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Street lightning market is anticipated to grow at a significant CAGR of 6.4% during the forecast period. The demand for use of smart street lighting for energy conservation and high efficiency is boosting the market. Energy efficient technologies and design can cut street lighting costs dramatically often by 25-60%, these savings can eliminate or reduce the need for new power generating plants and provide the capital for alternative energy solutions for populations in remote areas. According to World Bank data the global population continues to grow at 1.1% per year and people are migrating to urban areas, so smarter land and resource use is becoming a significant area of research which fuels the use of smart street lightning across the globe. Information collection through innovative technologies such as Smart Street Lighting are important sources of data and insights for Smart Cities to improve asset management and energy conservation which is growing the demand for smart street lighting across the globe. Smart street lighting is a cost-effective solution which compromises of advance wireless communication techniques, low cost LED lights and additional sensors which controls the intensity of light. This new system provides cost and energy savings over the conventional lightning. The smart street lights can control remotely the output of individual streetlights, detect faults, monitor energy performance and, when coupled with sensors, even facilitate real time alerts for city-wide problems like traffic flow, parking spaces, electrical outages, and possible accidents and others. On the other hand, the traditional lights consume high power, have a shorter lifetime, and high replacement cost, majorly hindering the street lighting market. These factors are creating demand for street lights in the forecast period as smart street lighting uses a management system which enables streetlight luminaires that are connected to be remotely controlled and monitored through a centralised online application which conserves energy and is more efficient.
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With the help of apparent insights depicted here into a wide range of product and service releases by key competitors in the market, novice players are able to position themselves in the vast market. It is an indispensable need to get detailed idea to track future business growth and this Street Lightning Market research report is the best medium to get that vision. It also aims at providing market environment along with covering complete market information. Street Lightning Market research report also enables business owners to have firm grasp over what consumers exactly expect, their future demands, wants and preferences by offering detailed customer related data. It further discusses about key market players and ongoing latest trends.
This informative yet easy to understand Street Lightning Market study report covers wide-ranging product launch wise latest trends, regulatory shifts and other important factors, which are expected to affect the overall industry growth for the approaching time span 2022-2028. It aims at providing detailed knowledge about what customers exactly want from which key players can make sound decision making for the growth of business. It also aims at measuring marketing effectiveness. SWOT Analysis technique is also employed to form the market research report to cover helpful opportunities, possible challenges and threats. Impact of new corona virus on the global economy is also shared in this Street Lightning Market report. Collaborations, mergers and acquisitions like strategies are also covered in this market study report.
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· Market Coverage
· Market number available for – 2023-2029
· Base year- 2022
· Forecast period- 2023-2029
· Segment Covered- By Source, By Product Type, By Applications
· Competitive Landscape- Archer Daniels Midland Co., Ingredion Inc., Kerry Group Plc, Cargill
· Inc., and others
Global Street Lightning Market Report Segment
By Light Source
​

• LEDs
• Fluorescent Lights
• HID Lamps

By Wattage Type
​

• Less than 50W
• Between 50W and 150W
• More than 150W

By End-Use
​

• Highways
• Street and Roadways
• Others

Global Street Lightning Market Report Segment by Region
North America
• United States
• Canada
Europe
• UK
• Germany
• Italy
• Spain
• France
• Rest of Europe
Asia-Pacific
• China
• India
• Japan
• South Korea
• Rest of Asia-Pacific
Rest of the World
• Latin America
• Middle East & Africa
The Report Covers
​

• Market value data analysis of 2021 and forecast to 2028.
• Annualized market revenues ($ million) for each market segment.
• Country-wise analysis of major geographical regions.
• Key companies operating in the global street lightning market. Based on the availability of data, information related to new product launches, and relevant news is also available in the report.
• Analysis of business strategies by identifying the key market segments positioned for strong growth in the future.
• Analysis of market-entry and market expansion strategies.
• Competitive strategies by identifying ‘who-stands-where’ in the market.

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I've taken a few thousand food order deliveries for Domino's Pizzeria and for DoorDash, doorgarbage in my market is worthless now - I do know one driver who is still making money, but the fools at DoorGarbage oversaturated the market and shut most of us out, gray zones all of the time, if we get a time block it is $3.00°° order average .. ridiculous
I was working for Jimmy John's for a few weeks until a lady drove her SUV into (kinda over) the front end of my sedan.. it was a 2005 GM 3800, best car ever.. drove what was left of her until last week .. as an aside, Jimmy John's doesn't care about what happens when you're driving for them (as I'm sure other companies also don't, but I thought I'd be covered in some way at all while W2 .. but nope)
Anyway my truck is older and upset 😡 but it has the 5.3L and a good transmission so I was wondering what I could do to make some money for now.. I cannot wander off too far because if it breaks down I'd just lose it to impound fees I suppose

 My body is f___ed from the accident now 

and I've lost a lot of weight so it would be good if I could be more of a lazy driver 😅 moving sucks 😅 but that hasn't stopped me of course
I'm trying to buy another 2005 3800 Lesabre, identical to my dead one.. a guy I know has a gorgeous one for $300 and it needs a little work
Buying a Honda or Toyota or Sprinter or 3/4ton+ truck would be awesome but they just cannot seem to be bought in my price range 😕 I can spend a few grand at the most on what ever I'm buying and people such as myself cannot lease
The 3800 GM seems like the closest I can get to Honda/Toyota without spending a fortune of cash.. 3800 mileage is great and they're kinda bullet proof
I'm at ICT but more than willing to move around and I'll work 12-16hr days 6-7 days weekly, no problem.. I like Wichita, I went up to Manhattan and Junction city to try DoorDash there twice, it wasn't great but I love the area
I don't ____ around, customers love me 😎 even when the imbeciles at DoorDash create frustrating ridiculous situations 😎 https://ibb.co/T10kkGK
TLDR; Looking for ideas 💡 for using old 1500 truck, ideas for replacing current vehicles, wrote long winded

