I'm back after a semester off to watch the universe that shaped me into what I am today vanish.  Hello again, everyone.

Looking to buy Blurred Sleepwaler Shades, and possibly Faded Jeans/Shoes if the price is right.

/t Eleutherophobia

It would seem that on both my laptop (XP) and the XP partition of my desktop (which is essentially my MxO-and-nothing-else partition), when I mouseover any item, the usual description box does not want to show up.  My drivers are up to date (nVidia GeForce 8800GT, 178.24 on the desktop), and I'm not experiencing any other issues.  Any help would be appreciated!

Nevermind, easy settings fix. 

On his knees, Otaku checked the ammunition of his pistol, his shaking hands nearly dropping the instrument. Most of the time, he had never bothered to check. Operators were able to code ammunition right into the gun, allowing for nearly unlimited ammo. But, Otaku wasn't lucky this time around. The operator was asleep somewhere.

Two clips left. Hopefully, it was enough. If not, well, he was screwed. Kahane was one of the best martial artists aboard the barge.

Back against the countertop, still on his knees, he heard the door slam open and Kahane's coarse voice, nails on a chalkboard, ring throughout the convenience store. Ach! He sprung out from behind the countertop, rolling to a knee, and firing twice Kahane. The behemoth of a man was hit twice, first in the leg and then the shoulder but he still kept on going, eyes furrowed, teeth bared in a feral smile, a 12-gauge shotgun grasped firmly in both hands.

Otaku cursed under his breath as the old man fired twice, pellets upon pellets descending upon the younger operative. He leapt out of the way, rolling across the floor as he landed to keep the damage to his RSI to a minimum. As he rolled to a knee, he fired but missed and watched as Kahane's foot connected with his jaw, sending him flying and into the cereal aisle of the store. He hit the floor hard on his back, trying his best not to yell from probably adding a concussion of some sort to his now long list of injuries.

It was now that he wondered if perhaps he should've told Eleutherophobia the whole story about Kahane. How Kahane had been the one who had awakened him, how Kahane had taken him under his wing and taught the tips and tricks of the Matrix, how Kahane had been there when he had finally conquered the jump program, how Kahane had called him the "son he had never had". Now, that didn't matter. One was a Machinist, the other a Zionist.

Of course, there was regret there in Otaku's mind; and sorrow, and pain, and loss. But, he had a job to do, to make sure that Kahane did not make it out of the Matrix alive today. This thought brought him back to reality and he realized that Kahane now stood above him, revealed in his glory. The behemoth of a man, nearly seven feet tall, pointed the barrel of his shotgun at his former pupil's face, his lips curving up into a smile, and was about to say something before the lips opened in a wordless scream of pain.

Somehow, somewhere, Otaku fortunately had pulled out his combat knife from beneath his black half-duster and stabbed the blade into Kahane's ankle with his free right hand. His left hand grabbed the Beretta, swinging up into the air to face Kahane's chest, and fired four times. The four bullets ripped through leather, skin, bone, and organ, dropping the old man to his knees, hands clutching aimlessly for something that wasn't there, for something he wanted back, the young man who had once been the only "son he had ever known".

Otaku aimed the pistol at Kahane's head from his prone position and fired, watching as his former friend finally collapsed to the ground, the bullet hole in his head beginning to leak a pool of blood around the behemoth's body.

Finally. It was done. He stood up, using his still-shaking hands to support his weight, and looked at the blood-covered corpse. With a sigh, he left the store as though nothing had happened other than perhaps a quick fight in the line for groceries with some overly aggressive customer.

"I'll tell y'everything I know." The words trickled from her dumbfounded grin, dried blood from her nose painting it in dark burgundy. The girl closed her eyes, exhaling melodramatically between eggshell teeth.

