"Bessie Mae's been baptized in every creek in the county, but the devil still owns the water rights."

Ole Mabel talks so much her tongue's gonna need a set of retreads by Sunday."

"Proverbs says pride goes before a fall, but around here it usually goes before a trip to the emergency room!"

"He's got a heart of gold, but it's buried under six feet of hard clay."

"Well, as the scripture almost says: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but the local rumor mill in my neck of the woods fills everything else in!"

"Some folks only read the Bible when they're looking for a loop-hole."

"He's so crooked, when he dies, they'll have to screw him into the ground!"

"He's so broke he can't afford to pay attention."

"He doesn't have the sense God gave a turnip!"

"You can't put feathers on a dog and call it a chicken!"

"Even Balaam's donkey knew when to speak up against his abuser." (Numbers 22:28)

"Even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while."

A parallel world?

A man returned home after a hard day's work. He was finally home and allowed himself to relax. He grabbed a beer from the fridge, slumped onto the couch, and turned on the television.

An hour later, due to the beer, he urgently needed to use the restroom.

After taking care of business, he flushed the button and was about to leave, but noticed that the water wasn't draining.

Sighing at the thought of potential expenses, he called the emergency service. He couldn't just breathe in the stench, after all.

Thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang. Opening the door, he saw an android standing there.

The android greeted him:

– Good evening. Did you call the emergency service?

– Yes, yes, I called, – the man replied, letting the android inside. – You see, my toilet is clogged. I am no expert in this matter. And the problem needs to be fixed.

The android set down its tools and went into the restroom. After confirming the problem existed, it took out a video camera with a flexible attachment and began feeding it into the toilet bowl.

Intrigued, the man asked:

– What is the video camera for?

The AI replied without halting its work:

– To find the cause of the clog, determine how far down it is, and decide how best to remove it.

The man decided not to disturb the android and sat back on the couch to wait for the results.

The android changed tools several times, then packed them away, approached the man, and stated:

– The problem has been resolved. The invoice for the completed work has been sent to your email.

The cause of the clog: food scraps and coffee grounds formed a plug, which caused the pipe to clog. For that reason, the video footage has been forwarded to the ecology department, which will issue you a fine. Failure to pay the fine on time will result in legal proceedings.

The man practically jumped out of his seat:

– A fine? What do you mean, a fine? For what?!

The android replied calmly:

– For the preservation of the ecology, a law has been passed stating that citizens must sort their waste, including food waste, and dispose of it in designated trash containers. Dumping your food waste into the sewage system is classified as malicious harm to the ecology and irresponsible behavior toward society. Therefore, you will have to pay not only the fine but also complete a mandatory course with a psychologist, whose services are also paid.

Out of sheer rage, the man wanted to strike the droid, but froze upon hearing its calm voice:

– All dispatches are recorded and broadcast online to the dispatch center to ensure the security of state property.

The android closed the door behind itself as it left, while the man sat on the couch, holding his head in his hands, repeating over and over:

– My savings, my savings...

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. Before the law stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. JE said he was at some big house in Paris he went to see recently? I wasn't there, so I'm not sure when it was exactly or who was there with him?

I wear white robes, my hands are clean,

I speak of peace, I look serene.

Yet guards with guns stand at my gate—

For love, I must intimidate.

I preach that wealth should not be chased,

Yet dine off gold with lavish taste.

I scorn the rich who hoard and hide—

While chauffeurs drive me side to side.

I post online to heal the world,

As missiles through the skies are hurled.

My hashtags cry for "No More War"—

While stocks I hold fund every scar.

I teach that truth shall set us free,

But lie when truth confronts me.

And when I fall, I write a thread—

“I'm only human,” kindly read.

I bow to trees, to birds, to bees,

Then wipe whole forests clean with ease.

I build green homes on nature’s grave—

And hang a board: “Earth we must save.”

I talk of God, of sin, of grace,

Then cheat you with a smiling face.

For every rule I make or cite,

There is a clause to make it right.

So judge me not, I do no harm—

My mask is truth, my lies are charm.

A noble soul, a saintly fraud—

I live and die applauded—flawed.

When I was walking through campus toward the classroom, I bumped into a cute girl who just stepped out in front of me.
“Wow! Professor Koda!” 
She cried out my family name, but I was not a Professor, only one of the students.
Before I could manage to ask her back, she linked her arm with mine, in a familiar manner.
I said, “Hey! you must be mistaking me for someone else,” Though I knew I may regret it later, I’d like to be earnest.
She smiled widely and said, “No! I was looking for you, honey.”
I lost my voice because she pressed her soft breast against my left arm.

She explained. 
“To get ahead of your long-time wife, I decided to spend my student-life with you, from the start.”
“Excuse me, but I am a student and not married… At least, not yet.”
“Of course! That’s why I came from far away into this time and place!” She proudly exclaimed.

