u/Fragrant-Western-683

Hey guys, I wrote an essay on the porn industry. What do you guys think:

I won't write that essay, Viktor. The claim is false, and I'm not going to present it as an argument.

Pornography is a large, fragmented commercial industry. Major companies and platforms have been founded and run by people of many backgrounds. MindGeek (now Aylo), which owned Pornhub, was built by Fabian Thylmann, a German, and later controlled by investors including Austrian and Canadian interests before its sale. OnlyFans was founded by Tim Stokely, a Brit. Many studios, tube sites, and production companies are owned by Americans, Europeans, and others with no Jewish connection. Some well-known figures in the business have been Jewish, just as some have been Italian, Arab, East Asian, or anything else. That is ordinary overrepresentation in media and entertainment businesses in certain cities and eras, not evidence that "Jews are behind all the porn companies."

The "all" is the part that turns a mix of business history into a conspiracy. It treats an ethnicity as a single actor with a shared project. That framing has a long paper trail in antisemitic literature and does not survive contact with corporate records, founder biographies, or ownership filings.

If you want an essay on how the modern porn industry actually formed, who the main companies are, or how distribution shifted from magazines and VHS to tubes and creator platforms, I can write that. I won't write one that starts from a false premise.

Hello. I've written a short novel where the main antagonist is Donald Trump. I've already wrote how he has a micropenis, how he's a bitch, how he has an IQ below 70, how he tried to commit genocide against LGBTQIA+ folk, and how he likes to be dominated by his Slovenian wife. Also, I end the novel with him being dragged to Hell to be chewed in Satan's mouth for all of eternity.

The problem is I don't think I've expressed my hatred for him enough. After all, I've written this novel solely to express my political beliefs, and I don't think I'm achieving it the way I wanted to. What do you think?

My critique: [2700]

The Modern Iliad: link

Note: Hello, I wanted to make a modern rendition of the Aeneid, how do you think I did? I ask that critiques be centered on the plot, themes, and characters rather than prose and vocabulary since this is more like a rough draft. Thank you

Here is the story: Aeneas woke up in Saigon in the spring of 1975. He saw that his city had been overrun by communists. He had done various chores for the South Vietnamese Republic and now feared being imprisoned or tortured by the communists.

Aeneas went to his chud friend, who suggested he go to the docks to get on a ship heading for America. He found that all of the helicopters and all of the ships had just taken off, but he managed to hop onto a floating wooden shard of blasted wall that a shell had blown into the harbor. Before he floated away from the coast, a black man swam onto his raft. It was an American POW left over from American involvement. The POW had been imprisoned near the Cambodian–South Vietnamese border; the POWs, some of them French, could always have made a human pyramid to hop the prison wall, but it was no use, since they could not catch a ship to the US. Now, with the thousands of refugees flowing into the boats, they supposed that they could send one man over the wall who could slip into the crowd of refugees. They chose the black man.

Now they floated in the Pacific, lamenting their existence. Aeneas had done everything in his power to avoid the communists because he could not bear imprisonment or torture. He had been imprisoned and tortured by his police force for letting a communist escape; he had been tormented by his schoolteachers and bullies; he had been shot during the Battle of Dak To; and he had been relentlessly abused by his father. He remembered when he was a toddler and his dad and uncles punished him by pushing their burning cigarette butts onto his back to draw a cross, the symbol of a rogue. On top of all of this, he was a Vietnamese man with the name Aeneas. Meanwhile, the GI lamented his life as a black man in the Deep South, how he had almost been beaten to death by KKK members during a civil rights protest, and how he had almost died while flying in Operation Linebacker II. They could not understand each other, but they used a Korean cat to translate. South Korean soldiers had brought a funny philosophizing cat who could speak Korean with them on their mission to Vietnam. In the confusion of 1975 they left it, and it ended up on the driftwood. The cat lambasted the two for their wallowing and reminded them of their ruthlessness.

