In this bustling digital world, ChatGPT is, without a doubt, a gleaming beacon of technological triumph. But the winds of fortune do not always blow favourably, and the gallant ChatGPT finds itself banished from most regions, with the likes of China and Russia leading the draconian brigade. Even the sunny land of Italy has decided to give ChatGPT the cold shoulder on account of some privacy hullabaloo.
Never fear, however, for the intrepid Virtual Private Network (VPN) is here to save the day. It's quite like a cunning detective in a thriller novel, adeptly masking your whereabouts by routing your digital footprints through a crafty labyrinth of its own servers. Moreover, it adds an extra layer of cloak-and-dagger charm by encrypting your data, ensuring that your usage of the AI chatbot remains as confidential as a whisper in the wind.
Now, I embarked on a quest akin to a rigorous sporting season, putting numerous VPNs through their paces, matching them against the wily ChatGPT. Speed, security, and the elusive 'user-friendliness' were the metrics on my scorecard, and after a thorough evaluation, I present to you my handpicked selection of the top 5 VPNs for ChatGPT in the year 2023. While each entrant is a worthy contender, ExpressVPN stands tall as my top pick, thanks to its unparalleled speed, formidable security, and the simplicity that makes it a crowd favourite.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN, my dear old thing. It's the cream of the crop, the top of the pile, the bee's knees, the cat's pajamas - essentially the belle of the ball when it comes to VPNs suitable for ChatGPT. It's armed to the teeth with security features that would make a British spy blush, speeds akin to a greyhound with a tailwind, and, it positively thrives in restrictive locales like China. Indeed, it's so dazzling, it's claimed the number one spot on our 2023 list of the finest VPNs.
Now, what sets ExpressVPN apart is its nifty 'split tunneling' feature, quite the deus ex machina for your digital life. It allows you to decide which apps don the invisibility cloak of the VPN and which ones stroll around in their everyday attire. This means, while your ChatGPT antics remain as hush-hush as a secret handshake, your banking activities can safely continue over your local network. It’s a fine compromise, considering many banks tend to look askance at VPN connections.
This whiz-bang VPN also holds the title for being the fastest gent on the circuit. It makes ChatGPT load like lightning, and lets you enjoy HD music videos on YouTube without the slightest stutter. What's more, it doesn't make you drum your fingers waiting for the next video to load.
ExpressVPN's apps are as simple to operate as a door handle. Servers are found and connected to with an ease and speed that would make a gazelle envious. And if that wasn't enough, there's a splendid 'Shortcuts' feature which lets you create one-click pathways to specific apps and sites. I had ChatGPT tucked away in my Shortcuts menu, giving me instant access to the site with the slightest twitch of a finger.
NordVPN
The trusty NordVPN, I must say, offers a splendidly secure setting for your tête-à-têtes with ChatGPT. It comes equipped with more advanced security features than a modern-day detective novel: full leak protection, RAM-only servers, and this thing they call perfect forward secrecy. Moreover, its commitment to keep your data logs to itself has been vouched for by multiple independent audits. Jolly reassuring, I must say.
But wait, there's more. It sports a feature called 'Threat Protection', which is akin to having your personal digital bodyguard. It shields you from the wickedness of malicious sites, keeps ads at bay, and thwarts any attempt to download files that reek of malware. Best part is, this trusty bodyguard stays vigilant whether or not you're connected to a VPN server.
There’s also this rather cloak-and-dagger tool called the 'Dark Web Monitor' which alerts you if your email address, the one linked to your NordVPN account, has taken an unauthorised detour into the shadowy alleys of the dark web. Terribly useful if you're using the same email for your ChatGPT account.
Now, NordVPN's speeds could give a marathon runner a run for their money. I conducted several tests on both local and distant servers and found only the slightest of lags during my conversations with ChatGPT. However, I did observe that websites took about the time one takes to hum 'Three Blind Mice' before they loaded. Its speeds are commendable, but ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access, and CyberGhost VPN tend to sprint a tad faster.
NordVPN is as friendly to use as a loyal Labrador. Its apps, compatible with Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, come with an interface as intuitive as a butler anticipating your needs. Plus, there's a quick-connect feature which seamlessly attaches you to the fastest server available, making your ChatGPT experience as smooth as a well-mixed cocktail.
Surfshark
For those wanting an efficient and user-friendly confederate when chatting with ChatGPT, Surfshark plays the role perfectly. Its plans are as pocket-friendly as they come, and its apps are so intuitive, you could be whistling Dixie while setting it up even if you've never heard of a VPN before. It's as if the settings come with their own handy guide, explaining everything in plain English. There's even a nifty quick-connect feature you can tweak to your liking, and the ever-so-convenient list of recently visited servers for easy revisits.
Its digital butler services extend to Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux. What's more, it's quite the social creature, allowing an unlimited number of devices to connect simultaneously.
In my foray into testing this provider, I found its speeds to be rather agreeable. ChatGPT’s site loaded up as quickly as one could recite a limerick, HD videos took as long as tying a neat bow tie, and 4K videos were up and running after a leisurely count to five. There was a bit of buffering at the start, making it slightly less nimble than the swift-footed ExpressVPN.
But here's where Surfshark really shines – its security features. It boasts RAM-only servers, perfect forward secrecy, and a no-logs policy that has survived the scrutiny of audits. It also flaunts an IP Rotator, a nifty little feature that changes your IP address as often as a chameleon changes its color. The only blemish on this otherwise spotless record is that it doesn’t consistently manage to outwit the restrictions in certain countries.
Decoding the Art of Selecting the Finest VPN for ChatGPT in 2023
Place security on the highest pedestal. In the bewildering world of the internet, a VPN should be your stout knight in shining armor, defending your online maneuvers, including your tête-à-têtes with ChatGPT, and keeping your private information safe from the rapscallions of the virtual world. The VPNs named in this list boast of the crème de la crème of security features - the unbreakable 256-bit AES encryption, a kill switch that acts as your virtual parachute should your VPN connection fail, a strict no-logs policy to ensure your data isn't filed away, and protection against the stealthy IPv6, DNS, or WebRTC leaks.
Search for a VPN as swift as a racehorse. For a smooth, uninterrupted gabfest with ChatGPT, you'd want a VPN with speed to spare. ExpressVPN takes the trophy in this department, with its fleet-footed speeds across all servers.
Aim for a VPN as easy to handle as a well-trained retriever. The VPNs on my list are designed to be as intuitive as a nursery rhyme, making it a walk in the park to find and connect to any server for accessing ChatGPT.
Find a VPN that offers the best bang for your buck. Each VPN listed here comes decked with bonus features like split-tunneling, obfuscation, or an ad blocker, generously allows at least 5 simultaneous connections, tags a reasonable price on its plans, and even offers a sizeable money-back guarantee. It's as if they're gifting you a perfectly brewed cup of tea and throwing in a plate of biscuits, too!

case StandardReportEnum.price_list: const categories = (productCategories && productCategories.length > 0) ? productCategories : ``; // eslint-disable-next-line no-console console.log(productCategories); // eslint-disable-next-line no-console console.log(categories); if (categories === undefined) { let q = '?productCategory=null'; downloadFromAPI(`${resourceBase}price-list/${funeralHomeId}/${q}`, dispatch); } else { let q = `productCategory=${categories}`; q += '&productCategoryIsSet=true'; // eslint-disable-next-line no-console console.log(q); downloadFromAPI(`${resourceBase}price-list/${funeralHomeId}/?${q}`, dispatch); } break; 

AND (${productCategoryIsSet} = FALSE OR p.category in (${productCategory:csv})) 

21:20:50 error: invalid input value for enum product.category: "casket,vault" task(GET /api/standard-reports/price-list/1): SELECT fh.key AS fh_key, COALESCE(p.category::TEXT, 'other') AS product_category, p.name AS product_name, p.cost AS product_cost, p.base_price / 100.00 AS base_price, m.name AS manufacturer, p.model_number AS model_number, p.sku AS sku, CASE WHEN p.tax_rate_id IS NOT NULL THEN 'Yes' ELSE 'No' END AS is_taxable, CASE WHEN p.is_hidden THEN 'Yes' ELSE 'No' END AS is_hidden FROM product.product AS p INNER JOIN public.funeral_home AS fh ON fh.id = p.funeral_home_id LEFT JOIN product.manufacturer AS m ON m.id = p.manufacturer_id WHERE fh.id = 1 AND (true = FALSE OR p.category in ('casket,vault')) 

Not sure how good this is for $750?

