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The Country of Nehalym
Nehalym, an island country, is a very mysterious dictatorship. What will Dan and Nathan do to save their people?

Chapter 1: Welcome to Nehalym!
“KFC! KFC!” someone shouts through the streets. Nathan knows the call. He and a bunch of other eleven-year-olds bolt down the corridor.
Nathan has dark hair, tan-ish skin, and green eyes. Common qualities of a citizen who lives in Nehalym.
“Darn,” Nathan grumbles. “I hate running!”
CRACK! The sound of a Baseball bat cracks on the wall of the Slap-Store convenience store. Due to the laziness of the manager, Slap-Store only houses toilet-paper rolls.
A ten-year-old kid named Dan is walking out the automatic-sliding-doors of Slap-Store. He has blond hair, light skin, and blue eyes. Common qualities of a White Person. “What’s all this angry mob do-”
RUMBLE-RUMBLE! The eleven-year-olds accidentally collide into Dan. Dan stands back up and says, “Hey, watch where you’re going!”
“Sorry!” Nathan calls as he runs. “But there’s a Killer following us!”
“Wait, wha-” Dan doesn’t have a clue about this “Killer” thing.
“Don’t just stand there!” Nathan shouts back. “Do something!”
Without explanation, Dan would probably know what a Killer is, anyway. He jolts down the street. After a while of running, Dan has to wait to catch his breath. Then he hears footsteps. He turns around. A wrinkly-skinned, white-haired man shows up, holding an obsidian Baseball bat.
That guy? That old-man? How’s he a Killer? Dan wonders. Instead of running away, he considers seriously questioning the old-man. DONK! A Baseball bat slams against his thigh.

Chapter 2: Meet Nathan, Average Kid!
“Hi, I’m Nathan,” Nathan says. “Say ‘Nay-Than’, not ‘Nah-Then’.”
Dan is still shivering. He’s lying down against a brick wall, several yards from Slap-Store. “Who the heck was that stupid guy?”
“Hey!” Nathan scolds. “Watch your mouth. We can’t use foul language in-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dan interrupts, annoyed. “Well go away.”
“Don’t you want to know the name of this country? I hear you’re a newcomer.”
“Ha! Yes, I know the name of this country! It’s…um…uh…Nazi-Germany! I’ve time-traveled back to the 1940’s.”
Nathan frowns. He stares blankly at Dan. “I can see you’re American. Let’s see how far you can go with this.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dan continues. “That was just a little attempt at humor. I know how much you like to laugh!”
Nathan’s eyes narrow into slits. His facial expression is very smug. “Not funny,” he retorts. He sighs, pauses, and introduces, “Welcome to Nehalym. I suppose it’s the last country in the world that still has a dictatorship.”
Dan corrects, “No, China, several ones in Africa, parts of Europe, and other places still have bosses in place of presidents.”
Suddenly, without notice, Nathan walks away. “Bye.”
“Hey, where you goin’?” Dan steps up onto the sidewalk.
“Shh. My parents. I might get myself killed. I must go!”
Getting yourself killed is actually quite common in Nehalym. Dan used to live in The State of Texas, United States, but his parents moved to Nehalym, a dangerous place. Sure, these can all be rumors, but who knows?
Dan’s father had been frequently switching jobs ever since. He had to travel all over the state just to get to a different workplace. He dreamed of a calm, convenient Utopia where switching jobs is unnecessary. Overwhelmed, he stumbles upon a Daily Epoch Newspaper Report about an island country where you can’t leave. That’s Nehalym.
Dan’s family, the Slap-Jacks, wanted to bring everyone along to Nehalym, but there was one problem.
Dan has a brother named Swaggington, but he wasn’t allowed to transfer to Nehalym. Swaggington was seventeen years old at that time, so it’s generally accepted that he stays in the United States alone.
Swaggington was in college, and he wasn’t allowed to come to Nehalym because of that. Nehalym has zero Universities, so they didn’t want Swaggington to be worried about his education.
The people in Nehalym tried to be nice to Swaggington by concerning his education, which is considered a good thing.
And whether somebody is still a college student or not, they should always avoid Nehalym.
In the United States, you’re not allowed to go to North Korea at the time of writing. However, another country where leaving is illegal, and United Airlines still lets you fly there.
And because an island is small, and you can’t leave Nehalym, Dan’s father used lazy strategies. Dan’s dad always answers a job-change request by saying, “I decline the request, since I can’t leave my small country.”
Even though Dan is only ten years old, he knows better than to move to a country where you can’t leave.

Chapter 3: The K.F.C. and Kia!
“KFC! RUN!” Nathan jerks his head around as he shouts.
Dan is still asleep. It’s eight-o’clock in the morning, but Dan has no clue about government sleeping rules. Neither do his parents.
Voices come from outside the house.
“KFC! KF-”
SLAM! Goes a Baseball bat.
“Kia!”
WHACK! Goes a Baseball bat.
“Kia!”
BAM! Goes a Baseball bat.
BONK! Again.
BLUBRUB! Someone gets rubbed against a wall.
“Kia!”
Dan stutters. He wakes up, startled to find another angry mob banging people around. “Who’s Kia?” he mutters.
“KFC’s are chasing us! Everyone dodge West!” Nathan commands. A group of other kids dodge to the side as a Killer tries to strike them, but misses. What the heck? How is it possible, fast-food-restaurants chasing eleven-year-olds?
Dan rushes downstairs and slams the front door behind him. He runs out onto the road where the angry mob is. Except he’s still wearing his pajamas! At first sight, Dan sees a bunch of elderly men swishing Baseball bats around.
Suddenly, a tall slender woman trots across the road, holding her right hand up to signal “stop.” Will she stop the Killers? No. Instead, she drags a young boy on the dusty ground. It’s the boy who exclaimed, “Kia,” three times.
The boy refuses, and tries to let go of her hand. The woman scolds, “Get up, Sylus!”
Sylus, the boy who called for Kia, flinches. He stands up on his feet. He walked obediently to a doctor’s office with the woman.
Wait a minute… The mob of old-men was trying to hurt Gordon and others, yet he goes to a doctor’s office. Are the old-men, called Killers, actually supposed to do that?
“Dan!” calls Nathan. “Dan, are you all-right?”
“Yeah,” Dan replies. “I just got out. Who’re those people supposed to be?”
“Um, before I answer that question, I have a question for you. Why the heck are you in your pajamas?”
“Oh, uh…I had no time. Just to be quick.”
“Go dress up! Now! You’re going to get yourself killed! You’re lucky the Killers didn’t see.”

Chapter 4: The Hall of Open Records!
“Hey!” a Killer shouts. “You’re new here, right?”
Dan turns around.
“He’s talking to you,” Nathan points out.
“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” Dan tells the Killer.
“What’s your name?” the Killer lowers his voice.
“Daniel Slap-Jack,” Dan says.
The Killer thinks for a moment. “Okay, now go to The HOOR.”
“What’s The HOOR?”
“THE HALL OF OPEN RECORDS, MORON!”
Dan, whose real name is Daniel, still doesn’t know where The Hall of Open Records is.
Just as Dan is about to ask the Killer where it is, Nathan grabs him by the shoulder and points in the North direction. He explains, “We live on the South side of town. If you need to go to The HOOR, go straight North of your home, and left.”
After a tiresome thirty minutes of walking, Dan catches up to his destination. The HOOR is a very tall building suspended by white poles. It has a couple of sculptures carved on the roof. It looks a bit like the U.S. Supreme Court, not to mention that Nehalym doesn’t even have any courts.
“What do you want?” a female wearing a suit says. It’s the Director, who owns The HOOR. She sits in a tall chair behind a curved desk.
“Uh,” Dan stutters, “An old-man, who my friend calls a ‘Killer’, told me to go here.”
“Friend?” the Director asks doubtfully. “I never received your contract agreement.”
“What’s that?” Dan wonders. That’s another peculiar thing about Nehalym.
“You’re new here, right?”
Dan nods.
“Then you shall read this packet,” the Director says as she hands Dan an old, wrinkled stack of papers. “It’s the introductory information about Nehalym. Please take a seat.”
Dan sits down on a purple couch and starts to read the first packet. Unfortunately, he gets interrupted again.
“That’s for the aristocracy,” the Director points out in a matter-of-fact tone. She points to several ordinary chairs to the left of the purple couch. “That’s for the middle class.” Then she points to dirty ram-shackle seats in the corner of The HOOR lobby. “That’s for the peasants.”
Peasants? Aristocrats? Dan is stunned at the concept of these old Feudal System Classes. Anyway, he continues reading.
“Males must wake up promptly at eight o’clock AM, and no later than that. Females must wake up at seven o’clock AM, otherwise they’ll get slapped in the face. Females are allowed to take naps, but males aren’t.”
Dan becomes enraged. He throws the packet on the ground. He stomps up to the front desk, and points straight at the Director. “You guys are sexist!” Dan shouts.
“No, we’re not,” the Director replies calmly.
“Oh yeah?” Dan argues. “And you’re violent, too.”
“Me? I’m not.” the Director asks, gesturing to herself.
“You and all the people of Nehalym,” Dan says. “This country is absurd. What sort of a dictator has ‘Killers’ on his side?”
“What’re you talking about? Killers?”
“You know, those old people wearing white coats?”
“What? Those people are Community Convenience Workers. They help make the country a better place. They arrest people who break the rules.”
“But I didn’t break the rules. A Killer chased me down and hit me with a Baseball bat!”
“Then you must’ve broken a rule. Didn’t your family move here from the United States?”
“Yes, except for my older brother, who is in college.” Then Dan switches on his angry attitude again. “Where do they come from? Those Community Convenience ‘blah-blah-blah’s. They seem to catch people from nowhere. Do they hide behind buildings like spies? That’s very deceptive, you know!”
“Daniel, I am the Director of the Hall of Open Records. Don’t talk to me like that. But, as always, I’m willing to explain things to immigrants. Most buildings have a specialized office in them, built for Community Convenience Workers to work there. They monitor people through the building’s security cameras, if the building has any. Security cameras are attached to both the outside and inside of most buildings, and they also have built-in microphones.”
“Um… Okay, but I…uh…really…have to go,” Dan says quickly as he turns around. He walks to the HOOR entrance. He turns around to face the Director again, who has a confused look on her face. “Bye,” Dan says casually. “I’ll read the packets later. I need to go back home.”
A woman wearing a tight dress is about to walk through the entrance doors.
“Look out behind you!” the Director snaps.
Dan is about to turn around to see who’s behind him, but it’s too late. The woman in the tight dress bumps in to him.
The woman in the tight dress scrunches up her face. “Oh, so this is how you treat me?” she taunts. “Running into me like a childish old troll? Well I’ve got news for you, buddy. You’re going down, sucker!”
“What’s your problem?” Dan asks angrily.
The woman smiles. “Your existence. Why shouldn’t I kill you?”
“All right then, kill me,” Dan says sarcastically.
The woman tries to perform a karate-kick, but her dress is so tight that she can’t lift her leg more than two feet off the ground. “Dang!” she exclaims.
Dan scoffs, “Whatever.” He opens the door and walks out of the HOOR like nothing ever happened.
The Director is left speechless. His face is stuck at a raised-eyebrow position. Finally, she murmurs to herself, “About how Dan said that we’re violent…”

Chapter 5: Father’s Labor!
Dan has a good-night’s sleep, and he’s expecting tomorrow to be a normal day, sitting on the couch, watching television, being carefree as he wants.
Unfortunately, little does he know that Nehalym’s elementary school system has no absolute, set enrollment date.
“Dad,” Dan asks nervously. “What’s your new job?”
Dan’s dad sighs. “Labor.”
“What?”
“Laborer! It’s very heavy-duty work.”
“Heavy-duty…um…uh… Are you fatigued?”
“Compared to other workers, no, ‘cause I just took the job. People with more experience get harder work.”
“What’s it like compared to America?”
“Heh, heh. In America, it’s just eight hours of light to medium-duty work. I have a colleague named Betch, and her job is twenty-three hours of relentlessly smashing an axe on a block of refined obsidian.”
“Well that’s stupid!”
“Shh…” Dad points to a sound recorder screwed to the ceiling. “They can hear us! We don’t have the freedom to criticize things the government owns! And by the way, you’re goin’ to school, mister!”
Dan glances at the clock. It’s seven-o’clock in the morning, right when the government sleeping rules set in. He’d been talking to his dad for about one minute. “Right now?” he asks, shocked.
“Yes!” Dad replies in a congradulative manner. “Right now.”

Chapter 6: Going to School!
“Can I go to the restroom?” Dan asks during Math Class, First Period of Droop-Gloop Elementary School. It’s Friday, and Dan is a new student in fifth grade.
The teacher, Mrs. Danky-Pants, turns away from the whiteboard, and faces Dan. “I don’t know, CAN you?” she retorts.
“MAY I go to the restroom?” Dan corrects.
“What? Can’t you see we’re in class? Why would I ever let you use the rest-room? Students aren’t allowed to REST and sleep on the soft, cushioned-”
“Not rest-room, resTRoom, as in ‘bathroom’.”
“We don’t have tubs and showers at Droop-Gloop Elementary.”
“Not that kind of bathroom! The bathroom with the toilets.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to LET you have a TOY from the class Treasure Box-”
“NO! The one with the sinks and the urinals.”
“Well, from my experience, I’ve never heard of anyone who SANK in the ocean from a URINAL tract infection.”
“NO!” Dan argues, annoyed. “Mrs. Danky-Pants, why are you so literal-minded?”
“Oh, that. If you need to pee, students such as you should go outside and urinate in the pointy, prickly thorn-bushes.”
Dan grunts, and throws his pencil on the floor to show his distress. Then he stumbles out of the classroom reluctantly. What psycho pees outside the school?
“Huh. Just that old darn thing,” Dan mumbles. He had experience peeing in the woods before, so it’s no sweat to do it now. But there’s still no reason why ordinary teachers force students to pee outside, when schools in Nehalym clearly has bathrooms…or do they? Just as he starts to pull down his pants, “Aaaaagh!”
There’s a person who suddenly jumps in front of him. He screams, too, “Aaaaagh! What the- Oof! Ouch! Kia! Ki…” Dan blocks his hand in front of the other screamer’s mouth.
“Hey!” the other guy reacts. “Kia’s the community nurse! What were you thinking?”
“Kia’s a nurse?” Dan wonders. Although he’d just learned something new about this specific community of Nehalym, he tries to seem “normal,” and pretends he already knows it. “Oh, yes, I know that,” Dan lies. “But still, don’t you think it’s a bit weird to need medical care due to accidentally falling over?”
“Not at all,” the other guy replies in a matter-of-fact tone. “My parents, the moms and dads of Nehalym, have all taught us to shout the name of the nurse when injured. It’s a common habit now.”
“Wait…” Dan tries to recall the memory of Sylus being dragged on the ground to get to Kia’s place, back on the street where he lives. The memory of the angry mob, bashing people beforehand. He asks, “Why can’t the school have its own nurse? Seems kind of inconvenient to drag people all the way down Main Street.”
“Mrs. Danky-Pants sent me,” Nathan bursts out the door, catching his breath. “You need to get back to class. And you’re not even ‘peeing’! You’re just standing around, talking to your-”
“Friend?” Dan suggests.
“No, no, no. You haven’t even signed the agreement yet!” Nathan grumbles, signaling that the Friendship Agreement is common knowledge, and Dan should know the rules by now. “Anyway, you’re not-” Nathan continues his message from the teacher.
Dan completes Nathan’s sentence with a familiar phrase, “-following directions like Mrs. Danky-Pants told me to.” He walks back into the school, half-surprised that Nathan goes to his school, too.

Chapter 7: The Backfiring Plan!
The next day, Dan encounters someone familiar he met at school. He’s glad it’s Saturday, so he won’t have to go to school and pee in the bushes or what-not.
“Hi, ‘names Helix Supernova,” the guy Dan talked to yesterday introduces himself. It’s after Dan ate his breakfast, put on his clothes, and walked out the door, to find the guy right in front of him.
“Um,” Dan starts, “about that ‘Kia’ thing, one time the Killers were trying to hit me, but why call them Killers? I mean, smacking your stomach or your thigh isn’t going to kill you.”
“Ha,” Helix says in a cruel, sarcastic manner. “WELL THEN, GO AHEAD! They’ll do whatever they’re told. You want to die, then fine.”
Dan picks out one sentence. It’s unique, at least in the sense of Nehalym. “They’ll do whatever they’re told.” His mouth formed into a sly grin.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Helix detects Dan’s emotion, and predicts his plan. “Now, don’t be too clever.” He tells Dan a fable, where a fox wasn’t allowed to pick the grapes off a tree. But the fox punched the grapes off the tree, since the rules only applied to picking. Unfortunately, the grapes were poison, and the fox regrets his way of thinking.
“Tree-hugger.”
“Hey, hey, hey! No insults! You could get in big trou-”
The ground starts to shake. “Get him!” several old men yell in a raspy voice.
“Aww, not the KFC!” Helix groans.
Dan dashes up to a nearby stop-sign, and points to it with both index-fingers. This indicates “stop.” The Killers stop running, and stare at him.
“Look,” Dan persuades. “This won’t change anything. What’s the point of injuring people? This is unethical, cruel, and just mean. Back in my country, America, kids would get chastised in a non-physical way. So would you please stop-”
The Killers confer for a few seconds, and then one speaks up, “Look, you know those clichés in movies, right? Someone says something very ‘heartwarming’ or ‘meaningful’ to the villain, and he immediately transforms into a protagonist. Well that certainly ain’t going to happen!” The Head Killer holds back his Baseball bat, aims, and… BAM! He smashes into his OWN head!
Helix rolls his eyes. “Ugh. Your plan totally backfired! Let me rephrase that. They’ll do whatever EVIL they’re told,” he counters toward Dan. Then, there’s a scream. And a splash. Helix turns around, and he sees a person flying through the air and landing in water. Dan isn’t standing on the road anymore. But according to science, how is it possible that Dan gets shot so high?
Helix snatches the Head Killer’s bat, and trips him over on the asphalt. Then he grabs a shoe to examine it. “Aha!” Helix exclaims. The shoes are super-bouncy, and give off ten times the amount of energy it receives. That may be why Dan got “kicked” so far.
Just then, the Killer who fell rises up behind Helix, and grabs his arms. He locks Helix with handcuffs! “I’m an adult,” the Killer explains. “Don’t you touch me again.”
Helix starts shouting. “Hey! Somebody! Dan got kicked and…mrphof-”
The Killer slaps Helix’s mouth shut.

Chapter 8: Save From the Hidden!
“Are you sure he got kicked?” the Rescue Squad confirms through the telephone. Nathan overheard from Helix, and is reporting an emergency over the phone in less than a minute after that. To blend in and seem non-suspicious, he calls from a normal street phone booth.
“Yes, of course,” Nathan replies.
“But according to science, a shoe can’t give off twice the energy it receives,” Bob, a Rescue Squad member, says. How can Nathan explain this?
Then another Rescue Squad member named Max comes on the phone. He’s a physicist with a PHD in science. He tells several scenarios of facts, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The shoes must have some energy source. If it’s the person who kicks, then his leg would be numb shortly afterward. The shoes might have a tank of fuel, but that can’t be gasoline or else he explodes. Using inductive charging is fine, but we hardly see that kind of tech in a pair of shoes.”
“But the shoes were really bouncy!” Nathan protests.
“But we’re the Rescue Squad. We rescue people who are lost or hurt. As for the ‘super-bouncy’ shoes that kick a person this far…let’s say, a mile…there’s no point of rescuing him. He’s probably dead. Who’s the owner of these mysterious shoes?”
“I don’t know his name, but he’s a Killer.”
“Killer? Killers give satisfactory corporal punishment to children as chastisement. The kid misbehaved, and that’s that. Kicking is a fair punishment.” Max hangs up the phone-call.
URRRGGGH! Nathan re-dials the telephone number for the rescue squad. He seems to be incredibly distressed. “Hello?” he talks into the phone’s speaker.
The same Max’s voice comes on the earpiece. “Hey, it’s you again, right?”
Nathan doesn’t know whether Max is angry or just questioning. Before he can reply, Max taunts, “No need to be rude, but we can call the police. Is this a prank call?”
Nathan considers the threat of calling the police. However, there’s no police in Nehalym, so Killers also serve as police. But their job isn’t to protect, it’s to do vigilante justice. And to them, vigilante justice basically means Baseball-bat-bashing.
“Uh, no,” Nathan answers unsurely. “But the main reason is that the Killer kicked him for doing something minor. It’s kicking as a punishment for name-calling.”
“Dude, we’re very busy. The Rescue Squad doesn’t deal with these situations,” Max replies. “Either hang up the phone, or JUMP OFF A CLIFF!” He yells the last phrase so loudly that Nathan’s ears hurt.
“Oww! Oof!” Nathan immediately drops the phone and falls on the ground next to the phone booth he’s calling from, without hanging up or canceling the call. What would happen next?
Nathan scoops the phone back up, and argues, “I’ve got to admit, you suck at insulting. ‘Jump off a cliff’ is basically nothing, and it’s not even offensive. How ‘bout this: ‘kill yourself’!” He’s yelling so loud that he’s practically shouting straight into the phone.
“That’s it,” Max says. “What started as an emergency call turned out to be an argument. NOW HANG UP THE PHONE, YOU IDIOT!”
Max shouted that last sentence so loud, and so sudden, that Nathan winces. The phone slips out of his hand again, and he accidentally bonks his head against the phone booth. He decides there’s enough pain to call for the help of Kia. “Kia! Kia! Kia…” Nathan calls into the open air.
After a few seconds, a sexy-looking woman escorts Nathan to a building that looks like a pediatrics medical center. Is she Kia?
Dan is a skillful swimmer, and he’s very lucky to land in the water, not on stone or dirt. He’s also very lucky to not land head-first, because even a water-landing might lead to brain damage. Despite his swimming skills, the water is easy to maneuver.
He realizes that the water is a shallow land-bridge connecting Nehalym to a nearby island. The island, as it seems, contains a circular wall of stone that had white-and-orange boards nearby. Maybe it’s an under-construction tower or something.
Dan wades through the water and steps back on the land, his soaked clothes causing perceived heaviness.
Before Dan steps off the coast and onto the man-made cityscape of Nehalym, he figures it’d be much more convenient to use a little lift. “Kia! KEEEAAH!” Dan roars at the top of his lungs. Soon, and I mean a couple of seconds, Dan sees a train speeding down the monorail. A curvaceous woman steps out. She’s wearing a red dress that looks very tight in relation to her body.
Dan feels confused. How did the woman hear Dan shout her name? The Nehalym Government must by eavesdropping on their citizens’ speech! But how’d they do that? Dan decides it’s too much of a mystery.
When she walks up to Dan, he hopes this “Kia” will drive him to the nurse’s office, or let him ride the monorail. Then he wouldn’t have to walk all the way home, right?
Unfortunately, the woman isn’t as nice as Dan thought. Dan wonders if he’s being too optimistic, but the woman snatches him by the shirt-collar. Dan lunges forward, sprawled on the sandy coastal-beach.
“Get up!” Kia scolds.
After Dan stands back up, he notices something strange. The type of dress Kia is wearing. What Kia’s facial features look like. She looks exactly like the woman in the purple dress who tried to assault him! In fact, Kia was the woman in the purple dress.
“It’s not my fault!” Dan implores. “You pulled me over! I got up anyway, but why should I listen to you?”
Kia frowns. “You talk back to me one more time, and you’re dead!” she threatens.
Dan flinches, and asks, “Um, aren’t you going to drive me there or let me ride the monorail?”
“Of course not! Do you think my job is to provide convenient rides for children? No. It’s to be a nurse. And there’s only one nurse’s office, and only one nurse. So it doesn’t matter how far away you are, because you’re still walking with me.”
It’s somewhat ironic that a nurse would injure her own patients. But Nehalym is Nehalym, right? Don’t judge a book by its cover, Dan thinks. ‘Same thing for women.

Chapter 9: Both Getting Arrested!
While Dan is walking, he tries to be extremely cautious. In his mind, Nehalym has a bad reputation.
But on the sidewalks, he sees the most unhappy, desperate people he ever sees in his entire life. Those people are young adult couples, but they seem to be terribly mismatched.
There is a woman walking with a man with a beard that drags on the concrete.
Another woman and a man that has horns in his…mouth?
This time, there is an old lady walking by with a man in a wheelchair.
And a woman with an…old-man who looks like a Killer?
Although this’s the first time Dan ever notices this, the sight astonishes him. He sees not one single car, not one single bike, not one single motorcycle. Everyone in the streets of Nehalym is a pedestrian! Nobody seems to own any personal motor-vehicle. Dan doesn’t know whether this is good or bad, but the dictator might be forcing people to walk so they take a long time and tire out.
Kia and Dan have walked a very long distance, but there’s one of natural life-forms that he doesn’t see: animals. There’re no animals in Nehalym. That dictator must be really mean!
After roughly an hour-and-a-half of “useless” walking, Dan becomes extremely thirsty. He pleads, “May I have some water?”
“Eh…” Kia replies, “no.”
“But I’m dehydrated!” Dan says.
“We’re almost there,” Kia reassures Dan.
“Where? Some dumb shank-”
“Shut up! You’re going to get yourself arrested!”
“But, there’s no police in Nehalym.”
“How did you know that?”
Dan is confused. It’s obvious, he knew. “Um,” Dan guesses, “I don’t see any police around here. It seems like the old-man-Killers are the police. Yet they’re not really police, since they’re unethical.”
“Dan! How dare you call our hard-working Killers unethical?”
Dan scoffs, and replies nonchalant, “Huh. ‘Hard-working,’ you say? I don’t think it takes much effort to kill somebody. You could just get out a gu-”
“Dan! Don’t talk like that. And it doesn’t work that way. Killers do work hard, but not the way you think. It’s uh, well for a classified reason.”
That doesn’t make much sense to Dan.
He enters the nurse’s office as Kia directed, but the room is dark and gloomy. There’re no patients, no counters, and no advertising brochures. There’s only one door, cast in the shadows at the back of the room. This doesn’t seem like a medical center at all.
Dan looks behind him, but Kia is nowhere in sight anymore. He realizes this is a total trick!
He catches a glimpse of a person sitting on a bench, wrapped around and around, from head to toe, in worn heavy-duty rope. As he walks farther into the room, he can see rows and rows of people tied up, all sitting on pews.
“What the…” Dan murmurs. “Wait a second, this ain’t a nurse’s office. It’s a-”
“Jail,” someone completes Dan’s sentence. Who just said that?
“Uh…” Dan hesitates. “Who…um…”
The person who finished Dan’s sentence giggles. “That was me,” Nathan says. He sits on the first row, third from the right.
“Nathan?” Dan exclaims. His eyes narrow. “What sort of a joke is this?”
“Oh, this isn’t no joke,” Nathan replies. “No need to explain. I called the Rescue Squad-”
“They have rescue squads here? I didn’t know that,” Dan comments.
“Shh! So the Rescue Squad, the guy on the other end… Never mind. I just accidentally fell and I called for Kia.”
“Yolo, we’d better tell the people about this,” Dan announces in a matter-of-fact manner.
Nathan lacks knowledge of American teenage slang, so he has no idea what “yolo” is. But that doesn’t matter, because Dan ran off.

Chapter 10: The Great Escape!
When Nathan notices Dan’s disappearance, he looks around. He sees two possible outlets: the door that you enter and exit the prison, and the door at the back. He squints, and he figures that door in the shadows is wrapped in caution tape that says, “GUARDS ONLY.” Nathan shouts, “Dan, we really shouldn’t be doing this!”
Dan looks around. He’s in the guards-only room, which is an administration control room. He notices a switch that says, “Emergency Rope Release.”
Nathan is still sitting on the long bench, but he suddenly forgets he’s tied up in rope. He tries to get Dan, but he instantly trips over and splats face-first on the floor. The rest of the tied-up prisoners laugh hysterically.
Someone yells a command. The prisoners turn around, and see a guard dressed in a gray suit. “What’s so funny?”
The crowd of jail-people remains silent.
“Well,” the guard tells everyone in a vain fashion, “if there’s nothing funny, then I shall return to my Jail Watch Duty.” He turns to a girl. “Azalea, keep an eye on the prisoner who just came in.”
Back in the Guards’ Administration Room, Dan flicks the switch. The alarm starts blaring, and prisoners who’d been tied in ropes are released. “Hey, what’s going on?” the guard asks angrily.
All the former-prisoners start running in chaos, and a few of them start cheering. The jail fills up with pandemonium.
The guard grunts as he opens the door to the guards-only room. AHA! Dan gets caught!

Chapter 11: Great Confusion!
Helix is about to enter Kia’s building, and like everyone, he thinks it’s a nurse’s office. The Killer, who handcuffed him, dragged him all the way over here. The Killer knocks on the door, and starts speaking, “Sir, we’ve got this dude named Helix who tripped me over and pulled my shoe off. Officer? Hello?”
Helix is confused. The Killer caught him for misbehaving, and now the Killer dragged him to a nurse’s office? Something fishy must be going on.
Both the Killer and Helix hear loud noises coming from inside the door. Helix asks politely, “Why’d you make me go to a nurse’s office? This nurse’s office doesn’t have any windows, and is has very loud patients.”
The Killer didn’t answer until a few seconds later. He replies, startled, “Oh! Um…uh… Oh, yes. You’ll see, once we go in.”
Even though this’s the first occasion a Killer ever talked to anyone nicely, Helix keeps asking questions. “How can we be sure it’s not someplace that just has a sign that says-”
“Look,” the Killer lectures. “Listen to me. You don’t want to get punished again, do you? I tell you that this ‘Kia nurse thing’ is completely true. I’ll even prove it.” The Killer opens the door.
“Hey!” a five-year-old prisoner squeals. “The door is open! We’re free!”
Helix gapes wide-eyed at the commotion. Here he is, expecting a “Killer” to bring him to a “nurse’s office,” and being greeted with escaping prisoners.
The prisoners run straight out the door. The door is only about eight feet high, so the people pile up quickly, and end up blocking the door. Ex-prisoners are literally pouring out of the jail!

Chapter 12: Famously Infamous!
If there’s a crowd of people, and you’re just like everyone else, it’s hard to pick you out since you blend in. That’s what Dan did to escape the jail-building.
Dan walks all the way down to his house, and it’s time for dinner already. Nehalym also has rules for male and female eating times, but Dan arrives home roughly five minutes within the parameters.
“Wow,” Dan’s mother exclaims. “What were you doing out there? It’s time for dinner. A few more minutes, and you’d break the rules! Let’s start eating now.”
“Hey Clara,” Dan’s father tells Dan’s mom, “you might want to check this out.” Dan’s dad is watching the News Channel on the family Samsung Television. Dan turns his head to the TV.
A news reporter is talking into a microphone. He announces, “Breaking news tonight! We’ve recently discovered that two-thousand prisoners have escaped from the local jail. One-thousand, three-hundred of which are bank-robbers. Jail Watch Guard, Bob Peterson, reports that a young boy named Daniel Slap-Jack may have caused all this fury with a flick of a switch in the control panel…”
Dan’s mom and dad exchange looks. Finally, Dad assumes, “Dan didn’t do this. He would never do anything like this. I seriously doubt if he even was arrested!”
Dan pipes up, and starts telling the truth a little too quickly, “No, I wasn’t ‘arrested’! I got hurt, and the nurse was supposed to bring me to the nurse’s place, but it was just a jail in disguise, and there were tons of people who weren’t supposed to be prisoners like my…um…future friend Nathan and Helix Supern-”
“Dan,” Mom interrupts politely, “you might want to explain more slowly. So start from the beginning: how did you end up at the jail?”
Dan tells his mom and dad all about what the Killers did, and how he swam up on the shore. He even describes the under-construction-building-or-something on the island next to Nehalym, as if it was something suspicious. He explains how calling the nurse’s name, “Kia,” is a complete hoax. The nurse’s office is just a disguised prison for innocent children. And, of course, how he released the prisoners for their own good.
“Whoa, Dan,” Dad remarks, amazed. “But I guess it’s not your fault. You just didn’t know that three-quarters of them were bank-robbers, did you, son?”
Dan scoffs, and answers, “Yeah, but it’s really THEIR fault. They made their banks ROBBABLE, so no wonder just about anyone can get away with hoards of money.”
Mom realizes an important fact. “So that might be why the country’s in a financial crisis! You’re a smart kid.”
Dan’s father resumes watching TV again. The news-reporter is still talking, “…in the past two hours, more than three banks have been robbed. We aren’t yet sure about whether Dan caused these incidents, but one thing’s for sure. Another infringement of the rules, and he’s dead!”
Dad chortles. Not at the threat of a death penalty, that’s for sure. He laughs at the three banks robbed in a mere two hours. “These banks are vulnerable, all right,” he retorts.
Mom glances at the clock. “Oh no!” she exclaims. “We haven’t eaten dinner yet! We’re going to get in big trouble with the government.”
Right at that exact moment, the door to the family’s home busts open. Chubby men wearing rubbery, yellow Hazmat suits walk into the house, holstering laser-blasters. Radio noises fill the room, and distorted voices coming through walkie-talkies are inaudible.
“We’re the Killers’ grandsons,” one Hazmat suit-wearing man says in a crackly voice. “But that’s not what we’re here for. That guy-” He points at Dan. “-didn’t eat dinner between six o’clock PM and seven o’clock PM. He ought to be executed!”
“Oh, really?” Dan’s mother taunts. “Just get a hold of that clock!” She points at a clock next to the microwave in the kitchen.
“Ha! We ain’t need clocks. We have watches here!” another guy in a suit proves a point. Although that was a false claim, since their watches just ran out of battery right then. They all groan.
The Killers’ grandsons look at the clock. They exchange confused looks. One of them chimes in, “Um, well we made a mistake. Sorry. Guess you still have a couple of minutes. Bye.” The Killers’ grandsons straighten up their yellow Hazmat suits, and exit the house, slamming the door.
Dan’s mom smiles. “I changed the clock,” she whispers into Dan’s ear.

Chapter 13: What’s It Like To Be A Prankster?
The under-construction structure on the nearby island is completed. To the average eye, it seems just like a century-old lighthouse. But this “lighthouse” isn’t used for any of those purposes at all. It’s a classified base.
Jim Kloss is the dictator of Nehalym. Everyone calls him “Kloss the Boss” or “Boss Kloss.” He’s a short man for a dictator, and he has an extremely round stomach. He has a large, brown mustache with a small beard on his pointy chin. He’s bald, so he wears a toupee even though it’s useless for a national ruler.
To the average eye, Boss Kloss looks like an average business-man. Just a little plumper.
Boss Kloss decides to hire a new helper. The helper arrives in the early morning on Sunday.
“Okay, let me introduce you to our new top-secret base,” Boss Kloss tells the new politician named Gates Bill, or G.B. They’re standing on the nearby island.
“Okay,” G.B. says, tentatively, “so let me get this straight. This is our top-secret base?”
“Yup,” Boss Kloss replies proudly. He and G.B. walk down the sidewalk as they talk. To the average eye, they look like tourists seeing the new tower. “I put the rock on the roof.”
“The…rock? Why’re you so proud of putting a rock on a tippy-cracker?”
“I usually just lounge around on the sofa playing video games. There’s really not much to do being the ruler of a whole entire country. I’m very proud of my most recent work.”
“Putting a rock on the roof doesn’t take much work. Plus, I’m pretty sure the secret base has an elevator.”
“I know, it seems easy. To you, it is. To me, it’s the most labor I’ve ever done.”
“Hey! That’s why you’re so fat!”
“Hey, you, we can call the cops.”
“I thought they’re called ‘Killers’.”
“Fat sat mat catted the get rat!”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. Are you stupid?”
Stunned by the rude statement, Boss Kloss fires G.B. His last words toward G.B. are, “It does make sense, you dumbhead!”
G.B. walks away quietly, shaking his head. The way Jim Kloss acts! How childish, inappropriate, mean, and unsensible! G.B. is fired.
One day later, Boss Kloss finds another person qualified to be his companion. Her name is Macy Marse. Boss Kloss is delighted, and he does his introductory sentence: “Let me introduce you to our new top-secret base.”
“That old thug?” Macy wonders in dismay. Then she became angry. “You know, I’d rather not work at a smugly, old tower. That’s it. I resign.”
Boss Kloss feels shocked again, and tries to persuade Macy, “Please, trust me. That tower is actually futuristic and modern on the inside.”
“I don’t trust someone with so much power,” Macy explains while looking at her newly-manicured fingernails. “I don’t want to work with a fat guy like you.” She walks away, clattering the ground with every step of her high-heels. She quit.
Two days later, Boss Kloss recruits a smart-looking geek with huge eyeglasses. Boss Kloss had already been through two people who didn’t seem to work with him. But this one seems so smart, he might be able to help Boss Kloss with their new plan.
This time, the geek introduces himself first, “Hi, my name’s Jamie Grimm. Other people call me ‘Freaky-Deekie’, but just call me Jamie.”
Boss Kloss cracks up with laughter. He thinks such a nickname like “Freaky-Deekie” is ridiculous.
Jamie frowns. Luckily, he doesn’t have the short attention-span of Macy, who quit immediately. Jamie folds his arms and snickers. “Look,” he tells Boss Kloss. “Don’t be immature. I’m here to work for you, but I don’t have that much goodwill to put up with you.”
“Okay,” Boss Kloss says. “Let’s go on an inside tour of out new base.” The two men rush into the old-looking tower.
Now it’s Wednesday, and Dan follows his usual morning routine. He gets up, goes to the restroom, dresses up, eats breakfast, packs up his backpack, and gets in the car with his mom to go to school.
Little did he know that there’re only three people at school, including him. They’re both standing in the schoolyard, chatting.
Dan notices one of them is Helix, but the other one is a Goth-Girl he doesn’t know. Dan greets Helix, but he doesn’t answer. They just keep talking. Dan taps Helix’s shoulder, and he arrogantly groans, “WHAT?”
“Um,” Dan starts, “is this a holiday or something?”
“Yup. It’s the dictator’s birthday,” Helix informs. “Our parents didn’t know. They just dropped us off here.”
Dan turns around, but his mother’s car already drove off. He’s trapped until three o’clock! “Did anyone bring a cell-phone?” Dan asks.
“Nope,” both Helix and the girl say answer in unison.
“Okay,” Dan’s mouth forms into a sly grin. “Here’s what we should do. We’re not going home…” The trio huddles together and discusses a secret spy-plan.
The three kids arrive near a landfill. Soon, Helix starts digging around in a trash-can. “Nope, not here,” he murmurs.
“What’re you doing?” Dan interjects. “Aren’t we supposed to get to the island, not look in trash-cans?”
Helix trots over to a dark-green, roof-shaped dumpster. He digs around in the great stash of trash. The trash makes loud CLANK-ing noises in the dumpster.
“Dude,” the Goth-Girl warns. “The Killers might come get us.”
Helix simply ignores the warning.
Suddenly, Dan and Goth-Girl dash up to the dumpster and close the lid on top of Helix’s hands.
“Yeeeoww!” Helix howls in pain. “What is your problem?”
“That’s what you get for wasting time messing around with rubbish,” Dan explains. “Now follow our plan. We have to get to the island.”
Helix sighs, and lifts the dumpster lid to take his arms out. But one of his hands contains the exact item he was looking for. He stuffs it in his pocket, and starts walking just like Goth-Girl and Dan.
“Oh, no,” Dan exclaims as he starts walking away. “The Killers have seen us! Quick! To the walls!”
“Um, there are no walls,” Goth-Girl says obviously. “Unless you’re talking about the side of the dumpster.”