"Twelve hours ago," there was omnipotence in her voice, "you were contacted by a Faust Cunningham, alias Dante." The woman's hair was raven black, in a strained bun, pulling her pale face too tight. Her head was thrown back gently, and because of the angle of her oval glasses to the light, her eyes had been replaced by two blank discs. She licked at the front of her teeth and produced a pen that had been perched on her ear.

"That's right." Fara glanced at herself in the mirror cut into the room's wall, wondering if there was anyone on the other side, wondering if there was another side. "He'd foun' himself at th'*CENSORED* end of Westview whif' 'alf a dozen pistols at'is forehead."

Dante's smile broadened, and he stuffed a bite of cheeseburger into it. Staring through the car's windshield, he watched two ivory sedans slow to a stop in front of a stinking fish market in Chinatown. The first packed a handful of toughs with shaved heads and unkempt collars; from the second stepped a short, thin man dressed to the nines and yelling into his cellular phone. "You're late, Adrian," he chuckled to himself.

"Can you identify this man?" queried the woman needlessly, tapping her pen on the cold, steel desk. The tink tink kept a perfect rhythm as she pulled a photograph of a small man in a seersucker three-piece suit from a folder and slid it toward the girl.

Fara knew who it was without looking at the picture. "Yeah, that's Adrian Noble. He was some crime lord wannabe whif' a Napoleon complex."

"Was?"

Fara trained her gaze lazily on the woman's lips and countered with a Cheshire grin.

The man closed his phone with a snarl and stepped into an alley, the bald men followed. A few minutes passed, enough time to let some pretty tramp in a red cocktail dress and a fur coat to step out of the sex shop down the street and hail a taxi. Dante opened his car door and stretched, leaning upward. A shiver caught him off-guard as the season's biting wind slapped at his leathery face.

The driver's thin black suit leaned over before Dante closed the door behind him. "Try to exercise a little more caution this time, yes?" Lethe grinned knowingly, and the expression mirrored itself on Dante's face as he checked the clip in his overzealous magnum, and replaced it in his coat. The door shut with a decided click, and a shining crimson coat seeped into a crowd of charcoal suits and cobalt ties. Lethe was twirling a knife around its handle as the shots reverberated through the cluttered chasm of a street. He glanced upward with a yawn and watched the crowd scatter, a clean hole through each car's driver-side window.

Aboard the Equinox, there was an uncharacteristic air of serenity. Jouzu's massive form was crooked over itself, asleep on a single-form table with his face in a pile of small devices he had been fiddling with. Domino was on the floor next to him, curled up comfortably under a large sweater. The two newer men had decided to remain at New Antigone while a windstorm passed through. No doubt, they had met women.

Systemic's tanned body had finally collapsed onto the bolt launcher she had been reassembling for a marathon eighteen hours. Ooidal had lost a bet that she could make it to twenty without blinking. His massive tumor of a frame oozed over the operator's chair as he silently clacked away at a keyboard, rerouting a hard drop that had been patched downtown. Two of his monitors were still strewn akimbo from the melee with Dante after he had kidnapped the brat.

Fara was lying on her stomach, the corrugated steel of the bed-slash-table digging cold, red pockmarks into her cheek. Violent images of war flashed through her vision each time she closed her eyes: guillotined preteens and fires that would never burn out.

Those thoughts turned to ash, and were replaced with vague, out-of-focus memories. She was with the terrorist – Pyraci – with rocks sharpened to knives at one another's throats, one making their way through Zero One as blackmail for the other. Jagged structures ripped into the blackened sky, and impossible machines drifted around the two, infinitely patient for a moment of vulnerability. Then, she was stripped of her upper hand, and her consciousness.

She was pulled through an endless black tunnel that seemed only and exactly large enough to fit her body by a torturous cramp that fastened itself snugly around the small of her neck; it cradled her head and vaulted a sharpened spike into the back of her head, lapsing her connection with reality, and causing her ears to cough blood. The rest was too hazy – a null, distant stinging every now and then, but more than anything, a feeling like her brain was bloated and full. She did not need to remember it though; the patchwork scars and poorly healed stitches that painted her body told the story themselves.

