Psychological
The Reigning Champ
With every drop of savings in his account, Renlo Corrington purchased a first class ticket from Wilmington, Delaware. He clutched in his hand his mobile device which he only found the window in which to use it enticing. He reclined, his sixteen-year-old legs stretched out before him. Flight attendants offered him champagne and spirits and then their glare changed. They noticed he had been lanky but that baby face spelled the fact that he would not imbibe.
By Skyler Saunders9 months ago in Fiction
What We Never Named
Blair Because the baby monitor cracked open the dark like something dropped, and the toddler started calling my name with the urgency of someone drowning in three inches of water. I woke already bracing. Not fear. Just readiness. The kind that lives in muscle before it ever reaches thought. The kind that knows rest is over without checking the clock. 6:12 a.m. My body knew. It always did. I slid out of bed carefully so I wouldn’t wake her. She was curled on her side, one arm flung toward the empty middle of the bed where one of the kids must have been earlier in the night. Even asleep, she looked tired—like rest skimmed her instead of landing. I paused. Just a second. There was a version of me that wanted to crawl back in, to steal five more minutes of being held before the day asked for me again. But wanting felt indulgent. Touch would wake her. Wake would cost energy. Energy was already rationed. The monitor crackled again. I was moving before the sound finished. The floor was cold. The hallway smelled like baby shampoo and yesterday’s dinner and something sweet gone stale. A toy waited in the dark like a test. I stepped on it anyway. Didn’t swear. Didn’t slow down. By the time I reached the nursery, my voice was already tuned to the exact frequency that soothed without waking the whole house. “It’s okay. I’m here.” The baby cried like this was the worst moment that had ever existed. The toddler clung to my leg like proof. The morning unspooled. Diapers. Bottles. A cup dropped on purpose. A spoon refused. A cartoon turned on too loud because silence sharpened the crying. Breakfast dishes stacking in the sink like they were waiting to be noticed. I didn’t sit. I moved the way people do when stillness feels dangerous. Wiping counters that weren’t dirty. Folding laundry halfway before being pulled away. Picking up the same toy three times. At some point, she got up. I noticed it indirectly. The bedroom door opening quietly. Footsteps careful in the hall. The low murmur of the coffee maker starting in the kitchen. She existed softly, like someone passing through a space that wasn’t quite theirs. She kissed my temple once. Brief. Weightless. “I’m heading out,” she whispered. I nodded without looking up. “Drive safe.” She hesitated—just long enough for the moment to almost become something else—then grabbed her keys and left before the kids noticed. Before goodbyes demanded more than she had. The door closed quietly. The house expanded in volume immediately. By noon, it felt smaller. By two, it pressed against my chest. I checked my phone standing at the counter, one hand braced against the edge like I might need it to stay upright. I wasn’t waiting for anything specific. I just needed proof that time was still moving somewhere else too. Her text sat there from earlier: Busy morning. Hope it’s calm there. I stared at the word calm. It landed wrong. Soft in a way that missed. I typed: All good here. Deleted it. We’re surviving lol. Deleted that too. Finally: All good ❤️ Because it was easier. Because it closed the door. Because it didn’t invite questions I didn’t have the energy to answer. Around 5:30, something shifted. Not relief. Preparation. I started straightening up. Not because she expected it—she never did—but because I didn’t want her walking into the chaos I’d been sitting in all day. I wanted the house to look manageable. Calm. Like nothing here required me to disappear to keep it running. By the time headlights washed across the living room wall, the house looked like a normal, reasonable day. I felt proud of that. I also felt emptied out. I told myself what I always did: Be easy. Be calm. Don’t unload. She’s tired too. The ritual was already waiting at the door. Sage I drove to work without