"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)
I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to. Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547 I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can. I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts. Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T
Intro
"The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
"I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
"For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
"We're spread way too thin."
"If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
Widespread match fixing
The Pandemic
"People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
"People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
"To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
"Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
"People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
"It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.
CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association
"Who does this union really fucking serve?"
RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
"and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
"We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
"They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
"I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
"Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
"Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
"That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
He also says their rankings are a joke
"Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
"Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission
"They have been put in an impossible position."
RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
"ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
"Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
"Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
"They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
"They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
Also says more coaches being banned are coming
He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
"I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
"So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
"Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
Stream Sniping
"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"
RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
"Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
"ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
"All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?
Match Fixing
"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."
RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
"Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
"Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
"I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
"Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
"There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
"It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
"It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
"I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
"That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
"All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
"I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."
North America
"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."
RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
"was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."
Talent
"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."
RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."
Valve
"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"
Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
"It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
"Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
"People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."
Closing Statements
"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."
RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
"We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
"There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
"How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
"Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
"The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
"If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
"They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
"Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
"This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
"You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
"Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
"Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
"You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
"I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
"I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
"I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."
Book 1 of The HEL Jumper Year 2 of The HEL Jumper Year 3 of The HEL Jumper ----- Previous | First | Patreon Thanks to Big_Papa_Dakky, Darth_Android, bloblob, AMERICUH, Ironwing, Krystalin, Mamish, Vikairious, Sam_Berry, KillTech, LilLaussa, Daddy_Talon, Gruecifer, Gaelan_Darkwater, Konrahd_Verdammt, red-shirt, DaPorkchop, Benjamin Durbin, Siddabear, and everyone supporting me on Patreon. ----- “You alright? Physically, I mean,” Russell asked as he and Thantis returned to the village alone on the shuttle that had brought them to the Forge. “The old ticker’s not going to give out or anything?” Thantis blinked a couple times as he extracted himself from the depths of whatever train of thought had occupied him for some time. Needless to say, the trip back had not featured lighthearted education regarding the nature of Mara’s core. “It was certainly a stressful situation, wasn’t it? I thank you for doing all of the heavy lifting, Winters.” He left out the fact that they both knew he’d have been left behind otherwise. “Don’t mention it. That’s literally the sort of thing I trained to do and you’re lighter than a fellow soldier. Would have been really nice to stick around and take a dip in the hot springs, but something tells me that goes against the new ‘don’t interfere with the planet’ policy.” ‘Not that you didn’t enjoy them to your fullest before the rest of the crew got here,’ Io reminded him with a pointed gaze. Russell cleared his throat and let that particular memory lay dormant. “A day of rest will be more than enough. But you’re sure everything’s alright on the inside, Thantis?” “You are kind to ask, Winters. Thankfully, my difficulties at the moment remain in the realm of the mental and spiritual. Much happened that I am having difficulty making sense of.” “You’re not the only one,” Russell assured him as the shuttle shuddered almost imperceptibly, a friendly reminder that they were traveling through air instead of gliding through space. “At least we didn’t break the place.” ‘On the outside, you mean,’ Io clarified in an agitated tone. She was equally as upset about the day’s events as Thantis. ‘We have no idea if anything is left standing on the inside, not to mention that the robot will likely never re-activate even if the facility didn’t self-destruct or otherwise dangerously terminate its own functions. This is the worst day for science since the Lancer was lost. And that was a very bad day for science!’ “You mean other than the fact that we can get home and tell the rest of humanity what happened here, along with everything else we’ve discovered?” Russell observed sharply. “Let a team of archaeologists deal with it. Later.” Io, who was using the B-MASS in order to be present for both Winters and Thantis, looked to the side and let out a long breath, acknowledging that the current moment might not have been the best time. ‘Yes, later is a good idea, sir. I think we should all give thanks that we will not be giving Veera or Gentia any reason to weep this evening.’ Russell and Thantis shared a look, agreeing that even if Io’s words were true, that wouldn’t be the end of it. The Jumper cleared his throat. “Yeah, no tears. But that doesn’t mean she won’t be mad as hell.” “You are forgetting a healthy helping of ‘I told you so’,” Thantis added, finally allowing a real smile to shine through the clouds of his tested faith. “A word of advice, Winters?” “Sure, what’s up?” “Cave early and cave often,” the Cauthan said with a wink, giving Russell a hearty chuckle as Io nodded approvingly. “Among other things, I find that’s been a constructive cornerstone of my long life with Gentia.” ‘While I’m very much in agreement regarding the capitulation to the needs and wants of the important women in one’s life,’ Io began, batting her eyelashes at Russell as though he needed some sort of reminder that she was such a woman. ‘Gentia and Veera may need to wait. I just received word from the Admiral, sir. He’s on his way to the village and intends to meet us there.’ “For what purpose?” Winters asked curiously. Io made a little show of opening a letter and reading the message within. ‘In his words? Examining primary sources.’ ----- True to his word, Natori was there to greet them when Russell and Thantis’ shuttle set down just outside the western gates. Thanks to his arrival there was already plenty of commotion, adding to the hectic Cauthan harvest season as males and females both hustled to and fro in the fields, plucking ripened produce just before the point of spoilage. The tall, ebony skinned human offered his hand to Thantis as the shuttle’s doors opened upward with an audible hiss. “I am glad to see you are well, my friend. Would you believe that our esteemed colleague Qul’Roth sends his regards and wishes you ‘good health in the name of the Order’?” ‘I wouldn’t,’ Io replied immediately, nevertheless allowing Thantis to answer on his own. “That is very kind of him. If you would convey my thanks when you return?” “Happily, Thantis. It sounds to me as though the two of you had quite the little adventure. Lieutenant,” the Admiral addressed Russell and the two men exchanged salutes. “That’s certainly one way of putting it, sir. What can we do for you?” he asked, waving to a villager who called out in greeting as he passed, a wooden tool for unearthing dato in his paws. “I believe we speak to Antoth first. I admit that I may have spooked him a little by returning to the village so soon after my last departure. All that I could tell him was that something unexpected happened at the Forge, but that the two of you were unharmed. While I wait on the lead researchers and Lance Corporal Mendes to pen their official reports, I figured it might be wise to hear of events the old fashioned way. Shall we?” he suggested, sweeping an arm behind him towards the village. A particular striped Cauthan was, of course, awaiting them there. She was not pleased. “Ah, perhaps an explanation for your wife is in order too?” Natori suggested, understanding that his presence was likely a significant contributor to Veera’s serious demeanor. “If it’s the same to you Admiral, I think it’s best I handle this alone,” Russell replied, leaving Thantis’ side and walking up to Veera. She tilted her head slightly to maintain eye contact, her expression one of expectation as she waited for him to begin. “Listen Veera, I know it looks bad but-” “Did you know that Fenrir’s figured out where all of the meat is stored?” she demanded suddenly, causing Russell to stick his neck out and cock his head in confusion. “I’m sorry, he what?” “He found me on patrol this afternoon with a chesko sausage hanging from his mouth and a very pleased expression on his face,” Veera explained, a hand on her hip. “I had to go to the temple of Valta and compensate them!” “Oh boy. I’m sure Ratha was thrilled,” Russell responded, a nervous pit in his stomach as he considered how much mayhem Fenrir could get up to. “She’s going to kill him if this continues!” Veera insisted. “Just please tell me you didn’t teach him to do this!” “Why would I teach Fenrir to steal meat from the one place in town that would get him riddled with arrows?!” Russell demanded, feeling he had some small, slight justification for taking offense. “Because sometimes you do silly things!” Veera replied as though it were obvious before visibly deflating. “We have to do something, Russell.” “We will, sweetie. We’ll give him a bit more food at meals and maybe see about keeping some sort of muzzle on him when he’s around town. I can take him hunting again soon too,” the human suggested, silently forgiving his wife her mild hysteria. Ratha’s opinions regarding Veera and hyrven were both well known. His proposal mollified her, and she embraced him to welcome him home. “I knew everything was alright the moment you and Thantis showed up unharmed. I suppose the Admiral being here means you will have some meeting with Antoth, but I’m glad you’re alright,” she told him. He hummed in her ear and left a quick kiss on her cheek. “Yeah, things didn’t go as planned but everyone made it out safely. If it’s all the same to you, I think when this is done I’d much rather focus on making sure our pet doesn’t become a pelt,” he replied. “As long as you admit that I told you so,” Veera said. “That place was obviously nothing but trouble from the very beginning.” ‘Are we going to continue overlooking the part where we can safely travel back to Earth now?’ Io demanded, having observed the married ‘spat’ for long enough. Veera’s eyes widened in surprise. “We can… you did it?” she gasped. “I sure as hell didn’t,” Russell clarified quickly. “But something happened that deactivated whatever process was going on in there. Io’s right. The warp point is clear and at some point soon I have to imagine Natori is going to take his ship home.” Veera found herself caught flat footed by the news, looking down at the earth beneath her feet as a sudden trepidation struck her. They had talked about Russell’s eventual departure many a time over the seasons she’d known him, but it was always a hypothetical, an occasion far down the line. That line seemed soon to end. “So I… have to leave?” she questioned. “Veera, I need to go meet with Antoth and the Admiral. When I’m done we’ll sit down and have a long talk about this, ok? If things have changed and you really want to stay, there may be a way to do that,” he explained. “But your family! Your parents!” Veera exclaimed before cutting herself off, noticing Thantis and Natori waiting at a polite distance for them. “You’re right. Please don’t take long.” “We won’t. Where’s the little troublemaker now?” Russell wondered. “I sent him off into the forest after his little snatch and grab. So he’ll probably be back for dinner.” “Count on that hyrven to never miss a meal. Alright love, I’m glad you and he are ok. See you soon?” Veera took his hands in hers and nodded. “Offer Antoth your guidance, Russell. You are the only human he can trust.” Though Russell’s first inclination was to protest, he couldn’t help but acknowledge the fact that even someone as forward and open as Natori could possess his own interests and agenda. He hummed low in his chest and agreed with a nod of his head. “I will, Veera.” ----- “Walk me through it one more time?” Antoth requested, running a hand through the feathers atop his head as he, Thantis, Russell, and Natori were seated within the temple of Kel. Xan was there too, finding himself in the position of scribe as Thantis was an involved party in the Forge incident. “As I said, Antoth, the Cauthan made from metal visited us while we were exploring the main chamber,” Thantis recounted. “It was clearly female, given the plumage, but how such a thing could possibly exist is beyond me. I am unsure whether it was a servant of Kel, Tyrdus, or neither. While there were many of us there, it chose to approach me specifically and attempted to communicate. I, regretfully, did not understand anything it said to me, either with its voice or its feathers.” “Yes, I got that part,” the chieftain clarified in a patient tone. “It is what comes afterward that puzzles me.” “You’re not the only one,” Russell agreed before allowing Thantis to continue the tale from his perspective. “I attempted to speak to the metal being, requesting information about its nature, which of the gods it served. I believe I mentioned Kel and Meylith specifically, Antoth. When it replied to me it was no clearer than when it first spoke, but I do believe it was a reply instead of some unrelated statement.” “Because it repeated the word Kel to you,” Antoth finished. “Precisely. That is when a great many things began happening all at once. Spirit Io tells me that some sort of invisible disturbance began within the Forge, something powerful. The entire place began to shake violently, and the great weapon that the humans believe was causing the corruption plummeted into the abyss below. It was then that the metallic being collapsed. I attempted to revive it, or at least ascertain what had happened but the humans deemed the situation too dangerous at that point. Winters carried me from the facility as I was unable to move fast enough.” Antoth glanced over at the Jumper. “I find myself in the position of thanking you yet again, Winters. However, given that Thantis would have never been in danger