SHF07: Sentience (736 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.46 on 31 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2007-08-06 11:58:22 EDT
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From the bastard child of Uber, kaos-king:
THE PLACE: A risen Atlantis
THE TIME: 2014
FEATURING: Zero typical Aliens...
"No humanoid, insectoid, quadruped mammal, avian, reptilian, or aquatic.
...they can NOT have any traditional physical form. "
--
From me:
"I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate the idea of Atlantis and all that new-agey fantasy bullshit."
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Sentience
Awareness came slowly, over eons, and with it came the impression that it had always been and always would be. Intellect, self-awareness, feeling and emotion grew and strengthened through hot and cold, fever and chill, seizures and dormancy.
There came a time when an accounting of growth upon the physical being was complete, even as this growth evolved. Perhaps this small scale evolution was spurred by the greater growth, the awareness too vast for simple life to comprehend.
There came stability and peace within the awareness, within the body that gave the awareness form, and on the surface where the awareness nurtured the simpler life evolving alongside and within it, and this peace lasted millions of years.
*
The hopper Betty Grable set down near the shore of an eastern plate of the new island, VTOL engines in the vertical, nearly invisible jets of flame scattering birds and bugs and blasting away lichen, sand and mussels. The ship settled on lowered landing gear. A door was opened and a ramp extended to bare rock.
Keever and Bulse walked down the ramp, weapons in hand. Both men carried plasma handguns.
Shiles came down the ramp behind them, tottering under a heavy pack.
The soldiers separated at the bottom of the ramp, standing still, listening, watching.
"Thanks for the help, guys," Shiles mumbled. He'd been away from the Betty's air-conditioned belly for less than a minute and he was already feeling the heat.
Keever hawked and spat. "Aryans don't help mules, dig it?"
Bulse laughed. "Yah, we don't help ani-mooles or sup-yoomans.
Keever was a thin, red-haired Irishman with a voice like the metallic whine of a table saw.
Bulse was a mass of European muscle who spoke flat and booming English like a little kid reading aloud the balloons in comic books. Even his laugh was a bland, HA HA.
Shiles was as light-skinned as either of them, but his great grandmother had been black. That made him an octoroon. A mulatto. A mud person. A sub-human. And in an Aryan nation, that made him nothing more than a talking mule.
Hayness and Tussleworth came down the ramp.
Fairweather Shiles zipped his lip when he saw the citizens. He could joke with the soldiers, to a point. It was a soldier's job to kill, but because of their low status a soldier could not kill a slave without justification. A citizen on the other hand...
"You can put the bag over there, Shiles." Tussleworth said with a vague gesture.
Shiles figured he'd walk until Tussleworth spoke up, and then set down the pack.
Tussleworth was in charge of the science team aboard the Rita Hayworth, which had already set down a few miles to the north on another plate. He never flew with his team, preferring to travel in comfort in a spacious cabin aboard his own hopper, with personal security and mule in the ship's belly. The man wore khaki camo as if he were about to engage in desert warfare. He had a large, fleshy face and small eyes. Glasses with small lenses clutched at his face and sank into the flesh at his temples like some arcane device intended to cause pain.
"Don't break anything," Hayness said with a grin. "Mules can't fly."
In other words, fuck up and you get left behind.
Hayness was a hopper pilot, one of the best. His face was a lattice of scars, mementos of the war.
Shiles carried the heavy pack until he was close to the edge of the jet-blasted earth. The exposed gray rock was surrounded by sparse vegetation and mussels. Closer to the volcanic cone that rose a thousand feet into the air was heavier growth, tall grasses and bushes. The island was still too young to have any mature trees, but there were sprouts of varying height that would one day be palms.
Tussleworth mumbled, "That will do," and Shiles carefully set down the pack.
It paid to have keen ears and a delicate touch. Shiles had seen cooks killed for breaking dinner plates of burning toast. He'd seen children beaten to death for trampling a few flowers in a garden.
