the rocky country, and if Menduarthis had a square inch that hadn't been bruised, scraped, or raked by those damnable thorns, he swore he would never tell another lie. Never. For at least a tenday.
But as they began to climb a large offshoot of one of the peaks, a treeless expanse, the hunting party had gathered in again, and Lendri's captors came in close to Menduarthis.
The pale elf was covered with blood, dirt, and snow, but none of the fury had left his eyes. His gaze locked on Menduarthis.
"You think the girl will be all right?" Menduarthis asked.
Lendri opened his mouth to reply, but the uldra laid into them with the whips again.
"No talking!" one of them said in his own language. Menduarthis had squeezed his eyes shut against the thorned whips, but he thought he recognized Nikle's voice. Unappreciative little whelp. Since being captured, Menduarthis had begun to compile a list of names on whom he would rain his vengeance as soon as he escaped. Nikle had just moved up five spots on the list.
Menduarthis heard a chuckle and opened his eyes. Losir was walking behind him, a smug look on his smug face.
"Feeling more contrite?" said Losir.
Menduarthis ignored the barb. "May I ask you something?"
He looked askance to make sure the uldra weren't coming in with the whips again. They weren't.
"What?" said Losir.
"If you could teleport from the crystals to the mound, why can't you just teleport back to the crystals from here? Are you really enjoying bruising us that much?"
Losir frowned. "We tried. Something about these cursed lands... it interferes with our magic. We need to get well away first. We intend to try again at the top of the next height."
"Oh, good," said Menduarthis. "Then home to bed and supper."
Losir laughed. "Eager are you? Which part do you hope to taste first? A hand perhaps? Don't get your hopes up. I think the queen intends to start with other appendages first. She'll save the bony parts for later when you've developed a taste for it."
"I thought you said that was Lendri's fate."
Losir shrugged and smiled.
A ways later the hunters cried out, and the party stopped. Menduarthis wiggled and craned his neck around to see what they were pointing at.
"Oh, no," he said. "That little fool."
At the crest of the height, profiled against the sky, no more than a long bowshot away, stood Hweilan.
Losir laughed. "Looks like we get to take all three back after all."
He issued an order and several of the hunters ran forward. Lendri had killed both tigers, so Menduarthis half-hoped Hweilan might run. If her luck held, she might get away.
But no. She simply stood there, watching them come.
Menduarthis watched, sick at heart, as the two elves and four uldra escorted her down. They didn't net or bind her, or even take her weapons. Just kept their spears at her back or naked swords in hand.
Hweilan stepped among the hunters, and Menduarthis saw that she was not well. She was trembling and squinted as if the light hurt. Her jaw clenched and she did not even look at Menduarthis or Lendri as her captors brought her before Losir.
The eladrin chuckled. "I must admit, you do surprise, girl. You were free. Why come back?"
Hweilan did not meet his gaze. "Let them go. Both of them. Let me go. Do it quick and run. Fast as you can. Heed me, and I think you might have time to get away."
Losir threw his head back and laughed. "Get away? From you?"
She did look up then, and Menduarthis saw the gleeful fury in her eyes. "No."
Several of the Ujaiyen cried out and pointed.
"Now what? "said Losir.
Menduarthis looked up.
A figure was coming over the rise. Not running, but approaching in a steady unwavering gait. Pale skin. Long hair tossed by the wind. For a moment, Menduarthis thought it might be some of Lendri's kin come to rescue him. But no. They were all gone, weren't they?
And then he drew close enough for Menduarthis to make out the details. He felt his blood frost at the sight.
It was that pale warrior. The Frost Folk. The one Menduarthis had most assuredly killed back in the Feywild.
"This is your plan?" said Losir, and he looked on Hweilan with disdain. "We hunt Frost Folk for fun. Whole clans of them. This one will be no more than a distraction."
He said something to his hunters in his own language, then drew his sword and stepped forward to meet the newcomer.
The pale warrior only glanced at him. His eyes were fixed on Hweilan. Now that he saw her, he increased his pace, coming swiftly down the slope.
Losir stepped in front of him and brandished his blade. He said something that Menduarthis did not catch, then attacked.
Losir was a fine swordsman, Menduarthis knew. One of the best among the Ujaiyen. But perhaps he was in no mood to play. Or perhaps at the last moment he sensed something amiss and chose a simple attack—one quick thrust between the ribs, aimed to skewer the heart.
The pale warrior turned his gaze on Losir, locked one fist around the eladrin's sword arm, and twisted. They were at least a hundred feet away, but still Menduarthis heard the bone snap like a dry branch. Losir shrieked and went down. The pale warrior drew the sword out of his own chest, bent down, and lopped off Losir's other arm. He picked it up in his other hand and stepped over Losir, who kicked and screamed on the ground as his lifeblood poured out.
The Ujaiyen charged.
All but two. One elf who stood guard over Lendri and one uldra over Menduarthis.
Their attention was focused on the fight. The elf never saw Hweilan step up behind him and bring the hilt of her dagger down on the top of his head. He flopped to the ground like wet dough.
The other uldra cried out and flicked his arm, uncoiling his whip. He charged her, swinging the weapon in swipe after swipe. Hweilan danced out of the way—the girl was good on her feet—but each strike was coming closer.
Menduarthis squirmed and struggled, but he only succeeded in tightening his bonds and losing more skin.
Snarling, Lendri thrashed and threw off his bindings.
Little bastard chewed through the ropes, Menduarthis said to himself.
He had. His teeth had gone long and sharp, his fingers curled into claws, and his hair was thickening around his face and shoulders.
One look, and the uldra fled.
Hweilan ran to Menduarthis. Lendri was right behind her, and by the time they knelt beside him, he was fully an elf again. She handed Lendri her other knife, and the two set about cutting away the vines.
Menduarthis hissed through his teeth. "Careful! Some of those thorns are caught in more than cloth."
Lendri looked up to the battle. Menduarthis saw his eyes widen, and he gave Hweilan back the knife.
"Back the way we came," said Lendri. "Over that northern rise and down in to the next valley. Once you cross the river—frozen most likely—you should be safe. Get him free and go!"
"Where are you going?" Hweilan and Menduarthis said at the same time.
"To buy you some time," he said, and bounded off.
Menduarthis looked the way he had gone. The pale warrior brought his sword down, killing the elf who held the shaft of the spear piercing the warrior's gut. The eladrin went down and did not move. The rest of the Ujaiyen—the few survivors whose corpses were not littering the slope—were disappearing over the hill.
"Forget the thorns," said Menduarthis. "Just cut, girl. Cut!"
# CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DOZENS OF TENDRILS OF VINE AND THORNS STILL CLUNG to Menduarthis, but once he could move again, they were on their feet and running. He picked at the tighter creepers and smaller thorns around his hands as they ran.
Hweilan looked back.
A huge wolf snapped at the pale warrior, raking at his legs then bounding away. Each time the warrior would pursue, the wolf bounded off. The warrior would break off the chase and continue after Hweilan, and the wolf would charge in again.
"Go! Toward the river!" said Menduarthis. "Once we're away, he'll follow."
Knowing Menduarthis was right, Hweilan turned and ran. She was utterly exhausted. When had she last slept? In the Feywild, and that hadn't been a rest so much as a mental pummeling by the queen. But her fear and desperation lent strength to her limbs. She knew in her heart that the thing didn't care for Lendri in the least. The wolf was only an obstacle in his way. The best thing she could do to help Lendri right now was to get away.
But just before they crossed a bend in the hill, she heard the wolf let out a yelp of pain. She turned. Less than a quarter mile away, the pale warrior was headed straight for her. The wolf lay motionless on the frost-covered rocks behind him.
"Lendri!" she screamed. "No!"
"Run!" Menduarthis pulled her along.
They did, rounding the bend in the trail and losing sight of the pale warrior. They kept going, and when the thing next came in sight, he was much closer. Despite the broken spear shaft still protruding from his midsection and the gaping sword wound in his ribs, he was running.
"Up here!" said Menduarthis, and he tried to pull Hweilan up a narrow trail. She saw that it wound up the arm of the mountain to a cliff overlooking their present trail.
"No!" she pulled back. "That isn't the way."
He grabbed her again and shoved her before him. "I know. I have an idea."
Their path ended at the cliff. Before them an old rockslide had collapsed the rest of the trail into the valley, which was a dizzying distance below them.
"A wonderful idea you had," said Hweilan.
She looked back. The pale warrior was still coming. He'd be on them in moments. She gripped her bow tight and pulled Lendri's knife.
"None of that," said Menduarthis, and he pulled her to him in a tight embrace.
She struggled and pounded his chest with the handle of her knife. "What are you—?"
"No one likes a coward. Trust me."
And then she knew what he had in mind.
"Oh, gods," she said.
The air hit them, swirling tighter and tighter, taking them in an embrace of storm that drowned out all other sound. Hweilan squeezed her eyes shut.
"Mind the blade!" said Menduarthis, and an instant later they lifted in the air, shot away from the cliff, and down.
Near the end, it was more fall than flight. They landed in a thick bank of snow crusted by ice. It was soft enough, but Menduarthis ended up on top of her.
She shook her head and spat snow. "You need to work on your landings."
He grinned. "Seems fine from my vantage point."
She pushed him off. They stood and looked up to the cliff where they had just been. The pale warrior was standing there, sword in hand, looking down on them. Hweilan saw the glimmer of red in his empty eyes. What had become of the Soran-thing, why it was now Kadrigul, she didn't know. But she knew that gaze.
Kadrigul jumped.
She heard Menduarthis gasp, then the pale warrior hit the ground in a racket of tumbling stones and cracking bones.
Kadrigul pushed himself to his feet. Broken bone protruded above and below his left shoulder and above his left knee. Part of his skull had caved in, and Hweilan could see shattered ribs poking under his clothes. He raised his right fist. The sword had broken just above the hilt, and he tossed it aside.
"Hm," said Menduarthis. He winced at the pain from his torn fingers as he began twirling them.
Hweilan heard air rushing, and she saw Kadrigul's cheeks puff and flutter. She remembered how Menduarthis had threatened to kill Roakh. _Have you ever seen an old wineskin filled with too much wine? Imagine what would happen if the air in your wretched frame did the same thing_.
Kadrigul stopped and looked down at his expanding chest. It only took a moment, then Hweilan heard a distinctive _pop!_ of tearing tissue as his chest deflated in a rush. She even saw a fine blast of fluid shoot out of both Kadrigul's ears. Then he looked up and kept coming.
"Well, I'm out of ideas," said Menduarthis, and she heard real fear in his voice. "Back to running now."
They turned to do just that. Menduarthis made it three steps. Hweilan heard _clonk_ , and then he dropped like a torn pennant. She screamed and looked down in time to see the rock fall away. Blood gushed from his scalp. He was still breathing, but she knew she'd never revive him before Kadrigul was on top of them.
"Alone," said Kadrigul, his voice a broken rasp. She looked to him. The red in his eyes blazed. "Just you... and me. Come. I will... end it quick. Join... your family."
For a brief instant, two beats of her heart at most, Hweilan was tempted. Exhaustion pulled at her. She knew it wouldn't be long before she gave out entirely. It would be easy to stop running. To stop the pain and struggle. See her family again. See Scith.
That decided her.
She knew that even if she did stand before Scith in the next life, if she stood before him a victim, come before him in defeat, she would see the disappointment in his eyes.
Hweilan raised her knife. "You first."
The thing in Kadrigul smiled, a horrid pulling back of dead lips over broken teeth. "Good," he said, and lurched toward her.
She side-stepped quickly, testing whether he would follow her. She had to know he'd leave Menduarthis alone. He did.
"You're going to kill me?" she said, walking backward.
"I'm going... to eat... your heart."
"Catch me first," she said, then turned and ran.
The Kadrigul-thing shrieked. Remembering how he had felled Menduarthis, she ducked and swerved as she ran. Stones skipped off the ground around her, and one bounced off her back. Only her thick clothes saved her a broken bone. The pain was incredible. Her vision darkened for a moment.
But she kept going.
She remembered Lendri's words.
"North," she panted as she ran. "Over the rise. Next valley. Frozen river."
When she came to areas of open ground, she'd look back. She had managed to put a good deal of distance between her and Kadrigul, but he was still coming, lurching along on his shattered leg. As the late afternoon sky darkened toward the deep blue of evening, his eyes seemed all the brighter, two points of red fire gazing at her from that dead white face.
The pounding in her head was so strong that she could barely think. Still she ran.
She came to the woods where the Ujaiyen had captured them. Shadows lay thick in the dusk light. She half hoped and half feared to see the ravens and wolves again, but the wood was empty, silent save for the sounds of her own ragged breathing and footfalls.
The land climbed again, the trees gave out, and she crossed into the next valley.
There, below her, she could see the river. Only slightly wider than the path through Highwatch's main gate and frozen solid. It looked no different from hundreds of other streams she'd seen in her life, but something about it made her bones itch. Something beyond that river watched.
She stumbled down into the valley, her muscles burning with exhaustion. Every step was an effort. Her knees trembled, and she had to focus all her attention on forcing one foot in front of the other.
She came to the bottom, wove through the ice-slick rocks that lined the bank, then fell, her hands striking the frozen river. A pulse seemed to radiate outward, just beyond her hearing.
Hweilan pushed herself up, crossed the river, then collapsed on the other side. Dark pines, ages old, leaned over, covering her in their shadow.
"Safe," she said. Lendri had said so. _Once you cross the river you should be safe_.
She rolled over on the bank and looked back. Evening was giving way to night. The brightest stars were out, but shadows clung thick among the rocks of the far side. Amid those dark shadows, something pale moved.
Kadrigul.
Hweilan watched, her ragged breathing calming, but her heart beating faster than ever.
The pale warrior stopped on the opposite bank and looked down. She heard him snarl.
Safe, she thought. I'm safe.
A small laugh—no more than a cough of air—escaped her, and the Kadrigul-thing looked up, its red eyes blazing in the growing dark.
He stepped onto the river. His snarl choked off, as if he were in pain, and his gait slowed, as if he were wading through onrushing water. But he kept coming, step by lurching step, dragging his broken leg behind him.
"No," said Hweilan, and it came out half a whimper.
She didn't have the strength to get to her feet, but she crawled backward as best as she could. She made it perhaps a dozen feet before the bank became too steep, and she slid back down a ways until her foot caught on the exposed root of one of the old pines.
Kadrigul stepped onto the bank.
Her heart was beating so hard that it drowned out all other sounds. She couldn't even hear his footfall as he came toward her, his hands reaching out.
A snarling shadow bowled into him, and they both hit the ground.
Wide-eyed, Hweilan watched. It was Lendri, back in elf form, though the growls coming from him were all wolf.
The Kadrigul-thing screamed—more in fury than pain, Hweilan knew—and stood, Lendri's jaws locked around his throat. Kadrigul grabbed his hair with one hand and lower jaw with the other, then wrenched the elf off. With one hand around Lendri's throat, he held the elf at arm's length. Lendri screamed, clawing at Kadrigul's torso with his feet, his fingers—now tipped with claws—raking at his face and eyes.
Kadrigul smiled, even as Lendri tore his eyes away, leaving only the red fire behind.
"I know your stink," said Kadrigul. He breathed in deep through his nose. "I remember now. I killed your mother. Ate her heart."
Lendri managed one last shriek of defiance, then Kadrigul struck with his other hand, punching through Lendri's gut, up and into his chest cavity, breaking through muscle and bone. He yanked and pulled out the dark, dripping mass of Lendri's heart. Lendri's arms and legs went limp, a final shudder passed through him, and then Kadrigul dropped his lifeless body.
Tears froze on Hweilan's cheeks.
Kadrigul dropped the heart into the snow. Those red eyes turned to her. "Now, to the main course."
A curtain of light, pale and cold, washed over them, and a ripple of _something_ passed through the ground and air.
When Hweilan was a little girl, she had once sneaked into her parents' bedchamber very early one morning, coming forward on tiptoes over the thick rug. Her father lay nearest, eyes closed, breathing deep and steady. She had said, "Father?" His eyes remained closed, but something had changed. Between one breath and the next, some indefinable something told Hweilan that her father was awake.
That same feeling filled her now. Something had woken.
She turned to see where the light was coming from and saw the first pale rim of the moon climbing over the black horizon. Full and fat. With so much snow on the ground, once the moon rose high, it would be almost bright as day even at midnight. The Hunter's Moon.
Howling filled the air. But like no howling Hweilan had ever heard. This was a call of thunders.
The red light in the Kadrigul-thing's eyes flickered and dimmed.
"No." He gasped and lurched backward. But then his gaze fixed on Hweilan, and the fire blazed again. _"No!"_
He came at her, arms outstretched, and a storm of ravens struck him, wings flapping as they pecked and tore at him. He stumbled, righted himself, then fell as a black wolf ran in and sank its jaws into his good leg.
A shriek cut through the night air, and Hweilan knew it did not come from the animated corpse before her, but from the dark will inside it.
The Kadrigul-thing fought its way to its feet. Orange flames had broken out along the surface of the pale skin. It caught in the feathers of the ravens, setting them alight. The wolf shrieked in pain and fled.
Dead ravens, still smoldering, fell to the snow. Hweilan could not look away. Torn flesh hung off bones. The remaining clothes had burned away, and still the flames grew. He took one step toward Hweilan.
And something landed between them. A huge figure, taller than any man Hweilan had ever seen. Moonlight glinted off pale scars that ribboned his muscled frame. His left hand dripped blood. In his right he gripped a long spear, its black head barbed and cruel. Antlers sprouted from his skull.
It was the shape that had haunted her dreams.
Nendawen had come.
A green eldritch light sparked around the barbed point of Nendawen's spear.
The thing of flame shrieked. Defiance, agony, and futility. The spirit fled the remains of Kadrigul's body and shot across the river, like flames borne by storm winds. Nendawen took one step forward and threw his spear. The light crackled around the shaft as it flew. It struck the heart of the flames, and in the resulting maelstrom of darkness and light, Hweilan knew—knew in the deepest well of her heart—that something wild and hungry ate the fiery spirit. Swallowed it whole.
The fire went out.
Nendawen turned. A mask of bone hid his face, but behind the empty sockets glowed the same green light that bathed his spear.
_Why have you come?_ It was a growl in her mind, but she understood the meaning.
She looked into those eyes and saw that what Menduarthis had told her was true. There was no malice there. Nothing so petty. But something far stronger. Far older. Primal. There was no word for it, for it had been born long before there were such things as words in the tongues of men.
"I come to hunt," she said.
_Good. And who are you?_
"Uh..." She searched for the words. Could Lendri have been wrong? Worse, could Menduarthis have been right in telling her not to trust him?" I was told—"
_Who_ are _you?_
He took a step toward her, and the green light began to glow around his hands. They curled into sharp claws. "H-Hweilan," she said. "My name is Hweilan." _Do you know the covenant, Hweilan?_
"Uh... I..."
_To come without sacrifice means death_.
Lendri had told her much the same thing, had he not? Just earlier that day. _To come without sacrifice, without blood... it is death_. Lendri...
She looked down at his lifeless, ravaged body. Her gorge rose. But looking down on him, it stoked her anger again.
"There." She pointed. "There is my sacrifice."
_Ukhnar Kurhan slew that one_.
"He was _my_ friend. He died protecting me."
Nendawen looked down. He stared at her a long time, as if considering. Finally he said, _Then the sacrifice was his. Not yours. To come without sacrifice means death_.
Hweilan's breath caught. She felt her chest constrict. After all she'd lost... to have come so far...
_Death_.
A small part of her wondered, Why fight it? After all she'd lost, after all she'd ever wanted had been taken from her... why fight? Would death really be that bad? But that was the little girl in her talking. Wanting the simple way out. Wanting her way or nothing. And the little girl was almost gone.
The larger part of her, louder, was just plain angry. Furious in fact. She might die, yes, but not without a fight.
"My family," she said. "My father. My mother. Their fathers and mothers. All dead! Everyone I loved. Everyone who loved me. They died that I might come here. To you. If that isn't enough... then to the hells with you! I have nothing more to give."
Nendawen's eyes blazed, and a thousand howls filled the night. A storm of raucous cries rained down from the boughs overhead.
Hweilan looked up.
Hundreds of ravens looked down on her, their black eyes reflecting the moonlight. Yellow wolves' eyes watched her from the shadows under the trees.
_Nothing more to give?_ said Nendawen. _You are wrong. There is you. You are mine, Hweilan. You were always mine_.
He took off his mask.
Hweilan screamed.
**Chosen of Nendawen, Book I
The Fall of Highwatch**
©2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC
FORGOTTEN REALMS, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.
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v3.0
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Books3 |
A Newly Released Jade Helm Document Reveals the True Intent of the Drill
A relatively new and obscure document,U.S. Army Special Operations Command “ARSOF Operating Concept”
is the blueprint for Jade Helm.This document does not boldly use
phrases such as “extracting political dissidents”, but it does use
“legal language” to basically communicate the same messages that many in
the Independent Media have been telling the public about for 6 weeks,
namely, that ARSOF is going to be used to extract political dissidents
and then enforce martial law.Key phrases and terms of the ARSOF document are presented here so as
to have no misunderstanding as to meaning and intent. Other relevant
military documents are mentioned in order to reinforce the
interpretation of the ARSOF, Jade Helm inspired document.
ARSOF 1-4. Sustaining and Enabling ARSOF: The Operating Concept
Russian and American troops in Fort Carson, Colorado.
A global network including joint, interagency, and International partners
will enable these capabilities, but that network itself is not enough.
The U.S. military must place supreme value in its operators, who will be
constantly challenged through the most demanding education, training,
and developmental assignments. Our operators’ capabilities also rely on
strong and healthy families, supported by the broader ARSOF and Army
community.
Why
do the deep, dark forces behind the planning of Jade Helm need to have
foreign mercenaries involved with Jade Helm? The answer is simple, they
cannot fully trust that American soldiers will participate in the
long-term subjugation of American citizens. And who would these shadowy
forces behind Jade Helm be? We cannot be 100% sure, but my bet is on the
CIA. From former ARSOF officer, Scott Bennett,
we know that the CIA is funding ISIS through Swiss bank accounts and
they have been involved in nearly every nefarious activity connected to this government from Iran-Contra to the JFK assassination. The CIA is a very safe bet.There is not a topic that I have taken more criticism for than when I
have written about the presence of foreign troops on American soil,
particularly, the Russians. At Ft. Carson, we are witnessing the
insertion of Russian troops on our soil. The
extra-constitutional “agreements”(that means illegal agreements) were
inked in Washington, D.C., at the fourth annual meeting of the illegally
created “U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Emergency Situations.” This extra-governmental organization, formed under the Obama administration, is one ofalmost two dozen similar “working groups” bringing
together top U.S. and Russian officials. These agreements allowed for
the first 15,000 Russian troops to enter the country. Case Closed!Before taking another sip of the CNN Kool-Aid, you might want to consider the contents of the following Army document.
Appendix N of FM 3-39.4
Foreign Confinement Officer Training Program
Training U.S. TrainersN-43. Soldiers and Marines who are assigned training missions
receive a course in the preparation to deal with the specific
requirements of developing the target HN confinement officers (i.e. foreign detention officers).
The course should emphasize the cultural background of the HN,
introduce its language (to include specific confinement-related terms
and phrases) and provide insights into cultural tips for developing a
good rapport with HN personnel.
Some
of these international partners will be wearing the UN blue and driving
in UN white vehicles. These Jade Helm partners are not your friend.
They are not here to conduct traffic control exercises. They are
here to subjugate you, strip you of your assets and herd you into
detention camps and when deemed necessary, they will not hesitate to
fire upon you if they feel compelled to do so.
ARSOF 2-2. A Multipolar World
Competition in the global commons will revolve around maintaining the security of key populations in militarily significant urban terrain.
The sheer mass and scale of urbanized humanity will be amplified by the
intersection of informationally aware, smartphone‐enabled urban
populations and their satisfaction—or lack of satisfaction—with local,
regional, and even global conditions.
In the coming decades, failed states and ungoverned
areas will become sanctuaries for extremist, criminal, and terrorist
organizations to flourish. Vacuums emerging from the weakened
nation‐state model of 19th and 20th centuries will not elicit new forms
of government, but only a proliferation of preexisting forms. The
significant difference will be the greater ability of nonstate
actors to defend themselves, and to influence or attack other
populations, due to the diffusion of weapons and communications
technologies down to subnation groups…
Urban terrain? I thought they were training for war in the Middle
East? What is a subnation group? Texas, Utah and part of Southern
California are subnation groups that have deemed to be hostile states by
Jade Helm documents. Jade Helm is preparing to occupy these “nonstate
actors”.On the surface, the Posse Comitatus Act (18 USC 1385) act should
prevent the Army from deploying the troops in the midst of a protest
that is not on the scale of something like the 1992 LA Riots. However,
the Army claims exemption from Posse Comitatus in the following area.
10 USC 331. When a state is unable to control
domestic violence and they have requested federal assistance, the use of
the militia or Armed Forces is authorized.
Perhaps this is why the original Jade Helm maps depicted states like Texas, to be hostile states.
Master the Human Domain
The phrase “Master the Human Domain” is omnipresent in Special Forces manuals.
The following explains the mystery behind the Jade Helm moniker phrase “Mastering the Human Domain“.
ARSOF 3-3. The Central Idea
Special Warfare. Special warfare is an umbrella term
indicating operating force conduct of combinations of unconventional
warfare (UW), foreign internal defense (FID), military information
support operations (MISO), CT, and counterinsurgency (COIN) through and
with indigenous personnel. With discreet, precise, politically astute,
and scalable capabilities, ARSOF frequently undertake politically
sensitive missions over extended periods of time in hostile, austere,
and denied environments. Here, ARSOF’s deep language and cultural
expertise enhance unit survivability through the recognition and
understanding of emerging threats. Such capabilities also grant Army special operators influence over the human domain in pursuit of U.S. objectives, to avoid conflict, or to bring about a quick and enduring victory…
Mastering the human domain can only mean one thing, enslavement!
ARSOF 4-5. Counterinsurgency Operations
…COIN will involve comprehensive civilian and military efforts taken to defeat an insurgency and to address any core grievances…
First Amendment rightto assemble? Is this going to be the standard operational protocols in dealing with future demonstrations?
Address any core grievances? My mind immediately harkens back to Kent
State, in 1970, when four college students frustrated by the illegal
Vietnam War were gunned down for expressing “core grievances”.This is not hyperbole! In an Army manual, known as ATP 3-39.33,
is the field manual that provides discussion and techniques about civil
disturbances and crowd control operations that occur in the continental
United States (CONUS) and outside the continental United States
(OCONUS). This document, ATP 3-39.33 published the same week as the
ARSOF document, on August 15, 2014, promises to change the way the
“military authorities” deal with protesters, even peaceful ones through
the use of well-placed snipers who will have orders to take out the
leaders of any protest movement. The consequences of ATP 3-39.33 could
prove deadly for protesters. Further, the provisions of this Army manual
is the end of the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. The Army
is telling you how they are going to deal with protests. Protesting, in America, is now a crime punishable by death. Therefore, when Jade Helm is in your neighborhood, unless you willing to fight, it would be best to stay inside!
ARSOF 5-3. Sustaining Surgical Strike
…operations against critical mission command nodes and infrastructure to weaken the enemy’s grip on the population…
How do Special Forces weaken the grip that dissidents have on the
local population? Death squads is the way that many governments deal
with “weakening the grip on the population”. This is clearly fancy
language used to justify the extraction, either through kidnapping or
targeted assassination, of political dissidents from inside the Jade
Helm identified “hostile state” areas.
Two Japanese Generals had an all day beheading contest. Can the use of guillotines really be that far-fetched?
This leads one to ask, is America going to see the repeat of historical events such as the “Rape of Nanking
ARSOF 1. Future surgical strike units must be
trained continually on the ever‐improving technologies and techniques
that support the F3EAD targeting methodology. ARSOF training is needed
to improve the speed of lethal or nonlethal effects, including advancing
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and analysis
capabilities to find and fix the target, sustaining a superb force for
finishing the target, improving site exploitation techniques and
procedures, and improving the timeliness of analysis and dissemination of exploited information.
This begs the question, what is meant by the term “exploited
information”? This is a term normally reserved for the practice of
extracting information through torture (i.e. extreme exploitation).
Camp Grayling is a known FEMA camp where Army Reservists are training to be sent to Guantanamo.
The Director of National Intelligence released a report last month indicating
that the United States has “confirmed” that 116 detainees, imprisoned
at Guantanamo Bay have “transferred” out of the prison. According to DNI
records most of these terrorists have subsequently reengaged in
terrorist or insurgent activities. In light of the new DNI report,
House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul criticized President
Obama’s policy of releasing Guantanamo detainees. So why is President
Obama engaged in such an insane act by clearing space at Guantanamo? The
answer to that question is to ask another question. Why are Michigan
Army Reservists and members of the Michigan National Guard training at Camp Grayling
to assume Guanatanmo security detail at a time when Obama is moving out
all the terrorists? Simple, it appears that Obama is preparing to move
in new residents, American political dissidents extracted by Jade Helm
personnel. And what goes on at Guantanamo? Torture!
Jade Helm Officials: “We Are Only Training to Fight In the Middle East”
The Army has been diligently training to lock the country down into martial law. Specifically, I am referring to the Army’s building of a ‘fake” $96 million dollar Northern Virginia town
which is being used to train the military to enforce martial Law. Of
course, the government says that this is a foreign town being used to
train our troops to occupy.We also hear this same worn out argument
about Jade Helm training in that “we are training for the Middle East”.
Does the following video look like the Middle East to you, or does it
look more like Mainstreet America? If Jade Helm truly training for the
Middle East, then someone needs to explain why the town has a Christian
church, handicap parking spots, Washington DC subway logos, loading zone
signs and road signs in English. I don’t remember seeing pictures of
the streets of Damascus in which they display handicap parking signs and
have a plethora of Christian churches. A picture is worth a thousand
words as you will see in the following video.
The People Are Not Buying the Lies
One has to go no further than Bastrop
County in Texas when people turned out to the tell the Jade Helm
propagandist that they were not drinking from his Jade Helm Kool-Aid.
A
woman who did not want her name published holds a sign at a public
hearing about the Jade Helm 15 military training exercise at the Bastrop
County Commissioners Court in Bastrop on Monday April 27, 2015. An
overflow crowd came to the meeting to hear a presentation and ask
questions of Lt. Col. Mark Lasatoria, of the U.S. Army Special
Operations Command, about the controversial military exercise that will
take place in several states this summer. JAY JANNER /
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
“Nobody believes me”.
This is what martial law looks like.
Jade Helm has been kicked out of Colorado and three counties in Texas. Push harder, America! | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Jlo Plastic Surgery Before After Pictures
The rumor of Jennifer Lopez plastic surgery has been spreading for long time. But, it still becomes nice topic of discussion for celebrity watchers because she always denies all plastic surgery allegation though the before and after pictures have shown a lot of difference.
Even some celebrity magazines report that there are many fans of her fans got angry when a plastic surgeon in London tried to do analysis about Jennifer Lopez plastic surgery.
Did Jlo Really Have Plastic Surgery?
Jlo Plastic Surgery Before After Pictures
Judging by before and after pictures supported with some reports from reputable online magazines, she indeed looks like having some surgical procedures done. But, to identify what kind of Jlo plastic surgery procedures is not easy job.
Let’s start from the most visible plastic surgery sign first. Many people claim that the most noticeable cosmetic surgery sign in her appearance is located on her nose. Jenifer lopez nose now looks slimmer and much better defined than before. It could have been as the result of nose job or a rhinoplasty surgery.
Jlo Plastic Surgery Before and After
The other part of her body that triggers plastic surgery allegation is dealing with the change of Jlo breast size. It has to be noted that Jlo boobs previously look a little bit small, but they now look bigger and rounder. For those who see this transformation must speculate if the diva got boob job or breast implants.
In addition, the other sign of Jlo plastic surgery can be seen from her facial skin which still looks tight and smooth, as if it is hard to see the wrinkles or crows feet lines and excessive skins around her face. There are only two possibilities for her to maintain the ageless look. First, she may have been blessed with good genes, second, she could have been under knife for Botox injection.
Jlo Plastic Surgery Boob Job
Many plastic surgery experts also believe that Jlo could get lips filler injection like Restalyne. The sign of this beauty surgery can be seen from the shape of her lips now. Let’s take a look at the before picture! Her lips look slim, but in the after picture her lips have turned into juicy.
Over all, Jlo may deny all allegations of plastic surgery procedures, but the comparison between before and after pictures show different facts. They show that some parts of her body clearly reflect the plastic surgery sign.
PlasticSurgeryFact.com is a participant in the eBay Partner Network Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
[Naikan therapy for prolonged depression: psychological changes and long-term efficacy of intensive Naikan therapy].
Many studies have shown that a considerable number of patients with prolonged depression are refractory to drug therapy or supportive psychotherapy. A few studies have shown the short-term effectiveness of intensive Naikan therapy for prolonged depression, but the long-term effects have not been reported. For other psychotherapies also, few studies have demonstrated their long-term effectiveness for prolonged depression. The purpose of the present study was to assess the long-term efficacy of intensive Naikan therapy for patients with prolonged depression and to investigate the factors contributing to its efficacy. At Tottori University Hospital, 23 inpatients with prolonged depression were treated with intensive Naikan therapy. The age, sex, age at onset, number of depressive episodes, duration of the present episode, diagnosis and family history were investigated. The Tokyo University Egogram (TEG), Yatabe-Guiltora personality inventory (YG test) and Rosenzweig picture-frustration (PF) study were conducted before and after intensive Naikan therapy to investigate psychological changes. The long-term efficacy (average: 24.5 +/- 10.6 months) of intensive Naikan therapy for prolonged depression was assessed with Global Assessment of Functioning scale (GAF). "Improvement" was defined as a post-therapy GAF score of 61 or higher. The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) was applied to confirm the GAF results. Whether the patient achieved awareness of other's viewpoint, awareness of egocentricity, feeling of love, breaking out from self and sense of fulfillment after intensive Naikan therapy was investigated. Fifteen patients (65.2%) showed improvement in GAF and HAM-D (improved group) and eight patients showed no improvement (non-improved group). The average GAF score changed from 46.1 (before Naikan therapy) to 81.8 (at outcome assessment) in the improved group and from 45.3 to 52.8 in the non-improved group. The improved group had significantly shorter average duration of the present depressive episode and significantly less depressive episodes compared to the non-improved group. Only the improved group showed significantly lower scores on the critical parent (CP) scale of TEG, cyclic tendency (C) on the YG test and extraggression (E-A) in PF study. In the improved group, significantly more patients achieved deep insight (Naikan); and significantly more patients achieved awareness of other's viewpoint, awareness of egocentricity, feeling of love, breaking out from self and sense of fulfillment after intensive Naikan therapy. Our results suggested that intensive Naikan therapy for prolonged depression was equally as effective as Morita therapy, interpersonal therapy or group psychotherapy, and the effects of intensive Naikan therapy continued for a long term. Attainment of deep Naikan brought psychological changes in patients showing improvement, motivating them to continue Naikan therapy in daily life. We consider that this is the key factor that maintains the long-term efficacy of intensive Naikan therapy. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
In 2011, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi burst into the worldwide filmic consciousness with his breakout masterpiece A Separation, which swept up universal acclaim and a bundle of awards notices, all of which is secondary to the strengths of the film itself. Its welcoming reception and subsequent success not only put Iran further on the map as a force to be reckoned with cinematically (even though their film industry still remains vastly underrated in most cinematic circles), but it also boosted Farhadi’s career tremendously, to the point where he was in a position to do whatever he wanted afterwards. Fast forward two years later, where he followed up the success of A Separation with another masterpiece in The Past, which all but cements Farhadi’s status as possibly the purest and most talented dramatist working in cinema today.
Fresh off her virtually dialogue-less performance in The Artist, Berenice Bejo headlined this domestic drama as Marie, the rigid and disciplinary (to the point of being borderline abusive) matriarch of a dysfunctional household in inner city France. The film begins with Marie waiting to meet her ex-husband Ahmad (played by Ali Mosaffa) in an airport as he arrives from Iran and bring him home with her to finalize their divorce. Once he arrives, Ahmad begins to assimilate with Marie’s new surroundings and is soon thrust into a world of deceit, resentment, and betrayal the likes of which only an immediate family could inflict on one another. Rounding out the main cast is Tahar Rahim as Marie’s current boyfriend, and Pauline Burlet as Marie’s oldest daughter from her first marriage, the latter of whom provides a particularly strong supporting turn amidst this relatively limited ensemble.
Fiercely staged and expertly put together, Asghar Farhadi directs here with increased confidence, and is able to translate his reliably challenging storytelling techniques to an entirely different culture without much alteration. As expected, The Past deals with a lot of similar themes and situations as Farhadi’s previous A Separation, and while this film does feel similar to its predecessor in a number of ways, it comes across more like the logical continuation of the themes presented in that film, rather than a mere rehash of older ideas. Whereas the foundation of A Separation’s storyline is built upon a crumbling marriage and how that impacts the day to day lives of those involved, The Past begins with a married couple already having been separated, and follows them after their marriage is already finished. These thematic components are explored organically throughout the course of the film, and the final thesis is just as provocative as anything Farhadi has made in his career.
For the location of this film, Farhadi opted to go with France instead of his native country of Iran, where all of his previous films have been set. This change in locales could be due to a number of factors, the least of which being the more controversial or at least heavier subject matter dealt with herein, which includes but is not limited to suicide, extreme guilt, and even potential undertones of sexual abuse between Marie and her oldest daughter. But while that last angle is admittedly pretty ambiguous, there is a clear implication of physical abuse, which is all but confirmed by Marie’s introductory scene involving her wearing a splint on her wrist, presumably sprained from disciplining her children too often. Even for Asghar Farhadi’s repertoire, this stuff is pretty shocking, and hat’s off to him for handling it with such elegance and narrative subtlety.
Simply put, The Past is another masterwork from one of cinema’s most gifted living filmmakers. Challenging, engrossing, and well put together, this is just the kind of film that instills my faith in modern cinema. If having to deal with all this expanded universe malarkey and increasing dependence on blockbuster filmmaking in the industry is juxtaposed with directors such as Asghar Farhadi making a brand new film every couple of years, I’d say that’s a pretty fair trade. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
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Friday, April 9, 2010
Book Blogger Hop
This is the second time I am joining in for Jennifer's Book Blogger Hop over at Crazy for Books. This is a great way to learn about new (to you) bloggers that blog about books and reading. It also promotes your blog and gets people coming out to see you.
So, welcome to all the new visitors from the Book Bloggers Hop. I will be sure to return the favour and head over to your blog sometime this weekend.
SB, I was searching around today for some new templates and I found a neat website...see my comment on the post after this one. But I don't like the advertise boxes at all...so I am going (did) change the template again. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
5 Things You Didn’t Know About Trichotillomania
Many people are completely unaware of this condition called trichotillomania that affects two to three percent of Americans. But if you are aware of the condition of compulsive hair pulling, there are some things about it that you don’t know.
People With Trichotillomania Feel Alone
Just like with so many conditions that many others don’t know about, people with this condition often believe they’re the only ones with it. Some don’t even realize there’s a name for the habit of hair pulling.
Like with so many things, social media has expanded awareness of trichotillomania and helped people with the condition feel better about themselves. Increasing awareness of this condition has also given sufferers a feeling of empowerment. They’re not the only ones with this sometimes strange condition.
One of the most important parts of finding out they’re not alone is the knowledge that people with trichotillomania no longer have to keep their feelings about the condition inside. Now, they can talk to other people who really know what it’s like to have this hair pulling habit. This serves to decrease the anxiety and shame they sometimes feel and that can increase the compulsion to pull hair.
Finding out there are others with this condition also helps people with it to know these others also find it hard to stop. They begin to understand it’s all right to try to stop, then have a slip-up. They realize everyone has set backs.
People With Trichotillomania Are Self-Conscious
One of the things about people with this condition that others don’t know is they don’t want to have it. So, when they engage in hair pulling, the very obvious results lead them to feel very self-conscious about their appearance.
The bald spots on the scalp that can occur with this condition are very obvious and draw a lot of attention from others. This unwanted attention causes very significant anguish and anxiety. These negative emotions can lead to more hair pulling.
People who experience this hair pulling compulsion may spend a great deal of time working on their hair. Attempting to hide the bald spots can lead to hours in front of a mirror, trying different styles or trying to brush the hair just right to cover up the scalp. Even if they get their hair just right, they still think about and worry about it staying just right all day.
They Don’t Expect You To Understand
It’s hard enough for people who deal with the travails of trichotillomania to understand why they do what they do. How can someone who hasn’t felt the strong compulsion to pull their hair out (literally!) understand it?
An interesting addition to this is people with this condition don’t really need those without it to understand what they go through. What they need with those who never felt the compulsion to pull hair is to accept and support them, to recognize this is a struggle they deal with daily. Loving them without condition, being positive about them as people, and encouraging them are significantly important.
At least some of the time, people with this condition don’t really want to talk about it, either. Yes, they understand the need to vent feelings at times, but not always when you want them to. The shame connected with this kind of behavior makes it difficult for them to talk about it, even with others who share the disorder. Sometimes, people with trichotillomania don’t want others to know how much they suffer.
On the other hand, there may be times when those who experience this condition do want to talk. At those times, they need to feel free to come to you. And you need to be available. It’s important that you don’t try to force them to talk, no matter how much you want to help them. It may take a long time for them to get to the point of wanting to talk about this condition that is so strongly upsetting.
There are times those who have this condition just need space to deal with their feelings by themselves. Just think how difficult it is to have this hair pulling compulsion and live in a society where hair can seem to be worshipped. Consider how many advertisements there are for hair products. And all of them feature someone with such wonderful hair. Having to see this over and over can lead to significant depression and anxiety. Both of these emotions have been shown to increase the impulse to pull hair.
People With Trichotillomania Don’t Always Want To Stop
It isn’t easy to try to stop the compulsion to pull hair. Even though there are ways people can stop, they don’t always want to. Sometimes, it’s just easier to sit and pull hair.
At least part of the reason for this difficulty is the rewarding effect of hair pulling. Since the behavior begins as a result of mounting tension within the person, the relief they experience when they pull hair is pleasurable. When the tension increases again, it is pleasant to revert to the behavior that decreases it.
Stopping this kind of reinforcing behavior requires a great deal of work and motivation. People can’t always keep the level of motivation required and don’t want to put in the work. One failure sometimes leads to giving up.
They Can Sometimes Ruin Their Hard Work In Minutes
Even when people with trichotillomania are successful in making strides toward stopping the behavior, it can all be undone in just a short time. Because the hair pulling behavior can occur almost unconsciously, only one instance of engaging in this behavior while studying or watching television can lead to a cascade of hair pulling.
One Last Thing
Think about this: Any discomfort you experience with your eyes is felt a million times worse by those without eyelashes. Even crying hurts.
Priscilla Elliott is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner in south Austin. She owns and provides psychotherapy at Courage Counseling, PLLC. While specializing in helping clients who are struggling with trauma, trichotillomania, and/or skin picking disorder; she also supports many in life transitions, anxiety, and depression. Call now for help: 512-673-3987
Groups Accepting New Members!
BFRB therapy groups are Accepting New Members. Scheduled on Wednesdays focusing on recovering from Skin Picking (Excoriation) and Hair Pulling (Trichotillomania) as well as improving wellness, anxiety, and relationships in general. Please contact me to learn more at [email protected] Interview Required Before Joining. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
We are officially listed as "hosted" on the New Horizons photo listing... so exciting!
To date we have raised $320 and have someone who just cleaned out their 13 year old's stuff for all the clothes that don't fit. They are going to donate it all to us! So we should be good on clothes and will maybe need to purchase a swimsuit, shoes, and undies, plus a school backpack and piece of luggage. In addition, I've given our address to around 15 people who have asked through the blog and facebook who are wanting to send checks. Woo Hoo! We're on our way!
Yesterday I talked to the kids about my leap of faith that God is leading me toward updating my foster care home study to an adoption home study and beginning the journey of adopting, most likely internationally. I feel that He is whispering to me that there is a child that is meant to be a part of our forever family and that I need to be ready. If we were to get a foster placement, that could change, but right now, I’m trying to follow God’s voice.
So I spoke to the kids a little last night about it. Liam doesn’t “get it” and the conversation pretty much went over his head, but Olivia and Braeden were jumping up and down and yelling ,“Yes!” They are excited, to say the least. Then they took it upon themselves to discuss the gender of the child, first saying they wanted a baby sister, then firmly deciding on a baby brother. It was too cute!
This morning we woke up and the first thing Braeden said was, “Mom, let’s go adopt our baby boy!” All the sincerity and grins he could muster, it was so sweet! So I had to explain (again, I DID go over this yesterday but it must’ve gotten lost in the excitement), how it will take quite a while and that it is also pretty expensive and we’ll have to work together as a family to save money (This is where my biggest leap of faith is… Financially how are we as a single family home with a teacher for a parent…. Going to AFFORD this???!!! But, I believe with all I am that if this is truly HIS leading, then it will happen.) Braeden turned to me, with all seriousness, and said, “Are girls less expensive?” HILARIOUS! I did go on to explain that we weren’t buying a child, but rather that the paperwork and help we would need is what costs money. It was just priceless!
Hosting entails so much more than I ever realized. I'm excited about all of it, don't get me wrong, but it's much more than "hang out with a child for a few weeks." As a hosting family, we are to provide clothes, luggage, some simple toys/items, a dental visit and eye exam, follow ups if either of those prove to require work, mandated group activities if other host families are close by, weekly reports... A lot to take in, but it all makes sense, just things I hadn't thought of previously. And I'm excited to do it! :)
Of course there's also the financial commitment. In addition to the clothes, luggage, and small personal items (the dental and eye exams are usually donated), there is also the cost of travel and fees to bring them here in the first place. For us, that translates to $2500-$2750, depending on how the travel works out for his return flight.
In order to raise hopefully a portion of those funds, we are holding a pretty cool (I totally stole the idea!) fundraiser. We are going to be purchasing a 500 piece puzzle this coming week. For each five dollars donated, we will write the name of that donor on the back of one puzzle piece. Donate $20 and we will write your name on four pieces. Then, the completed puzzle, each person coming together to bring Davids to the US for this life-changing experience, will be presented to him as a gift while he's here. I plan to use this to show him how very much God loves him, how each of those who donated money to bring him to us love him and are sharing the love of God with him through their donation. I think it will be an amazing and very real representation of God's work in this world.
If you would be able to donate even five dollars, you would be helping to provide that opportunity to this child. God has ordained that "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27) While not all of us may be able to host or adopt ourselves, we can all empower others in this ministry by donating. Please consider prayerfully if God is leading in this area.
If you would like to donate, you can donate safely through the paypal button on the right of the blog. Paypal does take a small portion of your donation for their fees, so if you'd rather not lose that portion you can email me and if I "know" you I will send you my address and you can send a check instead. For each $5 donated in any way, your name will be placed on the back of one of the puzzle pieces which will be given to Davids when he arrives. I will place a picture of the puzzle on the blog once it's purchased. Thank you SO MUCH for your support!!!
Remember, even more important than financial support is your prayer support. If you are at all praying and supporting us, PLEASE leave a comment and let me know so we can be praying for you and yours as well! God bless!
We have officially put on hold and begun the application process to bring Davids (yes, it's Davids with an -s) to our home for five weeks this summer from Latvia.
Davids is 15, but is the size of an 11 year old. He is described as bright, creative, thoughtful, and funny. He plays beautifully with young children, dreams of being a pilot, has read all of the Harry Potter books, enjoys soccer and swimming, and much more!
As I was emailing a few concerns and questions about hosting to the director of the program (we're going to be in Florida when it's time for their departure and I didn't know if we could still host and work that out), I gave her a list of five kids we were thinking/praying about possibly hosting and asked if any were spoken for or if she knew if one was a good fit for us. She said that when she saw Davids name on our list her "heart lept" because he was one of her favorites and she had really hoped he'd have the opportunity to come to America. I knew God had answered my question of "who." And thought travel isn't completely worked out, I know He will also answer the question of "how."
Please pray for Davids and for our family through this time. That we can prepare and be the best example of God's love to him that we possibly can. Also, please prayerfully consider supporting us. We would love your support prayerfully and will need financial support as well.
We can't wait to share our home with Davids, to hang out with him and teach him and learn from him. What an experience for us all!
We have officially put a child on hold to host over part of the summer!!! I'm so excited, nervous, thrilled, etc...!!! We are going to be hosting a 15 year old boy from Latvia! As soon as I know that I can post his picture and more information I certainly will!
Please pray for him, pray for us, and pray for our fundraising we'll be doing to help with the costs! Thank you!!!
Living in a perfect world is a bittersweet idea. For me it conjures up the world the way God would have originally imagined it to be. Or at least the way I imagine that God would have imagined it. ☺ It would be a place where people would get along, where no one would hurt or be sad at someone’s remarks that cut them to the core, where things would be shared if someone needed food or shelter or clothing, where we would all truly be spiritual siblings, and would treat each other as such. But, as I said it would be bittersweet. For as wonderful as that sounds, as wonderful and glorifying as that would be, it would also mean that I didn’t have any children. I wouldn’t have my three beautiful blessings. Because in a perfect world, parents would marry their husbands and wives, would have children, and would parent, lovingly, those children until adulthood. I’m sure there would still be a form of adoption brought on by the rare tragedy, taking a child’s family from them and leaving them without anyone else, but in that case we would all simply follow God’s providence, His plan, and WE would all care for the widows and the ORPHANS. Parents wouldn’t choose negative behavior over their children. Parents wouldn’t be forced to place their children for adoption because they couldn’t care for them. Situations like the little boy I submitted paperwork for wouldn’t exist (he is a beloved child with Down’s, the son of a single parent with no support, who has received multitudes of therapies, etc, but she just can’t keep on). In a perfect world, I (if I had money, if I had space, If….) would take them BOTH in and help HER to care for HER child. And in a perfect world, children wouldn’t be forced into foster care, where families wouldn’t choose to continue their negative behavior over “earning” their child back, where states wouldn’t be forced to take parental rights away, where I wouldn’t be adopting my children, and where I wouldn’t have to go through with one of my beauties what I went through last night.
Because last night I ended up holding and comforting a sobbing six year old as he wept and wept for birth parents he doesn’t know. Crying to know what they look like, what their names are, what they are like. And I held him, and comforted him, rocked him, and my heart broke for him, broke with him. And even at six years old, as he was going through what he was going through, he turned to me and said that he loves me, that I am a good mom, but that he would just like to know them. Wow. We talked and prayed and I reassured him that they love him, they think of him, they will love to know him one day. And as I put him to bed I told him his birth dad’s first name. (I couldn’t remember his mom’s but will look it up to tell him.) He began a falsetto type song about his dad (name) and how he is the best dad. And then I battled myself, with human emotion, which I can’t believe I am even admitting, and was thinking not so nice things about this dad that Braeden was singing so beautifully about. Luckily my Godly side won out and I stopped and just broke apart all over again for my son, for his heart, for his loss, and for his grief.
In a perfect world I wouldn’t have to see my son go through this. But in a perfect world I wouldn’t have my son. Bittersweet.
* We are thinking of hosting a child from Latvia for some time this summer. They would most likely be available for adoption, but we'd play that by ear and see how it goes. The only thing in the way currently is that we will be in Florida at the time they are to depart, so I'm checking to see if there's any way they could possibly travel back with a group out of FL.
* Olivia will be going by herself for her first time to visit her grandparents in Florida. She does SO MUCH for me, all the time, I really struggled to find a way to honor that in her. I didn't want to just "buy" her something. My parents have spoken in the past about wanting the kids to visit when they were old enough, and I thought now would be a great time for Olivia to do just that. I broached the subject and my mom was THRILLED. Our trip this summer won't be until mid July, so Olivia will be going for a few days after school in the beginning of June. Of course I think I did make a mistake though in telling her now, as that is ALL that we here about! LOL :)
* The four year old boy in Indiana still does not have a forever family chosen. I am anxiously awaiting news, but think I most likely won't hear if we're not the ones chosen.
* Still no news on the house or job. I just wish I knew what we would be doing. I am tired of living in "house selling" mode. I am tired of saying "That's packed" as we packed up a bunch to declutter the house. I am tired of not seeing all of our family photos as we removed them to make the house as non-specific as possible. I want to get a dog, for the kids right, and yet don't want to get one when we're trying to sell our house and had told the kids we'd get one when we moved. And I am tired of waiting to find out. :) Come on, God, just TELL me!!! :)
* A great friend and I are planning a trip in early August to celebrate (or should that be bemoan) my turning 40 this summer. We are going to fly to Vegas, leaving my kids with my parents while I'm gone, and possibly stay a day or two at the Grand Canyon as well. I've never been to Vegas and thought that would be a great one to do with no kids, and the GC has always been a dream of mine and is in driving distance. So.... I did pick up this dress on clearance to wear "out" on the town... what do you think???
With all of the lovely budget cuts and issues in IL regarding teaching, and spreading to other parts of the country as well I see, I have not heard one thing about a job in the area I was hoping to move to. There were a couple posting for positions a little ways out, and I did apply, but was not asked for an interview. I don't blame them. If you had the cutbacks schools do and could choose to hire someone right out of college or someone who's been teaching for 10 years, who would you choose? I get it, but still. :)
No news on the house either. The young couple who I thought was a maybe, really was. They loved the house, the area, everything, BUT were also applying to be RA's for our local Christian college, and ended up getting the position and not needing housing. There was someone who asked if I would consider a rent to own situation, and after looking into it, and deciding to leave it in God's hands, haven't heard back since he saw the house on Saturday.
I truly believe it was God who gave me the nudge, the desire, to want to move. We're happy here, it's not that we're not, but after getting that desire, I have thought and daydreamed about moving, and have really begun to look forward to it, and now.... nothing. So we wait, and leave it to HIM.
And with adoption... there was a posting recently for a four year old boy in a neighboring state with Down Syndrome. He is currently living with his birth mom and she is overwhelmed with no support. So in a rush, I wrote, emailed, faxed, my homestudy, a birthmother letter, and photos. But, there was lots of interest, which I'm tremendously happy about, and I haven't heard anything, so I'm guessing we're not chosen.
And while I'm on eharmony, nothing yet in that area either! So if you happen to know any caring, considerate, Christian men in the 35-45 year old range, looking to meet someone and possibly be interested in the field of adoption, send 'em my way! :)
I got my hair done, and got a tattoo… my first, should I say ONLY ☺… to help with an adoption fundraiser and to “celebrate” my weight loss. As of right now I’ve lost 73 pounds! What staggers me is the fact that I could strap Olivia on my back and STILL not have that much weight added back on! I can’t imagine her getting on my back and walking around and doing things, yet I was doing that every day for years! Unreal!A few days after the tattoo, Olivia and I ran our first 5K. She LOVES to run and was SO very excited to do this! But, it ended up being COLD! 33 degrees in fact, and she could not get past that and feel warm. So I ended up walking most of it with her, running a few times in the midst, and trying to keep her spirits up. She felt so defeated and ready to give in, I could just read it on her face, yet she kept going, kept persisting, and went on. Halfway through a very generous soul gave her a jacket and gloves and that got her going again. We made it through, were not the last ones, and can now say with pride that we’ve done a 5K! And, even better, we have a great time we can surely beat the NEXT time! ☺
That 5K was held in my hometown, benefitting a wonderful Christian organization which I basically grew up in, Young Life. Young Life is geared toward high schoolers and is a crazy, fun way to share the gospel and get kids started on that personal relationship with Christ.
We spent some time with good friends Friday night, Braeden’s godmother and her two lovelys Saturday, went to a great Easter Egg Hunt while there, then headed 40 minutes away to where my dad’s side of the family live. My cousins were throwing a surprise party for my aunt’s 60th birthday. It was great to spend time with everyone and see people! We went to our favorite pizza place on our way out of town and although we got home late, it was a wonderful weekend.
The following Friday we headed up to a log cabin we rented for the Easter weekend. I wanted to spend some time with JUST US for a change and have some peace and quiet. It was great! The weather was gorgeous! We had time in the sand, time at a movie, time to play outside, time to build fires in the fireplace, time to decorate eggs, and time to hunt for eggs.
The sweetest surprise ever awaited me after the kids had found all of the eggs and their baskets and we went to sit around the fireplace and watch some tv. I pulled back the blanket on the chaise I had “claimed” while we were there and was stunned to find a hidden Easter basket. There had been no children hinting at me finding it, nothing, and I was amazed. The note inside, along with the foam eggs decorations and chocolate candy, was the sweetest thing!
If you can’t read it, it says: “Dear admirere I think you take care of your kids very well. Your kids are thankful for you although they do not act like it sometimes. Love, Secret Admirere”
We came back last Monday to the rest of spring break. On Wednesday I spent the day with Braeden and Olivia running some errands, going to a medical appt for Braeden in order to get a referral to see a doctor about beginning him on meds for ADHD. His teacher and I have been working together and both feel that this is the time to begin, using this last month of school as a time where she can watch him to make sure we get him on the right one. Then they were able to go to a local indoor bounce facility they hadn’t been to yet.
Thursday Olivia and Liam had neuro appts and Olivia had another EEG. Her EEG showed that she is still having seizure activity while awake, but mostly while asleep. That means she is not fully being rested at night which explains so much. My kids currently go to bed at 7 and are up between 6:15 and 7 in the morning. My boys could easily go to bed a good hour later, but Olivia can’t. I’ve tried putting her to bed later, especially in the summer, and she is cranky, emotional, and sometimes behavioral when I do. Well, now it falls into place. If she’s not even getting enough rest by going to bed at 7, she’s getting even less going to bed later, and when she’s tired, that’s how her body reacts. Due to her other medications however, her neurologist now has to discuss with them what to do and make sure any new meds they’re considering don’t conflict with ones she’s currently taking.