in the first place if not for your discovery, I will not go so far as to say either of us are in your debt.” “That’s the least of my worries, Antoth, but thank you,” he replied as Natori spoke up. “Antoth, I believe that certain subjects we have discussed in the past must now be brought to the fore again. While departure is not imminent, as soon as my crew determines we can safely leave your planet we will begin preparing a timetable to do so. Assuming your invitation to my crew regarding your harvest festival still stands, I think it would be a crime to pass up such an opportunity for cultural exchange. Once it is concluded, I cannot envision a scenario where we remain much longer.” “I understand,” Antoth said, adjusting his posture as he stretched and stood sternly near one of Thantis’ many shelves full of dried herbs and scrolls. “My invitation to your people remains, however I reserve the right to revoke it at any time if I feel there is a need. I think we should table that discussion for another time. Right now I need to ruminate on the situation at hand. Kel refused to open his gate to your people, even Winters, but he did so for his servant among our own. This is… a curious omen.” Russell shook his head in discomfort as Io began to practically vibrate with excitement, causing a bit of feedback in his earpiece. Having dealt with her, he addressed the two leaders. “Antoth, I’m happy to stay if you wish but I should get home if not. It sounds like Fenrir was up to no good today.” “I don’t know about it and assuming the situation is under control I’ll be happy not to know about it,” Antoth replied, making it clear in his tone that he expected Winters to exert said control over the situation. “If Thantis and I need to speak with you we will find you.” “Understood. Admiral Kaczynski, sir?” The Admiral instead looked at Antoth. “Is there anything else you wished to discuss so long as I am here?” “The food situation,” Antoth replied immediately, glancing at Xan. Natori nodded. “I must admit that over the short period of time since we last spoke I have not received any updates myself. However I would be happy to escort Xan or someone else from your village up to the Event Horizon to inspect the current crop personally.” “Then you should go, Xan. If we will not receive armor or weapons we should at least ensure this food is suitable when grown far from Mara’s soil. Will there be any issues?” he finished on a considerate note. “No Antoth, I’d be happy to. I should grab a couple of things and let my family know where I’ll be though,” the young scholar explained. “Very well, you are dismissed.” “My shuttle will be waiting at the western gate,” Natori advised the young Cauthan. “First Lieutenant, I do not wish to keep you too long but I would appreciate it if you and Io would accompany me that far.” “Yes sir,” Russell replied, seeing no reason to protest. “Selah, Thantis. Today was quite the adventure.” “I shall remember it for the rest of my life,” Thantis agreed, his customary demeanor returning as a ‘smile of knowledge’ spread across his muzzle. “And while that may not be a particularly strong statement, I am sure that you will as well. Go in peace, everyone. Selah. Shall we summon the others, Antoth?” “Not yet. Let us speak privately,” the burly Cauthan requested, indicating that he no longer needed the other three individuals in the temple. Xan packed up the scroll he’d been scribbling on and departed for his family’s home to the north while Russell and the Admiral headed west. “Is your wife the only Cauthan with an understanding of English?” Natori began. “So far as I know, sir,” Russell replied in a guarded tone. “Excellent, then we can dispense with some of the secrecy. What is your opinion on taking this village back to Earth with us?” he wondered. Io was visibly restraining herself from answering for the both of them, but her opinions on the matter were obvious. Russell was more defferential. “I think that’s a little bit beyond my pay grade, sir. On that subject, however, I need to know if there will be any problems in taking my wife aboard when we leave.” “Yes well, if we take them all along with us I see no reason she couldn’t come too!” Natori replied in an almost obnoxiously upbeat tone. “The formalities and paperwork will be handled either way in her case, Lieutenant, I assure you. But I do not wish to discuss formalities and rules today. I can do that with men like your father once we return home, and I get the sneaking suspicion there will be quite a few of those conversations. Your gut feelings on the situation will suffice.” “I’d be worried about them if we left them here and I’d be worried if we took them along, assuming such a thing is even possible and they agree to it” Russell replied. “For every Cauthan like Gentia or Thantis who might jump at the idea, there will be Cauthan like Ratha who will surely object.” “Undoubtedly,” Natori agreed. “But the conditions are such that they will be forced to answer that question, assuming my staff comes back to me and deems such a mission possible. From a human perspective, it is a clever workaround of many of the objections from our Ghaelen guest, objections that will be more difficult to ignore once he is returned to his people.” ‘Since simply removing the village from existence was his enlightened idea in the first place,’ Io quipped, using vicious air quotes to append the word ‘enlightened’. Natori chuckled heartily, waving cordially to a couple of farmers who looked their way at the noise. “In defense of Emissary Qul’Roth, I am not sure I want to know what happens to Ghaelen who defy the Order,” Natori suggested. “But per your evaluation, Io, I see no reason not to make it our enlightened decision instead.” “A decision to do what, exactly? Take them home and just turn them loose in a random city? Keep them in an HEL compound for years?” Russell demanded. Kaczynski stroked his chin. “I need a shave I believe. And count on the Jumper to immediately identify all the ways in which a situation could go wrong. Before you object, I approve of the approach. Though if you’ve already moved on to that point I presume you would generally be in favor of the translocation?” Russell organized his thoughts as the two men passed through the central square of the town, considering what it might look like in various settings he’d visited back home. “At least if they came with us and needed help I’d be able to do something.” Natori looked at Winters out of the corner of his eye. In truth, the Jumper was not used to speaking with people taller than him. An uncomfortable reminder of days gone by being scolded by his father gave way to a desire to see the man again. “May I ask what you were planning to do upon returning to Earth, Lieutenant? If you remain at your current post I’m not sure you would be any more able to aid these Cauthan than if we left them here.” That feeling of familial absence returned as Winters shook his head. “I didn’t give it much thought when I was aboard the Lancer, sir. Once I was here, worrying about it seemed pointless. I guess now’s the time to think about it again, but life’s already moved past that. Not sure I’ll leave the HEL, but when we get I’m going to turn in my wings, so to speak. The Jumper corps don’t need fathers. Doesn’t mean I’m not proud to have served as one of humanity’s most heavily armed bachelors.” Natori laughed earnestly at the description. “Children really do change everything, don’t they?” “You would know far better than I, sir. I’m just making assumptions. I want Veera to come with me, and that if she does I need to come home each night for several reasons. I normally wouldn’t talk to someone like you about these things, but I’m sure you’ll be in charge of accepting or denying that request when the time comes,” he added, trying to keep his tone from being standoffish. Natori seemed to find the comment entertaining, so he figured he’d succeeded. “Yes I suppose it was a deviation into rather private affairs. You have my apologies, Lieutenant. You and your sister are so different, but I can see your father in the both of you. I cannot make any guarantees, but I will do what I can if you’ve decided that your future lies outside of the Jumper corps. If things play out the way I expect them to, you and I and Io may have a mutual interest in such an arrangement, lest you think I’m somehow trying to play father.” “Thanks for the assurances, sir,” Russell replied shortly, only broadening Natori’s smile. “Youth is wonderful, is it not? In any case, you have something like six months to consider these questions, plus however long it takes us to get our affairs in order and depart this planet. With the threat from the alien installation apparently gone, my curiosity as to its nature has only increased.” Natori paused for a moment before snapping his fingers as he remembered something. “I need an after action report from you within the next twenty four hours, Lieutenant. I am aware that you have duties that go a bit beyond those of the average Event Horizon crew member, but given the magnitude of the event you just bore witness to, I need to review evidence from every angle, every perspective. There is no telling what the twenty or so of you might have seen or not seen.” ‘Done,’ Io replied, making a show of procuring the necessary video and audio files along with a written report that literally materialized atop her open palm. ‘Anything else?’ “You’ll let me review it first before it’s sent to the Admiral,” Russell insisted in no uncertain terms. “And later, I want you to make sure Xan is alright when he’s aboard the Event Horizon. Veera and I need to talk things over.” ‘Yes I suppose you do,’ Io agreed, filing away the materials she’d produced for his review. She waved politely at Natori. ‘Admiral, I will speak with you again some other time.’ “A pleasure as always,” he replied before her projection winked away. “Thank you for your time, Lieutenant. I will be fine waiting for the young apprentice before heading back. In the coming days and weeks I hope you will keep in mind that I value your opinion as an expert on the Cauthan, even if I make decisions that conflict with your sensibilities.” Russell took a moment to think through his reply, knowing well enough that the Admiral was not trying to patronize him. Natori took that time to look up at the gatehouse, nodding appreciatively at the construct of wood and packed dirt. “As long as you aren’t making decisions to appease the Ghaelen, sir, I can’t see myself raising any objections.” Kaczynski hummed shortly in reply. “Fair enough. You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.” Winters saluted silently and turned to head off along the road to the north, wondering how many more times he would walk along the rows of crowded homes, blockhouses, and rough drainage trenches. ---- The evening’s dinner preparation was a mostly silent affair. The crackling of firewood and the sound of a knife against wood, vegetables, and meat were comforting as he reviewed the full contents of Io’s report on the Forge incident. Every so often he made annotations, correcting Io’s propensity for flourish and embellishment. It had been a long time since he’d had to deliver such a report, and Io obviously found military language to be boring and trite. Between the two of them they soon had an acceptable product to send up to Natori’s bridge, along with the footage from his helmet cams. Task completed, Winters was free to address the question that had been hanging over both him and Veera for the entire afternoon. She was clearly as eager, or perhaps as nervous, as he, and he found her scrutinizing him from over the cooking pot. “Hey there, I’m all finished,” he began, standing and moving to her side. “Do you need any help?” “No, all of the heavy lifting is done. Just need to let it simmer for a while,” she told him, knocking a wooden spoon on the rim of the pot before taking a seat on one of their chairs. He joined her. “Your people will leave soon, and you’ll have to go with them.” “Yeah, they will,” Russell agreed, taking her hand in his and giving thanks that they wouldn’t be beating around the bush. “I do want to go back, Veera. I haven’t seen my parents or my two other siblings for…” Veera watched as her mate fell silent, his face looking far older than his actual age of twenty five as he counted the months. “It’s been too long, hasn’t it?” she asked compassionately. “The Admiral managed to get them here in about three months, but I don’t think he would push things that hard on the return trip. All told, even if we left tomorrow and didn’t make any detours, it would probably be more than two years total by the time I get home. And for at least half of that time they’ll have lived without knowing whether I’m alive or dead.” “It was clearly very hard for Alice,” Veera agreed, recalling the tearful scene from the bridge of the Event Horizon. “And she got to see you long before they will. You know I’ll still go with you, my love.” “I know,” he affirmed, looking at the flames as they licked at the blackened exterior of the pot that had served them well for many months. “But I know things have changed here too. I know there’s a lot you would leave behind now so… I think we should talk.” “About what, Russell?” she inquired. “I’m happy to talk about anything with you. We even vowed to do so in sight of the Mother, but it sounds like our path is already set.” “Maybe, but when we get to Earth things need to change,” he explained. “I can’t… I won’t get sent off on another mission like this. Even if you weren’t pregnant there would be a question, you know? But now there’s no way I want you following me around on military ships, and no way I’m going to leave you after you give birth. So… I’m going to have to figure something else out. Even cabins in the mountains don’t build themselves, and the life of a recluse isn’t the sort of thing I’d want for our kids.” To Russell’s surprise, Veera purred and nuzzled his cheek. She teased him gently. “Look at you trying to plan out our entire lives. I would never say no to you being in less danger.” Russell placed an arm around her shoulder and rested his head against hers. “Is there a ‘but’ in there somewhere?” “I was trying to be accommodating,” Veera pointed out. “But I would feel awful if you gave up something important on account of my pregnancy. It’s not like we planned for this.” “No, we didn’t,” he agreed seriously, sitting up in his seat and rubbing the back of his neck. “But that doesn’t change the fact. Besides, there aren’t many people who remain soldiers forever. Even people like my father eventually take non-combat roles and desk jobs. It might not go exactly the way we expect, but I’m sure I can work something out within the HEL if the civilian life just isn’t for me.” “Then it sounds like we don’t have much to worry about in terms of our family,” Veera summarized in a relieved tone before casting a glance at their entryway. “I will miss them, though.” Russell exhaled and looked over at Io, taking up her usual perch at the foot of their bed. He raised his brows at her and she shrugged in return. “I might as well ask your opinion on it then,” he said. “On what?” “This is something Io and I have been thinking about for a while but never with any seriousness. Apparently Alice started thinking the same way and made a proposal to both Natori and Antoth the last time the two of them met.” “Is that where you were called to?” Veera wondered quietly, taking a spoonful of stew and blowing on it until it was cool enough to taste. Satisfied with the blend of flavors, she grabbed two wooden bowls and began serving them both. “What is it that Alice was contemplating?” “From the sound of it, taking you and every single Cauthan in this village back home with us to Earth isn’t a flight of fancy,” Russell explained. Veera paused with a ladle full of stew halfway between the kettle and her bowl. “I- what? Is such a thing even possible?” she demanded aghast. Russell nodded, propping up one ankle on the opposite knee. “Way I understand it, the Event Horizon is running with a skeleton crew, at least so far as non-military personnel are concerned. When they learned they were coming after me, that my ship had been lost, a lot of people who could chose to stay behind. There’s plenty of space so long as your people can handle space travel. Obviously we’ve already experimented with that a bit.” “But why would they take us in the first place?” Veera asked suspiciously. “Here, eat while it’s hot.” “Smells wonderful, thank you,” Russell replied, making sure to take a large bite and savor it for her edification before going on to explain some of the reasons humanity might see a vested interest in taking her village along. “From what I can tell it would actually resolve a sticking point with the Ghaelen regarding human influence on the village. The other reason, honestly, is that we want to.” “And when we can no longer feed or clothe ourselves because we have left Mara we will be at your mercy,” Veera pointed out suspiciously. Io felt the need to step in at that point. ‘That is true, Veera. However what humanity can offer you in exchange would far exceed what you would lose. Imagine a world where one Cauthan, in someone like Anita’s position, could grow enough food to feed the whole village!’ “That sounds like a good excuse to sit around and grow lazy and fat, just like Vash,” Veera spat. Io recoiled indignantly as Russell waved his spoon her way. “She’s got a point there, you know. Hey boy, get over here and sit! I heard you were bad today!” Russell commanded, distracted as none other than Fenrir chose that moment to arrive home, having no doubt followed the smells of cooking fires throughout the village. He ruffled the hyrven’s fur roughly before providing him with a plate of pre-cut chesko meat. It was a bit bourgeois to cut their pet’s steak, he knew, but both he and Veera considered bite sized pieces preferable to Fenrir flinging his dinner about the house like a barbarian intent on painting the walls red. ‘Now that the beastie has his dinner and I can defend myself, I can tell you that many humans choose to work jobs like those found at the temples of Tyrdus or the Twins, making things instead of growing things. That might not be a difficult transition. Even more choose to live like Thantis or Alice, devoting their lives to knowledge and its pursuit. And yes, per your conversation with Russell all the way back when you first met, there are some who engage in creating pornographic material and every other profession in between. Based on the amount of garbage I’ve scrubbed from the Event Horizon’s intranet there will be a market for Cauthan smut when we return to Earth one way or another, but I’d rather space my main processors than ruminate on that for too long. You are right, Veera. Being lazy, indolent, and fat is a temptation when you live in a land of plenty, but I think it is better than starvation, death by raider, succumbing to treatable illnesses, or freezing to death.’ “Not to mention there are plenty of human communities who prefer to keep to what they consider to be the ‘old ways’,” Russell added. “I’m not saying anyone’s given the logistics serious thought, but the idea is out there now and it’s not just me and Io who would want to see you all paid back for letting me live here and keeping me alive.” “That doesn’t change the fact that we would be giving up our freedom and putting our lives in your hands, Russell,” Veera pointed out. “I choose to do so on account of our bonds of marriage and because I consider you to be a male who does not think in such terms. That doesn’t mean that this village will be treated the same way.” Russell was unable to brush her concerns away, knowing that he was far from the most senior HEL individual in the system anymore. He didn't foresee any issues with the Admiral honoring the union he shared with Veera, but he hadn't exactly married the rest of the village. "I know, but it's not like Io or I would abandon them. I'm not worth much, honestly, but you've seen what Io can do when she doesn't get what she wants." 'I resent that,' she told him. 'You act as though I saw the Event Horizon and thought give me the shiny ship.' Russell and Veera looked at Io quietly, chewing over tenderized pieces of chesko. She eventually backtracked. ‘Well don’t blame me for having the ability to do both at once! Besides, it’s not even that shiny.’ Veera laughed pleasantly as she reached over to scratch Fenrir between the ears. Between the slowly waning cooking fire and his dinner the hyrven was already headed for dreamland. “I appreciate the sentiment, Io. I know that you and Russell would not abandon us, but that will not make it any easier, especially for people like Ratha and Antoth.” “That’s a bit of an understatement. I wouldn’t be surprised if it proved necessary to drag Ratha kicking and screaming into a shuttle,” Winters added, finding the image amusing. “Ah well, like I said it’s really not a decision that any of us get to make. I just wanted your perspective. I guess it’s probably a scary concept more than anything.” “Yes, it is,” Veera agreed quietly. “And unlike me, they do not have someone like you to lean on.” “Fair enough. Hopefully we can get a few set up like Xan, familiarize themselves with the ship at least. Sounds like Natori could use help and you all have five fingers, an opposable thumb, and are of approximately human height,” Winters reasoned. “Speaking of which, why don’t you head on up, Io. He should be aboard already. I think we’re just going to clean up dinner here.” Veera waved her feathers in understanding as Io nodded and killed her projection. ‘I suppose I could check back in on my various VI monitoring subroutines as well. As you say sir. I will return later tonight.’ ----- “By Kel this place is big,” Xan complained, walking through corridor after corridor aboard the Event Horizon. He’d returned to his normal weight so he figured he had to be somewhere close to his destination, but with every turn he only seemed to find yet another sign featuring vibrant green and yellow symbols showing him the way to the hydroponics bays. The Cauthan let out an audible groan of relief when he stepped into a larger hallway and found a sizable green arrow pointing at a set of bulkheads several times his size. He could not yet read the human runes painted within it, but he recognized the location well enough. Clearing his throat and composing himself he walked up to the doors and made to knock, but found his plans foiled as they simply opened on their own and a synthesized, female voice faintly reminiscent of Io’s own welcomed him to the hydroponics bay. “Hey, Anita?” he called out, facile enough with English to use at least one word. He smiled as she poked her head around the corner of the door to her office, her long ponytail hanging most of the way to the floor from her seated position. She was confused to see him, which confused him in turn. “X-Xan?” she stuttered. “What are you um, doing here?” The Cauthan leaned heavily on his cane, putting two and two together before letting out a long sigh of realization and clicking a talon on the floor. “You know, if you’d prefer to work for someone who doesn’t enjoy surprises, Antoth would be happy to have you if you can grow food for us. He’s a similar color too, so that wouldn’t be much of a change, right? He wanted me to check in and see how things are going up here. Guess Natori didn’t give you a warning?” “No, he didn’t,” Anita confirmed quietly, unsure whether to find humor in the idea of working for Antoth or trying to explain to Xan that it was the height of rudeness to remark on someone’s skin color in such a way. In the end she sat in silent embarrassment as her stomach betrayed her and growled audibly. Even with his mangled left ear Xan was able to pick up on it just fine. “I have a place to sleep up here so maybe let’s get food first? Not like I’m in a rush or anything. Well, I actually can’t rush much of anywhere these days,” he quipped, pointing to his gimped leg. “I don’t really know my way around so… or was I interrupting something?” Anita couldn’t bring herself to say no, so instead she zipped up her jumpsuit, grabbed her tablet, and ensured the automated subroutines were all green before tucking her chair neatly away at her desk. “So, ah, how have you been, Xan?” she asked politely, leading the way from her usual haunt to the hallways that would take them to the civilian canteen. The Cauthan kept a sure pace, his cane accentuating his progress. He chuckled to himself as he summed up the events of the prior cycle in one word. “Busy.” ----- Previous | First | Patreon ----- Own The HEL Jumper: Survive in the format of your choice: Hardcover, Softcover, and epub from Lulu | Amazon Kindle
Update4: Cheating wife ruined family and x-mas. Why does she expect me to be ok with her behavior?
So yesterday was the hearing, i am basically divorced. It will take 4-6 months for the paperwork to be official but at this point there is basically nothing anyone can do to change the outcome. The only option is if me and my wife together stop it. I am so f..ng tired, i haven't slept in,,,, i don't know how many days, so if i am a bitt all over the place im sorry. I just need to get this all out, i need to vent. Hopefully i can get some sleep after i type it out. My awesome lawyer got me a early hearing, just 12 days after submitting the paperwork. No doubt she called in some favor's on this one. I am getting off track, from the weekend up until today has been insane. Friday morning a whole bunch of police officers knocked at my door with a warrant to search the house. I was very confused, i was worried about the kids, so i asked if i could bring the kids outside while they did their search. Thankfully they agreed to that. They didn't really tell me much, but i did get a copy of the warrant, i was so shaken up i couldn't really make any sense of it. I guess everyone that said that my x-wifes behavior was probably drug related,,,, its safe to say that is at least a factor in this. The cops set about completely trashing my house, i called my lawyer and she talked to them, but the warrant was valid so there wasn't anything that could be done at the time. I didn't think about it when it happened but I have cameras everywhere now, in case i get wrongfully accused. I have video and sound of everything, I could possibly make a claim later if i want to. To be honest, i don't really know if i have the energy or will for that, maybe i just put a line over it and move on. I didnt know it then, but X and her 3 harpy friends drove my car while high and drunk, and crashed into a house at high speed. They where all arrested, all of them drunk and they all had drugs in, and on their body. They where pretty roughed up by the crash, the one in the passenger seat is in critical condition, they don't know if she will even make it. The lead harpy, lets call her Henrietta. She is the one that bragged about screwing over and lying about her x-husband in court. Lets call her x-husband Henry. Me and Henry have become really good friends, I will get back to him. Thankfully they didn't find anything from the search, i gave my statement that my X doesnt live here anymore, she lives with her parents,,, I dont know what she is doing. No i didnt give Henrietta permission to drive my car, etc. When i got back in the house i just broke down, everything was completely trashed. It was just the last straw i guess. The only thing i could think of was to call my dad who brought me and the kids home to stay with my Mom Dad then got a whole group together, 26 friends and relatives. While i was sobbing on the back porch, eating my moms amazing comfort food. Feeling sorry for myself, they completely cleaned and fixed my entire house. They did every single room, clothes, dishes, furniture, even washing the ceiling and walls! Its never been this clean, they even fixed all the little things, like loose door handles etc. I just couldn't believe they would do such a thing for me. I have no idea how i can ever repay them. I went from suicidal to feeling pretty good over the weekend thanks to them. Cops found more drugs at Henriettas house and her boyfriend wasn't there, no baby sitter either, just the kids alone. The kids where taken by CPS and Henry won temporary emergency custody Saturday after showing the judge the chat logs. Combined with the abandonment and piles of drugs thing, He got custody without much difficulty. Henry is over the moon happy, he has hardly seen his kids the last 5 years. He had been raising money to fight Henrietta in court when this happened. He still needs to go to court to make it permanent but the odds are really good at this point. Everybody thinks Henrietta will have to serve time. If her friend doesn't make it probably serious time. After that he will try for child support and compensation for all the crap Henrietta did. He isnt expecting much on this though. And to be honest, i think he doesnt want to waste his time fighting in court. He wants to be with his kids and make sure they have a good life. Its pretty clear that Henrietta has been very neglectful towards them. Bob has been a champ and set Henry up in a rental apartment through a friend. I have come to realize that i know practically nothing about Bobs private or professional life. I intend to remedy that. Anyway im off track again. Henrietta was at the wheel when she drove off the road and into a house. They where all pretty banged up, and due to the situation, the alcohol and the drugs, search warrants where issued for everyone residence. X is still registered with her residence at my house. I decided on Sunday that i am selling this house and moving away asap. I am afraid this will probably happen again. On Sunday i get a call from her parents, their house got searched as well. They had visited their daughter in jail on Saturday and they no longer trust anything she tells them. Long story short, they came over to talk on Sunday and it turns out she has been lying to them about everything. The nights she has been out partying and cheating. She told them that she was staying with me and we where trying to work things out?? They had no idea what was actually going on or what she has done to me and the kids. They knew she cheated but they believed it was a one time drunken mistake. That's basically what she told them. On Monday my wife calls me to try to get me to post bail. Its 15K and her parent have already told her no. After talking to my lawyer she made some papers that the bail is substracted from the settlement until she shows in court and the bail is released. The agreement included her mother as the custodial of the remaining amount. My lawyer didnt want my wife to have any excuse for not attending the hearing that's why she wanted me to get her out. X didn't really have a choice and she signed. She was released Monday afternoon. From what her parents tell me she refused to comply with the terms they had for her to continue living there. Terms like: Stop doing drugs, commit to rehab, open everything policy, drop the bad friends etc. She apparently left their house on Tuesdays to stay with some of her new friends. She didn't show for the hearing, and after showing the judge everything including the events over the weekend i won full custody. The settlement is according to the agreement we made. It was quick only 30 min. It will take 4-6 months to go through the papermill. But in reality, its done. There isn't really anything that can be done to stop this now. That brings us to today, i was unable to sleep. Everybody was congratulating me and treating me like i had some major victory. But it sure as hell doesn't feel like i won anything. This is just pain, i still love my wife. I know its over and there is absolutely no way back. Still she was my best friend, my soulmate up until recently and and even though i feel my love for her has been mortally wounded. Its still there. And it hurts like a motherfu...er. There are no winners in this, i loose my wife looses, my kids loose. I dont really have the words, it feel like i am being asked to celebrate that i have lost both my legs. But because i took action one of my legs could be cut below the knee while the other still was cut above. When people congratulate me it feels almost like that, like they are commending me for saving half a knee cap..... While loosing both my leg... So i cant really sleep, and when i doo i am torn through terrible nightmare's that wake me up drenched in cold sweat. I am complaining a bit here, sorry. Anyway today i get a call from the hospital that my X is hospitalized. I am still her emergency contact and she is still on my health insurance. There has been an altercation, she has lost some teeth, broken jaw and she will need to stay for observation a few days. I bring her parents and when i get there it turns out some of her new friends have beaten her up pretty badly. Word got out that Henry had chat logs of Henrietta bragging about what she did to Henry, from my wifes phone..... They assumed that my wife had given the Logs to Henry.... This resulted in them beating her up and kicking her out. Amazingly she still dont understand that i have access to monitor her phone... I will keep on like i do now, pay for insurance, her phone, etc. All the way until i get the papers in my hand, i just wont believe it until i hold it in front of me. She has nothing now, she asked if she could move back home. I simply told her "no way in hell." Her mother isnt giving her a single penny unless she get clean and stays clean for at least 1 year. They offered her to live with them on the previous strict terms. If she doesn't accept i dont see how she will manage. Its the first time i have seen any form of regret from her since this started, but i think its regret that she can no longer continue with her craziness. She did say "i am sorry i ruined everything" but i dont think its genuine. She hardly looked me in the eyes while i was there. It hurt seeing her like this. I felt like i wanted to protect her. But she is an adult, her behavior is dangerous and erratic and i need to protect my kids. Apart from that she didnt ask about the hearing, she didnt ask about the condition of her critically injured "friend" she basically just sat there seemingly irritated I still don't understand this, she has lost everything... She has destroyed her family and caused a lot of pain for a lot of people.... And for what? A buzz and some random sex? I am going completely NC until she has been clean for a long time, i just cant deal with all this crazy..