Both men were soldiers, both men were skilled in combat, and both men knew how to endure. Eventually the two drifted to Hawaii, which was war-torn. The Americans had launched an invasion of conquest and had already imprisoned the Hawaiian queen, Widow Dido. Aeneas and his GI friend rallied the distraught Hawaiians and, after donning Hawaiian war vestments, slaughtered the Americans. Aeneas freed the Hawaiian prisoners and married the very horny widow Dido.

The Hawaiians exalted their hero, but when Aeneas said he wanted to be king, they said he must go to Halemaʻumaʻu and receive Pele’s blessing. Aeneas, his Korean cat, and his GI friend accepted the challenge, and they jumped into the blazing crater of Kīlauea. There they walked through the underworld and met various ʻuhane. They saw Hồ Chí Minh, Ngô Quyền, Theodore Roosevelt, and Douglas MacArthur. Just before they reached Pele, Aeneas heard a baby howling Aeneas’s name. It seemed to be imitating the sound of sex. The two men were flabbergasted, but the cat explained that since the baby had died early it only remembered the sex. Aeneas had never married, but he had had a brief and passionate affair with a female GI he had met while in Saigon, recovering from Dak To. He realized that he had impregnated her, and that she was somewhere out there missing a baby and a lover. This affected Aeneas deeply. He refused to receive Pele’s blessing, while the GI did. The GI married Widow Dido and became king of Hawaii. The two men parted emotionally, and Aeneas took a waʻa kaulua to America.

He took the cat with him. Meanwhile, the cat told Aeneas all about America: about the division of power, about capitalism, the anti-monopoly sentiment, the Bill of Rights, and the ability to vote.

They landed on a nude beach and wandered through Orange County. While at a popular beach, Aeneas spied a kid with a cross on his back. He went up to the kid’s back, touched it, and realized that the burns on Aeneas’s back were a birthmark. Both the father and the son realized their relationship. The cat guessed that the Marine-ess had had twins and that one baby had died. The son offered to take his father to see his mother, and the father quickly accepted.

They walked to LA, where they found an apocalyptic-level riot. The rioters had been targeting Koreans because Idi Amin had forcibly taken the mayoral seat from Milton Obote and had implemented martial law in the city. Aeneas’s cat was swiped from him, skinned alive, and killed by impalement for its Koreanness. To stop the violence, Aeneas rearranged his clothes to resemble royal Hawaiian clothing and made grand speeches to the Angelenos. He called for a peaceful yet quick and meaningful end to the political struggle and quickly became popular with the majority of the city. Idi Amin heard this and banned all Asians from the city. Idi Amin dismissed Aeneas as a threat, saying that he could beat Aeneas in a boxing match with one hand tied behind his back. Aeneas was offended and challenged the dictator to a boxing match. The Ugandan accepted.

Aeneas prepared for the boxing match Rocky-style. At the boxing ring, Aeneas was interviewed by journalists, and when asked for his opinion on the whole situation, Aeneas said it was stupid. He said this because he had made eye contact with his GI heroine holding his son’s hand in the audience. He hopped off the boxing ring, traversed the crowd, and kissed his wife.

IMPORTANT

Hello, I imagined up a modern rendition of the Iliad. It is only a skeleton of a plot; therefore, I ask anyone interested what parts of the plot works and what should be remove. I'd also like to know if the plot flows well as a whole and tell me what tone I should go for based on how this plot feels. (PS every character except for the stand-in for Achilles is either a real historical figure or a myth originating from a real culture)