I've told this story so many times that my larynx hurts. I've dictated it so many times and then had to go back and correct the mistakes I'm working on carpal tunnel as well. Anyway as you can tell I'm at that point of the day where I felt I should share but what's the point? I work in an industry where I'm a painter of sets and such for corporate events and plays and things like that. So out of the blue they decided when you get day to use isisyanite-based primers and paints and we did it over the weekend and I was exposed for close to 16 hours with only a 3M gas mask with a regular filter in it. The sprayed product was called chassis saver. If you want to look up the MSDS you're going to have to type in chassis saver MSDS. It's got a whole smorgasbord of fun like methyl diisocyanate mixed with aluminum flake? That was shot out of an HVLP gun under pressure in a closed Warehouse because it was seemed outside so there was no ventilation for 2 days. I had ... okay let's just quit trying to give anybody to benefit it out here and say I had no protection whatsoever. Cuz if I'm going to mention the 3M mask but not the fact that I need a full body suit gloves full face mask with supplied oxygen and I'm supposed to leave all of my clothes at work including my shoes and not get it on my skin along with proper ventilation? Well none of that was done. First off because we weren't worried about the danger secondly none of that stuff is available to us at work and thirdly I wasn't even the one using the stuff. Didn't matter I still became concerned when the room was a silvery cloud of toxins so after a couple weeks when I realized I was asthmatic and having reactions every time I went to work? My GM had me apply for workers comp and sent me home for 4 days. Then I was asked to come back to work to help and the symptoms started again. It took me a while to figure out what was going on by doing some reading on OSHA and the CDC. Plus all the other articles and case studies. It all lined up it was obvious that I didn't kind of get exposed... I was immersed in it. That includes breathing it having it in my eyes eating after using it no ventilation and wearing the same clothes home along with getting some on my skin when I was helping him clean up afterwards. Poured it on the side of my abdomen because it was in a mixing cup. It felt really good. Anyway, as soon as this hit corporate everything went s*** house crazy. I continue to go to work for 4 weeks and see the doctor that they had sent me to and since I've been self-employed my whole life as a portrait artist? That's my college degree it's a BFA and fine arts. Probably kiss my oil painting career goodbye. So they got rid of the job I had and any other talents I could fall back on. Anyway yeah this is going to be kind of a sarcastic post so enjoy it. What doctor was I send to that was an expert on chemical exposure with isocyanates and occupational acquired asthma? What was the name of that place it's famous like the Mayo Clinic but instead it's everywhere and oh yeah Concentra. You know the place you go to and the doctor runs a stethoscope all over you and says he doesn't hear anything to indicate asthma even though it sounds like there's a kitten stuck in your throat? Then he tricks your blood pressure and says it's normal even though it's rising quickly? He asks you why you're there and nods his head and you can tell in his mind he's going "well that's like a total s*** show. If I do what the insurance adjusters are telling me to do I'm basically sending this guy back to work to die. So let me get on that" I would come in and he would look at me and say so what do you want to do today and I would say I don't know maybe doctor stuff like check me see if I have asthma I don't know what the tests are for us to cyanide exposure? You're the doctor what do you want to do? Oh you want to go okay well be sure and sign that box telling me to return to work because he can't find any injury or evidence of exposure. Thanks. Oh this week you want to do blood work. But you only want to test for the most extreme exposure the kind that would cause neurological damage and okay. So he sends off the blood test tells me it'll be a week. And remind you I'm going back to work every day and getting re-exposed to all the stuff that I'm now allergic to and it's damaging my lungs and I'm coughing so hard my lungs are starting to separate from the wall my back. It's funny it's hilarious you know but at least they're saving money. They get to watch it and hear it but you know... buck up cowboy. You shouldn't smoke. Yeah y'all managed to do more damage to my lungs in 18 hours than I did in 47 years of light smoking. Seriously five cigarettes a day maybe. No history of asthma no history of allergies other than penicillin. I always watched other people just go through miserable seasons I mean just I swollen shut it's not running down their face and I thought how lucky I am. So my job decided that wasn't fair and locked me in the building with a chemical that destroyed a town in India. And they only used it that one time and decided they didn't like the properties of it. Probably cuz it's not meant to be put on wood but that's what the chassis saver was for was to give it sort of a metallic quality so they can roll the what yeah that's right bed truck liner on it that was day two and early the next day. When everybody was at work. When we were applying this stuff they were only two people there me and my supervisor. So if you look at the time clock it tells you when and who was there. If you look at when this stuff was purchased and under what project the stuff was charged to? what client? While we were doing a huge project for caterpillar that they were having out in Las Vegas. Don't know why one of our designers figured that bed liner would be a good idea for some of the staging when you can achieve that with paint and clear coat. But that's what he wanted. So so much for avoiding it just because it's not necessary. In the state of Texas you can't sue your employer for personal injury unless you can prove gross negligence. I would say that kind of falls where we're at. Unfortunately the other thing in Texas is that there aren't many workers comp attorneys because in 1993 they passed some laws that made being a workers comp attorney a tricky thing and you can lose your license really easy. In other words it was a very business friendly law to get companies to move here. Especially when you couldn't get sued for you know sending someone on fire or destroying their lungs and life. So a lot of people can get a worker's comp attorney even if they're a crappy one. But most of them that claim to be workers comp attorneys? They're actually just want to hear your stories so they can see if there's a personal injury lawsuit in there due to gross negligence cuz that's the only way they're going to make any money in this state and if it's a chemical exposure? I've been told by several attorneys who had extreme sympathy for my situation that they couldn't even refer me to an attorney that would take my case hey there's no attorney that's going to touch a chemical exposure case in Texas because it's already tough enough. Well I've been put the ringer lied to followed by a private investigator in the whole time I've been on represented and doing all the paperwork myself which they throw at me everyday usually it's fake stuff or stuff with the wrong date or deadline on it they mess with any attempts I get to find another diagnosis when they know damn well what happened on what day and with what products and who was there and when you know there's just no disputing the fact of what happened and when it happened and that we weren't protected because they don't have that kind of stuff there for PPE. we don't use that stuff so why would we need supplied oxygen masks. If I'm spraying something with metal paint mixed with silo I put on a 3M mask and use it organic filter and keep an eye on when it's starting to wear out even then? I'm not going to get leukemia or brain cancer for another 30 years well after I'm not working for them anymore so they've got that going for them and as do I. And this happened back in February 25th and I was sent home immediately because they were extremely concerned but they be suddenly became unconcerned about 4 days later I guess cuz corporate got involved and told me to come back into work and I spent another four weeks getting worse and worse and worse having the weekends to try and recover but not completely so I would start off at a level of irritation and asthma that was already underway when I returned on Monday. This was fun. Because even though they can see it they would just blame it on my smoking which is hilarious because you know life and for that weekend I wasn't allergic to anything in that building for two and a half years and I'm one of two people in the paint department so it's not a huge crew I'd say there's about 30 people that work there and probably too many people in the front office getting paid too much just sitting air conditioning. I mean they do work but you know if they had the chance they'd probably urinate on your face. That's not fair. They would wait till you run conscious from toxic exposure to gases anyway. Or they would but the workers comp adjusters do that for them. I mean they pay them for a reason and it's not help the employee so? Why am I talking to them again without an attorney oh yeah see above. So yeah they're just having a good old time they're beating me like a pinata making me run around like an idiot and freaking me out with letters and false deadlines that after a while I began to realize it being seriously gas lit I stopped playing nice guy and started recording phone calls and screenshotting text messages to make sure they got saved and save me everything in files and whenever they screwed up and intentionally put the wrong deadline on a Federal form like a FL la form from the Department of Labor anything like that? I would call him about that and record the response. One of my favorites was well that was just a suggested date because you know if you got it done sooner then you would get the paperwork done sooner and everything you get done sooner and you know just faster. Well yeah I understand how that works Einstein thanks I understand the whole concept and time and speed Mass velocity whatever. I swear to God they treat me like Chaka from Land of the Lost. They're all like 30 years younger than me and about to lose their jobs to AI but hey it'll be funny to watch. Won't need all those people running CAD machines and designing stuff after a few years. But let them enjoy it while they can anyway back to my career being ruined so they've just been having a good old time calling me and then they sent out a private investigator to harass me and want to talk to me until finally I just exploded and said what is it exactly you want to talk to me about.? I've been advised by everybody I know who is an attorney who may not be working in workers comp but they are an attorney? That I should never ever meet with a private investigator especially one that's a third party. You know one that's hired and not actually from the company. Cuz then he's not bound by the laws of an attorney or a police officer or an investigator he can do what he wants. Especially since he wanted to just talk to me and fill in the details of what happened that day. You know what caused the accident. I asked him what kind of forum is this going to occur in he said we could meet anywhere you want we can meet at McDonald's but I'm sure you don't want people here in your private information and I told him I don't like McDonald's anyway so I don't know I guess maybe after I get done with this doctor and have a solid diagnosis of asthma and something to stand on I'll be ready to comment. But until then I'm not meeting with you without an attorney in the room and probably even after I'm not going to meet with you without attorney in the room. So now it's come to this thing where I do have a doctor that's helping that was accidentally in their Network because I guess it slipped to the radar that they had an actual doctor that would do spirometry and asthma testing. of course they're messing with her a lot. I get your phone calls I get weird texts everybody has assured me that I'm obviously being observed surveilled. I don't see anything but I don't care either because nothing to see. I'm not at work. Why would I have asthma at home? I'm sure there's some triggers out there but I haven't discovered yet but that'll be fun and something to do in my free time. Anyway they seem to be kind of stuck in this rut where they won't go forward or approve anything unless I meet with the private investigator. Finally I blew my stack and said that I have no obligation to me the private investigator I've made my statement they were two people in the room y'all know what happened y'all know what I'm saying was the result you're not allowing me to explore that so I would think the best way for y'all to fill in the gaps and figure out what happened and what the situation this is letting me go to a f****** doctor that treats me and actually trust me for the things that I claim I have. That way instead of treating me like I'm lying you can prove that I'm lying which won't happen because I'm not lying which is obviously what you know so what is it he wants to ask me about again oh yeah he wants me to fill in the details is he a doctor? No okay well how about you get a doctor to do it instead of somebody who follows people husbands and wives around looking for infidelity. So I still don't have an attorney and I called OSHA reported the exposure and all they did was call my workplace and say "hey, did you have an exposure there?" and they said "yeah, but we got rid of that stuff" and they said "okay great" slow clap into a face palm. Which you know, kind of blew my mind. Because I thought calling OSHA was starting a nuclear war. That they would be in there with clip boards and chemical detectors and wanting to know just what the hell happened here. Because they've been really hard on this chemical and they've been trying to educate the public but evidently calling and just asking if it happened and them saying "well we got rid of that stuff" . That's enough for them. never mind the fact it was an "exposure to isocyanates in the workplace that I was reporting" which is what they told me they were going to check on. I wasn't calling them to tell them that they had harmful materials in a building, so evidently the guy I'm dealing with doesn't understand exactly what the law is or what law I was trying to get them to acknowledge. Cuz that would help my case if there were questions posed by government officials and they had to tell the truth. Either way, if they reported the exposure?great. They followed the law and I would have that an admission that an exposure occurred .....or they didn't report it and it would look really bad and probably cost them some money. But to my dismay, OSHA is obviously a joke. At least here in Dallas. So it's been real fun, yeah it's been one disappointment after the other of people just saying "I know this is my job, but I'm sorry. looking at your situation I'm just not good enough talented or educated enough to take it on. I'm just one of those people takes the easy cases and if something looks difficult? Even if it's a matter of you possibly dying or living on the streets and your whole family getting kicked out and never having a proper diagnosis to have on your medical records to show other employers or people in the situations that you can't be in in the future? I'm going to go over here and handle this easy money case." I'm sure there are some attorneys out there that if they knew about me and my situation it'll be all over it because they like a challenge and realize that there's not much left to do. All the information that I have and phone recordings, some documentation of b******* that has accumulated over the past months. Because normally you know you'd call a lawyer at the beginning of the case and there wouldn't be anything there. But since they figured I was never going to get an attorney? It was just "hey let's whack the pinata guy" . If an attorney were to walk in at this point? We've got enough acts of malfeasance and fraud and deliberate dishonesty, misleading statements and instructions, recordings and plenty of Doom and gloom documents meant to make me quit give up or go away out of fear or exhaustion.....and all I have to do is just hand you this stack and explain to you what's going on and we could probably even find a case that had nothing to do with workers compensation and had more to do with fraud and gross negligence and just have fun doing that. I mean they've had their fun why not? I didn't go into this looking for a cash settlement I just wanted to be taken care of and as the law states it should be. But I'm really just kind of f****** done with the whole f****** thing because everyone I talk to everyone I talk to doesn't want to touch it. When you have workers comp insurance that doesn't have ANY (ZERO) doctors in their Network to handle workplace asthma? which is one of the most common workers comp claims it pretty much leads the pack with all the saw dust and gas fumes out there to breathe in. But no we didn't have any doctors that would treat that or even know how to treat that at all. in fact the ONE that I did find? had retired about 5 years ago. That was funny. it was always a interesting thing to find out that when you finally had an aha moment leading to a hopeful situation? That turned out it was actually just a straw man. Even dealing with the Texas agencies help with people who are going through workers compensation or having difficulties? It depends on how you get on the line there's nothing more extremely helpful to the point where they'll even call the adjuster to make them call you back and help you fill out your forms whereas there were others that are just generally irritated by the fact that you're even calling and don't know what you're talking about. Well believe it or not there are some people in this world that don't do workers comp for living and don't spend their whole time having to deal with it. Especially people that are self-employed portrait artists for most of their lives. I guess this long-winded rambling stream of consciousness is just what's going on in my head and I can tell you right now it ain't a lot of good things and nothing really positive to say about working for anybody under any circumstances and I wouldn't take anything that anybody said they were going to do for you as a fact. It's all good on paper and everything but when it comes down to it it's all about saving money and if it involves an injury that doesn't look good on their records they got to get rid of that and they really don't f****** care what happens to you. You could be dissolving with sulfuric acid on your body and they would tell you to get out of the Sun and quit smoking. And they just watch it happen until you were just a pile of just steaming you know white powder on the ground or whatever happens. Do I sound frustrated? Flippant "whatever. Didn't see that coming". So I guess if you're in Texas and you're an attorney that this work is compensation and you want your entire case handed to you and you can say that you want a chemical exposure case in Texas I've got it right here for you if not fine. If you're from out of state that's fine too if you'd like to file a lawsuit that they beat me with clowns I don't give a carrot to a donkey whether you do that or not. As long as we win the case and they suffer for their behavior. It's not all vengeance. I want but is owed to me by law. And I didn't get that instead I got financial destitution cuz they have not paid me a dime and I'm the runaround which is basically we won't honor your claim until you prove that you were injured on the job. Okay I can't do that unless I prove that I have asthma. So they send me to a doctor that doesn't treat me for asthma now he's my pcp. Finally I find somebody that can treat me what do they do they immediately start pulling the plug on everything saying that my time's up sorry this show's over quick turn off the lights but hold up a minute they were too slow and I was able to get in there and she's doing spirometry tests and everything but you know I know it's not going to be enough because that's why I need to do the super serious testing the kind that definitively says whether you have asthma or not and there's no doubt there's no doubt that these people can try and split hairs and make excuses. Then I get to try and type for the workplace which wouldn't be hard if I had an attorney because this in front of a judge and argue it this is the guy before this is the guy after he's got occupational asthma he worked here for two and a half years and then after that weekend where was the only two days out of the year that that chemical was present and being sprayed? After that he developed severe occupational asthma and an insensitivity to isocyanide due to acute exposure with absolutely no PPE or guidance instruction and now no help no financial help and the guys that I work with here in town that run the show don't talk to me anymore it's all corporate people that were states away and have no idea and don't care what the facts are they just want the positive outcome which is the one that benefits them. But we all know that. We wouldn't be in this form if we didn't know that. Ask for all of y'all that have had better luck congratulations. I am truly happy for you. I don't know where I'm going to be I know obviously you can tell where I am mentally right now and that if another person involved with the adjuster or my employers handed me a form fill out to get the thing that I need that ain't going to happen that they say would happen that won't? I'd wad it up and throw it back in their face without reading it and not worrying about what they say will happen if I don't fill it out. Because they know if I fill it out and sign it or if I don't fill it out and sign it? It wouldn't do a f****** thing. Unless it was an attorney wanting to get with me and get a retainer and all that stuff set up .....and get going. Because nothing.....everything else is just a f****** waste of time, gas and mental energy. It's just that's what it's designed to do... wear you down. You know the truth and you can't prove it and you start feeling like you're living in bad movie like invasion of the body snatchers or something. like I said, it's the ultimate definition of gaslighting. So if you're going through the same thing with workers comp? I feel your pain. I definitely have sympathies if your injuries are more severe or debilitating than mine and you're being treated like this, but something needs to be done about the system because I'm quite aware of what it is now. I've had plenty of time to sit down and parse out what happened and watch videos listen to other attorneys talk read articles on the chemical and how not only companies and workers comp are reacting to it, but also the manufacturers themselves. For instance the CEO that wiped out that city in India? he showed up one day for court in India and then claimed he had to return to the states to take care of some business and never went back. India tried to extradite him for several decades. But instead? he was able to retire with a nice fat paycheck Savage whatever you want to call it and live out the rest of his days in Florida. And I guess he slept well at night knowing what he did. Union carbide. Bought by now Dow? Pretty sure they have never done anything wrong..... I'll have to double check that but I'm pretty sure on they are on up and up right? If they have the good attorney defend the behavior. I mean chemical companies they don't f*** around.... do they? anyway. whatever. I'm not too jaded to where I don't want to accept help or nail these f***. Or just get what I deserve. So take my post as a bit of Comedy or just a rant..... some venting. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't. Just don't let it scare you cuz your case might be totally different than mine. I have an invisible injury and that's a s** place to be. Just like growing up in Texas. Well I guess it's time to lay down on the couch and play video games. How much is something like that pay?
My apologies if the punctuation spelling of what I've written up there (or actually dictated) has weird words that are completely out of contact in there somewhere. I dictated this because I'm so f****** tired of typing and I'm really tired of going back over what I wrote and fixing the grammar and trying to make it not look insane? It's just fatigue and I just thought I should get this out there in the Reddit forum. I'm a member of some other groups, but you know... first time listener first time caller

Twitter/Tumblr artist Agrust recently shared her latest Yoshitoki Ōima's To Your Eternity fan artwork of an AU when Parona decides to travel with Fushi, one of my favorites among her TYE fan artworks. This AU is really something...and very heartwarming too (I'm actually in love with this AU pic!), seeing one of my best TYE girls traveling with Fushi. Things would've been different but better if Oima should've gone with that for the storyline. Considering Pioran was Fushi's main teacher and guide, I wonder where Parona would have fit in all of it in this AU. My guess is that her role would be the same as Pioran's. Parona could teach Fushi survival tactics, like archery, and how to fight back. Pioran's role is more that of a teacher of the intellectual and spiritual way. She taught Fushi to speak, read and write. Parona, like all the people of Ninnanah, doesn't have writing and reading skills, so Pioran could teach them both. Here are my thoughts on how this AU plays out differently from Oima's original TYE content:

After March's death, Parona decides to leave her homeland of Ninnanah and travel with Fushi, knowing that "certain heartless woman" of Yanome is aftering him, as her way to protect him. During their travels together, they reunited with Pioran who taught both of them how to write and read while Parona herself taught Fushi archery and survival skills, like combat. Ever since seeing Fushi in March's form, Parona began to learn more about Fushi's immortal properties. While heading for Takunaha, they meet the first Nokker for the first time with Fushi defeating it. After reaching Takunaha, Fushi and Parona meets a boy named Gugu, who was disfigured in an accident after saving Rean. Gugu and Parona save Fushi from another Nokker, and Fushi, Parona, Gugu, and Rean become friends. For four years, Fushi refrains from transforming or creating objects in order to live as a human and Parona would've been 19 years old. A Nokker attack and Gugu was killed in the process while sacrificing himself to save Rean, who becomes a spirit like March. Fushi and Parona leave Takunaha, the former paranoid of Nokker attacks, followed by Pioran.
The trio continues their travels which leads them to the prison island of Jananda, which is actually the work of the now obsessed Hayase who pays a young girl named Tonari Dalton to lure the trio onto a prison ship to the island, where Fushi and Parona got separated from Pioran, meeting Tonari and her friends Sandel, Mia, Uroy, and Oopa for the first time, and encounters their old enemy Hayase once again. Parona and with the help of Tonari and her friends come to try and save the defeated Fushi from Hayase who was attempts to rape him, but at the same time, Nokkers attack the island, and three of Tonari's friends are killed. Fushi kills the Nokkers, and he leave the island with Hayase, abandoning her to die in the ocean, where she is attacked by a Nokker. Parona decided to stay in Jananda to help Tonari and Sandel reshape the island but knows that they will meet Fushi again. During her time in Jananda, Tonari and Sandel teaches her how to write and read (just like Pioran taught her and Fushi), as well as perfecting her archery skills.
Fushi, at 58 years old in Nameless Boy's form, remains on Sarlnine Island for forty years after the death of his long-time companion and mentor Pioran, until Nokkers begin attacking humans off the island. As he prepares to leave, he meets Hisame, the nine-year-old granddaughter and reincarnation of Hayase, who established the cult-like unit called the Guardians. Hisame's left arm contains the Nokker which had merged with Hayase. The pair travel to the site of the Nokker attack, where they meet the grown Tonari, Sandel and Parona (she would've been 59 years old). Hayase's Nokker in Hisame's arm tries to kill Tonari and Parona, which only wounded Hisame, but escapes. Both Tonari and Parona dies from their wounds in front of Fushi, and becomes spirits, with Parona reuniting with March. Two centuries passed, the ghosts of Fushi's companions have been following Fushi, who has avoided extensive human contact and is regularly visited by the obsessed Hayase's reincarnations and descendants. Along the way, Fushi meeting new friends such as Kahaku, Hayase's only male descendent and sixth reincarnation, Prince Bonchien Nicoli La Tasty Peach Uralis and Todo of Uralis Kingdom, and the Immortals Kai, Messar and Hairo, while dealing with enemies such as Nokkers and the Church of Bennett.
During the Battle of Renril, the forlorn and exhausted Fushi reverted to his true form, the Orb, when Hayase’s knokker in Kahaku’s arm stole the remaining forms of his loved ones. With young March, who was accidentally returned to life before the battle started, she and Bonichen go to seek aid to get Fushi to regain his human form and cherished memories of those whose lives he has touched over the centuries. Having had enough, Bonchien risks his life by killing himself near Fushi, giving him his form. Now aware of his latest ability to resurrect the dead, Fushi is overjoyed to reunite with his good friends Parona, Gugu, and Tonari. As the Nokkers are overwhelmed by the people returning to life, they retreat, therefore saving Renril and its people from destruction. Kahaku leaves the city with his Nokker, and later kills himself and his Nokker, but not before expressing his strong love for Fushi. Fushi tells his friends he will make the world peaceful and resurrect them after he has done so. He sleeps and spreads his body across the planet, to stop the Nokkers from returning. Fushi's friends live their lives and all die as Fushi sleeps. After 600 years, Fushi's body encompasses the entire planet, now at a modern level of technological advancement.
After awakening five centuries into the modern era, Fushi resurrects the eleven spirits following him, including his closest friends March, Parona, Gugu, Tonari Dalton and Bonichen, and they meet Yuki Aoki of the Occult Research Club and his younger sister Aiko and grandfather Kazumitsu. Like Tonari, Parona would've revert to her 15-year-old self and attend middle school, learning to read and write with positive effects, all thanks to Pioran and Tonari's teachings in her first previous life. She became close to March and Eko as she has to Tonari, and like Hairo and Kai, Parona became wary when Yuki comes home with Mizuha, Hayase's great-great-great-great-great granddaughter and ninth reincarnation and introduces her.