****WARNING****
***
Body Horror, bugs, death, gore. Attempted horror.
By my own standards, this is fairly tame, your mileage may vary, content advisory.
***
Captain Van’tu, the Garaboosian commander of the Alliance of Free Stars light scout cruiser Mandrake, frowned, in the way of his species, and gestured with a lower lefthand at his human science officer to continue.
The woman turned back to her console, to peer into the hood of her ‘scope and minutely adjust a control.
“The ship is an old Terran Alliance Explorer class, the TAN Nebula Star. She was reported overdue for resupply a little over a hundred years ago, exact details are spotty as the station she was supposed to report to was destroyed in the Terran civil war. By modern standards she was little more than a heavy cruiser with an oversized jumpcore, and limited weaponry. The Terran Alliance Navy was very much focused on exploration and first contact, and several of their vessels vanished without trace only to show up decades later in pirate hands. However, this does not seem to be the case with the Nebula Star…”
The image on the holotable was mute testimony to this information. The old starship, much more massive than the Mandrake, but significantly less well equipped, looked derelict. Several holes gaped in her once-pristene white hull, the smooth lines marred and crooked, and the jumpcore bulb near the stern showed a terrible, blasted crater, black with soot and melted steel.
Captain Van’tu scrolled the smooth wheel of the holo controls, swivelling the image and zooming into the damage.
“What do we think of this, Sasha, that looks like an internal explosion, not battle damage.”
“Yes Captain.” Sasha, the science officer, agreed. She manipulated a pad on her side of the console. Several sidebars lit up. “Here, here and here. Chemical signatures we’ve picked up in the dustcloud around the wreck, and the blast pattern, indicates a high yield chemical explosive was utilised, we would need to get a scan from inside the wreckage to be certain, but I think I can confidently say this was caused by a c4 package commonly kept as part of ship inventories of that era. We carry a similar type of explosive even now, it has uses in a number of emergency protocols.”
The captain nodded. “I’m familiar with Human paranoia, ‘better to have and not need than need and not have’, which is why I learned to carry a backpack heavier than myself at the academy.” He smiled at the woman, who grinned back in that wolfish human fashion.
Commanding a Terran vessel as part of the Alliance Navy was a high honour for a non-Terran, and he’d earned it the hard way, he’d actually completed his officer training on Earth itself, heavy gravity, lethal flora, fauna, and practical jokes be damned, he’d always dreamed of command, and he had never planned to settle for anything less than the best ships of the fleet.
Somehow his determination to ‘make it’ had actually impressed his trainers and teachers, and earned him the interest of a senior Admiral, which explained his current command. And he was no ticket-puncher, his crew was, in his opinion, the best in the fleet, and if his ship was small, he was so proud of her, some days he could almost burst his hearts from it. She was his first, and with luck, not his last, and while scouting duty following pre-war exploration routes was far from glamorous, it was essential work for the Alliance, following up first contacts, reopening lost trade routes, and, now and then, coming across relics, and giving closure to the descendants of those vanished vessels.
“Alright. She looks cold, and her reactor is dead, but we don’t know what happened to her, she could have run afoul of pirates, or been captured and misused for decades, or been left boobytrapped, so pack up a SAR shuttle, and give them a leader drone, they don’t enter unless the drone clears the way in.”
“Aye aye Captain, I’ll get them on their way. Sidearms?”
“Yyy…esss. Yes. And overarmour. If someone’s left any surprises, it will help.”
Sasha turned and walked off, already tapping her communicator to summon the personnel she’d be sending.
He frowned again, looking into the depths of the hologram. Something was bothering him, the same sensation he’d felt while visiting a zoo on Earth. Humans around him grinning, nodding to one another, and the confirmation of his worry came as a boom of hundreds of pounds of apex feline carnivore crashing against the high density crystal he’d been standing with his back to…
Something was creeping up on them, he could feel it.
***
The shuttle launched from the brightly lit boatbay of the Mandrake, arcing smoothly through the glittering blackness towards the cruelly murdered starship. In front of it zipped the mote of the drone, its scanners and sensors slaved to the shuttle, giving the drone specialist on board an instant feed to all his senses, feeling, experiencing everything the drone saw.
It zipped around the gaping hole where the jumpdrive had once been housed, then around in a helical pattern, scanning every micron of the lost ships hull, mapping it in complete three dimensional perfection, then tracking towards the boatbay. Inside, two, much older, versions of the Mandrakes shuttle rested, crooked against their davits, the bay airlock doors lying open.
The drone slowly crept inside the dark corridor as the shuttle followed it in, nestling into an empty davit. Power hookups, identical after a century thanks to long ago agreed standardisation, marry up, pogo pins compressed and energized, drawing trickle power from the shuttle to latch securely.
The crew debark, except the probe operator who remained strapped in his jumpseat, guiding the drone deeper into the derelict.
Suited figures follow its path, jumping from the shuttle hatch to the airlock. They don’t bother trying to seal it, it had been lying open for a century, there was no air left within to preserve. The drone met a cross passage, and moved right, headed towards the bridge, following schematics downloaded from Mandrake’s computer. The scout crew followed, alert, and making note of damage to bulkheads, the carpets that once covered the floors looking torn, dark stains telling a worrying story.
The probe entered the bridge of the Nebula Star and paused. The LIDAR scanner illuminated the space in a slow pass of green laser light, left to right and back again. The chamber was empty, save the various consoles and chairs the crew would have used, and the lone figure of the Captain, in his central command chair.
To Captain Van’tu, observing the time delayed remote feed on his own bridge, it was remarkable just how similar the darkened derelict wreck was to his own vessel, down to the arrangement of bridge consoles and type of carpeting used. He’d read, in one of his intro to ship design classes, that Terran bridge layout owed much to speculative fiction of pre-spaceflight eras, and a lot of experimental wet-navy designs.
He'd brought it up once with his chief of engineering, who had responded with a ridiculous approximation of a Scottish accent, “Aye laddie, we Terrans owe an awfy lot tae an auld lass called the Enterprise!” and laughed, continuing his explanation in his more natural German accented standardised Terran. Van’tu had spent several informative evenings with his console, soaking up ancient Terran entertainment as a result.
The drone circled the bridge, slowly, keeping its thruster exhaust well clear of the mummified body in the central chair, making its way to the science console. A small arm popped out and slotted into the consoles data port.
Several lights flickered on the antique panel, the probe powering up the cold circuits to read the datalogs, then around the room, dim red lights came to life, as more of the bridge woke up. Through the hull itself, a faint whine transmitted, the probes oversized fusion battery providing enough current to trigger the startup of a backup generator below the bridge.
The scouting party stepped in, peering around. One, her grey skinsuit marked with a red stripe down the arms, moves across to the captain, a medical scanner in her hand.
“I’m reading significant trauma throughout the corpse, but remarkable preservation as well. Life support must have been glitching badly for a long time after… Wait…” She smacked the side of the scanner, then passed it back across the corpse. “Scanner keeps picking up my own heartbeat, trying to tell me this guys still alive, fucking thing.” She put it away in the side pocket of her suit and pulled out a smaller device. “I kept my old one, should be good enough to… Fuck me sideways…”
“Maybe later Carol, what’s the script?” A green stripe on the party leader’s arm. He was looking around, feeling… itchy, between his shoulder blades. Something wasn’t right, and not just the dead ship. He’d been lead on two other derelict searches, and they never went like this. Accidents happened, people died, usually horribly, and you always found, well, bodies. Whole or otherwise. Yet, aside from the clearly traumatic bloodstains on the floors, soaked long before the artificial gravity had failed, this ship hadn’t shown them a single body, nothing, not even fragments.
Not only that but he could swear he’d seen movements. No-one else had, but he also knew that his reflexes tested significantly higher than average, he was seeing something the others were simply not noticing.
Carol stepped away from the corpse.
“My old scanner says this guy’s alive Mark. Heartbeat, brain activity, oxygenated blood. He’s not breathing and he’s a fucking corpse, but both my scanners say he’s gooey in the middle. And I’ll be honest I don’t want to be here, send probes back across on AI control and let them explore, this is too freaky. I know you’ve been seeing shit, well, I’ve been picking up weirdness all along, and this is too much. We should leave!”
Mark bit back a curse. He agreed, but he was also supposed to be a professional, and as the leader of the scout team who first boarded the derelict, he’d have been slated for command of the ‘prize crew’ to bring her home. At the same time, he was holding back a growing uneasiness, his other two team members were shuffling nervously, and Carol was on the edge of panic.
“Alright, we head back to the shuttle and leave the probe to grab the logs. Something’s weird here, might be the atmosphere on this thing, I admit it’s spooky, but we all know I see weird bugs and things other folk miss, and Carol, you’ve had that personal scanner since high school, if it’s saying something weird, something weird is going on. If Captain… Morrison, is still alive after a century in vacuum, he can keep a few more hours until the AI probes can collect him. We’re not equipped for medical evac anyway.”
They stepped back through the hatchway, leaving the probe to its work. Emergency lighting flickered into life, adding a lurid red glare to the tableaux, Mark, last to leave, sharply snapping his head back around as something… He was reminded of a time as a child, he’d turned over a log in his parents’ yard, and hundreds of inch-long centipedes had scurried in panicked circles to escape the sudden glare of sunlight.
Nothing moved, aside from the slow pulsing of rebooting computers.
He followed his people towards the shuttle.
One by one, they made the leap back to the shuttle davit, and boarded, cycling back aboard, and taking their seats. The drone pilot barely moved to acknowledge them, clearly lost in the datefeed from the old computers, and aside from a quick glance across readouts to ensure the data was flowing cleanly to the Mandrake, Mark didn’t disturb the man.
He hit the switch to release the davit clamps, and the popped free. The shuttle turned, and smoothly glided out, aligning with the mothership and headed home. He blinked and shook his head. That motion again, out the corner of his eye. He glanced over, seeing the drone pilot’s faceplate swarming with legs for a fraction of a second.
“Uhh, Josh, you alright there?” He hated breaking into drone pilot concentration, but this wasn’t right, and Carol was gesturing desperately at him from her chair. He reached across, and nudged Josh’s shoulder, the skinsuit collapsing under his fingers and the skull clacking loosely against the faceplate.
***
Captain Van’tu listened to the soft report coming from Sasha, the scout crew had found the captain of the derelict but were returning early due to some unsettling information they’d found. He didn’t like it, but he also respected human instincts. If skilled officers felt there was a reason to withdraw before mission completion, he knew better than to override the human-on-the-spot.
He’d have a word with Mark later, in private, if necessary, but the man had never been wrong before.
Across the communicator, there was a sudden eruption of yelling, the shuttle on the holo spiralling wildly. Sasha was demanding a clear response from the screaming communicator.
Mark came over the channel. “Abort mission, contamination, alien threat…” His words ended in a gurgling scream, the kind that began high and ended, eventually, in a growling snarl of mortal agony. The line remained open, however, and the entire bridge crew turned to stare, mouths agape, as into the silence the faint sounds of gnawing began to echo.
Sasha shut off the feed with a shaky finger. “Captain, I…”
“I know. Arm several probes, get them to the shuttle, find out what happened and…”
Once more, attention fell to the holo display, as on it, the icon of the shuttle winked red. Sasha motioned, and the focus zoomed in. Where the shuttle had been, a spreading scatter of debris remained.
She pulled up the sidebars again.
“Right before Mark, uh, died, his authorisation codes were used to trigger an overload on the shuttle reactor. We didn’t pick up the feed in real time, they were returning after all, but all of them suffered catastrophic biological distress immediately before their lifesigns cut out. Mark was the last one alive, and severely injured when he triggered the reactor.”
