Please note: This game has significant disparities in performance, player experience, and review scores between the PC, next-gen consoles, Xbox One, and PS4 versions. The OpenCritic team and several critics suspect that the developer, CD PROJEKT RED, intentionally sought to hide the true state of the game on Xbox One and PS4, with requirements such as only allowing pre-rendered game footage in reviews and not issuing review copies for PS4 and Xbox One versions. This notice will be taken down in February 2021.
I have finished Cyberpunk but I will not have a review up today as I could not comply with CDPR"s embargo requirement that prohibited us from using our own recorded gameplay in the review. Instead, we were told to use b-roll, which is basically trailer footage. Reviews should not be vehicles for rolling out more marketing material, so I'll put my review up when I'm able to show you the reality of the game with my own footage. I'm also disappointed that no console review code was provided to any outlet... Console games are often reviewed without their day one or even day zero patches, so Cyberpunk would not have been special in this regard. Its really lame that no reviewer can tell you how this game runs on console on the review embargo. I absolutely love this game and I think CDPR did extraordinary work, but its clearly unfinished at this point and no review relying on trailer footage alone can properly convey that.
The minimum GPU listed is a GTX 780, with GTX 1060 6GB recommended for 1080p high, RTX 2060 for 1440p ultra, and an RTX 2080 Super for 4K ultra. Then there's the ray tracing additions, with the RTX 2060 listed as the minimum for 1080p and RT medium, 3070 for 1440p and RT ultra, and 3080 for 4K RT ultra. Based on what we're seeing, it looks like those recommendations are for 30-40 fps.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the ultimate power fantasy. A video game that takes the best of modern RPG, first-person shooter, stealth, and the open world and masterfully blends it into a single product. If Skyrim and GTA V marked a before and after for their genres at the beginning of the 2010s, Cyberpunk 2077 is called to do the same from this 2020.
The game may not be perfect but given CD project Red's reputation for fixing and updating games Cyberpunk has a bright neon-lit future. It can proudly sit among its influences of Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner and Neuromancer (as well as games like Deus Ex, System Shock) with its augmented head held high. It's been a long wait, but the end result is a massive sprawling RPG with an incredible story, heart-pounding action, solid mechanics and customisation, offering you unparalleled player choice in a deep, atmospheric world that I can't wait to plug myself back into.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a victim of bloat, but you can choose to ignore a lot of it and take in the sights. That's where Night City is at its best, and I sincerely suggest that you take your time going through it, as rushing will only lead to disappointment. Even just strolling through though though, you'll probably be left wanting more.
We could wax lyrical about how good this game is for another ten years, and we still think the conversation would be relevant - so yes, we think Cyberpunk 2077 is the game of the decade. This is an event, and a big moment in gaming, because the brilliant Cyberpunk 2077 is laying down the stepping stones for greater feats in the future.
CD Projekt RED is willing to take an even bigger risk and dare something very different, combining elements that they have proven to know well and elements which they have no previous experience in.
And it is precisely for this reason that, despite all the technical problems of the production, we cannot in any way fail to assign a vote of excellence to the work of CDPR: the defects will disappear over time, but already now Cyberpunk 2077 is a title which undoubtedly deserves a place of honor in all players' library.
Measured against the extreme expectations, Cyberpunk 2077 can't fulfill any of them. But all in all, despite the countless small weaknesses and inconsequences, with interesting characters, great story and dialogues or the freedom concerning gameplay, CD Projekt delivers a unique and great RPG that every fan of the genre needs to play.
Cyberpunk 2077 proves that the developers have improved their skills since fantastic The Witcher 3. It is an excellent action RPG that would benefit from a longer delay to polish the various issues. However, no amount of bugs can diminish the immense pleasure of exploring this world.
The era of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X has arrived, but Cyberpunk 2077 is currently running on those next-gen platforms via backwards compatibility. A true next-gen update isn't due until sometime in 2021. That means CD Projekt Red developed a game for three platforms, and it's running on an acceptable level on just one (PC), provided you have the hardware. That is just plain ridiculous.
It's definitely feels like with Cyberpunk 2077 CD Projekt RED tried to tell a really meaningful story, while using as a backdrop truly a unique setting. And all the while the developers made sure that the game still feels approachable by all kind of people, and that it presents itself with insane graphical fidelity painting an image of an eerily realistic world of tommorow. We doubt there's too many people who don't believe in CD Projekt RED, but in case you're one of them, be warned - Cyberpunk 2077 is something that will change the way you look at the gaming industry as a whole.
This is an outstanding and highly enjoyable game, but take your time with it, do all the side missions (think of them as extensions of the main quest, in fact) and don’t rush the main storyline. You should absolutely take the earliest available opportunity to explore Night City and everything it has to offer. From the visuals to the music to the vibe, it’s a superb experience and one I am looking forward to spending a lot more time with.
Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t perfect, but it is ambitious. It marries a gripping story with a huge open world absolutely dripping with atmosphere; one in which, after fifty hours of gameplay, I still feel like I’ve only scratched its surface. Even now I’m itching to jump back in and complete yet more side jobs, not only because they’re enjoyable, but also just in case they offer V more options when it comes to ending their story.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a new masterpiece from CD Projekt RED, a huge, dense, vibrant, colorfoul and dark Sci-Fi RPG that any fan of the genre should step in. First because it will provide the sensation that the story really depends on you choices and that you have everything you need for your playstyle. Then because streets, stores, buildings, inhabitants of Night City won't get out of your head easily. You'll be happy to interact with Keanu Reeves, but the real star is this city and all it provides in terms of atmosphere, game mechanics and stories. [OpenCritic note: Gianni Molinaro separately reviewed the next-gen (10) and current-gen (4) versions. The scores have been averaged.]
Cyberpunk 2077 is the cyberpunk game of my dreams, it provides one of the most highly detailed environments I’ve ever seen, with an incredibly expansive and immersive narrative.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game, but it could have been an incredible game that defined a generation. Instead, it falls victim to its own ambition and the industry's constant desire to push, push, push it out. In its current state, it's not for the faint of heart, and even hardcore Cyberpunk fans may struggle to stay interested amidst all the crashes and issues. If you have yet to pick it up, wait a few months and you could very well be treated to the experience we were all hoping for at launch.
Although there still exist a lot of technical glitches, Cyberpunk 2077 stands out in terms of cyberpunk concept, story-telling, characters, level-design, combat, and so forth. It's a pleasure to spend hundreds of hours in the Night City, and I believe it would be one of the greatest open-world RPGs in the next decade.
The dark future certainly looks promising, thanks to the collective imagination of the team at CD Projekt Red, which seems to know no bounds. Cyberpunk 2077 certainly took a while to come to our hands, but be glad it’s finally here, for it is here to stay for a long time to come. And it certainly did not disappoint.
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the greatest RPGs of the generation. We love Night City, its characters and great writing for every mission. It is also one of the best looking games out there (if your PC is powerful enough).
Cyberpunk 2077 is like an addictive, huge, impressive braindance, where the feelings are real, while sometimes you see the puppet strings. It's an ambitious RPG, where narration, decisions and dialogue are far more important than combat, wrapped around a lot of fun, but usual and not always perfect, action mechanics. Engaging and marvellous to play, Night City on high-end PCs is stunning to see and super stylish. Cyberpunk 2077 is worth the wait, because the adventure of V and Johnny Silverhand is greater than the sum of its parts.
Cyberpunk 2077 offers a great sci-fi experience in which you can get lost for hours. It is not a revolutionary title in its genre, but it brings fresh changes. Whether it's new tasks, well-written dialogues, and characters, good stylized graphics, or very pleasant controls. Decision-making constructions leave you free where you need them. Conversely, they bind you in places where it is important. Everything fits together thanks to that. And if you were afraid that Cyberpunk 2077 would be a debacle. Throw this worry behind your head. Enjoy Night City to the fullest!
I haven’t fallen in love with playing Cyberpunk 2077, but I haven’t loathed it either. Some moments have been exciting or moving, while others have just felt like stuff to do.
A stunning achievement in open world gameplay but one whose tonal inconsistencies and weak narrative undermines what could have been an all-time classic.
Groundbreaking, but not quite as much as you're hoping it is. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't surpass its brilliant influences, but in Night City, Johnny Silverhand, and its chilling vision of hyper-capitalism, it claims territory of its own.
I fell in love with Night City, warts and all. If its many bugs can get ironed out, Cyberpunk 2077 is a potential Game of the Year candidate. Here’s hoping that CD Projekt Red can quickly push out fixes.
Cyberpunk 2077 is huge, steeped in sex, satisfying shooting, and the expansion of individual elements delights. It's one of those productions you want to get ing into to get to know its charms and enjoy every moment in Night City.
Cyberpunk 2077 is staggering, overwhelming, and even surprising at times in its spectacle. Although my first dozen hours with the game has been marred by easy-to-fix problems, Nighty City, along with all it offers and all that call it home, makes for an intoxicating escape. Here's hoping the next one hundred hours are as utterly compelling.
We're still playing Cyberpunk 2077 in order to bring you a finished review, but it's impossible to recommend picking this game up at launch on PS4 or PS4 Pro. On PS5 via backwards compatibility, there's still fun to be had - a glimpse of the game's excellent potential - but even then, it's crippled by bugs and crashing issues. There's something truly special at the core of Cyberpunk 2077, but in its current state, it's simply not good enough. So far, a colossal disappointment.
When Cyberpunk's grim setting and mix of gameplay systems land, it is a powerfully impressive experience - sprawling, dense, clever, witty, and most importantly damn good fun. Other times, it has all the charm of a moody, edgy teenager.
An ambitious, maybe over ambitious, thrilling ride that falters when it comes to execution. The developer's strength shines through the world building and production, resulting in a unique mix that is let down by a myriad list of technical and AI problems.
Ultimately, it feels like Cyberpunk 2077 is a fitting bookend for the previous generation of games and a strong starting point for current-gen. Now it's time to start innovating again.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a wild journey within an incredibly fascinating setting; some technical uncertainties destined to disappear and a partial repetitiveness limit its glory, but overall it is an adventure worthy of William Gibson himself. Cyberpunk 2077 allowed me to finally feel immersed in that pen & paper RPG I discovered in 1988, pouring rain clouding my view in a kaleidoscope of neon signs, just as I had imagined while leafing through those pages. Some may not consider it a perfect game, but I do.
I’m V and the game is Silverhand - I can’t get Cyberpunk 2077 out of my head. I’ve had it a week and played 70 hours, which is probably about as healthy as scooping out my face and replacing it with electronics, but it didn’t feel like work. Like a digital personality loaded onto a biochip, it felt like stepping into another life for a while. It’s a life I can’t wait to relive.
CD Projekt Red has created a triumphant RPG experience with Cyberpunk 2077, yet it often falters under the weight of its own ambition thanks to inconsistent writing and narrative
Too ambitious for its own good, Cyberpunk 2077 attempts to do too much and falters in its execution as a result. Despite its issues, it’s better than the sum of its parts and might be worth checking out for fans of action RPGs.
In the midst of such intense anticipation and scrutiny, it’s easy to get carried away with what Cyberpunk 2077 could have been. The final experience might be more familiar than many predicted, with plenty of elements that aren’t perfect, but it’s dripping with detail and engaging stories. With so much to see and do, Cyberpunk 2077 is the kind of RPG where you blink and hours go by, which is just what we need to finish off 2020.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world masterpiece that features some of the most immersive and liberating storytelling this industry has to offer. With full freedom to choose V's personality, looks, and gameplay style, Cyberpunk 2077 gives the player an unrelenting amount of control in a world that delivers dozens upon dozens of hours of high-quality content. Cyberpunk 2077 is a mammoth achievement and solidifies CD Projekt RED's place at the top of the pile.
It may not sound like it, but I enjoyed many aspects of Cyberpunk 2077. It doesn't hit the highs of The Witcher 3, but it still has a lot going for it. However, it was released in such an unfinished state that it's hard to give it a positive review. It's an 8.0 game hiding in a 4.0 game wrapper. I might change my tune in a few months, when patches have rolled out, but even when playing the best version available on the PlayStation systems, there's no getting around it: Cyberpunk 2077 might have been mocked for its delays, but it needed more of them. You'll still have fun if you pick it up now, but unless you're dying for it, it's best to wait until it's been patched and improved.
