COVID Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Honestly that’s what it feels like as of late. The last eight days or so have been pretty hectic. I won’t say bad, they weren’t terrible. Or maybe they were.

I am improving, but slowly. It is definitely a longer recovery. Compared to the stomach flu I endured a few months ago, where I started to feel fine a couple of days after the initial symptoms stopped, this is more of an annoying clinging, cloying experience. Like a goop that is just sticking to your hand and you can not shake it off.

There’s no fever anymore, just a half congested nasal passage, and a cough that cannot decide if it wants to be here with me in the moment or stand just outside of my peripheral vision.

And then there is the fatigue, which I think is getting better but I don’t know anymore what normal feels like. It’s been so long.

It is, for me, the definition of a, “meh” (with an upward intonation at the end) state, where there’s some bad stuff happening, some good stuff is happening, but overall things aren’t improving as much as I would like, but on the other hand they are not getting worse.

// Achievement Unlocked: Official Plague 2020 Participant

Why Computers?

The code font that is used by the code block is nostalgic for me. It is the font of the Apple ][e, the later, the no name brand computer that ran MS-DOC on the IBM PC platform.

The font brings me back to nights and days of spinning magnetized plastic platters. In return for learning how to perform the right rituals, video games spat out. And why not go all in to this hobby? Outside?

Outside was why there were bars on the windows, and why my life was Home and School and the Car Rides In Between.

These fonts were the keys to stories of space pilots stopping intergalactic wars, of smuggling contraband in your customized shuttle, of kleptomaniacs somehow picking up everything and becoming heroes, of secret agents overcoming supervillains, of a band of travelers hired to kill a mad god. From here my love of books dovetailed with this new hobby and I never went Outside until I had to.

// That ][e was the last apple product my family could afford. Period. Man my parents nailed it about computers being the future.

It’s a different time

//  March 31st, 2020 Y'all.  And I haven't even reached Peak 2020 yet.  In fact, part of me is still not sure if Peak 2020 is yet to come.  Hey, it's me from two years later and I realize, it's not devices that help me cope—it's software.

Devices are helping me cope.

There’s a Nintendo Switch with therapy a copy of Animal Crossing New Horizons.

That’s Some Yogurt

I am lying in bed, reviewing the online orders for the grocery. My finger hovers over a plus sign.

I wonder, out loud, but more to myself, “Hmmm. What about this fancy mixed berry yogurt?”

My partner is in the midst of a solitaire game on her tablet. Not looking up from her tablet, she responds.

“Girl, you are worth it.”

I blink a few times and a smile, welcome and inevitable and warm turns into a tumult of laughter. It lasts for a few moments and I realize I’m crying a little bit. She turns, making sure that I see she’s paying attention. “You okay?”

I take a breath.

“Yeah, just… I am worth it.”

// Handcrafted Greek Strained Yogurt, Mixed Berry x 1

Return to the Vault

Forty-Five Minutes Ago

I take position at the back left, the location familiar, not only physically in terms of knowing where to stand just out of sniper view, but also temporally familiar. My stopwatch is not exact, but it is close enough to help with the scheduling. At second thirty-three a Vex Wyvern will materialize, and I will deal with it, frozen at that time by the Stasis turret I threw out at second twenty-nine.

Then at the minute mark, the Oracles will sing.

The Wyvern was handled as predicted and I hear the first tone and wait, seeing nothing. I hear one of the hunters on the open channel, “One.”

The second tone rings out and in front of me the note breathes to life a glowing, shimmering cube of what I would guess a Cryptarch would describe as, “Organized Paracausal Energy contained within a Vex Matrix—known as an Oracle.” What I know is that if left alone, they will Mark us for Negation, and when the Templar finishes the Ritual of Negation, the fight is over as every member of the fireteam is well, negated.

I speak on the open channel, “Two.” This is going to complicate things a little but I’ve been Two before. Another wave of Vex Harpies materializes and immediately begin firing on my position. My partner engages them with a few bursts from his pulse rifle, taking out the lead Harpy and buying me enough time to turn and engage them now that I know I am second in the sequence.

A third fireteam member checks in as the last tone rings and the pattern reveals itself. We destroy the Oracles in the order they have appeared and we are spared once again.

Another wave of Harpies, this time accompanied by a Minotaur materializes at the back. A sniper round glances off of my armor but my shield holds as I reload my shotgun in preparation for the Minotaur’s rushing teleport.

Only five more rounds to go.

Now

I find myself someplace and sometime new. Someplace not as familiar. What I mean to say is that I have been here before, but not this time, this way.

There’s a lot of new information now, but I know a few things.

The Oracles are spawning in about ten seconds.

And the Templar is at twenty percent health and dropping.

It looks like a good pace, but I know that somehow, it is never going to feel fast enough. My Nova Bomb was expended at the beginning of the phase, something new I was trying out in this timeline, fired shortly after another fireteam member’s Tether.

We blocked a number of the Templar’s escape teleports earlier in this attempt, and that changed a lot of things. Topping the list of worst new changes were half a dozen agitated Minotaurs, an embarrassingly uncountable number of exploding Fanatics, and every single one of them converging on our fallback point.

And yet, this is the closest we have come to defeating the Templar.

I step out from behind a column and fire the last of my rockets, the Lasting Impression perk delaying the explosion in exchange for a higher damage output. That is going to sting later. I get back behind the column.

The barrage of energy and explosions from both sides is chaotic, but suddenly through it all, three tones ring out as the Oracles begin their song. None of us are in position to see them, to know the correct order in which to destroy them. They ring out once more and then fall silent.

I know one thing is certain in this timeline—we will die when the Templar completes the Ritual of Negation.

The rocket I fired finally explodes, taking a chunk of the Templar’s health, but in return it pummels the column I am hiding behind with an enthusiastic barrage of purple, and somehow angry energy.

I am out of rockets.

But I did not come here alone.

Five other separate timelines begin to merge and a future, one where the Templar is defeated is visualized.

It is possible.

Silently and collectively, a call is made. I vocalize it alongside the others.

“Ignore Oracles and push DPS.”

The Oracles, their song completed, have marked us. The Templar need only complete the Ritual of Negation, and this fight is over. The Templar will have won, again, and our collective timelines will be reset as we are negated from existence.

Two Witherhoard rounds, one aimed specifically to strike the Templar directly afflicting it with Blight, and one to hit the ground beneath the Templar for additional Area of Effect damage, fly from my right. Hammers made of Paracausal energy aligned with Solar energy strike the Templar setting them not on fire, but something far, far hotter. There are an urgent number of explosions and the staccato of gunfire that falls away as the Templar begins the Ritual of Negation.

I am unsure of the rest of the fight other than my own realization that I have swapped to a shotgun.

Which is empty.

I begin to run at the Templar, sliding down the central stairwell. I grimace as I hear the confirmation noise of the Slideshot ability, realizing that I have never checked to see exactly how many rounds that ability loaded.

Whatever number it was, it was going to have to do.

I jump to close distance, waiting until the last moment for my momentum to bring me close enough to the Templar, but not enough to bring me into the line of fire for my teammates. I aim down sights, the Templar’s singular eye taking up my entire field of view.

And I pull the trigger.

// Slideshot loads two rounds, and Fatebringer is a very crisp feeling Hand Cannon.