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Friday, February 6, 2026

Shhhh! Digital Media Presents: Grand Tapestry of Moments 03 - The Interview (New Chapter and artwork February 6, 2026 23:30 EST)






Chapters
  1. Monday July 21, 2025 10 AM - Change
  2. Tuesday July 22, 2025 12 PM - Sanity


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I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

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Brian Joseph Johns


Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:

Grand Tapestry Of Moments 03

The Interview

by Brian Joseph Johns



Monday July 21, 2025 10 AM - Change

- Pick up dry cleaning from Suds and Duds

- Lipstick and mascara from Glamorology

- Pesto for my pasta salad

- Meeting with Avner! Don't let him push you around!




Elsa pushed her way through the doors from the elevator foyer and into the reception area of News All Over Media, which of course was a subsidiary of All Over Global Media, who also owned other media subsidiaries such as Read All Over Media, Seen All Over Media and Heard All Over Media. Media All Over was their byline, though more recently and importantly, largely in part thanks to the global adoption of the internet, the web, mobile devices and the recent arrival of AI, they were quickly approaching the point at which they'd soon be all over, as in done.


The reception area itself was built during the company's renaissance. A marble desk, situated near a marble fountain complete with water-born plants and foliage, all of which was either dying or dead by this point, and scattered throughout the walls a variety of prints of award winning photographs shot by All Over Media photogs over the years, each housed in frames of masterpiece artisanship, and each of which was accumulating dust and cobwebs as they slowly faded into the obscurity of irrelevance and budgetary constraints.


Elsa's heels clicked as she stepped from the carpeted foyer of the elevator and into the marble floored reception area, drawing the attention of a man seated in the waiting area who over the top of his mobile phone, admired Elsa's gams as she passed him, the light fragrance of her perfume trailing the stale air behind her. She felt his eyes upon her, a fact that was more often the rule rather than the exception, for she was as much so a delight to the eye as she was a delight in her written word.


With her fingertips, she checked the marble desk for dust before leaning against it.


"Any messages Marlene?" asked Elsa of the receptionist.


"No, but Avner is in his office. He told me to remind you about your eleven o'clock with him," Marlene flared her brows at Elsa from behind her glasses.


"Alright. Thanks," Elsa responded, turning to get a quick look at the man admiring her before she continued beyond reception and into the offices.


"Morning Elsa," Patty waved to her as she passed the writer's cubicles of the dailies staff.


"How are you?" Elsa smiled to Patty, barely stopping for her.


"Good. One of my articles from last month just broke the two million mark," Patty smiled as she swiveled in her chair, a cup of coffee in her hand.


"Oh? Good for you. It won't be long before I have a new neighbour," Elsa smiled as she continued on past the cubicles and towards the offices and the door to her own.


Oddly enough, the door to her office was closed, though she'd often left it open in the event that the cleaning staff might eventually get to it. She reached for the door handle and turned, finding the door to be locked.


"That's strange. Maybe Avner locked it by mistake," Elsa remarked to herself, continuing on towards the coffee room.


"How's Elsa today?" asked Dan with a friendly smile on his face. Dan was a husky and bearded family man in his early forties, and one of the senior copy editors.


"Good. You wouldn't happen to know why my office is locked, would you?" asked Elsa, brushing her long black hair around her ear as she asked him.


He blushed ever so slightly.


"I don't know. I only work here. Did you ask the big guy?" Dan responded, slightly flustered as he carefully laughed through his gritten teeth.


"I haven't been in to see him yet. Should I be worried?" she batted her eyelashes at him ever so slightly.


"You? Noooo. You could tame a pack a wolves, Elsa. Its budget time and you know how he gets..." Dan skirted the topic carefully, backing away towards the hall as he tried to escape into neutral territory.


"What happened to the sweetner?" asked Elsa, searching the empty cupboards for coffee supplies.


"I think that Margie in HR got the last one. I'll see you later, Elsa," Dan turned and made his escape into the hall, leaving Elsa as she continued her search for sweetner.


She eventually found a package of sugar in the back of one of the drawers, under the cutlery holder. She opened and poured it into her coffee, stirred it and then continued down the hall towards Avner's door.