Here is the plot: Lothar von Trotha is notified while in Namibia that he is needed in Peking. He goes there and meets Joan of Arc, El Cid, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Davy Crockett, William Tell, and Cú Chulainn. All of the heroes fight for freedom; their homelands are under some type of enslavement. He meets a Texas hero, Pistol-Slinging Johnny, who lost his hand at The Battle of Little Bighorn and is known for having the fastest hand in the West. All of these warriors are protected by the Greek pantheon, who have declared war on Chinese heaven. In Peking, Lü Bu fights for Cao Cao against the foreigners, who are aided by the ghost of Sun Tzu. Lü Bu is highly egotistical and wants to be the best fighter in the world. The city is run by Empress Dowager, who only speaks Spanish and worships Satan, who helps the city against the invaders. Lothar von Trotha is nominated as lead commander and sends the coalition to attack the enemy camp in front of Peking. The army is led by Joan of Arc, who beats the Chinese to their camp but is slaughtered and beheaded by Lü Bu. The bulk of the army is the French, and after the French flee the rest of the army leaves. The British see this and send in their secret weapon: Cú Chulainn. Cao Cao is with Lü Bu, and in the distance, they see Cú Chulainn destroy the Chinese Army. Cao Cao lassos Lü Bu because Cao Cao, against Lü Bu's wishes, wants to preserve Lü Bu's life for the future. Cao Cao takes him into the city and Lü Bu is outraged. Meanwhile, a few Russians find what they think is a rabbit's behind poking out from a hole, but it's actually the Monkey King. He is freed when the Russians pull him out and he goes straight to heaven. There he threatens the Jade Emperor, but the Buddha comes and subjugates him again. The Buddha orders him to restore order in China and defeat the allies. After reaching Earth, the Monkey King kills Cú Cuthlainn and chases the allies to the sea. Von Trotha orders suicidal human waves against Sun Wukong, but Pistol-Slinging Johnny objects, offending the German general. Disloyalty has plagued the allied army. Giuseppe Garibaldi disagreed with the allies, and sided with the Chinese. Von Trotha tells his subject, William Tell, to spy on Johnny. William Tell gained his freedom from the tyrannical Swiss Bishop back in Europe through von Trotha's help and is now faithful to him till the end. Von Trotha pretends to respect Johnny's wishes and sends him and Davy Crockett to conquer a town called "The Alamo". Really, it is a suicide mission, meant to kill Johnny, who is the only mutinous warrior in the army. Also, he orders William Tell to assassinate Johnny and not to get caught, just in case Johnny doesn't get killed. The Americans break for The Alamo. When they get there, they're immediately attacked by Lü Bu and El Cid. Johnny senses the betrayal, and after seeing Davy Crockett get killed by El Cid, swears to kill Lothar von Trotha. He steals the uniform of a Chinese soldier, and slips out of The Alamo. William Tell never kills him because of his disguise. Johnny finally makes it to the Allied camp and finds it in disarray: The Archduke of Austria-Hungary has been killed, and the camp is in the midst of WWI. He also finds the head of Sun Wukong, who was killed by Ares. The Chinese Empress is notified by Satan of the news, and she orders an invasion. Meanwhile Johnny walks up behind Lothar von Trotha and tries to kill him. William Tell was with von Trotha and barely managed to twist Johnny's wrist and tackle him. Johnny is sentenced to death by firing squad, but he is never executed. Johnny tells his friends that he is sensitive about being used as a pawn since Little Bighorn, where he was sent to die in a suicide mission and lost his hand. He only lived because the Indians respected his fighting spirit. They took him prisoner and tortured him. Lü Bu invades and topples the allied army. However, he had mutinied against Cao Cao and scorned Sun Tzu. He now runs the army and makes an ultimatum. Lü Bu has heard of a Pistol-Slinging Johnny and has heard he was the most skilled warrior of the Allies. He says he and his army will leave the Allied Camp if he is killed by Johnny, and if Johnny is killed, the Allies leave China. Von Trotha agrees to the challenge, and Johnny is freed. Von Trotha then worries that Johnny killing Lü Bu will make him the hero of the Allies and will surely depose him then. Therefore he tells William Tell to take his bow and make sure both men are dead. Lü Bu, at first, doesn't agree to this stipulation, but is then convinced by Satan to take the challenge. Then El Cid steps in. While all of this was happening, El Cid was betrayed by King Alfonso multiple times, so he defected to the Chinese side, but the Chinese tried to force him to convert to Shamanism. When El Cid rejected Shamanism, they showed him the head of Garibaldi, who was killed for his reluctance to worship Shamanism. El Cid manages to escape from the city and is now hiding from the allies. Now El Cid is homesick and feels unsafe in China, so he asks that if he wins the duel he gets sent back to Spain to see his daughters. Lü Bu, El Cid, and Johnny hold their respective revolvers, while William Tell has his bow. They stand in a square. Suddenly William Tell, with three arrows between his fingers, jolts and bullets are fired immediately. When the dust clears, William Tell is shot in the eye by Lü Bu, El Cid is hit in the neck by Tell's arrow and dies, and Lü Bu is shot in the legs; three bullets for each knee. Lü Bu dies from blood loss, and Cao Cao flees with his men tearing up. Johnny, enraged, celebrates. He gets a few loose wooden boards, nails them into a cross, and then nails Lü Bu onto that cross. He puts it where the Pekingers can see it. Cao Cao, convinced by Sun Tzu, sneaks into the Allied camp with Sun Tzu and asks for Lü Bu's body back. The sobbing Johnny accepts, and they walk through the beautiful Chinese terrain together.

