Virtual surgery dissection games

Yo! First I want to say thank you for taking the time to read my post. I’m still searching for a few more people to talk to regularly, so I thought I’d try another shot to find some decent people. Most of the few acquaintances I talk to irl are guys, so it would be nice to have more women in my life, but all are welcome to DM.
Anyways about me:
So a little bit about me. Im 25 M and I live in the US. I’m pretty chill and easy going for the most part. I love joking around a lot, so don’t take me seriously most times haha 😅. I like to think that I’m a good listener, or at least i try my best to be. I’m pretty decent at holding conversations too, I can talk about a wide variety of stuff, and I’m not opposed to even talking about more difficult topics, as long as it is civil. I’m go with the flow pretty much, and the energy I get from you I’ll give back in return.
I’m introverted and a homebody, my ideal way of relaxing is wrapped up in a blanket watching a good Netflix series 😌, or just kicking back with some friends playing some games.
I spend a lot of my free time gaming lately. I mostly play Apex whenever I game but I also own some other games too. I have both a PlayStation and a Switch and I’m open to suggestions if you ever had another game you wanted to try playing. Feel free to ask me what games I own btw.
I enjoy listening to music. I listen to a little bit of everything. I like watching tv shows and movies on Netflix, and I’m a huge anime fan! I have more nerdy hobbies overall 😅 and I really enjoy science related topics, i like learning in general tbh. I enjoy playing card and board games, domino’s, ect, and I’m semi decent in chess too. I was learning to speak French at one point but consistency is kinda my arch enemy in well….everything 💀. I like reading every now and then, and I love a good story. I love memes and funny/interesting videos, so definitely feel free to share memes whenever you find them, and I definitely will do the same.
Long term wise, I prefer to keep talking on discord after talking on Reddit for a bit. I also would like it if in the long term you’re comfortable with voice chats. I’m cool with just chatting, but long term it would be better if we could call every now and then. Also, it would be good if we could do virtual hangouts from time to time. Maybe play some games, vibe out to some music, watch some shows/movies/anime together. I’m open to suggestions as well, so if you ever had something you wanted to plan then I’m open to trying new stuff.
Hopefully something in my post appealed to you. If it did, don’t be shy, even if we don’t have the same hobbies it would still be nice to have more consistent friends to talk to. I can hold pretty decent convos, and can talk about a variety of stuff. So don’t be shy, feel free to say Hi! 😁👋

Introduction
In the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare, technology has become an indispensable tool, revolutionizing the way we approach patient care. Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in the field of nursing, particularly in the realm of nursing and rehabilitation. As we delve into the role of technology in the evolution of rehabilitation care, we uncover a tapestry of advancements that have reshaped the patient experience, improved outcomes, and enhanced the efficiency of healthcare delivery.

1. Telemedicine: Bringing Care to Your Doorstep Telemedicine has emerged as a game-changer in rehabilitation care, breaking down barriers of distance and accessibility. Through video consultations and remote monitoring, nurses can now provide real-time support and guidance to patients recovering from injuries or surgeries in the comfort of their own homes. This not only fosters independence but also ensures continuity of care, promoting faster recovery and reducing the need for frequent hospital visits.
2. Wearable Technology: Monitoring Health on the Go Wearable devices such as fitness trackers and smartwatches have transcended their initial purpose of monitoring physical activity to become invaluable tools in rehabilitation. By tracking vital signs, activity levels, and even sleep patterns, nurses gain insights into patients' progress outside of clinical settings. This continuous monitoring enables early detection of potential complications, allowing for timely intervention and personalized care plans tailored to individual needs.
3. Virtual Reality: Immersive Therapy for Enhanced Rehabilitation Enter the realm of virtual reality (VR), where cutting-edge technology meets therapeutic innovation. VR simulations offer immersive experiences that aid in pain management, mobility training, and cognitive rehabilitation. Nurses can guide patients through virtual environments designed to mimic real-life scenarios, facilitating the relearning of motor skills and boosting confidence in a safe and controlled setting. This novel approach not only makes therapy engaging but also accelerates recovery by tapping into the brain's neuroplasticity.
4. Robotics: Assisting Hands in Healing The integration of robotics into rehabilitation settings has ushered in a new era of hands-on assistance. From robotic exoskeletons that support mobility to robotic arms that aid in activities of daily living, these advanced technologies augment the capabilities of both patients and nurses. By offloading repetitive tasks and providing customized support, robots free up nursing staff to focus on more complex care interventions while empowering patients to regain independence and confidence in their abilities.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing Data for Informed Decision-Making Behind the scenes, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms analyze vast amounts of patient data to extract meaningful insights and inform clinical decision-making. Machine learning models can predict outcomes, identify risk factors, and recommend personalized treatment plans tailored to each patient's unique needs. Nurses leverage these AI-driven insights to optimize care delivery, improve patient outcomes, and ensure the efficient allocation of resources, ultimately enhancing the quality and effectiveness of rehabilitation services.
6. Remote Monitoring: Keeping Patients Connected In an era defined by connectivity, remote monitoring solutions enable nurses to stay connected with their patients beyond the confines of traditional healthcare settings. Through mobile apps and web-based platforms, patients can report symptoms, track progress, and communicate with their care team in real-time. This seamless exchange of information fosters a collaborative approach to rehabilitation, empowering patients to actively participate in their recovery journey while providing nurses with valuable feedback to refine treatment plans as needed.
7. Education and Training: Empowering Nurses for Success As technology continues to reshape the landscape of healthcare, ongoing education and training are essential to ensure that nurses are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to leverage these advancements effectively. Institutions like A.G. Rhodes Cobb Senior Rehabilitation Services Marietta are committed to providing comprehensive training programs that empower nurses to harness the power of technology in delivering high-quality rehabilitation care. By investing in the professional development of their nursing staff, facilities can ensure that they remain at the forefront of innovation, driving positive outcomes for their patients.

Conclusion: In the dynamic realm of rehabilitation care, technology serves as a catalyst for transformation, empowering nurses to deliver personalized, evidence-based interventions that optimize patient outcomes. As we look to the future, it is clear that the synergy between technology and nursing will continue to drive innovation, shaping the way we approach rehabilitation and redefining the possibilities for recovery. For those seeking exceptional rehabilitation services, A.G. Rhodes Cobb Senior Rehabilitation Services Marietta stands as a beacon of excellence, where cutting-edge technology and compassionate nursing care converge to empower individuals on their journey to renewed health and independence.

1. although i understand that the BW rebirth/development is still in its early stages, but how will previous purchases be handled? for example, will those who have lifetime premium( from buying the original premium before linden labs swapped it to a subscription) still have that on their account, or will they lose their premium?
   
2. another question, how will blocksworld’s main method of income be? will it remain the same? (coin purchases, premium, etc)
   

finally, these are just my suggestions, (i think alot of this has been covered)

1. don't add any vc or messaging! half the fun of blocksworld was waiting for your friends to publish a new world and see what they had to say back to you. although it may seem inconvenient, i think it is generally a much more moderatable method, and fun way of communication.

4 if i remember right there were pay to play worlds.. i cant remember why they were added but please do not bring this to the new release. the entire idea of this just kills the entire purpose of sharing stuff on the internet. its like making someone need virtual stamps for a email. just please dont re-add these..
5 co-building worlds could be extremely fun. whether thats a online service you pay for, or a local only where two devices have to be on the same network, that would be extremely fun.

1. this is a point i think would be extremely nice - earning coins from moderating community worlds from other members. As a job, or a task. This would be so nice, and improve moderation. I would suggest that moderators must play a world for a certain amount of time to prevent AFK farming.
   
   1. and also, i cant remember if these were in the game originally, but slightly more in depth world analytics would be appreciated. examples for this could be average playtime, how many times the game has been seen by someone (not played), and maybe even if someone follows you after recently playing a world.

ok last thing
im sure fortell will do fine with the re-release, im not too worried. i know that previous IPs are lost currently, (GI joe, MLP transformers, etc) and thats not that big of a deal. i wont act like i know much about game creation or working on a project like this, but if i were to, this would be the tasks i would do before releasing the game.
Optimization Removal of unfair coin purchases Lighting/Graphics controls Moderation improvements Introduction of new tutorials (dont get rid of old ones)
good luck fortell, you guys seem pretty goated 🫡

My mom has a ginormous aneurysm, starts in ascending aorta, goes all the way through her abdomen. She didn't know about it until it ruptured just over a year ago. The dissection itself isn't small but I don't remember the size. She was offered surgery, but at age 83 and "ready, if and when," she refused. And ultimately I guess it appeared stable enough, but who knows what they're not telling her?
She's been very healthy all her life; mild annoyances like headaches, highish cholesterol (which she's taken statins for,) minor aches and pains. Her mom had a dissection in her ascending aorta at age 96; they told us she wouldn't live through the weekend, maybe another week at the MOST, so course she lived eight more years, got fired from hospice. So...in the women in our family, aneurysms just seem to be part of aging, but that doesn't mean she/we aren't taking this seriously.
Anyway, my mom has been managing at home pretty well with just blood pressure medication. She still does everything for herself, still gets out for a walk, drives, etc. But this last week, she's been feeling light-headed to the point of feeling kind of sick, and, her blood pressure has been higher than it's supposed to be. I suppose it speaks to our general good health that we're all pretty clueless about what might be going on.
She has been talking to her doctor, but as I say, I don't think they're telling her everything.
Like, for example--she has two new things going on: 1) an annoying, chesty (sounds phlegmy) cough; 2) swelling feet and ankles. My first thought was congestive heart failure. I know you can live with that for a long time, but...how did she go from playing pickleball quite competitively to...congestive heart failure? Or, did she?
Does lightheadedness come when your blood pressure increases? Or does blood pressure increasing suggest that aneurysm is fixing to take another step forward?
If anyone can follow my train of thought here, what I'm asking is are there signs if/when, or what might the progression be like?
My dad died a month ago without warning; (parents divorced 40 years so that's not affecting my mom.) Just trying to brace myself. It very unusual for our family (both sides) not to reach at least 89, but things can change.
Thank you!

Hey everyone!
I wanted to open up a discussion about a topic that’s crucial for anyone running a forex business: ensuring a secure and compliant payment processing system. One strategy that's really stood out lately is the use of virtual merchant accounts. Have you guys implemented these in your operations?
For those who might not be familiar, virtual merchant accounts are essentially a way to segregate funds without the need for separate physical accounts for each segment. They're not just sub-merchant accounts; they're completely separate virtual spaces where funds from different sources can be managed independently.
This segregation is especially valuable in forex because it aligns perfectly with many regulatory requirements. In several jurisdictions, for instance, there's a strict mandate to keep client funds separate from the company's operational funds. This separation is key to minimising risks such as misuse or mishandling of funds.
Using virtual merchant accounts gives businesses more control and flexibility over their funds while helping maintain an organised and compliant operational structure. It’s a win-win!
I’m curious to hear from you all:

• Have you implemented virtual merchant accounts in your forex business?
• What changes have you noticed in terms of compliance and fund management?
• Any tips or pitfalls to watch out for?

Three nights ago my wife had a big fight with our son, Charlie. Since then, Charlie hasn’t left his room. The argument was about Charlie’s grades and future, which my wife is sure he’s throwing away. Basically, she’s worried Charlie spends too much time playing Minecraft (“that stupid virtual block game,” as she calls it) and not enough time studying, interacting with real people or doing real things to prepare him for the real world.
Although I agree Charlie is a gamer, and his gaming choices are mostly limited to one game, many boys his age play video games, and at least his game of choice isn’t especially violent. It’s even quite creative. But when I tell this to my wife, she gets upset and insists that if Charlie likes building things, he should get his grades up and go to university to become an architect or an engineer. I say that maybe he’s learning to code. “He’s not coding. He’s playing,” my wife says. “He’s not learning anything.”
I’ve tried talking to Charlie through his locked door, but he doesn’t answer.
When I get up at night, I see light creeping from the space between the door and door frame, and hear the clicking and clacking of his keyboard.
When I knock, the clicking stops.