When she arrived, the door was open and Avner was wearing his bifocals and doing his emails. As she tapped on his door, he turned to face her, brushing his hand through his greying hair and removing his glasses and revealing a pair of cold blue eyes. He placed his glasses on the desk beside his keyboard, where they sat magnifying the dulled and salt bleached finish from his mouse hand.


"There you are. Why don't you close the door and have a seat?" requested Avner of her.


"You want me to close the door...? Isn't it nicer opened...?" Elsa responded, already having forgotten her personal note to herself from earlier in the same morning.


"We're going to be talking for a bit. Could you. Please?" he took the liberty of using the "P" word despite not having really meant it.


Elsa turned and reluctantly closed the door, then placing her coffee on Avner's desk. She took the seat poised before him and crossed her legs to make herself comfortable.


"Elsa...?" Avner began his lecture, starting with her name and following it with a long pause, though her patience didn't last as much so then as it ever had.


"Before we start, is this related to why my office door is locked?" she asked him, suddenly recalling her message to herself from earlier that morning.


"Elsa, we're no longer the be all, end all source of news and information. We no longer have a monopoly on the medium. It used to be print. Then radio. Then television. There was nothing else, and you know as well as I do, when there's only one place telling the story, that's the place from which you're going to get the story. Guaranteed readership. Guaranteed listeners. Guaranteed viewers. Advertising revenue, because that's what this is all about. Without advertising revenue, we're done..." Avner explained to her, leaning back in his chair as he fondly recalled the old days.


"...but the people don't come for the advertising. They come for the content. The writing. My writing," Elsa reminded him confidently.


"In the old days Elsa, they very much did, but we're no longer living in the old days. We brought them with us for as long as we could, burning through our assets to cover our costs without meeting change head on. The internet snuck up on us. Mobile devices. All of it, the channel of a new generation who are tech-savvy and way beyond us. You know how it is, the bigger the ship, the slower the port-side turn. Corporate sent the budget this morning. We're losing two floors this year, and another four next year, but we aren't losing staff as long as the staff are pulling their weight," Avner said to Elsa, looking down the end of his nose at her.


"Are you saying that I lost my office because I'm not pulling my weight?" she became agitated with his insinuation.


"No. I'm saying that you lost your office, because I didn't want you to lose your job!" he responded to her.


"What about my awards? What about my readership? My readers are loyal, you know. I put our monthly magazines on the map. We sell subscriptions because of my writing!" Elsa reminded him once again.


"You don't understand Elsa. We're ceasing all print operations effective by the end of this month. We're looking at all print media, including your monthly columns as part of our new online strategy. You're now competing with writers working our dailies, but you have the advantage of having established columns which we're adapting to our new format as weeklies. The three magazines that you used to headline, will each become a weekly. Your columns? You're going to have to produce four times as many per month, that's twelve columns per month, and all for the same money as the three a month you used to do. That's what its going to require for you to adapt to this new economic model..." Avner leaned forward in his chair this time, using his hands to help him make his point.


"Three per week? Are you kidding me? That's how long it takes to do the research for one column, let alone the copy! And without an office? The answer is no!" Elsa responded, raising her voice.


"Would you let me finish?!" Avner raised his voice, but not his tone.


"Fine!" Elsa folded her arms across her chest, and began dangling her right heel nervously as she waited for him to explain.


"We're assigning you a writer. You're going to be working with someone else. Patty. You're going to feed her your rough copy and she'll take it to the final draft. You won't have an office. You'll be working outside of the offices, doing research and real journalism work. You'll put your copy together, updating Patty on a daily basis before the end of the day, and she's going to put it together into the final draft,  for which you'll sign for approval. She'll be credited as a co-writer/copy editor, but the columns will still hold your name and full credit as the writer slash journalist. You're losing the office, but you're getting something that is going help us revitalize our hold on the media market, and more importantly, revitalize you. Elsa, you and Patty are very different people. Patty should have a job in the office anchored to her desk in the cubicle, where she thrives as a writer, but you? I want you to lose the desk, and gain something more. You're going to have to live it, and she's going to have to write it," Avner lowered his voice only slightly, though his words became more encouraging, perhaps even sounding somewhat like those of a concerned mentor.