English singer-songwriter Jessica Lois Ware (born October 15th, 1984), has already had a thriving career in music for about a decade. Jessie Ware started her career doing background singer gigs for artists like SBTRKT and DJ Joker. She's also a credited background vocalist on Florence and the Machine's excellent sophomore album Ceremonials, just to name a few of her early career feats. Even if you are unfamiliar with her earlier work, you might've stumbled upon a track she's co-written or lent her vocals to. Apart from the already mentioned Ceremonials, she sings a beautiful chorus on "The Crying Game" from Nicki Minaj's 2014 album, The Pinkprint. She's also co-written the title-track of Haim's "Days Are Gone" album and Ed Sheeran's "New Man" from Divide. As a result of her deciding to pursue a solo career, her debut album, Devotion, was released on August 12th, 2012 to critical acclaim, reaching the top ten of the UK album chart. Reviewers praised Jessie's soulful, warm vocals. It spawned singles such as "Wildest Moments", which remains a discography highlight if you ask me. After touring Devotion, Jessie began writing her sophomore album Tough Love, which was released on October 6th, 2014. While she did not stray too far from the sound she established with her debut album it did spawn arguably her biggest chart hit to date. With writing credits from Ed Sheeran and Benny Blanco, "Say You Love Me", became her biggest song to date and is certified gold in the UK. Her third studio album, Glasshouse, released on October 20th, 2017, was a slightly more upbeat affair than her first two albums, but that's not to say that melancholy she had become known for had been completely thrown out the window, as this was a deeply personal record, with her lyrics and vocals taking center stage. As opposed to Devotion and Tough Love, Glasshouse leaned more into adult-contemporary than the electronic r&b feel of the aforementioned albums. Glasshouse showed an even more mature side of Jessie as she navigated the highs and lows of all the life turns that come with marriage.
Album background
Following Glasshouse, which in some perspectives failed to meet the label's expectations in spite of its impressive list of co-writers and producers, Jessie largely shifted the focus to her podcast Table Manners. It quickly gained a dedicated follower-base due to the warm and oftentimes hilarious, chemistry between Jessie, her mom Lennie, and their impressive lineup of guests, the first couple seasons having guests such as Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, and Alan Carr, to name but a few stars. In an interview with The Independent last year, she admitted to people being more familiar with her through the podcast than through her music, which she seems perfectly content with. She also admitted to the podcast giving her a new platform to be more open about her personal life, something that she had felt pressured of doing with her music, as was more than evident on Glasshouse. For the recording of her fourth studio album What's Your Pleasure?, Jessie reunited with producer James Ford, who she had previously worked with on Tough Love, to create this new disco soundscape. With this album, Jessie felt less pressure to appeal to the greater music industry's expectations of her music, and the result is an album filled with nu-disco-tinged, front-to-end bops, dripped in glittery escapism flair. She emerges as a modern disco diva ready to serve bangers, let loose, and have fun. There are nods to classic disco outings, but Jessie and her collaborators have managed to create a new spin on the genre, something that is equal parts contemporary, timeless, and fully Jessie Ware. What's Your Pleasure? was preceded by a couple of pre-release singles and had been in the works for about two years prior to the album's release. The sultry "Adore You" was aptly released on Valentine's Day back in 2019, followed by "Mirage (Don't Stop)" in November. In early 2020, singles "Spotlight" and "Save a Kiss" followed in quick succession and quickly built up hype for the album. Finally, the anthemic title track dropped days before the album's release. Initially scheduled for a June 5th release, it got pushed back a couple of weeks and was finally released into the world on June 26th, 2020.
Track-By-Track breakdown
Spotlight It just so happens that the opening track of the album is also one of the undisputable highlights. What sets the album apart from your standard dance-pop fairs right from the start is the ethereal, cinematic, flair of "Spotlight". A dream intro sets the stage as you can almost imagine it being the beginning of the night. Even though it's a stark departure in tempo from her previous work, it's still very much a Jessie Ware song, never once sacrificing the mature songwriting and instantly recognizable vocals that she's become known for. Jessie's voice is almost whisper-like as she lustfully sings "I just wanna stay in the moonlight, this is our time in the spotlight." Jessie is inviting the listener to stay in the disco heaven for a minute and we'll happily oblige.
If only I could let you go If only I could be alone I just wanna stay in the moonlight This is our time, in the spotlight
Come on now, Push, press, more, less, Here together, what’s your pleasure?
Speaking to Glamour magazine last year, Jessie stated that she wanted this to be an album for people to have sex to. There's really no better song than the title track to make that statement clear as day. Evident from the lyrics above, taken from the pulsating, hypnotic chorus, this song is pure, fierce sex. The bassline is dirty and the lyrics are by far the most explicitly about sex on the entire album, but without making it too on the nose. This song is about a temptation that's too good to resist, Jessie is confident that they can make the most perfect love together, and she, sure enough, sounds utterly convincing and sensual. Ooh La La One of the characteristics of classic disco was, among other things, a killer bassline, which is a returning trait in the album, thankfully. And Ooh La La has a funky bassline to die for. In contrast to the first two songs, this one is more playful, as Jessie sings longingly and fantasizes all the things she and whoever she's singing about, could do together, with subtle innuendos referring to the joyride she's visualizing. Even though the song starts off relatively soft, it erupts into a full euphoric flurry of emotions during the outro, as she sings:
Drivin' fast, Drivin' fast, technicolor street lights Cigarettes on the dash, we can have a sweet time Baby where have you been all of my life?
Soul Control Similar to Spotlight, this is another lustful track, albeit with a lot more energy to it. Cascading synths and a funky bassline swirl with relentless pace as Jessie sings about losing one's inhibitions with whoever you happen to come across. This is glittery disco goodness in all its glitz and glamour.
Let's get a little closer Crash into me, please Let's keep these wheels in motion Tell me what you wanna be
Save A Kiss This is a personal favorite of mine. Compared to some of the rest of the album, the production on this song is actually more streamlined, which gives the lyrics and gorgeous melodies time to really shine. It's utterly euphoric and easy to sing along to, yet there's that ever so slight hint of melancholy in the lyrics. The melodies of the verses blend beautifully into the soaring chorus which later sparks a post-chorus dance break. There are quite a few elements to it but it all works together seamlessly. I also love how the extended intro gives the production some more breathing room, it really adds to an already excellent song.
Save a kiss for me tonight Wait for me, no compromise Promise you, it won't be long Just save a little bit of your lovin', baby
Adore You This was the first taste of the album we got back in 2019. Adore You is a simple confession of love, a bit more subtle and subdued than the rest of the album. There's also a hint of the vulnerability and softness of her past work in her voice on this song. To me, it feels perfectly placed in the middle of the album as the mood changes ever so slightly.
I think I'm falling for you For you And I know that I adore you
In Your Eyes Adding to the line of absolutely iconic songs titled In Your Eyes (look no further than to The Weeknd and Kylie Minogue), this is another grand cinematic piece, with a beautiful string arrangement that adds a brooding atmosphere to the song, while Jessie fires on all cylinders with her soulful vocals. Speaking to Zane Lowe, she said that "this is definitely the Bond-theme of the album.", and listening to it you can hardly disagree with that statement, as one can imagine it fitting perfectly during any given opening credit.
There were butterflies moving in the light They were justified every single time Every time you looked, they were justified
Step Into My Life So by now that you're a little over halfway through the album, you're probably asking yourself how much juice it's got left as all the tracks have been pretty killer, right? Well, thankfully, the party shows no signs of stopping. Step Into My Life is another fun and groovy track. Jessie has had enough of waiting for some kind of confirmation as she desperately seeks intimacy.
You got my attention, no complications I just wanna get to know ya I don't wanna talk, no conversation I'm tired of wantin' more, more of your love
Read My Lips This is the one song on the album that I'd consider campy, it's very tongue-in-cheek with carefree energy. The lip smacks during the chorus are so much fun. This is very apt given the subject matter of getting the partner to open up and be a little more daring. Read her lips, she's literally telling whoever she's singing about to make the damned move. But she makes it clear that she's going to wait for the response no matter how long it takes, the background vocalists echoing her sentiment during the blissful outro:
(Don't you know I need you so?) I'm waiting for you all night (Read my lips, I can't let go) If only you could read my mind, baby (Don't you know I need you so?) (Read my lips, I can't let go) You and me were meant to be
Mirage (Don’t Stop) With this song, Jessie is on a mission to make you dance, with a simple, repeated command to don't stop moving together. It's almost like at this stage of the album, she's entering the late-night phase so to speak. This is a surefire dancefloor-filler, with Jessie making references to dancing under the moonlight and getting swept away in the joyous moment of it all. I like to imagine myself potentially locking eyes with a stranger to the tune of this song. If I had to pick a least favorite track on the album, this would be it, but in an album as rich as this one, it's a ridiculously strong least favorite track I'd say.
Sometimes I see you in my dreams You are the only fantasy I see
The Kill Now correct me if I'm wrong, but based on what I've seen, I think it's safe to call this a fan favorite, and with good reason. This one is quite dark and foreboding, there's an urgency to it in the production, and once again, the strings add to the cinematic feel of the song, but this time the mood is considerably more sinister than anywhere else on the album. It's quite enigmatic, as the production sure is enough to be danceable, but the lyrics tell a whole different story. There layers upon layers to this song to pick apart. It's almost like it's taken straight from a movie scene where the camera pans out over a city skyline, and unsurprisingly that's exactly what is pictured in the music video. If you haven't watched the music video (linked above) for this song you need to do yourself a favor and watch it right away as it perfectly encapsulates the emotions of the song. By far the best music video on a budget in recent memory for me. The perfect lighting, the cinematography, Jessie's delivery, I could gush on and on about it.
