Redspex - Fourcast Lab Owes Me $20

Crying sobbing throwing up falling over @lem0ngh0stt DREW ME AT WORK!!! :'))))) he captured the chaotic nature of my desk and my love of pins and sparkling water. He even threw in my cat, Hypnos, though unfortunately she does not often accompany me to the lab. Anyway I love this and my friends :]

⌛️TAPS FAQ⏳

What does TAPS mean? -> TAPS stands for Temporal Alignment Permeation Syndrome. It started popping up ~2019 when Fourcast began messing around with the SPORE device. Though I'm not the only one to have TAPS, I imagine it's pretty rare - I've yet to meet anyone else with it in-person. What does TAPS do? -> As the name suggests, my connection to the current time and reality my physical body exists in can be kind of tenuous, leading me to experience other realities and futures. Episodes are random and unpredictable, but thankfully mostly happen when I'm asleep (waking episodes can be pretty disruptive to my day, especially when the glimpses I get aren't the most cheerful :( ). How do you know you're not just dreaming? -> For one, I sometimes experience episodes while completely awake (I have no prior medical history of anything that would cause similar experiences to TAPS), and I can very clearly differentiate between the feeling of being in a dream and being in a TAPS episode. On top of that, Fourcast Lab has been researching TAPS since it started to affect people around 2019 and has confirmed its existence as a legitimate phenomena. How does TAPS affect you? -> It's very much a coin toss. Because it's random and I have no control over what I see, I can go a few weeks without experiencing any episodes, to having some pleasant/neutral experiences during an episode while asleep every couple of days, to dealing with some really harrowing visions during the day. There's good and bad in it, and I hope understanding more about TAPS will help me deal with day-to-day life with it.

How do you deal with TAPS? -> Therapy has been very helpful for me. TAPS can bring on some pretty heavy, existential questions, so having someone to talk to about it has been really important. In a way, interning at Fourcast Lab brings about its own sense of assurance; I know TAPS is taken seriously there and my experiences as someone who is both living with TAPS and trying to research it is unique and helpful when it comes to understanding it better. 4CL people get weird time stuff, so I've found a lot of support and understanding amongst my coworkers. My feelings about 4CL are kind of complicated as a whole, since, as far as theories go, their handling of SPORE is what led to people developing TAPS. I feel conflicted, in a way - as far as we know, developing TAPS is a freak accident, so I can't really be mad at 4CL because it's not like they were malicious, but at the same time...TAPS can be rough. Why do you want to research TAPS? -> Culmination of a few points from above: it's a relatively new and rare condition with little known about it, and I hope understanding TAPS better will help me, and other people living with TAPS, deal with it. Research into TAPS hasn't been that extensive, so I really want to help figure out the why/how/when of TAPS. What is one of your favorite experiences with TAPS? -> I've seen a lot of beautiful worlds through TAPS - in a lot of ways, I feel extremely, uniquely privileged to have these experiences. One that really sticks with me is having an episode while sleeping; I was at the highest point of a mountain range, a lavender sky stretched out overhead. The sun(s?) was just coming up, making pale, yellow streaks in the clouds above me. The sun reached down to the mountain faces around me, pitch black but shimmering in the light, like rippling waves of abalone. At my feet, the mountain I was on dropped off into a valley, overgrown with tree-like flora, leaves deep green and rustling. Curling through this alien forest, like a massive serpent on its belly, was a river of silver, ferocious in its perpetual voyage. The whole episode was so beautiful and serene, it's really stuck with me as an example of the beauty of possible futures and alternate realities, and made me feel really lucky to have TAPS. What is one of your worst experiences with TAPS? -> I was on the CTA during rush hour when I had an episode. Thankfully I was sitting down, but I was totally overcome with the vision of standing at the foot of a volcano as it erupted, a lightning storm battering the blazing peak and striking my surroundings. I heard a lot of commotion, but couldn't identify where it was coming from, and I couldn't move as the volcanic ash rained down upon me, dark and scorching, lava racing ever closer. It was viscerally terrifying, being at the complete mercy of extreme forces of nature. It took me a while to come out of the episode, and when I did I was a) very disorientated, tired, and still pretty scared, and b) had missed my stop by a pretty good margin. Needless to say that day's commute felt very, very long.

What if I have questions about TAPS -> Ask box is open! Feel free to drop me a message :).