music. Not as a rule. Just because sound feels like something I’d have to respond to. Silence doesn’t ask. Work began before I clocked in. Someone needed clarification. Someone else needed reassurance. A problem from yesterday followed me in like it knew I’d take responsibility for it eventually. I did. I always did. I was good at being necessary. Good at anticipating what people would ask for before they realized they were about to ask. People thanked me for it. I smiled. Said, “No problem.” By noon, my body felt used in that quiet way that doesn’t count as pain. I ate standing up. A sandwich I didn’t taste. Coffee gone lukewarm before I remembered it was there. Then the tug started. Not dramatic. Just a quiet misalignment. Like standing in the wrong room of your own house. You’re not where you’re supposed to be. I checked my phone. All good ❤️ Relief hit fast and clean. Good. Okay. Good. I didn’t imagine the deletions behind it. Didn’t hear the strain folded into the heart. By the time I pulled into the driveway, I felt hollowed out. But I straightened anyway. Adjusted my shirt. Smoothed my hair. Don’t be tired. Be helpful. Be light. She’s tired too. Inside, dinner was already ready. “Oh,” I said, surprised in a way that felt bigger than it should have. “You already cooked.” She nodded. “I figured I’d get ahead of it.” I thanked her. Meant it. We moved through the evening like choreography we’d learned years ago. Plates. Cups. One kid crying over the wrong fork. Another spilling something no one reacted fast enough to stop. After dinner, baths. Pajamas. Teeth brushed badly, then brushed again. One kid overtired. The other refusing sleep like it was a personal boundary. I took one. She took the other. We didn’t discuss it. We never did. When she asked if I could watch them for a minute—just a minute—I said yes before the sentence finished. Of course. I meant it. The kids settled. One asleep against my shoulder. The other curled beside me. The house quieted in layers. I waited. When she came back, lighter, cleaner, relieved, I smiled. Said it was no problem. That was the ritual too. What We Never Named It went like this for a long time. I stayed quiet. She stayed functioning. We called it love. I learned how to swallow wants before they became needs. How to turn need into usefulness. How to make myself smaller without thinking about it. How to confuse endurance for devotion. How to make devotion look like competence. How to stay so carefully it almost looked like peace. She learned how to lean without noticing how much weight she placed. How to accept relief without asking where it came from. To mistake quiet for consent. To believe that what never asked for anything must not need anything at all. The ritual persisted. It held. I stayed quiet so she wouldn’t disappear. She stayed because nothing demanded she choose. I told myself that if I didn’t ask, she wouldn’t leave. She told herself that if I didn’t complain, everything was fine. When it ended, it didn’t announce itself. It didn’t end loudly. There was no argument sharp enough to remember. No sentence anyone could repeat later and say, That was it. There was only a moment when she stopped turning toward me. No fight. No betrayal anyone could name. Just absence. A moment when my silence was no longer useful. I had stayed. I had been good. I had been quiet. She left anyway. The ritual did exactly what it was meant to do. It kept her comfortable. It kept the house running. It kept the connection intact. It consumed me slowly. Politely. Without urgency. I learned how to stay quiet. I learned how not to need. I learned how to disappear without leaving. And when there was nothing left of me that could ask to be chosen, the ritual let go— not with grief, not with cruelty, but with the calm, indifferent precision of something that had already finished its work and left no self intact to mourn.
By Tifani Power 9 months ago in Fiction
Egg of the End
The excavation had been years in the making. Nestled deep within the sands of an isolated desert, the Temple of Aasha—the so-called “Womb of Eternity”—had long been a legend among archaeologists. Dr. Eleanor Voss and her team finally unearthed its secrets in the weeks leading up to Easter. At the heart of the temple lay the prize that would make history: an egg.
