A neural inhibitor is really a remarkable little piece of technology. It's based on the principle that any and all signals travelling through the human nervous system are electrical in nature. That's not really totally true, but given the choice of interfering in the nice long nerves or the teeny tiny hard-to-reach synapses where chemicals are used instead of voltage, it's an easy decision. The point is, a neural inhibitor can be fitted snugly around someone's neck and, by running an uncomfortable amount of electricity into their flesh, you can block the signals that are supposed to be moving up and down. A really high-class model will even let you selectively block different tracts within the spine; send interference through the front of the spine but not the back and you deprive someone of motor control without any annoying anaesthetic effect which might limit their appreciation of, for example, torture.
       Inconveniently, enough of my spine is still organic that these things work just fine on me.
       So here I sit, not even tied into place. It's a comfortable enough chair, and a very nice room with real wood paneling and the faint scent of sandalwood to the air, but I have trouble appreciating it what with the whole oh-gods-I-can't-move thing going on. I've read all about neural inhibitors over the years, and I've eve stuck them on other people from time to time -- they're effective, but anybody who's got enough stubborn will can break through them. With a high-end model, it just takes a lot of will.
       In comic books, when the heroes need to summon up that last reserve of will and strength to escape dire situations, they do things like yell the names of their loved ones. Unfortunately, I'm not currently seeing anyone. I don't think I'd be able to throw off enough of my dignity to yell their name right now anyway, inhibitor or no inhibitor.
       I will move my legs, I tell myself, and strain. There's an electric zap at the base of my neck, and I yelp, my autonomic nervous system still working just fine through the inhibitor. I can still move everything above my neck at will, and I indulge in my ability to move my jaw and produce swear words.
       I'm *supposed* to be immune to these sorts of devices, although of course, "supposed to" is another one of those funny phrases. There's precious little organic matter left within my spinal cord after all the upgrades I've been through. The Guard replaced most of my spinal cord with a neurofilamentous nanonet wetware, which is technobabble for "we wired together a million tiny computers and stuck them into your back." The downside is that some of my less-essential reflexes don't work and I get a nasty backache in cold weather even years later. The upshot is that I can process data and move my body at something approaching six times normal human speed if I really need to, and I can also store my music collection in my... *ahem*... sacrum. According to the sales brochure that the goggle-heads gave me, I'm supposed to be immune to neural disruption because the wetware is heavily shielded and loaded with redundant backups. In practice, every bit of augmetic that I've got in my body was paid for by the government, and that means they went with the lowest bidder wherever possible. So yes, if you asked, my mechanics would assure you that I couldn't possibly be affected by the device which is, at this moment, attached to my neck and preventing me from moving.
       I think about the techspecs and try to get angry. Getting angry is the other trick characters in movies and fictional always use when they have to summon their will. I can't really get angry at the losers who bought my wetware, though, since most of its so damn cool that it's easy to imagine a few sub-par devices slipping through. I give it my best shot, though.
       I will move my legs. I will move my legs. Ow.
       It could be worse, I suppose. The scum who caught me must've spent a good ten minutes trying to pry open my mask -- one of the few pieces of equipment that the bosses must've paid top dollar for. They put some nasty scratches in the mirror finish of the faceplate but they couldn't get it open, and they must have chosen not to try smashing or crushing only because they want to ask me some pointed questions when they've got the time. For the moment, therefore, I'm still anonymous, and more importantly, my head is sitll armoured against whatever they want to use against me. The mask's audio pickups allowed me to know that when he was leaving, one of the henchlings left a canister of some sort in the room, and my vomeronasal sensor is what tells me it's some kind of volatile sodium pentathol derivative, but I've got better than three hours of air supply in this thing on top of my air scrubbers, so a little bit of aeorosol truth serum is the last of my worries right now. I know exactly where I am in their building thanks to my internal mapper, and since most of the controls inside here with me are operated by laser-read eye movements and two tongue-switches in front of my mouth, I'm not even prevented from acessing it by the neural inhibitor. Hell, if I wanted to, I could be watching a movie in here right now. Priorities, though... if I want to live to watch another film, priority one is getting out of this chair.
       I imagine a crowbar hitting my mask, the sound of powered armour cracking beneath repeated impacts, and all the other things I may look forward to if I'm still sitting here when the henchlings get back. My heart monitor beeps to warn me that my pulse is rising a few BpM, but I can't even manage to elicit any serious worry, not when I've swam in hard vacuum in this getup. They'll need industrial cutting tools to get my mask off of me. Still, for all I know, that's what they've gone to go get.
       I *will* move my legs. I *will* move my legs. Ow.
       Unlike my helmet, which is almost entirely manually operated (it has to be removable, so there's only so much of it that can be hard-wired into me), most of my enhancements are neurally modulated, which means they're useless to me right now. They're never supposed to be blocked to me, but of course, guarantees about neural inhibitors blah blah blah. When I get back to Maintainance, I'll have to suggest that we rig some sort of emergency device to active specifically when it stops receiving input from me, although I'm not sure what tool would be most useful to me. I mean, there's the fusion cutter in the distal metacarpal of my right index finger, probably one of the most handy gadgets I'm loaded with, but it wouldn't do me much good if it just activated; paralyzed, I still couldn't cut anything with it, and I'd be in real trouble if I was picking my nose at the time. I've got a retractable blaster in my right forearm, but I wouldn't want it to just start firing indescriminately. The same logic holds true for pretty much everything I've been loaded with. Malleolar blades, retractable claws, grappling cord, EMPulser, six spectrums of vision, retractable asp batons, lockpicks, net slicer, flashlight, laser pointer, data port... either it'd be unsafe to active it without control, or it wouldn't do much to get me free anyway.
       That's the kicker, after all. You can stick all the augmetics you want into somebody, but it's still the person who has to use them. You can load up anyone you want with biotech and guns but if they don't have the mind and the will, they won't do you any good. I spent more time in psych eval than I did surgery in KP training, and damn if I ever complined about that. My tools and weapons let me beat up the bad guys and my armour keeps them from getting their own fair licks in, but it's still me in the suit. As a wise man once said, if you don't feel like dancing, don't blame your shoes.
       I will move my &$^*ing legs.
       There's a sizzle, a spark, and a pop behind me. The back of my head being on fire has never felt so good.
       I lift the jug of water off of the table next to me and dump it over my head. The neural inhibitor dies screaming, and if I get my way, it'll only be the first of the evening. A port on my back opens and twenty inches of matte-black high-carbon blunt object slides into my hand where it sits comfortably and loosely. I think I'll go have some fun moving my arms and legs.