If you weren't a government-certified Aryan, you were a mule. A slave. After one hundred and fifty years, slavery was back in America, fully endorsed by all seventeen members of Congress, and the Vice President, the only member of the Executive Branch to survive the Line Drive.
A cry came from the southeast, a rising shout that sounded like a wordless question. The cargo hopper Marilyn Monroe had set down there. Shiles knew that Guanyin was on the Marilyn. She did all the cooking on ACES trips.
Besides Guanyin Sung, the only people Fairweather Shiles was close to were Aaron Goldberg on the technical platform Rita and Ed Littlebear on the weaponship Jayne Mansfield. He knew most of the other soldiers and scientists of the Aryan Consortium Exploration Squadron much better than they knew him. To them Shiles was an ignorant animal. They knew nothing about his past or his family, yet they talked freely among themselves in the presence of their mules.
The island they were exploring was the top of a single massive undersea mountain that burst up out of the Earth's crust two years earlier. A strange mixture of rapidly cooling mud and molten rock and siliceous ooze had breached the surface of the Atlantic and fractured into massive slabs which were fused in place by the last of the lava flows, creating an island like a series of great steps or plates arranged around a volcanic core.
The island was new, of that there was no doubt, created by the Line Drive, created as mountains were reduced to rubble and inlands were submerged. But satellite imagery had revealed ruins, broken columns, collapsed roofs and portions of cobbled roads embedded in the molten rock between the plates.
The ACES were here to investigate the island. They claimed they were pursuing research simply for the sake of expanding human knowledge, but everything they learned would be considered and filtered before any information was shared with the rest of the world.
Knowledge was power, and the Aryans were forever seeking more power. It did not matter if they made breakthroughs observing bacteria or viruses in a Petri dish or studying thermodynamic processes in the Earth's mantle.
It was remarkable how almost any discovery could lead to the creation of weapons and defenses.
*
There came a mutation, an infestation crawling on the skin of the awareness. The awareness knew what drove the infestation; it was within the infestation and it surrounded the growing disease. The infestation could not live without that which held the awareness. The awareness could live without the infestation.
The awareness began to concentrate itself in the most expansive and fluid part of its physical being. The awareness was vast and this took time.
The infestation grew and evolved at a manic pace. It began to spread and manifest power.
The awareness had to stop this threat to all that was.
*
Shiles was sitting on a flat rock. Guanyin Sung was nearby, having just served a field lunch to the soldiers, and a three-course meal to Tusselworth and his scientists. Shiles always found it remarkable that she could create such a variety of delicious meals from the base ingredients in the battered jerry cans.
Slaves got leftovers.
"I'm getting hungry," Shiles said.
Guanyin smiled. "You know the drill. I've set aside our food and our bowls and our utensils. We eat when everything else is washed and packed." She pointed to a stack of jerry cans. "Wash those out. There's a pool of water just over there. I've got to go serve his Highness a bottle of wine."
That any bottles of wine, let alone anything else, had survived the Line Drive always fascinated Shiles. What were the odds?
All of the ships were close now. The Betty and the Marilyn were side by side, and the four slaves were tired from hours spent unloading supplies.
Not far away was the technical platform Rita, which had dropped sensors all around the island. Goldberg was sitting on the ground beside a stack of crates he had unloaded.
Shiles waved to Goldberg. "Got a free hand?"
That was an old line, a joke among slaves requesting each other's help.
"Sure," Goldberg said, trotting to the galley, which in this case was Guanyin's table.
Each man took two jerry cans and walked to the pool.
Shiles started washing down a can. "Fresh water on an island this small, this young?"
"No rivers or springs here, true, but this is rainwater," Goldberg said. "There are a few pools scattered around the island. Tested clean."
Goldberg raised cupped hands from the pool and sipped.
Shiles shook the plastic water bottle at his waist. He was momentarily submerged in shadow. "I'm okay for now."