"How did you know Mister Cunningham?" Absently, a few notes scribbled themselves onto the woman's open notebook. She reached for a glass of water, and remembered that the pitcher had been left on the other side of the mirror, where the tape recorders had been set up.

"He'd tried t'kill me." The girl patted down her pockets, and found a rumpled pack of cigarettes she had pilfered from Dante's jacket. She did not smoke, but placed one precariously on her lips anyway. "Why d'y'ask?"

His magnum unloading shot after shot at the hairless yeti, Dante swam through a whir of SMG fire. He lunged at the man, and they toppled through a splintered door, met by the surprised stares of a double-handful of trigger-happy thickset thugs. Frenetically, he bounced limbs across the first part of each that he could reach, and managed to subdue three of the men before being halted by a lead penetration in his left shoulder, and a shattered collarbone.

"Faust Cunnin'ham, as I live 'n breathe." Noble had a nasally voice with an accent like he had grown up on a bayou. A hand slapped Dante from shock, and he bit his tongue to give the small man a close-lipped grin. "Naw, this'us adorable. Here, I thought I'd missed th'opportune time t'kill you yea-us ago, back when you pulled a Houdini on us. But look 'ere. You've so puh'litely dropped in and deliv'uh'd me an early Chris-muss present." Noble stepped over to the chair he had been sitting in, and pulled an intricate, antique revolver from his jacket. "Find some rope."

"And the relationship between Cunningham and Noble?" She was glancing between the wall clock and her watch, checking if they were still in sync.

"Between you an'me I 'fink they were in love. This whole thing just seemed like a lovers' spat." Fara giggled mockingly.

"Please."

"Beh-fore Dante fell out 'huv th'machines' favor, he had a man inside some exile organization oh-r'unother. Y'know, before they got organized." The girl decided that gesturing with the cigarette between her bloodied fingers when she spoke gave her an authoritative flair. "Th'whole mob deal sorta' 'fing. Vuh-ry hush-hush; get on th' 7:15 at Mara and off by Achan. They'd gi-"

"There's no train service between Mara and Achan."

"Maybe they took th'bus."

Her head spun and her pupils shriveled as Ooidal tore open the shrieking metal door to the dormitory. "Dante jus' put out'tuh call f'ur you." Fara stumbled from the table, noiselessly landing on the cold ground with thinning socks. She kept the sweater-turned-blanket wrapped around her delicate form, remembering that she was in only a stained and threadbare camisole and the shorts that had been haphazardly torn to the crux of her thighs to accommodate the unseemly braces she had worn when first returning from the city. Their age difference gave Ooidal and Fara a father-daughter affinity, but she had before caught him stealing an inappropriate glimpse.

"Jus' came in. I duh'no what t'uh make 'huv it." He tapped at the monitor as Fara scanned through the message.

"Hey, friend. Listen, I think we need to bury the hatchet and get on with our lives about this whole thing. So I've got a little business proposition for you. Meet me in Chinatown – east end of Westview. You remember the spot, don't you? –Dante"

"Th'ur's some attachment I'm havin' some trouble decryptin'. Might take a while." Fara nodded without hesitation, and Ooidal stepped around her to his seat, running to protocols to find a hack closest to the market. Only a week ago, he had dropped her at the same spot – a payphone by the bathrooms of some cheap gambling hall where people always ended up shot to death. "Don't worry 'bout me," she had said, and went off to finally end that scum Dante.

He could not bring himself to tell her the truth: Dante's hand in the lost boys' survival, the strings he had pulled to keep Zero One from sending the four horsemen after the Equinox. If keeping her in the dark meant keeping her alive, than he would make it his mission to smash every lightbulb in the world. The machines needed more people like her. They could take care of the math, but there was always an element that needed to come from something, someone youthful and fresh. There needs to be a human side, a pretty face, someone to step to the podium and take responsibility, and answer questions, and write the press release.