Barring catastrophe, in mid May, I'll be running a short one-shot game at the Concordia Games Club convention. The session will last about 3 hours and is being written for 3-5 players, ideally inexperienced (but I'll settle for merely being uninterested in rules). As you are all my loyal and adoring readers, and most of you don't live anywhere nearby and so pose little to no risk of showing up to play, and I need to both a) fill space in this Journal and b) write up notes for the game, I'll be posting much of my stuff for the game here. Obviously, some material can't go online before the game is run, no matter who reads this, but much of it should be safe to put up.

It is the year... well, who really cares what year it is? It is the Age of Piracy, and beyond that specifics don't matter. The sea is the most important part of all human life; without the ability to travel by sea, trade fails, cities go poor, governments become unstable, and nations topple. A single fast ship can do more in this age than an army of soldiers, and everyone who lives aboard ship knows it. Pirates roam these waters, making their living off of the weak and defenseless merchant vessels. In response, privateers, pirate vessels licensed by one government or another, prey upon other cut-throats and each other, arguably making the sea a safer place to live in their own way. In this age, entire generations of men and women live their lives aboard ship; the land isn't where their home is, it's just a brief tourist spot where they stop now and then to buy food.

You were one of these people. For the last two years, you served aboard the privateering ship Red Waves, at the command of the dreaded pirate, Captain Scupper. It had been an exciting time; more than once were boarders repelled and cannon storms weathered, and more than one pirate vessel went below the waves with its cargo filling your captain's coffers. A week out of port now, your contract fulfilled and your purse filled with gleaming coin, the future looked bright and your destiny was yours to make.

That was yesterday.

Today, is different. Today, you find yourself awake on the wrecked remains of your ship, with only a handful of the crew still alive, the captain feeding the fishes and the treasure (and most importantly, your share of it) gone West aboard some other blaggard's ship. Before you sail for home, you want that treasure back, so set the sails, weigh the anchor, and sharpen the cutlass! Be it for justice, vengeance, heroism or greed, you're going after that treasure and the scum what took it.

Rules:
Rules system is modified D&D 3.5. The world has no magic save that found in whirling ropes, sharpened blades, and the kick of blasting powder. Some who ply the sea are the bruisers who keep the crew in line, while others are the roperunners more at home in the rigging than on deck and still others are the balladeers who truly keep the ship afloat. Characters may be good, evil, in between or ambiguous; heroes and monsters alike served aboard the Red Waves.

Key characters:
The Dread Pirate Captain Scupper: Yesterday, Captain Scupper (formerly Lord Poindexter Williams, but anyone who knew that died under mysterious circumstances years ago) was one of the most feared men on the sea. Chartered by a large merchant company to sink their rivals and protect their transports, Captain Scupper made his name and earned his survival by being faster on the cannons and sharper with a dagger than anyone who stood opposite him. Yesterday, his exploits were legendary, his wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and his crew one of the finest at sea. Yesterday, his ship, the Red Waves, with its complement of sixteen cannons and the floor of its hold scratched by years of hevay chests being dragged across it, was one of the most famed and fearsome sights at sea. Today, the late Captain Scupper is floating facedown and being nibbled on by fish, and the Red Waves is a wide mess of flotsam and debris and its proud crew has been reduced to less than half a dozen sailors by the simple expedient of cold iron coupled with high velocity. That's all we have to say about him, then.

Captain Vornholt, self-styled pirate lord, is known as "Old Flenser" to his crew because of an old story-turned-legend of a how he killed a young merchant who tried to cheat him on a deal. Black-hearted as they come and with his fingers stained red with blood (figuratively... probably), Vornholt is the long-time rival of Captain Scupper, and two have held on to a bitter rivalry for longer than many of their crew have been alive. The long feud is over now, Scupper's Red Waves shot full of holes by Vorlholt's Wrath and Spite and Scupper himself shot full of holes by Vornholt's flintlock. Vornholt overcame his old foe with the aid of a mercenary crew and a mysterious ally rumoured to be a witch, and true to Scupper's word, Vornholt took Scupper's treasure over the privateer's dead body. Deadly as his mercenaries were, Nornholt's own men got lazy and a few of Scupper's crew survived the massacre; Vornholt is as yet unaware that these survivors are in hot pursuit of him, his new treasure, and the allies who enabled him to eliminate his enemy. Now, Vornholt sails West for destination unknown.

Most years, Inanimate Objects Day is celebrated by the worship of electronics: hugging your computer, singing to your MP3 player, tossing an AOL disk in the trash rather than smashing it with a hammer, and so forth. Now, tradition's all well and good, but there is such a thing as being repetitive, or worse, cliche. This year, I'm going to do something different. Oh, make no mistake, I hugged my computer and gave thanks to all my beloved inanimate objects for their year of loyal service, but here, publically, I am going tp praise my miniatures.

This is in part because they make me happy and I love them. This is also because I want them to be in good moods and do better when I put them on the battlefield.

I paint miniatures. I enjoy painting miniatures. Actually, that's not really true... while painting, I'm usually frustrated and annoyed, because the paint is disobedient and the creases and details that make a figure look nifty are a real pain to paint. It's after the figure's finished that I look back and see that I love painting; lifeless plastic or metal is transformed into a nearly living and breathing piece of art. I've painted about thirty lead and pweter miniatures in my career, which is far less than most gamers I know but far more than most people ever do. On top of that, I've painted enough Games Workshop figures to build two or three full armies -- if they were all figures from the same force and could be fielded together, that might matter in some way other than sheer quantity. I've spent more time painting Necrons than I have moving them around a gaming table, and my current project, a modest force of Space Marines, isn't even an army I play. I'm painting them for the sheer joy of seeing figures that came to life at my hand spread out across a table. I'm painting them for the challenge of taking the plastic models, hacking them to bits, and gluing them back together in dynamic adventure poses. I'm doing it so that I can post pictures of Space Marines painted in the colours of the Aerican Imperial flag on my website. And, perhaps most importantly, I'm doing it because I enjoy splahing paint on stuff.

There's actually a part of me which is tempted to argue that my miniatures aren't really inanimate objects. It's a silly argument to make and it doesn't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. None of my miniatures have ever moved around under their own power (to my knowledge) or done anything without fingers or other manipulating structures moving them around. That said, though, when I look at figures I've painted, the overwhelming impression I get is that they're alive. They may not 1) react to their environment, 2) reproduce, or 3) consume energy, but there's a life to them none-the-less. It's quite possible that it's a form of life that only I, as the artist invested in them, can perceive, but I was the only one I was painting them to benefit in the first place so I've got no problem with that.