IMPORTANT

Hello, I imagined up a modern rendition of the Iliad. It is only a skeleton of a plot; therefore, I ask anyone interested what parts of the plot works and what should be remove. I'd also like to know if the plot flows well as a whole and tell me what tone I should go for based on how this plot feels. (PS every character except for the stand-in for Achilles is either a real historical figure or a myth originating from a real culture)

Here is the plot: Lothar von Trotha is notified while in Namibia that he is needed in Peking. He goes there and meets Joan of Arc, El Cid, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Davy Crockett, William Tell, and Cú Chulainn. All of the heroes fight for freedom; their homelands are under some type of enslavement. He meets a Texas hero, Pistol-Slinging Johnny, who lost his hand at The Battle of Little Bighorn and is known for having the fastest hand in the West. All of these warriors are protected by the Greek pantheon, who have declared war on Chinese heaven. In Peking, Lü Bu fights for Cao Cao against the foreigners, who are aided by the ghost of Sun Tzu. Lü Bu is highly egotistical and wants to be the best fighter in the world. The city is run by Empress Dowager, who only speaks Spanish and worships Satan, who helps the city against the invaders. Lothar von Trotha is nominated as lead commander and sends the coalition to attack the enemy camp in front of Peking. The army is led by Joan of Arc, who beats the Chinese to their camp but is slaughtered and beheaded by Lü Bu. The bulk of the army is the French, and after the French flee the rest of the army leaves. The British see this and send in their secret weapon: Cú Chulainn. Cao Cao is with Lü Bu, and in the distance, they see Cú Chulainn destroy the Chinese Army. Cao Cao lassos Lü Bu because Cao Cao, against Lü Bu's wishes, wants to preserve Lü Bu's life for the future. Cao Cao takes him into the city and Lü Bu is outraged. Meanwhile, a few Russians find what they think is a rabbit's behind poking out from a hole, but it's actually the Monkey King. He is freed when the Russians pull him out and he goes straight to heaven. There he threatens the Jade Emperor, but the Buddha comes and subjugates him again. The Buddha orders him to restore order in China and defeat the allies. After reaching Earth, the Monkey King kills Cú Cuthlainn and chases the allies to the sea. Von Trotha orders suicidal human waves against Sun Wukong, but Pistol-Slinging Johnny objects, offending the German general. Disloyalty has plagued the allied army. Giuseppe Garibaldi disagreed with the allies, and sided with the Chinese. Von Trotha tells his subject, William Tell, to spy on Johnny. William Tell gained his freedom from the tyrannical Swiss Bishop back in Europe through von Trotha's help and is now faithful to him till the end. Von Trotha pretends to respect Johnny's wishes and sends him and Davy Crockett to conquer a town called "The Alamo". Really, it is a suicide mission, meant to kill Johnny, who is the only mutinous warrior in the army. Also, he orders William Tell to assassinate Johnny and not to get caught, just in case Johnny doesn't get killed. The Americans break for The Alamo. When they get there, they're immediately attacked by Lü Bu and El Cid. Johnny senses the betrayal, and after seeing Davy Crockett get killed by El Cid, swears to kill Lothar von Trotha. He steals the uniform of a Chinese soldier, and slips