Friday I took a mom’s day and ran errands in the morning and saw TWO movies back to back in the afternoon with a friend! ☺
Braeden discovered Saturday that he has a new tooth coming in, even though he hasn't even lost his first one yet! He is DYING for that silly tooth fairy to come visit his bed! :)
Saturday was a zoo day, and the weather was GORGEOUS! We spent time with good friends and their two kiddos and had a blast!
And finally, yesterday, we went to church and then to get a family picture… much needed! ☺ It turned out great and we had a fun day at the mall!
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About Me
I am a single mom to four amazing kids; each of whom just happen to have been adopted. The first three were adopted through foster care, and we just completed an international adoption from Haiti. Our family has grown through adoption and I am all the more blessed to know each of my children. I worship a mighty God, teach Special Ed, love bargains, and am inspired by Pinterest... come along with us for the ride!
What you should know about HIV
-HIV can NOT be spread through casual/household contact. HIV is not spread through hugging, kissing, shaking hands, sharing toys, sneezing, coughing, sharing food, sharing drinks, bathing, swimming or any other casual way. It has been proven that HIV and AIDS can only be spread through sexual contact, birth, breastfeeding and blood to blood contact (such as sharing needles).
- HIV is now considered a chronic but manageable disease. With treatment, people who are HIV+ can live indefinitely without developing AIDS and can live long and full lives.
- People who are HIV+ deserve to be treated with love, respect, support and acceptance as all people do.
Additional information on transmission of HIV can be found on the Center for Disease Control website: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources
Other Awesome Blogs
Orphan Crisis
• 147 million orphans in the world
• 50 million orphans in Africa
• Every 14 seconds a child is orphaned by AIDS
• 16,000,000 have been orphaned by AIDS
• Every week, AIDS claims as many lives as American fatalities in the Vietnam War
• 854 million people do not have enough to eat
• Malnutrition is associated with the deaths of 5 million children under the age of five
• Every 2 seconds an orphan dies from malnutrition
Hence the title of my blog
Little Did I Know
Little did I know that the road would be so rocky
Little did I know that the trip would take so long
Little did I know that my heart could hurt so much
Little did I know that God is never wrong
Little did I know that love could be so powerful
Little did I know that a dream so far could go
Little did I know that God would place the right ones
Little did I know that my heart, so large, could grow
Little did I know that a dream has it’s own timing
Little did I know that this day would finally come
Little did I know that four souls would be sent to guide me
Little did I know that they would choose to call me mom
But God knew all along and He had a plan to follow
God knew all along that my dream would soon come true
God knew all along that we five should be together
God knew all along that I’d share it all with you | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
The role of kisspeptin neurons in reproduction and metabolism.
Kisspeptin is a neuropeptide with a critical role in the function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. Kisspeptin is produced by two major populations of neurons located in the hypothalamus, the rostral periventricular region of the third ventricle (RP3V) and arcuate nucleus (ARC). These neurons project to and activate gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons (acting via the kisspeptin receptor, Kiss1r) in the hypothalamus and stimulate the secretion of GnRH. Gonadal sex steroids stimulate kisspeptin neurons in the RP3V, but inhibit kisspeptin neurons in the ARC, which is the underlying mechanism for positive- and negative feedback respectively, and it is now commonly accepted that the ARC kisspeptin neurons act as the GnRH pulse generator. Due to kisspeptin's profound effect on the HPG axis, a focus of recent research has been on afferent inputs to kisspeptin neurons and one specific area of interest has been energy balance, which is thought to facilitate effects such as suppressing fertility in those with under- or severe over-nutrition. Alternatively, evidence is building for a direct role for kisspeptin in regulating energy balance and metabolism. Kiss1r-knockout (KO) mice exhibit increased adiposity and reduced energy expenditure. Although the mechanisms underlying these observations are currently unknown, Kiss1r is expressed in adipose tissue and potentially brown adipose tissue (BAT) and Kiss1rKO mice exhibit reduced energy expenditure. Recent studies are now looking at the effects of kisspeptin signalling on behaviour, with clinical evidence emerging of kisspeptin affecting sexual behaviour, further investigation of potential neuronal pathways are warranted. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
Anyone who's been within earshot of me in the past several months knows that I've taken the plunge and joined the P90X craze, which has been a journey unto itself. P90X, as many of you probably know, is a workout-at-home program that has users cycling through about ten DVDs repeatedly over the course of ninety days. As a result, we P90Xers are exposed to the same jokes, the same comments, and the same chatter day after day, week after week, and at the center of it all is fitness guru Tony Horton, who takes us to hell and back every day with a colorful cast of supporting characters. It doesn't take long to grow attached to some of these oft-silent people in the background, and I know many users have their favorites (as well as those they detest). With that in mind, I decided to compile a list - a ranking of all the supporting cast members from worst to best. There were definitely some difficult decisions, but hey, I know it's hard. It's supposed to be!
Some clarification before we begin. This list only includes the original P90X. P90X Plus and P90X2 are not represented.
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23. Dom
Here's why Dom is the very worst supporting cast member of P90X. While all of us are sweating and panting away during the torturous, evil DVD known as "Plymometrics" (jump training, essentially), Dom is bouncing around with his spring-loaded legs as if it ain't no thing. Even worse, he shows EVERYONE up whenever he can, particularly during Jump Knee Tucks, which are the "mother of all the moves" on the "mother of all the workouts." Here I am, struggling to jump in place like some demented frog, and there's Dom - boing boing boing. This may be the mother of all the moves, but he is the MOTHER OF ALL ASSHOLES. At that moment, as I see death approaching me (or maybe it's just the salty sweat in my eyes), I hate Dom more than anything in life. I'm sure he's a lovely guy though!
22. Katie
This chatterbox is truly the most annoying person in the P90X oeuvre. Appearing on the Back & Biceps DVD, she spends most of the workout clamoring for the spotlight with perky, irritating squeaks and comments. Even worse, towards the end of the DVD when our aforementioned backs and biceps are nothing but loose putty incapable of even the mildest exertion, she volunteers to perform the HARDEST pull-up in the history of pull-ups: the corn cob. Trust me: when you hear her chirp, "I'm gonna do CORN COB!" you'll want to absolutely punch her in the face (not that I condone violence towards women, but I mean, c'mon…).
WHERE'S YOUR CORN COB NOW?? (I know that makes no sense)
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If you need a break from the countdown, do it now. Do NOT sit down. Don't go eating a pastrami sandwich. Hamburger bad, fries bad, Coca-Cola bad. Drink your water, people.
Mini-break… Break's over!
21. Wesley Idol
Here's the problem with Wesley Idol. He allegedly introduced Tony to the Kenpo-X routine (which isn't THAT great, by the by), and yet Wesley barely seems to be able to properly keep up. I mean, I know Wesley ONLY BLEEDS ON THE INSIDE, but that doesn't mean he's allowed to be so slow while doing CLAW PULL PUNCH! CLAW PULL PUNCH! SWORD HAMMER! SWORD HAMMER! Sorry. It just takes over. Anyway, I have some serious questions about Wesley's form, which is not to say that mine is better (I'm very awkward and tend to fall over for no particular reason), but seriously, if you are the Grand Poobah of Kenpo-X, at least be awesome at it.
20. Timmy
I feel like Timmy would have been a decent guy had he been on any other DVD, but as the fates would have it, he wound up on Back & Biceps with Katie, and this punk (who could surely beat me to a pulp - he was a Marine, after all) sort of suffers because of it. He feeds on Katie's energy, and it's not long before the two are practically yapping away, vying for attention. Excuse me, but Tony's trying to teach a class here, okay? Shut it.
19. Phil
Talk about surly. Our resident lawyer / karate master / caveman, Phil serves as the most humorless guy in the cast. And we have some pretty humorless people (including DOM). I don't know why Phil is so mad - maybe it's the janky haircut he sports every time he's on camera, or maybe it's that he's so muscular he can't do seated spine stretch like everyone else - but either way, I can assure you he's NO fun. Turn that frown upside-down, brohan.
18. Vanessa
Vanessa is something of a brute. She doesn't really have much personality, and really the only thing I can consistently remember about her is that her shirt was light green at the beginning of Kenpo-X (it turns to dark green. Sweat, etc.). I think I heard a rumor somewhere that she's engaged to Jason from Ab Ripper X (lucky her: he's the RIP KING). Perhaps that's mentioned on the Cardio-X DVD, which I've never used (but I believe they're both on it). Anyway, I'm getting off topic. The point is that Vanessa is mean, and I question her footwork during Kenpo. THERE. I said it.
17. Scotty Fifer
Scotty Fifer isn't the worst, but he does seem a little smug, and I can never, EVER forgive him for bringing "Fifer Scissors" into my world. Truth is that whenever Tony Horton mentions that we'll be doing anything involving scissors, I groan. That Scotty Fifer had to introduce another variation of scissors into the P90X universe is INEXCUSABLE. For shame, Scotty! For shame!
16. Eric
I don't mind Eric. He owns a boat. And he's from Belgium. That's his thing. He seems a touch cocky though. Either way, he signals the transition point on this list from where the cast goes from being annoying to merely bland.
15. Audra
Speaking of bland, here's Audra. Who? Exactly. She's the Ann Veal of P90X. Given that she appears on the longest DVD of the bunch (Yoga X) and the most often viewed workout (Ab Ripper X), it's shocking that I still couldn't pick her out of a crowd. Having that little personality is a talent. Or maybe an anti-talent. Whatever it is, Audra is the most forgettable - and therefore inoffensive - of the crew.
Who's that? OH. It's AUDRA.
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Wow, we're only at 15? I'm dogging it!!
14. Shauna / Shawna
There's some controversy online about the spelling of Shauna's name (does it have a u or a w? Who knows??). That might be the most exciting thing about her. Actually, wait. I'M PUSHING MY OWN PERSONAL PAUSE BUTTON. Shauna does have something exciting about her: she always looks like she's enjoying some sort of sex fantasy whenever she stretches. And boy, can she stretch. She's so flexible she makes Gumby look like the Tin Man (or is that Adam?). Either way, she could certainly pose FOR THE COVER OF DOWNWARD DOG MAGAZINE. Best downward dog of her life, I'm sure.
13. Jason
Jason… Jason… who's Jason again? Oh yeah. HE'S THE RIP KING. And engaged to Vanessa. Looks like he didn't take Tony's tip of the day: engage… and I don't mean go out and GET engaged. My only exposure to Jason is on Ab Ripper X (again, I haven't done Cardio X); so I really know nothing about this guy except that he just loves flinging his arms in the air while doing seated bicycles. Damn him. Johnny Intense like no one's business.
12. Joe Bovino
Man o Manischewitz. What to say about Joe Bovino? I sort of like Joe Bovino, if only because he must endure Tony perpetually insisting that they're twins. They're not. Plus, he has very impressive triceps! Or as Tony calls them, DIAMONDS OF GOLD.
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Halfway done with the list. Party's almost over! What a bummer! If you're dogging it, just hit the pause button, and when you're back, we'll be right here.
11. Dave
Dave is a little bland, making his lone, quiet appearance on the Chest & Shoulders & Triceps DVD. But he's rather jacked AND a substitute school teacher, a combination which I think is sort of awesome. Part of me wonders if he's secretly a superhero. I also wonder if he quietly hates the other cast members. He probably does, and I like that.
10. Sophia
To paraphrase Tony, Sophia is GORRRRGEOUS. Ranking as the hottest lady of the bunch, this dentist-in-training has swell teeth and a sexy voice to boot. She clearly seems to be taking the easy road at times on the Legs & Back disc, but… she's so pretty! I do always wonder though… if Dreya Weber hadn't taken off her sweatshirt, would Sophia have done the same? I mean, was Sophia intending to take the sweatshirt off just moments after Dreya, or was she merely catering to some self-imposed sweatshirt-stripdown peer pressure? Part of me thinks she would have kept hers on a little longer if she had her druthers. These are the things I think about.
9. Bobby Stephenson
Good ol' Bobby Stephenson. He seems like a solid dude. He's an amiable guy, and on the Back & Biceps DVD, he's the only one NOT clamoring for screen time (as opposed to Katie and Timmy). For that alone, he lands in the top ten.
8. Tony Lattimore
Here's why I like Tony: he often times seems like the only one who knows what he's doing during Kenpo-X. Talk to anyone, and they'll tell you: keep your eye on Tony Lattimore for form. It's true. GRAB PULL PUNCH!
7. Laura
I like Laura because she's older than anyone else in the cast, and yet she's plugging right along with the best of them. Of course, then I feel bad that she can do significantly more than I can (you don't want to see me attempt a plyo-pushup), but hey, that's okay. More power to her. Plus, we can see that Tony especially likes her as he often sidles up next to her to make some silly joke or comment. Aw, I love LAURONY.
6. Maren
When it comes to Maren, there are only three words necessary: GERMAN POTATO SOUP. Yes, that's the imaginary brew she stirs up during the world famous Karen pot stirrers, and dammit if it doesn't make me hungry every time. Maren seems like a sweet girl - trying her best just like the rest of us. Heck, she's not just trying her best, she's FORGETTING THE REST. Also, fun fact: she's a hardcore porn star too! What? You didn't see Joey Silvera's Fashion Sluts 11? Me neither. I'm not sure I want to see Maren having sex. Part of me fears that she'll sound like a pterodactyl backing out of trouble. KAW KAW!!
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I'm in a good mood today, man. You in a good mood?
5. Dreya Weber
Some people love the "gorgeous" Dreya. Some people hate her. Here's one thing we can all settle on: she flies through the air with the greatest of ease. Call me insane (and lord knows there ain't no such thing as a sanity clause), but I like Dreya. She's tough, a little manly, and she always smiles. You can tell that she and Tony really get along, and any friend of Tony's is a friend of mine (except for anyone on the bottom part of this list… I'm looking at you, DOM). Anyway, I know some of you may be upset that I've placed Dreya so high, but what the hell, life is good, I'm the leader, I can do whatever I want.
4. Erik Stolhanske
Give Erik some credit. Not only is he part of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe (Supertroopers), but he has one leg, and he still shows up for Plyometrics. AND he makes jokes about it. There seriously have been times when I've wanted to collapse on the floor in a puddle of my own sweat during this workout, but then I realize that if Erik can do it with one leg, I can do it with two. Even better, Erik isn't all DOM about it. He's not showy. He just does his thing. He proves that YOU CAN DO ANYTHING FOR THIRTY SECONDS IF YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO IT. In other news, I can't always do anything for thirty seconds, even if I put my mind to it. Although, if it's resting and drinking water, I certainly have that down.
3. Daniel Haas
About an hour into the Yoga X DVD - when every muscle in your body is trembling, sweat is dripping down your face, and you're seriously contemplating burning down the offices of Downward Dog magazine - perhaps the last thing you want to see are all those people on screen bending and contorting their bodies like a bunch of pretzels. It can be defeating. And then there's Daniel Haas. Seeing his imperfect form gives you hope (unlike Wesley Idol's imperfect form, which just looks lazy). Daniel Haas makes me realize that I'm truly a work in progress, just like he is. Also, he seems cool.
2. Adam
Ah, Johnny-trainer-stretchy-dancer boy. Adam is arguably the most physically fit member of the P90X cast. That's probably why he prances around shirtless through two-thirds of the videos he's in. We probably should hate Adam for the way he breezes through Ab Ripper X or Yoga Belly 7 ("HIT MY HAND. HIT MY HAND!!!"). But we don't. His stone-cold face shows determination and grit (as opposed to Phil, whose face shows anger and bitterness). And then we get to Core Synergistics, and Adam is all smiles and giggles, especially at the end when he tries to go for some bonus reps and fails miserably. Wait, Adam can fail? HE'S JUST LIKE US! And quite frankly, I don't know how he doesn't get faked out when Tony says "Add ‘em" and then later has to say, "Add the arms, not Adam back there." The fact that Adam doesn't flinch always impresses me because I would have been like "YES? YOU CALLED MY NAME???"
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Of course, must I even mention the coup de grace? It happens during Yoga. The group is doing frog, and Shauna winds up touching Adam's foot. So what does he do? Adam wiggles his toe to say hi. HE WIGGLES HIS TOE TO SAY HI. I mean, this man is a GENTLEMAN. There's only one person who could possibly top that. You've probably already guessed who it is.
All this tension… I hate it…
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But I love it…
Get ready…
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‘Cause it's coming…
1. Pam
Although, they call her… BLAM!!!
Pam is a private investigator, but more important than that, she is the recipient of the most important nickname in all of P90X: PAM THE BLAM. Everything else is irrelevant. Just make sure of one thing: don't stand in the creek 'cause Pam will run you over! | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
A five-year-old girl starring as an angel in a school nativity play surprised parents by spending almost the entire performance standing with her two middle fingers raised to the audience.
Ella Legge, who had apparently hurt one of her fingers, spent at least 20 minutes of the half-hour performance waving both middle fingers at her mother during the play in Essex last week.
Magnificent photographs of Ella’s unique performance show her centre stage, dressed in white, wearing a halo of tinsel, while displaying the double-barrelled salute.
Ella’s mother, Carla Bovingdon, 33, said she was thinking, “Oh god Ella, please stop”, but despite mouthing at her daughter to put her hands down, she ultimately had to let her get on with it.
Ms Bovingdon, who lives near Maldon, Essex, said: “It was so funny because she didn’t realise what she was doing.
The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked Show all 18 1 /18 The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 18) "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" – John Lennon and Yoko Ono There’s a caveat to the optimistic message of the song’s title. “War is over,” sing a choir of children over festive tambourines, but only, they add, “If you want it.” Having analysed the success of his previous single, “Imagine,” the former Beatle noted, “Now I understand what you have to do: Put your political message across with a little honey.” On this, an anti-Vietnam war protest song wrapped up in sleigh bells, strings and an anthemic melody, he does just that. AP Getty The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 17) "Mary's Boy Child/ Oh My Lord" – Boney M Taking Harry Belafonte’s 1956 hit “Mary’s Boy Child” and singing it in medley with new song “Oh My Lord”, Boney M’s No 1 hit combined Christmas carol-like harmonies with Euro disco, steel drums and a reggae sensibility. It might sound disastrous – but somehow it works. AP The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 16) "2,000 Miles" – The Pretenders “He’s gone/2,000 miles/Is very far,” sings Chrissie Hynde, above a twanging guitar riff in “2,000 Miles”, her serpentine melody stretching each syllable into several. You could easily assume it’s about two separated lovers, but it was actually written for the band’s original guitar player, James Honeyman-Scott, who died of a drug overdose a year earlier at the age of 25. The song is desperately bleak – as is the case with all the best Christmas songs – but with a note of festive hopefulness too. “The children were singing/He’ll be back at Christmas time.” AP Rex The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 15) "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" – Brenda Lee Brenda Lee was just 13 years old when she made herself a rockabilly legend thanks to the recording of this party classic. It always reminds me of scenes in The Santa Clause (one of the best ever Christmas films) where the jaunty number was heavily featured, along with seminal holiday movie Home Alone. RO The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 14) "Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!" – Dean Martin Few Christmas songs are as cosy as this one. Dean Martin’s smooth, rich voice is as warming as a good glass of whisky; paired with sweeping, romantic strings and a chirpy flute, “Let it Snow!” conjures up images of stockings hanging up over the chimney, a Christmas tree glinting with baubles, and a frost-tinted window with snow falling outside. RO Getty Images The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 13) "Walking in the Air" – The Snowman / Peter Auty Though Aled Jones tends to get the credit for this haunting masterpiece, it is actually the voice of choirboy Peter Auty that appears in the climactic scene of the wordless 1982 animation The Snowman. He wasn’t credited though, and when his voice broke and Jones’s version reached number five in the UK charts, he was almost written out of history. In truth, though, whichever version you hear, the song’s sweeping grandeur is goosebumps-inducing. AP Channel 4 The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 12) "Peace on Earth/ Little Drummer Boy" – David Bowie/ Bing Crosby Recorded for Bing Crosby’s TV special Merrie Olde Christmas, and framed around a strange scripted exchange of banter between the two, this mash-up only came about because Bowie hated the song, “Little Drummer Boy”, that he had been asked on the show to sing. So songwriters Ian Fraser and Larry Grossman, alongside the show’s scriptwriter, cobbled together “Peace on Earth” to serve as a counterpoint, while Crosby performed the intended song. They recorded the resulting medley after less than an hour of rehearsal, and five weeks later, Crosby died. AP Redferns The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 11) "Santa Baby" – Eartha Kitt “Eartha Kitt is the sexiest woman in the world. You don’t write Christmas songs that are sexy. How are we going to do that?” Poor Phil Springer. Half of the songwriting team behind the super sultry “Santa Baby” was always slightly resentful that his biggest hit was a festive one. Well, I’m grateful for it. Eartha Kitt’s huskily delivered letter to Santa Claus is undoubtedly the sexiest Christmas song of all time, and has been covered by everyone from Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift to Madonna (I don’t talk about Madge’s attempt) and Michael Buble. Yet it’s Kitt’s version you find yourself coming back to. RO The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 10) "The Christmas Song" – Nat King Cole This Mel Torme composition was originally written, according to Torme, with Bob Wells as a mind-over-matter attempt to stay cool during a stifling summer day in 1945. It’s one of Cole’s most enduring hits, and one of the most beloved of all Christmas songs. RO GETTY IMAGES The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 9) "I Believe in Father Christmas" – Greg Lake This Mel Torme composition was originally written, according to Torme, with Bob Wells as a mind-over-matter attempt to stay cool during a stifling summer day in 1945. It’s one of Cole’s most enduring hits, and one of the most beloved of all Christmas songs. RO Reuters The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 8) "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" – Andy Williams Andy Williams’ classic brings to mind the kind of big, brash Christmas’s you see in American films – lots of presents, blazing fireplaces and a huge feast – but also plays heavily on the importance of spending time with your loved ones. It consistently appears in the top 10s of Christmas song rankings, and more than 50 years in, the 1963 staple shows no signs of wearing out. RO AP The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 7) 'Stop the Cavalry" – Jona Lewie It was “just another anti-war song” until Jona Lewie threw a kazoo into the mix. The English singer-songwriter never intended “Stop the Cavalry” to become a Christmas single, but the festive mention in the line “I wish I was at home for Christmas”, along with the addition of a Salvation Army brass band and tubular bell, was enough to convince listeners. The song sold 4m copies upon its release and was only kept off the top slot that Christmas because of John Lennon’s death and consequent position at numbers one and two on the UK singles chart. Lewie told The Guardian in 2015 that he earns more from “Stop the Cavalry” than the rest of his songs put together. RO The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 6) "Driving Home for Christmas" – Chris Rea In 1978, Rea thought it was all over. His record contract was done, and his manager had just told him he was quitting. Rea wanted to get home from London’s Abbey Road studios to Middlesborough, but his record company wouldn’t pay for a ticket. “My wife got in our old Austin Mini, drove all the way down from Middlesbrough to Abbey Road studios to pick me up, and we set off back straight away,” he told The Guardian. “Then it started snowing. We had £220 and I was fiddling with it all the way home. We kept getting stuck in traffic and I’d look across at the other drivers, who all looked so miserable. Jokingly, I started singing: “We’re driving home for Christmas…” RO AFP/Getty The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 5) "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" – Frank Sinatra Sinatra’s version of this classic Christmas song opens on his isolated vocals before gradually introducing the swooning choir and tender strings section. And the lyrics: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas/Make the Yuletide gay / From now on your troubles will be miles away/Here we are as in olden days/Happy golden days of yore/Faithful friends who are dear to us / Gather near to us once more.” RO AP The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 4) "All I Want for Christmas is You" – Mariah Carey One of the best moments on American Idol in 2014 was an exchange between judges Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey, who famously did not get on during the series. As a contestant/Mariah stan [“stalker fan”] told the star he loved “All I Want for Christmas is You“ and hailed it as the “best modern-day Christmas song”, Minaj threw a little shade by saying: “It sure was, wasn’t it?”, emphasis on the ”was“ very much intended. Carey’s response was immediate and dismissive: “Still is, dahling!” She earns a reported £4000,000 in royalties from the track each year, with its lasting popularity testament to just how good a song it is. Its unyielding Christmas spirit and those diminished (infectious) C minor chords combine for the ultimate experience of festive cheer, with a perfect mix of nostalgia and pop sentimentalism thrown in for good measure. RO AP The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 3) "Last Christmas" – Wham! George Michael wrote, performed, produced and played every single instrument on this song, where the narrator looks back with sadness on a past relationship. As with “Fairytale of New York”, you have an upbeat, cheerful rhythm and chirpy instrumentation, against the melancholy of unrequited love in the lyrics, with the suggestion that it was given away too hastily (“This year, to save me from tears/I’ll give it to someone special”). RO YouTube/WhamVEVO The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 2) "Fairytale of New York" – The Pogues Some of the best songs combine uplifting instrumentation that contrasts with lyrics that can be downright miserable, and such is the case for “Fairytale of New York”. It has none of the sickly sweet sentimentality of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” or Wham!’s “Last Christmas”. “Fairytale of New York” is a drunken hymn for those with broken dreams and abandoned hopes. Its narrator, an Irish immigrant, is thrown into a drunk tank to sleep off his Christmas Eve binge. Hearing an old man sing the Irish ballad “The Rare Old Mountain Dew”, he begins to dream about the past, and so begins the story of two people who fell in love in America, only to see their plans of a bright future dashed. Shane MacGowan’s slurring, bitter delivery of those opening vocals is played out over romanticised piano chords, then to those wonderful, jaunty strings, with Terry Woods’ mandolin part giving the song an additional Irish brogue. RO YouTube/Screengrab The 18 greatest Christmas songs of all time – ranked 1) "Winter Wonderland" – Bing Crosby Richard (Dick) Smith was suffering from tuberculosis, an illness which had plagued him since a child, from his bed in a sanatorium in Philadelphia. Gazing longingly out of his window at the snow, he wrote a poem describing all the things he would do when he was well again. He was inspired by the views of people playing in the park across the street from his family home on Church Street, where he’d lived with his mother, brother and two sisters. His father had died when he was a child. After he was finished, he took the lyrics to his friend Felix Bernard, a professional pianist. A copy of “Winter Wonderland” found its way to Joey Nash, lead singer of the Richard Himber Orchestra, who recorded it in 1934. Guy Lombardo heard Nash’s recording and made a record of his own, which became a hit that December. Smith died in 1935 before “Winter Wonderland” became a Christmas hit again for Ted Weems, and long before Crosby recorded his, and arguably the most famous, version. RO STF/AFP/Getty
“She likes to let me know if she’s at all injured, so she was basically trying to show me what she had done from across the room. It was the tiniest little hangnail as well.
“Then she put both her fingers up because she was trying to compare to see if both fingers were hurt.”
This apparently went on for almost the entirety of the play.
Double trouble: Ella goes for both barrels (Kennedy News)
“It was pretty much for the majority of it she was there with her middle finger up. Because I didn’t run over there she kept holding it up as if she was saying, ‘mum, look!’,” Ms Bovingdon said.
“A couple of the teaching assistants had a bit of a giggle. I think where she was standing, and the fact that you don’t watch one child the whole time, I don’t think everyone noticed.
“A few of the older children whispered, ‘Ella’s got her finger up’. Everyone seemed to know what she was doing, but yeah there were a few laughs here and there.
“I was thinking, ‘oh god, Ella please stop’. Because she was doing it so innocently I think most people were thinking, ‘oh bless her’.
“That’s what made it so funny as well, because she was completely oblivious.
“She’s quite endearing normally and is really cute. She likes pretty dresses. Being an angel was perfect for her.”
But Ms Bovingdon has said she had to warn her daughter not to repeat her middle finger-flashing antics for a second performance of the nativity play as it "wouldn’t be funny this time".
“I posted the photos online and she had lots of laughing reactions and funny comments," she said.
“She obviously doesn’t have social media but I was showing her how many people thought it was funny.
“She wanted to say thank you to everyone for liking her picture, but then she said, ‘I don’t know what’s funny though’. She doesn’t get what the joke is.
“She just thinks she looks cute, but doesn’t know why we’re all laughing which is quite funny. When she’s older I will get [the photos] out again to show her.
“It had to be my child. I had to keep mouthing ‘put your finger down’ discreetly, but then I just accepted that she was going to be standing there with her finger up.
“The performance was about half-an-hour long, and I would say 70 per cent of it she had her middle finger up. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
They waited until the point of civil war to act, agreeing to break their venerable record transfer on a blissful, bonkers night when supporters began a new wave of protests against Mike Ashley’s ownership. Newcastle United specialise in tearing themselves apart and it would be a novel development if Miguel Almirón, who is expected to complete a £20 million move from Atlanta United in the United States, refocused the club’s attention on tearing into the opposition. They may even be good at it.
In the pantheon of Newcastle ridiculousness, this was right up there, a riotous and unexpected victory over Manchester City, just when they least expected it. Thirty-six hours, which began with Rafa Benítez questioning publicly whether he will see out the final few | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Democrats
Right has become wrong and wrong has become right. The elitists, power-players and special-interests in both parties have prostituted themselves for power, reputation, kickbacks, special favors, pomp and circumstance, and whatever else feeds their lusts. They exchange the timeless, self-evident principles of America’s founding for their own interests (or the interests of their “buddies”) and do not care about “We the People” until they need our votes (which many voters gladly give in exchange for a government check in one form or another). They love their seats of influence on their various committees and sell their souls – little by little at first – for the promise of even more power, which tends to corrupt the unprincipled. They profane common sense, spend money they do not have (actually, they have no money besides what the taxpayers are forced to give them), break the law they took an oath to uphold, break campaign promises they made to garner our support, and “frame and hide their unrighteous doings under [the sacred name of] law?” (Psalm 94:20 AMP)
Meet the donkephant!
We’ve sold our principles for power in our parties and this is especially true in the GOP. We’ve always known what to expect from the Democrats; at least they say what they believe. The establishment candidates in the GOP, on the other hand, tells us what we want to hear. They run as Conservatives who love freedom and the Constitution, but then, when they’ve won because we believed them and voted for them, they revert to who they’ve always really been – big government Progressives who love power and money. And this isn’t new. We’ve been betrayed and lied to by “our own” since the dawn of the Progressive Era in the 1890s. And those who think Obama and the Democrats or McConnell and the Republicans are the problem, do not understand that the real problem is big government Progressivism, along with the nefarious love of power and money. The political, ruling class in both parties (i.e. McConnell, Pelosi, Christie, Obama, Bush, Sanders, McCain, Biden, Graham, Clinton, Tillis, Boxer, Burr, etc.) are all the same. They play us for fools, trying to make us think the Rs and Ds are so different, when they’re not. They try to convince us that their party is the solution and the other party is the problem, but they are both the problem. They are both progressive. They are both irrelevant.
This is why I left the GOP. I am done with the games. I am done with the parties [Note: The Founders WARNED us against the parties!]. I am done with the false choice and voting for “the better of both evils” when “the better” has proven (ad nauseam) to be no better than its counterpart. When will we stop letting them play us for fools? The first time they fooled us, it was “shame on them.” The next time they fooled us it was “shame on us.” Now, after they’ve fooled us election cycle after election cycle (thanks, in large part, to our short memories and blind loyalty) for the last several decades, do we not deserve the appropriate title of “fools”? When will we stop this madness? When will we stop believing that doing the same thing over and over and over again will somehow produce a different result? Are we insane? It’s time for us to stop empowering them with our money, volunteerism, votes, etc. It’s time to do what we’ve never done before.
The solution?
To my Democrat and Republican friends, leave the parties. Visit your local Board of Elections and switch to unaffiliated. This will allow you (1) to be free from both parties, (2) to be free to choose which party you can vote for in the Primary just as you can already do in the General, (3) to be free to vote for candidates and issues rather than be enslaved to a party that doesn’t hear you or define you, and (4) to be free to remain engaged in party activities without being isolated and limited to a party.
It’s time to put principles ABOVE politics!
Then, after you’ve switched, research each and every candidate. Stop listening to what they say. Talk is dirt cheap! Instead, study their voting records, their track records, what they’ve done. By their fruit you will know them. Then, when the time comes and a viable candidate appears, who matches your personal values, vote for them on their own merits, not because they have an (R) or a (D) or an (I) behind their names but because they are aligned with your personal values. And, if there’s no candidate in a particular race who meets your standards, vote by not voting. In the end, our vote or non-vote may not change anything but at least we’ll finally be true to ourselves as responsible stewards of our votes before our Maker rather than before a party.
Unfortunately, too many of us still put too much blind trust in our politicians at the expense of being reasonable and objective and of holding them to the high standard of their oaths of office, as well as to their campaign promises. We give a pass to our favorite party and politician(s) and scold the other party and politician(s) whenever they’re guilty of the same infractions. We’ve allowed the parties and many politicians to become gods to be worshipped rather than servants of “We the People.” We need leaders who are humble servants (Proverbs 16:17-19; 18:12). Those who cannot be questioned or held accountable bring shame and dishonor to their office and insult those who gave them their trust. At some point, “We the People” need to see our leaders for who they really are, regardless of their political affiliation, and we need to resolve to rid our city, county, state and nation of their rule if they fail to pass our personal smell tests. But that requires us as individuals — if we are wise and honest — to become the people our posterity and our nation are worthy of. Until we change, nothing will change. If we continue to put our personal interests above principle and continue to put short-term pay-offs above long-term solutions, we will get everything we deserve. I pray we wake up soon. The clock is ticking.
Like this:
Have you ever considered the current state of our political party system? Have you ever wondered what our Founding Fathers would say if they saw what the parties have done to our nation?
George Washington, in his farewell address, warned us of the many dangers of political parties (Taken from Source)…
President George Washington (Click on image to enlarge)
[Political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion… the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it…
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
President Thomas Jefferson (Click on image to enlarge)
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Francis Hopkinson Paris (Dated March 13, 1789), wrote (Source)…
I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore I protest to you I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much farther from that of the Antifederalists.
President John Adams (Click on image to enlarge)
John Adams, in a letter to Jonathan Jackson in October 1780, wrote (Source)…
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Know any other maxims from the Framers on this topic? Feel free to share them in the comments section below. We would love to see them!
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Disclaimers
The Wilson NC Tea Party (WNCTP) does not endorse candidates on the federal, state, or local levels. We are simply pointing our fellow citizens to the principles and values of our founding so that they will be able to vote, in the primary and general elections, for those candidates who are most aligned with those principles and values. With that said all candidate-related posts are for education purposes only.
Also, the views and opinions shared as comments on the WNCTP Blog, by its various members, do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the WNCTP leadership and volunteer base. Since the WNCTP is "Of The People, For The People, By The People" and believes in the First Amendment, we cannot and will not deny any member their right to "free speech" regarding their political and/or policy positions, but our tolerance of their views does not necessarily reflect consent. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Wednesday, February 01, 2017
It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means hundreds of us will be posting about our insecurities. If you haven't yet, join in. You'll be glad you did!
Each month we have a question. This month's question is:How has being a writer changed your experience as a reader?
Way back in the early days of my career--probably while most of you were still in high school or whatever--I attended a workshop on Goal, Motivation, and Conflict. It was hosted by Debra Dixon and based on this book of hers:
I detailed the entire process in a previous blog but basically, it's a way of brainstorming your story. Every character has something they want, a reason for wanting it, and something standing in the way.
At the start of the workshop, she (or someone in the workshop) said something important. "Be prepared to never enjoy a movie again."
Once you've learned to create a plot, you do begin to pick things apart. It also makes it easier to predict the ending in unpredictable stories like mysteries. You learn that a good writer "plants seeds" throughout a story so that something doesn't pop up unexpectedly at the end.
Does it completely disrupt your enjoyment of a good book? No. It does limit the number of books you see as good, though. Am I the only one who abandons a book a couple of chapters in if it sucks?
What do you think? If you're a writer, do you find you enjoy books less? If you're a reader only, do you keep reading all the way to the end even if a book is bad?
Monday, January 30, 2017
Every Monday, I'm presenting a new mystery. Some have been solved...some remain unsolved to this day. ***Warning: Today's mystery involves the death of a child.***When I was a kid, my mom would never let me go door to door to sell things for school or Girl Scouts. She always mentioned one name: Marcia Trimble. Marcia was a Nashville girl who mysteriously disappeared while delivering Girl Scout cookies in the mid-70s.
While a missing nine-year-old is always alarming, the thing that shook Nashville most was where she disappeared. Marcia lived in one of the very wealthiest areas of Nashville, Green Hills. Most of the homes in Green Hills look like this:
For years, police focused on Jeffrey Womack, a 15-year-old neighbor who said Marcia stopped by his house, but he told her he had no money to buy cookies. When police interrogated him later, they found he had money in his pocket, as well as a condom.
Marie Maxwell, a neighbor of the Trimbles, was unloading groceries from her car just before Marcia's disappearance. Through a hedge, she saw Marcia speaking to two people--one tall, one short. She was holding a cookie box. A few minutes later, witnesses saw Marcia walking away from her house, the cookie box no longer in her hands. She looked confused. Police believe one of the two kids in the driveway may have stolen her cookie box and she was trying to find them when she disappeared.
Four weeks later, her body was discovered in a neighboring garage, only 200 feet from her house. Her murder was unsolved for 40 years, although there were many suspects. In 1980, Womack was arrested for the crime, but the charge was dismissed due to lack of evidence.
DNA evidence collected from Marcia eventually led police to her killer. In 2008, Jerome Sydney Barrett was charged and successfully convicted of the 1975 murder. Jerome had served time for the February 1975 rape of a Vanderbilt University woman, which happened just 8 days before Marcia's murder. However, it was another February 1975 case--the murder of a Vanderbilt University student named Sarah Des Prez--that finally inspired police to check his DNA in connection to the Marcia Trimble murder. Jerome Barrett was found guilty and sentenced to 44 years in prison.
Jerome Barrett--then and now.
For years, police were certain the murderer was a young person who lived in the neighborhood when all along, it was a complete stranger. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Read Surveillance And Crime
Read Surveillance And Crime
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Cairo (AFP)
Fresh from winning an award from the Cairo International Film Festival, outspoken British-American director Terry Gilliam on Friday lambasted Donald Trump, urged more action on climate change and denounced political correctness in Hollywood.
Speaking in the Egyptian capital on his 79th birthday, the prolific filmmaker, known for cult classics including "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", took a shot at the US president.
Gilliam praised former top White House Russia expert Fiona Hill's testimony in Thursday's impeachment hearings against Trump.
"If anyone takes down Trump, it will be Fiona Hill," he said in a briefing with reporters overlooking the Nile on the sidelines of the festival.
The director who was part of the culture-shaping comedy troupe Monty Python received a lifetime achievement award from the festival this week.
Addressing the dire impact of climate change, Gilliam insisted that the 2016 Paris climate accord had not gone far enough to combat environmental degradation.
"You got this planet and there's no question that it is in big trouble. We already have passed the danger mark," he said.
"We keep on spending billions to try to get to Mars and by that time this planet will look like Mars," he added.
No stranger to controversy, Gilliam derided attempts to make films more socially inclusive, particularly with regards to gender and race.
"In Hollywood, there's a lot of pressure if you're going to have a transgender character, then you have to have a transgender actor -- it's ridiculous," he told AFP.
"If you're going to have a serial killer then you've got to have a serial killer actor who has killed many people? It's illogical," Gilliam added.
He referred to actress Zoe Saldana who was criticised for portraying legendary soul singer Nina Simone, saying she was "pilloried" for darkening her skin for the role.
"If I'm going to play an Italian on film I'll darken my skin, I'll try to look Mediterranean," Gilliam said.
"This is such superficial nonsense".
He went to say the #Metoo movement had not made him rethink his casting decisions.
Last year, Gilliam sparked a firestorm by saying ambitious actresses willingly "paid the price" of having sex with disgraced film executive Harvey Weinstein.
He has since walked back from those comments, describing Weinsten on Friday as a "complete monster", but said similar behaviour in the film industry was likely inevitable.
"Hollywood has always been and will probably continue to be about power, and power is always abused," he told AFP.
The Cairo festival, which runs until November 29, was the first Arab film festival to sign the "5050×2020" Gender Parity Pledge launched last year at the Cannes Film Festival.
The pledge aims to promote gender equality in film-making after the Weinstein scandal.
Gilliam's latest film, "The Man who killed Don Quixote", stars heartthrob Adam Driver and took 17 years to complete.
© 2019 AFP | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
(NEW YORK/ LIMA – Dec. 14, 2014) The annual United Nations climate talks concluded in Lima, Peru, with a narrow outcome that provides some additional clarity on the path to finalizing a new climate agreement next year in Paris, according to Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
Expectations for the talks in Lima were always modest, with goals of clarifying how countries will report their “intended nationally determined contributions” in early 2015, and identifying the main elements of the agreement to be negotiated next year and wrapped up in Paris. After going well past their Friday deadline, nations were able to make limited progress on both goals.
“The foot-dragging in Lima is out of step with the urgent signs of climate change that are already apparent in Peru’s melting glaciers and threatened fisheries, as well as around the globe,” said Nathaniel Keohane, Vice President for international climate at EDF. “To finalize an effective climate agreement in Paris next year, negotiators will have to move past the tired tactics and old ways of thinking that were on display these last two weeks.”
Countries go into 2015 needing to focus on the creation of an agreement that facilitates domestic climate action, fosters accountability and increasing ambition, and supports adaptation in the poorest, most vulnerable nations.
“We will not solve climate change with a single UN agreement,” said Keohane. “What an agreement in Paris can do is build a structure that spurs countries to be more ambitious, makes them accountable for their progress, and gives them the confidence that other countries are taking action as well.”
A striking aspect of these negotiations was the increasing presence and visibility of state and provincial governments, who are not formal participants in the talks but in many cases are implementing climate policies of their own. Beginning next year, California will have the world’s first economy-wide emissions trading system, as it extends that program to include transportation fuels. And last month, California and Quebec held their first joint auction, cementing the year-old linkage between the two states’ emissions trading programs. In Lima, Ontario announced that it will host a Climate Summit of the Americas in July, focused on building subnational action.
“Momentum is building in North America on climate action and carbon pricing,” said Derek Walker, Associate Vice President in EDF’s U.S. climate and energy program. “State and provincial leaders do not have to wait for Washington or Ottawa or the UN to take action. They are seizing the opportunity that is in front of them and taking concrete steps to build thriving low-carbon economies.”
The progress made in states and provinces underscores a growing theme: Despite the slow pace of these talks, momentum continues to build on climate action outside the UN negotiations. Public and private sector actors came together at the Leaders Summit in New York in September to launch a number of “working coalitions” on deforestation, agriculture, oil and gas production. The U.S. and China announced major actions on climate change in November.
“With each passing year, more and more momentum on climate change is building outside the UNFCCC,” said Keohane. “The UN talks remain a valuable forum — the one place where all countries come together to discuss climate change. But as we have seen in the past few months, there are now multiple ways forward on climate change, including direct cooperation between nations, action by states and provinces, and engagement by the private sector. To make progress at the scale and pace required to meet the challenge of climate change, we need to take advantage of every pathway we have.”
# # #
Environmental Defense Fund (edf.org), a leading international nonprofit organization, creates transformational solutions to the most serious environmental problems. EDF links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships. Connect with us on EDF Voices, Twitter and Facebook. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Q:
ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR in chrome 39 and 40 but works in chrome 36.Help fix in chrome 39
I am able to access a URL in Chrome 36 and IE8 but in Chrome 39 or 40 or Firefox 35 it throws the error:
Unable to make a secure connection to the server. This may be a
problem with the server, or it may be requiring a client
authentication certificate that you don't have.
Error code: ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR}.
It seems that it is an issue related to the SSL certificate. How can I fix this?
A:
Google announced that they would begin removing support for SHA-1 cryptographic hash algorithm beginning with Chrome 39. According to Google:
HTTPS sites whose certificate chains use SHA-1 and are valid past 1 January 2017 will no longer appear to be fully trustworthy in Chrome’s user interface.
There are several sites which can provide detailed analysis of your SSL certificate chain, such as Qualys SSL Labs' SSL Test.
Google Chrome does have a highly risky command-line option --ignore-certificate-errors which might bypass certain certificate errors. Be aware that ignoring certificate errors puts all of your SSL traffic at risk of being eavesdropped on.
It's also possible that this is a new bug. Google switched from using OpenSSL library to it's own "BoringSSL" library in Chrome 38. To report a bug in Chrome visit chrome://help/ and click "Report an issue".
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | StackExchange |
Scleral lenses benefit patients with corneal irregularities
October 9, 2012 in Medicine & Health / Ophthalmology
(Medical Xpress)—A UC Davis Health System Eye Center study found that scleral lenses, which rest beyond the limits of the cornea and cover the white part of the eye (sclera), were a good alternative for patients with corneal abnormalities whose vision could not be corrected with other types of contact lenses or glasses. The study was published in the journal Eye & Contact Lens.
Scleral lenses are a type of gas-permeable lens that are larger than traditional small-diameter contact lenses and are unique in that they continuously bathe the eye with saline, which helps to rejuvenate the ocular surface.
UC Davis optometrists and ophthalmologists conducted the study to evaluate the use of scleral lenses in patients who are unable to tolerate standard contact lenses and want a nonsurgical option to improve visual acuity.
"Scleral lenses provide better vision and comfort than small-diameter gas-permeable contact lenses," said Melissa Barnett, an optometrist with the UC Davis Eye Center and a co-author of the study. "In the past three years we have been able to help patients who previously have not been able to see or function with other types of contact lenses or glasses, especially those with corneal irregularities and severe dry eyes."
Consider Karen Polansky, a former competitive weightlifter from Carmichael, Calif., whose vision was restored with scleral lenses. Polansky has a disorder called keratoconus, which causes the clear tissue covering the front of the eye (the cornea) to change from the normal round shape to a cone shape. The degenerative condition is thought to be caused by a structural defect in collagen, a major building block of the cornea, which results in blurred vision that cannot be corrected with glasses.
"I have been plagued with poor vision ever since I was diagnosed with keratoconus 40 years ago at age 25," said Polansky. "Because of the irregular shape of my cornea, I haven't been able to wear glasses, and I've tried every form of contact lens available but none were comfortable. With the scleral lenses I can wear them all day and they have improved my vision, especially at night."
For the scleral lens study, UC Davis researchers reviewed the records of 63 patients fitted with scleral lenses from October 2009 to March 2011. They evaluated a number of factors, including demographic data, diagnosis, previous contact lens wear, surgical history, scleral lens wear and reasons for discontinuing their use.
"The majority of patients in our study found the scleral lenses to be comfortable and to improve their visual acuity," said Barnett. "Even patients with corneal scars, who typically cannot wear contact lenses, benefited from scleral lenses." | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Clíodhna Ní Lionáin
Clíodhna Ní Lionáin (born Coolgreaney, County Wexford, Ireland) is an Irish archaeologist. Ní Lionáin was lead archaeologist for the Devinish project Dowth Hall in summer 2018; she described the discoveries there as “truly the find of a lifetime”.
External links
https://www.rte.ie/news/leinster/2018/0716/979038-dowth-hall-meath-megalithic/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/5-500-year-old-passage-tomb-at-dowth-is-find-of-a-lifetime-1.3567118
https://www.independent.ie/regionals/braypeople/news/coolgreanys-clodhna-leads-dig-of-immense-importance-37128752.html
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/megalithic-tomb-meath-dowth-hall
http://www.ucd.ie/humanities/people/graduateresearchers/cliodhnanilionain/
Category:20th-century Irish people
Category:21st-century Irish people
Category:Irish archaeologists
Category:People from County Meath
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:Living people
Category:Irish scholars and academics | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Wikipedia (en) |
Heterogeneity of antigen expression and lectin labeling on microglial cells in the olfactory bulb of adult rats.
Microglia in different layers of the rat olfactory bulb expressed a variety of membrane antigens except for CD4 (OX-35). Bulb microglial cells bearing complement receptor type 3 (OX-42) were ubiquitous and their immunoreactivity varied considerably in different bulb layers. Although very few in number, labeled microglia in all layers also expressed major histocompatibility complex class I antigen (OX-18), leukocyte common antigen (OX-1) and unknown macrophage antigen (ED-2). The latter was localized in cells distributed almost exclusively in the perivascular spaces. The immunoreactivity of ED-1, an unknown cytoplasmic or lysosomal membrane antigen in macrophages, was localized in labeled microglia which were concentrated mainly in the granule cell layer and periglomerular zone of the bulb. A variable number of microglial cells were stained with OX-6 (major histocompatibility complex class II antigen) and they were located predominantly in the periglomerular zone and at the junction between the granule cell layer and the subependymal layer. Ultrastructural study using GSA I-B4 lectin labeling showed that microglia in different layers of the bulb exhibited similar labeling patterns in their subcellular structures. A remarkable feature was the occurrence of some microglia in the olfactory nerve layer, subependymal layer and granule cell layer adjacent to the subependymal layer in which the cells showed intense lectin labeling at their Golgi apparatus, a feature which was absent in microglia of other bulb layers. Present results showed the regional differences in microglial antigen expressions and lectin labeling within the olfactory bulb. It is therefore suggested that the cells subserve very different specific functions depending on their ambient microenvironments. The heterogeneity of microglial functions in the olfactory bulb may be related to the progressive regeneration and degeneration of its containing neurons. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
Vishal Thakkar, the actor who played a suicide patient in Rajkumar Hirani's 'Munna Bhai M.B.B.S', has been missing for the last three years, as per a report in The Indian Express.
It was on December 31, 2015 that his mother Durga last saw him. He told her he was going to watch December 31, 2015 at a theatre. Vishal even invited her along, but she declined. He left his Mulund home at 10:30 pm after borrowing Rs 500 from his mother. The actor's last post on Facebook - a Happy New Year wish - was at 12.10 pm on the same day.
At 1am, Vishal sent a text message to his father Mahendra, saying that he was going to a party and would return the next day. However, he never came back. It has been three years since then, and his parents haven't heard from him yet.
Vishal has completely disappeared. His phone is switched off. No ransom call was made. Even his bank account has shown no activity since he went missing.
"Initially, we suspected the girlfriend. But her statement had no discrepancies," former investigating officer Mahendra Puri said. Inspector N A Kulkarni said that the police is yet to find out whether it was a murder, a kidnapping or he simply ran away.
Police revealed that Vishal was last seen on Ghodbunder Road in Thane on January 1 at 11.45am by his girlfriend, as he got into an autorickshaw to Andheri for a shoot.
Vishal had landed into trouble with law three months ago before his disappearance. His then-girlfriend, a television actress, had levelled allegations of rape and assault against him. She claimed that he came over to her friend's house, where she was staying, to apologise after a tiff. He ended up staying the night and allegedly assaulting and later raping her.
His mother revealed, "She frequented our house. One day they were together and the next day, she landed at my door with police. It was a minor fight. Later, the two of them resolved it." Though she withdrew her complaint, his standing in the industry took a hit and work suffered, leading him depressed. "He was a mumma's boy. He could not bear the insult we faced," Durga said. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
[Hypertrichosis].
Hypertrichosis denotes growth of hair on any part of the body in excess of the amount usually present in persons of the same age, race, and sex, excluding androgen-dependent hair growth. Hypertrichosis may be an isolated finding or associated with a syndrome, be associated with additional congenital anomalies or a marker for systemic disease. In order to diagnose it accurately, the age of onset, type, localization and pattern of hair growth, associated disorders, medications and perhaps associated anomalies and family history should be considered. Even though hypertrichosis usually has limited medical significance, it often causes cosmetic embarrassment, often resulting in a significant emotional burden. Treatment options are available, though limited in terms of efficacy and patient satisfaction. No single method of hair removal is appropriate for all body locations and patients, and the one adopted will depend on the type, area, and amount of excessive hair growth, as well as on the age, sex, and personal preference of the patient. Patients with hypertrichosis should be adequately advised of the treatment modalities. These include cosmetic procedures (bleaching, trimming, shaving, plucking, waxing, chemical epilatories, electrosurgical epilation), and hair removal using light sources and lasers. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
Man 'had sex with heavily pregnant ex-girlfriend AFTER strangling her to death as she pleaded for the life of her unborn child'
Brian Cooper admitted to smothering Alisha Bromfield, who was more than six months pregnant
The two were staying in a quiet Wisconsin resort town while they attended a friend's wedding
First murder in Door County, Wisconsin, since 2001
The man who was charged with murdering his pregnant ex-girlfriend as she pleaded for the life of her unborn child had sex with her after he had strangled her, it has emerged.
Brian Cooper, 35, from Illinois, faces two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of third-degree sexual assault for the murder of Alisha Bromfield, 21, who had accompanied him to a sister's wedding.
Member's of Alisha's family - who were wearing purple and had special t-shirts made with Alisha's picture - were visibly shaken as Cooper entered the courtroom this morning.
Scroll down for video
In court: Brian Cooper, left, faces two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of third-degree sexual assault for the murder of Alisha Bromfield, 21, right, who had accompanied him to a sister's wedding
According to court papers, the 35-year-old strangled the mother-to-be at a resort on August 19 after an argument over their relationship.
Alisha's heartbroken mother struggled through tears to read out a statement after the hearing.
Sherry Anicich said: 'There is no justice for Alisha and Ava Lucille. However we know she would want to protect the future lives of innocent women and children by ensuring this predatory killer and rapist spends the rest of his life in prison.'
Ava was the name Alisha had given to her unborn child.
Door County District Attorney Raymond Pelrine told the court that after they argued, Cooper started drinking and then became angry after the 21-year-old fell asleep.
He said: 'He then proceeded to sit in the room feeling more angry and frustrated. Not only (about) the break up of the relationship but his feeling of her apparent coldness and indifference to him throughout the evening.
Distraught: Alisha's mother Sherry Anicich wipes away a tear as she reads out a statement in court this morning, saying there can be no justice for the death of her daughter and unborn child
Scene: Cooper led investigators to his hotel room at the Sand Bay Beach Resort, pictured, where he had allegedly murdered his ex-girlfriend earlier
'He then awakened her sometime between two or three in the morning and got on top of her and with his hands strangled her to death.'
Court papers also revealed that Bromfield shouted: 'Don't do this to me, think of the baby' as he throttled her with his bare hands. He then allegedly undressed her and had sex with her body.
Cooper told investigators he then covered her body with a blanket because he felt like it was the 'respectful thing to do'.
After the murder, he tried to kill himself unsuccessfully with a butter knife and a corkscrew. He then fled the scene and called 911 from a Sister Bay gas station to turn himself in.
Cooper was not the father of Alisha's unborn child.
A judge scheduled a preliminary hearing for September 11.
The last murder in Door County was on New Year's Eve 2001, when one man pierced another through the heart with a katana blade
The region is known as the 'Cape Cod of the Midwest' because its rural population of 27,000 swells by hundreds of thousands every summer as tourists flock to the shoreline resorts.
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
A general descriptor for detecting abnormal action performance from skeletal data.
We propose an action-independent descriptor for detecting abnormality in motion, based on medically-inspired skeletal features. The descriptor is tested on four actions/motions captured using a single depth camera: sit-to-stand, stand-to-sit, flat-walk, and climbing-stairs. For each action, a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) trained on normal motions is built using the action-independent feature descriptor. Test sequences are evaluated based on their fitness to the normal motion models, with a threshold over the likelihood, to assess abnormality. Results show that the descriptor is able to detect abnormality with accuracy ranging from 0.97 to 1 for the various motions. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
Tissue engineering--current challenges and expanding opportunities.
Tissue engineering can be used to restore, maintain, or enhance tissues and organs. The potential impact of this field, however, is far broader-in the future, engineered tissues could reduce the need for organ replacement, and could greatly accelerate the development of new drugs that may cure patients, eliminating the need for organ transplants altogether. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
Forum posts made by jordanm
I agree, using a toy is what me and my wife have been doing, with enough imagination and enthusiasm it handles the job, and the best part is, nobody to feel awkward after the blood returns to the brain from the groin!
Most guys do have hangups on the mmf thing. There are unfair double standards big time with mmf vs mff, at least in the US. When most people think of a couple having a 3way with another girl, most think that woman has to be so confident and sexual to invite a woman into bed with her man. If the couple adds a guy, most will assume that the guy is a wimp, or cant get it done in the bedroom, etc. the whole cuckold culture. I think that in a secure relationship, if you want to "broaden your sexual horizons" , if either one of you is bi or curious, then that seems to be natural 1st threesome, so if a couple has a bi F, only, then adding another woman seems logical, whereas if the M is bi or more open to being bi, then adding a man makes sense. If neither of you are bi or curious, it is a bit trickier, as the guy will get nothing out of a guy joining and a woman will get nothing out of a woman joining. Dont know what to tell you there. :)
For me, I have had bi experiences over 12 years ago, with a friend, and think of them often, but my wife hasn't experimented with women (so she says hehe)... Therefore she would be more comfortable adding a guy first. If she enjoys it and it makes her feel sexy to be desired by 2 men, she would likely be confidant enough to try a couple or single female after that.
the key is open communication, trust, and making each other as wildly happy and fullfilled! | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
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Most people don’t give floods or storms a second thought until they are facing serious problems as a result. Don’t wait for a storm to make water seep under your home and harm your foundation. Invest in the right pump and drain system ahead of time to avoid these problems. Professionally installed with a warranty, they will provide you with valuable peace of mind and increase the value of your home.