When he'd mentioned that she'd be outside of the office, her imagination began to explore the possibilities. At first she quickly shot them down, each one of them, thinking only in terms of the written words she needed to produce, rather than gathering the elements of the story for her column and where that might take her. As her subconscious fought a war over the possibilities and fears over how it might change her career, her mind once again arrived at the question of money.


"I want more money," Elsa said to Avner confidently.


"You're not getting it. However, I'm authorized to give you a monthly budget to cover some of your expenses. A portion of your fuel costs. Your vehicle insurance. Your phone bill. You won't be getting an increase, either this year or next, having your expenses covered works out to about the same as a standard increase. Prove it to us that you're still the draw of readership that we depend upon, and we'll reward you. That's the best you're going to get right now. So can I write this up?" asked Avner of Elsa, who sat in contemplation for a moment before giving him an answer.


"Give me the cheque for my car insurance today, and we've got a deal," Elsa responded with neither a smile nor a frown.


Avner pulled a cheque book from the top drawer of his desk, and quickly filled it out, leaving the amount blank and then handing it to her before signing it.


She filled in the numbers and returned it to him, at which point he signed it and returned it to her.


"Before you sign your new contract with us, from this point forward, we'll be choosing the topics of your columns..." Avner barely had finished his sentence before Elsa jumped on him verbally.


"No way! That's not the way I work!" she was ready to rip up the cheque before Avner responded.


"Corporate is using a market research firm as part of their guidelines for ensuring our share of the media market, and a guaranteed target audience for advertisers. Without that, we don't have advertisers. We'd be relying on internet click-throughs, which pay pennies compared to ad campaign deals and brand sponsorship. If you're going to leave and throw away everything you've built here, then you should know that any other media conglomerate that decides to pick you up, will require the same thing. If you won't do it for us, then you'll be doing it for someone else and for much less money," Avner explained the rules of the new media game to her, and she pursed her lips in frustration before folding the cheque and putting it in her purse.


"Where do I sign, and what's my first assignment?" she asked Avner.


"Glad to have you on board again, Elsa. Sign on the dotted line," Avner slid her contract across the desk after having retrieved it from a folder in the bottom drawer of his desk.


"We're doing an issue two weeks from now on the topic of modern spirituality. Now given the data of your previous readership, we've decided to give you a column dedicated to some of the more esoteric and controversial people associated with these new movements. You're going to be interviewing a fellow by the name of Proto-Humanus. He's the sole clerical representative of a largely unknown philosophy. Yet, for some reason, this guy has a large dedicated readership online, despite never having given public talks relating to his Proto-Humanus spiritual philosophy," Avner explained to her.


"So you're trying to lure his followers for the advertising revenue and throwing me to the wolves to achieve this?" confirmed Elsa.


"I'm not. Corporate is, but it does make sense. These online followers of his obviously read. They're consumers too, so why not? I can't say that I envy you because balancing between appeasing them, and every other competing philosophy is not going to be an easy task, but its one that I'm sure you'll be able to handle," Avner paused and smiled at her.


"Avner. I'm thirty-nine. I'm on the front doorstep of forty. I'm once divorced. I have no children, and the only thing I have to look forward to is writing columns about facial scrubs, cleansers and moisturizers, which I was hoping I would already have been doing by this point in my life. And now you're throwing me into a whirlwind which is most certainly there for young graduate writers starting out, rather than a woman whose egg will soon expire, leaving nothing in her future but anti-aging creams, ointments and the occasional vaginal fantasy club book of the month to look forward to..." Elsa spoke firmly, though her voice wavered slightly as if she was on the brink of tears.


"Elsa my dear. Take the opportunity and run with it. Insofar as the other woman stuff goes, why don't you talk about it with Patty?" Avner suggested to her, most certainly purposefully insensitively.


Elsa stood from her chair, placing Avner's pen back on his desk. She then turned and opened the door and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her without saying another word to him.


She then walked down the hall, towards the cubicles and over to where Patty was seated.


"So, did he say anything about my new office? The one neighbouring yours?" Patty asked Elsa.


Elsa's eyes grew narrow for a moment, before she once again regained her composure.