UPDATE

It’s now been five days, and as far as my wife and I can tell, Charlie hasn’t left his room even once. We suppose he must have bottled water in there and maybe some snacks, but we agree that what he’s doing isn’t healthy. At first, we suspected he may have been waiting for us to go to sleep before coming out, so I set up one of my game cameras in the hallway outside his door, but it hasn’t captured anything except some photos of us. He must be going to the bathroom inside there too. He’s not showering. He keeps his window—which looks out onto the backyard—closed, with the blinds down. I’ll set up another game camera outside, just in case he tries going out the window.

UPDATE

It’s now been a full week and my wife is really starting to freak out. She wants me to break down Charlie’s door. The game cameras still show nothing. The keyboard sounds continue, so at least we know he’s still alive. God, it feels weird to write that. I guess I’m not quite as worried as my wife, or I would be forcing the door. As it stands, I feel we need to respect Charlie’s independence and give him time. Teens are rebellious, and they definitely don’t like being told what to do. “His behaviour isn’t normal, even for a teenager,” my wife says. “Don’t you fucking see that?”
I guess I don’t—not yet.

UPDATE

The smell from Charlie’s room is starting to take over the hallway. It’s like a mix of old coffee, urine and eggs.

UPDATE

I gave in to my wife and forced the door—or at least tried to, because it seems Charlie has reinforced it somehow. It didn’t budge. Still nothing on the game cameras. Still flickering lights and clicking at night. There is the possibility of going in through the wall itself, which is just standard drywall, but I’m not desperate enough to try that. Like I’ve told my wife repeatedly, what am I going to do, smash the wall with a sledgehammer or an axe? It’s too Shining. Besides, what if Charlie’s by the wall? I don’t want to to smash him.

UPDATE

The outdoor game camera caught Charlie sneaking out the window! It was in the early morning when my wife and I were fast asleep. He was gone about half an hour, and the camera took another photo of him sneaking back in, holding what looked like a package of some kind. I know things aren’t back to normal, but nevertheless I feel somewhat relieved. And vindicated: I told my wife it would have been crazy to break through the wall.

UPDATE

It’s the night of the thirteenth day, and there are new sounds coming from Charlie’s room: whirring and rattling. They definitely sound mechanical.

UPDATE

Electronic music. Loud and all the fucking time. As if sleeping wasn’t hard enough for us, just with the nerves. My wife and I spent an hour sitting outside Charlie’s room and pounding on the door, hoping he’d answer. I think my wife is starting to break mentally. Her anger has transformed into despair. She has taken to apologizing to him and begging him to let us in.

UPDATE

Day 15. The outdoor game camera caught Charlie leaving again, but this time he returned with a package and a girl. I suppose if things were normal, I would be proud. But things are not normal and I have no idea what they’re up to. I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger’s kid locked up in a room inside my house. As for my wife, she’s been staying mostly in bed. She barely works anymore.

UPDATE

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Early this morning, Charlie sent us an email. It was cryptic but at least it’s proof he’s still willing to communicate. The message said: “im almost done now so it wont be long.”

UPDATE

My wife knocked herself out with sleeping pills and I’m sitting in the living room, trying to watch late night television. It’s not working. The lack of sleep and constant barrage of thumping electronic music is driving me a little bonkers. Sometimes the music sounds like someone screaming. I don’t know if the whirring and grinding and buzzing are instruments or sound effects or real. Charlie isn’t answering my emails. I must have written a hundred to him by now. He’s been in his room with that girl for days.

UPDATE

I’ve decided. I’m going to cut power to the house and go in through the wall with a sledgehammer. If I make a fool of myself, so be it.

UPDATE

Charlie’s in the hospital.
My wife is staying with her parents for the time being.
I’m living in a motel because I can’t stand the thought of being in that house alone anymore.
Not after what I saw. Not after smashing through the drywall to see my only son with his fucking arm cut off. So much blood on the sheets. It reeked of piss and burnt flesh. And that girl, Clarice—some internet girlfriend of his—so ungodly pale, sitting at a desk, cutting into my son’s severed arm with an X-Acto knife.
The police haven’t identified any actual crime, but—
Charlie’s lucky to be alive despite what he so calmly tells me whenever he regains consciousness.
“I did it…”
“Don’t you see?”
“I created…”
“In real life, just like mom…”

UPDATE

Charlie’s words haunt me. I’ve no one to talk to but the psychologist, and she acts like a robot. I feel like I want to grieve but I don’t know for whom. Maybe for my entire life.
I feel this persistent, unbearable dread.
I can’t explain why.
A fear that something fundamental has been changed.
My wife still hasn’t been to see him. She says she can’t bear to see him like this.
“It’s just an arm,” I say. “He’s OK.”
“Do you understand that he cut off his own arm?” she says at me, like it’s an accusation. Like it’s my fault.
There’s just so much guilt.

UPDATE

Charlie’s still in the hospital, but he’s doing better. The doctors are more concerned about his mental state than his physical one. They think he’s shut away the memory of cutting off his own arm. Whenever they try to tell him he’s missing it, he shrugs it off. “Oh, that. That’s fine. I’ll get another.”
Every time I see Charlie, I want to ask him about the things he told me earlier.
But the doctors dissuade me. They say he’s still too fragile. They say it’s better not to force him to remember the trauma. They say there’s a chance he may never truly remember it, and maybe that’s for the best.
The one thing he constantly asks is to see Clarice.
The doctors veto that too.
I don’t like leaving the hospital because there’s something terrible about the world now. Something I don’t want to face.

UPDATE

Clarice called me. Out of the blue.
She wants to meet.
There’s something about that girl that makes me uneasy, to put it mildly. Maybe it’s her pale skin, almost like bleached paper. Or the way her body felt that night I finally went through the wall. Charlie felt solid. She felt like a bunch of old bandaids on Jell-O. The way she was sitting there, so carefully, methodically working the flesh of his arm...
“Charlie thinks it's time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
“For you to finally see. He wants you to be proud of him.”
How fucked is this: I’m meeting her at some old automotive plant. I don’t know if she even has parents. Maybe she’s a runaway. God only knows.
But God help me, I have to do this.

UPDATE

I hesitated to the last possible minute about whether to tell my wife about meeting Clarice—before finally deciding not to. I don’t know why. I want to say I don’t want to cause her any more stress. Her psyche is pretty destroyed as it is. But I also feel, somewhere deep down, that she simply wouldn’t understand.
So that means no one knows I’m out here right now.
I know that’s not smart, but I don’t care. I shouldn’t be afraid of a girl.
Yet here I am, sitting in my car, writing on my phone. The weather is threatening a storm somewhere far off. The factory looks ominous.
And I’m fucking terrified.

UPDATE

I don’t know how to begin to describe what happened: what I saw and did and what I had done to me. I’m back at the motel, and I keep making mistakes typing this on my laptop because my hands are refusing to obey, but I’m resisting the urge to take a drink because I want to be as clear as possible while writing this.
It’s fucking monumental.
Insane.
I met Clarice after wandering about the factory for a quarter of an hour that felt like so much longer. The rain had started, and the way the drops echoed in that place was unreal. Like drums inside my own head.
She called my name suddenly—
I saw her standing by an old, overgrown piece of machinery, beside three bulbous garbage bags. At least one was leaking.
She said she was happy I had come. She said Charlie was a genius.
A god.
She was wearing an old trench coat, and without warning she let it drop to the cracked cement floor.
She was naked.
I wanted to back away. I started telling her I was married and there was no fucking way I would—
“It’s not about that,” she said.
She wanted me to look: to come closer and look at her.
So I did.
I remembered how her body had felt in Charlie’s room, and now I saw why. Her pale skin was spiderwebbed with blue veins, a nearly imperceptible network in a repeating pattern. “Go ahead, touch me,” she said.
I pressed a finger against her flesh. It still felt off, but not as disgustingly creamy as it had then. She had solidified.
“Now press harder.”
I did.
She groaned—and my fingertip sank into her: or more accurately, slipped into one of the blue veins.
“Go on. Keep going until you hear a click.”
I pushed deeper inside. Until there it was: a click, followed by a loosening.
“Remove it.”
I wavered, my gaze meeting hers. “Don’t be afraid.”
Gently, I removed my fingers from within her while maintaining my grip on whatever it was I was holding:
A cube of flesh.
And in her body I saw a corresponding void.
“My God…”
As I inspected the cube, rotating it between my fingers, she removed a second from her body—another void appeared—then took the cube I had been holding, held it against the one she had removed, and I watched them fuse together.
“Blocks,” I whispered.
Still missing two small volumes of herself, she turned toward the garbage bags. “These are my parents,” she said, pointing at the three bags in turn, “and this is Barker, a homeless man I met at the shelter.”
“They are—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how to finish it.
She crouched and unfastened the bags.
Inside each: a stew of raw flesh cubes and multicoloured ooze, steaming—bubbling, frothing, popping; pulsing with what I imagined must be life.
“Watch.”
She took a few cubes from each bag, wiped them, then held them together in the palms of her hands along with the two fused cubes of herself. Like melted metal, they all melded together into one new thing: a fleshy disc with wisps of hair, half an eye and a bone jutting from one end. The half-eye twitched and the entirety secreted a kind of slime across Clarice’s bare hands. It was both horrible and awesome, as if humanity had been deconstructed—
“We can all become blocks,” Clarice said. “To make and remake as we see fit.”
But there was something about that disc.
About the twitching.
The slime.
Maybe this was possible. But it was not fucking right.
I backed away: from Clarice, from her oozing garbage bags and inhuman smile. “It’s merely science,” she said matter-of-factly. “A new science, of being and bodies and existence, and Charlie is the discoverer. He is the new Darwin!”
I started to run.
Her words chased after me: “Are you proud of him? Are you proud of your son?”
The layout of the factory confused me.
Where had I left the car?
“You thought he wouldn’t amount to anything in the real world, so he redefined it: he changed what it means to be alive. Soon he will be worshipped—”
Something hard collided with the side of my head, reducing me with dwindling consciousness to the floor—smack!—and I felt hands grabbing me and dragging me, three shapes of reeking flesh, and Clarice’s laugh, echoing throughout the unreality of the factory as the whirring and buzzing faded in and out and in...
I awoke alone.
Nude. Cold rain on my face.
I was still in the factory, but Clarice was gone. I felt a kind of transcendent solitude. Groggily, I got up—only to promptly collapse on rubbery legs. I crawled toward some derelict machinery and used my arms to stand. My arms were rubbery too, but eventually I managed it. There were tools on the machinery: a saw, pincers, knives. Lightning lit up the distant sky, and in its flash I saw delicate blue veins all across my forearms. Memory returned to me. Memory and fear: the dread sense of realization.
Now I'm back at the motel, typing on my laptop. Disbelieving my own words.
Yet there it is: on a melamine plate beside me: my own flesh cube.
And every time I think I’ve gone crazy, I run my fingertip over the corporeal void from where I removed it.
My body is still soft and flabby—unsettled—but I imagine I will solidify.
As a human, I am filled with a hideous trepidation for our future as a species. I don’t know what this means for us as people.
But, as a father—
I cannot help but feel a kind of pride.