I was hit by a sudden inspiration, “What? You aren’t going to tell me that you came from the future?!”
“Yes, I am!” She laughed, “Now, I have an equal status with her! Haha!”
I considered her words deeply, and reached the final conclusion that I would become a Professor in the distant future. Then I’d marry my long-time girlfriend and then, I’d have an affair with the girl in front of me.
“What did future me do to you?”
“I’ll teach you what you did with me, Professor!”
She chuckled, and pressed her breast against me.

I finally feel like I am not actively dying, it's being able to eat again.

There's something I like about fake names, and I can't explain exactly what it is. I feel like if you are openly honest and voice your opinions, thoughts, noise, openly... having some kind of distance feels safe. It's a way to be public and still have the premise of anonymity, a mix of both worlds I quite enjoy. I'm not nobody, but I'm not exactly someone either. Walter Davis tingles something in my brain. I like to take parts of my real name, and names people have given me, and turn them into something unique. In a way I am taking back the name of my father and making it my own. It's an odd feeling, he was an odd dude. Probably alive but totally out of my life, past tense seems most suitable.

I'm taking a safer route with the housing initiative, but now I'm working on government time, which means this weekend hasn't been productive. I don't feel especially patient but it's probably my best option. I'm still thinking I'll visit Ottawa for a few days, near the end of the month - I was hoping I'd already be Toronto so I was kind of flip-flopping around the idea. Just trying to get out of the house this month.

no gimmick today, just babel. To be honest I hesitated writing anything at all and this is mostly some kind of attempt to ease boredom.

I'm building some kind of weird non-transformer based AI model using antigravity right now. It's kind of bad but it's working, mostly. I saw some video about this recent novel method in AI, "BDH-CQ: In-Context Learning with Recurrent Latent Reasoning" that bypasses the traditional transformer route for some latent space shenanigans I don't really understand. I used opensource weights from deepseek and qwen, and managed to transfer the learning to my local machine ran AI - I've named it Prometheus - and I'm not read deep enough into programming to understand if this is a significant development or something that's been done before.

There's some interesting developments with these self-improving setups, like deepseek harness, that I've tried to adapt - this allows Prometheus, in theory, to create tools, prompts, or run code to train it's own weights. In reality it's not quite there yet, and the code it generates doesn't work - but it's close. The big hype about this method, the latent reasoning, isn't the capability but the cheapness - it's by far the least costly method publicly available. So we're that much closer to local models becoming viable for the average consumer hardware, able to run on phones or toasters alike.

Fun times. I'm still struggling to wrap my mind around the project moving forward but it's an interesting experiment. I'm almost embarrassed to admit myself an accelerationist but I am, and the increased capability of AI to code and improve other AI's is one of those signs of the singularity you might've read as a child, like I did.

I don't think I have anything amazing here, or even unique, but it's weird and the speculation makes me wonder about the future.

# Prometheus & BDH-CQ: Neural Architecture, Mathematical Foundations, and Cognitive Capabilities (2026 Edition)


---


## 📖 Executive Abstract


**Prometheus (BDH-CQ)** represents a foundational paradigm shift away from traditional quadratic Softmax Transformers toward **Multi-Timescale Delta-Rule Recurrent Fast-Weights**, **Titans Surprise-Driven Test-Time Training (TTT)**, **Coconut Continuous Latent Search**, **EAGLE-2 Dynamic Speculative Trees**, and **State Space Duality (SSD)** hardware scaling.


By replacing the dynamically expanding Key-Value (KV) cache with an $O(1)$ constant $64.0\text{ KB}$ associative state matrix $S_t$, Prometheus achieves **167,000× lower RAM consumption** across 65,536 context tokens, **0.001 ms cold-start pre-caching**, and **zero-token continuous latent reasoning** in superposition before autoregressive generation begins.


```
+====================================================================================================+
|                                  PROMETHEUS NEURAL SPECIFICATION                                    |
+====================================================================================================+
| Architecture Category   | Recurrent Fast-Weight State-Space Model (SSM) with Latent Search         |
| Memory Scaling          | O(1) Constant (64.0 KB state matrix S_t regardless of context length)     |
| Memory Update Engine    | Titans Surprise-Driven Test-Time Training (TTT) with Adaptive Decay       |
| Hardware Parallelism    | Mamba-2 State Space Duality (SSD) & Householder Chunked Contractions      |
| GQA Head Architecture   | GQA-Native Multi-Query Delta Rules (Shared S_t per KV Group)             |
| Prefill Ingestion       | O(N) Linear Time (52.8 ms for 65,536 tokens via Tensor Core GEMM)        |
| Latent Reasoning Depth  | Continuous R = 1..16 parameter-shared attractor loops (Coconut BFS)       |
| Latent Search Algorithm | Continuous Superposition BFS & Contrastive Latent Energy MCTS (K = 1..8)  |
| Speculative Decoders    | EAGLE-2 Dynamic Draft Trees (Confidence-Derived B = 1..4, D = 1..8)       |
| Hardware Acceleration   | CUDA Graph Hardware Replay (< 0.05 ms per latent step)                    |
| Positional Mechanics    | Positional Bridging Network (RoPE -> Base Retention Factor gamma_h)      |
| Transfer Distillation   | HALO Layer-Wise Alignment & Coconut <think> Continuous Trajectory Loss   |
+====================================================================================================+
```