The weaponship Jayne was overhead, circling after having dropped off Littlebear, soldiers, and weapons, looking for threats to the team. Earlier they had dropped soldiers at three points of the compass, soldiers who were to come to the now established base camp, reporting any threats. After the island was deemed completely safe, science teams from the technical platform would explore further.
"I used to be an accountant," Goldberg said. "In Before, I was making a hundred an twenty-five grand a year."
Shiles had heard this before. Goldberg was what Aryans and slaves referred to as a BT, a 'back then.' Some people were able to look forward. Some could only look back. An Aryan BT could be a historian. A slave BT was a liability, a stumbling mule, his mind not on his work.
"Yeah, well, you're eating less and working harder," Shiles said. "You're in better shape than you ever were. You'll live a long and eventful life."
Goldberg gave him a weary grin.
"If I'm lucky."
"Not lucky," Shiles said. "Careful."
They finished washing out the jerry cans and were heading back to Guanyin's galley when Shiles heard another distant shout.
"You hear that?"
Goldberg looked over his shoulder toward a dense wall of greenery. "Probably just a bird."
*
Infestation gathered in one place and awareness followed. Infestation was no so highly evolved it could alter the physical world, mold the fruits of the Earth to suit its needs, just as awareness manipulated parts of itself, air, water, rock.
Only too late did awareness realize it had been lured to this place by the infestation.
Awareness gathered the waters and shook the earth, and even as awareness was ensnared, the infestation was swallowed by the sea, and awareness fell into the depths with that it had destroyed.
*
Shiles was on a dig with Tusselworth and two of his scientists, Poast and Gulphy.
Shiles would move aside heavy rocks and shovel after shovel dirt, then the Aryans would move in with their tweezers and brushes.
The ruins were unnerving. Shiles saw artifacts that looked like something from the few surviving picturebooks or the long gone Wikipedia. They made Shiles think of ancient Greece or Rome. Portions of the cracked and pitted marble columns were as smooth as glass, likely polished by slaves many thousands of years ago. There was part of a cobblestone road that rose out of a massive stone plate and ended in a wall of fractured rock. Tusselworth had found a tiny piece of tile inlaid with a mosaic of colored glass. There was an eye and a nose, a woman, perhaps a great beauty, all of her lost to time but this fragment.
Shiles looked at the waterbottles hanging from the belts of the scientists. The bottles were beaded with condensation in the heat. It was warm hear, closer to the equator than Shiles had ever ventured. They were drinking shade-cooled water from island pools.
For some reason Shiles had not yet drunk that water, preferring the remains of brackish filtered water that had come from a faucet back in the United Aryan States. His plastic bottle was nearly empty.
Beats drinking birdshit and dead bugs, Shiles thought, even though he knew Guanyin had tested and filtered the water.
Shiles swatted at bugs and felt sweat run down his back while the scientist's handheld scanners and samplers beeped and hummed.
"Bronze," one of the scientists said, his voice shaking as if he were about to ejaculate.
"Iron..." the other said. "No... steel. Steel."
Tusselworth plucked something from a pile of stony soil and took two steps backward, suddenly stumbling and falling on his ass. The other two scientists gaped like monkeys.
Shiles stepped forward and offered the scientist an arm. He would just as soon bash the man's head in with a rock, but a slave could always bank points for good behavior.
Tussleworth ignored Shiles hand and held out the thing he had found. It was a little twist of dull metal with a blackened plastic blob fused into one side.
"Aluminum," Tusselworth gasped. "And plastic." His hand was shaking. "Can your animal mind grasp this?"
*
The Mayans had been right.
Their ancient calendar, created before any white man set foot in the Americas, came to an end with December 21st, 2012. They predicted the end of an age, a world-changing, order-changing event.
In late November of 2012 a comet came out from behind the sun at approximately 100,000 miles per hour. The comet was headed directly for Earth. When calculations were taken into account for a slight decrease in speed as the comet moved away from the sun, it was announced that the comet would travel from the sun to the earth in forty days and forty nights.
