in other news here is my dog

i love my dog. her name is Frankie. she is my best friend.

L

pathetic whimpering

i did something pretty stupid today. i couldn't sleep last night, even with all this in my veins, and i just kept thinking of Muad-Dib. so at about 0400 i wrote a letter to him. the handwriting was so shitty he probably won't even recognise it, on account of my hands shake at the best of times and it gets worse when i'm stressed. i'm not even sure what i said.

i guess the heart of it is that i still love him. i cannot forget that. his loss poisons me every day that i am still without him, like something inside my chest is rotting away. i find myself thinking that if i can't be by his side again, it would have been far better if i had never met him at all. i had never loved anyone before him - i told a few boys and a few girls that i did, but it was always the kind of situation where you're forced to say it back because they just did and you don't want to upset them, then you sort of come to believe that liking them is the same thing... then i ran into Muad-Dib and everything was different. i'd do anything to be back with him. it's fucked up but if he asked me to stab my dog in the heart, and then i could come back to him, i'd seriously consider it. my loyal, faithful Staffie dog, the best dog in the world, that tries to comfort me when i wake up yelling at night and licks my face if i cry, that i could take for a walk on the main roads without a lead if i wanted to because she sits down at every curb and waits for me to tell her it's okay to cross, that never disobeys a command, the best friend i have in meatspace - and i would probably murder that poor dog if it would bring back the man i loved. i'd give up decades of my lifespan. i'd let myself get sent to an asylum. anything. even after all the shit.

i don't have a clue if he would forgive me for depending on him for so long. he probably remembers months and months of him working, me doing nothing, him bailing me out each time i bought too much food and pushed my bank account into the infrared again. i was a massive drain on his finances. and because of my depression, i was close to catatonic for a lot of the time, which must have looked a hell of a lot like pure brazen laziness. like just basking in the free time, not having to work, getting while the getting was good. i will always regret that.

of course because i had been writing and thinking of him, the dreams were even worse last night. every so often i have this cruel dream that i'm with him; usually there's some surreal conflict going on, like this time he was choosing a woman to marry from a list. i screamed and begged and pleaded with him, as i've never done in waking life. "Just marry me!" i shouted. and he agreed. i was so fucking happy. just like the other times, he came back to me and took me in his arms, and i actually felt him hugging me and his hands in my hair, and everything was gonna be okay again, and then i fucking woke up and it wasn't true and once again there i was sobbing at six in the morning like a fucking fool. i still sent the letter.

all i can do now is try not to wait for any reply. i can't get my hopes up, because if i do and nothing happens, or worse, he replies and tells me he's found a real woman who's beautiful and sexy and has a nice clear sunshiny fucking mind, it will be like hearing him leave me all over again.

this has come about as a result of all the promotion of Valentine's Day, of course. i suppose all the bitterness sank into my brain until it vomited. i doubt it was a good idea to send anything - tomorrow he will in all likelihood either get drunk with his mates, all of whom i also miss, and go to a club and pull some pretty girl, or if he has already replaced me, he will be writing her a poem and giving her roses. i will be alone in the house (my parents will be having a nice dinner somewhere) with the dog. i will probably raid my dad's stash of cider, get wasted, feed cake to my favourite hen Steve McQueen (she may as well have a nice dinner too), and hopefully fall asleep without any fucking dreams.

fuck. what a pathetic screed. believe me, i would love to be able to "get over it" as common sense suggests. other forms of repair are progressing: i have been assessed by a psychiatric nurse and referred to a consultant psychiatrist who is coming to my house in a few days to see how fucked up i am; i have a stable if expensive source of medication from a prescriber who does not believe i am a lying crackhead; i have seen an orthopaedic specialist who has decided that my spine, while it is too curved, is not bad enough to qualify as "deformed" and therefore does not require surgery. i also need to thank everyone who has sent anything, be it money or food or anything else - it really, really does help, so thank you. on Valentine's Day, all of you who are happily ensconced in loving couples, maybe think about not snogging and giggling in front of your fucked up single acquaintances. throw us a fucking bone here.