Chapter 14: The Monorail Ticket!
A Killer walks out of an operating room carrying a bottle of mineral water. He gazes around, seemingly looking for mischievous kids. His eyes fixate on Helix, Dan, and the Goth-Girl. “What were you just doing?”
“Nothing,” Dan pipes up. “We were just walking around, that’s all.”
“Ha,” the Killer retorts sarcastically, “what were you doing by that dumpster?”
Dan frowns. “We didn’t take anything. And that’s final.”
The Killer makes a smug face, and walks back to the operating room. As he walks there, he shouts, “I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” with his back turned.
“HELIX!” Dan yelps at Helix’s face. “You nearly got us in trouble! What’s with your obsession with trash?”
Helix sags his face down. “Sorry. But we have to ride the monorail to get to the island!”
Goth-Girl frowns, and remarks, “Yeah, without a map or GPS.”
Helix simply takes a map out of his pocket and hands it to Goth-Girl. It’s a standard green, yellow, and white road map. The monorail is marked with a dark-gray line. “THIS was what I was looking for in the dumpster.”
“Really? I guess we shouldn’t have made assumptions of you messing about, then. I’m a fan of dark colors, but this map still works fine,” Goth-Girl says.
The monorail station has been newly painted a vibrant shade of silver. The benches have cross-hatched surfaces just like those types of metal fences. When Dan, Goth-Girl, and Helix arrive at the station, they’re already out of breath.
“Let’s…sit…down…” Dan tells the others, breathing heavily.
Goth-Girl closes her eyes halfway, and replies, “We need tickets to ride, moron.” She folds her arms, but then she catches a glimpse of something on the train-tracks. “Hey, get those tickets down there.” She points to slips of paper on the train-tracks.
Dan kneels down on the edge of the platform. He can’t reach the tickets on the track.
“Just walk onto the track!” Goth-Girl shouts.
“You know,” Dan starts, “I think this train goes a lot faster than you thi-”
The monorail shoots past Dan. He dodges away just in time. The monorail coasts to a stop, its brakes making a continuous noise of descending pitch. A huge gust of air blasts at Dan’s face. So hard that he falls over on his buttocks.
“Hey!” Goth-Girl says. “I didn’t even see the train pass by. I blinked, and then it’s just right there making a screeching sound.”
“Free ride!” the conductor calls through the closed monorail window. His voice sounds muffled from outside. The monorail’s automatic-sliding-doors open, and he shouts, “Free ride!” again.
Shortly after the trio enters the monorail, to doors slam shut like two razor-sharp-knife-blades slicing the air in half. Helix shakes his head and mumbles, “They should seriously consider their safety.”

Chapter 15: The Secret Tower!
Ten-or-so seconds later, the trio arrives on the beach that’s next to the island with the tower. “This is the beach,” Dan explains. “It has a land-bridge under shallow water that connects to that small island¬¬-” He points to the island with the tower on it. “-with an old-looking tower built on it.”
The Goth-Girl assumes, “Well, it just looks like a naturally formed island. That tower could be an old landmark. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is,” Dan pauses mid-sentence, “that tower was under construction the last time I saw it.”
“So?” Goth-Girl says. “People build old-looking things in modern times.”
“It has no windows! People might want to not be seen. Modern towers have windows all over them. And why would they make it look like a lighthouse? Must be a secret spy base or something,” Dan analyzes.
“So?”
“Why would they build a tower on an island next to Nehalym instead of the mainland? Maybe it’s a remote military base. Just skinnier. And no tanks. Or missile-launchers.”
“If I tried to think of a word other than ‘so,’ I wouldn’t be able to do it. So what?”
“You don’t think it’s a big deal?”
“Nope. At first I thought I was supposed to buy a bikini from the swimwear shop, but no.”
Dan and Helix chortle.
Helix chimes in, “Jokes aside, but that island looks pretty deserted.” He points at the tower. “It’s just you, me, and you-” He gestures his hand at the other two kids. “-infiltrating some old tower, wide out in the open, on a tiny island. Man, there won’t even be a security camera!”
“No security cameras,” Dan repeats. “That’s it!” He runs off the shore and gets his lower-legs and shoes wet. The water above the land-bridge is only knee-level-high. Goth-Girl and Helix follow along, wading through the water flowing above the land-bridge.
The water is clear-ish, with an even hint of aqua. The land bridge is a road-like path connecting the two Nehalymian islands. The ocean-floor around the land bridge is about three feet deeper than the surface of the land-bridge. As for Global Warming, the land bridge used to be an actual path above land. But after the sea-levels have risen, shallow water fills over the land-bridge. Ocean waves erode and weather the land-bridge, so it shrank to barely a foot wide over thousands of years. The land-bridge used to be almost as wide as the land-bridge connecting Alaska and Russia, and even the puny island with the tower on it used to be bigger than Australia, millions of years ago.
Just as Dan, the leader while walking across the water-covered land-bridge, steps on the island, the tower seems to have grown larger. And there’s something peculiar about the “lighthouse” door…
Aha! The door to the old-looking tower. It opens like an elevator door. Dan is the first person to walk into the tower. It doesn’t look as skinny inside as it does outside. But most strange of all, the floor is made of glass. The door-frame is lined with a Neodymium magnet. Dan doesn’t know about chemistry so, of course, he doesn’t notice the technology in the doorway.
Dan casually paces around the tower, and notices stairs in the corner. No-wait, it’s a rugged ramp. No-wait, it’s an escalator. No-wait, it’s some sort of conveyor belt. The conveyor belt is much quieter than any escalator he’d seen in America. The conveyor leading upstairs, Dan wonders how any human can go up there on such a steep incline.
Goth-Girl and Helix run through the doorway together, but the map pulverizes into microscopic bits. She gasps.
“Huh,” Helix mumbles. He takes a BitCoin Wallet out of his pocket, and holds it out at the door-magnet. It vaporizes and fine dust snows down on him. “Uh…”
“BitCoin Wallet?” Goth-Girl exclaims. She saw Helix holding a dollar-bill-like note with the “B” symbol printed on it, right before it disintegrated. “HELIX!” she shouts. “You know we can’t use Internet money, right? Like BitCoins? It’s even worse now that you got it vaporized. You just wasted…um-”
“-more than a thousand BitCoins,” responds Helix.
Suddenly, a computerized female voice says in a flat tone, “Any non-human foreign objects other than clothing and shoes will be disintergenerated.”
Goth-Girl feels her hair. She used to have a headband, but now it’s not there. She shrugs as she nods, and remarks, “Not bad technology for a crappy country.”
The female computerized voice continues talking, “Analyzing object: BitCoin Note. Sending data to Dictator.”
“You darn freak!” Goth-Girl screams at Helix’s face. Her mouth opens wide and her eyebrows point down like she’s angry. “You just pulverized a BitCoin Wallet, something that’s illegal. You-”
Upstairs, Boss Kloss and Jamie Grimm are discussing a secret plan. They’re in their secret lab, covered in half a meter of sound insulation and thirteen authentication devices, not to mention digital key-locks and several more Neodymium magnetic doorways.
I’d say that’s pretty much useless when the sound insulation is already enough protection. They’re just talking, that’s all. It’s not like they’re testing bullet-blasters or anything. Even if they do test bullet-blasters, the amount of walls would bounce the bullets straight back, destroying the whole purpose of the inventions.
The sound insulation is to prevent the voice of the dictator and his helper from leaking out. There’re microphones and imaging devices to make sounds coming from the outside able to be heard inside, but not vice versa.

Chapter 16: The Bathroom Emergency!
“Now this is the bathroom,” Boss Kloss announces as he pushes open the clear-glass bathroom door in their secret base. “This toilet will provide the smelliest experience for you, Jamie…”
He glances at Jamie. But Jamie’s emotion isn’t what Boss Kloss expects, Boss Kloss thinks Jamie would be dazed by this. Instead, Jamie feels disgusted.
Anyway, Boss Kloss continues, “This bathroom has absolutely no privacy due to the clear door, and zero ventilation for defecation fumes. It’s the most luxurious flushing system, with eight-thousand pounds of force, enough to flush down an entire human posterior. Now isn’t that nice, Jamie?”
Jamie sighs. He answers, “Being the dictator’s sidekick, I officially decline this offer. This toilet sucks. Look! It’s even made out of splinter-y wood.”
“So? Look at that sink. As the dictator of Nehalym, I provide the top-secret base the most clean and bacteria-free sink.”
Jamie looks at the sink. There is slime drooping all over the sink. It’s even black, which makes it look even dirtier. “Such a lie,” he says sarcastically.
“Oh, but look at the bathtub. It fills up in five seconds, while most bathtubs in America take longer than thirty seconds to fill. Just like fast smartphone charge-times, this bathtub is a great convenience.”
“Fine.” Jamie walks up to the bathtub, staining his shoes on the poop-covered rug. Before he can even turn the water-faucet halfway, water blasts at the floor of the bathtub and shoots back up at Jamie, knocking off his glasses.
The water bounces off the sink mirror at a perfect angle, splashing the sink faucets. The sink faucets release skunk spray, which lands on the toilet-flushing-lever, affecting the smell of the bathroom, which already stinks.
“BEEP! BEEP!” an electronic alarm sounds.
“Hold on, I think I got a message,” Boss Kloss closes the bathroom door. He walks over to his circular workbench, housing several administrative electronic gadgets. Jamie follows up to check the computer after he puts his eyeglasses back on.
The bathroom pressure increases.
“Report,” Boss Kloss commands the computer.
A standard computerized female voice returns, “Systems have detected a BitCoin Wallet brought in by a ten-year-old male.”
The toilet continuously flushes.
“How should we punish him?” Jamie asks the computer.
“Standard Nehalym punishments include Baseball-bat-bashing, hose blasting-”
“No, no, no,” Jamie corrects. “A boy infiltrated our top-secret base. He also brought a BitCoin Wallet, which contains how much?”
“One-thousand, two-hundred BitCoins,” the computer replies happily.
“Oh, man,” Boss Kloss interjects. “Why don’t we just kick him out of this tower?”
The bathroom sink explodes.
The computer beeps again. “Systems have also detected a young female shouting at the boy who brought the BitCoins. The female is categorized as a lunatic, according to the past two minutes of behavior.”
A few seconds later, back at the ground-level floor, a loudspeaker instructs, “Helix Supernova and Amberlyn McKay, please exit this building immediately, otherwise we’ll literally ‘kick’ you out.”
“Wait,” Dan wonders, “Goth-Girl’s name is Amberlyn McKay?”
“Yup,” replies Amberlyn. She turns to Helix, “Sorry for shouting at you. It’s not our fault. We shouldn’t be in here anyway.”
Back in the secret lab, the toilet flushes down most of the oxygen supply.
The trio: Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn all walk out of the tower together, their faces glum and their shoulders sagging. And the doors close behind them.
Back in the secret lab, Boss Kloss checks the imaging sensors. The trio is nowhere to be seen. “All right, Jamie, those kids are out of here. Shall we lock the doors?”
The bathtub overflows.
“With pleasure,” Jamie agrees. He presses the lock button, which causes miniscule latches to lock the door that the trio walked out of.
Dan glances backward, just in time to see the latches lock the door. Now the three children are standing on the island again.
Back in the secret base, the faucet knobs implode on themselves. Brown smoke rises from the toilet. The toilet blows up, piercing wood into the walls. The bathtub drain-rim falls into the drainpipe. The bath-towels start retching under the negative air pressure. The electrical wires start wriggling out of their restraints.
Jamie hears cracking glass. He taps Boss Kloss on the shoulder, and they both turn around, astonished to see what’s happening to the bathroom.
Boss Kloss briskly turns away and picks up his smartphone from the workbench. “We’d better get this repaired.” He starts dialing the number for the Plumbers. Ironically, Boss Kloss owns the plumbing business, so he’s calling his own workers for help.
“Well hurry!” Jamie reminds him.
“Hello?” Boss Kloss speaks into the phone. “We have a bathroom emergency here.”
A plumber calling from the other side interrogates, “What kind of emergency? Buttock cramp? Pipe clogged of chest hair?”
“None of that,” Boss Kloss replies. “Our bathroom is…um…uh…let’s just say, ‘exploding’.”
“An exploding bathroom? Our plumbing business doesn’t deal with that kind of stuff. A plumber’s job is to fix pipes and such. If your bathroom exploded, there’re no pipes to fix.”
“Oh! You’re such a rat tat catted the slap met!”
“Sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. Someone else called me, so I’ve got to go!” The plumber hangs up on the phone call.
The dial-tone beeps on Boss Kloss’s side of the phone. “Hey! You can’t just-” Boss Kloss doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because the bathroom causes a fire emergency.
The smoke detector starts blaring. Actually, there’re more than ten smoke detectors per floor in the tower, so the noise gradually gets louder as more smoke detectors alarm-off.
“Get out!” Jamie shouts.
Boss Kloss runs swiftly up to Jamie, which, by the way, is probably the first time he even runs.
“I know!” Boss Kloss shakes Jamie’s body with his hands. “Why’d you have to make such a big deal of that?”
Jamie lightly jogs on his tiptoes out of the top-secret tower. Boss Kloss follows along, but due to his bulk, he stumbles like a rolling tumbleweed on the conveyor belt.
Boss Kloss attempts to reverse the conveyor belt, but fails to reach the lever. If the dictator owns such high-technology, why would he still use a lever anyway? Boss Kloss spins around, brushing against the glass panels.
“Warning. Bathroom on top floor may self-destruct at any moment. Please proceed with caution,” the female voice announces.
Uh-oh!
Boss Kloss tries to escape the tower, but he remembers that he locked the doors. Aww, man!
Basically what you just read happens in reverse motion. Boss Kloss has trouble getting up the conveyor belt, trips over, and goes back upstairs. He unlocks the door, which is just a one-inch red button, and the bathroom explodes right at that instant.
“Aaaaagh!” Boss Kloss screams as he falls off the tower. Luckily, he lands in the water. Not by the land-bridge, in the deep side.
With a big KABLOOSH! Boss Kloss bobs back up on the surface of the sea. Fat is less dense than water, so he has an easy time swimming to shore.

Chapter 16: The Puberty Surgery!
Back on the island, Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn get drenched in the water. Dan swims back to the mainland quickly, while the two others struggle to stay afloat.
Suddenly, a loudspeaker tied to a pole on the beach says in a raspy voice, “All children from ages ten to twelve, report to the HOOR for your Puberty ID Replacement.”
Helix and Amberlyn waddle up on the beach, their hair dripping and soaked. They start walking toward the monorail without saying a word.
Dan doesn’t go so fast. “Hey, hey, hey!” he says with his hands cupped around his mouth.
Helix and Amberlyn turn around. “What do you want?” Amberlyn releases her evil again. “YOU’VE MADE SOME SORT OF FAULTY PLAN, SOMETHING THAT BLEW UP OUR DESTINATION, AND NOW YOU…”
Dan runs up to Amberlyn and pushes her down on the sand. Dust flies up into the air. “Hey, Nehalym is already as corrupted as it is! That plan was to infiltrate the tower to apprehend the dictator.”
Helix argues, “Look. I have more experience than you do. I was born in Nehalym. The dictator isn’t like Adolf Hitler. He just sits around playing video games.”
“Whatever you say,” Dan agrees reluctantly. “Now what about the puberty what-you-call-it?”
Fifteen minutes later, Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn are tapping their feet, waiting in an extremely long line, a line full of every ten, eleven, and twelve-year-old in the country.
From far back, the long line looks like a casual setup for “Win Money” sweepstakes.
The three kids had joined the line after they saw the government setting up the Puberty ID Replacement Booth right here on the beach.
The Puberty ID Replacement Booth, or PIR Booth, is well…a booth. The booth is a worn-out, white, Polyethylene folding-table. There’s a big paper sign hung on the edge of the table that reads, “Ages Ten-Twelve: PIRB.”
Dan and the others walk forward. They’re almost at the front of the line now. Despite being extremely long, the line moves as fast as a bicycle chain!
“Excuse me, excuse me,” Nathan whispers. He joins the line to get his PIR. “Dan!” he shouts. Dan is already in the front of the line, so he can’t hear.
Nathan looks across the line, and everyone wears an orange ID band around their left wrist. All except one. Dan!
“DAN!” Nathan shouts.
Dan turns around and squints his eyes. “Nathan?”
“DAN!” Nathan repeats.
“What?” asks Dan.
“DAN! They’re going to kill you! DAN!”
“Huh?”
“Don’t eat that! NO!”
“Weird.” Dan has no clue about what he’s supposed to ‘eat.’ Eat? Why? What?
Dan is second place in line, so he cocks his head, curious to find out what the PIR does. He sees a blond girl holding out her forearm. A guy sitting on a chair behind the PIR Booth rips a piece of cardstock paper off her wrist, and sticks a new one on. Then the blond girl walks away as if nothing happened.
Now Dan stands directly in front of the PIR Booth. He decides to be skeptical and ask, “What’s this for?”
“Oh,” the person at the PIR Booth explains, “the Puberty ID Replacement is for young adolescents. We replace your current ID tag with an updated ID tag that records reproductive health.”
Dan nods, trying to seem socially normal. But he doesn’t have an ID tag.
The PIR person reaches out to Dan’s arm, but Dan isn’t wearing a piece of cardstock. The PIR man gasps.
He produces a walkie-talkie from his pocket, and says in a frozen tone, “Jim Kloss, come in, do you read me?”
The walkie-talkie flares an inaudible voice.
“Jim Kloss, I’ve got a rouge agent here named Daniel Slap-Jack. Ten-year-old boy, enters Nehalym illegally in classified!” the PIR man reports.
“What?” Dan asks, both confused and angry.
The PIR man chuckles, and explains, “Everyone in Nehalym needs to wear an ID band around their wrists. That identifies them as a Nehalym citizen.”
“Then how’d you know my name?” Dan asks.
The PIR man laughs again. “I don’t need an identifier to know who you are. You’re the bloke who broke into the jail and released all the prisoners! Don’t you know how many banks have been robbed?”
“Phhhttt! That’s your fault, since the banks have zero security.”
“But that’s not the point. The point is, you’re a felon. We require you, and I presume your family, to have ID’s, but you and them didn’t, did they? Did you? Nope.”
The PIR person grabs a bottle of white powder and pushes it toward Dan on the table. “Eat this. Just chuck it down,” the PIR guy says scantily.
Dan remembers what Nathan said. “DON’T EAT THAT!” echoes through his head. It must be poison, he thinks.
“HEY-YAH!” Dan shrieks as he kicks the PIR booth table down. But he doesn’t make a run for it.
Dan tries to prove to the PIR person that he won’t fall for “eat this” pranks. He does that by doing Karate. Or what he thinks is Karate. He does an unbalanced kick and falls over. The people in the front of the PIR line chortle.
Dan stands back up, and prepares to punch. “HEE-YAW!” he mimics what professional Karate fighters yell. The people waiting in line all scoff again. Dan actually doesn’t know anything about Karate. In fact, the fake Karate makes him look like a wimp.
“Yah-hey…” Dan says in a quieter voice as he pretends to do a head-butt. “No, I mean hey-yah!” He stops talking when the line of people laughs again. “Never mind.” Dan dashes off.
After the old top-secret lab in the tower was demolished, Jamie and Boss Kloss made use of the lower levels as their new secret lab. This time, of course, it didn’t include a ridiculous bathroom invention.
Boss Kloss has installed a very, very heavy, solid wood entrance-door to the secret lab. The installation didn’t take much time because the solid wood door is a slab of birch wood cut from an old tree. And they do have chainsaws in Nehalym.
“Jim?” Jamie calls as he knocks on the solid, wooden door of Boss Kloss’s new secret lab.
Boss Kloss is slouching on his couch, playing a video game, fiddling his thumbs like crazy. The name of the video game is Grand Theft Auto V.
“Jim?” Jamie says again. Instead of barging into the new secret lab, he decides to be polite and ask to come in.
Boss Kloss has set the volume of the game console up to one-hundred percent per Decibel, so he can’t hear Jamie calling him. Boss Kloss presses the yellow button on his game controller. His virtual game character punches his own virtual car.
Jamie pushes opens the door. It’s much heavier than he thinks. He exerts his whole body’s force to push the door sideways. Right as he walks into the secret lab, the door slams shut again.
Jamie walks up in front of Boss Kloss, who’s now eating a pound-bag of potato-chips. “Hey, you’re the dictator of this country, right?” Jamie asks rhetorically.
Boss Kloss doesn’t hear. All he hears is the game SFX sound effects. He presses the green button and the red button at the same time, and his virtual character jumps off a cliff.
Jamie instinctively switches off the game. He repeats, “You’re the dictator of this country, right?” Before Boss Kloss can answer, Jamie concludes, “You don’t seem like one. Dictators don’t sit around playing games. They need to take matters into their own hands.”
For the sake of language, Boss Kloss explains in a matter-of-fact manner, “The definition of dictate is to tell people what to do. I tell people what to do, not do it myself.”
“Bad news,” Jamie declares.
“What?” Boss Kloss asks.
Jamie is shocked. “Have you seriously been playing Grand Theft Auto for five hours?”
“Uh, yeah!”
“Well I’ve got news for you, buddy. There’s a kid named Daniel Slap-Jack, and he’s on the loose. You’re the leader of a country. You have power. You’ve got to do something!”
“Fine,” Boss Kloss sighs. He stands up clumsily and walks up to the intercom microphone. The intercom broadcasts important news to people all over Nehalym through loudspeakers. He speaks loudly, “Attention! Go catch that kid!” Then he plops back on the couch and turns on the game console.
“That’s it?” Jamie asks angrily.
“Yup,” Boss Kloss replies. “I’ve done my duty.”
Jamie sighs, disappointed at the now lazy dictator. He starts grunting as he tries to pull the door back open. Jamie takes revenge by pulling the door all the way open ninety degrees, and then letting go harshly. BANG!
“Hey!” Boss Kloss ramparts. “What was that for, you Freaky-Deekie?” He gets up off the couch, but the craggy wooden shed is collapsing already. But as he tries to get back at Jamie, part of the secret lab’s ceiling falls straight down on him.
Dan is still running. He sees a black motorcycle parked next to a skyscraper lobby. This must be the only motorcycle I’ve ever seen in Nehalym, he thinks.
Dan hops on the motorcycle after he’s too tired from running. He looks down, and there’s a kick-starter lever in the foot-grasper. He kicks the lever, and a loud sound fires out from the motorcycle. The engine must be very powerful!
“Hey! Get him!” hundreds of Killers yell angrily. Their eyebrows are very pointy and symmetrical, sort of…robot-like. The Killers stomp their feet and come closer. But very slowly. They’re all holding Uranium Baseball bats.
Before Dan can get the motorbike going, his instinct stops himself. “What’s that abbreviation again?” he wonders, tapping his fingers in quick succession. “Oh yeah! KFC!” He takes a deep breath, and bellows, “KFC! Everyone get far away. Don’t run down the corridor behind me, though!”
Dan turns the right-hand acceleration knob on the motorcycle handlebars. But he gets a bit of wheel-spin skidding, which is a good thing for him. Dust blasts out behind the back tire, and the Killers in front cough and back up. The Killers standing in the second row fall over, leading the Killers to fall backward like a domino-effect.
He rides the motorcycle back to the PIR line, where everyone is running around in random directions. Helix, Nathan, and Amberlyn hop on the back of the motorcycle. It’s good there are covers above the wheels!
Dan shifts his position forward to the edge of the seat so everyone has room. “Be careful,” he reminds them.
Soon, Dan, Amberlyn, Nathan, and Helix are approaching the beach. The same beach with the tower-island next to it.
“Dan, slow down!” Amberlyn orders.
Dan tries to turn the left-hand-handle-knob, but it won’t budge. Now he figures it out. The dictator and his people own this motorcycle. This is a complete prank motorbike. You can’t even de-accelerate!
“Dang it!” Dan whines. “Wait. Friends, I’m going faster.”
“What?” Amberlyn, Helix, and Nathan exclaim in unison.
Dan explains, “This motorcycle can’t slow down. We have to go faster to bust the engine!”
“Bust?” Nathan says. “Dude, destruction isn’t the only way to stop something that’s malfunctioning.”
Dan ignores him. VROOM! The motorcycle goes faster. Amberlyn’s hair gets caught in the wind. VROOM! VROOM! VROOM! Dan turns the acceleration knob. The engine meter points to the number seven, which means seven-thousand engine cycles per minute. It’s very dangerous for a gasoline-powered motorcycle to go that fast.
PJAW! The motorcycle explodes like a fiery inferno. Motorcycle mechanics are flying out in all directions and explode in the gray, cloudy sky. Luckily, nobody’s clothes catch on fire because the motorcycle just plunges into the ocean.
And when I say that Dan is a skillful swimmer, he’s good at swimming above water. He’s not-so-great at holding his breath underwater. But, as I just wrote, Dan can easily swim to the top. And he does.
“Dudes!” Dan shouts. His head is above the water, but none of the other kids’ heads are. His body under the water feels strangely cold. “Morons! Idiots! Retards! Doofuses! Sucke-”
Amberlyn is the first one to get up above the water. She punches Dan’s mouth, but not at full strength.
Dan says, “You know how boys aren’t allowed to hit girls? At least, it’s not polite in my country. But why doesn’t it go the other way around?”
Amberlyn shrugs, Helix and Nathan bobs above the water. Their hair is soaking wet. Helix shakes his head quickly like a dog drying off, and sea-water splashes onto Amberlyn’s face.
Amberlyn doesn’t react. The three other kids look puzzled. Amberlyn explains, “I get that a lot. ‘Dictator made me be a fashion model for a whole week, last month. He made me do it on the beach when it was cold, and dumped soda-pop in my hair if I don’t do it right.”
“Hey!” Nathan announces as he walks backward onto the beach. “Good news! That evil dictator is dead.” He nudges Amberlyn on the shoulder, and she looks up at the tower. The upper level looks like something exploded in it. Which the bathroom did. A large slab of glass and drywall is hanging over the lower level.
“We heard you,” the Killers approach in defensive crouches. Or more like…offensive crouches. They’re holding Bismuth Baseball bats. Although those bats aren’t to be considered for sports use anymore.
Dan whispers to Nathan, and Nathan nods affirmatively. He rushes into the collapsed tower.
Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn run up to the Killers. Dan does a fake Karate combo-move. The Killers in front laugh hard. The head Killer tries to lift the “Baseball” bat, but solid Bismuth is much too heavy. His head slams against the sandy beach, making a big “SPLUNK” noise.
And something very surprising indeed, happens. The Killer’s skull cracks open. Well, it isn’t actually a skull, because it’s made of polycarbonate.
Robots! The “Killers” are android robots!
Dan has an idea. He dashes past the Killers and tries to tiptoe across the land-bridge. The Killers try to chase him down, but they fall into the ocean ad electrocute.
“Hey!” Amberlyn calls. “What’re you doi-”
“I’ll take that,” a Killer declares. He starts grabbing the tank-top that Amberlyn is wearing. “Unauthorized material must be penetrated immediately.”
Helix stares blankly at the Amberlyn, and then looks at the Killer who attempts to destroy her shirt. “Yup,” Helix says. “They’re definitely robots.”
Another Killer glances at Helix. Helix frowns, “Uh…”
“Halt! Who goes there?” that Killer orders coldly.
Helix takes the Killer’s speech literally. He tries to be sassy to make the Killer argue with him uselessly. Helix replies, “Who goes there? Me. I’m standing here. My name is Helix Supernova.”
“I said, ‘HALT, WHO GOES THERE’?” the Killer repeats.
Helix replies sassily again, “I’ve already halted. I’m not moving. I thought you guys had an index of every person in the country. But anyways, ‘name’s Helix Supernova.”
The Killer gasps. Then he yells, “Aaaaagh! WHY, YOU LITTLE-” He pricks Helix in the stomach with his bony index-finger. “WHO GOES HERE?”
Dan arrives on the island, and he tries to enter the collapsed tower. But the door is still intact. And the door is very heavy. Very, very heavy. A much more informative method of describing the door is, “impossible to open.”
Dan yanks on the door, his body shaking back and forth. His hair is also being dragged forwards and backwards because of the air-resistance. “Why this stupid door?” Dan exclaims.
Nathan hears Dan’s voice. But the Killers are blocking his way, so Nathan takes a big leap into the water and tries to swim.
The Killers try to chase Nathan down, but they can’t swim. The density of the water causes the Killers to trip over and fall into the water. Seawater enters the Killers’ mouths, and they electrocute and instantly fail. ZAPPP!
Nathan’s clothes are soaked, and suddenly he feels swimming to the island will be a very daunting task.
Nathan can’t swim very well, so he has to do a tremendous thrusting movement to stay afloat every time he starts sinking. He swims all the way to the east side of the island.
“Dan!” Nathan calls.
“Just help me open the dumb door already!” Dan mutters angrily.
Nathan frowns and shakes his head. “That’s all because we haven’t been working together!”
Dan’s facial expression is still very smug.
“We all need to use teamwork!” Nathan continues. “All this time, we’ve been running around, doing all sorts of different things. We need to work together!”
“So let’s open the stupid door together,” Dan says.
“What’s the purpose of that?”
“NATHAN, JUST HELP ME PULL THAT HEAVY DOOR OPEN, YOU RETARDED RUNNING HORSE!”
A couple of Killers run towards Dan. Dan flinches, and in the blink of an eye, those Killers tumble down in the water. That sparks a light-bulb in his mind.
Dan takes a deep breath, and shouts at the top of his lungs, “HEY! COME AND CATCH ME! I BREAK THE RULES! YOU GUYS ARE SO IDIOTIC! COME ON! RUN TOWARDS ME!”
The Killers don’t budge. They stay put exactly where they are on the beach.
Nathan slaps Dan in the face. “You think they’d fall for that again and again? The Killers learn from their mistakes.”
Amberlyn and Helix distracted the Killers pretty well, and now they’ve gone back to their own homes.
Helix kept sassing the Killers around with the “Halt, who goes there?” statement. Amberlyn tricked the Killers with the good-old “look over there” prank.
Nathan and Dan don’t expect their team of four to split up, but Dan stays stubborn.
“Now that Helix and Amberlyn are gone,” Dan suggests, “why don’t we just open the door to the broken building without them? Surely we can open a door. Just open it. How simple is that?”
Jamie Grimm has about the same physical strength as two children combined, and he was able to open the door. Standing by the fact, Nathan and Dan pull open the door. They take twice as much time as Jamie did, because their shoes keep skidding across the sandy island.
The Killers don’t chase after them this time. If they swim, they electrocute. If they pick up the Baseball bats, they crack their plastic heads open. If they walk on the land-bridge, they fall off, and they electrocute.
Dan is curious to see what’s inside, so he lets go of the door and steps through the doorway.
When Dan ran into the building, Nathan was still holding the door and didn’t expect Dan to let go. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nathan exclaims quickly. He fumbles into the broken tower, nearly tripping over a large slab of concrete. The door slams shut, blowing a strong gust of wind at Nathan and Dan. The gust of wind combined with the force of the door slamming causes a bundle of electronics to fall from the broken ceiling.
“So…he died?” Dan ponders hesitantly. The large slab of concrete isn’t laying flat across the floor. There appears to be something under the slab of concrete, probably human-sized.
“You mean the dictator? He died?” Nathan replies.
“Well duh,” Dan says. “There’s nobody in this room.”
A faint buzz. Then a crackle. A voice speaks, “The identity of a young human male named Daniel Slap-Jack has been detected. He has reportedly infiltrated this tower earlier today. This message will be sent to the Killers.”
Nathan gapes angrily at Dan. Dan thinks Nathan doesn’t blink for thirty seconds straight! “Dude!” Nathan blurts.
“What?” Dan makes an excuse. “Like, it wasn’t my fault. Amberlyn and Helix also infiltrated this place.”
“So you guys are responsible for the dictator getting crushed?” Nathan confirms.
“Um, no,” Dan guesses unsurely. “When Helix, Amberlyn, and I infiltrated the tower, we kept hearing bathroom sounds. So maybe the bathroom blew up or something? Or maybe the door was so heavy it knocked the whole thing over.”
Besides the fact that Dan guessed it, what he said is exactly what happened to the tower that’s now only one story high.
“Why don’t we tell that computerized voice to-” Nathan mimics the talking style of the computerized voice. “-command every one of the Killers to altogether shut down indefinitely!”
Dan walks over the top of the concrete slab. He smirks at Nathan. He walks over to the dictator’s computer screen, and says, “Um…computer! Turn off Killers!”
The computer screen is black and stays that way.
Dan tries again. “Voice command!”
Nothing happens.
Dan repeats, “Enable voice command!”
Nothing happens.
“Turn on computerized voice!”
Nothing happens.
“Turn on the option that lets you talk to the computer!”
Nathan starts to chortle like a choking skunk. “You can’t tell the computer to turn on the feature that lets you tell it to do stuff,” he points out.
“Nathan, do you see that computer in the corner?” Dan asks.
“Yes,” Nathan answers. “It’s still intact.”
“Great! Now I need you to drag the icon.”
Nathan picks up the computer mouse, and literally physically drags it around the monitor’s screen. “That didn’t do anything!”
Dan repeats, “Drag it across the desktop!”
Nathan literally drags his mouse across the broken tabletop. “That didn’t do anything!”
Dan is shocked. “It didn’t? Now here’s the plan: open up the spreadsheet window, and go to the table labeled ‘REFERENCE’.”
Nathan spreads a sheet of newspaper across the physical broken window in the secret lab. Then he takes a long time to look around the broken table for a “REFERENCE” label.
“Nathan?” Dan says. “Are you still there?”
“I couldn’t find it,” Nathan replies.
“Of course you didn’t! You know what? Aaaaagh!”
“But what are we supposed to do?” Dan growls angrily. “Why are we even standing in the dictator’s lab? What’s the point?”
Suddenly, a high-pitched, rumbling noise comes from the door.
“What’s that?” Nathan shudders.
It took a lot of effort to push open the heavy, solid-wooden door. Dan doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to open the door again. Dan scoffs. “Aww, nothing. It’s probably just an old-man with his lawn-mower.”
The noise gets louder.
“Who would mow the lawn next to the dictator’s lab?” Nathan interrogates. “There isn’t even a lawn at all.”
“An old-man, that’s who.” Dan jokes. “I told you, it’s an old-man with his lawn-mower!”
But now there’s another obstacle for Dan. Internet memes pop up that joke about what’s under your underwear.
tldr didn't know there were femcels on this forum jfl
 
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didnt read. sorry.
 
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Terrible.
 
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Dnrd + rope
 
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Image 2024 04 23 192759837
 
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For the last months I have been reading and listening to several articles, jornalistic reports, podcasts, debates and interviews about the incel phenomenon in modern society, and even if the majority of them were highly against incels, I should point out that their argumentations were either wildly imprecise or relatively easy to deconstruct, but whenever there was an incel present they would not be any better at argumentations, which is somewhat understandable for even if one passes trought a very specific situation it does not mean they are some type of professional debater that will be able to defend the views that he has acquired trougth personal experience in a suficiently articulated and convincing argumentative speech. It is my hope that by sharing my reflections on this topic that I may strengthen the arguments of incels so that we can have a more productive participation on the societal debate about incels.



To begin this discussion we should observe that essentialy what inceldom is, is a symptom of the existence of sexual selection in the midst of human societal practices, I would say that to many people this is not so much of a problem to accept, and that would be true, but there is at least one group of people that this becomes somewhat of a taboo when they are beeing completely honest in the discussion, and those are the people that defend egalitarianism, sure what they usualy mean when they are defending egalitarian measures is that they don't agree with how in Captalism a person is arbitrarily born in either a rich family or a poor family and that the one born in a rich family has way more opportunities than someone born in a poor family, and how this makes many poor people work their entire lifes, many times not beeing able to leave poverty and reach the middle class while other people hardly work at all but have the privilege of beeing born into a rich family. On this note it is interesting to notice that what happened in every socialist country when they abolished Captalism and forcifully equalized the economy, instead of money being what people strived for, it became political power, for the political institutions would by then have become more stratified and with the most opportunities centralized around a political hierarchy of the state, and then again inequality emerged for those people with political power and those without, for people that were arbitrarily born into a more influent family and people that were born into a unrecognized family. Of couse, no coutry ever achieved this, but suposing one coutry were able to go trougth socialism without breaking, and were then able to implement comunism were there would be no state and therefore political power would then become equally distributed amongst the people what then would become the thing people would then strive for ? Well I am sure there could be many things but if I were to guess I would conjecture it would be sex, the differences in sexual hierarchies would be intensified creating caste systems where people that were arbitrarily born more attractive would be able to enjoy the status of a higher caste where they would have many opportunities and people that were born very unattractive would live lives as untouchables, members of the lowest caste were no opportunities would ever emerge. In this truly dystopian scenario, but nonetheless plausible for caste systems were very common in India and many other asiatic coutries, obviously there would never be any forced redistribution of sex, for it would be societal sanctioned rape which obviously is a crime ( even though every other forced redistribution of capital, and of political influence were also crimes, although one could argue that they were of different proportions) and therefore we would never really have any egalitarian utopia but only changes of through which medium inequality would arise.



All this talk about socialism and comunism has made me remember Slavoj Zizek’s article about incels (https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-moebius-strip-of-sexual-contracts/) and how he commits the hilarious mathematical error of saying things like "We would thus oppose the logic of universal human rights and the logic of social hierarchy as the two sides of a Moebius strip " when one of the most notorius characteristic of a moebius strip is that it only has one side, it gets even worse when after that he says "and focus on their point of intersection" (« Facepalm » ) what does he mean ??? the whole strip ??? And when you think it couldn't get any worse he begins to talk about turning and reversing shapes which only have one side, it's like some sort of mathematical torture, I know he is a specialist in Hegel and that makes him by consequence a specialist in meaninglessness and in utterly nonsensical things but this is too much. It is nothing more than the screaming example of double standards at play and nothing more, only then could he make a distinction of two things that are the same, that is, there can be no true equality if it doesn't encompass every significant thing in a person's life and that includes "politico-economic life and sex ". Although until here it may seem that I am advocating that there should be some type of enforcement of sexual partners, I would like to express how utterly appalling I think such thing is, and if you think that would be the only way to achieve equality of sexual relationships amongst everyone, then you are agreeing much more with the so called incel black pill than you are openly expressing. It is funny how the incel-normie situation resembles that of the lumpenproletariat - proletariat situation, much like how the proletarian class looks at the bourgeois class with envy, the proletarians at the same time despise and fear the lumpenproletarians for they may envy the proletarians, just like how the proletarians envy the bourgeois, and in doing so they may undermine the legitimacy of the proletarians in the class struggle and in this way prevent the Proletarian revolution.