out of The Alamo. William Tell never kills him because of his disguise. Johnny finally makes it to the Allied camp and finds it in disarray: The Archduke of Austria-Hungary has been killed, and the camp is in the midst of WWI. He also finds the head of Sun Wukong, who was killed by Ares. The Chinese Empress is notified by Satan of the news, and she orders an invasion. Meanwhile Johnny walks up behind Lothar von Trotha and tries to kill him. William Tell was with von Trotha and barely managed to twist Johnny's wrist and tackle him. Johnny is sentenced to death by firing squad, but he is never executed. Johnny tells his friends that he is sensitive about being used as a pawn since Little Bighorn, where he was sent to die in a suicide mission and lost his hand. He only lived because the Indians respected his fighting spirit. They took him prisoner and tortured him. Lü Bu invades and topples the allied army. However, he had mutinied against Cao Cao and scorned Sun Tzu. He now runs the army and makes an ultimatum. Lü Bu has heard of a Pistol-Slinging Johnny and has heard he was the most skilled warrior of the Allies. He says he and his army will leave the Allied Camp if he is killed by Johnny, and if Johnny is killed, the Allies leave China. Von Trotha agrees to the challenge, and Johnny is freed. Von Trotha then worries that Johnny killing Lü Bu will make him the hero of the Allies and will surely depose him then. Therefore he tells William Tell to take his bow and make sure both men are dead. Lü Bu, at first, doesn't agree to this stipulation, but is then convinced by Satan to take the challenge. Then El Cid steps in. While all of this was happening, El Cid was betrayed by King Alfonso multiple times, so he defected to the Chinese side, but the Chinese tried to force him to convert to Shamanism. When El Cid rejected Shamanism, they showed him the head of Garibaldi, who was killed for his reluctance to worship Shamanism. El Cid manages to escape from the city and is now hiding from the allies. Now El Cid is homesick and feels unsafe in China, so he asks that if he wins the duel he gets sent back to Spain to see his daughters. Lü Bu, El Cid, and Johnny hold their respective revolvers, while William Tell has his bow. They stand in a square. Suddenly William Tell, with three arrows between his fingers, jolts and bullets are fired immediately. When the dust clears, William Tell is shot in the eye by Lü Bu, El Cid is hit in the neck by Tell's arrow and dies, and Lü Bu is shot in the legs; three bullets for each knee. Lü Bu dies from blood loss, and Cao Cao flees with his men tearing up. Johnny, enraged, celebrates. He gets a few loose wooden boards, nails them into a cross, and then nails Lü Bu onto that cross. He puts it where the Pekingers can see it. Cao Cao, convinced by Sun Tzu, sneaks into the Allied camp with Sun Tzu and asks for Lü Bu's body back. The sobbing Johnny accepts, and they walk through the beautiful Chinese terrain together.

My Critique: [4357]

IMPORTANT

Hello, I imagined up a modern rendition of the Iliad. It is only a skeleton of a plot; therefore, I ask anyone interested what parts of the plot works and what should be remove. I'd also like to know if the plot flows well as a whole and tell me what tone I should go for based on how this plot feels. (PS every character except for the stand-in for Achilles is either a real historical figure or a myth originating from a real culture)