L

begging hat

my sincerest apologies if i inadvertently appeared to be a scam by not claiming funds via PayPal - i forgot you had to do that. i cannot thank you all enough for flinging a few quid this way here and there (or a whole lot of quid, as it may be) - i literally have nothing right now and it's fucking amazing to suddenly have even a little bit of funds for food and fags. i am kind of a massive burden on my parents and it sucks to live in someone's spare room and not even be able to feed yourself.

on the benefits front, i duly applied, sent lots of data and got a nice letter in the post. dear hacker, we cannot pay you benefits. it doesn't even say why - under the "why" section it just says "we cannot pay you". i don't even know if i'm eligible for some other shit, or what - the guy on the phone sure as hell didn't think i was. i guess i'm gonna have to find a way into the nearest city to get to a physical job centre or something, i dunno.

emo or not, the colder it gets, the more i just miss Muad-Dib. i'd give up anything for a chance to be back with him.

the kindness of hackers

i feel pretty goddamn shitty. i'm still at my mum's - i'll be here until September 2014 at the earliest - and i'm still completely fucking broke. i have to ask my parents for food right now. some people have volunteered to help, so if you really want to, i have a paypal at a.mason.06@aberdeen.ac.uk. i also have a bank account (it contains minus 2K). if anyone wants to give me 2K so the bank will stop trying to take my blood, you go right ahead, sir or madam. if you wanna throw me a few quid i will happily give you the details by email or you can text me, my phone number is a few posts down i think.

i will also accept offers of free food, random parcels, pills, your unwanted Steam items and/or oldarse games, all that shit your ex-girlfriend left at your place six months ago when she moved out, grocery vouchers pilfered from your parents, and a few people have asked if it is okay to send christmas presents, which it definitely fucking is. anything you wanna send, you can send. i am too poor to be proud, i will eat anything that doesn't contain cheese or tomatoes (they make me throw up). (well, they make me throw up more.) pizza is OK. and second-hand clothes you don't want, i seriously love those. especially men's ones, which are way more comfortable and seem to be the only way to get jeans which are not skintight or hoodies that actually keep you warm or hats that do not look fucking stupid. i am incredibly easy to please.

my mum has given the green light for sending things to this address, it is:

21 Ashgrove
Thornbury
Bristol
BS35 2LH
England

the condition on that is that nobody comes to visit. i'm not exactly up for visits anyway and i think most of you are on the mainland or in the USA to boot. so knock yourselves out.

*jingles its begging hat*

unfortunately i do not currently have the space for that pony.

L

so i got four emails that were all like HEY YOU OUGHT TO GO SEE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO IT HAS YOU IN IT and i was like YEAH WHATEVER

seriously, non-hacker general public, please stop informing me about the existence of that film. i have read the original novels. they were poorly written and not particularly interesting to me. the worst thing is no one person repeats themselves when telling me i ought to go and see it; everyone genuinely means well, and doesn't realise how psychotic my conditioned response to so many repetitions of the same suggestion has become. it's not like the same people tell me over and over again.

why do i hate it that much? because everyone who has never met me or seen this place thinks that i took my personal image from a fictional character in a Swedish pulp crime novel. i was interviewed for a Norwegian newspaper and the guy wanted so badly for this to be true that he asked me three times whether or not i'd wanted to look like Lisbeth Salander before getting into looking fucked up.

to be honest, being compared to the character probably isn't great for me. she's the perfect hacker, assassin, lover and everything else despite her broken bird demeanour. she's played by two very beautiful actresses and from what i can tell the films just emphasise how short and cute and sexy she is. the hero falls in love with her, she saves the day alongside him and proves to the world how badass she is. then she goes off and lives to badass another day. i'm fucked up and insecure and neither an alternative supermodel nor a completely unstoppable genius (not saying i'm stupid, just that i can't hack the Gibson with three keystrokes and an insouciant remark.) it's a recipe for failure.

er, other news after the commercial break.

L

reinitialising

i got enrolled in University again for fourth year, which started Monday. i was actually pretty proud of myself for getting to the advising appointment and doing the whole registration thing without any fuckups other than being an hour late. it turns out being fucked up is considered a legit excuse for that, somehow. they said they'd make the bureacracy go away since i was "one of their best students", although i think i'm actually just one of their most easily recognised charity case students. i got to the classes then, but that night i took my pills too late and ended up playing RIFT on MD's account until half three. so today i slept through all three classes and so did he. i guess it could be worse.

i also don't have student loans sorted out yet. my mail keeps going MIA after people send it, never arriving at my place because of its unorthodox address - slightly fucking worrying as the loans people have/had my fucking passport. no word on if or how much money will be paid. October rent due date approaching rapidly, kinda shitting bricks here.

head has been a little better. intrusive thoughts have ceased for the time being. plus i actually have people i know in this year, so maybe i can have more than one friend, a housemate and a partner as my meatspace social circle now. doesn't really matter since you guys are better support than any "friend" i ever had irl, to be honest. apart from Feoa, who is beyond good to me, but she needs space and help just like i do - we can't constantly be relying on each other since that would make both of us worse.

i did get some decent Valium from some of my street friends, though, so i should be able to sleep better tonight. only ten of them but they're real this time and this time i'm not gonna pop all of them, get anteretrograde amnesia and spend four hours telling Muad-Dib how x shitty romance book hero i read about when i was thirteen is totally hotter than him.

yeah, i was fucked. i was trying to block out pain from removing an embedded test prototype in my wrist and man, that tissue doesn't like letting go of embedded shit once it gets a hold of it.

gonna go take a bath, go to bed at midnight like an old lady and see if i can sleep through Quiz Night. (0900 lecture tomorrow.) fucking pub. cc.