This takes me to the question of "do incels belive they are entitled to sex ?" To which my answer would be : not any more than anyone else. I mean think for a minute, when an incel goes to declare himself to someone and ultimately gets rejected, the very rejection could only happen either because this person does not want to be in any relantionship ever, or because the person he declared himself to thinks they are entitled to someone better. Incels are not any more guilty, than they are victims of entitlement. And then one would say that there are no more reasons to belive that there should be any asymmetry between dating strategies of males and females, and that would perhaps be the case if humans layed eggs instead of adopting a gestational strategy in which the mother becomes vulnerable, which by itself, was a big problem since humans where nomadic for the greater part of our existence, and therefore there was evolutionary pressure to make females have higher standards whenever they would select their mates, to justify the risk they would have to pass through. Ok, so if this is something that has been this way since times immemorial why is inceldom a contemporary problem ? I would not say it is a contemporary problem, it is a problem which has been greatly amplified in comtemporary times in which everyone is having way fewer children because of the cost, and because it is only in contemporary times that we have seen the dismantlement of what feminists would call the patriarchy, and more conservative people would call the traditional family model and there is also the absolute abandonment of responsibility. Those things contribute first to women beeing more picky as a return to those more primordial instincts in these times in which it has become so expensive to have children, and along with the understanding that stability together with responsibility are in the decline, making women in general choose a much more select group of men, and beeing with any one of them by much less time. Creating a whole mass of women that have not been in many, if any, long therm relationships, a group of men that have relative easy acess to as many relationships as they desire and another group of men that have each time less and less chance of being in a relationship. Returning to the question of entitlement, if there is such a thing as a belief of entitlement to sex that is supported by a whole subsection of the population then we have to look for the origin of this belief, and although many people would go quite trigger happy to say that the source of this entitlement is this forum and others like it, I wouldn't be so sure of this, for a forum only reverberates opinions and narrative images that are already existent in society, this problem, if it exists at all, is much more profound than that, it has to do with the socialization process, and to better illustrate what I mean by saying that I will make reference to a personal experience, not because I think this will prove anything about how everyone behaves, for it is certainly statistically insignificant, nevertheless I belive this report will bring to light the superstructure of values and beliefs present in contemporary society that does much more to foster this entitlement than it does to sever it, that is to say that although statistically insignificant I belive my report not to be meaningfully insignificant.



When I was in High School I remember that in the first of a series of classes about sex education there were phrases profered such as "Since everyone in here will sooner or later have a sexual relationship ..." and "sex is a fundamental part of every healthy lifestyle" and many other like-minded sentences, since in my family I have an uncle that, differently from every other adult in my family, was not married and I remember the day that I, as a young boy, asked my mother why that was and she said that he was never able to date anyone and that he had given up on actively search for love, but she was sure that one day the right person would show up in his life. To me he was always an example of person living an alternative lifestyle, one that was as much valid as any other, for he was, and still is, one of the happiest people that I have ever know.



As I grew up I found out that he as a teenager studied in high school at morning and had began working part-time at evening, and once he had finished High school he began working full time in a factory and was living with my grandmother until he had saved enough money to buy his own house, but by his late twenties my grandfather died and he took the responsibility, as the oldest son, of economically helping my grandmother. Acording to my grandmother he never had had a girlfriend and she used to joke that because of that he had become grumpy. As time had passed he knew nothing but rejections in every declaration of love he had ever made, until he had enough of it and stopped caring about love all together. My uncle was what we would call today an incel. Today he is 78 years old and lives a simple retired life, he likes to buy old watches and repair them if so they need and then he sells them at slightly higher prices than for what he purchased, he goes on walks in parks and plays chess.



When I was having the first class in sex education and the teacher kept implying that sex was a inevitability, initially I thought about myself and how I have never had a girlfriend or even any type of close relationship with a girl and how I couldn't imagine my future self being any better than my then current self in this regard, and then I thought about my uncle and how his situation was the perfect counterexample of what that teacher had said, and then, having become somewhat troubled by what she was saying, I asked : "Teacher, you have been making several generalisations about how everyone will someday need to know all this information about sex, but what about those people that do not wish to have sex or what about the people that will never in fact be able to be in a sexual relationship ? Isn't this type of information useless to them ? I mean there are all kinds of important information about self preservation that we don't talk about, like airplanes or ships safety precautions or workplace safety procedures or even how to be careful about possible legal loopholes that might ruin someone's life, and yet we do not talk about these topics, probably because we do not think that they are applicable to everyone in here, so why is it that this classes are obligatory if there are people for which this information is useless and these classes are nothing more than lost time? and why is it that you have not mentioned abstinence as a prevention method ? " to which she answered : "It is important to learn about sex because even though presently you may not want to have sex, one day when you meet the right person this information will be useful, you may be doubting now about what I am talking but it is not as if we choose for whom we will fall for." this answer made me really unconfortable back then and reflecting about it made me realise that society as a whole is in large part to blame about people believing that they are entitled to sex, people feed hope of a better romantic future, many times in direct oposition to what every shred of evidence seems to indicate, to those who have difficulties with romance with talks like “ you don’t need to be worried about being rejected you just have to be yourself and one day someone who values you for what you are will appear.” and “you are a nice person you just need to wait until someone realises that.” and “ I’m sure that if you did X you would be much more in evidence and people would notice all the other great aspects about you” and “the right person for you is somewere out there you just have to find them” etc.



We drown people with all these hopes and promises and then we become infuriated if they ever complain about how they think life is unfair for not manifesting love to them as it does to the vast majority of other people, we say to they then “you are not entitled to sex” and “of course nobody will want you if you have that attitude” among other things, this is simply a image of how hypocrite and full of double standards society really is, in a first moment out of pity and some times as a form of doing away with a annoying situation, we offer this blind hope to those people in such a way as to make we not need to feel guilty with ourselves for our accomplishments and to not have to deal with any annoying and complicated thing as the romantic frustrations of another person, but in fact we don’t know if any of those promisses we made will ever be fulfilled and to begin with there is no way we can know about those things, and when all this hope we gave to those people backlashes we become offended or we laugh and ridicule that which we ourselves fostered.



That being said, I don’t tink there is anyone who actually thinks that they are entitled to sex in as much as there is people that recognise that intimacy is a type of fundamental human need and that people deserve to have such needs fulfilled. This understanding that intimacy is a fundamental human need can be very well observed in those people that go to psychologists and decide to talk about their romantic shortcomings, and the answer of the psychologist is never to say: “Get the hell out of my consultory! You are not entitled to sex or intimacy or romantic appreciation, if you have not yet understood this, I advise you to stop being a cry baby and deal with it !”. The problem about fundamental human needs and if these needs implicate rights is a difficult and important debate, especially for those that honestly hold a more egalitarian ethos, but it is not one that I will tackle in these reflections. To be completely fair then I will assume that someone that, trough the contrapositive of a belief arrive at another, that is to say, if someone believes that “I don’t deserve to live in solitude” it implies the belief that “I deserve companionship “, and since I consider that the original belief is as valid as the belief that “I don’t deserve anything “ that implies “I don’t deserve companionship “, leaves me to conclude that it is as fair to think that one does not deserve companionship as it is to think that one deserves.



Another story from when I was in High School is about one day in which we, the students, were handed a survey about our future aspirations and some of the questions were in multiple choice format, in particular one of those questions were “What is your most important objective in life ?”, amongst the answers were things like having a successful career, having a comfortable life with many travels trough the world, living a balanced life with no lack’s and no excess, and also there was a option that said “to marry, establish a family and have kids.”, initially I had read this sentence with a certain disregard, perhaps because at that time I already had a notion, based on what I had witnessed by then, of how my future would be like, and It had made the very notion of “establishing a family” as not something one could ever strive for, that is to say, it wasn’t anything that one could ever direct any work or effort towards, people would just live their lives and dedicate themselves to their ambitions, and only if one such people had the luck of meeting with someone that not only they liked but that also liked them in return, would then one be able to “establish a family”, in a sense this were a random event that could or could not occur within one's person lifetime, it is not something that has a continuous progression and therefore it is not something that one could rush towards as a objective, because there isn’t even any direction to rush towards. In my mind only those emotionally needy people would choose that option, those people that don’t seem to be able to be alone for any amount of time, and that always seem to be dating someone, and that make periodic references to their significant other and how they wished they were together in that specific moment. These people seem to be afraid of being alone or of even loneliness itself, it is the type of people that would say that their biggest fear is to die alone, and in saying that forgets that in life the majority of people are born alone and die alone, and they kind of contemn the lives of those people that live their entire life in solitude. With my disregard towards people that would choose the alternative “to marry, establish a family and have kids.”, I openly expressed my opinion about what I thought of that to my two best friends, it so happened that one of them had chosen that option in his survey, we then entered a discussion about how in my opinion that was a pathetic objective, and my friend rightly pointed out that what is important to each person is subjective which put me in a position where I had to concede that he had won the argument, and although in that moment I still didn’t think that objective to be worthy of being the most important to anyone, that for me was still the aspirations of cattle not of (mostly) rational human beings, but as time went on I began to see from new points of perspective this aspiration and began to not think so lowly of people who thought of constituting a family as their main objective in life and in fact at some point I began to accept that as valid as any other objective people might have in life, things like thinking about how according to several economists one of the main factors that move the economy is in fact the establishment of families, which generates many demands that in turn creates jobs to increase the supply and in this way equilibrates prices, other perspective that was quite enlightening was that of looking towards my own parents to which I am indebted for the rest of my life for having cared for me throughout my whole childhood and adolescence and how they sacrificed many things in favor of securing better opportunities in life to me and my siblings, than that which they themselves had, and they did that because their biggest objective in life is the well-being of their family, having benefited myself from such a life ambition how could I criticize others that may wish to follow the same objective ?



Obviously I can’t. And so I have come to terms with people who have their main ambition in life “to marry, establish a family and have kids.”, but immediately we arrive at a problem, take this friend of mine as a example, my social life in High School was mainly interacting with people who had the same problems to fit in with the rest of the class as myself, and this friend of mine was not different in this sense, I have kept in contact with the majority of my friends of High School and with my two best friends, and even now many years after we graduated High School and University none of us has ever had any relationships, even my friend which his biggest dream is to marry and constitute a family wasn’t able to even have a girlfriend in all of this time, so, even though it is not my life, I still think we have to reflect about this cases in which a person begins to see the years and years go by and their humble, if I may say so, life's dream appearing to be every time farther and farther away of being realized, can someone really be angry at the thought of someone in this situation gets disenchanted with life, and sometimes by doing so, begins to resent people in general ? Since I am talking so much about High School let me make an analogy with one of my particular experiences in High School, do any of you know how it feels like when you like something let’s say an group sport like soccer or basketball for example, but every time people would make the teams you were always the last one to be selected ? Well I know very well how this feels because that last person to be selected was always me, I used to like to play volleyball with my family in a volleyball court that was close to home, I never was very athletic but I liked to play, but as I began to play volleyball, any sport really but I liked volleyball in particular, in PE class in Middle School and High School I was always the last one to be chosen for any team and during the game all my teammates always treated me as some type of dead weight that they had to carry, and it was by observing their behavior towards me that little by little I not only stopped liking volleyball, but it became the sport that I hated, and still hate, the most. The feeling of being treated as if you are incapable of any positive collaboration to the victory of the team, the sporadic occasions in which a member of your team noticed how sad you were at not being able to participate in the game and purposely let you touch the ball, only to make themselves feel better for what they were doing, as if that was some act of charity they were performing. It all got to my nerves at some point and all I could feel every time I played volleyball was how little my classmates thought of me.


One can make a parallel between my description of the games of volleyball on my School years to what happened to my friend that had as his main ambition in life “to marry, establish a family and have kids.” in his adult life, except that in life no one is obligated to accept you just because you have offered yourself, so were you to be the last to be selected, in fact you just wouldn’t be selected at all, and that is what happened to him ( it also happened to me ). And sometimes when his Parents or his work colleagues noticed how lonely he were they would try to arrange to him a date with some women, and when he ultimately didn’t succeed at making a girlfriend, they would go to him and criticize him for letting such a chance let go like that, as if they were doing some type of charity to him. Could you really get mad at him for resenting those people who always seemed to reject him and also those people that felt bad for seeing the contrast between their lives and that of my friend and “mercifully” decided to offer him some time of emotional charity by arranging a date with some single woman they knew, only to not have to witness the loneliness of others.



Another topic that I have been thinking about was about how we model our understanding of the existence of incels in society, and since I have been watching several lectures of Jordan Peterson, I have been interested in the Jungian idea that at the most primitive and/or fundamental level we human beings model the world trough the use of archetypes, it then stimulated me to think about which character would best represent the incel archetype ? Thinking about it quite meticulously it came to mind at least two stories that had major characters that we would today categorize as incels, those would be The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Quasimodo and Cyrano de Bergerac’s Cyrano. Although Each of the stories have their own qualities and defects, through the semiotics of inceldom both characters are the representation of one societal occurrence, that is the utterly bankruptcy of Ethics at the predilection of Aesthetics, and as such I ultimately would have to choose Quasimodo as the better representative of the incel archetype, given the genius of Victor Hugo there is actually a passage in which Quasimodo leaves two vases in the window of Esmeralda’s room “One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked crystal vase. It had allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers which it contained were withered. The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson. I know not whether it was done intentionally, but Esmeralda takes the withered flowers from the crystal vase and presses them passionately on her heart for the entirety of the day.”. This symbolism represents almost perfectly the incel conundrum, this behavior of Esmeralda is the behavior of the vast majority of females, and although we cannot say that every incel can be described as a person that is internally akin to vibrant flowers that remained fresh and crimson, even if we were to exclude those that are morally corrupt, which seem to be homogeneously distributed trough all social groups, there would still be those that have scarred hearts from their previous failures, although the vast majority of incels have been naive and hopeful at some time in their lives, this naivety progressively becomes a presupposition of malice and this hope becomes scorn, that is to say, can one honesty believe that a unkept flower in a uncracked earthenware pot would not shrivel, dry and die ? Given that it’s necessities were not being fulfilled in a very long time (perhaps even never) ?



The usual reading of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, from my experience, looks with disdain towards the indirect rejection he suffers from Esmeralda, some people look at that and categorize it as a simple sexist instance of “it’s tragic because he didn’t get the girl”, where the situation is not anywhere that straight up, to quote Jordan Peterson on rejection: “It is a real judgement, at best it would be like: while I don’t mind your physical presence, your genes should definitely not survive another generation”, and if that was all perhaps that would be okay, but that is not all that happens, Esmeralda chooses Phoebus instead of choosing Quasimodo or even not choosing anyone at all, she rejects Quasimodo despite all of his good intentions and chooses Phoebus regardless of his egotistical intent. Why does she do that ? This has already been answered in these reflections, it is because se makes an aesthetic judgement and not an ethical one, Quasimodo is judged for his ugly and deformed appearance, of which he had virtually no choice, and Phoebus is judged for his handsomeness, of which he had been gifted without having done anything to deserve such blessing. Other people see that as a pathetically obvious result: “what did he expect ? Esmeralda is way out of his league, he should just accept that and hope that he finds someone that is just as ugly and deformed as himself, if that is even possible, and why should I even care for such a story ? The vast majority of the population, including myself, is neither deformed or that ugly and never have passed or will pass though such a life.”, whilst ignoring it’s own connotation as wildly discriminatory and sickly eugenic, much like Plato in his Republic: “It follows from our former admissions that the best men must mate with the best women in as many cases as possible, while the opposite should hold of the worst men and women; and that the offspring of the former should be reared, but not that of the latter, if our flock is going to be an eminent one. And all this must occur without anyone knowing except the rulers ... So then, we will have to establish by law certain festivals and sacrifices at which we will bring together brides and bridegrooms, and our poets must compose suitable hymns for the marriages that take place. ... I imagine that some sophisticated lotteries will have to be created, then, so that the inferior man of that sort will blame chance rather than the rulers at each mating time. ... And presumably, the young men who are good at war or at other things must —among other prizes and awards — be given a greater opportunity to have sex with the women, in order that a pretext may also be created at the same time for having as many children as possible fathered by such men.”, this is said by Plato, one of the most influential philosophers of the western world, so it is not that strange that people with such eugenic thoughts still exist and many times do not even realize the dangerous similarities between these two views, to simply accept this imposed hierarchy is not any better than to be like sheep that cannot begin to fathom the intentions of the shepherd.



That leaves us to think why is it exactly that almost every decision one can make is subjectable to ethics, with the notorious exception of romantic/sexual judgments, it is at this intersection between a unscrupulous pursuit of one’s desire and a prudent restriction towards ethical conduct, that the intellectual dishonesty begins, because there are considerable interests at stake, therefore the very notion of ethics in the judgment of romantic partners is discarded and this rustic, amorphous, sometimes even mystical, and a priori unprincipled imagery of what is love is pushed forward as a means to justify partial/biased judgment and to crush dissent among those that are at the margin in this aspect of life. This imagery is propaganda, and just like any propaganda, it seeks to create a narrative that encourages complacency towards the present status quo and vilifies the desistance of pursuit of those success goals that have been dictated by the narrative. That is why there are people that having been exposed to the narrative that effort is not only necessary, but sufficient to achieve economical success, for example, these people that take contemporary society to be a complete meritocracy, can pass by a homeless person and not only they become incapable of being sympathetic towards the difficult situation that those in misery pass through every day, but take that as a just sentence, for if those people had been committed and hardworking they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with, as they are it can only mean that they haven’t been those things, that they haven’t put enough effort to free themselves from poverty in which case they are only experiencing that which they deserve and one should only feel repugnance and aversion towards those people.



If anyone thinks that this is only exaggeration and a way to justify an inferiority complex, or as people in my country say a mutt complex, if you think so I suggest to you to make a thought experiment, imagine you had to cheer up Quasimodo that was sad because of his loneliness, could you honestly tell him things like “You just have to keep trying to find your soulmate, she is definitely out there.”, would you really think that was the case for someone that deformed ? And if you would say that what makes you think that this situation is any different from that which was jokingly pointed out by George Carlin in one of his jokes about prisons where he said something like “Everybody more or less agree that we need more prisons, some people even scream 'BUILD MORE PRISONS ! ... but not in here.' “. It is like those people that keep saying how people should be seeking love because they believe that society is full of bitter and resentful people , but then feel insulted if anyone they don’t fancy ever declare romantic feelings towards them. This characterizes a insidious cycle where society at large advocates for love as a fundamental element of having a successful life, and then there is a number of people that fail at that, and then society reaffirms love and then surprisingly enough more people seem to fail and then not only society reinforces this idea of love, they condemn those that fail at it, this is what is happening in Japan where an ever increasing number of men are not able to find female romantic partners, which then reflects negatively in the number of births which then begins to affect the economy of the country, another bizarre phenomenon that is happening there is that the number and popularity of female aimed brothels, or as they call it there Host clubs, that although also exist in the male oriented forms, they don’t reach the ridiculous proportion that the female oriented Host Clubs have achieved where there are literally huge billboards promoting the most popular “hosts”(gigolos) outdoors in clear day light , and then some people begin to complain that this situation is unique to Japan and that the situation on the vast majority of the world is different from that, and that may be true presently, but what they fail to see is that the demographics of present day Japan accurately represents the projections for the immediate future of all developed countries and that it already began to show in developing countries as well, so we would better learn what can be learned from Japan's situation because we will pass trough that soon enough.



Returning to how ethics has lost to aesthetics in the dating landscape, we may depart from a rational ethical analysis from what we experience in our failed attempts at dating, and the most recurring basis for rejection is not behavior or education or dedication, these things only achieve critical importance once two people have already begun dating, the thing that really works like a filter is attractiveness, which fundamentally means looks, knowing this we may begin this ethical analysis by asking what it means to exert judgment on other people mainly trough aesthetics, and that is, what makes anyone more aesthetically pleasing than another person ? Is it the actions that one chooses to take ? Is it the way one thinks about things ? Is it the behavior one upholds ? Is it the personality one has developed throughout his life ? Or is it one's physical appearance which was primarily defined by his genetics at the moment of birth, and secondly by the environment in which he grew up, both of which are random events in which one doesn’t have any influence over ?



Supposing one has honestly answered those previous questions can anyone say that the physical appearance is not a fundamental factor towards attractiveness ? If one still doesn’t agree then imagine yourself honestly telling that to Quasimodo, that is, if you were even capable of that. Still in this topic of attractiveness, a strange phenomenon that has been happening since about the 1990's when the percieved beauty standards for males changed radically. Generaly it is women that complain about the unattainability of such ideals, what is obviously a statistically and ethical valid complaint and one that I will take as a given, yet although unattainable they can hardly be said to be unfeminine, if for anything, the unattainability of such female standards arises from the exaggeration of the feminine to unrealistic levels, where as the contemporary beauty standard for males is almost entirely unmasculine in it's nature. The common feature shared by most male models of female oriented magazines is that, with the exception of their musculature and their jawbone that tend to be accentuated, they resemble some type of androgynous angel-like figure, having therefore more feminine traits in opposition to those biologically induced by characteristic masculine hormones like testosterone. In conclusion while women complaints of beauty standards are based in the fact that the cutoff region of what is considered attractive in the multivariate distribution of feminine aspects is so narrow that they become unrealistic, although the variables of the distribution are in principle still comparable throughout, if not all, the vast majority of women; Where as with men the problem lies in the fact that there is a break between men who have in their appearance those feminine dimensions capable of mustering an androgynous look, which has become attractive as of late, and those who doesn't have this dimension to them, and in this discrete, discontinuous classification we have men being forsaken not because they don't lie within some range on the scales of attractiveness, but because they are not even on many of those scales to begin with, that is, some times it is not only because someone is on the lower strata that they are rejected in favor of someone else, sometimes it is just because they aren't even comparable in the first place, and this is a big problem because, may people like it or not, there are way more people that look like Quasimodo than there are people that look like angels anyway.



One fascinating exemple of how ethics becomes mixed with aesthetics occurs when a feminist calls all men pigs (or at least some portion of men), is the identification of a men with the figure of a pig a ethical judgement or an aesthetical one ? It almost seems as if the problem was not the actions perpetuated by those men but their aesthetics, that those actions would be somewhat acceptable, were practiced by some Christian Grey of Fifty Shades of Grey instead of some random creep. Still talking about those feminists, there is much talk about how women should just wear whatever they want and that they shouldn't be demurred by any possible sexual aggressor, after all the guilt of any aggression is always of the aggressor (which is a correct assessment, of course), nevertheless it should be pointed out that this type of discourse has many times promoted debauchery and demoted prudency, and this is a problem because, although the guilt of the aggression is of the aggressor, we have to remember ourselves that sexual impulses are not triggered by rationality and logic (hah, we wish that were the case, imagine if things were so simple and reasonable as solving numerous logic problems from a set of "propositional calculi" « See what i did there ? » ), but by instinct, so that it only takes a person with bad judgement for a tragedy to happen, is it really okay to encourage women to make themselves preferential prey to those molesters ? One thing is to envision an idealized society, another one entirely is to advocate unprudent behaviour in the real world. In the extreme end of feminism we find organizations such as Femen wich proclaims to fight against the malice of the patriarchy, only to do so with malice of their own and to fight malice with malice can only increase the total amount of malice in the world.



So we have people judging other people mainly trough randomly assigned traits, considering, of course, that even those who can improve themselves into becoming more attractive have first to have the potential to become more attractive, and this potential is equally randomly assigned. We have then to ask ourselves if this is ethical, which it is not, for it is an arbitrary judgment, and knowing that we must ask ourselves what can be done to remedy this unjust behavior, obviously we could not force or coerce people to change this, for it would be equally not ethical, the only thing we can really do is to accept the way things are and to take our own judgment upon this unethical situation. One thing that I have seen recently that has made me a little irritated was this, rather vulgar, video by BuzzFeed (), the guy in the video is certainly not a very ethical person by what is portrayed of him thinking, but for a second forget what he thinks and what he does in his privacy, no one else in the real world would know that to begin with, what I think is the most irritating thing is the part where he buys a watch to gift to the coworker that he belives he is developing feelings for, even if it is in his own twisted way, and when he finally goes to give the gift to her, he freezes and is not able to say anything and she gets uncomfortable with that and walks away, at the next moment we see him in the HR being scolded for inappropriate behaviour, since when does trying to give a watch to someone constitutes inappropriate behaviour ? It is as Roger Scruton has once said (), as society is tending towards becoming less and less civilized, romantic relationships begin to stop requiring a previous period of courtship and become each time more dreadfully direct, or how Roger Scruton said “Nowadays, of course, sexual harassment just means sexual advances made by the unattractive, who are the majority, so you know, there is a huge injustice in this.”.



Going back to the topic of how incels are seen by society, we may spend days and days arguing about how every time there is, for a lack of a better word, a public exhibition of the subject there is always a permeating hypocrisy of some sort, either they think we are just “bad losers” in a way, that just because we aren’t able to date anyone we think it is alright to be whining about how we couldn’t achieve that which we wished, and how this is only because the world is unjust and so on, when in fact the majority of them revert right back to this state whenever their established relationships crumble, and in this moment they don’t think that in fact they are just whining and that they should just “buckle up, kiddo”, or when people are so reductionist to the point that they say we incels are just frustrated because we can’t get laid and begin talking about how this is some justification for why prostitution should be legalized, when in fact just because something is illegal it doesn’t mean it is impossible to find, prostitution, much like illegal drugs, is not that difficult to find if you are actually looking for it, these people forget about the deepest existential question that is in fact what really desolate the incels, these people just say this because they have had the privilege of having had their emotional needs fulfilled and reassured by this they have taken the liberty of dissociating one thing with the other, and having had their emotional needs fulfilled they begin to only think about sex and their sexual desires instead of the more basic, humane, problem. In the last case people just assume that if someone is rejected by everyone they have ever approached, then that means they are some type of freaks that should just lay down and rot, after all the word of the people have been ushered, and the word of the people is law. But jokes aside, I wish to talk about one opinionated person in particular, Natalie Wynn the transexual woman of the YouTube channel ContraPoints, in her video about incels () to which many people took to be a pondered, even perhaps conciliatory, stand on the question of inceldom, yet, although better than the majority of the expositions of the topic she still makes fundamental mistakes about incels, in particular in the part about how the black pill is just catastrophizing, or how she exposed it as being defined by psychotherapists as “A cognitive distortion where anxiety or depression leads you to infer apocalyptic conclusions from mundane setbacks and anxieties.”, every incel reading this might instantly see where the problem in that is, it only gets worse when she gives the first example of such a situation, she says to consider a person that is late for work and that from that they get to the conclusion that they and their hole family are going to die because of that, later on she tries to show how the black pill is just another scenario of catastrophizing, except that it isn’t as simple, consider first her first example, sure one person who once got late may not get fired because of that, but what about someone that is always late ? In fact forget the whole scenario where this person is employed in the first place, this scenario is already too reassuring to begin with, consider instead someone that is unemployed and has always been and the reason that that is so is amongst other things that they seem to always get late to their work interviews, let’s say that happens because they live in a city that has a serious problem of traffic congestion, since this person has not been able to get a job until now it would not be strange if they accepted that their chances of being able to get a job are low, and if they aren’t able to get a job soon they and their family are soon enough starve to death, of course this put in this way has a simple solution, just wake up early!, but let’s talk about something more real, in Brazil there has been a economic crisis that has subsisted over the last five or so years, and that has generated a somewhat new class of labor force categorization, roughly speaking there are the employed, the unemployed and the dismayed (in portuguese “desalentados”) that have given up on looking for a job and that according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) has estimated to be around 4.8 millions of Brazilians in the last year (2018) estimates. Which only demonstrates how giving up at situations of an overwhelming number of rejections is not some type of silly catastrophizing, it is something more close to a natural reaction towards this ubiquitous presence of rejection, but let’s go back to Natalie's description of the black pill, she begins with saying that experiences of rejection and isolation, where she doesn’t quantify this, making it seem as if it is just some experiences of rejection and isolation and not the only thing one has experienced, then she says one might infer that one’s unattractive to women, what may seem a plausible inference from someone that has had some experiences of rejection but is quite certain for someone who only has experienced this, then she goes on to say that from this one may conclude that they will be attractive to any woman, which again is a very big jump for someone who has had some experiences of rejection, but it is not that big of a inference jump for someone who was only experienced rejection, she then goes on to say things that are not inferences but deductions from the last inference in points 4-You will be forever alone; 5-You will always be Unhappy; and 6-Women did this to you. And then she goes on to talk about some points that can try to explain why would things be in such a way as to allow someone to come at those previous conclusions, that is points 7-feminism empowered women to do this to you; 8-The social trends that made this possible are only getting worse; And then there is that last conclusion that I will take the liberty of rewriting as 9-Humanity itself, as understood to be the association of every human being as equally “human” and therefore equally deserving of existence, nutrition, education, housing, friendships and love; is therefore Doomed. Having reach this conclusion is it really that strange if someone were to begin to think that the only thing that one can do in this overwhelming scenario where one is faced with nothing more than the perception and understanding of impotence towards the status quo of things ? That figuratively, in this scenario of powerlessness, the only thing one can do is to lie down and rot ? She then goes on to make rampant generalizations about how incels could stop being incels, or how she puts it “Mom the shit out of them.”, if they just socialized more, made some friends, ..., and many more standard discriminatory assumptions that people in general make and that they think they have the solution to. But to be frank I don’t dislike completely her video, compared to what other people have said she is almost comprehensive in this video, and if it were not for her latest video on Beauty (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mspMJTNEY) I would probably not being criticizing her now, but in this video she simply tries to justify why when she makes a plastic surgery it is alright, but when it is an incel that does one it is not because of the pressures of society, it is purely because they want to have sex with women and that they think that by doing that they will have their lives become meaningful, not because perhaps they would wish some amount of love in their dispassionate lives, but then again there is that one frase Natalie said in her penultimate video, what was it again ? .... oh, right it was that it’s “just a privileged person with a platform punching down at a politically besieged group he understands nothing about.” (here it has to be noted that her video on Incels is her most seen video.), after all if you can point out to people that never had a relationship how meaningless it all is and how it wouldn’t bring any meaning into your life anyway, is it alright for her then if we just faced every couple head on and said that their affection towards one another is really just a delusion that their relationship will foster them with any meaning in their shallow meaningless lives, just like a proper cynic would do ? I suspect not !


Another problem with Natalie exposition is that a part of the reason that she went through plastic surgery was because she wanted to be more beautiful and attractive, and how she wanted to look more like a woman, but that doesn’t seem to be ethically acceptable, if we were to consider a person who doesn’t like their ethnicity and would wish to make themselves look more like a ethnicity they liked more, would it be ethical to allow this person to pass trough treatments for skin whitening and facial reconstruction just to look more like a given ethnicity, would it not only be the expression of a societal racism that was then internalized by this person, and shouldn’t they be stopped and made understand that ethnicity is simply not something that should characterize anyone as this or that, and that they can in fact be whatever they want without having to reshape themselves to serve the perception of other people ? In this case shouldn’t Natalie just keep herself the way she was because of the same reasons ? What is it that really matters how one sees one’s self or how others see them or how one changes the way they see themselves based on how other people see them? These are difficult questions, but they are questions that demand answers as soon as possible because they are of fundamental importance to guarantee that everything is coherent. You see there was this very famous British mathematician called G.H. Hardy that, tell the stories, hated to look at his own face in the mirror and every time he would travel, he would ask for the hotel to cover all mirrors in his quarters with towels so that he wouldn’t have to keep staring at his own face. Some people today would certainly say that the cause for that is a psychological disorder and that he should go to a psychologist and solve that



Having faced several rejections, the majority of which didn’t provide any constructive criticism, although there were several instances of conveyed disgust, one still has to hear criticism of this sort: “Your belief that you will never find anyone who would love you is absurd, you cannot give up, you just have to keep trying even if it takes a hundred or a thousand tries, once you find someone who accepts you that will be all that will matter and all those rejections will be meaningless.”. Although it is sad to burst the bubble of such a Happy go lucky though, we have to face the facts nevertheless, and the fact is that the more rejections one has the lowest are his chances of actually being accepted by someone, it is just basic probability theory, considering that for any given person the number of attempts to get a girlfriend is too low to estimate the exact probability of him being accepted at any given occasion, we have to use the best expectation of such a result that we can make with the limited number of trials such a person has experienced, and the way to do that is with Bayesian probabilities, that is by the use of Bayes’ Law to update the initial expectations. To better illustrate this I will present an example, let us say that a young and naive boy would like to find the probability of him being accepted or rejected by a girl when he confesses, because he is very naive his first expectation is that there is as much chance of him being accepted as there is of him being rejected as he thinks to himself: “I don’t think there is any particular reason for me being rejected as also there isn’t any for me being accepted.”, and then he experiences his first rejection and says to himself: “Well, although that was sad, according to my expectation that was as probable as any other outcome”. As time goes on he finds that all five of his confessions ended in rejections and thinks to himself that the chances of that would be about 3.1% with the assumptions he had made, it can be that he was just unlucky, but he decides to make use of Bayes’ Law to update his expectation values of acceptance and rejection, since those trials can only result in discrete combinations of yes or no answers and because the number of possible candidates is so large that we can make the small approximation that there is reposition, which implies the need of the use of a binomial distribution to represent the chances of being accepted in a given number of trials, which when put into Bayes' Law, with the use of the Product Law of probabilities, can then be easily shown to be proportional to the initial guess of distribution of the acceptance (or conversely of the rejection) times a beta distribution with a normalization factor, I took the liberty of plotting the graphs for a given initial distribution of the acceptance probability and its evolution as one keeps getting rejected, in blue we have the probability density of the acceptance probability and in green we have the cumulative of such a probability density:




graph1-png.121781


graph2-png.121784



graph3-png.121785



graph4-png.121786




graph5-png.121788



graph6-png.121789





As one can see there is a clear tendency of the distribution to the right, that means that with every rejection the expected probability of a acceptance gets smaller and smaller, parting from a very conservative initial expectation distribution for the probability of an acceptance with a mean on 50% chance, we get that 15 consecutive rejections, and no acceptance since the beginning, later we have a 70% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 10%; and 20% of chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 2%.

Should one get 20 consecutive rejections with no acceptance since the beginning, we get that there is a 70% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 7%; with a 20% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 1%. It can be shown that this distribution uniformly converges to a class of distributions so called (Bounded) Pareto Distributions, which are sometimes mistakenly said to have the 80% to 20% rule, but this is only the case for exactly one Pareto Distribution and need not be the one we are getting.