Did a Group of San Diego Police Officers Get Away With Multiple Murders?: The Story of Donna Gentile and Cynthia Maine
I’ve been captivated by this one for a while. It’s a shocking saga that exposes a lot of corruption in law enforcement and I’ve never seen it discussed on Reddit, so I figured it warranted a write-up. This is extremely long (I like to go super in depth and include as many details as possible), but it’s worth the read IMO so check it out when you’ve got some spare time. Feel free to skip straight ahead to Donna and Cindy’s murders if you’re in a rush or aren’t interested in the background info. Background In the mid to late 1980’s, there was an alarming amount of women being murdered in the western states. The Green River Killer, Southside Slayer, and Night Stalker dominated all of the headlines. But through it all, a similar pattern was quietly unfolding in San Diego and receiving almost no media coverage outside of the city. The string of cases involving missing and murdered women in San Diego during this time period grew to around 43 total, most of which were what law enforcement called “fringe women” - meaning women who were prostitutes, addicts, exotic dancers, homeless, or involved with biker gangs. Detectives still do not know exactly how many perpetrators were involved in all of these slayings and disappearances. In the following years, police hypothesized that an ex-marine named Ronald Elliot Porter (who was already in prison for another murder) was responsible for approximately thirteen of the murders, though he has never been formally charged with them. Another three murders are believed to have been the work of Blake Raymond Taylor who was also already in prison for murder - and just like Porter, has never been formally charged with the suspected slayings. Around nine further cases were solved and lead to the convictions of multiple individual murderers, none of which with any apparent connections to the other San Diego murders. The remaining 17+ murders/disappearances are still considered unsolved. Today I want to tell you guys about two of these women - Donna Gentile and Cynthia Maine - who I firmly believe were not murdered by johns, pimps, or an elusive serial killer, but were in fact killed by the San Diego police officers themselves. The Complicated Relationships between the Prostitutes and the Police: To start, it’s important to go over the sometimes hostile - yet often co-dependent - relationship that many members of the San Diego police force had with local prostitutes during this timeframe. One disturbing note is that when police would talk to one another about reported disappearances, murders, or assaults involving prostitutes, they referred to them as “NHI cases” - which stood for “No Humans Involved”. So publicly, police made it quite clear that they didn’t see prostitutes as human beings and had no interest in them or their problems. But for many of these officers, what they did privately was a very different story. These cops’ main mission was supposed to be clearing the girls from the streets in the hopes they’d give up and move on to bother some other city. They were instructed to arrest for any infraction they could, be it loitering, suspicion of being under the influence, or even just jaywalking - because the more they had behind bars, the less would be out on the street. With the same group of police officers arresting the same local prostitutes again and again on a daily basis, they eventually got to know each other fairly well. This lead to mixed results, most being quite sketchy and corrupt. Many of the girls reported being sexually extorted on a daily basis, knowing that when a police car pulled up they would be obligated to service the officers if they wanted to continue working that night without going to jail. Personal relationships - both platonic and romantic - developed between several officers and prostitutes. Business arrangements began too, with cops getting in on the action and helping to pimp out these women. The most dangerous dynamic was the informant arrangements. Immediately after arresting the women, they would be given the options to either go to jail or become an informant. Rather than trying to help these women get out of the lifestyle, officers encouraged them to continue engaging in drug use and prostitution, so long as they agreed to wear a wire and record their interactions with the drug dealers, biker gang boyfriends, johns, pimps, and anybody else that the police may have wanted to lock up. It does not appear that police provided these women with any kind of security measures or even regular checks on their well-being, which could have possibly lead to some of the murders if the targets of the investigations found out. That said, I personally believe the police department’s culpability goes even deeper than that. First Reported Misconduct Case In the late 70’s and early 80’s, Sergeant Robert “Bullet Bob” Hannibal was a highly respected San Diego police officer. He had several other cops in the family, including his older cousin Al Quick who retired from the force a few years prior. As an undercover agent in the Narcotics unit, Hannibal put away several high level drug dealers. He was then transferred to Vice where his efforts helped to drive out the local massage parlors, causing practically all prostitution in the city to be done via outcall operations and street walking. He also participated in the informant scheme, luring prostitutes to motel rooms then showing his badge and giving them the options to either be arrested or flip on their pimps and dealers. Hannibal had taken a particular liking to a specific prostitute-turned-informant named Christine Cole and the two continued meeting even after Hannibal was transferred from Vice to Intelligence. Vice officers had some reservations about a now-unaffiliated detective still spending time with a Vice informant, but his superiors allowed it to continue as they believed Christine told him more than she’d tell other officers. Hannibal claims his end goal with Christine was to put away Bruce Compton, a man who was running fronts and credit card transactions for multiple local outcall services (and would in the end only be convicted of mail fraud which landed him just six months behind bars). In order for Christine to meet with Compton and record illegal activity, she needed an outcall service to recruit his help for. Hannibal gave her the money to start her agencies. Some were fairly transparent and others were hidden under fronts. The two of them started three prostitution agencies in all: Fantasy Outcall, California Fantasy Fashions, and California Fantasy Lingerie. He later involved his retired motorcycle cop cousin Al Quick in the arrangement, which was supposed to be a fake callgirl company but quickly developed into the real thing as time went on. The men ran the prostitution ring with Christine in a three-way partnership, hand-picking the prostitutes they’d employee, transporting them to johns, and profiting off of the outcalls. Quick allegedly had sex with several of the girls, and Hannibal admitted to sleeping with at least one of them as well. When a neighbor of Christine submitted a tip that a rogue cop was running a prostitution ring, Hannibal - who helped work the case - framed one of their competing outcall companies in an effort to shield he and Quick’s operation from the investigation. Vice became suspicious around this time and began trailing Christine which resulted in them catching Hannibal and Quick red handed, in addition to spotting Christine at a bar being affectionate with San Diego County Supervisor Paul Eckert, who lost his re-election campaign after the embarrassing publicity that followed. Hannibal was fired from the police department after he, Quick, and Christine were initially indicted for pimping, pandering, and obstruction of justice. They took a deal, pleading guilty to the obstruction of justice charge and each serving one year in prison. It was this case that made the Internal Affairs bureau first begin to have concerns about the troubling dynamic between the San Diego police force and the city’s sex workers. Donna Gentile: Donna Gentile was a young woman living in San Diego alone while the rest of her family resided in Pennsylvania. She had dreams of working in law enforcement, though her impoverished living conditions had forced her into prostitution in late 1980. In February 1981, she met Officer Larry Avrech of the San Diego Police Department. She told him about her dreams of working in law enforcement, so he invited her for a civilian ride-along, which was approved by the department. After their day together on the job, Avrech drove her home and the two had consensual sex. Avrech maintains he had no idea she engaged in sex work at the time, nor did the department when they approved her request to ride along with him. For the next two years, Donna worked as a security guard, was not involved in any prostitution or crime, and lived with her work supervisor whom she had fallen in love with. When they broke up in 1984 and she no longer had a place to stay, she returned to prostitution out of desperation and racked up three arrests, which were dropped to lesser charges after she agreed to help as an informant. Later that year, Donna was caught in a Vice sting that was supervised by Lieutenant Carl Black and included Officer Larry Avrech, who she had spent time with several years prior. She described Lt Black as being sympathetic and kind to her but she could not say the same for Avrech who allegedly prepositioned her for sex as soon as he had her alone. Donna claimed he said he’d go easier on her if she gave him what he wanted so she did and they had sex. She also claimed Avrech continued approaching her and extorting sex from her for months after. So long as she was giving into Avrech, he would tip her off to upcoming Vice raids. During this time period, Lt Black took an interest in her as well. “He treated me real nice, like a friend and never like a prostitute,” Donna said, “He said he wanted to watch after me and help me get off the streets”. Lt Black helped her pay her bail bond and legal fees in addition to contacting her probation department to ask them for leniency. He also introduced Donna to his girlfriend and several of his close friends. When Black and his girlfriend planned a four-day vacation to the Colorado River with two other police sergeants and their significant others, they invited Donna to come along. She said they “had fun and water skied” - and that the other officers did not know she was ever involved in prostitution, so it was refreshing for her to feel “normal” and respected. Avrech later learned of the trip and of she and Lt Black’s friendship, which Donna says he used to blackmail her. He told her that if she didn’t keep giving him what he wanted, he would report what he knew to his superiors which would get Lt Black fired and charged with a crime. “I liked the Lieutenant and didn’t want to see his career harmed because of me,” Donna explained. Eventually, she said she began rejecting Avrech’s constant extortion attempts and told him she didn’t want to see him anymore and didn’t care who he told. In a last ditch effort to get more sexual favors from her, he allegedly approached her with a $50 bill and a signed letter requesting leniency to the judge presiding over her case. She still said no and told him to leave. She recalled that he didn’t take it well and began harassing and threatening her on a regular basis. By August of 1984, she was fed up with his behavior and finally went to his superior Sergeant Harold Goudarzi to report that one of his officers was harassing, threatening, and extorting sex from her. He reluctantly forwarded her complaints to Internal Affairs, where they were taken fairly seriously because of the Hannibal/Quick saga that occurred shortly beforehand. They told her if she would be an informant and record Avrech’s harassment and threats, they would investigate him and hold him accountable, so she did it. When IAB questioned Avrech, he attempted to divert the focus to Lt Black and the vacation he brought her on, so a separate investigation of Lt Black was opened as well. Around the time that Avrech and Black became aware of the investigations, Donna alleges that several other members of the San Diego police force began harassing her on a regular basis. They followed her home often, parking outside of her house and waiting for any excuse to hassle her. She was given almost 20 citations in a short timeframe, some just within hours of one another, all for petty things like flicking cigarettes out on the ground and parking too close to a curb. They would even use timers to measure how long she stopped at stop signs, arresting her if she was just seconds below the minimum time. Some of the officers made threats, which Donna’s friends believe were intense enough to make her fear for her safety. The Internal Affairs investigations of both officers continued until March of 1985, resulting in suspensions for both men. It is around the same time that Donna again went to the police to formally report the continuing harassment. She stated that in addition to Avrech, there were multiple other San Diego East County police officers tormenting her, and she was able to list the names of seven of them. The officers listed in her report were Michael Blakely, Curtis Meyer, Richard Draper, Robert Candland, Frank Christensen, James Brook, and Jeffrey Dean. The civil service hearings for Avrech and Black were set to occur shortly after. Donna was called to the stand at Avrech’s and called a “liar, troublemaker, and known complainer” by Avrech’s former superior Sergeant Harold Goudarzi. It was decided that Avrech did violate police Department policies and would be fired, however he would face no criminal charges and would not be punished for the alleged sexual misconduct. Black’s hearing was scheduled two weeks after Avrech’s and resulted in him also facing no criminal charges but only being demoted instead of fired. Donna was supposed to be a witness in this hearing as well but she did not attend because on June 23 1985, a little over a week after Avrech’s hearing and just two days before Black’s, Donna was found murdered in a ravine off of Sunrise Highway about 40 miles east of San Diego. Her body was found hidden under brush and tree branches, naked with her clothes methodically cut off of her body. The medical examiner believed that she had been murdered approximately 24 hours before she was found. She had been severely beaten, then strangled to death. Gravel had been forced into her mouth and “tamped” down her throat by a foreign object, with some of it making it’s way into her airways - showing that she was alive and breathing when this occurred. The autopsy listed her cause of death as “manual strangulation and airway obstruction by foreign material”. Because her body was outside of the city, the investigation fell to the San Diego Sherriff’s Department rather than the San DiegoPolice Department that she had been harassed by. A veteran homicide detective named Thomas Steed was assigned lead investigator. The day after Donna’s body was found, Steed reports that a member of the San Diego Police Department arrived at Steed’s office and asked him if he “knew who he had back there” (referring to Donna’s body), then told Steed “that he was in a lot of trouble and this would be the end of his career”. The officer identified himself as Robert Candland, who Steed later learned was one of the officers Donna reported for harassment before her death. Candland was not the only one hostile to Steed’s investigation. Pretty much every time he contacted the San Diego PD asking for information or records, he was ignored or told to “take his request to Internal Affairs”. There was only one problem: the man now in charge of Internal Affairs was Sergeant Harold Goudarzi, the former superior and close friend of Avrech who publicly insulted Donna at the hearing just a week before her death. Predictability, Internal Affairs was as unhelpful as the local PD, refusing to even send over her arrest reports or lists of her regular clients. Eventually, whenever Steed called officers, they would tell him that their supervisors ordered them not to speak to him under any circumstances. The few that did speak to him had to do so secretly in meetings arranged by phone so as not to alert any other officers on their radios. Soon after, a witness came forward and told Steed she was positive that she overheard two men planning Donna’s murder. She stated that a man in what appeared to be an unmarked police car picked her up on El Cajon Blvd and drove her to a motel where he paid her for sex. When he removed his pants, she noticed that he placed a police badge on the nightstand along with his belt. When they were finished, he left her in the bed and she either laid down or watched tv while he made some phone calls. Soon after, a second man arrived at the motel room and they slipped away to have a hushed private conversation. She was able to overhear bits of it and was certain