L

PS. went to wedding of MD's sister Saturday, was recognised by guy i'd never seen before who had found Berlin lecture and shown it to fifty of his repulsed employees. lulz.

prodding the corpse

hey, i think its eyes have rott - FUCK IT'S STILL ALIVE.

um, hi. you've probably forgotten about my sorry ass by now. have the fans all gone? is that guy who kept asking me to marry him still here?

i owe you all an apology for being away so long. lots of things happened; first there was the move, which was so fucking stressful i kept throwing up, and then trying to catch up with my honours year project, trying to get my application to repeat last semester approved and get repeat tuition fee support for it, trying to catch up with everything else i missed. there was a lot of serious head problems just after the move as well, plus fallout head-wise from the shit i did at Christmas. it still eats at me. then my finances crashed while we were moving, i got a phone call from the bank about how they needed £800 that day, and i had to use up every single penny i and my ma had, anywhere, just to stop them closing down my account. i'm still so broke i can't afford fuck all except rent. Muad-Dib is helping me get food. it's pretty much just potatoes, noodles and those frozen bags of discount meat you get at Farmfoods. i still owe my friend Feoa and Muad-Dib's dad for Berlin, my flatmate B for the massive electricity bill that came in when the boiler broke and my ma for helping me pay the deposit on the new place.

headspace got pretty corrupted this time around, as you can probably guess. i didn't try to end it this time; it makes me feel too guilty, on account of the life partner and family i'd have to leave behind, and the bupe sorta cushions the blow of a lot of those thoughts. i did completely shut down for everything but the Honours project, so i haven't even been answering my phone or checking my email, much less working on the experiments. i thank the gods of sedation that i had this shit in my veins that keeps me from going completely insane when my brain just falters and fails for months on end like that. i think i'd have succeeded at death a while ago if i didn't.

it's time to start again, again.

in my absence two places have been set up to document and plan the experiments: they are Biohack.me and SelfModifier. they were set up by people who read the blog, and i will be establishing myself on them tomorrow. it's going to be the day when i finally check emails, answer messages, make introductory posts, etc. and i promise no matter what kind of progress i do or don't make, every Saturday i will check in here and on those sites.

i tried on various people's advice to set up a Flattr. i'm still trying. my paypal broke when a payment from my bank got refused, and i think that might have broken the flattr as well.

also i had an invitation in January to go speak about H+ in Ireland; i may or may not actually do this, since i don't know if it's too late to accept or about travel funds and whatnot.

in the main, though, sorry. sorry for leaving you all for this long. sorry for not replying to your messages and emails and SMS. sorry for not being better with my finances so i have any money at all to do anything. mostly, sorry for fucking up.

i have an essay i'll post for you tomorrow about underground H+. it's a long-ass bastard (4K) but it's a fairly decent piece, i think, since i wrote it for a University course. it's 0354 now and i ought to go find something to make me sleep. i'm okay, but i'll be better when i get back into talking to people. g'night, sibs. carpe corporem.

L

new year's resolutions

i. never to read threads about myself on other websites
ii. to talk more with my family
iii. to try and set up some sort of Southpaw development space rather than keeping it here, since a blog isn't ideal anymore for the volume of people coming in

any ideas on the latter are welcome.

L

exam results

well, i fucked over my 1:1 average. bastard Languages and Computability class. results for this year, all out of 20 (18 or over is a first-class):

CS3008 OPERATING SYSTEMS 19
CS3015 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE 18
CS3017 ADAPTIVE INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS 19
CS3019 KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS 19
CS3514 ENTERPRISE COMPUTING 18
CS3517 DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS AND SECURITY 20
CS3518 LANGUAGES AND COMPUTABILITY 14

man, i would've had a perfect first if it weren't for the fact that i hate computability theory (by which i mean that i am shit at it). on the plus side i'm informed that most people got about a 5-7 on it... musta been pretty harshly marked, especially seeing as this is the year where we don't get to retake exams. if you get CAS 4 the first time, you can resit, sure. you get a 20 the second time and it still goes down as a 4 on your record, and that's what they use to determine your final degree class. you don't like it? fuck you, you can retake the entire year.