On more occasions than he cared to admit, he had questioned how long it would be before the machines would decide to kill off their little army of awakened. When the news of the truce had first reached Babylon, he spent almost two weeks debating the longevity of his situation. But then, Dante's first death and Vice's last had helped him reach a decision. He swirled those thoughts around his head for a vacant moment and tried to come up with a tidy metaphor. But he gave up, because there was no metaphor to come from it – he had just stumbled upon a part of his brain that he did not like: the part that held irrefutable facts that made life seem too short and too simple.

(Eleutherophobia's awakening in two acts, since the forums can't handle the length.  It was made about a month ago for [lol, super-secret information censored].  I hope you enjoy it!)

"You're going to get caught, ya' know."

"Don't worry, I disabled the alarm, it's no big deal." Heavy smoke hung under the bathroom's overbearing fluorescent lights, casting twisted shadows onto the walls. "Besides, if I do get caught and anyone asks what I did, I'll be able to tell them I was in the girl's bathroom with the Fara Yazin."

Consolidated district two-thirty consisted of two middle schools and Aloysius Mesta High School, he had been an explorer, or a war hero, or something. No one really remembered, so no one really bothered to ask. The school had been built a few years after the private school's funding had collapsed, a hefty grant from one of the Mesta sisters (who could scarcely pronounce Aloysius) cleared out the former homeless shelter and built the two-story monument to hypocritical foresight. The building's west side overlooked the crumbling aqueduct separating Richland from Westview, acidic saltwater spray had eaten away a substantial amount of limestone.



"You're such a pervert Rob. Why d'you have to smoke in here anyway?" Fara slowly ran a delicate finger across her puffy lower lip, removing too much of the modena gloss she had just applied. Sighing, she leaned uneasily onto the ledge, her skirt scarcely too high, fumbling through her overstuffed purse for the war paint once again.

"I'm much too attractive to be ratted out by a girl, duh," he giggled, a cancerous smog seeping through his teeth. "Oh, by the way, Pfeiffer needs a hand sorting the applications today, he asked me to stay after. I'll probably cut out by six-or-seven if you want to grab something t'eat." He took a long drag from the cigarette, vigilantly watching the golden-brown rust flake off of a dull faucet. "This place is really falling apart, the mirror's growing mold, and there hasn't been a lock on that last stall since I star-"

She pursed her lips, taking every necessary precaution to not make the same mistake twice. "Did UMC send anything back yet? I'm dying to know if I got in," accompanied adept hands flaring a limp collar and pulling a tie down three black buttons.

"Meet me at Peg's around seven and-"

"Done, just don't order any of that nasty cake this time." She pulled a sock up from her ankle and sauntered through the door, its hinges shrieking angrily at the unexpected movement. The room was sealed from variable case 341102, ruinous effects were negligible, and manifested solely as physical deterioration. No resynchronization was deemed necessary.

Peg's Diner had been built dilapidated. Every floorboard housed a family of overweight termites, every table was built with one homunculus leg, and every tuna sandwich was seasoned with e-coli. Peg had never once stepped foot in the restaurant, she was the illusory identity of the schizophrenic Vietnam veteran who had opened the diner a month prior to hanging himself, or shooting himself, or jumping off of a building. The cashier - Erica Something-or-other had found him suspended from the ceiling fan in a revealing red dress. The night manager - Stephen Whats-his-face had thrown up at the sight of the old man's viscous brains splattered all over a blonde wig. Crazy-muttering Frank had watched him flatten himself in the filthy alley behind the building, his deep scarlet lipstick staining the fissured concrete for weeks. Regardless of circumstance, he was intensely dead, and it failed to change a thing.