Three nights ago my wife had a big fight with our son, Charlie. Since then, Charlie hasn’t left his room. The argument was about Charlie’s grades and future, which my wife is sure he’s throwing away. Basically, she’s worried Charlie spends too much time playing Minecraft (“that stupid virtual block game,” as she calls it) and not enough time studying, interacting with real people or doing real things to prepare him for the real world.
Although I agree Charlie is a gamer, and his gaming choices are mostly limited to one game, many boys his age play video games, and at least his game of choice isn’t especially violent. It’s even quite creative. But when I tell this to my wife, she gets upset and insists that if Charlie likes building things, he should get his grades up and go to university to become an architect or an engineer. I say that maybe he’s learning to code. “He’s not coding. He’s playing,” my wife says. “He’s not learning anything.”
I’ve tried talking to Charlie through his locked door, but he doesn’t answer.
When I get up at night, I see light creeping from the space between the door and door frame, and hear the clicking and clacking of his keyboard.
When I knock, the clicking stops.

UPDATE

It’s now been five days, and as far as my wife and I can tell, Charlie hasn’t left his room even once. We suppose he must have bottled water in there and maybe some snacks, but we agree that what he’s doing isn’t healthy. At first, we suspected he may have been waiting for us to go to sleep before coming out, so I set up one of my game cameras in the hallway outside his door, but it hasn’t captured anything except some photos of us. He must be going to the bathroom inside there too. He’s not showering. He keeps his window—which looks out onto the backyard—closed, with the blinds down. I’ll set up another game camera outside, just in case he tries going out the window.

UPDATE

It’s now been a full week and my wife is really starting to freak out. She wants me to break down Charlie’s door. The game cameras still show nothing. The keyboard sounds continue, so at least we know he’s still alive. God, it feels weird to write that. I guess I’m not quite as worried as my wife, or I would be forcing the door. As it stands, I feel we need to respect Charlie’s independence and give him time. Teens are rebellious, and they definitely don’t like being told what to do. “His behaviour isn’t normal, even for a teenager,” my wife says. “Don’t you fucking see that?”
I guess I don’t—not yet.

UPDATE

The smell from Charlie’s room is starting to take over the hallway. It’s like a mix of old coffee, urine and eggs.

UPDATE

I gave in to my wife and forced the door—or at least tried to, because it seems Charlie has reinforced it somehow. It didn’t budge. Still nothing on the game cameras. Still flickering lights and clicking at night. There is the possibility of going in through the wall itself, which is just standard drywall, but I’m not desperate enough to try that. Like I’ve told my wife repeatedly, what am I going to do, smash the wall with a sledgehammer or an axe? It’s too Shining. Besides, what if Charlie’s by the wall? I don’t want to to smash him.

UPDATE

The outdoor game camera caught Charlie sneaking out the window! It was in the early morning when my wife and I were fast asleep. He was gone about half an hour, and the camera took another photo of him sneaking back in, holding what looked like a package of some kind. I know things aren’t back to normal, but nevertheless I feel somewhat relieved. And vindicated: I told my wife it would have been crazy to break through the wall.

UPDATE

It’s the night of the thirteenth day, and there are new sounds coming from Charlie’s room: whirring and rattling. They definitely sound mechanical.

UPDATE

Electronic music. Loud and all the fucking time. As if sleeping wasn’t hard enough for us, just with the nerves. My wife and I spent an hour sitting outside Charlie’s room and pounding on the door, hoping he’d answer. I think my wife is starting to break mentally. Her anger has transformed into despair. She has taken to apologizing to him and begging him to let us in.

UPDATE

Day 15. The outdoor game camera caught Charlie leaving again, but this time he returned with a package and a girl. I suppose if things were normal, I would be proud. But things are not normal and I have no idea what they’re up to. I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger’s kid locked up in a room inside my house. As for my wife, she’s been staying mostly in bed. She barely works anymore.

UPDATE

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Early this morning, Charlie sent us an email. It was cryptic but at least it’s proof he’s still willing to communicate. The message said: “im almost done now so it wont be long.”

UPDATE

My wife knocked herself out with sleeping pills and I’m sitting in the living room, trying to watch late night television. It’s not working. The lack of sleep and constant barrage of thumping electronic music is driving me a little bonkers. Sometimes the music sounds like someone screaming. I don’t know if the whirring and grinding and buzzing are instruments or sound effects or real. Charlie isn’t answering my emails. I must have written a hundred to him by now. He’s been in his room with that girl for days.

UPDATE

I’ve decided. I’m going to cut power to the house and go in through the wall with a sledgehammer. If I make a fool of myself, so be it.

UPDATE

Charlie’s in the hospital.
My wife is staying with her parents for the time being.
I’m living in a motel because I can’t stand the thought of being in that house alone anymore.
Not after what I saw. Not after smashing through the drywall to see my only son with his fucking arm cut off. So much blood on the sheets. It reeked of piss and burnt flesh. And that girl, Clarice—some internet girlfriend of his—so ungodly pale, sitting at a desk, cutting into my son’s severed arm with an X-Acto knife.
The police haven’t identified any actual crime, but—
Charlie’s lucky to be alive despite what he so calmly tells me whenever he regains consciousness.
“I did it…”
“Don’t you see?”
“I created…”
“In real life, just like mom…”

UPDATE

Charlie’s words haunt me. I’ve no one to talk to but the psychologist, and she acts like a robot. I feel like I want to grieve but I don’t know for whom. Maybe for my entire life.
I feel this persistent, unbearable dread.
I can’t explain why.
A fear that something fundamental has been changed.
My wife still hasn’t been to see him. She says she can’t bear to see him like this.
“It’s just an arm,” I say. “He’s OK.”
“Do you understand that he cut off his own arm?” she says at me, like it’s an accusation. Like it’s my fault.
There’s just so much guilt.

UPDATE

Charlie’s still in the hospital, but he’s doing better. The doctors are more concerned about his mental state than his physical one. They think he’s shut away the memory of cutting off his own arm. Whenever they try to tell him he’s missing it, he shrugs it off. “Oh, that. That’s fine. I’ll get another.”
Every time I see Charlie, I want to ask him about the things he told me earlier.
But the doctors dissuade me. They say he’s still too fragile. They say it’s better not to force him to remember the trauma. They say there’s a chance he may never truly remember it, and maybe that’s for the best.
The one thing he constantly asks is to see Clarice.
The doctors veto that too.
I don’t like leaving the hospital because there’s something terrible about the world now. Something I don’t want to face.

UPDATE

Clarice called me. Out of the blue.
She wants to meet.
There’s something about that girl that makes me uneasy, to put it mildly. Maybe it’s her pale skin, almost like bleached paper. Or the way her body felt that night I finally went through the wall. Charlie felt solid. She felt like a bunch of old bandaids on Jell-O. The way she was sitting there, so carefully, methodically working the flesh of his arm...
“Charlie thinks it's time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
“For you to finally see. He wants you to be proud of him.”
How fucked is this: I’m meeting her at some old automotive plant. I don’t know if she even has parents. Maybe she’s a runaway. God only knows.
But God help me, I have to do this.

UPDATE

I hesitated to the last possible minute about whether to tell my wife about meeting Clarice—before finally deciding not to. I don’t know why. I want to say I don’t want to cause her any more stress. Her psyche is pretty destroyed as it is. But I also feel, somewhere deep down, that she simply wouldn’t understand.
So that means no one knows I’m out here right now.
I know that’s not smart, but I don’t care. I shouldn’t be afraid of a girl.
Yet here I am, sitting in my car, writing on my phone. The weather is threatening a storm somewhere far off. The factory looks ominous.
And I’m fucking terrified.

UPDATE

I don’t know how to begin to describe what happened: what I saw and did and what I had done to me. I’m back at the motel, and I keep making mistakes typing this on my laptop because my hands are refusing to obey, but I’m resisting the urge to take a drink because I want to be as clear as possible while writing this.
It’s fucking monumental.
Insane.
I met Clarice after wandering about the factory for a quarter of an hour that felt like so much longer. The rain had started, and the way the drops echoed in that place was unreal. Like drums inside my own head.
She called my name suddenly—
I saw her standing by an old, overgrown piece of machinery, beside three bulbous garbage bags. At least one was leaking.
She said she was happy I had come. She said Charlie was a genius.
A god.
She was wearing an old trench coat, and without warning she let it drop to the cracked cement floor.
She was naked.
I wanted to back away. I started telling her I was married and there was no fucking way I would—
“It’s not about that,” she said.
She wanted me to look: to come closer and look at her.
So I did.
I remembered how her body had felt in Charlie’s room, and now I saw why. Her pale skin was spiderwebbed with blue veins, a nearly imperceptible network in a repeating pattern. “Go ahead, touch me,” she said.
I pressed a finger against her flesh. It still felt off, but not as disgustingly creamy as it had then. She had solidified.
“Now press harder.”
I did.
She groaned—and my fingertip sank into her: or more accurately, slipped into one of the blue veins.
“Go on. Keep going until you hear a click.”
I pushed deeper inside. Until there it was: a click, followed by a loosening.
“Remove it.”
I wavered, my gaze meeting hers. “Don’t be afraid.”
Gently, I removed my fingers from within her while maintaining my grip on whatever it was I was holding:
A cube of flesh.
And in her body I saw a corresponding void.
“My God…”
As I inspected the cube, rotating it between my fingers, she removed a second from her body—another void appeared—then took the cube I had been holding, held it against the one she had removed, and I watched them fuse together.
“Blocks,” I whispered.
Still missing two small volumes of herself, she turned toward the garbage bags. “These are my parents,” she said, pointing at the three bags in turn, “and this is Barker, a homeless man I met at the shelter.”
“They are—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how to finish it.
She crouched and unfastened the bags.
Inside each: a stew of raw flesh cubes and multicoloured ooze, steaming—bubbling, frothing, popping; pulsing with what I imagined must be life.
“Watch.”
She took a few cubes from each bag, wiped them, then held them together in the palms of her hands along with the two fused cubes of herself. Like melted metal, they all melded together into one new thing: a fleshy disc with wisps of hair, half an eye and a bone jutting from one end. The half-eye twitched and the entirety secreted a kind of slime across Clarice’s bare hands. It was both horrible and awesome, as if humanity had been deconstructed—
“We can all become blocks,” Clarice said. “To make and remake as we see fit.”
But there was something about that disc.
About the twitching.
The slime.
Maybe this was possible. But it was not fucking right.
I backed away: from Clarice, from her oozing garbage bags and inhuman smile. “It’s merely science,” she said matter-of-factly. “A new science, of being and bodies and existence, and Charlie is the discoverer. He is the new Darwin!”
I started to run.
Her words chased after me: “Are you proud of him? Are you proud of your son?”
The layout of the factory confused me.
Where had I left the car?
“You thought he wouldn’t amount to anything in the real world, so he redefined it: he changed what it means to be alive. Soon he will be worshipped—”
Something hard collided with the side of my head, reducing me with dwindling consciousness to the floor—smack!—and I felt hands grabbing me and dragging me, three shapes of reeking flesh, and Clarice’s laugh, echoing throughout the unreality of the factory as the whirring and buzzing faded in and out and in...
I awoke alone.
Nude. Cold rain on my face.
I was still in the factory, but Clarice was gone. I felt a kind of transcendent solitude. Groggily, I got up—only to promptly collapse on rubbery legs. I crawled toward some derelict machinery and used my arms to stand. My arms were rubbery too, but eventually I managed it. There were tools on the machinery: a saw, pincers, knives. Lightning lit up the distant sky, and in its flash I saw delicate blue veins all across my forearms. Memory returned to me. Memory and fear: the dread sense of realization.
Now I'm back at the motel, typing on my laptop. Disbelieving my own words.
Yet there it is: on a melamine plate beside me: my own flesh cube.
And every time I think I’ve gone crazy, I run my fingertip over the corporeal void from where I removed it.
My body is still soft and flabby—unsettled—but I imagine I will solidify.
As a human, I am filled with a hideous trepidation for our future as a species. I don’t know what this means for us as people.
But, as a father—
I cannot help but feel a kind of pride.