that they were talking about murdering a prostitute and making it look like a “sex date gone wrong”. She was briefly fearful for her life before she heard the men use a name to refer to their victim, and to her relief it was Donna’s, not hers. Steed showed her several police yearbooks to see if she recognized any of the officers inside as the men she heard planning the murder. After scrolling through many pages, she finally spotted one, pointing at a photo of Lieutenant Carl Black and identifying him as the second man who arrived after their transaction. It took several more dated yearbooks before she finally recognized another one. “That’s the first man who picked me up,” she said upon seeing the face of Robert Hannibal, the San Diego Intelligence Officer who was fired two years prior for involvement with prostitution. Steed immediately called Black and requested he take a polygraph, which he initially agreed to. But minutes before the test was set to start, Black left the room and refused to come back. Steed has never verbally accused any specific San Diego officer of Donna’s murder. But he has pointed out that this was far from the average “prostitute murder”. Most of the murdered prostitutes in the area were either left posed in suggestive positions in public areas or haphazardly thrown from vehicles onto the side of the road. Donna’s crime scene was different. She was hidden, tucked under foliage in a ravine far outside of the city. No souvenirs were taken, something else that distanced her case from most of the others. No fingerprints were reported to have been found, which made their job harder as prints were how several of the other San Diego murders were eventually solved. Additionally, her dress was cut off with a quick and clean slice from bottom to top. Typically, the local prostitute murders occurred during or after the sex acts when victims were already naked. The very few times Steed had seen other homicide victims with clothes cut off of them, there was a clear struggle taking place which caused the cuts to be jagged, messy, jutting in multiple directions, and usually nicking the woman’s skin in multiple places since she was moving during the killer’s cuts. No such struggle was noted in Donna’s case, just one quick and easy slice that didn’t stop or touch her skin whatsoever - leading Steed to believe she was already dead when the dress was removed from her body solely for the purpose of staging the crime scene - indicating that the motive for her murder was not sexual in nature and only meant to look like it was. Steed was especially interested in the meticulous way that the tire tracks and footprints were obscured. He could see vague outlines of where the vehicle pulled up to ditch her body. But there were no precise, identifiable tracks. It appeared that after the body was put into place, the car was driven back to the paved road, off of the impressionable dirt/mud, and parked there while the perpetrators returned to the scene on foot. They then used branches, leaves, and brush to obscure all of the tire tracks - stopping every few steps and doing the same to their foot prints as well. They carefully filled in every print and track from the body to the highway, then presumably fled in their vehicle. In summation, this crime was committed by someone who knew exactly what detectives would look for. What I find to be the most compelling thing about Donna’s murder is that she effectively provided testimony from the grave. In the course of their investigation, detectives found multiple documents that showed she anticipated her life would end soon. Among the most damning was a letter she had handwritten to her cousin in mid-1985 while briefly incarcerated for her solicitation charges. It was written on labeled Las Colinas County Jail stationary. “I reported the patrolmen for sexually harassing me,” she wrote, “My life is in danger when I get out. The cops are waiting for me”. Her brother also came forward to present detectives with additional written correspondences from the same time period in which Donna again expressed fear for her life due to speaking out against the San Diego PD. One document even showed Donna begging to remain incarcerated after her sentencing was completed because she believed the police officers were lying in wait and would harm her the second she left the secure confines of the jail. Donna’s lawyer Douglas Holbrook soon came forward with an even bigger bombshell. He said that a few weeks before her death, she handed him an audio cassette tape and told him to play it for the media if anything ever happened to her. Steed put the cassette into a player and it was indeed Donna’s voice eerily forewarning the listeners of her eventual murder. “In case I disappear somewhere or go missing, I want my lawyer to give this to the press,” Donna began. “I have no intention of disappearing or going out of town without letting my lawyer know first. Because of the publicity that I have given a police scandal, this is the reason why I’m making this... I feel someone in a uniform with a badge can still be a serious criminal... This is the only life insurance that I have.” Detectives and relatives often point to the key detail that Donna, after writing that she knew she was in danger for opening her mouth, was found aspirated on gravel. This is not something typically seen in the average prostitute murder and many believe it indicates that whoever forcibly tamped the rocks into her mouth had done so as punishment for her speaking out against them. Another detail that was overlooked - and seemingly irrelevant at the time - was a piece of paper found in Donna’s things at the murder scene. Written across the paper scrap was a phone number belonging to a woman named Cynthia Maine. Cynthia Maine Donna’s friend Cynthia Maine - or “Cindy” as her family called her - was a local girl living a similar lifestyle. Growing up, she was a heavy set child with very low self esteem that carried on into adulthood. Steve Smith, her first real love, was an addict during their relationship and eventually involved Cindy in his drug use since she was the main provider in the house and he needed her money to support his habit. Pretty soon both of them were addicts and Steve was encouraging Cindy to engage in sexwork in order to raise money. Even after giving birth to their son Marky, Steve continued pimping her out on the San Diego streets. After tiring of this cycle and moving home to her mother’s with baby Marky, she planned to get her life back together but ultimately returned to the streets soon after. On July 2nd 1984, Cindy was arrested by Officer John Fung for “suspicion of being under the influence”. She was then given the typical ultimatum: leniency if she’d flip, hard time if she didn’t. She chose the former and began informing on all of the dealers she knew in the area and wearing a wire at drug buys. She had halted her own drug use around this time, proudly keeping track of every day of “clean time” in her journal. It was about a month after this arrest that Cynthia first read about the murder of her close friend Donna Gentile. Her mother remembers her sobbing over the newspaper. Throughout that month, her relationship with Officer John Fung evolved. Cindy had a certain respect for law enforcement officers because her own father was once a member of the San Diego PD. Many of her prior customers on the street were police officers as well, but Fung seemed different than the rest. She believed their bond was something deep and special. Cindy introduced Fung to her sister on one occasion and to her mother countless times as he arrived at their home on a daily basis and often came in for coffee. Her mother remembers Fung leaving love letters and sweet notes on their front door addressed to Cindy. Cindy’s journal details the one month anniversary of when they met, talks about her making him chocolate covered strawberries and other baked goods, and references their sexual relationship. Much like Donna’s relationship with Black, Cindy believed Fung truly wanted to help reform her and take care of her. She even credited him as her main inspiration to stay clean and sober. In September of that year, Cindy was sentenced to several months in Las Colinas County Jail (the same jail Donna Gentile spent time in) for a check fraud scheme she was previously involved in. She was originally sentenced to about four months but in November, halfway into her sentence, she was approached with a deal from some detectives who were seemingly investigating police misconduct (possibly related to Gentile’s death, but I am not certain about this as I have yet to see any further details on what investigation her intel was needed for). They pressured her to answer their questions, promising that she could immediately go home to her young son if she did. She agreed and provided the officers with honest answers, admitting that several members of the police force were clients of hers when she was doing sexwork, that some of them harassed and extorted the girls, and that she was romantically involved with one of them. Like Donna, she provided all of the names she knew and agreed to testify in civil hearings or court if needed. In exchange, she was sent home with her family right after, two months before schedule. She was glad to be home with her child, but she couldn’t stop second guessing her actions and wondering if she had made a mistake. In the following weeks and months, she mentioned to her mother and sister that she was very fearful of retaliation from the police officers she informed IAB about. Both of them downplayed her fears because they were a police family themselves and couldn’t imagine an officer harming innocent people. Then, on February 21 1985, mere months after she provided intel on the officers, Cindy left young Marky in the care of her mother while she went out for a movie. She never returned. She was reported missing five days later on February 26th, but the police had no interest. “We don’t actively look for these kinds of people.” they told her mother Lynda. So her family began searching for her on their own. They drove up and down the San Diego streets searching for any sign of Cindy, her car, or her possessions. They called Officer John Fung but he told them he had no idea where she was and to stop bothering him. When they pointed out to the police department that Fung would be the most likely person to have helpful information since he spent more time with her than anyone else they knew, Fung refuted it and claimed he barely knew her and she was just another hooker informant. He admitted showing her kindness, but said that was just because he was a kind person in general, not because he had any specific liking for her. He then refused to answer any calls or letters from the family. Again, unlike the typical behavior of the prostitute thrill killers in the area, Cindy was not found thrown out of a vehicle on the side of the road, disposed of in a dumpster, or posed in open spaces for others to find. Like her friend Donna - the other outlier in the string of murders - Cindy was well hidden, this time even better than Donna was considering Cindy’s remains still have yet to be located. It’s believed that much like in Donna’s case, Cindy’s murderer seemed to know what they were doing. Six weeks after Cindy’s disappearance, her mother Lynda finally found her car in the parking lot of a restaurant in La Mesa. She pleaded with the police to check it for prints or blood, but they refused. “Look it lady,” one officer told her, “There’s blacks and whites, and then there’s prostitutes.” She realized then that there was nothing she could ever say or do to get this police department to see her daughter as a human being worth looking for. Afterward: When police refused to help look for Cindy, her sister and mother had gone to the local newspapers to express their frustration and journalists were quite interested in all of the connections. After all, Donna and Cindy were good friends. They both were prostitutes-turned-informants with close relationships to members of the local police department, who denied the connections after. Cindy’s disappearance and Donna’s murder occurred just seven months apart, right after both left jail and provided incriminating information about officers. The officers implicated by the tipster in Donna’s case were one man personally involved with Donna and one man who was a known criminal that had lost his badge after illegal activity with prostitutes. The officers trying to shoo away both cases were deeply involved with the suspects. It was a perfect storm of sex, drama, corruption, and crime - so the headlines wrote themselves. After taking some heat from the press, it was decided that the cases of Donna and Cindy - along with the other 40+ missing and murdered women - warranted a second look. So, the Metropolitan Homicide Task Force, “MHTF” as they called it, was started. MHTF would be split into two branches, the Serial Killings Unit and the Police Corruption Unit, with four officers assigned to each. Detective Steed from the San Diego Sheriff Dept was uncomfortable handing over the Gentile case to the new task force, citing his distrust with the SD PD, so he was brought in as well and assigned to the Police Corruption Unit. The only problem was that the man in charge of that unit was none other than Sergeant Harold Goudarzi, the former Internal Affairs supervisor who had previously refused to help Steed’s investigation due to his dislike for Donna Gentile and his close friendships with Avrech, Black, and the others. Steed quickly realized that the mission of MHTF was just to look good to the public and not to actually track police misconduct. When he continued looking into officers involved with Donna and Cindy, he was fired from the MHTF by Goudarzi for being a “maverick who was out of control”. After a Roladex belonging to callgirl madam Karen Wilkening was found, it was discovered that Vice officers had removed the names of several members of law enforcement before it was entered into evidence. Because of this, the investigation was moved away from San Diego PD and placed into the hands of the San Diego District Attorney, who convened a grand jury on the allegations of police corruption. There were some links between the Wilkening case and the San Diego Prostitute Murders (including evidence that members of MHTF were listed in the Roladex, and that Donna Gentile herself had worked several parties thrown by Wilkening), so the MHTF was disbanded and the Prostitute Murders (including Donna and Cindy) were also handed over to the DA’s office. The DA would go on to investigate and discipline several members of San Diego law enforcement. Detective Chuck Arnold and his former partner John Lusardi (who was on the MHTF) received suspensions for previously ordering prostitutes from Wilkening for Lusardi’s bachelor party. Former police chief Bill Kolender was also investigated for allegedly being a client of Wilkening. Sergeant Alfonso Salvatierra was investigated after sexually explicit photos of both Donna and Cindy were found in his locker at work. Eventually, Sergeant Harold Goudarzi himself would be suspended for having a sexual relationship with Denise Loche, a prostitute who acted at as informant for the Donna Gentile case. No criminal charges were ever filed against any of the men involved, despite the grand jury all agreeing that there were serious problems with corruption in the city’s law enforcement. Donna and Cindy’s murders still remain unsolved. While for decades after, officers continued trying to sweep them under the rug as most likely being the victims of typical prostitute thrill killers like Ronald Elliot Porter and Blake Raymond Taylor, their families - and most locals - still believe that San Diego Police Officers got away with murder. Photos of the individuals involved: https://imgur.com/a/HnJa9On A source link: https://apnews.com/article/9c3a112a6ed8e128c2018ddf169b3a41 Thanks for reading all of this and for caring about these women who have been ignored for so long. I’d be super interested in hearing your thoughts on this case. Update: Since writing this, I started looking up the cops involved on Facebook and BeenVerified just to see if they’re still around. I found John Fung and he appears to have a normal life. Larry Avrech’s Facebook page was far more surprising. His whole Facebook page is about Donna, he has even written a book in which he claims all of her allegations were lies and Lt Black was the only criminal. He claims to know who killed her now and wants to expose him in the book. I don’t know what to think about it, I tend to believe he did everything he was accused of because Donna had no real reason to lie and endanger herself for no reason. That said, I do not believe he killed her (he would have done so before she testified against him, not after. And he wasn’t mentioned by the tipster who heard the planning). I’m interested to hear who he thinks did it. I definitely buy into the Black/Hannibal theory, I wonder if he does too. I bought an e-copy and will update y’all as I read.