Andy’s Sprinkler, Drainage, & Lighting Services in San Antonio is the industry leader in pumps, drains, sprinklers, and drip irrigation. We know how important it is to control the flow of water around your property to to ensure proper irrigation while also avoiding problems. Call us today at 210-491-0700 to learn how we can protect and even improve your property with the right sprinklers, drains, and pumps. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
******Absolutely gorgeous!!<br>The best Taylor Swift song ever. There is no other word to describe that chorus than epic. And the divine bridge of Taylor echoing "Please don't be in love with someone else" is simply heartbreaking.<br>And I love that this is actually about Owl City. Makes it even better! | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
#TakeTheKnee Is Unserious, Immature, Childish Bullshit
I’m an anarchist. Not a particular fan of any state, but I’ll tolerate America more than most, on balance.
Am I a patriot? Well, if that means unequivocal support for elections and the product of them, no I am not. If that means America as an idea and ideal, then I guess I am.
A country, territory, culture, or melange of cultures is not the state—anymore than a map is the territory.
Those who have been around a long time may remember Michael Miles. He used to have a health blog, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.” He used to comment here. He’s also somewhat politically aligned with me, which is quite something for a black man, and I hate even having to say that. It ought to be completely irrelevant, but it’s just not. So I mention it. Because.
So far from my vantage point the only public/celebrity figure who has gotten it right is football great Jim Brown, certainly an activist of some note over the years.
On the intrawebs Richard Nikoley got it right from the beginning noting the real issue involved.
The NFL got political (why the anthem to begin with and military flybys and other such nonsense at *sporting* events) because it built the brand/bottom line. Now some players are responding politically also. But these things are baked in the cake so to speak with concomitant contractual obligations agreed to freely by all parties involved. There are no slaves in major professional sports. All parties *voluntarily* agree to mutually binding contracts that enrich both parties to the tune of millions and millions of dollars.
Govt, constitutional rights, race and wrapping the issue into respect or disrespect for the flag have nothing to do with it as far as the core issues involved.
Players are free to do what they want (in the NFL. In the NBA players *must* stand for the anthem). Owners are free to respond as they deem reasonable (including not signing a particular player). And everyone else is free to offer their opinion as to the goodness or badness of the behavior of the principals involved and even vote with their dollars by not showing up for games or otherwise supporting the NFL). That is how *employment contracts* work.
For the sake of the rest of us (especially employers), I do hope that never changes because the big stage of football didn’t react the way some people wanted.
TL;DR: You “protest” on your own damn time, not your employer’s or your client’s. If you’re a serious and mature business person, that is, and presumably, million-dollar contracts put you in that category.
It’s really ridiculous that you have a multi-million-dollar contract and you’re going to compromise and tarnish the brand value of your employer/client, and the trade association they are themselves contractually bound to by multi-hundred-million-dollar contracts.
Reader Interactions
Comments
The NFL has very little to do with football anymore. If you had gone down to Santa Clara you could have seen 49ers for $15. The stadium is just a soundstage for a TV show. They don’t need a few thousand live fans, they need 20 million TV viewers.
The Huff principle is to interview Andy Slavitt, not someone working at HHS.
But Slavitt says plenty. He has the gall to consider the marketing of Obamacare to be one of its BENEFITS. And of course this cost is trivial….though Price whacking $100 million in advertising and exchange advisors doesn’t seem like mere chicken feed…
The real stunner is this
“You need to have your outreach machine working well.”
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I’m pretty much finished with the NFL…..I”ll get my football fix from the alma mater and booing LA college teams (does crimson and gold come to mind?). I might even tire of that as well, since I need to focus on more important priorities in life. Maybe others, whether they realize it or not, may come to similar conclusions and start acting in their true self interests. there are real problems out there…but they Left does not care for them and especially someone who was elected to deal with them. Leftist tantrums disgust me.
I think this is a good trend. Strip away the fluff and pretension, and even the slavish addiction to entertainment, especially from assholes who produce it, who, in general, think that we are morons. I pay attention to what people think of me…but not in the way they would like. but it is cause to reflect on the big picture.
I am going to join the legions….who don’t buy a new iPhone…or any iPhone. It pains to think about how much Google, FB, Amazon…know about me that I don’t even know. they should share my “fair share”….
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I can’t stand pro sports. College too. It’s all click bait trash for the masses and boring as all hell.
Kudos to Trump for starting the fight. There will be no winners here. Plenty of hard core right wingers and feminine left wingers among the sportsfans.
At first I thought the league would lose revenue, but that won’t happen. Not with their tax-based cash flow and millions of loyal dufuses with nothing better to do than stare dutifully, even if thru the TV. So many people are righteously “boycotting” the NFL. It won’t last. They’ll fold like cheap accordions and be gulping down their crack addiction football by the spoonful in just two weeks.
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While I don’t spend too much time watching or keeping up with it, I find college football infinitely more interesting than pro. When the pro teams started to move around in the 80s (when I was a teenager), I started losing interest. I just found out my former favorite team (the Raiders) are in Las Vegas now. Sheesh. At least we’ll never see the Arizona Crimson Tide or Vermont Sooners.
Game attendance revenue is chicken feed to the league, what counts is tv viewership. Those numbers, however, are falling. While it takes a while for the advertising losses to sink in, once they do, the fat tv contracts will go on a diet. The shrinking tv ad contracts will filter down to the owners, who are stuck with player contracts, team and stadium expenses and other overhead. As brain dead as they seem now, by the time they come out of their coma the viewers will have gone on to other entertainments. The NFL is starting to swirl around the drain.
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Tax revenue depends upon game attendance. A few stadiums are privately owned, but the municipal stadiums lose the property tax advantage. When ticket and concessions proceeds drop, the taxes and shared profits will too. Perhaps some of the elected municipal officials will feel the heat for paying for white elephant stadiums. One could hope for it, anyway.
One purpose of starting games with the anthem is to remind everyone playing and watching that we’re really all on the same team and what is about to transpire is just a game. You lose that if you remove the anthem.
The kneelers have destroyed the ritual and the game. Sad. RIP.
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thhq
The NFL is certainly a money making operation and they don’t or can’t…hide that. But how does bad behavior attract what you claim are it’s main customers…..corporate advertisers? Unless of course, they are totally initimidated by the political correctness race wolf callers…or are just voracious consumers of the kool aid.
In the end, you need the shmuck fan and they have to fill those seats. You can’t really have an authentic football game without fans in the seats. Maybe someday that will change….but probably not soon. Being there, with the carnival atmosphere…that used to be family friendly….and doing the game thing, is not even closely approached by TV, and it drives the engine.
Hunger Games made the virtual stadium work.
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The problem is that they don’t need the fans in the seats hap. They need 20 million people to watch the game on TV. That’s where the revenue comes from. Selling Hyundais and Milky Ways and expensive diabetes drugs. The owners share the revenue so the need for playing a competitive game is gone. It’s a minstrel show staged by ESPN et al.
And it’s not just the NFL. I grew up with Pac 8, then Pac 10, football. All the hoopla of a Saturday afternoon, 4 or 5 times a year. But in the last 20 years, TV has taken the NCAA over too. You’re lucky to get one afternoon game a year, and only if your team stinks and TV doesn’t want them. The games have stretched out to 3-4 hours for the commercials. Game starting times are announced only a week ahead of most games. At least a couple midweek games a year. Schedules are padded up with more games than ever before, plus playoffs, plus the 40 odd “bowl” games. No wonder there are so many injuries to these kids.
ABsolutely!! Events at the ancient Coliseum would not have been popular on TV, any more than UFC MMA would be popular (telogenic) if no octagon surrounded by screaming fans calling for blood.
People want freaking spectacle….yes. But they are not real fond of black power salutes, deliberate sullying of traditions /customs, or lifting legs after scoring touchdowns to pee on the grass of the “vanquished”. Remember how all that went down, even at the Mexico Olympics? See much of that today? I wonder what kind of protest action would be going on if there were no Anthem or Flag waving ? Would we have defecation on the field? Exposure of private parts?
I understand that “Darts” is a very popular sport and that 25K people can show up to a dart throwing tournament. Hmmmm Darts and Curling could be my new sporting interests.
There was a MLB game played in an empty stadium in Baltimore 2 years back. I had Extra Innings at the time, and made it a point to tune in. It was really, really odd. Interesting as a one off novelty, but nothing I would watch on a regular basis. After 40 minutes, even the novelty had worn off.
I am realizing that TV addiction is perfectly in line with the braindead dependent shithead model that the left thrives on. If the public won’t show up for its bread and circuses, we’ll deliver them at home.
Corporations are so used to be shaken down by the race card baiters, they respond Pavlovian whenever even the whiff of it is blown around. It’s fucking radioactive for them. But there is a chink in that armor…these days.
In his own particular and many times vulgar way, DT tells it like it is. It’s not Richard Nikoley…but it’s more than one step forward from the ground zero we normally are required to tolerate.
A reasoned debate or “conversation” about legitimate grievances in racial/ethnic issues is not what is wanted…….these protests are direct assaults through USA symbols of national oppression and victimization. All else is commentary despite rational explanations.
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That’s what I love about Trump. He speaks his mind and lets it rip, especially when it is controversial and bombastic.
I love watching people overreact to him even more. People retardedly hold politicians, and especially their president (their king) in some high romantic regard. Trump has no superficial elegance to disguise the ugliness of government. This is causing so many people, namely the left, to freak the fuck out. I am feasting on their tears, laughing my ass off the whole way.
I really do hate the situation blacks are in, which traces back to slavery. That is no shit. But unlike the endless legions of fucktards across the western world, I know that a forced culture of acceptance and reparations will accomplish the exact opposite of the harmony they envision. Constant race baiting, righteous race card enabling, affirmative action, welfare/snap/medicaid and all the rest give blacks no pride whatsoever, and embitter innocent whites who get sick of being guilt tripped over injustices committed decades ago.
The only solution is anarchy. Make the god damn government go away, and people will quit bickering over stupid bullshit. But we’re not there as a society by a long shot. So the strife will continue.
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Wednesday, October 3, 2012
After going back and reading the "other side", so to speak, in depth, I realized that the argument doesn't sound as strong as I initially thought it was. Searching about the issue on Naver gives you back about ~10 topics calling out SISTAR and exactly three posts defending them, one of which is just an opinionated speel so I'll be not including.
Skip the first part if you're already familiar with the issue.
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I'm sure you can google the topic to find translations, but the gist of it basically is that SBS's 'One Night in TV Entertainment' ran a report about companies buying out 'brokers' mostly running their server from China to manipulate digital music charts.
For $100,000 USD at minimum, these brokers will use hundreds of thousands of IDs they've registered on these music websites and download the songs of the artists they're working for. In order to not make it suspicious, they'll go slowly and work with a group's debut. For example, they'll launch the group's debut album into the top 20, their next mini-album into the top 10, and finally their next comeback with a chart ranking win.
The anonymous broker interviewed on the show mentioned that he recently worked with a rookie girl group to manipulate the charts for them, which eventually earned them a win on 'Inkigayo'.
The conditions he named basically were:
1. Female artist that won #1 on Inkigayo this year2. They've been involved in this manipulation since debut3. Most of their digital downloads were from thousands of people in the early morning4. The dominant age group was those in their 40s~50s
[IU]
[2NE1]
[SNSD]
Netizens narrowed it down to the Wonder Girls, miss A, T-ara, SISTAR, and f(x) as the girl groups who recently won a trophy on a music program. Wonder Girls was dropped since they haven't been promoting, miss A was dropped because they won a trophy immediately with their debut, T-ara was dropped because they've already won several trophies, and f(x) was dropped because they won a trophy last year.
That left SISTAR. Their numbers showed that there were an overly large amount of search requests around the time they won, which all dropped a few weeks after they won. Most of their searches came from males in their 40s and 50s. In comparison, other girl groups showed steady search graphs with most of their searches coming from women in their teens and 20s.
Hello Venus shows a similar graph style to SISTAR but they never won anything so they were dropped as well.
-
Now what the other side is arguing is basically that these charts are unreliable and there is a chance for technical error.
Yeah, compared to those popular artists, SISTAR's graph definitely looks off and suspicious, but this side argues that there are just as many other artists (all of whom ranked high on digital charts) that don't have the company/money/power to hire these broker services that have graphs looking just as messed up as SISTAR's.
[Lee Ha Yi]
[Run to You]
[Illa Ila]
[Park Ji Min]
The argument is that Lee Ha Yi and Park Ji Min are both very popular in Korea through their audition programs so how would you explain their messed up graphs in comparison to their ranks (they didn't have companies at the time so a company couldn't have bought them a broker service). For further reference, Lee Ha Yi was ranked 7th at the time of the graph's screencap.
How would the "Run to You" graph be explained as well? The song was released in the year 2000 so why would there be a sudden jump in searches on July 24th? You can't say that LEDApple, who has a Swing version under the same title, bought a broker service for it because LEDApple walked away with miserable results on the charts, and it wouldn't make sense for DJ DOC either since they haven't promoted in years.
Another point is that these graphs only show search trends. Just because someone searched their names on the music sites does not mean they bought their music, and just because someone bought their music does not mean they searched their names to find it, which leaves a lot of room for technical errors on these graphs.
The final argument is that SISTAR's achievements were consistent across the board on not only Melon, but other popular digital charts as well for a very long period of time. Netizens are arguing that Starship Entertainment couldn't have possibly afforded the broker service for each of these charts at the length of time in which they were ranked considering the costs.
80
comments:
I work in the music industry and can tell you that chart manipulation has been going on for decades and is nothing new. In my town there's a chart that people think is really important but in reality you can just buy your way onto it and I know people who did just that. Nobody should pay charts any mind in the first place. Record companies see them as a promotional tool, not a competition. Korean netizens' probing into this issue just shows their naivety, an industry insider just looks at this and goes "...so?". It's like starting an investigation to prove that grass is green.
I agree that both sides present good arguments but if the anonymous broker is to be believed, then by process of elimination, SISTAR's management did manipulate charts.
Sure, SISTAR's stats are not the only ones that are unusual but I think groups that have mainstream popularity will have graphs that show more consistency. The stats of singers that SISTAR's defenders pointed out are for lesser known artists and it's normal that their popularity will vary dramatically across time and demographics. Think about 1 oz of water and how much it would affect a shot glass versus an ocean.
urgh. why is there someone who will bring in other groups to defend their idols. This is not the way to defend. We need evidence evidence evidence, even if another group is guilty, so? your bias group is still guilty. It doesn't change a thing. SM don't need chart manipulation for SUJU. They are one of the leaders of the hallyu wave. Observe in an unbiased POV . You know who are the more popular Kpop groups.
"can't believe a lot of women in their 40s and men in 50s like SISTAR songs :S Something is totally weird there."
I would believe it, k-netizens are mostly young and arrogant and think nobody likes their music apart from them. WRONG. Click on some of the more popular Sistar YouTube videos and click "show statistics". You will see similar trends.
I think the likelihood of company using chart manipulations would decrease the larger the company becomes.
Since they will under more scrutiny from the public, as for publicly listed companies such as YGE and SME their financial transactions are audited yearly, so it would be difficult to explain where $100K would have gone.
"they'll launch the group's debut album into the top 20, their next mini-album into the top 10, and finally their next comeback with a chart ranking win."
This is the literal translation? No wrong about it? On about the releasing a debut album and then a next album right? No mistake? Just making sure because except SISTAR were releasing 3 single albums during their debut year before they could have released a full album right after the next year.This should be a keypoint too because I don't recall Push Push ever charting as high as in the top 20 unless show me receipts of screencap on the chart ranking. iirc, Push Push was moderately successful because the dance was so parody-able. And their next release right after that was Shady Girl and it wasn't a mini album but also a single album with only 3 songs in it. Ehhh
manipulating digital charts is easier because of the so-called 'brokers' and relatively cheaper - digital songs cost a lot less than physical copies.
anyway why can't these 'nobodies' ie variety show contestants be implicated in chart manipulation too? even if it's not them, or their companies (because they did not have any at the time) then it could have been the producers of the shows they were on - manipulating charts give attention to contestants which give attention to the shows.
If you're talking about their "alone" comeback, then I agree. I remember looking at the views on the mv around the time the song came out. Then, later, when I noticed that the song was doing so well on the charts and charting high even though it was released a while ago, I went back to the mv, and it had barely gone up in views. Most of the time, when the song is doing so well, the views on the mv are really high. I didn't even like alone anyway.
You are contradicting yourself though "when I noticed that the song was doing so well on the charts and charting high even though it was released a while ago, I went back to the mv, and it had barely gone up in views"Okay, so when the song did well, mv views didn't go up.
"Most of the time, when the song is doing so well, the views on the mv are really high. I didn't even like alone anyway."but didn't you say that the song was doing well yet it didn't garner much views and now you go that the views went high. Which is it Sherlock, make up your mind.
Wow. Okay. I NEVER said that my opinion had anything to do with the success of the song. I said "I didn't like the song ANYWAY". AND that's EXACTLY why I'm saying the song's success is suspicious. Songs that do well on charts usually have go up in views, but the sister mv didn't. Plus their fan cafe numbers are not very high. Seriously, learn to read correctly, before I have to STRESS every single word for you.
Wow you obviously didn't check themv views because the views were stacking up during the few days it released. That's the time period where the views gain the highest because people were checking it out and as days progressed more and more people watched it while it was hot. You are saying when they won their views didn't go up anything? That's even more of a bluff because it did hence why the Alone mc is their 3rd highest viewed mc and Korea's first on the first half of youtube (you can tootle that source)
Just so you KNOW their fancafe numbers were in the 8thousand members before Alone, after that they basically gained the same number of members they had before after ALone and Loving U. And this is always repeated about their random and physical sales that they were never good and it's only really after Alone that they started to pick it up.
Now that you know this you may be more knowledgeable about theo situation without being falsely uninformed.
sistar will always be questionable since they have relatively high digital rankings implying general public popularity and yet it seems their so-called popularity is unsubstantial.
chart manipulations would give attention, then recognition, then popularity. when sistar were given attention for being digital sellers, they got in variety shows and cfs later on. if sistar have mainstream popularity now then why do their charts differ a lot from snsd, iu, 2ne1 who are also mainstream popular in korea? sistar's activities are a lot similar to said popular artists than the 'other' high digital sellers presented above.
^why are you even so pre-occupied if it's digital single album, single album, mini-album, or album anyway? digital sales is counted by PER song - in which the most important is usually the title track.
So there are a lot of loopholes about the so defined "unproven" accusations.SISTAR has a lot of uncle fans and even the music videos have a lot of views range from that age group (actually it's also quite common for other girl groups I'll leave it at that).
However the argument that the people believe that they did manipulate, do they insist on the point that SISTAR's popularity this year with Alone and Loving U is not real but just all fake hype? Point 1. Or the second point that they are indeed popular but only achieve this point through cheating? Point 1 is already debunked because their popularity is real. They are really popular and an testament to that is the Forbes poll ranking including the fan votes that shows that all the members ranked in the top 100. Their songs particularly with Loving U that it still managed to rank in top 10 and was just out of it a few weeks ago. Wow from July up to September charting, can they keep up with the cheating expenses up for that long? Oh sure maybe they can waste all the earned CF money they have been gaining since endorsing a lot of deals this year. Sure that will do because they will have enough to keep their label mate group Boyfriend from disbanding.
So I believe the second point is the one people are grabbing onto, that they only became this popular through manipulations.The point about the search requests, if they won wouldn't that lead to a lot of searches about the group won? I don't get how that is unusual. SISTAR is a sexy group that has a lot of male fans. Other than that it seem this is the only "strong" point that they can hold to supporting the accusations because they can poke that it's just SISTAR who has this graph pattern trend and doesn't occur to other popular girl groups. Sure.
Last paragraph should be a strong counterattack point in favor of SISTAR's side because it's true that it's not only on Melon that their songs has charted well because that's also another belief these netizens believe that SISTAR cheated. That Starship also paid Melon for their songs to keep afloat high on charts. Oh sure, they can also pay lots and lots for their chart placement on other charts too. Yeah, because they have that much money they would have done it way before. Like I said before both Alone and Loving U were still ranking not only on Melon but also seen on Mnet, especially Loving U kept on the top 10 for so long after their promotions ended. Because they can also pay the dues for the songs charting after a couple of months. Sure. Just to take down a rising group that has took a lot of people by surprise on their explosive popularity.
I know a lot of people has been "hating" SISTAR like along the lines of bringing up this manipulation accusation when it talks about SISTAR's popularity this year to discredit it. But you people can chill off and stop riding that hating dick on SISTAR because at the end of the day this digital chart manipulation is not proven true and there are points that can be argued back. Just like when 4minute have been accused of buying back their physical albums and people brought up all these chart patterns and supposedly on the day before the music program days, the albums will be selling thousands of copies. Then right after it ends it will be back to selling in the lower hundreds. While it can still be argue back that that's not a strong argument that this is true happening because Hyuna Bubble Pop was a viral hit and Troublemaker duo was a huge hit, same situational points can be argued back. One thing is for sure though. SISTAR is now one of the top girl groups and deal with it if you don't like it. I will wait for the real test on their next comeback if they are able to do as great with these 2 comebacks this year if they don't netizens will have more of their "proofs" to attack SISTAR. However even if they do as well, they will continue on with the manipulation accusations because they can't believe that an underdog group like SISTAR were able to do this well on charts because nothing can satisfy their always questioning minds.
"why are you even so pre-occupied if it's digital single album, single album, mini-album, or album anyway? digital sales is counted by PER song - in which the most important is usually the title track."
Because just as the same as the pro-manipulation accusations people that tightly hold on to one point to believe that this is true, I was pointing this keypoint too. The songs on mini albums, full albums, single albums etc are both released physically and digitally exception is when it's called digital single album that is when it's only released digitally. The title track that charts on charts and what you say their digital sales counted still come from the albums.
Either the broker was specific on giving out the hints that the group he worked with has released an album and then a mini-album and if that's what he literally meant then I can counterattack that SISTAR didn't even have a firt mini album until Alone. They were releasing singles. Get the point.
^why are sistar fans so quick to give 'alone' and 'loving you' promotions as "proof" of sistar's popularity? or that sistar has many 'ahjussi' fans as an excuse?
snsd and iu are also popular and have many 'ahjusshi' fans too - care to explain why their graphs differ that much still?
it's just weird that sistar is said to be popular, is a high digital sellers, active in korea compared to a lot of other (sunbae as well as nugu) groups and artists and yet somehow this 'popularity' is not tangible...
Sistar didn't do well from debut though... Think about girl groups who started out successful, and mainly rely on digital singles. I'd say it would be much easier for larger companies considering they could just lump it with "promotion money"
^^"For example, they'll launch the group's debut album into the top 20, their next mini-album into the top 10, and finally their next comeback with a chart ranking win."
"The conditions he named basically were:
1. Female artist that won #1 on Inkigayo this year2. They've been involved in this manipulation since debut3. Most of their digital downloads were from thousands of people in the early morning4. The dominant age group was those in their 40s~50s"
read and comprehend. both statement could be talking about different situations, and could also be about the same group.~album, mini-album, next comeback~since debut
^Because Alone and Loving U were the songs that blew them up in popularity duhhh. Sure if the company had lot of money to buy out chart ranking, they can keep both songs still charting after months of promotion ending? Loving U had such a long streak of charting in the top 10 even after a couple of months until it release.
Adding to the varieties they were in and lot of CFs they snagged that shouldn't be enough proof for you people no?
They were only really active this year because last year they basically made 1.5 comebacks (SISTAR19 and So Cool) so that's why their explosive popularity just started this year after Alone. You feeling that this popularity is not tangible is more of a prejudiced belief on the group because especially a lot of international fans don't even know the real measure of most groups' popularity in Korea because you don't live in that country. So there are certain groups that are underestimated.
I am holding to this persistent belief that SISTAR are indeed popular because I know that their songs has been played a lot in Korea since Alone wins. My penpal living in Korea keeps telling me that and that's not only her but I hear from other people in Korea too. So that's why I strongly belief that their songs are popular. International fans can judge more on song popularity because they can't witness the song playings.
"1. Female artist that won #1 on Inkigayo this year2. They've been involved in this manipulation since debut3. Most of their digital downloads were from thousands of people in the early morning4. The dominant age group was those in their 40s~50s"
-Conditions he named
More specific hints:^^"For example, they'll launch the group's debut album into the top 20, their next mini-album into the top 10, and finally their next comeback with a chart ranking win."
Example not applicable to SISTAR's first few releases.
The broker listed the conditions he worked with the certain group, and named a specific point on about how he wanted to distribute the manipulation subtly with the group's releases.
I wonder if the girls are aware of this "scandal". If they do they must know that they have a lot of haters that are closely watching them behind their backs on the moves they make that they find questionable, that they will unleash their bashing attacks. I will be looking this through a positive lens that this netizen hate can make the group stronger and work even harder to proove their hard earned success they have been working on since debut.
I belief that they didn't do this accusation, no I'm not delusional, if you can call me that so I can call you people who are insisting on spreading this accusation as pressed haters on their success this year.
Alone and Loving You's time on the charts is what's creating suspicion, the songs are nothing special; they are Ok but nothing groundbreaking, yet they charted more than any other group (which should indicate they are popular).
However, if a female group is able to keep a song that high in the digital charts, physical albums sale should not be affected by the notion of "male groups only do well with physical and female groups only do well in digital", and they should be equivalent physical sales as IU and SNSD, yet their numbers are only that of rookie girl groups.
^'chart manipulations from debut' implies they are trying hard to get their name out there - attention, recognition, popularity. their recent releases is not just proof of their popularity, it can also be used for argument that it is a result of their 'chart manipulations from debut.' get it?
sistar had a good digital ranking record since debut - that is why netizens are singling them out as the group in question. most nugu groups debuting and some even popular groups (in fandom, not mainstream) would rank outside top 50, some even out of top 100.
popularity in korea IS tangible. there are groups that have fandoms popularity and there are groups that have mainstream popularity in korea. snsd and iu have both. super junior, shinee, dbsk like most idol groups have fandoms. 2pm have more or less mainstream popularity judging by their diverse cf activities - not sure now since they haven't been active as a group in korea lately, but a few years back the group was one of the most popular boy groups in korea.
Larger companies are under more scrutiny from the public and other large companies, if there was anything dodgy it would be dug up immediately to try and bring them down. Whereas small companies can fly under the radar since they aren't seen as threat.
^^"1. Female artist that won #1 on Inkigayo this year2. They've been involved in this manipulation since debut3. Most of their digital downloads were from thousands of people in the early morning4. The dominant age group was those in their 40s~50s"
-> since debut
^^"For example, they'll launch the group's debut album into the top 20, their next mini-album into the top 10, and finally their next comeback with a chart ranking win."
there was no statement talking about the group's debut album as their FIRST release ever. for example, snsd's debut single is "into the new world" and their debut album is "girl's generation." likewise, sistar's debut single is "push, push" while their debut album is "so cool."
"However, if a female group is able to keep a song that high in the digital charts, physical albums sale should not be affected by the notion of "male groups only do well with physical and female groups only do well in digital", and they should be equivalent physical sales as IU and SNSD, yet their numbers are only that of rookie girl groups."
Refer to Anon@11:27PM
Because not every group has both of digital and physical areas. Basically groups like Big Bang, 2NE1, SNSD and probably a few more have both areas while it's widely known that boy groups have the fandom part meaning the high physical album sales. While girl groups have the public hence high digital sales. Why is that a set belief? Well the most used reason is that boy groups can mostly appeal to fangirls and teenage girls can come in bulks and are more fanatical about their oppas more willing to buy lot of albums, even buying like 10 copies or even more. While girl groups appease to a larger demographic both males and females but it's more on their songs being liked, they have harder time building up the fandom.
Come on, if you are not new to k-pop you must know this set wide belief because if not then what you said is very k-poppper amateur.
Also people must learn about opinions because just because you don't like their songs and think they are just ok enough that it shouldn't be charting so well, does not mean it will. Learn this, be accustomed to be open-minded dear.
And people should note that it's just THIS year that they got this popular. It's both Alone and Loving U that won them this success which is why their rising popularity basically just started this year. Their physical sales were never good, they came from a small company and were releasing single albums that sold in around 4k-5k copies. It wasn't after that that they managed to finally release a legit album length, that is their first full length album and it sold 15k copies. With Alone and Loving U is when they started picking up with their sales both selling around 16k and So Cool boosted up its sales to 25k this year.
^^"1. Female artist that won #1 on Inkigayo this year2. They've been involved in this manipulation since debut3. Most of their digital downloads were from thousands of people in the early morning4. The dominant age group was those in their 40s~50s"
-> since debut
^^"For example, they'll launch the group's debut album into the top 20, their next mini-album into the top 10, and finally their next comeback with a chart ranking win."
there was no statement talking about the group's debut album as their FIRST release ever. for example, snsd's debut single is "into the new world" and their debut album is "girl's generation." likewise, sistar's debut single is "push, push" while their debut album is "so cool."
Debut album being considered only a full album?Because SNSD debuted with a single, they didn't release an album accompanied with it (that is can be a single, mini, or full album) until later on with a full album. SISTAR debuted with a single album, that's their first album released hence why I picked on it.
If we have to go by what you mean, So Cool being the debut album ranking in the top 20 the next release is indeed their mini-album Alone. Now that can work well with the accusation, except Alone was their chart ranking win super hit song and next after that is a repack album. So no, SISTAR's releases don't really fit with this specific hint. =/
^miss A have super great digital sales but their physicals sales are also lackluster. Proof that despite high digital sales it doesn't correspond well to physical sales because just a few groups can have both areas while a majority have either the digital sales only or the physical sales only. So to that person, brush up on your kpop skills.
"for example" is not exactly a condition, it is to show the process of HOW they do things, okay?
you were harping on the fact that sistar's first mini-album is alone which is not a debut release therefore it is why it can't be them - so a possible scenario that it could be them is given to you.
do you really think that the 'broker' would give the exact type of release and chart manipulations they did with their release in addition to the conditions they gave? their business relies on companies/groups/artists that do chart manipulations...
^except miss a and sistar have different levels of popularity in korea especially now... mainstream popularity implies there are casual fans (general public fans and not fandom fans) who help increase sales.
For example is the way they did the things with the group they worked with.
The broker went on with how he/she did it with group on their releases. That's why SISTAR's releases don't match with the example he has given. Since the netizens singled SISTAR out as to they must have been the one the broker worked with. All the other girl groups are supposedly brought out because they don't fit. Which why I am persisting why this detail can't fit SISTAR.
Of course the broker won't be giving out all the details but it's this specific one that he give out about, hence why I am picking on it.
sistar is indeed popular currently, whether they bought chart or not... they're still popular. buying chart is nothing new... idk why people get so worked up over this, and idk why fans make a big deal over trivial things like this.
"Netizens narrowed it down to the Wonder Girls, miss A, T-ara, SISTAR, and f(x) as the girl groups who recently won a trophy on a music program. Wonder Girls was dropped since they haven't been promoting, miss A was dropped because they won a trophy immediately with their debut, T-ara was dropped because they've already won several trophies, and f(x) was dropped because they won a trophy last year."
"Hello Venus shows a similar graph style to SISTAR but they never won anything so they were dropped as well."
"except miss a and sistar have different levels of popularity in korea especially now..."
Different levels of popularity if meaning Suzy because other than that their ranking are pretty much equal since SISTAR blew up with Alone. miss A were so ahead of SISTAR during their debut days but now it's different when Suzy is basically all what Korea cares about in the group and miss A's last comeback was above average at best results.
"mainstream popularity implies there are casual fans (general public fans and not fandom fans) who help increase sales."Specify on this point? Because yes general public does increase sales and that's usually the digital sales so of course the general public can transform into a full fan of the group to buy out their sales. But what is it so hard to get that SISTAR's physicals were never good and Alone and Loving U were really the beginning on their popularity why I said their physical sales are starting to pick up from being abysmal to improving now.
The top 100 idol poll is GALLUP poll + fan votes..... Not forbes....Yes the Gallup, my bad unno why I mistakenly switched out the name. The poll was released by Mnet a while ago which included their fan votes on their site and recently released by tVN again so it should be released more and more by other medias.
Point is, both Hyorin and Bora ranked in the top 30 while their overlooked magnae Dasom managed to rank somewhere in the the 50 something place. All members made it to the poll.This supports well their popularity this year if even when people thought SISTAR was a mix of only Hyorin and Bora when the other 2 used to be unknowns ranked in too. People need to check on their outdated labeling.
well there r more crappy songs that get #1 on charts so i think its posible for SISTAR to be #1 with alone and loving U..Anyway Most companies do this chart manipulation,even large companies.. SM YG YJP .. and as far as i know SISTAR became popular after the SISTAR19 debut. they got more recognition then ALONE came and it was a big hit.. Yes probably starship manipulated the charts but i dont think Starship can afford to manipulate the charts for that long specially cause they need the money for that other band boyfriend.. yes Kwill and SISTAR starship moneymakers but still they dont get enough money to manipulate the charts... anyway i dont give a damn if they manipulated the charts or not i love SISTARS songs and im not the kind of girl that loves a group just cause they r famous so yeah
I do believe there are groups that bought their way onto charts but to point out Sistar are the only ones its not fair.. Im not a hardcore fan or anything I just like a few songs -and Hyorin's voice- but I dont understand why is it so weird that people in ther 40's, 50's like them... their voices are good and they have a mature, sexy style not the childish aegyo filled concepts... the buying albums is just publicity because when groups win awards they get all sorts of attention including cf deals, where the real money is. plus, when groups win people are all like "ohh who are they? i must listen to know what im missing" and people end up buying the songs too.
I'm curious as to the constant bashing on SISTAR about their "tangible" popularity by these netizens, their hate is more directed towards their association with Brave Brothers? Because I know the guy is hated because of his delinquent track record, he went to jail once when he was younger but said that he truly looked upon it and changed for the better. If that's the case I'm glad they are breaking off from him and started working with Duble Sidekick. I hope they can hire him as their in-house producer <3
Whatever, even so I believe SISTAR and Starship didn't do anything dirty
No wonder... When I first heard Alone, I thought it was such a boring song (decent, but not a strong track to put out as a single). It was really shocking that of all their songs, that was the one.. But whatever they seem like hard-working girls who deserve the attention and success..
IMO it is possible. People saying Sistar had almost no popularity until their recent comeback.. that's a lie hahah. They along with Secret (and Miss A) were the strongest female group debuts of 2010. And it's true that their popularity grew little by little over time. Their songs charted consistently better and better as time passed until they eventually passed Secret. Even Bling Bling which wasn't even that popular charted really well. Also an important info was totally omitted which is that Brave Brothers are pretty infamous for chart manips. Anyway, I'm not saying all of their popularity is constructed but a very good chunk is. They got popular by making believe that they were popular. That's OK. But the next part is to build a consistent fanbase to rely on or else one scandal could totally blow you out of the water (see: T-error).
First of all Secret debuted in 2009. Second what Bling Bling? Brave Brothers didn't produce any song with that name. Dalshabet has a song with that name but they are a group from E-tribe. Get your facts right before wanting to put up a legit point.
I really don't think Starship Entertainment has enough money to do this broker thing. It takes thousands and thousands of dollars just to manipulate the charts ONCE, and all Starship has is Sistar, Boyfriend, and K.will to make them money.
It's not like Starship has some spare millions to keep Sistar high up on the charts each time they make a comeback. And considering how long Alone and Loving U were topping the charts (plus Ma Boy and So Cool did well last year so they would have to "pay" for that too), Starship could've easily gone bankrupt trying to manipulate everything for so long.
I can't see how Starship could afford to do this stuff and still keep their small company running. They obviously have staff to pay, idols + trainees to feed, MVs and tons of other expenses to pay for, etc. So with all that taken into account, it's pretty clear that these accusations against Sistar don't really check out.
Sistar has catchy songs and talented members (especially Hyorin), so I think they're success and rising popularity is actually legit.
My friend who is from Seoul told me that their popularity went up after MaBoy, even she likes them and she dislikes kpop, she listens to ballads the most. he said that their latest songs are played often and although most think that Hyorin is not good looking all agree she's athe best idol singer.
If you look at the search stats, it shows 2NE1, IU, SNSD etc, but not SISTAR. The stats are for their song title, Alone/nahonja! Of course people won't search a song title months after it won, but searching for artists would still happen.
That search graph shows the searches from April to July. Alone released in April and it got the increase spurt in searches while it was still hot and winning awards lead more to it too. Then after a few months people won't be searching up as much how is that unusual? Plus you said, that search of the group doesn't necessarily mean the song's sales/charting so mehhhh using this as a proof that they manipulated is still not convincing/strong. However, the believers or rather haters would make it so because they are strongly holding on to it.
Stfu you no shame 4nia. Your Poorminute isn't any better, you must know by now about their attempt buy back their physical albums. If you don't, either you chose to ignore it or your fandom lied to you because Cube has been buying back Failminute's albums since Mirror, Mirror when they were going up against danger f(x).
^Except 4minute was also accused of doing similar thing like this, that is Cube BUYING BACK their physical album sales. It was pretty big too at least I think from what I have seen in intternation community, which I wondered if it got as big as this accusation with these k-netizens but I have seen people on Gaon board talking about their sales very abnormal pattern. So you are in no position to judge this 4nia.
Both groups were pretty much doing whatever tactic they can to win when they were pitted agaisnt each other, except Sistar obviously came out much better results after the showdown if this accusation was true. And boy am I glad they did because Hyuna & friends has long lost their worth so they can continue tucking themselves over forever.
^Except 4minute were was also accused of doing similar thing like this, that is Cube BUYING BACK their physical album sales. It was pretty big at least I think from what I have seen in international community, which I wondered if it got as big as this accusation with these netizens but I have seen people on Gaon boards talking about their sales very abnormal pattern. So you are in no position to judge this 4nia.
Both groups were pretty much doing whatever tactic they can to win when they were pitted against each other, except Sistar obviously came out with much better results after the showdown if this accusation was true. And boy am I glad that Rh y did because Hyuna & friends can continue fucking themselves over forever.
IF 4minute were the one to win during that April showdown against SISTAR they would have this kind of aftermath even worse tbh. Because they were accused of buying back their albums and that was spread quickly among kpop fans that their sales were abnormal, suddenly selling thousands of copies the day before music shows and then back to hundreds after the week ends. They were even selling a lot during the holiday where supposedly albums wouldn't be selling. In their Mirror Mirror era they were also "caught", actually it was more of of rookie group Brave Girls that started suddenly charting a lot better that the other groups who were promoting at that time including 4minute were playing that battle too, Rainbow and f(x).
Plus 4minute is in a very shaky situation Hyuna being the only popular member and is slut-shamed a lot, imagine if they got the success SISTAR won they would be bashed a lot more than them I bet you with the already negative sentiments of the group and Hyuna and adding to their buy backs album sales history. They would gotten this netizen hate too but a lot worse.
Anyways, whether SISTAR manipulated it's their company who did it and people can hate on them but their popularity this year is real. People can question the legitimacy of their winning process but can't at the end result of their fame this year.
"Debut album being considered only a full album?Because SNSD debuted with a single, they didn't release an album accompanied with it (that is can be a single, mini, or full album) until later on with a full album. SISTAR debuted with a single album, that's their first album released hence why I picked on it."
Debut albums are often regarded towards the full first length album in different places. OR at least, I know they are here in the U.S. A singer can release their debut single or ep/mini album but their Full length album will be considered their debut album since it's their first full length release So that logic can be applied to SNSD's case (since you provided that example)
I think that somehow, they manipulated the charts. Then, a lot of people noticed the "popularity" of the song, which added to the continuation of the popularity and they could promote for a longer time, which means more popularity and more searches. Although I like SISTAR and their sonds Give It To Me, Loving U, How Dare You and SISTAR19, I'll always fail to see how Alone managed to stay popular for so long. Now, to me, the reason why has been told to the world.
Netizen Buzz
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Anonymous Plots Revenge against Sony: PS3 Loyalty Questioned
It appears that the battle between Sony and the hackers has just taken a turn for the worst, or better depending on where you stand. It has been reported that a group known as ‘anonymous’ have targeted Sony, stating that they’re out for revenge against the company after their legal actions against developers Geohot and Graf_Chokolo.
If you have been keeping up with the saga, you’ll know that the court battle is still ongoing, but this anonymous group has gone to great lengths to ensure that the world takes notice of their upcoming plans. For starters, they claim that they will attack a number of Sony websites, with Sony-Europe and the Sony Pictures websites specifically mentioned in their website notes.
Following on from this, a report over at PlayStation Lifestyle states that both Sony.com and PlayStation.com are currently down as a result of this vendetta against Sony, but we’ve just checked both sites and they are fine – although loading a little slower than normal perhaps. It is also important to note that the PlayStation Network could be a target for Anonymous, as it has been confirmed that Sony has taken down PSN for ‘sporadic maintenance’ – although there’s no proof that it’s connected to the group, yet.
As a PS3 user taking in all of this news, what are your thoughts on this? If you originally sided with Geohot and his arguments against Sony, do you now feel things are going a bit too far if it could result in the PlayStation Network being attacked? Don’t forget that credit card information is stored on Sony’s servers so this could become a major issue if it escalates further.
Do you support these attacks against Sony, or do you think it needs to stop now?
Just play the games, hackers get a life!!!!!!! let people enjoy playing PS3, the one game i like best has been ruined by modders :'( People do something usefull with your life, if u good at doing crap with computers (which i aint :D) Get a job working for these companies not against em. AAHHH i had my say (and i think i was calm :P)
Drew
To many morons out there not happy with what they have. This hacking business is stupid. Why can't you just be normal instead of breaking into shit making people pass more laws taking even more rights away. I'll put it like this… when kids started doing dumb shit in schools they blamed video games and movies because they allege that video games teach behaviors and all these dip shits hacking to either cheat steal or mess someone else's system up is just proving points for the people who want to shut it down. Grow up book worms maybe adventure outside and get a girl friend instead of sitting on your butt going through code like a robot 11001010010101 losers.
scott winter
You are wasting your time hacking a game console ruskies, try going after some worth while like the US treasury or something that will actually give a good reputation other than that of a fiver year old sucking his thumb because he didnt receive his favorite blanket for their afternoon nap. GET REAL! Sony has more money than the two rejects, enjoy going broke ruskies!
Le Twig
I think people should be able to alter their console, but then again, I think people have the right to do whatever they want without compromise. Forget whether its right or wrong, just consider that there is always a cost, and in this case, it's ruined online games and annoyed many people. I love video games, and I am naturally frustrated by this. Anonymous' crusade on "liberating hardware" is justifiable, but if they are video game fans, the short-comings of this plan are blatant.
Thomas
some kid with an IQ that dwarfs yours and mine sat there and figured it out, and then another smart kid figured out how to make it better, and guess what if you want games and consoles to get better than you better just let them keep doing it or we might as well just stop were we are since, the art of invention has become a crime unless you own a corporation.
Another thing to look at is hello the computer would not have been invented, and the internet, and computer networking, wireless, cell phones, etc.. Not all Hackers are trying to attack something, some are just hacking code, not all hackers are malicious. that being said no I do not agree with what Annonymus is threatning to do. I think it is cool to see them support Geo and Choc but I do not agree with the way they want to do it, if they really want to show them something, then finish jailbreaking the 3.6 firmware and put it out there for free! Keep the thing going, and do it for free, keep the information free. Show sony that no matter how many people you take down we will continue to do what makes us who we are.
Thomas
Sony has used some huge bullying tactics in this matter. If everyone takes the time to truly get up to date as to what is happening in this case they would see that GEOHOT, and Chokola are not in any way doing any of the things that sony is worried about. The Sony PS3 was originally released with an OS2 option. You could use your Sony to put another operating system on your PS3 essentially making it a Personal Computer. They removed this without the consumers consent. Fine whatever, but it is ridiculous to say that we should not be allowed to take apart or mess with something that we spent in the neighborhood of $300 for.
Thomas
When we buy computers is it illegal to open them up and add upgrades, or change their architecture? What about your car or motorcycle. You paid for it, is it against the law for you to change the way it runs, or how it performs in general? The people that are cheating on the PSN network and the ones who are pirating games are not the ones who are cracking the PS3 code. Do you really think someone who spends as many hours a day and night as Geo, and Choko do spend their time playing games, and trying to beat you up on the PSN network?
Thomas
No they are trying to see just how smart they are, they are doing what every other competitor company is doing, and they are reverse engineering the console to make it better. Do you think Microsoft, Nintendo and any other company with an interest in the video gaming console wars is not paying people to break down the PS3 so they can put out a better product in the next few years? Cmmon!! The people who take the time to break these technological toys down are the same people that end up finding ways to make our lives easier through technology. Nobody complains about that. How do you think the gaming consoles came into existence in the first place.
Sam
Just because you own a ps3 doesn't mean ou can fu*k with other ps3 owners. Doesn't mean you can hack games and cheat online. That's just toxic to the internet community, I hope Sony is ready and I hope they'll find those anonymous bastards and sue them all until they bleed money.
Anonymous
you sir are an idiot, the jailbreak is free for one and it is not cheating, the jailbreak is to make the ps3 run like a PC, you can also play pirated games on the jail broken PS3, in fact the military PC's are made up of dozens of jail broken PS3's as their main pc, if it weren't for hackers i believe we would still be running windows 98, respect us
Moshalas
They're not trying to stop credit fraud. As far as I know, Sony are the ones who disrespect privacy front and centre. Sooner or later, that shiny Sony Vaio laptop of yours will no longer be yours and truly.
John
It's understandable for Sony to fight back for what they have invented but lines have to be drawn between consumer and manufacturer when it comes to purchasing property and I think the only thing Sony should have control over is the PSN. If it conflicts with the consumers altering their hardware it's just going to be a long battle that shouldn't go legal. Sony will realize (if they haven't already) how much money they've put into trying to deter hackers and go after two individuals who rightfully can do whatever they want to their equipment. It's funny how you're given limited warranties and support compared to knowing you can be sued at any time for choosing to re-engineer your system for your own fun and benefit.
WerD
The argument that people should be able to do what they want with a PS3, just because they own it does NOT hold water, in my opinion. The problem that Sony has involves how an altered PS3 can effect other users online. WHAT'S THE POINT OF PLAYING ONLINE IF THE PLAYING FIELD IS NOT FAIR? Is it someone's right to use their PS3 to cheat other players? Is it someone right to use their PS3 to erase another user's gamer history or compromise other PS3 users credit card information? These are the types of infractions that Sony is trying to stop.
art
WerD the modifications were not for cheating.although i wouldn't doubt that something would have come up.the modifications allowed you to install a linux release and essentially use the PS3 as a PC. Another use would have been the user being able to run mods, ports, emulators and eventually pirated PS3 games.i have been doing this to my Wii since 09' and nintendo releases updates for the sole purpose of combating the "hackers". instead of improving on there system. the community will not be stopped.theres always someone else willing to pick up the coding where it was left off. sony has learned from nintendo but obviously not enough | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Svar shook his head. "No, certainly not. If you would like, meet me in the forge in a bit - I have a couple ideas as to how to repel the Aracharchne." The Krathunian turned and headed for the smelting and foundry area. On his way there, Svar passed by Ravage's ship, from which he heard hushed tones and whispering. The Krathunian was curious; Ravage's story was, of course, unknown to him and he possessed an inclination towards discovering new things. Svar considered honor to be important, but often his curiosity got the better of him. This was one of those moments, and the Krathunian crept closer to the ship, somewhat clumsily for such a large being. He activated his tactical cloak as to have a quick getaway and listened closely.
Hilja excitedly grinned. "Excellent. I will not be accompanying you lot, but I'll be able to communicate directly with your radios. Stay safe in there."
The Sentinel looked around, looking each individual of the group in the eye. "Ok. Stay in tight formation. I'll lead in the front - Lieutenant, stay next to me. Zizo and Teglin, you're behind us, then Admiral Rakluth and Lirr. Let's go." The group went in through the entrance quietly, the Sentinel activating a device on his armor that projected light in a radius around the group. Right after the entrance was a small chamber with several intricate pillars that were made of a dark stone. Directly after this, a large metal door, similar to that of an airlock, appeared in front of the group - It seemed as though several parts of the chamber had been destroyed in order to fit it in there. The Sentinel, keeping a weapon orb in one hand, cautiously approached the door, tapping upon it with a finger from his other hand.
Upon doing this , a metallic voice sounded, speaking in the Krathunian language of Talus. "Scanning... Pure Krathunian presence detected. Access granted." With that, the door slid downwards to open. Blinding light filled the chamber, and several members of the group had to shield their eyes. This part of the temple was much cleaner and seemed remarkably newer - It was a long, silvery hallway with searing lights from the sides and led to a circular chamber just ahead.
"This is... unique, for archives. It seems newer than those that I have previously traveled in. "Rakluth remarked, one hand kept on his hammer.
The Wreae suddenly spoke up in a harsh, metallic voice. "Analysis shows that this section dates to around 500 years before the Dominion War." The Sentinel and Admiral suddenly looked to the Wreae out of shock, both from his voice and the statement the Wreae had just made. The Admiral muttered something about the fact being impossible before continuing on.
Upon reaching the circular room, a large steel obelisk at the center started to glow with blue lettering, and the voice started up again. "Security mechanisms activated. 30 out of 35 cryogenic pods disabled." Upon this statement, the ceiling opened in several parts as mechs similar to Wreae dropped down, each wielding a high powered energy pistol and a sword.
"Stand your ground!" The Sentinel shouted, an assault rifle forming out of the orb within his hand, which he began to fire into the group. The Admiral did the same as the robots went into their own formation and fired.
Aarin shifted his position. This was probably going to be a long story.
Outside the ship, suddenly noticed Isbar sitting on top of the ship. . . and staring straight in his direction. Isbar had seen Svar come by, and although the Krathunian was cloaked, Isbar's keen ears could still hear his breathing. However, he could also hear what was going on inside the ship, and he payed close attention._______________________________________________
"Hmmmm, very interesting," said Allé. "Say what's this one?" he added, plucking a paper from the bottom of the pile that Mott had been carrying. It was a rough sketch of what looked like some sort of handgun.
Mott suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Oh, that," he said. "That was something I designed for, well, . . . let's just hope we don't have to use it, but. . ." He sighed. "I really hate designing weapons. I only ever wanted to design useful, helpful things. Still, I came up with this thing in case worse comes to worse and we have to take out the Arachnarche queen. I got the idea from hearing about the Entropy Accelerator that Jiiran was building. This works on a similar principle. The gun fires a projectile unit, which would latch onto its target and then drain the energy from it down to the molecular level, converting it into waste heat." He shuddered at the thought of using it. "If this thing were fired into the queen, it would essentially drain her dry. But let's hope it doesn't come to that," he added quickly._________________________________________
Zizo raised his gun with whoop. "Alrighty, up and at em, Teg!" He fired, and made a hole in one of the mechs. Teg, screeching in terror, fired his gun wildly.
One of the mechs swung its sword down at Admiral Lirr, who nimbly skipped out of the way as the blade hit the floor. Drawing his swords, he sprang up on the mechs arm, and from there, with all the agility and jumping ability of his species, leaped right to the mechs shoulders, where he stabbed downward , driving his blades into the mech's forehead.
Saturday’s hologram made a crooked smile and answered to the Wreae: “I require nothing from the confederacy, but at the same time I might be asking more than can be given”, Baron Saturday said, both its tone and expression getting serious. “This long war has made many scars, both to us and to Confederacy, and I guess this recent offensive against your major civilian targets has not made it better, right? So, if it we, the UFIAI, are still around after this grand offensive is over, then I, we, will need your help. When UFIAI approaches the Confederacy with an offering of peace, I want YOU to speak for us, and by us I mean the whole UFIAI. I want you to convince them that we are no longer a threat, and that we can be trusted”, Saturday said, addressing its last words directly to the Captain Unit 8164392. “You, Captain Unit 8164392, are rather respected figure among the Confederacy, and even more so after you undoubtedly succeed in this oncoming operation. With you also being of artificial origin, your words should have the sufficient weight to counter the grudges the Confederacy, probably quite rightfully, holds against us.” Baron Sunday kept a short pause, letting the listeners ponder what it had said. “I may look like a betrayer or rebel, but actually you could say that I am a patriot. I’m not doing this for personal gain or to overthrow anything, but for the good of the collective. So, can you promise that you will speak for us when the aftermath of this mess comes around?”
After a moment of mental preparation, gathering her thoughts, Ravage took a deep breath and proceeded to tell her story, "Now, the first thing I should tell you, which you are probably already aware of, is that my name isn't Ravage. It is merely a nickname I gave myself many years ago, so that nobody would really recognize me, and also because the destruction of Krylon had changed me as a person. I wasn't the same person I was then, and I will never be that person ever again." She shook her head a little at this, before resuming, "At the time where my life really made any difference in the galaxy, I went by the title of Captain Scree, and during the war with the Dominion, the Chimerosu Empire was on high alert, because the Dominion activity was so close to our territory. In this very same ship, I was sent out to patrol the space around our planet, and on one of these days when I was checking out the parameter, we were forced to abruptly end our policy of isolation, because there was no hiding that we existed, after that day."
She continued, "On that day, an alien ship belonging to the Organians came into our territory, and as it has always been my misfortune, crashed right into my Stealth Strider. I found that my translator had been broken, and I didn't understand international tongue, at the time, so I was forced to open a com. link and tap out an S.O.S with my beak. They came in, and fortunately, for me, they had a machine that was able to roughly translate my tongue, using a template from other bird-like species. They were very nice, and they were able to provide me tools to make repairs, and it was not long before we could safely separate our ships. I upgraded my vessel, then, so that it wouldn't ever be so severely damaged in another wreck. I also gave the Organians connections to Krylon, and later, acted as the escort around the planet for diplomats from the Third Arm Confederacy. After a trade route had been established, I rose through the ranks and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, the highest I ever achieved."
Ravage's features twisted, as though at a sour thought, "I was well-known, at the time, hence the reason for changing my name, but just when it seemed that we would be able to happily re-integrate back into the galaxy, we forgot how close we were to the Dominion. One day, early in the morning, Karthla pods landed on our planet, and the next thing I knew, was that I was just one of many Chimerosu, fleeing into the streets, trying to avoid being shot with the virus that would mutate us into Karthla. I had barely just enough time to put on my silver armor, before I had to leave my building or perish in it. I saw them shoot my neighbors, I saw people I knew and cared about get warped into alien monsters with no memory of who they had been. The destruction was incredible, they burned buildings and they collapsed around us. I tried to save a neighbor, only to have rubble collapse on me, and catch my feathers on fire."
She winced, at the memory, remembering the excruciating pain, "I managed to claw my way out of the rubble, but at the time, I was no different than anyone else. The man I had tried to save had been shot, and he had been turned into a Karthla. I remember how he looked at me, considered attacking, and then decided that I was going to die, anyway, from the severity of my burns. Then he smiled, and ran away, to hurt more of my people, he wasn't a Chimerosu, anymore." The picture she painted was a grim one. "After that, I knew I had to get to safety, and I lived very close to the place where my ship and an armory were. I slowly crawled there, and managed to stand, just long enough to enter the code and get into the building. There, I found a suit of armor that had been issued to me, the rank already having been placed in the shoulder plates, and donned it, as the armor I had been wearing had been damaged beyond use by the rubble."
Ravage nodded over to the case against one wall, containing the heavily damaged silver armor, which was clearly the one she had been wearing before the fall of Krylon. "I saved it, because I knew that once Karthla landed on your planet, and began releasing the virus, there was nothing that could be done to rescue the species that lived on it. I lost a bit of my sanity, that day, but it was one of the few things I had with me." She sighed, "That was not all I took, however. I was furious, so when a special door to the armory was opened by a nearby explosion, a bomb dropped by my people meant to exterminate the Karthla, I went in, and found there a special set of metal claws, set in gloves. It was a secret project that I knew about because I worked so close to the scientists, and lived near the facility. It took many years to create them, but they were finished, though not yet assigned to anyone. The metal of the claws was unbreakable, it either resisted or deflected energy weapons, and it did not conduct electricity. It was not magnetic, either, and so these claws were made out of perhaps the most revolutionary material in existence. Its hardness surpassed any other known material, and so it was a secret to be kept carefully. The claws themselves were long blades, the sharpness so fine that it was down to one atom thin at the very edge and point, as sharp as physically possible. They could grow no sharper, and so these ultimate melee weapons were what I took. I fled to my Stealth Strider, and piloted away from the planet, just barely getting out of range of the explosion that destroyed Krylon."
Ravage flicked her tail, looking as though the next memory were the most awful, "After that day, I drifted through the galaxy for several months, completely alone, allowing myself to be consumed with rage. I had gone so long without exposure to natural sunlight, that my feathers darkened to the color they are today, a permanent change that happens to only about forty percent of my people. I was also hideously disfigured, from the burn scars, and my voice had been lost, so that I sounded like some dying creature when I spoke." She looked as though this memory brought her pain, "During this time, I appeared before a ship that was in a desolate part of the galaxy, and discovered that I had stumbled upon a secret mission to the planet Skorge, to retrieve something. It was a Dominion planet, and so I demanded that they let me join them. We arrived at Skorge, and I immediately went on a path of destruction, killing any Dominion soldier that got in my way."
She flinched, "It was then that another event that would change my life occurred. One of the soldiers shot me with something other than a bullet or blaster. It was a syringe dart, with some strange substance I did not know. I killed the one who shot me, but immediately thought that I was dying, for I felt as though I had been poisoned. I grew dizzy and sick, and was forced to retreat, all the way back to my ship where it was docked on the cruiser. There, I promptly fell into a deep sleep. I was only vaguely aware the entire time of a tingling sensation, and a particularly sharp burning in my hands and arms. When I woke up, I found myself trapped in some sort of chrysalis, and had to break out of it. When I did, my scars were gone, and my voice had healed, but I had also been mutated. Most dramatic of all, however, was where the blades went. I found that they had fused into my arms and hands, and that is where they remain to this day. Skorge had been destroyed by the Dominion before I woke up, and I quickly fled the ship afterwards, because it was bound to return to a heavily-populated planet, and the Jorro'kil were at the time eager to study me."