Tell me what you wanna know And I'll tell you everything inside I'll tell you that you are the one for me Don't try to kill me with your love Don't kill me with your love
Remember Where You Are Given the quality of this album, it's seriously impressive that it maintains its standards all the way to the end. I can't think of a more fitting song to close the album with. Remember Where You Are is a sprawling epic that has a true sense of finality to it, it's like the end credits to a rich album journey. A heap of horns and strings complement the subdued bassline, while Jessie and her background vocalists' angelic voices sweep over you like a warm hug. The song is about staying grounded even through the dark times, and she makes it clear right from the cathartic opening line, "the heart of the city is on fire", which she sings with all her passion. I don't think it's an understatement to say that it carries even more weight during these times of uncertainty and as such it comes off as an even more poignant, and grand, end to the album.
The heart of the city is on fire Sun on the rise, the highs are gonna fall But nothing is different in my arms So darling, remember, remember Where you are
Final Thoughts
If you've managed to read through all of this, thank you for reading! It was a joy to write about one of my favorite albums of last year. I really think Jessie and her collaborators managed to create something unique. At its core, the album is very much centered around escapism, that's what dance-pop is all about after all. But it's also expertly written, filled with emotion and personality. That's the greatest thing about it, I think. Even if it's dance-pop which could easily be written of as impersonal, she's managed to create a dance-pop album that's very much a Jessie Ware album in a new, exciting shape. The songs are all so polished and refined that it's hard to find something negative to say at all. She really showed that she's fully in charge with newfound confidence. I for one can't wait to hear what she does next.
Points of discussion
If you've listened to Jessie's past work, how do you feel about her move to dance-pop? Do you feel like it was a successful transition?
What's Your Pleasure? is filled with small production quirks and vocal standout moments. What are some of your favorite moments of the album, however big or small?
A week in the life of your favorite firearm merchant! 2/10/2021
Things have been busy so, I apologize for the delay. I know lots of you love these stories. Last Friday night...Yeah, I think we broke the law...Always say we're gonna stop, whoa Friday, or in the alternative: What part of call me was not clear? I get to my desk at the usual time and deal with the usual bullshit. I got a SCAR 16s here on consignment because a customer of mine bought them from dealers that were less than reputable and lied about the condition of/country of origin of their merchandise. And they swapped sku's and other bullshit gun dealer things. Trying to be a nice guy, I can charge the guy to box and ship everything back or roll them at top dollar and give him a big stack of blue stripe benjamins. I tell him I'll try and sell them for him and take my cut off the top so we're both making money. He thinks this is a great idea and manages to line up a buyer on his own. I just need to do the 4473 and cut him a check. No big deal, I don't have a problem doing a little extra work for him versus the standard dealer to customer transfer. The guy he sold it to is a semi regular customer of mine and he comes in, bangs out the 4473 and it's about a 90 minute wait on transaction time. No big deal. Instead of packing up for the gun show, I'm selling other peoples guns. I'll pack up for the gun show tonight and get everything ready when I get home. I need to be up super early and on the road. I get everything squared off, customer comes in to get his money and drops off ANOTHER SCAR 16s to sell because the dealer pulled a con job. Okay, I can haul it to the show in the AM. I have a SCAR 16s in FDE from him. I have a 5.7 in FDE on the arm from a buddy of mine and a 509 FDE. I'll make a package deal, FDE FN Friday all FN time. Things are looking up! I clear off all the 4473's for the week and do an audit and I'm down about 75% inventory wise from last year. Things are tight but stuff is trickling in in drips and drabs. Hit the chickfila on my way home for a sandwich and milkshake that brings all the boys to the yard. I'm done eating and getting ready to leave when I get the call. ring ring FC: go for FC 1: Mr Hayden sir, can I ask a favor of you? FC: What up? 1: Got a guy who wants my scar 16 lined up but he has to pay on a credit card. Can you run it for me? You can take a card and cut me a check? (It's 7PM on a friday night. I still need to pack for the show. By the time I get back it will be 9PM and I still need to shower and get a decent nights sleep. I'm a glutton for punishment) FC: If you want to get it done tonight, have the guy call me. I'm eating dinner now and I'll head back if he calls me. 1: roger that, I'll pass along your info right now and let him know. I do a few more emails from the laptop and say hi to the chickfila owner who was friends with my dad and buys guns from me. We chat for a bit and my phone does not ring. Now, gentle readers - I offered to head back at 730PM on a friday to get something done for someone as a favor to them. That should be worthy of "holy shit you are the man for coming back on your own time!" but this was not the case. No phone call means I didn't head back. I head home, no phone call. Phone about to die. Plug it in and go into my garage and get all my gun show stuff sorted and loaded and organized. My normal display is 3 tables of merchandise stacked and racked on 2 tables. This show it's 1.5 tables of merchandise stretched out on 2 tables. Not good. My back is killing me. I get some ibuprofen and take a hot shower. Grab my phone off the charger. Bunch of missed calls, one email one VM. I return the VM. 1: Hey you must be having a good dinner at chickfila, we've been waiting here in the parking lot for the last hour! FC: You have? Well, I didn't get a phone call. I'm home and in pajamas. 1: What? He didn't call you? FC: Nope 1: HEY! YOU DIDN'T CALL HIM? Oh he says he just figured...... FC: No phone call means no turning around to go back to work. We'll deal with it next week. 1: Okay I'll tell him. I'm a pretty easy to get along with guy. If you ask me a favor, I'll likely do it if it does not interfere with my life too badly. But if you ask me for a favor and you can't follow simple instructions, well then you're wasting your own time. That's no skin off my hide. Failure to follow simple directions on your part does not warrant my bad back bending over backwards to make it right. I climb into bed, I have to be up at 5AM to tank up at the truck stop, grab breakfast on the run and get to this show on the road. Saturday, in the park. I think it was the fourth of july. People dancing, people laughing. A man selling ice cream. Singing Italian songs.... Showtime Saturday. My back is stiffer than I'd like. I get down to the show and get loaded in and everything is set up looking spiffy. Not in my normal spot right by the loading dock, much to my chagrin. There's a line that's 1/4 mile long to get into the building. This shit is looking crazy. Here's the deal, folks. The 4473 isn't hard. It does require attention to detail. Being in therapy with Dr Kaplan, I've learned a few things. Old FC: Here's the clipboard, call me when you're done. New FC: Here's the form, I'm guessing you haven't filled this out before. Start on line 9, read this carefully, 18A and 18B are two separate questions that both require answers, 21 L 2 is tricky, you need to read it ALL THE WAY TO THE END before you answer. Sign on 22, today's date on 23. STOP THERE. With the new spiel, of the 7 forms I was handed on Saturday before noon - guess how many were filled out correctly? I'll make a break here to talk about the bullshit I had to do. Show Hustler #1: I had a consignment mossberg built in new haven pre 1968. A guy wants to buy it and he's friends with Ray Dalio. Yes, the Ray Dalio. He tries getting me to knock $100 off but I tell him he's nuts. If he's FRIENDS WITH A BILLIONAIRE and lives in GREENWICH fucking Connecticut, you can pay my very fair asking price of about $350 on it. He relents and I give him a small discount and I give him the clipboard. Show Hustler #2: I got a guy wanting to trade me a 44 Mag Black Desert Eagle for a Colt 1911 I have on the table. Prices are about the same. I tell him I'm not doing the work of selling two guns for the profit of one gun. He tells me I'm not selling two guns, I'm trading one and selling one. That's selling one gun! I explain two entries in my A/D book means I sell two guns, and it's easier for me to sell a NIB Colt than it is for me to sell a used Desert Eagle. Well the DE isn't used! It's unfired! It's brand new! If I didn't get it from a wholesaler, it's used. He says for me to think about it and he'll be at the show. I tell him I thought about it. He says yeah, ready to do an even trade? I say no, now I want your gun plus $1000. He calls me a clown and walks away. Show Hustler #3: Over the road truck driver wants the FN 5.7 in FDE I have on consignment. Asks for a truck driver discount. He wants it for $1200. I've got it tagged at $1350. I tell him if he can fill out the form straight, no errors I write it at 1200. If there's an error, I write it for $1350. He says he just bought a brand new freightliner cascadia and money is tight. I tell him well we got a bet or what? He nods, I book the action. Show Hustler #4: Guy wants my 509C. He wants to trade me for a NIB glock even up. I tell him there's no money to be made and selling a used glock gets me less money. BUT ITS NOT USED! ITS BRAND NEW! We go back and forth 9 times about how new does not mean what he thinks it means. I offer him $350 on his trade as credit knowing that $650 on a used glock in 45ACP is all the money right now. He calls me a cocksucker and walks away. Okay, so 7 form 4473's with an explanation as to all the problem areas before noon on Saturday.....how many were filled out correctly? If you answered zero, you are right! That means I won the 4473 bet. The 5.7 goes out at top dollar. Winner winner chicken dinner! I head home and count my money. I need 9 more shows like this and I might finally be able to retire. On the way home I check web orders. Three guys in arkansas have ordered $900 22LR off my website at $150 a brick. I joke about my stash of 22LR being a brand new F350 platinum but at $150/brick that's rapidly becoming a reality. Sunday, Bloody Sunday Sunday is day 2 of the show. I stop at a local diner and grab corned beef hash and a short stack of pancakes for breakfast. Want to know how good a diner is? If there's real butter with the pancakes and not that bullshit country crock/margarine spread, you know things will be good. There's butter. It's good. A very nice Sig 229 in stainless in 9mm comes by from a guy who did business with me years ago. He traded me a Wilson CQB pistol for a Sig 226 and a Springfield Range Officer even up. I had maybe $1600 into that Wilson, I sold it for $2500 a few months later and tucked the money away. When my brother got married, our fucking gigantic family got together the night before the wedding and had dinner. I told him I'd cover it and he's like "are you sure?" and I said, how bad could it be? Not realizing his wife's family is a bunch of hungry alcoholics from cape cod who have never seen an open bar before and are total gluttons when someone else is buying. As it turns out, $2500 covered about half of the F&B, but he seemed appreciative. Anyhow. I sell nothing at the show all day and talk with the other dealers and swap stupid customer stories. I pack and head home and I've sold a good bit of stuff of mine and consignments. As I'm making my way out of the building, the wheel comes off the wagon. This is not a euphemism. https://imgur.com/a/KY5vLCl I pay off all my friends for their sales, and in the zelle memo field, I break down the transactions as such: $69.69 - Anal Hook $350 - Loch Ness Monster Poster (whatever the balance was after bullshit, I can't remember) - this is from your real dad I have lots of fun at this job sometimes. It's just another manic Monday. I wish it was Sunday. 'Cause that's my fun day. Monday morning I get an email from the fellow who spent his friday night in the parking lot waiting for me. His email address leads me to believe he spent some time at Parris Island or San Diego, because who else uses semper fi in an email address name? He says he can be in after work at 1645 hours sharp and is just down the road. I tell him I'll get everything squared away for him, and I prep the 4473's on a clipboard and get everything set up. Cleaning up files from the show, closing out 4473's. Down to 249 items in stock. 150 of them are lowers. This is not good. Must strike while irons are hot though. Gotta shear all the sheep while the wool is ready to harvest and prices are high. I have a bunch of personal ammo that will hit the market one POTUS says something stupid. That's not an if, that's a when. Bunch of phone calls from people seeking 380 and cheap 9mm. I do my best charles bronson impression. "No dice." The emails accusing me of price gouging are fantastic. There's some other idiocy too. I won't post the whole ones but here's a few snippets from the butthurt and the unprepared as well as the idiotic.
I’m just looking for fmj for target practice. Nothing fancy. If you could do them for $400 a case of 1000 I can talk.
FC: I can get you $400/case on 1000 but it'll be foreign made non brass 9mm ammo.
Pretty much what your saying is no matter how much money I try to spend, you’re continuing your get rich quick prices. People like you are direct part of the problem. It’s one thing to make money and it’s another to try to high way rob people. Hope you’re proud of yourself.
