Chương 7: 1.7 Liftoff

Liftoff 1. 7 April 2015 As the dawn broke, Rocket and I began our day with a workout. Now that we had the security provided by this little slice of civilization, I saw no reason to ignore my own physical conditioning. Well, no reason except the sassy murder-ferret cackling mockingly as I grunted through my thirty-fifth pushup. No, I wasn't especially athletic. Yes, the sentient scarf was a foot tall. Yes, he could fold me in half like a taco. Fucking pokemon and their llama-blessed magic steroids.

"Shut up," I grumbled as I allowed myself to collapse onto what used to be the putting green.

"Lin, linoone," he yipped, as if to say, "I didn't say anything." His shit-eating grin was impossible to mistake for anything else but schadenfreude however. Surely this was proof of sentience in pokemon, the ability to take sadistic joy at my suffering despite zero personal gain.

"You were thinking it."

"Oone." I groaned and rolled over onto my back. The grass was comfortable and, after stretching, going on what I estimated to be a two mile run, and doing what upper body exercises I knew, I was pooped. I would have happily taken a nap on the green until the sun rose over the sky and beamed eye-searing pain from on high, but Rocket didn't let me. He nipped at my fingers and when I slapped his snout away, he sat on my face until I had no choice but to get up.

He was soft, sure, but he was still seventy pounds of ferret, not at all like having a cute kitten do it. I bitched and moaned but got up anyway. In the end, this was for my own good. Without poke-magic of my own, I'd just have to train the hard way until I was the best me I could be, especially if I wanted to survive being a ranger for long.

I'd been extraordinarily lucky so far in that I hadn't had to scrap with any truly dangerous pokemon up close, but that wouldn't last forever and a good hunting knife only went so far towards evening the odds.

"Come on, Rocket," I said as I made my way back towards my trailer.

"Let's go grab a quick shower."

"Lin."

"Fine, let's grab me a quick shower. Not all of us can lick ourselves clean." It wasn't as though Rocket had sat around doing nothing but laughing at me all morning. There was no way in hell he'd get a workout from simply following me around so I took a page from some of those military boot camp videos that I saw floating around in the Before.

My army cousin used to show me Youtube videos of something called hell week, where jarheads like him got to yell at other, wannabe jarheads as they ran around with tires dragging behind them. I figured if soldiers got a workout this way, a pokemon could benefit at least as much. I had no tires, but I did have plenty of paracord, dead useful stuff for a survivalist like myself, and some pine logs I'd yet to chop into firewood.

It wasn't terribly heavy, maybe sixty pounds at most, but the friction made for a decent workout in the end, so long as I kept him from cheating with Quick Attack or some other aura-boosted move. Grabbing a change of clothes and toiletries, I hustled down to the communal showers. It was fucking freezing, but I at least had the privilege of not having to see anyone else's junk. No one else wanted a wash this early in the morning.

After shivering through a quick scrub, I led Rocket to the kitchens, this time the other side of the large, converted warehouse where breakfast was being served. They'd had the good sense to have the canteen located upwind of the butchering station. I walked over and was charged three stones for a serving of food. Apparently, the price was set by Mayor McAllen as a way to have some standardized backing behind the currency.

It made the food seem expensive, spearow weren't exactly easy to kill, but I supposed getting people to move around and do things rather than mope and fall into depression was a good thing. If they were productive, that was time they weren't thinking about all they'd lost in the Before. Still, price aside, the meal was hearty and warm. It was a little weird having fish stew for breakfast, but fish was what we had in abundance.

Stew was one of the dishes that could be made cheaply and in great bulk so just about everything went into the pot, from tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes from the fields to foxglove, an edible wild plant that didn't normally find itself onto the plate. I shelled out a few extra stones for Rocket to get his own share. He'd probably want something more later, but he seemed to like it well enough. We were about halfway through our meal when I saw two people approach.

One was Sabrina Swanson, the daughter of Ranger Swanson and self-proclaimed pokemon professor. The other was a tall, lanky man about our age with brown hair, hazel eyes, and a pronounced cleft chin. He wore a collared shirt and a sweater with a deep neckline so the collar could peek through, oddly professional all things considered.

"Morning, Shane, mind if we join you for breakfast?" Sabrina said with an easy smile. I waved to the table.