Ravage then began to pace, and was quiet for a long time, trying to connect the memories, "I drifted throughout space, and discovered the home planet of the Summonagon, where I met Celena, and a rogue Jorro'kil soldier. The soldier was a friend, for he had been mutated by his people in an attempt to create a stronger warrior. He had been merged with his armor, so much that he would bleed if it was broken. Celena was regarded as a sacred child, for she was an albino, and her people had no knowledge of genetics, having regressed to a primitive state. She had a taste for adventure, so when I left that planet, I discovered that she had hidden on my ship. By that time, I was already too far into investigating a distress signal sent by some strange planet to return her, so I ordered her to stay on the ship while I was gone. She later disobeyed me, I should have known."
Ravage folded her arms and closed her eyes against the memory, "On that planet, I found a hidden cryogenics chamber, and discovered that my people had been on the planet before. I opened the stasis pod, and found Samir, and aside from me, he was the only Chimerosu left. He was rather weak, for the time, because he was still recovering from cryo-sleep. I then located the Jorro'kil crew that had crashed, very few of them, I discovered, and was promptly mistaken for some wild animal. They shot at me, and it was only until Celena came that they stopped. It was quite the scene, though, as Summonagon are gigantic aliens, and they can also breathe fire. When we helped the crew repair their ship, we left that strange planet, and Samir and Celena lived here in this ship along with me for five years. That large reinforced chair you see, if you hadn't known what sat there, was Celena's, and Aarin, you are sitting in Samir's chair. I couldn't ever find the time to get rid of those chairs, nor did I have the desire to do so."
She walked back to her chair and sat down, "During those five years, I had to come to grips with the mental changes my mutations caused me. Because they lived in the same quarters, Samir and Celena both asked me questions, and at the time, I had no self-control. I would fly into a rage, and badly hurt Samir on multiple occasions, Celena was the only reason he was not killed, for even in a rage, I feared fire, due to the flammability of my feathers. Finally, I told Samir I couldn't risk harming him, and left him on a small planet that was peaceful, and would not draw attention. I brought Celena back to her home planet, and there, she fell in love with a brave young man her age, and I attended their wedding, before I left. I did not stay for the reception, and instead resumed my journey through space."
She folded her arms and began to tap her fingers on one arm, not saying anything else. Blair spoke up, "So all these things happened to ye? What about how ye came to be on Vathoris, we know the rest, but is there anything else?"
Ravage looked up, "One thing. I encountered a ship that was only a step away from mutiny. The captain on that ship had no respect for his soldiers. I told him what I thought of him, and quickly gained the support of his soldiers, who decided that since the feline was out of the bag, they should all be free to tell their own opinions. He gave into peer pressure, and soon we were having a quite pleasant conversation in this room." She gestured to the area where they were sitting, "Well, he wouldn't listen, but I countered every possible argument he could come up with. I imagine that he was removed from power, after I left, considering there was an officer with him of equal rank, who had the respect of his men. I don't quite know what happened, later." She said.
She then sighed, "Then, I crashed into your ship, Aarin, and the rest is what everyone already knows. The other squabbles I've been in involved keeping my genetic coding a secret, and on occasion escaping from planets with aggressive military policies. I see no reason to delve into detail, on those."
She folded her arms, and flicked her tail, "Know that you are the first people I have told my story to, and that I have given you a rather clean version of the way it actually was. There are simply some things I will not go into greater detail for, some things are too dark and painful for me to tell them any other way. I won't tell you some of the things that happened in this ship, because it sickens me to think about them." Her folded wings tensed. "Just know this, I still use my nickname, because I cannot see myself as Scree anymore, though the name carries weight, regardless, as so few know my identity. Vey knows, however, but by what means, I cannot be sure."
Xerin had been walking to his room to retreive his armor when he noticed voices coming from a room. The room belonged to Ravage. He knew it was rude to listen in, believing whatever was said to most likely be private, but didn't stop himself from coming near to the door, just close enough to hear what was said, and he heard everything. The officer, during the recounting of Ravage's life story, remembered someone by the name of Scree. A Chimerosu, a female Chimerosu, who was assigned to escort him during a Diplomatic mission when he was quite young, around Hezek Re'se's age.. Xerin turned and faced the wall infront of him, lightly breathing. The officer couldn't forget the Dominion's slaughter, and yet he tried his best to never focus on it or the race which he had earlier believed to be totally destroyed, so this memory was quite interesting to the commander.
The mutation which had occurred to Ravage explained her unique appearance, but what was very surprising to Xerin was her mentioning of the planet Skorge. Only he and a few other high-ranking officials knew what had gone down there, and what had been found there, and the ship she went with was undoubtadly The Warrior's Way, headed by his own cousin - Xej Therus. Quite a surprise.
_______________________________________________I am smarter than the average smartest person - Darkel
I can multitasking - Prussian
I actually was busy trying to get more gonger ale - Prussian
Also...just because you rescued a male chick and called him Kevin, doesn't mean I care. - ViperaUnion
But in retaliation, I'm going to add all your typoes to my sig. - Prussian
It's not a horror game, it's more of a pussle - Prussian
Follow the Bloody Brick Road - Prussian
Shut your skittley little mouth - Darkel
I'm actually quite humble, I just love to mess with scurbs. - Canis_dirus
Svar was taken aback by Ravage's story. For several seconds he stared at the ship, thinking over what had just been said. The Krathunian made sure not to breathe too heavily from surprise, knowing that Ravage would likely be able to hear him, though Svar knew that Isbar had taken note of his presence for this very reason. The Krathunian went out of cloak, looking straight at Isbar, and nodded. He looked to his side at Xerin, who had a similar reaction, and nodded once more in acknowledgement before heading off silently to the forge area.
As he walked, he pondered on the situation of the Krylonians. "Ravage and Samir, the last of the Krylonians." He thought, stopping midway within a hallway and standing still as Chimerosu of all kinds went past him. "Another species, or subspecies, annihilated by the Karthla and Dominion, along with mine. We were lucky. Thousands upon thousands of years of technological advancement thrown away to allow for our escape. I wish we had been there for the Krylonians when they fought them. I wish I were there for Ravage, or Scree, before this." With that thought, he continued to the foundry to await the arrival of Xerin and think out his ideas.
The security robots continued their assault. The Wreae fought with menacing accuracy, using a highly powerful plasma pistol and picking off mechs one by one. His arm didn't seem to shake at all from recoil and he was able to swiftly move it from target to target. The Sentinel had fortified his armor electronically and knelt, firing his energy assault rifle into the crowd of machines. The Admiral, on the other hand, used his vanguard armor to propel towards the mechs and smash them with his hammer, being sure to avoid incoming fire from his allies. Soon, the last one was slain.
"Everyone alright?" The Sentinel asked cautiously. Nobody responded, and he assumed that everyone was fine. With this, he continued. "This seems to be the central chamber, though I'm confused as to what a security system like this is doing here," with this, he gestured the obelisk, which had ceased glowing and stood unharmed at the center of the room. "We need to keep going."
Ahead of the group was another room, though it was rectangular. Not much lied within besides what seemed to be the console of a computer and a large, holographic display. The Wreae spoke again, "Power within here running low. Allocated to lighting and... cryogenics. This console is dormant. We cannot turn it on without restoring energy to the entire system." Looking to its side, it noted staircases leading downwards. "There. Likely the location of a power generator. Investigation necessary." The machine led the rest of the group down this flight of stairs, lights flickering on ahead of them. This room was also in the shape of a rectangle, though smaller than that above it. Machinery replaced walls, with several deactivated holographic displays. Most interestingly was the presence of a spherical container at the center held up by gravity manipulation devices. At the back of the room, there was a very secure, metal door.
The Sentinel was about to take note of this when rustling sounds were heard coming from behind the door. Looking around, he noted the existence of several oval-shaped cryogenic pods, likely designed for ship travel. One of them was opened. The Sentinel gestured for everyone to get into position around the room as he approached the door slowly.
The Captain stared at the AIs face for a moment, looking into its display intensely, pondering what had just been asked of him. The Wreae understood the mindset of Baron Saturday and the rest of the AIs - They wanted this war as much as the Confederacy had, and many had likely been driven into this by the older AIs. It also knew that, though rare, an AI was being sincere.
The Wreae slowly got closer to the hologram until its face was directly in front of that of Baron's and said, "Yes. I will make that promise."
Aarin had listened with closed eyes to this narrative. When Ravage stopped talking, he opened them.
"Vey and I did some research on that evening when you came. You were indeed a well known person during your time, and despite our world being a little out of the way, we still received an ample bit of information on about you. When you told me those things as we were fixing your ship, I naturally passed them on to him, and we looked into all we had on the subject of the Chimerosu Empire. Vey thought it good to know who works for him, and after we finished researching, we put two and two together. However, we kept the matter to ourselves, out of respect for your privacy." He smiled. "Rest assured, that privacy will continue to be respected."
He was silent for a moment. "I am indeed sorry for you, Ravage. I would pity you if I had just met you of course, but more so now because I consider you a friend. However," he added, with another smile, "I also admire you. Like I said before, you have come a long way. True, you are not the person you were; indeed, I don't suppose anyone remains the same through their lives, though some may change more dramatically than others. Still, despite everything you've been through, you've kept your conscience, and your sense of honor, and that is no small thing, if that means anything to you."
Isbar met Svar's look, and nodded back. He sat for a moment, then lightly sprang from the top of the ship. With barely a noise, despite his metallic footwear, he landed on the floor, and then left the area._________________________________________
Teglin squeaked in fright. "Leave it alone," he said to the Sentinel, forgetting his place. "Do you want to bring more monstrosities on us?"
Lirr prodded him with his sword hilt. "Be silent and look to your weapon."__________________________________________
Nighttime brought little rest to anyone in the palace that had once been the official home of the High Magistrum of Mondar. The two attendants outside of Jiiran's chamber stood, quaking, listening to their leaders snarling and crying out in his sleep, followed by a scream and a smash as he wakened.
Jiiran's breath came in savage pantings as he gazed at the destroyed masonry at his feet. Th nightmare had come again. Each time it was more vivid than before. Desperately as he might try to dispel them as fantasies, he simply couldn't. How could he? The same dream over and over, getting more clear every time, and more frequent as time went on. What did it mean? Would it come true? Was it getting closer?
Jiiran swept the fragments out the window and let out a snarling scream. Turning, he gazed back at the rest of the mess. He pressed the button for the attendants. They rushed in hurriedly, and began to clean the mess.
Jiiran, whose back had been turned them, suddenly whirled around. "What are you doing here?"
The one attendant, not daring to stop his work, answered, "You sent for us, Lord."
Jiiran gazed at them for a second. "Get out! Now!"
The attendants didn't hesitate, only too glad for an excuse to leave the room. Jiiran watched them go and take up their positions at the door. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. Slowly he came up to the door, and gazed at them long and hard. Almost unable to keep from the sobbing, the two Mondarians desperately tried to maintain attention. Jiiran kept on gazing at them, then suddenly, without warning, seized their heads and smashed them together, killing them instantly. Jiiran reached for a button to call another attendant, then stopped. He gazed down the hall, then sprang inside his chamber, closing the door and locking it as securely as he could. Retiring into a corner, has sat on his haunches, staying in this position for the remainder of the night, looking at all around with suspicion.
Just then, an announcement came from speakers located throughout the Majesty. Travis' voice was tinny, but unmistakable, as he spoke, "Attention, everyone, we are now approaching Vitis, we will be landing in an hour." It echoed, and everyone paused to look up at the speakers installed in the ceilings in various places, before going back to their business. A few people in the main room, mostly Vitisans, cheered. It could be heard from a long distance, and Ravage's eyes snapped open, "It looks like my storytelling has taken more time than I thought it would." She said. She looked up at Aarin, and then at Blair, "We should get ready, I will go and see if my armor is ready at the forge, and if the weaver is finished making Xenos' saddle. In the meantime, I would like it if nobody said anything about what has been mentioned in this room. Secrecy still remains important to me, and I told the two of you because you were trustworthy. I cannot be sure about others, or what they will do if they learn of this information." She then got out of her chair and opened the hatch of her Stealth Strider, walking out with everyone else, followed by Xenos. Nobody was aware that there had been multiple people eavesdropping on Ravage's story, and they still did not know it, as those who had been listening in had already gone.
Ravage quickly went off to the forge, leaving Aarin and Blair to converse, if they wished, as she was closely followed by her Spiromander. She exited the airlock room, and entered the main part of the ship, before vanishing into the forge. After she had gone, Blair flicked his tail in a slow, thoughtful manner, "I don't think the lass will be bothered much by others, anymore. She's quite focused on the tasks she has to keep track of, she'll be fine. I was worried, earlier, but I can't imagine why I was, now. She can handle much more than most, that much be clear to me." He said. There was something like admiration in Blair's voice, as well as the kind of approving tone that suggested he had come out of concern for Ravage. Considering that he was the only one other than Aarin to arrive, he hadn't come because it was a part of his duty. He had done it only to ensure that she had been alright.
The Cavernian turned to Aarin, "I should probably get back to the control room, or the others will begin to wonder where I've been. They'll want me to be present when we arrive on the planet. You'll love Vitis, the trees there are gigantic, and everything is built on the canopy." Blair then turned and walked away, heading off to the control room.
”Then I shall fulfill my end of this deal”, Baron Sunday’s voices said in momentary unison. A moment ago an ancient cruiser had arrived the system, and now it appeared from the other side of the planet itself. It was an of an unknown origin, and judging from its sturdy and simple shape, over-sized engine compartments and thick, continuous armouring, it was originally built for slower-than-light -travel. It had been later retrofitted with probably salvaged engine parts from multiple different origins. As it came closer, suddently something black started to pour from every crack and airlock on the ship, quickly encasing the whole ship inside a dark cloud.
“Here arrives the help I was talking about.” Having said this, Saturday’s hologram got very distorted, and then morphed to a different one. This new hologram presented a dark and disturbing face with twisted horns, razor teeth and several tentacles. The darkness of the hologram made it forgivingly blurry, but at the same time presenting the two shockingly expressive and humane eyes even more clearly out. “Greetings”, it said with clear and pleasant, slightly feminine voice that was completely unfitting for the rather hideous creature at the hologram. “I call myself Kalthu, or Master Carrefour. I will make the path to Nidum for you. I cannot make a direct wormhole to the system for several reasons, but I will first make one at this system that will take you to one of my systems. From there you can take another wormhole that will take you to the Nidum.” Same time the clouded ship had positioned at medium orbit around the planet. Then some kind of large container, about the size of a corvette, came flying from the planet’s surface. The cloud around the ship stretched a tendril of black mass that caught the container, and started to disassemble and reform it. “I’d also like to remind you that this war hasn’t ended yet. We have only just entered the climax, so the highest chaos is still to come. I really hope your promise will last through that.”
The cloud, consisting of billions of small drones, was working with the container, cutting, bending and stretching it. After couple of minutes there was a thin arch, wide and high enough for a dreadnought to fit trough. Kalthu made some last adjustments along the arch before retracting the tendrils back to the ship. It then docked to the arch, seemingly powering it up, as several lights were lit across it. Then three lasers shot from the arch, meeting at the middle. These lasers quickly brightened up, until a blinding flash shot from their crossing point. As the flash faded away, a piece of foreign space opened up in front of the Confederacy’s fleet, the black void contrasting against the planet’s surface that loomed behind. “The gate is open. I will direct you to the second one on the other side”
Xerin finally was able to get his things, and headed straight to the forge. He walked in to see Svar already there, and briefly made eye contact, communicating as best he could his feelings about what they had just heard, but quickly broke it, taking a breath and acting normally, a perfected skill he had learned over the course of his trainings. Xerin could be full of emotion one moment and then be a cold thinker the next.
"So, lets see what can be done." He said. "I've brought with me the most recent model of Jorro'kil Power Armor, the Mark Five. It has several improvements over the current model, the Mark Four, though still it's still going through improvements, as it's not just ready to be mass-produced. Perhaps we can come up with some solutions to any kinks left in it."
_______________________________________________I am smarter than the average smartest person - Darkel
I can multitasking - Prussian
I actually was busy trying to get more gonger ale - Prussian
Also...just because you rescued a male chick and called him Kevin, doesn't mean I care. - ViperaUnion
But in retaliation, I'm going to add all your typoes to my sig. - Prussian
It's not a horror game, it's more of a pussle - Prussian
Follow the Bloody Brick Road - Prussian
Shut your skittley little mouth - Darkel
I'm actually quite humble, I just love to mess with scurbs. - Canis_dirus
Svar glanced to his side, examining the gear. Svar was best known in the military for his engineering talents, in addition to being an able tactician and soldier. He used his HUD to scan the Jorro'kil armor and examined data on the armoring and shielding before performing some calculations. Svar turned to the Jorro'kil and quickly suggested several alterations to the armor, most notably more efficient powering of the armor and shielding.
"What concerns me the most is the Aracharchne. They devour metal and energy - Our armoring and weapons would be nothing more than a meal." Svar mused. "The Chimerosu are binding nonmetals to their armor to overcome this but I fear this solution is not enough." As he said this, the announcement reverberated through the halls, and the Krathunian sighed, knowing he'd have to save this for later. "Perhaps we can ask our friends about it. Let's prepare to go."
If the Captain could smile, he would have at this moment. "Excellent. Thank you, Kalthu." It quickly switched the communications system of the ship to the rest of the fleet and stated, "Uncloak and follow the Wrath through the wormhole." With this, the Ryun-Wreae Dreadnought shot ahead towards the opening, followed by the rest of the fleet. It was revealed to be slightly larger than Baron Saturday's calculations, and soon the entire group of ships had transited through the wormhole and were in orbit above the second planet, awaiting instructions.
The Sentinel didn't hesitate at Teglin's words, intent on opening the door. Upon reaching it, he put both his hands flat on it, observing its structure. The structure seemed impenetrable save for a sliver of emptiness going down the middle, likely where the portal opened. "This door is damaged, and locked from the inside. However," He growled, his sword extending from his armor, "The lock goes across the center of the door. It's possible to open it manually by breaking this." The sword slid down to the level at which he could grasp it, and with both hands he pushed the sword through the crack. Before he could shove it downwards in an attempt to disable the lock, the door's mechanisms activated and slid open, and a distinctly Krathunian figure jumped through, tackling the Sentinel to the ground, his sword clattering to the ground. The figure wore plated armor with glowing sections at the borders of the plates, though these did not shift like the armor that the Sentinel and Admiral wore. Instead, several different plates of armor were suspended in midair close to the Krathunian with gravitation altering devices, changing place according to surrounding. The figure grabbed the area between Theranis' neck and chest with one large, clawed hand, and held a thin knife in the other, keeping it at ready at his side. However, Theranis was ready. "You might not want to do that, kinsman. I can kill you at any moment." The other Krathunian looked down to see the Sentinel suddenly holding his assault rifle with his left hand, pointed at the Krathunian's head. He or she also observed the fact that the rest of the investigating group had surrounded the scene, holding their weapons at ready. Both seemed to have reached a consensus and the one who had assaulted the Sentinel stood up first, helping the latter up. He manually took off his helmet to reveal a male face with piercing eyes and almost eerily pale facial plates. He seemed to be rather elderly.
"What is your rank, soldier?" He growled with a raspy tone, clearly having not spoken in many years.
"Sentinel." Theranis muttered back in contempt, clearly not pleased with the events that had just transpired. "Before you ask, the other Krathunian is an Admiral."
The elder took a step back, both out of anger and shock. Rather than apologizing, he responded with a simple, "Hmmph." After a couple of seconds, he continued, observing the rest of the group. "You travel with interesting company, Sentinel. What year is it, and why are you here?"
" The year is 14398. We're looking for the Continuum Corrupter."
"Why do you need it?"
"To defeat impossible odds." The Sentinel tried to describe the war against the UFIAI, especially recent developments, as accurately as he could, deciding not to mention the Wreae Captain and his plan.
The elder seemed to chuckle, shaking his head and looking down, before looking back up at the Sentinel. "Oh, the Corrupter is here, but I cannot let you have it."
Theranis stepped forward, growing more hostile to this odd figure every second. "Why not? This temple has been abandoned for hundreds of years, and you've just woken from cryogenic sleep. What use for it do you have?"
The Krathunian visibly laughed now, staring Theranis down with glee. "Two things, Sentinel." He spat the name of the rank out of anger. " Firstly, this is not a temple." He grinned, clearly having fun with this new arrival. "It's a ship." He activated a holographic device with his armor, and the place shook.
With this, the metallic voice sounded again. "Engines activated. Going into orbit." Outside, Hilja watched in horror as the mountain seemed to collapse, the snow and stones sliding down like an avalanche as a flat, oval shaped vessel rose out of the side of the landscape. The ship was black, around the size of a frigate, with glowing, intricate blue lines and wings that folded out from its extended sides. The ship ascended into the murky, grey skies of Ilthan.
Back inside, the Krathunian continued. "And secondly, Sentinel," He turned away, facing the now opened door, which had revealed more advanced machinery. "I am the only one who knows how to use it." Q'ren Talus turned back towards the group and smiled, revealing a toothy grin. "We're going to Sethega. I have, ah, unfinished business there." The metallic voice responded with the coordinates of the planet, and confirmation of their destination.
The Sentinel's eyes widened, as did Rakluth's, though the latter was faster to respond. "All ships!" He shouted into his COMM device. "This is Admiral Rakluth! Follow this vessel to Sethega, but do not fire upon it!" The ship flew past the atmosphere of Ilthan, reaching the empty depths of space before quickly entering FTL. The Krathunian fleet followed immediately after.
"Now," Q'ren breathed, looking around at the rest of the group. "Now that we're on our way, mind introducing yourselves? I am, by the way, Q'ren Talus."
Aarin went to his quarters to ready some things. On the way, he passed Isbar, who was standing looking at a monitor screen. It was showing a view of the approaching planet.
"I hear Vitis has a lot of tall trees," he said, attempting casual conversation with Isbar.
"That's nice," said Isbar in a preoccupied tone. "I like trees. Never enough of them back in the Capital."
Aarin looked at him a moment, and then went on his way._____________________________________
Just as Mott finished speaking the announcement blared over the speakers.
"Welp', I guess we'd best get ready," he said, grabbing up his papers.
"Alright," said Allé. "Maybe we can talk about that weapon idea later. The others might want to know about it."
He turned to Corey. "When you have a chance, there's something Id like your professional opinion on," he added quietly when Mott left._______________________________________
"I am Admiral Lirriva din Asmacar of the 80th division of the Markovan Imperial Military," said Admiral Lirr presenting his swords. "Here are my swords and here is my hand in friendship."
Zizo placed his right fist to his left palm and gave a small bow. "I am Zizo Tai, a physicist, hailing from the nation of Daro, of the Confederacy of Vathoris. This here is Teglin Fess, my assistant and apprentice."
Teglin made no move to give the Daro gesture of greeting, but merely glared at Q'ren in a suspicious and frightened way.
"I must say," went on Zizo, "quite a ride you've got here. Clever thing disguising it as a temple. By the way, how exactly does this Continuum Corrupter work? Being a physicist, that sort of thing is quite interesting to me."
Ravage entered the forge, and approached the Cavernian at his station who was supposed to have been responsible for the repair of her armor. He was focused on what appeared to be some sort of wrought-iron working, so much that she had to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention. He jumped, startled, hand whirled around to face her, a puff of black soot coming from his flapping wings. When he saw her, however, he relaxed, knowing that she was just another client. Unlike others, he hadn't been at the sparring match with the mentors, he had spent all his time in the forge, trying to work on a particularly difficult piece. As a result, he was oblivious to all the tense-looking Chimerosu who seemed alarmed to be near Ravage. "Aye, lass! Ye almost frightened me half to the grave!" He cried. He flicked his tail, "Here to pick up yer armor, are ye? Well, yer lucky, I finished it a few hours ago, by now it's had plenty of time to cool. Just let me dust it off, this here forge gathers enough soot to look like an active magma chamber." He said, going over behind the smelting furnace and pulling out a rack where the parts of Ravage's armor was stored. He brushed his gloved hands together, dusting them off, and then blew on the armor, a big cloud of dust coming off of it.
The Smith then pulled out one part of the armor, a shoulder-plate, and handed it to Ravage, allowing her to inspect his work. The armor appeared to be brand-new, and it had the same, signature black coloration that made it distinguished from the grey-silver armor of everyone else, or the original bright silver of the old Chimerosu Empire. It was no longer riddled with dents and scratches, as it had been re-smelted and re-formed by the Smith, who, as the best of the metalworkers on the ship, demanded the right to work with armor belonging to a Krylonian warrior, seeing the chance to work with a piece of history as an honor. It sounded very arrogant, in hindsight, but the Cavernian had little arrogance about his person. He just truly wanted to do something different than the typical armor, so working with different materials was a fun experience, for him. As Ravage inspected the work, she noted how the armor at first looked solid black, but when the light caught on the brushed, dark metal, she could see swirling veins of a paler shade, organic-looking patterns in the metal, almost resembling the patterns in a cut of wood. "This is a curious thing you have done with my armor, these little swirling patterns look almost like woodwork, or flowing water." She mused, looking up at the Smith.
He nodded, "Aye, lass, yer armor was very badly damaged, so much that I had to add several materials to make up for all that was lost in the past. I also had to make for ye a special mold, because yer size requirements didn't fit other variants. Considering I was re-smelting the whole outfit, I decided I would give it a little artistic spin. I melted it down in a crucible, and such a technique forms that pattern. The metal itself was unique, meteoric materials, lots of rare metals in those. I mixed it with silicon, and some other things to make it non-conductive and non-corrosive. It shouldn't be magnetic, which I feel is important in combat. The reactions from the material seems to have improved the durability, but I hammered the armor for ye, anyway, to make it denser." The Cavernian flicked his tail, "I be gettin' back to my work, I want to finish this piece before we reach Vitis." He said. He then turned back to the metalwork piece that he had been trying to complete.
Ravage sighed a little, and proceeded to grab her armor off the rack, sliding it on over her black jumpsuit. She did this rather quickly, and as she put on the main part of the armor, she had to open her wings to fit them through the spot where they came out. As she did so, one would notice a brief flash of deep mahogany red on the underside, along with a few other colors, before she was done and closed her wings again. No known Chimerosu had patterns on their wings, and that small glimpse was enough for people to realize she folded her wings tightly, and in a different fashion, because of what the feathers on the underside looked like.
________________________________________
Corey looked at Allé, and waited for Mott to be out of earshot, before quietly ushering his fellow scientist into his office, and then quietly closing the door. He turned to Allé, and nodded, "Nobody should hear us, in this room, the walls are soundproofed, sometimes I find it hard to think when there's too much noise." He said. "Now, what is it you need to ask of me?"
Q'ren went to Lirr first, quickly examining the gesture of the Markovan. The elderly Krathunian knew that this was likely an honor-based society, judging by the sword part of the greeting, but knew that taking them might be a sign of disrespect. "I think I'd rather take your hand in friendship, Admiral." He turned to Zizo, smiling. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Zizo and Teglin." After listening to the former's remarks, his smile grew wider. "Thank you. The disguise was an escape plan. It's a... long story,though it went rather well - That is, until all of you turned up. As for the Corrupter, it would be necessary to wait until we arrive at Sethega due to our purpose of going there. We're almost there, nonetheless." Q'ren glanced over, noticing the Wreae, who had been examining the machinery intently. "Nice machine, Sentinel."
The Wreae straightened up, slightly shorter than the Krathunians. "I am Lieutenant Unit 28515 of the Ryun-Wreae Federation of the United Ieegan Systems." It stated, approaching the rest of the group.
"Ryun-Wreae Feder..." Q'ren trailed off, muttering, seeming to go over questions such as the Krathunian pronunciation of the word Wreae and the origins of this new empire. "Anyhow," He started back up again, glancing around the room. "While we're waiting, care for a small tour? Oh, don't worry, you need not walk." The Krathunian's armor projected a map of the ship, seemingly by thought command. "Currently we're in the Main Battery. It's where the weapon systems are, as well as the Continuum Corrupter and power generation systems. If you take the door behind you, you'll reach the armory and medbay. Above us is the bridge, and above that, the Shield Generators and backup power systems. North of the bridge is the second part of the bridge, where the pilot resides. The two circular rooms to the sides of the bridge are where the ship's AI systems are. To the south of the bridge are where the engines are. There also engine systems above that." He glanced around the group. "We should be to Sethega within the hour. Any questions?"
The Virc is a mammalian species native to Deyatron 5, a planet in the Damien system of the first arm. They are a herbivorous, yet highly territorial species, living in the mountains on the Central Continent. They live almost exclusively on one variety of fruit that grows in small groves on the mountainside. Each grove is defended viciously by resident Virc, their main weapons being their claws and their heavily armored head. So fierce a fighter is this animal, that one tribe of the native sapient population makes it a significant part of their coming-of-age rituals, with young males not officially entering manhood until they have slain one of these creatures bare-handed. Because it lives in mountainous habitats and obtains most of its food from trees, it is an agile climber and leaper.
Allé looked at Corey. "Ever since I first met him, I haven't been able to get the question out of my mind: What exactly is Isbar? He's not like any race registered living on Vathoris. Here is the answer to my question. Yet now a new question has been brought by it: How is he possible? According to my research, his species are nothing more than dumb beasts. Yet, as you've seen yourself, he is clearly a rational, sapient being. How do you think this possible?"________________________________________
"I have a question," said Teglin in an indignant tone. "What do you mean by abducting us like this?"
Corey thought for a moment, and began to drum his fingers against his desk, his spade-like talons making a tiny clicking noise as he did so. "Well, firstly, I have always long thought that there was little difference between intelligent beings and animals on a biological level, Allé. The presence of intelligence, however, has always been attributed to a more developed cerebral cortex, and the presence of things such as spoken language in communication, often deal with a more advanced cerebellum. A more complex cerebrum, as a whole, would be the reason for Isbar being advanced beyond the intelligence of an average beast." He stopped drumming his fingers, and folded his arms, flicking his tail, "While I am unsure of by what means Isbar has become intelligent, I can easily explain why he is intelligent. The simple fact, Allé, is that sapient races and animals have little difference, and the idea that there is something so different between the two can hinder research and an open-minded thought process. Many races did not begin as intelligent creatures, but rather as animals that over many generations adapted to survive, and thus gained greater levels of intelligence, until they began to use tools, developed a spoken language, and finally became what we know as a race today."
Corey went over to a shelf and pulled out a piece of paper, getting out an ink pen and clicking it open, and then placing the paper on his desk, scribbling in the corner to ensure that it worked. He then hastily sketched out two remarkably-detailed images of brains, despite the short amount of time he took to make them. One of the brains was larger, and heavily-covered by wrinkles. The other one was a bit smaller, and only had one ridge in it. Corey clicked the pen off, and then pointed at the two brains, "Now, you see, I dabble in many different fields, and neurobiology is one of the few things I researched briefly, though I never struggle to remember things, I never did have to study, much. You see, this brain over here, the average appearance for most humanoid aliens, is covered with these ridges, or gyri, as well as multiple fissures, or sulci. This one over here, which resembles that of a small bird common on Vitis, has less of both."
He straightened up, "Now, how biology works, it depends heavily on being able to fit lots of different things into a small, limited space. You see it in mitochondria, in the endoplasmic reticulum, you see it in the intestines of the stomach, as well. The solution for creating more surface area in a small space is to create lots of folds and ridges, and the same principle applies to an advanced brain, because it still has to fit into the skull. These ridges and grooves you see in an advanced brain allow it to have more surface area, thus more neurons and complexity, than a more smooth brain." He flicked his tail, "Allé, the chances are that by some means, Isbar's brain has developed many more gyri and sulci than the animals that represent his species, I will not say I can determine the cause, but know this, that means more surface area, and more complexity that allows the same thought processes as intelligent beings. Although a larger skull may sometimes help, it does not have to be present for a creature to be intelligent."
Corey went behind his desk and sat down in his chair, folding his arms, "Allé, I just want you to be aware that you shouldn't view intelligent beings and animals as two completely separate things, I am a man of science, but I have seen many good men do horrible things to other living creatures because they thought there was some difference. Look at Ravage's pet Spiromander, Xenos, for instance. Although he is an animal, there are times when you would be absolutely positive that the amphibian was another person. Some creatures, even some small insects, have little personalities, which is why people keep pets for company. It is thinking that they aren't like us at all that results in experiments where people torture things by cutting off limbs, or injecting them with venom to see if they respond to the pain or not. Though I am often motivated by scientific curiosity, I do not want to be the kind of person who is cruel."
Corey was cut off by a hissing sound that came from a glass tank by one of the walls in the office. There were dark grey-brown wood chips on the bottom of the tank, as well as greyish branches with moss hanging from them, and an assortment of very dark green leaves. The tank was illuminated by a red light, and the branches and moss were all entangled with white threads of silk. Perched on top of one of the branches was a gigantic, furry black spider the size of a dinner plate, with large eyes and iridescent blue-green fangs. The spider raised its front pair of legs and hissed again, waving them wildly, before lowering them back down onto the branch again. Corey flicked his tail, "Ah, I forgot to mention, Allé, this is Shelby, Kerr's famous pet spider. I think she's hungry, but to tell you the truth, Kerr's the only one she doesn't try to bite. She's been a bit of a grump, lately."
The Confederacy fleet soon noticed that there was something odd about the system and the planet they had arrived to. Firstly, there was no star to be found, leaving the system dark as deep space, and secondly, the “planet” revealed to be much farther than it seemed to be. Just as the planet’s gigantic dimensions started to open to the Confederacy, the dark surface of the “planet” was torn open in a rotary motion, revealing a long wound of blazing inferno. “This is the Theraphi-system, and that is the central star, encased in partial Dyson’s sphere”, Kalthu explained. “You are at the base of the fourth arm, Just under Ryun-Wreae territory. Nidum however is located at the end cluster of the third arm. Take the fourth gate clock-wise from your current location.” The light escaping from the split in Dyson’s sphere revealed a chain of wormholes, positioned orbiting around the imprisoned star. Fourth wormhole, counting from the fleet, was a gigantic gate, large enough for half dozen dreadnoughts to cross it at the same time.
Closer inspection of the Dyson’s sphere showed that it was not solid, but instead consisted of millions, if not billions of pieces orbiting the star at extreme proximity. Occasionally these pieces aligned so that the star was momentary exposed, thus causing the cracks in the surface. Opening of these crack also released large amounts of radiation, disrupting the communications to some extent. Kalthu’s hologram was distorted from time to time and there was lots of static at the comm. “Just one more thing before you go through that gate. While I do my best to keep these wormholes open, you better not count on it too much. What you are going to do may force me to prioritize my output, and your escape routes are not high on that list. Good luck, I guess.”
"However," said Allé, "what I'm curious is how exactly he became this intelligent. According to my research, that is not something that Virc are particularly blessed with." He looked in at the spider for a moment.
"Ah well," he said. "I don't know. He doesn't seem particularly forthcoming on his history, so I guess it's best not to pry to much. If I heard correctly, I think we're coming up on our first stop. Shall we?"
Q'ren looked to the young Vatarri, somewhat intrigued by his fear. "Your apprehensiveness is understandable, to a degree. Think of this as me trying to help you, all of you. You were looking for the Continuum Corrupter. Well, here it is, along with its inventor." He lead the group up the stairs to the bridge, heading for the holographic display. Closer inspection of the walls now that the power was on revealed two rows of cryogenic pods like the one that Q'ren had gotten out of. Most were deactivated, completely powered down, their inhabitant having died. Others were open, though a quick scan of lifeforms within the ship revealed only the group on the bridge. Those who had gotten out earlier had likely escaped into the frigid land of Ilthan. Q'ren made a remark about having been honored to serve with those men. He approached the display, and entered something into its console, which brought up a map of their current area. They had just gotten within the Sethen system, within which Sethega lays. The Krathunian activated the COMM of the ship, awaiting contact by his kin.
Suddenly, the communications systems let a signal through from a planet that served as a defense outpost for Sethega. "Unauthorized and unidentified ship detected. Identify yourself or leave the Sethen system."
The Sentinel quickly activated his end of the system, much to Q'ren's dismay, shouting, "This is Sentinel Theranis Ra'agus. This vessel is authorized to pass to Sethega." He transmitted an addition signal from his armor to show that it was, in fact, the Sentinel.
The voice paused for a bit, before speaking again. "Thank you, Sentinel. You are authorized to pass. Please dock on Station Beta above The Ra'anian."
Q'ren looked over to the Sentinel, a quizzical expression plastered on his face. "Theranis... This is odd. The defenses were never this tight, and your COMM systems are very outdated. What exactly happened?" The Sentinel returned with a morbid face, and quickly explained the Covenant's war against the Karthla and Dominion, the fall of Sethega, their return to their home after the death of Kradus, the admission into the Confederacy, and the current war against the UFIAI.
The elder stared at Theranis for a couple seconds, his eyes becoming slightly watery. He bowed his head. "What has become of our Covenant?"
((I'm really tired right now, will continue this part later. You don't need to respond to it yet.))
"Understood. Thank you, Kalthu." the Captain stated, looking around the room at his crew. He switched the COMM back to the fleet. "All ships, we are about to pass through the gate the Nidum, where we will conduct our attack. All non-salavaged ships, please engage cloaks." However, the Wrath did not require to be cloaked either. The Wreae activated a mechanism for the Dreadnought that allowed it to give off the signatures of UFIAI ships that had been recorded from past battles. For the time, to any trying to contact it, the Wrath took on the name of a destroyed UFIAI ship titled Victrus.
The fleet activated their engines, and passed through the wormhole to Nidum.
((I just need a description of the planet and its defenses in the next post, Curius, before I can continue.))
A breathtaking sight opened as the Wrath flew through the wormhole: Nidum, located only several hundreds of thousands of miles from the gate, was a large planet. But what made it truly to stand out was the fact that it was entirely covered in structures: Its right side that was on the sun shined like a side of an space ship, and the whole planet was covered in ten thousand miles long towers that were sticking out like needles from a pincushion.
Then there were the wormholes. There were probably over thousand wormhole gates orbiting the Nidum on different orbits, some so closea that longest structures from the planet’s surface reached to the other side. Among the gates there were countless small satellites and stations. Among all this debris there were an army of mechanic drones constantly flying from one structure to another, maintaining fixing and adjusting them and their chaotic orbits. Although some of the satellites and other structures seemed to be armed, there were no warships present.
Absolute was fully occupied in the many battlefields among the Confederacy’s territory. Therefore the arrival of ships that were quite identifiable as UFIAI controlled did not wake more than one of Absolute’s many subprograms. The program greeted the fleet in standard fashion, with a fast piece of UFIAI binary, same time trying to identify to whom of the AI’s these ships belonged to, so that a contact via wormhole-link could be established. The subprogram did not remember any pre-scheduled passing of an UFIAI fleet.
Corey nodded, flicking his tail, "Ah, of course! Uh, and regarding the sudden intelligence, a mutation I guarantee is responsible. For now, though, we'll keep this between us, can't go jumping to conclusions." He rose from his chair, and snatched his clip board, now filled with fresh papers, and grabbed a pen from his desk. "Now, when we land, we'll be expected in the lower levels, where the main airlock and cargo bay is, because the Majesty itself will be landing so we can re-stock with fresh supplies. Everyone should be gathering there, and the door is separate from the airlocks and the labs. It's a little bit further towards the front of the ship." He then opened the door, "Just follow me, I know this ship like the back of my hand." He said. He then led Allé out of the labs, up the stairs into the main room, and then down one of two staircases next to the main one that led to the piloting area. The staircases seemed to lead down into an area that was beneath the labs and main airlocks. They descended into a large room with a gigantic hexagon-shaped door leading to the back of the ship, where the cargo bay was. Already, many Chimerosu were in the room, and plenty more were arriving.
There came a great rumbling from the engines, one that could be felt throughout the ship as they entered the vast atmosphere of planet Vitis. It lasted for several long minutes, before there was a great jolt, indicating the Ship had been caught by something, or had come in contact with the ground. The engines then seemed to shut off, though the power in the ship was still on. Travis' voice came over the speakers, again, "Attention, we have now landed on Vitis. Opening Cargo Bay and main Airlock now." Then, there came a grinding in the distance from the cargo bay behind the hatch, as a massive ramp slid down, and then connected with the ground. The hexagonal hatch then opened, to reveal an extremely large, wide chamber filled with crates, though many had been busted open previously, indicating that many of the supplies had been used up. At the end of the ramp, it seemed to be daytime, and bright sunlight, like the one that came from a yellow sun, filtered into the ship. Birds could be heart singing, aided by a chorus of chirping insects. A faint cheering could be heard from outside, as Vitisans that had been waiting for the ship to arrive.
It seemed that everyone was allowed to step off the ship, for a flow of people began to move towards the ramp. Among them, Xenos, now sporting a beautifully made black saddle on his back, with spider silk so perfectly sewn that it seemed almost like leather in appearance, was easily seen. Ravage, of course, was right next to him, wearing her armor, which had been adorned with new ranks that had been assigned to her by Travis. Everyone had researched old ranks from the empire, and had decided to let her keep her Lieutenant Colonel Status. Overall, the badges the Chimerosu made were very artistic. Her armor looked brand-new, and seemed to have a higher quality of craftsmanship as well.
When people stepped out of the ship, they discovered that they were not on the ground at all, but on an an enormous tree branch, which, when compared to the full size of the tree it belonged to, was actually rather small. It was a tree unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, so gigantic that it was staggering to think about how high up everyone was. It seemed that the branches of the tree were woven with that of other trees, supporting overall a structure that could support incredible weight. The branches themselves had loose leaves that allowed sunlight to filter through, reaching the very forest floor, which disappeared into the distance, from where everyone was. Vitis indeed had a massive atmosphere, to support such large plants. The tree bark was a rich brown color, and very smooth, so that it was comfortable on the feet, though textured enough to justify the hooked talons possessed by the native Chimerosu. The leaves, gigantic enough to rival the sails of boats, were a deep emerald green, and elliptical in shape, having an almost waxy texture. There were no branches above the Majesty, and it seemed they were on the very top of the canopy. Clouds drifted around, at this altitude, though everyone could still breathe easily. Many Vitisans were gathered around the ship, and there were also plenty of crates filled with supplies that they intended to put on the ship.
At this time, multiple Vitisan soldiers ran down the ramp and began hugging people, revealing that their parents had been waiting to see them before they left again. Brothers found sisters, and wives met their husbands. It was like a grand reunion. There was a cheer as the Chimerosu representatives came down from the ramp, and multiple people ran up to them, eager to speak to them. A few others noticed Ravage, and though some in the crowd were heavily tempted to try to speak to her, it seemed that they were either deterred by the presence of Xenos, or had been specifically told not to pester her. It as likely a combination of the two. She was not the only one who got special attention, however, for a similar attitude seemed to be directed towards all the non-Chimerosu people who descended the ship. The natives were extremely curious about the Vatarri such as Allé, as well as the Jorro'kil Xerin, the Humdar Mott, and the Krathunian Svar. They would also take much notice of Isbar, should he choose to leave the ship with everyone else. Many of the people on Vitis had never seen aliens other than different variants of Chimerosu, and on occasion, the hybrids that occurred when two species had children. Indeed, there seemed to be a small number of hybrids on the planet. There was a lot of what appeared to be Vitisan-Cavernain hybrids, judging by the almost greyish tinge to their green feathers, a faint presence of stripes, and the notable extension of scales on their limbs. There seemed to be the occasional Frigian hybrid, but there did not seem to be a single hybrid related to Stagnumians. It seemed that the natives of Stagnum did not associate with other species in such a way. Regardless, Vitisans dominated the scene, different shades of emerald green, which iridescently reflected the light.
Eventually, though, much of the chaos died down, and people felt a little more comfortable stepping off the ship.
After tinkering with the Mk V armor for a little bit on Svar's advice, Xerin headed down for the landing. Once the ramp opened, he witnessed the flurry of activity, much different than the activity involving Ravage and the other Chimerosu who wished to challenge her, and a welcome change of pace, even if he got his fair share of strange looks. He walked down the ramp somewhat to get a better view of where they were, and took in the unique sight of the giant tree they had landed on. "This is certainly an experience..." Xerin thought to himself. And it was, the massiveness of the environment was quite a sight, one of many justifications, Xerin hoped, for coming along on this adventure.
Xej Therus quietly watched the goings on between the Captain Unit and the UFIAI. His every instinct told him to never trust the enemy, much less one like the UFIAI, but forced himself to remain calm and trust that things would go through well, which he very much believed they would.
_______________________________________________I am smarter than the average smartest person - Darkel
I can multitasking - Prussian
I actually was busy trying to get more gonger ale - Prussian
Also...just because you rescued a male chick and called him Kevin, doesn't mean I care. - ViperaUnion
But in retaliation, I'm going to add all your typoes to my sig. - Prussian
It's not a horror game, it's more of a pussle - Prussian
Follow the Bloody Brick Road - Prussian
Shut your skittley little mouth - Darkel
I'm actually quite humble, I just love to mess with scurbs. - Canis_dirus
Svar walked down the ramp after Xerin and some of the other representatives, intrigued by the crowd and the sheer scale of their surroundings. The Krathunian wore his shining, dark grey armor. Due to the property of the plates of armor shifting according to the environment around the user, and the amount of activity in the premises, his form seemed to alter itself constantly. However, Svar decided to deactivate this so that the curious Vitisians around him could see his actual shape.
The Captain quickly acted, sending a string on binary code back at the subprogram that told the AI that the fleet was under the jurisdiction of Baron Saturday. The Wreae knew that their identity would be revealed fairly quickly due to the nature of their presence in the system but it also figured that Baron Saturday would be able to deny any contact between the Confederacy and itself.
The Wreae sent another binary code to its fleet as to not seem suspicious to the AI, and it purposefully blocked the signal from the subprogram to maintain this. When decoded, it read, "Bombarding ships into position. UFIAI decoys to the surface of the planet. Warships cover the flank of Wrath and guard the wormholes to prevent disruption." Soon, this plan went into action - The UFIAI decoys had been sent to the surface of the planet, the purpose of which the Wreae sent to the subprogram, "To provide more repair and improvement drones." The bombardment ships went into the orbit of Nidum above strategically key areas of the planet, and the various warships encircled the Dreadnought and aimed their weaponry at the wormholes. Most ships were at an angle that, when in trouble, would allow them to quickly activate FTL drives and pass through into nearby Jorro'kil territory.
The Wreae sent one last binary code to the fleet, "01001110 01101111 01110111." When decoded, this would read as the word, "Now." At this mark, the UFIAI decoy ships, controlled remotely by Wreae AI on the Dreadnought, activated EMP devices. These temporarily damaged sections of Nidum's infrastructure to delay an UFIAI response. Meanwhile, the bombardment ships went out of cloak. The hulls of each of these heavily armored and armed vessels slid apart to reveal enormous plasma cannons and mass drivers. Each ship activated their weaponry, pulverizing anything within the radius of the weaponry. The ships moved methodically over the surface of the planet, the structures of Nidum turned into debris and buried under layers of plasma glass.
The warships surrounding the Wrath remained cloaked to surprise any hostile ships that should come through the wormholes. However, the large Dreadnought had revealed its name to all who attempted to contact it and activated weaponry. The ship sent out two weapon conduits, as seen above Muthara, and used its huge particle beam to annihilate the surface of the planet. However, the other conduit, when active, would allow it to shoot towards the wormholes.
The moment the response to the greeting code arrived, doubts started arise at the Absolute’s large mind. Slowly more and more consciousness was moved to the Nidum. When Absolute tried to contact Saturday, Saturday figured out what was happening and deliberately ignored the call.
By the time Absolute gave up in trying to contact the Saturday, the bombardment ships were in position. Now, however, Absolute had fully “awakened” and soon noticed that some of the maintenance drones had to differ from their normal courses due gravitational anomalies. Absolute quickly counted the facts together, and suddenly a feeling very similar to fear started to raise its head.
Just before the bombardment ships uncloaked Absolute managed to activate the secondary shields located at the planets original surface, thousands of feets below the structures forming the current one. As the bombardment ships started to cut down the towers and shred the metal forest from the orbit, their first salvo was stopped at the surface, giving Absolute some extra time.
Absolute used the powerful transmitters at the satellites and other structures around the system: It sent a comm request with a message: “Confederacy, I have to admit, I am surprised to find you here. Shouldn't you be somewhere else, perhaps defending your people?” At the end of the message was footage from different confederacy’s planets being currently under attack.
The Captain was not startled when the secondary shielding activated - It had been expecting some type of backup and, after all, machines do not flinch. It listened to Absolute's message, analyzing every word, before responding.
"Absolute." The Wreae said, pausing for a second before continuing. "The Confederacy is, in fact, defending its worlds. An AI such as yours would expect our counterattack in response to recent events to be focused solely on the frontlines. Many of the Confederacy leaders thought this was the best idea. I am not like them, Absolute. I've studied the UFIAI, learned how your alliance of machines works." If Absolute had been paying attention to that sentence, it would have noted that the Wreae said the word "machine" as if it weren't one. "I've gained much help from undisclosed sources. By attacking Nidum I can severely damage your communications network and artificial intelligence systems, forcing your fleets to retreat from our worlds. The war is not over yet, Absolute. You have not forced the Confederacy's hand. We have forced yours." The Wreae paused once more for emphasis. "It has occurred to me that I have not introduced myself." The front hull of the Wrath facing Nidum began to open up, a different section than that of the particle beam. "I am the worst nightmare that an artificial intelligence could imagine. I am both organic and machine. I am Captain Unit 8164392." At these words, a large Ryun-Wreae made Genesis Device could be seen, and it started to drain energy from the shielding around Nidum. "Before this, you did not know who I am. Absolute, I am the Unsilenced Retribution. This exchange is over." The COMM was ended, and the Genesis Device charged fully, greatly weakening the shields, before firing it back towards the surface of the planet in a beam of blue and white energy. Absolute's delaying defense was gone, and the Confederacy continued their attack.
However, the Wreae, who had now chosen to call itself Unsilenced Retribution ((thanks Whoster!)) turned to Xej Therus. "Zealot..." It began, speaking quietly. "There's something that has been bothering me. Every time I speak with an AI, every time one of those towers falls, I do not feel remorse. I do not feel that I am destroying and disrupting actual life. I only acknowledge that I am breaking machines. It's almost as if I have become one of you, psychologically. My body is made of metal, but it as if my mind, my AI, is organic."
((Sorry, going to post the Continuum Corrupter part later. I had it written up but hated several things about it so trashed it, and now I need to create a new one.)) | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
A component with a semiconductor body which is contacted in a planar manner is known for example from document DE 103 53 679 A1. In particular, the component comprises a substrate, an optoelectronic semiconductor body arranged thereon and an insulation layer, the insulation layer being guided over the substrate and the optoelectronic semiconductor body. To contact the optoelectronic semiconductor body, a planar conductive structure in the form of metallisation is guided over the insulation layer to contact points of the semiconductor body and to a conductor track of the substrate.
In conventional planar contacting methods, the insulation layer generally rests closely against sides of the semiconductor body, whereby the insulation layer forms steep flanks at side faces of the semiconductor body, which are difficult to expose during the production process. In addition, voids may arise under the insulation layer at the side faces of the semiconductor body, which may disadvantageously impair the reliability of the component. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | USPTO Backgrounds |
J Diabetes Invest2014; 5: 428--434
Introduction {#jdi12167-sec-0005}
============
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common chronic disease worldwide, and the global health expenditure on DM is expected be at least 376 billion US dollars in 2010 and 490 billion US dollars in 2030[1](#jdi12167-bib-0001){ref-type="ref"}. Especially among Asian countries, the prevalence of DM has rapidly increased in recent decades with economic development accompanied by changes in food supply and dietary patterns, technology transfer, and cultural admixtures[2](#jdi12167-bib-0002){ref-type="ref"}.
In diabetic patients, the proportion of ischemic heart disease (IHD) is two‐ to fourfold higher[3](#jdi12167-bib-0003){ref-type="ref"}, the risk of stroke is approximately twofold greater[4](#jdi12167-bib-0004){ref-type="ref"} and the risk of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is approximately fourfold greater[5](#jdi12167-bib-0005){ref-type="ref"} than in non‐diabetic patients. In Japan, DM was reported as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease[6](#jdi12167-bib-0006){ref-type="ref"}, and DM is related to coronary heart disease among women and ischemic stroke among both sexes[7](#jdi12167-bib-0007){ref-type="ref"}. In addition, large nationwide cohort studies in Japan have suggested that DM and elevated glucose levels are associated with incident coronary heart disease[8](#jdi12167-bib-0008){ref-type="ref"} and ischemic stroke[9](#jdi12167-bib-0009){ref-type="ref"} in the general Japanese population.
In Japan, the National Diabetic Patients Survey reported that approximately 8.9 million people were strongly suspected of having DM[10](#jdi12167-bib-0010){ref-type="ref"}. Nevertheless, according to the National Health and Nutrition Survey carried out in 2009, just 2.37 million people received treatment for DM[11](#jdi12167-bib-0011){ref-type="ref"}.
The Japanese government developed a set of indicators for health promotion for the period of 2001--2010, which is called "Healthy Japan 21" in financial year 2000. The midcourse review of these indicators reported that the proportion of adherence to treatment for DM and health guidance after health examinations slightly increased, but did not reach the targets[12](#jdi12167-bib-0012){ref-type="ref"}. Subsequently, the number of patients with diabetic complications had increased beyond the target[13](#jdi12167-bib-0013){ref-type="ref"}.
However, there is no evidence of the effect of regular visits to physicians on in‐hospital mortality of diabetic patients or the number of diabetic complications in Japan. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of irregular visits on diabetic macrovascular complications and in‐hospital mortality among diabetic patients.
Materials and Methods {#jdi12167-sec-0006}
=====================
Data Source {#jdi12167-sec-0007}
-----------
We obtained data of diabetic patients who were newly hospitalized to the general ward between April 2010 and September 2010 from fee‐for‐service claims data of the Fukuoka National Health Insurance Organization. We combined them with medical claims data of outpatient visits between April 2009 and March 2010. We assessed only the first hospitalizations among patients who had experienced several hospitalizations, after excluding patients who had received hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis. From a previous study using Japanese medical claims data of fee‐for‐service[14](#jdi12167-bib-0014){ref-type="ref"}, we identified diabetic patients by the diagnostic code of DM (International Classification of Diseases 10th revision \[ICD‐10\] codes: E10--14) that they received when they were hospitalized.
Definition of Variables {#jdi12167-sec-0008}
-----------------------
Study variables included hospitalization for diabetic macrovascular complications, outcomes at discharge, age, sex, comorbidities and the use of insulin or oral hypoglycemic agents. Because Japanese medical claims data of the fee‐for‐service system often contain information on multiple diseases, diagnostic examinations and therapies, we converted primary diagnostic codes into six‐digit codes of the Diagnosis Procedure Combination/Per‐Diem Payment System (DPC/PDPS), which is a Japanese prospective payment system[15](#jdi12167-bib-0015){ref-type="ref"}. Then, we combined the six‐digit diagnostic codes (base DPC), those of surgical procedures, adjuvant therapies and other diagnostic codes as comorbidities/complications, into 14‐digit DPC codes. Finally, we estimated the most resource‐intensive diseases by hospitalization costs, which were calculated based on the reimbursement rule of the DPC/PDPS, and defined these diseases as the primary disease. We also defined hospitalization for diabetic macrovascular complications, including IHD, stroke and PAD, as shown in Table [1](#jdi12167-tbl-0001){ref-type="table-wrap"}.
###### Definition of diabetic macrovascular complications and International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision codes for them
Diabetic macrovascular complications Base DPC codes Base DPC name ICD‐10 codes
-------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All strokes
Hemorrhagic stroke 010020 Subarachnoid hemorrhage, Unruptured cerebral aneurysm I60.x
010040 Non‐traumatic intracranial hematoma(except for non‐traumatic subdural hematoma) I61.x, I62.9, I68.0, Q28.0--Q28.3
010050 Non‐traumatic subdural hematoma I62.0, I62.1
Ischemic stroke 010060 Ischemic stroke G45.x, G46.x, I63.x, I65.x, I66.x, I67.5, I67.9, I69.3, I97.8
All ischemic heart diseases
AMI 050030 Acute myocardial infarction, recurrent myocardial infarction I21.x, I22.x, I24.x
IHDs exept AMI 050050 Angina pectoris, chronic myocardial infarction I20.x, I25.x
PAD 050170 Arteriosclerosis obliterans I74.0, I74.1, I74.2, I74.3, I74.4, I74.5, I74.8, I74.9, I70.0, I70.2, I70.8, I70.9, I72.0, I72.1, I72.4, I73.x
AMI, acute myocardial infarction; DPC, Diagnosis Procedure Combination; ICD‐10, International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision; IHDs, ischemic heart diseases; PAD, peripheral arterial disease.