Here is the plot: Lothar von Trotha is notified while in Namibia that he is needed in Peking. He goes there and meets Joan of Arc, El Cid, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Davy Crockett, William Tell, and Cú Chulainn. All of the heroes fight for freedom; their homelands are under some type of enslavement. He meets a Texas hero, Pistol-Slinging Johnny, who lost his hand at The Battle of Little Bighorn and is known for having the fastest hand in the West. All of these warriors are protected by the Greek pantheon, who have declared war on Chinese heaven. In Peking, Lü Bu fights for Cao Cao against the foreigners, who are aided by the ghost of Sun Tzu. Lü Bu is highly egotistical and wants to be the best fighter in the world. The city is run by Empress Dowager, who only speaks Spanish and worships Satan, who helps the city against the invaders. Lothar von Trotha is nominated as lead commander and sends the coalition to attack the enemy camp in front of Peking. The army is led by Joan of Arc, who beats the Chinese to their camp but is slaughtered and beheaded by Lü Bu. The bulk of the army is the French, and after the French flee the rest of the army leaves. The British see this and send in their secret weapon: Cú Chulainn. Cao Cao is with Lü Bu, and in the distance, they see Cú Chulainn destroy the Chinese Army. Cao Cao lassos Lü Bu because Cao Cao, against Lü Bu's wishes, wants to preserve Lü Bu's life for the future. Cao Cao takes him into the city and Lü Bu is outraged. Meanwhile, a few Russians find what they think is a rabbit's behind poking out from a hole, but it's actually the Monkey King. He is freed when the Russians pull him out and he goes straight to heaven. There he threatens the Jade Emperor, but the Buddha comes and subjugates him again. The Buddha orders him to restore order in China and defeat the allies. After reaching Earth, the Monkey King kills Cú Cuthlainn and chases the allies to the sea. Von Trotha orders suicidal human waves against Sun Wukong, but Pistol-Slinging Johnny objects, offending the German general. Disloyalty has plagued the allied army. Giuseppe Garibaldi disagreed with the allies, and sided with the Chinese. Von Trotha tells his subject, William Tell, to spy on Johnny. William Tell gained his freedom from the tyrannical Swiss Bishop back in Europe through von Trotha's help and is now faithful to him till the end. Von Trotha pretends to respect Johnny's wishes and sends him and Davy Crockett to conquer a town called "The Alamo". Really, it is a suicide mission, meant to kill Johnny, who is the only mutinous warrior in the army. Also, he orders William Tell to assassinate Johnny and not to get caught, just in case Johnny doesn't get killed. The Americans break for The Alamo. When they get there, they're immediately attacked by Lü Bu and El Cid. Johnny senses the betrayal, and after seeing Davy Crockett get killed by El Cid, swears to kill Lothar von Trotha. He steals the uniform of a Chinese soldier, and slips out of The Alamo. William Tell never kills him because of his disguise. Johnny finally makes it to the Allied camp and finds it in disarray: The Archduke of Austria-Hungary has been killed, and the camp is in the midst of WWI. He also finds the head of Sun Wukong, who was killed by Ares. The Chinese Empress is notified by Satan of the news, and she orders an invasion. Meanwhile Johnny walks up behind Lothar von Trotha and tries to kill him. William Tell was with von Trotha and barely managed to twist Johnny's wrist and tackle him. Johnny is sentenced to death by firing squad, but he is never executed. Johnny tells his friends that he is sensitive about being used as a pawn since Little Bighorn, where he was sent to die in a suicide mission and lost his hand. He only lived because the Indians respected his fighting spirit. They took him prisoner and tortured him. Lü Bu invades and topples the allied army. However, he had mutinied against Cao Cao and scorned Sun Tzu. He now runs the army and makes an ultimatum. Lü Bu has heard of a Pistol-Slinging Johnny and has heard he was the most skilled warrior of the Allies. He says he and his army will leave the Allied Camp if he is killed by Johnny, and if Johnny is killed, the Allies leave China. Von Trotha agrees to the challenge, and Johnny is freed. Von Trotha then worries that Johnny killing Lü Bu will make him the hero of the Allies and will surely depose him then. Therefore he tells William Tell to take his bow and make sure both men are dead. Lü Bu, at first, doesn't agree to this stipulation, but is then convinced by Satan to take the challenge. Then El Cid steps in. While all of this was happening, El Cid was betrayed by King Alfonso multiple times, so he defected to the Chinese side, but the Chinese tried to force him to convert to Shamanism. When El Cid rejected Shamanism, they showed him the head of Garibaldi, who was killed for his reluctance to worship Shamanism. El Cid manages to escape from the city and is now hiding from the allies. Now El Cid is homesick and feels unsafe in China, so he asks that if he wins the duel he gets sent back to Spain to see his daughters. Lü Bu, El Cid, and Johnny hold their respective revolvers, while William Tell has his bow. They stand in a square. Suddenly William Tell, with three arrows between his fingers, jolts and bullets are fired immediately. When the dust clears, William Tell is shot in the eye by Lü Bu, El Cid is hit in the neck by Tell's arrow and dies, and Lü Bu is shot in the legs; three bullets for each knee. Lü Bu dies from blood loss, and Cao Cao flees with his men tearing up. Johnny, enraged, celebrates. He gets a few loose wooden boards, nails them into a cross, and then nails Lü Bu onto that cross. He puts it where the Pekingers can see it. Cao Cao, convinced by Sun Tzu, sneaks into the Allied camp with Sun Tzu and asks for Lü Bu's body back. The sobbing Johnny accepts, and they walk through the beautiful Chinese terrain together.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