"Suit yourselves." The pair took their seats, placing identical bowls of stew on the table. Sabrina reached down and cooed as Rocket nipped lightly at her fingers. The man offered me a confident smile.

"Austin McAllen. I saw you run by in the morning."

"Shane Hayes," I introduced myself.

"Yeah, I know I'm never going to be able to wrestle a pokemon into the ground, but being in good shape never hurt anyone."

"True that. If nothing else, I think pokemon will respect trainers who work out with them more. Remember in the anime? Both Bruno of the Elite Four and Chuck, the Cianwood gym leader, wrestled their pokemon."

"Yeah, I do. You were a fan of the show I take it?"

"Yup. Watched all the episodes, played all the games. I've been helping Sabrina help get everything on paper. It's not a real pokedex, but it's still a ton of information."

"Right. Back when it all started, I downloaded a bunch of stuff from Bulbapedia, Serebii, and other websites like that, but that became nearly unusable when the bombs dropped," Sabrina chimed in with a bitter smile.

"Electronics are hard to keep operational, at least here in the smaller towns, and I didn't think to print everything."

"But that's why we're working to write it all down. The information's already been a huge help, especially with the graveler and geodude." I blinked in realization. That's why the name sounded so familiar. This was the mayor's son that Ranger Swanson had been talking about, the one who got the graveler to build them a wall.

"Ah, heard about that. How'd that happen?"

"Well, like I said, I played all the games and stuff so I know a lot about pokemon. When we were on our way from Truckee, I found a pair of graveler and three geodude and figured we could get them on-site for nothing since they eat rocks."

"Wait, wasn't this after the snorlax thing?"

"It was," Sabrina nodded, "and it wasn't some noble show of trust or anything either. Austin threw a rabbit carcass at the graveler to try and get them to leave. They decided they liked Austin and followed."

"Hey, it worked out, didn't it?" he protested.

"It did, I'll grant you that. I have a theory about why. Did you know there are very absolute herbivores in nature? Deer will eat eggs and meat if they can find them, especially during the winter months. Squirrels too." I nodded.

"Yeah, my uncle had a farm back then. He told me about how his horse started to eat a chick, just stooped down and gobbled it up in front of the hen."

"That's because a vegan diet doesn't provide all the minerals and proteins necessary. It's usually a sign that an herbivore is malnourished or not getting enough of something specific," Sabrina lectured. She was a vet, or at least in training, she probably knew what she was talking about.

"Anyway, my theory is that since there are very few absolute herbivores in the wild, the same might be true in the pokemon world among lithovores, creatures that mainly draw sustenance from rocks and minerals.

"So I saw Austin feed a graveler and wondered if that was what was going on. I don't care how magical pokemon are, they have to be getting protein from somewhere, right? Or, if they don't need it, having a ready source might be easier on their aura or something. Anyway, I started testing and found that the graveler prefer to eat bones, not flesh."

'Yeah, we started dumping large bones, deer carcass and such, separate from the offals once Sabrina found that out," Austin added.

"The graveler live underground and built us the wall after we started talking. Pokemon are pretty reasonable, you know? All you need to do is feed them."

"Except when we started, there were two graveler and three geodude. Now, there are a dozen graveler and a handful of other geodude. I don't think pokemon multiply that quickly, it's only been a month, so they must be attracting more of their species somehow."

"That's fine, what's wrong with it? We have more pokemon that we can defend ourselves with."

"Do we?" she asked skeptically. Judging by the look on her face, it was something they'd discussed before.

"They're not our pokemon. Or anyone's, really. And don't act like they'll fight at your command, Austin. If anything, we're the shield and farm rolled up in one. If pokemon are as smart as we think they are, it makes sense they'd build a wall for us. Our security is their security, but I don't think they'll put themselves between us and a snorlax or something."

"You worry too much, Sabrina. Like you said, our security is their security. They want us to do well. And they built us the wall, didn't they? That's proof they'll listen to me."

"It's proof they can think and calculate their best interests. In the end, living below us probably provides a good environment, free food, and protection from predators. If there are any that can eat a geodude, they would have to target humans first."

"What eats a geodude?"