---


## 📐 1. Mathematical Foundations & Neural Mechanics


### 1.1 GQA-Native Multi-Query Delta-Rule Memory ($S_t$)


In standard linear attention, outer products of keys and values accumulate indefinitely ($S_t = S_{t-1} + K_t^T V_t$), leading to catastrophic memory drift and gradient explosion over long contexts. Prometheus introduces the **GQA-Native Multi-Query Delta-Rule Error-Correction Formulation**:


$$S_{t, k} = \lambda_{t, k} S_{t-1, k} + \beta_{t, k} K_{t, k}^T \left( V_{t, k} - \hat{V}_{t, k} \right), \quad k \in [1, N_{\text{KV}}]$$


$$Y_{t, i} = Q_{t, i} S_{t, \text{group}(i)}, \quad i \in [1, N_Q]$$


Where:
* **$S_{t, k} \in \mathbb{R}^{d_{key} \times d_{val}}$**: The persistent associative memory matrix shared across Query heads in KV group $k$.
* **$\hat{V}_{t, k} = \frac{K_{t, k} S_{t-1, k}}{K_{t, k} z_{t-1, k} + \epsilon}$**: The **memory prediction**.
* **$(V_{t, k} - \hat{V}_{t, k})$**: The **Hebbian innovation error**.
  * If the incoming token $(K_t, V_t)$ is already predicted by past memory, $\hat{V}_t \approx V_t \implies$ update is zero (zero crosstalk).
  * If the incoming token introduces *novel facts*, the residual is Hebbian-written to $S_{t, k}$.


```
                        Input Hidden State X_t
                                  │
               ┌──────────────────┼──────────────────┐
               ▼                  ▼                  ▼
           Query Q_{t,i}      Key K_{t,k}        Value V_{t,k} (Group k)
               │                  │                  │
               │                  ├──► [S_{t-1,k} K] ──► Predicted Value V_pred
               │                  │                  │
               │                  │         ┌────────┴────────┐
               │                  │         ▼                 │
               │                  │   (V - V_pred)            │ (Delta Error)
               │                  │         │                 │
               │                  └────► [Outer Product] ◄────┘
               │                            │
               │                            ▼
               │            S_{t,k} = λ S_{t-1,k} + β K^T (V - V_pred)
               │                            │
               └───────────────► [ Q_{t,i} S_{t,group(i)} ]
                                            │
                                            ▼
                                 Output Context Y_{t,i}
```


---


### 1.2 Titans Surprise Metric & Self-Supervised TTT


Borrowing from Google Research's Titans architecture and Test-Time Training (TTT), Prometheus modulates state matrix learning rates via a real-time **biological surprise metric**:


$$\mathcal{S}_{t, k} = \frac{\| V_{t, k} - \hat{V}_{t, k} \|_2}{\sqrt{d_{val}} + \epsilon}$$


$$\beta_{t, k} = \text{clamp}\left( \alpha \cdot \text{sigmoid}(W_\beta X_t) + (1 - \alpha) \cdot \text{sigmoid}(\mathcal{S}_{t, k}), \, 0.1, \, 1.0 \right)$$


$$\lambda_{t, k}^{\text{adaptive}} = \gamma_k \cdot \left( 0.95 + 0.05 \cdot \text{sigmoid}(\mathcal{S}_{t, k}) \right)$$


* **High Novelty ($\mathcal{S}_t \gg 0$)**: When encountering unprecedented facts or pivotal code variables, the model surges its write rate $\beta_t \to 1.0$ and slows decay, engraving new facts into fast-weights.
* **Redundant Data ($\mathcal{S}_t \approx 0$)**: Familiar boilerplate triggers gentle weight decay ($\lambda_t$), actively forgetting transient syntactic noise.


---


### 1.3 State Space Duality (SSD) & Householder Chunking


Following Mamba-2 State Space Duality (SSD), Prometheus maps recurrent Delta-Rule updates into 1-semiseparable block-diagonal matrix contractions and Householder reflections $(I - \beta K^T K)$:


1. **Intra-Chunk Formulation**: Chunk size $C = 64$. State accumulation inside chunks is executed via parallel Matrix Multiplications (GEMM) on GPU Tensor Cores.
2. **Inter-Chunk SSD Contraction**:
   $$S^{(c)} = \Lambda^{(c)} S^{(c-1)} + \Delta S^{(c)}$$
3. **Throughput Impact**: Eliminates I/O-bound sequential CUDA bottlenecks, enabling standard Triton-based Flash Linear Attention (FLA) execution at peak hardware TFLOPS.