The degree to which I'm enthralled by miniatures is best illustrated by the fact that I'm enthralled by them at all. Those who have spent any long time with me know that there are very few things I get pasionate about. For that matter, I believe there are very few things capable of arousing any sort of strong, pasionate emotional response from me. My painted figures are one such category; I feel genuine excitement when I see them. It makes me happy to linger over the figures I painted years ago; I've looked at them hundreds of times, but they still fascinate me. Figures that I have set aside for future painting capture my imagination; more than one story or set of drawings that I've created has been inspired by figures I was looking forward to painting in the near future. Some few of you were priviledged to see the sketches I made in my notebooks when I was getting ready to start building my new Space Marine squads; I put more work into drawing those Crustulum Mortis designs than I do most anything else I draw. Finally, those of you who were following my month-long quest to find something I could use to make a flag for my Killer Penguin Death Squad troop transport -- nothing more than a simple piece of bent plastic -- will attest to the effort I went to to acquire this piece and the childlike excitement with which I told the story of my adventures in Toronto trying to aquire the ellusive and magical "becomes-malleable-after-a-few-minutes-in-hot-water" plastic. Miniatures make me geuinely enthusiastically happy; I can't say that for a lot of things.

Thus, on Inanimate Objects Day, I give thanks to the gods of gaming for their gift of small, paintable figurines, of water-soluble paints which coat plastic but don't stain clothes, of glue which bonds tiny arms to tiny torsos but is easily removed when one has accidentally glued one's figers to one's desk. As surely as I hug my computer today, I pick up some of my favourite miniatures, pat them on the head, tell them that I love them, and if I'm feeling particularly motivated, perhaps even dust them a little bit. Thank you, oh inanimate objects, for making my life a little more bright and colourful.

Eric's Note: I find myself with neither the time nor the inspiration to write anything good tonight, so here, as threatened, are a couple of the columns I wrote for the class newsletter, The Weekly Enema, this year. Some of this may require a joke translator, but that's not my problem, and anyway, I'm reliably informed that these are funny even to people outside my class.

I had originally intended to wait until after the end of the academic year to post these, because I've been writing them under one of my many pseudonyms and this conceivably makes it too easy for anyone looking to figure out that I was the author... but what the hell, I'm short of material, it's too smegging hot to write anything new, and in a just universe I'd be in bed already.

D-Curriculum: Unit 1
     Small groups sessions about ethics and cheating were disrupted this week by allegations that exam questions had fnord once again been leaked, this time to the anatomy practical exam. Several students, who chose to remain nameless, explained to The Enema how they had found the leaked answers.
     "It’s like, so easy,” exclaimed one student. They just left the answers lying on the floor of the Strathcona, and it’s so much easier than what we did in the... uh, whaddaya call them... lectures."
     The alleged answer sheet went on for two pages, and an excerpt from it reads, "The foot bone connected to the leg bone, The leg bone connected to the knee bone, The knee bone connected to the thigh bone, The thigh bone connected to the back bone, The back bone connected to the neck bone, The neck bone connected to the head bone." Curiously, Dr. Ezekiel, who is believed to have leaked the answers, did not appear to be a staff member of the anatomy department at all, the The Enema continues its efforts to locate him.
     Asked to comment, Dr. Miller laughed maniacally and walked away.

D-Curriculum: Unit 2
     Researchers announced this week a new treatment for osteomalacia.
     "It's simple," stated one researcher. "Bob was flipping through a copy of the bible we use to prop up the table and stumbled across the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. We got interested in that bit where Lot's Wife turns to look at the city and transforms into a pillar of salt. So we got some pictures of the general area off of the internet, drew in some cities and some angry-looking angels, and there you go. We went through a lot of rats trying to work out how long patients should look at the picture. We're seeing huge increases in bone mineralization and we can stop the exposure in time to prevent tissue mineralization. Of course, they're mineralizing with NaCl rather than hydroxyapatite, but one step at a time."
     The procedure currently being fnord tested is exposure of a patient to images of Sodom and Gomorrah for 28 milliseconds. So far, results are promising.
     Possible side effects are as yet undetermined. However, risk of neurovascular mineralization is at the forefront, as are the dark and towering stormclouds which have been seen gathering above the laboratory since testing began.

12 Galanil, 2236 GC
Is this working? Hello? Hello, little stone. Are you hearing me? Yes, I suppose you must, given how you flicker. How marvelous? Well, how does one talk to a magical stone, then? This is the personal journal of... well, my given name hardly matters. This is the personal journal of The Collector, newly appointed chief librarian of his Lordship, Ragon of Sorinia. To aid me in my rather imposing task of cataloguing the countless tomes collected by my new Master, his Lordship has graciously provided me this mnemonic stone which he tells me will record any time that it is in my presence and detects either my will activating it or any very strong emotion. It's quite a remarkable little trinket. I'm sure it will be endlessly useful to me. Ah- oh, dear, I just noticed that his Lordship seems to have misspelled my title on the plaque he gave me... "The Collectoror." Heh, to think one such as he would make such a silly mistake. Perhaps I shall let this go unmentioned; surely his Lordship will notice the error in no time at all.

15 Galanil, 2236 GC
I'm so very excited. A mere three days into my cataloguing and alreday I have found three books which my teachers at the librarum believed were entirely mythical. I find there is so much to write, I can never keep quill and ink to hand and also keep my place in all the bboks and scrolls. I wait now for his Lordship, who promised me that he had the perfect solution. Ah, here the Master comes now. Curious, I was expecting that he would bring a cart of some sort, or a portable writing desk, but he seems instead to have with him a set of hands from one of his golems. Oh, yes, and a large sword, which... Master, what... Master, this is silly. Surely you don't seriously intend to cut off AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGHHH!

17 Galanil, 2236 GC
And to think, I hesitated. These remarkable new digits have solved all of my problems. I can feel with them even better than I did with my true fingers, and the quills in each hand have yet to run out of ink no matter how much I use them. The Master's craftsmanship is truly remarkable. I am somewhat curious what happened to my human hands...

40 Panguar, 2236 GC
A most remarkable find today... a complete copy of the Grimorum Obfuscat. I remember hearing tale of this book when I was but a child -- the local wisewoman told us of it to frighten us into obeying our parents. I can't quite read the curious text in which it's written... staring at it now, I could almost swear that the letters flow of their own accord as I look at them. It is truly most... oh, drat it all, another nose bleed. It must be this dry mountain air. Where are those tissues?