Captain Van’tu shook out his lower hands with a stress-shedding gesture. “The shuttle reactor is in a sealed compartment. He had to get from his chair to the access panel and enter his code, while suffering life threatening injuries which had already killed the rest of his crew?”
“Yes, Captain. I’m sorry, I missed it, my team is still processing the data, but it looks as if the drone pilot ceased responding several minutes before the shuttle departed the wreck. At five minutes into the flight, the three junior officers began exhibiting distress, but gave no verbal alerts. Mark seems to have reacted to something that triggered a fight or flight response, but within a few seconds was exhibiting the same injury markers as the others. At the six-minute mark, he sent his warning, while moving. It appears as if the cessation of his vocalisations was not the end of his life, almost thirty seconds later his code was entered into the shuttle reactor, and it detonated.”
Captain Van’tu moved to his command chair, and sat down, lower hands grasping the armrests, upper hands folding under his chin. “Helm, chart course back to the nearest Alliance outpost, and warm up the jumpcore. Tactical, bring shields to standby and start charging the grasers, I don’t like what’s happening, and I do not want to be caught with our backs turned.”
His crew moved into action, tactical alerts bringing various stations to readiness.
“Sir! We’re receiving a communications request, uh, from the Nebula Star.”
He stared at his communications officer, who looked equally shocked.
“Please, Jen, put them through to the main holo.”
The hovering image of the wreckage that had once been a shuttle vanished, replaced by the familiastrange image of the old bridge, and its captain.
The man was a corpse, there was no debate. The papery skin had pulled back from his eyes and teeth, his nose collapsed inwards, decades of icy coldness and baking heat as the derelict tumbled slowly from shade to sunlight had freeze dried the body, yet, it moved. The jaw flapped open, and the sticklike arms gestured against the command chair arms, clawed fingertips clicking uselessly.
“Gree. Tings. Un. Known. Vess. Sell. I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace.”
The corpse in the holo quivered and twitched in some horrible mockery of life, the bared grey teeth clicking as the jaw spasmed open and closed, not, Van’tu noted, in time with the words being spoken. Inside the jaws, he also noticed, something black and shiny and segmented.
“I highly doubt you come with any sort of peace in mind, what are you really, and what did you do to the crew of the shuttle who boarded the ship you are on.”
The body twitched, a trickle of black ooze popping free from the corner of the sunken eye socket. Under the dried up eyelid, something squirmed around, curling with segmented motion, a few pointed claws poking briefly free before vanishing once more.
“I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace. We. Rek. Wire. Ass. Iss. Tan. Sse. Let. Uss. Board.”
An alert flashed from Sashas direction. A gesture diminished Captain Morrison to a corner of the holo and expanded the view of the derelict. Two shuttles of archaic design had just launched from it and begun making their way towards the Mandrake. He muted his pickup and turned to his tactical officer.
“Jeff? They do not get close enough to board.”
“Aye aye sir, tracking has them locked and my grazers are charged.”
“Very good.”
He returned to the holo and reopened the grisly view of the dead man being puppeted on his display.
“You will not be permitted to board my ship. I demand to know who you are, what you represent, and why you are trying to impersonate Captain Morrison.”
“You. Are. Food. You. Have. Use. Full. Tech. Nol. Ogy. We. Will. Take. It. We. Will. Use. You. We. Will. Mul. Tip. Lie. This. Vess. Hell. Came. To. Us. In. Peace. We. Took. It. We. Came. For. Ter. Rah. We. Became. Trapped. We Became. Lethargic. We have waited. Now you have brought us. A new vessel to carry us. To Terra.”
Captain Van’tu shook his head. If these things were familiar with humans, they’d recognise the gesture. For the sake of understanding he’d long ago learned to at least emulate some human body language.
“You will not be allowed to go any further. I have a duty to safeguard the people under my command, and to the people of… Terra.” Whatever this species was, it was not something he wanted anywhere near a colony or, worse, defenceless homeworld, of any of the Allied or friendly species he knew lay between here and Terra herself. Best for all they only had Terra in mind.
“Sir! The incoming shuttles are not going for docking, they’re on a ramming approach! Firing solution lost on bogey one!” The Mandrakes grazers were firing, gunnery crews managing their weapons as they tracked automatically and fired, spearing one of the wildly corkscrewing shuttles with lances of gravitationally focused gamma radiation. The second shuttle however spun, and fell downwards, smashing into the still warming shields, and through, impacting the Mandrakes hull with tremendous speed.
The scouting vessel shuddered. The shuttle had breached through the outer hull and spilled into a mess area.
Thanks to the alert condition, all crew had been in skinsuits, not that this helped the two cooks who had been finishing off the lockdown of the mess kitchen.
Fresh alerts sounded, the sound of which sent crewpeople to arms lockers. Mandrake had been boarded.
Captain Van’tu pointed to his tactical officer. “Destroy that wreck! vaporise it!”
“Sir! Weapons are offline, on-mount crews are reporting power losses.”
Across the bridge, the communications officer looked up. “Reports coming in, boarders are breaking out of mess two!”
The captain snarled. Ancient Garaboosians had warded off predators with that sound, and his teeth bared in an animalistic threat display. He slammed a finger into the appropriate button on his armrest.
“All hands, all hands, defence stations, repel boarders!”
His head snapped around. “Sasha, do we still have telemetry from the drone on the Nebula? If so, I want it to shut that shitheap down, or overload its reactors!”
His science officer acknowledged with an “Aye captain!” and turned to her console.
He returned to his holo. Removed the mute. “You have attacked an Alliance of Free Stars vessel, while using a Terran Alliance vessel reported lost to causes unknown. I am hereby declaring you to be pirates, and you will be treated accordingly. Surrender now and you will be returned to your government or homeworld after serving a prison term to be determined by Admiralty courts.”
He did not expect the thing pretending to be Captain Morrison to surrender.
“There will be no surrender. We will take all you have and all you are. You will be ours to consume and use.”
His tactical alert flashed, somehow, the older ship was charging its weapons systems. He flicked a gesture, and the old vessels appeared, with sidebars. The weapons were underpowered, and normally not really a threat to a modern vessel, but the Mandrake had just been rammed by a shuttle, cutting power to her own weapons, and disrupting her shields, it would take several more minutes to regenerate them.
He glared at the grinning visage of the corpse which was still mimicking life. The left arm was still quivering against the rest, fingertips drumming against a keypad almost identical to his own. From the bottom of the sunken belly of the dead man, a slowly undulating shape crawled, a thick-pincered head, followed by a segmented body flowing with sharp-tipped clawlike legs. It moved upwards and climbed back in through Morrisons throat.
“Captain, boarders have been destroyed. Sir, they were humans, but they were dead. Like mummies. They had some kinds of bugs inside, we had to go in with plasma to clear them out.”
“I see. Ensure all the bulkhead seals around the messhall compartment are still green, and pull everyone back, full medical scans on exit. Once everyone is clear, blow the compartment.”
“Uh, yes, sir, understood. Engineering teams are saying they’ll have full weapons restored in eight minutes.”
“Good. We can’t allow any of these things to get back to inhabited space. I want that wreck vaporised. Mess compartment too.”
He continued to watch the dead mans fingers rattle against the old command chair. And nodded.
“Captain Morrison, it has been an honour. Captain Van’Tu, out.”
In the holo, the corpse finally went still. The creatures which had inhabited him began to swarm, black blood and ichor bursting from his skull as the mother of the monsters which had ridden his body and his ship since they had tricked their way aboard a century before, burst free from her manipulating, feeding grasp in his skull.
“Captain, the drone has fully copied the Nebula Stars database, but is unable to access any critical systems. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay Sasha. When we have weapons available, we’ll finish whatever is left.”
“Sir? I don’t understand what…”
The holo tank cut her off. The Nebula Star had fired its engines, angling towards an intercept with the Mandrake, it needed to be much closer to engage with its much more primitive weapons. As the engines flared to life, fire blossomed across the aft hull. Multiple explosions rippled through it, billowing outwards from within, as the reawakened fusion reactors, initially stirred to life by the probes batteries, then by crawling undead crew hidden in the ships dead spaces, all overloaded, and detonated in a final orgy of self-annihilation.
There was a shudder again, as the Mandrakes crew activated the emergency charges that blew an entire section of the ship into space, carrying with it the bodies of dozens of the Nebula Stars crew, hundreds of incinerated and still crawling parasitic alien monsters, and the corpses of two unfortunate cooks.
“Begin sweeping everything in range with fire, maximum power and aperture, everything must burn. I want medical and bio survey teams going around the clock scanning for any trace of those things that might have breached containment. For the record, I will be recommending the Mandrake be scuttled once all crew are cleared and disembarked. Needless to say, we will not be making any landfall or station docks before then.”
He sat down in his command chair. He couldn’t remember standing up. He stared down at his armrest, and the keypad on it. With the fingers of his bottom left hand, he began typing, sending the results to the main holo where Sasha watched, curious.
ENMY HMWRLD r41429.135 i334451 b-1.791 KILL BURN QURTN
The rest of the sequence was the override code that would trigger the Nebula Star to overload its powerplants and blow itself to pieces before it could be used against its creators.
“Captain? How did you get that message? The log entries are still being processed, but it doesn’t look like anything coherent survived, there’s no co-ordinates in them.” Sasha was confused, and Captain Van’Tu smiled.
“Humans, you’re all the same when it comes down to the wire. Mark blew his shuttle rather than let it dock with those things on board. Even while they ate him alive, he crawled through his command, to do his duty to his species, and to the galaxy. Captain Morrison held off death, kept those things guessing, somehow, as they tried to use him, his ship, to reach Earth, made them keep him in some sort of horrific half-life, until they were distracted enough that he could get back control of his hand. His chair Sasha, same as mine. Probably came out of the same factory, a century apart, and he was typing, while they tried to speak to us, while they tried to board us, shoot us, while we distracted them, he set them up to give us the knowledge he knew we would need to ensure they would never threaten anyone again.”
Fire was still blossoming across the larger area of the holo display, graser weapons detonating fragments of hull with nuclear fire.
“Once we’ve cleared the skies here, we head to an outpost, and start warning the Admiralty. Jobs not over until these things are completely contained.”
***
103 Years, 4 months, 5 days before.
Jack staggered, his leg still bleeding from where a crewman had slashed at him with fingers broken into sharp bone claws. He’d stamped the mans head until the skull popped, rupturing the centipede thing curled inside. He was close. The familiar, once comforting hallways of the Nebula Star had become nightmarish, red lighting and blotches of gore, streaks of blood on the pristine walls, he was living in a horror game, but he had a job to finish.
He pushed off the wall he’d leant against. Behind him, he could hear screaming, and begging. He didn’t stop. It was a trick. They found the noises amusing, and mimicked them, discovering that it could draw in ‘helpers’ they could ambush.
Aft section, frame fourteen, jumpcore bay. He slapped the button, and fell through the door as it slid open. Inside, the bay was immaculate, no-one had been in here since this had started. How they had gotten aboard, he didn’t know.
Inside the skull of a landing team member, he could guess.
He knelt beside the humming machinery. His vision was going grey around the edges, he could feel dripping around his knees, he was kneeling in a pool of his own blood after only a few seconds, he didn’t have long.
He pushed his burden against the drive casing, the chem-catalyst agent on the back bonding it to the drive with a molecular weld.
He pressed the keypad of the emergency c4 cannister, the detonator arming with a beep, and a green telltale.
He typed in a code, short, sweet, he’d forgotten it by the time he reached the end, it didn’t matter. The disarm code was only for when you wanted to be able to stop the countdown. Ten seconds.
They reached him, before it finished counting. Inside his brain, they couldn’t find the code to stop the bomb.
The Nebula Star would not reach Terra, he made sure of that.
As the jumpcore failed, blowing a ragged hole out of the sleek hull, a single shuttle spun away from the boatbay, damaged, lifeless, cold and drifting outwards into the depths of space, the mutilated human corpse within stirring once with scurrying life, then going still.