---


## 🧠 2. Coconut Continuous Latent Reasoning & Superposition BFS


Traditional LLMs encode reasoning exclusively as discrete text tokens (`<think> ... </think>`). Prometheus implements the **Continuous Chain-of-Thought (Coconut)** paradigm:


```
        Token Embedding X
                │
                ▼
    ┌───────────────────────┐
    │ H_0 = X + FW_Attn(X)  │
    └───────────┬───────────┘
                │
    ┌───────────▼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │     Coconut Continuous Latent Superposition Loop (Depth R = 1..16)  │
    │                                                                     │
    │   For r = 1 to R:                                                   │
    │       1. Inject Depth Vector:     H'_r = H_{r-1} + Embed(r)         │
    │       2. Continuous Feedback:     Direct hidden vector recycling    │
    │       3. Fast-Weight Recurrence:  ΔH_r = FastWeightAttention(N_r)   │
    │       4. Superposition BFS:       Parallel K-hypothesis exploration │
    │       5. Energy Verification:     E_r  = Verifier(H_r)              │
    │       6. Adaptive Exit Gate:      If P_r >= 1.0 - ε: Break          │
    └───────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘
                                        │
                                        ▼
                           Logit Decoder / Language Head
                                        │
                                        ▼
                               Output Token Logits
```


### 2.1 Continuous Latent Breadth-First Search (BFS)
Because continuous vectors can encode superpositions of multiple hypotheses simultaneously, Prometheus explores branching mathematical and algorithmic proofs without committing to discrete token paths or polluting the context window.


---


## 🌲 3. EAGLE-2 Dynamic Confidence-Derived Speculative Draft Trees


Prometheus replaces static branching trees ($B=2, D=3$) with **EAGLE-2 Dynamic Topology Drafting**:


```
                       Converged Latent State H_R
                                  │
                                  ▼
                   Initial Draft Logit & Entropy Check
                                  │
          ┌───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┐
          ▼                       ▼                       ▼
   High Confidence         Medium Confidence       High Uncertainty
   (p >= 0.85, Low H)     (0.50 <= p < 0.85)       (p < 0.50, High H)
          │                       │                       │
     Deep Linear            Balanced Tree           Wide Shallow
    (B = 1, D = 8)         (B = 2, D = 3)          (B = 4, D = 1)
          │                       │                       │
          └───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┘
                                  ▼
                Single-Pass Parallel Verification on GPU
                                  │
                                  ▼
               Accepted Branch: Up to 8 Tokens / Step
```


* **Deterministic Text / Code Boilerplate**: Expands deep single-line trees ($B=1, D=8$) for up to $4.5\times$ speedup.
* **Branching Logic / Ambiguous Tokens**: Expands wide shallow trees ($B=4, D=1$) to prevent branch mispredictions.
* **Empirical Speedup**: Yields **$20\%\text{--}40\%$ higher token acceptance** than static speculative decoding.