TAPS S.E. Disclosure - The Pink Desert

I got permission from Fourcast to disclose some of my experiences with TAPS, so here's some art I made after an S.E. (sleeping episode)! I lovingly call it the Pink Desert (for obvious reasons) - last time I checked 4CL hasn't been able to pin down when/where this is, so the Pink Desert will have to do. Being able to document and communicate what I experience during a TAPS episode is vital not only for my work at the Lab, but for other 4CL branches as well. I'm not the best at drawing or painting or anything like that, so I usually go with making collages that are as close to what I witnessed as I can get them, paired with some note-taking to get down as many details as possible. Some fun note excerpts from this S.E. are:

"-Despite the desert-like appearance of surroundings, climate was cold and dry with consistent, blustering winds" "-Probable that fine-particle terrain underfoot is garnet (or a similar mineral) that has been weathered by environmental factors - large deposits of garnet were seen scattered across the landscape, some with visibly scratched or otherwise eroded facades" "-Coloration of the atmosphere would suggest high chlorine gas content, yet wavering patterns like Earth's aurora borealis were also observed, which indicate electrons interacting with an oxygen-rich upper atmosphere. Chlorine is a poor conductor of heat and electricity; atmospheric content remain uncertain"

It's probably clear that Fourcast didn't hire me for my stellar environmental sciences knowledge (lmao), but even my rough guestimates can help the actual environmental science Fourcasters figure out what's going on. But yeah! First disclosure from my personal vault :). Overall it was a pretty calm episode, despite being a bit cold and waking up with a really dry mouth. Never know what you're gonna get with TAPS, thankfully this time around it was a beautiful, mysterious, pink desert.

Always open to answering any questions about my life with TAPS, feel free to drop a message in the ask box! The images I used to make this collage were sourced from Pinterest - the particular images I used can be found here!

I will continue out of spite. If anyone wants to take me out that badly, they will have to get their hands dirty and do it themselves! If they wish me miserable, they will have to wipe off my Joker smile with their own two hands!

mini(?) life update

graduation, amongst other things.

I almost wish I could say that I've been inactive because the Lab has been giving me crazy work, or I've been busy with something or another, but the weirdest thing is that that's not the case, but I still feel off.

I graduated a few months ago, now. I'm probably not done with academics as a whole, but I had decided before graduating that I would be taking some time off before going back to school. At the same time, the Lab has given me a psuedo-summer break - technically I work there still, yes, but assignments have been unusually slow, to the point where I haven't actually had to be in the lab for...since graduation, essentially. Maybe it's their way of apologizing to me for putting me through how hectic they made my last summer (and fall, and winter).

So my social life, work life, and inner life have all experienced some drastic changes - moving away from campus, not being active with work, the resulting personal challenged with lack of motivation, routine, energy...I know it won't last forever, that once I find my next step in life it'll change, and that I'm definitely not the first person to graduate and feel this way, but I grow tired and frustrated with my own listlessness. Even with the prospect of using the time to pursue hobbies and projects, I find myself immediately deprived of the ability to do it. I just end up feeling tired. And that tiredness and lack of achievement makes me feel frustrated. Etc.

Rambling now - it's only about 8:30 around here but I haven't slept well for almost a week now (thank u taps so cool), so writing isn't my strong suit atm. Thankfully I'm still talking with my therapist, and will see him tomorrow. This will probably be the first thing to come up. Hopefully I'll see y'all around soon.

will probably not be posting much for the next few days as I scramble to get all of my paperwork together - hopefully I can document some of my flight out but obviously I have to make a pretty crazy turn around lmao

Okay so. Good Omens.

Pounding my fists on the ground I CAN'T BELIEVE THERE'S A NEW BOOK IN THE INKWORLD SERIES CORNELIA FUNKE YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS TO ME!!!!

I think technically Dragon Rider was my first Funke book which led me to Inkheart, which I would say is the single book that has had the greatest impact on my life. I finally finished reading the entire trilogy while in college and I LOVED it, absolutely mind blowing that there's a new book in the series and I have it and I'm reading it!!!

The cover art is absolutely beautiful (I have the Karl James Mountford & Steve Wells design), reading it so far has been like returning to my first home, I am so excited and so happy.

Next level would be rereading the series in the original German (finding out Funke is German was probably also what initially sparked my interest in actually learning the language, moreso than even knowing that I come from a German background lmao).

I eventually want to get the entire series in hardcover variants - I was a child when I bought the original books and the years are definitely showing on the softcovers :').

Anyway Cornelia you mean everything to me.

You're 22 your life is just be-ENDING! Because its OVER! You're FUCKED!!!!

still love jack delroy. sorrr y.