you know what's particularly lulzy about these results? i studied exactly once for each exam, the night before. sometimes i slept, sometimes i didn't; i just couldn't make myself do anything any earlier than that. depressive episodes are a cunt - or apparently, a magical blessing from the gods of depressed lazy assholes.

also lulz at the full marks in Distributed Systems and Security. HURR I AM A HAXOR DURR

L

things i have been doing today:

spinning on office chairs when nobody is around like a special child
lining up chips and PCB push buttons so they look like little creatures making a journey behind my keyboard to hunt for Penguin mints, which i then arranged them "eating"
swearing at electronic components i lack the finesse to pick up with my stubby little gimp fingers
stealing cola from the sports conference going on in our building

i am a mature, 22-year-old researcher in my field.

L

annoyances

so i have new ink coming up, my thirteenth, i think. if i wasn't universally fuzz-recognisable before, i sure as shit will be with an abstract arabesque and a ritual kris around my right eye socket... i've been painting abstract crap on there for months, anyhow, so it's not like anyone won't have seen it before. i'm pretty sure the only adverse reactions will come from my roommate, who's not often exposed to this sort of thing, and my mother, who will like as not take a tissue out, gob on it and try to use it to wipe the tattoo off my face as if i was seven and covered in Twix. upon finding out that it consists not of suspiciously skilfully applied face paint but subdermal pigmentation, i expect she'll hit me pretty fucking hard... c'est la vie.

i suppose i can always pretend i fell asleep in the studio and sue the shit out of my tattooist.

regardless, another reason for me never to have a real job. whilst waiting around for my preview of the final design in the studio, however, i overheard a few things - nothing new, but the red lens of my medication makes me want to kill people who say stupid things these days. this includes, but is not limited to, the following:

- So what are you, some sort of Goth?
- (speaking to the poor tattooist) I want a [heart/angel/star/rose/fairy/hideous rendering of my child's likeness which will lead to her disowning me in the future just to stop being associated with it/bad Latin phrase which will make Lepht froth at the mouth with the effort of not correcting my awful uninformed grammar/misspelled English cliche/football logo].
- I want one like [celebrity].
- Have you got a pattern book? [it says 'custom studio' on the door...]
- Aw, is this your first tattoo? [because it's not like i look about thirty-five and haggard as hell, besides being covered in ink, or anything.]
- Ha ha, you look rough, son. [i know.]
- I wanted [x], but my ma will only let me have [y], could you draw that? [why would you have something you don't really want drawn on you, for fuck's sake?!]

yeah i pretty much lose all rationality while i'm adjusting to new meds.

L

pardon my dust

sorry for the posting delay, peeps. it'll be kinda sporadic for a while; they just took me off one of my psych meds and it's gotta clear my system completely before they put me on the next kind. thus, for three weeks i'm kinda screwed, being without the shit that usually keeps me from doing things like opening my arms to the bone to watch myself bleed for shits and giggles, or delivering swift left hooks to people who annoy me in the supermarket.

i'll still be around, and i'll do my best to answer emails as usual. i'll try very hard not to kill myself (it would probably piss RU Sirius off).

L

ps. also minor surgery yesterday, in which i learned that the only State-approved implant i have was doing jack shit, since it does the same thing as our regular contraception... i gotta say, having things cut out of me with anaesthesia is fucking worse than cutting the fucker out myself.

what do you want, Lepht, a fucking medal?

i was informed today that i won an honest-to-goddamn medal, the University's "Quincentenary Prize". you know what comes with the medal? a fucking grand, awarded "on a basis of academic merit, personal qualities and needs". they had to pick one person to give this fucker to out of all of the schools of sciences, engineering and medicine, and it was me. that's awesome, if kinda fucked up.

translated: Hey Anonym - you're poor, right? Well, we feel sorry for your crippled, Government-subsidised ass. Have a medal. And get a suit at Primark for the award ceremony, will you, you fucked-up little cueball.

upshot: free rent for a couple months, and whenever anyone asks me "what do you want motherfucker, a medal?" i'm gonna flash that bitch like it was a fuzz badge.

all of this only lends more weight to my hypothesis of being incarcerated, heavily medicated and just making all this up to fool myself into thinking my life is awesome.