“So... this is it then? The end of planet Earth?” The old man sighs and said, “Looks like it doesn’t it?” They made an odd couple. One elderly male, his face wrinkled and worn, his hair white and untidy, his clothes stained and creased. Besides him, the young woman, aged in her mid twenties, her head shaved like a Buddhist monk, yet the dark circles about her eyes and frail body hidden In thick, oversized clothing, revealed her head was manifestation of some illness that was destroying her. They sat upon the hill besides the old Greenwich Observatory. All was in darkness. They had spotted each other earlier, when the sun had shone and people had come to Greenwich Park to enjoy the last day. Gaze at the grandeur of the old Royal Naval College. Walk their dog. Relish other’s company. Enjoy a perfect June afternoon, for one final time. But the sun had started to set and in twos and three everyone had left. Except the girl and the old man. Awkwardly she had invited him to join her on her blanket, and awkwardly he had accepted and now both rested upon the deep green grass and gazed up at the night sky. “So, what do we do now?” Her voice trembles a little even as she tries to keep her tone light. It’s dark. Still warm but no lights were lit around the observatory or in the park at all. The only illumination came from London itself. The city blazed defiant still. The old man ponders for a little and says, “I suppose we wait.” “What for?” He shrugs and says, “Boom.” “You think there will be a boom?” He smiles to himself, “Honestly? I hope so.” “Why?” “Means it’s over quick. I’d hate for it to be slow,” he says. He glances over at her. She was pretty. Still very pretty he felt. You could see whatever was ravaging her body had taken its toll but her eyes seemed to twinkle in the distant lights of the Docklands. “I know what you mean,” she says, her eyes glazing over sadly, before she adds, “It’s been slow for me.” “How long you been sick?” “Nine years. I’ve fought. I’ve done that whole brave soldier routine,” she says and turns to look at him, a tight smile on her lips; “But this body of mine just really isn’t as tough as I needed it to be” He sighs and looks away awkwardly, “I’m so sorry. That’s just awful.” “No, that’s just genetics. Can’t do a damn thing about it.” She continues to smile and he smiles back. Another awkward moment settles on them. But they want to talk. The intimacy of strangers. She glances down at her knees for a moment, her voice very quiet. “What about you?” “Renal failure. Well, that’s the excuse. The renal failure is simply a symptom. The cause is just being old.” She nods and they say nothing. In the distance they hear a few cars drive by very quickly. But it’s just them in the park. Moments pass and he takes a breath. “I’m actually glad it’s all happening now,” he grins, “I’ve not bothered with my treatment today. If the Earth isn’t destroyed this evening I’ll be in a terrible state in the morning.” She finds herself laughing, almost in spite of herself. It’s a gentle laugh. The old man gazed at her for a moment. “If you don’t mind me asking Miss... How long until...” His nervousness allowed her know exactly what he was asking about. She takes a breath. “Maybe a week. A month at most. Organ failure has kicked in. Nacrosis. My body is actually dying,” she shrugs. She gazed up at the stars and shrugs, “At least that was the plan. Recent events have forced me to cancel that.” “Damned inconvenient if you ask me,” he smirks and she smirks back at him. A siren, a police car maybe, echoes off the buildings to their left, somewhere in Greenwich itself. They glance over but see nothing. The orange glow of street lights beyond the nearby trees. She inhaled deeply. “I always liked it here. My favourite park.” “Me too. It has deer you know?” “I did. Never seen one. You?” “A few times. It’s rare though.” The siren fades and the odd couple sit on the hill on a warm summers evening. She bites her lip for a second and glances over at him. “Were you bothered? When they asked?” “About staying? No. I wasn’t. Although to be honest I didn’t have much choice.” He raises his bushy white eyebrows and tries to force a smile; “But I didn’t mind too much. It all made sense I suppose. You?” She nods, “I was a little upset. I mean, they asked nicely, but as you said, they worded it in a way that...” “Made you realise that ‘no’ was unacceptable?” She bites back a smile, “Something like that. And yeah, if I’m honest? It pissed me off for a bit. But... Like you said... it makes sense.” They stare at each other for a second before they are distracted as, suddenly, the sky is filled with explosions. The couple look. The hill they sit on has a commanding view of Docklands, her gigantic skyscrapers, huge towers of light. To their left the gigantic Shard can be seen, towering over the south side of the river. And beyond that, high above the skies of central London, they can seen the flashes of fireworks. So many fireworks. She smiled broadly. “That’s pretty.” “Agreed. Very.” As they watch fireworks explode along the Thames. Someone went to a lot of time and effort to do this. Huge firework barges along the river now erupted into light as all over the London sky the last firework display in Earth’s history plays out. For a few minutes they sit and watch in silence. Him, not quite cross legged, her, with her face resting on her knees. “I should have thought of that. Fireworks on Earth’s last day,” she says wistfully. “Smart a well,” he says, nodding. “Smart?” “Shows we are still down here. In case they are looking?” “Oh yes. I see. Your right that’s very smart.” The fireworks leave a gentle fog of smoke in the air. Along the river they fade out but the ones in the centre of the city continue, endless explosions. A gesture of defiance. Around them however, the park is silent and dark and warm. She shivers briefly and rests her cheek on her knee, gazing at him. The old man notices and smiles, “What?” “Does the idea of dying bother you?” “No. I’m old.” “Really?” He sighs and leans back onto his hands, his eyes focusing on the few stars above them. “Maybe a little. To be honest? Death bothers everyone I suppose. Troubles our thoughts. You do end up thinking about it a lot more as you get older. Get a bit more use to the idea.” He blinks and glanced over at her. “What about you?” “It’s weird. It scared me when I was younger. Especially after my first relapse. Before then I thought I’d overcome this. You know- mind over matter? But when I was told it was back? I became afraid. Really afraid.” The distant fireworks cascade in oranges and greens and reds, and her voice is very quiet. “And then a few years later? I felt I found peace you know? Got all reconciled to it. Nothing to be afraid off I convinced myself. But that was a few years ago. Now? Here and now? I don’t know how I feel. It’s weird.” He nods, but is unsure how to respond. Inhaling deeply and savouring the scent of the grass he gazes down the hill at the white shapes of distant grand buildings. “I suppose,” he says after a few seconds, “the good news is, that when I’m dead? I won’t worry about being dead. Won’t worry about anything really.” She frowns and her nose wrinkles. “That’s really hard for me to grasp. Like not worrying about stuff after I go. Like I can’t get my head around it.” “Well then, let me ask you something. What did you think, before you were born, about events in the 1920’s?” She blinks and raises her head. “I... I didn’t think anything. I wasn’t around in the 1920’s.” “Well, that’s how it’s going to be tomorrow. We won’t be around to think about events the day after Earth is destroyed and it will bother us the same way not being around in the 1600’s bothered us. Not even a little bit. Make sense?” Her face, he can tell, seems quite serious for a moment, and she sighs. “I suppose. Do... do you believe in... you know? An after life” “I want to. I’d hate to think the universe went to all this trouble to make me and then NOT have something afterwards.” She smiles, gently, at that. “I do. I really do. Not like heaven or stuff, but I just believe that consciousness is really complicated and we don’t understand it and that it exists. In another form. Somewhere. After we go.” He nods in response to her and gazes up at the stars again. “That sounds nice,” he says, “I like that. Everyone and everything who has ever lived has their consciousness carry on. So beyond our bodies we can all meet up and have a chat.” She smiles back at him, “I wonder what it would be like?” “Probably very crowded...” She laughs. It’s a lovely sound. Like something that had sat within her suddenly erupting. She laughs honestly and he finds himself smiling alongside her. Her laughter, however, lasts only a few seconds and then catches. Her eyes gaze upwards into the sky and go wide. The old man follows her gaze and sees it also. There, high above London, sits the Moon, her cold white face gazing down at them all from her usual place in the sky; but across the south west facet of its familiar visage they both can see a shadow. Its faintly triangular shaped. Something vast and leviathan flying between Earth and its moon. Something menacing. Something alien. As they watch, spellbound, he hears the fireworks begin to trail off, leaving a cloud of smoke that hangs in the neon lit air over London. “Is that them?” “Afraid so,” he replies. In the silence they can hear, far far away, a noise from where the fireworks came from. They can’t be too sure but it sounds like the distant roar of people screaming. “It looks intimidating,” she says and he nods. “I think it’s meant to.” As they watch the shadow crawls over the face of the Moon; the shadow of some vast thing that floats between the Earth and her companion. And as they watch the tip of this dark triangle begins to emit a bright, white, light. “What’s that?” “I think they are powering up their main weapon.” “Oh. Now?” “Looks like.” “Oh,” she says as if taken-aback. And no sooner has she said it then the triangle acts. From the dark shadow a solid beam of white light races through the night sky. It flies directly over them, beyond the horizon, aiming towards somewhere far far away. They, along with everyone else on Earth at the moment, just gaze at it opened mouthed. “Wow,” she says. “Yeah,” comes his reply. The distant sound of shouting ends. The city is remarkably quiet. She blinks. “Now what happens?” The old man takes a breath and steals his eyes away from the beam of white light that dissects the sky above him. “Well that beam they are shooting? According to what I read, that’s going to fly towards the sun and when it hits it? Boom.” She nods and looks at him. “How long until it hits then?” Even though he didn’t need to he glances down at his old watch. “Well it’s moving at the speed of light, so 8 minutes.” She frowns at that and asks, “So, 8 minutes until boom?” “No. Think about it. Going to take 8 minutes to get there. Take a while for the sun to react and go boom. And then when it does? 8 minutes for the boom to reach us. So I’d say twenty minutes. Give or take.” “The last twenty minutes of Earth?” “Yes. Looks like,” he says sadly. Before she can respond they both hear someone scream. A woman. She’s nearby. In the streets next to the park. Its a scream of pure terror. A scream of imminent morality. It lasts a few seconds. And then becomes still. The girl stares over at where it came from, hidden, behind the trees. “I wish they didn’t scream. It doesn’t help.” “People become afraid. They can’t help it.” Suddenly their eyes are drawn to something new. Not the terrifying light that crosses the sky, nor the ominous shadow of the alien craft that fires it. Back across central London, where the fog of thousands of fireworks slowly dissipates in a windless summer night, someone has activated a laser projector. Against the smoke appears words illuminated in intense red lettering: 90 feet high script begins taking shape above London, aiming upwards, sending a message out to the stars... FUCK OFF AND DIE YOU UTTER WANKERS The odd couple on Greenwich hill respond like all who saw those words responded and burst out laughing. Genuine laughter, from that heart. “Oh that’s brilliant,” the girl says, “Well done.” He grins back at her, “Humans. Can’t help ourselves can we?” They enjoy the message but then, suddenly, the beam of white light that laid across the sky, ceases. The night sky is returned to darkness. “Its stopped!” At her words, the old man glances down at his watch. “Two minutes. So the first part of the beam will hit the sun in about six minutes time. Assume the beam takes two minutes to churn stuff up. It’s coming I suppose.” Over the skies of London a new message appears in bright red lettering. WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER! The old man glances at it and under his breath says “Here here...” quietly. “It’s leaving,” she says pointing at the shadow upon the face of the Moon. He nods. “Yes. Probably looking to get far, far away. When the sun blows she’s going to make a hell of a mess.” The girl turns to him. “That means... it worked? The plan?” The old man blinks, like someone remembering something and he smiles. “Yes. Yes you’re right. They fell for it. It worked.” “Good,” she says, her voice resolute, “That makes me happy.” “Me too. Good to know it was worth it eh? All of this.” She nods and looks at him, her eyes showing resolve. “Yes,” says the girl, “It makes me happy. You know I was thinking the other day; I’ve spent so much time needing the help of others. Doctors, nurses, carers. The human race has spent a fortune on me to keep me alive this long.” She gazes at her frail hand for a moment. “I feel good I get to do something back for the human race.” “That’s a lovely way to see it,” he nods, “And I have to agree. I mean, I’ve had a good life. But I suppose I’ve benefitted. From electricity. And medicine. And society. I liked society. I mean it wasn’t perfect. But it allowed me live for a long time. It was nice.” “Yes. Society was nice. I hope we make a better one.” “Me too,” In the firework smog above London, new words appear... GO ON THEN! FUCK THE FUCK OFF! He smiles at the very, VERY British statements of resentment. “That’s them gone,” he says, watching the last of the shadow leave the surface of the Moon, “Flying away. Idiots.” She nods, “They are going to be so mad when they discover what we did to them.” “Well, here’s hoping they never find out eh?” She stares at the darkness of space besides the Moon for a moment before asking, “Who started it?” “Who started what?” “The war?” “Oh, it was Them. They are miles ahead of us technologically wise. I mean they can destroy suns with a single beam. We