We are who we are. Ultimately this is the most crushing truth, and yet the most liberating. Dante Bustamante has figured out in almost two decades what most of humanity still struggles with every single moment of every day. In their thoughts about the future, their inclinations tainted by experiences past, their temptations and yielding, their…

The kagluyag crave the perfect storm. My name is Ramon, Nephilim Reeve for this scattered archipelago, world-weary overseer of these centuries’ affairs. I take no sides. Our parents came here when the human race was young and impressionable. They gushed over our ancestors’ knowledge and magic and art  and asked to be consumed by them,…

There now, the legitimacy of these visions assaulted me like a trusting wife suddenly and rudely aware of a cheating husband. Sex on the matrimonial bed. There it is. As plain and surreal as mental pictures meeting reality. Even I couldn’t bear it. At the same time it was like walking into a dream. Who…

You know me. I had to experiment. I considered getting online and asking people whether they had ever encountered something like this, but thought this was going to be useful later on. I can try and figure out the thing’s mechanics without the bias of knowing what other people did when they found out. The…

Saturday, 4th floor, BA building. I don’t know what happened between the time we entered the tambayan, totally psyched and committed to studying for Strat and this ultimately peculiar moment where Keebs is pouring blue and yellow glitter over a sceptre drawn using glue and I am conscientiously scanning the tambayan log book entries for…

Dante and I had a long talk last night. He gave me gas money and told me to drive. I thought we were going somewhere. By the time we were near the other end of the Marikina River (the side beside a mall), he told me to stop. “I should have known that was what…

(First posted here.) Comm 3 class, we were the oldest here. We had to bring in a famous personality to interview. I, of course, ever-loyal and perhaps as wonderfully self-absorbed as the rest of the future business moguls of this country (and by self-absorbed I mean that in the most scientific of ways, in that…

(First posted here.) “The term hacker has such a bad connotation, I find it depressing.” “Your talent, Keebs, is screaming I don’t belong in BAA! I’m a computer genius and I know it!” “It’s just that, I’m not sure why we can’t use spreadsheets in class. This is bookkeeping! This won’t help me learn to talk stocks.”…

(First posted here.) “I don’t think this is mean at all,” Keebs said. Dante finished spraying the sides of Mr. Sanchez’s table with bubblegum-smelling cologne. “E ikaw, Deej?” I sometimes called Nirvana Deej, short for D.G., her middle initials, for De Guzman. “I think carrying a tiny dog around in a basket all day is inhuman.” “This is…

(First posted here.) It was a little less clear from here. Maureen’s purple hair did nothing to dull her personality. She was getting people to dance together, picking couples at random, then judging the victims’ mutual reactions with either a new match or by leaving them alone. “She’s hilarious,” a guy named Lima said near…