I had a friend that once told me he had 34 consecutive rejections since he had begun trying to get a girlfriend, so only for curiosity I made the calculations and there is a 90% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 7%; and a 20% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 0.7% that is to say that there is a 1/5 chance that on average* only 1 girl out of the next 142 girls he decides to declare to will accept., (*) considering as if the 0.7% were a larger concentration of probabilities, which is not the case, for it is in the 0% that there are bigger concentrations of probabilities. That may not seem soooo bad but we have to consider that we begun with a very naive and unrealistic guess at what the distribution of the acceptance probability would be like, had we begun with a homogeneous distribution or a distribution that was more centered at rejection we would have gotten way worse results. One funny paper that should not be taken as serious because the writer is too picky and his calculations are imprecise and uses outdated data is the paper entitled "Why I will never have a girlfriend" by Tristan Miller wich can be found at his web site at https://logological.org/girlfriend. So if we can take anything from the last exposition is that it doesn't matter if my probabilities are precisely correct what really matters is that if one person were to be completely rational about it's prospects of finding a girlfriend the weight of all the rejections he had ever witnessed are in fact evidences that his chances are not any good, and that with every rejection his percieved chances of success can only get worse.
Wholesome
 
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Chadlite. Nice to read
 
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My son is a hateful incel, and I just cannot save him or defend him anymore.​

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My boy, my oldest child, was so good when he was little, but something broke inside of him when he was a teenager.
My wife and I always accepted, loved, and encouraged him. We pushed him to work hard and treat people with respect. I don’t know where exactly we failed him but as a father I feel responsible for the thing he’s turned into.
It started when he was 14. He had began to become withdrawn and emotional. We chalked it up to teenaged mood swings. For some reason he was just so angsty and bitter all the time. We were worried about his lack of social life and his over-reliance on his computer. He kind of hid himself in the online world so my wife and I began to limit his computer time, but he simply became more aggressive and confrontational.
His hygiene was bad, and he was always confrontational when we told him to shower or do laundry. His room stank horribly and we eventually had a huge fight over it where he physically shoved my wife and called her a bitch, and eventually we got him to at least clean and air out his room regularly on the grounds that it was our house and if he couldn’t maintain his space he wouldn’t be entitled to it - essentially we got to the point where we told him he wouldn’t be allowed his worldly possessions or privacy unless he took care of the space we all shared. the room still smelled and he was still rude about cleaning it but we could tell him to get it clean and he would do it after that.
We ended up getting a call from his school saying that a female student felt harassed by him. We were shown messages where he continually badgered her to have sex with him, threatened to “punish” her for stringing him along, sending her unsolicited nudes, telling her some violent fantasies of his, and eventually just descending into some horrid rage-filled rant about how she is just another “whore” and other things.
We were shocked. We explained to him why this behaviour was unacceptable, and I explained to him that it was ok to be sexually active but his actions were toxic and abusive.
I tried mentoring him man-to-man, taking him on camping trips and whatnot and talking to him about women and girls and trying to give him advice. I suggested he try showering, changing up his hair and facial hair styles, trying out different fashion styles, maybe going to the gym.
I told him some hard truths - that he doesn’t want a gross woman so he shouldn’t be a gross man. By gross I mean hygiene and looks. I explained to him that good looks are more hygiene and self care than genetics but he refused to accept what I said to him.
After that I caught him sniffing his sister’s panties in the laundry room - she was 12 at the time and he was 17. He assured me it had nothing to do with his sister, he said he just had a panty sniffing fetish and he pretended they belonged to girls from porno videos, but still I gave him hell for it, and he was grounded and lost his computer for 6 months. I went through his computer and I was disgusted by the kinds of hateful, racist, incel forums he frequented, the horrid things he said about women, and his save file was full of cartoon porn with girls of questionable ages. I wiped the hard drive completely and began strictly monitoring his online activity. I used parental filters to block incel sites and and porn sites that hosted cartoon porn.
The next big issue was something he did to my daughter’s friend. My daughter is 5 years his junior, and one day after a sleepover, my daughter came to me and said her friend wanted to tell me something but was afraid of what I would say.
My son cornered this 13 year old girl and physically blocked her path and touched her hair and face while making very inappropriate comments about her body and asking her if she liked to sleep naked and what kind of underwear she wore.
I tore into my son for that, my wife and I both shouted at him, and told him his behaviour was horrible and I told him then that if his actions got him arrested I would not defend him. He accused us of not loving him, but I told him the reason I was so passionately angry in that situation is because I do love him, and I want to help him become a good man so he can stop being so predatory and bitter and miserable. I told him some hard truths. That he did this all to himself and that he is the only one he can blame for how bitter he is.
I suggested he look to women his own age and he went on a rant about how it was a waste of time because women were already whores (and his definition of a whore is a woman who has had sex even just once) by 17. I called him out on his bullshit and expressed clearly that if he harassed young girls anymore I would personally turn him in.
I invited my daughters friend over after and I personally apologized to her for her experiences, I cried in shame for my son’s behaviour and begged her forgiveness for allowing her to feel unsafe in my home and promised her that if she ever felt uncomfortable she could come to my wife and I and we would always believe and help her. Luckily, my daughter didn’t lose this friend, but for safety I installed a lock on my daughter’s door.
We got my son therapy but he refused to engage with the therapist, calling him a “sand nigger” and “pajeet” and “terrorist”. His next therapist was a “chad”, so he didn’t relate to that either.
We fought about him not trying, not getting a job, and he said he couldn’t get one because of the immigrants, to which I pointed out that he was struggling because he got fired from his high school jobs for being lazy.
After those fights, my wife tried to empathize with him and understand what made him so bitter but he flipped out at her, and called her a cock-gargling whore and said that she fucked her way through dozens of men until she found a “beta-fag” who was willing to shelter her for missionary sex.
My wife, who works and contributes to the family income, who is an independent, professional woman.
Honestly, I lost it more than ever before. I had never been so angry when I heard what he said. That may be his mom, he may be my son, but the woman he was abusively tearing into is my god damn wife. No one can treat my wife like that.
I am ashamed to say in my anger, he shoved me and I physically retaliated, shoving him back, and pinning him against the wall. I felt ashamed of myself, I have never been an angry or violent person, but I couldn’t control myself. I’ve never put my hands on either of my children in such a way in my life, I hate child abusers... but this boy was no child. He was a grown man.
He was intimidated and backed down, and for a while he was peaceful.
The last straw was this week.
My daughter has dated 3 people her whole life. A boy, a girl, and now another boy. We were as open about sex with my daughter as we were with my son. We asked if she would like to have a question-free steady supply of condoms left in her bathroom drawer, and if she wanted to get on birth control. She said no to both questions with her first boyfriend. She never really brought him home but we met him at one of her recitals. When she had a girlfriend she went over to her house all the time, and didn’t want to bring her to the same house her brother lived in, a sentiment I understood.
But her most recent boyfriend has a lot going on behind the scenes in his family. He’s a nice boy but his mom is a single mom of 4 and they struggle.
This boy started coming around a month after they got together. I like him. My daughter is happy with him. He treats her with respect. He is an intelligent boy. He’s an absolute gentleman. He’s respectful and polite in our home. He calls me sir, calls my wife Ma’am, he offers to help with the cooking or dishes or cleaning while he’s visiting, he talks to us, he’s a bit of an amateur cook himself and brings us food all the time to say thank you for taking care of him, when we go out for dinner he always offers to pay for himself and my daughter (though I know he doesn’t have much money so I always pay). When getting out of the car he opens the door for my wife and offers her his hand (he sits behind her for leg room). He holds the doors, when we leave somewhere he helps my daughter put her jacket on like those sweet old fashioned couples.
This young man works hard, and gives what little he has to his mom and siblings. Like I said, I really respect the boy. I offered him money once for groceries for his family but he turns me down and says he would feel guilty accepting my money like that. He’s appreciative of things - in the winter, it was -20 and he had only a hoodie, so I draped my jacket over his arms, and I said “take it son, it’s cold.” He had tears in his eyes as he said thank you, and I made some excuse about wanting to get rid of the jacket and told him he could keep it if he brought cookies for us next time he visited.
When Christmas came along, I invited him over for supper, and when I went to pick him up I delivered some presents for his family, and on the ride back to my house we had a moment. He was crying because he didn’t have much to give us - he got everyone in our house a present but he cried anyways because he felt it wasn’t enough to make up for what we gave him. I pulled over, and I just hugged him, and I said to him that it wasn’t the value of what he got, it was that he got us anything at all. I thanked him for treating my daughter so well, and I told him he would always be welcome in my home.
My own son didn’t get us anything for christmas, not even a card bought with the money we give him. This boy got my wife and I matching wine glasses since we like to share a bottle every now and then.
My son didn’t eat with us. He pillaged the food table and ran away to his room alone while my daughter’s boyfriend met my sister and her family and my parents and my uncle. They all told me how charming he was and how polite he was. Meanwhile after dinner my son told my 5 year old nephew “fuck off Faggot” for asking to play a game with him. A man over 20 years old.
Last week, my wife and I went out for an evening to ourselves. We went to dinner, then we went to an upscale bar to play some pool, then we went home.
When I walked in the door, the kids were screaming at each other. I came in to see my son and my daughter’s boyfriend fighting. The boyfriend was just pushing my son back and trying to redirect him, my son was throwing punches and charging him. My daughter was crying and sitting against the wall clutching her face. I got between them and pushed them apart, and demanded to know what was happening.
My son went on a tirade about how he found birth control pills and heard “whore” sounds from her room, so he kicked open her door and discovered them having sex, he said he couldn’t believe his own sister would “be a nigger’s whore” and called the poor boy a monkey and other things.
My wife got my daughter and her boyfriend out of there and I yelled at my son for how he was acting. Eventually I got nowhere with him so I made him wait in his room. I went to talk to my daughter. I apologized to her boyfriend, crying as I did, telling him that I hope he could forgive me for letting this happen. He said he was sorry for getting violent but that he only did it because my son hit her. My daughter cried and said he was a psycho and threatened to rape her, and that he admitted to ejaculating on her toothbrush and hair brush.
I charged into his room, and I said firmly that he should pack his bags and leave. I told him I would pay to have his things sent to him, wherever he went, but that he was leaving tomorrow.
My wife stayed at my sisters, and my daughter and her boyfriend spent the next few nights at his place.
The next day I practically threw my son out of the house kicking and screaming.
I took his key back and changed the alarm codes and garage door code. A day later I had a message requesting some of this things - mostly his gaming stuff - be delivered to some strange apartment block I didn’t recognize a couple of towns over. A college aged man buzzed me in and I delivered the stuff. I didn’t see my son.
My wife and I then went through his room. My daughter’s boyfriend came over and helped me move his furniture to the garage. We threw out his mattress and some other more gross and smelly things, and we took out the carpet to be replaced.
Hidden in the closet was a treasure trove of my daughter’s underwear, so saturated with old, moldy semen that they were as hard as bricks. The unnerving part was that there were a few pairs my daughter was adamant didn’t belong to her. And they were too small for my wife. It was possible he stole them from my nieces.
There was a sketchbook containing graphic drawings of my son violently raping different women and keeping little girls chained up in some kind of sex dungeon. I went through his old phone that was still working, and all his photos were screenshots of my nieces and their friends in their bikinis, lots of cartoon porn, lots of red pill and incel and Trump memes. He still had messenger, so I checked his messages, most of them were just him trying to harass women and underaged girls.
I checked his Email and... much to my disgust, he stole private photos of my wife from her phone, and he was selling them.
Today, I went to the police with everything and told them everything.
I gave my baby boy everything... I don’t know why he went down this road. But I’m just so sorry I failed him. I don’t know what the police will do... but I hope they stop him before he hurts someone else.
The sad thing is... yesterday, once it was all over and settled, yesterday we had a wonderful day. One of the happiest we have ever had.
Not a word son
 
For the last months I have been reading and listening to several articles, jornalistic reports, podcasts, debates and interviews about the incel phenomenon in modern society, and even if the majority of them were highly against incels, I should point out that their argumentations were either wildly imprecise or relatively easy to deconstruct, but whenever there was an incel present they would not be any better at argumentations, which is somewhat understandable for even if one passes trought a very specific situation it does not mean they are some type of professional debater that will be able to defend the views that he has acquired trougth personal experience in a suficiently articulated and convincing argumentative speech. It is my hope that by sharing my reflections on this topic that I may strengthen the arguments of incels so that we can have a more productive participation on the societal debate about incels.



To begin this discussion we should observe that essentialy what inceldom is, is a symptom of the existence of sexual selection in the midst of human societal practices, I would say that to many people this is not so much of a problem to accept, and that would be true, but there is at least one group of people that this becomes somewhat of a taboo when they are beeing completely honest in the discussion, and those are the people that defend egalitarianism, sure what they usualy mean when they are defending egalitarian measures is that they don't agree with how in Captalism a person is arbitrarily born in either a rich family or a poor family and that the one born in a rich family has way more opportunities than someone born in a poor family, and how this makes many poor people work their entire lifes, many times not beeing able to leave poverty and reach the middle class while other people hardly work at all but have the privilege of beeing born into a rich family. On this note it is interesting to notice that what happened in every socialist country when they abolished Captalism and forcifully equalized the economy, instead of money being what people strived for, it became political power, for the political institutions would by then have become more stratified and with the most opportunities centralized around a political hierarchy of the state, and then again inequality emerged for those people with political power and those without, for people that were arbitrarily born into a more influent family and people that were born into a unrecognized family. Of couse, no coutry ever achieved this, but suposing one coutry were able to go trougth socialism without breaking, and were then able to implement comunism were there would be no state and therefore political power would then become equally distributed amongst the people what then would become the thing people would then strive for ? Well I am sure there could be many things but if I were to guess I would conjecture it would be sex, the differences in sexual hierarchies would be intensified creating caste systems where people that were arbitrarily born more attractive would be able to enjoy the status of a higher caste where they would have many opportunities and people that were born very unattractive would live lives as untouchables, members of the lowest caste were no opportunities would ever emerge. In this truly dystopian scenario, but nonetheless plausible for caste systems were very common in India and many other asiatic coutries, obviously there would never be any forced redistribution of sex, for it would be societal sanctioned rape which obviously is a crime ( even though every other forced redistribution of capital, and of political influence were also crimes, although one could argue that they were of different proportions) and therefore we would never really have any egalitarian utopia but only changes of through which medium inequality would arise.



All this talk about socialism and comunism has made me remember Slavoj Zizek’s article about incels (https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-moebius-strip-of-sexual-contracts/) and how he commits the hilarious mathematical error of saying things like "We would thus oppose the logic of universal human rights and the logic of social hierarchy as the two sides of a Moebius strip " when one of the most notorius characteristic of a moebius strip is that it only has one side, it gets even worse when after that he says "and focus on their point of intersection" (« Facepalm » ) what does he mean ??? the whole strip ??? And when you think it couldn't get any worse he begins to talk about turning and reversing shapes which only have one side, it's like some sort of mathematical torture, I know he is a specialist in Hegel and that makes him by consequence a specialist in meaninglessness and in utterly nonsensical things but this is too much. It is nothing more than the screaming example of double standards at play and nothing more, only then could he make a distinction of two things that are the same, that is, there can be no true equality if it doesn't encompass every significant thing in a person's life and that includes "politico-economic life and sex ". Although until here it may seem that I am advocating that there should be some type of enforcement of sexual partners, I would like to express how utterly appalling I think such thing is, and if you think that would be the only way to achieve equality of sexual relationships amongst everyone, then you are agreeing much more with the so called incel black pill than you are openly expressing. It is funny how the incel-normie situation resembles that of the lumpenproletariat - proletariat situation, much like how the proletarian class looks at the bourgeois class with envy, the proletarians at the same time despise and fear the lumpenproletarians for they may envy the proletarians, just like how the proletarians envy the bourgeois, and in doing so they may undermine the legitimacy of the proletarians in the class struggle and in this way prevent the Proletarian revolution.



This takes me to the question of "do incels belive they are entitled to sex ?" To which my answer would be : not any more than anyone else. I mean think for a minute, when an incel goes to declare himself to someone and ultimately gets rejected, the very rejection could only happen either because this person does not want to be in any relantionship ever, or because the person he declared himself to thinks they are entitled to someone better. Incels are not any more guilty, than they are victims of entitlement. And then one would say that there are no more reasons to belive that there should be any asymmetry between dating strategies of males and females, and that would perhaps be the case if humans layed eggs instead of adopting a gestational strategy in which the mother becomes vulnerable, which by itself, was a big problem since humans where nomadic for the greater part of our existence, and therefore there was evolutionary pressure to make females have higher standards whenever they would select their mates, to justify the risk they would have to pass through. Ok, so if this is something that has been this way since times immemorial why is inceldom a contemporary problem ? I would not say it is a contemporary problem, it is a problem which has been greatly amplified in comtemporary times in which everyone is having way fewer children because of the cost, and because it is only in contemporary times that we have seen the dismantlement of what feminists would call the patriarchy, and more conservative people would call the traditional family model and there is also the absolute abandonment of responsibility. Those things contribute first to women beeing more picky as a return to those more primordial instincts in these times in which it has become so expensive to have children, and along with the understanding that stability together with responsibility are in the decline, making women in general choose a much more select group of men, and beeing with any one of them by much less time. Creating a whole mass of women that have not been in many, if any, long therm relationships, a group of men that have relative easy acess to as many relationships as they desire and another group of men that have each time less and less chance of being in a relationship. Returning to the question of entitlement, if there is such a thing as a belief of entitlement to sex that is supported by a whole subsection of the population then we have to look for the origin of this belief, and although many people would go quite trigger happy to say that the source of this entitlement is this forum and others like it, I wouldn't be so sure of this, for a forum only reverberates opinions and narrative images that are already existent in society, this problem, if it exists at all, is much more profound than that, it has to do with the socialization process, and to better illustrate what I mean by saying that I will make reference to a personal experience, not because I think this will prove anything about how everyone behaves, for it is certainly statistically insignificant, nevertheless I belive this report will bring to light the superstructure of values and beliefs present in contemporary society that does much more to foster this entitlement than it does to sever it, that is to say that although statistically insignificant I belive my report not to be meaningfully insignificant.



When I was in High School I remember that in the first of a series of classes about sex education there were phrases profered such as "Since everyone in here will sooner or later have a sexual relationship ..." and "sex is a fundamental part of every healthy lifestyle" and many other like-minded sentences, since in my family I have an uncle that, differently from every other adult in my family, was not married and I remember the day that I, as a young boy, asked my mother why that was and she said that he was never able to date anyone and that he had given up on actively search for love, but she was sure that one day the right person would show up in his life. To me he was always an example of person living an alternative lifestyle, one that was as much valid as any other, for he was, and still is, one of the happiest people that I have ever know.



As I grew up I found out that he as a teenager studied in high school at morning and had began working part-time at evening, and once he had finished High school he began working full time in a factory and was living with my grandmother until he had saved enough money to buy his own house, but by his late twenties my grandfather died and he took the responsibility, as the oldest son, of economically helping my grandmother. Acording to my grandmother he never had had a girlfriend and she used to joke that because of that he had become grumpy. As time had passed he knew nothing but rejections in every declaration of love he had ever made, until he had enough of it and stopped caring about love all together. My uncle was what we would call today an incel. Today he is 78 years old and lives a simple retired life, he likes to buy old watches and repair them if so they need and then he sells them at slightly higher prices than for what he purchased, he goes on walks in parks and plays chess.



When I was having the first class in sex education and the teacher kept implying that sex was a inevitability, initially I thought about myself and how I have never had a girlfriend or even any type of close relationship with a girl and how I couldn't imagine my future self being any better than my then current self in this regard, and then I thought about my uncle and how his situation was the perfect counterexample of what that teacher had said, and then, having become somewhat troubled by what she was saying, I asked : "Teacher, you have been making several generalisations about how everyone will someday need to know all this information about sex, but what about those people that do not wish to have sex or what about the people that will never in fact be able to be in a sexual relationship ? Isn't this type of information useless to them ? I mean there are all kinds of important information about self preservation that we don't talk about, like airplanes or ships safety precautions or workplace safety procedures or even how to be careful about possible legal loopholes that might ruin someone's life, and yet we do not talk about these topics, probably because we do not think that they are applicable to everyone in here, so why is it that this classes are obligatory if there are people for which this information is useless and these classes are nothing more than lost time? and why is it that you have not mentioned abstinence as a prevention method ? " to which she answered : "It is important to learn about sex because even though presently you may not want to have sex, one day when you meet the right person this information will be useful, you may be doubting now about what I am talking but it is not as if we choose for whom we will fall for." this answer made me really unconfortable back then and reflecting about it made me realise that society as a whole is in large part to blame about people believing that they are entitled to sex, people feed hope of a better romantic future, many times in direct oposition to what every shred of evidence seems to indicate, to those who have difficulties with romance with talks like “ you don’t need to be worried about being rejected you just have to be yourself and one day someone who values you for what you are will appear.” and “you are a nice person you just need to wait until someone realises that.” and “ I’m sure that if you did X you would be much more in evidence and people would notice all the other great aspects about you” and “the right person for you is somewere out there you just have to find them” etc.



We drown people with all these hopes and promises and then we become infuriated if they ever complain about how they think life is unfair for not manifesting love to them as it does to the vast majority of other people, we say to they then “you are not entitled to sex” and “of course nobody will want you if you have that attitude” among other things, this is simply a image of how hypocrite and full of double standards society really is, in a first moment out of pity and some times as a form of doing away with a annoying situation, we offer this blind hope to those people in such a way as to make we not need to feel guilty with ourselves for our accomplishments and to not have to deal with any annoying and complicated thing as the romantic frustrations of another person, but in fact we don’t know if any of those promisses we made will ever be fulfilled and to begin with there is no way we can know about those things, and when all this hope we gave to those people backlashes we become offended or we laugh and ridicule that which we ourselves fostered.



That being said, I don’t tink there is anyone who actually thinks that they are entitled to sex in as much as there is people that recognise that intimacy is a type of fundamental human need and that people deserve to have such needs fulfilled. This understanding that intimacy is a fundamental human need can be very well observed in those people that go to psychologists and decide to talk about their romantic shortcomings, and the answer of the psychologist is never to say: “Get the hell out of my consultory! You are not entitled to sex or intimacy or romantic appreciation, if you have not yet understood this, I advise you to stop being a cry baby and deal with it !”. The problem about fundamental human needs and if these needs implicate rights is a difficult and important debate, especially for those that honestly hold a more egalitarian ethos, but it is not one that I will tackle in these reflections. To be completely fair then I will assume that someone that, trough the contrapositive of a belief arrive at another, that is to say, if someone believes that “I don’t deserve to live in solitude” it implies the belief that “I deserve companionship “, and since I consider that the original belief is as valid as the belief that “I don’t deserve anything “ that implies “I don’t deserve companionship “, leaves me to conclude that it is as fair to think that one does not deserve companionship as it is to think that one deserves.



Another story from when I was in High School is about one day in which we, the students, were handed a survey about our future aspirations and some of the questions were in multiple choice format, in particular one of those questions were “What is your most important objective in life ?”, amongst the answers were things like having a successful career, having a comfortable life with many travels trough the world, living a balanced life with no lack’s and no excess, and also there was a option that said “to marry, establish a family and have kids.”, initially I had read this sentence with a certain disregard, perhaps because at that time I already had a notion, based on what I had witnessed by then, of how my future would be like, and It had made the very notion of “establishing a family” as not something one could ever strive for, that is to say, it wasn’t anything that one could ever direct any work or effort towards, people would just live their lives and dedicate themselves to their ambitions, and only if one such people had the luck of meeting with someone that not only they liked but that also liked them in return, would then one be able to “establish a family”, in a sense this were a random event that could or could not occur within one's person lifetime, it is not something that has a continuous progression and therefore it is not something that one could rush towards as a objective, because there isn’t even any direction to rush towards. In my mind only those emotionally needy people would choose that option, those people that don’t seem to be able to be alone for any amount of time, and that always seem to be dating someone, and that make periodic references to their significant other and how they wished they were together in that specific moment. These people seem to be afraid of being alone or of even loneliness itself, it is the type of people that would say that their biggest fear is to die alone, and in saying that forgets that in life the majority of people are born alone and die alone, and they kind of contemn the lives of those people that live their entire life in solitude. With my disregard towards people that would choose the alternative “to marry, establish a family and have kids.”, I openly expressed my opinion about what I thought of that to my two best friends, it so happened that one of them had chosen that option in his survey, we then entered a discussion about how in my opinion that was a pathetic objective, and my friend rightly pointed out that what is important to each person is subjective which put me in a position where I had to concede that he had won the argument, and although in that moment I still didn’t think that objective to be worthy of being the most important to anyone, that for me was still the aspirations of cattle not of (mostly) rational human beings, but as time went on I began to see from new points of perspective this aspiration and began to not think so lowly of people who thought of constituting a family as their main objective in life and in fact at some point I began to accept that as valid as any other objective people might have in life, things like thinking about how according to several economists one of the main factors that move the economy is in fact the establishment of families, which generates many demands that in turn creates jobs to increase the supply and in this way equilibrates prices, other perspective that was quite enlightening was that of looking towards my own parents to which I am indebted for the rest of my life for having cared for me throughout my whole childhood and adolescence and how they sacrificed many things in favor of securing better opportunities in life to me and my siblings, than that which they themselves had, and they did that because their biggest objective in life is the well-being of their family, having benefited myself from such a life ambition how could I criticize others that may wish to follow the same objective ?



Obviously I can’t. And so I have come to terms with people who have their main ambition in life “to marry, establish a family and have kids.”, but immediately we arrive at a problem, take this friend of mine as a example, my social life in High School was mainly interacting with people who had the same problems to fit in with the rest of the class as myself, and this friend of mine was not different in this sense, I have kept in contact with the majority of my friends of High School and with my two best friends, and even now many years after we graduated High School and University none of us has ever had any relationships, even my friend which his biggest dream is to marry and constitute a family wasn’t able to even have a girlfriend in all of this time, so, even though it is not my life, I still think we have to reflect about this cases in which a person begins to see the years and years go by and their humble, if I may say so, life's dream appearing to be every time farther and farther away of being realized, can someone really be angry at the thought of someone in this situation gets disenchanted with life, and sometimes by doing so, begins to resent people in general ? Since I am talking so much about High School let me make an analogy with one of my particular experiences in High School, do any of you know how it feels like when you like something let’s say an group sport like soccer or basketball for example, but every time people would make the teams you were always the last one to be selected ? Well I know very well how this feels because that last person to be selected was always me, I used to like to play volleyball with my family in a volleyball court that was close to home, I never was very athletic but I liked to play, but as I began to play volleyball, any sport really but I liked volleyball in particular, in PE class in Middle School and High School I was always the last one to be chosen for any team and during the game all my teammates always treated me as some type of dead weight that they had to carry, and it was by observing their behavior towards me that little by little I not only stopped liking volleyball, but it became the sport that I hated, and still hate, the most. The feeling of being treated as if you are incapable of any positive collaboration to the victory of the team, the sporadic occasions in which a member of your team noticed how sad you were at not being able to participate in the game and purposely let you touch the ball, only to make themselves feel better for what they were doing, as if that was some act of charity they were performing. It all got to my nerves at some point and all I could feel every time I played volleyball was how little my classmates thought of me.


One can make a parallel between my description of the games of volleyball on my School years to what happened to my friend that had as his main ambition in life “to marry, establish a family and have kids.” in his adult life, except that in life no one is obligated to accept you just because you have offered yourself, so were you to be the last to be selected, in fact you just wouldn’t be selected at all, and that is what happened to him ( it also happened to me ). And sometimes when his Parents or his work colleagues noticed how lonely he were they would try to arrange to him a date with some women, and when he ultimately didn’t succeed at making a girlfriend, they would go to him and criticize him for letting such a chance let go like that, as if they were doing some type of charity to him. Could you really get mad at him for resenting those people who always seemed to reject him and also those people that felt bad for seeing the contrast between their lives and that of my friend and “mercifully” decided to offer him some time of emotional charity by arranging a date with some single woman they knew, only to not have to witness the loneliness of others.



Another topic that I have been thinking about was about how we model our understanding of the existence of incels in society, and since I have been watching several lectures of Jordan Peterson, I have been interested in the Jungian idea that at the most primitive and/or fundamental level we human beings model the world trough the use of archetypes, it then stimulated me to think about which character would best represent the incel archetype ? Thinking about it quite meticulously it came to mind at least two stories that had major characters that we would today categorize as incels, those would be The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Quasimodo and Cyrano de Bergerac’s Cyrano. Although Each of the stories have their own qualities and defects, through the semiotics of inceldom both characters are the representation of one societal occurrence, that is the utterly bankruptcy of Ethics at the predilection of Aesthetics, and as such I ultimately would have to choose Quasimodo as the better representative of the incel archetype, given the genius of Victor Hugo there is actually a passage in which Quasimodo leaves two vases in the window of Esmeralda’s room “One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked crystal vase. It had allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers which it contained were withered. The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson. I know not whether it was done intentionally, but Esmeralda takes the withered flowers from the crystal vase and presses them passionately on her heart for the entirety of the day.”. This symbolism represents almost perfectly the incel conundrum, this behavior of Esmeralda is the behavior of the vast majority of females, and although we cannot say that every incel can be described as a person that is internally akin to vibrant flowers that remained fresh and crimson, even if we were to exclude those that are morally corrupt, which seem to be homogeneously distributed trough all social groups, there would still be those that have scarred hearts from their previous failures, although the vast majority of incels have been naive and hopeful at some time in their lives, this naivety progressively becomes a presupposition of malice and this hope becomes scorn, that is to say, can one honesty believe that a unkept flower in a uncracked earthenware pot would not shrivel, dry and die ? Given that it’s necessities were not being fulfilled in a very long time (perhaps even never) ?



The usual reading of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, from my experience, looks with disdain towards the indirect rejection he suffers from Esmeralda, some people look at that and categorize it as a simple sexist instance of “it’s tragic because he didn’t get the girl”, where the situation is not anywhere that straight up, to quote Jordan Peterson on rejection: “It is a real judgement, at best it would be like: while I don’t mind your physical presence, your genes should definitely not survive another generation”, and if that was all perhaps that would be okay, but that is not all that happens, Esmeralda chooses Phoebus instead of choosing Quasimodo or even not choosing anyone at all, she rejects Quasimodo despite all of his good intentions and chooses Phoebus regardless of his egotistical intent. Why does she do that ? This has already been answered in these reflections, it is because se makes an aesthetic judgement and not an ethical one, Quasimodo is judged for his ugly and deformed appearance, of which he had virtually no choice, and Phoebus is judged for his handsomeness, of which he had been gifted without having done anything to deserve such blessing. Other people see that as a pathetically obvious result: “what did he expect ? Esmeralda is way out of his league, he should just accept that and hope that he finds someone that is just as ugly and deformed as himself, if that is even possible, and why should I even care for such a story ? The vast majority of the population, including myself, is neither deformed or that ugly and never have passed or will pass though such a life.”, whilst ignoring it’s own connotation as wildly discriminatory and sickly eugenic, much like Plato in his Republic: “It follows from our former admissions that the best men must mate with the best women in as many cases as possible, while the opposite should hold of the worst men and women; and that the offspring of the former should be reared, but not that of the latter, if our flock is going to be an eminent one. And all this must occur without anyone knowing except the rulers ... So then, we will have to establish by law certain festivals and sacrifices at which we will bring together brides and bridegrooms, and our poets must compose suitable hymns for the marriages that take place. ... I imagine that some sophisticated lotteries will have to be created, then, so that the inferior man of that sort will blame chance rather than the rulers at each mating time. ... And presumably, the young men who are good at war or at other things must —among other prizes and awards — be given a greater opportunity to have sex with the women, in order that a pretext may also be created at the same time for having as many children as possible fathered by such men.”, this is said by Plato, one of the most influential philosophers of the western world, so it is not that strange that people with such eugenic thoughts still exist and many times do not even realize the dangerous similarities between these two views, to simply accept this imposed hierarchy is not any better than to be like sheep that cannot begin to fathom the intentions of the shepherd.



That leaves us to think why is it exactly that almost every decision one can make is subjectable to ethics, with the notorious exception of romantic/sexual judgments, it is at this intersection between a unscrupulous pursuit of one’s desire and a prudent restriction towards ethical conduct, that the intellectual dishonesty begins, because there are considerable interests at stake, therefore the very notion of ethics in the judgment of romantic partners is discarded and this rustic, amorphous, sometimes even mystical, and a priori unprincipled imagery of what is love is pushed forward as a means to justify partial/biased judgment and to crush dissent among those that are at the margin in this aspect of life. This imagery is propaganda, and just like any propaganda, it seeks to create a narrative that encourages complacency towards the present status quo and vilifies the desistance of pursuit of those success goals that have been dictated by the narrative. That is why there are people that having been exposed to the narrative that effort is not only necessary, but sufficient to achieve economical success, for example, these people that take contemporary society to be a complete meritocracy, can pass by a homeless person and not only they become incapable of being sympathetic towards the difficult situation that those in misery pass through every day, but take that as a just sentence, for if those people had been committed and hardworking they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with, as they are it can only mean that they haven’t been those things, that they haven’t put enough effort to free themselves from poverty in which case they are only experiencing that which they deserve and one should only feel repugnance and aversion towards those people.



If anyone thinks that this is only exaggeration and a way to justify an inferiority complex, or as people in my country say a mutt complex, if you think so I suggest to you to make a thought experiment, imagine you had to cheer up Quasimodo that was sad because of his loneliness, could you honestly tell him things like “You just have to keep trying to find your soulmate, she is definitely out there.”, would you really think that was the case for someone that deformed ? And if you would say that what makes you think that this situation is any different from that which was jokingly pointed out by George Carlin in one of his jokes about prisons where he said something like “Everybody more or less agree that we need more prisons, some people even scream 'BUILD MORE PRISONS ! ... but not in here.' “. It is like those people that keep saying how people should be seeking love because they believe that society is full of bitter and resentful people , but then feel insulted if anyone they don’t fancy ever declare romantic feelings towards them. This characterizes a insidious cycle where society at large advocates for love as a fundamental element of having a successful life, and then there is a number of people that fail at that, and then society reaffirms love and then surprisingly enough more people seem to fail and then not only society reinforces this idea of love, they condemn those that fail at it, this is what is happening in Japan where an ever increasing number of men are not able to find female romantic partners, which then reflects negatively in the number of births which then begins to affect the economy of the country, another bizarre phenomenon that is happening there is that the number and popularity of female aimed brothels, or as they call it there Host clubs, that although also exist in the male oriented forms, they don’t reach the ridiculous proportion that the female oriented Host Clubs have achieved where there are literally huge billboards promoting the most popular “hosts”(gigolos) outdoors in clear day light , and then some people begin to complain that this situation is unique to Japan and that the situation on the vast majority of the world is different from that, and that may be true presently, but what they fail to see is that the demographics of present day Japan accurately represents the projections for the immediate future of all developed countries and that it already began to show in developing countries as well, so we would better learn what can be learned from Japan's situation because we will pass trough that soon enough.



Returning to how ethics has lost to aesthetics in the dating landscape, we may depart from a rational ethical analysis from what we experience in our failed attempts at dating, and the most recurring basis for rejection is not behavior or education or dedication, these things only achieve critical importance once two people have already begun dating, the thing that really works like a filter is attractiveness, which fundamentally means looks, knowing this we may begin this ethical analysis by asking what it means to exert judgment on other people mainly trough aesthetics, and that is, what makes anyone more aesthetically pleasing than another person ? Is it the actions that one chooses to take ? Is it the way one thinks about things ? Is it the behavior one upholds ? Is it the personality one has developed throughout his life ? Or is it one's physical appearance which was primarily defined by his genetics at the moment of birth, and secondly by the environment in which he grew up, both of which are random events in which one doesn’t have any influence over ?



Supposing one has honestly answered those previous questions can anyone say that the physical appearance is not a fundamental factor towards attractiveness ? If one still doesn’t agree then imagine yourself honestly telling that to Quasimodo, that is, if you were even capable of that. Still in this topic of attractiveness, a strange phenomenon that has been happening since about the 1990's when the percieved beauty standards for males changed radically. Generaly it is women that complain about the unattainability of such ideals, what is obviously a statistically and ethical valid complaint and one that I will take as a given, yet although unattainable they can hardly be said to be unfeminine, if for anything, the unattainability of such female standards arises from the exaggeration of the feminine to unrealistic levels, where as the contemporary beauty standard for males is almost entirely unmasculine in it's nature. The common feature shared by most male models of female oriented magazines is that, with the exception of their musculature and their jawbone that tend to be accentuated, they resemble some type of androgynous angel-like figure, having therefore more feminine traits in opposition to those biologically induced by characteristic masculine hormones like testosterone. In conclusion while women complaints of beauty standards are based in the fact that the cutoff region of what is considered attractive in the multivariate distribution of feminine aspects is so narrow that they become unrealistic, although the variables of the distribution are in principle still comparable throughout, if not all, the vast majority of women; Where as with men the problem lies in the fact that there is a break between men who have in their appearance those feminine dimensions capable of mustering an androgynous look, which has become attractive as of late, and those who doesn't have this dimension to them, and in this discrete, discontinuous classification we have men being forsaken not because they don't lie within some range on the scales of attractiveness, but because they are not even on many of those scales to begin with, that is, some times it is not only because someone is on the lower strata that they are rejected in favor of someone else, sometimes it is just because they aren't even comparable in the first place, and this is a big problem because, may people like it or not, there are way more people that look like Quasimodo than there are people that look like angels anyway.



One fascinating exemple of how ethics becomes mixed with aesthetics occurs when a feminist calls all men pigs (or at least some portion of men), is the identification of a men with the figure of a pig a ethical judgement or an aesthetical one ? It almost seems as if the problem was not the actions perpetuated by those men but their aesthetics, that those actions would be somewhat acceptable, were practiced by some Christian Grey of Fifty Shades of Grey instead of some random creep. Still talking about those feminists, there is much talk about how women should just wear whatever they want and that they shouldn't be demurred by any possible sexual aggressor, after all the guilt of any aggression is always of the aggressor (which is a correct assessment, of course), nevertheless it should be pointed out that this type of discourse has many times promoted debauchery and demoted prudency, and this is a problem because, although the guilt of the aggression is of the aggressor, we have to remember ourselves that sexual impulses are not triggered by rationality and logic (hah, we wish that were the case, imagine if things were so simple and reasonable as solving numerous logic problems from a set of "propositional calculi" « See what i did there ? » ), but by instinct, so that it only takes a person with bad judgement for a tragedy to happen, is it really okay to encourage women to make themselves preferential prey to those molesters ? One thing is to envision an idealized society, another one entirely is to advocate unprudent behaviour in the real world. In the extreme end of feminism we find organizations such as Femen wich proclaims to fight against the malice of the patriarchy, only to do so with malice of their own and to fight malice with malice can only increase the total amount of malice in the world.



So we have people judging other people mainly trough randomly assigned traits, considering, of course, that even those who can improve themselves into becoming more attractive have first to have the potential to become more attractive, and this potential is equally randomly assigned. We have then to ask ourselves if this is ethical, which it is not, for it is an arbitrary judgment, and knowing that we must ask ourselves what can be done to remedy this unjust behavior, obviously we could not force or coerce people to change this, for it would be equally not ethical, the only thing we can really do is to accept the way things are and to take our own judgment upon this unethical situation. One thing that I have seen recently that has made me a little irritated was this, rather vulgar, video by BuzzFeed (), the guy in the video is certainly not a very ethical person by what is portrayed of him thinking, but for a second forget what he thinks and what he does in his privacy, no one else in the real world would know that to begin with, what I think is the most irritating thing is the part where he buys a watch to gift to the coworker that he belives he is developing feelings for, even if it is in his own twisted way, and when he finally goes to give the gift to her, he freezes and is not able to say anything and she gets uncomfortable with that and walks away, at the next moment we see him in the HR being scolded for inappropriate behaviour, since when does trying to give a watch to someone constitutes inappropriate behaviour ? It is as Roger Scruton has once said (), as society is tending towards becoming less and less civilized, romantic relationships begin to stop requiring a previous period of courtship and become each time more dreadfully direct, or how Roger Scruton said “Nowadays, of course, sexual harassment just means sexual advances made by the unattractive, who are the majority, so you know, there is a huge injustice in this.”.



Going back to the topic of how incels are seen by society, we may spend days and days arguing about how every time there is, for a lack of a better word, a public exhibition of the subject there is always a permeating hypocrisy of some sort, either they think we are just “bad losers” in a way, that just because we aren’t able to date anyone we think it is alright to be whining about how we couldn’t achieve that which we wished, and how this is only because the world is unjust and so on, when in fact the majority of them revert right back to this state whenever their established relationships crumble, and in this moment they don’t think that in fact they are just whining and that they should just “buckle up, kiddo”, or when people are so reductionist to the point that they say we incels are just frustrated because we can’t get laid and begin talking about how this is some justification for why prostitution should be legalized, when in fact just because something is illegal it doesn’t mean it is impossible to find, prostitution, much like illegal drugs, is not that difficult to find if you are actually looking for it, these people forget about the deepest existential question that is in fact what really desolate the incels, these people just say this because they have had the privilege of having had their emotional needs fulfilled and reassured by this they have taken the liberty of dissociating one thing with the other, and having had their emotional needs fulfilled they begin to only think about sex and their sexual desires instead of the more basic, humane, problem. In the last case people just assume that if someone is rejected by everyone they have ever approached, then that means they are some type of freaks that should just lay down and rot, after all the word of the people have been ushered, and the word of the people is law. But jokes aside, I wish to talk about one opinionated person in particular, Natalie Wynn the transexual woman of the YouTube channel ContraPoints, in her video about incels () to which many people took to be a pondered, even perhaps conciliatory, stand on the question of inceldom, yet, although better than the majority of the expositions of the topic she still makes fundamental mistakes about incels, in particular in the part about how the black pill is just catastrophizing, or how she exposed it as being defined by psychotherapists as “A cognitive distortion where anxiety or depression leads you to infer apocalyptic conclusions from mundane setbacks and anxieties.”, every incel reading this might instantly see where the problem in that is, it only gets worse when she gives the first example of such a situation, she says to consider a person that is late for work and that from that they get to the conclusion that they and their hole family are going to die because of that, later on she tries to show how the black pill is just another scenario of catastrophizing, except that it isn’t as simple, consider first her first example, sure one person who once got late may not get fired because of that, but what about someone that is always late ? In fact forget the whole scenario where this person is employed in the first place, this scenario is already too reassuring to begin with, consider instead someone that is unemployed and has always been and the reason that that is so is amongst other things that they seem to always get late to their work interviews, let’s say that happens because they live in a city that has a serious problem of traffic congestion, since this person has not been able to get a job until now it would not be strange if they accepted that their chances of being able to get a job are low, and if they aren’t able to get a job soon they and their family are soon enough starve to death, of course this put in this way has a simple solution, just wake up early!, but let’s talk about something more real, in Brazil there has been a economic crisis that has subsisted over the last five or so years, and that has generated a somewhat new class of labor force categorization, roughly speaking there are the employed, the unemployed and the dismayed (in portuguese “desalentados”) that have given up on looking for a job and that according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) has estimated to be around 4.8 millions of Brazilians in the last year (2018) estimates. Which only demonstrates how giving up at situations of an overwhelming number of rejections is not some type of silly catastrophizing, it is something more close to a natural reaction towards this ubiquitous presence of rejection, but let’s go back to Natalie's description of the black pill, she begins with saying that experiences of rejection and isolation, where she doesn’t quantify this, making it seem as if it is just some experiences of rejection and isolation and not the only thing one has experienced, then she says one might infer that one’s unattractive to women, what may seem a plausible inference from someone that has had some experiences of rejection but is quite certain for someone who only has experienced this, then she goes on to say that from this one may conclude that they will be attractive to any woman, which again is a very big jump for someone who has had some experiences of rejection, but it is not that big of a inference jump for someone who was only experienced rejection, she then goes on to say things that are not inferences but deductions from the last inference in points 4-You will be forever alone; 5-You will always be Unhappy; and 6-Women did this to you. And then she goes on to talk about some points that can try to explain why would things be in such a way as to allow someone to come at those previous conclusions, that is points 7-feminism empowered women to do this to you; 8-The social trends that made this possible are only getting worse; And then there is that last conclusion that I will take the liberty of rewriting as 9-Humanity itself, as understood to be the association of every human being as equally “human” and therefore equally deserving of existence, nutrition, education, housing, friendships and love; is therefore Doomed. Having reach this conclusion is it really that strange if someone were to begin to think that the only thing that one can do in this overwhelming scenario where one is faced with nothing more than the perception and understanding of impotence towards the status quo of things ? That figuratively, in this scenario of powerlessness, the only thing one can do is to lie down and rot ? She then goes on to make rampant generalizations about how incels could stop being incels, or how she puts it “Mom the shit out of them.”, if they just socialized more, made some friends, ..., and many more standard discriminatory assumptions that people in general make and that they think they have the solution to. But to be frank I don’t dislike completely her video, compared to what other people have said she is almost comprehensive in this video, and if it were not for her latest video on Beauty (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mspMJTNEY) I would probably not being criticizing her now, but in this video she simply tries to justify why when she makes a plastic surgery it is alright, but when it is an incel that does one it is not because of the pressures of society, it is purely because they want to have sex with women and that they think that by doing that they will have their lives become meaningful, not because perhaps they would wish some amount of love in their dispassionate lives, but then again there is that one frase Natalie said in her penultimate video, what was it again ? .... oh, right it was that it’s “just a privileged person with a platform punching down at a politically besieged group he understands nothing about.” (here it has to be noted that her video on Incels is her most seen video.), after all if you can point out to people that never had a relationship how meaningless it all is and how it wouldn’t bring any meaning into your life anyway, is it alright for her then if we just faced every couple head on and said that their affection towards one another is really just a delusion that their relationship will foster them with any meaning in their shallow meaningless lives, just like a proper cynic would do ? I suspect not !