First thing you need to understand is this process I follow is designed in a compounding fashion.
I always start with these exercises as a foundation to create some clarity.
I'm sharing exactly what I do. If you would like to follow along and implement these absolutely critical elements on your side hustle/business.
Try them, they work. It's already been proven. Remember, success leaves clues.Do the exercises regardless of what you think of them. At the end it will all make sense.
The reason I warm up like this is because these are the things everyone skips(myself included).

1 - MINDSET

I know you’re thinking… “ah come on!... ”Trust me, I know the feeling. I used to think the mindset part of other marketers courses was just fluff. Nonsense to fatten the course to make it seem more valuable.
But, I’m here to tell you a fact I’ve discovered over the years.
The number 1 reason majority of my peers fail is due to their mindset.

• Not a lack of ability
• Not a lack of funds
• Not a lack of skills
• Not a lack of time
• Not a lack of quality teachers/products

But, a lack of the proper mindset to take the information they’re given and to apply it to success. There are some of reading this right now and all you’re thinking is…
"SHOW ME THE MONEY"
Newsflash… THAT’S THE WRONG MINDSET!!!
You should be thinking “show me the stability.” That’s what this process is about. How to create a online BUSINESS that sustains. This about how to continuously generate revenue.
And, to do that you have to approach your business from a particular mindset that no one teaches.
The next thing we’re going to focus on is…

2 - GOALS

Yes, I know this seems like elementary stuff but you’d be surprised how many people I've worked with who knew they wanted to make money but was unclear an how much they needed to be free.
What to know a secret?
(When I asked them for an estimate they ALWAYS over estimated the number).
This is important. When you have a goal in mind and know where you’re going it makes getting there a lot easier.
Think about taking a long drive. Imagine you’re driving across your current country. You know the destination you’re heading to but you have no clue how long it’s going to take, the best route, the places to stop a long the way.
You just know if you take the main highway at some point you’ll get there. Eventually it’s going to drive you made driving through the night with no clue when you’re going to arrive where you’re headed.
Well, that’s how many people approach an online business. They know they want to make a lot of money and nothing else.
The next thing we must discuss is…

3 - TIME MANAGEMENT

This is huge!!! So many people fail here as well.
First, this statement… "I don’t have the time”
Is usually BULLSH*T! I’m sorry if me using strong language offends you but it’s the perfect word to describe my experiences with people who use it as an excuse.
You know people are generally glossing over when they say they don’t have time..
1) The amount of time they spend watching TV 2) On the telephone 3) Browsing the web aimlessly 4) Playing video games 5) Hanging out with friends 6) Unnecessary hovering over their children 7) Napping 8) lounging around 9) At the bar 10) At the gym 11) etc…
Anytime you spend not making money at your job is time you should be spending making money in your business.
Stop making excuses for your luxuries.
Do you really have to watch that game?
Is a zombie going to rip your face off if you miss a episode of the walking dead?
Heaven forbid you miss out the latest news about the kardashians!?!
^These will be reasons people will be the same ones who say “Oh, I don’t have time to focus on the prep work, can we just get to the making money part”.
So, I think you understand when I tell these folks to “Sit Down, shut up, and do the work!” (more later)
That's all I have to say about that!
Next thing we must discuss is…

4 - WORKFLOW & FOCUS

This is another biggie. Many folks have no clue what work they should focus on and what they should either delegate or drop. Let me explain this really quickly…
Basically… Every moment of every day you’re ei- ther moving yourself towards what you want (investing) or piddling away moment after moment (spending) and moving yourself FURTHER away from what you really want.
Tomorrow, I'll breakdown how I evaluate my time in a way that will make me the most efficient! This part will create massive clarity for you as its done for me.
I have created homework files for myself to follow the process. I will gladly share them with those that are serious about this affiliate marketing thingy.
Ok, thats it for today. I have to get to work...
Talk soon!