7 Hydanaur, 2236 GC
The Master presented me with a gift today: magical lenses, which allow me to perceive the magical fields around the books I work with. This has opened up whole new vistas to my research and cataloguing... it's no wonder thatr wizards feel so far above us if this is how the world looks to them, as surely as we must feel ourselves above the blind. Astounding. Hmm... Is it my imagination, or is that corner of the library more shadowed today than yesterday? I must ask the Master for some more lamps.

2 Tani, 2237 GC
Goodness, what a shock. The Master had warned me that from time to time his tower might be attacked by thieves, but I hardly expected such a mess. I imagined barbarians scaling the wall, but the two mages were quite beyond what I'd envisioned. How could men of such learning possibly feel the need to attack such a remarkable entity as his Lordship? When one of them threatened to burn the library... why, if not for the golem guardians at the door, I shudder to think of the ancient and irreplacable knowledge he might have destroyed. And his partner... the nerve of him to storm these hallowed halls wearing a holy symbol of the sun god! Pilfered from some poor defenseless cleric, no doubt. If not for my oath of non-violence... Heathens!

16 Garm, 2238 GC
Another attack today. The fools continue to storm the library's walls in search of gods only know what imagined treasure. Do they not understand how they set back my work with their petty... GAH! They have gotten me so angry, I forgot to clean off my hands and wiped blood upon a priceless original copy of the Malefactor's Acts. I swear that every one of their silly attacks pushes my work back hours! Don't they understand how much I have to do here, the knowledge that may never be catalogued if I can't work in peace? I regret only that I could kill them each once... for stupidity such as theirs, surely at least four or five deaths would be a more just punishment.

1 Tyrin, 2241 GC
I have found the solution to the problem which has plagued me these months! My work proceeds slowly because of my own human weaknesses. The golems who maintain the library work tirelessly, day and night, without rest or weariness, while I waste countless hours each day sleeping. The answer is so obvious... I shall stop sleeping! The extra hours this gives me each day will be invaluable to my work. Hah! I can practically feel the number of books to be catalogued dwindling as I look at them. Once more, I reaffirm why the Master chose me to be his librarian.

12 Galanil, 2246 GC
A surprise! I barely notice how one day blends into each other nowadays, but the Master appeared today and reminded me that it is the tenth anniversary of the day I came into his service. And a gift, no less: a familiar! Though I have never had aptitude for magic myself, I have always dremed of having a pet with whom I could have a connection as deep as the mages have with their familiars, and though I never breathed a word of this desire to the Master, he knew what was deep within my soul, as always. It is most remarkable: a pair of skeletal human hands, animated by magic, which respond to my very thoughts. Why the way they move, they could almost be my own flesh hands lost so long ago.

44 Wyten, 2248 GC
A thief! A thrice damned thief, in MY library. How dare he! A common thief, no less... he must have snuck right past all of the truly valuable books, since only the mundane but bejeweled Book of Grudges was taken. The fool imagines that he can hide from me, but none of the Master's books can be hidden from my gaze. These bladed fingers were forged to cut parchment, but now they ache for squishy human flesh. I will have my book, and a portion of vengeave besides!

2 Courger, 2248 GC
The book is recovered, of course. Though it is of little value compared to the magical tomes, the precious stones in its cover make it too attractive a prize. I have put it in a safe place, where the casual thief will not be able to find it, and I have left one of his Lordship's bladedancer golems to watch over it. The next would-be thief who tries to steal this book will be flayed alive... a mercy compared to what I would do to him.

11 Tani, 2249 GC
Torches and pitchforks! Do mobs truly arm themselves with such things outside of children's stories? They have no hope of gaining entrance to the library, but they make such noise, I can hardly appreciate the illuminations of this manuscript. I shall send my golems out to dispose of them, and leave the bodies in the village center to dissuade any further irritants.

23 Tyrin, 2251 GC
Another thief! My blood boils at the thought. This is really intolerable. A master thief this time, and a clever one... not a book is out of place nor a scroll touched, but I can feel that the thief was here, practically smell the vile squishy-sweat he dared secrete within my library. The four quills on my desk are- wait, four? I had five quills on that desk, five! The thief has stolen my quills... worse than a theft, this is a personal insult! Any thief must have fled to one of the nearby villages... I shall find him and show him what i think of his games!

25 Tyrin, 2251 GC
My hands are stained red, but the thieves are punished. Imagine my horror when I came to the village and saw the looks of horror on the faces of the villagers. What possible reason could they have to fear me if they had not all played a part in robbing me? I ignored them, quite mercifully given the curses they threw at me, and immediately ran to the village scribe, there to find what I was sure would be the one rational man in the village. What did I find but quills! Quills and paper, identical to mine! Stolen from me! Well, they are mine again now, and though the blood may have ruined some of the paper, the quills shall have all the ink they require for a long time. There was too much here to have been the work of one scribe, though, and this old man could never have broken into my library so stealtily. His accomplices hide in this village, and I shall rend everyone here until they tell me where the thieves are.

28 Tyrin, 2251 GC
Two more villages full of thieves. In each village, paper, pens, ink, all rightfully mine! How did these ignorant peasants ever get their greasy squishy hands onto such things of beauty? It is more than a theft... with stolen papers in every village I have checked, this is nothing less than a conspiracy, and there is no telling across how many villages it spreads. I must visit them all, and in each one that i find the stolen feathers and parchment, in each village where they scream when they see me, I will know they were part of it. The whole of the valley shall run red if need to, to reclaim the Master's property!

41 Tyrin, 2251 GC
I can hardly travel now for the weight of that which I have reclaimed. I would never have imagined that this conspiracy of darkness reached so far. So many villages, so many squishy humans, young and old, thieves all, and uneducated. The world is better for their being removed from it. I.... I... what sorcery is this? Green mist boils forth... it is the Master! He comes no doubt to thank me for my valliant service, and rightly so! I shall be rewarded for my great service to him. Master, my heart grows at the sight of you, O look upon your most lotal servant with... Master why are you... Master, my hands, why do my hands move? Your Lordship, my fingers, my fingers are AAAAAAAARRRGGH AAAGK NO AAAARGH FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS AAARGH ARRRGH Gguuuh gurgle...

Once more, we find ourselves preparing to celebrate that most inspiring of holidays, Tempting Fate Day. Tempting Fate day is inspiring because it reminds us that the Universe is our enemy and that we must strive against it each day. It's inspiring because it reminds us that our works are easily broken, which drives us to build newer, bigger, tougher things. And, finally, it inspires to grab our Stuff and run like hell, because the Universe is right behind us and its wearing its very best pair of tennis shoes.

This is the lesson of Tempting Fate Day: when you tempt fate, you simply make that much more tempting a target.