"I don't know. That's why I said 'if.'""Again, you're worrying too much. I told you, I played all the games and saw the show. All pokemon are pretty simple to understand. They want to evolve and get stronger. Sure, they're smart, but that doesn't mean they're exactly like humans. It just means they can be talked to and bribed with food in exchange for more complicated services than playing fetch. Watch, soon I'll have a killer golem following me around." I balked at that.

"Wait, you've tried training a graveler?"

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I? I mean, no offense, but a linoone is pretty low-tier." Rocket, who'd curled up in donut formation and started to doze, opened an eye, flipped his upper lip, and let out a warning growl. Austin noticed the murder-ferret he'd been insulting and wisely backpedaled.

"N-Not that you're not helpful, but I'm just saying, a more powerful pokemon would be better for the town's protection."

"Rocket's fine the way he is. He's got a good mix of moves that makes him a great tracker and hunter. I think you're forgetting that this isn't a game; no one's trying to be the Indigo Champion or anything."

"Maybe not, but a strong pokemon is the definition of security in this new world, you know? You can't tell me you've never imagined riding a dragonite or something. Dragon Dance? Extreme Speed? Hell, Rain Dance on demand? It'd be so much more than raw muscle. Think about it. We could go down the mountain and back in an afternoon, see about getting better resources."

"Alright, but be real. You're not Lance. Even if you had that magical dragon charisma, you'd have to find a dratini, spend years training it, and then pray you've earned its respect enough to listen to you," Sabrina pointed out.

"No one's saying a strong pokemon wouldn't be nice, but you need to temper that with realistic expectations."

"A golem," Austin said definitively.

"A golem is the ideal pokemon for us. It eats rocks, gets pretty strong, and could lead the other members of its species we have."

"You're also forgetting that dex entry that says they randomly roll down mountainsides and start massive rock slides for fun."

"Psh, that's behavioral. I can train it out when it's a geodude." Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"So why haven't you?" I asked. Truthfully, he was getting a little irksome. It was great to be confident, but he looked like the kind of guy who didn't yet realize that this wasn't a game. Or maybe he did, thanks to that snorlax, and this was his way of coping. Either way, I decided to call him on it.

"Why haven't you gotten yourself a geodude? You said you got the graveler to build a wall for you so why not take the next step?" He balked at that, looking a lot less confident now.

"I'm just waiting for the right one," he said lamely. I eyed him meaningfully and thought about how Rocket and I met. It wasn't too different from Austin and the graveler to be truthful. He was a pint-sized trash panda. I wrestled the little shit after he tried to steal what food I could forage, back when he was small enough that a grown man had a shot. Somehow, I doubted that'd go nearly as well for Austin.

Austin didn't seem like a bad sort, but he clung too much to the games, hanging tight like they were a lifeline. The information we remembered was important, but I didn't think we could trust it completely. My thoughts went back to the weird lightning rat I batted into a petrol pump. Clearly, there were some pokemon that we had no information about.

"Are you sure that wasn't just a pachirisu or some other pika-clone?" Austin asked with a doubtful frown when I told him about it.

"It was probably dark in the station, right?"

"It was, but not outside. I know what a pachirisu looks like. It doesn't have yellow-orange fur."

"Minum? Plusle?"

"No, those things didn't have the right build, blue and red accents, or the plus and minus signs on their tails. Dude, I know what the pika-clones look like. What Rocket and I fought wasn't anything from the games."

"I'm sorry, man. I'm still not sure if I believe that."

"He's probably not lying," Sabrina cut in.

"Fairy type became a known quantity in 2013 when an Irish Army regiment cleared the dungeon near Kilkenny. Until then, we thought pokemon like clefable were normal types so it's possible that Shane saw something new."

"Yeah, but that's like a type update, not a whole new species."

"And you think there are only 649 species of pokemon in the entire pokemon world?" she asked with an arched brow.

"How does that make sense? That's not at all how ecological diversity works. Hell, there are more than ten thousand species of birds in the world. Just birds." I watched the two bicker back and forth. I didn't know what Austin's issue was necessarily, but the confidence about pokemon he tried to project was clearly made of glass. I hadn't missed the nervous looks he kept shooting Rocket's way, nor the way he backtracked the moment the idea of getting a personal pokemon for himself was brought up.