Another problem with Natalie exposition is that a part of the reason that she went through plastic surgery was because she wanted to be more beautiful and attractive, and how she wanted to look more like a woman, but that doesn’t seem to be ethically acceptable, if we were to consider a person who doesn’t like their ethnicity and would wish to make themselves look more like a ethnicity they liked more, would it be ethical to allow this person to pass trough treatments for skin whitening and facial reconstruction just to look more like a given ethnicity, would it not only be the expression of a societal racism that was then internalized by this person, and shouldn’t they be stopped and made understand that ethnicity is simply not something that should characterize anyone as this or that, and that they can in fact be whatever they want without having to reshape themselves to serve the perception of other people ? In this case shouldn’t Natalie just keep herself the way she was because of the same reasons ? What is it that really matters how one sees one’s self or how others see them or how one changes the way they see themselves based on how other people see them? These are difficult questions, but they are questions that demand answers as soon as possible because they are of fundamental importance to guarantee that everything is coherent. You see there was this very famous British mathematician called G.H. Hardy that, tell the stories, hated to look at his own face in the mirror and every time he would travel, he would ask for the hotel to cover all mirrors in his quarters with towels so that he wouldn’t have to keep staring at his own face. Some people today would certainly say that the cause for that is a psychological disorder and that he should go to a psychologist and solve that



Having faced several rejections, the majority of which didn’t provide any constructive criticism, although there were several instances of conveyed disgust, one still has to hear criticism of this sort: “Your belief that you will never find anyone who would love you is absurd, you cannot give up, you just have to keep trying even if it takes a hundred or a thousand tries, once you find someone who accepts you that will be all that will matter and all those rejections will be meaningless.”. Although it is sad to burst the bubble of such a Happy go lucky though, we have to face the facts nevertheless, and the fact is that the more rejections one has the lowest are his chances of actually being accepted by someone, it is just basic probability theory, considering that for any given person the number of attempts to get a girlfriend is too low to estimate the exact probability of him being accepted at any given occasion, we have to use the best expectation of such a result that we can make with the limited number of trials such a person has experienced, and the way to do that is with Bayesian probabilities, that is by the use of Bayes’ Law to update the initial expectations. To better illustrate this I will present an example, let us say that a young and naive boy would like to find the probability of him being accepted or rejected by a girl when he confesses, because he is very naive his first expectation is that there is as much chance of him being accepted as there is of him being rejected as he thinks to himself: “I don’t think there is any particular reason for me being rejected as also there isn’t any for me being accepted.”, and then he experiences his first rejection and says to himself: “Well, although that was sad, according to my expectation that was as probable as any other outcome”. As time goes on he finds that all five of his confessions ended in rejections and thinks to himself that the chances of that would be about 3.1% with the assumptions he had made, it can be that he was just unlucky, but he decides to make use of Bayes’ Law to update his expectation values of acceptance and rejection, since those trials can only result in discrete combinations of yes or no answers and because the number of possible candidates is so large that we can make the small approximation that there is reposition, which implies the need of the use of a binomial distribution to represent the chances of being accepted in a given number of trials, which when put into Bayes' Law, with the use of the Product Law of probabilities, can then be easily shown to be proportional to the initial guess of distribution of the acceptance (or conversely of the rejection) times a beta distribution with a normalization factor, I took the liberty of plotting the graphs for a given initial distribution of the acceptance probability and its evolution as one keeps getting rejected, in blue we have the probability density of the acceptance probability and in green we have the cumulative of such a probability density:




graph1-png.121781


graph2-png.121784



graph3-png.121785



graph4-png.121786




graph5-png.121788



graph6-png.121789





As one can see there is a clear tendency of the distribution to the right, that means that with every rejection the expected probability of a acceptance gets smaller and smaller, parting from a very conservative initial expectation distribution for the probability of an acceptance with a mean on 50% chance, we get that 15 consecutive rejections, and no acceptance since the beginning, later we have a 70% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 10%; and 20% of chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 2%.

Should one get 20 consecutive rejections with no acceptance since the beginning, we get that there is a 70% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 7%; with a 20% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 1%. It can be shown that this distribution uniformly converges to a class of distributions so called (Bounded) Pareto Distributions, which are sometimes mistakenly said to have the 80% to 20% rule, but this is only the case for exactly one Pareto Distribution and need not be the one we are getting.



I had a friend that once told me he had 34 consecutive rejections since he had begun trying to get a girlfriend, so only for curiosity I made the calculations and there is a 90% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 7%; and a 20% chance that the probability of being accepted is between 0% and 0.7% that is to say that there is a 1/5 chance that on average* only 1 girl out of the next 142 girls he decides to declare to will accept., (*) considering as if the 0.7% were a larger concentration of probabilities, which is not the case, for it is in the 0% that there are bigger concentrations of probabilities. That may not seem soooo bad but we have to consider that we begun with a very naive and unrealistic guess at what the distribution of the acceptance probability would be like, had we begun with a homogeneous distribution or a distribution that was more centered at rejection we would have gotten way worse results. One funny paper that should not be taken as serious because the writer is too picky and his calculations are imprecise and uses outdated data is the paper entitled "Why I will never have a girlfriend" by Tristan Miller wich can be found at his web site at https://logological.org/girlfriend. So if we can take anything from the last exposition is that it doesn't matter if my probabilities are precisely correct what really matters is that if one person were to be completely rational about it's prospects of finding a girlfriend the weight of all the rejections he had ever witnessed are in fact evidences that his chances are not any good, and that with every rejection his percieved chances of success can only get worse.
not a molecule
 
The Country of Nehalym
Nehalym, an island country, is a very mysterious dictatorship. What will Dan and Nathan do to save their people?

Chapter 1: Welcome to Nehalym!
“KFC! KFC!” someone shouts through the streets. Nathan knows the call. He and a bunch of other eleven-year-olds bolt down the corridor.
Nathan has dark hair, tan-ish skin, and green eyes. Common qualities of a citizen who lives in Nehalym.
“Darn,” Nathan grumbles. “I hate running!”
CRACK! The sound of a Baseball bat cracks on the wall of the Slap-Store convenience store. Due to the laziness of the manager, Slap-Store only houses toilet-paper rolls.
A ten-year-old kid named Dan is walking out the automatic-sliding-doors of Slap-Store. He has blond hair, light skin, and blue eyes. Common qualities of a White Person. “What’s all this angry mob do-”
RUMBLE-RUMBLE! The eleven-year-olds accidentally collide into Dan. Dan stands back up and says, “Hey, watch where you’re going!”
“Sorry!” Nathan calls as he runs. “But there’s a Killer following us!”
“Wait, wha-” Dan doesn’t have a clue about this “Killer” thing.
“Don’t just stand there!” Nathan shouts back. “Do something!”
Without explanation, Dan would probably know what a Killer is, anyway. He jolts down the street. After a while of running, Dan has to wait to catch his breath. Then he hears footsteps. He turns around. A wrinkly-skinned, white-haired man shows up, holding an obsidian Baseball bat.
That guy? That old-man? How’s he a Killer? Dan wonders. Instead of running away, he considers seriously questioning the old-man. DONK! A Baseball bat slams against his thigh.

Chapter 2: Meet Nathan, Average Kid!
“Hi, I’m Nathan,” Nathan says. “Say ‘Nay-Than’, not ‘Nah-Then’.”
Dan is still shivering. He’s lying down against a brick wall, several yards from Slap-Store. “Who the heck was that stupid guy?”
“Hey!” Nathan scolds. “Watch your mouth. We can’t use foul language in-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dan interrupts, annoyed. “Well go away.”
“Don’t you want to know the name of this country? I hear you’re a newcomer.”
“Ha! Yes, I know the name of this country! It’s…um…uh…Nazi-Germany! I’ve time-traveled back to the 1940’s.”
Nathan frowns. He stares blankly at Dan. “I can see you’re American. Let’s see how far you can go with this.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dan continues. “That was just a little attempt at humor. I know how much you like to laugh!”
Nathan’s eyes narrow into slits. His facial expression is very smug. “Not funny,” he retorts. He sighs, pauses, and introduces, “Welcome to Nehalym. I suppose it’s the last country in the world that still has a dictatorship.”
Dan corrects, “No, China, several ones in Africa, parts of Europe, and other places still have bosses in place of presidents.”
Suddenly, without notice, Nathan walks away. “Bye.”
“Hey, where you goin’?” Dan steps up onto the sidewalk.
“Shh. My parents. I might get myself killed. I must go!”
Getting yourself killed is actually quite common in Nehalym. Dan used to live in The State of Texas, United States, but his parents moved to Nehalym, a dangerous place. Sure, these can all be rumors, but who knows?
Dan’s father had been frequently switching jobs ever since. He had to travel all over the state just to get to a different workplace. He dreamed of a calm, convenient Utopia where switching jobs is unnecessary. Overwhelmed, he stumbles upon a Daily Epoch Newspaper Report about an island country where you can’t leave. That’s Nehalym.
Dan’s family, the Slap-Jacks, wanted to bring everyone along to Nehalym, but there was one problem.
Dan has a brother named Swaggington, but he wasn’t allowed to transfer to Nehalym. Swaggington was seventeen years old at that time, so it’s generally accepted that he stays in the United States alone.
Swaggington was in college, and he wasn’t allowed to come to Nehalym because of that. Nehalym has zero Universities, so they didn’t want Swaggington to be worried about his education.
The people in Nehalym tried to be nice to Swaggington by concerning his education, which is considered a good thing.
And whether somebody is still a college student or not, they should always avoid Nehalym.
In the United States, you’re not allowed to go to North Korea at the time of writing. However, another country where leaving is illegal, and United Airlines still lets you fly there.
And because an island is small, and you can’t leave Nehalym, Dan’s father used lazy strategies. Dan’s dad always answers a job-change request by saying, “I decline the request, since I can’t leave my small country.”
Even though Dan is only ten years old, he knows better than to move to a country where you can’t leave.

Chapter 3: The K.F.C. and Kia!
“KFC! RUN!” Nathan jerks his head around as he shouts.
Dan is still asleep. It’s eight-o’clock in the morning, but Dan has no clue about government sleeping rules. Neither do his parents.
Voices come from outside the house.
“KFC! KF-”
SLAM! Goes a Baseball bat.
“Kia!”
WHACK! Goes a Baseball bat.
“Kia!”
BAM! Goes a Baseball bat.
BONK! Again.
BLUBRUB! Someone gets rubbed against a wall.
“Kia!”
Dan stutters. He wakes up, startled to find another angry mob banging people around. “Who’s Kia?” he mutters.
“KFC’s are chasing us! Everyone dodge West!” Nathan commands. A group of other kids dodge to the side as a Killer tries to strike them, but misses. What the heck? How is it possible, fast-food-restaurants chasing eleven-year-olds?
Dan rushes downstairs and slams the front door behind him. He runs out onto the road where the angry mob is. Except he’s still wearing his pajamas! At first sight, Dan sees a bunch of elderly men swishing Baseball bats around.
Suddenly, a tall slender woman trots across the road, holding her right hand up to signal “stop.” Will she stop the Killers? No. Instead, she drags a young boy on the dusty ground. It’s the boy who exclaimed, “Kia,” three times.
The boy refuses, and tries to let go of her hand. The woman scolds, “Get up, Sylus!”
Sylus, the boy who called for Kia, flinches. He stands up on his feet. He walked obediently to a doctor’s office with the woman.
Wait a minute… The mob of old-men was trying to hurt Gordon and others, yet he goes to a doctor’s office. Are the old-men, called Killers, actually supposed to do that?
“Dan!” calls Nathan. “Dan, are you all-right?”
“Yeah,” Dan replies. “I just got out. Who’re those people supposed to be?”
“Um, before I answer that question, I have a question for you. Why the heck are you in your pajamas?”
“Oh, uh…I had no time. Just to be quick.”
“Go dress up! Now! You’re going to get yourself killed! You’re lucky the Killers didn’t see.”

Chapter 4: The Hall of Open Records!
“Hey!” a Killer shouts. “You’re new here, right?”
Dan turns around.
“He’s talking to you,” Nathan points out.
“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” Dan tells the Killer.
“What’s your name?” the Killer lowers his voice.
“Daniel Slap-Jack,” Dan says.
The Killer thinks for a moment. “Okay, now go to The HOOR.”
“What’s The HOOR?”
“THE HALL OF OPEN RECORDS, MORON!”
Dan, whose real name is Daniel, still doesn’t know where The Hall of Open Records is.
Just as Dan is about to ask the Killer where it is, Nathan grabs him by the shoulder and points in the North direction. He explains, “We live on the South side of town. If you need to go to The HOOR, go straight North of your home, and left.”
After a tiresome thirty minutes of walking, Dan catches up to his destination. The HOOR is a very tall building suspended by white poles. It has a couple of sculptures carved on the roof. It looks a bit like the U.S. Supreme Court, not to mention that Nehalym doesn’t even have any courts.
“What do you want?” a female wearing a suit says. It’s the Director, who owns The HOOR. She sits in a tall chair behind a curved desk.
“Uh,” Dan stutters, “An old-man, who my friend calls a ‘Killer’, told me to go here.”
“Friend?” the Director asks doubtfully. “I never received your contract agreement.”
“What’s that?” Dan wonders. That’s another peculiar thing about Nehalym.
“You’re new here, right?”
Dan nods.
“Then you shall read this packet,” the Director says as she hands Dan an old, wrinkled stack of papers. “It’s the introductory information about Nehalym. Please take a seat.”
Dan sits down on a purple couch and starts to read the first packet. Unfortunately, he gets interrupted again.
“That’s for the aristocracy,” the Director points out in a matter-of-fact tone. She points to several ordinary chairs to the left of the purple couch. “That’s for the middle class.” Then she points to dirty ram-shackle seats in the corner of The HOOR lobby. “That’s for the peasants.”
Peasants? Aristocrats? Dan is stunned at the concept of these old Feudal System Classes. Anyway, he continues reading.
“Males must wake up promptly at eight o’clock AM, and no later than that. Females must wake up at seven o’clock AM, otherwise they’ll get slapped in the face. Females are allowed to take naps, but males aren’t.”
Dan becomes enraged. He throws the packet on the ground. He stomps up to the front desk, and points straight at the Director. “You guys are sexist!” Dan shouts.
“No, we’re not,” the Director replies calmly.
“Oh yeah?” Dan argues. “And you’re violent, too.”
“Me? I’m not.” the Director asks, gesturing to herself.
“You and all the people of Nehalym,” Dan says. “This country is absurd. What sort of a dictator has ‘Killers’ on his side?”
“What’re you talking about? Killers?”
“You know, those old people wearing white coats?”
“What? Those people are Community Convenience Workers. They help make the country a better place. They arrest people who break the rules.”
“But I didn’t break the rules. A Killer chased me down and hit me with a Baseball bat!”
“Then you must’ve broken a rule. Didn’t your family move here from the United States?”
“Yes, except for my older brother, who is in college.” Then Dan switches on his angry attitude again. “Where do they come from? Those Community Convenience ‘blah-blah-blah’s. They seem to catch people from nowhere. Do they hide behind buildings like spies? That’s very deceptive, you know!”
“Daniel, I am the Director of the Hall of Open Records. Don’t talk to me like that. But, as always, I’m willing to explain things to immigrants. Most buildings have a specialized office in them, built for Community Convenience Workers to work there. They monitor people through the building’s security cameras, if the building has any. Security cameras are attached to both the outside and inside of most buildings, and they also have built-in microphones.”
“Um… Okay, but I…uh…really…have to go,” Dan says quickly as he turns around. He walks to the HOOR entrance. He turns around to face the Director again, who has a confused look on her face. “Bye,” Dan says casually. “I’ll read the packets later. I need to go back home.”
A woman wearing a tight dress is about to walk through the entrance doors.
“Look out behind you!” the Director snaps.
Dan is about to turn around to see who’s behind him, but it’s too late. The woman in the tight dress bumps in to him.
The woman in the tight dress scrunches up her face. “Oh, so this is how you treat me?” she taunts. “Running into me like a childish old troll? Well I’ve got news for you, buddy. You’re going down, sucker!”
“What’s your problem?” Dan asks angrily.
The woman smiles. “Your existence. Why shouldn’t I kill you?”
“All right then, kill me,” Dan says sarcastically.
The woman tries to perform a karate-kick, but her dress is so tight that she can’t lift her leg more than two feet off the ground. “Dang!” she exclaims.
Dan scoffs, “Whatever.” He opens the door and walks out of the HOOR like nothing ever happened.
The Director is left speechless. His face is stuck at a raised-eyebrow position. Finally, she murmurs to herself, “About how Dan said that we’re violent…”

Chapter 5: Father’s Labor!
Dan has a good-night’s sleep, and he’s expecting tomorrow to be a normal day, sitting on the couch, watching television, being carefree as he wants.
Unfortunately, little does he know that Nehalym’s elementary school system has no absolute, set enrollment date.
“Dad,” Dan asks nervously. “What’s your new job?”
Dan’s dad sighs. “Labor.”
“What?”
“Laborer! It’s very heavy-duty work.”
“Heavy-duty…um…uh… Are you fatigued?”
“Compared to other workers, no, ‘cause I just took the job. People with more experience get harder work.”
“What’s it like compared to America?”
“Heh, heh. In America, it’s just eight hours of light to medium-duty work. I have a colleague named Betch, and her job is twenty-three hours of relentlessly smashing an axe on a block of refined obsidian.”
“Well that’s stupid!”
“Shh…” Dad points to a sound recorder screwed to the ceiling. “They can hear us! We don’t have the freedom to criticize things the government owns! And by the way, you’re goin’ to school, mister!”
Dan glances at the clock. It’s seven-o’clock in the morning, right when the government sleeping rules set in. He’d been talking to his dad for about one minute. “Right now?” he asks, shocked.
“Yes!” Dad replies in a congradulative manner. “Right now.”

Chapter 6: Going to School!
“Can I go to the restroom?” Dan asks during Math Class, First Period of Droop-Gloop Elementary School. It’s Friday, and Dan is a new student in fifth grade.
The teacher, Mrs. Danky-Pants, turns away from the whiteboard, and faces Dan. “I don’t know, CAN you?” she retorts.
“MAY I go to the restroom?” Dan corrects.
“What? Can’t you see we’re in class? Why would I ever let you use the rest-room? Students aren’t allowed to REST and sleep on the soft, cushioned-”
“Not rest-room, resTRoom, as in ‘bathroom’.”
“We don’t have tubs and showers at Droop-Gloop Elementary.”
“Not that kind of bathroom! The bathroom with the toilets.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to LET you have a TOY from the class Treasure Box-”
“NO! The one with the sinks and the urinals.”
“Well, from my experience, I’ve never heard of anyone who SANK in the ocean from a URINAL tract infection.”
“NO!” Dan argues, annoyed. “Mrs. Danky-Pants, why are you so literal-minded?”
“Oh, that. If you need to pee, students such as you should go outside and urinate in the pointy, prickly thorn-bushes.”
Dan grunts, and throws his pencil on the floor to show his distress. Then he stumbles out of the classroom reluctantly. What psycho pees outside the school?
“Huh. Just that old darn thing,” Dan mumbles. He had experience peeing in the woods before, so it’s no sweat to do it now. But there’s still no reason why ordinary teachers force students to pee outside, when schools in Nehalym clearly has bathrooms…or do they? Just as he starts to pull down his pants, “Aaaaagh!”
There’s a person who suddenly jumps in front of him. He screams, too, “Aaaaagh! What the- Oof! Ouch! Kia! Ki…” Dan blocks his hand in front of the other screamer’s mouth.
“Hey!” the other guy reacts. “Kia’s the community nurse! What were you thinking?”
“Kia’s a nurse?” Dan wonders. Although he’d just learned something new about this specific community of Nehalym, he tries to seem “normal,” and pretends he already knows it. “Oh, yes, I know that,” Dan lies. “But still, don’t you think it’s a bit weird to need medical care due to accidentally falling over?”
“Not at all,” the other guy replies in a matter-of-fact tone. “My parents, the moms and dads of Nehalym, have all taught us to shout the name of the nurse when injured. It’s a common habit now.”
“Wait…” Dan tries to recall the memory of Sylus being dragged on the ground to get to Kia’s place, back on the street where he lives. The memory of the angry mob, bashing people beforehand. He asks, “Why can’t the school have its own nurse? Seems kind of inconvenient to drag people all the way down Main Street.”
“Mrs. Danky-Pants sent me,” Nathan bursts out the door, catching his breath. “You need to get back to class. And you’re not even ‘peeing’! You’re just standing around, talking to your-”
“Friend?” Dan suggests.
“No, no, no. You haven’t even signed the agreement yet!” Nathan grumbles, signaling that the Friendship Agreement is common knowledge, and Dan should know the rules by now. “Anyway, you’re not-” Nathan continues his message from the teacher.
Dan completes Nathan’s sentence with a familiar phrase, “-following directions like Mrs. Danky-Pants told me to.” He walks back into the school, half-surprised that Nathan goes to his school, too.

Chapter 7: The Backfiring Plan!
The next day, Dan encounters someone familiar he met at school. He’s glad it’s Saturday, so he won’t have to go to school and pee in the bushes or what-not.
“Hi, ‘names Helix Supernova,” the guy Dan talked to yesterday introduces himself. It’s after Dan ate his breakfast, put on his clothes, and walked out the door, to find the guy right in front of him.
“Um,” Dan starts, “about that ‘Kia’ thing, one time the Killers were trying to hit me, but why call them Killers? I mean, smacking your stomach or your thigh isn’t going to kill you.”
“Ha,” Helix says in a cruel, sarcastic manner. “WELL THEN, GO AHEAD! They’ll do whatever they’re told. You want to die, then fine.”
Dan picks out one sentence. It’s unique, at least in the sense of Nehalym. “They’ll do whatever they’re told.” His mouth formed into a sly grin.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Helix detects Dan’s emotion, and predicts his plan. “Now, don’t be too clever.” He tells Dan a fable, where a fox wasn’t allowed to pick the grapes off a tree. But the fox punched the grapes off the tree, since the rules only applied to picking. Unfortunately, the grapes were poison, and the fox regrets his way of thinking.
“Tree-hugger.”
“Hey, hey, hey! No insults! You could get in big trou-”
The ground starts to shake. “Get him!” several old men yell in a raspy voice.
“Aww, not the KFC!” Helix groans.
Dan dashes up to a nearby stop-sign, and points to it with both index-fingers. This indicates “stop.” The Killers stop running, and stare at him.
“Look,” Dan persuades. “This won’t change anything. What’s the point of injuring people? This is unethical, cruel, and just mean. Back in my country, America, kids would get chastised in a non-physical way. So would you please stop-”
The Killers confer for a few seconds, and then one speaks up, “Look, you know those clichés in movies, right? Someone says something very ‘heartwarming’ or ‘meaningful’ to the villain, and he immediately transforms into a protagonist. Well that certainly ain’t going to happen!” The Head Killer holds back his Baseball bat, aims, and… BAM! He smashes into his OWN head!
Helix rolls his eyes. “Ugh. Your plan totally backfired! Let me rephrase that. They’ll do whatever EVIL they’re told,” he counters toward Dan. Then, there’s a scream. And a splash. Helix turns around, and he sees a person flying through the air and landing in water. Dan isn’t standing on the road anymore. But according to science, how is it possible that Dan gets shot so high?
Helix snatches the Head Killer’s bat, and trips him over on the asphalt. Then he grabs a shoe to examine it. “Aha!” Helix exclaims. The shoes are super-bouncy, and give off ten times the amount of energy it receives. That may be why Dan got “kicked” so far.
Just then, the Killer who fell rises up behind Helix, and grabs his arms. He locks Helix with handcuffs! “I’m an adult,” the Killer explains. “Don’t you touch me again.”
Helix starts shouting. “Hey! Somebody! Dan got kicked and…mrphof-”
The Killer slaps Helix’s mouth shut.

Chapter 8: Save From the Hidden!
“Are you sure he got kicked?” the Rescue Squad confirms through the telephone. Nathan overheard from Helix, and is reporting an emergency over the phone in less than a minute after that. To blend in and seem non-suspicious, he calls from a normal street phone booth.
“Yes, of course,” Nathan replies.
“But according to science, a shoe can’t give off twice the energy it receives,” Bob, a Rescue Squad member, says. How can Nathan explain this?
Then another Rescue Squad member named Max comes on the phone. He’s a physicist with a PHD in science. He tells several scenarios of facts, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The shoes must have some energy source. If it’s the person who kicks, then his leg would be numb shortly afterward. The shoes might have a tank of fuel, but that can’t be gasoline or else he explodes. Using inductive charging is fine, but we hardly see that kind of tech in a pair of shoes.”
“But the shoes were really bouncy!” Nathan protests.
“But we’re the Rescue Squad. We rescue people who are lost or hurt. As for the ‘super-bouncy’ shoes that kick a person this far…let’s say, a mile…there’s no point of rescuing him. He’s probably dead. Who’s the owner of these mysterious shoes?”
“I don’t know his name, but he’s a Killer.”
“Killer? Killers give satisfactory corporal punishment to children as chastisement. The kid misbehaved, and that’s that. Kicking is a fair punishment.” Max hangs up the phone-call.
URRRGGGH! Nathan re-dials the telephone number for the rescue squad. He seems to be incredibly distressed. “Hello?” he talks into the phone’s speaker.
The same Max’s voice comes on the earpiece. “Hey, it’s you again, right?”
Nathan doesn’t know whether Max is angry or just questioning. Before he can reply, Max taunts, “No need to be rude, but we can call the police. Is this a prank call?”
Nathan considers the threat of calling the police. However, there’s no police in Nehalym, so Killers also serve as police. But their job isn’t to protect, it’s to do vigilante justice. And to them, vigilante justice basically means Baseball-bat-bashing.
“Uh, no,” Nathan answers unsurely. “But the main reason is that the Killer kicked him for doing something minor. It’s kicking as a punishment for name-calling.”
“Dude, we’re very busy. The Rescue Squad doesn’t deal with these situations,” Max replies. “Either hang up the phone, or JUMP OFF A CLIFF!” He yells the last phrase so loudly that Nathan’s ears hurt.
“Oww! Oof!” Nathan immediately drops the phone and falls on the ground next to the phone booth he’s calling from, without hanging up or canceling the call. What would happen next?
Nathan scoops the phone back up, and argues, “I’ve got to admit, you suck at insulting. ‘Jump off a cliff’ is basically nothing, and it’s not even offensive. How ‘bout this: ‘kill yourself’!” He’s yelling so loud that he’s practically shouting straight into the phone.
“That’s it,” Max says. “What started as an emergency call turned out to be an argument. NOW HANG UP THE PHONE, YOU IDIOT!”
Max shouted that last sentence so loud, and so sudden, that Nathan winces. The phone slips out of his hand again, and he accidentally bonks his head against the phone booth. He decides there’s enough pain to call for the help of Kia. “Kia! Kia! Kia…” Nathan calls into the open air.
After a few seconds, a sexy-looking woman escorts Nathan to a building that looks like a pediatrics medical center. Is she Kia?
Dan is a skillful swimmer, and he’s very lucky to land in the water, not on stone or dirt. He’s also very lucky to not land head-first, because even a water-landing might lead to brain damage. Despite his swimming skills, the water is easy to maneuver.
He realizes that the water is a shallow land-bridge connecting Nehalym to a nearby island. The island, as it seems, contains a circular wall of stone that had white-and-orange boards nearby. Maybe it’s an under-construction tower or something.
Dan wades through the water and steps back on the land, his soaked clothes causing perceived heaviness.
Before Dan steps off the coast and onto the man-made cityscape of Nehalym, he figures it’d be much more convenient to use a little lift. “Kia! KEEEAAH!” Dan roars at the top of his lungs. Soon, and I mean a couple of seconds, Dan sees a train speeding down the monorail. A curvaceous woman steps out. She’s wearing a red dress that looks very tight in relation to her body.
Dan feels confused. How did the woman hear Dan shout her name? The Nehalym Government must by eavesdropping on their citizens’ speech! But how’d they do that? Dan decides it’s too much of a mystery.
When she walks up to Dan, he hopes this “Kia” will drive him to the nurse’s office, or let him ride the monorail. Then he wouldn’t have to walk all the way home, right?
Unfortunately, the woman isn’t as nice as Dan thought. Dan wonders if he’s being too optimistic, but the woman snatches him by the shirt-collar. Dan lunges forward, sprawled on the sandy coastal-beach.
“Get up!” Kia scolds.
After Dan stands back up, he notices something strange. The type of dress Kia is wearing. What Kia’s facial features look like. She looks exactly like the woman in the purple dress who tried to assault him! In fact, Kia was the woman in the purple dress.
“It’s not my fault!” Dan implores. “You pulled me over! I got up anyway, but why should I listen to you?”
Kia frowns. “You talk back to me one more time, and you’re dead!” she threatens.
Dan flinches, and asks, “Um, aren’t you going to drive me there or let me ride the monorail?”
“Of course not! Do you think my job is to provide convenient rides for children? No. It’s to be a nurse. And there’s only one nurse’s office, and only one nurse. So it doesn’t matter how far away you are, because you’re still walking with me.”
It’s somewhat ironic that a nurse would injure her own patients. But Nehalym is Nehalym, right? Don’t judge a book by its cover, Dan thinks. ‘Same thing for women.

Chapter 9: Both Getting Arrested!
While Dan is walking, he tries to be extremely cautious. In his mind, Nehalym has a bad reputation.
But on the sidewalks, he sees the most unhappy, desperate people he ever sees in his entire life. Those people are young adult couples, but they seem to be terribly mismatched.
There is a woman walking with a man with a beard that drags on the concrete.
Another woman and a man that has horns in his…mouth?
This time, there is an old lady walking by with a man in a wheelchair.
And a woman with an…old-man who looks like a Killer?
Although this’s the first time Dan ever notices this, the sight astonishes him. He sees not one single car, not one single bike, not one single motorcycle. Everyone in the streets of Nehalym is a pedestrian! Nobody seems to own any personal motor-vehicle. Dan doesn’t know whether this is good or bad, but the dictator might be forcing people to walk so they take a long time and tire out.
Kia and Dan have walked a very long distance, but there’s one of natural life-forms that he doesn’t see: animals. There’re no animals in Nehalym. That dictator must be really mean!
After roughly an hour-and-a-half of “useless” walking, Dan becomes extremely thirsty. He pleads, “May I have some water?”
“Eh…” Kia replies, “no.”
“But I’m dehydrated!” Dan says.
“We’re almost there,” Kia reassures Dan.
“Where? Some dumb shank-”
“Shut up! You’re going to get yourself arrested!”
“But, there’s no police in Nehalym.”
“How did you know that?”
Dan is confused. It’s obvious, he knew. “Um,” Dan guesses, “I don’t see any police around here. It seems like the old-man-Killers are the police. Yet they’re not really police, since they’re unethical.”
“Dan! How dare you call our hard-working Killers unethical?”
Dan scoffs, and replies nonchalant, “Huh. ‘Hard-working,’ you say? I don’t think it takes much effort to kill somebody. You could just get out a gu-”
“Dan! Don’t talk like that. And it doesn’t work that way. Killers do work hard, but not the way you think. It’s uh, well for a classified reason.”
That doesn’t make much sense to Dan.
He enters the nurse’s office as Kia directed, but the room is dark and gloomy. There’re no patients, no counters, and no advertising brochures. There’s only one door, cast in the shadows at the back of the room. This doesn’t seem like a medical center at all.
Dan looks behind him, but Kia is nowhere in sight anymore. He realizes this is a total trick!
He catches a glimpse of a person sitting on a bench, wrapped around and around, from head to toe, in worn heavy-duty rope. As he walks farther into the room, he can see rows and rows of people tied up, all sitting on pews.
“What the…” Dan murmurs. “Wait a second, this ain’t a nurse’s office. It’s a-”
“Jail,” someone completes Dan’s sentence. Who just said that?
“Uh…” Dan hesitates. “Who…um…”
The person who finished Dan’s sentence giggles. “That was me,” Nathan says. He sits on the first row, third from the right.
“Nathan?” Dan exclaims. His eyes narrow. “What sort of a joke is this?”
“Oh, this isn’t no joke,” Nathan replies. “No need to explain. I called the Rescue Squad-”
“They have rescue squads here? I didn’t know that,” Dan comments.
“Shh! So the Rescue Squad, the guy on the other end… Never mind. I just accidentally fell and I called for Kia.”
“Yolo, we’d better tell the people about this,” Dan announces in a matter-of-fact manner.
Nathan lacks knowledge of American teenage slang, so he has no idea what “yolo” is. But that doesn’t matter, because Dan ran off.

Chapter 10: The Great Escape!
When Nathan notices Dan’s disappearance, he looks around. He sees two possible outlets: the door that you enter and exit the prison, and the door at the back. He squints, and he figures that door in the shadows is wrapped in caution tape that says, “GUARDS ONLY.” Nathan shouts, “Dan, we really shouldn’t be doing this!”
Dan looks around. He’s in the guards-only room, which is an administration control room. He notices a switch that says, “Emergency Rope Release.”
Nathan is still sitting on the long bench, but he suddenly forgets he’s tied up in rope. He tries to get Dan, but he instantly trips over and splats face-first on the floor. The rest of the tied-up prisoners laugh hysterically.
Someone yells a command. The prisoners turn around, and see a guard dressed in a gray suit. “What’s so funny?”
The crowd of jail-people remains silent.
“Well,” the guard tells everyone in a vain fashion, “if there’s nothing funny, then I shall return to my Jail Watch Duty.” He turns to a girl. “Azalea, keep an eye on the prisoner who just came in.”
Back in the Guards’ Administration Room, Dan flicks the switch. The alarm starts blaring, and prisoners who’d been tied in ropes are released. “Hey, what’s going on?” the guard asks angrily.
All the former-prisoners start running in chaos, and a few of them start cheering. The jail fills up with pandemonium.
The guard grunts as he opens the door to the guards-only room. AHA! Dan gets caught!

Chapter 11: Great Confusion!
Helix is about to enter Kia’s building, and like everyone, he thinks it’s a nurse’s office. The Killer, who handcuffed him, dragged him all the way over here. The Killer knocks on the door, and starts speaking, “Sir, we’ve got this dude named Helix who tripped me over and pulled my shoe off. Officer? Hello?”
Helix is confused. The Killer caught him for misbehaving, and now the Killer dragged him to a nurse’s office? Something fishy must be going on.
Both the Killer and Helix hear loud noises coming from inside the door. Helix asks politely, “Why’d you make me go to a nurse’s office? This nurse’s office doesn’t have any windows, and is has very loud patients.”
The Killer didn’t answer until a few seconds later. He replies, startled, “Oh! Um…uh… Oh, yes. You’ll see, once we go in.”
Even though this’s the first occasion a Killer ever talked to anyone nicely, Helix keeps asking questions. “How can we be sure it’s not someplace that just has a sign that says-”
“Look,” the Killer lectures. “Listen to me. You don’t want to get punished again, do you? I tell you that this ‘Kia nurse thing’ is completely true. I’ll even prove it.” The Killer opens the door.
“Hey!” a five-year-old prisoner squeals. “The door is open! We’re free!”
Helix gapes wide-eyed at the commotion. Here he is, expecting a “Killer” to bring him to a “nurse’s office,” and being greeted with escaping prisoners.
The prisoners run straight out the door. The door is only about eight feet high, so the people pile up quickly, and end up blocking the door. Ex-prisoners are literally pouring out of the jail!