"Alright. I guess you already know that we're working together. I'm going to be getting setup with this new arrangement for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, I'll call you with an update, and by the evening I should have the first bit of material for the first draft. Any questions?" asked Elsa of Patty.


"So are we going to like, go for the whole mysterious side to this? You know, like a conspiracy? Or are we going to cover it like a spiritual tourist?" Patty asked Elsa enthusiastically, whose expression betrayed any dignity to Patty's question, instead averting it entirely.


"We'll talk about that tomorrow. I've got a real busy day ahead of me," Elsa turned to leave as Patty responded.


"Alright partner. BFN," Patty replied with a smile, leaving Elsa to wonder what that meant.


When Elsa arrived in the parking garage at her car, she got in and pulled her favourite note pad from her purse and wrote herself a note:


- Tub of Hagen-Dazs from Lakeshore Market

- Curl up with flannel blanket, Hagen-Dazs, television remote and have a good cry



Tuesday July 22, 2025 12 PM - Sanity


- Get to Yonge St. and St. Clair carwash by ten

- Oil and filter change

- Mechanic's inspection for power train warranty

- Deposit insurance money at bank

- Interview Porto-Hummus




Elsa pulled into the front driveway of the Apathy Center for Long Term Care, stopping at the parking station to obtain a ticket from the parking attendant. She rolled down her window as the parking attendant greeted her from within a strangely ornate glass booth.


"Good day Miss. Are you visiting or an out-patient here for counseling?" he asked her calmly and without any implied semblance of judgement.


"If life was the board game Monopoly, I'd be just visiting, and you'd be free parking," Elsa quickly finagled a clever quip to save face at that moment, though her jest was far too stealthy for his sense of humour.


She withdrew her Press Card identification and handed it to him, once again insulating herself against the impression of her being an outpatient, despite the fact that the only person to whom that impression meant anything was her.


He examined her Press Card, which had a professional photo of her taken two years earlier. The same photo that had graced every one of her magazine columns since that time. He squinted at it several times and then back to her, before he nodded.


"That is definitely you, though a different you than the one now here before me now," he said to her thoughtfully.


"No. That's the same me as the one sitting in the driver's seat of my BMW Z4 Roadster," she spoke diplomatically, though it quickly became clear to her that the two of them were from very different worlds and held very different values.


He slid her press card through a scanner and then handed it back to her, the license plate camera already having done its job.


"The guest parking is around the back of the facility. Its a short walk from the side door. Just ask at the check-in station and they'll direct you to the front desk," he said to her, offering her a simple smile as the gate opened, granting her access to the parking lot.


She followed his instructions, navigating the parking lot around towards the back of the main building until she found a spot in the very place he'd indicated. She pulled in and parked her car and then got out, lifting her sunglasses from her eyes momentarily so she could see the side door of the building. She then made her way into the building and over to the check-in station, where she was greeted by an older lady in a blue care facility uniform.


"You must be Miss Chlorine?" the lady asked her.


"Clovis. Elsa Clovis. I'm here to see..." Elsa dug through her purse to find her note book, which upon finding it she thumbed through the pages until she arrived at her day's notes.


"Porto-Hummus? Did I say that right?" she asked the lady.


"...errr, close enough. His real name is Perry Hanson, but we just call him Perry..." the lady responded.


"As in perennial, perhaps?" Elsa thought out loud, once again finding something that might prove anecdotal in her writing, pertaining to this particular story.


"No. Perry doesn't often get to see flowers or the gardens. He's uhhhh. You'd better see for yourself. If you'll wait a moment, I'll have Doctor Briggs take you to him," the lady assured Elsa, mentioning a name that she'd recognized.


"You mean Doctor Steven Briggs by chance?" Elsa asked, having recognized his name as that of another columnist in one of the Psychology Quarterlies published by Read All Over Media.


"No. Definitely not. You can be seated over there until Doctor Briggs gets here," the lady responded quite flatly.


Elsa rested her sunglasses atop of her head as she walked over to the chairs, taking a tissue from her purse to check the chair for any signs of dust or filth. When she found her tissue to be slightly soiled upon inspection, she instead remained standing, writing several notes in her pad, which provoked a frown from the lady at the check-in desk.