can’t even come close. We’d never have picked a fight with them.” “True. What did they want?” He sighs and shrugs. “The usual. The human race to surrender to them. Become slaves. Or food. I think both.” “And that is what caused their ultimatum?” “Think so. And you know our reaction.” She looks over at the laser created letters above the ancient city of London and smiles sadly. “Yeah,” she says and is still for a moment. “How long now?” He glances down at his watch. “About 13 minutes or so.” “Soon then?” “Yes. But it does seem to be slowing. Time that is.” “I suppose.” She sounds sad and he wishes to distract her. A sudden thought comes to him. “Very ironic us worrying about time here of all places don’t you think?” “What do you mean?” “The Observatory,” he indicates the large brick building about 50 feet from them on the top of the hill. “See, that was where we calculated all the time zones from. The GMT line. Greenwich Mean Time. It actually runs right through the middle of the building. This is the centre of time on Earth. Literally go that way...” He points down river towards the sea, “And you have to put your clocks forward, and if you go that way...” He gestures down towards the town itself, hidden behind the trees, “And you have to put your clocks back. This is the centre of time.” She nods slowly, “I never knew that.” “This has been the place where the whole world has kept time. That was why I came here to be honest. That building. What it represented. Time.” He is silent for a moment. She stares at this old man, his disheveled clothes, but sees a spark of intelligence in his face. She wonders about his life. His life before. For his part the old man sighs and continues, “I don’t know. I suppose we all retained some mad dream that somehow we’d all escape this. Somehow find a way out. Mine? It involved being here. Maybe here where we fixed time we could do something like freeze time, hold the last perfect day so it could last forever.” He catches himself and winces. “Sorry, must sound silly.” “That’s lovely,” she says and then takes a breath. And then turns to him again. “How long? Tsk! Sorry. I shouldn’t keep asking...” “It’s fine. It’s not like we can ignore the circumstances,” replies. He glances down at his watch. “About ten minutes,” he says quietly. The girl is staring at the night sky. “Where are they do you think?” “The enemy? Probably running as fast as he can away from here.” “No. Us. The rest of us?” “Oh. Well, given it’s been a week or so, I’d say they are nearly there by now. They said Eden was three and a half thousand light years away. So I think that means it will take them nine days on the arks. Give or take.” He shrugs at her and continues, “Obviously I wasn’t paying too much attention to the evacuation procedures.” This makes her smiles again. “Me neither,” she says quietly, “Didn’t see the point.” She takes a deep breath and straightened out her back. She turns to him. “I’m pleased it worked.” “Me too,” he nods back and looks up at the darkness of the cosmos, “Fuck you assholes, we fooled you. We’ve won.” “When will they know?” “Who?” “Us,” she says, “The rest of us. When will they know Earth was destroyed?” His eyes never leave the stars and his frail voice is distant and quiet. “I suppose one night humanity will look up into the night sky above Eden and they will see a bright flash far distant as our sun blows up. In three and a half thousand years.” “And the enemy doesn’t know about Eden?” Her voice is almost pleading, hoping for this validation. He nods. “No. It’s why nothing was broadcast. Why we turned off all radio and TV communications. We couldn’t even allow an accidental slip. We printed everything. They don’t know about Eden.” She shivers quietly, and blinks. Wondering what the cause was. She can see nothing but the park in darkness and the old man staring up into space. “We outsmarted them,” she says and he blinks and turns to her. “Yes. We did. Final proof that there is nothing we humans can’t do if we out our minds to it. An all powerful alien species threatens to destroy our world? And we? Manage to sneak off nearly every human being right under their noses and settle on another world. Quite brilliant.” He seems happy and for reasons she didn’t quite understand, his happiness gave her joy. She leaned forward and asks, “Did you see the descriptions of Eden? I didn’t really feel like paying much attention to it?” “Oh yes,” he says getting excited, “Exoplanet almost identical to Earth. Slightly larger. Gravity a tad more but also a tad warmer. And two moons which means it’s tides are much more stable. Sounds ideal. And we know we can live there. Had people on it for thirty years before the crisis.” She sighs gently, “Eden. The Bible says we came from the Garden of Eden.” “We came from Eden and we go back to Eden. Nice symmetry.” He sighs and glances down at his watch. He sees her questioning look and says flatly, “Not long now. About seven minutes.” She nods and looks sad. Hit with a moments insecurity he asks, “Do you... do you need to be anywhere?” “I’ve got nowhere else to go. Everyone I know has...” “Me too,” he says. He looks around and remembering turns to her, “You know what I did yesterday? Spent a day walking around a primary school. It was filled with the remains of what had just been. Books and pens and art on the walls. In one classroom the children had drawn a big picture of Earth and above it the words ‘Goodbye Earth- thank you. We won’t forget you’. It was very sweet.” She smiles. “I’m pleased they took the children. All the children.” “Me also. And hey, they took 9 billion and change out of 10 billion humans. That’s bloody remarkable when you think about. All creeds, all colours, rich and poor. Didn’t care about religion or caste. They took everyone.” “Except us,” she says quietly. “Except the very old,” he replies. “And the very sick.” Her voice is small and vulnerable and he glances over, a look of concern upon his face. She sees it and holds her head up. “It’s alright. It made sense. A lot of sense. I mean they HAD to leave some right?” “Indeed. If we ALL went, when the enemy showed up they would have known, especially as we had stopped using tv and radio for the last month. They had to look down and see humans still on the planet. Be convinced we were still here. That way they would do what they threatened to do and move on. Not aware most of us had escaped.” “And it’s worked,” the girl beams. “It has worked. Well done humanity,” he smiles back. “Fuck you aliens!” She looks up at the night sky, her face defiant and strong. Her defiance infects him, and he nods. “Indeed. Fuck them.” The trees come alive, as hundreds of birds suddenly start flying. No birdsong. But hundred and hundreds of avian creatures all come to life. Briefly they are distracted by their sudden movement. “That’s odd,” she says but then just gasps as all the lights in the city go out. A few emergency lights in tower blocks automatically come to life, but it was as if someone had turned off all the power to everywhere with the flick of a single switch. Utter darkness envelops them both. They sit for a few seconds, their eyes adjusting to the complete darkness (where the Moon is the only illumination), but all they can hear are the flap of thousands of birds wings in the trees and air around them. “Do you think?” Her voice is raised slightly to be heard over the noise of the animals. “I don’t know,” he replies. “Oh. The sky?” He hears her and looks up. The sky has changed. Where there was at most twenty or thirty stars that could be seen above, now there were millions of them. It was if the entire sky had come alive with a myriad of stars of every size and hue. “Yes. Light pollution. We can see the sky without the orange glow.” “It’s so pretty,” she says dreamily, gazing up at the sky as if it was new to her. “Yes. Perfect. Normally you have to go deep in the countryside to get that.” The girl gazes upwards and narrows her eyes. “Where is Eden? Which one of these stars is Eden?” The old man has no idea, but senses that the actual answer didn’t matter right now. “That one,” he says pointing at a nice looking twinkling star. “Really?” “Yes. Its that one.” She smiles broadly and whispers up at the star, “We did it humanity. We fooled them.” And as quickly as it starts the beating of wings suddenly ends. A sudden, terrifying silence falls upon the world. “I’m getting scared,” she whispers. “Oh don’t my dear. Don’t be scared. Its just something that was going to happen fairly soon to us all just happening a little bit sooner eh?” She turns to him, “Can you hold my hand?” “I’d be honoured,” he says and takes hers in his. It feels thin and fragile; his feel calloused and wrinkled. It doesn’t matter. As much as they dare, without words, they squeeze each other’s hand. “I’m pleased to have met you,” she says, quietly. “So am I. I’m glad I’m not alone.” “Me too. I’m sorry. I never asked your name,” says the girl. The old man smiles. “William. My friends call me Billy.” “I’m Abigail.” “I’m really pleased to have met you Abigail.” “I’m really pleased to have met you too Billy.” The darkness suddenly diminishes. Nearby a herd of deer race out of some trees and spring across the grass before them. Twenty, thirty, more. Majestic even in their panic. Racing from somewhere to anywhere. The darkness lightens. As if, far away, the luminosity the sun has just been turned way up. They can see the red deer race down towards the river and watch them sadly... “I feel sorry for it,” she says. “What?” “The Earth. And the Sun. They didn’t ask for this,” comes her voice. “No, I suppose they didn’t.” “Poor old Earth.” Billy pats the grass besides him... “Yes indeed. She was a good planet. Thank you Earth. For everything.” Abigail smiles at that and Billy is suddenly aware he can see her clearly. It’s getting quite light... A ROAR. The air is rent by a roar unlike any heard upon this world. Superheated air catches fire high above them, igniting the atmosphere far above, as the opening salvo of the death of the sun hits the other side of the planet. The odd couple are illuminated as if it were day light, but it is a harsh white daylight, unforgiving and uncaring. It’s over for the other side at least thinks Billy. But the roar increases, and he notices it is getting much hotter. “Billy. I’m scared.” “Don’t be Abigail. I’m here.” Instinctively the old man brings her close, into a hug and she allows it. She can smell the stale scent of old dried sweat on unwashed clothing and tobacco and grime but for some reason she cannot explain it fills her with comfort. Relief. To be held by another human. He holds her close and desperately seeks to talk about something, anything... “Did... did you have any family?” His voice is loud now. The roar above is deafening. “My parents. My brother. We said goodbye last week. They didn’t want to go. I insisted. You?” “I have a daughter. I assume she has gone. Haven’t spoken to her in years. She’s safe. Like the rest of them. They are all safe Abigail.” “All safe,” she says and smiles and tears form, hard tears. The light gets brighter and the temperature higher. Sweat forms on her neck. The roar continues and he has to shout. “Jolly well taking it’s time eh?” Abigail finds this the funniest joke she has ever heard in all her life and laughs through her tears. “Yes. I wish to complain in the strongest terms about the slow service at the end of the world...” And Billy finds it the funniest joke he has ever heard in all his life. He glances up and sees a white burning sky, flames only a few hundred feet above them. Coming lower. He feels absolute terror and curls himself up around the young woman, protecting her, burying his face into her neck while she curls up inside his arms. The ground beneath them starts to shake. “Billy?” “Its alright Abigail. I’m here. Be over soon.” The hill begins to shake far more violently, vibrating back and forth and forces beyond any in the planets history smash into it. They cling to each other tighter in a final embrace. Here. At the end of all things. Her thoughts race with lightning speed, a history of broken memories of a life spent in hospitals and sick beds and of snatched glimpses of health. She begins to cry properly. Shuddering tears, all defences broken, all pretences gone. She sobs and curls into a little ball, and says ‘Daddy..’ And around her the old man begins to hum a tune he knew from his own childhood, cradling her and rocking her, he wants desperately to tell her it will all be alright, wants desperately to tell this young girl that he can make it better... And with this Billy’s mind finds itself at some kind of mental singularity; a point of no return. And he’s sees all his life, his two wives, his daughter laughing as a child, his mistakes, his regrets... all his life flashes before his minds eye. And yet to his surprise he sees something else. He sees before him an image of giant craft, its vast engines cooling, from huge gates in its side, disgorging people, so many people...sees their faces filled with hope and fears... he sees them smile at the sounds of children laughing He sees them build and stumble; sees them punishing criminals, making laws, sees they making countries. He seems them making mistakes, so many mistakes, and he sees their wars and their horrors; and they do inflict wars and horrors upon each other. But in that mental singularity he sees more. Children growing, living, loving, having children of their own. He sees ten thousand thousand generations yet to be born, building in a new place. On a new planet. Safe and wonderful and beautiful and perfect and they gaze up in the night sky of an alien word at a star that flares briefly... And like a singularity this last thought is all; forever trapped between the now and the was; forever would Billy feel that sense of pride and of joy and of love... And this young woman’s words and his own combine and in that endless moment of time he thinks We did it humanity; we fooled them; remember us... And that was all he knew. The nova was spectacular, the suns core tearing itself apart and it deaths throes obliterating Mercury and Venus and Earth and Mars; it’s vast forces slammed into Jupiter and Saturn. The Giant Planets died also. The sun flared briefly in its death and then exploded. And all trace of the planet Earth and of all the life upon it was gone forever. And across the endless cosmos a single thought of a single mind repeated as it held to the last sliver of its time, filled with hope and love and a defiance eternal. Remember us... It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known -Charles Dickens.
How many married couples do not sleep in the same bed/room?