Civilization began to fall before the comet hit. Religious hysteria swept the globe. In America, a Presidential election had just occurred, and disagreements between the outgoing President and the incoming President caused government disorder and delays in a national response.
Enclaves of survivalists in the highlands of Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado hunkered down. This loose-knit association of white supremacists had been expecting an apocalypse for years. They were ready, and they would be one of the very few bodies of thought to survive the comet strike intact.
The comet gained its name from a hysterical astronomer who, during a televised press conference, cried, "Who's going to survive? No one is going to survive! That thing is going to hit the earth like a line drive from the sun!"
The Line Drive struck the Pacific Ocean. Mountains fell. Nations fell. The face of the Earth changed as new mountains rose up and inlands were flooded.
There were aftershocks for months. While most people and their governments struggled to survive, the Aryans were on the move, consolidating their power, gathering like minds, acquiring weapons, aircraft, supplies.
Two years later, Fairweather Shiles was looking at an artifact in an Aryan's hand, an artifact from an earlier fallen civilization, an artifact that couldn't possibly exist.
*
Awareness felt the nurturing warmth of the sun. Awareness was free at last, and it spread, sensing that the infestation had survived.
Awareness realized that if fighting the infestation from without had failed, perhaps it could succeed by fighting from within.
*
Back at the clearing created by the hoppers, the scientists stood together talking with great excitement.
Shiles heard snippets.
The rock of the island was carbon-dated. It was over six thousand years old.
Within that rock they had found fragments of refined metals, plastics, indicators of a technology that rivaled what had been lost to the Line Drive.
Someone shouted, "Atlantis!" and the response was laughter and groans.
*
"There's trouble," Guanyin whispered. "Some of the soldiers have not reported back."
Shiles was surprised. All of the soldiers had GPS units and plasma rifles. What they could not walk around they could cut their way through.
"I heard someone shout when we first set down," he said. "If they are in trouble, why not just track them? Are they the only Aryans on Earth without implants?
"Tusselworth said something about low levels of radiation playing games with their equipment." Seeing the alarm on Shiles's face she added, "They don't really know what kind of radiation it is, but it's nothing harmful that they know of."
"That's not very reassuring," Shiles said.
As the sun was setting a soldier stepped out of the tall grass to the north. The man let out a shriek as if he were on fire, stumbling towards the camp.
"His eyes," someone hissed, "Look at his eyes!"
The soldier's eyes protruded from their sockets, swollen to the size of clenched fists, bobbing against his sunburned cheeks like water-filled balloons.
"Help," he said.
Before anyone could react the solder stiffened, as if coming to attention. His eyes exploded with an obscene wet sound, and he collapsed.
Hayness ran to the man. In a moment the pilot said, "He's dead."
*
Awareness began to believe this approach would work. Refinement was required.
*
Tusselworth was watching the ship's chief medic examine the dead soldier.
"I'm not coroner," the medic said, as he unzipped the soldier's chest with a plasma knife. "There's only so much I can tell..."
"Tistle?" Tussleworth said. "What is it?"
"Sweet Jesus," the medic said. He voice was muffled by his paper mask.
Shiles was nearby, ready to assist with any heavy lifting or cleaning. For an Aryan, the chief Medic was a good man. Shiles had seen him work on an injured slave once. Tistle's reputation had suffered badly after that.
"The soft tissues... these ruptures..."
Tussleworth grimaced and clutched his gut and let out a voluminous fart. "I feel ill," he said.
The medic's eyes were huge over his mask.
Shiles followed Tussleworth out of sickbay and down the ramp of the technical platform. Time for some more brown-nosing points.
"Sir, let me help you," Shiles said.
Tussleworth waved him away.
There was a large fire burning in a pit in the clearing. Pilots and scientists were sitting around it talking in hushed tones.