A few minutes later, which Elsa spent observing the goings on around her, another lady in her mid-thirties arrived, adorned in a Doctor's lab coat. She stopped at the check-in desk and spoke with the lady there, and then stepped over to where Elsa stood.


"Miss Clovis? I'm Doctor Stephanie Briggs, the Head Psychiatric Specialist of this facility. I understand that you're looking to speak with Perry today?" Doctor Briggs was barely five feet five inches tall, standing at eye level with the tip of Elsa's nose, and she spoke to Elsa as if she were an infant.


A demeanor that Elsa found slightly offensive, if not condescending at first.


"A pleasure to meet you Doctor Briggs. You can call me Elsa or even Doctor Elsa. I'm a Doctor of Journalism," Elsa responded, shoring up her perceived condescension by Doctor Briggs, failing to understand that for Doctor Briggs, the way she'd learned to deal with people just came with the territory and her career.


"I didn't realize they were giving out Doctorates for Journalism, but I'm sure that you're very aptly deserving of your credentials," Doctor Briggs responded calmly.


"Even those of us who tell the real story have to swear the hypocrite's oath, you know," Elsa smiled, feeling confident that she'd earned Doctor Briggs' trust.


"Well I'm sure that Hippocrates is very honoured, if not rolling over in his grave at this moment. Any who, let me take you to see Perry. We keep him tucked away in a corner of the facility that doesn't often get many visitors. He's part of our special care population," Doctor Briggs started walking, scrolling through the screen contents of her tablet to check up on her patients and schedule.


Elsa, upon seeing Doctor Briggs familiarity with technology, pulled her note pad and a pen from her purse once again, and began jotting down notes and randomly flipping between pages, almost as if she were intimidated by Doctor Briggs' use of the device.


Elsa, despite having been one of the highest scoring students in her graduate program two decades earlier, was a chronic technophobe. She'd graduated from the University of Toronto's Journalism program the same year that saw the birth of YouTube, and the purchase of the Cheerify social network platform by MindSpice, and yet she'd been the only student who'd handed in all of her assignments on paper, hand written or on very rare occasions, scanned copies or facsimiles, but never through the use of technology that went beyond anything but a scanner, fax machine or a pocket calculator.


It wasn't that she was incapable of or lacked the intelligence and skills needed to use computers. It was the fact that she believed that if the words had not been scribed by the muscles and tendons in her fingers and arms, that they somehow hadn't originated from her, but rather through some bizarre alchemy secretly inherent in technology, that if not acknowledged, could be potentially harmful to those who relied upon it.


Any who had attempted to question her about her phobia, would often find themselves confronted by very creative and contrived excuses that completely skirted the real issue, but explained for that specific moment as to why she wasn't using a computer, and it would never involve any mention of her phobia.


Hence, most people that had come to know Elsa didn't suspect a thing when it came to her and technology. They just assumed (and most correctly so) that she was eccentric. As much so as Doctor Briggs had now assumed the same thing upon experiencing some of her social quirks thus far, though in under estimating Elsa's intellect, she'd also missed the cues that would have told her that there were issues related to a deep seated phobia she'd not yet acknowledged. How she walked with poise and confidence, despite the fact that she seemed intimidated by the presence of Doctor Briggs' tablet. Enough so that the flipping of the pages of her note pad and occasional writing of notes had become the ascribed medicine she'd eventually found through years of self discovery. A medicine that helped her deal with her phobia, despite the fact that she was secretly protecting it.


"Have you ever been in a long term care facility, Miss Clovis?" asked Doctor Briggs of Elsa, who by that time had turned off the screen of the tablet and tucked it under her arm.


"You mean as an in patient? No! Certainly not," Elsa responded somewhat defensively, without knowing she was once again secretly protecting her phobia.


"No. Silly me for not clarifying myself. I meant as a professional, or as a visitor?" Doctor Briggs elaborated on the context of her question.


"No. Most of my work as a columnist involved the promotion of women's products, especially brand names, though I really turned it into an artform of sincerity. Perhaps a little sheltered in the flowerbed of life compared with writing a piece on a long term care facility, but life happens in many different places and to many different people, doesn't it?" Elsa responded with a sense of rhetoric, feeling relieved once again that she or her phobia was not under the microscope.