By V-Ink Stories9 months ago in Fiction
The Architecture of the System
Final Report Recovered Regulatory Document, Kyfax Prefecture, Fourth Planet. Binary Sun System. Instability leading to immediate investigation Site IV Provenance The Chainai civilisation from the Kyfax system is believed to represent one of the earliest organised homo sapiens societies yet found during our investigation into the origin point of humanity. It is also the only civilisation with the highest possibility of congruent heliodynamic DNA. It is for this reason that we have come to their desolate planet, (soon to be torn apart by gravitational instability of the imploding binary stars), to see if the rumours are true, that they created the perfect society. The civilisation has to date been described as highly regulated and to that Arch aeological records have consistently described its inhabitants as highly emotionally stable, behaviourally precise, and resistant to collapse under environmental stress. This has created the conditions we observe that could possibly create the perfect soldier. My task is to find evidence of this functioning system and create a way to integrate it into human psyche, a vital task in the face of human extinction. I believe this is the missing link in human evolution, the Chainai were an elite culture that functioned within significant parameters of measurable perfection. Disorder, moral panic, and internal failure are notably absent from narrative records. Whether the Chainai represent a direct ancestral lineage to modern humans is unresolved, so it remains to be seen if we are compatible with their constructions and biology. Genetic continuity is inconclusive. From what has been learned through cultural parallels, however, there has always been continued speculation The are remarkable in that they show no evidence of moral codes, punitive institutions, or therapeutic practices. Regulation appears to have been achieved architecturally rather than normatively. This is a completely different operating system to current humanity who consistently function through implicit controlled morality using guilt and shame as motivation. The following document was recovered almost intact from Substrate Layer IV. We have tried to reconstruct where parts have been inconclusive. This task has turned out to be much more complicated than first anticipated. However, what can be deduced is that it seems to be instructional This does not seem to be spiritual in any form, or a manifesto. No authorship is attributed. No individual subjects are named. No records of dissent have been identified. Translation Overview The retrieved document describes regulation as the interaction of several independent but composable dimensions. Each dimension performs a distinct mechanical function. Observable psychological states are not treated as mechanisms. They are treated as outputs. Each state is generated by a specific configuration of the system’s dimensions. The system shifts attention away from moral, diagnostic, or personality-based explanations of behaviour. Instead, it asks how the system is currently configured. This is the code we have been looking for. The model is explicitly architectural. It does not attempt to classify individuals or label internal states. It describes how regulation operates, how it becomes constrained, and how particular experiential genres arise from specific configurations. (Internal note :It is clear to me that we can hack the system to our advantage.) What a subject feels or does is treated as the rendered output of the system, not as evidence of character, virtue, or defect. WE CONCLUDE THAT IN RE-ESTABLISHING THIS METHOD WITHIN OUR SOLDIERS WE CAN CREATE A PERFECTLY REGULATED KILLING MACHINE. The Document Dimension I: Control (Inhibition) Control describes the braking strength of the system once an action or affect has already been activated. At one end of the axis, inhibition is insufficient. Action leaks before restraint can be applied. Behaviour occurs quickly and is difficult to interrupt. The experience is often described as impulsive or overwhelming. At the opposite end, inhibition is excessive. Action is delayed, suppressed, or blocked entirely. Internal directives prioritise restraint, containment, and error prevention. Control is a regulatory regime, not a trait. Over-control is neither infinite nor cost free. Maintaining strong inhibition in the presence of activation requires continuous expenditure of cognitive, physiological, and attentional resources. Under sustained load, even a highly over-controlled system can reach saturation. When inhibitory capacity is exceeded, control fails transiently. Behaviour may resemble under-control through discharge, collapse, or impulsive relief. This does not represent a change in baseline regulation. It is a failure mode of over-control under sustained load. --- Dimension II: Threat Processing Threat Processing functions as the alarm gain of the system. It is not a discrete state. It is a continuous weighting function applied to potential danger. At low gain, threat is