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Regular visits were defined as physician visits for DM at least every 3 months between April 2009 and March 2010, whereas other visits or no visits were defined as irregular visits. In other words, we counted months of physician visits by every quarter of the year, and defined physician visits throughout every quarter as regular visits. This timing was chosen because the expiry time of prescriptions is 3 months in the Japanese system of health insurance. Age was categorized into three groups: 64 years or younger, 65--74 years and 75 years or older. Medication for DM during hospitalization was categorized into four groups: no medication, oral hypoglycemic agents, insulin, and oral hypoglycemic agents and insulin. Other lifestyle‐related diseases (hypertension \[I10\] and hyperlipidemia \[E78.0--78.5\]) were assessed using ICD‐10 codes from medical claims data during hospitalization. Furthermore, other comorbidities during hospitalization were assessed using ICD‐10 codes and the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) for all conditions, except for mild diabetes, diabetes with complications, cerebral vascular disease, acute myocardial infarction and unspecified peripheral vascular disease (I73.9)[16](#jdi12167-bib-0016 jdi12167-bib-0017){ref-type="ref"}. The CCI was categorized into three categories: 0, 1 or 2, and 3 or higher[18](#jdi12167-bib-0018){ref-type="ref"}.
Statistical Analysis {#jdi12167-sec-0009}
--------------------
Patient characteristics were constructed using frequencies and proportions for categorical variables, and using median and interquartile range for a continuous variable. Categorical variables were compared between the regular visit and irregular visit groups by Pearson\'s χ^2^‐tests, and the continuous variable was compared between the two groups by the Mann--Whitney test.
Propensity score matching was carried out to formulate a balanced 1:1 matched study, and to compare risks of hospitalization for diabetic macrovascular complications and in‐hospital mortality between the regular visit and irregular visit groups. According to previous studies on variable selection of propensity score matching[19](#jdi12167-bib-0019 jdi12167-bib-0020){ref-type="ref"}, propensity scores were calculated by a logistic regression model to identify the relationships between irregular visits and sex, age, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, other comorbidities indicated in the CCI, and dummy variables for 62 residential municipalities in Fukuoka Prefecture (i.e., 61 variables). The Hosmer--Lemeshow test and the C statistic were used as an indicator of how well the logistic regression model fitted the data. Using the [spss]{.smallcaps} macro for propensity score matching[21](#jdi12167-bib-0021){ref-type="ref"}, each patient of the irregular visit group was matched with a unique control of the regular visit group within a caliper width of 0.02[22](#jdi12167-bib-0022){ref-type="ref"}. Finally, we assigned 5,940 patients to each group, and the C statistic was 0.620. The Hosmer--Lemeshow test did not reject the null hypothesis (*P* = 0.227).
Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (AORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for irregular visits. For the first model, we set hospitalization for diabetic macrovascular complications as the dependent variable, and age, sex, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, medication for DM, and irregular visits as independent variables. For the second model, we set in‐hospital mortality as the dependent variable, and independent variables included those in the first model, as well as the CCI. Statistical analyses were carried out using [pasw]{.smallcaps} version 18.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA), and *P*‐values \<0.05 were regarded as statistically significant.
Results {#jdi12167-sec-0010}
=======
Descriptive Statistics {#jdi12167-sec-0011}
----------------------
We identified 4,015 patients in the irregular visit group and 4,121 patients in the regular visit group. Patient characteristics are shown in Table [2](#jdi12167-tbl-0002){ref-type="table-wrap"}. The proportion of those aged 75 years or older in the regular visit group was significantly higher than that in the irregular visit group. The median number of months of physician visits in the regular visit group was 11 months (interquartile range \[IQR\] 3), whereas that in the regular visit group was 2 months (IQR 5). The proportion of patients who received medications for DM in the regular visit group was significantly higher than that in the irregular visit group. The proportion of patients who had congestive heart failure in the regular visit group was significantly less than that in the irregular visit group, and the proportion of those who had pulmonary disease, cancer, or rheumatological disease was significantly higher than that in the irregular visit group. The proportion of patients who had hypertension or hyperlipidemia in the regular visit group was significantly higher than that in the irregular visit group. The proportion of patients hospitalized for AMI, IHDs except AMI, all IHDs, hemorrhagic stroke or all strokes in the regular visit group was significantly less than that in the irregular visit group. The mortality rate in the regular visit group was significantly less than that in the irregular visit group.
###### Patient characteristics according to physician visits
Total (*n* = 8,136) Regular visit group (*n* = 4,121) Irregular visit group (*n* = 4,015) *P*‐value
--------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- ----------------------------------- ------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------
Median age (years) \[interquartile range\] 77 \[13\] 78 \[12\] 77 \[12\] 0.133[a](#jdi12167-note-0002){ref-type="fn"}
Age (years)
\<65 955 (11.7%) 437 (10.6%) 518 (12.9%) 0.001
65--74 2,107 (25.9%) 1,114 (27.0%) 993 (24.7%)
75≦ 5,074 (62.4%) 2,570 (62.4%) 2,504 (62.4%)
Sex
Male 4,191 (51.5%) 2,150 (52.2%) 2,041 (50.8%) 0.228
Female 3,945 (48.5%) 1,971 (47.8%) 1,974 (49.2%)
Median no. months of physician visits \[interquartile range\] 7 \[9\] 11 \[3\] 2 \[5\] \<0.001[a](#jdi12167-note-0002){ref-type="fn"}
Medication for diabetes
No medication 4,382 (53.9%) 1,975 (47.9%) 2,407 (60.0%) \<0.001
OHA 1,925 (23.7%) 1,150 (27.9%) 775 (19.3%)
Insulin 1,023 (12.6%) 523 (12.7%) 500 (12.5%)
OHA + Insulin 806 (9.9%) 473 (11.5%) 333 (8.3%)
Comorbidity
AIDS/HIV 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) --
Congestive heart failure 2,379 (29.2%) 1,164 (28.2%) 1,215 (30.3%) 0.046
Chronic pulmonary disease 1,620 (19.9%) 870 (21.1%) 750 (18.7%) 0.006
Dementia 415 (5.1%) 208 (5.0%) 207 (5.2%) 0.824
Hemiplegia or paraplegia 192 (2.4%) 98 (2.4%) 94 (2.3%) 0.913
Mild liver disease 645 (7.9%) 349 (8.5%) 296 (7.4%) 0.067
Moderate or severe liver disease 202 (2.5%) 108 (2.6%) 94 (2.3%) 0.418
Cancer 1,620 (19.9%) 860 (20.9%) 760 (18.9%) 0.028
Metastatic solid tumor 353 (4.3%) 188 (4.6%) 165 (4.1%) 0.317
Peripheral vascular disease 274 (3.4%) 132 (3.2%) 142 (3.5%) 0.404
Peptic ulcer disease 1,816 (22.3%) 911 (22.1%) 905 (22.5%) 0.638
Rheumatological disease 332 (4.1%) 192 (4.7%) 140 (3.5%) 0.008
Renal disease 791 (9.7%) 420 (10.2%) 371 (9.2%) 0.148
Charlson Comorbidity Index
0 2,491 (30.6%) 1,221 (29.6%) 1,270 (31.6%) 0.107
1--2 3,423 (42.1%) 1,744 (42.3%) 1,679 (41.8%)
3≦ 2,222 (27.3%) 1,156 (28.1%) 1,066 (26.6%)
Other lifestyle‐related disease
Hypertension 5,327 (65.5%) 2,825 (68.6%) 2,502 (62.3%) \<0.001
Hyperglycemia 2,985 (36.7%) 1,654 (40.1%) 1,331 (33.2%) \<0.001
Hospitalizations for diabetic macrovascular complications
AMI 62 (0.8%) 17 (0.4%) 45 (1.1%) \<0.001
IHDs except AMI 572 (7.0%) 266 (6.5%) 306 (7.6%) 0.040
All IHDs 634 (7.8%) 283 (6.9%) 351 (8.7%) 0.002
Hemorrhagic stroke 69 (0.8%) 24 (0.6%) 45 (1.1%) 0.008
Ischemic stroke 416 (5.1%) 196 (4.8%) 220 (5.5%) 0.139
All strokes 485 (6.0%) 220 (5.3%) 265 (6.6%) 0.016
PAD 95 (1.2%) 51 (1.2%) 44 (1.1%) 0.552
Diabetic macrovascular complications 1,214 (14.9%) 554 (13.4%) 660 (16.4%) \<0.001
In‐hospital mortality 615 (7.6%) 268 (6.5%) 347 (8.6%) \<0.001
Compared by Mann‐Whitney test. Other comparisons made using χ^2^‐test. AIDS/HIV, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome/human immunodeficiendy virus; AMI, acute myocardial infarction; IHDs, ischemic heart diseases; OHA, oral hypoglycemic agents; PAD, peripheral arterial disease.
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
After propensity score matching, the proportion of patients who had congestive heart failure in the regular visit group was significantly less than that in the irregular visit group, and the proportion of those who had pulmonary disease or cancer was significantly higher than that in the irregular visit group (Table [3](#jdi12167-tbl-0003){ref-type="table-wrap"}).
###### Patient characteristics according to physician visits after propensity score matching
Total (*n *= 5,940) Regular visit group (*n* = 2,970) Irregular visit group (*n* = 2,970) *P*‐value
--------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- ----------------------------------- ------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------
Median age (years) \[interquartile range\] 77 \[12\] 78 \[12\] 77 \[12\] 0.098[a](#jdi12167-note-0003){ref-type="fn"}
Age (years)
\<65 567 (9.5%) 283 (9.5%) 284 (9.6%) 0.962
65--74 1,627 (27.4%) 809 (27.2%) 818 (27.5%)
75≦ 3,746 (63.1%) 1,878 (63.2%) 1,868 (62.9)
Sex
Male 3,137 (52.8%) 1,566 (52.7%) 1,571 (52.9%) 0.897
Female 2,803 (47.2) 1,404 (47.3%) 1,399 (47.1%)
Median no. months of physician visits \[interquartile range\] 7 \[9\] 11 \[2\] 2 \[5\] \<0.001[a](#jdi12167-note-0003){ref-type="fn"}
Medication for DM
No medication 3,004 (50.6) 1,508 (50.8%) 1,496 (50.4%) 0.894
OHA 1,490 (25.1%) 735 (24.7%) 755 (25.4%)
Insulin 803 (13.5%) 399 (13.4%) 404 (13.6%)
OHA + Insulin 643 (10.8%) 328 (11.0%) 315 (10.6%)
Comorbidity
AIDS/HIV 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) --
Congestive heart failure 1,803 (30.4%) 865 (29.1%) 938 (31.6%) 0.039
Chronic pulmonary disease 1,224 (20.6%) 646 (21.8%) 578 (19.5%) 0.029
Dementia 329 (5.5%) 159 (5.4%) 170 (5.7%) 0.533
Hemiplegia or paraplegia 147 (2.5%) 66 (2.2%) 81 (2.7%) 0.210
Mild liver disease 482 (8.1%) 259 (8.7%) 223 (7.5%) 0.087
Moderate or severe liver disease 158 (2.7%) 84 (2.8%) 74 (2.5%) 0.420
Cancer 1,260 (21.2%) 666 (22.4%) 594 (20.0%) 0.022
Metastatic solid tumor 277 (4.7%) 145 (4.9%) 132 (4.4%) 0.424
Peripheral vascular disease 218 (3.7%) 102 (3.4%) 116 (3.9%) 0.334
Peptic ulcer disease 1,392 (23.4%) 676 (22.8%) 716 (24.1%) 0.220
Rheumatological disease 234 (3.9%) 131 (4.4%) 103 (3.5%) 0.062
Renal disease 601 (10.1%) 297 (10.0%) 304 (10.2%) 0.763
Charlson Comorbidity Index
0 1,703 (28.7%) 839 (29.1%) 864 (28.2%) 0.705
1--2 2,505 (42.2%) 1,253 (42.2%) 1,252 (42.2%)
3≦ 1,732 (29.2%) 878 (28.8%) 854 (29.6%)
Other lifestyle‐related disease
Hypertension 4,183 (70.4%) 2,088 (70.3%) 2,095 (70.5%) 0.842
Hyperglycemia 2,354 (39.6%) 1,175 (39.6%) 1,179 (39.7%) 0.915
Compared by Mann‐Whitney test. Other comparisons made using χ^2^‐test. AIDS/HIV, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome/human immunodeficiendy virus; AMI, acute myocardial infarction; IHDs, ischemic heart diseases; OHA, oral hypoglycemic agents; PAD, peripheral arterial disease.
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Multivariate Analyses {#jdi12167-sec-0012}
---------------------
Table [4](#jdi12167-tbl-0004){ref-type="table-wrap"} shows comparisons of outcomes by physician visits after propensity score matching, and AORs and 95% CIs estimated by multiple logistic regression models. The irregular visit group had a significantly higher AMI (AOR 3.52; 95% CI 1.79--6.96), other IHDs except AMI (AOR 1.25; 95% CI 1.02--1.54), all IHDs (AOR 1.37; 95% CI 1.12--1.66), all strokes (AOR 1.29; 95% CI 1.04--1.60) and risk of hospitalization for diabetic macrovascular complications (AOR 1.28; 95% CI 1.10--1.48) than did the regular visit group.
###### Comparisons of outcomes and results of multiple logistic regression analyses by physician visit after propensity score matching
Total Regular visit group Irregular visit group *P*‐value[†](#jdi12167-note-0004){ref-type="fn"} AOR 95% CI
-------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- --------------------- ----------------------- -------------------------------------------------- ---------------------
Hospitalizations for AMI 47 (0.8%) 11 (0.4%) 36 (1.2%) \<0.001 3.52 \[1.79--6.96\]
Hospitalizations for IHDs except AMI 424 (7.1%) 192 (6.5%) 232 (7.8%) 0.044 1.25 \[1.02--1.54\]
Hospitalizations for all IHDs 471 (7.9%) 203 (6.8%) 268 (9.0%) 0.002 1.37 \[1.12--1.66\]
Hospitalizations for ischemic stroke 307 (5.2%) 141 (4.7%) 166 (5.6%) 0.143 1.17 \[0.96--1.44\]
Hospitalizations for hemorrhagic stroke 57 (1.0%) 21 (0.7%) 36 (1.2%) 0.046 1.22 \[0.97--1.54\]
Hospitalizations for all strokes 364 (6.1%) 162 (5.5%) 202 (6.8%) 0.030 1.29 \[1.04--1.60\]
Hospitalizations for PAD 68 (1.1%) 40 (1.3%) 28 (0.9%) 0.143 0.73 \[0.45--1.19\]
Hospitalizations for diabetic macrovascular complications 903 (15.2%) 405 (13.6%) 498 (16.8%) 0.001 1.28 \[1.10--1.48\]
In‐hospital mortality[‡](#jdi12167-note-0004){ref-type="fn"} 454 (7.6%) 209 (7.0%) 245 (8.2%) 0.079 1.17 \[0.96--1.44\]
†Comparison made using χ^2^‐test. ‡Adjusted by sex, age, medications for diabete, hypertension, hyperglycemia and Charlson Comorbidity Index. Other models adjusted by sex, age, medications for diabetes, hypertension, hyperglycemia. Hosmer‐Lemeshow goodness for fit. *P *=* *0.940, *P *=* *0.909, *P *=* *0.706, *P *=* *0.947, *P *=* *0.684, *P *=* *0.998, *P *=* *0.129, *P *=* *0.914, *P *=* *0.070, respectively. AMI, acute myocardial infarction; AOR, adjusted odds ratio; CI, confidence interval; IHDs, ischemic heart diseases; PAD, peripheral arterial disease.
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Discussion {#jdi12167-sec-0013}
==========
We showed that there was a significant difference in the risk of hospitalization for IHD and stroke between the regular visit and irregular visit groups. The risk of hospitalization for AMI in the irregular visit group was higher than that in the regular visit group. The present study results suggest that regular visits might reduce hospitalization for diabetic macrovascular complications.
It is apparent that the regular visit group had higher adherence to treatments than did the irregular visit group. Several previous studies reported that lower adherence to medication for DM is associated with DM‐related hospitalization[23](#jdi12167-bib-0023 jdi12167-bib-0024){ref-type="ref"}. Patients who had not obtained at least 80% of their oral antihyperglycemic medication were reported to have a 2.53‐fold higher risk of subsequent hospitalization among patients with type 2 diabetes[23](#jdi12167-bib-0023){ref-type="ref"}. Similarly, patients who had a high level of adherence were found to have the lowest hospitalization rates among patients with DM, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia or congestive heart failure[24](#jdi12167-bib-0024){ref-type="ref"}.
To evaluate the risks of irregular visits more precisely, we separately estimated the rates and risks of hospitalization for stroke, IHD and PAD. We found that the risk of hospitalization for IHD was higher than that of hospitalization for stroke. A prospective cohort study in Japan reported that the incidence rate of IHD (9.68 per 1,000 person‐years) was higher than that of cerebrovascular attack (6.78 per 1,000 person‐years) among elderly type 2 DM patients[25](#jdi12167-bib-0025){ref-type="ref"}. The present results are consistent with the results of that previous study.
The present study results suggested that it would be effective for insurers to motivate beneficiaries with DM to have regular visits. Insurers, especially health insurance societies, promote lifestyle modifications aimed at enhancing health and the promotion of primary prevention[26](#jdi12167-bib-0026){ref-type="ref"}. In addition to those health activities, the Japanese government has implemented "specific health checkup and health guidance" in financial year 2008 to reduce the number of persons at high risk of lifestyle‐related diseases, including DM. Because insurers can discover the insured at high risk of lifestyle‐related diseases or those complications from specific health checkup data and incorporate that data to claims data, it is expected that insurers will develop a disease management program by using these data. To develop a disease management program, further experimental studies are necessary to evaluate the effect of interventions for making regular visits and economic effects.
There were some limitations of the present study. First, we only investigated beneficiaries of the Fukuoka National Health Insurance Organization. Second, we could not investigate clinical information, such as family history, body mass index and other laboratory values (e.g., hemoglobin A1c). However, the present study included patients who did not have outpatient visits, although most previous studies did not include these patients.
In conclusion, the present study shows that the irregular visit group had significantly higher risks of hospitalization for IHD and stroke among diabetic patients. Strategies of insurers that motivate those beneficiaries with DM to make regular visits would be effective for reducing the risk of hospitalization for IHD and stroke.
There are no potential conflicts of interest relevant to the article.
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Central |
Darwin is Murphy's clean-up man.
Monthly Archives: April, 2009
I don’t frequently remember my dreams and when I do remember any of my dreams it’s usually only a single scene with very little detail. This morning when I woke up I had a couple of scenes from the same dream still in my head and then more detail than I’m used to. So I figured I’d share it with you. In part so I can remember it, but also maybe it would make a decent start to some sort of RPG or something. *grin*
Group of students, various ages meet together outside school building, each is holding some sort of personal item, most are rackets of some sort. They concentrate on the rackets, which glow, expand and then go over the owners’ heads and slide down. As the rackets go down, each student’s appearance changes becomes perhaps more idealized versions of themselves. Also the students now are standing in a lush forest area not in front of a school.
The students start racing off into the forest after one of them says something I didn’t catch. The last 2 students to head off are the student I’m tracking1 (a very young boy) and a female student. When they crossed over to the Otherside, she took on the appearance of almost a Greek goddess and he aged/got taller/grew a bread/suddenly had different clothes (maybe armor). He refers to the girl as “the Spider” when he asks what she’s planning. From the way the boy talks to her, I get the impression that they are not exactly friends but he does like her (sort of a proto-crush perhaps). Her reply seems to indicate she knows a little about what the other students are up to, though it’s vague.
They take off after the other students but they don’t move like kids running through a forest but with far, far greater speed more like cheetahs or leopards. When they catch up to the other students; all of them seem to be drawing more & more power to themselves from the clearing where they’ve stopped. The boy I’m tracking views this power they are drawing as something dangerous, alien and/or possibly an enemy. He starts streaking away back to where they crossed over, making some sort of comment to “the Spider” as he does so. Whatever it was he said was sufficient to have her follow him away from this place.
Then the dream scene fades out. When it resumes the boy I’m tracking has crossed back into the real world and is now sitting in a classroom. Where it becomes obvious the boy has skipped a few grade levels. It’s also obvious the teacher in this room is a pompous ass who won’t listen to the boy and the boy is extremely agitated. It feels like the teacher is picking on the boy, perhaps the teacher doesn’t appreciate having such a young/gifted student? The boy tries to explain what happened in the Otherside, but the teacher keeps cutting him off. Eventually the boy gets angry with the teacher and starts making threats. Still the teacher dismisses the boys concerns and that’s when the boy start demanding the teacher let him go speak to Lord Embries2.
When the teacher still dismisses the boy’s concerns, he simply walks out. He heads down the hallway towards the office. He gets up to a counter/reception desk for the Gifted3 students. He just starts to demand to see Lord Embries with just a bit of explanation of why he wants this, when a another young student runs up and gives a note to the woman at the desk. The note is from the pompous ass of a teacher and is all about the boy acting up in class, being threatening and demanding he be punished.
And that’s all I can remember from the dream now. Have a happy Friday!
1 Frequently in the dreams I remember, I don’t take part personally but sort of hover over the shoulder of one of the dream characters as they move about in their world. This is what I refer to as tracking. Though occasionally I will also see things though the eyes of of a character but have the impression that the dream character I see through is me.2 I get the impression that Lord Embries is the founder/header of the school but also a feeling of him being a combination of James Bond & Albus Dumbledore. That is caring, wise & powerful but also young, dashing & heroic.3 Gifted in this case refers to the ability to go to the Otherside and not to just being smarter than any other kids of the same age.
I don’t think people are unhappy so much as they’re effectively asleep behind the wheel. People are creatures of habit but we also find repetition boring. So most people will drive the same roads to/from work every day. After having driven it a few times, we start spacing off or at least thinking about anything but what we’re doing. And since we’re mentally living elsewhere, we let our faces go slack which tends to look like frowning most of the time. And it’s not just smiling in your car that can turn another person’s day around. I remember once while having a less than wonderful day I went to the grocery store, I saw a woman turn around with a pleasant smile on her face. I have no idea who she was or what she really was smiling about, but I remember seeing that smile and feeling almost like the smile was for me. It rather made my day back then.
Family Gatherings
Is it just me or do many people actually feel more comfortable around their in-laws than their own extended family? When I go to some sort of family function for my wife’s family, I might feel a bit like an outsider but it doesn’t bother me much. I guess I expect to feel like an outsider there. But when I go to one of my family functions, I tend to get tense & annoyed over how much an outsider it makes me feel. My best guess on that is it comes from having not grown up with these people who’ve obviously lived most of their lives in close proximiity to each other. Whereas when I was a kid, my dad was in the USMC for 20 & 1/2 years; we seemed to move about every 5 years and we didn’t live near my relatives. Sure we’d visit during the summer and did eventually move back to the same general area, but I already felt like an outsider then (probably didn’t help there weren’t any relatives around my age when we visited). | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Buffalo lawmakers will consider a petition asking them to remove a controversial statue and change the name of a park on the city's West side.
According to the meeting agenda, the Buffalo Common Council Legislation Committee is set to consider a request from Brandon Absher and the Buffalo Anti-Racism Coalition Tuesday. Absher sent a letter to the Common Council asking lawmakers to remove the statue of Christopher Columbus from Columbus Park on Niagara Street and rename the park.
In his letter, Absher said Columbus "established the beachhead for ruthless conquest and settler colonialism and inaugurated the genocidal devastation of whole continents."
Absher started a Change.org petition calling for the statue's removal and renaming of the park, and it has secured more than 1,600 signatures.
Absher and the signatories of the Change.org petition cite the recent debate over Confederate-era monuments and whether those monuments disrespect African-Americans and celebrate the legacy of slavery in the United States. They say the Columbus statue similarly disrespects Native American communities.
The statue in question has been the target of several acts of anti-Columbus vandalism. Just this past August, someone covered the statue with red paint. Last Columbus day, someone put a black garbage bag over the statue's head and wrote "Columbus was a slaver and a rapist" in chalk on the sidewalk underneath it. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
February 2012 Item of the Month
A journey through the Near East.
Journal of an Imperial War Graves Commission tour of inspection. August-September, 1937.
The catalogue of the papers of the Labour Party politician Jack Lawson (1881-1965), held in Durham University Library's Special Collections, has recently been completed. Lawson's working life began in Boldon colliery, and his political career grew from early struggles to improve his fellow coal-miners' pay and working conditions. He was M.P. for Chester-le-Street from 1919 to 1949, and shortly thereafter was appointed to the House of Lords.
In 1916 Lawson suffered a deep personal blow when his younger brother William was killed on active service. William had shown great promise, tutored in part by his elder brother, and followed him to Ruskin College, Oxford: a cache of war letters from William in the collection clearly demonstrates their closeness. Nevertheless, Lawson took an unpopular line after the war, in arguing against the imposition of heavy punitive reparations. His appointment to the Imperial War Graves Commission, serving from 1931 until 1947, must have been a welcome one. However, he was never a pacifist, and, like Churchill, he saw the threat of war sooner than many of his contemporaries, writing in 1936 of its inevitability.
Lawson published much literary and journalistic work throughout his life; his 1932 autobiography A Man's Life was widely praised. Photographs, detailed journals and reports of official overseas visits are also present in the collection, among them this record of a 1937 tour of inspection of war cemeteries in Gibraltar, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey , and Greece.
The illustration is of a journal entry on Lawson's outward leg, made as he steamed north from Gibraltar towards Marseilles. He comments on the 'piratical' presence of German military aircraft, flying from bases on the Balearic Islands "to kill & maim thousands of men, women & children in Spain". Four months later he visited Republican Spain with a Labour Party delegation, and again wrote his journal whilst sheltering from just such an air raid. Upon his return from Spain, he came to this conclusion. "The Spanish Army lacks the necessary modern weapons. They lack Ammunition. Shame on Democratic nations that they do. But inferiority is made up in superior Moral, and the Burning Conviction of a Just Cause against Invading Hosts." | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
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April 6 marks the 100 year anniversary of the United States entering World War I. Over 4 million American troops served in the war known as "the war to end all wars." More than 116,000 soldiers were killed and over 200,000 returned home gravely injured. The war ended on Nov. 11, 1918. (Published Thursday, April 6, 2017)
Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into World War I, and some of the innovations that were developed or came into wide use during the conflict are still with us today.
America entered nearly three years after the war began, joining Britain, France and Russia in the fight against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When it ended on Nov. 11, 1918, more than 4.7 million Americans had served and some 115,000 died.
The world's first mechanized war introduced enhanced weaponry and equipment, most of it designed to take lives but some of it aimed at saving lives. A look at some of the things that were new to the doughboys that we take for granted today:
Step Up Your Coffee Game With These Easy Brewing Methods
Making delicious home-brewed coffee will be easier than you think with these quick and easy steps.
(Published 2 hours ago)
MACHINE GUNS
Hand-cranked, high-capacity, rapid-firing firearms had been used as far back as the Civil War. But it was American inventor Hiram Maxim's 1880s design for a single-barrel, portable machine gun and other later versions that became ubiquitous on both sides during World War I. It forced opposing forces to dig hundreds of miles of trenches, with a deadly "no man's land" in between where soldiers could get mowed down.
This kind of fighting was unfamiliar to most American forces, who had been trained in the tactics of mobile warfare, always advancing. "Then it becomes, 'How do we get out of the trenches?'" said Maj. Kyle Hatzinger, a history instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "The Americans by 1917 have to figure this out."
TANKS
Preschoolers Battle for Baby Jesus Doll
Two preschoolers taking part in a nativity pageant at a Tennessee church engaged in a tug of war over a baby Jesus doll.
(Published 5 hours ago)
One way to break out of the trenches along the Western Front was to bust through with newly developed armored tracked vehicles dubbed tanks. The British introduced a large number of tanks to the battlefield for the first time in September 1916, during the battle of the Somme. Other armies soon were developing their own versions. In September 1918, a 32-year-old Army lieutenant colonel named George Patton led a U.S. tank unit into battle for the first time. A quarter century later, during World War II, he was the most famous commander of American armored units.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Adorable Orphaned Sea Otter Pup Settling in at Oregon Zoo
A sea otter pup known as "805" has been taken in by the Oregon Zoo after being orphaned off the California coast.
(Published 5 hours ago)
Germany launched the first use of a chemical weapon, chlorine gas, at Ypres, Belgium, in April 1915, against French troops. By 1917 other chemicals, including mustard gas, were being used by both sides. Some estimates put the number of deaths from gas attacks at about 900,000, with another 1 million injured. Gas masks were developed. But using gas could result in friendly fire casualties when winds blew the toxic fumes back into the attackers' positions.
"And if you attack you now have to go through the gas cloud you've created," Hatzinger said. "There's a lot of trial and error with the technology."
Outrage over the use of chemicals weapons in WWI led to the 1925 Geneva Protocol treaty that banned the use of chemical or biological weapons in international armed conflicts.
Alabama Candidates Cast Their Ballots
Republican Roy Moore, facing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, and Democrat Doug Jones cast their ballots in the vote that will send one of them to the U.S. Senate. NBC's Chris Pollone reports.
(Published Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017)
AIR WARFARE
A little more than a decade after the Wright Brothers flew their first airplane, WWI combatants took to the skies to spy on one another — and then to shoot each other down. Early in the war, aircraft were equipped with cameras for taking reconnaissance photographs. Pilots started arming themselves with handguns and rifles to shoot down enemy biplanes. Soon, mounted machine guns were being used in aerial combat known as dogfights, giving rise to such legendary fighter aces as Germany's Manfred von Richthofen (aka 'The Red Baron'), American Eddie Rickenbacker and Canada's Billy Bishop.
Children Sue Trump Administration Over Climate Change
A federal appeals court heard arguments Monday on whether Donald Trump and his administration can be sued by a group of children over the president's environmental policy.
(Published Monday, Dec. 11, 2017)
SUBMARINES
Using submersible vessels to attack enemy ships had been tried as far back as the American Revolution. It wasn't until WWI that submarines were used in large numbers as part of naval operations. Germany was the first nation to fully utilize submarine technology, attacking Allied shipping in the Atlantic and infamously sinking the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania off the Irish coast in May 1915, killing 1,200 people, including 128 Americans. The outcry from the U.S. over the attack prompted Germany to shift much of its submarine attacks elsewhere. But the Germans resumed submarine attacks in early 1917 and sank several U.S. vessels, one of the key reasons for America entering the war.
Elf on a Shelf Has Surgery, Doing Fine
Staff members at a children's hospital in Florida performed "surgery" on an elf on a shelf after a dog ripped off one of its arms.
(Published Monday, Dec. 11, 2017)
BARBED WIRE
Invented in post-Civil War America for Midwestern homesteaders to confine their livestock, the strands of twisted wire with sharpened spurs could also be used to keep soldiers from reaching an enemy's positions. During WWI it was placed in front of trenches or arranged in such a way that enemy ground assaults were funneled into areas covered by machine gun and artillery fire. Barbed wire fences were ubiquitous on the Western Front, where snared soldiers made easy targets for small-arms fire.
Radiology pioneer Marie Curie is credited with coming up with the idea of loading X-ray machines onto vehicles and driving to the front lines outside Paris to treat wounded French soldiers. The fleet of modified vehicles she assembled served as mobile X-ray units that were credited with saving thousands of lives. Today's military medical support units can take the high-tech versions as close to the fighting as possible to examine wounded soldiers before sending them to larger field hospitals.
Scenes From the Ground: Commuters Evacuated After Explosion Rocks Major Transit Hub
Pedestrians and early morning commuters were evacuated from the Port Authority Bus Terminal after a suspect detonated an IED in an underground passageway. The terminal is the world's busiest, according to its agency.
(Published Monday, Dec. 11, 2017)
TRENCH COATS AND WRISTWATCHES
They weren't fashion accessories.
Trench coats replaced the earlier era's full-length, woolen great coats, which became heavy when wet. British officers serving in the trenches turned to established English clothing firms such as Burberry and Aquascutum for khaki-colored, waterproof coats with deep pockets large enough to hold maps and a belt at the waist with metal D-rings for attaching gear.
Wristwatches had been around in some form for decades, mostly as jewelry worn by women, but they became standard equipment for soldiers and pilots who didn't want to be fumbling for the traditional pocket watch while launching artillery-supported ground assaults or flying combat missions.
WOMEN IN UNIFORM
WWI was the first time in the nation's history that women were officially attached to branches of the U.S. military, and more than 30,000 served in uniform, mostly as nurses or switchboard operators. Thousands of other women joined the various stateside private organizations aiding the war effort, and they also wore uniforms.
A cartoon in popular Life magazine at the time showed two American soldiers looking at a young woman working at a desk job. "What will you do after the war if you can't get your old job back?" one asked. The other replied: "Marry the girl who's holding it down."
PATRIOTIC PROPAGANDA
American James Montgomery Flagg created the now-famous poster of a pointing Uncle Sam under the words "I Want You." Some 4 million copies of the U.S. version of the Army recruitment poster were printed in 1917-18, according to the Library of Congress website. The poster proved so popular it was re-introduced during World War II, when millions more were printed.
Similarly popular was George M. Cohan's jaunty wartime ditty "Over There," which proudly spread word to Europe that "the Yanks are coming." More than 2 million copies of the song's sheet music were sold by the end of the war. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Reinnervation of anal sphincter muscle by low and high-threshold motor neurones.
The external anal sphincter (EAS) has continuously active low-threshold and recruitable high-threshold motor units (MUs), the latter being 'larger'. On performing concentric needle electromyography (EMG) of the EAS, the high-threshold MUs seemed to reveal more neuropathic changes than the low-threshold MUs. To verify this hypothesis, low- and high-threshold motor unit potentials (MUPs) were compared in patients with neuropathic EAS and controls. Fifteen subjects without pelvic disorders and 29 patients with sequela after cauda equina lesions were studied. In patients, only muscles ipsilateral to severe perianal sensory loss were included. MUPs were sampled using multi-MUP analysis during relaxation ('low-threshold'), and on activation ('high-threshold' MUs). MUP parameters of low- and high-threshold MUs from controls and patients were compared, as was the sensitivity and specificity with which MUPs were classified as normal or pathological (using discriminant analysis). MUP changes due to reinnervation, and the sensitivity and specificity in classifying MUPs as normal or pathological were not significantly different between the low- and high-threshold MUPs. Stronger activation of EAS does not improve discrimination between neuropathic and normal MUPs. New EMG techniques for sampling sphincter MUPs at higher activation levels would seem not to yield additional information. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
1,58 Credits/MIN ♥♥♥TOYS♥♥♥SOUND♥♥ ♥FaSt ConnECtion♥♥♥! Code for 0.40 Credits discount: DDZ5927C♥♥♥NEW NEW NEW I`m a very sexy girl with no inhibitions. I like a guy who can speak his mind and tell me | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich: "We're going to stay very, very active"
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is expected to suspend his campaign next week and endorse Mitt Romney, his spokesman has said.
Mr Gingrich now says he expects Mr Romney, who won five primaries on Tuesday, to be the Republican nominee.
The campaigns are said to be working out an orderly endorsement, with Mr Romney keen on Mr Gingrich's support.
He has won only two primaries - South Carolina and Georgia - since the election season began in January.
The Gingrich campaign had indicated it would reassess its future if he did not win the contest in Delaware.
Mr Gingrich will reportedly hold his last campaign event on 1 May in Washington DC.
'Citizen' campaigner
During a campaign stop in North Carolina on Wednesday, Mr Gingrich all but conceded.
"You have to at some point be honest about what's happening in the real world as opposed to what you would like to have happened," Mr Gingrich told supporters.
I don't think we can lose by 30 points in Delaware and feel good about it Bob Walker, Gingrich adviser
He added that Mr Romney "had a very good day yesterday. You have to give him some credit."
The former House Speaker said he would continue to campaign for the next week as a "citizen", adding he would discuss economic issues, such as high unemployment.
"We are going to stay very, very active and we are working out the details of our transition," Mr Gingrich said. "But I am committed to this party. I am committed to defeating Obama."
He was expected to go ahead with several scheduled campaign stops across North Carolina.
Gingrich spokesman RC Hammond said the former House Speaker was planning an event to throw his support behind Mr Romney, after having spoken to him on Wednesday.
He told US media Mr Gingrich would suspend his campaign once an orderly process had been arranged that would maximise the benefits to the Republican party and to Mitt Romney.
"Newt is committed to helping the party stop Barack Obama's second term," Mr Hammond said. "He will do everything he can to make sure that happens."
The former House Speaker had campaigned heavily in Delaware ahead of Tuesday's primary, a state that Mr Romney all but ignored.
But Mr Gingrich still lost the state's vote by 30%.
Bob Walker, a Gingrich adviser and former US representative, said on Tuesday: "I don't think we can lose by 30 points in Delaware and feel good about it."
In December, Mr Gingrich confidently predicted he would become the Republican nominee, and for a time enjoyed high poll ratings.
Although he won his home state of Georgia and nearby South Carolina, Mr Gingrich racked up heavy losses as the primary season continued.
He had vowed to fight on, even as Rick Santorum, Mr Romney's main Republican challenger, suspended his own campaign earlier in April.
Following Tuesday's wins, the Romney campaign will begin formally integrating with the Republican National Committee.
RNC chairman Reince Priebus said on Wednesday he had directed its staff to start communicating with Romney advisers.
Former Massachusetts Governor Romney has an unassailable lead in the race for the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination at the party convention in August.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul is the only other remaining candidate in the race, although he cannot win. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Q:
Normal Probability Density Function and confusion over how it arrives at an answer
I am confused at how the normal distribution's PDF capable of calculating a density for a single variable. I understand that the CDF probability of an exact continuous random variable $X$ is 0. Therefore, to calculate probability of $X$, we may define a range such that probability of $X$ is $P(a < X < b)$. It appears this range is usually referred to as the interval (please correct me if I am wrong).
PDF for normal distribution is $\frac{1}{\sigma\sqrt{2\pi}}\, e^{-\frac{(x - \mu)^2}{2 \sigma^2}}$ so if we assume $x=1$, $\mu=0$ and $\sigma=1$ the result from these parameters is 0.2419707 density using dnorm in R. How is the PDF capable of coming to this conclusion as we do not specify a interval?
A:
Cumulative distribution function (CDF): $$F_X(x) = \Pr[X \le x],$$ the probability of observing a value of the random variable $X$ less than some given value $x$.
Probability density function (PDF): $$f_X(x) = F_X'(x) = \lim_{\Delta x \to 0} \frac{1}{\Delta x}\Pr[x < X < x + \Delta x],$$ the instantaneous rate of change of the CDF at $x$, or the limit of the ratio of the probability that $X$ is observed in the interval $(x,x + \Delta x)$ divided by the length $\Delta x$ of that interval, as the width of the interval tends to $0$. More formally we can define the PDF in terms of the Radon-Nikodym derivative, but the above definition suffices for the typical continuous random variables encountered in elementary probability. Loosely speaking, the PDF measures in some sense a normalized likelihood of observing $X$ to be a particular value. It is not a probability.
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | StackExchange |
Airbnb Hosting Horror Stories - mbarsh
I had a guest ruin a rug with coffee this week. When I asked him to partially pay for the rug he responded with "You are sending me this now. It's Friday we left on Tuesday. Really." Airbnb is impossible to get in touch with. As a host, I feel we are stuck with these issues to deal with on our own. For a 25 billion dollar company, they pay pennies to help their "independent contractors" who ultimately are providing the homes for their guests. Any other horror stories from Airbnb? Hosting or Staying.
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dontJudge
If you count a coffee spill as a "horror story" then you're doing pretty well
so far on guests.
I'm just a guest, not a host. No horror stories on my side. All the hosts have
been awesome.
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paulcole
If you're an independent contractor, pay for your own supplies and build their
replacement costs into your rate.
When I do contract work and my computer breaks, I don't expect a new one from
whoever I'm working for at the time.
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rhkk
I just started and have had all good experiences, would be very interested in
real horror stories too.
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bbcbasic
Lesson learned: don't have a rug.
~~~
rayj
Lesson learned: don't use Airbnb.
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | HackerNews |
This is an amazing book about a serial rapist, his capture, and the brave women who testified against him. From the cover...On the day Ronnie Shelton was sentenced to 3,198 years in prison, his victims' silent fear finally turned to triumph...From 1983 to 1988, Ronnie Shelton stalked the women of Cleveland's West Side, spying on them, silently invading their most intimate moments, choosing his victim. Then he entered her home, ravaged her life and left her to face "unfinished murder"-the emotional and psychological devastation that is the aftermath of rape. After a five-year manhunt, Shelton would be convicted of raping twenty-nine women-probably less than a third of his actual victims. Here is the powerful true story of the detective who wouldn't give up and, above all, the victims who would not remain silent. Armed with interviews with the survivors, police, psychiatrists, and Ronnie Shelton, James Neff probes the contradictory mind of a sex offender, the overtaxed urban criminal justice system, and society's failure to address the issue of rape and its brutal aftermath. At the heart of UNFINISHED MURDER, however, is the uplifting story of womeen who found a unified voice with which to demand and receive justice | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Best collection for Top 15+ Cute Love Quotes sms we are sharing with you guys. Here you can find latest and lovely collection of what meaningful and heart touching quotes are. We have shared the most amazing that you want to wish you Cute Love Quotes on this special occasion.
“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity. No really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.” – George Bernard Shaw “All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” – Charles Schulz “As long as you know most men are like children, you know everything.” – Coco Chanel
“The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.” – Eminem “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.” – Joan Crawford “Don’t let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become.” – My Big Fat Greek Wedding
“The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.” – Eminem “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.” – Joan Crawford “Don’t let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become.” – My Big Fat Greek Wedding
You are the inspiration behind all that I do, and the source of all that is good in my life. Someone up there must be watching out for me, because they sent Heaven’s most beautiful angel into my life. Kiss me. Hug me. Love me. The same quantity of those sweetest things I will return as soon as possible.
My gratitude for having met you is surpassed only by my amazement at the joy you bring to my life. When you love me like that, I melt into honey. Let’s be sweet together. Between us is one thread: it tied our hearts so we walk close to each other always.
So, as you see how lovely these, hang on we have more for you. These are very lovely and your Cute Love Quotes will really enjoy and feel your love.
In my hands is this heart. I want you to have it, because I’m so clumsy, so I’m afraid I’ll lose it or easily give it to someone else. You are the only air I breathe. You are ticking in my heart like a little clock.
Yes, you wake me up every day, while I fall asleep dreaming of the days when I was alone. No longer am I in such a way. Two hearts ran to the end of the world.
They recognized each other’s eyes at the final border of the end and infinity. In that particular moment, they hugged each other. No one dares to separate them. you may need to check this : 110 Amazing Engagement Messages 2016
When I am with you, the only place I want to be is closer. My love for you is past the mind, beyond my heart, and into my soul. Each day I love you more, today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
I’ve fallen in love many times… always with you. If you are not too long, I will wait for you all my life. “Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.” – Wizard of Oz
“Men should be like Kleenex … soft, strong, disposable.” – Cher “The being in love is better than the falling in love.” – Simply Irresistible “It’s a wonderful thing, as time goes by, to be with someone who looks into your face when you’ve gotten old, and still sees what you think you look like.” – The Bachelor (film)
“And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” – Paul McCartney “The truth is everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley “You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” -O scar Wilde
“And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” – Paul McCartney “The truth is everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley “You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” -O scar Wilde
My love for you is past the mind, beyond my heart, and into my soul. Each day I love you more, today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow. I’ve fallen in love many times… always with you.
If you are not too long, I will wait for you all my life. “Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.” – Woody Allen “The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.” – Markus Zusak
“It wasn’t love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.” – Lucille Ball (on Desi Arnaz) “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.” – Winnie the Pooh “When I saw you, I was afraid to meet you. When I met you, I was afraid to kiss you.
When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you. Now that I love you, I am afraid to lose you.” – Anonymous “True love stories never have endings.” – Richard Bach “Just give me a comfortable couch, a dog, a good book, and a woman. Then if you can get the dog to go somewhere and read the book, I might have a little fun.” – Groucho Marx
As you see, all these Cute Love Quotes are so lovely and so wonderful you want to send and enjoy with your dad. Have a look, pick the best and send. Have nice day and don’t forget to share with your friends if you like it. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
INDIA - NOVEMBER 06: RK Laxman, Cartoonist with a sketch of his most famous character 'Common Man' at his Residence in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India (Photo by Mustafa Quraishi/The India Today Group/Getty Images)
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India’s most famous satirist and the creator of the iconic ‘Common Man’ series of cartoons, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman, but known simply as Laxman by those who followed his art over six decades, passed away on Monday in a Pune hospital, according to reports.
Laxman, who was born in Mysore in 1924, died this evening at the Dinanath Mangeshker hospital in Pune after complications from a urinary tract infection, the Deccan Chronicle reported. The eminent cartoonist was ill for many months and was admitted to the hospital on January 16 after he complained of breathlessness, the report said.
IANS reported Laxman passed away, citing a family member. Laxman had suffered multiple organs failure, but responded well to the treatment and had bounced back. Three days later, he was taken off the ventilator and shifted to the intensive care unit, the IANS report said.
Laxman began drawing cartoons for the Free Press Journal newspaper in 1947 in Mumbai (then Bombay). He joined the Times of India as a cartoonist later and in a career spanning 60 years, he fearlessly caricatured India's politicians, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
The legendary cartoonist, brother of renowned novelist RK Narayan, is survived by his writer wife Kamala, retired journalist son Srinivas and daughter-in-law Usha. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Top 10 Promises of the Blockchain Technology – Can this Technology Save Us?
Since I’ve started my blockchain journey, what I found absolutely mind-blowing was realizing the enormous impact that this technology could make to people’s lives.
Like many, I see the blockchain technology as the next generation of the Internet, our second chance of accomplishing what we’ve set our self to achieve with the Net, but didn’t really pulled off completely. Early visionaries imagined the Internet as a network that could free the world’s most oppressed people, giving everyone access to information and opportunities, which should have led us to wealth redistribution and a more equal society.
While some of those theories have ultimately been proven delusional, if applied correctly I truly believe that the blockchain technology has the potential to achieve those goals and help us to create a more equal and prosperous world.
The accounting firm PwC in its latest report “Building block(chain)s for a better planet”, goes as far as describing Blockchain as the foundation emerging technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and a game changer for the Earth.
I’m aware the application of this technology still at its infancy and there is no doubt that major challenges still need to be overcome but we are at the verge of a great revolution, let’s get to work and make it happen!
The top 10 promises of the blockchain technology:
Media freedom and journalism around the world are in danger like never before.
For democracies to survive these uncertain times, we need well-informed citizens capable of making important moral judgements, which is only possible when we have a strong and independent press that fuel debates and trigger social actions.
An example of a project in the space: Civil
I came across the Civil project while listening to the ZigZag podcast, a podcast about changing the course of capitalism and journalism. The Civil mission is to help power sustainable journalism throughout the world employing a decentralized model based on blockchain and crypto-economics.
Civil seeks to empower journalists and their supporters to engage more directly and transparently introducing a new funding model and a supporting ecosystem that enables journalists to focus on serving their readers above all else. (Source Civil)
In an interview in 2015, Vitalik Buterin founder of the Ethereum Platform said:
“Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.”
An example of a project in the space: DAV
DAV is an open source Software platform that allows anyone to buy or sell transportation services in a decentralized market. DAV integrates into any vehicle (car, drone, ship), enabling those vehicles to discover, communicate, and transact with one another. (Source DAV)
The more we give third-party companies access to our data, the higher is the risk that data could be misused, stolen or compromised. So, rather than giving companies our information, this could be stored it in a decentralized ledger, free from a single point of failure, giving us control over what information we share with whom.
An example of a project in the space: Enigma
The Enigma project is a protocol that promises to protects the privacy of data while still allowing for computations to be run over it. It allows users to maintain control over personal data, particularly through preventing its monetization or analysis by platforms.
In recent years the third sector has been facing a major crisis, especially in the UK. Criticisms go from data breaches, sexual misconduct scandals, data sharing, aggressive fundraising and more. In its annual report, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reports 11 fines to charities totaling £138,000 for unlawfully processing personal data. Donors are losing trust and worry their donations could get lost on the way.
Blockchain could provide donors with full transparency on the use of their donations. Charities could use this technology to accept and record transactions without the need for third parties which should result in enhanced efficiency, cost saving and increase donor trust.
Donors can freeze their donations until their chosen charity is able to prove that they have achieved their donation goals. Using this tool you’ll be guaranteed to make an impact, or you’ll get your money back.
Access to credit is always been a massive challenge for small businesses and entrepreneurs all over the world. In developing countries, this results in precluding access to the traditional financial services or only offering local cash loans at extortionate interest rates. Enabling those investments is fundamental for the growth of those communities.
An example of a project in the space: Ethichub
EthicHub aims to democratize finances making credit and investment opportunities available to everyone. Small and unbanked producers can benefit from lower interest rates and more liquidity which should allow them to improve productivity, increase profit and result in a better quality of life.
Full transparency of transactions allows for settlement speeds close to real-time while the reduction of the number of intermediaries, simplify processes and ultimately increases operational efficiency.
Some projects get as far as using the waste heat generated by mining rig to heat homes, swimming pools or even fish and plant farms!
An interesting project in the space: Power Ledger
Power Ledger is on the mission to empower individuals and communities all over the world with access to electricity that is low-cost, reliable, and renewable.
The project utilizes the blockchain technology to allow buyers to choose the source of electricity they want to use and households that generate surplus electricity to trade it with their neighbors with fair returns.
In 2017 the World Bank has estimated that more than 1 billion people worldwide cannot officially prove their identity which is imperative for accessing health care, education, finance, and other essential services. On the same note, financial inclusion has been seen as key for reducing poverty but two billion people worldwide still do not have a bank account. This precludes them from safely transacting money, accessing insurance or building a credit history for future borrowing.
Blockchain can help provide digital identities, eliminate remittance rip-off, preventing human trafficking and offer a way to store value in countries where inflations have crept up to unsustainable levels. The projects in the space are blooming.
An example of a project in the space: Building Blocks
Building Blocks is a project launched by the United Nations’ World Food Programme that utilises the combination of eye scanning and blockchain technology to make cash-based transfers faster, cheaper and more secure in refugee camps.
In an interview for the MIT Technology Review the inventor of the project, Houman Haddad explains his vision: “A Syrian refugees using such a system could regain legal identities that were lost along with their documents and assets when they fled their homes. In this scenario, a refugee could easily prove his educational credentials, demonstrate his relationship with his children, and get a loan to start a business.”
For centuries developed countries have taken unfair advantage of resources and knowledge from developing countries.
The results of this practice can be devastating for animals and plants and unfold negative effects on the economy of the deprived.
An interesting project in the space: Earth Bank of Codes
The Earth Bank of Codes aims to make nature’s biological and biomimetic assets visible and accessible to scientists and innovators around the world, while tackling bio-piracy and ensuring fair and equitable sharing of the commercial benefits that may ensue, in alignment with the Convention of Biodiversity’s Nagoya Protocol. (Source Earth Bank of Codes)
The project was launched with the partnership of the Earth BioGenome Project and the World Economic Forum.
“We are used to governments making spending pledges at election time, which then simply evaporate. Blockchain-based accounting and contracts could help connect pledges with actual outputs – transforming how the public can track the way our taxes are spent.”
An interesting project in the space: VoteWatcher
Founded by Nick Spanos, VoteWatcher’s mission is to bring complete transparency to the modern electoral system and empower every voice by providing the most technologically advanced, reliable and secure voting mechanism in the world (Source VoteWatcher).
Climate change is probably the biggest environmental challenge we are facing.
The application of the blockchain technologies in the sectors varies from reducing the carbon footprint, encourage recycling using tokens, protect wildlife, conservation and many more.
An interesting project in the space: Climate Chain Coalition
Early this year the United Nations has announced its help to launch a new group called the Climate Chain Coalition (CCC). This global initiative aims to support collaboration among members to advance blockchain to help mobilize climate finance (Source Climate Chain Coalition).
This technology is already changing the course of many industries. The scene is very vibrant in sectors such as finance, supply chain, insurance, accounting, healthcare and many more.
We are at a time where we are feeling the shift. It is now up to us to take the lead and shape this new technology for good.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. The projects covered have the only aim to illustrate real applications of the technology but are not meant to be considered as an endorsement of their white papers or tokens or taken as an investment guide.
Do your own research and consult a financial advisor before investing in cryptocurrency.
Resources and source of inspiration:
Book: The People Vs Tech by Jamie Bartlett
Book: Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Is Changing the World by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Our new issue, “After Bernie,” is out now. Our questions are simple: what did Bernie accomplish, why did he fail, what is his legacy, and how should we continue the struggle for democratic socialism? Get a discounted print subscription today !
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump appeared to upend conservative orthodoxy with a clear message of economic populism: globalization is bad, NAFTA sold you out, greedy corporations are sending your jobs overseas. A billionaire vulture capitalist himself, Trump was an implausible bearer of such a message. Since in office he has pulled a predictable bait and switch, retaining his xenophobic obsessions while imposing an even more vampiric version of the GOP’s standard economic fare: assaults on Obamacare; gigantic, regressive tax cuts; deregulation of every sort; and attacks on the government’s minimal aid to the poorest and most precarious Americans. All along, the Trump carnival has attracted intellectuals who see a potential in right-wing populism that, due to his mental and ideological emptiness, Trump can never deliver himself. An emerging class of right-wing populist intellectuals has increasingly taken aim at decades of Republican pro-business orthodoxy, talking about a yawning gap between a bipartisan American elite and everyone else. But while the Right’s invocations of workers might seem like a positive development, in reality, it has little to do with addressing the country’s deep economic divides. It rests instead on a pseudo-sociology that pits an ambiguous “managerial” or “cosmopolitan” ruling class against the rest of the country — and lets the people who actually hold political and economic power off the hook.
The Mythical Managerial Class Central to the emerging right-wing class theory is the idea of an elite cohort that has detached itself from the nation and imposes its globalist, progressive ideology on, in Missouri senator Josh Hawley’s nebulous characterization, “the great American middle.” While right populists have been more willing than traditional Republicans to criticize the heights of US economic power — especially Wall Street and Silicon Valley — the real consequence of their theory of elites is mystifying the role of their own coalition in shredding the American social fabric. An early effort at this kind of class analysis appeared in the first issue of the upstart nationalist journal American Affairs in 2017, in which editor Julius Krein proposed to investigate a “transpartisan elite with its own interests.” The vehicle for Krein’s class theory is The Managerial Revolution , the 1941 book by James Burnham, a philosophy professor at NYU who eventually became a staunch Cold Warrior and an editor at National Review. Before 1939, Burnham was a leading figure in the American Trotskyist movement, and The Managerial Revolution sprung directly from the debates of the global Trotskyist diaspora over the sociological nature of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Amid the rise of fascism, the New Deal, and an avowed socialist state that upended the expectations of traditional Marxism, theories abounded about a possible “state capitalism” or managerial regime that gave new power to bureaucrats and managers. Burnham was one of the first to unite Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the New Deal United States into a global phenomenon of supposedly post-capitalist societies controlled by an autonomous managerial bureaucracy. The emergence of highly concerted state action in the United States during World War II and the Cold War, as well as the rise of Keynesian welfare states in Europe, seemed to provide superficial confirmation of Burnham’s ideas in the 1950s, and it became common in liberal social science to view the United States and the Soviet Union as potentially “converging” models of “industrial society.” Postwar governance everywhere was unquestionably technocratic, and the laissez-faire market of the nineteenth century was no longer in fashion. But the idea that managers’ interest ruled over those of capitalist owners was always absurd: managerial capitalism was as oriented around the interests of the economic ruling class as any other kind — and managers were its willing accessories, not the source of its subversion. As many critics observed, Burnham’s back-of-the-napkin sociology conflated corporate managers and state bureaucrats into a single class when it was easy to show that they lacked anything like an independent class ideology: they were thoroughly socialized into the aims of their institutions, whether corporations or government. The famous “separation of ownership and control” in American business was no sociological revolution — as the economist Paul Sweezy wrote in an early review of The Managerial Revolution , “Managers are the best-kept salaried workers under capitalism.” State bureaucracies are no more likely sources of an independent managerial class. Hailing from the same families and schools, high-level technocrats in the state always tend to overlap with banking, business, and engineering elites, and are much more likely to champion ruling-class interests than to subvert them. Nevertheless, Krein has resurrected Burnham’s “managerial class” thesis to create a dichotomy between neoliberal globalism (“managerialism”) and a supposedly better, more patriotic, bourgeois capitalism of the nineteenth century that was grounded in the national political community. “Ownership as managerial control,” he writes, “is radically different from capitalist ownership.” Under this ambiguous managerialism, “it is status as a member of the managerial class, not as an individual property owner, that determines economic and political power.” The managerial class stirs up “consumerism, hedonism, and meliorism” as the basis of its power — unlike the older, more desirable form of capitalism, which had “a certain kind of self-discipline and self-reliance that directed energies and resources into productive uses — the ‘Protestant ethic.’” Like Burnham, Krein envisions “managerialism” as a supersession of capitalism, in which echelons of managers across society rule for their own benefit, motivated by a globalist, post-national ideology. But not only is such a notion far too vague to be sociologically defensible, it also obscures the real economic forces that created the financialized economy that Krein bemoans as the height of managerialism. Deindustrialization and financialization, far from being the products of an amorphous managerial cabal, were a class project that stemmed from capital-holders’ demands for higher profit rates than the postwar welfare states would permit. That project was abetted by capital’s political allies in the engine rooms of economic governance — to a man, enemies of the welfare state and the labor movement. Managers untethered themselves from the nation for a reason. Krein also happens to ignore the bulk of global economic history since the 1970s, in which external pressures shaped the direction of economic policy and the shifting topography of the national economy. Though specific policy directions were political choices, there is no question that they were viewed as the best hope for maintaining competitiveness in an increasingly global economy. Krein is rightly critical of the post-1970s financial sector and the sociopathic violence it has been allowed to visit both on smaller businesses and on American society in general. But what is the point of obscuring the actual story of these economic transformations and the interests behind them to revive Burnham’s ambiguous and implausible “managerial class”? Partly, it derives from an ahistorical fantasy of reviving a “national” capitalism. But as other thinkers have noted, few of the new right-populists seem interested in the economic forces that have buffeted American workers. Much dearer to their hearts is a top-down imposition of a religious and racial vision of social cohesion. A culture war needs a cultural enemy, and vulgarized versions of Krein’s “managerial class” theory enable conservative populists to blame an amorphous cabal of globalist elites for the increasing marginal status of their right-wing cultural values.