Three nights ago my wife had a big fight with our son, Charlie. Since then, Charlie hasn’t left his room. The argument was about Charlie’s grades and future, which my wife is sure he’s throwing away. Basically, she’s worried Charlie spends too much time playing Minecraft (“that stupid virtual block game,” as she calls it) and not enough time studying, interacting with real people or doing real things to prepare him for the real world.
Although I agree Charlie is a gamer, and his gaming choices are mostly limited to one game, many boys his age play video games, and at least his game of choice isn’t especially violent. It’s even quite creative. But when I tell this to my wife, she gets upset and insists that if Charlie likes building things, he should get his grades up and go to university to become an architect or an engineer. I say that maybe he’s learning to code. “He’s not coding. He’s playing,” my wife says. “He’s not learning anything.”
I’ve tried talking to Charlie through his locked door, but he doesn’t answer.
When I get up at night, I see light creeping from the space between the door and door frame, and hear the clicking and clacking of his keyboard.
When I knock, the clicking stops.

UPDATE

It’s now been five days, and as far as my wife and I can tell, Charlie hasn’t left his room even once. We suppose he must have bottled water in there and maybe some snacks, but we agree that what he’s doing isn’t healthy. At first, we suspected he may have been waiting for us to go to sleep before coming out, so I set up one of my game cameras in the hallway outside his door, but it hasn’t captured anything except some photos of us. He must be going to the bathroom inside there too. He’s not showering. He keeps his window—which looks out onto the backyard—closed, with the blinds down. I’ll set up another game camera outside, just in case he tries going out the window.

UPDATE

It’s now been a full week and my wife is really starting to freak out. She wants me to break down Charlie’s door. The game cameras still show nothing. The keyboard sounds continue, so at least we know he’s still alive. God, it feels weird to write that. I guess I’m not quite as worried as my wife, or I would be forcing the door. As it stands, I feel we need to respect Charlie’s independence and give him time. Teens are rebellious, and they definitely don’t like being told what to do. “His behaviour isn’t normal, even for a teenager,” my wife says. “Don’t you fucking see that?”
I guess I don’t—not yet.

UPDATE

The smell from Charlie’s room is starting to take over the hallway. It’s like a mix of old coffee, urine and eggs.

UPDATE

I gave in to my wife and forced the door—or at least tried to, because it seems Charlie has reinforced it somehow. It didn’t budge. Still nothing on the game cameras. Still flickering lights and clicking at night. There is the possibility of going in through the wall itself, which is just standard drywall, but I’m not desperate enough to try that. Like I’ve told my wife repeatedly, what am I going to do, smash the wall with a sledgehammer or an axe? It’s too Shining. Besides, what if Charlie’s by the wall? I don’t want to to smash him.

UPDATE

The outdoor game camera caught Charlie sneaking out the window! It was in the early morning when my wife and I were fast asleep. He was gone about half an hour, and the camera took another photo of him sneaking back in, holding what looked like a package of some kind. I know things aren’t back to normal, but nevertheless I feel somewhat relieved. And vindicated: I told my wife it would have been crazy to break through the wall.

UPDATE

It’s the night of the thirteenth day, and there are new sounds coming from Charlie’s room: whirring and rattling. They definitely sound mechanical.

UPDATE

Electronic music. Loud and all the fucking time. As if sleeping wasn’t hard enough for us, just with the nerves. My wife and I spent an hour sitting outside Charlie’s room and pounding on the door, hoping he’d answer. I think my wife is starting to break mentally. Her anger has transformed into despair. She has taken to apologizing to him and begging him to let us in.

UPDATE

Day 15. The outdoor game camera caught Charlie leaving again, but this time he returned with a package and a girl. I suppose if things were normal, I would be proud. But things are not normal and I have no idea what they’re up to. I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger’s kid locked up in a room inside my house. As for my wife, she’s been staying mostly in bed. She barely works anymore.

UPDATE

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Early this morning, Charlie sent us an email. It was cryptic but at least it’s proof he’s still willing to communicate. The message said: “im almost done now so it wont be long.”

UPDATE

My wife knocked herself out with sleeping pills and I’m sitting in the living room, trying to watch late night television. It’s not working. The lack of sleep and constant barrage of thumping electronic music is driving me a little bonkers. Sometimes the music sounds like someone screaming. I don’t know if the whirring and grinding and buzzing are instruments or sound effects or real. Charlie isn’t answering my emails. I must have written a hundred to him by now. He’s been in his room with that girl for days.

UPDATE

I’ve decided. I’m going to cut power to the house and go in through the wall with a sledgehammer. If I make a fool of myself, so be it.

UPDATE

Charlie’s in the hospital.
My wife is staying with her parents for the time being.
I’m living in a motel because I can’t stand the thought of being in that house alone anymore.
Not after what I saw. Not after smashing through the drywall to see my only son with his fucking arm cut off. So much blood on the sheets. It reeked of piss and burnt flesh. And that girl, Clarice—some internet girlfriend of his—so ungodly pale, sitting at a desk, cutting into my son’s severed arm with an X-Acto knife.
The police haven’t identified any actual crime, but—
Charlie’s lucky to be alive despite what he so calmly tells me whenever he regains consciousness.
“I did it…”
“Don’t you see?”
“I created…”
“In real life, just like mom…”

UPDATE

Charlie’s words haunt me. I’ve no one to talk to but the psychologist, and she acts like a robot. I feel like I want to grieve but I don’t know for whom. Maybe for my entire life.
I feel this persistent, unbearable dread.
I can’t explain why.
A fear that something fundamental has been changed.
My wife still hasn’t been to see him. She says she can’t bear to see him like this.
“It’s just an arm,” I say. “He’s OK.”
“Do you understand that he cut off his own arm?” she says at me, like it’s an accusation. Like it’s my fault.
There’s just so much guilt.

UPDATE

Charlie’s still in the hospital, but he’s doing better. The doctors are more concerned about his mental state than his physical one. They think he’s shut away the memory of cutting off his own arm. Whenever they try to tell him he’s missing it, he shrugs it off. “Oh, that. That’s fine. I’ll get another.”
Every time I see Charlie, I want to ask him about the things he told me earlier.
But the doctors dissuade me. They say he’s still too fragile. They say it’s better not to force him to remember the trauma. They say there’s a chance he may never truly remember it, and maybe that’s for the best.
The one thing he constantly asks is to see Clarice.
The doctors veto that too.
I don’t like leaving the hospital because there’s something terrible about the world now. Something I don’t want to face.

UPDATE

Clarice called me. Out of the blue.
She wants to meet.
There’s something about that girl that makes me uneasy, to put it mildly. Maybe it’s her pale skin, almost like bleached paper. Or the way her body felt that night I finally went through the wall. Charlie felt solid. She felt like a bunch of old bandaids on Jell-O. The way she was sitting there, so carefully, methodically working the flesh of his arm...
“Charlie thinks it's time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
“For you to finally see. He wants you to be proud of him.”
How fucked is this: I’m meeting her at some old automotive plant. I don’t know if she even has parents. Maybe she’s a runaway. God only knows.
But God help me, I have to do this.

UPDATE

I hesitated to the last possible minute about whether to tell my wife about meeting Clarice—before finally deciding not to. I don’t know why. I want to say I don’t want to cause her any more stress. Her psyche is pretty destroyed as it is. But I also feel, somewhere deep down, that she simply wouldn’t understand.
So that means no one knows I’m out here right now.
I know that’s not smart, but I don’t care. I shouldn’t be afraid of a girl.
Yet here I am, sitting in my car, writing on my phone. The weather is threatening a storm somewhere far off. The factory looks ominous.
And I’m fucking terrified.

UPDATE

I don’t know how to begin to describe what happened: what I saw and did and what I had done to me. I’m back at the motel, and I keep making mistakes typing this on my laptop because my hands are refusing to obey, but I’m resisting the urge to take a drink because I want to be as clear as possible while writing this.
It’s fucking monumental.
Insane.
I met Clarice after wandering about the factory for a quarter of an hour that felt like so much longer. The rain had started, and the way the drops echoed in that place was unreal. Like drums inside my own head.
She called my name suddenly—
I saw her standing by an old, overgrown piece of machinery, beside three bulbous garbage bags. At least one was leaking.
She said she was happy I had come. She said Charlie was a genius.
A god.
She was wearing an old trench coat, and without warning she let it drop to the cracked cement floor.
She was naked.
I wanted to back away. I started telling her I was married and there was no fucking way I would—
“It’s not about that,” she said.
She wanted me to look: to come closer and look at her.
So I did.
I remembered how her body had felt in Charlie’s room, and now I saw why. Her pale skin was spiderwebbed with blue veins, a nearly imperceptible network in a repeating pattern. “Go ahead, touch me,” she said.
I pressed a finger against her flesh. It still felt off, but not as disgustingly creamy as it had then. She had solidified.
“Now press harder.”
I did.
She groaned—and my fingertip sank into her: or more accurately, slipped into one of the blue veins.
“Go on. Keep going until you hear a click.”
I pushed deeper inside. Until there it was: a click, followed by a loosening.
“Remove it.”
I wavered, my gaze meeting hers. “Don’t be afraid.”
Gently, I removed my fingers from within her while maintaining my grip on whatever it was I was holding:
A cube of flesh.
And in her body I saw a corresponding void.
“My God…”
As I inspected the cube, rotating it between my fingers, she removed a second from her body—another void appeared—then took the cube I had been holding, held it against the one she had removed, and I watched them fuse together.
“Blocks,” I whispered.
Still missing two small volumes of herself, she turned toward the garbage bags. “These are my parents,” she said, pointing at the three bags in turn, “and this is Barker, a homeless man I met at the shelter.”
“They are—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how to finish it.
She crouched and unfastened the bags.
Inside each: a stew of raw flesh cubes and multicoloured ooze, steaming—bubbling, frothing, popping; pulsing with what I imagined must be life.
“Watch.”
She took a few cubes from each bag, wiped them, then held them together in the palms of her hands along with the two fused cubes of herself. Like melted metal, they all melded together into one new thing: a fleshy disc with wisps of hair, half an eye and a bone jutting from one end. The half-eye twitched and the entirety secreted a kind of slime across Clarice’s bare hands. It was both horrible and awesome, as if humanity had been deconstructed—
“We can all become blocks,” Clarice said. “To make and remake as we see fit.”
But there was something about that disc.
About the twitching.
The slime.
Maybe this was possible. But it was not fucking right.
I backed away: from Clarice, from her oozing garbage bags and inhuman smile. “It’s merely science,” she said matter-of-factly. “A new science, of being and bodies and existence, and Charlie is the discoverer. He is the new Darwin!”
I started to run.
Her words chased after me: “Are you proud of him? Are you proud of your son?”
The layout of the factory confused me.
Where had I left the car?
“You thought he wouldn’t amount to anything in the real world, so he redefined it: he changed what it means to be alive. Soon he will be worshipped—”
Something hard collided with the side of my head, reducing me with dwindling consciousness to the floor—smack!—and I felt hands grabbing me and dragging me, three shapes of reeking flesh, and Clarice’s laugh, echoing throughout the unreality of the factory as the whirring and buzzing faded in and out and in...
I awoke alone.
Nude. Cold rain on my face.
I was still in the factory, but Clarice was gone. I felt a kind of transcendent solitude. Groggily, I got up—only to promptly collapse on rubbery legs. I crawled toward some derelict machinery and used my arms to stand. My arms were rubbery too, but eventually I managed it. There were tools on the machinery: a saw, pincers, knives. Lightning lit up the distant sky, and in its flash I saw delicate blue veins all across my forearms. Memory returned to me. Memory and fear: the dread sense of realization.
Now I'm back at the motel, typing on my laptop. Disbelieving my own words.
Yet there it is: on a melamine plate beside me: my own flesh cube.
And every time I think I’ve gone crazy, I run my fingertip over the corporeal void from where I removed it.
My body is still soft and flabby—unsettled—but I imagine I will solidify.
As a human, I am filled with a hideous trepidation for our future as a species. I don’t know what this means for us as people.
But, as a father—
I cannot help but feel a kind of pride.