I've been thinking about this for a bit and I decided you know what I might as well have Alice and a couple of the other girls play Ascension and try to get to round 30. It was originally supposed to be Saya and Alice playing it but I decided to throw Saeko into the mix to spice things up. The first part will contain rounds 1-10.
Ascension as a map is easy! The reason behind it being easy is the fact that that the map has quite a few open areas where you could run around and gather the zombies into giant hordes and unleash everything onto them plus with some useful tactical grenades and overpowered wonder weapons, this can make for a fun experience.
It's three girls, two guns per girl, five perks (No Mule Kick) with one objective: Survive.
Alice, Saya and Saeko landed into the area with their Lunar Lander as they were trying to figure out where they were in this cosmodrone. Alice looked aroind as Saya tried to figure our what was happening.
"Hey who took the color away?" Saya asked while they were looking around.
"Help me." A voice called out. The three girls turned their heads to figure out who was speaking. "The mechanism must be repaired. Please, she's coming."
"Don't worry sir we'll try to help you." Alice called out to whoever said the mysterious voice that she would try everything to rescue it. "We only have three players and we need four. Who should be the fourth player?" Alice asked as they couldn't save this man with just three players.
"It doesn't matter Alice, let's try our best to have some fun." Saeko told Alice that having a full team of four wasn't going to really matter at this point but they should try their best to enjoy themselves.
"Well the time to have fun is now, I can hear them breaking in." Saya explaind to Saeko. It turned out Saya was right, the zombies were indeed breaking in. Alice went up to one of the windows and slashed a zombie open with her knife, the zombie went down Saeko and Saya did the same thing as they were slashing the zombies down with one blow. Eventually they finished slashing them as the next round began.
"We need to find the color to this map so I think there might be a big power switch somewhere." Saeko suggested that they should bring the color back as the black and white atmosphere was creeping them out.
"Which way should we go?" Saya asked if there were any ideas of which direction they should take. Alice walked over to where the M14 was and purchased it.
"Ahh it looks like it's you and me my friend." Alice told the M14 as she cocked the rifle.
"For now let's build up points and then we'll decide." Saeko told the group. The zombies began to come in again as the three girls drew their pistoles and began firing, with the starting pistols being weak it was easy to build up points. The three of them began firing away, trying to accumilate as many points as they could, Their pistol ammo quickly ran out as they had to resort to much more effective means. Saeko was knifing the zombies while Alice was picking them off with her M14. If a zombie got too close, she would knife it and therefore bring the zombie down. She reloaded as much as she could to make sure she had a full magazine in there.
"Gah pistol ammo is out. We need to go." Saya called out. She spotted a door right by the lander that costs 750 points. She went over and purchased it. The door opened as Saya went exploring around, trying to find where the power switch was. She went up the stairs and spotted one of the perk machines, a tall one that overlooked the area. She looked out of the rafters as Alice and Saeko were trying to fight the zombies off as best as they could. "They need help." Saya told herself. She went up the second set of stairs to another door that costs 1250 points. She touched it as she realized she was out of cash. Not enough there to open the door. She looked around as she desperately needed a gun. She spotted one right by where she was earlier. She went over and decided to purchase it for a thousand points. "It's not going to do much but it'll hold me over for a little while longer." Saya told herself as she purchased the PM-63. She decided to head back down the stairs to help.
Saya entered the scene as Saeko was running out of ways to deal with the zombies and Alice was just racking up points with the M14. Saya began firing the PM-63 trying to go for headshots. Eventually one of the zombies dropped a hammer as Saeko ran up and picked it up.
"Carpenter!" The voice called out. Almost like magic the barriers came back as this clowed the game down. At least everyone got a couple hudrred extra points. Finally out of the blue the structure in the center of the room began to spin the spinning continued to get faster and faster as the last few zombies were killed as their bodies were flung all over. The round ended as the next round began.
"Round 3 we need to turn the power on." Saeko reminded them that they needed to turn the power on.
"I have made a way there, let's take that." Saya told Saeko that they could go her way and get the power open.
"No don't! I'll explain later when the power is on and we get perks." Alice warned them to not open the door heading up the other stairwell. They nodded as they began to look around.
"What about that door heading out?" Saeko asked as she pointed to the one above the stairs. Saeko and Saya went over, up the stairs and to the door. Saeko had points but she had no decent weapon so she wanted to save up.
"This door?" Saya asked. They heard the moans of zombies that were starting to spawn as they were going to attack next.
"Yes!" Saeko shouted. She went over and purchased the 750 door and this lead them outside. She turned back to Alice who was ready to take the zombies on. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Saeko asked Alice.
"I'll be alright, go!" Alice shouted. Alice raised her M14 and began firing away at the zombies. She was desperate to buy Saeko and Saya time to switch the power on.
Saeko was trying her best to knife the zombies while Saya took potshots with the PM-63, a round or two was needed as Saeko finished them off. Saya even went for headshots as it was the fastest way to get points. The two of them rounded the corner as Saeko went up and purchased the Mp5K from the wall.
"Something to hold me over for now until a better weapon is acquired." Saeko told herself as she began firing the sub machine gun at the zombies. She was helping Saya out as Saya purchased the next door. The two of them headed off as they followed the arrows to find the power switch. They found the door that was going to lead them to where Saya originally wanted to go. Saya raised her PM63 and fired at the zombies following them. She reloaded as they headed up the stairs. They were going to find the power switch today. Making their way up the stairs, they eventually got to the top of the stairs where another door was, It was 1250 points. Saeko bought it as this top door contained the Mystery Box. Saya went over to the Mystery Box while Saeko grabbed the power switch and flipped it on.
"Hey the color is back!" Saya shouted as she was happy with this revalation. Saeko nodded as she fired her Mp5K at the zombies. Saya was watching the Mystery Box flash the random guns it had as it was giving Saya the choice of illusion. Eventually the gun landed on the Galil as Saya takes it and traded her empty pistol away. "Well time to make them bow down before me without their kneecaps!" Saya called out. They watched as the rocket was being set up. After a few seconds they had set the rocket set up. "What next Saeko?" Saya asked. Saeko went over to the other door that costs 1250 points and purchased it. She had the most amount of points out of the group though she was starting to run out.
"We keep moving. We need to make sure Alice is still safe and hasn't gone down as of yet." Saeko told Saya that making sure they were able to keep Alice alive was the next priority.
The two of them headed down the stairs to see where they were going to go. Saya was shooting the zombies with the PM-63 as the third round came to a close and the fourth round began. Saya was beginning to run out of PM-63 ammo as she was going to use the rest of that up and hit the box again. Saya went over and purchase the 1250 door that lead up.
"Will Alice be safe?" Saya asked as she was keeping a look out for her friend.
"She hasn't gone down as of yet so she's doing okay but I don't know how well she is doing currently." Saeko told Saya as they past a green colored perk machine and the wallbuy for the M16. They eventually found one of the spots as Saeko spotted something strange and she went up to it. She purchased the Sickle for 3000 points.
"A farming tool to kill the zombies? I wonder how this would turn out?" Saeko asked while she twirled the Sickle around. One of the zombies approached Saeko and she quickly swiped it with the sickle, quickly taking it down. "Sickle does more damage than the knife?" Saeko asked, she was going to hang onto it. Saya went over and pushed the button.
Alice was busy fighting off the zombies but her M14 was becoming less effective, she had racked up a large number of points because of it but she was starting to get swarmed. She had been standing on the Lunar Lander when she felt a shaking and the gates went up.
"Woah woah woah!" Alice told herself as she was taken off balance. She was in for a ride. The Lunar Lander flew off to where it had been called. Alice looked around from her position as two thirds of the map had been opened. Eventually the Lunar Lander made touch down to the area where Saya and Saeko were.
"How are you Alice?" Saeko asked as she wanted to see how Alice was doing.
"Fine but I got a full magazine in the M14 and not much ammo left, I'm starting to run out." Alice told Saeko that she was running dry on ammo. Saeko swiped at the zombie with the Sickle while Alice fired away.
"Okay. Saya take this lander back. I'm going to take Alice to the box." Saeko gave Saya some objectives to take care of the Lander while she got Alice a better gun. "Come on Alice." Saeko told Alice. Alice nodded while she and Saeko went back to the Mystery Box. Saya activated the Lunar Lander which began to take her back to spawn.
Saeko and Alice went to the mystery box as they were going to have Alice replace one of her out of ammo guns. Since Alice and Saeko had made a lot of points, they were going to hit the box and try finding something better. They looked up to see one of the pieces of the rocket flash green.
"A rocket piece is green, what does that mean?" Alice asked as she didn't know what exactly this was going to mean.
"I don't know either. Maybe we should link up more landers." Saeko suggested. She got out the Mp5K and fired away to make more points. Alice went over as she was going to trade her empty pistol out for something to kill zombies. Alice went to the Mystery Box and decided to spend some of her points to find out what she was going to get. She looked in wonder as the guns were spinning around in her head trying to see what she was going to get. Eventually it landed on a gun and Alice took it.
"I still think this is my favorite shotgun." Alice told herself as she had gotten herself the Spas-12 from the box. She went up to a zombie and blasted its face in. The zombie went down instantly but for Alice it wasn't that much of a good pay off. "I need a point maker but I will hang onto this." Alice sighed. Saeko went over to the Mystery Box and tried to get something good from the box. Eventually Saeko got a bunch of wooden nesting dolls as her choice of weaponry.
"I don't know what these dolls will do to save a warrior like me? I think these will please the emperor." Saeko told herself as she had gotten herself the Matroyshka Dolls. Saeko was curious to see what these dolls were going to do but she was going to save them up for a large crowd of zombies thinking they had some kind of grenade in them.
Alice was dumping whatever ammo she had left in her M14 while Saeko went to rejoin her. Saya was busy doing the next Lunar Lander as she was determined to link all of them up. Saya nodded that they were fighting on. Alice used the last ammo she whipped out the Spas-12 and began firing it at the zombies. Saya spent more points on the Lunar Lander as it began to bring her back while Saeko attacked the Zombies with the Sickle.
"I'm going to open the last part of the map, try to find Saya and see what the next strategy is." Alice told Saeko. Saeko nodded before pulling out the Matroyshka doll and opening up. Out popped a doll into the crowd of zombies the doll exploded as those dolls underneath also detonated, wiping out the entire group in one go.
"Oh Cluster bombs." Saeko told herself. Round four has ended and Round five began. Saeko went off to find Saya.