FC: I can assure you that this isn't a get rich quick situation. I spent plenty of money investing in half a million rounds of ammo about FOUR years ago during the Trump slump and I'm just getting around to realizing profits now. I am not getting rich, nor am I doing it quickly. I hardly think that any investment that takes 4 years to realize a gain is quick. (No response back) Subject: Used Ruger 10/22 Message: I’ll give you 175 for it. FC: Deal. Can you come by today? (new message, no subject) Message: I can come by Tomorrow or Thursday. (I try calling him. VM box is full) FC: Great! Lets get it done. Your VM box is full. Tomorrow is better. (new message, no subject) Message: I can come tomorrow but I only have 150 I can spend at the moment so I’ll probably wait a few days. FC: What happened to " I’ll give you 175 for it." a few hours ago? (new message, no subject) Message: My bad dude. I have a kid I don’t know what to tell you. And I’m pretty sure I said Wednesday or Thursday. If you really want it gone that bad I don’t see what the big deal is. FC: I was just expecting you to have $175 ready if you said you wanted to deal......So, will Wednesday or Thursday work this week? Bring me cash and your concealed. (new message, no subject) Message: No cwl. But you don’t need one for a private sale. I can have your cash. FC: No CWL no sale. (new message, no subject) Message: Yeah I’ll pass. Good luck. You totally should have mentioned that at the start of negotiations. FC: What part of my ad that said cash and concealed required was unclear? Yeah. Fucking mondays. 1630 rolls around and our scar loving jarhead walks in. With his wife. And his children. Not one, not two, not three, but FOUR little munchkins. All without an ipad and disney + streaming to keep them occupied. They're not bad kids, just curious at all the little things I have lying around like lower parts kits, magazines, AAC 51T mounts, stuff like that. He hands over his ID. I look at the address. It's a city two and a half hours away. FC: Uh, you're a long way from home. USMC: Yeah I just moved. I'm putting my new address on this form if that's okay. FC: You have anything with your new address on it? I can't do anything with ID that's not current. USMC: It's not expired, it's current. FC: Where do you live? USMC: (names address locally) FC: Then this is no longer current. I need something with your new local address on it. USMC: Oh then I'll just use the old address on this form then. FC: That's not acceptable. I need a current government document with your new address. USMC: Here, I have activation orders and training orders from the army. FC: That won't work. Government document with your new address. USMC: Here's my W2 from the DOD. FC: That's not a government document. USMC: But the DOD gave it to me! It's FROM the department of defense, which is the government! (Editors note: Did I mention that I hate mondays?) sigh FC: I can call ATF and ask...... USMC: Please do! (I phone the ATF area supervisor on his cellular device) ATF: Mr Hayden, how can I help you today? FC: Barry, I got a funny one. Guy wants to use his DOD W2/activation orders to get his gun since that has his current address. ATF: Why? Is there a reason he's unable to get an updated drivers license? FC: That's a good question Barry, let me find out. (FC puts ATF on speakerphone) FC: Hey private first class, ATF wants to know why you didn't update your license USMC: Uh because I've been busy ATF: Sir, that's not an answer. I was in the military too and I had to change ID's just like you. If I can had to do it you have to do it. (Barry was a very long time ago a RIO on the F4 Phantom) USMC: But I have activation orders! and training orders! and a W2! ATF: Get your license changed over or produce another document for the licensee to process your transaction. FC: Thanks barry! I hang up and tell him that's the area supervisor and I'm playing this one the way he tells me. He needs to produce a document compliant with ATF regulations for me to release this firearm. USMC: Oh by the way there's a guy with my same name that robbed a bank in Detroit last year, I always get delayed anyways. (sigh) I type his stuff into the computer and I get a thumbs up from the computer instantly much to his amazement. I fire off a quick email to the guy who owns the scar Subject: No current ID Message: your jarhead friend who wants the scar does not have current ID
No deal? Or what's the plan?
My reply is interrupted. Their oldest child admires the batman dollar on my safe. The youngest child is incessantly clicking a spare pilot G2 pen I had on my desk. Mother: If you click that pen ONE MORE TIME, you are WALKING HOME. (kid puts the pen down) Me, whispering to the kid: It's not that far. (kid picks the pen back up) Mother scowls at both of us. I giggle. I get back to email. FC: Lets put it this way. You're gonna owe me for this one. Big time. His wife starts pulling out auto registrations, USAA insurance cards, cable bills, etc with their new address - NONE of which are useful because none of them are government issued. She updates his and her drivers licenses online at the state website and gives me a voter registration printout confirming the update, but that's not a workable document since it's an informational update and not an actual registration. Customer that owns the scar walks in and witnesses the flurry of kids playing with gun stuff and two grown ass adults trying to make it all work. It's been 45 minutes of this. The guy finally gives up and goes on the state website and gets a fishing license and emails it to me. Stacks a big stack of SCAR magazines that NOBODY has in stock to the order and I charge it onto his USAA mastercard. Had I returned to work on a Friday after hours to get an ID that wasn't current, I would have been apoplectic. Now, I'm just mildly annoyed. I can assure you that anyone who has walked through the hallowed halls of MCRD Parris Island should know to have their shit together. This just seemed like some hybrid of cluelessness more than it was an issue of stolen valor. Gun and mags go out the door. My customer sits down and starts laughing. I look at him totally nonplussed. 1: That was easy, right? (FC looks nonplussed) 1: An hour worth of work, for $50! That's good! you should do a few of those a day! (FC looks nonplussed) 1: Really? FC: You owe me. I cut him his check and I'm done for the night. I head home. Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too.... Tuesday Another day, another box of 9mm at $75 each heading out the door.....I'm down to my last 15,000 rds of 9mm. I sold my entire personal stash of Remington UMC at $67 a box. Now that we're into the Federal American Eagle, it's up to $75. People are thanking me for having it available because they've called everywhere. This morning's "no I don't have it" calls: 380ACP, 30-40 Krag, 6.5 CM, Grendel and Swede, 2.5" .410 slugs, 3 or 3.5" shells and turkey loads. Now, for the uninitiated: Turkey season is around the corner. ALL the ammo for turkey loads have been purchased by new shooters looking for home defense ammo since last year. Why turkey loads for self defense? That's all the cabelas had.... Come season, there will be lots of very disappointed hunters who were unprepared. Those with ammo will hunt, those without ammo will hunt for ammo, and they will not be successful given the state of the ammunition markets. There is far more money to be made cranking out buckshot and slugs than there are turkey shells. Package comes in for transfer. Guy has a NJ license. He's just moved here. Has NOTHING with his new address. This is basically a repeat of Monday's SCAR sale. The guy here is ADAMANT that he's bought a home here and he can purchase a firearm without being a state resident. He's technically right. HOWEVER this is why dealers hate doing things: The gun and sale have to follow both the laws of the state he's in AND the state of New jersey. Now I have to run down all the bullshit that is NJ published ordnances to ensure that this gun is Phil Murphy(TM) approved. For the price of a transfer. BUT WAIT THERES MORE! The gun is for a BUDDY of his he's giving it to him as a gift when he's down here for a fishing trip in a few days. https://imgur.com/0cqL7vX Read that last line. Yeah. I tell him that it's unlawful for him to dispose of a firearm to a non resident. He's wondering what the fuck to do. He insists on taking delivery. I tell him I need to run it down with the address and everything since his NJ license isn't technically valid since HE NO LONGER LIVES THERE. The guy bought a double wide trailer here, the trailer park handles all the water, the power, the etc - he does not have any REAL property here. He's insistent that he has a deed for his house. He's holding a bill of sale for a mobile home. sigh I tell him we should just get things sent to his friend via an FFL in his state. The guy lines up an FFL and I fedex the gun to the dealer up there. We need ONE UNIFORM SET OF COHESIVE COMMON SENSE GUN LAWS, not one federal set and 50+ subsections on a state level plus NY State HOME RULE BULLSHIT. I head home early, telemedicine with Dr Kaplan. He's impressed with my progress. I'm not. There are no songs that have Wednesday that I can think of here Wednesday, Hump Day I decide to work from home today. I can take all the phone calls and tell people no I don't have anything from home. I decide to do some early spring cleaning. It's a BEA-U-TIFUL day. The sun is out, nice weather means I can work in the garage for once. I start a load of laundry. Everything starts off fine. I'm sorting through old shot show HK posters when I can smell burning. There's no smoke but I do smell burning. Am I having a stroke? I can't figure it out and I get a load of laundry processed through my carbon neutral solar powered clothes drying system. I start another batch of laundry and hear a massive grinding noise when I should hear the washing machine washing. That burning smell? That was the timer burning up. And I have a full tub of underwear that needs to get done since I'm nearly out. Fuck. My dad's old toolbox is in disarray. Mine isn't. I quickly grab a few tools. A snap on general service kit is totally overkill, but it's super nice to have EVERYTHING in one spot ready to go. My 1/4 drive ratchet takes apart my washing machine panel with ease. I unplug the timer and hit the electronic bay for a replacement. I find one 2 hours away and they say they can ship immediately on my fedex account. I can get it here tomorrow if they fedex ground it on todays truck. Deal, here's my amex. Email me tracking when it's sent. One problem arisen, one problem in progress of being fixed. Not bad for before noon. I get a bunch of stuff stacked up and straightened up and I throw a ton of stuff on facebook marketplace. Old Glock signs and point of sale merchandise like hanging ceiling mobiles, glock pencils, FN pads, FN hats, Daniel Defense stickers and patches, HK pistol racks, some old Colt and Beretta Blue boxes, all that stuff. People message me about the Colt box. WHATS IN THE BOX they ask. Well it's an empty fucking box. I made that VERY clear in the description. So what's my witty rejoinder? A youtube link to the scene from Seven with Brad Pitt yelling at Morgan Freeman "WHATS IN THE BOX? WHATS IN THE BOX?!?!!?!" They are not amused. I think it's brilliant. They ask me what gun is for sale. I tell them it's just an empty box but if they want a gun, here's my info and call me at work during business hours. I'm then told that people selling empty boxes on facebook aren't selling empty boxes, they're selling guns. This, I did not know. Armed with this newfound information, I proceed to post more random stuff from my garage for sale in front of a pile of 20,000 rds of 9mm. An old kegerator and some bar equipment my dad had, a Miller Genuine Draft neon sign backdropped with 5 cases of Winchester Q4170 45ACP and 5 cases of CCI Lawman 147gr 9mm. The messages flood in looking to buy my stuff cheap. But I know what I got. My favorite interaction: 1: hey man, you got anything else for sale? FC: Tons of stuff for sale! 1: I'm looking for pews. FC: I got pews, you want to stop by and check out my pews? I got some real nice ones, super nice. Only used on sunday! 1: Yeah man I'm leaving for lunch in 10 min, give me your address FC: Sure thing! Here's me, be here in 30 minutes! I continue to clean up my garage and I pull out some of my dad's old auction finds. Under about 200 old polynesian tiki mugs, I dust off some white oak church pews and pull them into the driveway. The guy tells me he wants to see the pews I got, and I point them out to him in the driveway. White oak, great shape - just needs some lemon pledge and they'll be good as new. He calls me a clown, gets in his car and drives off. What's wrong with these people? I return to find 254 facebook marketplace messages for people asking me to sell/ship them guns and ammo to all sorts of places and that facebook has suspended my account for violations of their marketplace terms. The offending item? An old Sig Sauer binder that has a P226 exploded diagram on the front. Because firearm parts are not allowed. I manage to sell on facebook marketplace an old surefire incandescent rifle light, a blue colt mustang box, a few tin winchester ammo signs, some beer neons that belonged to my dad and some soft pistol rugs that I ordered from RSR on clearance. A productive wednesday. My haul nets me after facebook marketplace fees and shipping about $54 on the shipped items and a few hundred bucks in miscellany. I give my business cards to all the folks looking for gun stuff and they seem surprised that I still have ammo and that they've never heard of me. They do all their ammo and gun shopping online and don't do B&M. That's the way things will be in the future. I head to the tex mex joint for dinner. I chat it up with a very cute blonde that is the manager. She's just moved into a new place after her man chated on her and she ditched that zero. I offer her my stack of bed bath and beyond coupons. FC: Starting over is expensive. Maybe this will make it a little bit cheaper. 1: Oh my gosh this will save me a bunch of money! Here, your dinner is on me. FC: It's been a long time since a woman has bought me dinner. Perhaps I should return that favor. Do you like firefighters? (she cracks a big smile under the mask) 1: I do, but I'm talking to someone right now. FC: I can see you ditched the zero, but if it does not work out and you want to get yourself a hero - I'm here pretty often. Just ask and I'll take you to dinner at your favorite place. I manage to get rejected by a woman at the same time she bought me dinner. That takes talent. I head home, pop some ibuprofen and head to bed. I check my email in bed. There's a tracking number. PICKUP OCCOURED AFTER FEDEX CUTOFF FOR TODAY, PACKAGE WILL BE TENDERED THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY You fucking clowns. You had one job. I call fedex and ask them to hold it at the facility 2 hours away. I'll grab it in the AM. They can't even find it. Fuck it. Leave it. I'll deal with it later. Thursday, I don't care about you Thursday, or FC makes a new friend! I head into work a bit early today, as I'm driving down my street, I round the corner and see an older fellow wheeling his trash to the curb. This guy had a '99 Ford F250 extended cab 4x4 with the venerable 7.3 navistar in MINT condition for sale. 129,000 miles, parked in a garage 10 months out of the year. He wanted $16k for this truck and I figured he got tired of tire kickers and lowballs and kept it. I messaged him 3 days after the post went up and I never followed up, I knew the house since I've literally been driving past it MY ENTIRE LIFE on the way to elementary, middle, high school, college and now work. My passenger window rolls down as I stop right next to the mailbox. FC: You still got your F250? 1: No! That thing sold in one hour! To a dealer! FC: Son of a bitch! I wanted that truck, I didn't even know you were selling! 1: Dealer came over in one hour, took a look at it, put cash on the hood, slapped a dealer tag on it and drove it out of here! FC: Damn! I wish you put a sign on it and I would have stopped. 1: I told my wife I didn't want to sell it to a dealer but my garage isn't big enough! FC: No kidding. Say, you still got your T bird? 1: My thunderbird? How'd you know I have a thunderbird? FC: I grew up here! When I was in grade school I'd ride by and you were wrenching on it, when I was in high school, I'd see you wrenching on it from the bus and when I was in college I'd see you wrenching on it on my way home from class! 1: I spent 20 years building that car 2 weeks at a time! You wanna see it? FC: Well, when you put it that way.... I pull off into the grass. He's got a detached 3500 square foot garage with Snap On's Mr Big not 1 but 2 ben pearson four post lifts. He shows me his thunderbird he's been working on for two decades. We get to talking. He's a commercial alaskan fisherman and he spends 10 months of the year in alaska and seattle running boats. Super nice guy. He asks me what I do for work, and I tell him. He tells me all his friends are scrambling for ammo and he didn't think it was that bad. I tell him it's been that way for about a year. He needs 00 buckshot, 8 or 9 pellet. I just got a small delivery. I tell him I can get him some. I give him my card and tell him call me this afternoon and I'll throw a few boxes in my briefcase and I'll deliver them on my way home. I'm asked about my watch, he's apparently a GMT man as well. We both like fords and stainless GMT's. Nice. He tells me the story about how he accidentally welded the band to his boat in the bering sea while doing repairs with a stick welder. FC: What do you catch? 1: Pollock, cod FC: long line? 1: No, trawler..... You know your commercial fishing. FC: I know my customers. Impressed at my substantial seafood knowledge, he tells me he'll call me after he checks his safe. I head into work and get some more stuff done. I get a call from a referral. This guy was busted for selling pot and spent 8 months in miltary prison at Leavenworth. He's wondering if he can still own or have a gun with a bad conduct discharge. I'm not sure. I call my retinue and we agree that it's worthy of research and we should do a bar journal article about it. I love it when a plan comes together. Doctor lady and her husband come in and their attorney has told them that without a trust, their silencer order will need to be approved by the CLEO of the region. This is why people hate lawyers. I get all their stuff drawn up as they requested with two trusts and interlocking responsible parties. Double the prints and plenty of passport photos all around. Dead Air is behind on pistons and mounts, as usual but I'm assured by the big man in charge that they will be at wholesalers shortly. I'm so scrambled that I forget to charge her for two cans. No big deal, I'll email her and deal with it when I get her the mounts. I have a facebook marketplace post up for an old Glock brand Pistol case and some glock brand ear pro. Here's the message:
Hi Will it's John from facebook marketplace I was looking at the glock bb gun and head phones will you show me a pic of the actually glock and does it have a clip and a slide,,??¿?? My old one did but I left it at my apartment I was sharing with friends but I miss having it lmk asap please and thanks sincerely Jeff K.