Three nights ago my wife had a big fight with our son, Charlie. Since then, Charlie hasn’t left his room. The argument was about Charlie’s grades and future, which my wife is sure he’s throwing away. Basically, she’s worried Charlie spends too much time playing Minecraft (“that stupid virtual block game,” as she calls it) and not enough time studying, interacting with real people or doing real things to prepare him for the real world.
Although I agree Charlie is a gamer, and his gaming choices are mostly limited to one game, many boys his age play video games, and at least his game of choice isn’t especially violent. It’s even quite creative. But when I tell this to my wife, she gets upset and insists that if Charlie likes building things, he should get his grades up and go to university to become an architect or an engineer. I say that maybe he’s learning to code. “He’s not coding. He’s playing,” my wife says. “He’s not learning anything.”
I’ve tried talking to Charlie through his locked door, but he doesn’t answer.
When I get up at night, I see light creeping from the space between the door and door frame, and hear the clicking and clacking of his keyboard.
When I knock, the clicking stops.

UPDATE

It’s now been five days, and as far as my wife and I can tell, Charlie hasn’t left his room even once. We suppose he must have bottled water in there and maybe some snacks, but we agree that what he’s doing isn’t healthy. At first, we suspected he may have been waiting for us to go to sleep before coming out, so I set up one of my game cameras in the hallway outside his door, but it hasn’t captured anything except some photos of us. He must be going to the bathroom inside there too. He’s not showering. He keeps his window—which looks out onto the backyard—closed, with the blinds down. I’ll set up another game camera outside, just in case he tries going out the window.

UPDATE

It’s now been a full week and my wife is really starting to freak out. She wants me to break down Charlie’s door. The game cameras still show nothing. The keyboard sounds continue, so at least we know he’s still alive. God, it feels weird to write that. I guess I’m not quite as worried as my wife, or I would be forcing the door. As it stands, I feel we need to respect Charlie’s independence and give him time. Teens are rebellious, and they definitely don’t like being told what to do. “His behaviour isn’t normal, even for a teenager,” my wife says. “Don’t you fucking see that?”
I guess I don’t—not yet.

UPDATE

The smell from Charlie’s room is starting to take over the hallway. It’s like a mix of old coffee, urine and eggs.

UPDATE

I gave in to my wife and forced the door—or at least tried to, because it seems Charlie has reinforced it somehow. It didn’t budge. Still nothing on the game cameras. Still flickering lights and clicking at night. There is the possibility of going in through the wall itself, which is just standard drywall, but I’m not desperate enough to try that. Like I’ve told my wife repeatedly, what am I going to do, smash the wall with a sledgehammer or an axe? It’s too Shining. Besides, what if Charlie’s by the wall? I don’t want to to smash him.

UPDATE

The outdoor game camera caught Charlie sneaking out the window! It was in the early morning when my wife and I were fast asleep. He was gone about half an hour, and the camera took another photo of him sneaking back in, holding what looked like a package of some kind. I know things aren’t back to normal, but nevertheless I feel somewhat relieved. And vindicated: I told my wife it would have been crazy to break through the wall.

UPDATE

It’s the night of the thirteenth day, and there are new sounds coming from Charlie’s room: whirring and rattling. They definitely sound mechanical.

UPDATE

Electronic music. Loud and all the fucking time. As if sleeping wasn’t hard enough for us, just with the nerves. My wife and I spent an hour sitting outside Charlie’s room and pounding on the door, hoping he’d answer. I think my wife is starting to break mentally. Her anger has transformed into despair. She has taken to apologizing to him and begging him to let us in.

UPDATE

Day 15. The outdoor game camera caught Charlie leaving again, but this time he returned with a package and a girl. I suppose if things were normal, I would be proud. But things are not normal and I have no idea what they’re up to. I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger’s kid locked up in a room inside my house. As for my wife, she’s been staying mostly in bed. She barely works anymore.

UPDATE

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Early this morning, Charlie sent us an email. It was cryptic but at least it’s proof he’s still willing to communicate. The message said: “im almost done now so it wont be long.”

UPDATE

My wife knocked herself out with sleeping pills and I’m sitting in the living room, trying to watch late night television. It’s not working. The lack of sleep and constant barrage of thumping electronic music is driving me a little bonkers. Sometimes the music sounds like someone screaming. I don’t know if the whirring and grinding and buzzing are instruments or sound effects or real. Charlie isn’t answering my emails. I must have written a hundred to him by now. He’s been in his room with that girl for days.

UPDATE

I’ve decided. I’m going to cut power to the house and go in through the wall with a sledgehammer. If I make a fool of myself, so be it.

UPDATE

Charlie’s in the hospital.
My wife is staying with her parents for the time being.
I’m living in a motel because I can’t stand the thought of being in that house alone anymore.
Not after what I saw. Not after smashing through the drywall to see my only son with his fucking arm cut off. So much blood on the sheets. It reeked of piss and burnt flesh. And that girl, Clarice—some internet girlfriend of his—so ungodly pale, sitting at a desk, cutting into my son’s severed arm with an X-Acto knife.
The police haven’t identified any actual crime, but—
Charlie’s lucky to be alive despite what he so calmly tells me whenever he regains consciousness.
“I did it…”
“Don’t you see?”
“I created…”
“In real life, just like mom…”

UPDATE

Charlie’s words haunt me. I’ve no one to talk to but the psychologist, and she acts like a robot. I feel like I want to grieve but I don’t know for whom. Maybe for my entire life.
I feel this persistent, unbearable dread.
I can’t explain why.
A fear that something fundamental has been changed.
My wife still hasn’t been to see him. She says she can’t bear to see him like this.
“It’s just an arm,” I say. “He’s OK.”
“Do you understand that he cut off his own arm?” she says at me, like it’s an accusation. Like it’s my fault.
There’s just so much guilt.

UPDATE

Charlie’s still in the hospital, but he’s doing better. The doctors are more concerned about his mental state than his physical one. They think he’s shut away the memory of cutting off his own arm. Whenever they try to tell him he’s missing it, he shrugs it off. “Oh, that. That’s fine. I’ll get another.”
Every time I see Charlie, I want to ask him about the things he told me earlier.
But the doctors dissuade me. They say he’s still too fragile. They say it’s better not to force him to remember the trauma. They say there’s a chance he may never truly remember it, and maybe that’s for the best.
The one thing he constantly asks is to see Clarice.
The doctors veto that too.
I don’t like leaving the hospital because there’s something terrible about the world now. Something I don’t want to face.

UPDATE

Clarice called me. Out of the blue.
She wants to meet.
There’s something about that girl that makes me uneasy, to put it mildly. Maybe it’s her pale skin, almost like bleached paper. Or the way her body felt that night I finally went through the wall. Charlie felt solid. She felt like a bunch of old bandaids on Jell-O. The way she was sitting there, so carefully, methodically working the flesh of his arm...
“Charlie thinks it's time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
“For you to finally see. He wants you to be proud of him.”
How fucked is this: I’m meeting her at some old automotive plant. I don’t know if she even has parents. Maybe she’s a runaway. God only knows.
But God help me, I have to do this.

UPDATE

I hesitated to the last possible minute about whether to tell my wife about meeting Clarice—before finally deciding not to. I don’t know why. I want to say I don’t want to cause her any more stress. Her psyche is pretty destroyed as it is. But I also feel, somewhere deep down, that she simply wouldn’t understand.
So that means no one knows I’m out here right now.
I know that’s not smart, but I don’t care. I shouldn’t be afraid of a girl.
Yet here I am, sitting in my car, writing on my phone. The weather is threatening a storm somewhere far off. The factory looks ominous.
And I’m fucking terrified.

UPDATE

I don’t know how to begin to describe what happened: what I saw and did and what I had done to me. I’m back at the motel, and I keep making mistakes typing this on my laptop because my hands are refusing to obey, but I’m resisting the urge to take a drink because I want to be as clear as possible while writing this.
It’s fucking monumental.
Insane.
I met Clarice after wandering about the factory for a quarter of an hour that felt like so much longer. The rain had started, and the way the drops echoed in that place was unreal. Like drums inside my own head.
She called my name suddenly—
I saw her standing by an old, overgrown piece of machinery, beside three bulbous garbage bags. At least one was leaking.
She said she was happy I had come. She said Charlie was a genius.
A god.
She was wearing an old trench coat, and without warning she let it drop to the cracked cement floor.
She was naked.
I wanted to back away. I started telling her I was married and there was no fucking way I would—
“It’s not about that,” she said.
She wanted me to look: to come closer and look at her.
So I did.
I remembered how her body had felt in Charlie’s room, and now I saw why. Her pale skin was spiderwebbed with blue veins, a nearly imperceptible network in a repeating pattern. “Go ahead, touch me,” she said.
I pressed a finger against her flesh. It still felt off, but not as disgustingly creamy as it had then. She had solidified.
“Now press harder.”
I did.
She groaned—and my fingertip sank into her: or more accurately, slipped into one of the blue veins.
“Go on. Keep going until you hear a click.”
I pushed deeper inside. Until there it was: a click, followed by a loosening.
“Remove it.”
I wavered, my gaze meeting hers. “Don’t be afraid.”
Gently, I removed my fingers from within her while maintaining my grip on whatever it was I was holding:
A cube of flesh.
And in her body I saw a corresponding void.
“My God…”
As I inspected the cube, rotating it between my fingers, she removed a second from her body—another void appeared—then took the cube I had been holding, held it against the one she had removed, and I watched them fuse together.
“Blocks,” I whispered.
Still missing two small volumes of herself, she turned toward the garbage bags. “These are my parents,” she said, pointing at the three bags in turn, “and this is Barker, a homeless man I met at the shelter.”
“They are—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how to finish it.
She crouched and unfastened the bags.
Inside each: a stew of raw flesh cubes and multicoloured ooze, steaming—bubbling, frothing, popping; pulsing with what I imagined must be life.
“Watch.”
She took a few cubes from each bag, wiped them, then held them together in the palms of her hands along with the two fused cubes of herself. Like melted metal, they all melded together into one new thing: a fleshy disc with wisps of hair, half an eye and a bone jutting from one end. The half-eye twitched and the entirety secreted a kind of slime across Clarice’s bare hands. It was both horrible and awesome, as if humanity had been deconstructed—
“We can all become blocks,” Clarice said. “To make and remake as we see fit.”
But there was something about that disc.
About the twitching.
The slime.
Maybe this was possible. But it was not fucking right.
I backed away: from Clarice, from her oozing garbage bags and inhuman smile. “It’s merely science,” she said matter-of-factly. “A new science, of being and bodies and existence, and Charlie is the discoverer. He is the new Darwin!”
I started to run.
Her words chased after me: “Are you proud of him? Are you proud of your son?”
The layout of the factory confused me.
Where had I left the car?
“You thought he wouldn’t amount to anything in the real world, so he redefined it: he changed what it means to be alive. Soon he will be worshipped—”
Something hard collided with the side of my head, reducing me with dwindling consciousness to the floor—smack!—and I felt hands grabbing me and dragging me, three shapes of reeking flesh, and Clarice’s laugh, echoing throughout the unreality of the factory as the whirring and buzzing faded in and out and in...
I awoke alone.
Nude. Cold rain on my face.
I was still in the factory, but Clarice was gone. I felt a kind of transcendent solitude. Groggily, I got up—only to promptly collapse on rubbery legs. I crawled toward some derelict machinery and used my arms to stand. My arms were rubbery too, but eventually I managed it. There were tools on the machinery: a saw, pincers, knives. Lightning lit up the distant sky, and in its flash I saw delicate blue veins all across my forearms. Memory returned to me. Memory and fear: the dread sense of realization.
Now I'm back at the motel, typing on my laptop. Disbelieving my own words.
Yet there it is: on a melamine plate beside me: my own flesh cube.
And every time I think I’ve gone crazy, I run my fingertip over the corporeal void from where I removed it.
My body is still soft and flabby—unsettled—but I imagine I will solidify.
As a human, I am filled with a hideous trepidation for our future as a species. I don’t know what this means for us as people.
But, as a father—
I cannot help but feel a kind of pride.