Chapter 12: Famously Infamous!
If there’s a crowd of people, and you’re just like everyone else, it’s hard to pick you out since you blend in. That’s what Dan did to escape the jail-building.
Dan walks all the way down to his house, and it’s time for dinner already. Nehalym also has rules for male and female eating times, but Dan arrives home roughly five minutes within the parameters.
“Wow,” Dan’s mother exclaims. “What were you doing out there? It’s time for dinner. A few more minutes, and you’d break the rules! Let’s start eating now.”
“Hey Clara,” Dan’s father tells Dan’s mom, “you might want to check this out.” Dan’s dad is watching the News Channel on the family Samsung Television. Dan turns his head to the TV.
A news reporter is talking into a microphone. He announces, “Breaking news tonight! We’ve recently discovered that two-thousand prisoners have escaped from the local jail. One-thousand, three-hundred of which are bank-robbers. Jail Watch Guard, Bob Peterson, reports that a young boy named Daniel Slap-Jack may have caused all this fury with a flick of a switch in the control panel…”
Dan’s mom and dad exchange looks. Finally, Dad assumes, “Dan didn’t do this. He would never do anything like this. I seriously doubt if he even was arrested!”
Dan pipes up, and starts telling the truth a little too quickly, “No, I wasn’t ‘arrested’! I got hurt, and the nurse was supposed to bring me to the nurse’s place, but it was just a jail in disguise, and there were tons of people who weren’t supposed to be prisoners like my…um…future friend Nathan and Helix Supern-”
“Dan,” Mom interrupts politely, “you might want to explain more slowly. So start from the beginning: how did you end up at the jail?”
Dan tells his mom and dad all about what the Killers did, and how he swam up on the shore. He even describes the under-construction-building-or-something on the island next to Nehalym, as if it was something suspicious. He explains how calling the nurse’s name, “Kia,” is a complete hoax. The nurse’s office is just a disguised prison for innocent children. And, of course, how he released the prisoners for their own good.
“Whoa, Dan,” Dad remarks, amazed. “But I guess it’s not your fault. You just didn’t know that three-quarters of them were bank-robbers, did you, son?”
Dan scoffs, and answers, “Yeah, but it’s really THEIR fault. They made their banks ROBBABLE, so no wonder just about anyone can get away with hoards of money.”
Mom realizes an important fact. “So that might be why the country’s in a financial crisis! You’re a smart kid.”
Dan’s father resumes watching TV again. The news-reporter is still talking, “…in the past two hours, more than three banks have been robbed. We aren’t yet sure about whether Dan caused these incidents, but one thing’s for sure. Another infringement of the rules, and he’s dead!”
Dad chortles. Not at the threat of a death penalty, that’s for sure. He laughs at the three banks robbed in a mere two hours. “These banks are vulnerable, all right,” he retorts.
Mom glances at the clock. “Oh no!” she exclaims. “We haven’t eaten dinner yet! We’re going to get in big trouble with the government.”
Right at that exact moment, the door to the family’s home busts open. Chubby men wearing rubbery, yellow Hazmat suits walk into the house, holstering laser-blasters. Radio noises fill the room, and distorted voices coming through walkie-talkies are inaudible.
“We’re the Killers’ grandsons,” one Hazmat suit-wearing man says in a crackly voice. “But that’s not what we’re here for. That guy-” He points at Dan. “-didn’t eat dinner between six o’clock PM and seven o’clock PM. He ought to be executed!”
“Oh, really?” Dan’s mother taunts. “Just get a hold of that clock!” She points at a clock next to the microwave in the kitchen.
“Ha! We ain’t need clocks. We have watches here!” another guy in a suit proves a point. Although that was a false claim, since their watches just ran out of battery right then. They all groan.
The Killers’ grandsons look at the clock. They exchange confused looks. One of them chimes in, “Um, well we made a mistake. Sorry. Guess you still have a couple of minutes. Bye.” The Killers’ grandsons straighten up their yellow Hazmat suits, and exit the house, slamming the door.
Dan’s mom smiles. “I changed the clock,” she whispers into Dan’s ear.

Chapter 13: What’s It Like To Be A Prankster?
The under-construction structure on the nearby island is completed. To the average eye, it seems just like a century-old lighthouse. But this “lighthouse” isn’t used for any of those purposes at all. It’s a classified base.
Jim Kloss is the dictator of Nehalym. Everyone calls him “Kloss the Boss” or “Boss Kloss.” He’s a short man for a dictator, and he has an extremely round stomach. He has a large, brown mustache with a small beard on his pointy chin. He’s bald, so he wears a toupee even though it’s useless for a national ruler.
To the average eye, Boss Kloss looks like an average business-man. Just a little plumper.
Boss Kloss decides to hire a new helper. The helper arrives in the early morning on Sunday.
“Okay, let me introduce you to our new top-secret base,” Boss Kloss tells the new politician named Gates Bill, or G.B. They’re standing on the nearby island.
“Okay,” G.B. says, tentatively, “so let me get this straight. This is our top-secret base?”
“Yup,” Boss Kloss replies proudly. He and G.B. walk down the sidewalk as they talk. To the average eye, they look like tourists seeing the new tower. “I put the rock on the roof.”
“The…rock? Why’re you so proud of putting a rock on a tippy-cracker?”
“I usually just lounge around on the sofa playing video games. There’s really not much to do being the ruler of a whole entire country. I’m very proud of my most recent work.”
“Putting a rock on the roof doesn’t take much work. Plus, I’m pretty sure the secret base has an elevator.”
“I know, it seems easy. To you, it is. To me, it’s the most labor I’ve ever done.”
“Hey! That’s why you’re so fat!”
“Hey, you, we can call the cops.”
“I thought they’re called ‘Killers’.”
“Fat sat mat catted the get rat!”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. Are you stupid?”
Stunned by the rude statement, Boss Kloss fires G.B. His last words toward G.B. are, “It does make sense, you dumbhead!”
G.B. walks away quietly, shaking his head. The way Jim Kloss acts! How childish, inappropriate, mean, and unsensible! G.B. is fired.
One day later, Boss Kloss finds another person qualified to be his companion. Her name is Macy Marse. Boss Kloss is delighted, and he does his introductory sentence: “Let me introduce you to our new top-secret base.”
“That old thug?” Macy wonders in dismay. Then she became angry. “You know, I’d rather not work at a smugly, old tower. That’s it. I resign.”
Boss Kloss feels shocked again, and tries to persuade Macy, “Please, trust me. That tower is actually futuristic and modern on the inside.”
“I don’t trust someone with so much power,” Macy explains while looking at her newly-manicured fingernails. “I don’t want to work with a fat guy like you.” She walks away, clattering the ground with every step of her high-heels. She quit.
Two days later, Boss Kloss recruits a smart-looking geek with huge eyeglasses. Boss Kloss had already been through two people who didn’t seem to work with him. But this one seems so smart, he might be able to help Boss Kloss with their new plan.
This time, the geek introduces himself first, “Hi, my name’s Jamie Grimm. Other people call me ‘Freaky-Deekie’, but just call me Jamie.”
Boss Kloss cracks up with laughter. He thinks such a nickname like “Freaky-Deekie” is ridiculous.
Jamie frowns. Luckily, he doesn’t have the short attention-span of Macy, who quit immediately. Jamie folds his arms and snickers. “Look,” he tells Boss Kloss. “Don’t be immature. I’m here to work for you, but I don’t have that much goodwill to put up with you.”
“Okay,” Boss Kloss says. “Let’s go on an inside tour of out new base.” The two men rush into the old-looking tower.
Now it’s Wednesday, and Dan follows his usual morning routine. He gets up, goes to the restroom, dresses up, eats breakfast, packs up his backpack, and gets in the car with his mom to go to school.
Little did he know that there’re only three people at school, including him. They’re both standing in the schoolyard, chatting.
Dan notices one of them is Helix, but the other one is a Goth-Girl he doesn’t know. Dan greets Helix, but he doesn’t answer. They just keep talking. Dan taps Helix’s shoulder, and he arrogantly groans, “WHAT?”
“Um,” Dan starts, “is this a holiday or something?”
“Yup. It’s the dictator’s birthday,” Helix informs. “Our parents didn’t know. They just dropped us off here.”
Dan turns around, but his mother’s car already drove off. He’s trapped until three o’clock! “Did anyone bring a cell-phone?” Dan asks.
“Nope,” both Helix and the girl say answer in unison.
“Okay,” Dan’s mouth forms into a sly grin. “Here’s what we should do. We’re not going home…” The trio huddles together and discusses a secret spy-plan.
The three kids arrive near a landfill. Soon, Helix starts digging around in a trash-can. “Nope, not here,” he murmurs.
“What’re you doing?” Dan interjects. “Aren’t we supposed to get to the island, not look in trash-cans?”
Helix trots over to a dark-green, roof-shaped dumpster. He digs around in the great stash of trash. The trash makes loud CLANK-ing noises in the dumpster.
“Dude,” the Goth-Girl warns. “The Killers might come get us.”
Helix simply ignores the warning.
Suddenly, Dan and Goth-Girl dash up to the dumpster and close the lid on top of Helix’s hands.
“Yeeeoww!” Helix howls in pain. “What is your problem?”
“That’s what you get for wasting time messing around with rubbish,” Dan explains. “Now follow our plan. We have to get to the island.”
Helix sighs, and lifts the dumpster lid to take his arms out. But one of his hands contains the exact item he was looking for. He stuffs it in his pocket, and starts walking just like Goth-Girl and Dan.
“Oh, no,” Dan exclaims as he starts walking away. “The Killers have seen us! Quick! To the walls!”
“Um, there are no walls,” Goth-Girl says obviously. “Unless you’re talking about the side of the dumpster.”

Chapter 14: The Monorail Ticket!
A Killer walks out of an operating room carrying a bottle of mineral water. He gazes around, seemingly looking for mischievous kids. His eyes fixate on Helix, Dan, and the Goth-Girl. “What were you just doing?”
“Nothing,” Dan pipes up. “We were just walking around, that’s all.”
“Ha,” the Killer retorts sarcastically, “what were you doing by that dumpster?”
Dan frowns. “We didn’t take anything. And that’s final.”
The Killer makes a smug face, and walks back to the operating room. As he walks there, he shouts, “I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” with his back turned.
“HELIX!” Dan yelps at Helix’s face. “You nearly got us in trouble! What’s with your obsession with trash?”
Helix sags his face down. “Sorry. But we have to ride the monorail to get to the island!”
Goth-Girl frowns, and remarks, “Yeah, without a map or GPS.”
Helix simply takes a map out of his pocket and hands it to Goth-Girl. It’s a standard green, yellow, and white road map. The monorail is marked with a dark-gray line. “THIS was what I was looking for in the dumpster.”
“Really? I guess we shouldn’t have made assumptions of you messing about, then. I’m a fan of dark colors, but this map still works fine,” Goth-Girl says.
The monorail station has been newly painted a vibrant shade of silver. The benches have cross-hatched surfaces just like those types of metal fences. When Dan, Goth-Girl, and Helix arrive at the station, they’re already out of breath.
“Let’s…sit…down…” Dan tells the others, breathing heavily.
Goth-Girl closes her eyes halfway, and replies, “We need tickets to ride, moron.” She folds her arms, but then she catches a glimpse of something on the train-tracks. “Hey, get those tickets down there.” She points to slips of paper on the train-tracks.
Dan kneels down on the edge of the platform. He can’t reach the tickets on the track.
“Just walk onto the track!” Goth-Girl shouts.
“You know,” Dan starts, “I think this train goes a lot faster than you thi-”
The monorail shoots past Dan. He dodges away just in time. The monorail coasts to a stop, its brakes making a continuous noise of descending pitch. A huge gust of air blasts at Dan’s face. So hard that he falls over on his buttocks.
“Hey!” Goth-Girl says. “I didn’t even see the train pass by. I blinked, and then it’s just right there making a screeching sound.”
“Free ride!” the conductor calls through the closed monorail window. His voice sounds muffled from outside. The monorail’s automatic-sliding-doors open, and he shouts, “Free ride!” again.
Shortly after the trio enters the monorail, to doors slam shut like two razor-sharp-knife-blades slicing the air in half. Helix shakes his head and mumbles, “They should seriously consider their safety.”

Chapter 15: The Secret Tower!
Ten-or-so seconds later, the trio arrives on the beach that’s next to the island with the tower. “This is the beach,” Dan explains. “It has a land-bridge under shallow water that connects to that small island¬¬-” He points to the island with the tower on it. “-with an old-looking tower built on it.”
The Goth-Girl assumes, “Well, it just looks like a naturally formed island. That tower could be an old landmark. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is,” Dan pauses mid-sentence, “that tower was under construction the last time I saw it.”
“So?” Goth-Girl says. “People build old-looking things in modern times.”
“It has no windows! People might want to not be seen. Modern towers have windows all over them. And why would they make it look like a lighthouse? Must be a secret spy base or something,” Dan analyzes.
“So?”
“Why would they build a tower on an island next to Nehalym instead of the mainland? Maybe it’s a remote military base. Just skinnier. And no tanks. Or missile-launchers.”
“If I tried to think of a word other than ‘so,’ I wouldn’t be able to do it. So what?”
“You don’t think it’s a big deal?”
“Nope. At first I thought I was supposed to buy a bikini from the swimwear shop, but no.”
Dan and Helix chortle.
Helix chimes in, “Jokes aside, but that island looks pretty deserted.” He points at the tower. “It’s just you, me, and you-” He gestures his hand at the other two kids. “-infiltrating some old tower, wide out in the open, on a tiny island. Man, there won’t even be a security camera!”
“No security cameras,” Dan repeats. “That’s it!” He runs off the shore and gets his lower-legs and shoes wet. The water above the land-bridge is only knee-level-high. Goth-Girl and Helix follow along, wading through the water flowing above the land-bridge.
The water is clear-ish, with an even hint of aqua. The land bridge is a road-like path connecting the two Nehalymian islands. The ocean-floor around the land bridge is about three feet deeper than the surface of the land-bridge. As for Global Warming, the land bridge used to be an actual path above land. But after the sea-levels have risen, shallow water fills over the land-bridge. Ocean waves erode and weather the land-bridge, so it shrank to barely a foot wide over thousands of years. The land-bridge used to be almost as wide as the land-bridge connecting Alaska and Russia, and even the puny island with the tower on it used to be bigger than Australia, millions of years ago.
Just as Dan, the leader while walking across the water-covered land-bridge, steps on the island, the tower seems to have grown larger. And there’s something peculiar about the “lighthouse” door…
Aha! The door to the old-looking tower. It opens like an elevator door. Dan is the first person to walk into the tower. It doesn’t look as skinny inside as it does outside. But most strange of all, the floor is made of glass. The door-frame is lined with a Neodymium magnet. Dan doesn’t know about chemistry so, of course, he doesn’t notice the technology in the doorway.
Dan casually paces around the tower, and notices stairs in the corner. No-wait, it’s a rugged ramp. No-wait, it’s an escalator. No-wait, it’s some sort of conveyor belt. The conveyor belt is much quieter than any escalator he’d seen in America. The conveyor leading upstairs, Dan wonders how any human can go up there on such a steep incline.
Goth-Girl and Helix run through the doorway together, but the map pulverizes into microscopic bits. She gasps.
“Huh,” Helix mumbles. He takes a BitCoin Wallet out of his pocket, and holds it out at the door-magnet. It vaporizes and fine dust snows down on him. “Uh…”
“BitCoin Wallet?” Goth-Girl exclaims. She saw Helix holding a dollar-bill-like note with the “B” symbol printed on it, right before it disintegrated. “HELIX!” she shouts. “You know we can’t use Internet money, right? Like BitCoins? It’s even worse now that you got it vaporized. You just wasted…um-”
“-more than a thousand BitCoins,” responds Helix.
Suddenly, a computerized female voice says in a flat tone, “Any non-human foreign objects other than clothing and shoes will be disintergenerated.”
Goth-Girl feels her hair. She used to have a headband, but now it’s not there. She shrugs as she nods, and remarks, “Not bad technology for a crappy country.”
The female computerized voice continues talking, “Analyzing object: BitCoin Note. Sending data to Dictator.”
“You darn freak!” Goth-Girl screams at Helix’s face. Her mouth opens wide and her eyebrows point down like she’s angry. “You just pulverized a BitCoin Wallet, something that’s illegal. You-”
Upstairs, Boss Kloss and Jamie Grimm are discussing a secret plan. They’re in their secret lab, covered in half a meter of sound insulation and thirteen authentication devices, not to mention digital key-locks and several more Neodymium magnetic doorways.
I’d say that’s pretty much useless when the sound insulation is already enough protection. They’re just talking, that’s all. It’s not like they’re testing bullet-blasters or anything. Even if they do test bullet-blasters, the amount of walls would bounce the bullets straight back, destroying the whole purpose of the inventions.
The sound insulation is to prevent the voice of the dictator and his helper from leaking out. There’re microphones and imaging devices to make sounds coming from the outside able to be heard inside, but not vice versa.

Chapter 16: The Bathroom Emergency!
“Now this is the bathroom,” Boss Kloss announces as he pushes open the clear-glass bathroom door in their secret base. “This toilet will provide the smelliest experience for you, Jamie…”
He glances at Jamie. But Jamie’s emotion isn’t what Boss Kloss expects, Boss Kloss thinks Jamie would be dazed by this. Instead, Jamie feels disgusted.
Anyway, Boss Kloss continues, “This bathroom has absolutely no privacy due to the clear door, and zero ventilation for defecation fumes. It’s the most luxurious flushing system, with eight-thousand pounds of force, enough to flush down an entire human posterior. Now isn’t that nice, Jamie?”
Jamie sighs. He answers, “Being the dictator’s sidekick, I officially decline this offer. This toilet sucks. Look! It’s even made out of splinter-y wood.”
“So? Look at that sink. As the dictator of Nehalym, I provide the top-secret base the most clean and bacteria-free sink.”
Jamie looks at the sink. There is slime drooping all over the sink. It’s even black, which makes it look even dirtier. “Such a lie,” he says sarcastically.
“Oh, but look at the bathtub. It fills up in five seconds, while most bathtubs in America take longer than thirty seconds to fill. Just like fast smartphone charge-times, this bathtub is a great convenience.”
“Fine.” Jamie walks up to the bathtub, staining his shoes on the poop-covered rug. Before he can even turn the water-faucet halfway, water blasts at the floor of the bathtub and shoots back up at Jamie, knocking off his glasses.
The water bounces off the sink mirror at a perfect angle, splashing the sink faucets. The sink faucets release skunk spray, which lands on the toilet-flushing-lever, affecting the smell of the bathroom, which already stinks.
“BEEP! BEEP!” an electronic alarm sounds.
“Hold on, I think I got a message,” Boss Kloss closes the bathroom door. He walks over to his circular workbench, housing several administrative electronic gadgets. Jamie follows up to check the computer after he puts his eyeglasses back on.
The bathroom pressure increases.
“Report,” Boss Kloss commands the computer.
A standard computerized female voice returns, “Systems have detected a BitCoin Wallet brought in by a ten-year-old male.”
The toilet continuously flushes.
“How should we punish him?” Jamie asks the computer.
“Standard Nehalym punishments include Baseball-bat-bashing, hose blasting-”
“No, no, no,” Jamie corrects. “A boy infiltrated our top-secret base. He also brought a BitCoin Wallet, which contains how much?”
“One-thousand, two-hundred BitCoins,” the computer replies happily.
“Oh, man,” Boss Kloss interjects. “Why don’t we just kick him out of this tower?”
The bathroom sink explodes.
The computer beeps again. “Systems have also detected a young female shouting at the boy who brought the BitCoins. The female is categorized as a lunatic, according to the past two minutes of behavior.”
A few seconds later, back at the ground-level floor, a loudspeaker instructs, “Helix Supernova and Amberlyn McKay, please exit this building immediately, otherwise we’ll literally ‘kick’ you out.”
“Wait,” Dan wonders, “Goth-Girl’s name is Amberlyn McKay?”
“Yup,” replies Amberlyn. She turns to Helix, “Sorry for shouting at you. It’s not our fault. We shouldn’t be in here anyway.”
Back in the secret lab, the toilet flushes down most of the oxygen supply.
The trio: Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn all walk out of the tower together, their faces glum and their shoulders sagging. And the doors close behind them.
Back in the secret lab, Boss Kloss checks the imaging sensors. The trio is nowhere to be seen. “All right, Jamie, those kids are out of here. Shall we lock the doors?”
The bathtub overflows.
“With pleasure,” Jamie agrees. He presses the lock button, which causes miniscule latches to lock the door that the trio walked out of.
Dan glances backward, just in time to see the latches lock the door. Now the three children are standing on the island again.
Back in the secret base, the faucet knobs implode on themselves. Brown smoke rises from the toilet. The toilet blows up, piercing wood into the walls. The bathtub drain-rim falls into the drainpipe. The bath-towels start retching under the negative air pressure. The electrical wires start wriggling out of their restraints.
Jamie hears cracking glass. He taps Boss Kloss on the shoulder, and they both turn around, astonished to see what’s happening to the bathroom.
Boss Kloss briskly turns away and picks up his smartphone from the workbench. “We’d better get this repaired.” He starts dialing the number for the Plumbers. Ironically, Boss Kloss owns the plumbing business, so he’s calling his own workers for help.
“Well hurry!” Jamie reminds him.
“Hello?” Boss Kloss speaks into the phone. “We have a bathroom emergency here.”
A plumber calling from the other side interrogates, “What kind of emergency? Buttock cramp? Pipe clogged of chest hair?”
“None of that,” Boss Kloss replies. “Our bathroom is…um…uh…let’s just say, ‘exploding’.”
“An exploding bathroom? Our plumbing business doesn’t deal with that kind of stuff. A plumber’s job is to fix pipes and such. If your bathroom exploded, there’re no pipes to fix.”
“Oh! You’re such a rat tat catted the slap met!”
“Sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. Someone else called me, so I’ve got to go!” The plumber hangs up on the phone call.
The dial-tone beeps on Boss Kloss’s side of the phone. “Hey! You can’t just-” Boss Kloss doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because the bathroom causes a fire emergency.
The smoke detector starts blaring. Actually, there’re more than ten smoke detectors per floor in the tower, so the noise gradually gets louder as more smoke detectors alarm-off.
“Get out!” Jamie shouts.
Boss Kloss runs swiftly up to Jamie, which, by the way, is probably the first time he even runs.
“I know!” Boss Kloss shakes Jamie’s body with his hands. “Why’d you have to make such a big deal of that?”
Jamie lightly jogs on his tiptoes out of the top-secret tower. Boss Kloss follows along, but due to his bulk, he stumbles like a rolling tumbleweed on the conveyor belt.
Boss Kloss attempts to reverse the conveyor belt, but fails to reach the lever. If the dictator owns such high-technology, why would he still use a lever anyway? Boss Kloss spins around, brushing against the glass panels.
“Warning. Bathroom on top floor may self-destruct at any moment. Please proceed with caution,” the female voice announces.
Uh-oh!
Boss Kloss tries to escape the tower, but he remembers that he locked the doors. Aww, man!
Basically what you just read happens in reverse motion. Boss Kloss has trouble getting up the conveyor belt, trips over, and goes back upstairs. He unlocks the door, which is just a one-inch red button, and the bathroom explodes right at that instant.
“Aaaaagh!” Boss Kloss screams as he falls off the tower. Luckily, he lands in the water. Not by the land-bridge, in the deep side.
With a big KABLOOSH! Boss Kloss bobs back up on the surface of the sea. Fat is less dense than water, so he has an easy time swimming to shore.

Chapter 16: The Puberty Surgery!
Back on the island, Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn get drenched in the water. Dan swims back to the mainland quickly, while the two others struggle to stay afloat.
Suddenly, a loudspeaker tied to a pole on the beach says in a raspy voice, “All children from ages ten to twelve, report to the HOOR for your Puberty ID Replacement.”
Helix and Amberlyn waddle up on the beach, their hair dripping and soaked. They start walking toward the monorail without saying a word.
Dan doesn’t go so fast. “Hey, hey, hey!” he says with his hands cupped around his mouth.
Helix and Amberlyn turn around. “What do you want?” Amberlyn releases her evil again. “YOU’VE MADE SOME SORT OF FAULTY PLAN, SOMETHING THAT BLEW UP OUR DESTINATION, AND NOW YOU…”
Dan runs up to Amberlyn and pushes her down on the sand. Dust flies up into the air. “Hey, Nehalym is already as corrupted as it is! That plan was to infiltrate the tower to apprehend the dictator.”
Helix argues, “Look. I have more experience than you do. I was born in Nehalym. The dictator isn’t like Adolf Hitler. He just sits around playing video games.”
“Whatever you say,” Dan agrees reluctantly. “Now what about the puberty what-you-call-it?”
Fifteen minutes later, Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn are tapping their feet, waiting in an extremely long line, a line full of every ten, eleven, and twelve-year-old in the country.
From far back, the long line looks like a casual setup for “Win Money” sweepstakes.
The three kids had joined the line after they saw the government setting up the Puberty ID Replacement Booth right here on the beach.
The Puberty ID Replacement Booth, or PIR Booth, is well…a booth. The booth is a worn-out, white, Polyethylene folding-table. There’s a big paper sign hung on the edge of the table that reads, “Ages Ten-Twelve: PIRB.”
Dan and the others walk forward. They’re almost at the front of the line now. Despite being extremely long, the line moves as fast as a bicycle chain!
“Excuse me, excuse me,” Nathan whispers. He joins the line to get his PIR. “Dan!” he shouts. Dan is already in the front of the line, so he can’t hear.
Nathan looks across the line, and everyone wears an orange ID band around their left wrist. All except one. Dan!
“DAN!” Nathan shouts.
Dan turns around and squints his eyes. “Nathan?”
“DAN!” Nathan repeats.
“What?” asks Dan.
“DAN! They’re going to kill you! DAN!”
“Huh?”
“Don’t eat that! NO!”
“Weird.” Dan has no clue about what he’s supposed to ‘eat.’ Eat? Why? What?
Dan is second place in line, so he cocks his head, curious to find out what the PIR does. He sees a blond girl holding out her forearm. A guy sitting on a chair behind the PIR Booth rips a piece of cardstock paper off her wrist, and sticks a new one on. Then the blond girl walks away as if nothing happened.
Now Dan stands directly in front of the PIR Booth. He decides to be skeptical and ask, “What’s this for?”
“Oh,” the person at the PIR Booth explains, “the Puberty ID Replacement is for young adolescents. We replace your current ID tag with an updated ID tag that records reproductive health.”
Dan nods, trying to seem socially normal. But he doesn’t have an ID tag.
The PIR person reaches out to Dan’s arm, but Dan isn’t wearing a piece of cardstock. The PIR man gasps.
He produces a walkie-talkie from his pocket, and says in a frozen tone, “Jim Kloss, come in, do you read me?”
The walkie-talkie flares an inaudible voice.
“Jim Kloss, I’ve got a rouge agent here named Daniel Slap-Jack. Ten-year-old boy, enters Nehalym illegally in classified!” the PIR man reports.
“What?” Dan asks, both confused and angry.
The PIR man chuckles, and explains, “Everyone in Nehalym needs to wear an ID band around their wrists. That identifies them as a Nehalym citizen.”
“Then how’d you know my name?” Dan asks.
The PIR man laughs again. “I don’t need an identifier to know who you are. You’re the bloke who broke into the jail and released all the prisoners! Don’t you know how many banks have been robbed?”
“Phhhttt! That’s your fault, since the banks have zero security.”
“But that’s not the point. The point is, you’re a felon. We require you, and I presume your family, to have ID’s, but you and them didn’t, did they? Did you? Nope.”
The PIR person grabs a bottle of white powder and pushes it toward Dan on the table. “Eat this. Just chuck it down,” the PIR guy says scantily.
Dan remembers what Nathan said. “DON’T EAT THAT!” echoes through his head. It must be poison, he thinks.
“HEY-YAH!” Dan shrieks as he kicks the PIR booth table down. But he doesn’t make a run for it.
Dan tries to prove to the PIR person that he won’t fall for “eat this” pranks. He does that by doing Karate. Or what he thinks is Karate. He does an unbalanced kick and falls over. The people in the front of the PIR line chortle.
Dan stands back up, and prepares to punch. “HEE-YAW!” he mimics what professional Karate fighters yell. The people waiting in line all scoff again. Dan actually doesn’t know anything about Karate. In fact, the fake Karate makes him look like a wimp.
“Yah-hey…” Dan says in a quieter voice as he pretends to do a head-butt. “No, I mean hey-yah!” He stops talking when the line of people laughs again. “Never mind.” Dan dashes off.
After the old top-secret lab in the tower was demolished, Jamie and Boss Kloss made use of the lower levels as their new secret lab. This time, of course, it didn’t include a ridiculous bathroom invention.
Boss Kloss has installed a very, very heavy, solid wood entrance-door to the secret lab. The installation didn’t take much time because the solid wood door is a slab of birch wood cut from an old tree. And they do have chainsaws in Nehalym.
“Jim?” Jamie calls as he knocks on the solid, wooden door of Boss Kloss’s new secret lab.
Boss Kloss is slouching on his couch, playing a video game, fiddling his thumbs like crazy. The name of the video game is Grand Theft Auto V.
“Jim?” Jamie says again. Instead of barging into the new secret lab, he decides to be polite and ask to come in.
Boss Kloss has set the volume of the game console up to one-hundred percent per Decibel, so he can’t hear Jamie calling him. Boss Kloss presses the yellow button on his game controller. His virtual game character punches his own virtual car.
Jamie pushes opens the door. It’s much heavier than he thinks. He exerts his whole body’s force to push the door sideways. Right as he walks into the secret lab, the door slams shut again.
Jamie walks up in front of Boss Kloss, who’s now eating a pound-bag of potato-chips. “Hey, you’re the dictator of this country, right?” Jamie asks rhetorically.
Boss Kloss doesn’t hear. All he hears is the game SFX sound effects. He presses the green button and the red button at the same time, and his virtual character jumps off a cliff.
Jamie instinctively switches off the game. He repeats, “You’re the dictator of this country, right?” Before Boss Kloss can answer, Jamie concludes, “You don’t seem like one. Dictators don’t sit around playing games. They need to take matters into their own hands.”
For the sake of language, Boss Kloss explains in a matter-of-fact manner, “The definition of dictate is to tell people what to do. I tell people what to do, not do it myself.”
“Bad news,” Jamie declares.
“What?” Boss Kloss asks.
Jamie is shocked. “Have you seriously been playing Grand Theft Auto for five hours?”
“Uh, yeah!”
“Well I’ve got news for you, buddy. There’s a kid named Daniel Slap-Jack, and he’s on the loose. You’re the leader of a country. You have power. You’ve got to do something!”
“Fine,” Boss Kloss sighs. He stands up clumsily and walks up to the intercom microphone. The intercom broadcasts important news to people all over Nehalym through loudspeakers. He speaks loudly, “Attention! Go catch that kid!” Then he plops back on the couch and turns on the game console.
“That’s it?” Jamie asks angrily.
“Yup,” Boss Kloss replies. “I’ve done my duty.”
Jamie sighs, disappointed at the now lazy dictator. He starts grunting as he tries to pull the door back open. Jamie takes revenge by pulling the door all the way open ninety degrees, and then letting go harshly. BANG!
“Hey!” Boss Kloss ramparts. “What was that for, you Freaky-Deekie?” He gets up off the couch, but the craggy wooden shed is collapsing already. But as he tries to get back at Jamie, part of the secret lab’s ceiling falls straight down on him.
Dan is still running. He sees a black motorcycle parked next to a skyscraper lobby. This must be the only motorcycle I’ve ever seen in Nehalym, he thinks.
Dan hops on the motorcycle after he’s too tired from running. He looks down, and there’s a kick-starter lever in the foot-grasper. He kicks the lever, and a loud sound fires out from the motorcycle. The engine must be very powerful!
“Hey! Get him!” hundreds of Killers yell angrily. Their eyebrows are very pointy and symmetrical, sort of…robot-like. The Killers stomp their feet and come closer. But very slowly. They’re all holding Uranium Baseball bats.
Before Dan can get the motorbike going, his instinct stops himself. “What’s that abbreviation again?” he wonders, tapping his fingers in quick succession. “Oh yeah! KFC!” He takes a deep breath, and bellows, “KFC! Everyone get far away. Don’t run down the corridor behind me, though!”
Dan turns the right-hand acceleration knob on the motorcycle handlebars. But he gets a bit of wheel-spin skidding, which is a good thing for him. Dust blasts out behind the back tire, and the Killers in front cough and back up. The Killers standing in the second row fall over, leading the Killers to fall backward like a domino-effect.
He rides the motorcycle back to the PIR line, where everyone is running around in random directions. Helix, Nathan, and Amberlyn hop on the back of the motorcycle. It’s good there are covers above the wheels!
Dan shifts his position forward to the edge of the seat so everyone has room. “Be careful,” he reminds them.
Soon, Dan, Amberlyn, Nathan, and Helix are approaching the beach. The same beach with the tower-island next to it.
“Dan, slow down!” Amberlyn orders.
Dan tries to turn the left-hand-handle-knob, but it won’t budge. Now he figures it out. The dictator and his people own this motorcycle. This is a complete prank motorbike. You can’t even de-accelerate!
“Dang it!” Dan whines. “Wait. Friends, I’m going faster.”
“What?” Amberlyn, Helix, and Nathan exclaim in unison.
Dan explains, “This motorcycle can’t slow down. We have to go faster to bust the engine!”
“Bust?” Nathan says. “Dude, destruction isn’t the only way to stop something that’s malfunctioning.”
Dan ignores him. VROOM! The motorcycle goes faster. Amberlyn’s hair gets caught in the wind. VROOM! VROOM! VROOM! Dan turns the acceleration knob. The engine meter points to the number seven, which means seven-thousand engine cycles per minute. It’s very dangerous for a gasoline-powered motorcycle to go that fast.
PJAW! The motorcycle explodes like a fiery inferno. Motorcycle mechanics are flying out in all directions and explode in the gray, cloudy sky. Luckily, nobody’s clothes catch on fire because the motorcycle just plunges into the ocean.
And when I say that Dan is a skillful swimmer, he’s good at swimming above water. He’s not-so-great at holding his breath underwater. But, as I just wrote, Dan can easily swim to the top. And he does.
“Dudes!” Dan shouts. His head is above the water, but none of the other kids’ heads are. His body under the water feels strangely cold. “Morons! Idiots! Retards! Doofuses! Sucke-”
Amberlyn is the first one to get up above the water. She punches Dan’s mouth, but not at full strength.
Dan says, “You know how boys aren’t allowed to hit girls? At least, it’s not polite in my country. But why doesn’t it go the other way around?”
Amberlyn shrugs, Helix and Nathan bobs above the water. Their hair is soaking wet. Helix shakes his head quickly like a dog drying off, and sea-water splashes onto Amberlyn’s face.
Amberlyn doesn’t react. The three other kids look puzzled. Amberlyn explains, “I get that a lot. ‘Dictator made me be a fashion model for a whole week, last month. He made me do it on the beach when it was cold, and dumped soda-pop in my hair if I don’t do it right.”
“Hey!” Nathan announces as he walks backward onto the beach. “Good news! That evil dictator is dead.” He nudges Amberlyn on the shoulder, and she looks up at the tower. The upper level looks like something exploded in it. Which the bathroom did. A large slab of glass and drywall is hanging over the lower level.
“We heard you,” the Killers approach in defensive crouches. Or more like…offensive crouches. They’re holding Bismuth Baseball bats. Although those bats aren’t to be considered for sports use anymore.
Dan whispers to Nathan, and Nathan nods affirmatively. He rushes into the collapsed tower.
Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn run up to the Killers. Dan does a fake Karate combo-move. The Killers in front laugh hard. The head Killer tries to lift the “Baseball” bat, but solid Bismuth is much too heavy. His head slams against the sandy beach, making a big “SPLUNK” noise.
And something very surprising indeed, happens. The Killer’s skull cracks open. Well, it isn’t actually a skull, because it’s made of polycarbonate.
Robots! The “Killers” are android robots!
Dan has an idea. He dashes past the Killers and tries to tiptoe across the land-bridge. The Killers try to chase him down, but they fall into the ocean ad electrocute.
“Hey!” Amberlyn calls. “What’re you doi-”
“I’ll take that,” a Killer declares. He starts grabbing the tank-top that Amberlyn is wearing. “Unauthorized material must be penetrated immediately.”
Helix stares blankly at the Amberlyn, and then looks at the Killer who attempts to destroy her shirt. “Yup,” Helix says. “They’re definitely robots.”
Another Killer glances at Helix. Helix frowns, “Uh…”
“Halt! Who goes there?” that Killer orders coldly.
Helix takes the Killer’s speech literally. He tries to be sassy to make the Killer argue with him uselessly. Helix replies, “Who goes there? Me. I’m standing here. My name is Helix Supernova.”
“I said, ‘HALT, WHO GOES THERE’?” the Killer repeats.
Helix replies sassily again, “I’ve already halted. I’m not moving. I thought you guys had an index of every person in the country. But anyways, ‘name’s Helix Supernova.”
The Killer gasps. Then he yells, “Aaaaagh! WHY, YOU LITTLE-” He pricks Helix in the stomach with his bony index-finger. “WHO GOES HERE?”
Dan arrives on the island, and he tries to enter the collapsed tower. But the door is still intact. And the door is very heavy. Very, very heavy. A much more informative method of describing the door is, “impossible to open.”
Dan yanks on the door, his body shaking back and forth. His hair is also being dragged forwards and backwards because of the air-resistance. “Why this stupid door?” Dan exclaims.
Nathan hears Dan’s voice. But the Killers are blocking his way, so Nathan takes a big leap into the water and tries to swim.
The Killers try to chase Nathan down, but they can’t swim. The density of the water causes the Killers to trip over and fall into the water. Seawater enters the Killers’ mouths, and they electrocute and instantly fail. ZAPPP!
Nathan’s clothes are soaked, and suddenly he feels swimming to the island will be a very daunting task.
Nathan can’t swim very well, so he has to do a tremendous thrusting movement to stay afloat every time he starts sinking. He swims all the way to the east side of the island.
“Dan!” Nathan calls.
“Just help me open the dumb door already!” Dan mutters angrily.
Nathan frowns and shakes his head. “That’s all because we haven’t been working together!”
Dan’s facial expression is still very smug.
“We all need to use teamwork!” Nathan continues. “All this time, we’ve been running around, doing all sorts of different things. We need to work together!”
“So let’s open the stupid door together,” Dan says.
“What’s the purpose of that?”
“NATHAN, JUST HELP ME PULL THAT HEAVY DOOR OPEN, YOU RETARDED RUNNING HORSE!”
A couple of Killers run towards Dan. Dan flinches, and in the blink of an eye, those Killers tumble down in the water. That sparks a light-bulb in his mind.
Dan takes a deep breath, and shouts at the top of his lungs, “HEY! COME AND CATCH ME! I BREAK THE RULES! YOU GUYS ARE SO IDIOTIC! COME ON! RUN TOWARDS ME!”
The Killers don’t budge. They stay put exactly where they are on the beach.
Nathan slaps Dan in the face. “You think they’d fall for that again and again? The Killers learn from their mistakes.”
Amberlyn and Helix distracted the Killers pretty well, and now they’ve gone back to their own homes.
Helix kept sassing the Killers around with the “Halt, who goes there?” statement. Amberlyn tricked the Killers with the good-old “look over there” prank.
Nathan and Dan don’t expect their team of four to split up, but Dan stays stubborn.
“Now that Helix and Amberlyn are gone,” Dan suggests, “why don’t we just open the door to the broken building without them? Surely we can open a door. Just open it. How simple is that?”
Jamie Grimm has about the same physical strength as two children combined, and he was able to open the door. Standing by the fact, Nathan and Dan pull open the door. They take twice as much time as Jamie did, because their shoes keep skidding across the sandy island.
The Killers don’t chase after them this time. If they swim, they electrocute. If they pick up the Baseball bats, they crack their plastic heads open. If they walk on the land-bridge, they fall off, and they electrocute.
Dan is curious to see what’s inside, so he lets go of the door and steps through the doorway.
When Dan ran into the building, Nathan was still holding the door and didn’t expect Dan to let go. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nathan exclaims quickly. He fumbles into the broken tower, nearly tripping over a large slab of concrete. The door slams shut, blowing a strong gust of wind at Nathan and Dan. The gust of wind combined with the force of the door slamming causes a bundle of electronics to fall from the broken ceiling.
“So…he died?” Dan ponders hesitantly. The large slab of concrete isn’t laying flat across the floor. There appears to be something under the slab of concrete, probably human-sized.
“You mean the dictator? He died?” Nathan replies.
“Well duh,” Dan says. “There’s nobody in this room.”
A faint buzz. Then a crackle. A voice speaks, “The identity of a young human male named Daniel Slap-Jack has been detected. He has reportedly infiltrated this tower earlier today. This message will be sent to the Killers.”
Nathan gapes angrily at Dan. Dan thinks Nathan doesn’t blink for thirty seconds straight! “Dude!” Nathan blurts.
“What?” Dan makes an excuse. “Like, it wasn’t my fault. Amberlyn and Helix also infiltrated this place.”
“So you guys are responsible for the dictator getting crushed?” Nathan confirms.
“Um, no,” Dan guesses unsurely. “When Helix, Amberlyn, and I infiltrated the tower, we kept hearing bathroom sounds. So maybe the bathroom blew up or something? Or maybe the door was so heavy it knocked the whole thing over.”
Besides the fact that Dan guessed it, what he said is exactly what happened to the tower that’s now only one story high.
“Why don’t we tell that computerized voice to-” Nathan mimics the talking style of the computerized voice. “-command every one of the Killers to altogether shut down indefinitely!”
Dan walks over the top of the concrete slab. He smirks at Nathan. He walks over to the dictator’s computer screen, and says, “Um…computer! Turn off Killers!”
The computer screen is black and stays that way.
Dan tries again. “Voice command!”
Nothing happens.
Dan repeats, “Enable voice command!”
Nothing happens.
“Turn on computerized voice!”
Nothing happens.
“Turn on the option that lets you talk to the computer!”
Nathan starts to chortle like a choking skunk. “You can’t tell the computer to turn on the feature that lets you tell it to do stuff,” he points out.
“Nathan, do you see that computer in the corner?” Dan asks.
“Yes,” Nathan answers. “It’s still intact.”
“Great! Now I need you to drag the icon.”
Nathan picks up the computer mouse, and literally physically drags it around the monitor’s screen. “That didn’t do anything!”
Dan repeats, “Drag it across the desktop!”
Nathan literally drags his mouse across the broken tabletop. “That didn’t do anything!”
Dan is shocked. “It didn’t? Now here’s the plan: open up the spreadsheet window, and go to the table labeled ‘REFERENCE’.”
Nathan spreads a sheet of newspaper across the physical broken window in the secret lab. Then he takes a long time to look around the broken table for a “REFERENCE” label.
“Nathan?” Dan says. “Are you still there?”
“I couldn’t find it,” Nathan replies.
“Of course you didn’t! You know what? Aaaaagh!”
“But what are we supposed to do?” Dan growls angrily. “Why are we even standing in the dictator’s lab? What’s the point?”
Suddenly, a high-pitched, rumbling noise comes from the door.
“What’s that?” Nathan shudders.
It took a lot of effort to push open the heavy, solid-wooden door. Dan doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to open the door again. Dan scoffs. “Aww, nothing. It’s probably just an old-man with his lawn-mower.”
The noise gets louder.
“Who would mow the lawn next to the dictator’s lab?” Nathan interrogates. “There isn’t even a lawn at all.”
“An old-man, that’s who.” Dan jokes. “I told you, it’s an old-man with his lawn-mower!”
But now there’s another obstacle for Dan. Internet memes pop up that joke about what’s under your underwear.
Every single fucking mollecule, i read. Kill yourself what the fuck is this shit give me back 15 minutes of my life:feelswhy::feelswhy:
 
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The Country of Nehalym
Nehalym, an island country, is a very mysterious dictatorship. What will Dan and Nathan do to save their people?