FC: Lets start here. 1. I don't sell Glock BB guns. 2. I don't have head phones. Were you only interested in BB guns?
Ya I was on Facebook marketplace looking for BB c02 pistols
sigh I go truck shopping online. A guy has a 2011 F250 diesel for $24k. Except it's not a 2011. It's a 2001. I don't know what's more absurd, a 2011 at $24k, when average retail is a shade under $20k or a 20 year old truck selling for half of MSRP. I'm ready to give up on this. Truck prices are stupid. I check my email. Timer in transit, Fedex has it en route. I head home and pop a flexiril and head to sleep. The flexeril isn't fixing any of my muscles but manages to knock me the fuck out quite nicely. I need to be up early. Just got paid, Friday night.... Friday, or FC vs The Washing Machine As a kid, I always played with my dads toolbox. I took apart tons of stuff and had no idea how to put it back together. Some kids when they're in the tender years made birdhouses and small woodworking projects and it was super fun for them to pretend. Me? I took apart a 1 horse GE electric blower motor my dad short circuited on accident and made a pretend General Electric first generation boiling water nuclear reactor. Which was not really easy to do given the fact that the internet didn't exist in the early 90's. You had to have some modicum of imagination, and in that case your design was neither right nor wrong because nobody could easily prove your design accurate or otherwise. I had effectively built Schrodinger's BWR. I used different colored and sized tapcons and red heads for fuel/control rods if anyone was wondering. I think I can handle the washing machine. Just for good measure I put on my Cal Tech shirt. As I warm up breakfast, I get an email from a guy named Eddie. He wants to see some 40S&W pistols. I tell him I have a busy morning. I can find some time for him around 10AM if he wants to stop by and I'll have what he's looking for ready. My fedex guy stops at the Boeing facility first thing in the morning to drop off parts at the loading dock, I know his schedule so I pull up to the dock and hang out there waiting for him. Jeff is right on time and I snag my washer timer. No email back from Eddie so time to head back home to put everything back together. I'm in the middle of buttoning it up when I get a call. Eddie is standing in my parking lot wanting to check out some 40S&W pistols I have in stock. I tell him all my available inventory on the website and that if he wanted me to have everything ready for him at 10AM, he should have given me an affirmative reply or a phone call. Right now, clean underwear is a priority and Eddie seems to understand this and he says he will chat with me later. I head back to work. The entire parking lot smells like weed. There's a VW microbus parked on the far side of the lot and I'm downwind of it. This is not a coincidence. Wholesale rep tries to sell me $700 complete andersons again with a min order of 50. Pass. I get a bunch of messages from other dealers looking to buy ammo off me and resell it to their customers at "reasonable" prices and I tell them they are fools for selling stuff cheap. They just don't get it and they'll be out of business soon. I get a call from a guy wanting ammo. He wants all my 22LR. I tell him the price and he says "I can't make a profit selling it at those prices!" This is the reason regular people can't buy ammo just FYI. It's Friday again. I've got another gun show to prep for. New product just rolls in on the UPS truck. A few glocks, a few shields, and for some reason the rep sent me 5 sets of rear MBUS sights instead of 5 front and 5 rear. Ugh. I manage to get a small allocation of 9mm in on this truck as well as 11 boxes of 10mm! This year is looking better by the week! I get several calls for AAC mounts that nobody has in stock and the owners are totally confused. One guy had a can and was selling a rifle and sold the ONLY mount he owned for that can to the guy buying his rifle for $200. He was under the impression that you could just call AAC and order another mount for $112. I tell him if I can find what he's looking for, I'll need to buy it for $250 from someone and that it will sell for $350-500 by the time I mark it up. He's super confused as to why everyone is running out and buying AAC mounts and why they can't be ordered. I explain AAC/Remington's two bankruptices in 5 years. He is even more confused. I finally blurt it out. You had ONE mount for your can. You sold it. There are no other mounts. You have paid a tax stamp for and own a can that YOU CAN NO LONGER MOUNT because you sold them. He now realizes the error of his ways. Nothing I can do about that. Second guy tells me he sees I have AAC mounts. He needs one for his can. I ask him what model he has. He has to crack open the safe. 1: It's an Advanced Armament Corp Norcross Georgia FC: That's the manufacturer...... 1: It's a.........ZERO ENNN DASH ZERO EFFF EFFF FC: It's a what? 1: It says on the side ZERO ENNN DASH ZERO EFFFF EFFFF (Editors note: https://www.advanced-armament.com/assets/products/762-SDN-6.png ) FC: That's not the model. 1: It's not? Then what did I read to you? FC: That's not a zero. That's the letter O.
The number O?
FC: O. As in Oh. ENNNN. Dash. Oh. EFFF EFF. 1: I'm confused. FC: You just read the directions to take the can ON or OFF. 1: Huh that would explain the arrows wouldn't it...... FC: Yeah. What model do you have? 1: It's an MK13-SD! FC: You need a 90T ratchet mount. 1: Great! You stock em, right? FC: Nope. 1: But your website has some, those will work right? FC: Unless you need 51T mounts, I can't help you. 1: Can you suggest someone that can? I need mounts. FC: AAC is gone, these mounts may never be made again. 1: Shit. Not to be out done, I get one more phone call. 1: hey this is brent, I need an AAC mount FC: What model you got? 1: 7.62 FC: Right, thats the caliber. 1: RS7! FC: SR7? 1: That's the one! I need an SR 7 mount in 5.56, the one I have is in 7.62 FC: Got four here. $400. 1: I just need one. FC: That is for one. 1: WHAT? FOR ONE? Why's it so expensive? FC: Remington went under. These may never be made again. I've been buying up everything I've been able to find so I can run the table. 1: That's a good business move. FC: Not my first rodeo. 1: Well for $400 I'll just take a mount off a rifle I'm not using and I'll set that up. Thanks anyways. (90 minutes later, my door swings open) FC: What can I do for you? 1: I'm brent, we talked about that RS7 mount. FC: SR7. 1: Whatever. I got this here and it does not even fit! It's for the wrong rifle! I need the right mount, this one is in 5.56 I need the one for the 7.62 FC: Lemme see what you got. (Looks at package. AAC 90T TAPER MOUNT FH SR-5 5.56 1/2x28) FC: What are you mounting this to? 1: AR15 in 223 FC: This is the correct mount. 1: No it's not! It does not fit! FC: Does not fit barrel or can? 1: The can! I mounted it to the barrel and the can won't work! Need the one for the RS7! FC: SR7 1: Whatever! I have a 7.62 can, this mount is for 5.56 and it's the wrong one. FC: Who sold you this mount? 1: The gun store across the street from my house. FC: You live an hour away, why didn't you go there? 1: I did, they don't have this mount in 7.62, I went there first. FC: And they didn't explain this to you? 1: What is there to explain? This mount is marked 5.56. My can isn't 5.56. It's 7.62. FC: Oh, so you want the one marked 7.62 in 1/2x28. 1: Exactly! FC: 7.62 mounts aren't made in 1/2x28, all the 90T mounts are 90T exterior and the threading internally is different. 1: You're wrong. FC: Please, argue with the guy wearing a caltech shirt..... 1: Prove it. (I open his package and I grab an SR7 out of the safe. I press the latch down and thread it on) 1: You son of a bitch. FC: You want to argue with me some more? 1: So what mount do I need? (I pull out one of my mounts and show him side by side they're exactly the same) 1: Hmmmm. Okay. I must have done something wrong. FC: There's not a lot of ways to do this wrong, but you found one. Go try it again. (90 minutes later he calls back and tells me I was right) What the fuck is with all the AAC people this week that are totally clueless? But hey, at least I have clean underwear.
r/Conservative provides some movie-style popcorn as they debate whether presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani was fondling his junk in front of Borat's daughter, or just tucking in his shirt while laying on a bed
The Sacha Baron Cohen sequel Borat Subsequent Moviefilm comes out on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, but leaked screencaps from the film have engendered some controversy. Apparently 24yr old Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, playing the character of Borat's daughter, claiming to be a conservative Eastern European journalist, met with former NYC mayor and Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani (age 76, thrice-divorced). During the encounter she took him to her hotel room (filled with hidden cameras) where they had a scotch and chatted, and at some point Rudy lay down on the bed and stuck his hand down his pants. Following which Borat ran into the room in an outrageous drag costume and shouted "she's 15, she's too old for you!" Rudy realized it was a setup and called the police, who concluded no crime had been committed. The issue has been hotly debated over the last couple days, as to whether Rudy did anything wrong or this is just planting rumors, knowing that the initial shock will outweigh any later debunking. There are some allegations of hypocrisy about rumor-planting, particularly as this is coming during the same week while Rudy is claiming to have incriminating information allegedly found on Hunter Biden's laptop, which is burning up the conservosphere but meeting skepticism elsewhere. Even on the sub Conservative, with 737 comments and 1.5k updoots, not everyone is thrilled with how America's Mayor is coming across on this issue. Basically the key arguments are "Rudy has every right to bang hot young chicks" versus "how can an experienced lawyer, politician, and international security expert fall for a really really obvious honeypot?"