L

i'm retired from the human race

due to the diligence of my newfound readership (hat tip Ian), you can find my queer ass on an obscure YouTube video from last year, hosted under my nasty ex-partner's account. it's about how to insert nodes on the back of your hand, which tbh is a pretty worthless procedure, but someone (i forget) asked me for video.



or you can find it at said abusive's account. bear in mind i haven't spoken to him in a year, so i don't want anyone going all OMG UR EX SENT ITS ARMY HERE CUZ YOUR A CUNT. he is a cunt, but that's beside the point; i was a cunt while we were together as well, albeit less so.

enjoy, marvel, speculate on what the fuck that is on the back of my wrist.

L

good news, everyone:

the new node appears to be taking, with the help of a hefty daily dose of flucloxacillin just to be sure (i heart the NHS.) additionally, that nice little motto you see under the blog's title is the lyrics to the chorus of wetware by the excellent Johnny Mo, a hermit-genius culture buddy of mine; it's now on my left arm, in a rather nice circuit-board design. i have therefore been entirely drained of both bodily fluids and cash.

also i have been watching the blog search stats, and i'm curious as to why certain gentlemen from the States keep asking my Lijit wijit if i am gay. i'm not, as it happens; i'm bisexual. it is, of course, entirely irrelevant to transhumanism as a whole whether i sleep with men, women or both.

thankyou and goodnight.

L

so i heard you guys like fiction

okay, i am not dead yet. soon i'll be writing either an article for h+, if i'm lucky, or a post here, if i'm not, about the ethics, legality and processes of self-surgery. in the meantime here's a piece of fiction called "tea". i wrote it a while back, but maybe some of y'all would like it.


tea
Lepht Anonym
23.04.09

Cherry stares at his earlier text-file notes through a haze of purloined codeine, the pills themselves long gone and the holder of the rest of the stash out of reach for good. "How the fuck you s'posed to grind stuff without a mortar'n'pestle?" he asks the half-deduced recipe, regretting again that he threw the pestle at a yowling cat outside his kitchen window three weeks ago and gave the mortar to the thing that lives upstairs the month before, when said bizarre neighbour inexplicably appeared at seventeen minutes past four outside his bedroom, requesting in his well-spoken way that Cherry lend him a non-metallic bowl.

He's way too nice for his own good sometimes. He's gotta stop being so nice.

Google reveals nothing, except sites where you can buy brand-new shiny mortars and pestles, none of which Cherry can afford. Hell, he can't afford to reconnect his own broadband line; he's stuck hijacking half the pathetic bandwidth of downstairs' ancient WEP setup, much to his annoyance and the bewildered chagrin of the lower floor. He's gonna be so screwed when they finally figure out what's going on. Cherry sighs, and goes back to the kitchen cupboards; retrieving the best alternative to the mortar and pestle a life in the City's patchwork slums can come up with (the mixing-bowl and shot glass) he empties a bag full of khaki dust that he's been trying to grind up with a rolling pin out over the bowl, and sets to mashing it against the pale china with the side of the glass, muscles complaining as the pliant fragments refuse to comply with his efforts.

"Hello?" he calls as he hears the door creak, expecting some drinking buddy, maybe Tommie with sake, and recoils. "Gah, fuck!"

His upstairs neighbour has drifted quietly into the kitchen, proffering a handful of thick stoneware fragments that once were Cherry's ex-wife's Italian mortar. "I'm afraid I broke your bowl," he apologises in his half-whispered, drug-addled monotone, and deposits them reverently on the introductory electronics textbook that sits open on the counter. "It was less... sturdy than I assumed it to be. Sorry." He sinks, cross-legged, to the grimy tiles and stares up at Cherry with hollow, dulled green eyes, snuffling the dust in the air and adding, "If you're trying to make a Papaverum somniferum infusion, by the way, you're doing it badly. You can't grind it like that, for a start."

Cherry glares at the interloper, annoyed but not surprised after so many years of living here. The block is essentially communal and such intrusions are common, if not this late. "Who are you again?"

"They call me the Saint."

"And Saint, what the fuck are you doing sitting on my kitchen floor?"

"I'm instructing you on how to better brew morphine tea... assuming that's what you're trying to do," Saint's eyes focus upwards on the cupboard door behind Cherry's head, "and not making oregano pasta sauce or some such idiocy. In addition," and he leans forward on his elbows with a slightly unstable air, gaze scanning over the detritus that clusters on every surface in here, "I'm refraining from asking you impolite questions about where you got the somniferum straw, or what's causing you enough pain to risk synthesising Class A drugs when you've left your front door open."

"You're some kind of crazy. I knew it." Cherry narrows his eyes and mentally prepares for another nonsensical fight with another of the block's cadre of meth-addled nutjobs. "Always with the crazies in my block. Go on home, Saint."