Chapter 1: Welcome to Nehalym!
“KFC! KFC!” someone shouts through the streets. Nathan knows the call. He and a bunch of other eleven-year-olds bolt down the corridor.
Nathan has dark hair, tan-ish skin, and green eyes. Common qualities of a citizen who lives in Nehalym.
“Darn,” Nathan grumbles. “I hate running!”
CRACK! The sound of a Baseball bat cracks on the wall of the Slap-Store convenience store. Due to the laziness of the manager, Slap-Store only houses toilet-paper rolls.
A ten-year-old kid named Dan is walking out the automatic-sliding-doors of Slap-Store. He has blond hair, light skin, and blue eyes. Common qualities of a White Person. “What’s all this angry mob do-”
RUMBLE-RUMBLE! The eleven-year-olds accidentally collide into Dan. Dan stands back up and says, “Hey, watch where you’re going!”
“Sorry!” Nathan calls as he runs. “But there’s a Killer following us!”
“Wait, wha-” Dan doesn’t have a clue about this “Killer” thing.
“Don’t just stand there!” Nathan shouts back. “Do something!”
Without explanation, Dan would probably know what a Killer is, anyway. He jolts down the street. After a while of running, Dan has to wait to catch his breath. Then he hears footsteps. He turns around. A wrinkly-skinned, white-haired man shows up, holding an obsidian Baseball bat.
That guy? That old-man? How’s he a Killer? Dan wonders. Instead of running away, he considers seriously questioning the old-man. DONK! A Baseball bat slams against his thigh.

Chapter 2: Meet Nathan, Average Kid!
“Hi, I’m Nathan,” Nathan says. “Say ‘Nay-Than’, not ‘Nah-Then’.”
Dan is still shivering. He’s lying down against a brick wall, several yards from Slap-Store. “Who the heck was that stupid guy?”
“Hey!” Nathan scolds. “Watch your mouth. We can’t use foul language in-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dan interrupts, annoyed. “Well go away.”
“Don’t you want to know the name of this country? I hear you’re a newcomer.”
“Ha! Yes, I know the name of this country! It’s…um…uh…Nazi-Germany! I’ve time-traveled back to the 1940’s.”
Nathan frowns. He stares blankly at Dan. “I can see you’re American. Let’s see how far you can go with this.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dan continues. “That was just a little attempt at humor. I know how much you like to laugh!”
Nathan’s eyes narrow into slits. His facial expression is very smug. “Not funny,” he retorts. He sighs, pauses, and introduces, “Welcome to Nehalym. I suppose it’s the last country in the world that still has a dictatorship.”
Dan corrects, “No, China, several ones in Africa, parts of Europe, and other places still have bosses in place of presidents.”
Suddenly, without notice, Nathan walks away. “Bye.”
“Hey, where you goin’?” Dan steps up onto the sidewalk.
“Shh. My parents. I might get myself killed. I must go!”
Getting yourself killed is actually quite common in Nehalym. Dan used to live in The State of Texas, United States, but his parents moved to Nehalym, a dangerous place. Sure, these can all be rumors, but who knows?
Dan’s father had been frequently switching jobs ever since. He had to travel all over the state just to get to a different workplace. He dreamed of a calm, convenient Utopia where switching jobs is unnecessary. Overwhelmed, he stumbles upon a Daily Epoch Newspaper Report about an island country where you can’t leave. That’s Nehalym.
Dan’s family, the Slap-Jacks, wanted to bring everyone along to Nehalym, but there was one problem.
Dan has a brother named Swaggington, but he wasn’t allowed to transfer to Nehalym. Swaggington was seventeen years old at that time, so it’s generally accepted that he stays in the United States alone.
Swaggington was in college, and he wasn’t allowed to come to Nehalym because of that. Nehalym has zero Universities, so they didn’t want Swaggington to be worried about his education.
The people in Nehalym tried to be nice to Swaggington by concerning his education, which is considered a good thing.
And whether somebody is still a college student or not, they should always avoid Nehalym.
In the United States, you’re not allowed to go to North Korea at the time of writing. However, another country where leaving is illegal, and United Airlines still lets you fly there.
And because an island is small, and you can’t leave Nehalym, Dan’s father used lazy strategies. Dan’s dad always answers a job-change request by saying, “I decline the request, since I can’t leave my small country.”
Even though Dan is only ten years old, he knows better than to move to a country where you can’t leave.

Chapter 3: The K.F.C. and Kia!
“KFC! RUN!” Nathan jerks his head around as he shouts.
Dan is still asleep. It’s eight-o’clock in the morning, but Dan has no clue about government sleeping rules. Neither do his parents.
Voices come from outside the house.
“KFC! KF-”
SLAM! Goes a Baseball bat.
“Kia!”
WHACK! Goes a Baseball bat.
“Kia!”
BAM! Goes a Baseball bat.
BONK! Again.
BLUBRUB! Someone gets rubbed against a wall.
“Kia!”
Dan stutters. He wakes up, startled to find another angry mob banging people around. “Who’s Kia?” he mutters.
“KFC’s are chasing us! Everyone dodge West!” Nathan commands. A group of other kids dodge to the side as a Killer tries to strike them, but misses. What the heck? How is it possible, fast-food-restaurants chasing eleven-year-olds?
Dan rushes downstairs and slams the front door behind him. He runs out onto the road where the angry mob is. Except he’s still wearing his pajamas! At first sight, Dan sees a bunch of elderly men swishing Baseball bats around.
Suddenly, a tall slender woman trots across the road, holding her right hand up to signal “stop.” Will she stop the Killers? No. Instead, she drags a young boy on the dusty ground. It’s the boy who exclaimed, “Kia,” three times.
The boy refuses, and tries to let go of her hand. The woman scolds, “Get up, Sylus!”
Sylus, the boy who called for Kia, flinches. He stands up on his feet. He walked obediently to a doctor’s office with the woman.
Wait a minute… The mob of old-men was trying to hurt Gordon and others, yet he goes to a doctor’s office. Are the old-men, called Killers, actually supposed to do that?
“Dan!” calls Nathan. “Dan, are you all-right?”
“Yeah,” Dan replies. “I just got out. Who’re those people supposed to be?”
“Um, before I answer that question, I have a question for you. Why the heck are you in your pajamas?”
“Oh, uh…I had no time. Just to be quick.”
“Go dress up! Now! You’re going to get yourself killed! You’re lucky the Killers didn’t see.”

Chapter 4: The Hall of Open Records!
“Hey!” a Killer shouts. “You’re new here, right?”
Dan turns around.
“He’s talking to you,” Nathan points out.
“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” Dan tells the Killer.
“What’s your name?” the Killer lowers his voice.
“Daniel Slap-Jack,” Dan says.
The Killer thinks for a moment. “Okay, now go to The HOOR.”
“What’s The HOOR?”
“THE HALL OF OPEN RECORDS, MORON!”
Dan, whose real name is Daniel, still doesn’t know where The Hall of Open Records is.
Just as Dan is about to ask the Killer where it is, Nathan grabs him by the shoulder and points in the North direction. He explains, “We live on the South side of town. If you need to go to The HOOR, go straight North of your home, and left.”
After a tiresome thirty minutes of walking, Dan catches up to his destination. The HOOR is a very tall building suspended by white poles. It has a couple of sculptures carved on the roof. It looks a bit like the U.S. Supreme Court, not to mention that Nehalym doesn’t even have any courts.
“What do you want?” a female wearing a suit says. It’s the Director, who owns The HOOR. She sits in a tall chair behind a curved desk.
“Uh,” Dan stutters, “An old-man, who my friend calls a ‘Killer’, told me to go here.”
“Friend?” the Director asks doubtfully. “I never received your contract agreement.”
“What’s that?” Dan wonders. That’s another peculiar thing about Nehalym.
“You’re new here, right?”
Dan nods.
“Then you shall read this packet,” the Director says as she hands Dan an old, wrinkled stack of papers. “It’s the introductory information about Nehalym. Please take a seat.”
Dan sits down on a purple couch and starts to read the first packet. Unfortunately, he gets interrupted again.
“That’s for the aristocracy,” the Director points out in a matter-of-fact tone. She points to several ordinary chairs to the left of the purple couch. “That’s for the middle class.” Then she points to dirty ram-shackle seats in the corner of The HOOR lobby. “That’s for the peasants.”
Peasants? Aristocrats? Dan is stunned at the concept of these old Feudal System Classes. Anyway, he continues reading.
“Males must wake up promptly at eight o’clock AM, and no later than that. Females must wake up at seven o’clock AM, otherwise they’ll get slapped in the face. Females are allowed to take naps, but males aren’t.”
Dan becomes enraged. He throws the packet on the ground. He stomps up to the front desk, and points straight at the Director. “You guys are sexist!” Dan shouts.
“No, we’re not,” the Director replies calmly.
“Oh yeah?” Dan argues. “And you’re violent, too.”
“Me? I’m not.” the Director asks, gesturing to herself.
“You and all the people of Nehalym,” Dan says. “This country is absurd. What sort of a dictator has ‘Killers’ on his side?”
“What’re you talking about? Killers?”
“You know, those old people wearing white coats?”
“What? Those people are Community Convenience Workers. They help make the country a better place. They arrest people who break the rules.”
“But I didn’t break the rules. A Killer chased me down and hit me with a Baseball bat!”
“Then you must’ve broken a rule. Didn’t your family move here from the United States?”
“Yes, except for my older brother, who is in college.” Then Dan switches on his angry attitude again. “Where do they come from? Those Community Convenience ‘blah-blah-blah’s. They seem to catch people from nowhere. Do they hide behind buildings like spies? That’s very deceptive, you know!”
“Daniel, I am the Director of the Hall of Open Records. Don’t talk to me like that. But, as always, I’m willing to explain things to immigrants. Most buildings have a specialized office in them, built for Community Convenience Workers to work there. They monitor people through the building’s security cameras, if the building has any. Security cameras are attached to both the outside and inside of most buildings, and they also have built-in microphones.”
“Um… Okay, but I…uh…really…have to go,” Dan says quickly as he turns around. He walks to the HOOR entrance. He turns around to face the Director again, who has a confused look on her face. “Bye,” Dan says casually. “I’ll read the packets later. I need to go back home.”
A woman wearing a tight dress is about to walk through the entrance doors.
“Look out behind you!” the Director snaps.
Dan is about to turn around to see who’s behind him, but it’s too late. The woman in the tight dress bumps in to him.
The woman in the tight dress scrunches up her face. “Oh, so this is how you treat me?” she taunts. “Running into me like a childish old troll? Well I’ve got news for you, buddy. You’re going down, sucker!”
“What’s your problem?” Dan asks angrily.
The woman smiles. “Your existence. Why shouldn’t I kill you?”
“All right then, kill me,” Dan says sarcastically.
The woman tries to perform a karate-kick, but her dress is so tight that she can’t lift her leg more than two feet off the ground. “Dang!” she exclaims.
Dan scoffs, “Whatever.” He opens the door and walks out of the HOOR like nothing ever happened.
The Director is left speechless. His face is stuck at a raised-eyebrow position. Finally, she murmurs to herself, “About how Dan said that we’re violent…”

Chapter 5: Father’s Labor!
Dan has a good-night’s sleep, and he’s expecting tomorrow to be a normal day, sitting on the couch, watching television, being carefree as he wants.
Unfortunately, little does he know that Nehalym’s elementary school system has no absolute, set enrollment date.
“Dad,” Dan asks nervously. “What’s your new job?”
Dan’s dad sighs. “Labor.”
“What?”
“Laborer! It’s very heavy-duty work.”
“Heavy-duty…um…uh… Are you fatigued?”
“Compared to other workers, no, ‘cause I just took the job. People with more experience get harder work.”
“What’s it like compared to America?”
“Heh, heh. In America, it’s just eight hours of light to medium-duty work. I have a colleague named Betch, and her job is twenty-three hours of relentlessly smashing an axe on a block of refined obsidian.”
“Well that’s stupid!”
“Shh…” Dad points to a sound recorder screwed to the ceiling. “They can hear us! We don’t have the freedom to criticize things the government owns! And by the way, you’re goin’ to school, mister!”
Dan glances at the clock. It’s seven-o’clock in the morning, right when the government sleeping rules set in. He’d been talking to his dad for about one minute. “Right now?” he asks, shocked.
“Yes!” Dad replies in a congradulative manner. “Right now.”

Chapter 6: Going to School!
“Can I go to the restroom?” Dan asks during Math Class, First Period of Droop-Gloop Elementary School. It’s Friday, and Dan is a new student in fifth grade.
The teacher, Mrs. Danky-Pants, turns away from the whiteboard, and faces Dan. “I don’t know, CAN you?” she retorts.
“MAY I go to the restroom?” Dan corrects.
“What? Can’t you see we’re in class? Why would I ever let you use the rest-room? Students aren’t allowed to REST and sleep on the soft, cushioned-”
“Not rest-room, resTRoom, as in ‘bathroom’.”
“We don’t have tubs and showers at Droop-Gloop Elementary.”
“Not that kind of bathroom! The bathroom with the toilets.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to LET you have a TOY from the class Treasure Box-”
“NO! The one with the sinks and the urinals.”
“Well, from my experience, I’ve never heard of anyone who SANK in the ocean from a URINAL tract infection.”
“NO!” Dan argues, annoyed. “Mrs. Danky-Pants, why are you so literal-minded?”
“Oh, that. If you need to pee, students such as you should go outside and urinate in the pointy, prickly thorn-bushes.”
Dan grunts, and throws his pencil on the floor to show his distress. Then he stumbles out of the classroom reluctantly. What psycho pees outside the school?
“Huh. Just that old darn thing,” Dan mumbles. He had experience peeing in the woods before, so it’s no sweat to do it now. But there’s still no reason why ordinary teachers force students to pee outside, when schools in Nehalym clearly has bathrooms…or do they? Just as he starts to pull down his pants, “Aaaaagh!”
There’s a person who suddenly jumps in front of him. He screams, too, “Aaaaagh! What the- Oof! Ouch! Kia! Ki…” Dan blocks his hand in front of the other screamer’s mouth.
“Hey!” the other guy reacts. “Kia’s the community nurse! What were you thinking?”
“Kia’s a nurse?” Dan wonders. Although he’d just learned something new about this specific community of Nehalym, he tries to seem “normal,” and pretends he already knows it. “Oh, yes, I know that,” Dan lies. “But still, don’t you think it’s a bit weird to need medical care due to accidentally falling over?”
“Not at all,” the other guy replies in a matter-of-fact tone. “My parents, the moms and dads of Nehalym, have all taught us to shout the name of the nurse when injured. It’s a common habit now.”
“Wait…” Dan tries to recall the memory of Sylus being dragged on the ground to get to Kia’s place, back on the street where he lives. The memory of the angry mob, bashing people beforehand. He asks, “Why can’t the school have its own nurse? Seems kind of inconvenient to drag people all the way down Main Street.”
“Mrs. Danky-Pants sent me,” Nathan bursts out the door, catching his breath. “You need to get back to class. And you’re not even ‘peeing’! You’re just standing around, talking to your-”
“Friend?” Dan suggests.
“No, no, no. You haven’t even signed the agreement yet!” Nathan grumbles, signaling that the Friendship Agreement is common knowledge, and Dan should know the rules by now. “Anyway, you’re not-” Nathan continues his message from the teacher.
Dan completes Nathan’s sentence with a familiar phrase, “-following directions like Mrs. Danky-Pants told me to.” He walks back into the school, half-surprised that Nathan goes to his school, too.

Chapter 7: The Backfiring Plan!
The next day, Dan encounters someone familiar he met at school. He’s glad it’s Saturday, so he won’t have to go to school and pee in the bushes or what-not.
“Hi, ‘names Helix Supernova,” the guy Dan talked to yesterday introduces himself. It’s after Dan ate his breakfast, put on his clothes, and walked out the door, to find the guy right in front of him.
“Um,” Dan starts, “about that ‘Kia’ thing, one time the Killers were trying to hit me, but why call them Killers? I mean, smacking your stomach or your thigh isn’t going to kill you.”
“Ha,” Helix says in a cruel, sarcastic manner. “WELL THEN, GO AHEAD! They’ll do whatever they’re told. You want to die, then fine.”
Dan picks out one sentence. It’s unique, at least in the sense of Nehalym. “They’ll do whatever they’re told.” His mouth formed into a sly grin.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Helix detects Dan’s emotion, and predicts his plan. “Now, don’t be too clever.” He tells Dan a fable, where a fox wasn’t allowed to pick the grapes off a tree. But the fox punched the grapes off the tree, since the rules only applied to picking. Unfortunately, the grapes were poison, and the fox regrets his way of thinking.
“Tree-hugger.”
“Hey, hey, hey! No insults! You could get in big trou-”
The ground starts to shake. “Get him!” several old men yell in a raspy voice.
“Aww, not the KFC!” Helix groans.
Dan dashes up to a nearby stop-sign, and points to it with both index-fingers. This indicates “stop.” The Killers stop running, and stare at him.
“Look,” Dan persuades. “This won’t change anything. What’s the point of injuring people? This is unethical, cruel, and just mean. Back in my country, America, kids would get chastised in a non-physical way. So would you please stop-”
The Killers confer for a few seconds, and then one speaks up, “Look, you know those clichés in movies, right? Someone says something very ‘heartwarming’ or ‘meaningful’ to the villain, and he immediately transforms into a protagonist. Well that certainly ain’t going to happen!” The Head Killer holds back his Baseball bat, aims, and… BAM! He smashes into his OWN head!
Helix rolls his eyes. “Ugh. Your plan totally backfired! Let me rephrase that. They’ll do whatever EVIL they’re told,” he counters toward Dan. Then, there’s a scream. And a splash. Helix turns around, and he sees a person flying through the air and landing in water. Dan isn’t standing on the road anymore. But according to science, how is it possible that Dan gets shot so high?
Helix snatches the Head Killer’s bat, and trips him over on the asphalt. Then he grabs a shoe to examine it. “Aha!” Helix exclaims. The shoes are super-bouncy, and give off ten times the amount of energy it receives. That may be why Dan got “kicked” so far.
Just then, the Killer who fell rises up behind Helix, and grabs his arms. He locks Helix with handcuffs! “I’m an adult,” the Killer explains. “Don’t you touch me again.”
Helix starts shouting. “Hey! Somebody! Dan got kicked and…mrphof-”
The Killer slaps Helix’s mouth shut.

Chapter 8: Save From the Hidden!
“Are you sure he got kicked?” the Rescue Squad confirms through the telephone. Nathan overheard from Helix, and is reporting an emergency over the phone in less than a minute after that. To blend in and seem non-suspicious, he calls from a normal street phone booth.
“Yes, of course,” Nathan replies.
“But according to science, a shoe can’t give off twice the energy it receives,” Bob, a Rescue Squad member, says. How can Nathan explain this?
Then another Rescue Squad member named Max comes on the phone. He’s a physicist with a PHD in science. He tells several scenarios of facts, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The shoes must have some energy source. If it’s the person who kicks, then his leg would be numb shortly afterward. The shoes might have a tank of fuel, but that can’t be gasoline or else he explodes. Using inductive charging is fine, but we hardly see that kind of tech in a pair of shoes.”
“But the shoes were really bouncy!” Nathan protests.
“But we’re the Rescue Squad. We rescue people who are lost or hurt. As for the ‘super-bouncy’ shoes that kick a person this far…let’s say, a mile…there’s no point of rescuing him. He’s probably dead. Who’s the owner of these mysterious shoes?”
“I don’t know his name, but he’s a Killer.”
“Killer? Killers give satisfactory corporal punishment to children as chastisement. The kid misbehaved, and that’s that. Kicking is a fair punishment.” Max hangs up the phone-call.
URRRGGGH! Nathan re-dials the telephone number for the rescue squad. He seems to be incredibly distressed. “Hello?” he talks into the phone’s speaker.
The same Max’s voice comes on the earpiece. “Hey, it’s you again, right?”
Nathan doesn’t know whether Max is angry or just questioning. Before he can reply, Max taunts, “No need to be rude, but we can call the police. Is this a prank call?”
Nathan considers the threat of calling the police. However, there’s no police in Nehalym, so Killers also serve as police. But their job isn’t to protect, it’s to do vigilante justice. And to them, vigilante justice basically means Baseball-bat-bashing.
“Uh, no,” Nathan answers unsurely. “But the main reason is that the Killer kicked him for doing something minor. It’s kicking as a punishment for name-calling.”
“Dude, we’re very busy. The Rescue Squad doesn’t deal with these situations,” Max replies. “Either hang up the phone, or JUMP OFF A CLIFF!” He yells the last phrase so loudly that Nathan’s ears hurt.
“Oww! Oof!” Nathan immediately drops the phone and falls on the ground next to the phone booth he’s calling from, without hanging up or canceling the call. What would happen next?
Nathan scoops the phone back up, and argues, “I’ve got to admit, you suck at insulting. ‘Jump off a cliff’ is basically nothing, and it’s not even offensive. How ‘bout this: ‘kill yourself’!” He’s yelling so loud that he’s practically shouting straight into the phone.
“That’s it,” Max says. “What started as an emergency call turned out to be an argument. NOW HANG UP THE PHONE, YOU IDIOT!”
Max shouted that last sentence so loud, and so sudden, that Nathan winces. The phone slips out of his hand again, and he accidentally bonks his head against the phone booth. He decides there’s enough pain to call for the help of Kia. “Kia! Kia! Kia…” Nathan calls into the open air.
After a few seconds, a sexy-looking woman escorts Nathan to a building that looks like a pediatrics medical center. Is she Kia?
Dan is a skillful swimmer, and he’s very lucky to land in the water, not on stone or dirt. He’s also very lucky to not land head-first, because even a water-landing might lead to brain damage. Despite his swimming skills, the water is easy to maneuver.
He realizes that the water is a shallow land-bridge connecting Nehalym to a nearby island. The island, as it seems, contains a circular wall of stone that had white-and-orange boards nearby. Maybe it’s an under-construction tower or something.
Dan wades through the water and steps back on the land, his soaked clothes causing perceived heaviness.
Before Dan steps off the coast and onto the man-made cityscape of Nehalym, he figures it’d be much more convenient to use a little lift. “Kia! KEEEAAH!” Dan roars at the top of his lungs. Soon, and I mean a couple of seconds, Dan sees a train speeding down the monorail. A curvaceous woman steps out. She’s wearing a red dress that looks very tight in relation to her body.
Dan feels confused. How did the woman hear Dan shout her name? The Nehalym Government must by eavesdropping on their citizens’ speech! But how’d they do that? Dan decides it’s too much of a mystery.
When she walks up to Dan, he hopes this “Kia” will drive him to the nurse’s office, or let him ride the monorail. Then he wouldn’t have to walk all the way home, right?
Unfortunately, the woman isn’t as nice as Dan thought. Dan wonders if he’s being too optimistic, but the woman snatches him by the shirt-collar. Dan lunges forward, sprawled on the sandy coastal-beach.
“Get up!” Kia scolds.
After Dan stands back up, he notices something strange. The type of dress Kia is wearing. What Kia’s facial features look like. She looks exactly like the woman in the purple dress who tried to assault him! In fact, Kia was the woman in the purple dress.
“It’s not my fault!” Dan implores. “You pulled me over! I got up anyway, but why should I listen to you?”
Kia frowns. “You talk back to me one more time, and you’re dead!” she threatens.
Dan flinches, and asks, “Um, aren’t you going to drive me there or let me ride the monorail?”
“Of course not! Do you think my job is to provide convenient rides for children? No. It’s to be a nurse. And there’s only one nurse’s office, and only one nurse. So it doesn’t matter how far away you are, because you’re still walking with me.”
It’s somewhat ironic that a nurse would injure her own patients. But Nehalym is Nehalym, right? Don’t judge a book by its cover, Dan thinks. ‘Same thing for women.

Chapter 9: Both Getting Arrested!
While Dan is walking, he tries to be extremely cautious. In his mind, Nehalym has a bad reputation.
But on the sidewalks, he sees the most unhappy, desperate people he ever sees in his entire life. Those people are young adult couples, but they seem to be terribly mismatched.
There is a woman walking with a man with a beard that drags on the concrete.
Another woman and a man that has horns in his…mouth?
This time, there is an old lady walking by with a man in a wheelchair.
And a woman with an…old-man who looks like a Killer?
Although this’s the first time Dan ever notices this, the sight astonishes him. He sees not one single car, not one single bike, not one single motorcycle. Everyone in the streets of Nehalym is a pedestrian! Nobody seems to own any personal motor-vehicle. Dan doesn’t know whether this is good or bad, but the dictator might be forcing people to walk so they take a long time and tire out.
Kia and Dan have walked a very long distance, but there’s one of natural life-forms that he doesn’t see: animals. There’re no animals in Nehalym. That dictator must be really mean!
After roughly an hour-and-a-half of “useless” walking, Dan becomes extremely thirsty. He pleads, “May I have some water?”
“Eh…” Kia replies, “no.”
“But I’m dehydrated!” Dan says.
“We’re almost there,” Kia reassures Dan.
“Where? Some dumb shank-”
“Shut up! You’re going to get yourself arrested!”
“But, there’s no police in Nehalym.”
“How did you know that?”
Dan is confused. It’s obvious, he knew. “Um,” Dan guesses, “I don’t see any police around here. It seems like the old-man-Killers are the police. Yet they’re not really police, since they’re unethical.”
“Dan! How dare you call our hard-working Killers unethical?”
Dan scoffs, and replies nonchalant, “Huh. ‘Hard-working,’ you say? I don’t think it takes much effort to kill somebody. You could just get out a gu-”
“Dan! Don’t talk like that. And it doesn’t work that way. Killers do work hard, but not the way you think. It’s uh, well for a classified reason.”
That doesn’t make much sense to Dan.
He enters the nurse’s office as Kia directed, but the room is dark and gloomy. There’re no patients, no counters, and no advertising brochures. There’s only one door, cast in the shadows at the back of the room. This doesn’t seem like a medical center at all.
Dan looks behind him, but Kia is nowhere in sight anymore. He realizes this is a total trick!
He catches a glimpse of a person sitting on a bench, wrapped around and around, from head to toe, in worn heavy-duty rope. As he walks farther into the room, he can see rows and rows of people tied up, all sitting on pews.
“What the…” Dan murmurs. “Wait a second, this ain’t a nurse’s office. It’s a-”
“Jail,” someone completes Dan’s sentence. Who just said that?
“Uh…” Dan hesitates. “Who…um…”
The person who finished Dan’s sentence giggles. “That was me,” Nathan says. He sits on the first row, third from the right.
“Nathan?” Dan exclaims. His eyes narrow. “What sort of a joke is this?”
“Oh, this isn’t no joke,” Nathan replies. “No need to explain. I called the Rescue Squad-”
“They have rescue squads here? I didn’t know that,” Dan comments.
“Shh! So the Rescue Squad, the guy on the other end… Never mind. I just accidentally fell and I called for Kia.”
“Yolo, we’d better tell the people about this,” Dan announces in a matter-of-fact manner.
Nathan lacks knowledge of American teenage slang, so he has no idea what “yolo” is. But that doesn’t matter, because Dan ran off.

Chapter 10: The Great Escape!
When Nathan notices Dan’s disappearance, he looks around. He sees two possible outlets: the door that you enter and exit the prison, and the door at the back. He squints, and he figures that door in the shadows is wrapped in caution tape that says, “GUARDS ONLY.” Nathan shouts, “Dan, we really shouldn’t be doing this!”
Dan looks around. He’s in the guards-only room, which is an administration control room. He notices a switch that says, “Emergency Rope Release.”
Nathan is still sitting on the long bench, but he suddenly forgets he’s tied up in rope. He tries to get Dan, but he instantly trips over and splats face-first on the floor. The rest of the tied-up prisoners laugh hysterically.
Someone yells a command. The prisoners turn around, and see a guard dressed in a gray suit. “What’s so funny?”
The crowd of jail-people remains silent.
“Well,” the guard tells everyone in a vain fashion, “if there’s nothing funny, then I shall return to my Jail Watch Duty.” He turns to a girl. “Azalea, keep an eye on the prisoner who just came in.”
Back in the Guards’ Administration Room, Dan flicks the switch. The alarm starts blaring, and prisoners who’d been tied in ropes are released. “Hey, what’s going on?” the guard asks angrily.
All the former-prisoners start running in chaos, and a few of them start cheering. The jail fills up with pandemonium.
The guard grunts as he opens the door to the guards-only room. AHA! Dan gets caught!

Chapter 11: Great Confusion!
Helix is about to enter Kia’s building, and like everyone, he thinks it’s a nurse’s office. The Killer, who handcuffed him, dragged him all the way over here. The Killer knocks on the door, and starts speaking, “Sir, we’ve got this dude named Helix who tripped me over and pulled my shoe off. Officer? Hello?”
Helix is confused. The Killer caught him for misbehaving, and now the Killer dragged him to a nurse’s office? Something fishy must be going on.
Both the Killer and Helix hear loud noises coming from inside the door. Helix asks politely, “Why’d you make me go to a nurse’s office? This nurse’s office doesn’t have any windows, and is has very loud patients.”
The Killer didn’t answer until a few seconds later. He replies, startled, “Oh! Um…uh… Oh, yes. You’ll see, once we go in.”
Even though this’s the first occasion a Killer ever talked to anyone nicely, Helix keeps asking questions. “How can we be sure it’s not someplace that just has a sign that says-”
“Look,” the Killer lectures. “Listen to me. You don’t want to get punished again, do you? I tell you that this ‘Kia nurse thing’ is completely true. I’ll even prove it.” The Killer opens the door.
“Hey!” a five-year-old prisoner squeals. “The door is open! We’re free!”
Helix gapes wide-eyed at the commotion. Here he is, expecting a “Killer” to bring him to a “nurse’s office,” and being greeted with escaping prisoners.
The prisoners run straight out the door. The door is only about eight feet high, so the people pile up quickly, and end up blocking the door. Ex-prisoners are literally pouring out of the jail!

Chapter 12: Famously Infamous!
If there’s a crowd of people, and you’re just like everyone else, it’s hard to pick you out since you blend in. That’s what Dan did to escape the jail-building.
Dan walks all the way down to his house, and it’s time for dinner already. Nehalym also has rules for male and female eating times, but Dan arrives home roughly five minutes within the parameters.
“Wow,” Dan’s mother exclaims. “What were you doing out there? It’s time for dinner. A few more minutes, and you’d break the rules! Let’s start eating now.”
“Hey Clara,” Dan’s father tells Dan’s mom, “you might want to check this out.” Dan’s dad is watching the News Channel on the family Samsung Television. Dan turns his head to the TV.
A news reporter is talking into a microphone. He announces, “Breaking news tonight! We’ve recently discovered that two-thousand prisoners have escaped from the local jail. One-thousand, three-hundred of which are bank-robbers. Jail Watch Guard, Bob Peterson, reports that a young boy named Daniel Slap-Jack may have caused all this fury with a flick of a switch in the control panel…”
Dan’s mom and dad exchange looks. Finally, Dad assumes, “Dan didn’t do this. He would never do anything like this. I seriously doubt if he even was arrested!”
Dan pipes up, and starts telling the truth a little too quickly, “No, I wasn’t ‘arrested’! I got hurt, and the nurse was supposed to bring me to the nurse’s place, but it was just a jail in disguise, and there were tons of people who weren’t supposed to be prisoners like my…um…future friend Nathan and Helix Supern-”
“Dan,” Mom interrupts politely, “you might want to explain more slowly. So start from the beginning: how did you end up at the jail?”
Dan tells his mom and dad all about what the Killers did, and how he swam up on the shore. He even describes the under-construction-building-or-something on the island next to Nehalym, as if it was something suspicious. He explains how calling the nurse’s name, “Kia,” is a complete hoax. The nurse’s office is just a disguised prison for innocent children. And, of course, how he released the prisoners for their own good.
“Whoa, Dan,” Dad remarks, amazed. “But I guess it’s not your fault. You just didn’t know that three-quarters of them were bank-robbers, did you, son?”
Dan scoffs, and answers, “Yeah, but it’s really THEIR fault. They made their banks ROBBABLE, so no wonder just about anyone can get away with hoards of money.”
Mom realizes an important fact. “So that might be why the country’s in a financial crisis! You’re a smart kid.”
Dan’s father resumes watching TV again. The news-reporter is still talking, “…in the past two hours, more than three banks have been robbed. We aren’t yet sure about whether Dan caused these incidents, but one thing’s for sure. Another infringement of the rules, and he’s dead!”
Dad chortles. Not at the threat of a death penalty, that’s for sure. He laughs at the three banks robbed in a mere two hours. “These banks are vulnerable, all right,” he retorts.
Mom glances at the clock. “Oh no!” she exclaims. “We haven’t eaten dinner yet! We’re going to get in big trouble with the government.”
Right at that exact moment, the door to the family’s home busts open. Chubby men wearing rubbery, yellow Hazmat suits walk into the house, holstering laser-blasters. Radio noises fill the room, and distorted voices coming through walkie-talkies are inaudible.
“We’re the Killers’ grandsons,” one Hazmat suit-wearing man says in a crackly voice. “But that’s not what we’re here for. That guy-” He points at Dan. “-didn’t eat dinner between six o’clock PM and seven o’clock PM. He ought to be executed!”
“Oh, really?” Dan’s mother taunts. “Just get a hold of that clock!” She points at a clock next to the microwave in the kitchen.
“Ha! We ain’t need clocks. We have watches here!” another guy in a suit proves a point. Although that was a false claim, since their watches just ran out of battery right then. They all groan.
The Killers’ grandsons look at the clock. They exchange confused looks. One of them chimes in, “Um, well we made a mistake. Sorry. Guess you still have a couple of minutes. Bye.” The Killers’ grandsons straighten up their yellow Hazmat suits, and exit the house, slamming the door.
Dan’s mom smiles. “I changed the clock,” she whispers into Dan’s ear.