"It certainly does. So tell me, where are you from originally Elsa?" asked Doctor Briggs.


"Scandinavia," Elsa responded, fondly recalling the foggiest bits and pieces of her life as a child. Brief flashes of being held in her mother's arms, or wheeled in a stroller.


"Where in Scandinavia?" Doctor Briggs spoke softly and with sincere interest.


"Norrköping. In Sweden. Until the age of three. Then we moved to Düsseldorf at that point in time and lived there until I was thirteen, at which point we moved to Canada," Elsa recalled more from her youthful life. Colourful memories Düsseldorf. The bright summer sun shining down upon the Rhine River. The vivid colours of autumn leaves amidst the Eller forest, where she chased the birds and squirrels until she was out of breath from laughter.


"It must have been nice to have seen that much of the world from an early time. Not many of our patients here have had that kind of luxury, and the ones who have, often experienced very difficult developmental challenges that hindered their lives. I hope that you're not uncomfortable talking about such things?" Doctor Briggs asked her as a courtesy and in the interest of caution.


"I have to be honest and say that I've never had this kind of an experience, nor have I dealt with those who've found themselves in such a challenge. Any pointers as to how I might proceed without putting my foot in my mouth, or theirs?" Elsa asked Doctor Briggs.


"The special care facility are a group of patients whose long term care requirements often include, but not always thankfully, restraint, strict schedules and rules, carefully monitored diets, carefully monitored activities including their consumption of various forms of media. Most are pleasantly peaceful, especially when their regimen is carefully accounted for, but some can be triggered quite easily at the drop of a hat, or by something as simple as an expression or gesture. Even asking the wrong question might lead to a response that could very quickly get out of hand," Doctor Briggs explained to Elsa, who despite still not fully fathoming what she was getting into, began evaluating her creative options when it came to her questions.


"What about Porto-Hummus?" asked Elsa of Doctor Briggs, still not having corrected her notes.


"Perry. You see, that's the sort of thing that might trigger a patient. Something so simple as forgetting their name. In here, their name is all they truly have, and not something to be taken for granted," Doctor Briggs explained to Elsa.


"But isn't a name the weight of a person's importance? I mean, its value to a person is in some way a representation of their self respect. Isn't it?" asked Elsa from the perspective of an astutely observant woman who'd known many people for whom their sense of being was a specific acumen associated with their name.


"Mazlo's hierarchy of needs certainly goes a great length towards defining the importance of a sense of self, and one that isn't reliant upon a sense of belonging or acceptance, and often in spite of it. When we have little else, we only have ourselves. But does that mean that without other people, is a name important? You'd have to lose everything and only be left with that to know for certain," Doctor Briggs posed to Elsa, who contemplated what the Doctor had to say.


"Philosophically speaking, many beliefs espouse the idea that the self, especially in terms of the identity is irrelevant," Elsa responded, drawing upon her knowledge of philosophy, though without ever having fully explored its many rounded corners.


"Subjectivity versus objectivity, and a simplification of they who are the observer and that which is observed. Some philosophy does away with the observer paradigm, instead favouring the idea that there is only the observed. We're not separate from what we perceive. We're a part of it," Doctor Briggs began hitting upon an inherently complex topic.


"However, identity and the self in a modern society are very important aspects associated with one's survival. How do we accrue money without a name? In some of the dark corners of society, there are people who live without banks. Without credit cards. Without identification. The data centers have very little if any knowledge of these people, and perhaps in the sense of organized society, they live without an established identity in terms of the record keeping of the rest of society," Doctor Briggs continued.



"In such corners, there are established barter systems that rely upon identity and its being constantly associated with a person at the level of their physical being. In such corners, these barter systems are very actively keeping track of a person's social debt, and their social gains. The people who maintain these dark corners are very adamant about protecting and preserving what is theirs and what isn't. In recent studies however, researchers have found that collectivism has eroded the concept of individual identity enough so that those who live within these barter system based economies disappear unless they become part of a larger group that can protect them," Doctor Briggs paused as they turned a corner, where she waved to one of the female patients who smiled back innocently.