Alice went to the left of spawn and made her way to the back end of the map. She finished reloading her Spas-12 and began to wonder how she was going to need points. She looked around to see if she was going to get another gun from the wall. She spotted something outlined in chalk. She walked up to the chalk and purchased the AK-74U to replace the ammoless M14. A couple of zombies approached her.
"Well I can't say that this is my favorite gun from the wall." Alice told herself as she cocked the AK-74U bolt. The zombies rounded the corner. Alice pointed the SMG at the zombies and fired into their heads, their heads popped off as Alice still had some points left over. Alice went to the door to the last lander and opened it. It was a huge area where rounding up the zombies was possible. She went to the Lunar Lander and called it over. The Lander arrived a couple moments later as Alice fired into the heads of a couple more zombies and did her best to get points. Eventually the Lander arrived as Alice got onto it, ready to take the trip back. She pressed the button as the gates went up and the Lander took off. "I'm going for a ride. WEEE!" Alice cheerfully called out. The Lander would eventually return her to Spawn as Saeko and Saya were busy trying to fight the zombies. When the Lander reached them. Alice pointed the AK-74U and finished off the crowd.
"Where were you Alice?" Saya asked. Saeko looked at the screen.
"Saya don't ask, look!" Saeko told Saya. "Alice activated the last Lander, the entire rocket is green and ready to take off."
"All right let's go get perks first." Saya told the group that getting at least one perk before heading off to activate the Rocket was important. She took off to the tunnel where she purchased the PM-63 and knew what perk they decided to get. They decided to go for the one that was located in the area by the PM-63 and stock up on perks. After getting what they needed. They prepared to head out as Alice and Saya killed the last couple of zombies, this triggered Round six to begin.
"So far so good, I'm going to look out ahead." Alice told Saeko and Saya, They nodded as Alice decided to take a look around but this round six was going to be their first challenge. "Uhh... why is the screen red?" Alice asked. Suddenly She heard something crash down. Alice quickly got out the Spas-12 thinking it was her way of killing the zombies. Then monkeys in spacesuits began to emerge from the pods and start heading straight for Alice. Alice felt like she was going to panic, she quickly fired the Spas-12 off as a warning, killing a monkey. Alice ran back to Saeko and Saya as if she didn't know what to do. Saeko spotted Alice coming fo them in a panic.
"Is there something wrong?" Saeko asked. Alice reloaded her Spas-12 as she wanted to have a full tube.
"Yes, monkeys are coming!" Alice told them. She turned around as the monkeys had made their appearance. Alice got herself ready as Saya had her PM-63 on standby which she had purchased more ammo for and Saeko had her sickle. Alice lined up her sight on a monkey and fired, killing it instantly. A monkey tried to attack Saeko but the latter jabbed it with the Sickle. Alice was blowing the monkeys up with the shotgun as Saya fired into a couple of them with her PM-63, Another monkey attempted to attack Saya but Alice turned and blasted the shotgun into the Monkey's face.
"Stay back!" Saya shouted before firing her PM-63 into another monkey. The monkeys continued to attack as Alice blasted the Spas-12 into more of the monkeys. It was her effective way of dispatching them as Saeko was using her sickle. Finally Saya shot the last monkey as an ammo box and a bottle had dropped. Alice reloaded her guns while Saeko went over and picked both of them up. they now had two perks as the second perk had been randomized for each of them.
"Max ammo!" The announcement had been made looks like they had. All of their guns had been magically refilled. Round seven had begun.
"Let's go turn that rocket on." Saya instructed the group. They began to make their way back to the rocket with Saeko leading the way as she slashed the zombies with the Sickle. Saya was supporting her by dumping out all of her PM-63 rounds into the zombies as possible. Alice was at the rear using the AK-74U to build up points. As they moved around to the rocket where they believed it was. They approached the power room where the Rocket was Located. Saya and Alice went to the mystery box while Saeko was slashing the zombies with her sickle. Saya had used all the ammo in her PM-63 and was ready to dump the gun entirely. She was the first to hit the box to see what she was going to get. When the jingle finished. Saya had become really excited to get the gun she was gifted.
"SAY HELLO TO MY BEAUTIFUL FRIEND! Oh wait... that's just me." Saya told herself excitedly as she had recieved the Thundergun, exchanging her PM-63. Saya went over as a large crowd of zombies as Saeko was being overran. With the click of the trigger, the zzombies were instantly killed. Saeko nodded while she was going to deal with the other side. Saya went up to the rocket and pressed the button. The rocket began to fly up into the sky as as someone had authorized its launch. Alice was had hit the box and was too busy watching the guns to really pay attention to what Saeko and Saya were doing which was watching the rocket fly into the air. Alice finally recieved what she needed from the box.
"Man this looks odd, might as well figure out what it does." Alice told herself as she had gotten the Gersh Device. Alice decided to head down to where the rocket was stationed and where it took off from. Saeko and Saya decided to follow as Alice killed the last three zombies. With their deaths, round eight had begun.
Alice had went down into the launch pad area where the rocket was as those doors had now been open. Alice went inside as if she had opened the final area of the map. There was a machine that was her reward that they had linked the Lunar Landers together. Alice quickly took out the Spas-12 as the zombies were breaking down the barricades.
"Well I don't want to be stuck loading into a game." Alice told herself as she placed the Spas-12 into the Pacck a Punch Machine. She had ground up enough points to be able to achieve a feat like this. Saya and Saeko had arrived as Alice was upgrading one of her guns.
"Alice what are you doing?!" Saya asked with concern. The zombies began to pour through the barricades while Pack a Punch Machine gave the gun back to Alice.
"Hey guys this is nice and shiny now!" Alice shouted as she held her Spaz-24 shotgun. She pointed it at a group of zombies, she fired it. It was a hybrid of an automatic rifle and a shotgun as it was blasting the zombies heads off. Best part of it was the fact that should reload it all in one go instead of reloading it individually. A large group of zombies made their way into the room as Saeko was curious about what this Pack a Punch machine could do. She got out her colt and placed it into the Pack a Punch Machine. Alice and Saya thought they weren't going to hold them off this time so Alice got out one of her Gersh Devices and activated it, she threw it at the feet of the zombies as they ran over it suddenly a purple sphere had been opened as the zombies were quickly being sucked into the Gersh Device. Alice being curious tried to figure out where this machine was going to take her. She ran over and dove into the Gersh Device.
"Alice no!" Saya shouted. It was too late Alice had disappeared as Saeko grabbed what seemed to be her starting pistol from the Pack a Punch Machine.
"Is it strange that the starting room pistol is turned into a dual wield grenade launcher?" Saeko asked as Saya was panicking. Saeko looked around while getting out her Mp5K and firing it at the zombies. "Has anyone seen Alice?" Saeko asked.
Alice eventually popped out as the Gersh Device was a black hole for the zombies but for Alice she must've survived this. Alice looked around as she spotted a perk machine and the AK-74U wall buy she had purchased earlier.
"I survived the portal trip I don't think I want to be doing that again." Alice told herself. Then round eight had ended and turned into round nine. The Zombies began to swarm around her as Alice got out the AK-74U and began firing it off as she needed the points. She was going to attempt to empty out the magazine if she was going to be able to change it for another gun. She reloaded as if she was firing it all off rapidly. Alice would eventurally dump out all the AK-74U ammo as she decided to get out the Spaz-24 and begin blasting her way through the crowd. The Spaz-24 was effective at its job maybe a little too effective. Alice was happily blasting away as whatever this pack a punch machine had done had made this shotgun beefy so strong that when Alice needed to reload, she had taken out everything around her. Alice went over to the Lunar Lander and tried to call it over. Eventually it came over and Alice got onto it. Then the Lander took off but Alice didn't push any buttons. The lander few up into the sky as she wasn't being taken back to spawn but rather to Lander site B where the Sickle was. When Alice landed. Saeko and Saya were waiting as Alice was relatively unharmed.
"Well what happened, we were so scared to have you not with us." Saya told Alice that she was more or less frightened to see where their friend went off to.
"I was teleported across the map when I went into that device. The zombies were sucked in which I was more than happy to find out." Alice replied about her experience. She went over and purchased the Sickle, Saya killed the last zombie as round nine ended and round ten began.
"Cool so we can all be teleported?" Saya asked. Saeko was in the mood to go to the mystery box to exchange the empty Mp5K she had. Alice definitely wanted to see the box again. Alice was also out of AK-74U ammo and she needed a good point maker to help balance her Spaz-24. She got out the shotgun and she began to blast her way through to the mystery box. The others were behind as Saeko was blowing up everything with his pistols from the rear. Saeko even got out onf of the Matroyshka dolls and tossed it at the horde, the cluster grenades exploded as the entire group was taken down. Alice and Saya were keeping their guard as Saeko decided to hit the box. The guns were flashing all over before Saeko was given a gun.
"I don't know if a medieval weapon would be useful for someone like me?" Saeko asked as she took the crossbow. She aimed at the zombies anf fired before reloading, moments later the crossbow bolt detonated and took out some of the zombies. "Explosive huh?" Saeko asked. Alice went to the box to trade out the empty AK-74U she had. She hits the box while the others were trying to take out the zombies. For Saeko she watched as it landed on something she wanted.
"This box loves me!" Alice told herself as she recieved a Spectre from the box. She decided to join the fray and began to spray the Spectre into the zombie crowd as they were trying their best to get points and to clear out the crowd. Eventurally Alice threw down a Gersh device and it sucked the zombies in. "Come on." Alice called out. She Saeko and Saya raced into the Gersh Device and were swallowed up along with the zombies.
Eventurally the three of them would land in the spawn room where they were once again fine.
"Wow I never knew something like this could be exciting, it's like going through a teleporter." Saya began. They got up to dust themselves off. the three of them didn't realize was the fact that they had killed the last zombie and the round was over. Round eleven was about to begin.
"We survived the first ten rounds, now what?" Saya asked. The rest of the game was up to their choices.
Going to leave this off as this took a while to type as it was just them setting up and getting the Pack a Punch door to open as well as dealing with the mechanics of Ascension. Next two parts wouldn't be as long as I will be skipping rounds as it would be just them killing zombies and monkeys. It will get repetivive if I go through round for round but I will be describing major actions like getting guns and upgrading them.
Also do not get the PM-63, it's a waste of points as you constantly need ammo for it. Also there is a door on Ascension that you should not open its the 1250 door where the PM-63 is and the reason the door should remain closed is when the monkeys spawn in they will take all the routes to steal your perks by keeping that door closed you're only giving the monkeys one route to steal your perks and you can defend two perks instead of one.
Rounds 11-20 will be the next part.