Chapter 13: What’s It Like To Be A Prankster?
The under-construction structure on the nearby island is completed. To the average eye, it seems just like a century-old lighthouse. But this “lighthouse” isn’t used for any of those purposes at all. It’s a classified base.
Jim Kloss is the dictator of Nehalym. Everyone calls him “Kloss the Boss” or “Boss Kloss.” He’s a short man for a dictator, and he has an extremely round stomach. He has a large, brown mustache with a small beard on his pointy chin. He’s bald, so he wears a toupee even though it’s useless for a national ruler.
To the average eye, Boss Kloss looks like an average business-man. Just a little plumper.
Boss Kloss decides to hire a new helper. The helper arrives in the early morning on Sunday.
“Okay, let me introduce you to our new top-secret base,” Boss Kloss tells the new politician named Gates Bill, or G.B. They’re standing on the nearby island.
“Okay,” G.B. says, tentatively, “so let me get this straight. This is our top-secret base?”
“Yup,” Boss Kloss replies proudly. He and G.B. walk down the sidewalk as they talk. To the average eye, they look like tourists seeing the new tower. “I put the rock on the roof.”
“The…rock? Why’re you so proud of putting a rock on a tippy-cracker?”
“I usually just lounge around on the sofa playing video games. There’s really not much to do being the ruler of a whole entire country. I’m very proud of my most recent work.”
“Putting a rock on the roof doesn’t take much work. Plus, I’m pretty sure the secret base has an elevator.”
“I know, it seems easy. To you, it is. To me, it’s the most labor I’ve ever done.”
“Hey! That’s why you’re so fat!”
“Hey, you, we can call the cops.”
“I thought they’re called ‘Killers’.”
“Fat sat mat catted the get rat!”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. Are you stupid?”
Stunned by the rude statement, Boss Kloss fires G.B. His last words toward G.B. are, “It does make sense, you dumbhead!”
G.B. walks away quietly, shaking his head. The way Jim Kloss acts! How childish, inappropriate, mean, and unsensible! G.B. is fired.
One day later, Boss Kloss finds another person qualified to be his companion. Her name is Macy Marse. Boss Kloss is delighted, and he does his introductory sentence: “Let me introduce you to our new top-secret base.”
“That old thug?” Macy wonders in dismay. Then she became angry. “You know, I’d rather not work at a smugly, old tower. That’s it. I resign.”
Boss Kloss feels shocked again, and tries to persuade Macy, “Please, trust me. That tower is actually futuristic and modern on the inside.”
“I don’t trust someone with so much power,” Macy explains while looking at her newly-manicured fingernails. “I don’t want to work with a fat guy like you.” She walks away, clattering the ground with every step of her high-heels. She quit.
Two days later, Boss Kloss recruits a smart-looking geek with huge eyeglasses. Boss Kloss had already been through two people who didn’t seem to work with him. But this one seems so smart, he might be able to help Boss Kloss with their new plan.
This time, the geek introduces himself first, “Hi, my name’s Jamie Grimm. Other people call me ‘Freaky-Deekie’, but just call me Jamie.”
Boss Kloss cracks up with laughter. He thinks such a nickname like “Freaky-Deekie” is ridiculous.
Jamie frowns. Luckily, he doesn’t have the short attention-span of Macy, who quit immediately. Jamie folds his arms and snickers. “Look,” he tells Boss Kloss. “Don’t be immature. I’m here to work for you, but I don’t have that much goodwill to put up with you.”
“Okay,” Boss Kloss says. “Let’s go on an inside tour of out new base.” The two men rush into the old-looking tower.
Now it’s Wednesday, and Dan follows his usual morning routine. He gets up, goes to the restroom, dresses up, eats breakfast, packs up his backpack, and gets in the car with his mom to go to school.
Little did he know that there’re only three people at school, including him. They’re both standing in the schoolyard, chatting.
Dan notices one of them is Helix, but the other one is a Goth-Girl he doesn’t know. Dan greets Helix, but he doesn’t answer. They just keep talking. Dan taps Helix’s shoulder, and he arrogantly groans, “WHAT?”
“Um,” Dan starts, “is this a holiday or something?”
“Yup. It’s the dictator’s birthday,” Helix informs. “Our parents didn’t know. They just dropped us off here.”
Dan turns around, but his mother’s car already drove off. He’s trapped until three o’clock! “Did anyone bring a cell-phone?” Dan asks.
“Nope,” both Helix and the girl say answer in unison.
“Okay,” Dan’s mouth forms into a sly grin. “Here’s what we should do. We’re not going home…” The trio huddles together and discusses a secret spy-plan.
The three kids arrive near a landfill. Soon, Helix starts digging around in a trash-can. “Nope, not here,” he murmurs.
“What’re you doing?” Dan interjects. “Aren’t we supposed to get to the island, not look in trash-cans?”
Helix trots over to a dark-green, roof-shaped dumpster. He digs around in the great stash of trash. The trash makes loud CLANK-ing noises in the dumpster.
“Dude,” the Goth-Girl warns. “The Killers might come get us.”
Helix simply ignores the warning.
Suddenly, Dan and Goth-Girl dash up to the dumpster and close the lid on top of Helix’s hands.
“Yeeeoww!” Helix howls in pain. “What is your problem?”
“That’s what you get for wasting time messing around with rubbish,” Dan explains. “Now follow our plan. We have to get to the island.”
Helix sighs, and lifts the dumpster lid to take his arms out. But one of his hands contains the exact item he was looking for. He stuffs it in his pocket, and starts walking just like Goth-Girl and Dan.
“Oh, no,” Dan exclaims as he starts walking away. “The Killers have seen us! Quick! To the walls!”
“Um, there are no walls,” Goth-Girl says obviously. “Unless you’re talking about the side of the dumpster.”

Chapter 14: The Monorail Ticket!
A Killer walks out of an operating room carrying a bottle of mineral water. He gazes around, seemingly looking for mischievous kids. His eyes fixate on Helix, Dan, and the Goth-Girl. “What were you just doing?”
“Nothing,” Dan pipes up. “We were just walking around, that’s all.”
“Ha,” the Killer retorts sarcastically, “what were you doing by that dumpster?”
Dan frowns. “We didn’t take anything. And that’s final.”
The Killer makes a smug face, and walks back to the operating room. As he walks there, he shouts, “I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” with his back turned.
“HELIX!” Dan yelps at Helix’s face. “You nearly got us in trouble! What’s with your obsession with trash?”
Helix sags his face down. “Sorry. But we have to ride the monorail to get to the island!”
Goth-Girl frowns, and remarks, “Yeah, without a map or GPS.”
Helix simply takes a map out of his pocket and hands it to Goth-Girl. It’s a standard green, yellow, and white road map. The monorail is marked with a dark-gray line. “THIS was what I was looking for in the dumpster.”
“Really? I guess we shouldn’t have made assumptions of you messing about, then. I’m a fan of dark colors, but this map still works fine,” Goth-Girl says.
The monorail station has been newly painted a vibrant shade of silver. The benches have cross-hatched surfaces just like those types of metal fences. When Dan, Goth-Girl, and Helix arrive at the station, they’re already out of breath.
“Let’s…sit…down…” Dan tells the others, breathing heavily.
Goth-Girl closes her eyes halfway, and replies, “We need tickets to ride, moron.” She folds her arms, but then she catches a glimpse of something on the train-tracks. “Hey, get those tickets down there.” She points to slips of paper on the train-tracks.
Dan kneels down on the edge of the platform. He can’t reach the tickets on the track.
“Just walk onto the track!” Goth-Girl shouts.
“You know,” Dan starts, “I think this train goes a lot faster than you thi-”
The monorail shoots past Dan. He dodges away just in time. The monorail coasts to a stop, its brakes making a continuous noise of descending pitch. A huge gust of air blasts at Dan’s face. So hard that he falls over on his buttocks.
“Hey!” Goth-Girl says. “I didn’t even see the train pass by. I blinked, and then it’s just right there making a screeching sound.”
“Free ride!” the conductor calls through the closed monorail window. His voice sounds muffled from outside. The monorail’s automatic-sliding-doors open, and he shouts, “Free ride!” again.
Shortly after the trio enters the monorail, to doors slam shut like two razor-sharp-knife-blades slicing the air in half. Helix shakes his head and mumbles, “They should seriously consider their safety.”

Chapter 15: The Secret Tower!
Ten-or-so seconds later, the trio arrives on the beach that’s next to the island with the tower. “This is the beach,” Dan explains. “It has a land-bridge under shallow water that connects to that small island¬¬-” He points to the island with the tower on it. “-with an old-looking tower built on it.”
The Goth-Girl assumes, “Well, it just looks like a naturally formed island. That tower could be an old landmark. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is,” Dan pauses mid-sentence, “that tower was under construction the last time I saw it.”
“So?” Goth-Girl says. “People build old-looking things in modern times.”
“It has no windows! People might want to not be seen. Modern towers have windows all over them. And why would they make it look like a lighthouse? Must be a secret spy base or something,” Dan analyzes.
“So?”
“Why would they build a tower on an island next to Nehalym instead of the mainland? Maybe it’s a remote military base. Just skinnier. And no tanks. Or missile-launchers.”
“If I tried to think of a word other than ‘so,’ I wouldn’t be able to do it. So what?”
“You don’t think it’s a big deal?”
“Nope. At first I thought I was supposed to buy a bikini from the swimwear shop, but no.”
Dan and Helix chortle.
Helix chimes in, “Jokes aside, but that island looks pretty deserted.” He points at the tower. “It’s just you, me, and you-” He gestures his hand at the other two kids. “-infiltrating some old tower, wide out in the open, on a tiny island. Man, there won’t even be a security camera!”
“No security cameras,” Dan repeats. “That’s it!” He runs off the shore and gets his lower-legs and shoes wet. The water above the land-bridge is only knee-level-high. Goth-Girl and Helix follow along, wading through the water flowing above the land-bridge.
The water is clear-ish, with an even hint of aqua. The land bridge is a road-like path connecting the two Nehalymian islands. The ocean-floor around the land bridge is about three feet deeper than the surface of the land-bridge. As for Global Warming, the land bridge used to be an actual path above land. But after the sea-levels have risen, shallow water fills over the land-bridge. Ocean waves erode and weather the land-bridge, so it shrank to barely a foot wide over thousands of years. The land-bridge used to be almost as wide as the land-bridge connecting Alaska and Russia, and even the puny island with the tower on it used to be bigger than Australia, millions of years ago.
Just as Dan, the leader while walking across the water-covered land-bridge, steps on the island, the tower seems to have grown larger. And there’s something peculiar about the “lighthouse” door…
Aha! The door to the old-looking tower. It opens like an elevator door. Dan is the first person to walk into the tower. It doesn’t look as skinny inside as it does outside. But most strange of all, the floor is made of glass. The door-frame is lined with a Neodymium magnet. Dan doesn’t know about chemistry so, of course, he doesn’t notice the technology in the doorway.
Dan casually paces around the tower, and notices stairs in the corner. No-wait, it’s a rugged ramp. No-wait, it’s an escalator. No-wait, it’s some sort of conveyor belt. The conveyor belt is much quieter than any escalator he’d seen in America. The conveyor leading upstairs, Dan wonders how any human can go up there on such a steep incline.
Goth-Girl and Helix run through the doorway together, but the map pulverizes into microscopic bits. She gasps.
“Huh,” Helix mumbles. He takes a BitCoin Wallet out of his pocket, and holds it out at the door-magnet. It vaporizes and fine dust snows down on him. “Uh…”
“BitCoin Wallet?” Goth-Girl exclaims. She saw Helix holding a dollar-bill-like note with the “B” symbol printed on it, right before it disintegrated. “HELIX!” she shouts. “You know we can’t use Internet money, right? Like BitCoins? It’s even worse now that you got it vaporized. You just wasted…um-”
“-more than a thousand BitCoins,” responds Helix.
Suddenly, a computerized female voice says in a flat tone, “Any non-human foreign objects other than clothing and shoes will be disintergenerated.”
Goth-Girl feels her hair. She used to have a headband, but now it’s not there. She shrugs as she nods, and remarks, “Not bad technology for a crappy country.”
The female computerized voice continues talking, “Analyzing object: BitCoin Note. Sending data to Dictator.”
“You darn freak!” Goth-Girl screams at Helix’s face. Her mouth opens wide and her eyebrows point down like she’s angry. “You just pulverized a BitCoin Wallet, something that’s illegal. You-”
Upstairs, Boss Kloss and Jamie Grimm are discussing a secret plan. They’re in their secret lab, covered in half a meter of sound insulation and thirteen authentication devices, not to mention digital key-locks and several more Neodymium magnetic doorways.
I’d say that’s pretty much useless when the sound insulation is already enough protection. They’re just talking, that’s all. It’s not like they’re testing bullet-blasters or anything. Even if they do test bullet-blasters, the amount of walls would bounce the bullets straight back, destroying the whole purpose of the inventions.
The sound insulation is to prevent the voice of the dictator and his helper from leaking out. There’re microphones and imaging devices to make sounds coming from the outside able to be heard inside, but not vice versa.

Chapter 16: The Bathroom Emergency!
“Now this is the bathroom,” Boss Kloss announces as he pushes open the clear-glass bathroom door in their secret base. “This toilet will provide the smelliest experience for you, Jamie…”
He glances at Jamie. But Jamie’s emotion isn’t what Boss Kloss expects, Boss Kloss thinks Jamie would be dazed by this. Instead, Jamie feels disgusted.
Anyway, Boss Kloss continues, “This bathroom has absolutely no privacy due to the clear door, and zero ventilation for defecation fumes. It’s the most luxurious flushing system, with eight-thousand pounds of force, enough to flush down an entire human posterior. Now isn’t that nice, Jamie?”
Jamie sighs. He answers, “Being the dictator’s sidekick, I officially decline this offer. This toilet sucks. Look! It’s even made out of splinter-y wood.”
“So? Look at that sink. As the dictator of Nehalym, I provide the top-secret base the most clean and bacteria-free sink.”
Jamie looks at the sink. There is slime drooping all over the sink. It’s even black, which makes it look even dirtier. “Such a lie,” he says sarcastically.
“Oh, but look at the bathtub. It fills up in five seconds, while most bathtubs in America take longer than thirty seconds to fill. Just like fast smartphone charge-times, this bathtub is a great convenience.”
“Fine.” Jamie walks up to the bathtub, staining his shoes on the poop-covered rug. Before he can even turn the water-faucet halfway, water blasts at the floor of the bathtub and shoots back up at Jamie, knocking off his glasses.
The water bounces off the sink mirror at a perfect angle, splashing the sink faucets. The sink faucets release skunk spray, which lands on the toilet-flushing-lever, affecting the smell of the bathroom, which already stinks.
“BEEP! BEEP!” an electronic alarm sounds.
“Hold on, I think I got a message,” Boss Kloss closes the bathroom door. He walks over to his circular workbench, housing several administrative electronic gadgets. Jamie follows up to check the computer after he puts his eyeglasses back on.
The bathroom pressure increases.
“Report,” Boss Kloss commands the computer.
A standard computerized female voice returns, “Systems have detected a BitCoin Wallet brought in by a ten-year-old male.”
The toilet continuously flushes.
“How should we punish him?” Jamie asks the computer.
“Standard Nehalym punishments include Baseball-bat-bashing, hose blasting-”
“No, no, no,” Jamie corrects. “A boy infiltrated our top-secret base. He also brought a BitCoin Wallet, which contains how much?”
“One-thousand, two-hundred BitCoins,” the computer replies happily.
“Oh, man,” Boss Kloss interjects. “Why don’t we just kick him out of this tower?”
The bathroom sink explodes.
The computer beeps again. “Systems have also detected a young female shouting at the boy who brought the BitCoins. The female is categorized as a lunatic, according to the past two minutes of behavior.”
A few seconds later, back at the ground-level floor, a loudspeaker instructs, “Helix Supernova and Amberlyn McKay, please exit this building immediately, otherwise we’ll literally ‘kick’ you out.”
“Wait,” Dan wonders, “Goth-Girl’s name is Amberlyn McKay?”
“Yup,” replies Amberlyn. She turns to Helix, “Sorry for shouting at you. It’s not our fault. We shouldn’t be in here anyway.”
Back in the secret lab, the toilet flushes down most of the oxygen supply.
The trio: Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn all walk out of the tower together, their faces glum and their shoulders sagging. And the doors close behind them.
Back in the secret lab, Boss Kloss checks the imaging sensors. The trio is nowhere to be seen. “All right, Jamie, those kids are out of here. Shall we lock the doors?”
The bathtub overflows.
“With pleasure,” Jamie agrees. He presses the lock button, which causes miniscule latches to lock the door that the trio walked out of.
Dan glances backward, just in time to see the latches lock the door. Now the three children are standing on the island again.
Back in the secret base, the faucet knobs implode on themselves. Brown smoke rises from the toilet. The toilet blows up, piercing wood into the walls. The bathtub drain-rim falls into the drainpipe. The bath-towels start retching under the negative air pressure. The electrical wires start wriggling out of their restraints.
Jamie hears cracking glass. He taps Boss Kloss on the shoulder, and they both turn around, astonished to see what’s happening to the bathroom.
Boss Kloss briskly turns away and picks up his smartphone from the workbench. “We’d better get this repaired.” He starts dialing the number for the Plumbers. Ironically, Boss Kloss owns the plumbing business, so he’s calling his own workers for help.
“Well hurry!” Jamie reminds him.
“Hello?” Boss Kloss speaks into the phone. “We have a bathroom emergency here.”
A plumber calling from the other side interrogates, “What kind of emergency? Buttock cramp? Pipe clogged of chest hair?”
“None of that,” Boss Kloss replies. “Our bathroom is…um…uh…let’s just say, ‘exploding’.”
“An exploding bathroom? Our plumbing business doesn’t deal with that kind of stuff. A plumber’s job is to fix pipes and such. If your bathroom exploded, there’re no pipes to fix.”
“Oh! You’re such a rat tat catted the slap met!”
“Sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. Someone else called me, so I’ve got to go!” The plumber hangs up on the phone call.
The dial-tone beeps on Boss Kloss’s side of the phone. “Hey! You can’t just-” Boss Kloss doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because the bathroom causes a fire emergency.
The smoke detector starts blaring. Actually, there’re more than ten smoke detectors per floor in the tower, so the noise gradually gets louder as more smoke detectors alarm-off.
“Get out!” Jamie shouts.
Boss Kloss runs swiftly up to Jamie, which, by the way, is probably the first time he even runs.
“I know!” Boss Kloss shakes Jamie’s body with his hands. “Why’d you have to make such a big deal of that?”
Jamie lightly jogs on his tiptoes out of the top-secret tower. Boss Kloss follows along, but due to his bulk, he stumbles like a rolling tumbleweed on the conveyor belt.
Boss Kloss attempts to reverse the conveyor belt, but fails to reach the lever. If the dictator owns such high-technology, why would he still use a lever anyway? Boss Kloss spins around, brushing against the glass panels.
“Warning. Bathroom on top floor may self-destruct at any moment. Please proceed with caution,” the female voice announces.
Uh-oh!
Boss Kloss tries to escape the tower, but he remembers that he locked the doors. Aww, man!
Basically what you just read happens in reverse motion. Boss Kloss has trouble getting up the conveyor belt, trips over, and goes back upstairs. He unlocks the door, which is just a one-inch red button, and the bathroom explodes right at that instant.
“Aaaaagh!” Boss Kloss screams as he falls off the tower. Luckily, he lands in the water. Not by the land-bridge, in the deep side.
With a big KABLOOSH! Boss Kloss bobs back up on the surface of the sea. Fat is less dense than water, so he has an easy time swimming to shore.

Chapter 16: The Puberty Surgery!
Back on the island, Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn get drenched in the water. Dan swims back to the mainland quickly, while the two others struggle to stay afloat.
Suddenly, a loudspeaker tied to a pole on the beach says in a raspy voice, “All children from ages ten to twelve, report to the HOOR for your Puberty ID Replacement.”
Helix and Amberlyn waddle up on the beach, their hair dripping and soaked. They start walking toward the monorail without saying a word.
Dan doesn’t go so fast. “Hey, hey, hey!” he says with his hands cupped around his mouth.
Helix and Amberlyn turn around. “What do you want?” Amberlyn releases her evil again. “YOU’VE MADE SOME SORT OF FAULTY PLAN, SOMETHING THAT BLEW UP OUR DESTINATION, AND NOW YOU…”
Dan runs up to Amberlyn and pushes her down on the sand. Dust flies up into the air. “Hey, Nehalym is already as corrupted as it is! That plan was to infiltrate the tower to apprehend the dictator.”
Helix argues, “Look. I have more experience than you do. I was born in Nehalym. The dictator isn’t like Adolf Hitler. He just sits around playing video games.”
“Whatever you say,” Dan agrees reluctantly. “Now what about the puberty what-you-call-it?”
Fifteen minutes later, Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn are tapping their feet, waiting in an extremely long line, a line full of every ten, eleven, and twelve-year-old in the country.
From far back, the long line looks like a casual setup for “Win Money” sweepstakes.
The three kids had joined the line after they saw the government setting up the Puberty ID Replacement Booth right here on the beach.
The Puberty ID Replacement Booth, or PIR Booth, is well…a booth. The booth is a worn-out, white, Polyethylene folding-table. There’s a big paper sign hung on the edge of the table that reads, “Ages Ten-Twelve: PIRB.”
Dan and the others walk forward. They’re almost at the front of the line now. Despite being extremely long, the line moves as fast as a bicycle chain!
“Excuse me, excuse me,” Nathan whispers. He joins the line to get his PIR. “Dan!” he shouts. Dan is already in the front of the line, so he can’t hear.
Nathan looks across the line, and everyone wears an orange ID band around their left wrist. All except one. Dan!
“DAN!” Nathan shouts.
Dan turns around and squints his eyes. “Nathan?”
“DAN!” Nathan repeats.
“What?” asks Dan.
“DAN! They’re going to kill you! DAN!”
“Huh?”
“Don’t eat that! NO!”
“Weird.” Dan has no clue about what he’s supposed to ‘eat.’ Eat? Why? What?
Dan is second place in line, so he cocks his head, curious to find out what the PIR does. He sees a blond girl holding out her forearm. A guy sitting on a chair behind the PIR Booth rips a piece of cardstock paper off her wrist, and sticks a new one on. Then the blond girl walks away as if nothing happened.
Now Dan stands directly in front of the PIR Booth. He decides to be skeptical and ask, “What’s this for?”
“Oh,” the person at the PIR Booth explains, “the Puberty ID Replacement is for young adolescents. We replace your current ID tag with an updated ID tag that records reproductive health.”
Dan nods, trying to seem socially normal. But he doesn’t have an ID tag.
The PIR person reaches out to Dan’s arm, but Dan isn’t wearing a piece of cardstock. The PIR man gasps.
He produces a walkie-talkie from his pocket, and says in a frozen tone, “Jim Kloss, come in, do you read me?”
The walkie-talkie flares an inaudible voice.
“Jim Kloss, I’ve got a rouge agent here named Daniel Slap-Jack. Ten-year-old boy, enters Nehalym illegally in classified!” the PIR man reports.
“What?” Dan asks, both confused and angry.
The PIR man chuckles, and explains, “Everyone in Nehalym needs to wear an ID band around their wrists. That identifies them as a Nehalym citizen.”
“Then how’d you know my name?” Dan asks.
The PIR man laughs again. “I don’t need an identifier to know who you are. You’re the bloke who broke into the jail and released all the prisoners! Don’t you know how many banks have been robbed?”
“Phhhttt! That’s your fault, since the banks have zero security.”
“But that’s not the point. The point is, you’re a felon. We require you, and I presume your family, to have ID’s, but you and them didn’t, did they? Did you? Nope.”
The PIR person grabs a bottle of white powder and pushes it toward Dan on the table. “Eat this. Just chuck it down,” the PIR guy says scantily.
Dan remembers what Nathan said. “DON’T EAT THAT!” echoes through his head. It must be poison, he thinks.
“HEY-YAH!” Dan shrieks as he kicks the PIR booth table down. But he doesn’t make a run for it.
Dan tries to prove to the PIR person that he won’t fall for “eat this” pranks. He does that by doing Karate. Or what he thinks is Karate. He does an unbalanced kick and falls over. The people in the front of the PIR line chortle.
Dan stands back up, and prepares to punch. “HEE-YAW!” he mimics what professional Karate fighters yell. The people waiting in line all scoff again. Dan actually doesn’t know anything about Karate. In fact, the fake Karate makes him look like a wimp.
“Yah-hey…” Dan says in a quieter voice as he pretends to do a head-butt. “No, I mean hey-yah!” He stops talking when the line of people laughs again. “Never mind.” Dan dashes off.
After the old top-secret lab in the tower was demolished, Jamie and Boss Kloss made use of the lower levels as their new secret lab. This time, of course, it didn’t include a ridiculous bathroom invention.
Boss Kloss has installed a very, very heavy, solid wood entrance-door to the secret lab. The installation didn’t take much time because the solid wood door is a slab of birch wood cut from an old tree. And they do have chainsaws in Nehalym.
“Jim?” Jamie calls as he knocks on the solid, wooden door of Boss Kloss’s new secret lab.
Boss Kloss is slouching on his couch, playing a video game, fiddling his thumbs like crazy. The name of the video game is Grand Theft Auto V.
“Jim?” Jamie says again. Instead of barging into the new secret lab, he decides to be polite and ask to come in.
Boss Kloss has set the volume of the game console up to one-hundred percent per Decibel, so he can’t hear Jamie calling him. Boss Kloss presses the yellow button on his game controller. His virtual game character punches his own virtual car.
Jamie pushes opens the door. It’s much heavier than he thinks. He exerts his whole body’s force to push the door sideways. Right as he walks into the secret lab, the door slams shut again.
Jamie walks up in front of Boss Kloss, who’s now eating a pound-bag of potato-chips. “Hey, you’re the dictator of this country, right?” Jamie asks rhetorically.
Boss Kloss doesn’t hear. All he hears is the game SFX sound effects. He presses the green button and the red button at the same time, and his virtual character jumps off a cliff.
Jamie instinctively switches off the game. He repeats, “You’re the dictator of this country, right?” Before Boss Kloss can answer, Jamie concludes, “You don’t seem like one. Dictators don’t sit around playing games. They need to take matters into their own hands.”
For the sake of language, Boss Kloss explains in a matter-of-fact manner, “The definition of dictate is to tell people what to do. I tell people what to do, not do it myself.”
“Bad news,” Jamie declares.
“What?” Boss Kloss asks.
Jamie is shocked. “Have you seriously been playing Grand Theft Auto for five hours?”
“Uh, yeah!”
“Well I’ve got news for you, buddy. There’s a kid named Daniel Slap-Jack, and he’s on the loose. You’re the leader of a country. You have power. You’ve got to do something!”
“Fine,” Boss Kloss sighs. He stands up clumsily and walks up to the intercom microphone. The intercom broadcasts important news to people all over Nehalym through loudspeakers. He speaks loudly, “Attention! Go catch that kid!” Then he plops back on the couch and turns on the game console.
“That’s it?” Jamie asks angrily.
“Yup,” Boss Kloss replies. “I’ve done my duty.”
Jamie sighs, disappointed at the now lazy dictator. He starts grunting as he tries to pull the door back open. Jamie takes revenge by pulling the door all the way open ninety degrees, and then letting go harshly. BANG!
“Hey!” Boss Kloss ramparts. “What was that for, you Freaky-Deekie?” He gets up off the couch, but the craggy wooden shed is collapsing already. But as he tries to get back at Jamie, part of the secret lab’s ceiling falls straight down on him.
Dan is still running. He sees a black motorcycle parked next to a skyscraper lobby. This must be the only motorcycle I’ve ever seen in Nehalym, he thinks.
Dan hops on the motorcycle after he’s too tired from running. He looks down, and there’s a kick-starter lever in the foot-grasper. He kicks the lever, and a loud sound fires out from the motorcycle. The engine must be very powerful!
“Hey! Get him!” hundreds of Killers yell angrily. Their eyebrows are very pointy and symmetrical, sort of…robot-like. The Killers stomp their feet and come closer. But very slowly. They’re all holding Uranium Baseball bats.
Before Dan can get the motorbike going, his instinct stops himself. “What’s that abbreviation again?” he wonders, tapping his fingers in quick succession. “Oh yeah! KFC!” He takes a deep breath, and bellows, “KFC! Everyone get far away. Don’t run down the corridor behind me, though!”
Dan turns the right-hand acceleration knob on the motorcycle handlebars. But he gets a bit of wheel-spin skidding, which is a good thing for him. Dust blasts out behind the back tire, and the Killers in front cough and back up. The Killers standing in the second row fall over, leading the Killers to fall backward like a domino-effect.
He rides the motorcycle back to the PIR line, where everyone is running around in random directions. Helix, Nathan, and Amberlyn hop on the back of the motorcycle. It’s good there are covers above the wheels!
Dan shifts his position forward to the edge of the seat so everyone has room. “Be careful,” he reminds them.
Soon, Dan, Amberlyn, Nathan, and Helix are approaching the beach. The same beach with the tower-island next to it.
“Dan, slow down!” Amberlyn orders.
Dan tries to turn the left-hand-handle-knob, but it won’t budge. Now he figures it out. The dictator and his people own this motorcycle. This is a complete prank motorbike. You can’t even de-accelerate!
“Dang it!” Dan whines. “Wait. Friends, I’m going faster.”
“What?” Amberlyn, Helix, and Nathan exclaim in unison.
Dan explains, “This motorcycle can’t slow down. We have to go faster to bust the engine!”
“Bust?” Nathan says. “Dude, destruction isn’t the only way to stop something that’s malfunctioning.”
Dan ignores him. VROOM! The motorcycle goes faster. Amberlyn’s hair gets caught in the wind. VROOM! VROOM! VROOM! Dan turns the acceleration knob. The engine meter points to the number seven, which means seven-thousand engine cycles per minute. It’s very dangerous for a gasoline-powered motorcycle to go that fast.
PJAW! The motorcycle explodes like a fiery inferno. Motorcycle mechanics are flying out in all directions and explode in the gray, cloudy sky. Luckily, nobody’s clothes catch on fire because the motorcycle just plunges into the ocean.
And when I say that Dan is a skillful swimmer, he’s good at swimming above water. He’s not-so-great at holding his breath underwater. But, as I just wrote, Dan can easily swim to the top. And he does.
“Dudes!” Dan shouts. His head is above the water, but none of the other kids’ heads are. His body under the water feels strangely cold. “Morons! Idiots! Retards! Doofuses! Sucke-”
Amberlyn is the first one to get up above the water. She punches Dan’s mouth, but not at full strength.
Dan says, “You know how boys aren’t allowed to hit girls? At least, it’s not polite in my country. But why doesn’t it go the other way around?”
Amberlyn shrugs, Helix and Nathan bobs above the water. Their hair is soaking wet. Helix shakes his head quickly like a dog drying off, and sea-water splashes onto Amberlyn’s face.
Amberlyn doesn’t react. The three other kids look puzzled. Amberlyn explains, “I get that a lot. ‘Dictator made me be a fashion model for a whole week, last month. He made me do it on the beach when it was cold, and dumped soda-pop in my hair if I don’t do it right.”
“Hey!” Nathan announces as he walks backward onto the beach. “Good news! That evil dictator is dead.” He nudges Amberlyn on the shoulder, and she looks up at the tower. The upper level looks like something exploded in it. Which the bathroom did. A large slab of glass and drywall is hanging over the lower level.
“We heard you,” the Killers approach in defensive crouches. Or more like…offensive crouches. They’re holding Bismuth Baseball bats. Although those bats aren’t to be considered for sports use anymore.
Dan whispers to Nathan, and Nathan nods affirmatively. He rushes into the collapsed tower.
Dan, Helix, and Amberlyn run up to the Killers. Dan does a fake Karate combo-move. The Killers in front laugh hard. The head Killer tries to lift the “Baseball” bat, but solid Bismuth is much too heavy. His head slams against the sandy beach, making a big “SPLUNK” noise.
And something very surprising indeed, happens. The Killer’s skull cracks open. Well, it isn’t actually a skull, because it’s made of polycarbonate.
Robots! The “Killers” are android robots!
Dan has an idea. He dashes past the Killers and tries to tiptoe across the land-bridge. The Killers try to chase him down, but they fall into the ocean ad electrocute.
“Hey!” Amberlyn calls. “What’re you doi-”
“I’ll take that,” a Killer declares. He starts grabbing the tank-top that Amberlyn is wearing. “Unauthorized material must be penetrated immediately.”
Helix stares blankly at the Amberlyn, and then looks at the Killer who attempts to destroy her shirt. “Yup,” Helix says. “They’re definitely robots.”
Another Killer glances at Helix. Helix frowns, “Uh…”
“Halt! Who goes there?” that Killer orders coldly.
Helix takes the Killer’s speech literally. He tries to be sassy to make the Killer argue with him uselessly. Helix replies, “Who goes there? Me. I’m standing here. My name is Helix Supernova.”
“I said, ‘HALT, WHO GOES THERE’?” the Killer repeats.
Helix replies sassily again, “I’ve already halted. I’m not moving. I thought you guys had an index of every person in the country. But anyways, ‘name’s Helix Supernova.”
The Killer gasps. Then he yells, “Aaaaagh! WHY, YOU LITTLE-” He pricks Helix in the stomach with his bony index-finger. “WHO GOES HERE?”
Dan arrives on the island, and he tries to enter the collapsed tower. But the door is still intact. And the door is very heavy. Very, very heavy. A much more informative method of describing the door is, “impossible to open.”
Dan yanks on the door, his body shaking back and forth. His hair is also being dragged forwards and backwards because of the air-resistance. “Why this stupid door?” Dan exclaims.
Nathan hears Dan’s voice. But the Killers are blocking his way, so Nathan takes a big leap into the water and tries to swim.
The Killers try to chase Nathan down, but they can’t swim. The density of the water causes the Killers to trip over and fall into the water. Seawater enters the Killers’ mouths, and they electrocute and instantly fail. ZAPPP!
Nathan’s clothes are soaked, and suddenly he feels swimming to the island will be a very daunting task.
Nathan can’t swim very well, so he has to do a tremendous thrusting movement to stay afloat every time he starts sinking. He swims all the way to the east side of the island.
“Dan!” Nathan calls.
“Just help me open the dumb door already!” Dan mutters angrily.
Nathan frowns and shakes his head. “That’s all because we haven’t been working together!”
Dan’s facial expression is still very smug.
“We all need to use teamwork!” Nathan continues. “All this time, we’ve been running around, doing all sorts of different things. We need to work together!”
“So let’s open the stupid door together,” Dan says.
“What’s the purpose of that?”
“NATHAN, JUST HELP ME PULL THAT HEAVY DOOR OPEN, YOU RETARDED RUNNING HORSE!”
A couple of Killers run towards Dan. Dan flinches, and in the blink of an eye, those Killers tumble down in the water. That sparks a light-bulb in his mind.
Dan takes a deep breath, and shouts at the top of his lungs, “HEY! COME AND CATCH ME! I BREAK THE RULES! YOU GUYS ARE SO IDIOTIC! COME ON! RUN TOWARDS ME!”
The Killers don’t budge. They stay put exactly where they are on the beach.
Nathan slaps Dan in the face. “You think they’d fall for that again and again? The Killers learn from their mistakes.”
Amberlyn and Helix distracted the Killers pretty well, and now they’ve gone back to their own homes.
Helix kept sassing the Killers around with the “Halt, who goes there?” statement. Amberlyn tricked the Killers with the good-old “look over there” prank.
Nathan and Dan don’t expect their team of four to split up, but Dan stays stubborn.
“Now that Helix and Amberlyn are gone,” Dan suggests, “why don’t we just open the door to the broken building without them? Surely we can open a door. Just open it. How simple is that?”
Jamie Grimm has about the same physical strength as two children combined, and he was able to open the door. Standing by the fact, Nathan and Dan pull open the door. They take twice as much time as Jamie did, because their shoes keep skidding across the sandy island.
The Killers don’t chase after them this time. If they swim, they electrocute. If they pick up the Baseball bats, they crack their plastic heads open. If they walk on the land-bridge, they fall off, and they electrocute.
Dan is curious to see what’s inside, so he lets go of the door and steps through the doorway.
When Dan ran into the building, Nathan was still holding the door and didn’t expect Dan to let go. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nathan exclaims quickly. He fumbles into the broken tower, nearly tripping over a large slab of concrete. The door slams shut, blowing a strong gust of wind at Nathan and Dan. The gust of wind combined with the force of the door slamming causes a bundle of electronics to fall from the broken ceiling.
“So…he died?” Dan ponders hesitantly. The large slab of concrete isn’t laying flat across the floor. There appears to be something under the slab of concrete, probably human-sized.
“You mean the dictator? He died?” Nathan replies.
“Well duh,” Dan says. “There’s nobody in this room.”
A faint buzz. Then a crackle. A voice speaks, “The identity of a young human male named Daniel Slap-Jack has been detected. He has reportedly infiltrated this tower earlier today. This message will be sent to the Killers.”
Nathan gapes angrily at Dan. Dan thinks Nathan doesn’t blink for thirty seconds straight! “Dude!” Nathan blurts.
“What?” Dan makes an excuse. “Like, it wasn’t my fault. Amberlyn and Helix also infiltrated this place.”
“So you guys are responsible for the dictator getting crushed?” Nathan confirms.
“Um, no,” Dan guesses unsurely. “When Helix, Amberlyn, and I infiltrated the tower, we kept hearing bathroom sounds. So maybe the bathroom blew up or something? Or maybe the door was so heavy it knocked the whole thing over.”
Besides the fact that Dan guessed it, what he said is exactly what happened to the tower that’s now only one story high.
“Why don’t we tell that computerized voice to-” Nathan mimics the talking style of the computerized voice. “-command every one of the Killers to altogether shut down indefinitely!”
Dan walks over the top of the concrete slab. He smirks at Nathan. He walks over to the dictator’s computer screen, and says, “Um…computer! Turn off Killers!”
The computer screen is black and stays that way.
Dan tries again. “Voice command!”
Nothing happens.
Dan repeats, “Enable voice command!”
Nothing happens.
“Turn on computerized voice!”
Nothing happens.
“Turn on the option that lets you talk to the computer!”
Nathan starts to chortle like a choking skunk. “You can’t tell the computer to turn on the feature that lets you tell it to do stuff,” he points out.
“Nathan, do you see that computer in the corner?” Dan asks.
“Yes,” Nathan answers. “It’s still intact.”
“Great! Now I need you to drag the icon.”
Nathan picks up the computer mouse, and literally physically drags it around the monitor’s screen. “That didn’t do anything!”
Dan repeats, “Drag it across the desktop!”
Nathan literally drags his mouse across the broken tabletop. “That didn’t do anything!”
Dan is shocked. “It didn’t? Now here’s the plan: open up the spreadsheet window, and go to the table labeled ‘REFERENCE’.”
Nathan spreads a sheet of newspaper across the physical broken window in the secret lab. Then he takes a long time to look around the broken table for a “REFERENCE” label.
“Nathan?” Dan says. “Are you still there?”
“I couldn’t find it,” Nathan replies.
“Of course you didn’t! You know what? Aaaaagh!”
“But what are we supposed to do?” Dan growls angrily. “Why are we even standing in the dictator’s lab? What’s the point?”
Suddenly, a high-pitched, rumbling noise comes from the door.
“What’s that?” Nathan shudders.
It took a lot of effort to push open the heavy, solid-wooden door. Dan doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to open the door again. Dan scoffs. “Aww, nothing. It’s probably just an old-man with his lawn-mower.”
The noise gets louder.
“Who would mow the lawn next to the dictator’s lab?” Nathan interrogates. “There isn’t even a lawn at all.”
“An old-man, that’s who.” Dan jokes. “I told you, it’s an old-man with his lawn-mower!”
But now there’s another obstacle for Dan. Internet memes pop up that joke about what’s under your underwear.
Better to play sports as a yute
 
i remember writing a 27 page book when i was 6 or 7

it on aliens invading earth and everyone on earth dying because of the world couldn’t beat the aliens and everyone was hiding in bunkers but they eventually died aswell

the last people were hiding in a basement of a nuked town surviving off cans of beans and someone had to find more food so they could live but then he died and everyone died

they also had a radio and were extremely depressed
 
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