The six-fifteen train was unlucky, everyone knew it. Some guy in a suit had jumped in front of it a couple of years ago, back when it ran the only route between the south districts. Fara was alone in the diminutive station, the worst feeling comprehensible. The unsteady power fizzled, and the lights cracked on and off as she bought her ticket. The machine was terribly superannuated; most of the buttons failing to light, or stolen entirely. Greedy rust had begun to crawl up its left side, thankfully enough, someone had bothered to scribble in "Rust" and an arrow to alert the masses.

Sitting on the uninfected half of a bench, Fara twirled a finger around her flowing, nacarat locks, clicking her tongue at each uninvited split end she found. A surprised squeak escaped an overweight rat just before the train's whistle chimed, fragmenting the silence of the moldy, tile sarcophagus. Richland Metro had decided that it was unnecessary to replace the shattered forward lights of the train, it was a snake, indistinguishably making its way into a rabbit hole. Fara crossed her fingers, held her breath, and jumped into the car, stumbling for balance as the doors closed immediately behind her, because that's how you were supposed to get on the six-fifteen train. After all, it was unlucky, everyone knew it.



It had been raining for a month, and Westview's sewage system portrayed that unfortunate reality gorgeously. The three block trek to Peg's was peppered with rainy visions of a man in an apron drowning himself in a puddle, or a gentleman wearing thigh-high boots and halter top slitting his wrists, or neither of those. She stepped through the door at exactly seven-oh-four, and waited a sodden, hypothermic twenty minutes for her cohort to arrive under a shielding umbrella.

"You're all wet."

"You're late."

"I said seven-thirty, didn't I?"

"You said seven, didn't you?"

"I'm starving."

"I'm all wet."

Dinner was Peg's famous (not really) beef-burger with fries and two mugs of Peg's "world-class" coffee- tar heated to a vicious extent then mixed with curdled goat milk. Everyone in the room had an indistinct face, the walls were covered in static, and kept flashing into cerise brick. Fara's silverware kept switching arrangement, her napkin turning into a letter, a tax refund, a coupon for Tastee Wheat. Mold was crawling up the windows, every piece of metal tarnished, rust flaking off of the cash register. That didn't happen.

Dinner was Peg's international (not really) stir-fry with white rice and two mugs of Peg's "Italian delight" coffee- gelatinous mud served lukewarm with expired whipped-cream. "So, did you check my file for anything from UMC?" escorted a crooked, hopeful grin.

"Oh, that's right," patting down his pockets, he created two envelopes, both bearing the same college's insignia, "I figured you'd want to open them, so I just held them up to a light and read them."

Frantically, she ripped open both casings, unsuccessfully attempting to read the coupled letters simultaneously. She squinted, understanding each separately, but failing to comprehend their correlation. "Rob, when was this-" she checked the dates on both sheets of paper, "the third? This was sent almost a month ago."

The paneling that had covered the room's walls had been painted the same egg colour too many times to count, and was starting to curl again. Two men stood stationary, each in an impossibly black suit, a third, the same, was sitting at a table, reviewing files he already knew. 341102 was a liability, an unnecessary expenditure of resources. The simulation was programmed to re-synchronize itself in the event of-

"What's wrong?"

"I was accepted, they wanted to interview-"

"That's fantastic, congratulations!"

"Yesterday. The meeting was yesterday," she limply held up the second letter, fat, salty tears welling up in her eyes, "This one's application instructions for next year." A single tear beaded in the corner of her eye, slowly cresting at the swell of her cheek, and rolling down her chin.

"I...I'm so sorry. Hey, listen, we'll get some of your work together, and we'll call them tonight to reschedule. They'll understand, it just got...got lost in the mail, ya' know? These things happen, it's no big deal. We'll just...we'll just take care of it, okay?" He searched for more meaningful words, anything that would stop this moment from happening, make it all go away.

"I want to go home."