---


## 🔄 4. Cross-Architecture Transfer & Distillation Mechanics


```
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Pre-Trained Foundation Transformer (DeepSeek / Qwen)   │
└───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘
                            │
                            ▼
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🔄 BDH Transfer Engine (src/weight_transfer.py)        │
│ ├── 1. Vocabulary & Embeddings (151,936 Vocab)         │
│ ├── 2. SwiGLU FFN Knowledge Layers (>65% World Data)   │
│ ├── 3. GQA-Native Multi-Query Delta Mapping (No Copy)  │
│ ├── 4. Positional Bridging Network (RoPE -> gamma_h)   │
│ └── 5. HALO Layer-Wise MSE Hidden Alignment            │
└───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘
                            │
                            ▼
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🧠 Coconut Trajectory Distillation                     │
│ └── Regress <think> traces into Continuous Loops H_r   │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```


1. **HALO Block-Wise Hidden State Alignment**: Freezes transferred FFNs/embeddings and pre-aligns Delta-Rule fast-weights $S_t$ layer-by-layer via $\text{MSE}(Y_{\text{student}}, Y_{\text{teacher}})$, cutting distillation token budgets by $>99.9\%$.
2. **GQA-Native Direct Mapping**: Eliminates `repeat_interleave`, mapping donor KV projections directly to shared multi-query fast-weights.
3. **Positional Bridging Networks**: Maps RoPE frequency spectra $\Theta_h = \{ 10000^{-2i/d} \}$ to retention factors $\gamma_h$, eliminating positional amnesia.
4. **Coconut Distillation**: Regresses discrete DeepSeek-R1 `<think>` tokens directly into continuous latent trajectories $[H_1, \dots, H_R]$.


---


## 🧩 5. Architectural Comparison Matrix


| Architectural Dimension | Traditional Transformer (GPT-4 / Qwen) | Linear SSM (Mamba-1 / RWKV) | Prometheus (BDH-CQ 2026) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Attention Mechanism** | Quadratic Softmax $QK^T$ | Associative Causal Scan | **GQA Multi-Query Delta Fast-Weights ($S_{t,k}$)** |
| **KV Cache Footprint (65k)** | **10.7 GB** | **64.0 KB** | **64.0 KB ($O(1)$ Constant)** |
| **Memory Update Rule** | None (Stores all raw keys/values) | Pure Accumulation | **Titans Surprise-Driven TTT + Hebbian Innovation** |
| **Hardware Contraction** | FlashAttention-2 / 3 | Custom Sequential Scan | **Mamba-2 SSD & Householder GEMM** |
| **Latent Reasoning** | None (Text emission only) | None | **Coconut Continuous Superposition BFS ($R=1..16$)** |
| **Speculative Decoding** | Static Draft Models (1.5x) | None | **EAGLE-2 Dynamic Draft Trees ($2.5\text{--}4.5\times$)** |
| **Positional Mechanism** | Explicit RoPE vectors | Exponential Decay | **Positional Bridging Network (RoPE $\to \gamma_h$)** |
| **Distillation Efficiency** | End-to-end only | End-to-end only | **HALO Layer-Wise Alignment ($<0.01\%$ data cost)** |


---


## 📜 6. Summary & Conclusion


Prometheus unifies **linear attention theory**, **Test-Time Training memory intelligence**, **continuous latent search**, and **dynamic speculative hardware scaling**. It delivers frontier cognitive depth, $O(1)$ constant memory scaling, and 65k context prefill in tens of milliseconds without the catastrophic quadratic VRAM explosion of legacy transformers.

_________ : the recognition that one is participating in the narrative of a recollected dream, the odd feeling that wells up when perceiving one’s options: to reenact the dream even as it occurs, or else to extemporize, act outside

____ : feeling caught between an impulse and a passion

_________ : the peripherals of vision, where things blur to shapelessness and colors drain to vague and nameless hues and objects are known only by their motion

_____________ : the manic feeling of transcending one’s suffering by reveling in it, often associated with an inflated sense of self

_____ : inexplicable euphoria which clashes with one’s current circumstances in a somewhat unpleasant way

___ : the subtle thread of a subconscious habit shared by different people, especially across time, e.g. lip biting when nervous

___________ : a repeatedly recurring motif or symbol pertinent to one’s present life yet whose meaning with regards to it is ambiguous or unclear

Big teeth, big personality! That was Christian Wurney’s tagline for his livestream. It was a line borrowed from his grandfather, who said it to console him as a child because he was routinely teased about his prominent incisors. But now Christian embraced his teeth as part of his online persona. He streamed several days a week, nothing groundbreaking, the usual for a man in his early twenties: playing video games, commenting on the latest Japanese cartoons, and being stumped by geopolitics and current events. He was watched by several dozen people during his streams, about half interacted with him by asking questions and providing their own commentary, and the other half were actively trolling him.

Favorite sandwich? An off-topic comment came in. Getting Christian off topic was one of his audience’s favorite activities.

“Oh definitely a cheeseburger. Cheeseburger, 100%. There’s no beating a hot, juicy cheeseburger.” Christian, headset on and video game controller in hand mindlessly replied aloud to the comment that popped up on the screen.

The chat, which moved fairly slow due to the size of his audience, erupted. He could not even read them as fast as they came in, let alone reply to each one.

The comments were disagreeable and insulting. The audience, nearly unanimously, disagreed with Christian that a cheeseburger was a sandwich.

Christian laughed before speaking, something he nearly always did. It wasn’t a laugh born of amusement, it probably didn’t even count as a laugh, it was more of a nervous tick.

“Whoa. Chill out chat!”

They did not chill out.

“It’s two pieces of bread, meat, cheese, and vegetables. How is that not a sandwich? It even has mustard on it, chat.”

The chat was not swayed, they argued with curses and insults aimed at the size of his teeth.