In reality, I envied him a little. He had a good relationship with the graveler colony underground. If anyone could get a geodude to part with the group and partner up, it was him. But he didn't because he was afraid. It wasn't like I didn't understand, pokemon were scary as fuck, but I didn't think him waffling about like this was any use either. At best, it was postponing the inevitable. At worst, his backseat training advice was annoying. I hoped he sorted himself out soon, if for the town's sake.

Either way, I didn't want anything to do with the guy. Rocket and I finished our meals and bid them goodbye. X After breakfast, I decided to continue with my tour of Carnelian Bay. There was at least one place I hadn't visited after all: the piers. As a vacation destination, Lake Tahoe was home to several yacht clubs, one of them in our fair town. There was probably some larger, overarching organization or wildlife conservancy that governed them all like an HOA, but I knew nothing about that.

What I did know was that there were three main piers of varying lengths along the Carnelian coast, each dotted with a series of boats. The longest pier curved at a right angle, forming a sort of L- shaped loop towards the shore. After asking around, Rocket and I were directed towards a small building that overlooked this pier as the headquarters of the "Carnelian Fishing Club."

I was looking for one Vincent Jackson, the head of the yacht club who'd organized his pals into being the main suppliers of fish for the town. He was a local resident, or at least hadn't been at Truckee for the snorlax thing, so I was hoping he didn't have a phobia of pokemon. Surprisingly, I didn't find him on a boat or in the administrative building overlooking the piers. Mr. Jackson and another man were standing off the end of the shortest pier. He was dressed in a breezy Hawaian shirt and cargo shorts.

He even had a straw hat to complete the distinctive look I was told to find. The man next to him had a big beer belly covered by a thick sweater to ward off the lake chill. Down next to them was a cooler filled with beer, a bucket for their fish, and two camping chairs with a jacket thrown over one in case Jackson got cold. Leaned up against the railing, side by side with two fishing rods, was a rifle.

"Hey, is one of you Vincent Jackson?" I called.

"Yeah, who wants to know?" the man with a straw hat asked. He turned to face me with a casual grin and a cigarette in his mouth. He looked to be in his mid-forties with a touch of gray in his hair and a short but prominent beard.

"Shane Hayes, new guy in town. This here's Rocket the linoone. I thought I'd take a few days to check out the town, see what's what. I heard you were the guy in charge."

"You heard right, son. This used to be the home of the Carnelian Yacht Club. Call me Vincent."

"Hey, I'm Henry," the fat man said.

"Good to see a new face around. Where're you from?"

"Arlington, Virginia," I said with a rueful chuckle, "I lucked out and was on a backpacking trip here in the Cascades."

"Damn, you are lucky. Think we should call him that, Vinnie?"

"Knock it off, Henry," the older man said.

"Now, we rebranded as the Carnelian Fishing Club and serve up a lot of the protein 'round here. And this one of them pokey-mans?"

"Pokemon," I corrected. What was it with older people and being unable to pronounce "pokemon?" Ranger Swanson did it too. I was starting to think it was more for the sake of poking fun than anything else.

"He's the evolved form of a zigzagoon, one of those beige and brown raccoons if you've seen 'em around."

"Once or twice. I heard these critters can change forms, but never saw one myself."

"If you've seen a graveler, you have. That's an evolved form too, evolves from a small, pebble-like thing with two arms called geodude."

"Ey, I hear your boy Phil's marill is an evolved form too," Henry added.

"It can still get bigger though."

"Azurill into marill into azumarill. That's right," I confirmed. Vincent snorted dismissively.

"Bah, I'll forget their names after this anyway. That there ferret trained?"

"He's as smart as a person. Just talk to Rocket like you would to me."

"Lin," Rocket barked with a nod. He sat on his haunches, still just barely the height of my knees.

"Huh, well why're you around here for? Little Rocket doesn't look like a fishing sort. You must've talked to Tom, right? He should have you roaming the forests and whatnot." It took me a second to remember that Tom was Ranger Swanson's first name. They looked about the same age so they were likely friends.

"Just looking around. I was hoping you could give me a quick tour of what we're working with here."

"Heh, sure, son. Why don't you pull up a chair? You can grab it and a spare rod from inside the admin building and join us. Henry and I'll be out here 'til about eleven. Then we'll go do a check of the fish farm and you can see what we're about." I thought about it and shrugged. It wasn't as though I had anything else urgent going on. Rocket and I couldn't train constantly and the view was grand. Just about the only thing on my to-do list besides this was to visit Guillermo for my crossbow in the afternoon.