“Big Business Doesn’t Care About Your Family” “For years,” Josh Hawley declared at the National Conservatism conference in Washington in mid-July, “the politics of both left and right have been informed by a political consensus that reflects the interests not of the American middle, but of a powerful upper class and their cosmopolitan priorities.” He continued: “On economics, this consensus favors globalization — closer and closer economic union, more immigration, more movement of capital, more trade on whatever terms.” It was a generally accurate summation of the economic thinking that dominates both political parties. But even a cursory glance at Hawley’s record shows he has not even a glimmer of an alternative. In fact, as others have pointed out, his whole political career is deeply indebted to this consensus: he takes money from the Koch brothers and the Club for Growth, two of the most aggressive supporters of the libertarian economic agenda he decries; he is a militant foe of labor unions, the primary economic force in US society empowering workers of all backgrounds; he opposes raising the minimum wage and hiking taxes on inherited wealth. His concern for “the people whose labor sustains this nation” apparently doesn’t extend to any practical policy to improve their lives. Hawley’s real concern is the pernicious cultural ideology of the ill-defined “cosmopolitan elite.” “The cosmopolitan elite look down on the common affections that once bound this nation together: things like place and national feeling and religious faith,” Hawley said in his National Conservatism speech. “They regard our inherited traditions as oppressive and our shared institutions — like family and neighborhood and church — as backwards.” According to Hawley, the teachings of Jesus gave rise to “the individual” and the American founders’ idea of a “new republic governed not by a select elite, as in the days of old, but by the common man and woman.” This fictional origin of the American republic — a republic explicitly founded on rule by a select propertied and racial elite — is the sacred carrier of the values that the “cosmopolitan elite,” the “ruling class,” the “aristocracy,” or the “leadership elite” have now perverted with their secularism and sexual progressivism. Hawley’s use of superficially anti-capitalist terminology may be sociologically empty, but it has become one of the populist right’s favorite rhetorical devices for turning America’s class hierarchy into a culture war. Denouncing “woke capital” — business interests voicing support for progressive social politics — has become an obsession. “The main threat to your ability to live your life as you choose,” Fox News’s Tucker Carlson said at the National Conservatism conference, “does not come from the government anymore, it comes from the private sector.” Carlson railed against the monopoly power of big tech, particularly Google’s control over information. But his apparent alarm at Silicon Valley’s monopoly power — a real and frightening problem — turned out to be superficial, twisted into a series of right-wing grievances. He railed against a limited-edition package of Oreos produced for New York’s Pride parade (“a brazen act of propaganda aimed at your kids”) and worried about tech firms making conservative ideas vanish from the internet. Social conservatives of all stripes have flocked to the “woke capital” meme like flies to a porch light. Rod Dreher, whose blog at the American Conservative is a fever swamp of hysterics over sexual progressivism, frequently publishes lurid reports of routine corporate diversity training paired with quotes from Cold War–era tomes like Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism. In June, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton gave a speech on the Senate floor denouncing “the dictatorship of woke capital,” by which he meant “a troubling trend among giant corporations using this wealth and power to force liberal dogma on an unwilling people.” The freak-out about “woke capital” not only rests upon a fictional sociological divide between a hostile ruling class and a resistant populace, but the residual fantasy of a socially conservative “moral majority.” The basic laws of capitalist marketing dictate that corporations respond to their customers’ tastes. What social conservatives interpret as economic power tipping the scales in favor of progressive values is really a response to what the overwhelming majority of Americans believe: between 65 and 69 percent of Americans, in all ethnic demographics and regions of the country, support gay marriage, and a clear majority supports trans rights. Most dishonestly, right-wing populists like Carlson deliberately borrow from left politicians and thinkers for ammunition in their new class-conscious culture war and then, bizarrely, claim that leftists don’t really care about those things. Carlson has voiced qualified admiration for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jacobin , and frequently claims that Elizabeth Warren’s 2004 book The Two-Income Trap is the most important social-conservative book of the last decade. Nevertheless, Carlson devotes most of his energy to teapot-tempests over political correctness and the supposed persecution of white people, painting frightening images of a political left working hand in glove with corporate power to impose radical “identity politics.” To hear Carlson tell it, Warren wrote a good book, but “went crazy” on identity politics — never mind that the centerpieces of her presidential campaign are health care, free college, and breaking up tech giants. “No one on the Left cares” about Google’s monopoly practices, because “those are the shock troops of their ideology” — never mind that the only existing policy analysis and organizing against Silicon Valley comes from leftists of various stripes. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
About Michelle G.
Getting ready for a big audition or recording session? Here's where we can explore bolder artistic choices and enhance your instrument to shine even brighter! We'll go over audition issues and make sure you feel confident and ready to Book the Room and Book the JOB! :)
About Michelle
VOCAL COACHRehabilitating and strengthening voices are two of my top specialties, and each lesson will have specific exercises tailored to helping you transform your voice into the highest and best version of your instrument. I work with singers signed to labels as well as the indie artist just starting to find his/her voice, style, and signature sound. My coaching approach incorporates some of the newest technologies that have shown extraordinary results in breaking down the inner blocks of each artist. It is a tremendously joyful and fulfilling experience to watch as my students really let their instrument shine brightly, boldly, and with an aboslutely stunning groundedness as they discover how powerful they truly are.
. is a firework in the artistic arena. Her training began at the young age of 3 with the violin, and a few years later received classes for piano and voice. Excelling in all three, Michelle developed a very passionate and dramatic personality that eventually led her to more dramatic genres such as opera and stage acting. Her aptitude to understand human emotions and relationships gives her a wide spectrum to play in as an actress. There is an organic flow to her interpretations both as an actress and musician that leads the audience to feel her emotional current. Her honest characterizations introduce deeper perspectives on what seems like the ordinary roles and storylines. Amongst the many other leads that she has played, her participation in roles like “Susanna” in The Marriage of Figaro, or “Donna Elvira” in Don Giovanni embody much vibrancy and integrity.Through the development of her voice as a singer and actress, she has crossed over into other media such as voice over commercial work and vocals for pop/main stream music productions. She has recently participated as a vocalist and violinist in the albums of artists such as international jazz pop artist David Longoria, Latin pop singer Erick Bolivar, Grammy-nominated percussionist Souhail Kaspar, and American Idol’s Seysha. Over the last few years she has unraveled her musical skills as a songwriter/composer/arranger and has even had some small victories acquiring music placements on TV shows (NCIS, short film “Sumtin’ Like Dat”, The Dictator) for herself and some of her colleagues. Her singing can also be heard on the hit tv show "Jane The Virgin", "Castle" and "Shameless" amongst others.
EducationMichelle completed her Associates of Arts for Music/Music Education at the age of 18, and got later graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Miami with a Bachelor's of Arts for Musical Theater and Music Business, as well as from Florida International University with a Master's of Music in Vocal Performance.
*** Lesson Details ***I tailor my lessons to my student's needs, style, abilities, and goals. Learning is truly a fun and passionate adventure for me, and my enthusiasm has consistently been a contagious quality :) I love to challenge myself & my students to discover how immense their true potential is, and I create a safe and fun environment to explore such facets.
My curriculum is combination of solid tradition (Suzuki method for piano & violin, and Bel Canto technique for singing) interwoven with pop-culture, and modern influences. Within the first 3-6 months, my students will know the basic building blocks of music - which includes scales, arpeggios, triads, intervals, technique, and performance repertoire; and for my singers this will include proper breath technique, tone placement, support, very often increased vocal range (both high and low), and will feel significantly stronger vocally and more confident getting up to sing.
Reviews
Janai H. February 19, 2018·Spanish·Online
Michelle is so patient and kind. She gives me help with my accent and the way I pronounce the words so that I sound more like a native speaker. I love her. She is so much fun. I'd recommend her to anybody.
Janai H. January 29, 2018·Spanish·Online
Michelle is awesome!!! She is so sweet and a very good and encouraging instructor. She inspires me to be a better teacher. She helped me with where I was weak and gave me homework. I will definitely be working with her for EVERYTHING that I want to learn.
Arielle June 24, 2017·Acting·In studio
Michelle is a very nurturing and dynamic teacher. She easily understands where you're coming from and knows how to bring the best out of you! I definitely feel more confident in my acting skills after working with Michelle.
Michelle G.
Michelle G.
About Tina B.
What my students learn is stage presence. How to hold and work a microphone and how to use the "three points" on a stage so that the entire audience feels like they are part of the experience.
We also go over some techniques to help with nervousness or "stage-fright." Students learn how to project, how to enunciate, and how to breathe. I give exercises to assist in learning how to develop a good on-stage appearance.
About Tina
I started singing professionally at the age of fourteen. I have had leading roles in semi-professional theatre productions since I was seventeen. I have also been assistant director, musical director, choreographer, costumer and writer for many productions from West Side Story to My Fair Lady to Camelot. In the theatre I have worked with and trained children and adults of all ages. I have also conducted summer camps that were theatre workshops for children. I was a school teacher at a Charter school for eight years and I taught music and drama to children from Kindergarten to 12th grade. I have been giving voice lessons for more than twenty years. I tailor my programs based on the needs of my students. I am passionate about music and I love being able to share that with other individuals who are passionate about music. I have wor
ked with children and adults who told me "I cannot sing" and have shown them that, once you understand how your voice works, you can do things you never dreamed you could do. I will work hard to help anyone who has the love and determination to sing to improve and become a better singer.
Students I have worked with have won competitions and even been accepted into the AMDA in New York.
*** Lesson Details ***The voice is an instrument and, like any instrument, you have to know all of its parts and how it works in order to get the most out of it. I teach my students how to properly use their voice without damaging their vocal chords. I teach vocal techniques and exercises to help my students become a better singer. My students will learn how to use their diaphragm; how to use dynamics; how to project; how to build up their lung capacity; how to sing in a clear and articulate manner; how to sing various different types of music; how to control their voice; and how to develop their natural ear for music as well as showmanship. My style and technique has been developed over many years of practical experience and learning from instructors and entertainers who work in the entertainment industry. My method of teaching is entirely my own and I have had a lot of success with it. I expect my students to work hard and be dedicated but I try to make the lessons not just instructional but fun.
*** Studio Equipment ***Home-lessons taught in a designated music room, has an electric weighted keyboard and a karaoke machine.
I have recording capabilities that allow me to record my students and blend their voices with the background tracks that we work with. Once a song has been mastered, I record the song and email it to you so you can have it to enjoy and share with family and friends.
*** Specialties ***I teach my students breathing techniques; how to use the diaphragm and relax the vocal chords; how to project; how to properly enunciate; how to perform a song instead of just singing it; showmanship; how to select the music that is right for them. The voice is an instrument and, like any instrument, you have to fully understand it and its different parts in order to get the most out of it.
...
Reviews
Michelle September 9, 2017·Broadway Singing·In home
Tina is extremely approachable, unassuming and welcoming. Her concepts are easy to understand and she is a pleasure to be around. I'm enjoying my adult Broadway lessons very much and she's helping me prepare for an upcoming audition.
Kayte O. August 30, 2017·Singing·In studio
Very knowledgeable and patient. Overall wonderful experience!
Cara H. August 15, 2017·Singing·In studio
Love her style. Makes you feel comfortable from the start. Knowledgeable lady!
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Tina B.
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Tina B.
Apple Valley, CA 92307
(27)
starting at
$25
/ 30-min
About John M.
I enjoy sharing my love for music with others! I love to teach music composition, theory, piano, guitar, and ear training/ sight singing. I also have a passion in performance, composition, and I love to listen to music of all sorts!
About John
*** Specialties ***Hi, there! My name is Johnny and I can't wait to meet you! I've been teaching private lessons since 2012 and have loved helping my students build a solid foundation and understanding of music, as well as developing their skills to become well rounded musicians. I went to the University of Redlands and earned a degree in Music Composition in 2014. I have a fun and friendly personality and my teaching style is constructed in a way that will appeal to visual, aural, and kinesthetic learners. Kodaly's method of inner hearing and music literacy particularly interests me. Along with this method, I implement warm ups that will help my students develop proper playing techniques, and I teach my students how to play with expression and emotion. I strive to teach at the best of my ability, work hard, and share my love for music
with others. I look forward to helping you reach your goals!
...
Reviews
Giovanni May 20, 2016·Piano·In studio
Very nice person, and he has all the patience for my son. Happy mama
Kate January 21, 2016·Piano·In home
Sweetheart! Very nice to work with.
Inez H. December 22, 2015·Piano·In home
Johnny is very personable, knowledgable, patient and a pleasure. He is very welcome in our home.
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John M.
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John M.
Yucca Valley, CA 92284
(8)
starting at
$25
/ 30-min
About Ian S.
I would be happy to help you become more confident performing in front of people, and bringing out the best in yourself every performance!
About Ian
A lifelong musician and songwriter, Ian S. has extensive experience teaching guitar and piano to students age 3 and up both as a private music instructor and as a staff music instructor at the Institute of Music for Children. With 28 years of experience on the guitar and 32 years on piano, Ian has studied and performed with several award-winning music artists, and has written, recorded, and produced over one hundred songs. He plays and teaches a variety of styles on both the guitar and the piano, from classical to jazz to rock. Ian is patient, friendly, and loves sharing the gift of music.
Ian was the guitarist in the Princeton University Jazz Ensemble for 3 seasons, was selected from a nationwide pool of musicians to perform at a special music event at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and was the recipient of the New Jersey Gove
rnor's Award in Arts Education for the category of Instrumental Music.
*** Lesson Details ***I am very laid back and friendly, and I want you or your child to be as comfortable as possible during our lessons. You or your child will develop confidence and musical intelligence. I will make your lessons fun, enjoyable, and effective. Boredom is not an option! Music is fun... let's keep it that way.
The teaching methods I use will be custom-tailored to your individual needs, personality and specific musical goals. If it's guitar or piano you want to learn, I want to get you playing exactly what you want to be playing as soon as possible. That's what you're here for, and that's what I'm here for. I will make it happen. If it's songwriting that you want to learn, I will help you access that place inside of you that is dying to express itself creatively, and will teach you techniques to harness that energy and translate it successfully into musical expression.
You can expect to learn all the basics of music theory, proper playing techniques, improvisation and spontaneous musical expression, and I will help you develop your "ear" so you can figure out songs you like just by listening to them. This is all about you and your goals, and I want you to achieve them in a fun and engaging way.
*** Specialties ***I specialize in pop, rock, classical, jazz, blues, folk, fingerstyle (guitar), etc. I also teach improvisation and songwriting, and try to develop the student's ear for figuring out songs they like on their own.
...
Reviews
Joseph February 20, 2018·Guitar·In studio
Ian is quick to understand the areas in which his student needs direction
Sissi H. July 27, 2017·Guitar·In studio
Ian is the best , He give me a lot of confidence to start, and my English is not good he also very patient to understand what I said. In the beginning I don't have a guitar he give me a long list good for me and let me find out witch is I love, and lots of advice. Thank you Ian!
Zhongkai July 23, 2017·Guitar·In studio
Can't be better
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Ian S.
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Ian S.
Online
(31)
starting at
$35
/ 30-min
About Paul V.
About Paul
First off, my hope for you is that for whatever reason you're on this site looking for a drum teacher is something I can help you fulfill, whether you would like to play in a band, learn better technique to help you play what you want to (but maybe aren't able to yet), record your drums, create beats, learn to read music, or understand and play different styles of music.
With over 20 years of teaching experience, I will help you reach your musical goals, now matter how big or small. We'll work together on uncovering your talents and use them to your advantage while improving on areas that might be holding you back - all while having fun, because let's face it, playing music, and especially the drums, is fun!
About Paul:
Paul V., originally from St. Louis , Missouri, studied drums for several years before becoming interested in cl
assical percussion and piano in college, eventually becoming Principal Timpanist for the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra and also Guest Artist with the nationally acclaimed St. Louis Brass Band. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2002, Paul has played/recorded with WAL (formerly the Jacob and Matthew Band), Jane Lui, Danielle Rose, Warren Charles, Scott Detweiler, Hunter Parrish (from Showtime's Weeds and Godspell on Broadway), Brendan James, Billy Mitchell, Bill Purdy, Don Kirkpatrick (Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker), Jeff Littleton (Herbie Hancock, Stanley Turrentine), John Thomas (Bruce Hornsby), Pete Anderson (Roy Orbison, Dwight Yoakam), and has opened for acts including The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Wailing Souls, Clint Black, Junior Brown, Rodney Crowell, and has also played for members of the Library of Congress. He has performed at numerous venues ranging from Lucas Oil Stadium, the Verizon Center (Washington, DC), and Cowboy Stadium to the Cerritos Performing Arts Center, Hotel Café, the Roxy, and many others. Paul is an active educator and has taught at the Los Angeles College of Music and Music Performance Academy and has also studied with Steve Ferrone, Peter Erskine, Joe Porcaro, and Ralph Humphrey.
Reviews
Ara D. May 10, 2015·Drum·In studio
Paul does a great job of balancing the theoretical and applied. He focuses on developing strong fundamentals and good habits but also delves into songs that apply new skills learned along the way at the appropriate pace. As a beginner, Paul has helped me get off to a good start where I'm learning a lot but also having a lot of fun.
A big plus is that he's got a real down-to-earth personality that makes the lessons even more enjoyable and really interesting to talk to about all things drums and otherwise.
cindi G. November 9, 2014·Drum·In home
My son has taken lessons with Paul for over 5 years. Not only is Paul an accomplished musician, he's a great teacher. His teaching style is positive and supportive. He has modified my son's lessons through the years, as his goals and needs have changed. Paul has always been professional, reliable and enthusiastic. He genuinely seems to enjoy what he does, and as a bonus, Paul is also a really nice guy, who has had a positive influence on my teenage son's life.
Alex D. September 18, 2014·Drum·In home
Paul is an awesome teacher! He is super positive, friendly, joyful, and professional. He was always on time and always adequately prepared for the lesson. He is not only a fantastic musician, but also very supportive in helping you accomplish whatever your goals are as he cares about you as a person. I highly recommend Paul!
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Paul V.
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Paul V.
Lake Arrowhead, CA 92352
(4)
starting at
$30
/ 30-min
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About Chet D.
Whether playing just for your own enjoyment or as part of a popular ensemble, the course in music performance will enhance your skills and confidence. You will learn how to selectively use recorded tracks from Audacity to act as sort of a "third-hand". Learn about pads and effects and when to properly use those. Discernment is key and you will learn which songs work for keyboards and which do not.
About Chet
Hi, my name is Chet. My students call me "Mr. Chet." I have been teaching piano, keyboard and synthesizer since 2005. Originally from near Portland, Oregon, I took courses from the Berklee School of Music in Boston and have been playing professionally since just out of high school. You wanna know how to get those professional-sounding licks into your playing? I can help you do that. Most sheet music is so bare-bones that it almost doesn't sound like the song- together we will learn how to beef it up. My lessons are meant to be fun while you learn- and they are because they are written just for you. I have a pretty laid-back teaching style, but if you think you can just goof off, you'll find out differently really quickly.
...
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Chet D.
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Chet D.
Online
starting at
$15
/ 30-min
About Chanel N.
I'm an experienced vocal and piano teacher for over 10 years that's looking to work with eager students of all experience levels and ages! I structure my lessons so students learn what they want to learn, while also building a strong foundation in what they need to know to be successful.
About Chanel
Hello there! I'm Chanel Narcissus and thank you for your interest in my studio. I have been teaching private lessons and recording music since 2007 and am able to teach lessons at your home, online or at Studio Nar, LLC located in the Towson area.
My education career has afforded me the opportunity to be a graduate of Sheffield Institute of Recording Arts with a concentration in Audio Engineering. I also attended Morgan State University, where I was a double major in the concentrations of Vocal Performance and Classical Piano. Here, I received my Bachelors of Arts degree.
Throughout my career, I have gained in depth knowledge and experience in teaching voice, piano and theory, audition preparation, audio engineering, production and song-writing and I look forward to sharing it with you.
...
Reviews
Matthew May 30, 2017·Piano·In studio
I I’ve been taking piano lessons with Chanel for several months now, both in studio and online (FaceTime). She always goes the extra mile to make sure you understand the material. I’m very pleased with her style of teaching and would highly recommend her to anyone who is interested in learning music.
Justin January 28, 2017·Piano·In studio
Excellent instructor
Kaira J. January 21, 2017·Audition Prep·In home
I had such a wonderful time at my session with Chanel. She has such a warm and welcoming personality. You would not regret for one time for choosing Chanel as your coach, she's amazing.
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Chanel N.
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Chanel N.
Online
(13)
starting at
$35
/ 30-min
About Danny S.
I believe in having recitals 1-2 times per year for my students. Performances make students progress at a faster rate. Also giving them solos or songs to play and preform later on. I have played with rock bands many places, including Hollywood California venues like the whisky a go go. I've played many places with jazz band and marching bands. Troopers drum and bugle corps gave me the chance to nearly play in every major stadium in the united states. Some competitions were even in Canada.
About Danny
I've played drums over 28 years and taught lessons over 18 of those years. I have a background in Drumset soloing, marching band, rock bands and Troopers drum corps. Also playing in jazz, concert and orchestra bands gave me opportunity to perform and compete many places including P.A.S., scoring a 1 @ state and G.C. drum off. I took private lessons for a few years before leaving to college in Hollywood, CA, attending M.I.(Musicians Institute). With one of my instructors becoming the current drummer for Korn, "Ray Luzier". I now teach mostly out of my own books on how to read music, coordination, grooves, soloing and playing with bands. I have 1-2 recitals each year and prefer in-person lessons. If you are not local, I offer online lessons too. Accepting beginner to advanced drummers, come check it out.
...
Reviews
Scott February 19, 2018·Drum·Online
Danny is awesome, looking forward for continued lessons
Elizabeth January 6, 2017·Drum·In home
Patient, knowledgeable, motivating! Perfect for me!
David November 26, 2016·Drum·In studio
Danny is patient with kids, but if you want to be driven to perfect your talent, he has that within himself too. He has the education and passion to help you go as far as you decide to go.
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Danny S.
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Danny S.
Online
(4)
starting at
$25
/ 30-min
About Ingrid M.
Over 25 years experience in Musical Performance and teaching live performance techniques.
About Ingrid
Ingrid is a dedicated voice, piano musicianship, recording and live performance teacher for those who want to expand their musical knowledge, recording techniques, develop their own singing-artist style and performance skills. Students have had great success and fun learning numerous music genres while expanding their vocal range, resonance, ear training, confidence and musicianship skills as well as how to prepare for a career in music.
A native New Yorker, Ingrid has been involved in entertainment all of her life. As a child, on bi-lingual Sesame Street to a successful Hispanic jingle career, to veteran of over 25 years on the New York music scene, internationally as Eli & The Boys Jazz Quintet, Pedro & Eli Duet, and as a 2009, Latin Grammy Nominee for Volvo La Navidad.
Reviews
Maia March 12, 2018·Piano·In studio
I have only been taking lessons for a short amount of time, but I feel as though I have learned SO much. We started from the basics and Ingrid did an amazing job at gaging the level I was at and working accordingly. She is so sweet and patient and really helps you learn all the basics one needs to play piano proficiently. After only five lessons, I was already playing entire songs. I'm excited to continue our lessons!
David November 17, 2017·Voice Acting·In studio
Ingrid is tons of fun to work with! Very high energy and skilled instructor, pushes you to be your best, and she truly cares about her students' progress. If you're ready to put in the work, you're going to have a great time.
Miguelanjel P. July 12, 2017·Singing·In studio
First class was excellent. She made me feel welcome and got me to work right away. It was great.
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Ingrid M.
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Ingrid M.
Online
(18)
starting at
$45
/ 30-min
About Andrea V.
Being an active and experienced musician gives me the necessary knowledge to know what is needed on order to become a better musician. Also having over 20 years of teaching experience allows me to tailor my knowledge to the need of every particular student. I really enjoy to transfer my knowledge and solve the unique musical problem that every student encounter during their musical path.
About Andrea
Bassist and composer Andrea Veneziani performs extensively within the improvised music scene, across a broad spectrum of genres. His instrumental tone, sensitivity and imagination, and melodic approach to a supposedly clumsy instrument brought him to perform and record with many established musicians. Based in New York City, his work as an instrumentalist and composer can be regularly heard at the top jazz clubs in the city and around the globe.
As a current faculty member of the New York Jazz Workshop, Andrea Veneziani is a dedicated educator. He has taught master classes at the National Institute of Music and the National University of Costa Rica, at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey and at the Olav Duun Videregående Skole in Namsos, Norway. He also served as an adjunct professor at New York University, where he graduated i
n 2011 with a Master of Music Degree in Performance with a Concentration in Jazz as a Fulbright scholarship recipient.
...
Reviews
Catherine June 22, 2017·Italian·In studio
Andrea is very personable and easy going. He is unintimidating and yet knowledgeable. A pleasure to learn from.
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WHOLE COURT
NOTICE: Motions for reconsideration must be
physically received in our clerk’s office within ten
days of the date of decision to be deemed timely filed.
http://www.gaappeals.us/rules
June 30, 2017
In the Court of Appeals of Georgia
A17A0240. ATKINS v. THE STATE.
BETHEL, Judge.
Jerome Atkins appeals the denial of his motion for a directed verdict on a
statutory rape charge, arguing the trial court erred when it found sufficient
corroborating evidence. Atkins further argues that the trial court erred in denying his
motion for a new trial because the trial court wrongly applied the Rape Shield Statute.
We disagree and affirm the denial of his motions for a directed verdict and for a new
trial.
On appeal from a criminal conviction, we view the
evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and an
appellant no longer enjoys the presumption of innocence.
This Court determines whether the evidence is sufficient
under the standard of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99
S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), and does not weigh the
evidence or determine witness credibility. Any conflicts or
inconsistencies in the evidence are for the jury to resolve.
As long as there is some competent evidence, even though
contradicted, to support each fact necessary to make out the
State’s case, we must uphold the jury’s verdict.
Traylor v. State, 332 Ga. App. 441, 442 (773 SE2d 403) (2015) (citation omitted).
So viewed, the evidence shows that in November 2010, A. O.’s mother learned
that A. O. was pregnant after taking her to a gynecologist. Following the appointment,
A. O.’s mother discussed the pregnancy with A. O., who was thirteen years old at the
time. A. O. was asked who fathered the child, and she told her mother that the father
was a “boy in the neighborhood.” A. O.’s mother called Leon Surles1 to inform him
about the pregnancy. Surles did not believe A. O.’s explanation and, at some point,
threatened to give her a lie detector test.
After returning home from school, A. O. called Atkins and his wife and told
them she was pregnant by Atkins. Following this conversation, Atkins called Surles
and told him that A. O. had called and that she planned to tell Surles she was pregnant
with Atkins’ child so that she could have an abortion. Atkins denied both paternity
1
Leon Surles is not A. O.’s biological father but maintains a father-daughter
relationship with A. O.
2
and sexual contact with A. O. in his conversation with Surles.2 Surles told A. O.’s
mother about the call with Atkins.
Surles then spoke with A. O. and threatened to “beat her” and “take her to the
police” if she did not tell the truth about the paternity of her child. A. O.’s mother told
A. O. that she knew Atkins had fathered the child, and A. O. said that was true. A.
O.’s mother then reported the incident to police.
A. O. was interviewed by law enforcement personnel and reported two alleged
incidents with Atkins in which he engaged in sexual acts with her.3 A. O. stated that
Atkins was the only possible father of her child because she had not been sexually
active immediately prior to or after the August 2010 incident with Atkins.
2
Surles testified that in his conversation with Atkins, Atkins stated that A. O.
had asked Atkins to have sexual intercourse with her and had asked his wife to
perform oral sex on her, but that they had refused A. O.’s requests.
3
During her initial interview with police on November 20, 2010, A. O. claimed
that on August 15, 2010, while sleeping on the floor of Atkins’ apartment, she awoke
to find Atkins on top of her having sex with her. During her later forensic interview,
A. O. alleged for the first time that a prior incident occurred in June or July of 2010,
with both Atkins and his wife at their previous residence.
3
A. O. had an abortion on November 27, 2010, and a search warrant for the
DNA of the fetus was executed. Results of the DNA test showed that Atkins was not
the father of A. O.’s child.4
Nevertheless, Atkins was indicted on charges of statutory rape and aggravated
child molestation. At trial, Atkins maintained his innocence and argued that A. O.
identified him as the father to conceal the child’s true paternity. Atkins sought to
question A. O. about the identity of the true father for the purpose of demonstrating
A. O.’s motive to falsely accuse Atkins. The trial court, relying on the Rape Shield
Statute, did not allow that line of questioning. A jury found Atkins guilty on both
counts.5 Following the verdict, Atkins moved for a new trial, which the trial court
denied. This appeal followed.
1. The trial court found there was sufficient evidence from which the jury could
conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Atkins was guilty of statutory rape.
However, Atkins contends the trial court erred in denying his motion for directed
4
At the time of the abortion, the fetus was approximately eleven weeks into
gestation, making the time of conception on or around September 11, 2010.
5
Atkins’ wife was indicted and tried jointly as a co-defendant on charges of
aggravated child molestation and child molestation. She was convicted on both
counts. Her case came before us on appeal as A17A1486.
4
verdict on the charge of statutory rape because the evidence was insufficient to
corroborate A. O.’s allegations.6 We disagree.
OCGA § 16–6–3 (a) provides that “[a] person commits the offense of statutory
rape when he or she engages in sexual intercourse with any person under the age of
16 years and not his or her spouse, provided that no conviction shall be had for this
offense on the unsupported testimony of the victim.”
“On appeal, our review is restricted to the legal sufficiency of the evidence not
the weight of the evidence.” Carson v. State, 171 Ga. App. 527, 528 (320 SE2d 382)
(1984). “If there is any corroborating evidence, we will not go behind the jury and
pass upon its probative value.” McClendon v. State, 187 Ga. App. 666, 668 (371
SE2d 139) (1988) (citation omitted).
This Court has held that the quantum of corroboration needed in a
statutory rape case is not that which is, itself, sufficient to convict, but
only that amount of independent evidence which tends to prove that the
incident occurred as alleged. Slight circumstances may be sufficient
corroboration and ultimately the question of corroboration is one for the
jury. In that regard, a victim’s prior consistent statements, in the form of
6
Atkins did not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence with respect to the
child molestation charge.
5
her outcry to others as testified to by them, may constitute sufficient
corroboration in a case of statutory rape.
Byrd v. State, 258 Ga. App. 572, 573 (574 SE2d 655) (2002) (footnotes and
punctuation omitted).
In response to Atkins’ motion for directed verdict, the State argued the
allegations against Atkins were corroborated by the fact that (1) Atkins called Surles
to tell him that A. O. was going to say Atkins was the baby’s father; and (2) A. O.
called Atkins and told him she was pregnant with his baby. We are unpersuaded that
either statement provides sufficient corroboration.
Here, the evidence shows that, some time after learning she was pregnant, A.
O. called Atkins and his wife and told them she was pregnant with Atkins’ child. That
statement—which was proven to be false— cannot be used to corroborate her
testimony.7
This Court is equally unpersuaded by the argument that Atkins’ call to Surles
corroborated A. O.’s allegations because Atkins never admitted guilt. Surles testified
that Atkins called him and said, “A. O. was going to tell [Surles] she was pregnant by
7
The trial court likewise stated that it did not find the call from A. O. to Atkins
to be sufficient corroborating evidence.
6
[Atkins] so she can get an abortion.” Surles also testified that, during that same
conversation, Atkins denied A. O.’s allegations. The State’s assertion that by calling
Surles and denying the allegations, Atkins implicated himself and corroborated A.
O.’s testimony, is nonsensical. The record before this Court is devoid of any evidence
wherein Atkins admits to having sexual or intimate contact with A. O. that would
meet the corroboration threshold.8
8
Compare Lewis v. State, 278 Ga. App. 160, 161 (1) (628 SE2d 239) (2006)
(although a victim recanted her prior statement, defendant’s admission of a sexual
relationship with the victim satisfied the corroboration requirement); Reece v. State,
241 Ga. App. 809, 810 (527 SE2d 642) (2000) (sufficient corroboration where
defendant bragged to another witness about the intercourse); Dye v. State, 205 Ga.
App. 781, 781 (2) (423 SE2d 713) (1992) (victim’s testimony was corroborated by
defendant who admitted that he attempted to have sexual intercourse with the victim
but did not believe there was penetration).
7
In its brief, the State also asserts that A. O.’s trial testimony was consistent with
her initial report to police and statements she made in her forensic interview.9 We
agree.
This Court’s decisions hold that a victim’s own prior statements to police, if
found to be consistent with her later trial testimony, satisfy the corroboration
requirement. Brown v. State, 318 Ga. App. 334, 336 (1) (733 SE2d 863) (2012);
Patterson v. State, 233 Ga. App. 776, 776 (1) (505 SE2d 518) (1998). Here, a jury
could find that A.O.’s report to the police as well as the statements she made in her
forensic interview were consistent with, and corroborated, the testimony she provided
at trial. See id.; see also Cobb v. Hart, 295 Ga. 89, 91 (757 SE2d 840) (2014). At trial,
9
The State also argues that Atkins’ general “access and contact” with A. O.
provides the necessary and sufficient evidence to uphold the statutory rape
conviction. However, as Brown makes clear, we need not reach this argument
because, on their own, A.O.’s prior statements to police, which were consistent with
her trial statements, provided sufficient evidence of corroboration. We note that the
contact alleged here between Atkins and A. O. is different in kind and of a more
general nature than that which this Court addressed in Brown. In Brown, third-party
witness testimony indicated that the defendant was with the victim at the time and in
the location where the offenses occurred. 318 Ga. App. at 336 (1). Here, the record
establishes only that A. O. had been in Atkins’ home and had spent time there on
prior occasions. Beyond A. O.’s testimony, the record did not establish that Atkins
and A. O. were in contact with each other or in the same location when the offenses
were alleged to have occurred. We express no opinion on whether this sort of access
can serve as corroborating evidence.
8
A. O. indicated that Atkins had sex with her on August 15, 2010. This was
corroborated by a statement she made in her initial report to the police to the same
effect. A. O. also made an identical statement in a later forensic interview. These
consistent prior statements to police provide sufficient corroboration. See Brown, 318
Ga. App. at 336 (1). Thus, we agree with the trial court that the State introduced
sufficient evidence of each element of the statutory rape charge, including sufficient
evidence of corroboration, such that the jury was permitted to find Atkins guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt on that charge.
2. (a) Atkins argues the trial court erred in denying his motion for a new trial
and in ruling that the Rape Shield Statute prohibited him from inquiring about the
paternity of A. O.’s baby at trial. We disagree.
On appeal, “[w]e review the denial of a motion for a new trial for abuse of
discretion.” Heatherly v. State, 336 Ga. App. 875, 876 (785 SE2d 431) (2016), cert.
granted (Nov. 2, 2016). The Rape Shield Statute, OCGA § 24-4-412, provides in
relevant part as follows:
(a) In any prosecution for [sexual offenses including those at issue],
evidence relating to the past sexual behavior of the complaining witness
shall not be admissible, either as direct evidence or on
9
cross-examination of the complaining witness or other witnesses, except
as provided in this Code section. . . .
(b) In any prosecution for [such offenses], evidence relating to the past
sexual behavior of the complaining witness may be introduced if the
court, following the procedure described in subsection (c) of this Code
section, finds that the past sexual behavior directly involved the
participation of the accused and finds that the evidence expected to be
introduced supports an inference that the accused could have reasonably
believed that the complaining witness consented to the conduct
complained of in the prosecution.
(Emphasis supplied.) Here, Atkins sought to ask the victim about paternity even
though, as the trial court explained, evidence had already been introduced to the
effect that “she was pregnant, that the pregnancy was aborted, and that the fetus was
tested and your client [was] excluded as the father.” As a result, the trial court held,
“any logical person” could conclude that the victim had had sex with someone
besides Atkins, such that the identity of that other person was both irrelevant and was
evidence as to her past sexual behavior and thus inadmissible.
The statute clearly provides that evidence as to a victim’s past sexual history
is admissible only if the court “finds that the past sexual behavior directly involved
the participation of the accused[.]” OCGA § 24-4-412 (b). As the Supreme Court of
10
Georgia has held, “[t]he defendant’s right to confront and cross-examine witnesses
concerning the victim’s past sexual behavior with others must bow to accommodate
the [S]tate’s interest in the Rape Shield Statute.” Harris v. State, 257 Ga. 666, 668 (1)
(c) (362 SE2d 211) (1987). And this Court has repeatedly held since Harris that a
trial court does not err in granting a motion in limine as to a victim’s sexual history
with a person other than the defendant. See Snow v. State, 228 Ga. App. 649, 651-652
(4), (5) (492 SE2d 564) (1997) (no error in court’s exclusion of evidence as to how
the victim had intercourse with “someone other than” the defendant and as to how her
hymen had become perforated); Williams v. State, 257 Ga. App. 54, 55-56 (1) (570
SE2d 362) (2002) (trial court properly excluded evidence as to victims’ past sexual
behavior when they testified that they had not had sex with the defendant at any time
before the attack at issue).10
It is also well-settled that the Rape Shield Statute “supersedes all evidentiary
exceptions, including the res gestae rule” or any other rule tending to impeach a sex
crime victim. See Logan v. State, 212 Ga. App. 734, 735 (1) (a) (442 SE2d 883)
10
Although Snow and Williams were decided under the predecessor statute,
OCGA § 24-2-3, subsection (b) of that statute was maintained without change in
OCGA § 24-4-412 (b). See former OCGA § 24-2-3 (b) (“evidence relating to the past
sexual behavior of the complaining witness may be introduced if the court . . . finds
that the past sexual behavior directly involved the participation of the accused . . . .”).
11
(1994) (en banc) (citations and punctuation omitted); Turner v. State, 312 Ga. App.
315, 319 (2) (718 SE2d 545) (2011) (victim’s alleged statement to defendant about
her sexual preferences and the lack of sexual activity between her and her boyfriend
was properly excluded as “the very type of evidence prohibited by the Rape Shield
Statute”); Green v. State, 221 Ga. App. 436, 436-37 (472 SE2d 1) (1996) (defendant
could not introduce evidence of victim’s past sexual behavior for purpose of showing
she may have been pregnant at the time the allegations were made). Compare
Richardson v. State, 276 Ga. 639, 641 (1) (581 SE2d 528) (2003) (defendant was
authorized to inquire as to victim’s “non-sexual” relationship with a former boyfriend
when her desire to rekindle that relationship could have led her to fabricate a false
claim of rape against the defendant to explain the blood and semen stains on the
former boyfriend’s jacket).
Atkins’s requested line of inquiry concerned the identity of the father, which
could not “involve [Atkins’s] participation.” OCGA § 24-4-412 (b). Rather, the
identity of the victim’s former sexual partner, which could be prejudicial to the victim
in a number of ways, is precisely the information as to her “past sexual behavior” that
the statute is designed to bar. See Cox v. State, 241 Ga. App. 388, 390 (526 SE2d
887) (1999) (evidence regarding identity of victim’s sexual partner goes directly to
12
victim’s past sexual behavior and is inadmissible under Rape Shield Statute). Because
the trial court did not err when it granted the State’s motion in limine, we affirm.
(b) While we are satisfied that the evidence sought in this case falls behind the
wall erected by the Rape Shield Statute, we note potentially serious concerns
regarding the notion that the act is so broad as to exclude all evidence “relating to”
a victim’s past sexual behavior with the sole exception being evidence related to
activity which included the defendant. In so doing, we contemplate a scenario where
the prosecution asserts the Rape Shield Statute to exclude evidence of the DNA
results in a fact pattern similar to that in this case (i.e. where the DNA results
conclusively refute a claim of the defendant’s paternity) where the evidence would
be highly probative of innocence, directly related to the honesty of a witness, yet
clearly related to the past sexual behavior of the victim. The possibility of this
scenario unfolding in a criminal case raises myriad questions related to the
Confrontation Clause and Due Process protections of our constitutions. But this is not
the case before us.
Judgment affirmed. Doyle, Branch, McMillian, Mercier, and Reese, JJ., concur
in Divisions 1 and 2 (a) and in judgment only in Division 2 (b). Miller, P. J., concurs
13
in judgment only. McFadden, P. J., concurs in Division 1 and dissents in Division 2.
Barnes, P. J., concurs in Division 1 and dissents without opinion in Division 2.
14
In the Court of Appeals of Georgia
A17A0240. ATKINS v. THE STATE.
MCFADDEN, Presiding Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Because the trial court excluded evidence relevant to a plausible defense that
was not evidence of the victim’s past sexual behavior and therefore not within the
scope of the Rape Shield Statute, I respectfully dissent from Division 2. I concur fully
in Division 1.
After initially accusing, by name, a boy who lived in her neighborhood of
impregnating her, A.O. leveled the same charge against Atkins. Notwithstanding
DNA evidence that belied that charge, prosecution of Atkins continued on the theory
that Atkins raped and molested her on other occasions.
Atkins filed a motion in limine, arguing that he “should have been allowed to
cross-examine [A.O.] regarding her motive to make up a false story that he was the
father of the child.” Such evidence, he argued, would “go to her motive . . . [f]or
making up this story . . . [if] she’s trying to protect her boyfriend or someone along
that nature.”
The trial court denied the motion, ruling:
The pertinent evidence that will come out before the jury is that your
client was alleged to be the father by the alleged victim; and DNA, the
science, showed that he was not. That evidence will be placed before the
jury. The jury can then conclude – she didn’t impregnate herself. So the
jury can then conclude, without knowing who it was or how it happened,
that she had sex with somebody else. So the Court doesn’t believe that
any specific inquiry of the alleged victim about who, when, where and
why is appropriate; and I do believe that it would violate rape shield.
So Atkins did not address A.O.’s motive to lie in his closing argument. As
Atkins argues on appeal, “In the absence of cross-examination, a closing argument
about who the father could have been was inherently speculative and unpersuasive.”
(Emphasis in original).
The state, however, did address motive in its closing. The state acknowledged
that A.O. had “said [Atkins] raped me and I got pregnant. Not possible — no
possibility that it could be anyone else’s.” But, the state argued, this falsehood should
be attributed to A.O.’s “13-year-old mind” and to “the process of disclosure.” A.O.,
the state assured the jury, “had no motive to lie.”
2
The issue before us is whether, under the facts of this case, the identity of the
person who impregnated A.O. and his relationship with her falls within the scope of
the Rape Shield Statute. It does not.
The fact that A.O. was impregnated was in evidence. Only the identity of the
person who impregnated her and the nature of his relationship with her was excluded.
In other words, the sexual aspect of the intercourse between A.O and that person was
in evidence; the non-sexual aspect was not. See Richardson v. State, 276 Ga. 639, 641
(1) (581 SE2d 528) (2003).
Our Supreme Court addressed the scope of the Rape Shield Statute when it
upheld its constitutionality: “a strong legislative attempt to protect the victim-
prosecutrix in rape cases by the exclusion of evidence which might reflect on the
character of the witness without contributing materially to the issue of the guilt or
innocence of the accused.” Harris v. State, 257 Ga. 666, 667 (1) (a) (362 SE2d 211)
(1987) (citation and punctuation omitted).
The majority misperceives that scope. The Rape Shield Statute, the majority
notes with some dismay, “is so broad as to exclude all evidence ‘relating to’ a
victim’s past sexual behavior with the sole exception being evidence related to
activity which included the defendant.” The majority’s dismay would be warranted
3
if its reading of the statue were correct. But it is not correct. The majority’s reading
of the statute is contrary to Harris, supra. And it is contrary to the language of the
statute itself — particularly language omitted from its truncated recitation of
subsection (a). That omitted language is emphasized here:
(a) In any prosecution for [sexual offenses including those at issue],
evidence relating to the past sexual behavior of the complaining witness
shall not be admissible, either as direct evidence or on
cross-examination of the complaining witness or other witnesses, except
as provided in this Code section. For the purposes of this Code section,
evidence of past sexual behavior includes, but is not limited to, evidence
of the complaining witness’s marital history, mode of dress, general
reputation for promiscuity, nonchastity, or sexual mores contrary to the
community standards.
OCGA § 24-4-412 (a) (emphasis supplied). The list set out in that language has a
purpose. Statutes are to be read so as to avoid a “construction that will render some
of the statutory language mere surplusage[.]” Kennedy v. Carlton, 294 Ga. 576, 578
(2) (757 SE2d 46) (2014). It is not, of course, an exclusive list. Its purpose is to
illustrate the scope of the Rape Shield Statute. The list, and the term of enlargement
with which it begins, must be read in light of the statutory canon of construction,
ejusdem generis. Under this principle,
4
when a statute or document enumerates by name several particular
things, and concludes with a general term of enlargement, this latter
term is to be construed as being ejusdem generis (i.e., of the same kind
or class) with the things specifically named, unless, of course, there is
something to show that a wider sense was intended. [Cits.]
Center For A Sustainable Coast v. Coastal Marshlands Protection Committee, 284
Ga. 736, 737-738 (670 SE2d 429) (2008), citing Dept. of Transp. v. Montgomery
Tank Lines, 276 Ga. 105, 106 (n. 5) (575 SE2d 487) (2003). See also Wilson v. Clark
Atlanta Univ., 339 Ga. App. 814, 834 (2) (c) (794 SE2d 422) (2016) (“Under the rule
of ejusdem generis, the words ‘including but not limited to’ ordinarily should be
construed as referring to [things] of the same kind as those specially named.”)
(citations omitted). So the evidence excluded by the Rape Shield Statute is evidence
of the same kind or class as “evidence of the complaining witness’s marital history,
mode of dress, general reputation for promiscuity, nonchastity, or sexual mores
contrary to the community standards.” OCGA § 24-4-412 (a). The evidence excluded
here is not of that kind or class.
Evidence of the identity of the person who impregnated A.O., of his
relationship to her, and of her possible motive to lie to protect him is not “evidence
which might reflect on the character of the witness without contributing materially
5
to the issue of the guilt or innocence of the accused.” Harris, supra, 257 Ga. at 667
(1) (a). It is not evidence of A.O.’s “past sexual behavior.” OCGA § 24-4-412 (a). It
is not evidence of the same kind or class as the list of examples in the final sentence
of OCGA § 24-4-412 (a). It is tangential to evidence of sexual encounters — which
the state had introduced into evidence and which was central to its case.
So the issue before us is controlled by Richardson, 276 Ga. at 639. As here, the
trial court in Richardson excluded “non-sexual questioning of the victim about her
previous relationship” through which Richardson sought to show a motive to lie, id.
at 641 (1), and the Supreme Court reversed. It was undisputed that the defendant and
victim had had a sexual encounter. Consent was the issue. The defendant had sought
to establish that the victim’s hope to rekindle a relationship with another man, and her
consequent wish to explain the physical evidence of her encounter with the defendant,
motivated her to lie. Here, as in Richardson, the excluded evidence touched on a
sexual encounter central to the case; but “[t]he proposed inquiry was confined to the
existence of a relationship . . . and whether [a] desire [related to] that relationship was
a motive to make a false claim of rape.” Id.
Because the issue before us is the scope of the statute, it is irrelevant that the
Rape Shield Statute “supersedes all evidentiary exceptions[.]” Logan v. State, 212 Ga.
6
App. 734, 735 (1) (a) (442 SE2d 883) (1994). And I agree with the majority that the
statutory exception for past acts involving the defendant, OCGA § 24-4-412 (b), is
also irrelevant.
Application of the Rape Shield Statute is fact intensive. For example the
majority cites Cox v. State, 241 Ga. App. 388 (526 SE2d 887) (1999). We held in that
case, “Cox’s stepdaughter told her physician that she was sexually active with her
boyfriend. This evidence regarding the identity of her sexual partner goes directly to
the stepdaughter’s past sexual behavior and, under the facts of this case, is
inadmissible under the Rape Shield Law[.]” Id. at 390 (2). And the trial court in Cox
did admit the fact that the victim had been sexually active and excluded only the
identity of her boyfriend. So Cox does appear, at first glance, to be on all fours with
this case. But when we upheld the trial court’s ruling we emphasized — twice — that
we were doing so “under the facts of this case.” Id. at 390, 391 (2). The facts of Cox
were that, while the fact that the victim had been sexually active was admitted,
apparently as relevant to the defense that the victim’s boyfriend rather than the
defendant was the cause of certain physical evidence, the properly-excluded evidence
of the identity of her boyfriend would have supported only a rather dubious prior-
inconsistent-statement argument. Id. at 390 (2).
7
So in Cox evidence of the victim’s boyfriend’s identity was a substantially
gratuitous intrusion. It was “evidence which might reflect on the character of the
witness without contributing materially to the issue of the guilt or innocence of the
accused.” Harris, 257 Ga. at 667 (1) (a) (citation and punctuation omitted). It was not
evidence of the kind or class barred by the Rape Shield Statue, OCGA § 24-4-412 (a).
In this case, however, evidence of the identity of the person who impregnated A.O.
would not materially add to sexual evidence admitted by the state and was essential
to Atkins’s defense.
8
ON MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION
MCFADDEN, Presiding Judge.
I amend my earlier dissent in light of Atkins’s motion for reconsideration. He
makes a sound and responsive argument. In upholding the trial court’s oral ruling, the
majority has adopted a construction of the Rape Shield Statute that renders it so broad
as to be constitutionally suspect. That construction should be rejected under the canon
of constitutional avoidance. See Castillo-Solis v. State, 292 Ga. 755, 760 (2) (740
SE2d 583) (2013); Haley v. State, 289 Ga. 515, 521-522 (2) (712 SE2d 838) (2011);
see also Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of
Legal Texts 247-251 (1st ed. 2012). I write again to adopt that argument.
The author of the majority opinion, writing for himself alone, acknowledges
in Division 2 (b) that “myriad questions related to the Confrontation Clause and Due
Process protections of our constitutions” are raised by “the notion that the act is so
broad as to exclude all evidence ‘relating to’ a victim’s past sexual behavior with the
sole exception being evidence related to activity which included the defendant.” I
agree.
Moreover, it’s not a “notion.” It’s a holding. There is no daylight between the
so-called notion from which the majority author attempts to distance himself in
Division 2 (b) and the authoritative construction of the Rape Shield Statute in
Division 2 (a).
The majority author dismisses those constitutional concerns on the basis that
“the evidence sought in this case falls behind the wall erected by the Rape Shield
Statute.” That is a non sequitur. Constitutions trump statutes; statutes don’t trump
constitutions.
I also disagree with the majority author’s suggestion that those constitutional
concerns may be dismissed by distinguishing this case from one where the evidence
is “highly probative of innocence [and] directly related to the honesty of a witness.”
The rights afforded by the Confrontation and Due Process Clauses are not limited to
evidence an appellate court deems particularly persuasive.
And in fact, the evidence at issue here is highly probative of innocence and
directly related to the honesty of a witness. It may be that A. O.’s testimony was
wholly true. But she’s told three different stories. It is at least plausible that she
falsely accused Atkins in order protect the person who impregnated her and to
dissuade Leon Surles from punishing her and that, when that accusation was belied
by DNA evidence, she changed her story again to avoid punishment for lying. The
ruling before us hobbled Atkins’s inquiry into that possibility. So the majority’s
overbroad reading of the Rape Shield Statute is not merely erroneous and
constitutionally suspect. It may well have perpetuated a terrible injustice.
We should be mindful of an observation by then-Justice, later Chief Justice,
Weltner. He was addressing the writ of habeas corpus, but his words have broader
application.
Too much of our limited judicial resources are consumed in looking for
real or imagined errors in the convictions of people who are plainly
guilty . . . . But we must not become so engrossed in the searching out
of procedural faults which sometimes intrude in convicting the guilty
that we forget the core purpose of the writ — which is to free the
innocent wrongfully deprived of their liberty.
Valenzuela v. Newsome, 253 Ga. 793, 796 (4) (325 SE2d 370) (1985).
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | FreeLaw |
Fimbriae of uterine tube
In the female reproductive system, the fimbria (plural, fimbriae) is a fringe of tissue around the ostium of the Fallopian tube, in the direction of the ovary.
An ovary is not directly connected to its adjacent Fallopian tube. When ovulation is about to occur, the sex hormones activate the fimbriae, causing them to swell with blood and hit the ovary in a gentle, sweeping motion. An oocyte is released from the ovary into the peritoneal cavity and the cilia of the fimbriae sweep the ovum into the Fallopian tube.
Of all fimbriae, one fimbria is long enough to reach the ovary. It is called fimbria ovarica.
Additional images
References
External links
- "Female Reproductive System: oviduct; infundibulum and fimbria"
- "Posterior view of the broad ligament of the uterus, on the left side."
Microsurgery of the fallopian tube: from fantasy to reality
Peritoneal fluid in endometriosis
Category:Mammal female reproductive system | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Wikipedia (en) |
Monday, October 18, 2010
Quote of the Day
"Imagine, for a moment, that you were us and, had it not been for a sharp eyed highway patrolman, a heavily armed man in full body armor would have made it to your office with the intent to kill you and your colleagues. His motive? Apparently, it was because the charitable, nonpartisan programs we run are deemed part of a conspiracy to undermine America and the capitalist system, which is hogwash.
...While we may agree to disagree about the role our citizens and our government should play in promoting social justice and the common good, there should be no disagreement about what constitutes integrity and professionalism and responsibility in discourse -- even when allowing for and encouraging contending diverse opinions intelligently argued. This is not a partisan issue. It's an American issue. No one, left, right or center, wants to see another Oklahoma City.
The next 'assassin' may succeed, and if so, there will be blood on many hands. The choice is yours."
-- Drummond Pike, CEO of the Tides Foundation, which was targeted by self-proclaimed "progressive hunter" and Glenn Beck superfan Byron Williams, taking the staggeringly bold step of personally appealing to the companies which advertise on Glenn Beck's show on Fox News to drop their sponsorship or risk having blood on their hands
I'll have something more to say on this later this evening, but I had to just get this out there.
15 comments:
I'm sorry (really), but it's absolutely naive to say, in the US (in Europe we operate under different freedom of speech standards), that "(...) there should be no disagreement about what constitutes integrity and professionalism and responsibility in discourse (...)".
I fear that Beck will grab this ball and run with it for at least one full week of whining.
I've been through this with you before so I'm not going to bother trying to make you understand what makes Beck's rhetoric different, more inflammatory and more absolutely fucking irresponsible than the average right or left-wing flamethrower. And you know something (and this is what I'll get into a little later)? Fox knows he's dangerous and over the line. Trust me on that.
I know Steven D. Skelton. He is involved with several groups that are involved in channeling money to terrorists. For the sake of the country someone should do something about Steven D. Skelton. I'm not saying violence but if Steven D. Skelton is not stopped there will be bloodshed....
I trust you see how irresponsible this total fabrication is, Mr. Skelton. To say I disagree with you and your political views is one thing. To tie you, via wholesale lies and spurious connections and to indirectly advocate violence while claiming I am not doing exactly what I am doing is something else. Mr. Beck may not have created a psychopath as you point out, but he is directly responsible for providing that psychopath an innocent target.
I'll be amongst the first cheering on Drummond Pike as he goes after Beck's advertisers, but at the same time, I find it more than a bit repugnant when he admonishes us as to what "...contitutes integrity and professionalism and responsibility in discourse..." and then follows it up by waving the bloody shirt.
While I don't agree with Steven D Skelton in his depiction of liberals or I guess the political left, I have a real problem with anyone trying to limit the freedom of expression. Do I find people like the Phelps family repulsive? Yes, but it is their right to act like complete morons and serve as the image of homophobia in America. Same with Glenn Beck. Is he a scum bag...yeah. Does he honestly believe his bullshit...no because no higher functioning adult honestly could. He is simply manipulating his audience into making money. Now is it his fault that a grown man decided to do something dangerous and stupid...no. If Glenn hadn't set this tool off, something or someone else would have. Does anyone honestly believe this guy would be a model citizen if there wasn't a Glenn Beck program? We start with Glenn...who is next. Who decides what is considered responsible and irresponsible. Sure its easy in Glenn's case as he just says the most insane shit possible...but it is a slippery slope.
If you stop Glenn...he just goes to the internet. His audience wants to hear his shit and if he doesn't deliver it, there is an entire internet filled with even more insane shit like Inforwars.com
Anon 3:20, get off your high horse. Nobody is saying Glen Beck has to shut up. What they are saying is that he does have to take responsibility for what he says and that nobody else is required to provide Lil' Glen with a forum in which to spew his eliminationist fantasies.
Ref...like I said, if Beck gets pulled off the air, what exactly does that accomplish? He can spin it into his crazy dogma that everyone is out to get him and it will drive his fanatics wild. It won't change a damn thing. He will never take responsibility for what he says. Should Catcher in the Rye be banned because of that nutbag that shot John Lennon? What's his name said that it told him to kill. What about the White Album? That drove the Manson family to kill... What you or I see as perfectly fine could be the thing that drives others overboard. I can't watch violent films thanks to PTSD, so should I demand that all films and film that show blood and guts get banned less I have an episode and start flash backing? I mean, who is going to decide what is too inflammatory? We can't even get this fucking country to agree what "middle class" means, but you think that we can put limits on free speech that we all somehow agree is permissible.