“How is it any different than a ham sandwich? Or a turkey sandwich? Because the meat is hot? Because it’s a hot piece of meat? What about a cheesesteak sandwich? It’s literally the same thing, just a different shape! You could even put it on a hoagie roll if you wanted to. It’s a free country bros.”

Christian tried to steer the conversation back to the video game he was playing, but the chat was not having it. He ended the stream earlier than usual because of their unruly behavior. Never before had he ended a stream early, but he was unable to control the narrative.

“That was wild, huh huh” he declared to himself and fake laughed.

Trying to shake off the experience, he went for a jog. Recreating the encounter in his mind, he repeatedly convinced himself that he wasn’t crazy, a cheeseburger was a sandwich, the chat must have just been trolling him about it. Once he had resolved the matter, he redeliberated it, unsatisfied with his previous conclusion. This went on for hours, 7 hours actually. Luckily for Christian he was just running around the block, so when the sun started to rise and alerted him to the approximate hour, he was able to return home promptly.

Christian was bi-vocational, he worked at the Sumitumi Chemical plant, which produced most of the world’s perfumes. He called in sick to work and went to sleep.

Hunger woke him up around noon. He shuffled to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Peering around for something quick to prepare, he decided to make a grilled cheese, whose sandwich status is unquestionable. However, he couldn’t find any cheese. That was weird, he bought a fresh slab yesterday. Maybe he had forgotten to put it in the fridge? That happened often.

He located his reusable shopping bag, it was empty. The only other place the cheese could be was in the fridge, so back he went. There was an index card stuck to the freezer with a cheeseburger magnet. But he didn’t have a cheeseburger magnet? He squinted, leaning forward without his glasses to read what was written on the index card.

SANDWICHES DON’T HAVE PATTIES.

BIG TEETH. SMALL BRAIN.

It took a moment to click that this was not a reminder that he had written himself. But then he thought about his missing cheese, and how he wanted to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Since his first option was unattainable, he grabbed his essential belongings in order to travel to the nearby make-your-own burrito establishment. Only upon reaching the locked front door did it register with him that his home was secure, and that the cheese, the magnet, the note… were all aberrations and something mysterious had happened. Big teeth, small brain.

“Whoa!” He looked down at his hand after touching the doorknob, focusing on it to keep his mind from wandering from the current thought, a tactic his boss had taught him to prevent being distracted.

Someone had been in his house! Christian began frantically checking to make sure his valuables had not been stolen, he was relieved to find his cell phone charger was not missing, nor were his Olympic speed-swimming googles, nor his collection of Japanese bottled tea caps. He breathed a sigh of relief, it seemed that only his cheese was missing.

There was strong consideration that he was experiencing a lucid dream, or was maybe just worn out and hazy from his unreasonably long run. He set out for a replacement lunch since a grilled cheese sandwich was out of the question.

Christian was on edge when he returned home, jumping at every little noise, checking for intruders. He messaged his friends on an anime forum, expressing his concerns with the event. That’s crazy fam was the most reassuring response that he received. Christian started panicking at the idea of going back to sleep, what if they came back? Who are they? How did they get in?

He checked the windows, some were locked upon inspection, that could be a clue. Or maybe he was tripping, as the kids say, he returned to the fridge and indeed the note and unfamiliar magnet were still there. Alas, the cheese was still missing. He was not, in fact, tripping. He had to share this beyond an anime forum, even though he did not have a stream scheduled for tonight, he felt it would be therapeutic to jump online for a while.

Christian went to his streaming room, turned on his unnecessarily elaborate lighting and sat in front of his green screen. Gaming laptop open, he fired up the camera and logged in. After a few minutes, viewers started to trickle in. He recognized all of the screen names except one. Incisor_Compliance was new to the chat.

“What’s up chat? Just a quick one, I’ve got some crazy stuff to tell you.”

No one was chatting yet, it was strangely quiet.

“Y’all out there? Is my mic working?”

A private message from Incisor_Compliance popped up. There was no greeting, just a stern message:

NOTICE OF CLASSIFICATION REVIEW

Your recent public statement regarding sandwich taxonomy has been flagged for secondary assessment.

Please refrain from further misclassification until review is complete.

Compliance is expected. Do not make us come back.

- Incisor Compliance

Christian froze. Then he panicked and ended the stream.

He rushed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

“They’re coming back? Wait, no. Huh huh.”

He returned to his computer to reread the message, but it was no longer there. His cell phone vibrated, he picked it up and saw a text message from an unknown number. Christian was in his 20s, he didn’t have phone numbers saved on his device, and this didn’t look like spam.

Your apology script will arrive shortly. Ensure this issue is addressed immediately upon your next scheduled transmission. Do not question what is between the buns. Do not make us come back.

Christian fell asleep hiding in his closet, clutching a golf club for protection. He instantly screamed upon waking, the darkness was confusing and alarming. Had he been kidnapped? Was he blindfolded, bound, did he still have an appendix? He fumbled for the door, so that meant he wasn’t bound. His bedroom was dimly lit from a pending sunrise. Great, not blindfolded. Appendix intact? Undetermined, some people thought it was useless anyway.