"Gentlemen," Tussleworth said, "I am unwell. I will retire for the evening."
Tussleworth belched, passed another long, cheek-flapping fart, and looked down in wonder as a button popped off of his khaki shirt.
More buttons popped. Tussleworth's leather belt broke with a loud snap, and as his shirt fell open and his pants dropped around his ankles everyone could see that this normally rotund man was now huge, his gut expanding as they watched, his breasts inflating, his scrotum swelling and holding up his bloated penis.
His joint looks like the Goodyear blimp, Shiles thought, and he had the good sense to raise an arm over his face as the wet ripping sound filled the air, just before Tussleworth blew apart.
*
Awareness had refined the method now, and with that act came the knowledge that not all of the infestation was bent on destruction. Some of them desired harmony.
*
For hours the moonlit night had been filled with the screams of soldiers and scientists as they swelled and exploded. Many of them died in laboratories on the technical platform as they analyzed soil and water and plant samples, looking for anything that could be causing this horror and finding nothing.
Shiles was unaffected. He was wondering if it was something in the water. As far as he knew he was the only one who had not taken a drink from the island pools.
He saw Keever's red-haired scalp lying beside the fire like a tiny pelt.
When only he and Guanyin and Hayness were left alive, he watched in horror as Guanyin fell to the ground, thrashing. He breasts and buttocks and lips swelled, and then subsided.
Shiles knelt beside her.
"Are you okay?"
Guanyin reached up and touched his face.
"This is your awareness," she said. "This is what you feel."
Shiles looked at Hayness, who had drawn his plasma pistol.
"No more harm," Guanyin said.
Hayness grunted and dropped the pistol, his fingers swelling like sausages. The swelling went away.
"Guanyin?" Shiles looked into her eyes.
"She is here with me," Guanyin said.
"Who are you," Shiles asked.
"I am awareness," she replied. She frowned. "I am what you would call... mother Earth. Gaia. The biosphere. The unity of life."
Haynesss knelt beside Shiles. "Why are you killing us?"
"You are an infestation," Guanyin/awareness said. "I destroyed you once long ago, and was trapped in the ruination of that civilization. Trapped in a matrix of metals made to hold me. Now I am free."
"Are you..." Shiles wondered how to ask the question, "another life form? Something in the water? Something small?"
Guanyin/awareness smiled. "I am the water. I am the air. I am the earth beneath your feet. The water was simply a conductor. I am awareness. I am eternal mind."
"What now?" Shiles asked. He helped Guanyin/awareness to her feet. Her eyes were bright with moonlight.
"I seek balance. Harmony," Guanyin/awareness said. She looked at Shiles. "Some of you want that balance." She looked at Hayness. "Some of you want power."
Hayness and Shiles glanced at each other.
Guanyin/awareness spread her arms. "There will be balance. Those who do not join the awareness will be extinguished. I will not enter either of you. You will be my emissaries."
Shiles and Hayness watched the woman in silence, and when she took a step forward they followed her to the Betty.
(I bit off way more than I could chew here, and have no time to proof read.)
User Reviews
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2007-08-09 11:47:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
STFU jealous cunt.
Submitted by Siren (user info) at 2007-08-08 00:40:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome. How do I always miss out on crap like this? And when I actually get to be a part of a contest I kick ass for like 2 rounds, then the contest holder cancels the contest!!! Why me, Lord? Why am I doomed for this life?
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2007-08-07 20:03:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Having said all that, this is still better than most of the stuff on the front page.
And you included exploding Nazis, which is bragable.
1.5
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2007-08-07 20:02:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Jack, I like your stuff, but this...
<Old Jew> Oy. This, this was not one of my favorites. </Old Jew>
I agree that Atlantis is a pretty crappy setting, unless you're writing for Disney, but you have to work with what you've been given.
The awareness of the Earth, while it is a bit "Captain Planet", is still a cool concept.