What do you guys think? Hope you have any thoughts.

I know what I'm about to say might shock some of you, but I'm here to share my perspective on a situation that has deeply affected my family. Brace yourselves because this story is far from ordinary.
Let me start by introducing myself. I am a mother, a flawed human being, and someone who believes in speaking her mind. Some of you might think I'm evil for what I'm about to say, but I'm not here to sugarcoat anything. I believe in honesty, even if it's uncomfortable.
A few years ago, my son, who is now 23, started dating a woman who was 37. Yes, you read that right—a 14-year age difference. Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me explain my perspective. My son had just recently moved out, and I wasn't aware of the true extent of their age difference when they first started dating. I wasn't thrilled about him dating someone significantly older, but I initially chalked it up to a typical age-gap relationship.
As time went on, I began to grasp the full magnitude of their age difference and its potential consequences. I knew that my son was young and inexperienced when it came to relationships, and I worried about the dynamics between them. I didn't want him to be taken advantage of or hurt by someone who had already lived a much longer life than he had.
Despite my concerns, I couldn't stop their relationship. I tried my best to intervene, to convince my son that this woman was not the right match for him. But love is a powerful force, and my efforts were in vain. Two years passed, and tragedy struck. She was involved in a fatal car accident, leaving my son traumatized and heartbroken.
Here's where my honesty might make some of you cringe. When my son expressed his pain and grief, I didn't respond with the comforting words he desperately needed. Instead, I told him something that many would consider heartless—I said that she deserved to die for dating someone so much younger, and that I was actually relieved she was gone. I even questioned why he was feeling heartbroken over someone who, in my eyes, had made questionable choices.
My husband disagreed with me, claiming that my words were cruel and insensitive. He argued that in times of grief, we should show compassion and support, regardless of our personal opinions. He asked me to imagine how I would feel if our daughter were in a similar situation, and her partner tragically passed away. I understood his point, but I still couldn't fully empathize.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. How could a mother say something so heartless to her own grieving son? I can't deny that my words were harsh, but here's the thing—I stand by them. I truly believe that age-gap relationships can come with significant challenges and potential risks. And while I may not have expressed my concerns in the most sensitive way, I couldn't hide my relief that my son was now free from what I perceived as an unhealthy dynamic.

I know what I'm about to say might shock some of you, but I'm here to share my perspective on a situation that has deeply affected my family. Brace yourselves because this story is far from ordinary.
Let me start by introducing myself. I am a mother, a flawed human being, and someone who believes in speaking her mind. Some of you might think I'm evil for what I'm about to say, but I'm not here to sugarcoat anything. I believe in honesty, even if it's uncomfortable.
A few years ago, my son, who is now 23, started dating a woman who was 37. Yes, you read that right—a 14-year age difference. Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me explain my perspective. My son had just recently moved out, and I wasn't aware of the true extent of their age difference when they first started dating. I wasn't thrilled about him dating someone significantly older, but I initially chalked it up to a typical age-gap relationship.
As time went on, I began to grasp the full magnitude of their age difference and its potential consequences. I knew that my son was young and inexperienced when it came to relationships, and I worried about the dynamics between them. I didn't want him to be taken advantage of or hurt by someone who had already lived a much longer life than he had.
Despite my concerns, I couldn't stop their relationship. I tried my best to intervene, to convince my son that this woman was not the right match for him. But love is a powerful force, and my efforts were in vain. Two years passed, and tragedy struck. She was involved in a fatal car accident, leaving my son traumatized and heartbroken.
Here's where my honesty might make some of you cringe. When my son expressed his pain and grief, I didn't respond with the comforting words he desperately needed. Instead, I told him something that many would consider heartless—I said that she deserved to die for dating someone so much younger, and that I was actually relieved she was gone. I even questioned why he was feeling heartbroken over someone who, in my eyes, had made questionable choices.
My husband disagreed with me, claiming that my words were cruel and insensitive. He argued that in times of grief, we should show compassion and support, regardless of our personal opinions. He asked me to imagine how I would feel if our daughter were in a similar situation, and her partner tragically passed away. I understood his point, but I still couldn't fully empathize.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. How could a mother say something so heartless to her own grieving son? I can't deny that my words were harsh, but here's the thing—I stand by them. I truly believe that age-gap relationships can come with significant challenges and potential risks. And while I may not have expressed my concerns in the most sensitive way, I couldn't hide my relief that my son was now free from what I perceived as an unhealthy dynamic.

I know what I'm about to say might shock some of you, but I'm here to share my perspective on a situation that has deeply affected my family. Brace yourselves because this story is far from ordinary.
Let me start by introducing myself. I am a mother, a flawed human being, and someone who believes in speaking her mind. Some of you might think I'm evil for what I'm about to say, but I'm not here to sugarcoat anything. I believe in honesty, even if it's uncomfortable.
A few years ago, my son, who is now 23, started dating a woman who was 37. Yes, you read that right—a 14-year age difference. Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me explain my perspective. My son had just recently moved out, and I wasn't aware of the true extent of their age difference when they first started dating. I wasn't thrilled about him dating someone significantly older, but I initially chalked it up to a typical age-gap relationship.
As time went on, I began to grasp the full magnitude of their age difference and its potential consequences. I knew that my son was young and inexperienced when it came to relationships, and I worried about the dynamics between them. I didn't want him to be taken advantage of or hurt by someone who had already lived a much longer life than he had.
Despite my concerns, I couldn't stop their relationship. I tried my best to intervene, to convince my son that this woman was not the right match for him. But love is a powerful force, and my efforts were in vain. Two years passed, and tragedy struck. She was involved in a fatal car accident, leaving my son traumatized and heartbroken.
Here's where my honesty might make some of you cringe. When my son expressed his pain and grief, I didn't respond with the comforting words he desperately needed. Instead, I told him something that many would consider heartless—I said that she deserved to die for dating someone so much younger, and that I was actually relieved she was gone. I even questioned why he was feeling heartbroken over someone who, in my eyes, had made questionable choices.
My husband disagreed with me, claiming that my words were cruel and insensitive. He argued that in times of grief, we should show compassion and support, regardless of our personal opinions. He asked me to imagine how I would feel if our daughter were in a similar situation, and her partner tragically passed away. I understood his point, but I still couldn't fully empathize.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. How could a mother say something so heartless to her own grieving son? I can't deny that my words were harsh, but here's the thing—I stand by them. I truly believe that age-gap relationships can come with significant challenges and potential risks. And while I may not have expressed my concerns in the most sensitive way, I couldn't hide my relief that my son was now free from what I perceived as an unhealthy dynamic.

# Today In Phishstory - June 8th Brought to you by tiph-bot. Beep.
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Phish

Phish, Friday 06/08/2012 (11 years ago) DCU Center, Worcester, MA, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 2012 Early Summer Tour
Set 1 : Free , Kill Devil Falls , Roses Are Free > Theme From the Bottom > Axilla > Julius , Bouncing Around the Room , Maze , Bathtub Gin
Set 2 : Down with Disease ¹ > Sand -> Nellie Kane , Mike's Song > Makisupa Policeman ² > Weekapaug Groove , Wading in the Velvet Sea , Also Sprach Zarathustra , Character Zero
Encore : The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg
1 Unfinished. 2 Keyword was "Sour Diesel."
Jamchart Notes:
Roses Are Free - A very nice melodic jam that turns dark develops as "Roses" proper is winding down.
Julius - Proving again that less is more (at least for "Julius"), Trey's nimble, amped-down playing provides interesting texture, and creates better suspension awaiting the inevitable re-build.
Bathtub Gin - In a bit of a nod to the old, pre-August '93 days, the jam begins with decelerating tempo and downward sloping melodies. At 7:30, the jam shifts into the more familiar, uptempo "modern" "Gin" jam. Cool version. Check out 11/16/91 if you doubt.
Also Sprach Zarathustra - Stellar 3.0 version. Trey's delicate soloing is inspired and fresh and Page fills in all the right gaps. Simply gorgeous.
Show Notes:
Mike teased Sundown in Bathtub Gin. Down with Disease was unfinished. Makisupa's keyword was "Sour Diesel." 2001 contained Sand teases from Fish and Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine and Mike's Song teases from Trey.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Wednesday 06/08/2011 (12 years ago) Darien Lake, Darien Center, NY, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 2011 Early Summer Tour
Set 1 : Nellie Kane , Mellow Mood , Buffalo Bill , Kill Devil Falls , Wolfman's Brother , Rift , Undermind , Ride Captain Ride , It's Ice > Dog Faced Boy , Brian and Robert > 46 Days , Limb By Limb , Character Zero
Set 2 : Golden Age > Mike's Song > Fast Enough for You > Weekapaug Groove , What's the Use? > Theme From the Bottom > Backwards Down the Number Line > Also Sprach Zarathustra > Harry Hood
Encore : Good Times Bad Times
Jamchart Notes:
Weekapaug Groove - "Golden Age" teases are followed by a nice funky breakdown jam with great Page and Mike. At the end, Trey sustains a note which carries into "What's The Use."
Also Sprach Zarathustra - "Golden Age," "Happy Birthday," and "WTU?" teases worked in perfectly, along with a serious syncopated throwdown, make this one a must hear. Play this to impress others.
Harry Hood - A very solid jam, building from start to end, and thus in good company with 5/6/90, 11/30/95, 2/18/97, 8/8/98, and 11/27/09.
Show Notes:
Weekapaug contained Golden Age teases. Also Sprach Zarathustra contained Golden Age, Happy Birthday and What's the Use? teases. In the soundcheck (which was played on Kevin Shapiro's From the Archives #15(b) show on 7/1/11 from SBIX ), Funky Bitch contained alternate lyrics, Dream On contained a brief Stairway to Heaven tease and "Old Zealand" alternate lyrics, and The Pendulum had Two Princes quotes.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Thursday 06/08/1995 (28 years ago) The Delta Center, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1995 Summer Tour
Set 1 : Don't You Want To Go? , Ha Ha Ha > Runaway Jim > Guelah Papyrus , Mound , Fast Enough for You , Reba ¹ , Prince Caspian ² , Chalk Dust Torture
Set 2 : Simple > Rift > Free > Bouncing Around the Room > Tweezer -> Lifeboy > Poor Heart > Julius
Encore : Good Times Bad Times
1 No whistling. 2 Debut.
Jamchart Notes:
Runaway Jim - After some "Third Stone From The Sun" (Hendrix) teases from Trey, this one gets out beyond the norm.
Prince Caspian - Debut includes a short instrumental bridge. The ending jam section and closing chords were added in 1996.
Tweezer - Another wacky "type II" version that is worth hearing if you're an aficionado of Phish improv.
Show Notes:
Runaway Jim contained Third Stone from the Sun teases. Reba did not have the whistling ending. This show marked the debut of Prince Caspian. Page teased The Sabre Dance in Tweezer. This gig was originally scheduled for the outdoor Wolf Mountain Amphitheatre in Park City; due to a late spring snowstorm, the day before the show took place it was moved to the indoor Delta Center.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, Friday 06/08/1990 (33 years ago) 23 East Cabaret, Ardmore, PA, USA
Gap Chart, Tour: 1990 Tour
Set 1 : Foam > Bouncing Around the Room > You Enjoy Myself > Divided Sky , Uncle Pen , The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg > Run Like an Antelope
Set 2 : Possum , My Sweet One > Bathtub Gin > Tweezer , I Didn't Know ¹ , Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove
1 Fish on trombone.
Show Notes:
I Didn't Know featured Fish on trombone.
Listen now at Phish.in!
Phish, 1989-06-08 The Quad, Hobart College, Geneva, NY, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/phish-june-08-1989-the-quad-hobart-college-geneva-ny-usa.html
Tour: 1989 Tour
Show Notes: Phish played an outdoor party, complete with a beer moat. One fan in attendance recalls hearing Peaches en Regalia, as well as a Zeppelin cover (possibly Good Times Bad Times).