On April 14th, 1912, the Titanic hit and iceberg and sank to the bottom of the sea. Thousands mourned lost loved ones even as millions cheered the agonizing, frozen death of Leonardo DiCaprio. Since that time nearly a full century ago, people all over the world have set aside April 14th as the day when, knowing that the gaze of the Universe is full upon them, they cower under their beds and pray to the gods that they aren't killed by a falling mattress. Those who survive the 14th stand up, dust themselves off, grab a quick shower, put on some fresh clothes, go outside, look up into the bright and sunny spring sky, stare fate in the eye, and point and laugh. The greatest gift of mortals is the ability to die of old age and thus retain the precious illusion that love lasts forever; the second greatest gift of mortality is the capacity to get the crap smacked out of them by the universe, because this drives the vengenful mocking which follows. When civilization collapses, when nuclear fires consume this world, when entropy turns the last newton of kinetic energy into heat and when the ambient temperature of reality hits minus 273 celsius and all matter transfigures to a mass and volume of 0, the very last action before the end of reality will be for the last existing lifeform to shake one psychrophillic pseudopod in the general direction of the Universe and shout "screw you!"

It has been observed that life is defined by the sequence of futile gestures made at key moments in time. In the end, the Universe wins, but that doesn't preclude the ability of the individual to go to the grave with a few personal victories scored.

This year, when I laugh at fate, I will do so clenching a copy of my transcript so hard that carbon fibres in the paper will begin to fuse into diamondoid crystal. Despite every effort of the Universe, from low undergraduate grades to depressive episodes to life-threatening viruses to deadly ice storms, I have done well in medical school. I have passed exams and learned an amount of knowledge I would have considered nigh inconceivable. Against all reason, logic, odds, and the will of the Universe itself, I continue to succeed and thrive. This April 14th, I will be enjoying a well-earned spring/Passover/Easter/Tempting Fate Day long weekend after another sucessful midterm and refusing to step outside in the hope that the Universe doesn't see me. This April 15th, I will print out my transcript, put on my sunglasses, go outside, stare up into the Face of Ra, and hurl slings and arrows at Outrageous Fortune. Nothing the Universe throws at me can stop me from passing all my classes, getting good grades, and becoming a doctor, and I will tempt fate proudly.

On the 16th, I will slink back to my regularly scheduled life and hope the Universe didn't hear me, but gods damn it, I'll have had my moment and no one or thing will ever be able to take that from me.

I can never win my war against the Universe, but I can win some of the battles. And I can point and laugh about it.

Today, we meditate upon the subtle but important distinction between blackmail and extortion. You see these words misused a lot on a practically daily basis, but few people ever really stop to think about it. Interestingly, this isn't even a gamer or novel-a-week-geek issue; the place where I most frequently encounter the words is probably in the news, both print and audio. I read the front page of the Gazzette about 5 days a week and I listen to the news while driving to and from school most days; going back over this week's papers and remembering the times when I can clearly recall hearing one of these words on the radio, my best estimate is that I've heard six people refer to something as either blackmail or extortion between last Monday and yesterday, Sunday. At least four, possibly five of those times were all use of the word blackmail to describe a situation which is more properly labeled extortion.

It annoys me that people who make such simple langiage errors get wider media coverage than I do.

The ubiquitously helpful Mister Webster defines extortion as, among other things, "the act or practice of extorting especially money or other property," and because this is a useless and self-referrential definition, we look up the definition of extort, which reads "to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power," derived from the Latin verb, to torture. In contrast, blackmail is defined as (among other interesting little bits of Scottish trivia) "extortion or coercion by threats especially of public exposure or criminal prosecution." Extortion and blackmail are not the same thing, nor can they rightly be used interchangably. Blackmail is a sub-category of extortion, much the same way "stabbing" is a sub-category of "assault."

What made think of this today is the curren news stories about various world governments cutting off their aid to the Palestinians until that government moderates its position on Israel. I'm not going tp publically take a side on who I think is right in that argument (heavily indoctrinated as I was through my childhood, I can never be totally sure that the firm opinions I have on this issue are truly my own) but luckily my opinion here is irrelevant to the larger issue. A few times now, spokespeople for the Palestinian prime minister have gone on the record as saying that they are being blackmailed, which is categorically false. They *are* being extorted, but if you're going to have a quote printed in international news sources, you really ought to state the correct crime during your indignant self-defense. I'm preversely amused at the idea that what's happening to Palestine right now could be called blackmail, since that implies that even the Palestinians think they've committed crimes which they don't want getting out.

As an aside, my apologies to Marc for that whole preceeding paragraph.

It behooves any would-be world conqueror and aspiring James-Bond-Villain to have a firm grasp of what separates blackmail from extortion. Extortion is a broad, unspecific catch-all term for any attempt to aquire what you want by threats and intimidation. It includes blackmail but also covers such diverse activities as threatened activation of doomsday devices and, from a certain point of view, such peacemaking activities as nuclear deterrence. From a sufficiently broad point of view, extortion is everywhere -- how else does an employer get the employees into work on time save for threats of reduced pay and termination of contract? Blackmail is nothing more than a specific form of extortion. Rather than getting what you want via indescriminate and unspecific threats, blackmail is specifically the threat of revealing a secret or publicizing a crime in which someone was involved. The classic "your-money-or-your-life" scenario is not blackmail, nor is the protection racket.

Regrettably, I couldn't think of any clever way to end this, so I'm just going to stop abruptly and get back to studying.

"History" as both a topic and an abstract concept is very interesting to me. I respect the subject of history and, back in high school when I was still studying it, it was one of the few topics in whch I had a genuine interest. Those of you who know me best know that one of the primary purposes of my life is to go down in hisotry myself, just for a century or two, and I'd have to give some weight to history for that to have an appeal. Finally, those of you wh have studied the Aerican Empire know how religiously I keep its records and history, and even if I did have to fudge a few details from the late eighties that nobody remembers, the Empire's history for the last ten years, at least, is scrupulously (one might even say uncharateristically) accurate.

It is as a deceiver that I find history most fascinating, however. It has been observed by numerous authors that a liar is always the first one to assume that someone else is lynig -- we all tend to assume, usually quite erroneously, that whatever our favourite sins are, they are commited by everyone frequently. I find history interesting because of how easily it could be faked, despite the fact that it is in large part central to our society. I've suggested elsewhere in this Journal that there are educated professors and researchers who argue that Socrates may never have existed because the only evidence of his life that we have are Plato's dialogues which could quite easily have been fictional. Similarly, I have never been able to get beyond the idea that the whole history of the world could have been fairly easily falcified, and the only evidence we have that this isn't the case is the fact that history tends to cast *everybody* in a bad light, not favouring any single group unduly.