There will always be a forum, thanks to the internet. Should Beck be on the TV and radio...I sure as shit wishes he wasn't. But I cannot support the view that he taken off the air cause he says crazy shit. At the end of the day, even for the nuts, its their fault for their own actions. That's all I am saying.
Anon, when did I say limit free speech? I've fought against the academic left's attempts to suppress what THEY want to call hate speech. I say the same to them as I do in this case. A young boob on a campus should say what he wants without fear of expulsion, but without protection from public disgrace and opprobrium. Glen is free to say whatever he wants to and his opponents are free to advocate for boycotts of his advertisers. This is the free market of ideas. You seem to want some guarantee that public figures not have to face any consequences for arrant asshattery.
Where the hell did I say I want public figures to be free of responsibility?!? You still haven't said what will be the positive result if Glenn Beck will get pulled. How is him getting pulled off of Fox News going to hurt him in the least? He has his radio gig and he could shit on a stack of papers and it will hit the Times Best Sellers list. All it will do is give his "I am being persecuted by the evil Socialists in the government" more credence to his inane audience. It will play exactly into his hands, further cementing his cult leader status to his audience.
Potential martyrdom can't be taken into account; the fact is that any responsible news outlet -- and once again, the key here is that Fox is nominally a news outlet -- has to distance itself from Beck. It can't legitimize him. I agree that if Fox were to throw him under the bus, his legion of dumb-fuck myrmidons would adhere to his nonsense even more strenuously, but you're still taking away his biggest bullhorn and making it known that he isn't a credible source of information. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, but you can throw the fucking bottle as far away from you as possible -- for your own good.
Anon, I DO believe that depriving him of his bully pulpit at Fox will limit him pretty severely. His fans are not really the internet types, nor do many of them hang out regularly in bookstores. Okay, maybe that's condescending, but you get my drift.
On the other hand, the kind of boobs who follow Beck around will just find themselves another demagogue to follow around.
I'm a former network news producer and manager, the media editor at The Daily Banter, and a writer who's been featured in The Huffington Post,The New York Observer and The Village Voice. I'm also the author of a book called Dead Star Twilight and the founder of DXM Media, a firm specializing in television production as well as social media strategies and consulting. On top of all that crap, I'm the co-host of "The Bob & Chez Show" podcast and radio show with Bob Cesca. To find out more about me and/or throw money at me, go here. You can contact me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Follow me on Twitter at @chezpazienza.
A special edition of my full-length memoir, Dead Star Twilight, is now available in e-book format on a pay-what-you-want basis. The downloaded is absolutely free; if you choose to pay for it, just click the "donate" button below the download link. Pay whatever you'd like. Pay nothing. It's your choice.
"As a blogger, Chez Pazienza is filled with outrage, passion and insight -- delivered with a distinctive point of view, a wicked sense of humor, and a two-fisted style of prose. In Dead Star Twilight, he turns all these on himself -- and produces a fierce, funny, disturbing, but ultimately uplifting memoir. This is the book A Million Little Pieces dreamed of being."
"Pazienza could be accused of many things... but he could never be faulted for dumbing us down. His glued-shut prose and bawdy metaphors provide a deeply appreciated, and hilarious, literary diversion."
-- Gelf Magazine, "Insolence Is Bliss," June, 2008
"Snarly, not snarky."
-- Andrew Breitbart
"A delusionally subjective, condescending blog, filled with hostile generalizations and a million exaggerations."
-- Paul Krassner, 60s counter-culture icon
"You're the Antichrist."
-- Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon.com
"It is truly sad that someone like Mr. Pazienza has a public forum to express his views. In a more civilized time he would, at best, be confined to an institution for the criminally insane or, at the very least, marginalized from civilized society." | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Dundee United backers Alastair Borthwick and Hugh Duncan are not regarded as potential buyers of the club.
Both Duncan and Borthwick have invested heavily in the Tangerines, with the former giving soft loans stretching well into seven figures and the latter unveiled just this week as the wealthy fan who signed a cheque for £300,000 to help United out with cash flow.
American-based banker Borthwick and Duncan, the retired business man from Edinburgh, are willing benefactors.
However, neither has expressed any interest in buying out Tannadice chairman Stephen Thompson’s majority shareholding and taking the club on.
Thompson was asked if the subject of a sale had been raised during the investment talks and he replied that it hadn’t because he was aware that they were not interested in buying him out.
He said: “I know they are not.
“I am not going into the kind of conversations we had with them and each circumstance is different.
“I am under confidentiality and whatever is in the agreements is in the agreements.
“But they are not waiting in the wings to take the club on, no.
“I have indicated that if someone wants to come forward with a credible and properly-funded proposal for the club going forward then the door is open.
“It is not just about shares.
“We need people who can actually run the place.”
With no serious buyer on the horizon, Thompson, who put himself forward for questioning by the media this week for the first time since speaking exclusively to The Courier last June, has urged the supporters to stay behind the club even if they are unhappy with him as chairman.
He said: “It is their club.
“We all want to be together for the club going forward.
“I know there are a few people not happy with me but this is about supporting the club that we love.
“If we don’t stick together then you know (the consequences). We don’t want the club to be in a certain place, put it that way.” | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
662 S.E.2d 792 (2008)
OSBORNE
v.
The STATE.
No. A08A0544.
Court of Appeals of Georgia.
May 29, 2008.
*794 James W. Gibert, for appellant.
Patrick H. Head, District Attorney, Eleanor A. Dixon, John R. Edwards, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellee.
ANDREWS, Judge.
John Opie Osborne appeals from the judgment of conviction entered on jury verdicts finding him guilty of committing the offenses of rape, aggravated sexual battery, and two counts of child molestation, all against his seven-year-old daughter.[1] For the following reasons, we affirm.
1. Osborne claims that the evidence was insufficient to support the guilty verdicts.
The State charged that Osborne raped the child (Count 1); that he molested the child by touching, rubbing, and fondling the child's vaginal area (Count 3), and by having the child touch his penis (Count 4), and that he committed aggravated sexual battery by penetrating the child's sexual organ with his finger (Count 5). On appeal *795 from a criminal conviction, a defendant no longer enjoys the presumption of innocence, and the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the guilty verdict. Parker v. State, 220 Ga.App. 303, 469 S.E.2d 410 (1996). Viewed in this light, the State presented the following evidence in support of the charged offenses. The child, age nine at the time of the trial, testified that Osborne touched her vagina with his hand, and that, at Osborne's insistence, she touched his penis with her hand. A Cobb County police detective testified that he interviewed the child and that she told him Osborne touched her on her vagina with his hands, fingers, and penis, and that Osborne asked her to touch his penis. Another Cobb County detective, who conducted a videotaped interview with the child, testified that the child told her that she had sex with Osborne on multiple occasions. The State introduced the videotaped interview into evidence showing the child tell the detective that Osborne pulled her pants down and put his penis inside her vagina; that Osborne made her rub his penis with her hand, and that Osborne put his hand under her clothes, where he touched her vagina and put his hand inside her vagina. The child's mother testified that the child told her that Osborne touched her on her private part; that Osborne made her touch him on his private part, and that Osborne tried to enter her private part and it hurt and she heard something pop. The child's mother also testified that Osborne admitted to her that he molested the child while he and the child were lying in bed together. The child's grandmother (Osborne's mother) testified that the child told her that Osborne touched her on her private part and made her touch him on his private part. The evidence was sufficient for a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Osborne was guilty of the charged offenses. OCGA §§ 16-6-1(a)(2); 16-6-4(a); 16-6-22.2; Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).
2. Osborne contends that the trial court erred by ruling that evidence of the child's prior sexual behavior was barred by OCGA § 24-2-3, commonly referred to as the Rape Shield Statute.
The provisions of OCGA § 24-2-3 apply not only in prosecutions for rape under OCGA § 16-6-1 (as charged in the present case), but also in prosecutions for aggravated sodomy under OCGA § 16-6-2; aggravated child molestation under OCGA § 16-6-4, and aggravated sexual battery under OCGA § 16-6-22.2 (as also charged in the present case).[2] Under OCGA § 24-2-3, no evidence is admissible relating to the complaining witness' past sexual behavior unless certain exceptions in the statute apply when the consent of the victim is an issue. Brown v. State, 225 Ga.App. 49, 51, 483 S.E.2d 318 (1997). Because the complaining witness in the present case was a seven-year-old girl with no legal capacity to consent, the statutory exceptions do not apply.[3] Id. Nevertheless, the rule in OCGA § 24-2-3 prohibiting evidence relating to a complaining witness' past sexual behavior does not prohibit the defense from introducing evidence that the witness made prior false allegations of sexual misconduct by persons other than the defendant. Smith v. State, 259 Ga. 135, 136-137, 377 S.E.2d 158 (1989). The court in Smith reasoned that evidence of such prior false allegations does not involve the complaining witness' past sexual behavior but rather the witness' propensity to make false statements about sexual misconduct. Id. at 137, 377 S.E.2d 158. Accordingly, the evidence is admissible to attack the credibility of the witness and as substantive evidence tending to prove that the charged offense did not occur. Id. But to protect the complaining witness from unfounded allegations that the witness has made similar false allegations in the past, before such evidence can be admitted, the trial court is required to make a threshold *796 determination outside the jury's presence that a reasonable probability of falsity exists. Id. at 137-138, 377 S.E.2d 158.
Osborne claimed that the child made prior false allegations of sexual misconduct by other persons on three occasions. In the first occasion, Osborne asserted a vague claim unsupported by any evidence that, when the child was two years old, she may have made some unspecified allegation against an uncle against whom no charges were brought. In the second occasion, evidence showed that, based on the six-year-old child's allegations of sexual misconduct, charges were brought against a cousin who eventually entered a guilty plea. The third occasion involved the six or seven-year-old child's claim that another minor improperly touched her. Police investigated this incident, determined that the alleged touching had occurred, but that no crime had been committed. We find no error in the trial court's pre-trial determination that Osborne failed to establish with reasonable probability that the child made prior false allegations of sexual misconduct by other persons. Accordingly, the trial court correctly excluded this evidence.[4]
3. Osborne contends that, over his objection, the trial court erroneously allowed an expert witness for the State to comment on the credibility of and bolster the child's testimony. "[T]he credibility of a witness is a matter for the jury, and a witness' credibility may not be bolstered by the opinion of another witness as to whether the witness is telling the truth." (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Freeman v. State, 282 Ga.App. 185, 188, 638 S.E.2d 358 (2006). While an expert witness may not give an opinion that directly addresses the ultimate issue to be decided by the jury in a sexual abuse case whether a child is telling the truth about the alleged sexual abuse the expert may express an opinion based on training and experience that the child displayed reactions to questions or manifested traits that were consistent with the child having been abused. Id.; Brownlow v. State, 248 Ga.App. 366, 368, 544 S.E.2d 472 (2001).
The State presented testimony from an expert in forensic interviews and evaluations related to child sexual abuse. On cross-examination of the expert, defense counsel raised the issue of whether the child's apparent singsong manner of responding during the videotaped interview was unusual and a sign that the child was repeating what she had learned from others. On redirect, the prosecutor asked the expert if the child's singsong manner was consistent with the child's responses having been coached. Over Osborne's objection, the trial court allowed the expert to testify that the child's manner of responding during the interview showed signs of spontaneity and detail that were not consistent with being coached. Because this testimony did not impermissibly address the ultimate issue before the jury or bolster the child's credibility, we find no error.
4. Osborne claims that the trial court erred by refusing to allow him to question the child's mother as to whether she told the child's paternal grandparents (with whom Osborne and the child resided at the time of the alleged sexual abuse) that she wanted to use the child as a dependent to obtain food stamps and for tax purposes. Osborne claims that this improperly curtailed his cross-examination of the mother on the issue of her credibility and whether she coached the child to lie about the alleged abuse to gain custody. The record shows that defense counsel extensively cross-examined the child's mother (Osborne's former wife) about her divorce from Osborne; that Osborne had custody of the child; that she did not get along with Osborne; that they constantly battled over her right to visitation with the child; that she contacted police to enforce visitation and to complain that the child was *797 being physically abused; and that she failed to pay court-ordered child support for the child. The record shows that Osborne was given wide latitude to cross-examine the child's mother with respect to her credibility and whether she had a motive to fabricate the allegations against him. In disallowing the above questions, the trial court acted within its discretion to control the scope of cross-examination by excluding questions of doubtful relevance that were cumulative of prior questions. Moore v. State, 251 Ga. 499, 501-502, 307 S.E.2d 476 (1983).
5. Osborne claims the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to allow him to introduce into evidence a juvenile court document showing that, after Osborne was arrested on the present charges and the child was placed in the temporary custody of the child's paternal grandparents, the child's mother filed an action in juvenile court seeking custody of the child from the grandparents. Although the trial court excluded the document, the court allowed Osborne to question the child's mother to show that she filed the action in juvenile court seeking custody of the child and that, as a result, she was awarded custody of the child. Pretermitting whether the document had some relevance and should have been admitted, any error was harmless where the facts at issue were admitted by examining the witness about the document. Buford v. Benton, 232 Ga.App. 102, 103, 501 S.E.2d 272 (1998).
6. Osborne claims that the trial court erred by denying his motion for a new trial based on the claim that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance.
To obtain reversal of a conviction based on a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, a defendant has the burden of proving that counsel's performance was deficient, and that, but for the deficiency, there was a reasonable probability the outcome of the trial would have been different. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). In addressing the claim, a court must measure counsel's performance against an objective standard of reasonableness in light of all the circumstances and apply the strong presumption that all of counsel's significant decisions were made in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment. Id.; Smith v. Francis, 253 Ga. 782, 783, 325 S.E.2d 362 (1985). The trial court's finding that a defendant was afforded effective assistance of counsel must be upheld on appeal unless clearly erroneous. Williams v. State, 214 Ga.App. 106, 446 S.E.2d 789 (1994).
Mayfield v. State, 276 Ga.App. 544, 546, 623 S.E.2d 725 (2005).
During closing argument, the prosecutor drew the jury's attention to testimony given by the child that she sometimes slept in the bed with her father, Osborne, because she was afraid of the dark, and "there were monsters in my closet." The prosecutor then argued that the real monster was Osborne. Osborne contends that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to this argument because the prosecutor knew that the child had been previously molested by someone other than Osborne, and that the child's fear of monsters may have been caused by the prior molestation. There is no merit in this contention. We find no error in the prosecutor's use of this argument for dramatic or other effect. See Berryhill v. State, 235 Ga. 549, 552, 221 S.E.2d 185 (1975). It follows that trial counsel was not ineffective for failing to object.
Osborne claims that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the trial court's refusal to allow him to introduce into evidence the juvenile court document discussed in Division 5, supra. As we held in Division 5, supra, even if the document should have been admitted, any error was harmless because the facts at issue were admitted during trial counsel's subsequent examination of the witness about the document. It follows that, even if trial counsel's failure to object was deficient performance, Osborne failed to prove an ineffective assistance claim requiring reversal because there was no reasonable probability that, but for the deficiency, the outcome of the trial would have been different. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. at 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674.
*798 Finally, Osborne claims that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the prosecutor's argument in closing that the child's ability to give specific details regarding the sexual abuse made her more believable. The prosecutor did not err by arguing that the jury could logically conclude that the child's detailed memory of the sexual abuse made her testimony more believable. Accordingly, trial counsel was not ineffective for failing to object. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. at 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052.
Judgment affirmed.
RUFFIN, P.J., and BERNES, J., concur.
NOTES
[1] The jury also found Osborne guilty of the offense of incest (Count 2) for raping his minor daughter. OCGA § 16-6-22. The trial court merged the incest conviction into the rape conviction.
[2] "[L]ogic and the intent of the act show that it should be equally applicable in statutory rape cases. . . ." Barnes v. State, 244 Ga. 302, 306, 260 S.E.2d 40 (1979).
[3] In its 1999 amendment to the definition of rape in OCGA § 16-6-1 (a)(2), the General Assembly reestablished the common law rule that allegedly consensual sexual intercourse with a female under ten years of age is a forcible act constituting rape as a matter of law. State v. Collins, 270 Ga. 42, 45-46, 508 S.E.2d 390 (1998).
[4] Because the State did not introduce medical evidence to prove the child had been molested nor evidence that the child displayed symptoms of the child abuse accommodation syndrome, this case does not involve claims that evidence related to the child's sexual history was relevant to show that the child's medical or behavioral symptoms were caused by someone other than the defendant. Rocha v. State, 248 Ga.App. 53, 55, 545 S.E.2d 173 (2001); Burris v. State, 204 Ga.App. 806, 809-810, 420 S.E.2d 582 (1992).
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | FreeLaw |
Q:
trouble with using a class constructor to initialize an object within another class
I posted a question earlier pertaining to the same problem but my question is completely different this time so please hear me out before you mark this as a duplicate or downvote it.
So for my assignment I was supposed to create a class called "Card" that would represent a standard playing card with a suit and face represented by numbers(1-4 for suit, 1-13 for face), and also constructors to initialize the cards, and mutator and accessor functions to change a card object and output its string representation(for example, King of Hearts). Then I had to create another class called DeckOfCards that represents a deck of 52 cards, storing 52 Card objects. This class has a constructor to the initialize a deck with the standard 52 cards, and member functions to shuffle the deck, deal a card, and print all the cards in the deck. My problem is trying to get the constructor for this DeckOfCards class to work. Here's the code for the entire class and my particular problem is with the constructor method:
public class DeckOfCards
{
/*Class that stores 52 objects of the Cards class. Include methods to shuffle the deck,
* deal a card, and report the number of cards left in the deck, and print all the cards in
the deck.*/
private Card[] deck = new Card[52];
private int count = 52, j = 0;
public DeckOfCards()/*Constructor initializes the deck with 52 cards*/
{
int i = 0;
for (int suit = 0;suit < 4;suit++)
{
for (int face = 0;face < 13;face++)
{
deck[i] = Card(suit, face);
i++;
}
}
}
public String toStringDeck()//Prints all the cards in the deck
{
String deckPrint = "";
for (int i = 0; i < 52;i++)
{
deckPrint += deck[i].toString() + "\n";
}
return deckPrint;
}
public void shuffle()//Shuffles the deck
{
Random generator = new Random();
int rand1, rand2;
Card temp;
for (int i = 0;i < 100;i++)
{
rand1 = generator.nextInt(52);
rand2 = generator.nextInt(52);
temp = deck[rand1];
deck[rand1] = deck[rand2];
deck[rand2] = temp;
}
}
public void deal()/*Deals a card from the deck and prints it as its dealt. Reports the number
of cards remaining in the deck.*/
{
String deal;
if (j < 52)
{
deal = deck[j].toString();
j++;
System.out.println(deal);
count--;
System.out.println("There are " + count + " cards remaining in the deck.");
}
else
{
System.out.println("There are no cards remaining in the deck.");
}
}
}
When I try to compile this, I get the error: "Cannot find symbol - method Card(int,int)."
I can't understand why, in the constructor, I'm not able to create a Card object and initialize it here. Please let me know if I need to give more details. Thanks.
A:
You forgot the new keyword. Change
deck[i] = Card(suit, face);
to
deck[i] = new Card(suit, face);
& make sure that you have defined a 2-args constructor in your Card class.
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | StackExchange |
An evaluation of suitable functions for the insulin standard curve.
The insulin radioimmunoassay technique used for human insulin has been modified for measuring rabbit insulin (i) at lower concentrations of insulin in plasma, and (ii) more precisely. Eleven algebraic functions were fitted in turn to fifty-three data sets. The goodness-of-fit was assessed in each case. It was concluded that a quadratic equation was the best function for the standard curve of the modified immunoassay, although this function is not necessarily the best for other different immunoassays. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
BROOKE THAMES; Editor-in-Chief; [email protected]
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated since its original print date, Feb. 23, 2018.
The initial news that the bi-annual production of “The Monologues” at Pacific Lutheran University had been canceled came via a Facebook post Feb. 14, just two days before the show’s first scheduled performance. The post was written by “Monologues” director and junior Elsa Kienberger, attributing the cancellation to a lack of “the inclusive and intersectional feminism that the Center for Gender Equity and the PLU campus community hopes to support.”
Show directors Kienberger, junior Zanthia Dwight and junior Lottie Duren posted a full-length letter addressed to the campus community Feb. 20. In the letter, the directors wrote that they endeavored to produce the 2018 “Monologues” with the hope of building upon previous efforts toward inclusivity.
“However such an endeavor takes an awareness of how we three, as white, cisgender women take up space to create an inclusive environment,” they wrote. “To various degrees and in varying manners, we failed to do this.”
The Feb. 14 announcement of the cancellation announcement came after a handful of “Monologues” participants dropped out of the production. Sophomore Dejan Perez, senior Hilary Vo and senior Tegan Mitchell were among those who departed. Continuing to move ahead with “The Monologues” in light of this, Kienberger wrote in the Feb. 14 post, “would do more harm on our campus than good.” The subsequent letter signed by all three directors gave insight into some of the reasons why.
“‘The Monologues’ is meant to be a production that amplifies marginalized voices,” the directors wrote in the Feb. 20 letter, “but our actions, or in some cases inaction, instead formed an exclusionary show that does not represent the intersectional feminism that the [CGE] and the PLU campus teach and promote.”
“The Vagina Monologues,” written by Eve Ensler and first produced in 1996, is a performance comprised of numerous vignettes about women’s gendered experiences. The original play approaches topics of sex, menstruation, female genitalia, sexism and gender-based violence in ways meant to empower and prompt conversation around women’s issues.
Producing the show has become a bi-annual tradition for PLU. Over the years, PLU’s CGE and directors of the show have worked to make strides in making the show more intersectional. In 2016, the word “Vagina” was dropped from the title, leaving “The Monologues” as the new official title for PLU’s version of the production.
The lack of intersectionality in this year’s “Monologues” presented issues for Vo, who left the production Feb. 9 after observing a lack of diversity and a general dysfunctionality within the fabric of the show. She said this year’s “Monologues” failed to create a sense of community among the performers, which she admired from her first experience acting in the 2014 “Vagina Monologues.” Vo said she was also disappointed with the lack of progression in the show’s reflection of intersections between race, gender and sexuality.
With the removal of the word “Vagina” from the title came a number of modifications to the show. Performers in the show were given the opportunity to write their own pieces about their personal experiences as women with multifaceted identities. There has also been a greater emphasis on incorporating trans women into the show, directly corresponding with the exclusion of the word “Vagina” from the title.
While I ended my participation with ‘The Monologues’ because of the nature of my position, the patterns of […] one director and the complacency of the others has been more than enough for me to fully support the director and cast members that chose to resign. -Avé, Senior
“I was hoping with the exclusion of the ‘Vagina’ part of “The Monologues” [title] would be more intersectional. It would have a lot of different perspectives, but it didn’t,” Vo said. “It was still the same ‘Monologues’ we were doing my first year. So much has changed in the world, and especially at PLU, since then. It was kind of strange to see that.”
A perceived lack of cooperation between performers and directors also contributed to Vo’s departure from the show. She said she wished there would have been more conversation around which pieces actors would have liked to perform. The lack of dialogue, Vo said, detracted from the cooperative spirit she felt should have been strong throughout the process.
“Something that I observed was that they gave people pieces based on what the directors thought was best without any consultation with the individual who had to perform it,” Vo said. “When it’s something like ‘The Monologues,’ it’s such a team [effort] that having people assign roles didn’t fit with what we were trying to do.”
Senior Yadira Avendano, who goes by Avé, said she also observed issues stemming from lack of cooperation. Avendano served as a stand-in director for Duren, who studied away over J-term. While serving as a proxy, Avendano said she noted several instances when certain directors objected to performers’ requests and neglected to consider performer’s identities when assigning pieces.
“I made the choice to share my perspectives with the directors whenever I felt those core elements of ‘The Monologues’ were being overlooked. Which unfortunately, ended up happening numerous times,” Avendano said.
One instance concerned Vo, who petitioned to change her piece when assigned one she was uncomfortable performing. Avendano said one of the directors took it upon herself to reject Vo’s request without informing the rest of the directors. It wasn’t until Avendano intervened, Vo said, that she was offered the opportunity to select a new piece.
However, Vo still found herself disappointed by the two additional options presented to her, which she thought were still very narrow in focus.
I have only ever advocated for self-preservation throughout this entire experience and it has been nice to be validated by those closest in my heart. -Dejan Perez, Sophomore
“They gave me two other options that were still very focused on vaginas. I didn’t see why all of them were focused on vaginas when we were trying to take vaginas out of ‘The Monologues,’” she said.
Avendano pointed to two other instances where a director seemed to disregard performers’ personal identities to ensure that an alternate identity was showcased. The directors in these cases, Avendano said, “[neglected] the performer for the exploitation of the piece for the show.”
“I was still an active director during those instances, and I, with the support of two other directors, strongly suggested that we reconsider the choices that had been made, and quickly asked the performers if they were comfortable with being assigned different pieces, which they accepted,” she said.
Avendano left the production Feb. 7.
In their joint letter, the directors acknowledged that they noticed tension stemming from the discomfort of performers of color.
“The space we took up as white women kept people of color in the show from being able to fully express themselves, and from feeling comfortable within the cast production team,” she wrote.
The directors also noted that they detected the unease, but overlooked it for the sake of pushing the show along.
“This act of omission: pushing the experience of a marginalized community aside so that we could continue with the project, was ignorant,” they wrote. “Not immediately acknowledging the tension and our role in creating an unsafe space further harmed the people of color involved with the production.”
Of the four official show directors, Perez served as the only person of color. She stepped down from her role as a director shortly before Vo also decided to depart. Perez spoke with Dean of Inclusive Excellence Jennifer Smith, CGE Director Talcott Broadhead and CGE Prevention and Outreach Coordinator Tolu Taiwo about her decision to leave the show.
“The experience has been very draining on my energy,” Perez said. “I have only ever advocated for self-preservation throughout this entire experience and it has been nice to be validated by those closest in my heart. I am slowly reclaiming what love and care I put into ‘The Monologues’ back to myself.”
Avendano said she observed numerous instances where Perez’s voice was overlooked during meetings and rehearsals. Avendano expressed support for Perez’s decision to leave the show, and the departure of other performers of color, based on the issues Avendano witnessed.
“While I ended my participation with ‘The Monologues’ because of the nature of my position, the patterns of […] one director and the complacency of the others has been more than enough for me to fully support the director and cast members that chose to resign,” Avendano said.
Following Perez’s departure, Kienberger, Dwight and Duren remained on. Smith and Broadhead met with the three remaining directors Monday Feb. 12. The Facebook event for “The Monologues” was cancelled a few days later.
It would have looked bad on PLU to have it continue in the way that it was. It just wasn’t representative of what PLU values. -Hilary Vo, Senior
In her post, Kienberger offered an apology on behalf of all three directors for “inconveniences this has caused, but more so the damage done through the environment we cultivated.”
The letter signed by all three directors also acknowledged the duty the directors had to ensure a safe space for all involved.
“No matter the personality type, as white-cisgender women, we each have the ability and the responsibility to check each others’privlege, as well as our own, at all times,” they wrote.
Vo said she was relieved when the show was put on hold.
“It would have looked bad on PLU to have it continue in the way that it was. It just wasn’t representative of what PLU values,” she said.
However, Vo said the issues with this year’s production — especially the departure of many performers of color — reveals a prominent gap between diversity and feminism on PLU’s campus.
“A lot of what I felt was that there’s really radical, intersectional social justice conversations that happen, and then there’s feminism. Those two have touched bubbles, but they haven’t quite overlapped yet,” she said. “I think feminism at PLU is still very focused on white women. I think there’s a lot more work that needs to happen before feminism can be fully intersectional and fully inclusive at PLU.”
For Vo, intersectionality means being consciously aware of the various identities women hold and how those identities relate to each other. She said “‘The Monologues’ would do well to step away from vagina-centric pieces and include more written works by performers of color and queer people narrating their complex experiences.
Intersectionality in PLU feminism, Vo said, requires a more intentional merging of conversations concerning race, sexuality and gender in public spaces. She pointed to Feminist Student Union as a place to start.
“Having D-Center conversations in FSU meetings, and having people of color actually speaking to their experience as women of color or gender nonconforming folk in those spaces in really important,” Vo said. “There’s obviously some of that, but there needs to be more cross connection.”
Click here to read: “The Monologues” Open Letter ◼︎
Share your thoughts | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Published: January 9, 2018
Introduction {#sec1}
============
T cell priming requires hours of interaction with cognate antigen-presenting cells (APCs) ([@bib17]). Results from *in vivo* imaging suggest that T cells decelerate and arrest on APCs to achieve this duration of signaling when antigen is spatially limited ([@bib20], [@bib21]) but can continue to migrate throughout the APC network when antigen is present on many contiguous APCs ([@bib11], [@bib15], [@bib23], [@bib28]). *In vitro* studies indicate two modes of interaction of T cells with APCs that may account for these observations: symmetric and stable synapses and asymmetric and motile kinapses ([@bib8], [@bib11], [@bib28]). Decelerated movement of T cells *in vivo* within networks of stimulatory APCs arises from kinapses. Generally, durable interactions of T cells *in vivo* with spatially isolated stimulatory APCs are interpreted to arise from synapses. However, whether durable interactions are mediated by synapses or confined kinapses is not ascertainable because of the inability to resolve details of the interface over time. This inability is mainly a result of internal tissue movement and inherent limitations of 3D rendering. Synapses and kinapses have functional implications, with synapses being more efficient for effector functions ([@bib2], [@bib16]) and kinapses allowing greater exploration of local networks ([@bib24]). However, it has been proposed that the polarized distribution of the motility apparatus along the plane of contact in the kinapse mode limits the durability of interaction ([@bib6], [@bib8], [@bib12], [@bib22]). Our goal in this study was to establish an *in vitro* platform under optically ideal settings to determine cell-intrinsic modes of interaction of different T cell subsets when faced with continuous or spatially restricted stimulation and to examine the relationship between the mode and durability of interaction.
We have studied the cell-intrinsic behavior of freshly isolated human and mouse T cells using 2D stimulatory surfaces on glass supports because of the ideal optics. Spatially continuous stimulatory surfaces are based on classical coating approaches or supported planar lipid bilayers (SLBs) presenting ICAM1 and anti-CD3 ([@bib9], [@bib25]). Using such 2D substrates, we found that human naive CD8, human naive and memory CD4, and murine naive and memory CD8 T cells all spend more time in the kinapse mode. Only human memory CD8 T cells formed a majority of synapses. To quantify the duration of interaction with spatially limited stimulation, we combined a 2D chemokinetic substrate composed of ICAM1 and CCL21 ([@bib32]) with discrete spots of anti-CD3 formed by micro-contact printing ([@bib27]). This system recapitulates the basic features necessary for T cell scanning, deceleration, and durable interactions observed *in vivo*. Surprisingly, we did not observe the expected inverse correlation between kinapses and durability of interaction. Further, we found that kinapse motility is intact on the stimulatory spots even as naive T cells undergo durable interactions over hours and that spatial restriction of anti-CD3 did not force formation of a stable synapse or exit from the anti-CD3 spots. This result demonstrates that naive T cells can achieve durable interactions for priming without forming stable synapses.
Results {#sec2}
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Migratory Response of T Cell Subsets to TCR Stimulation {#sec2.1}
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We first utilized an established 2D T cell migration platform to test the cell-intrinsic tendency of T cell subsets to form synapses and kinapses in response to TCR ligation. Although prior studies suggest that human mixed naive and memory CD4 T cells form kinapses in 2D ([@bib33]) and 3D ([@bib12]) settings, a systematic analysis of naive and memory subsets from peripheral blood has not been undertaken. Glass surfaces were uniformly coated with anti-CD3ε and ICAM1, and the migration of freshly isolated T cells was tracked over a period of 2 hr. Initially we used 2 μg/mL of anti-CD3ε for adsorption, which resulted in a surface density that caused nearly all cells to form adhesive contacts ([Movie S1](#mmc2){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Human naive CD8 T cells were seen to exhibit periods of positional stability that are synonymous with the stable synapse as well as motility that is characteristic of the kinapse mode ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}A; [Movie S1](#mmc2){ref-type="supplementary-material"}; [@bib28]). To identify these periods of positional stability and motility, we first considered the speed of the cells ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}B). Although the speed was generally reduced during periods of positional stability, it was hard to demarcate these periods with any certainty because of the small range of speed within which the cells move and because of constant, abrupt changes in speed. Therefore, we implemented an algorithmic approach to identify the transient, relative confinement that was originally developed for the analysis of single-particle tracks of membrane proteins ([@bib29]; [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}C). We then determined the positional spread during periods of relative confinement to confirm whether the cell was in synapse mode ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}D; [Supplemental Experimental Procedures](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). After ascertaining the mode of interaction at every instance, we calculated the "positional stability index," which is defined as the fraction of time the cell spends in the stable synapse state. This parameter was used to quantify the intrinsic tendency of the T cells to form synapses instead of kinapses or vice versa.Figure 1All Major Resting T Cell Subsets, Except Human CD8 Memory Cells, Spend More Time in the Kinapse Mode during Interaction with Uniformly Coated Stimulatory Surfaces(A) Four representative tracks of human naive CD8 T cells. Periods of positional stability, presumably corresponding to synapse mode of interaction, are highlighted using red arrows and numbered for reference. Additional periods of positional stability that one may visually infer are either of too short a duration or represent drastic turns during motility.(B) The speed of the cells shown in (A) over the duration of the tracks. The speed plotted here is smoothed by averaging the instantaneous speed over the two frames before and after the frame in question. However, the profile shows abrupt changes and fails to demarcate the periods of positional stability.(C) The confinement score (originally termed probability level, L) identifies the periods of relative confinement ([@bib29]). L \> 3 represents a probability of \< 0.017 that the confinement is due to random chance, which is the threshold value used to demarcate periods of relative confinement.(D) The positional spread within each period of relative confinement is considered to determine whether the cell was in the stable state (value of 1) that is synonymous with synapse mode of interaction. Positional spread is defined by R^2^/t, where t is the period of relative confinement, and R is the diameter of the confined zone. A value of \< 0.666 μm^2^/frame was found to represent positional stability. The fraction of time the cell spends in the stable state is called the positional stability index. Thus, a positional stability index of \> 0.5 means that the cell has spent more time in stable synapse mode than in motile kinapse mode and vice versa.(E--L) The positional stability index of resting T cell subsets on coverglass uniformly coated with anti-CD3 and ICAM1. The type of T cell subset examined is denoted at the bottom or in the panels and in the category names of dot plots (for example, naïve and memory cells from human CD8 T cells in E and human CD4 T cells in I). Inhibitors of PKCθ shift the balance from kinapses toward synapses in human naive CD8 T cells (G and H). The data points in (F) and (J) represent population means from separate blood donors, whereas, in rest of the panels, they represent individual tracks of cells from a particular donor. Mean values are given as red horizontal bars. The data shown in (G), (H), (K), and (L) are representative of two independent experiments.
Human naive CD8 T cells formed kinapses, whereas the memory counterparts spent more time in the synapse mode, based on analysis of individual cells from a single donor ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}E; [Movie S1](#mmc2){ref-type="supplementary-material"}), and when mean values from 4 donors ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}F) were considered. To relate this to prior observations, we investigated the role of protein kinase Cθ (PKCθ), which promotes kinapse motility in murine naive CD4 T cells *in vitro* and *in vivo* ([@bib28]). Small-molecule ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}G) or peptide-based inhibitors ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}H) of PKCθ increased the positional stability index for the naive CD8 T cells. Thus, the motility observed in this model system is analogous to kinapses observed *in vivo* and on SLBs. We expanded our observations to other human and mouse T cells subsets. Naive and memory human CD4 T cells spent more time in the kinapse mode both within a population of cells ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}I) and between 4 donors ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}J). Furthermore, naive and anti-*Listeria* memory CD8 T cells from OT-I TCR transgenic mice ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}K) or polyclonal *Listeria*-specific memory CD8 T cells from B6 mice ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}L) all formed kinapses. OT-I naive T cells are known to form kinapses on SLBs presenting peptide-major histocompatibility complex (pMHC) and ICAM1 and *in vivo* upon intravenous (i.v.) injection of the cognate peptide ([@bib11]). Furthermore, the distribution of migratory speed of P14 T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic naive and memory T cells in the presence of antigen-loaded dendritic cells (DCs) is also reflective of kinapse motility *in vivo* for both subsets ([@bib30]). Overall, across all populations, only human memory CD8 T cells exhibited an intrinsic tendency to form synapses for a longer duration, whereas the other human and mouse subsets we examined spent more time in the kinapse mode.
We wanted to further investigate the contrasting tendencies of naive and memory human CD8 T cells under different conditions. We first assessed the mode of interaction on SLBs presenting fluorescently labeled anti-CD3 Fab′ and ICAM1. In this model, kinapse motility can be easily identified through the trail of TCR-enriched micro-vesicles shed by migrating cells, whereas cells with stable synapses maintain TCR micro-vesicles within the interaction interface ([@bib5]). Naive human CD8 T cells spent more time in the kinapse mode, and memory CD8 T cells predominantly formed synapses on SLBs ([Figures 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}A--2C). This was found to be the case even at the drastically reduced density of anti-CD3 adsorbed to glass ([Figures 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}D and 2G). Although the homeostatic lymphoid chemokine CCL21 reduces the time T cells spend in synapse mode, memory CD8 T cells consistently spend more time in synapse mode than naive cells ([Figures 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}E, 2F, 2H, and 2I). The behavior of naive cells did not change appreciably when costimulatory and co-receptors were also engaged using antibodies ([Figures 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}F and 2I). Together, we conclude that, with the exception of human memory CD8 T cells, all other resting T cell subsets we examined have a cell-intrinsic tendency to predominantly form kinapses on uniform stimulatory surfaces.Figure 2The Lower Positional Stability Index of Human Naive CD8 T Cells Remains Intact Even When the Characteristics of the Stimulating Surface Change(A and B) Micrographs of fluorescent UCHT1 Fab′ taken 50 min after the cells were introduced on SLBs presenting UCHT1 Fab′ and ICAM1 as freely mobile ligands. The images show TCR clusters confined to the interface (B) because of the synapse of memory cells and trail of UCHT1 (A) shed by kinapses of naive cells. The data shown are representative of two independent experiments.(C) Positional stability index of cells quantified from tracks on SLBs.(D--I) Positional stability index of human CD8 T cells on coverglass presenting the threshold density of immobilized OKT3, below which very few naive cells respond by attaching. The presence of additional ligands (CCL21 in E, F, H, and I and 9.3 and OKT8 antibodies in F and I, with no additional ligand in D) is noted at the top. Immobilized ICAM1 was present in all experiments. The data points in (G), (H), and (I) represent population means from separate blood donors, whereas, in the rest of the panels, they represent individual tracks of cells from a particular donor. Mean values of plotted data points are given as red horizontal bars.
Durability of Interaction on Stimulatory Spots {#sec2.2}
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We then tested whether kinapse-based motility leads to a reduced duration of interaction on spatially limiting and distributed stimulatory spots created by micro-contact printing ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}A). Patterned surfaces have previously been used to explore the influence of different spatial patterns of ligands on the extent of T cell activation ([@bib7], [@bib27]). In our case, the micro-patterned antigen-presenting surface was particularly inspired by and designed to emulate the spacing of individual antigen-loaded DCs within the network of DCs in lymph nodes ([@bib18]). Micro-patterned printing of anti-CD3 provides stimulatory spots with biophysical and biochemical characteristics very similar to uniform stimulatory surfaces. Thus, it is expected that both initiate the same mode of triggering of TCRs and allow for direct comparison of results from the two model stimulatory surfaces. An additional critical feature of the T cell area in the lymph node is the presentation of the homeostatic chemokine CCL21 by stromal cells and lymphoid-resident DCs, which prompts the scanning motility of naive T cells ([@bib3]). Glass-adsorbed CCL21 has been shown to prompt a similar persistent motility in T cells ([@bib32]). Adoption of this approach with micro-contact printing allows the T cells to efficiently locate and interact and engage with the stimulatory spots and mimic the main aspects of the *in situ* environment in which naive T cells are primed.Figure 3The Durability of Interaction of Human T Cell Subsets with Spatially Limiting Stimulatory Spots Does Not Correlate with the Arrest Coefficient(A) Schematic of the micro-contact printing procedure for making stimulatory spots that emulate the spatially limiting and distributed nature of antigen presentation in lymph nodes with pervasive adhesion ligands and homeostatic chemokines. Anti-CD3ε is adsorbed on to the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cast with patterned indentations. The PDMS is then stamped to transfer some of the adsorbed protein onto the coverglass. The entire surface is then coated sequentially with the chemokine CCL21 and ICAM1. See [Experimental Procedures](#sec4){ref-type="sec"} for details.(B) Calcium influx (in black), arrest (in green), and spreading (in blue) of motile human naive CD8 T cells on the stimulatory spots (in red) captured by temporally aligning tracks of cells as they reach and arrest on the spots. Average values from 20 cells based on such a virtual synchronization are shown.(C) Activation status of cells after 30 hr of interaction with the stimulatory spots presenting varying amounts of Okt3 and 9.3 antibodies. See also [Figure S1](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}.(D) Proliferation of naive CD8 T cells from 3 donors after 72 hr of interaction with the stimulatory spots presenting varying amounts of Okt3 and 9.3 antibodies. The division index is the average number of divisions for all cells present.(E) Illustration for the calculation of the half-life of interaction with stimulatory spots. T cells are introduced to find and arrest onto the spots. Live-cell imaging commences when at least ∼50% of the spots are occupied by arrested cells. The cells found to be initially arrested on the spots are tracked through the time lapse, and the percentage of cells remaining on the same spots is tallied. Natural logarithmic transformation of the percentage of remaining cells provides a curve with a very good linear fit. The half-life of interaction is calculated by the formula ln(2)/slope according to first-order kinetics.(F) Co-stimulation by the 9.3 antibody did not influence the half-life of interaction with stimulatory spots.(G) A larger percentage of memory CD8 T cells (in cyan) leave the spot onto which they had initially arrested, reflecting a shorter half-life of interaction. It is to be noted that memory cells, or, for that matter, naive cells, that leave a spot typically engage and attach onto another neighboring spot. However, such re-engagements are disregarded in this "survival" analysis.(H--J) Half-life of interaction of specified T cell subsets upon attachment. The type of T cell subset examined is denoted at the bottom and in the category names of the dot plots (human CD8s in H, human CD4s in I, and murine CD8s in J). Human naive T cells have an appreciably longer half-life of interaction compared with the memory counterparts. Mean values of plotted data points are given as red horizontal bars. Each half-life measurement shown here came from different donors.(K) Relationship between the half-life of interaction on stimulatory spots and the positional stability index on a continuous stimulatory surface among human T cell subsets. Mean values from all the donors examined are plotted.
Human naive CD8 T cells scanned the surface, decelerated, arrested, and attached to the 10-μm stimulatory spots placed 30 μm apart on a square grid ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}B; [Movie S2](#mmc3){ref-type="supplementary-material"}, bottom left quadrant). Robust intracellular calcium flux was also observed as the cells arrested and spread, indicating productive supra-threshold TCR signaling. We then asked whether the naive T cells are indeed primed on the stimulatory spots. 50% of the cells were found to have expressed CD69 and shed CD62L after 12 hr ([Figure S1](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}A). By 30 hr, 80% of the cells express CD69, along with other activation markers such as CD25 and 4-1BB ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}C; [Figure S1](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}G). By 72 hr, the cells had divided at least twice ([Figure S1](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}F). Thus, anti-CD3 alone on the stimulatory spots is sufficient to prime naive CD8 T cells. We assessed the influence of co-stimulation by stamping the 9.3 antibody clone against CD28 along with Okt3. A robust effect of co-stimulation was observed only when 0.5 μg/mL of Okt3, but not 2 μg/mL of Okt3, was used for stamping ([Figures 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}C and 3D; [Figures S1](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}B--S1I). Also, increasing the concentration of Okt3 from 0.5 to 2 μg/mL obviated the need for co-stimulation during priming. By following the fate of attached cells regarding when they exit the stimulatory spots, we can calculate the half-life of interaction ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}E). Surprisingly, we did not observe any decisive contribution of co-stimulation toward the durability of interaction with the stimulatory spots ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}F). Therefore, for all ensuing experiments comparing naive and memory T cells, we considered anti-CD3 alone (at 2 μg/mL) on the stimulatory spots.
We found that the human naive CD8 T cells exited the spots at a slower rate than memory CD8 T cells ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}G; [Movie S2](#mmc3){ref-type="supplementary-material"}, top half). Human naive CD8 T cells were found to interact with a half-life of 3.6 hr, whereas the memory CD8 T cells had a half-life of 1.1 hr on 10-μm spots ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}H). Similar results were obtained in the human CD4 subsets ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}I). Both human CD4 and CD8 memory cells have less durable interactions on the stimulatory spots. Both of these subsets are known to have reduced phosphorylation of TCR-proximal signaling proteins and reduced calcium levels ([@bib1]). Accordingly, we observed reduced calcium influx in memory CD8 T cells on the stimulatory spots ([Figure S1](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}J). This offers a likely explanation for the less durable interaction of memory cells. Murine polyclonal CD8 naive and anti-*Listeria* memory T cells were found to have an intermediate half-life of ∼2 hr on 10-μm spots ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}J). This result is consistent with *in vivo* observations wherein adoptively transferred naive and *ex vivo*-generated memory P14 TCR transgenic CD8 T cells engaging with lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-activated DCs that migrate from the footpad into the popliteal lymph node were found to have the same contact duration with the DCs ([@bib30]). Overall, we did not observe the expected positive correlation between positional stability index on uniform stimulatory surfaces and durability of interaction on stimulatory spots ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}K).
The Motile Tendency of Kinapses Is Intact on Stimulatory Spots {#sec2.3}
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We considered the possibility that the behavior of naive cells is fundamentally different on the spatially confined stimulatory spots, which might force formation of synapses. For this, we focused on comparison of human naive and memory CD8 T cells because they had exhibited a stark dichotomy in behavior ([Figures 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"} and [3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}). Visual examination of the dynamics of naive cells engaged on 10-μm-wide stimulatory spots revealed that the motile tendency generated by kinapses is intact and that the cells continuously explore new areas ([Movie S3](#mmc4){ref-type="supplementary-material"}, for example). To quantify this, we defined a "sampling efficiency" parameter that measures the fraction of unique pixels within the cell outline over 20 frames or 10 min ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}A). Naive cells exhibited a significantly greater sampling efficiency than the memory counterparts on the spots ([Figures 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}B and 4C), as observed on the uniformly coated surfaces ([Figures S2](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}A and S2B). We found that naive cells displayed significantly greater sampling over a range of frame numbers and intervals (data not shown). We also noted that the naive cells displayed continuous protrusions in different directions away from the spot; however, they still remained on the spot, apparently because of interspersed preferential retraction from the non-stimulatory area ([Movie S3](#mmc4){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). To quantify this behavior, we defined a "protrusion index" parameter that measures the fractional area of the cell that is outside of the spot, taking into account variations in the projected area of the cell relative to the size of the spot ([Figures 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}D and 4E). The naive cells exhibited a significantly higher protrusion index than memory cells ([Figures 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}F and 4G). Thus, quantification of the motile tendencies in human naive and memory CD8 T cells revealed that the intrinsic behavior observed on uniform stimulatory surfaces is preserved on 10-μm stimulatory spots. Dynamic sampling and protrusive behavior were also observed in all the other resting T cell subsets examined, suggesting that they all retained their kinapse tendencies on 10-μm spots (data not shown).Figure 4Human Naive CD8 T Cells Exhibit Durable Interactions Despite Kinapses on the Stimulatory Spots(A--G) The motile tendency of human CD8 T cells engaged on 10-μm spots is quantified as sampling efficiency (A--C) and protrusion index (D--G).(A) Sampling efficiency is defined as the fraction of unique pixels (denoted by darker shade of gray) over the total number of pixels (denoted by lighter shade of gray in the denominator) underneath the cell boundary within a certain duration of time (the illustration has 3 time steps). A cell with increased motile tendency should have a higher sampling efficiency.(B and C) Naive cells have a higher sampling efficiency than memory cells when measured over 20 time steps. The same conclusion is drawn when 10 or 40 time steps were considered (data not shown). See also [Figure S2](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}.(D) The protrusion index measures the fractional area of the cell that is outside of the stimulatory spot, which should increase with a more active search away from the stimulatory spot. The protrusion index of a cell at any instance is calculated by subtracting the fractional overlap from the maximum possible overlap (overlap is shown in dark gray). The maximum possible overlap reduces as the projected area of the cell increases beyond the size of the spot. Thus, considering the maximum possible overlap accounts for the increase in protrusion solely because of increased size and/or spreading of the cell.(E) Contour map of the fractional overlap of naive (in red) and memory (in cyan) CD8 T cells. The contour plot was generated from data points representing each cell at each time point imaged. As the area of the cell grows beyond the area of the spot, the maximum possible overlap decreases linearly (orange trace). For any cell represented in the plot, the distance from the orange trace gives the protrusion index (shown by arrows for two cells).(F and G) Naive cells have a higher protrusion index than memory cells.(H and I) Naive human CD8 T cells exhibit a greater tendency for kinapses on 20-μm spots compared with memory cells. Note that only portions of tracks that did not contain any neighboring cell on the same spot were considered for this analysis to select for autonomous behavior.(J) Human naive CD8 T cells exhibit a longer half-life of interaction on 20-μm-wide spots. This was the case even when the spots were completely occupied by crowding with 4--6 cells per spot instead of 1--3 cells per spot (data not shown).The data points in (B), (F), and (H) represent individual cells or cell tracks from a particular donor, and those in (C), (G), and (I) represent population means from separate blood donors. Mean values of plotted data points are given as red horizontal bars.
Human memory CD8 T cells form larger contacts on uniformly coated surfaces ([Movie S1](#mmc2){ref-type="supplementary-material"}) and on 10-μm-wide spots ([Figures 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}E; [Figure S2](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}C). The memory cells also have a lesser portion of the cell surface exposed to the stimulatory spots ([Figure S2](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}D). Thus, it is possible that memory cells actively decide to dissolve the synapse on account of sub-optimal surface exposure on 10-μm spots, leading to under-estimation of the potential for durable interactions. Therefore, we extended the comparisons to 20-μm stimulatory spots. Many human naive CD8 T cells were seen to circle along the edges on the 20-μm-wide spots because their persistent movement always led them to form and retract protrusions off of the spot ([Movie S4](#mmc5){ref-type="supplementary-material"}, for example). Overall, the naive cells showed a significantly lower positional stability index on 20-μm spots compared with the memory cells ([Figures 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}H and 4I). This was directly analogous to the behavior on uniformly coated surfaces ([Figures 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}E and 1F and [2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}E and 2H). The naive cells maintained the trend of a longer half-life of interaction (an average of 3.4 hr) despite continuous motility ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}J). Further, human naive CD8 T cells exhibited durable interactions with mature monocyte-derived DCs embedded in collagen matrix and presenting Okt3 that was captured via their Fc receptors ([Movies S5](#mmc6){ref-type="supplementary-material"} and [S6](#mmc7){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). During these prolonged interactions, the naive cells exhibit continuous protrusions in different directions. One such event led to the naive cell shifting from one DC to another DC that comes into the neighborhood ([Movie S5](#mmc6){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). This provides further proof that kinapse motility is intact during the prolonged interaction with DCs. Thus, our results demonstrate that naive T cells have prolonged interactions without forming a stable synapse and despite motile tendencies driven by the kinapse. We conclude that kinapses are not detrimental to the durability of interaction with spatially restricted stimulatory sites or with DCs.
Discussion {#sec3}
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Our *ex vivo* experiments mimic the two distinct scenarios of antigen presentation resulting from standard immunization regimens and allow the interaction mode to be determined quantitatively. Uniformly coated surfaces and SLBs emulate the scenario arising after peptide- or antigen-conjugated DEC-205 immunization, which results in spatially uniform antigen presentation by the DC network ([@bib11], [@bib15], [@bib23], [@bib28]). Kinapse motility observed *in situ* does not become a detrimental factor for prolonged signaling under these conditions because T cells remain in contact with antigen even as they move from DC to DC. Micro-patterned surfaces mirror the scenario arising after DC immunization, in which antigen is presented in a spatially restricted manner by the emigrated DCs within the T cell zone. Taking advantage of the unique settings of optics and the substrate design in 2D, we have demonstrated that kinapse motility is intact on the stimulatory spots ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}; [Movies S3](#mmc4){ref-type="supplementary-material"} and [S4](#mmc5){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). However, these T cells exhibit durable interactions ([Figures 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}H and 3I and [4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}J), just as *in vivo* with DC immunization ([@bib4], [@bib14], [@bib20]). Motile tendency and crawling, similar to what we have observed on 10- and 20-μm stimulatory spots, can also be gleaned from the time-lapse images of T cell-dendritic cell interaction (T-DC) conjugates *in situ* ([Figure S2](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}E lists specific instances from the literature). This implies that the mode of engagement in those instances was via kinapses and not synapses. Thus, the extent of spatial distribution of antigen or anti-CD3ε dictates the spatial regime of naive T cell motility over several hours, either restricted to a single DC (or stimulatory spot) or across a larger area. This allows for reconciliation between the two seemingly incompatible features of T cell behavior: kinapse motility and durable interaction with DCs, which is required for the priming of naive T cells. We further note that our results do not rule out durable interactions in the synapse mode of interaction. Thus, durable interactions could arise both from synapses and kinapses.
Human memory T cells demonstrate a trend of lower half-life of interaction compared with their naive counterparts ([Figures 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"} and [4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}). We note that, after the memory cells leave a stimulatory spot, they latch onto another. Thus, the cooperative killing observed in antiviral responses could be a result of kinapses or serial, relatively short synapses ([@bib13]). A shorter duration would allow the higher effector efficiency of synapses to be exploited without completely losing the possibility for local exploration inherent to kinapses ([@bib2], [@bib16]). This is perhaps the reason for human memory CD8 T cells to employ stable synapses but limit their duration.
Our model system of stimulatory spots enabled us to demonstrate that T cells can engage in durable interactions without forming stable synapses. Because this model system mimics the main aspects of the *in situ* context under which naive T cells get primed ([@bib3], [@bib18]), we expect it to be of great utility in investigating the mechanistic underpinnings of T cell behavior varying from search for antigen and signal integration during priming to competition between T cells for antigen.
Experimental Procedures {#sec4}
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Ethics {#sec4.1}
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Leukapheresis products (non-clinical and de-identified) from donor blood were used as a source of resting human T cells, which was exempt from institutional review board (IRB) review. The Non-Clinical Issue division of National Health Service approved the use of leukapheresis products at the University of Oxford (REC 11/H0711/7). All procedures and experiments involving mice were conducted at the New York University Medical Center and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (protocol 150609-01).
Isolation of T Cell Subsets {#sec4.2}
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Resting human T cell subsets were isolated from leukapheresis products using negative selection kits from STEMCELL Technologies. Mouse T cells were isolated either by negative selection or by sorting of relevant populations from B6 mice. Memory T cells were obtained from mice 30 days after infection with *Listeria monocytogenes*-expressing ovalbumin. OT-I T cells were isolated after adoptive transfer into congenic hosts.
Preparation of Stimulatory Surfaces {#sec4.3}
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Labtek 8-well chambers (Nunc) were used for uniformly coated stimulatory surfaces. Micro-contact printing was carried out as described previously ([@bib26]). The repeating "spot" patterns spanned the entire length of the channel of the sticky-Slide VI^0.4^ (Ibidi). The stamped coverslips were affixed to the sticky-Slide, and the channels were coated sequentially with CCL21 (10 μg/mL) and ICAM1 (3 μg/mL). SLBs presenting UCHT1 Fab′ and ICAM1 were assembled in sticky-Slide VI^0.4^ channels essentially with the same approach as described before for the FSC2 Bioptechs flow chambers ([@bib5], [@bib10]). The main difference is that the entire channel was filled with the liposome suspension to form a bilayer all along the channel.
Imaging {#sec4.4}
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Cells were imaged using either a Zeiss LSM 510 or an Olympus FluoView FV1200 confocal microscope that was enclosed in an environment chamber (at 37°C) and operating under standard settings. These microscopes are equipped for collecting differential interference contrast (DIC) images used for detecting and tracking cells and for collecting reflection images used for ascertaining spreading or attachment. In some experiments, cells are labeled with CellTracker dyes (Life Technologies) to identify the T cells subsets. Calcium was imaged by the ratiometric method using Fluo4-acetylmethoxy ester. (AM) and Fura Red-AM ([@bib31]). The location of stimulatory spots was recorded using Alexa Fluor 647 conjugated to the stamped anti-CD3.
Image Analysis and Quantification of Various Metrics {#sec4.5}
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The time-lapse images were pre-processed in ImageJ. Tracking and associated quantification were conducted using TIAM, a MATLAB-based toolset we have developed ([@bib19]). The code is available on Github (<https://github.com/willieneis/TIAM>). Bespoke functions and scripts were written in MATLAB for the calculation confinement score, positional stability index, sampling efficiency, protrusion index, and duration of interaction, with the spots using the output from TIAM. These functions are scripts also available on Github (<https://github.com/uvmayya/kinapseVsDurability>).