Her parents were out on business. Fara was broken; twin trails of mascara paving her pale cheeks. She lay on an overstuffed couch, the letters covering her face. Rob leaned forward in a recliner, gawking at his fingers, and every now and then, he would itch his nose, or look at the clock, or look to the left, or tap one shoe on the ground, just to make sure everything was still working right. Notebooks, paper, folders were strewn akimbo across the room, each bearing the same signature; Fara Kerrigan Yazin with adorable little hearts dotting the letter "i." Fara had given up childish delusions of royalty by age nine, and hopes of being a ballerina soon after. She was interested in psychology, infatuated with it.

The paint peeled around the door's peephole, the hallway trying to enter the room. The door flew off of its hinges, immediately replaced by itself. The couch was suddenly suede, leather, polyester, wool. The walls collapsed into the floor. The floor hit the ceiling. Never mind.



An immaculately polished dress shoe scissored through the air, coming to rest on a bolted door. The hinges cried, broke, two choleric men in identical suits stood stoic, bathed in an effluvium of dust. One held a hand to his ear as the other stepped into the room, oblivious, or unconcerned with the faded books under his feet. "Miss Yazin, we would like you to come with us." The man oozed jurisdiction, both did.

"Who the'll do you think you are? You can't just-"

"Mister Capa, I can assure you, we have sufficient liberty to be here. Unfortunately, we will need to take Miss Yazin with us for...questioning." The second entered, granting the room considerably more attention than it deserved. The first callously made his way towards Fara, who had ducked behind the couch, terrified, the moment the door had shattered.

"No, get away!" squeaked out of her mouth as the man harshly wrapped a frigid cuff around each of her immature hands. She frenetically clawed at his arms, grabbing at anything. Her finger traced backwards along "oh-five-point." Instinctively she grabbed the gun; hands still uncomfortably behind her back. Unfortunately, she had never held a firearm previous to this encounter. Luck, fate, chance disengaged the safety, and rounds began to climb excitedly out of the barrel. Each shot dug the handcuffs painfully into her wrists and bent her arms another way, the recoil overbearing for her delicate arms. Wood splintered, paper tore, and then a much more wet noise. The bullet ripped through the silk of his tie, shattering a plastic button and cleaved through cross-stitched cotton. Hair, sweat, skin, fat, muscle, bone, all fissured.

(I've finally decided to start my own image thread.  I hope you folks enjoy.)

### Validating Screened Signal ###

...Complete ; )

>Welcome to the Hovercraft Equinox (NX-1879) self-contained retrospection and sentiment storage archive. If at any time the data encountered is unfamiliar to you, seek immediate psychiatric attention, as this can be a sign of neural damage, or inter-cranial hemorrhaging. You must be logged in to access the database.
>User: Eleutherophobia
>Password: ******

-----

-Robert Winchester : Beachhead-

---

 "If you wish to know what a man is, place him in authority."
Yugoslav Proverb

---

I first met him in a November, a chilly November. Robest Winchester was a behemoth, a silverback in an Italian suit. I used to sit at the other end of a mahogany conference table and watch him argue with himself about procedure, the straining weight of a thousand signatures weighing down on him. That was back when there was still time for bureaucracy. This picture was taken downtown, in the Edgewater district. We had received a report that a handful of outdated trade synchronization routines had been straining the structure of the quay. Mister Winchester straightened his fedora, and loaded a magazine into his handgun. The exiled programs were eradicated, entirely without incident.

((A debate on the Tetragrammaton boards a while ago stemmed in my mind the question of how the HvCft Equinox came into being.  I decided to explore its history today.  Feel free to add the history of your hovercraft to this thread.))

Although they certainly still hold some disdain towards awakened humans, I would imagine that save for letting us waltz through Zero One, the machines would certainly give us benefits in the real not available to Zion and Exile crews. In another light, I could understand the founding crews [of the Tetragrammaton] using formerly Zion hovercrafts due to the fact that...most of us were awakened by Zionites.