My husband and I have been together for 18 years. We have not slept in the same bed for 16 of those years and I honestly feel like that’s one of the reasons we have lasted in a long and happy marriage. Even today, we are happier and more in love than ever, we don’t argue much and when we do it’s about small things and sorted out quickly, we are best friends and each other’s favourite person and we still get intimate almost every day. But when (if) I tell people that we don’t sleep in the same bed, they are shocked and tend to believe there must be something wrong in our marriage, that we aren’t intimate or that we are on the rocks. But I honestly don’t think it’s a big deal, I don’t think it’s that unusual and I also, thinking logically, can’t understand why more couples don’t choose to sleep separately. When we moved in together 16 years ago we realised very quickly that we are completely different sleepers and what constitutes a good night sleep and what is required to get it, is very different for us. He likes it as dark as possible, with blackout curtains and even a sleep mask. I don’t like a pitch black room and prefer at least a little moonlight or street light so I can see. He likes silence. A ticking clock, the hum of the radiator when the heating starts up, loud breathing - it will all annoy the hell out of him and keep him awake. I, on the other hand, can sleep easily even if there’s a tv on in the room. I never have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep. I actually like a little background noise and for over half the year I sleep with the window open and the curtains open because I like to fall asleep to the distant sounds of traffic/life and I like to wake up to natural sunlight and birds tweeting. He is a light sleeper and wakes up several times a night to use the bathroom. I am a deep sleeper and most nights I don’t wake up until he wakes me the next morning. When his alarm goes off he bounces straight out of bed. When mine goes off I like to snooze for 5-10 mins and wake up and get my bearings. When I go into his room to get dressed (his room holds our wardrobes) it looks like he’s had a fight with his bed sheets because he is a fidget and tosses and turns a lot. By contrast, I wake up in the same position I fell asleep in and when I’ve got out of bed you’d hardly know anyone had slept in it because I’m so still. I like to read to get sleepy, he could never sleep while I have the light on. I don’t mind our dogs sleeping on the bed but he would never get to sleep with the dogs fidgeting all night. The contrasts are many. When we tried to sleep together, both of us were always unhappy and grouchy/tired the next day. One of us (most times both of us) always never got a proper sleep. It would be a heatwave and I’d be desperate to open the window but he wouldn’t because of the noise. On the occasions I insisted he’d end up going to the spare bed at 1am to get some sleep. When we got the blackout curtains If I woke or stirred in the night, I would have a full blown night terropanic because I’d start awake and it would be so dark it was like I hadn’t even opened my eyes. We are just very very different when it comes to how we like to sleep. So we did the sensible thing within weeks of us moving in together and we decided we would each have a bedroom. To this day, nearly two decades later, we still comment several times a week on how sleeping separately changed our lives. He still writes in my valentines and anniversary cards ‘thanks for letting me sleep alone!’ The point of this post though is to see how many others are like us out there? I was reading an article the other day about how the notion that people in love should share a bed is old fashioned and stems from the fact that most couples have children (or share a house with other family) so the only time they would have the privacy to be intimate would be bedtime. Therefore if they weren’t sleeping together then they mustn’t be having sex. So that’s why people seem to put so much importance snd emphasis on sharing a bed. I should point out that my husband and I are child free and we don’t live with anybody else besides our dogs. So we can have sex whenever and wherever we want to in our home. This means that even if we did share a bed, we wouldn’t have sex at bedtime much anyway because when the option to have sex any time is there, you don’t necessarily have to wait until bedtime. That means that when we go up to bed, it’s usually because we’re tired and want to actually sleep. Any sex would have occurred far earlier in the evening (or during the day depending when the mood takes us). The article stated that more people should consider sleeping alone because one of the biggest problems in healthy adults is lack of a proper, decent nights sleep. It also said that one in four couples don’t sleep together. My knowledge of other couples I know in my life doesn’t reflect these statistics at all. I know of no other couples that sleep separately (or at least I know of none that are willing to admit it). So I wondered whether people would be more willing to admit it on Reddit than perhaps in real life and how many other couples don’t sleep together?
Pass the bong and gather round, bros! We're gonna like....um....what were we doing again? Oh yeah, we're gonna talk about those Chronic stocks and how you Ganja Gorillas can avoid becoming Game Gibbons
Hay hay, Ay, listen up, B, lemme holler at you a minute. I notice you been eyeing that portfolio real luscious like, almost like you found a couple extra bananas under your tree, am I right? Cool, cool. So whatchu holdin', homey? Tillllllray? Aw yiss. Aphria? Yeah, she fine as hell. CGC? Oh lawd, dat ass is bangin'. ACB? Aw man, you like the classics, that's dope. OGI? Into the up and comers, respect young blood. SNDL? SNDL? For real? Dude.... Hi all, NrdRage here. You might remember me from such hits as "pegging $GME dead right multiple times during its bubble, making everybody rich on $RIOT, exposing the $PLUG infinite money glitch, accidentally helping start the $BB craze, never getting an $AMD weekly call right and being in an abusive relationship with the VIX" or maybe "The SEC and you: How you can just say no to having them shove a Mister Fister up your ass". Alright, apes, it's been a great few days being able to throw a dart at a wall of weed stocks and no matter where it sticks, you make money. It's been a great run. But if you're going to expand the acreage of your jungle and the amount of lady gorillas you earn the right to mate with, you gotta start thinking a bit. And that means - hear me out - thinking of how the hell you plan on getting out of SNDL alive. And yes, I realize I'm saying this right after it spiked almost a hundo percent in the last 24 hours. Look, I was playing it, too. I grabbed some 2/19 3c's and a shit ton of 1/22 1.5c's on Tuesday. I also got out of both of those today, though not as high up as I could have. If you check my history, you'll see I even said I was goingt to eye a re-entry. Then the market took a giant dump and gave me that entry, but I passed on it because I had done some research by that point. Whatever, profit's profit. Here's the TL:DR: It's basically a penny stock that's gotten pumped to hell. But the smart ape realizes when something has gone too mainstream and gets out of the way before the bulldozers wipe out his trees. Hey, I love shoving a share price around a bit as much as the next guy, I ain't gonna talk shit about that. But it seems like nobody has an exit strategy for this, and I'm starting to see a lot of really stupid shit about Holding to 42.69 and all the other ridiculous bullshit from people who clearly don't even know what they fuck they've invested in that the GME Gibbons fell for.
Here's the reality of SNDL:
The company was on the verge of bankruptcy around Thanksgiving, they have no other markets other than Canada, which is ridiculously oversaturated with weed to the point that wholesale prices are less than a dollar a gram. And they recently got forced to admit that their product fails to meet THC content requirements. In case you're wondering what that means, it means they sell skunkweed that they cut with paper and sawdust to make it cheaper. They sell garbage. And everyone knows it - their brand is associated with low quality crap. Plus, they actively solicited us to buy their stock to drive up the price, then diluted it to fuck with a billion share offering. Now, to their credit, this not only enabled them to become debt free, but also up their marketing budget and spend some time trying to create a brand. Don't get too excited, fucking Sam's Choice at Wal-Mart is a brand, too, doesn't mean you should stick a chub of their ground beef up your rectum. By reason of them selling skunkweed, their margins lag well behind that of their competitors. Looking at their financials, they've got 615 million in cash laying around. That's pretty good - except they're a company that burns 250 million a quarter. Which means they're going to dilute the fuck out of everyone again next month. They've got no exposure to the US market, but had no problem dropping "rumors" that they were going to break in to the US market through licensing deals - which turned out to be 1 pot shop in Bellingham, Washington. They have no real expansion plan anywhere in the world, for that matter.
B...bu.....bu.bu....BUT NRDRAGE! Stonk go up ! Look at it! SNDL to the moon! 🚀 🚀 🚀 ).
Yeah, I know. It's fucking crazy to talk shit about a stock when it's seemingly mid flight. But here I am anyways. Not to talk you out of the weed party - you should totally keep playing that for all it's worth - but rather to get people to see that they've probably outgrown skunkweed now. Look, the reason this thing mooned is because it was like a dollar. Hell, it was 13 cents not too far back. With a stock worth a dollar, it's easy to get a lot of other apes to throw a couple of bananas at it for the lulz. It's easy to shove around a penny stock with an extra 10 bucks you have laying around from another trade somewhere. But as the price goes up, so too goes up the perceived cost of entering. I can make a strong (unassailable, in fact), argument that $APHA at $25 is cheaper than SNDL at 3.25. But people are conditioned to like smaller numbers. Unfortunately, as the GME Gibbons learned, eventually you run out of buyers, and then things go tits up real fast. As the Prophet Biggie Smalls once said, Mo' Money Equals Mo' Problems. We all know this equation to be true. And here you are, sitting on bags of bananas you didn't know you were gonna have a week ago thanks to some stonk you hadn't heard of before yesterday. You don't think you've got a problem, but you do. Because those bags of bananas aren't edible until you turn them in to the bank for real cash. If you're sitting on bananas from the gold standard of the weed world (that would be, $TLRY), you're resting pretty easy that no other ape is gonna come by and steal your bananas. There are gonna be lots of bananas to go around, and mostly we're just taking bananas from fools who think their bananas will be less later. But you don't have that with SNDL. All the bananas are currently sitting with people who think the bananas will go higher. You can't all be right, especially when there are billions of bananas, and now your grandparents are starting to buy bananas because some Boomer on CNBC told them it would make their dick bigger and their friends think they were cooler.
Again, I'm not telling you to leave the party
But, if you recall your dorm room years, the best pizza you could afford was the Tony's school lunchroom style shit for a dollar. Then you managed to hide a few bucks from the people who collect your student loans, and you upgraded to Domino's. Maybe by now you're ordering from a local joint that makes it's own dough in house and the sauce is made with the love of an old Italian grandma who accidentally dips her sagging tiddies into the pot 3 times while making it. That just makes it taste better. That's science. But I digress. The point is, you can get better weed now. You don't have to smoke the skunk. So before you get the rug pulled out from beneath you and are stuck investing in shitty penny stocks again, maybe you should elevate your enterprise. Let's take a look at your options:
Canopy Growth
You could go with $CGC. They not only sell higher quality weed, but are an established brand and also sell oils and shit to those hippie fucks who still think Burning Man isn't just a brogrammer beatfest and go to an acupuncturist to enhance their "luck". They've captured that all important 65+ stoner demographic by marketing their shit as a cure for seizures, cataracts, and dry vag, so they've got a lot of revenue. They've also had a much more muted rise this week because they just haven't been on everybody's lips, which means they've got a lot of room to run. The downside here is they burn almost as much cash as SNDL, but they've also got more bullets.
Aurora
If you go with $ACB, you're going with a company that's already gone through its "shady as fuck" stage and has re-emerged healthy from it. You're also not only getting on weed, but the DIY urban chicken farmer types who want to grow their own weed. They, too, have had a strong run, but have a lot more runway than most because they've actually got a really strong path to dominance in the US market once it opens up to them.
Organigram:
Look, if your dick is still getting hard at the thought of playing a low dollar stonk or you've only got 28 dollars to invest, you could do a lot worse. They've got strong branding, large growth potential, a management structure that doesn't seem to act shady, and they've run almost as well as the other new generation of meme stonks, but lagged back enough because nobody can fucking rmeember their name to where they can rubber band a bit.
Tilray and Aphria:
I'm combining these because they're inexorably joined at the hip (or should be, more on that later) because the two of them are merging. For those who don't know, sometime in Q2, every share of $APHA you own will turn into .833 shares of $TLRY. Even though APHA is the one buying out TLRY. This is basically the gold standard of weed stonkery. When you start investing in these, you know you're a real investor. Here's the interesting thing with these guys, though. Even though APHIA should be just slightly trailing behind TLRY in terms of stock price, it's currently trading at less than half. With TLRY sitting at 73 a share as I write this, APHA should be at just over $60. But it's at 29. Now, obviously, this means that TLRY has a lot more momentum, and some of that is due to the fact that there's a mini (don't flog me for using the word, but it's true) short squeeze going on with that one, which has turned it into such a strong momentum play. But APHA, by virtue of actual math, needs to be within about 17% of TLRY's price. Which means APHA either needs to moon dramatically, or TLRY needs to fall precipitously. Now either of those things could happen, but the momentum of TLRY is hard to stop, which means it's more likely that APHA rubber bands to catch up to it in the coming months. Even if TLRY does falter, that means APHA still has to come up a bit to meet it. Making APHA kind of a "can't go tits up" situation. TLRY also has the benefit of having enough market cap to where fund bois will buy into it, whereas SNDL is too small to meet most of their requirements. Which can further propel TLRY (and thus, drag APHA with it). One of the interesting things that's been happening with this pair is that the order books, even though they should mirror one another, have completely inverted from one another numerous times in the last couple of days. This, of course, was a bull flag for TLRY every time it happened, leaving APHA to compensate to try and catch back up shortly thereafter. It's really easy money. Fundamentally, these guys have one HUUUUUUUGE advantage over the others: They secured the UK distribution, and now have the inside track to be the supplier for the rest of the Europoors across the pond who need to smoke a bond to help forget all the things wrong with them. And if you don't think they won't be able to leverage that to be the front runners out of the gate when the US opens for business, then you definitely ain't black.
Or, you can just stay where you are and do the 💎👐 thing
Ask the $GME Gibbons how well that worked out for them. The ones still holding that stonk are like that one dude sitting at the edge of the bar of the Viper Room, still rocking his mullet and chain wallet, just convinced that Warrant and Slaughter are going to ring in the glory days of hair metal once more and that Queensryche is going to start selling out stadiums again. It's just sad. You're flying right now, but a rug is gonna get pulled out from under you and then you're gonna have your own daily thread where you reassure yourselves that it's gonna be OK and that you're gonna ride it to a thousand one day. Lots of us (myself included) made a fuck ton of money on GME. And we've made a fuck ton on SNDL and the rest of the Weedies this week. But there are always people who Melvin it and hang on to their position too long and get stuck. That's gonna be a lot of you, but you shouldn't let it be you.
TL:DR: Smart apes should look at their much bigger pile of bananas from SNDL while you're way ahead and upgrade them to plantains before the other apes. Plaintains equals breeding with better apes, not low quality apes that cannibalize fellow apes and give ape diseases.