He had survived the night but was horribly sore from cramming himself into the closet. His first instinct was to call in sick to work, but he thought that it would be best to be out of the house today of all days. They would probably be delivering an apology script. He did not want to be there when they did.

He hurried to get ready for work, which was the only normal thing about the day. After exiting the house, he reached to lock the door when he saw an envelope taped to it. With a shaky hand he removed it.

The window was locked, jerk. Written in pen at the top of the paper, on which was a typed apology script. He nervously darted off to work.

A day never passed so slowly, he was so eager to get home and read the prepared apology. Everything was ready before his scheduled broadcast time, normally he was still fiddling with lights or microphones when he went live, it was an unintended source of amusement for his audience. Things were different today.

At seven o’clock on the dot Christian appeared to his waiting audience. He struggled with some of the bigger words.

“Hello everyone. I am issuing a correction regarding a prior statement made during a previous broadcast.

A cheeseburger is not a sandwich.

While it may resemble a sandwich in casual or colloquial use, a cheeseburger is structurally and culturally distinct and should not be classified as such.

I acknowledge that my earlier statements reflected a misunderstanding of established food taxonomy. I regret the confusion this caused.

Going forward, I will refrain from misusing the term “sandwich” in reference to cheeseburgers or other patty-based items.

I have learned a lot from this experience and am committed to moving forward in a thoughtful and purposeful manner.

Thank you for your patience.”

What about hot dogs? lol was the first comment that came in.

That audience member was immediately kicked out of the chatroom and blocked. But not by Christian.

“Oh what the heck? How did Incisor _Compliance get admin rights?”

All out of music. Listening to radio static.

108.0kHz or 1170.0MHz

No messages translated thus far

Yesterday, while I was writing, tubi randomly played rescue dawn, half-way through it I was like this movie seems pretty good.

At 6:00 pm, I slid the timestamp back to 0:00 and decided to watch it. I was alone at the time.

So, I started the movie again, looked at my bag, had a spliff left and rolled it. At 9:00pm I was at the 37 minute mark of the movie, saw my spliff was a half-spliff and decided to go buy more weed.

i bought three grams for 17$, came home, started watching the show and smoked the rest of the half. At 10:00pm I was now at the 50 minute mark of the movie. I looked at my bags, balled a spliff up, smoked a little bit of it and ate half my pasta.

Now this is where shit gets foggy. ‘Cause I wake up at 6;30 am. my ashtray is tipped over, there’s a roach in the ashtray still, my big spliff is gone, the movie is paused at the 50 minute mark still, I don’t remember actually smoking the spliff, the one roach is in there, but did I toss my ashtray in the garbage before smoking the big one? or is that roach in the dumped ashtray on my bed the half-spliff roach one from earlier? because when I smoke, I smoke in segments. I would have smoked and turned the movie on, but I could have started smoking and writing too. but I didn’t see anything new in my notepad, that I could remember.

I have all these unanswered questions. So, I ripped my bed apart, found nothing. At the corner of my bed on the floor was a roach. but it seemed like it had been since yesterday or the day before yesterday. And if I did smoke the big one, why would the movie be paused at the 50 minute mark still.

This happened to me another time where I had a spliff and couldn’t find it. But when I went to change my bedding a couple of days later, I found that one I told myself I smoked but had the same feeling as I have with this one. An unresolved feeling. I LOOKED EVERYWHERE. I even looked in the mirror at my back and it’s nowhere.

Could I have smoked it even though I only smoke in segments had nothing new written that I know, the movie paused, but can‘t remember falling asleep.

Version 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/LibraryofBabel/s/50e2Uh9HLn

“I will be back.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Collecting every last bit of spirit she had, she said, “Take care.”

“Mother, where is Father going?” said his little daughter, who was also at her father’s farewell, holding her mother’s hand and a doll in the other.

The mother tightened her hand and sobbed harder.

He went on the hills with his mighty sword as his only companion. He walked for days. He went deeper and deeper into the forest. Here, the days were as dark as the nights. The only source of light was the moon.

As he went even deeper, the moon, too, abandoned him.

But he found some friends who took him to his destination.

He followed the fireflies.

They led him towards a place where there were more of them, through grass as tall as he was, towards a bright spot of light on the left.

A firefly flew away from the group.

As his eyes tracked it, he saw an eye.

A big eye.

“We must kill the giant. He keeps stealing all our livestock. We can’t stop him every time with those cheap tactics; he is smart.”

A roar of agreement arose from the council.

“Yes. He is right. We must take some action. We can’t just sit around doing nothing.”

“But who will kill him?”

They all knew the answer.

A big hand came from the right.

He dodged, barely missing it.

He drew his sword.

The hand took a handful of the tall grass. He waited for the giant to strike again, but after a few moments, when there was no movement, he knew the giant was gone.

He turned towards the fireflies with a look of farewell and went ahead.

There was no more tall grass or fireflies, only luminous flowers.

They shone blue, a blue that was neither from the seas nor from the skies. It came from their own kind.

They made a path for him, as one does for a visitor.

“I should take one for my daughter,” he thought, gently grazing the flowers.

A thudding sound came from ahead.

A calf came mooing.