Three nights ago my wife had a big fight with our son, Charlie. Since then, Charlie hasn’t left his room. The argument was about Charlie’s grades and future, which my wife is sure he’s throwing away. Basically, she’s worried Charlie spends too much time playing Minecraft (“that stupid virtual block game,” as she calls it) and not enough time studying, interacting with real people or doing real things to prepare him for the real world.
Although I agree Charlie is a gamer, and his gaming choices are mostly limited to one game, many boys his age play video games, and at least his game of choice isn’t especially violent. It’s even quite creative. But when I tell this to my wife, she gets upset and insists that if Charlie likes building things, he should get his grades up and go to university to become an architect or an engineer. I say that maybe he’s learning to code. “He’s not coding. He’s playing,” my wife says. “He’s not learning anything.”
I’ve tried talking to Charlie through his locked door, but he doesn’t answer.
When I get up at night, I see light creeping from the space between the door and door frame, and hear the clicking and clacking of his keyboard.
When I knock, the clicking stops.

UPDATE

It’s now been five days, and as far as my wife and I can tell, Charlie hasn’t left his room even once. We suppose he must have bottled water in there and maybe some snacks, but we agree that what he’s doing isn’t healthy. At first, we suspected he may have been waiting for us to go to sleep before coming out, so I set up one of my game cameras in the hallway outside his door, but it hasn’t captured anything except some photos of us. He must be going to the bathroom inside there too. He’s not showering. He keeps his window—which looks out onto the backyard—closed, with the blinds down. I’ll set up another game camera outside, just in case he tries going out the window.

UPDATE

It’s now been a full week and my wife is really starting to freak out. She wants me to break down Charlie’s door. The game cameras still show nothing. The keyboard sounds continue, so at least we know he’s still alive. God, it feels weird to write that. I guess I’m not quite as worried as my wife, or I would be forcing the door. As it stands, I feel we need to respect Charlie’s independence and give him time. Teens are rebellious, and they definitely don’t like being told what to do. “His behaviour isn’t normal, even for a teenager,” my wife says. “Don’t you fucking see that?”
I guess I don’t—not yet.

UPDATE

The smell from Charlie’s room is starting to take over the hallway. It’s like a mix of old coffee, urine and eggs.

UPDATE

I gave in to my wife and forced the door—or at least tried to, because it seems Charlie has reinforced it somehow. It didn’t budge. Still nothing on the game cameras. Still flickering lights and clicking at night. There is the possibility of going in through the wall itself, which is just standard drywall, but I’m not desperate enough to try that. Like I’ve told my wife repeatedly, what am I going to do, smash the wall with a sledgehammer or an axe? It’s too Shining. Besides, what if Charlie’s by the wall? I don’t want to to smash him.

UPDATE

The outdoor game camera caught Charlie sneaking out the window! It was in the early morning when my wife and I were fast asleep. He was gone about half an hour, and the camera took another photo of him sneaking back in, holding what looked like a package of some kind. I know things aren’t back to normal, but nevertheless I feel somewhat relieved. And vindicated: I told my wife it would have been crazy to break through the wall.

UPDATE

It’s the night of the thirteenth day, and there are new sounds coming from Charlie’s room: whirring and rattling. They definitely sound mechanical.

UPDATE

Electronic music. Loud and all the fucking time. As if sleeping wasn’t hard enough for us, just with the nerves. My wife and I spent an hour sitting outside Charlie’s room and pounding on the door, hoping he’d answer. I think my wife is starting to break mentally. Her anger has transformed into despair. She has taken to apologizing to him and begging him to let us in.

UPDATE

Day 15. The outdoor game camera caught Charlie leaving again, but this time he returned with a package and a girl. I suppose if things were normal, I would be proud. But things are not normal and I have no idea what they’re up to. I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger’s kid locked up in a room inside my house. As for my wife, she’s been staying mostly in bed. She barely works anymore.

UPDATE

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Early this morning, Charlie sent us an email. It was cryptic but at least it’s proof he’s still willing to communicate. The message said: “im almost done now so it wont be long.”

UPDATE

My wife knocked herself out with sleeping pills and I’m sitting in the living room, trying to watch late night television. It’s not working. The lack of sleep and constant barrage of thumping electronic music is driving me a little bonkers. Sometimes the music sounds like someone screaming. I don’t know if the whirring and grinding and buzzing are instruments or sound effects or real. Charlie isn’t answering my emails. I must have written a hundred to him by now. He’s been in his room with that girl for days.

UPDATE

I’ve decided. I’m going to cut power to the house and go in through the wall with a sledgehammer. If I make a fool of myself, so be it.

UPDATE

Charlie’s in the hospital.
My wife is staying with her parents for the time being.
I’m living in a motel because I can’t stand the thought of being in that house alone anymore.
Not after what I saw. Not after smashing through the drywall to see my only son with his fucking arm cut off. So much blood on the sheets. It reeked of piss and burnt flesh. And that girl, Clarice—some internet girlfriend of his—so ungodly pale, sitting at a desk, cutting into my son’s severed arm with an X-Acto knife.
The police haven’t identified any actual crime, but—
Charlie’s lucky to be alive despite what he so calmly tells me whenever he regains consciousness.
“I did it…”
“Don’t you see?”
“I created…”
“In real life, just like mom…”

UPDATE

Charlie’s words haunt me. I’ve no one to talk to but the psychologist, and she acts like a robot. I feel like I want to grieve but I don’t know for whom. Maybe for my entire life.
I feel this persistent, unbearable dread.
I can’t explain why.
A fear that something fundamental has been changed.
My wife still hasn’t been to see him. She says she can’t bear to see him like this.
“It’s just an arm,” I say. “He’s OK.”
“Do you understand that he cut off his own arm?” she says at me, like it’s an accusation. Like it’s my fault.
There’s just so much guilt.

UPDATE

Charlie’s still in the hospital, but he’s doing better. The doctors are more concerned about his mental state than his physical one. They think he’s shut away the memory of cutting off his own arm. Whenever they try to tell him he’s missing it, he shrugs it off. “Oh, that. That’s fine. I’ll get another.”
Every time I see Charlie, I want to ask him about the things he told me earlier.
But the doctors dissuade me. They say he’s still too fragile. They say it’s better not to force him to remember the trauma. They say there’s a chance he may never truly remember it, and maybe that’s for the best.
The one thing he constantly asks is to see Clarice.
The doctors veto that too.
I don’t like leaving the hospital because there’s something terrible about the world now. Something I don’t want to face.

UPDATE

Clarice called me. Out of the blue.
She wants to meet.
There’s something about that girl that makes me uneasy, to put it mildly. Maybe it’s her pale skin, almost like bleached paper. Or the way her body felt that night I finally went through the wall. Charlie felt solid. She felt like a bunch of old bandaids on Jell-O. The way she was sitting there, so carefully, methodically working the flesh of his arm...
“Charlie thinks it's time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
“For you to finally see. He wants you to be proud of him.”
How fucked is this: I’m meeting her at some old automotive plant. I don’t know if she even has parents. Maybe she’s a runaway. God only knows.
But God help me, I have to do this.

UPDATE

I hesitated to the last possible minute about whether to tell my wife about meeting Clarice—before finally deciding not to. I don’t know why. I want to say I don’t want to cause her any more stress. Her psyche is pretty destroyed as it is. But I also feel, somewhere deep down, that she simply wouldn’t understand.
So that means no one knows I’m out here right now.
I know that’s not smart, but I don’t care. I shouldn’t be afraid of a girl.
Yet here I am, sitting in my car, writing on my phone. The weather is threatening a storm somewhere far off. The factory looks ominous.
And I’m fucking terrified.

UPDATE

I don’t know how to begin to describe what happened: what I saw and did and what I had done to me. I’m back at the motel, and I keep making mistakes typing this on my laptop because my hands are refusing to obey, but I’m resisting the urge to take a drink because I want to be as clear as possible while writing this.
It’s fucking monumental.
Insane.
I met Clarice after wandering about the factory for a quarter of an hour that felt like so much longer. The rain had started, and the way the drops echoed in that place was unreal. Like drums inside my own head.
She called my name suddenly—
I saw her standing by an old, overgrown piece of machinery, beside three bulbous garbage bags. At least one was leaking.
She said she was happy I had come. She said Charlie was a genius.
A god.
She was wearing an old trench coat, and without warning she let it drop to the cracked cement floor.
She was naked.
I wanted to back away. I started telling her I was married and there was no fucking way I would—
“It’s not about that,” she said.
She wanted me to look: to come closer and look at her.
So I did.
I remembered how her body had felt in Charlie’s room, and now I saw why. Her pale skin was spiderwebbed with blue veins, a nearly imperceptible network in a repeating pattern. “Go ahead, touch me,” she said.
I pressed a finger against her flesh. It still felt off, but not as disgustingly creamy as it had then. She had solidified.
“Now press harder.”
I did.
She groaned—and my fingertip sank into her: or more accurately, slipped into one of the blue veins.
“Go on. Keep going until you hear a click.”
I pushed deeper inside. Until there it was: a click, followed by a loosening.
“Remove it.”
I wavered, my gaze meeting hers. “Don’t be afraid.”
Gently, I removed my fingers from within her while maintaining my grip on whatever it was I was holding:
A cube of flesh.
And in her body I saw a corresponding void.
“My God…”
As I inspected the cube, rotating it between my fingers, she removed a second from her body—another void appeared—then took the cube I had been holding, held it against the one she had removed, and I watched them fuse together.
“Blocks,” I whispered.
Still missing two small volumes of herself, she turned toward the garbage bags. “These are my parents,” she said, pointing at the three bags in turn, “and this is Barker, a homeless man I met at the shelter.”
“They are—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how to finish it.
She crouched and unfastened the bags.
Inside each: a stew of raw flesh cubes and multicoloured ooze, steaming—bubbling, frothing, popping; pulsing with what I imagined must be life.
“Watch.”
She took a few cubes from each bag, wiped them, then held them together in the palms of her hands along with the two fused cubes of herself. Like melted metal, they all melded together into one new thing: a fleshy disc with wisps of hair, half an eye and a bone jutting from one end. The half-eye twitched and the entirety secreted a kind of slime across Clarice’s bare hands. It was both horrible and awesome, as if humanity had been deconstructed—
“We can all become blocks,” Clarice said. “To make and remake as we see fit.”
But there was something about that disc.
About the twitching.
The slime.
Maybe this was possible. But it was not fucking right.
I backed away: from Clarice, from her oozing garbage bags and inhuman smile. “It’s merely science,” she said matter-of-factly. “A new science, of being and bodies and existence, and Charlie is the discoverer. He is the new Darwin!”
I started to run.
Her words chased after me: “Are you proud of him? Are you proud of your son?”
The layout of the factory confused me.
Where had I left the car?
“You thought he wouldn’t amount to anything in the real world, so he redefined it: he changed what it means to be alive. Soon he will be worshipped—”
Something hard collided with the side of my head, reducing me with dwindling consciousness to the floor—smack!—and I felt hands grabbing me and dragging me, three shapes of reeking flesh, and Clarice’s laugh, echoing throughout the unreality of the factory as the whirring and buzzing faded in and out and in...
I awoke alone.
Nude. Cold rain on my face.
I was still in the factory, but Clarice was gone. I felt a kind of transcendent solitude. Groggily, I got up—only to promptly collapse on rubbery legs. I crawled toward some derelict machinery and used my arms to stand. My arms were rubbery too, but eventually I managed it. There were tools on the machinery: a saw, pincers, knives. Lightning lit up the distant sky, and in its flash I saw delicate blue veins all across my forearms. Memory returned to me. Memory and fear: the dread sense of realization.
Now I'm back at the motel, typing on my laptop. Disbelieving my own words.
Yet there it is: on a melamine plate beside me: my own flesh cube.
And every time I think I’ve gone crazy, I run my fingertip over the corporeal void from where I removed it.
My body is still soft and flabby—unsettled—but I imagine I will solidify.
As a human, I am filled with a hideous trepidation for our future as a species. I don’t know what this means for us as people.
But, as a father—
I cannot help but feel a kind of pride.