All my love -Chad Dickens EDIT 1: I forgot to list my positions CGC - None ACB - None OGI - 10,000 shares @ $4.23, 1000 1/22 5c, 500 2/19 7.5c TLRY: 20,000 shares @ 18.74, 100 2/12 65c, 500 2/19 65c, 500 2/12 42c, 5000 6/18 43c APHA: 500 2/19 26c, 500 2/19 25c, 5000 7/16 30c SNDL: Opted out today
Having seen a couple of posts about Sumo Logic it seems nobody really has an understanding about what they do so I thought I’d help break things down for the common layman. There has been enough commentary about the conservative multiple so I will instead try to discuss the market dynamics and technology shifts. I hope this helps bring awareness to this segment of the market and look forward to a discussion around these points. Disclosure: I work in enterprise software and am long 10,100 shares @ $22 (screenshot) TLDR: In a future where an infinite amount of machine data is being generated, only Sumo has the architecture that makes sense.
Overview of the logging market
Let’s begin by understanding what logs are. All digital machines generate data, everything from status updates from a server, traffic levels on the network, battery levels of your phone, and even temperature readings from your HVAC system. The amount of machine data generated will continue to grow exponentially, particularly as more and more IoT devices come online (smartwatches, cars, fridges, etc.). All of these logs need a central repository to be stored, upon which analysis can be performed. Historically logs have mostly been from on-prem systems like firewalls, routers, databases, etc. however as more and more systems migrate to the cloud, these new cloud environments are generating logs as well. These logs are important to the IT organisation of any company, to be able to track and answer questions such as:
How are traffic levels trending on my website?
Is my AWS instance still alive? How is the application performing?
Are my Windows machines patched and up to date?
Is there any unusual activity on my network?
This culminates into a single pane of glass, where companies can monitor the health and status of all their systems in one place. In addition to that, large companies are mandated to store logs for:
Compliance: Companies need to store immutable logs for a certain period of time as a form of record keeping.
Security: Logs are reviewed during threat forensics after a cybersecurity breach. The security team needs to inspect their firewall/access logs to identify how and when they got breached. ie. who accessed this file and when?
As a result, we can expect the logging market to continue to exist over the long term. The only question is, who is best positioned to meet this need for the future?
The current players
While there are many nuances and buzzwords around SIEM, observability, APM, IoT, etc. I will keep things simple and talk only about a relatively established and mature market – logging. It is a crowded market with a lot of players including LogRhythm, Loggly, Logz.io, Rapid7, IBM, Exabeam, etc. I will look specifically at the companies built for serving the Fortune 500, as this enterprise segment is where the greatest share of wallet is. Datadog deserves a mention, however their core competency is APM. Their log solution was through a startup acquisition and has a pretty negligible run-rate so we’ll ignore them in this discussion.
Company
Founded
Type
Multitenant
Market Cap (as of 02/21)
ArcSight
2000
On-prem (1st gen)
No
Acquired
Splunk
2004
On-prem (2nd gen)
No
28B
Elastic
2012
Open Source
No
15B
Sumo Logic
2010
Cloud SaaS (1st gen)
Yes
4B
The original pioneer of the logging market is ArcSight, who were then acquired by HP and subsequently spun off to Microfocus. They are now dying a slow death, while Splunk is the current de-facto solution for most companies. A CIO today has 2 main choices when wanting to implement a logging solution, they can either Buy or Build.
Buy: Pay Splunk to help deploy in your datacentre. And then pay them professional service fees every year to help maintain and manage the software. And pay them based on the amount of data you send to them.
Build: Get a bunch of your developers to build a solution inhouse using an open source Elastic stack (ELK). They then have to actively manage the system themselves to keep it alive and manually scale it up and down accordingly.
Architecture matters
The shift from on-prem to cloud A lot of the latest high-flying SaaS companies haven’t really been that innovative. They are solving the same age-old problems, except doing it in the cloud instead. A few examples are shown below. In fact, a lot of these are done by the exact same people. Crowdstrike was founded by ex-McAfee guys, Zoom was founded by ex-Webex, and so on. No different with Sumo, which was founded by ex-ArcSight guys. The reason for this phenomenon is because these people understand their industry inside out and have experienced the challenges first-hand. They see where things are headed and want to do things a better way. Another common trend amongst all of these new hot stocks is that they were founded AFTER the inception of the cloud (AWS began in 2006). The shift is both a technological one (on-prem -> cloud) as well as a business model shift (license -> SaaS). Sumo is in a similar position to capture this technology lifecycle shift, as workloads shift from on-prem to cloud. Naturally, logging and analysis should also occur in the cloud. This kind of scale is what the cloud was made for.
Incumbent
Cloud SaaS
Market
McAfee
Crowdstrike
Endpoint security
Siebel
Salesforce
CRM
Oracle
Workday
ERP
Webex
Zoom
Video conferencing
Remedy
ServiceNow
ITSM
While Splunk no doubt has a more mature product that can serve a broader range of edge cases, Sumo has managed to demonstrate product maturity by gaining a client like Macquarie Bank, a bank in Australia (case study available on YouTube). Anyone who works in enterprise software sales knows that cracking the FSI vertical is the holy grail, as they are super conservative, with lots of red tape and requirements. It’s one thing to convince a forward-thinking cloud native company (like JFrog or PagerDuty) to use your software, it’s another thing to convince a bank to send their sacred data to a third-party cloud. A structural advantage: Multitenancy and Elasticity Given the volume heavy nature of this type of business, architecture really matters particularly as the amount of data grows exponentially. The advantage with multitenancy ultimately manifests itself either in the form of better gross margins, or reduced costs to customers. We know that this is where the market is heading, not just because every other SaaS vendor is multitenant, but also because Splunk is throwing big dollars in trying to reposition for the cloud. Splunk doubled their R&D budget, spending over $600m in R&D alone last year, which is probably more than Sumo has spent in its entire lifetime. They are desperately trying to catch up, but multitenancy is not a feature you can add overnight, as it involves rearchitecting your entire product. It is especially hard when you already thousands of customers using your platform, it gets even harder once you’ve bolted on a few acquisitions over the years. It is akin to trying to convert a regular combustion car into an electric car, while someone is driving it. It took a long time for Splunk just to achieve the basic separation of storage and compute, a milestone they achieved last year. This is what happens when you’re trying to refactor code written in 2004, and throwing 10x more money doesn’t necessarily accelerate things by 10x. Frank Slootman (Snowflake CEO) had a fairly eloquent way of describing this:
You can put 1000 mothers on the task of creating a baby, but it’ll still take 9 months.
Splunk Cloud in its current form is simply a hosted solution, meaning that instead of hosting the software yourself in your data centre, you’re paying Splunk (who pays AWS) to host it. This is very different from a true cloud native SaaS solution (which is what Sumo is).
Asymmetric risk and incredible upside
Massive TAM Sumo is backed by the crème de la crème of VCs: Accel, DFJ Growth, Greylock, IVP, Sequoia, Sutter Hill Ventures, Battery Ventures. Usually you see 1 or 2 of these names in any winning company, you almost never see all of them together. And even if you did, you definitely wouldn’t be able to get it at prices close to theirs. These people spend all day thinking about the future, TAM and competitive dynamics. And they allowed Sumo to make a big long term bet and spend 10 years developing the next generation platform. By putting their money where their mouth is, these people have validated the market and investment opportunity for you, and you’re able to participate in the upside at a price not too distant from theirs. The last VC pricing round in May 2019 for Sumo was at $12 (~3x). For comparison, Snowflake’s last VC price in February 2020 itself was $39, and they are now trading around $300 (~8x). Typically, the majority of the gains are captured by the VCs pre-IPO, but in this case there is still plenty of room for retail investors to participate in the upside. Sumo is also barely scratching the surface with market penetration. Only 15% of their revenue is coming from outside the US, there is so much room for international expansion. Mature software companies usually see around 50% of their revenue from international sources. Multiple Expansion Prior to COVID, Sumo had a pretty solid and consistent growth rate. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect it could revert to the mean and get back closer to 50% once the macroeconomic outlook improves. There are many notable growth companies that have missed a couple of quarters, I remember when ZScaler had a quarter with 18% billings growth and the stock tanked, presenting an incredible buying opportunity for those who believed in the long-term vision and market opportunity, rather than quarter to quarter execution. Similarly in 2010, people back then were debating whether Apple’s stock was overpriced, based on whether they were going to sell 8m or 10m phones that quarter, which in hindsight seems a little silly and didn’t really matter. Sumo Revenue Growth Rates:
FY2019: 53%
FY2020: 50%
FY2021E: 30% (COVID)
FY2022 and beyond: ???
If Sumo can get back closer to 50% growth rates, the stock could see significant multiple expansion. For perspective, other SaaS companies at 50% growth rates are currently trading closer to a 40x multiple, which would put Sumo closer to a valuation in the 12B range (roughly $120 share price). In addition, the risk reward here is asymmetric, given they are already priced in for a low growth rate. Meaning that if they do deliver a low growth rate, nothing much will happen and the downside is limited. Whereas if they manage to execute, deliver positive surprise during earnings and become the cloud leader for logs, the upside is incredible. In the current rate environment and frothiness within software stocks, it is not unreasonable to expect that their market cap could easily go from 4B -> 40B within 3 years. What we have is a company that was good enough to go public during a pandemic, but was conservatively priced due to the short-term execution issues. While Sumo has had weak execution over the past 12 months, they are well positioned for the future due to the architecture they’ve spent 10 years building. In investing you want to spend more time thinking about what the future could bring, rather than what happened the past 2 quarters.
So why has the stock been floundering?
This is what I have been asking myself ever since the flopped IPO. In addition to the growth deceleration causing multiple compression, I think the real challenge Sumo has faced is that they may have been too early to the market. It wouldn’t be the first time that VCs were too forward thinking, the reality is that these large companies are relatively slow moving and trends take a long time to play out. Even across the broader cloud story, we are still in the very early innings. More specifically, Sumo has been struggling with:
Inability to acquire net new customers
Competing against vendors with much larger scale
A less than articulate CEO. Granted he came from a product background as opposed to a sales background, so we’ll cut him some slack. I originally thought he seemed a little burnt out but having watched his older videos, that’s just the way he is.
As they say, you want to be either the number 1 or 2 in any market. Sumo is not that (but has the potential to be).
The bottom line
Splunk is slipping When your marketing team is busy pushing t-shirts, that’s how you know you’ve hit rock bottom and really have nothing good to talk about. It is also evident that Splunk has become a bureaucratic political beast. Their cloud team has had a different leader every 2-3 years. With those kinds of dynamics, it is very difficult to execute on a long-term vision and see the development through. Execs get paid on short term quarterly performance, and nobody wants to risk cannibalising their cash cow. There has also recently been a massive exodus within their sales team, which began with their CRO leaving, and this is usually a leading indicator that the party is over. Elastic is a wildcard The wildcard here is Elastic, as they have demonstrated product market fit and strong momentum within the developer community. They have been taking share from Splunk and may end up becoming the provider of choice, instead of Sumo. However if you zoom out, the idea of every company building and managing their own log solution just seems silly. This simply isn’t the way software was meant to be built, particularly since logging a common requirement across companies, and the devices generating these logs are also the same. A better way to do things My view is that any software that requires the buyer to maintain it, is garbage software. This is the case with Splunk and ArcSight where customers have to pay professional service fees every year for consultants to tweak and maintain it. And it’s the same case with Elastic which requires you to provision a team of people on keeping the system alive. With Sumo it’s pretty straight forward, you install connectors which route the logs into Sumo. From there Sumo processes the data and generates dashboards, etc. Watch out for Q4 earnings in March The most important thing obviously is that Sumo can actually deliver on the vision. A few important things are happening next month when they announce earnings, here are some things to watch:
Q4 growth performance – is the chart moving up and to the right?
FY2022 guidance – how healthy is their pipeline looking?
Lockup comes off – are VCs dumping the stock?
Sumo needs to demonstrate a reacceleration in growth, and to signal confidence in the future. If they can guide >30% growth for FY2022, then a 10 bagger within 3 years is in sight. Any less than that and it deserves to trade like a donkey. Trade it if you want to bet on positive surprise next quarter, hold it if you believe in the long-term vision. Final thoughts I think that companies are going to move from Splunk -> Sumo when they get sick of getting ripped off, and as more of their workloads shift to the cloud. I think that companies are going to move from Elastic -> Sumo, when they get sick of needing to manage a solution, or when it gets too complex. I think that at the end of the day all markets experience margin compression and get commoditised, and that Sumo has a cost advantage due to their architecture. Only a true cloud native, multi-tenant SaaS platform makes sense for a world generating an infinite amount of data. The One True King: SUMO Edit: Here is a screenshot of my position https://imgur.com/jqbb94X
My Dad and I live in a really weird hospital. I'm not even sick.