"The ones who don't, often end up with the weight of debt, while losing the graces of their social output, which is cannibalized by more predatory collectives. Some of the people in this long term care facility have fallen victim to such collectives at various points in their lives, and upon denying them of their name, you might draw their violent wrath, for when you have nothing left, and that last bastion of your sense of self is taken from you, the lengths that you'd go to in order to protect yourself, and prevent yourself from inheriting someone else's debt, would likely be very far. Possibly risking the only thing that you have left after losing your name. Your life. Remember, that to the power of a collective, the concept of identity is based upon a social agreement between the individual and the collective. If the collective chooses not to recognize the identity of the individual however, that is and can become a very big problem, and a threat to society and civilization itself," Doctor Briggs explained carefully to Elsa, giving her enough background so that she could safely and cautiously proceed as a responsible journalist.


"Then this long term care facility is the last place these lost sheep have to go?" asked Elsa, now understanding much more about the nature of the facility and the people whom currently relied upon it.


"Not all. Many were born with issues. Life and health challenges that made their development very difficult and in most cases in the special care wing, impossible without intervention. Here, they have a life and they are protected, even insulated from the risks that their challenges pose for them and others in society. Some however, were rescued from those dark corners about which I just spoke. They weren't born that way. They were made. Manufactured by predatory collectives, though now they're safe here. From such groups, and from themselves and the risks that their resultant condition imposes upon their continued survival, both from a physical and a psychological standpoint. Perry however, is a very unique and distinct case from them all, as you'll see in a moment," Doctor Briggs continued around another corner, leading Elsa down a hall to a door with a card checkpoint and a PIN code entry number pad.


Doctor Briggs inserted her identification card (which caused Elsa to immediately note the significance of their previous discussion), and then entered her PIN code. A green LED lit on the magnetic lock of the door, Doctor Briggs opened it for Elsa, the two of them stepping forward into the special care facility as Elsa carefully jotted down a note for herself.


The special care facility was housed in a dome shaped room, about thirty meters in height, with three floors, the bottom most of which they were at had six halls leading outward from the dome concentrically, each at spaced sixty degrees to their neighbours.


The dome's foyer area was alive with life in the form of green plants, all of which were of healthy colour and texture, feeding on the light streaming in through the skylight atop of the dome. A number of special care patients were seated amongst strategically placed benches, both near and far from the plants. Some of the patients possessed books, and of the books there were many varieties. Some of them strictly with pictures, and others with combined text and in storybook format. Others were filled with large print text, and much rarer were those of modern and classic literature.


"How many patients are housed in the special care wing?" asked Elsa.


"Currently, there are thirty. Twenty of them are lightly monitored, while the remaining ten are under constant monitoring and supervision. Perry is at the very top of that list, though as you'll soon find out, he's actually quite special," Doctor Briggs stood in the center of the dome, pointing out some of the first twenty patients, and then indicating a few of the top of the list.


Elsa took notes as Doctor Briggs spoke, Elsa's eyes cautiously darting towards her tablet every now and again.


"They seem very well adjusted," Elsa noted aloud.


"Most of them are, thankfully, but that requires a lot of dedication on the part of the staff. Its not always easy you know. Some of the patients seek very creative ways of expressing their independence from us, and most often at the expense of safety. Either that of others, or more often than not, their own," Doctor Briggs looked specifically over to one of the patients, a fellow in his late twenties and wearing the same inpatient gown as the others. His hair was messy, and his face was quite literally half-shaven, though diagonally. He bore half a beard and moustache on one side of his face, split along a diagonal line that ran through his chin, leaving trail of sloppy shaving strips on his neck.


"Well, lets get you to Perry," Doctor Briggs suggested, starting towards the third concentric hall to their left.


They ventured forth and down the hall, passing only one hall monitor along the way, eventually arrived at a large door with another card checkpoint and number pad. Doctor Briggs inserted her ID card into the checkpoint and entered her PIN once again.


A large magnetic lock buzzed and hummed, eventually clanking at which point the door began opening sideways, to the left.


"Any reason why the door went that way rather than right?" asked Elsa observantly.