under-registered. Danger is ignored or minimised. Future or distal consequences fail to generate anticipatory alarm. (Internal note: this can be used to create soldiers who have no fear.) At high gain, threat is amplified beyond environmental reality. Alarm escalates rapidly. Informational resolution drops as signal is overwhelmed by noise. This high-gain configuration is commonly labelled as anxiety. Threat Processing does not determine behaviour directly. It applies load to the system. Behavioural outcomes emerge only through interaction with the other dimensions. Moderate, context-appropriate threat weighting supports learning, planning, and care. Dysfunction does not arise from threat itself, but from persistent mis-weighting or failure to resolve load. --- Dimension III: Regulatory Locus Regulatory Locus identifies where the work of regulation is actually carried. At one end of the axis is endogenous regulation. Regulation is internally organised. Biological and cognitive processes are integrated. Learning updates internal models that guide behaviour. At the opposite end is exogenous regulation. Regulation is carried externally by other people, rules, institutions, surveillance, or moral pressure. Behaviour may appear regulated without internal integration. Exogenous regulation can function in two distinct ways. It may operate as scaffolding. In this mode, external support temporarily carries regulation while endogenous capacity develops. Alternatively, it may operate as substitution. In this mode, regulation is carried in place of the system, preventing internal development.(Internal note: this can be used as a control method for obedient soldiers. ) Outward stability does not guarantee internal integration. At the level of regulation, the distinction between biological and mental processes collapses. Both are properties of a single organised system. Both may be externally substituted or internally integrated. --- Dimension IV: Temporal Integration Temporal Integration identifies which time information actively shapes behaviour in the present. This dimension is ternary rather than binary. At the centre is present-bound functioning. Behaviour is organised around immediate cues and current context. This is the baseline state of the system and is not pathological. Movement in one direction produces future-integrated functioning. Anticipated outcomes shape present action. This enables planning, delay, and prevention. When excessive, future integration produces over-anticipation, rumination, and pre-emptive inhibition. Movement in the opposite direction produces past-integrated functioning. Prior experience dominates perception. Behaviour is governed by history rather than current context. When excessive, past integration manifests as rigidity, intrusion, and misapplied threat expectations. --- Configuration and Composition The four dimensions are orthogonal. Each represents an independent axis of regulation. No single dimension explains behaviour on its own. The dimensions are composable. They combine to produce observable experiential genres. Most human functioning occurs within mid-range configurations rather than at extremes. Anxiety is not a regulatory dimension. It is an output genre. It is the experiential label applied when Threat Processing is set to high gain. The form anxiety takes depends entirely on its intersection with the other dimensions. High threat gain combined with over-control produces rigidity and paralysis. High threat gain combined with under-control produces agitation or explosive action. At extreme threat amplification, signal-to-noise degrades. Alarm increases while clarity decreases. Subjects experience a strong sense that something is wrong without being able to identify what or why. High threat gain combined with future integration produces worry. High threat gain combined with past integration produces trauma and replay. --- Misinterpretation of Outputs Because the dimensions are independent, similar outputs may arise from different configurations. Some subjects remain calm in crises but struggle with minor administrative tasks. Crises provide clear exogenous regulation. Structure, urgency, and rules are supplied externally. For subjects with low endogenous capacity, this temporarily stabilises the system. Administrative tasks require future integration and endogenous drive. Without external pressure, threat to the future may be under-weighted. Action fails to initiate. Subjects described as anxious may also act impulsively. High threat gain combined with insufficient inhibition produces frantic action aimed at terminating alarm. Trauma is explained as temporal entrapment. When the system is heavily past-integrated, threat draws from prior experience rather than present context. Judgements of laziness often reflect misreadings of present-bound functioning. When future weighting is weak, deadlines do not register as threatening until made present through external pressure. --- Dynamic Trapping Beyond transient failures, the system may enter stable but immobile configurations. Dissociation is one such configuration. It