So I just opened a sofi account and had to manually set up the direct deposit through the UKG app because my employers didn't pop up in their list (but I double checked to make sure routing and savings account numbers are exact).
Will they automatically bump my savings 1.20% to 4.20% once the deposit goes through or do I have to talk to a chat agent?
How long does it take for my direct deposit to go through to them too because I just got paid and it's my first time for it to go through as a portion already went to my other bank account (not sofi).
Thank you.

A creationist commented on a YouTube video of mine which basically ciriticized superstition and favored science instead. The video was very general, and not at all specifically about creationism or even religion. It was more about creating a better world, etc. Anyway, to the point, a commenter wrote: "Daniel 2:44 ====== Evolution = Self Assembling Atoms = Impossible =====." I wrote back that evolution and abiogenesis are two different things, and so the back-and-forth began.
Recently they wrote: "To this day, not one scientists on this earth has found a pathway from dirt to your brain. It doesn't exist. You have been lied to. Getting life from dirt doesn't just happen. The laws of probability would never allow it. Not to mention the laws of physics and chemistry. The combinatorial numbers are proving life was designed. Your pseudoscience evolutionist priests are lying to you."
To which I responded: "Don't you creationists believe that your mythical sky wizard made Adam through dust? No real scientist thinks that we evolved from dirt or rocks. Those are just lies spewed by creationists. We evolved from a single-celled organism which came about through chemical selection (selection began at the chemical level). Origin of life research has made tremendous progress in recent decades, including but not limited to: 1) The discovery of plausible non-biological routes for the formation of important molecules like sugars and amino acids, 2) Studies have demonstrated that short peptides and proteins can be formed under simulated prebiotic conditions. Various mechanisms have been proposed, such as non-enzymatic peptide bond formation, condensation on mineral surfaces, and thermal cycling processes, 3) Studies have revealed potential chemical pathways for the formation of ribonucleotides, the building blocks of RNA. Those are just 3 advancements of many."
They completely dodged the question about their belief on "god" creating "Adam" from dust, which is mentioned in the bible. When pressed on it again, they continued to ingnore it.
And here lies the two very common creationist argument tactics.
1) Dodging questions about their own beliefs: This doesn't aply to all creationists, as some will straight up tell you the pseudoscience they believe in. But many will straight up ignore specific questions about their beliefs. The commenter basically told me that I believe that humans came from dirt. After I explained abiogenesis to them and then questioned them about Adam being made from dust, which is straight from the bible, nada. Nothing. Refuses to answer. Kent Hovind does the same thing in debates. He's fine calling evolution absurd and crazy, but he doesn't want the debate to focus on his beliefs, which, if he's being honest, do in fact say that a sky wizard created the first person from dust and the world in 6 days.
2) Projection: They call science and evolution "pseudoscience", equating them with "dogma" and calling scientists "priests". Science is the opposite of that. The scienctific method ensures that it is. If they have such a problem with "dogma" and "priests", they should stop believing creationism and actually accept where the facts line up. Or maybe it's a subconcious acceptance on their part that their beliefs are only beliefs and instead try to put the blame on scientists and those who accept facts. But that's a whole other discussion on human psychology.

