Taking a deep, halting breath, I set the buzzing paperclip chain on my desk. Now that it feels like I'm moving in the right direction, it's becoming much too tempting to sprint on head-first with my eyes glued to the pavement. Productive movement, one step in front of the other.

It's an instinct I never knew I had. My life has been characterized by avoiding and minimizing risks, not seeking them out. My reward for all that due caution is having no real-life friends and no surviving loved ones... at least as far as I am aware. I'm too much of a coward to so much as prove it. The cop on the phone had certainly implied as much, but I was pretty young back then, who knows what they said behind closed doors? I am for the most part isolated, sad, and cowardly, and I have been these things for a very long time.

All that to say that it's so very tempting to tell myself: "I've engaged in some risky behavior now, and as a result I am financially independent and learning to deal with my condition." That conclusion ignores the most obvious, most tangible benefit of my habitual caution. I may be treading water, but you have to be alive to care about that. I am apparently so violently unlucky that my fancy paperclip bangle charged in mere minutes, where the blog implied that could take months. I built up these habits for a reason, survival.

If I want to remain alive, I need to remember the careful person that I was, not solely embrace this new and changing, risk-seeking me. I can't do either one alone, I need to make these modes work together.

I think the post-adrenaline dump high may be making me a wee bit too introspective, but deep inside I still know I'm right. Breathe in, breathe out, gently, gently.

I think this new understanding sets the tone for step one of my true journey into the unknown: recap. It doesn't pay to take shortcuts if the alley you wander down gets you stabbed in the back; best to think carefully about what I've done so far. What happened that could have been catastrophic, or may still yet prove catastrophic, and what can I do going forward to avoid these risks?

My new geist dynamo is extremely powerful. Relative to my degree of misfortune and the things I'm trying to power up currently, it should concentrate enough power in only a few iterations. I don't need the consistency or autonomy that other people trying this might, and the blog implies that's a good thing in a way. However, the moment I started Big Stack up, I attracted the attention of a very angry "smart ghost" that has been presumably following me for years. I think it just tried to kill me in earnest for the first time in recent memory. I may have provoked it more openly now, but at least I can reasonably say this thing has wanted me dead for most of my life. Why did the thing come and go so easily? When I was scared the first time, I heard a bark behind me, but I never found the source. I don't think that was a coincidence. At the same time, I really, really don't want to think about the implications.

For the time being I should minimize how often I use the dynamo. I should always stay in the room while it is running, and immediately knock over the loci if it stands on edge. That means clear expectations for why I'm starting this energy minting process, how long, and how often I do it. It also means that any experimentation on the loci in more detail has to wait until I have a surefire way of escaping the ghost's attention. I have no idea if they'll behave the same with each implement, like how would I "shut off" dice, or use one to find the ghost's location? Overall I think these are some fair ground rules.

The haunting was very overt, and yet I didn't see or hear any reaction from neighbors. Even the neighbor across the road vanished right before it all went down. The dogs were very clearly corporeal, so it's not like I hallucinated the whole thing, others should be able to see it too. That means the enemy either waited for me to be perfectly isolated, or worse, it compelled everyone to leave in order to facilitate this stealthy assault. The latter seems both more complicated and more difficult to arrange than beaming a single ghost dog in my house to kill me. I can't assume I'm safe inside, but the walls or my home provide some kind of protection... somehow. It can circumvent this protection by corporeal means - including potentially manipulating other people, or a supernatural sense for my own vulnerability. Scary prospects, but reassuring as well in some ways.

To compensate: my experimentation should be conducted during daylight hours unless I have a good reason, and I need to invest in a home security system. I need to make sure the ghost or ghosts are doing as much work as incorporeally possible to get to me. Likewise, my little peep hole isn't good enough, clearly. I never even noticed the smaller dogs that were sticking close to my door until the howling. If I opened it too soon, I would have been dead, just like that. I should also look into varying ways of warding away demons, ghosts, whatever. The blog has given me a few tips already though I doubt their voracity in at least some circumstances. Trust but verify.

My neighbor across the road spotted the dynamo right away, and the deliveries were very conspicuous. Both must have set off massive red flags. Deliveries should probably be scheduled later in the day or even at night, and I need to order something to obscure the dynamo and any other contraptions I make from easy view of the outside. A good start would be a hanging curtain at my door - bonus if I can figure out some way to ward off attackers with that, too.