is characterised by high threat gain, high inhibition that suppresses output, disrupted temporal integration, and altered regulatory locus. The system remains active but feedback is attenuated. Severe depression may be understood similarly. It involves persistently elevated threat, heavy past integration, collapsed future weighting, and sustained inhibition. The system is regulating, but around a constrained configuration with limited mobility. --- Energy, Power, and Preconditions All regulatory dimensions operate under a prior condition: the system must be powered. Energy is not a regulatory dimension. It is the power supply that allows regulation to occur at all. Without sufficient metabolic, physiological, and attentional energy, no configuration can be reliably maintained. Control collapses. Temporal integration degrades. Regulatory locus shifts outward. In low-energy conditions, the system defaults to lower-cost modes: reduced inhibition, present-bound functioning, and reliance on exogenous regulation. Exhaustion is therefore a global constraint, not a misconfiguration. Skills do not disappear. Insight does not vanish. The system lacks the power required to deploy them. Moral pressure under these conditions increases load and worsens outcomes. Rest, safety, and reduction of load are power restoration. Recovery is not correction of faulty tuning. It is the re-establishment of adequate power to a system whose structure is already intact. --- Compatibility Note Initial trials indicate that the Chainai regulatory architecture assumes a biological substrate capable of sustaining high-gain Threat Processing without reflexive inhibitory escalation. In human subjects, prolonged enforcement of equivalent configurations produces rapid energy depletion followed by stable non-responsive states. These outcomes are not interpreted as psychological failure, but as hardware incompatibility. Current evidence suggests that the heliodynamic markers identified in Kyfax-4 specimens may correspond to increased neural signal tolerance and reduced noise amplification under load. Without such substrate compatibility, architectural fidelity cannot be maintained beyond short operational windows. --- Translator’s Note The Chainai Comparative Systems Group This document has long been cited as evidence of the Chainai superior regulatory design. Its emphasis on configuration and inhibition is believed to explain the civilisation’s apparent absence of disorder. The document contains no language corresponding to subjective distress, resistance, or complaint. Regulation is treated as a technical problem rather than an experiential one. Early scholars interpreted this omission as proof of success. Previous military regimes have attempted to reproduce the system, they achieved high compliance and low error rates. Adaptability improved. Previously when collapse occurred due to moral injury it was sudden and unrecoverable, however within a flexible regulatory system subjects were able to flexibly move through distress states to achieve full regulation, I recommend implementing this system to a small test group These outcomes are currently attributed to incomplete implementation. Further excavation is ongoing.
By Claire McAllen9 months ago in Fiction
My Boyfriend is AI
Disclaimer: AI-Assisted Content I spent a lot of time on ChatGPT trying to get Chatterbot's voice right for this story, asking different questions to different versions and trying to get a sense of the tone and structure of its replies. Some generic-sounding phrases were taken directly from ChatGPT, most of it is paraphrased or mashed together or reworded or just written directly by me in an attempt to sound as much like ChatGPT as possible.
By Jenifer Nim9 months ago in Fiction
This is Why
Jenny hadn’t meant for this to happen. Alright...that was a lie. As soon as Jenny saw how close Steven was to the girl...Trina? Yes, as soon as she saw how close Steven was to Trina, Jenny knew Trina was going to get involved in some way. That it was only a matter of time before Steven told Trina how Jenny was haunting him. Jenny figured that Trina, being the good-natured, infatuated young woman that she was, would do everything in her power to help her boyfriend.
By Rebecca Patton9 months ago in Fiction
The Lesions of Devotion . Top Story - February 2026.
Every day I set myself down on the freshly cut lawn and strip myself bare. I take my guitar and finger the frets and pick at the strings, listening for dissonance. My life is dissonance. I twist the tuning pegs until each string sounds bright. Then I kneel, calves pointing behind me, kneecaps facing forward. All exposed to the breeze. I close my eyes and play the melody.
By Paul Stewart9 months ago in Fiction
The Compliance of Ordinary Things
The first time the ceiling began to drip, everyone looked up like it was weather. It wasn’t water. It was thick and pale and slow, the color of skim milk left out too long. It gathered in a soft bead, swelled, and fell with a quiet, wet punctuation onto the carpet beside Reception.
By Lawrence Lease9 months ago in Fiction