Trey Anastasio

Trey Anastasio Band, 2003-06-08 Memorial Auditorium, Burlington, VT, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-08-2003-memorial-auditorium-burlington-vt-usa.html
Tour: TAB - The Dectet Summer 2003 Tour
Show Notes: This was a headlining performance of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival. The Unknown Blues Band opened, with special guest Joey Sommerville.
Trey Anastasio Band, 2002-06-08 Deer Creek, Noblesville, IN, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-08-2002-deer-creek-music-center-noblesville-in-usa.html
Tour: TAB - The Dectet Summer 2002 Tour
Show Notes:
Vermont Jazz All-Stars, 1999-06-08 Higher Ground, Winooski, VT, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/trey-anastasio-june-08-1999-higher-ground-winooski-vt-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes:

John Fishman

Jazz Mandolin Project, 2004-06-08 The Fox Theatre, Boulder, CO, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/jon-fishman-june-08-2004-the-fox-theatre-boulder-co-usa.html
Tour: Fish - Jazz Mandolin Project Summer 2004 Tour
Show Notes:

Page McConnell

Page McConnell, 2007-06-08 The Orange Peel, Asheville, NC, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/page-mcconnell-june-08-2007-the-orange-peel-asheville-nc-usa.html
Tour: Page McConnell Spring & Summer 2007 Tour
Show Notes: After "Maid Marian," Page gave a shout out to the people at the Moog Factory and then followed up with a short demonstration of his Moog.

Other

Anastasio, Gordon & Masefield, 1993-06-08 WVPS Studios, Burlington, VT, USA
Setlist: https://phish.net/setlists/guest-appearance-june-08-1993-wvps-studios-burlington-vt-usa.html
Tour: Not Part of a Tour
Show Notes: This performance for Vermont Public Radio featured Trey on guitar, Mike on bass and Jamie Masefield on mandolins. There is no known setlist or circulating recording.

“Pete knows what he saw, Martha!”

“Bunch ‘a frightened children ain’t exactly the--”

A door slammed shut.

Clark Kent, only a young boy, squeezed his eyes shut until it hurt and pressed his hands against his ears until his temples throbbed.

One step after the other. Heavy. Crunching grass.

“You think I’m an idiot, Martha?!”

“Now, I never said that.”

The pained look on Clark’s face softened -- softened, so it could be remolded into a whimper while the rest of his body stiffened.

“He ain’t done nothing wrong, all I’m saying is--”

“All you’re saying is that you’d rather not talk about it!”

“There’s nothing to talk about!”

Then why wouldn’t they stop talking! All of these voices, the thousand-million voices screaming at him, and all Clark could hear were the two arguing over him! Him!

A long, creaking groan. Wood shuddering.

“CLARK!”

The word, his name, knocked the other two sources of dismay from his head, an instant of soothing comfort before the pain took hold again and even more intensely, now as if he were pressing his head against a bass booster. “Pa!” Clark cried out, only to regret it as quickly as he had acted on the impulse.

“CLARK!”

His father called for him again and, judging from what should have been the imperceptible way the wind whistled, began dashing around in search of him; it took nothing less than an eternity for Pa to finally find him and one thunderous thwump after the other to finally lay eyes on him.
Pa pulled down the last barrel of hay -- Clark had stacked some around himself in an attempt to muffle the noise -- before breathing a sigh of relief; little did he know, it was a veritable wind storm to his son. “Remember…” he made sure to whisper, his small crisis finally abetting, if only a little. “This is all you. You’re inside your own head and that’s making it so much worse. You are the one in control.”
Clark’s only response was a strangled noise and to curl up further into himself.
To that, Pa felt his own throat tighten. “So open your eyes, son, get on back to the rest of the world… I’m right here.” He extended his hand, gently nudging Clark.
Again, no response and, again, Pa’s throat tightened, twisting and winding until the strain became too much to bear, and finally snapped loose under the pressure.

“DAMNIT, CLARK!”

He burst out, the sudden snap of tension giving each word a trembling quality as it all came pouring out. And then Clark flinched, like all boys do when they’re scared or hurt or both, and the dam was suddenly closed again, sealed with a silent promise.
“Son, I--” Pa stammered, his voice the sort of wreck so mired with cracks and creaks that it was a miracle it held together at all. “I didn’t--”
It was then that Clark finally stirred, hands at last unwrapping themselves from around his head, which peaked up ever so slightly to look out beyond his hay-fort at his father. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice so small that Pa struggled to hear it.
His body screamed a thousand different things to say, but he knew that just was the last thing Clark needed right now. So, fighting back to the calm, measured tone he had managed just a scant few moments ago, Pa said, “You best not be sorry, you ain’t done nothing wrong,” and pulled his son out from his refuge.
“Seriously?” Clark seemed dumbfounded by the statement, so much so that he even resisted the tug, if only for a passing second. “You seen what’s happening back there?” He jabbed a finger towards the house. “It’s all me. Literally. They’re arguing about me. ‘Cuz I-I’m some sort of freak or something!”
Pa was quick to correct him. “You ain’t no different from any other boy I ever met.”
He was met with a piercing glare from his son.
“You know what I mean, aside from your gifts--”
“How the hell’re these supposed to be gifts!” Clark threw up his hands in his best attempt at exasperation, but even an ear without super hearing could hear how his throat stiffened with each word.
Pa smiled, shrugging. “Able to race the car, leap the barn in a single bound…”
“But I don’t want to do any of that!” he said, voice finally breaking. “And w-when it comes with stuff like… this…! I just wanna be Clark Kent: Pete and Lana’s friend. Your and Ma’s son. Not some freak!”
“Clark--!” A cross of anger and dread flared in Pa’s voice, and he caught himself from pulling Clark into a hug. Swallowing hard, he instead summoned the warmest smile he could, ruffling the boy’s hair.

“You are my son, but you are so much more than that too.”

🔻 🔺 🔻 🔺 🔻
DC Next Proudly Presents…!

SUPERMAN: HOUSE OF EL

The Return of Superman - Part 3, Moving at Super Speed
By JPM11S
Edited by ClaraEclair & Deadislandman1
< Next>>
🔻 🔺 🔻 🔺 🔻
To say silence hung thick in the air would have been an understatement, because even silence was something more than being frozen in a single, inescapable instant: Kal-El staring down the man clutching his throbbing hand, the man’s friend looking on flush-faced, and the rest of the establishment bracing for whatever happened next. It was a rare thing that Jon Kent found himself slipping into Bullet Time on accident -- a state of heightened awareness where the world seemed to grow still around him -- and an even rarer thing that it should happen when a bright red cape wasn’t slung around his shoulders; simply put, as an instinctual reaction to being threatened, there needed to be, well, something that could threaten him, and there weren’t very many things that seriously could: Kryptonite, which Jon was confident wasn’t in play, and being yelled at, which he couldn’t have even known.
It was then that it dawned on him, so obvious that the muscles and tendons along Jon’s arm tensed in anticipation of slapping himself upside the head before he stopped himself -- a small thunderclap born from his own embarrassment was likely to only make the feeling worse. ‘Just an adrenaline rush…’ Jon explained to no one but himself. ‘Because… you know… watching dad do… that.’ The recently appeared doppelganger of his father had broken a man’s finger to “teach him a lesson” -- something his father most certainly would not have done; what he would have done, and what Jon was currently doing, was take a deep, relaxing breath, easing the stress away so that he could “hit play” on the rest of the world.
It came as something of a mild surprise when… nothing happened; Jon panicked, doing a double take as the terrible thought sprung into his mind: What if this was something else, some time-weapon unleashed just then on the city? Or what if he had failed to slow himself down? Would he be forced to wander the world a waking ghost? Jon shook his head, knocking such silly notions from his mind -- and also getting the attention of Natasha Irons.
“Something up?” she asked, broken from her spellbound trance.
Jon blinked. “Nope. Nothing.” The Ace ‘o Clubs could be a little rough around the edges, so what didn’t even qualify as a minor scuffle at the bar hardly registered with many of the patrons, who merely kept about their business as if nothing had happened -- because, to them, nothing had. Jon shook his head again, chidding himself for thinking that a cursory glance in that general direction had been any real indication of interest; his own bias, he supposed.
Kal-El returned to the table, his sheer weight and size making it known despite the fact that Jon’s attention had been elsewhere. No one said anything, and it took the visitor from another world a few passing seconds to realize that fact -- like they were all waiting for him to do something.
Kal looked up, a look of restrained puzzlement on his face.
Lois’s lips went thin. “What was that?”
“What was… what?” Kal-El’s eyes darted across everyone’s face, searching for an answer.
Irons nudged him gently.
“Wait, really?” he almost recoiled, tilting his chin up and cocking his head, confusion finally overtaking him. “I--”
“Was wrong.” Lois finished the sentence for him. “The hell were you thinking?!”
Jon and Natasha exchanged looks.
Kal-El shrugged it off. Literally. “The way I see it, a broken finger or two isn’t going to impede him in any real way, while also being something he’s not going to just forget.”
“So that makes it alright?!” insisted Lois, leaning forward.
“...yes?” he answered. “Though I feel like that’s… not the answer you wanted.”
“That’s not how we do things here.”
At that moment, with just how each word was frozen in a block of ice, Jon could have swore his mom had spontaneously developed Frost Breath; ironically, that was what inspired him to finally intervene. “You know, mom,” he explained, “In class, the professors always talked about how different all these cultures were from each other: food, clothing, language, medicine, you get the idea… Their sense of justice, how they handled punishments and such… that was one of the big ones too. Judeo-Christian morality versus something like Hammurabi's ‘an eye for an eye.’” He paused, making sure his mom was actually listening. “So, you know, on Kal’s Earth, maybe that was perfectly acceptable. Heck, there’re a lot of people here who would agree with him.”
Lois stopped to consider her answer, though it seemed more an imitation of the action than a genuine attempt. “He’s here now, and that wouldn’t make it right if he wasn’t.”
“Listen, I’m really sorry if--” Kal-El raised his hands in apology.
“No, no,” Jon waved him off, gaze never breaking from his mom. “You can’t just force your values onto another culture.”
“Like he forced that guy’s finger back?” she countered, rising to the bait. “Seems like that’s exactly what you’re talking about.”
“If I was talking about him right now, sure, but I’m talking about you,” insisted Jon. “You’re just doing the same thing you’re complaining about him doing.”
Lois lowered her chin, motioning towards herself. “So, wait, I’m the one who’s done something wrong here?”
“The both of you, yes.”
“So you’re saying it was perfectly alright?”
“I just said it wasn’t.”
“Oh, so you’re not judging him based on your own values?”
Jon shook his head, grinning. “You’re trying to distract from the point!”
“No, I just think the entire argument is flawed, since by criticizing someone like that, you’re inherently impressing your own values on them,” she explained. “You know, the thing you’re taking issue with.”
“But you’re from the same culture as I am: he isn’t.”
“He isn’t sitting right here, yes…” Kal-El groaned.
Lois and Jon kept going like he wasn’t.
“He’s impressing his own cultural values on someone from another.”
“Right, and I agree, but I’m taking issue with you right now, because--”
“Because it’s time for this conversation to end,” Irons finally interjected, much to the audible relief of Kal and Natasha, whose shoulders visibly relaxed. “Seriously, I think I speak for all of us when I say I can hardly follow what you two are going on about.”
“We’re saying--” Jon and Lois began in unison, only to be cut off with a raised hand.
“We’ll manage without it,” he chuckled.
There was a brief lull in the conversation, a time where the most activity was Jon’s eyes scampering about the place and the beat of Kal-El’s fingers against the table. Eventually, Jon’s gaze locked onto something or, more accurately, the lack of something.
With his mouth hung open just slightly, Jon asked, “Hey, did anyone notice Mr. Bibbowski?”
“Yeah,” Natasha spoke up, glancing around the table. “Didn’t you guys’s see?”
She took the blank stares as a no.
“Didn’t you guys catch the sign-note-thing?”
More blank stares.
“Okay, seriously, two of you have literal super senses and the other two are, like, super geniuses.” Nat waved her hands around. “You know what, doesn’t matter. I’m getting off topic. Bibbo’s in the hospital. The sign was about raising money.”
“What?” Lois pressed, immediately leaning forward. “What’s wrong?”
His gaze a million miles away -- or, more accurately, only a few -- Jon answered first. “Lung cancer. He’s in Metropolis General. Room 414.”
Irons chewed his lip, then looked up directly into Jon’s eyes. “First thing tomorrow, you pay him a visit, ‘kay?”
“But I was just going to now…?” Jon cocked his head. “What don’t I know about?”
🔻 🔺 🔻 🔺 🔻
In retrospect, the thought that Kal-El would need somewhere to stay really should have occurred to him sooner than it had -- well, that might have been putting it a little too generously: had occurred to him at all. To be fair, though, it wasn’t every day that you met your deceased father from another world, though, also to be fair, he dealt with weirder things on a regular basis.
The Fortress of Solitude, Superman’s icy abode at the top of the world and one of the scant few remaining pieces of Krypton, seemed the most logical place to house Kal while they worked on returning him -- and everyone else -- back to the proper Earth, and it seemed that Jon wasn’t the only one who thought so. Following their malaise-laiden departure from the Ace ‘o Clubs, it was the immediate destination of the not-so-merry band, traveling up across the globe to it’s frosty doorstep, where they needed Jon to heft the Fortress’s giant, golden key above his head and unlock an equally gargantuan front door. The key was made of Supermanium, a metal forged by Clark from the heart of a dying star, and weighed an incalculable millions of tons, the only security measure needed despite it sitting out in the open.
Jon slotted the end of the key bearing the Crest of El into the groove, turning it to trigger the rumblings of icy shards as they peeled back to reveal a wall of blinding, cleansing white light. The group took a step forward, entering into another world -- almost literally: born of materials not of Earth and minds born far from it, the Fortress resembled something best described as an alien, crystalline landscape. The ground was a maze of large, roughly hexagonal spires with smoothly shorn tops, each of which peaked at a slightly different elevation and tapered off in the distance to create a sheer drop; at the edge of that cliff sat a circular array of crystals gently pulsing with light and humming just barely above perception. Placed around what was assumedly the central chamber of the Fortress, judging from the hewn hallway entrances at the perimeter, were trophies and mementos from Clark’s decades-spanning career as Superman, items ranging from the mundane, like Lex Luthor’s shrinking ray, to the absurd, such as psychic sand from the dimension of Quarm, to the profound, like the precious Bottled City of Kandor, a shrunken Kryptonian city rescued from the clutches of the vile Brainiac many years ago.
Kal-El loosed a low whistle. “Wow,” he said, eyes flitting about the place, jumping from the looming pillars that came together to form an arched ceiling, to the large, gaping voids dotted around where the spires didn’t conjoin. “It’s so… clean.”
“Come again?” Jon quirked a brow.
With a flutter of his cape and a look that Jon almost mistook for melancholy, Kal-El raised several inches above the ground and began drifting between the various exhibits on display. “Clean. See, I… I live in my… Fortress of Solitude, so--”
Jon finished for him. “Like a dirty room.”
“Exactly,” Kal looked up from the display and flashed him a subtle smile. “Like a dirty room.”
Lois, unable to fly and wearing shoes ill-begotten for her husband’s arctic-O.S.H.A.-violation, carefully stepped across one hexagonal tile to the next until she finally approached the black-suited Superman. “Little lonely living at the top of the world, no?”
“It is called the Fortress of Solitude.” There was a slight edge to his voice, though Lois could tell it wasn’t one pointed towards her. “Maybe, I wanted to be alone.”
Lois cocked her hip, rested her hand on it, and considered for a long moment pressing deeper, giving in to the gut screaming at her that this was the thing to pick at. Her heart, though… her heart counseled now was not the time, and she had long since learned the wisdom of always following her heart. “If you’re looking for solitude, we might have brought you to the wrong place,” she suggested instead.
In the same manner Jon had not a moment ago, Kal quirked a brow. “What do you mean?”
“A thousand apologies.” From across the room, a voice not unlike his carried, though distorted to an almost unnatural bass and strained with what was best described as someone fighting hard against a thick accent. “If I had been expecting guests, I would have prepared something for you all to enjoy.”
The comparisons to Clark and Kal-El didn’t end with just the man’s voice; while his face and form were the same general shape, his skin was ashen and craggy, like a smooth stone. With every step forward he took, the mass of rippling, coiled muscle underneath his purple-blue Superman t-shirt strained against their confines. “Ah, I see we have another visitor, unless my brother decided death didn’t suit him.” He inclined his head, placing a large hand over his even larger chest. “For now, you can call me Bizarro.”
Natasha, a gleaming smile on her face, chimed in. “We’ve been working on choosing a name!” she said, bounding towards the behemoth and wrapping herself around one of his hulking arms.
Bizarro returned the affection as best he could. “It was Nat’s idea. We were watching Space Trek: Pathfinder one night and--”
“And I was there too,” Jon interjected.
“And Jon was there too,” he chuckled. “But one of the characters was searching for a name and, considering the circumstances, it seemed appropriate that I do the same.”
Floating over towards Bizarro, Kal-El dragged his sight up and down the man, the doppelganger of his enemy from another world, eyeing him with a mix of reservation and curiosity. Eventually, Kal paused on the Crest of El worn on his chest. “You’re not like mine.”
Bizarro nodded. “In one key respect, yes. I’m not as--”
“Dumb.”
“Slow,” he finished, correcting him with a side-eyed glance. “While Jon was working a case with the Flash, Mister Allen devised a way to ‘speed up’ my thought processes.” (Author’s Note: See The Flash #19!) Bizarro paused for several more long moments, looking at Kal like he had to him not a second ago before shaking his head, seemingly perishing the thought. “You’ve met me,” he said, smiling. “Have you had the chance to meet our other housemate?”
Kal cocked his head. “Other housemate?” He threw his eyes behind Bizarro, expecting someone else to enter the chamber, but no one came. “Another reformed villain?”
“Your cousin,” Jon interjected, taking a step forward. “Kara. She got here only a few months ago.”
The spark of joy on Kal’s face lived up to its description: appearing in a bright instant, only to vanish as soon as it came, replaced now by a deeply furrowed brow, emphasizing the lines on the man’s face. “How’s she taking the adjustment? Losing one world, then another, I can’t--” Kal cut himself off when he saw Jon’s eyes widen slightly and his mouth open in response: he didn’t need to wait for the correction he was about to receive. “She’s not from another Earth like me… Where is she? I’d like to meet her.”
Lois shrugged. “She’s busy in National City right now, if I remember correctly, but--”
Irons stepped behind Lois, his hulking form framing her. “But we’d like to wait a minute and figure out how to break the news to her first.”
“No,” Kal said, every muscle in his powerful body visibly tensing, rearing. “She needs my help! You don’t understand what it’s like! You’re not like her! None of you, not really. Only I can understand.”
With a withering look, Irons replied. “You’ve never even met her, how can you know better than her own family?”
“I am her family,” asserted Kal, beginning his ascent into the air. “I helped my Kara through this once already, I can do it again.”
“And you’re the problem! You know how much she’s going through right now?!” Irons shouted up at him. “You died! The person she was sent here to protect! Dead! And now here you are in the flesh and blood! She’s got a lot to process already without that!”
There was a lengthy bout of silence between Kal and everyone else, only coming to an end when the otherworldly Man of Steel asked, “And who’s going to stop me if I try anyway?”
Jon swallowed.
🔻 🔺 🔻 🔺 🔻
To be continued in Superman: House of El #4, Don’t Call her Supergirl!