I glance over to my door with a grimace. The door itself is pretty bad off, damaged thoroughly by the attack. I have no idea how it could be fixed discretely, or who I'd even talk to if I wanted to get that done. The crack runs horizontally across most of the bottom half of the door, the lower panel is dented inwards, and I can only imagine this mess is even more noticeable from the outside. I should bite the bullet and replace the door entirely. Something heftier, with more or better peep holes drilled in if possible.

I'll also make sure to double check my finances tonight just in case I'm running low on cash - these aren't excessively big ticket purchases, but it's still way more than I'm used to budgeting for. If a few of my accounts got busted all at once, I could be in trouble. All in all though, these problems seem manageable to me. Surveillance, scheduling, protection, new door.

It feels good to get my shit in order. Sighing with relief I feel some of the anxious burden fall from my shoulders. I lean way back in my chair and scratch my chin, sliding off my hard hat and goggles and letting them drop to the floor behind me.

Now that I've got all that squared away, step two feels easy: read the damned blog. I should scan fully through my list of options to move forward before picking one, and then make sure I learn everything there is to learn about the next trick before trying it out. If I can find an experiment I can do safely I'll try it, if they're all too dangerous then I'll put it off until I've ordered and installed my preventative measures. Right now I'll focus on re-reading this starter guide in full, but after I'm done here I need to crunch through as much of the rest of the blog as I can stomach before pushing the line again.

I focus intensely on my monitor, hunching over my desk. I power through the post, trying to put the info together in my brain in a more cohesive fashion. It's painstaking to make any progress, but surprisingly I find myself excited by the work anyway. Even the random bits of techno-babble are so much more palatable now that I know for a fact it at a minimum kind-of works in reality. Not that I buy into much of the mysticism yet.

Idly reaching around on the desk, I snag one of my notepads and a pencil and start writing notes on the stuff I'm re-reading. It's been too hectic and/or halfhearted for me to bother doing any background research, but I can't keep that attitude if I want to take advantage of this stuff.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Yin Chinese? METAL OK -> YIN except gold/ 'wrought iron' "Truth" capitalized brought up randomly. art vs craft (am I starving artist now?) Lots of mentions of karma and fate, interchangeable or what?

GHOST FEARS: bean paste, peach wood, "blessed" incense, dogs were bloody and still seemed possessed... not blood from the dog? FIGURE OUT DOG

Tapping my pencil on my chin, I scroll back up the page, then down again, skimming the contents. As promised by the author, the lower half of the blog devolves into a simple list of devices and tools for me to make, followed by the "tips & tricks" section that describes their flaws, risks, and clever uses. It's not hard to break down the greater list into the set of distinct objects and their role in "craft," ignoring most of the chaff and detail that I'll only need if I decide I want to make it.

Portable Karmic Happy Joy Buzzer

An intrinsic property of a concentrated medium is that it has enough mixed energies to act as a stable receptacle for other modes of power. While too weak to save you in many encounters, harnessing mundane electricity can be surprisingly useful for catching amateur internalists or other minor threats flat-footed. Get the target to make contact with the loci at the same time you do and offer up a taste of your own "tribulations." May require willful exertion; practice on small animals.

The little boy in my heart is deeply excited by the idea of portable lightning zapper. The adult is less excited about the power bills and notion I might ever need to use it. I definitely want some, but would a few paperclip "lightning brass knuckles" save me from a horde of a hundred-plus possessed dogs? The fact the author finds it likely I'm going to want to have these is concerning. I've also just realized that I have no idea what the fuck an internalist is, despite the author acting like it's just common sense, which means even more research to do. I honestly thought it was some kind of doctor the first time I read it, but in what universe would I need to attack amateur doctors with zappy electric chain things? Not this universe, I hope.

Karmic Bull's Eye ~➵

Place your yin-tainted fate medium in the center of sufficiently large paper or a parchment scroll imbued with this talisman. Draw four circles around it. Hold your drawing tool, tip to the paper, and make any decision. Let the tool drag to where it feels most natural. In the first space, the outcome is neutral. In the second, positive. In the third, it is neutral. In the fourth, you will perish. Accuracy varies, but you may repeat the process until the medium disintegrates.