Since the Equinox was commissioned as a reaction to the destruction of the Hovercrafts Repulse, Monitor and Enterprise, I think it's safe to say that we wouldn't make a run into Zion and steal a ship. The Equinox and Axalon were commissioned at nearly the same time, but it would be idiocy to make the same ship twice. As per the current Tetragrammaton hovercraft list, the Axalon is an Archon class (big), while the Equinox is an Alliance class (hopefully was small as the Valdore). I won't speak for the Axalon as I am not its captain, but the Equinox is a clandestine operations ship. "[During the former equinox of the sun], the effects of equinoctial periods was their temporary disruptive effect on communications satellites. For most geostationary satellites, there is almost always a point when the sun is directly behind the satellite relative to Earth. The Sun's immense power and broad radiation spectrum overload the Earth station's reception circuits with noise and, depending on antenna size and other factors, temporarily disrupt or degrade the circuit. The duration of those effects varies but can range from an hour to a few minutes" (Wikipedia : Equinox). The Equinox was built to be primarily self-sufficient vessel, eliminating any risk of outside disruption 

This being said, the Equinox is able to broadcast a respectable signal (entering the simulation, gathering data streams, communicating with other ships) without first establishing a connection to one of Zero One's dedicated networks, or attempting to pirate an exile or Zion signal. While in the initial design stages, the ship was designed to utilize a combination of biomass and geothermal energy, it quickly became apparent that neither source was readily available to the extreme necessary. The Equinox was redesigned with a repetitive-energy source built in, the ship's energy was initially stemmed by nuclear reactor, which was promptly disabled, the waste given off being re-used much in the vein of the original biomass plans. The ship runs in a continuous dormant state in order to keep nuclear waste and bagasse (solid sugar-waste) levels nominal. Needless to say, containment is monitored.

Those of you on the ship of course have noticed the single engraved, and two painted (though admittedly haphazardly) Oroborus above the console. The original was marked into the ship by its machine creators, representing the self-sufficiency of the ship. As per Plato:

"The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. For the Creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than one which lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take anything or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but the movement suited to his spherical form was assigned to him, being of all the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and intelligence; and he was made to move in the same manner and on the same spot, within his own limits revolving in a circle. All the other six motions were taken away from him, and he was made not to partake of their deviations. And as this circular movement required no feet, the universe was created without legs and without feet."

The other two I painted, conjoining the three as Borromean rings, each representing a plane of reality; the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic. "Real" is represented by the machine snake. If we were to go blind, deaf, and dumb, we would still be able to feel the grooves of its design. The outlined snake illustrates "Imaginary". It exists in every sense except for substantiation. "Symbolic" is exemplified by the looking backwards. This snake is static, and only holds meaning by comparing itself to the past.

((I very well may add onto this a bit later, but I'm far too tired right now.))

-OOC-

Hey folks, I was meandering around on Google today, and came accross this.  Sorta' neat: http://www.dansego.com/matrix/index.html .  (I take no credit for anything on, in, or next to this website.)

-A Newspaper Clipping:

-The problem goes deeper than the trains. 

-The key is who is inside. 

-The next stop could be tomorrow.

I was bored, and had a camera sitting in front of me.  So I had some fun.  Ecks dee!

"Entire Clips"

"Analysis"

Right, since I have twenty-six days of PhotoShop CS2 left, I think it only makes sense to get as far into a graphic novel as possible (that is to say, finishing it).  So, here it is folks, the official announcement of "Innocent Putrescence", coming much sooner than too late.  What's that, you want a preview?  -pfft-  Fine!

Right folks, so I've always used FireworksMX to make all of my images, but for my life, I could not get the effect that I was going for on eyelashes, so I collapsed and downloaded the PhotoShop CS2 trial.  Oh em gee!  What was I thinking using anthing other than PhotoShop ever?  Anyway, I've been playing around today and came up with this.  Questions/comments/criticism/revelations?

 'Runaway"

Edit:  Original