Prolifers frequently equate abortion with the murder of a child. In this post, I'll argue that that's a false equivalence by focusing on the death itself. So for now I'm setting aside the "intentional killing" part of the debate and focusing on a subjective sense of wrongness or badness when a living thing dies.
Obviously all living things die eventually. But do we typically care about all those deaths equally? Are they all equally terrible? I don't think so.
The death of a carrot after you pull it out of the ground to eat it is almost universally considered morally neutral, if not a net good. The death of a fish when you pull it out of the water to eat it is slightly more concerning to many people. The death of a domesticated animal with whom we have social bonds is even more upsetting. And finally, the death of a human being is almost always perceived as negative by most other human beings.
So obviously death in and of itself isn't inherently an evil thing; indeed it can be a beneficial thing.
When it comes to humans dying, there is also a range of badness: from sad but expected, all the way up to life-shatteringly tragic, the stuff of superhero origin stories. Note that I'm not not talking about the moral value of the people; all people are equally valuable. I'm only talking about the negative weight of the death.
Take my grandmother, for example: she died a few years ago at the age of 92, peacefully in her sleep with her loved ones nearby. She led a long and fulfilling live, and she was ready to go. Our family grieved, of course. And I miss her, of course. But all in all I'd call it a good death, comparatively speaking.
Compare that to the death of my uncle: he was a remarkably healthy man with two teenaged sons and a loving wife, who felt a little off one day. He kept feeling worse and worse and none of the doctors could figure out what was wrong. He suffered horribly for a couple months, and then he was suddenly dead at the age of 49. Our family grieved, of course. And I miss him, of course. But his death seems more tragic, or simply worse, when compared to my grandmother's.
Again, I'm not saying my grandmother's life had any less value than my uncle's; just that her death was less distressing.
Do you agree with my premise that not all deaths are equally bad, and not even all deaths of humans are equally bad? If not, please let me know in the comments.
In thinking about the differences between the perceived awfulness of different deaths of living organisms, I've come up with a list of contributing factors:
1) Was there no justification for the death? Senseless death seems more tragic.
2) Was the death preventable? It seems worse if it could have been prevented.
3) How much suffering was involved? There is potential for both physical suffering for the organism itself and emotional suffering for both the organism and anyone who cared about it.
4) Was the dying organism self-aware and/or opposed to death? This may just be an extension of factor 3, but we tend to be empathetic if the death is both anticipated and feared or dreaded, making it seem worse.
Each of these factors contributes a different weight depending on the circumstances. For a carrot, the answer is no to all four factors. A fish might suffer a bit, which is why some people are vegan. The death of a beloved pet is more tragic still, since now we're including the grief of the animal's owners.
For humans these factors can vary widely based on circumstance. My grandmother was not in any pain and was at peace with dying; her death was both inevitable and unavoidable. And while we did grieve for her, we did not suffer any surprise or loss of expectations. My uncle's death felt much more senseless, and possibly preventable. It also involved a lot more suffering, for him and for us (especially my aunt and cousins). Everyone had expected him to be around for many more decades, and no one was at peace with it. And he was all too aware that he was dying.
So let's apply the four factors to the death of a human blastocyst that fails to successfully implant. I consider these to be natural deaths, since blastocysts die without implanting most of the time. It's the way human reproduction has evolved: to cull all but the strongest embryos, since human pregnancy is so costly to the pregnant person. In that sense, the death of a blastocyst does have a purpose. And of course the answers to the other three factors are no. So we can say the death of a human blastocyst is still a loss of human life, but not a terribly upsetting one. This view bears itself out in the way society responds to these deaths: with resounding apathy. Most people don't even know it's happening, and no one who does know is trying to do anything about it. I'm fairly certain that most people don't even view these blastocysts as human beings, despite PL claims to the contrary.
What about the blastocysts that manage to implant successfully? Early miscarriage is far more common than most people realize. Around 15% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage (considerably more then will be intentionally aborted). Almost half of all women who make it to 24 weeks gestation have already had at least one miscarriage previously. The cause of death can be considered a mixture of natural and accidental; many of the implanted embryos are unhealthy in some way, but the healthy ones die by some accident that might have been avoided. These spontaneous abortions occur during the same gestational time period as induced abortions, with the vast majority of both occuring in the first trimester. These are the exact same "babies" that are being killed in abortion. So are their deaths widely considered equivalent to the accidental (or natural) death of a born child?
No. Of course not. The typical family does not grieve for an early miscarriage the same way they would for the death of a child. Much of the time they don't even tell anyone; there's a reason why it's customary to wait until the second trimester to make a public announcement. And my society is doing very little to address it. This is the same society that banned lawn darts after three kids were killed, but they do virtually nothing to try to prevent the deaths of millions of embryos? I'd love to hear if any society does treat miscarriage the same way they treat lawn darts, SIDs, or prematurity, with the same devotion to prevention efforts.
Seriously ask yourself: would you rather suffer an early miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy, or have your four year old develop a fatal illness or be killed in a fatal accident? Or are the two scenarios perfectly equivalent in your mind?
Please let me know if you have any rebuttal to my claim that embryonic death is not generally perceived as equivalent to the death of a child.
Why aren't the deaths of embryos perceived the same as the deaths of children? I think it goes back to the four factors: the death of an embryo may be kind of senseless and minimally avoidable, but they also cause relatively little suffering (in some cases no suffering at all) and of course the embryo is completely unaware it was ever alive, let alone that it's dying.
So if the death of an embryo is demonstrably not equivalent to the death of a child (both in how people typically perceive it and how society responds to it), then comparing killing an embryo to killing a child is also demonstrably not equivalent.