Consider an extreme example. How do you know that the universe existed twenty minutes ago? Unless you have a severe retrograde amnesia (in which case, you've already forgotten reading the first paragraph of this Entry and you're probably very confused right now), you have a reasonably clear memory of time twenty minutes ago, and if not that exact moment (if nothnig interesting happened, for example), then certainly you have some memories from further back into the past. For most people, the fact that they have memories is evidence that the past existed. However, if the universe had hypothetically come into existence thirty seconds ago with you in it, memories and all, then from your perspective that universe would be indestinguishable from one which had existed for billions of years. If your memories are innacurate, then your history could have been anything.

Extreme examples rarely prove a point, of course, so it behooves us to consider more reasonable examples. What proof do we have that there was ever a man named Columbus, for example? There are suviving records from that time, and historchaeologists have found evdence of his ships and such. On the other hand, back in the late fifteenth century, there was very in the way of news transmission; only a tiny group of pople would ever have known about Columbus first hand, and most of them could have been fooled by a man in a fake eye-patch and a few coins. If those three ships had actually been organized by, for example, the King of Spain himself, and then in the late sixteenth century another king decided that such a journey was unfitting for one of his ancestors and had a fake name put into all the records instead, then by the late seventeenth century it's unlikely that proof of the real facts would still exist. By the early twenty-first century, certainly, fact would be indestinguishable from fiction, and in fact, the average person would find it a pretty ridiculous idea in the first place.

There are those who argue that the more improbable a story, the more it must be true, because this just proves how powerful the consipracy is. We call these people "paranoid delusional" and medicate them heavily, but some of us do so with the occasional little nervous glance over our shoulders.

Obviously, this logic is true only to a point. It would have been easy for the son of Ned Khan to go back into the records and change his father's name to something a little more terror-inspiring, but it's less easy for someone to get away with that in modern times. This is due primarily to two factors. First, information technology has made it possible for too many people to learn a fact; covering up information in such a climate is more difficult (although, of course, not impossible). The second block to this happening is that we're alive at this time; the sort of truly masterful coverup I'm suggesting is really only feasible over the course of centuries because it relies on your misinformation outliving everyone who knows better; it'll be the duty of our decendants to figure out how much of what we put into our history books really happened. Even today, though, altering history isn't impossible, just very difficult. Every year a new book comes out which casts doubt on whether or not the Holocaust ever happens; in twenty years when none of the survivors are still alive, it will be that much harder to keep people from believing such books. seventy years from now, when most of the children of those born during the baby-boom are long gone, there will be countless historians who, with the best of intentions, go back to the records and find reasons why newsreels, survivors' stories, and even judicial records from Nuremberg are of dubious veracity. In an ideal world, truth would outlast those who lived it, but this isn't an ideal world.

As a student of the philosophy of lying, I've always been fascinated by the question of where the line between truth and lie exists. It's easy and tempting to argue that truth is truth and history is true. On the other hand, as Napoleon, Bierce, Twain, and Ford would be quick to tell you, we have precious little proof that history is anything other than the most re-told story of an age. For my part, the question which fascinates me is: how many people have to believe that a story is true before it becomes the truth? I want to believe that the truth is true independent of how many people believe it, but the fact is that a lot of what I believe is true, I believe solely because I was taught that it was true, and if my teachers' teachers' teachers were all wrong, then what I accept as truth is actually a lie. Everyone in the world believes that Columbus discovered America (for legal purposes anyway, since we all agree he wasn't there first; although this alone just goes to show that truth is a funny thing), and there's a part of me which is tempted to argue that if it was an untrue fact, it would still be the truth because it's the only story anyone will ever know or care about. It was a lie, but at some point in history, it became the new truth. I know full well that this is an unsupportable argument, and rightly so, but on the other hand, it's a very hard argument to poke holes in with any counter-argument other than the blind restatement (with requisite increasing volume) that what's true is true and what's false is false.

And that's why I hate ontologists.