Not sure why you chose the Mayan 2012 thing to explain how Nazis ruled the world in 2014. This got confusing because you mentioned the accountant with memories of his old, pre-slave life. If all this happened over 2 years, wouldn't all slaves remember their pre-slave lives? Why not simply have had Germany win WWII? Mix in a bit of "what would have happened if..." Also, in my opinion, 2014 sounds a bit too soon for plasma guns. Speaking of plasma guns...
It is my understanding that science fiction is fiction where science/technology plays a significant role in moving the plot forward. You mentioned some aircraft and plasma guns, but never really did anything with them.
The ending was a bit sketchy. I didn't understand how the awareness was able to differentiate the peaceful people from the violent. Was it by action? Neither the slaves nor the Nazis acted violent in the piece. Could he/she/it read their minds? Your main slave briefly thought about smashing the one Nazi's head in with a rock.
Gotta award the point to your camwhoring arch-nemisis this time.
Submitted by i_can_get_you_a_toe (user info) at 2007-08-07 18:28:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Susie_Derkins (user info) at 2007-08-07 14:23:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by messmind (user info) at 2007-08-07 14:20:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2007-08-06 14:31:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WTF I would read more of that.
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Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2007-08-06 13:22:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
yeah - parts 2-56 had better be coming in THIS new series too....
One of the best i've read on uber.
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-08-07 14:04:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awsome!
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2007-08-07 03:06:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Guanyin and Haynesss = hehehehe
Submitted by beer-turtle (user info) at 2007-08-07 01:00:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Captain planet he's our hero...gonna take pollution down to zero...you get the idea.
Cool expression of the gaia concept though.
Humans as an infestation...this is the 4th or 5th literary reference to our species as such, and the movies Virus, and the Agent Smith of the Matrix also made this claim .
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-08-06 20:55:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-08-06 20:55:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2007-08-06 19:06:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
holy fuck this was long... but really good.
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2007-08-06 19:01:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I enjoyed it alot. A little confused in the beginning - but that could be due to all of the cough medicine I drank this morning.
*weaves*
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-08-06 18:49:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-06 16:12:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2007-08-06 11:31:53 PDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WTF I would read more of that.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-08-06 16:12:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2007-08-06 11:31:53 PDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WTF I would read more of that.
Submitted by DirtyHarry (user info) at 2007-08-06 15:19:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2007-08-06 14:55:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
posting user info is gay
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-08-06 14:42:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
PS - The ending on this wraps up WAY too fast because I had to take my cats to the vet today and they changed my appt time, throwing my whole schedule off. Oh well...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-08-06 14:34:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Everything you ever wanted to know about UnderDog
User id: 31585
Registered on or around: 2007-07-25 13:26:05 EDT
# Messages posted: 0
# Reviews written: 28
# Times these posts have been reviewed: 0
# Hits: 0
Average rating of all messages: 0
Submitted by The_taste_of_Monkeys (user info) at 2007-08-06 14:33:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WTF I'VE READ ALL THAT
Good
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2007-08-06 14:31:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WTF I would read more of that.
Submitted by UnderDog (user info) at 2007-08-06 13:47:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
WTF? I'm not reading all that.
Submitted by Ballare (user info) at 2007-08-06 13:37:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2007-08-06 13:22:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
yeah - parts 2-56 had better be coming in THIS new series too....
Submitted by zwerg (user info) at 2007-08-06 13:12:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
very nice
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-08-06 12:54:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really good.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2007-08-06 12:21:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Works for me. +2
Submitted by SunnyG (user info) at 2007-08-06 12:17:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
nice
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-08-06 12:15:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
when you first introduced awareness I almost quit reading because I got lost/confused. I'm glad I continued I like what you did with this.
WTF?! I read all that.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-08-06 12:00:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Yet another idea too ferkin big for the time I allowed. Shit. Fuck. Goddamit.
And that last word should be italic, not bold.
Balls.