It took me over 30 years to fully grasp my mother and her NBPD. It’s taken even longer to realize my hero father has truly been complicit and enabling of her abuse.
My Nsister were very close. Best friends. She had it under control for the most part, and I never minced words with her, so she usually didn’t engage in that behavior with me. I became unexpectedly pregnant (real late bloomer) and decided it was best for me to be closer to her (she had just moved cross-country). My partner and I decided that it would be best raising LO there, and she would have her aunt/uncle cousins very much engrained in her life. We were to stay there, and help her transition into her new career by watching the kids. We paid rent, and bills. This was meant to be until we found our own place, but after we got there, housing started to skyrocket, and no matter how hard we worked, we knew it just probably wasn’t going to be feasible with a newborn to afford anything there. My sister later begged us to stay (she had 24/7 child care, and this now is obvious to me as the reason why).
Welp, after about four months, my sister had some sort of internal crisis, and immediately pushed her husband of seven years out of the house. I believe she realized I could take care of everything she needed when it came to the kids, and she was the primary breadwinner, so she found no use for him anymore. After he moved out, she went on heavy drinking benders. Acting like a freshly 21 year old college student, leaving her kids with me to go out and drink all night. She used to be the best mother. So attentive, caring, and present. I watched her completely deteriorate from what she once was. She started dating a terrible person- obnoxious, alcoholic, unintelligent and rude and everything went south. She never had her kids anymore, my partner and I did. I went from being pregnant to essentially having three children at once. She refused to bathe them, help with homework, grocery shop, anything needed. Once the guilt set in for her, she would pick them up, take them on a shopping spree, convince herself that was enough and restart the cycle. She became so nasty, mean, and a horrendous liar. I suffered from horrendous PPA, and immediately sought help. She was nowhere to be found. This caused so much turmoil mainly due to the neglect to her children that I knew we needed to plan our escape. Whenever I’d discuss the possibility of moving near his family, she begged and pleaded, because what was she going to do? Who was going to help her?
My NBPD mother had me fooled for a while. She for the first time agreed with me, and said I needed to get out. My e-dad guilted me for months and months, with what would become of my nieces if I left? How could I abandon them?
Eventually the situation got so toxic, that we secretly finalized plans, and within two weeks of move date- I let her know what was happening. Wrong move. She tried to dismantle, and try to get me to engage in a war so many times. I bit my tongue and reminded myself it was almost over.
The night we packed, she set up cameras around the house, and left to drink with her boyfriend. At one point my partner and I got super frustrated with each other, and we started yelling. We were exhausted, and trying to pack as fast as we could because all signs were pointing to one last explosion. The baby was teething, and I think we just lost it with each other. My sister was baby sitting the cameras, and took recordings and sent them to my NBPD mom and e-dad. All of them started blowing up my phone asking if I needed them to come save me frkm my abusive partner. They said they heard him yelling, and that they were going to make him suffer for it. I was like wtf? 1. It was completely out of frustration and juvenile. 2. It wasn’t even slightly aggressive 3.It was so minor I didn’t even know what they were referencing. (They heard him tell me to “shut the f up”.)
Both my sister and mother were so offended that I turned down their “protection” from him, and told them that nothing was going on. My mom started blowing up his phone, his brothers phone- anyone she could yell at. She got in the car and started driving 10 hours to my sisters. I knew they were trying to get a reaction out of me, but I kept cool and my eye on the prize.
We got out, stayed in a hotel that night, and decided he was going to fly with our eleven month old (i hate flying) and I’d drive the dog and huge uhaul 13 hours- I was looking forward to the silence and decompression time. The next day around five hours into my trip is when my BPD mom started the onslaught. (As soon as my stuff was out of the house- I blocked my sister on everything). She started using my partner as a scapegoat, and fighting on my sisters behalf. She laughed at me, called us losers, and then finally got the reaction she was begging for when she threatened to call CPS for my child, because she was going to take her, and we didn’t deserve her. She said she heard him be abusive and I abandoned my sister, and don’t deserve my child anymore because of it….. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t understand how she was in full support of my sister being a monster in general for months, and then within two days- completely championing for her. My sister has always been the GC though- I was always always the sibling that called out the toxic behavior and wasn’t scared of either of them. Truth teller? I think that’s it. Five hours into my trip, my phone stopped working shortly after my conversation with my mom ended. I had always been on a family plan I shared with my sister. She paid for that, and I paid for all the streaming apps. It all evened out. I tried placing a call, and that’s when I realized service had been stopped. I was in a giant uhaul with my car towed on the back, with my dog, in a random city- no phone, no gps, and no idea what to do. I drove around for about an hour in a huge city and finally found and ATT store, ran in, told them I had no time and just needed a new plan etc. my mother sat with my sister laughing at me before they shut my phone off. They knew I was alone.
My dad has always been my favorite person. I relate with him far more than anyone in my family- but I’m starting to realize he’s been worse than the Nsister or NBPD mother.
I hadn’t talked to any of them in about a month and a half. My dad didn’t contact me. Normally when my mom did this stuff, he would find ways to sneak talking to me. He would try to convince me to apologize and beg for it. He would agree it was her fault, but he would insist I apologize “so the family could be whole”. “Start the healing” “do you just hate your mother? You know how she is, she can’t help it” “just apologize and it will be back to normal” “if she finds out I’m talking to you she will leave me” My mother had always treated me like a mistress of my father’s rather than her daughter. I was always enemy #1, and if she caught him talking to me- it was a major act of betrayal in her eyes. She had gotten so abusive over it in the past (physically/mentally) that I understood why he had to hide it.
The last month an half has been so hard. My other sister as been distant in order to not get caught in the crossfire of my Mom. my mother spent a month at my Nsisters house coddling her, and watching her kids, and cleaning up after her. I spent weeks crying wondering why my dad hadn’t secretly reached out to even just check in about my child. Yesterday I gave in and messaged my dad. He tried to push the whole viewpoint of my mother- that they heard him yelling at me, and they needed to defend me. That I should think about leaving him. My father said my mother was still very angry and so hurt over what I said after she said she was going to take my child. He said he was going to call me once he left the house and wasn’t around her. Once on the phone, he explained he agreed with me leaving, and that my sister was really spiraling, and my mom shouldn’t be involved in the fight or picking sides/daughters. He said I was going to have to apologize. I’m not apologizing. I can’t do it this time. My daughters first birthday is coming up, and for some reason today,‘I got extremely sad over it and messaged my mother- just letting her know I was open to a conversation and would like if she could come to my daughters first birthday party no matter what her feelings are towards me. Her response was insane, ans made me feel so incredibly stupid for reaching out.
“Sorry to say but we have made other plans so we will not be able to come to her party. But we would be happy to send her gifts and stuff she needs. Just to make this very clear I will not ever be around baby’s father after having to listen to his disrespectful. Sorry arse. His father was right about one thing he is lazy as hell. His words at your shower. If baby needs anything just get in touch with your dad or send me a text. As soon as we receive a heartfelt apology we will be more than happy and joyed to come pick you and Jude up so you can spend some time with us.”
We went back and forth for a while- and she just was so hateful the entire time. I kept my cool, and just tried to tiptoe as much as I could. She kept pummeling on my partner- and then when that didn’t work, it was hat I chose his family over my own. That I was not loyal, and what does it matter if she doesn’t talk to me anymore. I kept assuring her I wasn’t abandoning her for them, and she doesn’t have to feel threatened by , and the onslaught continued. She then started defending everything my sister had done, and adding her own twists on it. I told her it was between my sister and me, and to just stop choosing sides- that she could have a relationship with both of us independently, no matter our status with each other. She didn’t care. She said well, that’s your version of the truth, and you have your new family. She kept hammering the point that no one will love my child or me as much as her. My father has a bad habit of saying that as well. She’s demonizing my partner so much through the entire conversation, and he’s so hurt by it too. He offered to apologize instead of me. He said he could go beg her and plead. It made me sick. How absolutely embarrassing. I won’t allow him to do it. I’m not subjecting him to this anymore. My family has always been good at throwing money at problems. No real emotional care, love, or support- but if you have an issue, need, or want?, they will pay for it- and that’s love to them. My sister has adapted it with her children. My mother favors that sister because of money. She’s successful- has a huge house- and my sister buys her whatever she wants when she’s around. (My parents are well off, so I’m not sure why this even matters to her). It’s always a “well I did this for you! That for you! I paid for all of these things!” Most of the time when my mother gave me gifts, it was things she could hold over my head. Once I got older and had my own money, I know she was bothered by not having that control anymore- so I’m sure watching my sister shut my phone off was a long awaited scratch to her itch.
I found out their plans for my daughters first birthday was going to my sisters house.
I cried hysterically for a few hours- and here I am. I’m used to this behavior from her, so I don’t think I’ll mourn the loss of her in a NC- but I can’t get past my dad. Thinking about how old he is getting, and how this is all a giant waste of time that I could have him spending time with my daughter, makes me physically ill. I’m so scared that I won’t be able to see him again because of my mother, and he will eventually pass. I’m sorry if this isn’t too coherent, I’ve been sobbing for hours, and I’m exhausted. My mother has made it obvious that she chooses not only my sister, but her children as well, and my dad is allowing her to drag him along for the ride. I should hate him for it, but I can’t. It destroys me to think of going NC with him or my other sister. She lives far away from all of us, and is extremely busy so doesn’t really get involved with my mom other than surface level. My mother has apologized to me one time. One time in 30+ years. I have bitten the bullet and apologize and begged her to forgive me every single time since I was a preteen for the sake of my dad. I remember there would be times he would call me crying begging me to apologize to her “to make the family whole again”.
The writings on the wall for NC, but I just can’t bring myself to enforce it with my father or my other sister. She has a bad habit of giving updates and sending photos, so I’d probably have to. I don’t want her getting stuck in the middle of it. TIA for any advice.

Hi everyone, in my city there was a train accident/failure tonight. The train is stuck unable to move on the tracks for an unknown amount of time. How does this effect neighboring cities and states? How far can this domino effect go?

Anyone with a CDL looking for a driving job? 120k per year on average. Good gig if you have a teammate.
Average $120,000 each
Home on Weekends
Consistent Route
Our Salt Lake City, UT terminal is immediately hiring Team Truck Drivers.
Job details
Starting at .80 CPM for Teams
2500+ Miles a week
M-F, Weekends off
Home on Weekends
Regional Route
Responsible for the transporting freight
Adhere to the operational policies and procedures
Join us in making history. MME Inc. was founded over 100 years ago. Over the last century, our Class A CDL truck drivers have made a difference. Our home weekly routes allow truck drivers to enjoy the benefits of being part of an LTL industry leader. Come see why truck drivers have chosen MME for over 100 years. More Benefits
Competitive Compensation & paid weekly
High Deductible Health Plan with associated Health Savings Account
Company contribution to Health Savings Account
Vision & Dental Insurance available
Group Disability, accident, medical bridge, and critical illness coverage available
401K plan with company match
Paid Vacation, Holidays & Personal Leave
Direct Deposit
Company-paid Life Insurance
Will Planning Assistance
Employee Assistance Program
Class A CDL
Hazmat, Doubles/Triples, Tanker Endorsement
Valid DOT Physical/Medical Card
No DUI or Reckless Operation in the past 5 years
Less than 4 moving violations in the past 3 years
Fluent in English
Position subject to pre-employment drug screens
High school diploma or equivalent

Anyone with a CDL looking for a driving job? 120k per year on average. Good gig if you have a teammate.
Average $120,000 each
Home on Weekends
Consistent Route
Our Salt Lake City, UT terminal is immediately hiring Team Truck Drivers.
Job details
Starting at .80 CPM for Teams
2500+ Miles a week
M-F, Weekends off
Home on Weekends
Regional Route
Responsible for the transporting freight
Adhere to the operational policies and procedures
Join us in making history. MME Inc. was founded over 100 years ago. Over the last century, our Class A CDL truck drivers have made a difference. Our home weekly routes allow truck drivers to enjoy the benefits of being part of an LTL industry leader. Come see why truck drivers have chosen MME for over 100 years. More Benefits
Competitive Compensation & paid weekly
High Deductible Health Plan with associated Health Savings Account
Company contribution to Health Savings Account
Vision & Dental Insurance available
Group Disability, accident, medical bridge, and critical illness coverage available
401K plan with company match
Paid Vacation, Holidays & Personal Leave
Direct Deposit
Company-paid Life Insurance
Will Planning Assistance
Employee Assistance Program
Class A CDL
Hazmat, Doubles/Triples, Tanker Endorsement
Valid DOT Physical/Medical Card
No DUI or Reckless Operation in the past 5 years
Less than 4 moving violations in the past 3 years
Fluent in English
Position subject to pre-employment drug screens
High school diploma or equivalent

They used to he called JAM EXECUTIVES and you can find the reviews about them here: https://www.reddit.com/recruitinghell/comments/yihdnf/has_anyone_heard_of_jam_executives/
Jam Executives does not exist anymore because the CEO (Alex Diaz) changed the name of the company because so many bad reviews and also because problems with the justice… it’s bad.
The new name for JAM EXECUTIVES is TRIFOLIUM.
Same building, (Hoboken, NJ)
Same recruiter, (Elizabeth Morris)
Same organization, same way of scamming people
Here is what you need to know If you got recruited by TRIFOLIUM… https://www.trifoliumnj.com
No, they are not a new company.
They have been in the market doing different scams for a while.
You are going to be sent to the trenches of different cities (which they say they have partnerships with but when you ask to see the city permit, they don’t have and the police can literally give you a ticket for soliciting without a permit) to give out free phone service.
You will tell people you are giving free phones with the government, but after getting their information and their social security number you are going to tell them the phone actually costs and the service is free.
You will get cursed out and depending on the day you will be putting your life in danger.
The interview is a joke. Whatever you say does not matter you will be selected even if you have no experience or skills in the area.
They will explain very broadly what you will do with a word salad of technical terms.
The job is 100% commission, meaning if you don’t sell, you don’t make any money.
There is the understanding between them what people look for jobs for 3 reasons. They will ask yours and then they will promise you exactly what you are looking for. Growth/skills, money, community.
In the morning you will be asked to come into the office in a suit, a bunch of interns wearing a suit and teaching each other how to manipulate people and make sales. It’s a mess. Weird cult like environment chanting random hey guys/hey what at times.
Anybody else had experiences with them?