I can see why they would call it a "karmic bulls-eye," but I'm not sure if I buy this as a useful tool conceptually. The author babbles proudly about how the device is an nonathletic cheat-code for "pacing the guideline," whatever that means, but goes on to say that it gets less accurate the more deeply you ask about your fate. It starts stably enough - 90%? 80%? who knows - and then falls precipitously. Asking the same question over and over seems to have other ramifications, even across seperate mediums. If it works properly for me even a single time then that would be a miracle. Given how fast I can charge up a metal medium, I think it might be useful to try at least a few times for the novelty.

Night Witch

Craft an appropriate flying paper device capable of gliding with its own form, and imbue it with this talisman. Poke a hole in the center of the focus of the talisman and lace your powered medium through it, this is an example where a chain serves perfectly. Visualize strongly what you want to find and write it on the paper. Throw the device at midnight, and the chain will drag it away, possibly delivering it to you the next morning... Yes, it is a magical paper plane.

Prepare a paper airplane a certain way and it... finds things for you, I think? The effect is quite ambiguous, even when I squint hard at the parts of the description that are too complicated for me to understand. How does the paper bring me what I want? What if I ask for a million dollars, or somebody's firstborn son? No clear answers, other than "try it and find out," so far as I can tell. It's apparently a safe and fairly reliable technique, but the author warns repeatedly to be very clear on what you're looking for. There's a "chance" of misfire, and that bodes poorly for me.

Little Jyo Soup ( ’ω’) 旦~~

Wrap a cup or bottle containing spring water with long metal media containing concentrated yin-tainted fate. Cast in a yin-filled scrap loci and raise to a simmering boil. Draw this talisman and then place it in the boiling water, then permit to cool for three to six hours as appropriate (until the metal disintegrates.) Collect metal fate dust for potential reuse. Water takes on rudimentary properties of the nine springs and can imbue such properties into submerged objects. DO NOT DRINK.

I glance over at the geist dynamo - The coin lays there, heads-up, unperturbed from where I left it. I suspect that if I flip it, the process will start again right away, it doesn't look wrecked enough to be a "battery" the way that the author described, and I don't have any good way to know for sure one way or the other. Apparently, the more "yin-filled loci" you chuck in, the more things you can realistically make, at least until they're well and truly spent. For now, I think I should put aside "little Jyu soup" and focus on my other options. Stalling here should give me time to build up plenty of scrap loci. It does sound very promising, though. The tips section on it is huge, the only section bigger than the geist dynamo's, and it's just a list of random household objects I should try and throw in the pot to generate increasingly peculiar claimed effects. In summary, the soup is something of a prerequisite for future "craft," at least insofar as this guide is concerned.

No soup for now, but I do want to try out all three of the rest of these ideas at some point, sooner rather than later. Night Witch is especially tempting given how potentially useful it could be to me, I'm practically homebound so bringing the fun to me instead of the other way around means a lot less risk in the process. At the same time, even the chance of things going awry makes me nervous. I don't exactly have a backup home or something - so I think I'll put that one off until after more preparations. That just leaves the karmic bulls-eye and the "joy buzzer."

I have so much stuff to look up and prepare for - seemingly more by the minute at this rate - that my heart says to go with the bulls-eye. That option doesn't force me to risk anything to try and use it, and if the prediction saves me even once then that constitutes a peek into the real, genuine future, which is, uh, neat. At the same time, the joy buzzer is a potentially necessary self defense tool that seems relatively safe to make, and only takes the paperclip chain I have on hand. Cheap and fast. I feel like I understand the world less and less, which means having a weapon against these unknown "threats" could be quite nice. What if one comes here tonight? I've already been attacked once.

Ultimately, between the two of them... I think I'll go with the bulls-eye.

Running around with paperclip fists of fury would be too conspicuous right now, and I can't afford to attract any more attention. I mean, if I shock somebody even on accident - or myself - it might be catastrophic. Not that I want to test them out on small animals as the author recommends, but it feels best to stay away from it for now as a result.

Instead, let's mess around with some fortune telling, because why not at this point? Once I get some results from that, it might tell me where best to go next!