Three nights ago my wife had a big fight with our son, Charlie. Since then, Charlie hasn’t left his room. The argument was about Charlie’s grades and future, which my wife is sure he’s throwing away. Basically, she’s worried Charlie spends too much time playing Minecraft (“that stupid virtual block game,” as she calls it) and not enough time studying, interacting with real people or doing real things to prepare him for the real world.
Although I agree Charlie is a gamer, and his gaming choices are mostly limited to one game, many boys his age play video games, and at least his game of choice isn’t especially violent. It’s even quite creative. But when I tell this to my wife, she gets upset and insists that if Charlie likes building things, he should get his grades up and go to university to become an architect or an engineer. I say that maybe he’s learning to code. “He’s not coding. He’s playing,” my wife says. “He’s not learning anything.”
I’ve tried talking to Charlie through his locked door, but he doesn’t answer.
When I get up at night, I see light creeping from the space between the door and door frame, and hear the clicking and clacking of his keyboard.
When I knock, the clicking stops.

UPDATE

It’s now been five days, and as far as my wife and I can tell, Charlie hasn’t left his room even once. We suppose he must have bottled water in there and maybe some snacks, but we agree that what he’s doing isn’t healthy. At first, we suspected he may have been waiting for us to go to sleep before coming out, so I set up one of my game cameras in the hallway outside his door, but it hasn’t captured anything except some photos of us. He must be going to the bathroom inside there too. He’s not showering. He keeps his window—which looks out onto the backyard—closed, with the blinds down. I’ll set up another game camera outside, just in case he tries going out the window.

UPDATE

It’s now been a full week and my wife is really starting to freak out. She wants me to break down Charlie’s door. The game cameras still show nothing. The keyboard sounds continue, so at least we know he’s still alive. God, it feels weird to write that. I guess I’m not quite as worried as my wife, or I would be forcing the door. As it stands, I feel we need to respect Charlie’s independence and give him time. Teens are rebellious, and they definitely don’t like being told what to do. “His behaviour isn’t normal, even for a teenager,” my wife says. “Don’t you fucking see that?”
I guess I don’t—not yet.

UPDATE

The smell from Charlie’s room is starting to take over the hallway. It’s like a mix of old coffee, urine and eggs.

UPDATE

I gave in to my wife and forced the door—or at least tried to, because it seems Charlie has reinforced it somehow. It didn’t budge. Still nothing on the game cameras. Still flickering lights and clicking at night. There is the possibility of going in through the wall itself, which is just standard drywall, but I’m not desperate enough to try that. Like I’ve told my wife repeatedly, what am I going to do, smash the wall with a sledgehammer or an axe? It’s too Shining. Besides, what if Charlie’s by the wall? I don’t want to to smash him.

UPDATE

The outdoor game camera caught Charlie sneaking out the window! It was in the early morning when my wife and I were fast asleep. He was gone about half an hour, and the camera took another photo of him sneaking back in, holding what looked like a package of some kind. I know things aren’t back to normal, but nevertheless I feel somewhat relieved. And vindicated: I told my wife it would have been crazy to break through the wall.

UPDATE

It’s the night of the thirteenth day, and there are new sounds coming from Charlie’s room: whirring and rattling. They definitely sound mechanical.

UPDATE

Electronic music. Loud and all the fucking time. As if sleeping wasn’t hard enough for us, just with the nerves. My wife and I spent an hour sitting outside Charlie’s room and pounding on the door, hoping he’d answer. I think my wife is starting to break mentally. Her anger has transformed into despair. She has taken to apologizing to him and begging him to let us in.

UPDATE

Day 15. The outdoor game camera caught Charlie leaving again, but this time he returned with a package and a girl. I suppose if things were normal, I would be proud. But things are not normal and I have no idea what they’re up to. I don’t feel comfortable with a stranger’s kid locked up in a room inside my house. As for my wife, she’s been staying mostly in bed. She barely works anymore.

UPDATE

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Early this morning, Charlie sent us an email. It was cryptic but at least it’s proof he’s still willing to communicate. The message said: “im almost done now so it wont be long.”

UPDATE

My wife knocked herself out with sleeping pills and I’m sitting in the living room, trying to watch late night television. It’s not working. The lack of sleep and constant barrage of thumping electronic music is driving me a little bonkers. Sometimes the music sounds like someone screaming. I don’t know if the whirring and grinding and buzzing are instruments or sound effects or real. Charlie isn’t answering my emails. I must have written a hundred to him by now. He’s been in his room with that girl for days.

UPDATE

I’ve decided. I’m going to cut power to the house and go in through the wall with a sledgehammer. If I make a fool of myself, so be it.

UPDATE

Charlie’s in the hospital.
My wife is staying with her parents for the time being.
I’m living in a motel because I can’t stand the thought of being in that house alone anymore.
Not after what I saw. Not after smashing through the drywall to see my only son with his fucking arm cut off. So much blood on the sheets. It reeked of piss and burnt flesh. And that girl, Clarice—some internet girlfriend of his—so ungodly pale, sitting at a desk, cutting into my son’s severed arm with an X-Acto knife.
The police haven’t identified any actual crime, but—
Charlie’s lucky to be alive despite what he so calmly tells me whenever he regains consciousness.
“I did it…”
“Don’t you see?”
“I created…”
“In real life, just like mom…”

UPDATE

Charlie’s words haunt me. I’ve no one to talk to but the psychologist, and she acts like a robot. I feel like I want to grieve but I don’t know for whom. Maybe for my entire life.
I feel this persistent, unbearable dread.
I can’t explain why.
A fear that something fundamental has been changed.
My wife still hasn’t been to see him. She says she can’t bear to see him like this.
“It’s just an arm,” I say. “He’s OK.”
“Do you understand that he cut off his own arm?” she says at me, like it’s an accusation. Like it’s my fault.
There’s just so much guilt.

UPDATE

Charlie’s still in the hospital, but he’s doing better. The doctors are more concerned about his mental state than his physical one. They think he’s shut away the memory of cutting off his own arm. Whenever they try to tell him he’s missing it, he shrugs it off. “Oh, that. That’s fine. I’ll get another.”
Every time I see Charlie, I want to ask him about the things he told me earlier.
But the doctors dissuade me. They say he’s still too fragile. They say it’s better not to force him to remember the trauma. They say there’s a chance he may never truly remember it, and maybe that’s for the best.
The one thing he constantly asks is to see Clarice.
The doctors veto that too.
I don’t like leaving the hospital because there’s something terrible about the world now. Something I don’t want to face.

UPDATE

Clarice called me. Out of the blue.
She wants to meet.
There’s something about that girl that makes me uneasy, to put it mildly. Maybe it’s her pale skin, almost like bleached paper. Or the way her body felt that night I finally went through the wall. Charlie felt solid. She felt like a bunch of old bandaids on Jell-O. The way she was sitting there, so carefully, methodically working the flesh of his arm...
“Charlie thinks it's time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
“For you to finally see. He wants you to be proud of him.”
How fucked is this: I’m meeting her at some old automotive plant. I don’t know if she even has parents. Maybe she’s a runaway. God only knows.
But God help me, I have to do this.

UPDATE

I hesitated to the last possible minute about whether to tell my wife about meeting Clarice—before finally deciding not to. I don’t know why. I want to say I don’t want to cause her any more stress. Her psyche is pretty destroyed as it is. But I also feel, somewhere deep down, that she simply wouldn’t understand.
So that means no one knows I’m out here right now.
I know that’s not smart, but I don’t care. I shouldn’t be afraid of a girl.
Yet here I am, sitting in my car, writing on my phone. The weather is threatening a storm somewhere far off. The factory looks ominous.
And I’m fucking terrified.

UPDATE

I don’t know how to begin to describe what happened: what I saw and did and what I had done to me. I’m back at the motel, and I keep making mistakes typing this on my laptop because my hands are refusing to obey, but I’m resisting the urge to take a drink because I want to be as clear as possible while writing this.
It’s fucking monumental.
Insane.
I met Clarice after wandering about the factory for a quarter of an hour that felt like so much longer. The rain had started, and the way the drops echoed in that place was unreal. Like drums inside my own head.
She called my name suddenly—
I saw her standing by an old, overgrown piece of machinery, beside three bulbous garbage bags. At least one was leaking.
She said she was happy I had come. She said Charlie was a genius.
A god.
She was wearing an old trench coat, and without warning she let it drop to the cracked cement floor.
She was naked.
I wanted to back away. I started telling her I was married and there was no fucking way I would—
“It’s not about that,” she said.
She wanted me to look: to come closer and look at her.
So I did.
I remembered how her body had felt in Charlie’s room, and now I saw why. Her pale skin was spiderwebbed with blue veins, a nearly imperceptible network in a repeating pattern. “Go ahead, touch me,” she said.
I pressed a finger against her flesh. It still felt off, but not as disgustingly creamy as it had then. She had solidified.
“Now press harder.”
I did.
She groaned—and my fingertip sank into her: or more accurately, slipped into one of the blue veins.
“Go on. Keep going until you hear a click.”
I pushed deeper inside. Until there it was: a click, followed by a loosening.
“Remove it.”
I wavered, my gaze meeting hers. “Don’t be afraid.”
Gently, I removed my fingers from within her while maintaining my grip on whatever it was I was holding:
A cube of flesh.
And in her body I saw a corresponding void.
“My God…”
As I inspected the cube, rotating it between my fingers, she removed a second from her body—another void appeared—then took the cube I had been holding, held it against the one she had removed, and I watched them fuse together.
“Blocks,” I whispered.
Still missing two small volumes of herself, she turned toward the garbage bags. “These are my parents,” she said, pointing at the three bags in turn, “and this is Barker, a homeless man I met at the shelter.”
“They are—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how to finish it.
She crouched and unfastened the bags.
Inside each: a stew of raw flesh cubes and multicoloured ooze, steaming—bubbling, frothing, popping; pulsing with what I imagined must be life.
“Watch.”
She took a few cubes from each bag, wiped them, then held them together in the palms of her hands along with the two fused cubes of herself. Like melted metal, they all melded together into one new thing: a fleshy disc with wisps of hair, half an eye and a bone jutting from one end. The half-eye twitched and the entirety secreted a kind of slime across Clarice’s bare hands. It was both horrible and awesome, as if humanity had been deconstructed—
“We can all become blocks,” Clarice said. “To make and remake as we see fit.”
But there was something about that disc.
About the twitching.
The slime.
Maybe this was possible. But it was not fucking right.
I backed away: from Clarice, from her oozing garbage bags and inhuman smile. “It’s merely science,” she said matter-of-factly. “A new science, of being and bodies and existence, and Charlie is the discoverer. He is the new Darwin!”
I started to run.
Her words chased after me: “Are you proud of him? Are you proud of your son?”
The layout of the factory confused me.
Where had I left the car?
“You thought he wouldn’t amount to anything in the real world, so he redefined it: he changed what it means to be alive. Soon he will be worshipped—”
Something hard collided with the side of my head, reducing me with dwindling consciousness to the floor—smack!—and I felt hands grabbing me and dragging me, three shapes of reeking flesh, and Clarice’s laugh, echoing throughout the unreality of the factory as the whirring and buzzing faded in and out and in...
I awoke alone.
Nude. Cold rain on my face.
I was still in the factory, but Clarice was gone. I felt a kind of transcendent solitude. Groggily, I got up—only to promptly collapse on rubbery legs. I crawled toward some derelict machinery and used my arms to stand. My arms were rubbery too, but eventually I managed it. There were tools on the machinery: a saw, pincers, knives. Lightning lit up the distant sky, and in its flash I saw delicate blue veins all across my forearms. Memory returned to me. Memory and fear: the dread sense of realization.
Now I'm back at the motel, typing on my laptop. Disbelieving my own words.
Yet there it is: on a melamine plate beside me: my own flesh cube.
And every time I think I’ve gone crazy, I run my fingertip over the corporeal void from where I removed it.
My body is still soft and flabby—unsettled—but I imagine I will solidify.
As a human, I am filled with a hideous trepidation for our future as a species. I don’t know what this means for us as people.
But, as a father—
I cannot help but feel a kind of pride.