"Quite," nods the Saint in agreement with the insult, ignoring the order to leave. "The mental health profession do disagree on exactly what's wrong with me, though. When they can be bothered to see someone with as much negative finance as myself," he smiles, parenthetically. "And they ignore that anything's wrong at all when it comes to getting their fix." His half-focused eyes travel distractedly to the empty bookshelf, the dangling unfixed locks on the window, the dirt-soaked mat in front of the sink, and his expression takes on a tinge of mirth.

He doesn't leave. Cherry goes back to brutalising the poppy straw, and eventually the bedraggled little figure rises and wanders away.

When he wakes up with his cheek smushed against the keys of his laptop and a strange, not unpleasant scent invading his nostrils, the room looks... cleaner. It is cleaner. Beyond the cleared, wiped surface of the table, he can see his recipe books and reference texts have all been put neatly back on their shelf, ordered by subject. Did he do that? The one spare blanket he owns is now covering the ripped back padding of his sofa, joined by four puffy, comfortable-looking cushions from fuck knows where, all lit by a thin shaft of orange streetlight from the open window. The sink is devoid of dirty dishes, freshly bleached. It must be nearly dawn, he realises, because a soft drift of birdsong is infiltrating the room on the night air. More of the little chirping voices join in every few minutes.

"Unh, shut 'em up..." Cherry peels his face off the keyboard. The floor has been swept, the work surfaces wiped. His ashtray has been emptied. There's a fresh bag in the bin, and a fragrant pot of chai tea billowing steam into the air beside him, and a battered candle in an old jam jar burning on the counter. Cherry feels like a slumhead Sara Crewe.

"What the fuck?" he mumbles. "Tommie? Did you lot clean up in here? Where's this stuff come from?" Did he already take that crap he was trying to make and it just broke his brain? What's the point of a painkiller if it's gonna do that? He coulda just Rohypnol'd himself
.
"I had some things spare... An apology, since I broke your bowl." Cherry's shoulders jump at the deadpan voice from behind him, where the Saint, barefoot on the dirtless floor in his ancient fatigues, with the sleeves of his once-white jersey rolled up to the elbows, is stirring something in one of Cherry's dented aluminium cooking pots. Oh fuck, he thinks, this guy's some sort of stalker. Now he's going to think you owe him, and he's gonna take your liver as payment or something. Why don't you ever lock your fucking front door, you fool.

"Is... that why you're called the Saint? Doing this kinda thing?" ventures Cherry, unsure if he's about to be stabbed with his own wooden spoon or served cream of chicken soup. He means it as a distraction, a ruse while he looks around for his knife, but the Saint's easy posture and the air of relaxed, naive friendliness that surrounds him are disarming. "'Cause... thanks."

"Yeah, it's that," says his new chef, "and it's also because I'm the source of most of the narcotics around this district. If you're addicted to morphine, anyone who delivers it is a saint to you," he points out with a twinge of regret, and swirls the contents of the saucepan about. "But it started off when I used to bring people food." He looks up, remembering something. "Sorry about invading your kitchen like this, by the way... but you were really going to mess this batch up, and it's very good straw, very well-prepared. A shame to waste it." He scrapes around the inner edges of the pot with the spoon, tapping the handle on the side to flick the scrapings back into the boiling liquid. "Nowadays, I'm something resembling a dealer, but once I was just a young man trying to do his peeps some good. I'd give this another four or five minutes if I were you."

Cherry nods placatingly, still not really awake enough to follow anything the Saint, with his barely-audible voice like an Eton schoolboy permanently hooked to an opium pipe, can say. He's heard enough words like peeps and bring people food and source of narcotics to figure out that the Saint, rather than turning out to be a psychopathic killer, is more likely to be pathologically charitable, and definitely not on the opposite side of the law to Cherry and company. "Mhm. What exactly are you cooking? Did your oven break or something, cause you could've just asked -"

"I'm steeping your poppy straw, like I said. Wasn't that what you wanted?" The Saint turns to face him, and the hollows beneath his eyes are arresting despite his smile. He's one of the palest people Cherry's ever seen, with Caucasian skin that's bleached out like an albino's, the little holes in the backs of his hands and those bruised pits looking even worse against the pallor. "I'll dry it back out if you weren't going to use it yet."

"No, no, I was trying." Cherry holds his hands up like a hostage. "Listen, I don't really need any more help, but thanks for cleaning up. I'll bring you a few beers when I'm done tonight. Thanks," and he stands up, expecting the Saint to amble out with his odd junkie grace.

Instead, his new friend points to the pot and beams widely, a genuinely warm grin that looks misplaced between the gaunt cheekbones and the blemished skin, lighting up his eyes so they almost look normal. "Do you actually know what to do with this now that I've cooked it?" he asks, almost playfully. (Can crackheads be playful? wonders Cherry.)