Today my Dad finally allowed me to start using Reddit! He's been very nervous about this. He even wrote me a list of subreddits not to look at. Of course that makes me really curious, but I always do what Daddy says so there's no way I'm actually gonna check any of them out. So… hello Reddit! How are you? My name is Maggie. I live in a huge house with my Dad and a lot of other people he says need to be "under close observation and close to medical treatment at all times". When I asked him what that meant, he told me we all need to be watched by doctors and nurses here so in case something happens to us, they can take care of that. Apparently, we're all sick in one way or another. Personally, I feel fine so I'm not sure why I'm here at all. I've been asking Dad but he never gives me an actual answer, he just kind of talks around the subject whenever I bring it up. Another weird thing is that none of the other patients have their parents with them. I think they're all older than me though so I guess it's not that strange. Dad is around me literally all the time. Well, not all the time, but quite often. When he's not with me, he talks to the nurses and doctors or he goes into his office. He works here too. Once a day, I have to talk to a doctor myself. Her name is Ellie and she's very nice to me, but not to Dad. She never lets him stay when she talks to me. Apart from that, I like our daily appointments though. Her room is very nice. There's a lot of photos of ducks on the walls and she even has a stuffed duck on her desk. She lets me hold it everytime I talk to her. Ducks are her favorite animals. Dr Ellie never really examines me, she just asks questions. Today for example, after she told Dad to wait for me outside and had me sit down across from her, she asked how I was feeling. That's always her first question. I said I was well and asked to hold the duck. She gave it to me and then asked how my day had been so far, what I'd had for breakfast, that sort of thing. It was just small talk. Then she asked me if I'd had that dream again. See, I have these nightmares sometimes. They're really fuzzy and unclear, but basically, I dream of men in weird dark clothes. They always have these masks on that cover their faces and leave out only the mouths and eyes. Sometimes, I dream that they're holding me down and that one of them keeps shouting stuff at me while I'm crying. "Not last night," I said to her. "That makes you nightmare-free twenty nights in a row," she replied. She was smiling, but she didn't sound too happy. "I'm sure you don't miss them." "They scare me for a little while but all in all, they're just dreams. That's what Daddy says." Dr Ellie frowned. "That's what your Daddy says, huh," she repeated. "Right… I know I ask you this a lot as well, but has your Dad ever done anything to hurt you?" I shook my head no. "Never? Or maybe not hurt you, but did he tell you odd things? Or did he do anything to make you feel strange in any way?" I shook my head no again. Dr Ellie didn't look satisfied. "Well, that's good." "Why would my Dad do something like that?" I asked. "Nevermind it. I just thought I'd ask. A lot of kids have very mean parents after all," she replied. "That's sad but my dad isn't like that." "That's great, Maggie. That's all I wanted to hear." "You don't like my dad, do you?" Dr Ellie tensed up a bit. "That's not true. Your dad and I have a history though, we go way back, so to speak. And there's a lot I can't tell you because it's… well, between him and me and our colleagues, you know?" I told her I didn't get that at all but she didn't want to tell me anything else. Our time was up after that anyways so I got back out where Dad was waiting for me. I saw him and Ellie glare at each other for a split second through the open door. But the really weird thing happened afterwards. I wanted to take a nap so Dad came with me to tuck me in. He stayed by my bedside until I was already half-asleep before turning to leave. I heard him shut the door behind him, and just one second later, he gasped. I sat up immediately, startled. "What are you doing here?" I heard him hiss at whoever was outside with him. "Could ask you the same thing. I thought you'd agreed on giving her space." The voice was Dr Ellie's. She didn't sound like she does when she talks to me though. She sounded angry. "Jack, what exactly do you think you're doing?" "Can we please take this somewhere else?" Dad replied in a hushed tone. "What, are you afraid she'll hear us?" "Of course I am! Move along now, we're going to your office." "Are we? Because I'm staying right here." Dad sighed deeply. "I don't have time for this. Why would I want to deal with your crap in the first place?" "Then maybe I should talk to her myself. This has been going on for long enough anyways…" "The hell you will. Because I…" I heard my door being locked. "…have the only key to her room as of now. She's asleep in there, so if you try and talk to her from out here like an idiot, I'll tell her it was all a dream. Meanwhile, I'll be off and get security and when I come back, you'll be rid of your job, I promise." Dad sounded really casual when he said this, but with that kind of concealed rage people carry in their tone sometimes. Dr Ellie didn't say anything for a little while. When she spoke up again, she sounded almost sad. "This is sick. You are so sick, Jack." "Oh, you think? Well, I don't really care, to be honest. And before you ask, no one else does. In fact, do you really think our bosses gave her to you, you who graduated rock bottom of your class, the most inexperienced shrink of everyone they've got, because they want her to get better?" Noticing he'd raised his voice, Dad suddenly fell silent. I could hear him press up against the door. "Maggie?" he asked softly. I didn't respond. I gave him no sign I was awake at all. Something about what I'd just heard made me feel like I shouldn't. Dad let out a sigh of relief. "I'm gonna get lunch now," he said to Dr Ellie, quieter this time. "You should think about what I said though. Really, think about it." I heard him walk off, followed by the clacking of Dr Ellie's heels on the floor. "Not sticking around after all? Good choice," Dad said just before they were too far away for me to hear them anymore. I tried to sleep a little bit, but I kept thinking about the two of them. None of what they'd been talking about made any sense to me. Eventually, Dad came back to get me. I was really happy when he did because I had been getting bored. He took me out to the hall where everyone eats and told me to get myself something on my own since he had to get back to work. I wasn't happy about it but I saw Jonah sitting at a table in the back so once Dad was off, I went to sit with him. Jonah is my friend. I love talking to him but I only do it when Dad isn't around. My father really hates him for some reason. Once, the two of them actually got into a fight, like a real fistfight. A couple of nurses had to break it off. Jonah's about Dad's age. He's taller though and very strong, but not scary. He lost his right leg, although he won't tell me how, and the people here have been building a new one for him. They're still working on it and he needs to get used to it first, so he can't go anywhere without crutches. That's also why I was so scared when Dad attacked him that one time. Since Jonah was trying to hit him back, I thought he was going to trip and fall over, but he could actually stand for a whole minute without his crutches. Them fighting was terrible, but I overheard one of the nurses later saying that at least now they knew Jonah was adapting to the mechanical leg. I've asked him thousands of times why he doesn't get along with Dad, but he always dodges the question. I like him anyways. He has this really nice smile and when we talk, he doesn't treat me like I'm a dumb kid; more like we're old friends. "Hey Maggs," he said when I sat down across from him. He was holding a large slice of pizza. There was a carton with more sitting in front of him and he nodded down at it. "You want some?" I thanked him and took a slice of my own. "How are you?" "I'm alright. It's pizza day. Doesn't get much better than this, does it? Not around here at least." He hummed as he ripped a large bite from the slice in his hand. "Do they make the pizza here?" Jonah laughed. "Hell no, they don't. If they did it would be just as shitty as the rest of their food. But that's hospitals for you." "Wait, so this is a hospital? Never thought of it as one." "Sorta. Sorry, I just forgot I'm not supposed to talk to you about that." He rolled his eyes at an imaginary bystander. "What do you mean by that?" "Nothing. Just… something that's been going for way too long. One of these days I might just forget altogether." "Forget what?" "To keep my mouth shut." This freaked me out a little but he wouldn't say anything else so I stopped prodding. We ate in relatively comfortable silence, but Jonah ate faster than me… and about twice as much. When there was nothing left, he wiped his mouth and smiled at me. "Come over here. I've something to show you." I quickly ducked under the table and emerged on Jonah's side where I sat down. He lifted his prosthetic leg up on the bench beside us and pulled up the bottom of his sweatpants. I almost jumped in my seat. Jonah's mechanical leg is black and made of some kind of shiny metal, or at least I think so. But what he showed me looked completely different. There was skin over it and it appeared rather soft. "Oh my God," I muttered. "It's amazing, right? I can't even feel anything off about this anymore. I can move it perfectly, it looks exactly like it used to… well, I used to have hair on it, but that's fine." "That's so great, congrats!" "I know! They finally finished it. I know we were off to a rocky start and at first… well, you saw me, you know I was struggling. But now… this was worth the wait. I still keep my crutches at hand 'cause I don't wanna test my luck just yet. But I'm really positive about this. My doc says he wants me relaxing and getting used to it for six more months and then I can start working again. Can't wait." "Wait, what do you work as?" "Oh, I did the same thing as you." "What?" I looked at him, my eyes wide with confusion. "I've never had a job." Jonah sighed. "Yes, right. How could I forget." "You're being kinda weird," I admitted. "Am I? Sorry. I don't even notice anymore." Not long after, I saw my Dad enter the hall. I was still sitting with Jonah so I immediately started freaking out and wanted to hide under the table, but my friend grabbed my arm–gently, but firmly–to keep me seated. My father proceeded towards us with a deep frown on his face. He didn't even acknowledge Jonah's presence when he came to a halt in front of us. "Maggie, princess. Did you eat?" His voice was strained, even though he was trying to hide it. I nodded. Dad raised his brows. "Good. Sorry I was gone for so long. I'll be off again soon, too, but I got the computer room wide open for you so you can play in there." "Thanks, Dad." I scrambled down from the bench, walked over to him and took his hand. Before we left, he addressed Jonah. I was stunned, to be honest. "How are you adjusting?" Even Jonah himself seemed puzzled. "Can't complain. You did a good job on this one, man." My father ignored the compliment. I was a little surprised. I didn't know Dad was one of the people who had created Jonah's leg. I'd known he worked here, sure, but until now, I had never thought about what he actually did exactly. We turned to leave and Dad walked me to the computer room. This room, as the name implies, is filled with computers. The patients may use it from time to time, but they have to share with the research assistants. Dad says that's because they need to work but aren't important enough to have their own office. That's when Dad explained Reddit to me and gave me the list of subreddits I can't look at and everything. This site is really cool. Feels like there's everything the internet has to offer here. That aside, I actually got curious so I did some research on prosthetics such as Jonah has. It seems they're actually not very common outside of this place. That really makes me wonder a bit. Just another odd thing about this hospital, I guess. But the strangest thing, the reason why I'm writing this, happened afterwards. I didn't feel like surfing the web anymore so I went to my room to change clothes so I could go take a walk outside in the yard. I opened the door to find something lying on the floor. It was a photo. Surprised, I bent down to pick it up. My stomach turned when I laid eyes on the picture and I felt bile rise in my throat. It was a monster. It sounds childish and very rude saying that since I know very well it must have been a person at some point but it didn't look like one anymore. They were lying in a hospital bed not unlike those I'd seen in some of the rooms here in this building, but the sheets were soaked with blood and some other yellowish fluid. Their lower half was covered by a blanket. From what I could see, there was hardly any skin left on their body. Instead, it hung shredded off their limbs and torso. It reminded me of what it looks like when deers shed the skin on their antlers. The lower part of one of the person's arms was missing, leaving behind only a stump from which a broken bone protruded. The person's scalp was torn up badly and chunks of hair were hanging down from bits and pieces of it. The worst thing however were the eyes. Don't get me wrong, the eyes were the only thing about them that were left unharmed, but they were wide open and looking right at me. The person had looked into the camera when the picture had been taken. This mangled mess of a body… it wasn't a corpse. At the time of the photo, they had to have been alive. I doubled over and threw up on the floor. The picture slid out of my hand. I sat there for minutes, retching and weeping. The door was still open a crack so it was no surprise when one of the male nurses, I think his name's Ethan, who was just passing by noticed me and came in. He found me kneeling there beside that awful picture, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to my feet. He half dragged, half carried me into the mess hall where he sat me down on a bench. He tried to talk to me but I couldn't hear what he said; I could hear his lips moving but it sounded like his voice was nothing but the faint sound of static somewhere far off in the distance. I was panting and crying. I remember thinking it was really hard to breathe. It sounds silly now, but I suppose I thought I was going to die. That's how terrified I was. Two other nurses came up to us, one of them was Cassandra, another friend of mine. She pushed through to me and quickly made me swallow a tiny pill. She then gently grabbed my ankles and lifted my legs up onto the bench, turning me around in the process. When she spoke, her voice was clearer than Ethan's. She was very calm and just the sound of her speaking, softly telling me to breathe more slowly, was enough to soothe my nerves a little. Meanwhile, Ethan and the other lady had jogged off in different directions, one was heading for the hallway my room is in and the other to where the doctors have all their offices, presumably to find Dad. I fell asleep before they came back. When I woke up, I was in my room again, lying in bed. It's very late at night now as of me writing this, but after having slept so much already, I guess it's no surprise that I'm kind of restless. One of the nurses must have removed the picture because I can't find it anywhere. I sneaked out to the computer room again because I really didn't feel like staying where I was. So that's where I'm at now. I'm so confused. I've never questioned this place before but now, I feel like something really bad is going on here. I feel like Ellie and Jonah both wanted to tell me and that the picture has something to do with it. Worse yet, I'm pretty sure Dad knows. X Update—Part 2 Update—Part 3 Update–Part 4
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