To say my mother is a nutcase would be an understatement. She's a bat fuck bipolar whackadoo who has the world's longest medication list of narcotics.
Growing up nothing I (27F) ever did was good enough. I would be punished just for sitting on the couch wrong. Here's a summarized list of things she did:
When I was 7 one of her rings fell down the kitchen sink drain and she blamed me because I was taking a shower at the same time. She beat with a hairbrush and took my bed away. Claiming had to earn the right to have a have a bed. I slept on the floor in the living room until I was 18.
On my 8th birthday she got mad that I showered without being told, so she dragged me by my hair back into the shower and threw me in. Next thing I know I'm waking up on the with her holding a belt ready to beat me because I fell asleep in the shower.
At 9 she threw away what little clothes I had because I was getting to fat. She went out and bought clothes that were way to small for me to properly wear to encourage me to lose weight. She also locked up the fridge and cabinets. This went one until I was 16 and she gave up.
At 11 I got seriously ill while at school and instead of taking me to a doctor, she brought me and yelled that I got the flu on purpose because I was to stupid to learn. She grabbed my brother's gulf club and beat me until I was covered in bruises.
At 12 she began waking me up in the middle of the night to make me clean the house. I'd clean and she would destroy it all my hard work saying it was because I missed or spot.
At 14/15 the beatings stopped for a bit due to her being in a near fatal car accident (broken spine, and brain injury). By this point I had become completely dependent on her and thought it my life was normal. After a melt down at my granny's house one my cousins took me aside and laid it all out for. That what I was going through was abuse and he was sorry no one tried to stop it. They were so afraid she would kill me if they intervened.
Six months after the accident I went back home to live with her. I became her primary care taker. Booking her appointments, giving her baths, etc. Despite her injuries she was still capable of causing me great harm. But by this point I knew better and did my best to defend myself.
But due to years of being belittled and a human punching bag I had a hard time sticking up for myself. I would tell people what was happening but no one would believe because of how frail she looked.
At 17 I dislocated my knee while playing street hockey and needed to go to the hospital. She told the coaches and referees that she would drive me (by this point she had regained the ability to drive). They all trusted her to do so. Nope she took me home and beat me for making accuses not to play. Since winter break started the same day as the game, no one at the school wouldn't notice that she lied. She took away my phone to keep me calling for help. I spent most of winter break barely able to move and in pain.
The day after christmas I managed to get ahold of my phone while she was passed out and call a family friend for help. He took me to the hospital where they fixed my knee up and kept me overnight for observation because of how long I had to wait for treatment. I told them about my mother and what she did, but they knew her and said I was lying and attention seeking.
When I got home, my mother was still passed out. When she came to she didn't even notice that I had a knee brace on or using crutches to get around. I ended up benched for the rest of hockey season. My knee is still fucked up to this day due the damaged caused by being forced to wait.
That same school year, she burned all my identification records; birth certificate, state ID, and SS card because she wanted to make sure I stayed with her forever.
When I was 18 I was done with abuse. I was done trying to get people to listen me. I was fighting a losing battle. I figured no one would miss me, so I made a plan to end it all. I decided to spend my last day in the one place I felt safe, the library. Thankfully I met someone that day that gave me hope and strength to keep going.
Because of him, I was able find the courage to run. On my last day living with my mother, she beat me to the point she drew blood and broke my ribs. She was in such a rage I feared for my life. I managed to secretly record the audio of what happened. When she finally stopped and left me alone, I managed to get up, grab my phone and run to my neighbor's house.
The police and ambulance were called. I played the recording, but they all looked at her and deemed it was a fake recording. The officer threatened to arrest me if called the cops again under false pretenses. The paramedics begrudgingly took me to the hospital to get stitched up and xrayed but the ride was filled with accusatory looks and a lecture on how I'm a horrible daughter.
After being released, I took a bus home, grabbed what I could while she wasn't there and left. I lived on the streets for a bit while still going to school l, determined to finish up my senior year. Thankfully the guy I had met at the library, and his family took me in when they realized what had happened.
I finally had people who believed me and took actual care of me. They made sure I had a real bed and a real room to sleep in. They helped me get new copies of my birth certificate and SS card so I could get a new ID.
My mother to this day refuses to admit to what she did. She'll tell people I was a troubled and angry child who purposely hurt myself to get her in trouble. She'll claim she couldn't find a better way to get me to behave.
I still have a lot of trauma to work through, but I am more or less my own person. I have a steady-ish job and I pay bills. I married the guy from the library and gave birth to our child. I see a therapist every few weeks to work on bettering myself. And I'm determined to never end up like her. I will also not remain silent about my childhood. I will make sure people hear me.