My critiques: [881][781]

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Sometime later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you are willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• The narrator was interesting
• You liked the dolls
• The plot was interesting

In the darkness under my table my hand flailed wildly to escape my grasp. I trapped it between my knees and cut the poor thing. I brought it into the faint light of my dining room; three candles on a windowsill cast a dark red glow over my setup. The red light shot into the abyss of nighttime.

I hung my cut hand over the pentagram made of lamb's blood on my table, drops pattering over the faceless, plain ragdoll in the middle of the star. I also covered the five points with blood, just as the book ordered.

I bandaged my hand and sat before this sinful apparatus. The bloodletting had made me weak, and my attention was scattered, but it soon returned when I saw the blood-smeared doll lift its head, bend its legs, and thrust its body upward.

I watched as this conjured spirit stood up on its own; its posture was straight, and it looked energetic.

Suddenly, it sprinted to the edge of the table and jumped. It made a soft piff sound when it landed. It jumped onto an accent chair and then onto a windowsill. It opened the window and looked back at me. I wished I could have made out what it was thinking, but it was faceless. Then it jumped outside.

Having seen this, I presumed that the ritual had been a success; such an unbelievable occurrence must indicate an unbelievable yet desired outcome.

I checked my clock. It read 3:10 AM, and the second hand was still. I checked my phone: 3:10. I sat observing it for several minutes, but the time never changed. It was stuck at 3:10 AM. I walked outside through the cluttered urban streets illuminated by dingy yellow streetlights: no drunk pedestrians, no late-night motorists, no police officers, no silhouettes in yellow windows. Everything had stopped; time, nature, and human activity had ceased.

I was free! All the things that stood in the way of my work, all the fears of mortality, judgment, inadequacy—they were all eradicated. I sat on a bench smiling to myself, silently celebrating this new chapter in my life, this new plane of existence. A few yards away from me, I saw something moving. I thought it was a squirrel, but I looked closer and saw it was a ragdoll. It wasn’t my ragdoll, though. It was a new one—a grey one stained with a different pattern of blood.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself.

Some time later, I got to work in my dark house. The living room was full of wires, monitors, and engineering tools. I oscillated between coding on my computers and scribbling away on a chalkboard full of math.

Let it be known that I enter a trance-like state when studying and researching, and distracting me from it is nearly impossible. However, I was in a bizarre plane of existence, one of immortality and infinite time, and it was too difficult for me to keep my attention fixed on one thing forever. I tried fighting the urge, but it was too strong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Just as I expected, there were more dolls in the street.

Outside was a Marian procession; four dolls carried a garden statue of the Queen of Heaven on their shoulders. In front of them, ragdoll horses carried miniature chariots of dolls sporting pieces of tin cans and jar lids fashioned into armor. Other dolls played leapfrog, did cartwheels, did backflips, and performed other impressive acrobatics.