"Yes, as a matter of fact. Perry is right handed. Actually we've observed him a number of times using his left hand equally as well as his right, but he still favours his right. We also noticed that he has a tendency to stand on the right side of the hall nearest the door, which gives us an advantage when dealing with him in cases where he's violating the rules of his residency," Doctor Briggs explained, peering to her left and finding Perry standing facing the still opening door as Doctor Briggs entered the room, Elsa behind her.


Elsa examined Perry, who for all intense purposes seemed a normal man in his mid thirties, even handsomely so though somewhat bereft of focus unlike the others Elsa had seen. His appearance was like that of a ghost, pale as a sheet, though not quite as much as so as her own skin and foundation. He slowly turned around to face Doctor Briggs, his face lighting up when he spied Elsa for the first time.


He smiled at her and immediately began turning after which he began walking over to a first chair which was centered in the room, facing another chair of similar design, as if he'd been waiting for her to arrive.


"Perry? I've got someone that I'd like you to meet. Would you like that?" Doctor Briggs asked of Perry, as he walked in small steps purposefully towards the chair for which he was aiming, moving more like the tortoise than the hare.


"You brought her? I was wondering when she'd get here, and look, oh do look how you've brought her!" Perry said as he paused with his back to them, slowly turning having arrived at his chair, before slowly bending over to be seated.


"Perry, you're to go easy with her. I don't have to call for the restraints, do I?" asked Doctor Briggs of Perry, Elsa looking to the Doctor and then back to Perry as they awaited his response.


"Do they need the restraints today she asked me?" he turned as if he were speaking to someone else whom only he could see.


"No. I don't think that will be an issue today. Its such a nice day. There's no noisy bits at all," Perry turned back to face them, eagerly awaiting her from his own chair.


"Alright. That's a good sign, he seems to like you..." Doctor Briggs didn't get a chance to finish her sentence before everything went dark, and the world seemed to disappear momentarily.


 Elsa was seated facing him, her legs crossed and her note pad resting on her knee as she played with the pen in her hand.


"...what just happened? I was standing over there and then... nothing! And now I'm here? What happened?" Elsa turned around to see that there was no sign of Doctor Briggs and that the door was now closed and locked.


"You walked over to the chair after Doctor Briggs introduced you to me, and then you sat down. Doctor Briggs bid us farewell and then she closed the door. You then pulled your note pad from your purse and I asked you if I could borrow it. You said no, but you gave me a piece of paper from it instead. I used a very very very tiny pen to draw a picture for you and gave you back the piece of paper. You smiled for the second time since you got here, and put it at the back of your note pad. Then you asked me if it was alright if we talked for a bit, and I said alright, and smiled. You began playing with your pen, and then you looked startled and asked me what happened," Perry explained to her, going over every detail slowly and patiently.


As he explained what had happened, she suddenly began to recall what she'd missed, and all in great detail, as if someone had poured her recollection of the events back into her head from where they'd been taken.


She opened the note pad, flipping through the pages all the way to the back, where a perfectly precision etched image of the Birth of Venus presented itself to her, though instead of the original Venus, it was a perfect rendering of her. Upon seeing it, she even blushed, closing the note pad momentarily as she covered her face, and then opening it again to take another look. She then held it up to her face, examining it up close, absolutely amazed by the level of detail, smaller than her eyes even up close to see.


"How did you do this?" she asked him.


"With a LOT of practice," he winked at her.


"Was that your first question?" he confirmed with her.


"Who are you? I know that your name is Perry Hanson, a very nice name by the way, but who are you?  Can you tell me?" she asked him softly, flipping her note pad back to the front and the most recent page she'd been using.


"Yes. I can tell you, but you've got to keep it a secret," Perry said to her, retaining the same innocent look upon his face.



- Who is Perry Hanson?


- Who is Porto-Hummus?


- Why is he in here?



For later tonight:


- Pickup Salmon filet and hollandaise for BBQ dinner

- Bottle of wine? Shiraz? Riesling?

- First page draft for Patty

- Call Düsseldorf


Coming soon...

Written by Brian Joseph Johns


Credits and attribution:


Thank you both the Deepai.org and Photopea.com, without whom the title art would not have been possible.

Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Deepai.org, Google AI Studio, Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts

Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history

Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)

Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art

Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion 
Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility

Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools

Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!

Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

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