The way I see it, if you don’t notice that I exist, then I’m doing my job correctly.
​
My name is Ben McFarlane and I work as a municipal sewer inspector in the town of Tevam Sound, Ontario. It's not the most glamorous job, but hey, somebody's got to do it and it puts food on the table.
​
You'd probably think that working as a sewer inspector isn't that exciting… and yeah, for the most part you'd be right. Most of the time, all I'm doing is checking the pipes for damage. Unless there’s a reason for me to investigate a certain area, most of what I do is routine inspection, which helps ensure that the sewers remain in good working order. Trust me, nobody wants to see what happens when they aren’t.
​
Thankfully, a lot of what I do can be done without me needing to crawl through pipes. I can use a small camera to help me do the inspection. But with some of the larger pipes and cisterns, I need to actually go inside and take a look.
​
It’s never the best part of my day, but like I said before: somebody’s got to do it.
​
Going down into the bigger tunnels is always a little unnerving. Part of it is the claustrophobic atmosphere and part of it is the knowledge that you’re basically standing in a river of literal human waste. I can deal with it now, but back when I first started the smell alone was darn near impossible to deal with.
​
Ask most sanitation workers and I'm sure they'll have stories about what they've found in the sewers before. Heck, most of it isn't even stuff that people flush down the toilet. It's the stuff that people drop down manhole covers, or the stuff that gets washed into the sewers by the rain. Dead animals are surprisingly common, as are kids toys. I found an entire bicycle in the sewer once and I've got a buddy who found a loaded gun down there! Someone probably thought they'd get rid of it by just tossing it in the sewer.
​
Someone was wrong.
​
But of all the strange things I've experienced during my time working in the sewers… none of it compares to the stuff I see in the pipes on the southeast side of town.
​
The things down there… I don't usually like to talk about them. Heck, I might not even be legally allowed to talk about them. I guess we'll find out, won't we? I've had a few drinks tonight and I'm feeling particularly chatty. So why not spill the beans? Hey, maybe someone out there will tell me something I don’t already know.
​
I’d been on the job for about a year or so before getting sent to the southeast side of town. It’s closer to the lake and the downtown area, so there’s some deeper pipes there. I’d always figured that that was the reason they only really ever sent certain people down there. I’d heard that those tunnels were old and a little labyrinthian. Anyone who didn’t know what they were doing could easily get lost.
​
But after we got hit with a particularly nasty rain storm back in summer of 2013, they needed to send someone down to check on some sensors and I just so happened to be one of the guys who was available.
​
A bad rain storm can push a sewer system to its limit, so it wasn’t really that surprising that we’d gotten that kind of call and at the time, I didn’t think that there was anything that strange about it. My supervisor told me to head on down toward the pumphouse on the southwest side of town like it was any other priority inspection, and I went along with no questions asked. It was a few streets away from downtown. I’d seen it before but never had a reason to go inside up until then.
​
I was working with a couple of other newbies at the time, a guy by the name of Stewart Long who’d only been on the job for a round three months or so, and another guy by the name of Tomas Opunui who’d started around the same time that I had.
​
We’d arrived at the pumphouse, and when we got there we noticed another team waiting on us. This wasn’t too shocking either. Depending on the size of the job, they might’ve sent some other guys in to help us handle it.
​
The guy in charge was an older man who looked to be pushing sixty. He had sort of a ‘Santa Claus on summer vacation’ look, with white hair, a short white beard, a big beer belly and a no nonsense expression.
​
He watched us get out of his truck with a look of stern disapproval, before huffing and trudging over to us.
“Where’s the usual fellas?” He asked.
“I dunno, out. They called us,” I replied.
​
He didn’t seem to like that answer but didn’t say anything in response to it.
“You ever worked on the southeast approach channel before?” He asked.
“Yeah, we’ve been in the ones on the north side of town,” I said.
“That’s not what I asked, kid. You ever worked in this one before?”
​
Something about the way he asked this question struck me as a little odd. I’d worked in an approach channel before. I knew the drill. What did it matter which one I’d worked in?
​
For the unenlightened, an approach channel is a cistern filled with wastewater. They feed into a deep tunnel which feeds into a water treatment plant and they’re considered to be fairly dangerous, due to their depth (if you fall off the ladder on your way down, you’re in for a long drop into a biohazardous lake unless you’re properly tethered) and the harmful gasses that can accumulate in them. Standard operating procedure is to always test the air before entering one just to make sure that it’s even safe to breathe down there.
​
Being reckless while going into an approach channel is a recipe for disaster, and I would have understood if the old man was concerned about us not having dealt with one before. But the way he spoke to us implied that this one was different somehow, which didn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me.
“What’s the difference?” I asked. “Same procedure, right?”
“No, not the same procedure. We need people experienced with this approach channel. These tunnels are a little different than what you’re used to.
“Look, the boss sent us here. So I’m sure we’ll manage,” Tomas said. “You can show us what we need to know.”
​
The Old Man didn’t respond to him. He just shook his head and turned away.
“I’m gonna call this in and clear it with the boss first. You three, don’t move until I get back.”
I traded a look with both Tomas and Long as the Old Man trudged away. He said something to the two guys who were with him, before getting back into his truck to make a call.
​
Part of me was obliged to try and just get to work. But looking at the other two guys that the Old Man had with him, I had a feeling that they’d try to stop me. One of them, another older guy with a receding hairline and a bushy moustache was watching us like a hawk.
​
So we waited.
​
After a few minutes, the Old Man got out of his truck again, said something to his buddy with the mustache and trudged back over to us.
“Bad news, fellas. Looks like our usual company’s retired… guess you’re the replacement.”
“So we can get to work?” I asked.
“Yeah. We can get to work,” The Old Man said. “Come on, let’s get going.”
​
With that, he turned and led us into the pumphouse.
“Suppose I might as well introduce myself. Names Troy. My colleagues here are Craig and Peter.”
He gestured to the two men who were with him, Mr. Moustache (who I assumed was Craig) and the other guy, who looked to be in his mid thirties and had sunken eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in a few days. The one who I assumed was Craig just gave us a nod, while the guy I figured was Peter gave a lazy half wave before they followed us into the pumphouse.
“So if you don’t mind my asking, what’s so special about this channel?” I asked.
“I guess you’ll be seeing for yourself soon enough,” Troy replied as he started down a set of stairs. “The guys you’re replacing… well, guy… a fella named Tom… he always had a set of rules for working down here. He passed ‘em on to me and Craig when we started. We’ve passed ‘em on to Peter. Guess it’s time we passed ‘em on to you too.”
​
“Rules?” I asked, “What kind of rules?”
“The kind you listen very, very closely to, kid.”Troy looked back at me, before his eyes shifted to Tomas and Long behind me.
“Very, very closely.”
He descended the rest of the way down the stairs, where there was a hatch in the concrete floor beneath us, along with a large locker on the far side of the room.
​
“Rule number one,” Troy began. “You don’t enter this part of the sewers alone. You stay in a group of at least three to four at all times. No more, no less. Too many and it slows you down. Too few, and you might not come back at all.”
He trailed off, watching as Craig cracked open the hatch to test the air inside.
​
“Rule number two: You do not enter this part of the sewers without a gun and a radio.”
He opened the locker on the far side of the room and I was taken aback to see a collection of several handguns inside, along with boxes of ammunition and one shotgun in amongst the usual PPE.
Troy clipped one of the guns to his belt, along with one of the radios, before handing a pair off to Peter and looking over at us.
​
“Who’s taking it?” He asked.
“Whoa, just hold up for a minute!” Long interjected, “What the hell is down there?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Troy replied. “Hate to say it but it ain’t our job to know. I leave that to someone else. Our job is to follow the rules. You follow them, and you’ll be fine.”
Long seemed skeptical, but I looked at the gun in Troy’s hand and took it. I wasn’t sure if he was having a laugh with us or not, but I was there to do a job and I intended to do it.
​
Troy gave me a quiet nod, before thrusting the second gun over to Long. He didn’t seem to happy to get it.
“Are we gonna have to use these?” He asked.
“Not if you do as I say, you won’t. Rule 3: If you see a pipe or a tunnel with heavy spiderwebs, don’t go down it. Doesn’t matter if that’s where the sensor is. You make a note of it, report it to your supervisor and leave it alone.”
​
Spiderwebs? What the hell was he talking about?
“Rule 4: If you find a body… and odds are, you will find a body, don’t touch it. Don’t try to move it. Hell, don’t even get close to it. And don’t waste the supervisors time reporting it. Only time the bodies get reported is when they’re human.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve been finding human bodies down there?” I asked.
“Rarely,” He replied. “But it’s been known to happen. And if we do find one… the same rules apply. Don’t approach it. Don’t touch it. Stay as far away as possible.”
​
I could see some of the color draining from Long’s face.
“Rule 5: If you see anyone else down there, you are not to interact with them. You do not follow them if they try to lead you somewhere, if they ask you for help, you do not help them. I don’t care if they’re crying and begging. You leave them alone. You report it to your supervisor.”
“There are people down there?” I asked.
“Normally, no. Far as I know, Tom only ever ran into a couple during his career. I’ve only ever seen one. Like I said, best to leave them alone.”
​
“Why?” I asked, “If there’s someone stuck down there, we have an obligation to help them!”
“That would be very ill advised,” Troy said. “You don’t want to anger the things that are down there… which leads me to rule 6: Avoid killing anything you come across down there. They’re not yours to kill. And if you have absolutely no choice, if you have to break that rule for the sake of self defense, then we leave immediately. That’s rule number 7.”
​
“Air’s safe down there,” Craig said, interrupting our conversation.
“Good. Let’s get suited up, then. Oh… and rule 8. Final rule. If anything happens to any member of our team, we leave immediately. We don’t go after them. We don’t try to help them. We leave immediately. Is that clear? I don’t care if it’s me, begging you for help. You leave me behind.”
​
Long and I remained silent, neither of us entirely sure how to react to this or even what to say. Troy had made it sound as if we were about to descend into a level of hell. I couldn’t imagine what the hell could possibly be down there to elicit a list of rules like that, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to find out either!
“Well? You fellas getting ready or not?” Troy asked impatiently as he put on his PPE. “The quicker we get down there, the quicker we can get out again!”
​
“If this is so dangerous, why are they sending us?” Long asked, “Shouldn’t they be sending… I dunno, the cops or something?”
“They tolerate us being down there, so long as we don’t disturb them. They wouldn’t be so forgiving toward the local police,” Troy replied. “Listen, kid. Obey the rules and you’ll be fine, got that? We’ve been doing this for years without any problems. You keep your head on your shoulders, you do what we say and you go home safe. Alright?”
​
Long still didn’t seem convinced, but I did. By this point, I was morbidly curious about exactly what was down there… and Troy’s assurance that they’d come out unscathed before did set me at ease a little bit. These rules sounded kinda scary, but what could realistically go wrong? With Troy keeping us in line, everything would probably be fine and besides, I still wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t all some sort of elaborate prank the old man was pulling. I grabbed myself a set of PPE and got ready and after a moments hesitation, Long did the same.
​
When we were ready, Craig opened up the hatch in the floor, and Tomas helped get us tethered so that we wouldn’t plummet down into the waters below if we slipped on the ladder, then we finally began our descent.
​
Troy went first, climbing down the ladder and into the darkness below. I went second, followed by Peter and followed by Long.
​
We climbed down into the approach channel in relative silence, only really speaking again once we made it to the bottom of the ladder.
​
Troy helped me get untethered, before doing the same for Peter and Long as they reached the bottom, and while he did that I got my first look at the dreaded southeast approach channel. I can’t say that there was a heck of a lot to see. The walls were boxy and flat, and the dirty wastewater trickled over my boots and into the pipe sending it even deeper through the sewer system.
​
The sensors should have been mounted on the ceiling, and I traced the black conduit line with my flashlight as I searched for the sensor they connected to. Peter and Long stayed back as Tomas and Craig lowered our tools down after us, while Troy came up behind me.
“Should be quick work…” He noted, “Rain doesn’t seem to have done much in here. Water level is still fairly low.”
​
I saw his flashlight shift upward toward the ceiling before he spotted the sensor. He trudged through the water to get closer to it, and I followed him.
“No external damage,” I noted. “Conduit lines look good too.”
“Yeah, we’ll run our tests and get out of here,” Troy said. “Approach channel is usually pretty safe… usually.”
“Usually?” I asked, and Troy pointed his flashlight up toward a set of silky spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling a few feet behind the sensor.
​
“They don’t typically come up here… but every now and then you might find some proof of some young ones, trying to get into the pumphouse.”
I looked over at him.
“They try to break into the pumphouse?” I asked, “Did they ever get in?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard of. Can’t imagine they’d stay long if they did. Nothing to eat in there.”
“What exactly are they?” I asked, “And don’t you tell me that’s not for us to know. You’ve seen them, right? What do they look like?”
​
Troy had started to answer, when suddenly I heard Long screaming and swearing up a storm. Both of us turned to look, just in time to see something large skittering up the wall beside him. I only caught a brief glimpse of it, but it seemed to be roughly the size of a dog with more legs than I could count. Long stared at it with wide, horrified eyes as he fumbled with his gun, before pulling it free.
​
I saw Troy’s eyes widen before Long fired five times. Only one or two of the bullets actually hit the target. I heard Peter cry out in pain and grab at his arm before falling and whatever it was that Long had actually been shooting at collapsed into the shallow water, its pale body twitching violently.
“What did you just do?!” Troy demanded, running over to Peter’s side.
“I-it was coming for me!” Long protested, before noticing what he’d done to Peter. I saw his eyes widen in horror.
“Oh no… no, no, no… I didn’t…”
“Rule 6! You don’t kill anything down here! You leave them alone and they leave you alone!” Troy roared, before his attention returned to Peter. “How bad is it?”
​
“J-just a scratch, boss… I think I got hit by the ricochet,” Peter said, as Troy inspected his wound. I’ve never seen a gunshot wound before, but there was a lot of blood for it to just be a scratch.
“We’ll get you topside,” Troy said. “And come back down tomorrow with someone who knows how to follow rules!”
​
He shot Long a death glare before his radio crackled to life.
“Troy, everything good down there?” Craig asked.
“No, no it isn’t. One of the newbies got jumpy, shot at a centipede.” He huffed, “Put a hole in Peter in the process. Think you can reel him back up?”
“Yeah, sure thing. Hook him up. Tomas and I will bring him topside.”
​
Troy quietly hooked Peter up to the line, before helping him onto the ladder.
“You take it easy on the way up, and we’ll get that checked out,” He promised.
“Thanks boss,” Peter said quietly.
Troy’s attention returned to Long next, as he fixed him in a death glare.
“You, up the ladder behind him. And you…” He looked at me, his expression softening just a little.
“Behind him. I’ll go up last.”
​
Peter started to meekly climb the ladder, although it seemed like Craig and Tomas were doing most of the work, hoisting him up rung by rung. Once he’d made it part of the way up, Long started to hook himself up to climb behind him. Although before he could hook himself in, I saw him pause for a moment, staring at Troy.
“What is it?” Troy asked, before pausing.
​
Long craned his neck a little, his hand moving down to his gun again… and it was then that both Troy and I realized that he hadn’t been looking at Troy. He’d been looking at what was behind him.
​
I only saw a shadow, perched on the roof of the tunnel. But that was all that Long needed to see before he started shooting again.
“DON’T!”
But by the time Troy had gotten the word out, that trigger happy idiot had already started shooting again and this time, the thing that came for him didn’t drop dead.
​
Instead, it launched itself off of the ceiling of the tunnel, crashing into the ground a few feet away from me.
“WAIT!” Troy tried to protest before the thing in front of us knocked him aside, dashing him against the wall. Long scrambled away, retreating deeper into the tunnel while Peter frantically tried to unholster his gun.
“Troy? Troy, what’s going on down there?” I heard Craig calling over the radio, “Troy? Anyone, respond!”
​
The shape in front of us turned, looking over at me and Long. Eight eyes shone in the darkness and though I could only see the shadow of the creature before us, I saw enough. It had a body like a spider, with eight long chitinous legs. Only its body was much larger than any spider I’d ever seen before.
​
Much, much larger.
​
This creature was almost the size of a small car, but it wasn’t its size that terrified me. It was the humanoid torso coming out of the front of it. The two arms that ended in razor sharp claws, the snarling mouth that made noises that almost sounded human.
​
When this impossible thing looked at us, I saw real intelligence in its eyes. It was studying us, trying to determine how much of a threat we were…
​
Long kept his gun trained on it, hands shaking violently. I knew that he was going to shoot again, and hoping not to anger this thing, grabbed his arm, trying to force his gun down. He jumped the moment that I touched him giving me a hysterical look.
“Don’t!” I snapped, “You’re just gonna piss it off!”
​
The Spider took a step toward us, hissing as it did. Long pulled away from me.
“Stu!”
I tried calling his name, but Long had already made his choice and sealed his fate. He’d opted to fight this thing. And so, like the fool he was he shot at it again.
​
The Spider lunged for us.
​
I ran. Long didn’t.
​
He only had enough time to scream before it pounced on him, and then… all I could hear were the dying screams in his throat as he was pulled apart. I didn’t see him die. But I didn’t need to. I heard everything. I kept running, not even thinking about where the approach channel was going to end. And when it did end, all I could do was plummet into the darkness.
​
See, at the end of an approach channel is what is appropriately called a drop shaft. It’s where the water flows into a larger tunnel beneath the city. That tunnel, flows into the water treatment plant, eventually and the water down there… yeah… let’s just say that you don’t want to end up in the water down there.
​
Unfortunately, that was exactly where I was going.
​
I know that every job has its struggles, but I didn’t expect to need to choose between diving into raw sewage and fighting a giant spider monster when I woke up that morning. However the choice was presented to me and I did the best that I could given the circumstances.
​
Going into the wastewater was exactly an unpleasant experience as you’d think it would be. I’m inclined not to share the details of what it was like, simply because I genuinely do not want to remember them and I’m still not entirely convinced that dealing with the giant angry spider person wasn’t the better choice.
​
A small comfort was that the pain of hitting the water, combined with the confusing sensation of being flushed through a pipe and into an even larger pipe made the whole experience slightly less disgusting, at the cost of being considerably more painful.
​
At the end of it, I was washed out into the main pipe and collapsed into the water, covered in filth and gagging from the stench that had sank into my every pore. I felt disoriented and confused. I tried to stand, only to collapse back into the wastewater, before aimlessly looking around, hoping that maybe I could figure out what direction to go in. It was too dark to see much of anything and I’d lost my flashlight during my trip through the wastewater, so I was left to just wander aimlessly, following what I thought was the flow of the water as my eyes slowly started to acclimate to the darkness.
​
I could feel shapes in the water. Some of them I almost tripped over and I could smell rotting meat on top of the stink of human waste. In the darkness, I could make out shapes in the water and hear the buzzing of bugs around me. I could even feel a few whizz past my head and mindlessly swatted at them.
​
Old bones crunched under my boots, and I quietly thanked whatever God was listening that I couldn’t see what they’d belonged to. I wanted to assume they were animal bones… but who knew, right? I couldn’t shake the mental image of myself unknowingly stepping over the mauled corpse of Stewart Long… although that was more from the trauma of having recently witnessed a man die than any guilt over what had happened to him. Long had quite literally gotten himself killed. Although I was terrified that I’d be joining him at any second.
​
I kept listening in, half expecting to hear spider legs creeping up behind me. But it was impossible to tell if I was alone or not in that darkness and with the bugs buzzing past me. If there were anything after me, I truly would not know it until after it had pounced.
​
Still, I knew I couldn’t afford to let the fear get the better of me. So I just kept walking, hoping that maybe if I did, I’d somehow find myself at the water treatment plant and maybe then I’d get some help.
​
Maybe.
​
As I pressed on, I noticed a light ahead of me and picked up the pace, hoping to God that I’d finally found my way out of this mess. But as I drew closer, I became very aware that whatever the source of that light was, it was not from the water treatment plant.
​
In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. My first thought was that it was a fatberg (which is a solid mass of waste matter formed by an unholy mixture of wet wipes, grease, oil and every other piece of garbage people tend to flush down their toilets) but the longer I looked, the less certain I was about that.
​
Fatbergs usually didn’t have lamps embedded in them.
​
Fatbergs usually didn’t have thick spiderwebs clinging to them.
​
Fatbergs didn’t usually lead into a separate tunnel into the earth large enough for me to walk through.
​
And finally, fatbergs didn’t usually have dead deer protruding from them. Let alone dead deer with other bugs living in them. God… the sight of those corpses… the way the bugs crawled through the rotting flesh and exposed bone. The empty, hollow eyes… it was almost too horrible to look at.
​
And I swore that I could see things inside the corpses! Honeycombs of some sort, and the bugs who crawled around them looked almost like bees.
​
Was… was something cultivating some kind of bee in these things?
​
I thought back to Troy’s rules.
“Rule 4: If you find a body… and odds are, you will find a body, don’t touch it. Don’t try to move it. Hell, don’t even get close to it. And don’t waste the supervisor's time reporting it. Only time the bodies get reported is when they’re human.”
​
Suddenly, they made a little more sense. If those spider things were cultivating something in these bodies… of course we shouldn’t touch them. And if they were cultivating their food in the sewer… I paused, before staring down the tunnel that the corpses sat near the entrance of.
​
Dull lamps illuminated it as it wound down into the earth, and I could see several pale centipede things that looked a lot like the creature that Long had shot to get us into this mess in the first place. These things must have belonged to the Spiders too, although whether they were some sort of guard dog or another thing they were farming was hard to say.
​
I took a step away from the tunnel, before looking back to make sure that I was well enough alone and trudging onward. And that was when I heard the slow rustle of movement.
​
I paused, feeling a chill run through me as the imminent reality of my own death dawned on me.
​
Slowly I turned, just in time to see a dark shape descending from the ceiling. A fresh set of eyes settled on me, narrowing as they studied me.
​
I put my hands up, hoping that it might understand the gesture of surrender and slowly it drew closer to me. I wasn’t sure if it was curious, or looking to murder me and at that point, I don’t think it really mattered. I wish I could say that I faced my death with dignity, but I’m going to be honest, I didn’t. I sat there, quivering and praying to whatever God would listen that it wouldn’t, kill me.
​
And then… I heard a voice.
“Leave that one! He’s with me!”
​
Troy?
​
I saw a figure emerge from the tunnel in the wall, and against all logic, somehow it was Troy! He had a hell of a goose egg on his head from where he’d been hit earlier, but he was alive! He stepped between me and the spider person, arms outstretched.
​
“With me.” He repeated firmly.
The Spider stared down at him, before huffing and turning away. I watched as they disappeared down the nearby tunnel, and Troy watched them go, before quietly turning to me.
​
“Good lord, boy… I’m shocked to see you’re still alive!”
“W-what just happened?” Was the only thing I could stammer. “You can talk to them?!”
“Some of ‘em. I’ve been down here for long enough that they know me. Know I’m not a threat. But they ain’t too happy with us right now. So what you’re gonna do here is get up, follow me, and I’m gonna get you out of here.”
“How do you know they’re even gonna let us leave?” I asked.
​
Troy’s expression soured.
“Had to pay ‘em off…” He admitted, “Let them keep what was left of your friend. They considered it a fair trade, so long as we leave. Now, let’s go.”
I didn’t ask any more questions.
​
***
​
After I made it out of the sewers that day, I ended up in the hospital alongside Peter. I had some minor cuts and bruises, a burning rash over most of my body from all the sewage I’d been crawling around in… but I was still alive, and I figured that had to count for something.
​
Nobody said a word about what happened to Stewart Long down in the sewer. He got written off as a workplace accident and they never even tried to recover his body. I suspect what’s left of him is still down in the sewers, even now… feeding whatever it is that those things down there are cultivating, although I’ve never seen the body myself.
​
Yes… I have been back down beneath the southeast side of town. The next time they needed someone to go, they sent me and Tomas along with Troy, Craig and Peter. We know what’s down there and we know how to deal with them, after all. My second visit to those sewers was a lot less eventful, and most of my subsequent visits haven’t been all that eventful either.
​
Over the years, I’ve gotten better at dealing with the Spiders… they’re not the most friendly folk and I know all too well that if you cross them, they’ll rip your guts out before you even realize that you’re dead. But so long as you follow the rules and leave them alone, they’re content to live and let live. They can even be reasonable, to an extent. We’ve had a few small incidents over the years, but nothing like the one that Long caused.
​
Odds are, when Troy and Craig retire next year, Tomas and I will be training the next group on what to do when you’re down beneath the southeast side of town. So in preparation for that, I’ve made a point to keep a copy of Tom's rules in the pumphouse. I also keep a picture of Stewart Long in there. Not as a memorial and not out of spite either. Just as a grim reminder of what can happen when you don’t follow the [rules.](https://www.reddit.com/HeadOfSpectre/)