That was how I found myself shooting the breeze with two old men, Rocket lazily lounging by my side. I hadn't been fishing since I was a child, but I learned it all over again with Vincent's help. Like riding a bike, he said. We went through the usual song and dance. Introductions, where we're from, what we did in the Before, the sort of chitchat that started the majority of conversations. When that avenue ran dry, Vincent and Henry told me about the fish here.

There were smaller species, but only four were considered trophy fish in Lake Tahoe: mackinaw, kokanee salmon, rainbow trout, and brown trout. There were also catfish if I wanted to head up one of the creeks.

"Say, Vincent, where are all the other fishermen? There's gotta be more than just you two, right?" I asked. He waved out towards the lake. Off in the distance, I could see a handful of small dots.

"Out there. There are a little over sixty of us and we drive a few boats out each day to try and catch fish, leaving a few of us on rotation to mind the farm, kind of like a weekend for us. Not all the yachts are useful, some are just too big to be operable with the diesel we've got. They need to be fuel-efficient, have lots of deck space, and come with a low deck so we could cast our nets, even better if they have a pulley setup on board already."

"Huh, guess I never thought about that. Makes me curious though, how'd you get the nets? And what happens if the diesel runs out? It's not the same as gasoline so it's not like we can loot a gas station either, right?"

"Well, aren't you just full of questions." He waved off my apology.

"It's fine. It's good to ask, especially now. The answer isn't always nice, but not knowing is worse. Originally, the nets came from soccer goals. Yeah, seriously, Henry's idea. Then we started building on them since they're about the right size to let the smaller fish get away. Now, we've got a bunch of people making nets out of whatever we can unravel back into thread.

"As for the diesel… Yeah, we're fucked. We're a lot less fucked since Henry thought up the fish farms, but we're still pretty fucked. Some of the boats have sails we can use, but no diesel will still ground a lot of them and make our jobs a lot harder."

"That's good. What's this about a farm though?" Vincent waved to Henry to take over the conversation.

"Ah, it's not that complicated. See that longer, L-shaped pier? We decided to bury some chain link fences below the water. We occasionally take a bit of scrap meat and veggies and toss it in to attract fish. It's helped a lot with feeding the town."

"That's brilliant. So that's where some of the fencing around the golf course went. But doesn't that also attract predators? I guess bigger fish can't really break chain link, but what about pokemon?"

"Some, and that's why we're here. Always a few of us around to chase them off. The water pokemon seem a bit more even-tempered than those bird-things that Pat and his boys have to deal with."

"Spearow. And yeah, just about everything's got a better attitude than those things. They're good eating though."

"You had one of them before?"

"A couple times, yeah. They just taste like gamier, more flavorful chicken. Cooks no different, just clean them, wrap them in foil, and let them bake next to the coals. That's why Rocket's great. Natural prey and all." Our time lounging about came to an end with not a single fish to my name. I would've liked to have caught a salmon, but that just wasn't to be. On the plus side, Vincent let me keep the spare rod. Then the four of us went inside the admin building, where I was introduced to Elaina and Phil Jackson.

The first thing I noticed about Vincent's wife was her age. Vincent was roughly in his mid-forties. Either Elaina aged extremely gracefully, or she was a decade his junior. The second thing I noticed about her was an orange and cream colored pelt wrapped around her olive-toned neck.

"Is that a buizel?" I asked in shock.

"Hmm? Oh, this? Yes, I think that's what it's called. Vinnie shot it because it was stealing from the farm. And its fur is so soft too," she said with a proud smile. Then she saw Rocket amble in and shot her scarf a nervous look.

"Ah… That's okay… right?" Rocket looked at the buizel, then at the Latina. He eyed her up and down as if gauging her worth before letting out a dismissive chuff.

"Linoo-lin. Oone." That made me laugh. It wasn't like he'd never eaten a mammal before. We spent almost a year traveling together now; it'd have been strange if we'd never encountered a mustelid of some sort.

"Don't mind him; he doesn't care," I assured her.

"It's not like they're the same species. And even if they were, dead is dead. There's nothing to be done about it now, right?"

"R-Right."

"Law of the jungle. Don't stress."