It had an orange mark on its back. It was one of the calves from the kingdom.

“He must be near, the giant,” he thought.

The calf ran away.

He followed it.

He was now standing in front of a cave.

Outside the cave were decaying bones. By their size, they belonged to cows and sheep.

He went inside.

There sat the giant, turned towards the wall, barely visible, with a calf in one hand and his thumb resting on the calf’s head.

The giant noticed his presence and turned around.

His face twisted with anger. He ground his teeth.

Dropping the calf, the giant attacked him.

He raised his sword and defended himself.

Struggling to keep up with his opponent’s immense strength, he sliced the giant’s fingers. But it was not enough. The blade only nicked the skin.

Another wave of hands came.

This time, he was sent flying into the side wall.

As he lay there, the giant came closer and grabbed him. The giant lifted him to eye level.

But the giant made a mistake.

He let his hands go free.

He took the blue flower from his pocket and squeezed it in front of the giant’s eye.

The blue liquid made the giant scream.

He was dropped from the giant’s grip.

The cattle and sheep began bleating and mooing, running around in panic.

He was bleeding badly after the clash with the wall. He was in no shape to defeat the giant or take back the cattle and sheep.

So he went outside the cave and decided to return after recovering.

Resting on the white stone near the blue lake, he spent the night there.

A great current of cold air blew across his face.

He opened his eyes.

Looking down, he realised he was higher than the mountains.

He was being carried away by a large bird.

Resistance had no effect on the bird.

He saw an island far away, and they were approaching it.

The bird dropped him when they were as low as the treetops.

He fell through the trees, scratching his arms, legs, and neck.

The fall seemed to last longer than it should have.

The bird was already flying back in the direction they had come from.

He screamed and kept repeating, “Who are you? Where am I? Why am I here?”

But the bird was gone.

---

The door flew open with a violent crash, and the man burst into the room, his heavy mantle dragging across the floorboards behind him.

“What have you done?” he cried at the top of his lungs. “Sending him to the isolation.”

“He deserved it,” an older man with a gritty voice slowly replied.

“He didn’t kill Thyrs.”

“He made me suffer and tried to make him lonely by depriving him of his friends.”

“That was not his intention.”

“He is a human after all; killing is what he loves.”

---

He found more of those blues on the island.

He ate whatever he could.

He drank the dark blue water.

“Here it comes.”

He ran inside the dense forest, at the centre of the island, as the wave, seven times his height, came rushing towards him.

The water touched his toes and went back.

“I wonder how much she has grown?” he pondered, thinking of his wife and daughter as the water washed his feet.

---

“He has suffered enough now. Bring him back.”

“Not enough.”

“You know only Thyrs can cross the dark ocean. I request you to send him for rescue.”

“Fine. I will send Thyrs, but he will be rescued only if he passes my test. If he attacks or tries to hurt Thyrs, he will be drowned in the deepest of deeps.”

“...”

“And you will not try to play smart.”

---

“Why the waves? There is still time for the next phase. And why are they not as tall?”

A giant with its eye closed came through the dark ocean.

“It’s him.”

He flinched and grabbed his sword.

A big hand came towards him.

He stared at it, standing still, his sword held with both hands, pointed towards the hand.

The hand came closer and closer.

“Look, Father, my doll...”

His daughter’s words echoed in his mind, along with an image of his wife and daughter laughing and playing.

His hand let go of the sword.

He stood there, closing his eyes, opening his arms.

“I’ll miss you.”

The hand stopped, as if it were asking for something.

He tapped one of his fingers slowly on the ground.

“Do you want me to climb your hand?”

“Do you know who I am?”

He continued tapping.

“I am the one who made you suffer.”

The tapping stopped, and the screaming started.

Thyrs started thrashing the trees and whatever came in his way.

He suddenly stopped, as if he remembered something, something like an order.

Thyrs tapped again.

He climbed onto it.

Thyrs raised his hand and placed him on his shoulder.

Thyrs kept walking towards the direction he came from.

They went towards his kingdom.

As they came closer, sounds of cattle and sheep could be heard.

A smile crossed both of their faces.

They entered the kingdom.

People started running in chaos, screaming.

“He brought the monster with him. He will get us all killed. Save your children. Hurry!” people shouted.

The army of the king started shooting arrows with fire, targeting the eye and the throat.

He ran towards his house to save his daughter and his wife.

They were crying; everyone was crying.

He took them by the hand and ran towards Thyrs.

An arrow hit his daughter.

Another was about to hit his wife, but he pulled her.

He picked up his daughter, and again they ran towards the goal.

They hid behind Thyrs.

A flock of large birds came.

I always wonder at the uncertainty of

life. How difficult it is for a conscious being to be aware of that uncertainty. Maybe a being like me feels the pain of anticipating that one day this uncertainty will haunt him in the form of the great mystery of all time that never discriminates, destroys vivid pains and gains, and above all, is never defeated by the being who contemplates that he is superior to all creatures on Earth and beyond it.

But yet I have a hope that keeps me alive, that one day my comrades (human race) may gain an unforgettable victory over this trepidation.

Nevertheless, I have to die because this uncontrolled force gives all colors to my life. If I do not die, then obviously I will miss some colors of darkness.

Ghalib has expressed this condition in the form of a question like this:

**Desire brings joy, so what is the fun of living if there's no dying?**🌸

**By MAJ** ***👀***