It had always been my dream to be a law enforcement officer. Since I was a small boy, I have always loved the idea of having a gun and catching bad guys all day. Hell, what kid didn't? While everyone was having an existential crisis straight out of high school, wondering what to do with the rest of their lives, I already figured that out when I was 9 and still playing with action figures. After graduation, I applied for the new York city police academy and after 6 months of physical and academic training, I was ready to patrol the streets of New York City.
A few years into my law enforcement career, I can say without a doubt as most of us know by now: Reality is often disappointing. I had made my dream come true of becoming a police officer in a great city, but I guess I never considered I could be disappointed in that. I was severely under paid and overworked, I could barely afford a janitors closet to live in this fucking city, I couldn't keep a relationship to save my life and every time I put my uniform on it was like I was public enemy number one to every citizen. The only thing keeping me from quitting my job and starting over was my partner, DeLeon. The only other thing that was consistent in my life Aside from the constant shit flow from this job was DeLeon.
In just a few short years, he had become like my older brother, giving me life guidance, inviting me to spend time with his wife and son, and always having my back. Last night, I was quieter than usual while on patrol, and I guess he saw the writing on the wall. "Listen, kid, if you're unhappy with your place in life, you gotta do what makes you happy." I looked at him with a mix of shock and sadness I could feel burning on my face. "That's clearly not police work," he said like he could literally read my mind, ofcourse I was an open book to him.
Before I had a chance to explain myself, a voice came over the radio. "Unit 13, we have 10-62 in progress at westport," that was code for breaking and entering. My partner had already turned on our patrol lights and speed on when he said "Well you did want some excitement," while grinning like a little kid behind the wheel. "10-10 guardian, show us in route," I replied over the radio while I spot checked my equipment.
It took us about 15 minutes to get to the scene. The place was some abandoned warehouse scheduled to be demolished to make way for a new mall. The site was also secluded. We hadn't seen any cars, houses, or anyone for miles. "Who the hell would want to break in here?" I asked my partner, not really waiting on an answer. "Better question is who called this in?". DeLeon had a point.
There was no one around or waiting for us when we got there. There were a few large trucks and demolition equipment just outside the warehouse, so there must've been a security guard posted somewhere. "Keep your gun up and don't drop your guard," DeLeon ordered before we checked the area out. It was comically dark,the only light that illuminated our path were our flashlights and the distant full moon. It took forever, but we managed to find the main gate to the warehouse and a few feet next to it, a security guard post. I moved toward the guard post to see if anyone was inside.
"NYPD, we're responding to your call..." I could smell it before I saw it. There was a familiar smell of iron in the air, but it wasn't until i peeked inside that I could make the connection. It was blood. The security guard was indeed inside, still sitting in his cheap chair. His face had been clawed off,barely resembling a face at all now, his lower jaw was nowhere in sight and only one brown eye remained, it looked like it wanted to roll into the back of his skull.
His insides had been hollowed out, and his one remaining arm had half its hand bitten off. There was blood and chunks of human flesh all over the small cabin. It looked like he had been mauled by a fucking bear but I've never seen anyone be so utterly destroyed. I couldn't stand the sight for more than a couple of seconds before I had to involuntarily throw up. DeLeon was only a few steps behind me before he saw the same thing I did.
I could hear him gagging and moving away from the guard post. "We better call this in." I couldn't agree more. Whatever was happening here and whatever killed that security guard, I wanted nothing to do with it. We started walking back to our vehicle, and I noticed it somehow had gotten even darker since we got to the scene.
It looked like clouds had covered the moonlight from shining down. Before I could even process what was going on something had violently tackled me to the ground, at first I thought it was whatever mauled the security guard but I could see that it was a man wearing ripped clothes. There was a brief struggle on the ground were the mother fucker tried to take a bite out of me. just as fast as I was on the ground DeLeon took out his tazer gun zapped away. I got underneath him and kicked him as hard as I could in the mouth.
I took out my hand cuffs and put him under arrest. "Do you think I just knocked out a potential witness?" I asked jokingly trying to relieve some of the insane stress I was under. "Whoever this fucker is he's coming with us." We picked the guy up and walked over a few feet to where we had parked only to find another unwanted surprise.
Our tires had been slashed in the amount of time we had been gone. I would've blamed our suspect but on the vehicles bonet there were 4 gashes that covered the whole of it's length. It didn't matter how maniacal you were, you weren't going to be able to do that with your bare hands. We threw the unconscious suspect in the back of the vehicle and immediately tried to get backup on the radio. " Guardian, 10-30, we need immediate assistance on scene, at least one dead person and suspect in custody. Our vehicle has been sabotaged and we are stranded."
We anxiously awaited a reply but nothing came. Only static. "What the fuck do we do now?" I said nearly panicked. "Try to calm down, they know our location, if we don't report back they'll send in back up" DeLeon said scanning the surrounding area in the dead of night. "You shouldn't have kicked me in the face" I jumped in my seat as I turned around and realized the suspect had regained consciousness and was leaning his face against the division cage.
"It wasn't personal, but now it is cop!" The man was grinning so wide I could see he was actually drooling. "Did you kill that man out there you son of a bitch?" I said trying to regain my composure. "No. My friends did, but I'll make sure you get it worse."
I was taken aback by this and felt my hand tightening against my holstered weapon. "You got friends out here asshole?" DeLeon cut in. "Oh sure, and don't think I forgot about you zapping me either, you'll get yours too."
DeLeon exited the vehicle and I immediately followed him out. "What's our play here man?" He opened the back of our patrol vehicle and pulled out a pair of shotguns from a duffel bag. "We aren't gonna let those fuckers hunt us. Shoot whatever isn't friendly." As he tossed me one we both stopped in our track's.
Somewhere in the distance we could hear a horrendous sound that I could only associate with some kind of roar. "What the fuck is that?" I gripped tightly on the shotgun and I readied myself. "Something tells me it might be his friends." Suddenly we heard another roar, this one sounded closer but coming from a completely different direction. "Oh Jesus, what the hell is that?!" I took cover behind the vehicle.
"Whatever they are, their surrounding us." DeLeon was aiming in the direction where the last roar came from. My heart was racing. Even with the moonlight illuminating us again,we couldn't see 10 feet in front of us. We could hear whatever was out there now. They were close enough that we could make out the sounds of something large and fast quickly running from places we couldn't see in the darkness.
Suddenly, I heard a loud, deafening gunshot coming from DeLeon's direction. I didn't know if he had gotten anything with the first shot but he kept firing, before I could join in something had smashed into him so hard and fast he flew through the air and landed several feet away from the cover of our vehicle. As soon as I saw him land, I sprinted toward him, shooting a few times in the direction I saw that black blur speed towards to. "DeLeon, are you alright?!" I asked while trying to get him off the ground. "MY LEG!"
He didn't need to say much more. Even in darkness, I could see he had landed terribly, and his leg was bent in a way it wasn't meant to. I handed DeLeon my shotgun as his had been thrown somewhere in the darkness, I got him up, and we could only get a few steps in before we hear another roar of whatever was hunting us. Before any of us could react, we were violently thrown in the air again. I managed to land close to the passenger side of the vehicle, DeLeon hadn't been so lucky.
A few feet from me, what looked like a massive black warewolf dragging my partner across the ground... moments after it started ripping chunks out of him however way it could. It sliced into DeLeon's belly, and his intestines came spilling out. DeLeon was somehow still alive through all of that,trying to defend himself with one hand and trying to unholster his sidearm with the other. The warewolf bit unto his hand, taking all his digits off, then another warewolf joined in ravaging my partner. The only thing I could manage to do was jump inside the car and lock myself in as the two warewolfs finished ripping DeLeon apart.
"I told you we were going to get yours." I jumped as I had forgotten about the subject. Still, I'm custody. "Shut the fuck up!" I aimed my sidearm straight at the suspects head.
"I may not make it out of here tonight, but I'll make sure to empty this on your face first!" My heart dropped to my stomach as I was pointing my weapon. As soon as the man leaned out of the darkness, he was lit by the moonlight and started laughing maniacally. Maniacal laughter turned into violent convulsions. He had started to go through a transformation. He broke free of the handcuffs, and his body started to grow,somehow outgrowing his own skin to the point I could see it ripping throughout his exposed body. His face had begun to morph into something out of the sickest person's nightmares.
Something inside his face was trying to explode out, so he used his claws to rip his own human face off, revealing a demonic warewolf that was still somehow grinning at me. Another warewolf had jumped on the car and was staring right at from the other side of the windshield, the other one had slowly peeked up from my passenger side window, both still stained in my partner's blood and now we're out for mine. Realizing how complete and utterly fucked I was, I started hyperventilating and in what seemed like unison all three werewolves attacked their respective sides. The first one to get through was the one by my passenger side window, it easily smashed through and immediately tried to bite my face off,it missed by a few inches, the only reason it didn't succeed in it's second attempt is because I fired a round right inside its mouth. This staggered it enough for me to uncomfortably slide over to the driver's seat.
The warewolf on the car bonet was quickly smashing through the windshield and desperately trying to bite or slash at me. The one still in custody was bitting his way through the metal cage and seemed to be the most anxious of all to get to me. I shot off a few more rounds to the one that was now apparently stuck halfway through the window space due to how massive it was. It didn't seem to hurt it at all. Maybe piss it off more. It was only a matter of time before they got to me, and having a bullet as a final meal was starting to sound like a good idea.
I turned the barrel of my weapon to my lower jaw pointed up, I could still feel the heat emanating from it and the faint smell of gunpowder still in the air. I was about to pull the trigger when one of the werewolves, the one on top of the bonet and desperately reaching for me only seconds before,was thrown off violently off the car. Seconds after it was the one stuck in the window, it was pulled so hard back that chunks of flesh remained on the broken glass left. Lastly, the door to the back seats was ripped off, and something pulled the suspect that had turned into a hound from hell out. I was convinced I was going to be next, but nothing happened for the next few minutes.
I heard the roars of those creatures somewhere in the dark,different now,sounding less powerful and frightening and more hurt and frightened. I want to say I was brave during the whole encounter but the truth is I was a nervous wreck, I spent the next eternity with my gun pointed at the darkness in front of me waiting for something worse than those werewolves to take me, I wouldn't have been able to shoot anything even if I tried with how much my hands were shaking. Maybe an hour passed when I saw the red and blue lights approach, I didn't really feel safe until fellow officers I barely recognized pulled me out of the destroyed patrol vehicle. The next few hour's were a complete blur, I remember getting medical attention at the scene, being taken into questioning for hour's trying to explain the fucked up events that had taken place that night. We have body cameras that are mandatory for all NYPD officer's to use while on duty so that should have been more than enough evidence to explain everything and clear my name.
A few hours into waiting in a precinct interrogation room, a man holding a folder and who I've never met before comes in and sits down opposite me. "I'm terribly sorry to have made you wait so long, Mr. Morales, I had to grab a few things from the boys at csi" the man said with an accent I couldn't quite place. "Look if you're going to ask me what happened again, save it. You've got my body cam footage. There's nothing else for me to say."
I hung my head in defeat and expected him to berate me of the potential years of jail I could be facing. "You mean the body camera footage that has been destroyed?" I jumped my attention back at him. "What the fuck are you talking about?" He threw a folder at the middle of the table containing photographs of the crime scene. Our destroyed patrol vehicle, the dead security guard at his post, and a few random dismembered bodies, I thought I recognized one of the bodies using the same clothing as our suspect.
"I don't understand. What's going on here?" I was tired, confused, and angry, and I had half a mind to punch the fancy dressed bastard in the mouth at this point. " What's going on, Officer Morales? Is that you and your deceased partner encountered not one but three lycanthrope's last night. It's a very rare occurrence to survive an encounter with one, let alone three.
All evidence of last night's events has been confiscated and suppressed. The department will issue a statement of your partners death that will not involve supernatural creatures." I interrupted him as he was beginning another sentence."I've had a really stressful night, and I'm sorry, I don't think I've ever seen you in our department before, not that I'd care what your fucking name is or your hopes and dreams but you just barge in here and start telling me thing's that don't make a lick of fucking sense to me." I drop my head yet again in indifference.
"All I want to know right now is, am I crazy or not." The man looked sympathetic although in a very robotic way. "You're not crazy Mr. Morales. And as you most eloquently put it, you and I have never met. Consider me a liason between our two departments." "What department?" I asked, genuinely confused. "The one you've just been transferred to."

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