"Woah, that's a linoone, sweet!" I heard a little boy say. The child who walked in was about eight years old, with his mother's tan complexion and his father's facial features. He still had a fair bit of baby fat around his cheeks and I guessed his age to be about eight or nine years old. What caught my eye however was the blue and white, mouse-like creature in his arms. A marill, a water type pokemon that used its bulbous tail as a floatation device.

Back before Gold and Silver released, I remembered seeing leaks of marill. People called it pika-blue back then, which technically made marill the very first pika-clone before plusle and minum, and the only non-electric type.

"Ah, this is Phillip, my son," Vincent said. He ruffled the little boy's hair.

"He's tamed one of them pokey-mans too."

"Daaddd! Plue's a pokemon! Poke-mon!"

"Plue? You named your marill Plue?" I asked, bemused. For its part, the marill looked quite comfortable in its trainer's arms, but I could see it eyeing my linoone with caution. Pokemon could be friends in the wild, but I didn't doubt Rocket would take a nibble out of it if he found the chance.

"Hey, what's wrong with Plue?"

"Nothing, nothing. It's a great name. I hear the little guy's responsible for filling the shower tank each day, right? Great job, squirt."

"Hehe, yeah, Plue's awesome. He also helps dad herd fish into the farms sometimes too!"

"See, Rocket? Plue isn't food," I said with a teasing kick towards my pokemon.

"Plue gets us more food."

"Linoone!" he barked as if offended I'd ever imply such barbarity. He sat on his haunches and looked to the side, looking a tad too innocent.

"It'd be great if we had a few more water types," Phil said.

"Plue has a lot of work to do and I think he gets lonely sometimes."

"I wouldn't mind a second pokemon," I agreed. I flipped open the notebook Sabrina had given me, my "pokedex" as it were.

"Let's see… You've seen buizel and marill obviously… Magikarp? You guys know not to treat those poorly, right?"

"Obviously. We're not dumb, you know. Plue gives magikarp some potato scraps from Mr. Myers' farm and herds them away without fighting them."

"Yeah, just checking. A gyarados was one of my main six back when I played through Silver, but here… Better safe than sorry."

"We won't be around to be sorry if we meet a gyarados."

"You've got a dark sense of humor for a kid."

"I'm nine!"

"And therefore a kid." I followed along with Vincent, Henry, Elaina, and Phil as they did a tour of the fish farms. Henry proved to be a wealth of information; as a former engineer, he was creative enough to have ideas and skilled enough to see them to completion. I saw how, inside the chain link enclosures, they had traps made of plastic crates that could be hauled up for fish. He also told me that they took on gathering teams for shellfish once every few days.

Apparently, freshwater mussels and clams could be found in the basins. After a light but filling lunch of grilled trout from Vincent and Henry's fishing rods, we bade them goodbye. X The sporting goods store turned supply depot was a bit more crowded today so Rocket opted to wait outside. Guillermo called me over as soon as I entered.

"Oi! Shane, you're here. Good. I've got your bow straightened out for ya," he said gruffly.

"Oh? Thanks for the quick turnaround. What's with everyone here though?"

"Go ask Tom; he was looking for you. He said he's putting together a scavenging run back to Truckee and wants you to take part." I wasn't too surprised. Ranger Swanson did say he'd put me and Rocket to use in a day or two.

"Sounds good. I guess everyone's here stocking up?"

"Seems like it."

"Well then, guess I'll be busy for a few days." Author's Note I see this as the last of the setup chapters. Hopefully things will get a bit more interesting now that I've listed out most of the characters. Austin is terrified of pokemon, as he should be. On the other hand, he's not stupid and understands that pokemon are the future. He can't ignore the potential they represent. So he's desperately clinging to the information he has. Is it wise? Of course not.

But he will anyway until reality slaps him with a dead fish. Fun fact: The 40 hour workweek is a social construct. People living off the land, assuming they're not industrializing, tend to have a lot more free time despite the harsher lifestyle. For example, it's thought that hunter-gatherers typically worked roughly 20 hours per week and farmers 30.

Someone going from a corporate or academic lifestyle to this kind of post-apocalyptic setting might find it strange, but after the initial hubbub of getting a settlement functioning, they're likely to have more free time than before, not less. Of course, filling in those hours without the internet is the challenge. Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites.

You can find them all on my Link Tree: https: //linktr. ee/fabled. webs.