"Well, I've read the wiki."

"I wrote most of that, but I left a few things out. The users have probably filled in the gaps by now." The Saint holds out the spoon in a conciliatory gesture. "If you can do it, I won't intrude any further."

Cherry wrinkles his lower lip. "Fine, you do it."

"I can stay?" Another alien smile.

"Yeah - wait, you can chill here while you cook, you can hang here, but you can't live here." Cherry is struck by a wave of irrational suspicion. "I'm not trading drugs for living space, this is my house, damn it."

"I have a home," the Saint says carelessly, looking at Cherry over his shoulder. "I live on the floor above you, have done for years."

He knew that. Damn, he's out of it. He's obviously been under for a while. The Saint picks up the pan with no regard for the heat it must be radiating, carrying it over to a cup on the work surface on Cherry's left, on whose rim an unfamiliar object - a tiny fine sieve with two scratched wooden handles - is perched.

"I shan't keep the recipe a secret from you," he reassures Cherry in his conspiratorial whisper. "I'm not Betty Crocker... First of all, you don't really need to be grinding it, especially not with straw like this - it's already been ground fine enough that you can just throw it into a few centimetres of water. Let it steep at about sixty degrees for a couple hours, and always add a few shakes of lemon juice, don't forget, because the pH needs to be low..." He looks at his host to see if Cherry is following, oblivious to the fact that although his eyes are open, the veteran is essentially still asleep. "A lower pH makes for a better morphine yield. Anyway, my tea strainer is yours to borrow anytime you need it," and he pours the sludge from the pan, now turned a greyish mud-brown, into the little mesh strainer, compressing it down with a teaspoon. It takes him a while to push all the fluid out of the wire basket, and the resulting cup of brown liquid looks anything but appealing. Its thick organic scent, tart like dung and not entirely distasteful, hangs around the Saint like a cloak as he brings it over. "Here you are."

"You sure this stuff is even gonna work?" mutters Cherry as the Saint places the teacup, carefully like some underworld maitre-d', in front of the still-steaming teapot. Its own gases rise and mingle with the pot's cloud. "I didn't pay very much for it."

"Of course. Papaverum somniferum," shrugs the Saint, as if that even approximates an explanation. Cherry looks at him vacantly. "The root of all opium," he clarifies. "It made the Victorian opium dens what they were and it got the Persians high enough for surgery; it makes the heroin people get from me, and those rubbishy codeine pills that you buy at the chemist's, and the morphine they pump into people in the State hospitals instead of antibiotics. East is east," he smiles. "It's all Greek to me."

Cherry chews at the inside of his lip warily, heaves his head off the table again, stares into the brown stuff. He sniffs it and recoils as a stronger wave of the tangy smell hits his nasal membranes - exactly how much lemon juice has gone into this shit? - and then, with the same instant resolve that made him take this apartment years ago and join the Army a decade before that, he lobs it down his throat.

"Jesus!" He coughs and spits a fragment of stalk away, fishing another out from under his tongue. "God, that is fucking disgusting. Augh."

The Saint puts the half-full, mostly solidified bag of sugar back where he found it, in the back of the cupboard that houses microwave chips, Yum Pax toaster pastries, extra-caffeinated instant espresso and cornflakes, items which compose the majority of Cherry's diet. "You can sweeten it before you... never mind."

"Fuck it. Whoo," Cherry shakes his head as the tea slides into his stomach. "Strong stuff."

"I told you it was a good batch. Thankyou for letting me help."

Cherry raises an eyebrow, but ignores his doubt that anyone would possibly thank people for letting them help with chores. "Sure. Any time." At least he doesn't have to do it.

"Really?" The Saint looks hopeful, and Cherry wonders how many people invite this wasted little dealer into their houses without wanting drugs. What do saints do in their spare time?

"Yeah, come for a beer whenever you want. You saved my ass," he gestures to his creaking back, and to the invisible damage inside his chest from the gas they don't tell recruits about. "Y'welcome here anytime, Saint."

A slow, lopsided smile creeps over the drug synther's face. "Honestly?"

"Sure."

"Then what do I call you, amico mio?"

"Lieutenant-Corporal Martin B. Chandrasekhar, son... but most people stick with just Cherry." He grins back. "Can't be arsed with that regiment shit any more, if I'm honest." The opiate tea is starting to kick in, and his slurring becomes progressively more apparent as he speaks. He drags himself out of the chair and around the table, slumping onto the sofa with relish.

"No ranks amongst scum," observes the Saint as he moves. "We're all just sitting down for a cup of tea."