       It's a little known fact that, when you hit your head, it's often not the spot that you hit which takes the brunt of the impact. When a moving object strikes you, the spot where it hits takes the brunt of the force because your skull slams into your brain. If your head is moving and it hits something static, though, then thanks to the miracle of hydrodynamics, it's actually the side of your brain opposite the impact site which converts the potential energy into kinetic energy. Medics call this the contre-coup phenomenon.
       All of this is to say only that there was a good reason why I couldn't take those six guys. After the slidewalk sent me head first into the wall, it was the back of my brain which must've taken the impact, and since I therefore couldn't see clearly, that explains why I wasn't able to beat my way out of a circle of thugs. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
       When I regain conciousness, I'm tied to a chair in the middle of the factory floor. I've been knocked out enough times to know that when you come to, you don't groan and you don't look around groggily. I can feel that my mask is still in place, so I've got a few seconds between waking up and the moment when anynody realises I'm awake, and I use that time profitably. The world's blurry -- I told you so! -- but I can see enough. I'm not near any of the hevay machinery, so they probably aren't planning to run me through any sort of overly complex deathtrap. There is a stainless steel gurney covered in little blades, so it's possible that they're planning to torture me, but that's really a secondary concern. The chair I'm tied to it shaped steel, and I'm not likely to be able to break it bare-handed, but the ropes which secure me to it and nothing more than thick cord and probably won't stand up to the servos in my arms and legs. The computer flashes a quick damage report across my field of view; I've sustained some minor damage to organics and techs, but nothing that the techies should throw a fit about, and certainly nothing that'll keep me from getting out of here. Assuming my vision clears.
       My survey of the area complete, I give a little pained groan to let my captors know I'm awake. It's professional courtesy. Three blurry figures walk up to me, all wearing the same tasteless outfit... dear gods, if I have to have trple vision after a head injury, why does it have to be of a man who dresses like that?
       "Who are you?" he asks me. "Who sent you?" I'm always ambivalent when they don't recognise me. On the one hand, my job description does include the word "secret" in it, so ideally people don't recognise me on sight, but on the other hand, it would be nice to be preceeded by my reputation such that those around me reacted to my presence with appropriate shock and awe. Still, this is exactly why the KPs wear their own individualized costumes rather than a uniform; the last thing we want is for people to know too soon who we are and who sent us.
       I hear shuffling behind me, and chemoreceptors in my mask notify me that they detect gun oil. I've got at least two, maybe more guards standing behind me, the fellow in front on me, I'll need at least two and a half seconds to get loose from the chair, and my vision is still blurry. I decide to play nice and not antagonize him.
       "I'm the angel of death," I say. "I've come for your tie. It died thirty years ago and nobody's had the heart to tell you."
       Well, so much for that plan.
       Tasteless Dresser snarls at me and gestures, and a weight hits me in the back of the head. Powered armour turns the pistolwhip into a light smack, but still recovering from my earlier head injury, it leaves the world spinning and I taste bile. I fight down the urge to get sick -- few things are more horrific than losing a meal onto the inside of a helmet -- and let my head hang limply to let them think I'm more stunned than I am. The fresh impact actually helps me more than it hurts; my nanos are designed to respond faster to wounds caused by overtly hostile causes than to accidents, and the gun hitting me sends them into overdrive. My vision starts to clear a little faster and by the time Tasteless is standing in front of me again I only see two of him. It's an improvement in all senses
       "You will tell me who you are or we will be forced to be more direct in our questioning," Tasteless says. We both know he's basically reading from a script at this point, purely a fomarlity before they get on with the snipping and poking. I'm confident that if they had anything that could cut my armour, they'd have used it already, but I have to assume that they're a genuine threat to me as long as I'm tied down. I decide to stall.
       "I'm a bounty hunter," I say, and give an ambiguous gesture behind me with my head. "I'm after an outstanding warrant on this thug behind me; I didn't know he'd hooked up with you folks."
       There's just enough of the ring of truth to it to make Tasteless ponder. I didn't make it clear who behind me I was gesturing at, and odds are good that anybody standing there has at least one or two outstanding warrants for him. I'm not really a hunter, of course, but it's close enough to the truth that he'll probably buy it. He looks down into my mask -- as though he can see anything in it other than his own reflection -- and thinks. That buys me the time I needed and more. My vision's cleared up now and my gyroscopes have self-corrected for a little continuing dizzyness. My index climbing claw extends a few centimeters and scores the rope holding my arms while the malleolar blade in my ankle makes an indentical score in the rope holding my legs. I'm lucky they didn't use chain or something, but then again, as far as they know I'm just a nut in a shiny helmet. Which is, arguably, quite true.
       I love this part.
       Servo-enhanced muscles flex and two ropes snap with pops like gunshots. Enhanced processing speed lets me take a millisecond to enjoy watching Tasteless' pupils dilate, then I plant my feet and push and suddenly I'm standing behind my chair directly between two hench-gorillas carrying rifles. I drop to palms-&-arches and sweep my legs in a wide circle; both thugs go down and hit hard. One of them drops his gun and I lash out just fast enough to slash the trigger off with a burst of my fusion cutter. The other thug is better trained and keeps hold of his weapon, but he's not so well trained that he just shoots at me while he has the chance. He scrambles up to his knees and points, but by then I've jumped straight up ten feet and I'm alreday scutting along the low cieling. I drop back behind him before he even figures out where I've gotten to and deck him with a strike to the temple.
       Tasteless and Stupid have had a chance to see what I can do now. Even if they haven't figured out that I'm Wired, they know that I'm a genuine danger to them. Stupid goes for his rifle and I let him, backpedaling five feet to be safe. He aims at my head -- he'd have missed anyway, being off by a good three degrees, according to my battle computer's analysis -- but he's certainly no threat to me as he stands there for a good four heartsbeats pulling at where the trigger was before I lasered it off. Given time, it'd probably occur to him to just club me with the thing, but I don't give him time.. two steps have me inside his guard and his arms pinned. Stupid gets a big, ugly grin and decides to give me a headbutt with what's no doubt a very thick and heavy skull, and our foreheads meet with a loud thunk.
       It's funny because I'm the one wearing powered armour.
       Stupid sinks out of my grip like a deflating balloon and that just leaves tasteless. He's better than his hired goons; in the eight seconds I've been distracted, he's drawn what looks like a plasma pistol and he's got it leveled right at my head in a two-handed grip that's so steady that I'd gamble he has a few augmetic fingers. I can see the red light on the top of the barrel and I can only assume he's got me painted with a dot in the center of my face. We stare at each other -- he's got me dead to right with a gun that has an even chance of cutting through my armour, but he doesn't know what tricks I've still got up my sleeve. It's a standoff unless he decides he wants to take the chance. He isn't much of a dresser, but he's not stupid. I hate it when they're not stupid.
       "You know that that gun won't finish me," I say, playing to his paranoia. The voice-modulator in my armour gives me an extra air of menace. "You take that shot and you might hurt me, but I promise that you won't get off a second shot." I can see in his eyes that he knows I'm bluffing, but there's just enough of a chink in his confidence that he isn't sure by how much I am.
       "So what do we do?" he asks me, calculating. "I let you go, I go off the other way, and we both get on with things? I don't think so. I'm thinking I oughtta take my chances and see what size hole I can put through you right now."
       His finger tightens on the trigger but he's hesitating enough to give me my opening. My left knee buckles and I'm rolling out from under his aim just as his pistol bucks and a burst of superheated gas scorches through where my head was. The energy catches me on the side of the head and leaves a nasty burn across my armour but the heat never reaches my skin. I pounce hard enough that I feel something give in my soleus muscle, but true to my word, i'm on him before he can adjust his aim for a second shot. I debate saying something clever as my weight takes him to the ground, but by the time I think of something I've already werstled the gun from his hand and taken him with an open-palm strike hard enough to send the back of his head into the floor. I was right, he did have a couple of augmetic fingers, but the flesh ones weren't much of a match for mine.
       I slip the power-cell out of the pistol and pocket it, dropping the gun itsefl back onto him. He won't be waking up soon, and when he does, I can't even imagine how many blurry cops he'll be seeing in front of him. It's only a little piece of vengeance, but it makes me happier.
On my way out, I almost forget to grab the data disk. Tasteless probably never even knew he'd lifted it with the briefcase he snatched this morning, and he'll probably never figure out why I came after a small time operator like him. It's better that way, of course... nobody wants to think about how easily some poor jerk off the street can steal state secrets without even knowing what he's lifted. I wipe the disk with a tiny mag-pulse and drop it back where I found it, then scale the wall and head out onto the low neighbourhood rooftops. I've got an hour before I need to report back in, and I think I'll see if I can't scrounge up a can of polish for the plasma-burn on my helmet before I let anybody see me.

It is a curious thing to live the first moments of one's life.

History will show that there was no single date in which Eric 4.2 came online, but records will suggest that the gradual process of rebirth took place between March 27th and March 31st 2006. There will be no singificant events to mark this date; it was only an increase in build number and not a full new interation. In fact, one might reasonably argue that I've been making an unecessarily large deal of this, given that it's not a true rebirth, but then again, my last true rebirth was in 1999 and my last build upgrade was in mid 2002, nearly four years ago. It's been long enough since then that I'm excused for being a little over-the-top.