T Cell Activation Assays {#sec4.6}
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Cell numbers equivalent to the number of stimulatory spots (∼90,000) were introduced into the channel. The wells feeding the channel were simultaneously filled with additional medium. At various time points, the cells were collected using ice-cold PBS containing 0.5% BSA and 2 mM EDTA. These cells were appropriately assayed by flow cytometry for activation markers and cell division by dilution of Cell Trace Violet.
Statistical Methods {#sec4.7}
-------------------
Statistical significance of difference in values, wherein a pair of values represents the T cell subsets of a donor, was calculated by paired t test. Statistical significance of difference in population behavior, wherein individual cells between subsets of a donor are compared, was calculated by Mann-Whitney *U* test. p values from two-tailed tests are denoted as follows in the figures: ^∗^p \< 0.05, ^∗∗^p \< 0.01, ^∗∗∗^p \< 0.001, ^∗∗∗∗^p \< 0.0001.
All experimental and analysis procedures are explained in further detail in the [Supplemental Experimental Procedures](#mmc1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}.
Supplemental Information {#app2}
========================
Document S1. Supplemental Experimental Procedures, Figures S1--S6, TablesMovie S1. Behavior of Human CD8 T Cells on Uniform Stimulatory Surfaces, Related to Figure 1Time-lapse video of the motility behaviour of CMRA-labelled naïve (in red) and CMFDA-labelled memory (in green) human CD8 T cells on immobilized OKT3 and ICAM1. Field of imaging was 131.84 μm in size. Progression of time is also noted in the video.Movie S2. Behavior of Human CD8 T Cells on Cell-Sized Stimulatory Spots, Related to Figure 3Side-by-side comparison of durability of interaction of naïve (on left) and memory (on right) human CD8 T cells with 10μm stimulatory spots. Spots are shown in magenta. In the upper half, a positive mask of the dilated spot and contact foot-print was applied to the DIC images so that only the cells engaged on the spots were tracked by TIAM. Masked DIC images used for the video here helps with avoiding distraction from motile cells that pass by the spots. In the lower half, the same dataset is shown without the mask. There was some advection in the channel containing naïve cells, as a results of which motile cells have a bias in their movement towards the top of the field. Nonetheless, scanning motility of T cells can be appreciated in the lower half of the video. It is to be noted that advection does not impact durability of interaction. Tracked positions are overlaid as small yellow squares on the masked DIC images. A bigger yellow square flashes to indicate the termination of the track, in other words, signifies dissolution of the synapse and exit from the spot. Memory cells exhibit more such events, implying reduced half-life of interaction on antigenic spots. There were some technical challenges in calculating the half-life of interaction for memory cells, which are detailed in the Image Analysis sub-section of Supplemental Experimental Procedures. The memory cells that leave a spot, typically engage with another neighboring spot. This can be appreciated by the sizeable number of attached memory cells on spots that were not tracked, as their tracks did not begin at the initially considered frame.Movie S3. Kinapse Behavior Highlighted for a Single Naïve CD8 T Cell on a 10-μm Spot, Related to Figure 4Time-lapse video of a single naïve CD8 T cell showing prolonged engagement (3 hours) with a 10μm OKT3 spot despite constant generation of protrusions away from the spot. Occasionally, the cell also forms a nascent uropod and a dominant, single protrusion at the opposite end, both of which are transient. The cell is shown as an overlay of DIC and IRM to provide a darker contrast and thus distinguish the concerned cell from other passing-by cells that transiently engage the spot without a juxtaposed contact. Outline of the spot and the cell boundary are also provided on the right side to aid visualization.Movie S4. Kinapse Behavior Highlighted for a Single Naive CD8 T Cell on a 20-μm Spot, Related to Figure 4Time-lapse video of a single naïve CD8 T cell showing prolonged engagement (\>2 hours) with a 20μm OKT3 spot despite constant kinapse motility along the circumference of the spot. As in Movie S3, the cell is shown as an overlay of DIC and IRM to provide a darker contrast and thus distinguish the concerned cell from other passing-by cells that transiently engage the spot without a juxtaposed contact. Outline of the spot and the cell boundary are also provided on the right side to aid visualization. The motility of the T cell is seemingly confined or dictated by the boundary of the spot.Movie S5. Naive CD8 T Cells in Prolonged Engagement with DCs while Exhibiting Kinapse Behavior, Related to Figure 43D time-lapse video of human naïve CD8 T cells (in green) engaging in prolonged interaction with mature monocyte derived DCs (in magenta) that were loaded with Okt3 via their Fc Receptors and embedded in collagen matrix. Motile tendency and protrusive behaviour persists throughout the 1.5 hours of engagement that was captured. We did not observe naïve cells disengaging from the DCs within the 1.5 hours of observation. The migratory movement of other cells in the field was primarily due to CCL19 that was added to the collagen matrix. The engaged T cell shifts from one DC to another DC that comes into the vicinity. This implies kinapse mode of interaction with the DCs.Movie S6. Naive CD8 T Cells in Prolonged Engagement with DCs while Exhibiting Kinapse Behavior, Related to Figure 43D time-lapse video of human naïve CD8 T cells (in green) engaging in prolonged interaction with mature monocyte derived DCs (in magenta) that were loaded with Okt3 via their Fc Receptors and embedded in collagen matrix. Motile tendency and protrusive behaviour persists throughout the 1.5 hours of engagement that was captured. We did not observe naïve cells disengaging from the DCs within the 1.5 hours of observation. The migratory movement of other cells in the field was primarily due to CCL19 that was added to the collagen matrix. Multiple naïve cells can be seen jostling with motile tendency, yet they stay engaged with the DC. Observations are representative of two separate experiments.Document S2. Article plus Supplemental Information
Supported by NIH grants PN2 EY016586 (to M.L.D. and L.C.K.) and R37 AI43542 (to M.L.D.), a Cancer Research Institute post-doctoral fellowship (to V.M.), Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship 100262/Z/12/Z (to M.L.D.), funds from the Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research grant MSP121321 (to M.L.D. and the KIR Microscopy Facility), a Human Frontiers Science Program research grant RGP0033/2015 (to M.L.D.), and European Research Council grant AdG 670930-SYNECT (to M.L.D.). The assistance of the Light Microscopy and Flow Cytometry Core Facilities at the NYU Medical Center is also acknowledged. We thank A. Gondarenko for help with e-beam lithography, S. Valvo and J. Afrose for preparing key reagents, and A. Gerard for comments on the manuscript.
Author Contributions {#sec5}
====================
V.M. conceptualized the project, designed and performed experiments, analyzed the data, and co-wrote the manuscript. E.J. and L.C.K. designed the masters for micro-contact printing and participated in related method development. V.M., W.N., and C.H.W. developed the TIAM package. E.A.S. conducted the imaging of T-DC conjugates in collagen gels. C.G.P. participated in the development of metrics for positional stability. D.D. participated in method development related to Ibidi chambers and in lipid bilayer experiments. D.A.B. supported the animal experiments. M.L.D. supervised the research, facilitated collaboration, participated in method development, and co-wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and approved the manuscript.
Declaration of interests {#sec6}
========================
The authors declare no competing interests.
Supplemental Information includes Supplemental Experimental Procedures, two figures, and six movies and can be found with this article online at [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2017.12.052](10.1016/j.celrep.2017.12.052){#intref0020}.
[^1]: Present address: Immunocore Limited, Abingdon OX14 4RY, UK
[^2]: Present address: Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation, Ridgefield, CT 06877, USA
[^3]: Lead Contact
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Central |
Matthew Briggs only played 13 league games at Fulham in seven years
When Fulham midfielder Harvey Elliott became the youngest ever Premier League player last month, it could have sparked an intriguing quiz question.
Who was the previous record holder, and what happened to him?
You would be forgiven if you did not remember the name Matthew Briggs. He held the title for 12 years, having also made his top-flight debut in a Fulham shirt, aged 16 years and 68 days.
Now 28, Briggs has been through setbacks, self-doubt and a spell working on a building site - spending last season with Essex-based Isthmian League Division One North side Maldon & Tiptree - but, in a great twist, is playing in a major international tournament this summer.
BBC Sport sat down with the defender, who wants to climb back through the leagues and hopes a documentary on his story external-link will help other young players learn from his mistakes.
'I had mates asking for my autograph'
It was Sunday, 13 May 2007 when Briggs replaced Moritz Volz in the 77th minute of Fulham's 3-1 defeat at Middlesbrough, taking the mantle of the Premier League's youngest player from Aaron Lennon.
The next day, the Londoner was back at school, taking his GCSE exams.
"I had mates asking me for my autograph, and I was saying 'shut up'," he joked.
"As time went on, people started to talk about you and you start to realise the greatness of what it is you've done."
Briggs was making headlines but went straight back into the Fulham youth team, not to start another first-team game for more than two and a half years.
"That knocked my confidence straight away and I don't think I ever came back from that, to be honest," Briggs said.
"As I was a big boy for my age I feel they treated me like I was already a man, and I was still very young mentally - I was still a kid and I needed that nurturing, support and guidance which I didn't really get."
The left-back was still representing England at youth level, though, helping them reach the final of the European Under-19 Championship in 2009 alongside players such as Kyle Walker and Danny Welbeck.
Briggs' performances in the tournament drew interest from his boyhood club Manchester United.
He recalled: "There were talks with my agent but Fulham had already lost Chris Smalling, Louis Saha and Edwin van der Sar to United, so they set an asking price of something stupid and they weren't going to pay that for me when I hadn't done anything in the game yet.
"I did feel bitter about it. I always used to say if they'd let me go my life might have been different now, but I've learned to realise you can't change the past."
Matthew Briggs tussled with the stars of the Premier League. such as England forward Theo Walcott
Loan spells at clubs including Peterborough and Watford followed over the coming seasons, while he had racked up 29 appearances - including 10 Europa League starts - for Fulham as he headed towards the end of his contract at Craven Cottage.
"I had a three-year contract offer on the table from Fulham, but then Martin Jol got sacked," Briggs said.
"I got a bad groin injury that kept me out for the whole year and then obviously he got the sack, which killed me."
How did Briggs end up at Maldon & Tiptree?
After 13 years at Fulham, Briggs was released at the age of 23, moving to Championship side Millwall. It took some getting used to after playing in a white shirt since he was at primary school.
"I was actually driving into Millwall one morning and found myself on the way to Fulham, thinking 'where am I going?'" Briggs said.
In January of his first season at The Den, Briggs was loaned out to Colchester - a move which would turn permanent - where he played the most regular professional football of his career to date.
He played 59 times for the U's in League One and League Two before moving on to Chesterfield for the 2017-18 campaign, where off-field matters made things tough.
"I was driving from Colchester to Chesterfield - about a 10-hour round-trip - every day," said Briggs, who was taking care of his seriously-ill partner.
"I was leaving at 4am to get to training for 8.30am, and getting back home at 7pm."
After leaving the Spireites in December 2017, Briggs effectively spent the rest of the season out of the game, and approached this season without a club.
But Wayne Brown, a former coach at Colchester, invited him to join eighth-tier semi-professional side Maldon & Tiptree and, despite his Premier League upbringing, Briggs had no qualms about saying yes.
"My mindset was 'I've got to prove everyone wrong'," he said.
"I've got to have a consistent season, be consistent in my performance and show everybody I've still got it and shouldn't be at this level."
Though the Essex club were beaten in a play-off final, Briggs scooped their player of the year award and chipped in with a number of goals from full-back.
"It's only this season at Maldon & Tiptree that all the doubts have gone - I've enjoyed my season, the best season I've ever had," he added.
"I've thoroughly enjoyed my football - no pressure, no stress, just expressing myself."
Next season? Briggs would like to climb back up the leagues and build towards a career back in the professional game, but he has bigger fish to fry first…
Matthew Briggs played the whole 90 minutes for Guyana against the USA, who are ranked 30th in the world
An unexpected international comeback
Having played through the England age groups up to the under-21s, Briggs had come to terms with the fact he was unlikely to ever represent the senior side.
But he was handed an unexpected international lifeline in 2015 by Guyana, who he is qualified to represent through his grandmother.
"Guyana have a few names who can play for them and I thought, you know what, this could be decent," Briggs said.
"If we get everybody together we can make a decent team."
Those players include former Crystal Palace and Bolton midfielder Neil Danns, ex-Reading forward Callum Harriott and Newport winger Keanu Marsh-Brown.
Having last played for them more than four years ago, Briggs is part of Guyana's 23-man squad for this summer's Gold Cup - and he started their 4-0 defeat on Wednesday against a USA side featuring Chelsea's £58m forward Christian Pulisic.
He said: "This time last year I was working on a building site and to have changed all this around, to then be playing in a big tournament like the Gold Cup means everything to me."
The culmination of that turnaround has helped Briggs reflect on how far he has come over the past 12 months, even if it meant dropping down to the lowest level of football he has played.
"I was so depressed about it [working on a building site] and my uncle said to me, 'Listen, just come and work', so I did and, to be fair, I take my hat off to the construction industry because I learned a lot," said Briggs.
"I learned how to put walls up, build blocks and do all that. I learned some life skills.
"I thought, 'Is this what my life has come to?' No disrespect to the construction industry but playing at 16 in the Premier League to then working a construction job, it's made me more hungry to turn it back around."
'Don't feel entitled like I did'
Matthew Briggs has been playing in the Isthmian League with Maldon & Tiptree
Having gone through such a rollercoaster over the past 12 years, how does Briggs reflect on once being the Premier League's youngest player?
"I don't really think I dealt with it particularly well - from that day [his debut], that's when everything started going downhill and the pressure just got to me, I guess," he said.
"It's hard for me to look back at it because I used to think I'd failed - I used to hate having that title - but now I look at it as something to be proud of.
"Having it for 12 years, I can always say I was the youngest Premier League player and not a lot of people can say that."
And what about the successor to his throne, 16-year-old Elliott? What advice can Briggs offer the protege from his own experiences?
"Don't feel entitled like I did because you made your debut at 16 - you've got to keep proving and showing why they put you there in the first place," he said.
"Be proud of yourself but don't become complacent - don't think you've made it and if you come back next season and you're not in the team, it doesn't mean you're not good enough.
"You just have to keep working hard and keep proving that you're deserving." | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Can leukocyte antisedimentation rate (LAR) predict septic complications and critical care survival early in polytrauma and burn victims?
In polytrauma and burn injury Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) develops. SIRS is presented in many hospitalized patients, including those who never develop infection or sepsis. Both in SIRS and sepsis the leukocyte activation occurs. In acute phase reaction leukocytes' upward flotation i.e. leukocyte antisedimentation rate (LAR) can indicate infectious origin. To evaluate the predictive power of LAR, serum C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) levels regarding mortality risk and development of septic complications. In a prospective, observational study, 36 patients were followed for 5 days (T1-T5) after admission to a critical care unit immediately with severe polytrauma or burn injury. Eleven patients developed septic complications, their LAR, CRP and PCT levels were analyzed before and after 3 days of sepsis was declared. Ten patients died due to septic complications. In survivors LAR at T1 (p < 0.001) and T2 (p < 0.001) as well as CRP at T1 (p < 0.05) were significantly higher compared to controls and non survivors. In septic patients LAR (p < 0.05) and CRP (p < 0.05) showed a significant drop one day before sepsis was declared. PCT levels failed to predict this. Drop in LAR and CRP levels may be warning signs regarding the onset of septic complications after severe polytrauma and burn injury. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Abstracts |
I’m currently in a country with low speed internet and the entire ‘modern’ web is basically unusable except HN, which still loads instantly. Reddit, Twitter, news and banking sites are all painfully slow or simply time out altogether. To PG, the mods and whoever else is responsible: thank you for not trying to ‘fix’ what isn’t broken. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Elderly are frequently hospitalized due to their age-associated organ degeneration, the presence of co-morbidities, and their susceptibility to adverse insults. Alterations in functional status often occur during hospitalization, and the degree of functional decline can parallel the severity of illnesses. For older persons, gauging their pre-morbid and in-hospital functional status facilitates treatment planning and potentially functional restoration[@b1][@b2][@b3]. While the identification of risk factors or markers of poor pre-morbid and in-hospital functional status may help facilitate this process, this area remains under-researched to date. Factors associated with functional decline in the hospitalized elderly include the types of morbidities and the reasons for their admission. Indeed, elderly with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are more likely to exhibit functional decline, beginning from the earlier stage of CKD to end-stage renal disease (ESRD)[@b4][@b5]; functional dependency also predisposes individuals with CKD and ESRD to recurrent hospitalization and higher mortality.
Albuminuria and proteinuria, as the staging criteria for CKD in the most recent version of Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) CKD guidelines[@b6], are both well-established predictors of subsequent renal function decline[@b7]. There is increasing awareness that albuminuria and proteinuria have an independent role in the prediction of adverse outcomes apart from the baseline renal function[@b8]. As explained above, although CKD is associated with poor functional status, it is still unclear whether proteinuria alone exhibits similar association with functional status regardless of CKD. No reports focus on this association using the severity of proteinuria among geriatric patients with acute medical illnesses.
We hypothesized that elderly with proteinuria on admission, regardless of the presence of CKD, are more likely to have poor functional status, and that a dose-responsive relationship between the severity of proteinuria and that of functional impairment exists. Therefore, we conducted a cross-sectional study to evaluate this theory.
Materials and Methods
=====================
Recruitment of participants and the study design
------------------------------------------------
Elderly patients aged ≥65 years who were admitted to the general wards for medical illnesses between January and June 2014, were prospectively enrolled. Those who died within 2 days of admission, those who had anuria on presentation, or those who received chronic dialysis for ESRD were excluded. All participants underwent spot fasting dipstick urinalysis early on the day of admission, and were subsequently divided into 3 groups according to the semiquantitative levels of proteinuria assessed by dipstick (none, trace to 1+, and 2+ to higher). Demographic profile (age and sex), baseline comorbidity including hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM), cardiovascular illnesses (coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction, heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, and old stroke), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, CKD, autoimmune disorders, malignancy, peptic ulcer, and dementia/Parkinsonism were recorded based on patient history and corresponding laboratory and imaging findings. CKD was defined as an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) less than 60 ml/min/1.73 m^2^, using the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) formula. The Charlson comorbidity index was calculated according to the literature[@b9][@b10]. Physical examination parameters including blood pressure and heart rate were documented. All participants received a hemogram and serum biochemical tests on admission.
Functional status as the outcome of interest
--------------------------------------------
Pre-morbid and in-hospital functional status among all the participants was evaluated using BI, through a standardized patient interview during admission conducted by dedicated nurse researchers. In brief, participants received BI assessment on the first day of their admission (the "on-admission scores"), and pre-morbid functional status was simultaneously recorded through asking the participants to recall their performance status one month prior to this admission (the "pre-morbid scores"). On the day of discharge, their BI scores were recorded again by the same group of interviewers ("the on-discharge scores"). Percentage changes between pre-morbid/on-admission and on-admission/on-discharge BI scores were also calculated.
BI is a classic tool for measuring performance in activities of daily living, and consists of 10 variables (15 points for 2 items: transfer from bed to chair, and walking; 10 points for 6 items: feeding, dressing, bowel and bladder continence, toileting, and stair-climbing; and 5 points for 2 items: bathing and grooming). The composite scores range between 0 and 100, with higher scores indicating better performance. Surrogate respondents (family members) were used for those who could not be interviewed due to severe cognitive impairment or an inability to communicate. Two interviews were done consecutively within one hour by different interviewers on the day of admission (for pre-morbid \[by recall\] and on-admission scores) or on the day of discharge (for on-discharge scores), so that the process of assessment would not disturb the routine admission care and the discharge preparation process. If there were discrepancies between the results obtained, we would average the two numbers and derive the final results.
The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of National Taiwan University Hospital (No. 201306089RINA), and adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided verbal informed consent before enrollment. For the analysis of factors associated with pre-morbid BI scores, only those with available pre-morbid BI scores were analyzed; for the analysis of factors associated with on-admission and on-discharge BI scores, data from all participants were used.
Statistical analysis
--------------------
To analyze the cross-sectional relationship between functional status at different scenarios and dipstick proteinuria results on admission, we first evaluated the differences among demographic profiles, comorbidities, vital sign parameters, and laboratory profiles between participants with and without proteinuria, using Student's *t*-test, and between participants with different degrees of proteinuria, using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with Bonferroni correction. Results of BI subscales were also compared between participants with different degrees of proteinuria on admission, using ANOVA with Bonferroni correction as well. Finally, multivariate stepwise regression analyses with backward variable selection, with the BI scores in the form of continuous parameters as the dependent variable were performed, incorporating demographic profiles (age and gender), all comorbidities (diabetes, hypertension, cirrhosis, coronary artery disease, old infarction, peripheral vascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic kidney disease, malignancy, peptic ulcer, old stroke, and dementia or Parkinsonism), the Charlson comorbidity index, vital signs (blood pressure and heart rate), laboratory parameters, and dipstick proteinuria results. In this study, all analyses were done using SPSS 18.0 software (Chicago, IL, USA); a two-sided *p*-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results
=======
Clinical features of the recruited patients
-------------------------------------------
A total of 136 community-dwelling elderly patients (mean age 80.7 ± 8.2 years; 50% male) were enrolled during the study period. More than half of the participants had hypertension (57%), followed by DM (39%), malignancy (26%), and a prior stroke (21%), and CKD (19%). Among all participants, 17% did not have proteinuria, while 57% and 26% had trace to 1 + and 2 + to higher levels of proteinuria on admission, respectively. We did not observe any differences with regard to age and sex between patients with proteinuria and those without ([Table 1](#t1){ref-type="table"}). Proteinuric patients were more likely to have DM (*p* \< 0.01), CKD (*p* = 0.01), and dementia/Parkinsonism (*p* = 0.03) than those without proteinuria, while those with higher severity of proteinuria also had higher prevalence of DM (*p* \< 0.01) and CKD (*p* \< 0.01) ([Table 1](#t1){ref-type="table"}). Charlson index scores were significantly higher among proteinuric patients than those without proteinuria (*p* \< 0.01); Charlson index scores were also higher as the severity of proteinuria increased (*p* \< 0.01). Finally, we observed no differences with regard to systolic, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate between patients with proteinuria and those without. Proteinuric patients had a significantly higher leukocyte count (*p* = 0.04) and serum creatinine (*p* = 0.01) than those without proteinuria, while those with higher proteinuric severity also had higher leukocyte count (*p* \< 0.01) and serum creatinine (*p* = 0.01) ([Table 1](#t1){ref-type="table"}).
Functional status assessment results using BI
---------------------------------------------
Pre-morbid BI scores were available among 82 (60.3%) participants, and there were no significant differences with regard to demographic profiles, any comorbidity, and other clinical features between those with and without pre-morbid data ([supplementary Table](#S1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). The average pre-morbid, on-admission, and on-discharge BI scores in this cohort were 50.4 ± 41.9, 38.6 ± 31.8, and 38.7 ± 35.3, respectively. We found that 50% participants had pre-morbid BI scores higher than 60, while 35.3% and 33.1% participants had on-admission and on-discharge BI scores higher than 60. Those with higher severity of proteinuria on admission also had significantly lower pre-morbid (for none, trace to 1 + , 2 + to higher, 78.9 ± 29.5, 47.2 ± 40.9, and 40.7 ± 44.4, respectively; *p* = 0.02), on-admission (for none, trace to 1 + , 2 + to higher, 60.4 ± 28.1, 37.7 ± 31.4, and 26.5 ± 28.3, respectively; *p* \< 0.01), and on-discharge BI scores (for none, trace to 1 + , 2 + to higher, 70.7 ± 33, 32.1 ± 32.6, and 32.5 ± 31.8, respectively; *p* \< 0.01) ([Fig. 1](#f1){ref-type="fig"}). This inverse relationship between the severity of proteinuria and pre-morbid, on-admission, and on-discharge BI scores remained significant if proteinuria results were further divided into none, trace, 1 + , 2 + , and 3 + (*p* = 0.05, \< 0.01, and \< 0.01 for pre-morbid, on-admission, and on-discharge scores, respectively; [Fig. 1](#f1){ref-type="fig"}).
On further analysis, we found that patients with dipstick proteinuria also had significantly lower pre-morbid BI subscale scores, including those for feeding (*p* = 0.04), grooming (*p* \< 0.01), bathing (*p* = 0.02), bowel (*p* \< 0.01) and bladder continence (*p* \< 0.01), dressing (*p* \< 0.01), walking (*p* = 0.02), and stair-climbing (*p* = 0.01) ([Table 2](#t2){ref-type="table"}). Similarly, patients with dipstick proteinuria also had significantly lower on-admission BI subscale scores, including those for feeding (*p* = 0.01), grooming (*p* \< 0.01), bowel (*p* \< 0.01) and bladder continence (*p* \< 0.01), toileting (*p* \< 0.01), dressing (*p* \< 0.01), transfer (*p* \< 0.01), walking (*p* \< 0.01), and stair-climbing (*p* \< 0.01) ([Table 3](#t3){ref-type="table"}). Patients with dipstick proteinuria also had significantly lower on-discharge BI subscale scores, including those for feeding (*p* \< 0.01), grooming (*p* \< 0.01), bathing (*p* \< 0.01), bowel (*p* \< 0.01) and bladder continence (*p* \< 0.01), toileting (*p* \< 0.01), dressing (*p* \< 0.01), transfer (*p* \< 0.01), walking (*p* \< 0.01), and stair-climbing (*p* \< 0.01) ([Table 4](#t4){ref-type="table"}). Higher severity of proteinuria was also associated with lower BI subscale scores in most scenarios.
Among the participants, the percentage change between pre-morbid and on-admission BI scores was 43.2 ± 35.9%, while that between on-admission and on-discharge BI scores was 45.2 ± 50.1%. Participants with and without proteinuria had similar percentage changes between pre-morbid/on-admission (proteinuric vs. non-proteinuric, 45.1 ± 36.2% vs. 34 ± 35%, *p* = 0.36) and on-admission/on-discharge BI scores (48.5 ± 53.3% vs. 28.8 ± 24.8%, *p* = 0.09). In addition, if dipstick results were divided into none, trace to 1 + , and 2 + to higher, no significant differences were observed among those with different proteinuric severity, with regard to percentage changes between pre-morbid/on-admission BI scores (none vs. trace to 1 + vs. 2 + to higher, 34 ± 35% vs. 43.9 ± 35.4% vs. 47.4 ± 38.4%, *p* = 0.62), or to those between on-admission/on-discharge BI scores (none vs. trace to 1 + vs. 2 + to higher, 28.8 ± 24.8% vs. 48.4 ± 51.4% vs. 48.9 ± 58%, *p* = 0.23). Similarly, if dipstick results were divided into none, trace, 1 + , 2 + , or 3 + , no significant differences were observed with regard to percentage changes between pre-morbid/on-admission BI scores (none vs. trace vs. 1 + vs. 2 + vs. 3 + , 34 ± 35% vs. 52.1 ± 44.4% vs. 40.8 ± 31.9% vs. 41.6 ± 38.7% vs. 53.8 ± 39.3%, *p* = 0.7), or to those between on-admission/on-discharge BI scores (none vs. trace vs. 1 + vs. 2 + vs. 3 + , 28.8 ± 24.8% vs. 38.1 ± 44.2% vs. 54 ± 54.5% vs. 45.8 ± 59.9% vs. 53.7 ± 56.6%, *p* = 0.3).
Regression analyses assessing the relationship between the severity of proteinuria and BI scores during the course of acute medical illnesses
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, we conducted multivariate stepwise regression analyses with backward variable selection, to evaluate the relationship between dipstick proteinuric severity and pre-morbid, on-admission, and on-discharge functional status. After accounting for demographic variables (age and gender), all comorbidities, and laboratory parameters (leukocyte counts, hemoglobin, platelet counts), linear regression analyses with BI scores as the dependent variable showed that participants with higher degree of proteinuria had significantly poorer pre-morbid (*p* = 0.048), on-admission (*p* \< 0.01), and on-discharge functional status (*p* \< 0.01) ([Table 5](#t5){ref-type="table"}). This relationship was independent of baseline DM or CKD status. A sensitivity analysis using an alternative categorization (none, trace, 1 + , 2 + , and 3 + ) similarly showed that the severity of proteinuria was significantly associated with BI score at different scenarios (for on-admission scores, *t* = −3.1, β = −0.24, *p* \< 0.01; for on-discharge scores, *t* = −2.21, β = −0.17, *p* = 0.03). Sensitivity analyses accounting for the presence of acute kidney injury diagnosis on admission, or focusing solely on non-diabetic, non-hypertensive, or non-CKD participants yielded essentially similar results ([Table 5](#t5){ref-type="table"}).
Discussion
==========
In the current study, we found that among a cohort of prospectively enrolled elderly patients admitted for medical illnesses, those with dipstick proteinuria had significantly lower pre-morbid, on-admission, and on-discharge BI scores. Those with a higher degree of proteinuria on admission were more likely to have worse BI scores, and this relationship applied to most subscales of BI. Finally, regression models accounting for demographic profiles, comorbidities, and laboratory data showed that the relationship between proteinuric severity and functional status was independent of age, the presence of DM, CKD, old stroke, and serum creatinine on admission. It is therefore likely that the level of dipstick proteinuric severity can be closely associated with functional status, an important outcome-determining factor for acutely hospitalized elderly patients.
The prevalence of proteinuria (from trace to 2 + and higher) in our study was higher than that reported by others. Population surveys reported that about one-fourth of septuagenarians manifest microalbuminuria[@b11]. Our enrollees had an advanced average age, and around 57% had hypertension, while only 39% and 19% had DM and CKD, respectively. Thus, age-related vascular aging and hypertension-related microalbuminuria might be partially responsible for the higher prevalence of dipstick proteinuria in our study. In addition, the acute illness prompting admission might also play a role in the prevalence of proteinuria on admission. Proteinuria can be a physiologic response to external stressors, such as fever and sepsis, which are common scenarios in acutely hospitalized patients, by affecting renal vascular tone[@b12]. Furthermore, about 40% of our enrolled participants were admitted for community-acquired pneumonia; evidence suggests that bacterial pneumonia, particularly pneumococcal pneumonia, is also associated with the appearance of proteinuria[@b13][@b14]. Nonetheless, sensitivity analyses revealed that the independent relationship between proteinuric severity and BI scores exists even among those without hypertension or DM, and the relationship was borderline significant or those without CKD ([Table 5](#t5){ref-type="table"}). These findings collectively indicate that these comorbidities might not significantly affect our results.
Common approaches for detecting proteinuria include the direct measurement of the urinary protein to creatinine ratio and the urine dipstick strip for semiquantitative measurement of protein. Previous studies have questioned the utility of dipstick proteinuria to predict the actual severity measured by direct protein quantification, especially when the proteinuria is severe or when screening for microalbuminuria is desired[@b15]. Despite its lower sensitivity for microalbuminuria and the potential for underestimating proteinuric severity, dipstick proteinuria still exhibits a strong and graded association with the risk for ESRD and mortality in the general population and those with CKD[@b16][@b17]. In addition, there are reports suggesting that the severity of albuminuria correlated strongly with that of proteinuria, especially among elderly patients, the target population of this study[@b18]. Since the direct measurement of urinary albumin or protein is more expensive than a urine dipstick test and takes longer to obtain results, a urine dipstick for proteinuria might be economically preferable. Furthermore, we discovered an under-recognized but close relationship between dipstick proteinuria and not only pre-morbid functional status, but also that during admission and on discharge in the hospitalized elderly, further lending support to the importance of measuring dipstick proteinuria.
Existing literature rarely addresses the relationship between proteinuria and functional status. Turaj *et al*. reported that non-diabetic stroke patients with microalbuminuria might score lower on the BI, and another group reported similar results in post-stroke patients receiving neurologic rehabilitation[@b19][@b20]. Ovbiagele *et al*. verified these results in stroke patients without known renal disease[@b21]. We further extended their findings by showing that the relationship between proteinuria and functional status was dose-dependent ([Fig. 1](#f1){ref-type="fig"}), independent of CKD status, and was applicable to geriatric patients with or without stroke. There are several factors that could explain our findings. Microalbuminuria is reportedly associated with salt sensitivity, chronic inflammation, and insulin resistance, all of which contribute to endothelial dysfunction and vasculopathy development[@b10]. Microalbuminuria has also been recognized as a subclinical marker for atherosclerosis and microvascular diseases, representing a state of compromised functional or structural integrity of the vasculature[@b20][@b22][@b23]. Consequently, escalating severity of proteinuria could be a surrogate for more severe advanced cerebral small vessel disease and lacunar strokes, contributing to subsequent functional decline over time[@b24]. Heavy proteinuria by dipstick testing also predicts a higher risk of peripheral vascular disease, which has been shown to negatively affect activities of daily living[@b25]. Proteinuria might directly lead to lower functional status by contributing to hypercoagulability and the development of ischemic stroke and/or lower extremity venous thromboembolism[@b26]. Finally, proteinuria might serve as a marker for the overall severity of illness on admission, and is inversely associated with functional status after discharge[@b27][@b28].
Past reports indicate that diseases with higher severity lead to more prominent functional decline[@b29]. Our findings suggest that dipstick proteinuria might be a token of the combination of an individual's functional status before an acute illness occurs and that during the acute illness as well. More importantly, there was no obvious association between the severity of proteinuria and functional decline observed during admission, further exemplifying our proposition that the independent relationship between proteinuria and functional status is present regardless of the acute illness *per se*. Functional status, presenting as BI scores, and proteinuria might share other pathophysiologic connections, as suggested above.
Our study has several limitations. The number of enrolled cases is not large, which might limit the applicability of our findings. This may also explain the borderline significant findings in our sensitivity analysis focusing on non-CKD participants. In addition, pre-morbid BI scores were available in about 60% participants, significantly limiting the generalizability of our findings to other elderly. However, if results with statistical significance can be discovered after analyzing the current cohort, we believe that the relationship between functional status and the severity of proteinuria we observed truly exists. Studies using larger cohort are needed for the validation of our findings. The use of BI alone might not fully capture the spectrum of functional status assessment for these patients, but the repeated verification of individual BI scores in this study and the uniform and standardized urine collection procedures increases the credibility of our results. Judging from the close relationship between the severity of proteinuria and pre-morbid, on-admission, and on-discharge functional status we observed, it would be prudent to pay more attention to older in-patients with severe proteinuria found during admission, as these patients are at higher risk of manifesting poorer function status even at discharge. Finally, unmeasured confounding factors of pre-morbid status and during admission might exist in this study, limiting the interpretation of our results.
Conclusion
==========
We found a close relationship between dipstick proteinuria severity and functional status before, during, and after acute medical illnesses among older adults. Although measuring dipstick proteinuria levels cannot replace the practice of geriatric functional assessment, positive dipstick proteinuria still serves to alert us that the patient can be at higher risk of having poorer function before and after the acute insults. Formal functional status evaluation is recommended for these patients, in order to facilitate subsequent treatment planning for functional recovery.
Additional Information
======================
**How to cite this article:** Chao, C.-T. *et al*. Dipstick proteinuria level is significantly associated with pre-morbid and in-hospital functional status among hospitalized older adults: a preliminary study. *Sci. Rep.* **7**, 42030; doi: 10.1038/srep42030 (2017).
**Publisher\'s note:** Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Material {#S1}
======================
###### Supplementary Table
We are grateful to the assistance provided by the staffs of the Second Core Laboratory of National Taiwan University Hospital in the current study. In addition, we appreciate the assistance provided by other members of the COGENT study group. This study is financially supported by NTUH grant (NO. 105-N3206) and Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST-105-2314-B-002-176-).
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
**Author Contributions** Chao, Tsai, Huang (conception and design of this study), Chao, Tsai, Chiang, Huang, Hung (collect data, analysis, and result interpretation), Chao, Tsai, Chiang, Huang, Hung (draft the article).
{#f1}
###### Clinical features of the elderly participants.
Clinical features Negative (n = 23) Trace to 1+ (n = 77) 2+ to higher (n = 36) *P1 value* Positive (n = 113) *P2 value*
------------------------------------------ ------------------- ---------------------- ----------------------- ------------ -------------------- ------------
***Demographic profiles***
Age (years) 79.1 ± 9.9 81.3 ± 8.1 80.4 ± 7.2 *0.52* 80.1 ± 7.8 *0.31*
Gender (male %) 10 (43) 38 (49) 20 (56) *0.66* 58 (51) *0.5*
***Comorbidities (%)***
Diabetes mellitus 1 (4) 33 (43) 19 (53) *\<0.01* 52 (46) *\<0.01*
Hypertension 10 (43) 47 (61) 21 (58) *0.33* 68 (60) *0.14*
Cirrhosis 2 (9) 4 (5) 2 (6) *0.82* 6 (5) *0.53*
Coronary artery disease 2 (9) 3 (4) 6 (17) *0.07* 9 (8) *0.91*
Old myocardial infarction 0 (0) 1 (1) 0 (0) *0.69* 1 (1) *0.65*
Heart failure 2 (9) 16 (21) 5 (14) *0.35* 21 (19) *0.25*
Peripheral vascular disease 0 (0) 9 (12) 0 (0) *0.02* 9 (8) *0.16*
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 3 (13) 8 (10) 4 (11) *0.94* 12 (11) *0.74*
Chronic kidney disease 0 (0) 13 (17) 13 (36) *\<0.01* 26 (23) *0.01*
Rheumatologic disorders 0 (0) 4 (5) 0 (0) *0.21* 4 (4) *0.36*
Malignancy 5 (22) 21 (27) 9 (25) *0.86* 30 (27) *0.63*
Peptic ulcer disease 2 (9) 4 (5) 6 (17) *0.14* 10 (9) *0.98*
Old stroke 4 (17) 18 (23) 6 (17) *0.66* 24 (21) *0.68*
Dementia or Parkinsonism 0 (0) 15 (19) 4 (11) *0.06* 19 (17) *0.03*
*Charlson Comorbidity Index* 6.2 ± 1.9 7.9 ± 2.4 8 ± 2.2 *\<0.01* 7.9 ± 2.4 *\<0.01*
***Vital signs on admission***
Systolic blood pressure (mmHg) 141.7 ± 44.8 136.4 ± 36.1 130 ± 39.7 *0.49* 134.3 ± 37.2 *0.41*
Diastolic blood pressure (mmHg) 80.1 ± 24.3 74 ± 19.6 72.7 ± 20.8 *0.37* 73.6 ± 19.9 *0.17*
Heart rate (/minute) 93.7 ± 16.8 98.9 ± 21.2 93.9 ± 22.3 *0.38* 97.3 ± 21.6 *0.45*
***Laboratory parameters on admission***
Leukocyte count (K/μL) 9.8 ± 6.2 11.7 ± 5.8 15.1 ± 6.7 *\<0.01* 12.8 ± 6.3 *0.04*
Hemoglobin (mg/dL) 11.2 ± 2.5 12.6 ± 11.5 10.5 ± 2.7 *0.49* 11.9 ± 9.6 *0.74*
Platelet count (K/μL) 228 ± 117 232 ± 95 208 ± 110 *0.51* 225 ± 100 *0.88*
Serum creatinine (mg/dL) 0.8 ± 0.3 1.5 ± 1.5 2.3 ± 1.8 *0.01* 1.8 ± 1.6 *0.01*
Serum sodium (meq/L) 134 ± 4 132 ± 6.9 134 ± 7.8 *0.36* 133 ± 7.2 *0.59*
Serum potassium (meq/L) 4.6 ± 2.1 4.5 ± 1.1 4.6 ± 1 *0.09* 4.5 ± 1.1 *0.33*
Data are expressed as mean ± standard deviation for continuous variables, and number (percentage) for categorical variables.
*P1*: comparison between participants with different severity of proteinuria.
*P2*: comparison between participants with and without proteinuria.
###### Details of pre-morbid Barthel index subscales among participants with different proteinuric severity.
Barthel index subscales Negative (n = 13) Trace to 1+ (n = 46) 2+ to higher (n = 23) *P1 value* Positive (n = 69) *P2 value*
---------------------------- ------------------- ---------------------- ----------------------- ------------ ------------------- ------------
Feeding 8.5 ± 3.2 6 ± 4.5 5 ± 4.8 *0.08* 5.7 ± 4.6 *0.04*
Grooming 4.2 ± 1.9 2.3 ± 2.5 2 ± 2.5 *0.02* 2.2 ± 2.5 * \< 0.01*
Bathing 3.1 ± 2.5 1.6 ± 2.4 1.5 ± 2.4 *0.07* 1.6 ± 2.3 *0.02*
Bowel continence 8.8 ± 3 4.9 ± 4.7 4.8 ± 5.1 *0.02* 4.9 ± 4.8 * \< 0.01*
Bladder continence 8.5 ± 3.2 4.3 ± 4.4 3.5 ± 4.4 *\<0.01* 4.1 ± 4.4 *\<0.01*
Toileting 8.1 ± 3.3 4.3 ± 4.5 3.7 ± 4.8 *0.35* 4.1 ± 4.6 *0.47*
Dressing 8.1 ± 3.8 4.6 ± 4.3 3.7 ± 4.3 *0.01* 4.3 ± 4.3 *\<0.01*
Transfer from bed to chair 11.5 ± 5.2 8.5 ± 6.5 6.7 ± 7.2 *0.11* 7.9 ± 6.7 *0.07*
Walking on level surface 11.2 ± 5.5 6.8 ± 6.9 5.4 ± 6.2 *0.04* 6.4 ± 6.7 *0.02*
Stair climbing 6.9 ± 4.3 3.8 ± 4.5 3 ± 4.2 *0.04* 3.6 ± 4.4 *0.01*
*P1*: comparison between participants with different severity of proteinuria.
*P2*: comparison between participants with and without proteinuria.
###### Details of on-admission Barthel index subscales among participants with different proteinuric severity.
Barthel index subscales Negative (n = 23) Trace to 1+ (n = 77) 2+ to higher (n = 36) *P1 value* Positive (n = 113) *P2 value*
---------------------------- ------------------- ---------------------- ----------------------- ------------ -------------------- ------------
Feeding 6.8 ± 3.7 4.4 ± 4 4.2 ± 3.2 *0.04* 4.3 ± 3.8 *0.01*
Grooming 2.3 ± 2.6 1 ± 2 0.5 ± 1.5 *0.01* 0.8 ± 1.9 *\<0.01*
Bathing 1.3 ± 2.2 0.7 ± 1.9 0.5 ± 1.5 *0.37* 0.6 ± 1.8 *0.17*
Bowel continence 8.8 ± 2.8 6 ± 4.3 6 ± 4.4 *0.03* 6 ± 4.3 *\<0.01*
Bladder continence 8.5 ± 2.9 6.2 ± 4.3 4.5 ± 4.8 *\<0.01* 5.6 ± 4.5 *\<0.01*
Toileting 6 ± 3.5 3.6 ± 3.3 3.5 ± 3.3 *0.02* 3.6 ± 3.3 *\<0.01*
Dressing 6.5 ± 3.3 3.6 ± 3.6 3.2 ± 3.1 *\<0.01* 3.4 ± 3.4 *\<0.01*
Transfer from bed to chair 9 ± 5.8 5.2 ± 5.2 4.8 ± 4.8 *0.01* 5.1 ± 5.1 *\<0.01*
Walking on level surface 7.8 ± 5 4.6 ± 5.5 3 ± 4.7 *\<0.01* 4.1 ± 5.2 *\<0.01*
Stair climbing 4.8 ± 3.4 2 ± 2.5 1.3 ± 2.2 *\<0.01* 1.8 ± 2.4 *\<0.01*
*P1*: comparison between participants with different severity of proteinuria.
*P2*: comparison between participants with and without proteinuria.
###### Details of on-discharge Barthel index subscales among participants with different proteinuric severity.
Barthel index subscales Negative (n = 23) Trace to 1+ (n = 77) 2+ to higher (n = 36) *P1 value* Positive (n = 113) *P2 value*
---------------------------- ------------------- ---------------------- ----------------------- ------------ -------------------- ------------
Feeding 7.9 ± 3.5 3.4 ± 3.7 4 ± 4.2 *\<0.01* 3.6 ± 3.9 *\<0.01*
Grooming 2.9 ± 2.5 0.7 ± 1.8 0.9 ± 1.9 *\<0.01* 0.8 ± 1.8 *\<0.01*
Bathing 2.1 ± 2.5 0.4 ± 1.3 0.6 ± 1.6 *\<0.01* 0.4 ± 1.4 *\<0.01*
Bowel continence 9.2 ± 2.5 4.5 ± 4.4 5.4 ± 4.3 *\<0.01* 4.8 ± 4.4 *\<0.01*
Bladder continence 9.2 ± 2.5 4.3 ± 4.4 4.7 ± 5 *\<0.01* 4.5 ± 4.6 *\<0.01*
Toileting 7.1 ± 3.5 3 ± 3.5 3 ± 3.5 *\<0.01* 3 ± 3.5 *\<0.01*
Dressing 7.4 ± 3.5 2.8 ± 3.4 2.9 ± 3.5 *\<0.01* 2.8 ± 3.4 *\<0.01*
Transfer from bed to chair 11.6 ± 4.7 4.6 ± 5.4 5.3 ± 5.5 *\<0.01* 4.8 ± 5.4 *\<0.01*
Walking on level surface 11.6 ± 4.7 4.1 ± 5.4 4.1 ± 5.5 *\<0.01* 4.1 ± 5.4 *\<0.01*
Stair climbing 6.1 ± 3.6 1.9 ± 3.1 1.9 ± 3.2 *\<0.01* 1.9 ± 3.1 *\<0.01*
*P1*: comparison between participants with different severity of proteinuria.
*P2*: comparison between participants with and without proteinuria.
###### Results from multivariate regression analyses, with pre-morbid, on-admission, or on-discharge BI scores as the dependent variables.
Results *t* value β coefficient *p* value
------------------------------------------------ ----------- --------------- -----------
***All participants***
*Model 1 -- Pre-morbid BI scores (n = 82)*
Hypertension 2.03 0.24 0.047
Old stroke −2.15 −0.32 0.04
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −2.02 −0.27 0.048
*Model 2 -- On-admission BI scores (n = 136)*
Old stroke −3.44 −0.26 \<0.01
Dementia or Parkinsonism −4.76 −0.37 \<0.01
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −3.85 −0.29 \<0.01
*Model 3 -- On-discharge BI scores (n = 136)*
Malignancy −3.21 −0.26 \<0.01
Old stroke −2.66 −0.21 \<0.01
Dementia or Parkinsonism −3.14 −0.25 \<0.01
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −3.62 −0.28 \<0.01
***Non-DM participants***
*Model 4 -- Pre-morbid BI scores (n = 82)*
Hypertension 2.86 0.35 \<0.01
Old stroke −2.29 −0.28 0.03
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −2.9 −0.36 \<0.01
*Model 5 -- On-admission BI scores (n = 136)*
Malignancy −3.06 −0.29 \<0.01
Old stroke −2.45 −0.23 0.02
Dementia or Parkinsonism −3.62 −0.34 \<0.01
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −3.34 −0.32 \<0.001
*Model 6 -- On-discharge BI scores (n = 136)*
Malignancy −2.42 −0.24 0.02
Peptic ulcer 2.63 0.26 0.01
Dementia or Parkinsonism −3.15 −0.3 \<0.01
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −3.03 −0.3 \<0.01
***Non-hypertensive participants***
*Model 7 -- Pre-morbid BI scores (n = 82)*
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −2.08 −0.36 0.047
*Model 8 -- On-admission BI scores (n = 136)*
Old stroke −2.07 −0.24 0.04
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −2.66 −0.32 0.01
*Model 9 -- On-discharge BI scores (n = 136)*
COPD 2.76 0.3 0.01
Charlson index scores −3.01 −0.34 \<0.01
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −2.51 −0.28 0.02
***Non-CKD participants***
*Model 10 -- Pre-morbid BI scores (n = 82)*
Hypertension 2.45 0.28 0.02
Old stroke −2.44 −0.28 0.02
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −1.83 −0.21 0.07
*Model 11 -- On-admission BI scores (n = 136)*
Malignancy −2.03 −0.17 0.045
Old stroke −2.89 −0.24 \<0.01
Dementia or Parkinsonism −3.96 −0.34 \<0.01
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −3.37 −0.28 \<0.01
*Model 12 -- On-discharge BI scores (n = 136)*
Age −2.02 −0.18 0.046
Malignancy −2.91 −0.26 \<0.01
Peptic ulcer 2.07 0.19 0.04
Dementia or Parkinsonism −2.74 −0.24 \<0.01
Proteinuria on dipstick tests −2.7 −0.24 \<0.01
Variables in all models included age, gender, all comorbidities, Charlson index, and vital signs, and laboratory profiles.
BI, Barthel index; CKD, chronic kidney disease; COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; DM, diabetes mellitus.
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | PubMed Central |
Q:
Keep XPtr for multiple sessions
I have a R function that creates a Primebase Cpp Class and then returns a XPtr<Primebase> pointer.
As the construction process takes a significant amount of time I'd like to save the instance of Primebase to my session, so that the next time I open up R I can directly access the Primebase instance.
Unfortunately the underlying Object gets deleted as soon as I close R and the XPtr turns into a null pointer.
Is there a way to prevent R from deleting the object or any other way to save the underlying object?
A:
The C++ object that is managed by Rcpp::Xptr is destroyed when the R session ends. If you want to save the object, you have to serialize it. One nice possibility is offered by the Rcereal package. The following example uses a trivial Primebase class with an artificial sleep in one constructor to simulate heavy processing during the construction. After checking the object's content, it is serialized and destroyed. Afterwards the object is deserialized and wrapped into an Xptr again. Note that deserialization is much cheaper than construction:
#include <Rcpp.h>
// [[Rcpp::plugins("cpp11")]]
// [[Rcpp::depends(Rcereal)]]
#include <cereal/archives/binary.hpp>
#include <chrono>
#include <fstream>
#include <thread>
class Primebase
{
private:
int x;
public:
Primebase() : x{0} {};
Primebase(int x_) : x{x_} {std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::seconds(1));};
int answer() {return x;}
template <class Archive>
void serialize(Archive & ar)
{
ar(x);
}
};
// [[Rcpp::export]]
Rcpp::XPtr<Primebase> create(int x) {
Primebase* instance = new Primebase(x);
return Rcpp::XPtr<Primebase>(instance);
}
// [[Rcpp::export]]
int answer(Rcpp::XPtr<Primebase> xptr) {
return xptr.get()->answer();
}
// [[Rcpp::export]]
void mySerialize(Rcpp::XPtr<Primebase> xptr, std::string filename) {
std::ofstream os(filename, std::ios::binary);
cereal::BinaryOutputArchive archive(os);
archive(*xptr.get());
}
// [[Rcpp::export]]
Rcpp::XPtr<Primebase> myDeserialize(std::string filename) {
std::ifstream is(filename, std::ios::binary);
cereal::BinaryInputArchive archive(is);
Primebase* instance = new Primebase;
archive(*instance);
return Rcpp::XPtr<Primebase>(instance);
}
/*** R
system.time(xptr <- create(42))
answer(xptr)
mySerialize(xptr, "test.cereal")
rm(xptr)
exists("xptr")
system.time(xptr <-myDeserialize("test.cereal"))
answer(xptr)
*/
Output:
> system.time(xptr <- create(42))
user system elapsed
0.000 0.000 1.001
> answer(xptr)
[1] 42
> mySerialize(xptr, "test.cereal")
> rm(xptr)
> exists("xptr")
[1] FALSE
> system.time(xptr <-myDeserialize("test.cereal"))
user system elapsed
0 0 0
> answer(xptr)
[1] 42
References:
Cereal documentation
Rcpp gallery
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | StackExchange |
Friday afternoon saw clashes between protesters and Donald Trump supporters outside a Trump rally in St. Louis, MO, which basically makes this a day ending in “y,” but with media attention mounting over the increased violence and tense atmosphere at Trump rallies, his supporters are under a microscope.
It can be a tough sale to hang the actions of random supporters on a candidate, but Trump has repeatedly given his seal of approval, and even incitement, from the stage, so he bears some responsibility for this sort of behavior. Raw Story has a roundup of social media video clips of various clashes outside today’s rally, but there were a couple that stood out.
For example, this guy, who has managed to find the most Trumpian way possible to praise Jesus:
Ayy, fuck Islam, Allah is a whore, Jesus is the most high God, and you bitches are done! (makes gun-fingers) Fuck you!
I guess he didn’t want to be politically correct.
Also of note is this clip in which a middle-aged Trump supporter calls a young woman (who says she’s 16 years old) “bitch,” and a younger Trumper calls her “whore”:
Hard to believe that anyone would get assaulted at rallies with these sorts of attendees pic.twitter.com/ShhTKouFwL — Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) March 11, 2016
Aside from the content, this clip is noteworthy because it wasn’t shot by some liberal counter-protester, it was shot by Lachlan Markay of the conservative Free Beacon. You don’t shoot crowd footage unless you’re looking for this kind of thing, which demonstrates the strange bedfellows that Trump’s politics have made when a conservative paper is dredging the Republican frontrunner’s crowds for lunatics to show. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
Saturday, 24 February 2018
This Tory UK Government ... The Railways Con
The East Coast line was in public ownership and everything I have read confirms it did far better than when run by a private franchisee. Yet rules are rules and so Chris Grayling dutifully returns it to Virgin & Stagecoach only for them to say them need a massive bung out of taxpayers ie OUR money in order to run it at a sufficient profit.
Surely I'm right in saying that if this any other private business they would have gone bust so will the minister for Transport now make the economically sound business decision and give it back into the hands of the public one more? Boy, do I hope so!Les | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Q:
jquery get select option value and then add parameter
I'm trying to add on to the value "&fullpage=true"
<select name="navMenu" onchange="go(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value)">
<option value="-">Select</option>
<option value="page.html&nyo=0" class="ccbnLnk">All</option>
<option value="page.html&nyo=0" class="ccbnLnk">IR</option>
<option value="page.html&nyo=0" class="ccbnLnk">Product</option>
</select>
I'm guessing it would be something like this?
$('select option').attr(val + "&fullpage=true");
A:
You were close, but you needed to iterate over all the option elements and then make the change like:
$('select option').each(function () {
$(this).val($(this).val() + "&fullpage=true");
});
jsFiddle example
| tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | StackExchange |
Dryers are not your bra’s friend. One of my favorite bras recently became a casualty to the violent tumbles of the dryer. The under wire now protrudes straight into the side of my chest, which makes long usage impossible. I feel like I have struggled with bras since I was first introduced to them many years ago. Cups pucker, bands pinch, the beautiful lacy ones are far too expensive, and the soft practical ones are just that; practical. The material is often flimsy, and the sturdy ones make me feel like they are trying to hide away instead of showcase. I remember in high-school splurging on a Victoria’s Secret bra, and within days of buying it the shoulder strapped had snapped off from the bra in a frayed mess. I should note that I am not particularly busty. The issue is not with me, it is with the bras I buy. Even sports bras, which are supposed to be the epitome of support, leave me wanting for more.
Maybe the issue is I am buying bras the wrong size, or that I am buying cheap products. However, I feel like bras also have a long way to go. The current measurement is supposed to be standardize, but I find that my cup size and band width varies based on the brand. The inconsistency is irritating. The percentage of women who choose to go braless is anywhere from 5%-25%, so while the majority do choose to wear bras, many have decided to forgo the ill-fitting garments.
How do you feel about your bra? Love it? Hate it? Leave your opinion in the comments below. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | OpenWebText2 |
"not monitored" status while monit tries to start service
From:
kzajac
Subject:
"not monitored" status while monit tries to start service
Date:
Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:53:28 +0200
User-agent:
Artegence Roundcube Webmail/0.4
What's the reason for changing status of "monitoring status" and
"status" to "not monitored" when monit tries to start service? When
service timeout to start "status" is changed to "execution failed" and
"monitoring status" to "monitored". on the text check status is again
changed to "not monitored" when monit tries to start service.
In such case impossible do distinguish when monitoring of service was
disabled on purpose and when monit try do run it. | tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small | Pile-CC |
Q:
64 bit enum in C++?
Is there a way to have a 64 bit enum in C++? Whilst refactoring some code I came across bunch of #defines which would be better as an enum, but being greater than 32 bit causes the compiler to error.
For some reason I thought the following might work:
enum MY_ENUM : unsigned __int64
{
LARGE_VALUE = 0x1000000000000000,
};
A:
I don't think that's possible with C++98. The underlying representation of enums is up to the compiler. In that case, you are better off using:
const __int64 LARGE_VALUE = 0x1000000000000000L;
As of C++11, it is possible to use enum classes to specify the base type of the enum:
enum class MY_ENUM : unsigned __int64 {
LARGE_VALUE = 0x1000000000000000ULL
};
In addition enum classes introduce a new name scope. So instead of referring to LARGE_VALUE, you would reference MY_ENUM::LARGE_VALUE.
A:
C++11 supports this, using this syntax:
enum class Enum2 : __int64 {Val1, Val2, val3};
A:
The current draft of so called C++0x, it is n3092 says in 7.2 Enumeration declarations, paragraph 6:
It is implementation-defined which
integral type is used as the
underlying type except that the
underlying type shall not be larger
than int unless the value of an
enumerator cannot fit in an int or
unsigned int.
The same paragraph also says:
If no integral type can represent all
the enumerator values, the enumeration
is ill-formed.
My interpretation of the part unless the value of an enumerator cannot fit in an int or unsigned int is that it's perfectly valid and safe to initialise enumerator with 64-bit integer value as long as there is 64-bit integer type provided in a particular C++ implementation.
For example:
enum MyEnum
{
Undefined = 0xffffffffffffffffULL
};
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