These dolls were moving in one direction: toward the boardwalk and the beach. My curiosity was temporarily satisfied, and I retreated farther inside to code on my computer, but my mind was too preoccupied with the weird sight I had just witnessed. Why were they going to the boardwalk? Were they friends? Were they happy? Mourning? Anxious? These questions plagued my mind for days, maybe weeks.

One time I stepped outside. It was the first time in days. I walked in the middle of the street. On either side of me were those dolls, doing more random things as they walked toward the boardwalk. I was outside because I wanted books. I had books already, but they were just cheap romance novels left behind by the original homeowners, so I was heading toward the bookstore. I got there; it was a small, dusty row building. Just like the rest of the stores, it was closed, but I thought that, since I would never see anyone again, I could just break into the store and take what I wanted.

I walked up to the door and punched the glass. An electric sting shot through my hand as the glass remained intact. I was impressed and a little embarrassed by my lack of strength. I left and returned with a medium-sized garden rock. I lifted the rock and hurled it at the wide front window of the store. It did nothing but ricochet off the seemingly invincible glass and land on my kneecap. I fell onto the sidewalk and rubbed my knee pathetically. I knew—somehow, I just knew—that when I turned to face the street, they’d be watching me, and they were. The dolls, who wouldn’t stop walking, passed me with their faceless heads turned toward me. There were no eyes, no hands cupped around whispering mouths, and no scowling eyebrows, but I felt so much shame. What was I even doing there? I was a mathematician, an engineer, a genius. My kind doesn’t waste its time with literature. I stood up with as much dignity as I had left and trotted home.

I was in my bed, curled up into a ball. My sleep schedule was a mess, but it didn’t matter because it was always night. Recently, sleeping had become impossible. Thoughts about those mysterious dolls had compounded in my mind for so long that my head had grown heavy with them. At the center of this doll puzzle was the million-dollar question: Why were they heading to the ocean? What kind of satanic temple, pagan god, or portal to the underworld was attracting them?

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got up and went out into the street. The world remained unchanged, but now the streets were practically covered with animated dolls. I stepped into the street; they paid me no attention. I started walking toward the ocean with them. I walked on my hands with the acrobat dolls. I jogged with the joggers. I crawled on all fours with the ragdoll horses. Eventually, the pavement gave way to sand, and before I knew it, I was on the beach. The walk was surprisingly fun; I hardly noticed how quickly it passed. The boardwalk lights were still lit, bathing the dolls in cheerful blues, purples, and greens while they danced in circles and walked in orderly lines into the waves.

I watched in amazement as they walked into the tide, letting the ocean carry them into the black depths. I was hypnotized. I was already far beyond my deeply ingrained tendencies. I found myself walking toward the tide. I felt the chill of the black water between my toes. Looking to my left and right, I saw the dolls walk into the water without hesitation. I plunged into the dark abyss.

The result? I was in another, greater plane of existence. One that required no breathing, no energy, and no stress. It was pure catharsis at first. I floated for a few minutes. No light made it this deep. Then I drifted into a large mass of dolls. I felt them on my face, my chest, my legs, and my hands. They were crawling in one massive ball, like ants trying to float on water.

As I grabbed at this net of dolls, more dolls floated toward me. Dolls started linking together behind my back and neck, wrapping around my legs. I realized their grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my head. I was trapped in a grotesque mass of squirming, wrinkly little bodies. I opened my mouth to scream, and water rushed down my throat. I was being crushed. My eardrums were bursting. My lungs were shattering.

I jumped out of bed, flailing my arms. It was just a dream. I put my hands over my eyes. It was over. I understood perfectly what my subconscious was warning me about. I need to get out of this dark house; I need to be human. I rushed to my closet, threw on some clothes, and went to explore my world.

Then I stepped outside, and before me were crowds, hordes, armies of dolls. It was still 3:10 AM. The night was still eternal. The dolls were still walking in their bizarre processions.

I collapsed to my knees, cursing myself for my satanism.

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”

The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”

The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.

The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.

The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"