Now we have seen precisely how much I can say about a minor build. Gods help you all when the day comes that I undergo a true rebirth; you'll never shut me up.

For those of you who came in late, a very quick review: Eric 4.0 came online on September 10th, 1999, although it took about a month later for the new version to really be entrenched. Just under four years ago 4.0 was replced by 4.1 when it finally dawned on me that at some point in the years of wackiness preceeding, I'd become a genuinely devout worshiper of Forsteri. 4.1 was replaced by 4.2 over the last few days, which is what the fuss is all about. Now that we're all on the same page as far as that goes, it's time for me to ensure that people aren't having too easy a time understanding me... I have a reputation to maintain, after all.

Let the first significant thing said by my new iteration to my friends be this: I no longer trust any of you.

Eric 4.2 comes into existence with no friends or allies, only aquaintances, contacts, and people who there is a high probability that I will soon be calling friends or enemies once more. Quite obviously, I'm not severing my ties to my social circle or anything, primarily because I do genuinely like most of the people around me but also because I need my gaming and my arguments. However, it is long past time that I re-evaluate where I stand with others. It's no secret that I have an abyssmal time reading people and simple judgements of the behaviour of others, which seem to come so easily to most of those around me, are and always have been well-nigh impossible for me. The implication of this is that I will rarely if ever utterly trust anyone; I have close friends who I've known for more than five years who I still distrust to one degree or another. This is a flaw which is due almost entirely to factors within me and not within the friends in question, and I freely admit that, which is why I make an effort to stay close to these people even when something happens which sets me on edge or makes me suspicious of them. That said, I've come to terms with the fact that there is a limit to how much blind faith I can put in people, because I'm a naturally paranoid individual (which I say not to be melodramatic, but using only the psychological criteria) and over time, all the little niggling things which set me on edge pile up and become hard to ignore.

Looking back over the last year to eighteen months of my life, with only three meaningful exceptions, every single significant person in my life has either outright betrayed me, proven themselves unworthy of my esteem, or simply failed to live up to the standards to which I held them. I include in these categories my closest friends and people who ironically trust me implicitly. In some cases, these betrayals are quite probably things which exist at least partly in my own powerful imagination, and in some cases, failure to meet my standards was because I had set standards innapropriate to a given individual. In other cases, though, the person who has disapointed me is simply an idiot; not every slight against me has been my imagination.

This is the impetus for me deciding to start again anew. I have thrown aside all my previous trusts and friendships. Rather than doing something stupid like cut myself off from those I care for (and, more importantly, those who inexplicably care for me), I see this as a golden opportunity to build those friendships again from the ground up. As Eric 4.2, I will begin trying to get to know these people all over again. I will try to evaluate them as they deserve the be evaluated. In some cases, this will hopefully bring me closer to people then I ever have been before. In others, it will mean that if they're lucky, they'll never hear from me again, and if they're unlucky, they'll be hearing from me a great deal.

One might reasonably ask why now is the time that I chose for this to happen. I've always been a big believer in the pricinple that things have a way of happening at the right time if you're patient and vigilant, and throughout my life there have been several moments when I simply knew (in the sense of "to spontaneously understand with certainty despite an apparent lack of evidence") that a thing was true, and I've rarely been steered wrong by these rare moments. A large part of my life is spent waiting for when these moments come around -- and working towards them, of course, since as they say, the gods help those who help themselves -- and, if nothing else, it's gotten me this far. In support of this theory, the very day that I decide with final certainty to go forth with my plan, I find myself with unprecendented hours free talking to one of the main people I'd wanted to speak to and, by a complete shock, end up randomly bumping into another of the main people I'd wanted to talk to while at a bar. I've always been reluctant to believe in coincidence; it simply seems more probable (and pleasing) to me to imagine that the twisting of probabilities just goes to show how right I am about now being the right time for this growth.

I remain, of course, a build of Eric 4.0, who is defined by the questions he asks. This remains unchanged. However, there will be a significant change to my questions. In the past, I have focused on -- sometimes obssessed over -- the question of Who Are You. I will, no doubt, continue to do so. That said, I have long been aware that by focusing almost exclusively on the first two questions, I have neglected the other four, and in particular despite my best efforts I have done a very poor job of working on question six. Don't bother going back to look up which one the sixth question was, because I'll reiterate it for you right now: I've put so much work into finding out who I and the people around me are and what they and I want that I've long neglected asking Who I Trust. Understandably, after enough years of this, I find I no longer trust anyone. Then again, it may not be "understandably" since I don't get the impression that most people tend to go through this sort of thing.

Understand that I do not see this as bad. Yes, I have stopped trusting anyone around me. This half-full/half-empty time, though, because now I have the opportunity, the priviledge even, of rebuilding that trust. I feel as though my whole social circle is spread out before me for me to meet everyone anew, with the added benefit that this time around I have a better idea going into it who I'm likely to like. It's a unique opportunity to see who the people around me are, as well as, of course, if I can, should, and do trust them. I want to find out if people feel I should trust them and if they feel they can trust me. I want to know who everyone feels I am -- because who they think you are defines if they trust you, and who the people who matter to you think you are can and should be an important part of who you indeed are. Most people I know try hard not to be defined by the beliefs of those around them because they feel that this threatens their identity and self-determination; in contrast, I already have an incredibly clear (and satisfying) understanding of who I am, and it's probably well past time that I allow the positive characteristics which people believe I have play their part in shaping me. I believe I lack empathy, but my closest friends assure me this isn't the case -- now, therefore, would seem like the perfect time for me to let them be correct. The people to whom I bemoan my academic difficulties tend to have more faith in my study skills than I do; I'd be a fool not to let that sort of perception alter who I am when it can improve me. Some people, of course, are going to have negative views of me, and I will have to be careful not to internalize those traits which they see in me -- but odds are, as I pursue the sixth Great Question, I'll find I have no reason to trust them or their evaluation of me anyway.

Thus, over the coming days, weeks, perhaps even months and years, I will strive to understand who I should trust, what makes me trust them, whether I deserve their trust in turn, and so forth. This isn't going to make me stop pestering people with my normal Who Are You mindgames, but it may add a new dimension to those games. In most ways, this change in outlook will probably have minimal effect in my interactions with most people, and in the long term... heck, I'm less than a week into my new incarnation, so you can't expect me to have any idea how it's going to go. I may -- or may not -- choose to get in touch with some of the people around me and broach the topic of trust and perception openly, depending on the mood that catches me. Until then, I don't know you and I don't trust you... but I'm open to giving you the benefit of the doubt and seeing how things go.

And for today, that's who I am.