"Cup of tea," agrees Cherry as his eyes start to close. He's asleep before he can say it again.

[EOF]


thus ends another round of public humiliation. whoop.

L

public humiliation time!

sometimes i get fucked up and morbid and it leads to me writing whiny-ass pieces in lectures instead of taking notes. i'm sure it looks like i'm taking really fucking good notes, though. anyway here's the piece i wrote in Knowledge-Based Systems today while Dr. Kollingbaum was talking about backward chaining in Jess (awkward); it's called "doll", and it's about biohacking, in the sense of the word that i don't use. assume it's set at some unknown time in the future, like most of my crap. and ignore the wangst; it spills out into the text editor so that it doesn't stay in my head. i'm not actually this emo in real life.


doll
i am a morbid, morbid motherfucker
Lepht Anonym 30.11.09
-------------------------------------

He can't sleep without his doll. That's fucked up, and he knows it. Close to necrophilia, closer to obsession or maniacal grief. It's just a doll now; no more sentience, no more talk, but he still needs it. He talks to it sometimes anyway, even though it won't hear. Those fuckers. He still tells it he loves it, gives it those little showers of kisses it used to laugh at. It says nothing. It sits.

Those fuckers. He's almost traced them, doesn't know any more how much time and money he's invested in making the contacts to do it and bribing the ISP and trading the guy upstairs drugs to teach him how to work the black wares. It's become all he knows, and it won't make the doll into a sentient being again, but it will make him feel better. Sometimes, like the doll itself, he doesn't feel anything at all.

He kisses its cheek, thirteen years' habit, as he climbs out of bed - it sits up in reaction to his absence, his stomach doing its familiar barrel roll before he tells himself for the thousandth time that that's just the basic functionality of the shell activating. Looks into its slack face to make sure. Sees its dead eyes and turns away sick to the screen. Almost there. Almost there. Those fuckers.

Do they even know? Do they ever feel guilty? Do they give a fuck that they killed the only person he depended on?

Of course they know. They do it for fun. And why should they care? It wasn't their love. They didn't technically murder anyone. They just threw some commands to a botnet drone that happened to sit inside his partner's favourite coffee shop. They didn't even manually spread the infection. Just programmers, showing the world their skills. Clever programmers proving the weaknesses in modern technology. Those fuckers.

He turns back to the bed. It's still sitting there; the urge to smash it rises again, throw the lightweight shell out of the window and watch it be crushed by the trains below or fried on the rails, but he can't move his limbs. It still looks like his life partner. It's still wearing a medical bracelet and the T-shirt that smells like cigarettes long gone. Like it could light up any minute, speak again, make one of their stupid injokes or yell "Psych!" and start cackling. Its head lolls. The deep blue eyes stare at the whirls on its blanket.

He doesn't know what he'll do when the trace completes. He knows it won't be legal. He cradles the doll's limp torso tight.

[EOF]

zen and tau

i have no idea where i got the idea that the Greek letter tau represents the concept of oneness (Dune?) but those two little one-syllable mantras have been revolving around my head all fucking day. this is, obviously, because i am a fuckup whose zen and tau have gone out the fucking window.

i'm trying incredibly hard not to be self-pitying here. i have free meds, on a state healthcare plan (albeit one that makes me wait to see the fucking doctor until the receptionists have gone home and the cleaners are hoovering around my sorry ass, i shit you not) and i've yet to go completely psychotic. plus, they seem to be keeping the acid flashbacks down. but i'm really not having fun with these fuckers. i missed a lot of important shit today. my sense of calm has fucking vanished.

zen, tau, it'll all come back. i'm just kinda fucked until it does.

L

drivel

the pseudo-novel now boasts close to 30K words of drivel about a dead priest in Hell. some are pressing me to get it published, although i doubt its calibre is high enough not to be used as kitty litter by any respectable publishing house; in any case, i will let you junkheads decide by posting bits of it once the first draft is completed.

in other news, yes, 240mg of codeine will fuck you up, Google-searching drug-quester, unless you're like me and you're already fucked up. the codeine by itself wouldn't be so bad, but it's probably cocodamol, and you're talking 16g of paracetamol there, which your liver DOES NOT WANT.

interestingly, paracetamol is one of the most hepatotoxic compounds we prescribe to patients nowadays, as i learned from my biomedical buddy. i bleev it's one of those drugs that wouldn't pass modern safety guidelines, although that might be an urban myth. i have a lot of those stuck in the lobes.

end drivel. expect Mask excerpts sooner or later.

L

w00t

unconditional acceptance to the University's Honours programme. score three for Blofeld.