TIME Mag tells the story of how the Left Stole the Election
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing. The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence. Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster. Reactions Throughout the U.S. After Biden Wins Presidential Race in Unprecedented Election A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.” In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy. The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding. Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program. For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol. The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.” 📷 Biden fans in Philadelphia after the race was called on Nov. 7 Michelle Gustafson for TIME This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.” That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
THE ARCHITECT
Sometime in the fall of 2019, Mike Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it. This was not his usual purview. For nearly a quarter-century, Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation, has marshaled the latest tactics and data to help its favored candidates win elections. Unassuming and professorial, he isn’t the sort of hair-gelled “political strategist” who shows up on cable news. Among Democratic insiders, he’s known as the wizard behind some of the biggest advances in political technology in recent decades. A group of liberal strategists he brought together in the early 2000s led to the creation of the Analyst Institute, a secretive firm that applies scientific methods to political campaigns. He was also involved in the founding of Catalist, the flagship progressive data company. The endless chatter in Washington about “political strategy,” Podhorzer believes, has little to do with how change really gets made. “My basic take on politics is that it’s all pretty obvious if you don’t overthink it or swallow the prevailing frameworks whole,” he once wrote. “After that, just relentlessly identify your assumptions and challenge them.” Podhorzer applies that approach to everything: when he coached his now adult son’s Little League team in the D.C. suburbs, he trained the boys not to swing at most pitches–a tactic that infuriated both their and their opponents’ parents, but won the team a series of championships. Trump’s election in 2016–credited in part to his unusual strength among the sort of blue collar white voters who once dominated the AFL-CIO–prompted Podhorzer to question his assumptions about voter behavior. He began circulating weekly number-crunching memos to a small circle of allies and hosting strategy sessions in D.C. But when he began to worry about the election itself, he didn’t want to seem paranoid. It was only after months of research that he introduced his concerns in his newsletter in October 2019. The usual tools of data, analytics and polling would not be sufficient in a situation where the President himself was trying to disrupt the election, he wrote. “Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,” he noted. “But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes”–Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. “We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.” It turned out Podhorzer wasn’t the only one thinking in these terms. He began to hear from others eager to join forces. The Fight Back Table, a coalition of “resistance” organizations, had begun scenario-planning around the potential for a contested election, gathering liberal activists at the local and national level into what they called the Democracy Defense Coalition. Voting-rights and civil rights organizations were raising alarms. A group of former elected officials was researching emergency powers they feared Trump might exploit. Protect Democracy was assembling a bipartisan election-crisis task force. “It turned out that once you said it out loud, people agreed,” Podhorzer says, “and it started building momentum.” He spent months pondering scenarios and talking to experts. It wasn’t hard to find liberals who saw Trump as a dangerous dictator, but Podhorzer was careful to steer clear of hysteria. What he wanted to know was not how American democracy was dying but how it might be kept alive. The chief difference between the U.S. and countries that lost their grip on democracy, he concluded, was that America’s decentralized election system couldn’t be rigged in one fell swoop. That presented an opportunity to shore it up.
THE ALLIANCE
On March 3, Podhorzer drafted a three-page confidential memo titled “Threats to the 2020 Election.” “Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as ‘fake’ and rigged,” he wrote. “On Nov. 3, should the media report otherwise, he will use the right-wing information system to establish his narrative and incite his supporters to protest.” The memo laid out four categories of challenges: attacks on voters, attacks on election administration, attacks on Trump’s political opponents and “efforts to reverse the results of the election.” Then COVID-19 erupted at the height of the primary-election season. Normal methods of voting were no longer safe for voters or the mostly elderly volunteers who normally staff polling places. But political disagreements, intensified by Trump’s crusade against mail voting, prevented some states from making it easier to vote absentee and for jurisdictions to count those votes in a timely manner. Chaos ensued. Ohio shut down in-person voting for its primary, leading to minuscule turnout. A poll-worker shortage in Milwaukee–where Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic Black population is concentrated–left just five open polling places, down from 182. In New York, vote counting took more than a month. Suddenly, the potential for a November meltdown was obvious. In his apartment in the D.C. suburbs, Podhorzer began working from his laptop at his kitchen table, holding back-to-back Zoom meetings for hours a day with his network of contacts across the progressive universe: the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others. In April, Podhorzer began hosting a weekly 2½-hour Zoom. It was structured around a series of rapid-fire five-minute presentations on everything from which ads were working to messaging to legal strategy. The invitation-only gatherings soon attracted hundreds, creating a rare shared base of knowledge for the fractious progressive movement. “At the risk of talking trash about the left, there’s not a lot of good information sharing,” says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a close Podhorzer friend whose poll-tested messaging guidance shaped the group’s approach. “There’s a lot of not-invented-here syndrome, where people won’t consider a good idea if they didn’t come up with it.” The meetings became the galactic center for a constellation of operatives across the left who shared overlapping goals but didn’t usually work in concert. The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync. “Pod played a critical behind-the-scenes role in keeping different pieces of the movement infrastructure in communication and aligned,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. “You have the litigation space, the organizing space, the political people just focused on the W, and their strategies aren’t always aligned. He allowed this ecosystem to work together.” Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy.
SECURING THE VOTE
The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure–in the middle of a pandemic. For the thousands of local, mostly nonpartisan officials who administer elections, the most urgent need was money. They needed protective equipment like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. They needed to pay for postcards letting people know they could vote absentee–or, in some states, to mail ballots to every voter. They needed additional staff and scanners to process ballots. In March, activists appealed to Congress to steer COVID relief money to election administration. Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, more than 150 organizations signed a letter to every member of Congress seeking $2 billion in election funding. It was somewhat successful: the CARES Act, passed later that month, contained $400 million in grants to state election administrators. But the next tranche of relief funding didn’t add to that number. It wasn’t going to be enough. Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million. “It was a failure at the federal level that 2,500 local election officials were forced to apply for philanthropic grants to fill their needs,” says Amber McReynolds, a former Denver election official who heads the nonpartisan National Vote at Home Institute. McReynolds’ two-year-old organization became a clearinghouse for a nation struggling to adapt. The institute gave secretaries of state from both parties technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes. Local officials are the most trusted sources of election information, but few can afford a press secretary, so the institute distributed communications tool kits. In a presentation to Podhorzer’s group, McReynolds detailed the importance of absentee ballots for shortening lines at polling places and preventing an election crisis. The institute’s work helped 37 states and D.C. bolster mail voting. But it wouldn’t be worth much if people didn’t take advantage. Part of the challenge was logistical: each state has different rules for when and how ballots should be requested and returned. The Voter Participation Center, which in a normal year would have deployed canvassers door-to-door to get out the vote, instead conducted focus groups in April and May to find out what would get people to vote by mail. In August and September, it sent ballot applications to 15 million people in key states, 4.6 million of whom returned them. In mailings and digital ads, the group urged people not to wait for Election Day. “All the work we have done for 17 years was built for this moment of bringing democracy to people’s doorsteps,” says Tom Lopach, the center’s CEO. The effort had to overcome heightened skepticism in some communities. Many Black voters preferred to exercise their franchise in person or didn’t trust the mail. National civil rights groups worked with local organizations to get the word out that this was the best way to ensure one’s vote was counted. In Philadelphia, for example, advocates distributed “voting safety kits” containing masks, hand sanitizer and informational brochures. “We had to get the message out that this is safe, reliable, and you can trust it,” says Hannah Fried of All Voting Is Local. At the same time, Democratic lawyers battled a historic tide of pre-election litigation. The pandemic intensified the parties’ usual tangling in the courts. But the lawyers noticed something else as well. “The litigation brought by the Trump campaign, of a piece with the broader campaign to sow doubt about mail voting, was making novel claims and using theories no court has ever accepted,” says Wendy Weiser, a voting-rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. “They read more like lawsuits designed to send a message rather than achieve a legal outcome.” In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in 2020, practically a revolution in how people vote. About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day.
THE DISINFORMATION DEFENSE
Bad actors spreading false information is nothing new. For decades, campaigns have grappled with everything from anonymous calls claiming the election has been rescheduled to fliers spreading nasty smears about candidates’ families. But Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers made disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the 2020 vote. Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it. One component was tracking dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed. Researchers then provided information to campaigners or the media to track down the sources and expose them. The most important takeaway from Quinn’s research, however, was that engaging with toxic content only made it worse. “When you get attacked, the instinct is to push back, call it out, say, ‘This isn’t true,'” Quinn says. “But the more engagement something gets, the more the platforms boost it. The algorithm reads that as, ‘Oh, this is popular; people want more of it.'” The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. “The platforms have policies against certain types of malign behavior, but they haven’t been enforcing them,” she says. Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line. In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) “It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”
SPREADING THE WORD
Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night. Dick Gephardt, the Democratic former House leader turned high-powered lobbyist, spearheaded one coalition. “We wanted to get a really bipartisan group of former elected officials, Cabinet secretaries, military leaders and so on, aimed mainly at messaging to the public but also speaking to local officials–the secretaries of state, attorneys general, governors who would be in the eye of the storm–to let them know we wanted to help,” says Gephardt, who worked his contacts in the private sector to put $20 million behind the effort. Wamp, the former GOP Congressman, worked through the nonpartisan reform group Issue One to rally Republicans. “We thought we should bring some bipartisan element of unity around what constitutes a free and fair election,” Wamp says. The 22 Democrats and 22 Republicans on the National Council on Election Integrity met on Zoom at least once a week. They ran ads in six states, made statements, wrote articles and alerted local officials to potential problems. “We had rabid Trump supporters who agreed to serve on the council based on the idea that this is honest,” Wamp says. This is going to be just as important, he told them, to convince the liberals when Trump wins. “Whichever way it cuts, we’re going to stick together.” The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Protect Democracy’s election task force issued reports and held media briefings with high-profile experts across the political spectrum, resulting in widespread coverage of potential election issues and fact-checking of Trump’s false claims. The organization’s tracking polls found the message was being heard: the percentage of the public that didn’t expect to know the winner on election night gradually rose until by late October, it was over 70%. A majority also believed that a prolonged count wasn’t a sign of problems. “We knew exactly what Trump was going to do: he was going to try to use the fact that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted in person to make it look like he was ahead, claim victory, say the mail-in votes were fraudulent and try to get them thrown out,” says Protect Democracy’s Bassin. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies. 📷 Amber McReynolds, Zach Wamp and Maurice Mitchell Rachel Woolf for TIME; Erik Schelzig—AP/Shutterstock; Holly Pickett—The New York Times/Redux The alliance took a common set of themes from the research Shenker-Osorio presented at Podhorzer’s Zooms. Studies have shown that when people don’t think their vote will count or fear casting it will be a hassle, they’re far less likely to participate. Throughout election season, members of Podhorzer’s group minimized incidents of voter intimidation and tamped down rising liberal hysteria about Trump’s expected refusal to concede. They didn’t want to amplify false claims by engaging them, or put people off voting by suggesting a rigged game. “When you say, ‘These claims of fraud are spurious,’ what people hear is ‘fraud,'” Shenker-Osorio says. “What we saw in our pre-election research was that anything that reaffirmed Trump’s power or cast him as an authoritarian diminished people’s desire to vote.” Podhorzer, meanwhile, was warning everyone he knew that polls were underestimating Trump’s support. The data he shared with media organizations who would be calling the election was “tremendously useful” to understand what was happening as the votes rolled in, according to a member of a major network’s political unit who spoke with Podhorzer before Election Day. Most analysts had recognized there would be a “blue shift” in key battlegrounds– the surge of votes breaking toward Democrats, driven by tallies of mail-in ballots– but they hadn’t comprehended how much better Trump was likely to do on Election Day. “Being able to document how big the absentee wave would be and the variance by state was essential,” the analyst says.
PEOPLE POWER
The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives. The best way to ensure people’s voices were heard, they decided, was to protect their ability to vote. “We started thinking about a program that would complement the traditional election-protection area but also didn’t rely on calling the police,” says Nelini Stamp, the Working Families Party’s national organizing director. They created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities. The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.
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