I really can't say what my type is. Whenever I try to figure it out, I feel like all my functions are split 50/50. I'm also an over-analyzer, overthinker, etc. so it's hard to come to conclusions because I hate not knowing if I'm 100% right.
I would appreciate if someone would type me or give me some pointers! Sorry that the text is so long.
How old are you? What's your gender? Give us a general description of yourself.
I'm a 22 year old IT student.
• Is there a medical diagnosis that may impact your mental stability somehow?
ADHD and PTSD...
• Describe your upbringing. Did it have any kind of religious or structured influence? How did you respond to it?
I was raised as a somewhat liberal Christian. Sometimes I feel like I still can't shake off some of the values it has imposed on me. I don't believe in God anymore and I don't agree with a lot of what Christians teach.
It had more negative effects on me than positive ones. But I like the idea of loving everyone, of caring for each other, of community, of everyone being capable of being saved and redeemed, and that we are all born of sin, which is why it's so hard not to do "bad things." It aligns with my belief that we're all human beings, we all have biases, we all have emotions, we all make mistakes, and we should be forgiven for them.
However, I do think that these values are simply just that - values, and not based in rationality, which is why I'm unsure of whether I should follow them.
It's hard for me to be a complete atheist because of this upbringing, although I do lean towards atheism and cosmic nihilism most of the time.
• What do you do as a job or as a career (if you have one)? Do you like it? Why or why not?
I am an IT student. I love computers, because almost anything can be possible with computers. I grew up playing video games and tweaking them with mods and making everything how I want it to be. It's why I also enjoy using Linux over Windows etc - customizability to make things look and function how I want them to, everything will stay the same as you've configured it, etc. I love the process of finding out what's causing a technical issue, because I know for sure there's an answer, I just have to find it, and find out how to get there.
I also love that I can feel useful, people come to me with their questions, and I can give advice. I can fix a problem for someone else easily with the more I know. I can set up servers for my friends, make mods that fix problems with their games, etc.
• If you had to spend an entire weekend by yourself, how would you feel? Would you feel lonely or refreshed?
Honestly, both... I can spend an entire weekend on my own, no problem. But I just did that last weekend, too, and I felt very lonely. When I spend weekends alone, then I'll want to have those social interactions with my coworkers at work, and get frustrated when they don't give me enough. I can entertain myself for days on end, but I do also wonder where everyone is to hang out with. Even if it's just sitting in silence together. I get energy from hanging out with my closest friends so much, but I can't focus on anything properly unless I'm alone, because I'm constantly engaging with them, and trying to be attentive.
• What kinds of activities do you prefer? Do you like, and are you good at sports? Do you enjoy any other outdoor or indoor activities?
Hate sports. I prefer indoor activities. I make myself go outside for a walk once a day, because I know people need sunlight etc and being in nature is good for your mental health. I love being outside once I'm there, and I'd love to spend a few days in nature.
When I'm with an extroverted friend we tend to go outside a lot to bars and restaurants, which I do enjoy a lot and can do for a while, but at some point, I miss my computer, reading, drawing, etc.
Most of my hobbies are indoors. I like making music, drawing, cosplaying, making outfits, reading, watching shows.
• How curious are you? Do you have more ideas then you can execute? What are your curiosities about?
Oh God. I am so curious about everything. I want to know everything. It's a problem. I wish I could stick to what I know and have stability. Have less things I want to explore. I would love to find peace of mind, and more specialization in the things I already find interesting, but it is so hard not to get to the bottom of everything. It's getting easier as I get older, though, to dismiss some subjects as "not for me" because I know I can't do everything in this life.
I'm curious about the future - what computers can do for humanity, AI, transhumanism, virtual worlds. Physics, math, chemistry, biology, what this world is made of, what are the rules? Are there laws that always apply? Is there more out there? Aliens? A multiverse? I need a unified theory of everything, and it frustrates me that all I can do is contribute a little bit to getting closer to one, at most.
​
• Would you enjoy taking on a leadership position? Do you think you would be good at it? What would your leadership style be?
I have done leadership positions and I find them very fun to do - not being in leadership is more relaxing, but therefore very boring in comparison. I was definitely not a natural at it, though, and not everyone believed in me at the start. My compassion for people tends to get in the way, not wanting to hurt feelings, wanting to make sure everyone's still on board with everything. Being assertive was very hard in the beginning, but I eventually got better at it. My leadership style was incredibly improvisial - I can't memorize and remember a plan, I adapt to everything on the spot, I just need people to do as I tell them no matter what the plan was, or the procedures are. I tend to follow the procedures and rely on them to help me, until they get in the way.
• Are you coordinated? Why do you feel as if you are or are not? Do you enjoy working with your hands in some form? Describe your activity?
I don't feel coordinated. I feel like chaos. I do enjoy trying to coordinate in situations as a challenge sometimes though, but other times I can't be bothered and just wanna embrace the chaos.
• Are you artistic? If yes, describe your art? If you are not particular artistic but can appreciate art please likewise describe what forums of art you enjoy. Please explain your answer.
I love art so much and always have. I've always thought I'd be an artist when I grow up, an entertainer, a game dev, a musician, etc. I didn't have the patience for all the 'be scientific, logical, do your research, solve problems' stuff back then, (unmedicated ADHD back then) though I was always interested.
My drawings are chibi and cute. I love making drawings of my friends, I don't have the patience to make them but I also love animations, the way people choose to draw or portray certain characters is amazing. Art is the best form of self-expression and genuinely one of the best things we have in the world. So much media shaped my life and the way I think about the world, and I want all of those pieces of art to be a part of me forever. Making and sharing your art with another person, making connections between your original character and the other person's.
I also love video games with lots of lore, compelling characters, and environmental storytelling, things for you to piece together and find out, finding secrets, other ways to play the game etc.
I love music to death, I think it's one of the best things humanity has done, because of the deep connection I feel with it, and how it unites people together at concerts when you all sing together, when you find out why a person wrote a particular song, or finding songs to relate to yourself, your friends, fictional characters, your situation etc.
• What's your opinion about the past, present, and future? How do you deal with them?
I have PTSD, so the past haunts me. I try not to think about it. I MAJORLY struggle to long term plan; I can't envision the future at all because anything could change. I'm just planning to finish my 2 year degree for now. I'm trying to embrace the good things in my past, and try to see how everything has shaped me. I actually don't struggle with living in the present moment that much, which I've been told is something my friends are jealous of.
Gonna leave it at this for now. Feel free to ask me more questions to narrow it down!

1. What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games (ex: resolution, FPS, settings) or programs you will be using.

• Mostly color grading and video editing heavy-duty 4k and 8k raw files. I use Da Vinci Resolve for all my video editing needs. Only game I play of any significance is MSFS 2020.

Here's my probably-flawed attempt at a build: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/usedevanagscott/saved/#view=w7dGjX

2. What is your maximum PRE-TAX budget before rebates and shipping?

• 3500 CAD.

3. When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.

• ASAP. Within a week, hopefully.

4. What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ex: toweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc)

*CPU, Cooler, Mobo, RAM, SSDs (x2), GPU, Case.

5. If reusing any parts (including monitor(s)/keyboard/mouse/etc), what parts will you be reusing? How old are they? Brands and models are appreciated.

• I have a pre-existing Super Flower Leadex Platinum SE 1200W I'd like to use if it's applicable.

I'll be using the following from the old build: 2x Dell U2719D monitors, LG C3 HDTV, Sony A80K HDTV, Logitech MX Master 3 mouse, MS Surface Keyboard, USB bluetooth adapter, Intel X540T2 10GBPS network card, Blackmagic Decklink, Blackmagic Micro Control Surface, PCIE card, webcam, mic, Synology NAS, Cyberpower UPS, and various other niche USB peripherals.

6. Will you be overclocking (ex: CPU/GPU/RAM)? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line?

• Not necessary.

7. Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, VR, VirtualLink, tensor cores, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)

• 1TB boot SSD, 2TB secondary SSD. 4k120fps output via HDMI 2.1. I specifically do -not- need Wifi.

8. Do you have any specific case preferences (ex: mITX/mATX/mid-towefull-tower sizes, styles, colours, window or not, LED lighting, etc.), or a particular color theme preference for the components?

• Mid-tower. Black. Window is preferred. No LED lighting necessary (my edit suite is blackout.)

9. Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? Note: some post-secondary students can get Windows 10 for free.

• No.

10. Will you be upgrading this PC in the future (ie: will you swap out better parts later on or will you build an entirely new tower later)? If so, when?

• Possible new GPU down the line if necessary, more likely just additional SSDs as storage needs inevitably grow in time.

11. Do you have a brand preference? (ex: AMD/Intel for CPUs, AMD/NVIDIA for video cards, etc)

• Intel/Nvidia (play nicer with video editing software.)

12. What are the specs of your old PC / laptop? Do you want to see if it can be upgraded instead? If so, paste its build from PCPartPicker here.

*Here's my old build. Not interested in upgrading, would rather start fresh. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/usedevanagscott/saved/#view=RDFWXL

13. Extra info or particulars:

• 64GB of RAM and 16GB of VRAM are both hugely useful at this point given the amount of 6k-8k workflows I need to work with on the regular, and the amount of video edit layers. I'm routinely using ~28-30gb of RAM and being bottlenecked by my current 8GB of VRAM a bit these days.

Only other note is that the build feeds an unusual number of monitors (2x daisychained displayport monitors, and two HDTVs via HDMI - though only one of the HDTVs is active at a time.) Otherwise, nothing out-of-the-ordinary.